FLASHBACK: "Blog of the Year NA Confidential's press release takes third straight top press release award in its own competition."

Headline: "This is the fifth time in the past nine years that the News and Tribune has been designated Newspaper of the Year for CNHI."

I can't believe it's been five+ years since CNHI's "homer" awards annoyed me enough to comment. Gadzooks, I may be maturing or something. Let's revisit the acrimony (in 2013 and 2014).

---

March 26, 2013

NA Confidential press release takes third straight top press release award in its own competition.

1117 EAST SPRING STREET NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION — NA Confidential was named Blog of the Year for the third consecutive year in the Best of NA Confidential blogging competition for 2012.

The blog — with offices in the aging laptop belonging to the senior editor — competed in the “Only New Albany Blog That Matters” category, which is the only category awarded, and was honored by itself for comprehensive coverage of the devastating errors found in CNHI publications based locally but owned from afar. Individually honored in the “only New Albany blog that matters” category were Bluegill, who was named Junior Editor of the Year in his most recent year at the blog, and Senior Editor Roger A. Baylor, who was named polemicist of the year for the third time in the past four years of voting for himself after precluding other entrants.

NA Confidential received praise from a team of NA Confidential judges for “breadth of coverage, strong photography and initiative” in everyday news and civics coverage, but especially in the aftermath of the latest offenses against taste and decency committed by the CNHI publication based locally but owned from afar, which dreadfully bored readers in Floyd County, Clark County and surrounding areas, according to an NAC news release.

“During the CNHI publication’s reign of terrors, I watched as our reporters, photographers and designers did some incredible work documenting a horrific time in this area’s journalism history,” said NA Confidential’s Roger A. Baylor. “They went about their business as clock-punchers, but what really struck me at first read, though, was how everyone did their work with such devotion to posting Bible proverbs.”

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have a pop-ad to foist on unsuspecting on-line readers."

Baylor, who has worked in blogging for 10 years and in five states of booze-addled consciousness, added, “The residents of Clark and Floyd counties are served by some of the best and brightest producers of birdcage lining anywhere in the country. I’m so happy for the parakeets able to use that as a target and for their aviaries.”

The NA Confidential blog has won Blog of the Year each year a competition has been held for itself, run by itself, and with nary a merger in sight.

NA Confidential serves more than 130 readers housed in at least 23 separate New Albany street addresses. The annual Best of NA Confidential recognizes the individual and collective works of the company’s two contributors and sole voters.

---

December 10, 2014

NA Confidential wins "General Cantankerousness" at HSBA awards in Birdseye.

There wasn't an award for Best Twitter Parody.

NA Confidential won 12 awards — including General Cantankerousness in its division — at the 48th weekly Hoser State Blog Association Foundation Better Blogging Awards on Saturday at the No Tell Motel in Birdseye.

General Cantankerousness is based on the number of welts administered.

“I’m really proud that the great work of the NA Confidential staff was recognized by our bile judges,” said Editor Roger A. Baylor. “Winning General Cantankerousness shows the depths to which we’ll descend to match what other chain photographers, reporters, designers and editors produce every day, and we’re excited to win six first-place HSBA Foundation awards. It’s one of our best showings in the weekly contest in my nine relatively sober months of paying scant attention to awards.”

NA Confidential competes in division four against blogs of similar size:

Freedom to Screech
Kitchen Linoleum
Laryngitis of the People

But in the spirit of déjà vu ... haven't we been here before?

Why yes, we have. Let's return to March 26, 2013 ...

NA Confidential press release takes third straight top press release award in its own competition.

The NA Confidential blog has won Blog of the Year each year a competition has been held for itself, run by itself, and with nary a merger in sight.

NA Confidential serves more than 130 readers housed in at least 23 separate New Albany street addresses. The annual Best of NA Confidential recognizes the individual and collective works of the company’s two contributors and sole voters.

Although Bluegill was a bit annoyed.

I'm just bummed NAC didn't snag a web design award this year. The site template it shares with so many others couldn't be any more innovative and effective, even if the person at Blogger HQ who actually designed it tried really, really hard. I'm proud to work with them.

No biggie. We'll keep calm and carry on as the New Albany blog no one reads.

An unlikely pairing of Rod Serling with craft beer narcissism -- and a glance back at 2013.

14 years and 13,727 posts into this writing experiment, I've long since given up trying to remember what I wrote and when I wrote it. Often I'll get a brilliant idea about a topic, start writing, then become overwhelmed with deja vu. Upon closer examination, it will be revealed that I certainly have "been there" before, perhaps ten years ago, often using an eerily similar pattern of words.

Earlier today I referenced a craft beer commentary.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Pokemonification? The beer market is plenty big enough for legacy brewers to benefit from segmentation.

The rest of the day something indefinable kept nagging at me. It wasn't until 9:00 p.m. that my YouTube feed disgorged the link (above) about the new Twilight Zone series, which in turn prompted me to search NA Confidential for the article about Rod Serling that I seem to have remembered writing.

I found it, and my leitmotif was "narcissism," or the very word that kept occurring to me as I read the Pokemonification screed. Consequently, I've been plunged into one of my familiar moods of contemplation with regard to then versus now. 

Obviously the world was a very different place for me in April of 2013. Trench warfare at NABC Bank Street Brewhouse was ongoing, and in retrospect the craft beer world outside our besieged perimeter was a confusing and fog-shrouded landscape.

Re-reading my words almost six years later, I stand by them. What I didn't know at the time was my eventual decision to deal myself out of the war and sidestep the narcissism (the Pokemonification?), resolving to navigate a course backward to the egg -- to hop off the tilt-w-whirl and find a quiet, clean, well-lighted spot to contemplate the universe with a mug of Pilsner Urquell or Fuller's London Pride.

As John Lennon sang, "I just had to let it go."

In 2016, I kept repeating to people that comebacks are impossible unless you go away -- and I did just that. While I was away, metaphorically, there was enough time and space to rediscover who I really am, as opposed to the role I was expected to play in an off-Broadway production of Craft Beer Nation. It was a role I'd become weary of performing, because my beer-related interests (along with numerous other topics having little to do with beer) were elsewhere. 

Every now and then we must shed our skins and evolve into the next iteration. The process can be gratifying and painful in equal measure, and my only complaint is that in the overall scheme of things for me, time is running short. How many reinventions are left?

Just the same, these past few tumultuous years have been worth it, all the births and deaths, ups and downs, and agonies balancing ecstasies. Most importantly, being involved with Pints&union has helped me understand that my life experience is still useful.

I'm not exactly fashionable, but I don't care. At the age of 58, I can show up with mismatched socks and not give a damn. Apart from a sliver of new music, popular culture utterly eludes me. The historic preservationists can deal with their buildings, and I'll embrace beer and beer-related culture. The re-educational "legacies" mission has only just begun.

Narcissism still annoys me, as it did Rod Serling. He's been gone for a very long time. I hope to stick around a while longer. Here's the column from April, 2013. 

