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Showing posts with label recreational drinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recreational drinking. Show all posts
I'm a regular reader of The Guardian, and remember Emine Saner's review of the television program, which was published in August. It seems to me I'd made note of it in this space, but apparently not.
In my own case, a lifetime of drinking far more weekly units of alcohol than recommended by Great Britain's National Health Service has resulted in an unreliable memory, and I don't dispute it.
There'll be no deep thinking from me, at least not today. We turn instead to a British television personality, Adrian Chiles.
The broadcaster’s film about ‘nice, regular drinking’ soon becomes an analysis of much more, from his physical and mental health to society’s difficult relationship with alcohol
Adrian Chiles has a drinking problem. Or maybe he has an Adrian Chiles problem, alleviated by drinking. Anyway, he’s definitely not an alcoholic, he says in his exploration of “nice, regular drinking” in Drinkers Like Me – Adrian Chiles (BBC Two).
Looking back on the past week, which included a wine dinner at La Chasse on Monday, I've had two glasses of vino and maybe eight or nine beers. Or ten. I don't drink every single day, and often go two or three days between drinks, but it still averages out to a couple drinks daily.
I've made a conscious effort for quite some time to try keeping my consumption of beer to the lower ABV ranges, and all in all, I drink far less than during my peak Public House period, now more than ten years ago.
At 58, it's absolutely inconceivable to me that I could still put away as much beer (and sometimes wine) as I did then. A 12-pack of Sierra Nevada during an NBA doubleheader on Sunday afternoon?
It hurts just thinking about it, so what does all this mean?
I've no clue. However, here is a year's-end summary of Chiles' moderation efforts, written by the reduced drinker himself.
He used to drink an awful lot – and now drinks a lot less. It is well worth the effort in the long run, he says
... The documentary I made this year, Drinkers Like Me, definitely changed me. I used to drink an awful lot and hardly ever talk about it. Now I drink a lot less, but talk about it all the time. I can’t go for a quiet pint without someone having a word with me. This could involve a gentle expression of concern that I have fallen off the wagon (I never went on the wagon). Or, more often, a long sort-of confessional about that person’s drinking habits. Everyone seems to have a story about alcohol, about how much they drink or used to drink or how much their families drank or whatever. And this year we were even told that no amount of alcohol is good for our health.
His conclusion.
Moderating, as opposed to abstaining, is seen as a bit of cop out. Trust me, it isn’t. It requires constant thought; hundreds of decisions have to be made every week. But it is worth it: I am a bit lighter, a bit calmer, a bit healthier and what I do drink, I enjoy more.
For me, alcohol is like fire, water, religion, politics and many other things: it’s not the thing itself, it’s what you do with it. It can do you and others harm, or a little good. I think I am managing to edge from one to the other.
ON THE AVENUES: It's the beginning of the end of insipid Gahanism, so let's look back at the Top Ten columns of 2017.
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
For the final ON THE AVENUES column of 2017, I'd dearly love to conjure something striking and profound, perhaps an all-encompassing summary like Donald Sutherland gave to Kevin Costner as they sat on the park bench by the Washington Monument in Oliver Stone's JFK -- but I don't watch many films these days, and I'm not sure there's a single written soliloquy left in me as this strange, confusing and exhausting year draws to a close.
No worries; the beatings must continue until morale improves, but you'll be surprised and pleased to hear the wonderful news, because in my view, New Albany has witnessed the apogee of Gahanism, and the high water mark of this dull political mediocrity's obsession with illicit campaign finance and Greg Fischer (on second thought, I risk redundancy).
The surreal and absurd Kim Jong-Jeffrey cult of personality that Gahan uses to extract so very much public money has become gut-punch laughable to almost everyone apart from his sycophantic bunker mates in the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party, whose expressions are beginning to resemble those of the local Sarajevo administrators saying goodbye to the Archduke.
Gahanism's fissures are visible, and the impending TIF drought risible. The onetime veneer salesman's signature cash-stuffed envelopes will be markedly thinning, and by the occasion of New Albany's next municipal election, it will have been 64 years since a mayor won a third consecutive term -- and it won't happen again in 2019.
For the record, C. Pralle Erni (D) served four straight terms from 1948 through 1963, totaling 16 years. Beginning in 1964, Republicans occupied the mayoral seat for 16 of the next 20 years, interrupted only by Warren Nash's underachieving tenure.
I'm not saying the resistance will be easy. However, at all times we're compelled to remember the example of Toto ...
... no, not THAT Toto or THIS forgettable prom song theme from the heyday of most current city council members, but rather Dorothy's inquisitive mutt ...
... who by pulling back the curtains, allows us to see that when push comes to puke, Gahanism is no more than smoke and mirrors. It's a ruse, with no substance behind the endlessly vapid press releases.