Heavens, what a photo.

---

ON THE AVENUES: You gaze at your own reflection, all right.

“The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.”
-- attributed to Rod Serling (1924-1975)

Science fiction isn’t my forte, but no matter. Even if I seldom indulge, it is evident to me that the genre has its strengths, among them the ability to harness the otherwise far-fetched to the greater cause of allegorical relevance.

Consider, if you will, Rod Serling’s scripts for the Twilight Zone television series, many of which remain fresh and thought-provoking a half-century after their inception.

Serling’s personal mission, one that he pursued with considerable skill, was to befuddle white-bread network censors by disguising progressive commentaries as seemingly harmless manifestations of the macabre – tales regarded as inhabiting the science fiction canon, with commensurate camouflage.

As Serling pithily observed, “Things which couldn't be said by a Republican or Democrat could be said by a Martian."

To which I’d add: Things which couldn’t be said by a Republican or Democrat or a Martian might be said by craft beer, but not if we insist on a narcissistic self-absorption.

---

Lately I’ve been thinking about Serling’s admonition to reject narcissism. A talented man possessing strong viewpoints and pronounced beliefs, he came of age as a writer in the 1950s, precisely at a time when the mass hysterics and delusions of McCarthyism rendered the intellectual climate quite dangerous for those with contrarian viewpoints. It may well have been a nadir for progressivism, even by America’s remarkably low standard in such matters.

And yet, Serling possessed the innate strength of character – a sheer, contrarian stubbornness – to find a way of speaking his mind during a time when the presumed ideal of “free” speech was being honored primarily in the breach. He found a way, because to him, narcissism wasn’t a career option. I couldn’t agree more.

As others did at the time, Serling might have chosen to withhold his talent and wait for the inevitable thaw, perhaps opting for self-exile in an entirely different professional venue. Rather, he resisted drawing back and inward, and continued challenging viewers by painting the corners of the plate with nuance.

What if Serling had shrugged and gone strictly commercial, eschewing the artful for the straightforward, indulging the low common denominator all around him, and giving television audiences more by-the-numbers entertainment? Then as now, safety is easily rationalized, and in the mainstream, there’s a greater probability that the paychecks won’t stop coming.

I’m not judging others, merely noting that for whatever reason, Serling elected not to follow the easiest path. He persevered. The message got out, converts were made along the way, and these many decades later, we’re still able to learn from his experience.

---

My chosen profession is craft beer, and I’m no happier seeing it corrupted by shoe-gazing narcissism than Rod Serling -- in his world, during his heyday, and according to the parameters of his calling.

Craft beer means many things to many people, and that’s as it should be. Speaking for myself, it’s a hobby that eventually grew into an occasional paycheck; it tastes great even though it’s often more filling; it is a wonderful device for promoting the life of the local pub; and it’s the final, best hope for sustaining local pub culture.

But to me, precisely because I’m not narcissistic, there is more to craft beer than just those attributes. Naturally, self-interest as a business owner brings with it certain promotional necessities and instances of self-aggrandizement, but these are not to be confused with staring at one’s reflection in a pond filled with Barrel Aged Black Kolsch while reaching for the Kleenex ... and not because one needs to blow his nose.

Beer, as writ large, may very well be a commodity suitable for the Financial Times, but craft beer specifically also is a symbol, an analogy – a metaphor. Craft beer’s very founding principle is active and points outward, not passive and shrinking toward the inside. It is expansive in the market sense, but more importantly, in profits from the larger sense of community consciousness.

Craft beer is revolutionary, the overt rejection of an established order commonly known as mass market beer, which profits by accumulating capital for the express purpose of thwarting competition in purely Mafioso capitalistic fashion, and substitutes slavish conformity for the broad panoply of life’s possibilities.

When craft beer lapses narcissistic, and whenever the circle geeking starts, we as a presumed culture of appreciation are only providing the multinational mockrobrewing hegemonists with head space to mislead the larger segment of the market, which we haven’t yet reached. The established order we first rebelled against hasn’t gone away. It’s fighting back, and the best way to confront the Goebbelsian lies it deploys is to break away from our narcissism, stop looking in the mirror, and engage those folks standing just beyond the tent flap.

That’s because many of them want to come inside. Let’s give them a reason to do so.

I can’t be sure that Rod Serling would have appreciated craft beer, but I believe he would quickly see the merit in purging narcissism from the culture of craft beer appreciation. It’s repellant, even to those of us who already get it.

THE BEER BEAT: England, or one man's heightened cholesterol panic is another man's nostalgic repast (2013).

Having just now introduced an eager young student to the delightful concept of stargazy pie ...

 ... with pilchard heads gloriously intact, I found myself hungry for English comfort food and daydreaming about Real Ale, and with the pantry barren of Marmite, made do instead with kippers and my last bottle of Fuller's ESB.

The words of Inspector Morse, classic British television police crime solver, popped into my head.

“The secret of a happy life is to know when to stop – and then go that bit further.”

I was plunged into a reverie about our last trip to the United Kingdom in 2013.

---

The very least I could do during two weeks spent in England’s lovely West Country was to ingest my gout medicine each and every morning without fail – preferably washed down with a pint of cask-conditioned Bitter from one of those nearby pubs nearby dispensing it, but in a pinch, grudgingly conceding the utility of mere water.

Yes, I know: Fish do IT in THAT. The solution? Eat more fish, especially with chips ... or, a genuine pasty.

Somewhere a health fanatic reads and brays with dismay, but have no fear. It’s only despairing, defeatist clatter of the sort Winston Churchill wouldn’t have countenanced, even after his morning bottle of champagne, and these naysayers are inaudible to me — fully muffled by the cacophonous sizzle of a traditional English breakfast frying atop the stove, even the waxy tomato from Tesco’s, because it is destined for maximum exposure to hot oil just like all the rest.

Queue the Elgar, and consider this partial list of foodstuffs joyfully consumed during my holiday, including both local “English” fare and widely available culinary options borrowed from elsewhere.

Anchovies fillets (fresh)
Bacon
Baked beans
Bangers and mash
Black pudding (i.e., blood sausage)
Cornish pasties
Crab sandwiches
Egg rolls
Falafel
Fish pie (not Stargazy pie, alas)
Gajrati (regional vegetarian Indian)
Haddock and chips
Pie, mash, eel and liquor (the latter is gravy)
Pizza (loaded)
Smoked salmon
Spanish tapas
Steak & kidney pie
Thai red curry
Yorkshire pudding

Alas, I digress. Generally it is my custom to entertain and inform in purely fermentable measures of prose, and yet during this most recent English holiday, I found it quite unthinkable to separate the culinary from the ale-mentary.

Overall, ways of the new were not my objective, and I did not search for top chefs flashing their own branded apron and sauce wear. Rather, my task was to focus on the glories of the much maligned traditional English table, and to accompany them with the products of classic native ale-making.

---

Mission accomplished. First, let’s review the liquidity to be found in a reference volume.

Just after purchasing plane tickets, and before any other arrangements had been made, I purchased the essential book for ale hunting in the United Kingdom: “Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) Good Beer Guide,” edited by Roger Protz, and fully revised for publication each year.

CAMRA is the beer world’s oldest and most doggedly pervasive consumer protection society, founded in 1973 for the express purposes of espousing and protecting cask-conditioned “real” ale from the intrusions of modern times. What exactly is cask-conditioned “real” ale? CAMRA explains:

Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.

Just know that traditional cask-conditioned ale is a living entity. It is pre-industrial, “slow” beer at its finest, predating every advance in ease of packaging, and preceding all processing shortcuts undertaken for the sake of modernity.

Consequently, as a product requiring training, thought and effort to maintain and dispense properly, real ale and the pub where it is consumed are inextricably linked. In America, the “coldest beer in town” merely signposts the triumph of refrigeration. In England, the best pint of real ale within walking distance of a bus stop is stirring testament to the publican’s commitment to craft.

That’s why CAMRA’S beer guide is vital. The organization’s local chapter members serve as diligent boots on the ground, studiously analyzing ales and pubs on a daily basis. Their intelligence gathering is the heart of the book, making it the top source of information for the visitor who cares less about his bed and breakfast than finding pints of fresh ale.

Which pubs are tops at tending their firkins? What do they usually pour? Do they serve snacks or meals? Are they hosts for discourse in their community? The book provides these answers, and many more.

My first visit to Devon and Cornwall was in 2009, and four years later, there have been changes in the pub scene. Owing to regulatory, political and societal factors too numerous to recount, pubs in the UK are diminishing in number, and that’s a bad sign. At the same time, there are more breweries now at work than at any point in a half-century.

Dozens of newcomers are brewing classic ale styles — Mild, Bitter, IPA, Stout and Porter – alongside newer variations, and they’re supplying local pubs. There may be fewer venues, but the range of choice probably is greater. Session strengths (below 4.5% abv) remain the norm, and while I might drop names (St. Austell, Skinner’s, Summerskill and Bridgetown), it wouldn’t matter, because none of the beers brewed by these excellent breweries are available anywhere close to Louisville.

This is as it should be. They await your arrival, over there.

---

On a sunny Sunday in July, my wife’s cousin drove us from the city of Plymouth to the Dartmoor National Park. In Merrivale, surrounded by rolling, sparse uplands and freely roaming sheep, we dined at a venerable establishment called the Dartmoor Inn.

I enjoyed roast beef with gravy, cabbage, vegetables and Yorkshire pudding. Two pints of well-tuned local Jail Ale from the Dartmoor Brewery in nearby Princetown completed this time-honored Sunday Roast.

Frankly, I gloried in the ambiance: Dark walls, wooden beams, a low-hanging ceiling and a fireplace, with humps, stoops and irregular measurements, and overall, minimal space for a heavyweight like me to navigate. The roasted meal was deliciously overcooked, and the ale’s ideally balanced malt and hops kept my palate sharp amid the meat and butter. It was the embodiment of a lifetime’s fascination with BBC News, “The Last of the Summer Wine” and maritime gin rations.

But what of the calories and cholesterol?

Whenever healthfulness began encroaching, I merely reached for another custard tart, found the closest CAMRA-listed pub, and waited for the feeling to pass.

Brew, Britannia.

ON THE AVENUES: Almost two years later, Mr. Gahan has yet to plug in this clock, and so it's time for him to clock out.

Tonight there'll be a softball toss masquerading as a debate, in a Taj Mahal that shouldn't exist, as organized with bored partiality by local Democrats, for whom job security comes before any substantive commitment to substance or ideals of impartiality, and really -- should any of this come as a surprise?

It's what happens in a top-down, one-party state.

At least all three mayoral candidates will be in attendance tonight, although if Kevin Zurschmiede had not opted to purchase a round-trip ticket from his son's destination wedding, Jeff Gahan would have achieved his ideal of not having to face both opponents at once. Whether undertaken from conniving or cowardice, Gahan's "debate" planning should be offensive to every voter in this city.

This column was written on New Year's Eve, 2013. That's almost two years ago, and obviously, much has happened since then. The outside vendor still has the communications contract, but Gahan's minions write the script, so it isn't ProMedia's fault that during 2015, social media and municipal outreach have been devoted almost exclusively to Gahan re-election bromides -- at taxpayer expense, of course.

Downtown decision-making continues to be made according to prevailing Eastridge Drive Neighborhood Association standards of suburban-think, as opposed to urban logic. Bob Caesar gave up the wrong vocational ghost, retiring from jewelry sales, which he was good at doing, and retaining his political seat (not so much). The backroom antics continue, with no-bid contracts and the ritualistic Hooters visits by the economic dishevelment department.

We await the first pangs of John Rosenbarger's shame at not only signing off on millions to plant flowers in front of his Main Street home, but watching as the preferred non-union pavers have gotten his pet project wrong so very often that they're now being confused with the management of the Oakland Raiders. I'm not holding my breath on this one.

Sadly, overall -- 21 months later -- I stand by this paragraph:

More urbanism, not less. More transparency, not less. More localism, not less. More public information and participation, not less. More thinking and doing outside the stunted, Democratic Party-smothered obstruction zone, not less.

I hope to see some of you later today at Silver Street Park. The session begins at 6:00 p.m.

---

ON THE AVENUES: Mr. Gahan -- plug in this clock.

A special New Year's Eve column by Roger A. Baylor.

Perception.

Reality.

They’re how I’ll remember the year 2013, and so appropriately, two New Year’s Eve tweets tell the whole story, and nothing but the story.

From City of New Albany Government: It's New Year's Eve and the City of New Albany wishes everyone a happy and safe night. It was a great year here in New Albany and the future of 2014 looks bright for our city!

From Jeff Speck: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

(By the way, the city’s utterance today might be the last authored by ProMedia, which cannot be blamed for municipal government’s notoriously non-responsive social media effort. The Green Mouse is told that these communications are to be taken back in-house. Shall we speculate how this decision will impact exclamation mark futures?)

Meanwhile, aside from musical memories coming on Thursday in this space, there’ll be no year in review.

That’s because it was another in a series of mediocre, underachieving years, in which New Albany largely reaffirmed its half-century commitment to repeating the same reactive actions over and over, while hoping the outcome might be different this time.

The Bicentennial was utterly wasted with same-old-suspect buffoonery. There was no plan for economic development downtown, and there are no plans to have a plan. Selected property owners were fluffed, while others were relegated to the iron rule of the slumlord. We’ll have a wonderfully expensive parks system, and use our cars to drive back and forth between them on streets designed for high-speed, reckless driving, while ignoring success stories in other cities, where the city itself has become a recreational area simply by taking back its street grid. The Democratic Party substitutes words for action, and the Republican Party is so moribund and devoid of an intellectual pulse that it doesn’t even have its own Tea Party insurgency.