I'll continue to do my part while transitioning toward what I earnestly hope becomes Pub Mach II. Just remember the hash tag: #FireGahan2019
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To end this year, let's take a look at the ON THE AVENUES columns recording the most page views according to Blogger's forever Byzantine metric.
Half of the year's most-read columns dealt with what will be remembered by future generations as Gahan's own personal Waterloo: Dear Leader's hostile takeover (putsch) of public housing and his subsequent installation of the worst conceivable choice to act as human relations slapstick Gauleiter, David "Bag Man" Duggins.
Gahan's mythology-impelled spite and ceaseless avarice with regard to New Albany's most vulnerable population stand an excellent chance of splitting the local Democratic Party, and although Team Gahan's cadres insist they didn't read my accounts of their boss's slow-motion but inexorable train wreck (the guffaws erupt), thanks to all of you who did.
Several other columns were about drinking, which remains the New Albanian's traditional default mechanism for coping with the mendacity, cowardice and overall foolishness that permeate local pillars.
However, the single most pleasing aspect of this year's most-read list is the fact that "number one" was written not by moi, but was contributed by guest columnist Cisa Kubley. It deals with one of the topics Team Gahan is most panic-stricken to even consider, and is least interested in exploring -- verily the third rail of politics in this town, Harvest Homecoming.
And yet if everyone is delighted with the way Harvest Homecoming's annual occupation trickles down on downtown each year, why would Cisa's open letter record triple the page views captured by a typical column?
Cisa's guest column was timely, analytical and well written. This makes me very happy. Remember that I'm forever ready to accept such contributions, and enjoy the following recap.
In short, the updated comprehensive plan is equal parts fiction, theater and suburban-weighted dreckscape. Reading through these sterling commitments to bedrock facets of urban life that have remained entirely alien to the plan’s authors, most of whom don’t live these tenets and wouldn’t recognize one if it wandered by mistake into their Olive Garden chain-haven and pulled up a chair, you become jaded remarkable quickly.
For instance, I saw a handful of references to bicycling, felt a surge of excitement, then realized that all it really means is the procurement of more spray paint to draw sharrows, the most useless of a city planner’s excuses to do absolutely nothing, declare victory, and gaze lovingly at holiday photos of the time share.
If you intend to “resist” Trumpism by doubling down on behalf of the Democratic Party as it currently exists and operates on a daily basis right here in the real world, as opposed to Disney World, then you’re in for yet another apocalyptic shock, because the party requires gutting down to the foundations, and probably beyond.
Speaking personally, I don’t care. Both major parties can go to hell, and the Democrats might as well go first. If the Democratic Party disappears, perhaps something better can be built in its place. How can it be worse?
Our gutless right-wing local version of pretend-Democrats is on life support, and the chairman’s delusional cluelessness seems to have become institutionalized. The humane thing to do would be to euthanize the party, and start all over again.
Yes, I have a car, too. However, since around 1992 it has been my aim to organize my life so as to facilitate other transportation options – walking, biking, Uber-ing, light rail -- whatever. I'd rather take the money and buy a plane ticket to a European city where I can ride the tram.
I haven't eliminated the need for a car, mind you, but have been shrinking it down, so as to be fit comfortably within the perimeter of a typical oil filter. I've purchased homes twice, one for each marriage, with this in mind. If I return to business, it will be downtown, where I can walk to and from work.
Point "c" is an example of classic Gahanite circular reasoning. These "recommendations" are not to be found in the detailed program already devised by the professional, trained staff of the New Albany Housing Authority, but rather as stipulated in the form of demolition-friendly reductions forced on the NAHA by means of a daintily termed Memorandum of Understanding, a writ of annexation slated for approval by a board packed by the mayor with the usual servile sycophants, as fully intended to render the result Gahan has fixed in advance.
The Green Mouse believes former Redevelopment Commission kingpin David Duggins, now the interim director of the demolition-of-housing authority, was a prime junket honoree, presumably as a measure of heartfelt thanks for his efforts on the city’s behalf to assist Denton Floyd’s and Vitality’s project at M. Fine – and as a prelude to whatever luxurious domiciles eventually are constructed atop the smoldering remnants of public housing in New Albany, which of course is one reason for Duggins being cozily ensconced within his current sinecure – this, and for catering to the eccentric whims of Dear Pretend Democratic Leader.
Picking up the story on Monday, 18 May 18 1987, I'd arrived in Sarajevo from Zagreb and found cheap, legal lodgings ($5.50 per night) in the spare room within the apartment of a man named Mickey (real name: Milenko Ćurčić). At the time, the street address was Ulica J.N.A. 37, or the Yugoslav People's Army Street. Now it's Ulica Branilaca Sarajeva 37 (the Defenders of Sarajevo Street).
Before the drinking starts, let’s return to the analogy of a ship leaving the dock and making for open water.
This was something we experienced first-hand just last year aboard a big Baltic ferry, first leaving Tallinn for Helsinki, then again on the trip back later the same day.