Even the tea partiers understand the meaning of wasted effort, and concentrate their attention elsewhere.

---

I’m always exhausted at year’s end. This year, as my business approached the end of what amounted to a five-year plan, it has taken much more effort than usual to plan for the next phase. Curiously, as both the city of New Albany and America’s craft beer segment have declared victory, there’s a nasty bubble waiting to pop, although willfully blinded eyes are averted.

Craft beer’s headed for an adjustment, borne of over-capacity among breweries dependent on production-level distribution. There will be casualties. In like fashion, downtown revitalization in New Albany faces the very real likelihood of a slowdown. We’ve gone as far as we can go with smoke and mirrors. Now more than ever, we need the city to put some skin into the game.

Louisville, Jeffersonville and even Clarksville have development plans and strategies to garner entrepreneurs and their dollars. In New Albany, we have enough eateries and bars, and we may well have too many. There needs to be a next phase; and yet current indie business operators are hard-placed to find the time to cooperate. Non-profits are inconsequential. There are no downtown housing initiatives. Ideas that can help right now – a street grid that supports, not defeats, the sort of indie ethos we’ve painstakingly built with our own money – are marginalized by city leaders bizarrely ignorant of urbanism and forever afraid of their own political shadows.

And the newspaper’s top stories of 2013?

Two murder trials, River Ridge, the Floyd County auditor’s incompetence, the city’s new unconnected parks department … and the Ohio River Bridges Project.

Shall I state the obvious?

The ORBP is the undisputed 800-lb gorilla casting a shadow over every single thing mentioned here. We might be doing something about it now; for instance, a commission composed (please God, just for once) of more than just the same tired old usual suspects, to brainstorm coping strategies now, and to engage the public, rather than await the results of useless studies conducted by even more tired old usual consulting suspects, and try yet again to bluff our way through at the very last moment, lest we offend a Democratic Party grandee or dispute Bob Caesar’s self-interested conviction that toll bridges connected to one-way streets will bring an unprecedented number of diamond shoppers downtown.

---

More urbanism, not less. More transparency, not less. More localism, not less. More public information and participation, not less. More thinking and doing outside the stunted, Democratic Party-smothered obstruction zone, not less.

Watch them read the preceding paragraph. See their body language. Realize how futile such efforts are doomed to be.

Quite frankly, I’d dearly love to say “fuck it” and disengage; cash out, punt, pack Uncle Jed’s jalopy and finally spend some quality time in places that are not perpetual fixer-uppers, but turnkey habitations: Like Bamberg -- not Birdseye on the Ohio.

But see, the thing is this: Reduced options have a remarkable way of narrowing one’s focus. At home or at work, we’ve bet the whole pile on this recalcitrant, woebegone, thick-headed old and dirty river town, and I was a stubborn bastard even before it became clear that it was a dubious wager I must have placed in a state of intoxication much more elevated than my normal level of degradation.

I may be tired, but I am not defeated.

I so wish there could be togetherness. There isn’t, so I will push. They will push back. Maybe, for once, we’ll get lucky. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Wouldn’t it be nice if just once, we could hack our way through the oblivious mire, push the plug into the wall socket, and see what happens when the clock actually runs?

After all, we haven't tried it before.

---

Recent columns:

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Neighbor: If you’re tired of the same old story, turn some pages.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: Lanesville Heritage Weekend comes around again.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: When even Mitt Romney can run to the left of New Albany’s Democrats, it's a very big problem.

August 27: ON THE AVENUES: Whips, chains and economic development (2010).

August 20: ON THE AVENUES: In the groove.

August 13: ON THE AVENUES: It’s time to purge two-party politics and tie the community together.

August 10: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL EDITION: When it comes to the RCI, can the RDA opt out of the RFRA?

ON THE AVENUES: "Water on the brains: Much less for far more will keep us swimming in it."

ON THE AVENUES: "Water on the brains: Much less for far more will keep us swimming in it."

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

New Albany's River Run Family Water Park belatedly opened last week, and was formally dedicated yesterday by means of a mayoral re-election rally thinly disguised as a christening. By last night, several discussions were underway at Facebook and other social media sites as to the water park's value in a community context.

Memories are short, and the following was written by NAC co-editor Jeff Gillenwater. It was published here on May 20, 2013. Given that Jeff Gahan will be using the aquatics facility as a major component of his 2015 campaign platform, and depicting it as a precious gift bestowed upon loyal subjects, it seems only fitting to give over my column today to Gillenwater's matchless explanation of how Gahan might have claimed just as much credit for half the price -- because the money does indeed matter, whether Steve Sipes, Pat McLaughlin or any other Democratic functionary cares to discuss it or not, and they generally haven't.

This $9 million expenditure was not mentioned during Gahan's 2011 run for mayor, and once it was given the green light, there was no substantive public discussion of benefits versus cost.

Without such a discussion, how is the water park's ultimate value to be determined?

Answer: It isn't, and that's the whole point. In fact, River Run is a certified campaign issue in 2015, just not in the way Gahan assumes -- and Gillenwater explained why two whole years ago.

I'm delighted to let him do it again. Take it away, Jeff.

---

Water on the brains: Much less for far more will keep us swimming in it.

Since the serious prospect of a new municipal swimming pool or aquatic center was made public in New Albany, several people, though not elected officials or most media types, have issued numerous, relevant questions.

Roger did a fine job, for instance, of asking how or why an aquatics-based project fits with quality of life justifications, particularly when more pressing quality issues, some of which are much less expensive to address and more costly not to, stand mostly ignored.

Likewise, Sam Schad and his group asked why, with such a huge expenditure, we can't at least get increased utility from such a facility if we're going to build it anyway without the sort of considerations Roger suggests.

Somewhere in-between the two, I mused that whether the expenditure would be worth it or not would depend largely on what was ultimately and comprehensively delivered-- hardly a profound concept but one too readily dismissed by too many current decision makers. Given the vast amount of money then proposed and now doubly approved, I foolishly held out hope that council voices would rightfully point out that, for the price, we should be able to produce an aquatic center and a competitive lap pool and the reclamation of our two-way streets and perhaps some other potential initiatives.

Why did/do I think that? Because, apparently unlike some voluntarily voiceless council members, I bothered with a smidgeon of research into how comparable cities have handled comparable situations.

Marion, Ohio, is one such city. Its population of just under 37,000 is almost exactly the same as New Albany's. Marion, too, had an aging pool - a very common predicament nationwide - in a setting of roughly the same land space as Camille Wright: one that needed either substantial rehabilitation or replacement if the city decided to maintain a facility at all.

Conversation in Marion was somewhat similar to ours here as well.  Like New Albany, there were discussions of the overall usefulness of such a facility and whether or not it would cash flow. Totally unlike New Albany, there was even legitimate debate about proposed costs. Finally, Marion's city council online.com/uncategorized/2011/06/council-overrides-veto-of-aquatic-center/">overrode a cost driven mayoral veto to build an aquatic center, depicted below via text and images from online.com/">Marion Online and the aquatic center's Facebook page. It opened last summer, 2012, and has since online.com/news/2013/03/marion-aquatic-center-earns-state-award/">won a state award for recreation facilities.

"The new center will feature heated water, Lazy River, Floating Lilly Pads, Zero-depth entry, 25 foot Racing Slides, a 6 foot Family Slide, a Water Play set with a bucket that dumps 150 gallons of water, 25 meter 6 lane pool with a high dive and low dive and a separate baby pool."

 

It indeed appears to be a very nice facility that's been well received by the community. 

Here's the rub: That debate about cost that led to both a mayoral veto and a council override? It was a fight over whether to spend $2.4 million or $3.5 million. The council favored the 3.5 and won. 

All the above- much of it strikingly familiar - was built within the past couple of years for less than half of even the most conservative cost estimate provided by the administration and approved by the council for New Albany's impending center. Assuming we're not purposefully overspending for nefarious political purposes, New Albany could have something very similar and $4 - 5.5 million left over to address other quality of life needs without spending any more than what's already been approved.

Making that possible, though, requires a majority of council members who think beyond mayoral and Estopinal suggestions and consider such basic, comparative due diligence a part of their job. In terms of what our council has thus far publicly offered up relative to aquatic center merits, the one direct comparison offered here - easily gleaned from about 30 minutes of individual research - unfortunately represents more than our council members have collectively put forth over several months. 

The quantity and quality of discourse around numerous "park" projects has been so low and the prices so high that, if I didn't know some of the folks involved personally, I'd probably just assume they were receiving substantial kickbacks for such a dubious (lack of) effort. I don't believe that, but the lack of diligence has been egregious enough to make it a plausible explanation to fill an obvious void.

One would think (or at least I did) that the public embarrassment of a $750,000 downtown pocket park with less utility and flexibility than a $200,000 park could've offered and/or tens of thousands so casually given to a Bicentennial Commission who clearly told council members they had "no idea" how the money would be used before being granted funding should have been sufficient cause for a slightly more thoughtful approach in considering the aquatics expenditure. But, then, I already admitted to being foolishly optimistic.

If any of the council "yes" voters would like to explain exactly which portion of our proposed aquatic center justifies multiple, additional millions as compared to what we can plainly observe here, the floor is open. It's been open for months. Until any such rational, evidence-based explanation materializes, however, "rubber-stamp" criticisms will ring truer than usual for a group who, via the intelligence of its individual members, ought to know much better. 

As an overall experience, our current council group has in ways been even more frustrating than some of the lesser moments of the Kochert-led era that served as my introduction to New Albany politics. During that time, a distinct lack of intellectual capital coalesced with an abundance of insider bullying to render capacity so low as to substantially limit both expectations and actual potential. 

But that's not the case here. What we have now is an example of "won't" rather than "can't" in which acquiring council seats has somehow rendered usually talented people into an amorphous mass of counterproductive group decline. The sum is less than its parts. No one is consistently demonstrating their capacity for good questions, so we're settling for lousy, injudicious answers and losing badly.

So far, a bunch of really smart people have managed to haphazardly waste millions in public funding without so much as addressing some fundamental quality of life and prioritization issues. If such behavior continues unchecked by any number of council members quite capable of checking it, future councils and the city at large will have a much more difficult time responding to those issues as we try to dig ourselves out of holes already dug, some quite literally, at places like Bicentennial Park and the aquatics center. 

As a citizen and voter, I've always felt it important to extend at least some effort toward helping ensure that we elect as talented a group of leaders as possible. This council, however, with its inexplicable yet seemingly automatic brainpower off switch - apparently activated by the doors at city hall - is calling that premise into question. 

An unexamined "yes" is no better and sometimes worse than an ignorant "no" in that it actively reduces opportunities rather than just passively ignores them. In short, all this "no-brainer" malarkey when it comes to water features is costing us a lot of money that could easily be better spent but which we'll never get back. 

We've seen several frighteningly unthinking financial decisions from this council lately that, taken together, set quite a negative precedent that should be and, since no aquatics contracts have been let, can be immediately corrected before yet another boondoggle becomes a part of their permanent record.

---

Recent columns:

June 25: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Red scarf, white shirt and San Miguel beer (2012).

June 18: ON THE AVENUES: These 10 definitions will help you speak local politics like a native.

June 11: ON THE AVENUES: This is Dan Coffey, New Albany’s quintessential Democrat.

June 4: ON THE AVENUES: Dan Coffey speaks for Jeff Gahan and the Democratic Party … unless they say otherwise.

May 28: ON THE AVENUES: The last of the summer beer.

May 21: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: "I Just Want to Know, Can I Park Here Somewhere?”

See how much it's changed (gulp) in a quarter century?

Top, the view in 1987, when my friend Bob joined me in a day of downtown decay photography. Last year I snapped the scene below. If not for the graffiti and a few more panes of broken glass on the Reisz building, it would be hard to tell which year was which. And yet the political perspective remains the same, always, administration through administration: Abject and enduring fear of putting the pedal to the metal, breaking a few eggs, shifting the paradigm, and actually getting something done. In New Albany, caution is defined like this: "Every generation deserves the same deterioration."

A six-pack of ON THE AVENUES ... because they tell you where we're headed in 2014.

No, it isn't because I'm planning on running for office again, although quite the platform is starting to emerge, isn't it?

---

December 31, 2013: ON THE AVENUES: Mr. Gahan -- plug in this clock.

The ORBP is the undisputed 800-lb gorilla casting a shadow over every single thing mentioned here. We might be doing something about it now; for instance, a commission composed (please God, just for once) of more than just the same tired old usual suspects, to brainstorm coping strategies now, and to engage the public, rather than await the results of useless studies conducted by even more tired old usual consulting suspects, and try yet again to bluff our way through at the very last moment, lest we offend a Democratic Party grandee or dispute Bob Caesar’s self-interested conviction that toll bridges connected to one-way streets will bring an unprecedented number of diamond shoppers downtown.

---

Thursday, December 5: ON THE AVENUES: Plans and hopes and screams.

"Much like the sacrifice of Mount Tabor residential areas for poorly developed commercial strips on its fringes, the sacrifice of Spring and other nearby streets for Main has long been a part of the plan. And that's precisely why they don't/won't talk about it out loud. A part of any holistic answer, historically and currently, likely has to do with diverting auto traffic to Main, not away from it. That, however, doesn't fit the current gerrymandering scheme."

---

Thursday, November 7: ON THE AVENUES: Me? I’m just a crackpot.

I view it as axiomatic that how we get around, and the manner by which our mobility options influence the surroundings, absolutely should not be determined solely by a self-interested engineering caste ... but to so much as consider this bit of evolutionary/revolutionary theory requires our elected and appointed officials to stop squirming like elementary school children, wash the rheumy glaze from their eyes, grow a metaphorical pair, and think a little bit.

---

September 26, 2013: ON THE AVENUES: You actually can get something for nothing.

... Successive generations of political leadership in New Albany have neglected economic development in the historic core of the city. Finally indies and entrepreneurs took it on themselves to do much of the heavy lifting, on their own, with little more than verbal encouragement. Isn’t it past time for the city to put some real, substantive skin in the game – in a clear, real-world way that benefits the many, rather than the few?

---

September 19, 2013: ON THE AVENUES: Yellow lines, and what comes due.

Just take every one of those “no-brainer,” “quality of life,” and “economic development” arguments made by those in favor of $20 million worth of new city parks, and grasp that these exact same arguments apply just as strongly to two-way streets, traffic calming and complete streets – at least insofar as the new cadre of independent business owners are concerned.

---

May 30, 2013: ON THE AVENUES: It’s the wrong way, pal.

Four years later, Spring Street as yet runs one way, with too few stop signs or lights, still tailor-made for speeding and reckless driving. Although you’ll see knowledgeable recreational cyclists using the bike lanes on the north side alongside traffic (as they should), dozens of others merrily pedal the wrong way on both sides of traffic -- when not engaged in doing the same on adjoining sidewalks, with scant regard for walkers. I’ve never seen a policeman stop one. I’ve never seen any effort on the part of the city to educate cyclists, or to enforce any outdated laws pertaining to them. This would require having a plan, a scheme, a semblance of an outline, rather as Jeffersonville is doing right now in trying to coordinate a master plan.

---

And as a special bonus for workaholic readers, this one from 2012.

March 26, 2012: No, I will not shut up, but thanks for the hint. Now, for more on the necessity of independent business empowerment.

 All one needs to know is that in this community, there is almost no disagreement: Independent locally-owned businesses have driven New Albany’s revitalization, and yet in terms of decision-making, the reins are nowhere close to our hands. Why do we acquiesce in this? Why do we not insist on input commensurate with our achievements?

2013: My year of books and reading.

I’m always relieved when cooler weather arrives. My working world never really abates, but with winter comes more quality time for reading. At this late date, it is unimaginable that music would not be playing in my head at all times, or that a book is somewhere close by.

And then there are those persistently bibulous tendencies ...

The past year’s completed book list is offered here, somewhat chronologically in reverse, beginning with the most recent (a memoir still in progress), and including links to reviews and comments written about particular books at the blog during 2013. Expect a more detailed review of Ray Mouton’s novel later in January.

Works of fiction are marked with *

The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig (in progress)

*In God’s House, by Ray Mouton

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey: How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game, by Edward Achorn

*Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon

Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney, by Marion Meade

*The Assistant, by Robert Walser

Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch,

Walkable City, by Jeff Speck

Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s, by Dan Epstein

Who I Am: A Memoir, by Pete Townshend

*Riders in the Chariot, by Patrick White

*Necessary Errors, by Caleb Crain

Ghost Strasse: Germany's East Trapped Between Past and Present, by Simon Burnett

*Adam and Evelyn, by Ingo Schulze

Jerusalem: The Biography, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

*Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford

*The Drinker, by Hans Fallada

*Memoirs of an Anti-Semite. A Novel in Five Stories, by Gregor von Rezzori

---

Because 2014 commences the centenary of World War I, expect to be deluged with thoughts on the conflict during the coming year. First up: The aforementioned memoir by Zweig, followed by 1913: The World Before the Great War, by Charles Emmerson. Both set the scene for the tumult to follow, and both are in hand. Two books will be chosen from this group …

1913: The Year before the Storm, by Florian Illies
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark
July 1914: Countdown to War, by Sean McMeekin
The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, by Margaret MacMillan
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, by Max Hastings

… and then I’ll see what comes next. The plan is to read a few books about the Great War each year, through 2018, while pondering whether I’ll live to read through the next centenary, circa 2039.

There’s one acclaimed baseball biography waiting, too: The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, by Ben Bradlee Jr.

Fiction? That's a good question. It seems I never set out to read novels, and yet always do. A few recommendations are in the bin, but at this precise juncture, I'm in a real-world frame of mind.

ON THE AVENUES: My musical year in 2013.

ON THE AVENUES: My musical year in 2013.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Verily, as cultural markers go, few are as personalized as one’s choice of music. As such, the inescapable verdict of 2011 and 2012 is repeated in spades in 2013: My sell-by date for musical awareness has long since expired.

Taking into account multiple “best of 2013” collections of music perused on-line, my familiarity has extended to as few as one (often none) of every ten selections cited. In terms of chronology, I’ve effectively pole-vaulted the shark. I’m an old fogey, and while the kids may well be alright, their musical tastes utterly elude me.

So be it. I remain a joyful musical has-been, and shall proceed into the cruel gloaming with shoulders a-shrugging, expounding the freedom to dial back my consciousness to big bands, classical and world music as the mood strikes me – and it very often does. Music of all eras and genres plays constantly inside my cranium, and it has been so for as long as I can remember. When it ceases to be audible, it will mean I’m dying, so by all means, let’s keep the music playing.

Remember, I’m not attempting a dissertation on the most important or “the best” music of 2013. I am no musicologist. I don’t know Kanye West from Miley Cyrus. Taylor Swift might as well be a brand of lunch meat, and Mumford & Sons a sitcom about a junk dealer. Quite frankly, there are more important things to occupy my time.

In the end, it’s purely a random process. I’m all about tunes and songs. Ear worms comprise my criteria. They stick or they don’t, and if they can be whistled whilst strolling past Bill Allen’s beautifully painted rubble pile on Main Street, it’s a win. Humans able to carry a tune without the aid of electronic gimmickry matter, too, and albums are my thing, not random collections on auto shuffle.

Let’s begin with Band of the Year.

It’s Houndmouth. New Albany lives vicariously through these four personable and talented musicians, who are achieving what I thought was impossible: Compelling me to listen to what I’m guessing is still referred to as “roots” music. The members of Houndmouth are skillful beyond their years, and there’s a chemistry – an intangible little something – that we all hope lifts up Houndmouth to bigger and better things.

Concert of the Year: (Half) The Who at Yum Center, performing Quadrophenia in its entirety. I wrote about it here, here and here. Houndmouth at Iroquois Amphitheater in April comes next.

Now, the main event; my “Top Twenty” album releases in 2013 are as follows.

20 David Bowie … The Next Day
19 Arcade Fire … Reflektor
18 Franz Ferdinand … Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action
17 Glasvegas … Later -- When the TV Turns to Static
16 Yeah Yeah Yeahs … Mosquito

There’s a major delineation between 16-20 and the remainder of the list. Above are five albums that I enjoyed and might yet explode for me with further listening. However, they did not penetrate my defenses in quite the way the next 15 managed.

15 Nine Inch Nails … Hesitation Marks
When Bill Clinton was president, Nine Inch Nails provided an unexpected soundtrack to one of my most chaotic personal periods. Hesitation Marks doesn’t sound like vintage NIN; it sounds like the hypnotic commentary of someone who survived considerable weirdness, and I can relate to that.

14 The Feeling … Boy Cried Wolf
One catchy Britpop song after another, but unfortunately, every single one of them finds a way to address the collapse of the singer/lyricist’s relationship. Loving the tunes, I find myself wishing the words would just go away.

13 Imagine Dragons … Night Visions
The group’s strength is a diverse sound; from song to song, it doesn’t seem like the same band. Then you realize that each song was recorded for a different television commercial, and this suggests caution. Enjoy … but keep a respectful distance. How many Mormon bands (Neon Trees is the other) can an atheist like me enjoy without guilt?

12 Psychic Friend … My Rocks Are Dreams
Geeky piano-driven pop by a quasi-band that doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. One of my single biggest surprises of the year.

11 Foals … Holy Fire
It’s a British group, somewhere in the vicinity of Kasabian and Bloc Party. Lyrically, the album isn’t strong, but I quite enjoy the anthemic song structures … and there are guitars galore! Rock lives. Hallelujah.

10 Elton John … The Diving Board
Captain Fantastic is having a wonderful late career run: Five worthy albums over a dozen or so years, and a powerful return to the sound that made albums like Tumbleweed Connection so essential back in the day. There’s even a song about Oscar Wilde, although my favorite is "Oceans Away."

9 The 1975 … The 1975
I’m clueless in describing why I might embrace this Manchester band’s aura, but I know I’ll keep listening to it. It is distinct and defies classification, striking me as an amalgam of late 80s and early 90s radio pop, when there still was something like “radio pop.” There are synths, guitars, soul and rhythms suitable for dancing, if I ever choose to spill beer that way … and I do not.

8 Arctic Monkeys … AM
My, how these youngsters are evolving. Heavy bass, guitar solos, footstompin’ music, yet retaining the band’s trademark lyrical cleverness and sense of ironic style.

7 Pearl Jam … Lightning Bolt
Others may lament aging rock heroes from youth, but never me. Evidently, Pearl Jam always wanted to be professional, working musicians, and shouldn’t every generation aspire to craftsmanship like this? What’s more, there is no loss of sincerity; witness “Sirens,” a superb ballad. We’re better that Pearl Jam rocks among us.

6 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds … Push the Sky Away
Nick Cave and the dark side of life go together like gin and tonic. I was expecting the cynical snarl, the familiar libidinous compulsions and propensity to squalor, and instead was offered tired reflection – plenty of jaundice, but very weary, and with a subtle, nuanced soundscape in support. Memorable stuff.

5 Manic Street Preachers … Rewind the Film
I cannot not like these guys, even when they drop an album that is primarily acoustic, occasionally folky, bizarrely whimsical and with whole songs performed by guest singers. It doesn’t matter. The passion and exuberance are undiminished. My beloved Manics; if only I might be Welsh.

4 Johnny Marr … The Messenger
Lyrically, it’s a muddle, and Marr’s voice may never be ready for prime time. However, all is forgiven. The songs are muscular and vibe-laden; much stylistic ground is covered, and the mastermind’s guitar goes everywhere and does everything. Ye Gods, a living, breathing rock and roll record. I’m glad it’s still possible.

3 Suede … Bloodsports
I was only a casual fan in Suede’s original 1990s incarnation. The band’s newest album displays maturity and adept songcraft. One reviewer referred to it as elegant melancholy; toss in some romantic leanings, and what comes out is both catchy and sophisticated.

2 Paramore … Paramore
This isn’t a debut album, although it might as well have been for me. I bought it on a whim, and was rewarded with tunes I’d still be hearing in my sleep at night. The singer is an impossibly youthful Mississippian with a gigantic, versatile voice and pop hooks running through her veins. Some songs are punkish, others accompanied by ukulele, and “Ain’t It Fun” is a gospel-tinged definitive triumph. Almost my number one.

1 Deep Purple … Now What?!
My Top Twenty is a nice mix of old and new, although surely eyebrows will be raised at the choice of Deep Purple as the top album in my musical year 2013. If it’s any consolation, I wasn’t expecting it either.

Chronology is a bizarre concept. If you’d have informed me back in ’73 that four decades hence, both Black Sabbath and Deep Purple would release new albums within months of each other in spite of being populated primarily by senior citizens, I’d have been unable to concentrate long enough to calculate my own age after 40 celestial orbits, much less determine how old it would make my junior high musical heroes.

Here we are; 40 years have passed, and it stands to reason: If rock ‘n’ roll once pondered dying before it gets old, it must be allowed a measure of introspection upon discovering, perhaps with amazement, that it had in fact succeeding at aging.

Black Sabbath’s 2013 reunion release didn’t address any such musings. The Stones don’t bother, either; some might say the better for it. Deep Purple’s Now What?! inexplicably makes the effort, and it is an impressive contemplation, lighter on the boogie and pyrotechnics, and heavier on the prog. It is a veritable concept album from grimly determined road warriors who stubbornly continue to make new music that embodies all of the band’s different eras and members. There’s even a tip of the hat to Aaron Copland.

After all, Deep Purple has been around for so very long that its fans refer to the various chronological groupings of member musicians as Mach I, II, and so on, all the way up to today’s VIII. No original band member remains aboard save for drummer Ian Paice; keyboardist Jon Lord retired from Deep Purple years before dying in 2012, and guitar virtuoso Ritchie Blackmore quit in 1993. The current lineup has made three albums together, and I’d gladly pay good money to watch them perform songs off these alone, even to the exclusion of the 1970s material for which the group is justly famed.

Leader Ian Gillan’s voice is diminished, but it continues to be immediately recognizable. He knows how to use it. Steve Morse’s endlessly inventive guitar can be reminiscent of Blackmore, while also recalling the jazzy virtuosity of Tommy Bolin, who was a member of Mach IV (I think) prior to dying tragically young. Veteran keyboardist Don Airey admirably honors the memory of Lord, and the rhythm section of Paice and bassist Roger Glover could not be more solid.

The album’s opening song observes that time doesn’t matter, but it’s all we have, and the penultimate cut closes the loop: Here we are, with all the time in the world. It’s the most organ-heavy Deep Purple album in ages, and as such, recalls the band’s heyday, when the interplay between Lord and Blackmore made for classic riffs and jams. In some strange way, a strikingly focused album like this provides justification for my longtime allegiance as a fan, as well as continued hope for evolution even at this late date.

Growth and evolution in rock and roll, a half-century later. It suits me. Give it a listen, and thanks for reading.

ON THE AVENUES: Mr. Gahan -- plug in this clock.

ON THE AVENUES: Mr. Gahan -- plug in this clock.

A special New Year's Eve column by Roger A. Baylor.

Perception.

Reality.

They’re how I’ll remember the year 2013, and so appropriately, two New Year’s Eve tweets tell the whole story, and nothing but the story.

From City of New Albany Government: It's New Year's Eve and the City of New Albany wishes everyone a happy and safe night. It was a great year here in New Albany and the future of 2014 looks bright for our city!

From Jeff Speck: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

(By the way, the city’s utterance today might be the last authored by ProMedia, which cannot be blamed for municipal government’s notoriously non-responsive social media effort. The Green Mouse is told that these communications are to be taken back in-house. Shall we speculate how this decision will impact exclamation mark futures?)

Meanwhile, aside from musical memories coming on Thursday in this space, there’ll be no year in review.

That’s because it was another in a series of mediocre, underachieving years, in which New Albany largely reaffirmed its half-century commitment to repeating the same reactive actions over and over, while hoping the outcome might be different this time.

The Bicentennial was utterly wasted with same-old-suspect buffoonery. There was no plan for economic development downtown, and there are no plans to have a plan. Selected property owners were fluffed, while others were relegated to the iron rule of the slumlord. We’ll have a wonderfully expensive parks system, and use our cars to drive back and forth between them on streets designed for high-speed, reckless driving, while ignoring success stories in other cities, where the city itself has become a recreational area simply by taking back its street grid. The Democratic Party substitutes words for action, and the Republican Party is so moribund and devoid of an intellectual pulse that it doesn’t even have its own Tea Party insurgency.

Even the tea partiers understand the meaning of wasted effort, and concentrate their attention elsewhere.

---

I’m always exhausted at year’s end. This year, as my business approached the end of what amounted to a five-year plan, it has taken much more effort than usual to plan for the next phase. Curiously, as both the city of New Albany and America’s craft beer segment have declared victory, there’s a nasty bubble waiting to pop, although willfully blinded eyes are averted.

Craft beer’s headed for an adjustment, borne of over-capacity among breweries dependent on production-level distribution. There will be casualties. In like fashion, downtown revitalization in New Albany faces the very real likelihood of a slowdown. We’ve gone as far as we can go with smoke and mirrors. Now more than ever, we need the city to put some skin into the game.

Louisville, Jeffersonville and even Clarksville have development plans and strategies to garner entrepreneurs and their dollars. In New Albany, we have enough eateries and bars, and we may well have too many. There needs to be a next phase; and yet current indie business operators are hard-placed to find the time to cooperate. Non-profits are inconsequential. There are no downtown housing initiatives. Ideas that can help right now – a street grid that supports, not defeats, the sort of indie ethos we’ve painstakingly built with our own money – are marginalized by city leaders bizarrely ignorant of urbanism and forever afraid of their own political shadows.

And the newspaper’s top stories of 2013?

Two murder trials, River Ridge, the Floyd County auditor’s incompetence, the city’s new unconnected parks department … and the Ohio River Bridges Project.

Shall I state the obvious?

The ORBP is the undisputed 800-lb gorilla casting a shadow over every single thing mentioned here. We might be doing something about it now; for instance, a commission composed (please God, just for once) of more than just the same tired old usual suspects, to brainstorm coping strategies now, and to engage the public, rather than await the results of useless studies conducted by even more tired old usual consulting suspects, and try yet again to bluff our way through at the very last moment, lest we offend a Democratic Party grandee or dispute Bob Caesar’s self-interested conviction that toll bridges connected to one-way streets will bring an unprecedented number of diamond shoppers downtown.

---

More urbanism, not less. More transparency, not less. More localism, not less. More public information and participation, not less. More thinking and doing outside the stunted, Democratic Party-smothered obstruction zone, not less.

Watch them read the preceding paragraph. See their body language. Realize how futile such efforts are doomed to be.

Quite frankly, I’d dearly love to say “fuck it” and disengage; cash out, punt, pack Uncle Jed’s jalopy and finally spend some quality time in places that are not perpetual fixer-uppers, but turnkey habitations: Like Bamberg -- not Birdseye on the Ohio.

But see, the thing is this: Reduced options have a remarkable way of narrowing one’s focus. At home or at work, we’ve bet the whole pile on this recalcitrant, woebegone, thick-headed old and dirty river town, and I was a stubborn bastard even before it became clear that it was a dubious wager I must have placed in a state of intoxication much more elevated than my normal level of degradation.

I may be tired, but I am not defeated.

I so wish there could be togetherness. There isn’t, so I will push. They will push back. Maybe, for once, we’ll get lucky. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Wouldn’t it be nice if just once, we could hack our way through the oblivious mire, push the plug into the wall socket, and see what happens when the clock actually runs?

After all, we haven't tried it before.

It's a Smoked Pork Crown Roast -- well, it USED to be.

As prepared by Ryan Rogers at Feast BBQ and served on Saturday night at the 1117 East Spring Street Neighborhood Association's holiday gala. The dish easily weighed 15 lbs.

The Internet boasts numerous references to pork crown roast. The photos don't do it justice; bones point to the sky, the stuffing is marinated in pig oil, and it isn't readily apparent how much meat there really is on each one until you cut the string and start carving. Ryan smoked the meat in his inimitable way, and words on a page simply cannot describe the house-filling aroma and succulence of the porcine main course. Lawdy.

Festive, eh? Beer never hurts, and there was Port wine, cheeses, cigars and bountiful conversation. Too soon, the new year comes, and it's back to the grind -- work as the curse of the drinking class. Until then, good company provided a wonderful evening's escape.

"Blurred Lines" is the worst song ever -- and an update from Noel Gallagher.

Roger's annual "year in music" column continues to take shape, and eventually will be published here in one or the other quickly forgettable formats. Until then, these are the two funniest pieces about pop music I've read in a while.

First, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone on the worst song of the year -- and here's the takeaway: While it's possible I may have overheard snippets of Thicke's song, I have not heard it as a whole, even once. That's because I'm quite old.

'Blurred Lines': The Worst Song of This or Any Other Year; Everything next year will just have to suck a little harder

 ... I always thought I could never hate a song more than Cat Stevens's "Wild World," and indeed, "Wild World" always sounds every bit as terrible as I remember. "I never want to see you sad, girl / Don't be a bad girl" – that has to be the worst lyric of the pre-Robin Thicke era. The way Cat hums along with the piano solo – that is some virtuoso sucking. But Robin has reached Cat's rarefied level. That's not the kind of sucking you achieve by accident. You have to earn it. And wow, Robin was willing to put in the work.

And, also in Rolling Stone, Noel Gallagher is being curmudgeonly on topics ranging from boiled eggs to dress codes at gigs.

Noel Gallagher's Epic Year-End Gripe Session: The Britpop vet praises Kanye, slams Arcade Fire and hints at new solo material in the works

Noel Gallagher did not enjoy 2013 very much. "Fucking had a shit year," says the British guitarist and songwriter, formerly of Oasis, when Rolling Stone reaches him by phone. "All I've done is sit around the house and become a fucking hypochondriac. Dog-shit year. Can't wait until it's over."