At night, the specific sensation might be described as lights fading, but by day it is the gradual disappearance of land as the ship moves farther away from shore. Depending on the weather and the strength of one’s eyesight, there comes a split second when land no longer is visible. It’s a melancholy feeling, like the place itself has ceased to exist apart from the imagination.
Gahan proceeded to run down the list of previous multi-million dollar quality-of-life luxury improvements, praising the investments while never revealing their true cost in terms of municipal subsidies and post-ribbon-cutting maintenance.
Verily, Gahan’s done it all; laid the bricks, moved the dirt, smoothed the asphalt, sold hot dogs and swept the floor. It was repulsive and sickening, and within a few seconds it became evident to me as never before that short of getting caught in bed with a known book reader, Gahan has emerged as the odds-on favorite to serve indefinitely as New Albany’s de facto mayor-for-life.
The list of baubles, glitz and glitter – of bright, shiny objects that function as Potemkin facades, suggesting municipal progress while obscuring the ongoing rot proceeding apace underneath – has become as lengthy as Shane Gibson’s arm.
I drink very differently now than before, and far less overall, but drinking's still a conscious lifestyle choice. So it goes.
Back to these fictional drinkers, who in my view reflect an existential aspect of the human condition. To be succinct, what else remains to be said, done or alibied when life’s fundamentally surreal futility strikes you as inescapable, and is best addressed and assuaged by peering through the bottom of a lifted glass, one deftly drained just seconds ago?
Cisa Kubley composed an open letter to Harvest Homecoming. In it, the owner of Sew Fitting patiently and meticulously explained why Harvest Homecoming isn't always a positive interlude for independent small businesses downtown.
Cisa's guest column proceeded to triple the number of page views one of my columns normally receives, and is by far the most-read ON THE AVENUES of the year to date. You can read it again, below, for reasons that soon will be obvious.
Even before Cisa's column was published, I spoke with David White and asked him if Harvest Homecoming would tender a reply, for which I'd supply as much space as necessary. Here it is.
I am not asking that the festival be shut down or done away with. I am asking that the festival committee do more than offer excuses and hollow apologies to the dozens of businesses which are negatively affected because the festival is still set up and run as though downtown were a ghost town.
Take seriously the fact that refusal to change the festival model impedes the livelihoods of hundreds of downtown workers. If shops can’t be open, workers aren’t paid. The business generates no revenue and yet they still incur their regular expenses. How is our business community supposed to be sustainable when a festival that claims to celebrate that community actively gets in the way of business operations?
ON THE AVENUES: Sixteen of one, thirty five of another.
A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
When Gravity Head comes calling, familiar space and time continuums can be briefly altered. Normal routines are rendered Byzantine by comparison. Life’s infinite horizons narrow, and one reverts to existence by the hour, minute by minute. Passing through the looking glass bores by comparison.
I’m not speaking of the fest’s actual commencement, because once the opening bell sounds on Friday morning, we all collectively observe the Sidney Freedman dictum from television’s M*A*S*H: “Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice - pull down your pants and slide on the ice.”
No, it’s the preparation for Gravity Head that saps working days and requires so much attention to detail during the run-up to the bacchanalia. We might choose to do it differently, but when it comes to what has unexpectedly become a tradition, the array of minor points adds up to a greater sum. It’s just a beer fest, but it’s more, and different from the rest.
In my opinion, the fundamental difference has been that from the very start, when we decided to have a second Gravity Head, we had no idea what the “proper” organization of a beer festival was supposed to be. Conventional wisdom eluded us, for which I remain grateful. Our aim has been to provide our regular customers and locally-based friends with as many opportunities as possible to taste a few special beers over a period of time. That’s it.
The beers never have been served all at once. They unfold in waves over a period of weeks. We don’t do flights, because flights imply a “right” to taste them all. Rather, the desired end is for folks to taste a few, and then return another time and taste a few more. Not too many at once, because they’re strong.
Of course, Gravity Head’s opening day has become somewhat of a scrum, and a singular tradition all its own. I’m content with the interior logic occurring there, but it isn’t what I look forward to experiencing each year. Rather, there’ll inevitably be a quiet Tuesday night on the second or third week, with a handful of friends, and leisurely, contemplative sipping of one or two quality libations, spiced with conversation. These are the precious times that lead to feelings of timelessness.
And timelessness is why I like beer, among other reasons.
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The 16th edition of Gravity Head begins tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. at NABC’s Pizzeria & Public House. It reminds me that 2014 marks the 35th year of my professional beer drinking career.
The autumn of 1979 provided a familiar impetus for renouncing amateur status and turning pro. There was a messy breakup of a relationship, and one morning during the worst of it my car suddenly veered away from IU Southeast’s parking lot in the direction of a nearby package store. I wasn’t carded, and breakfast magically became two quart bottles of Colt ’45.
There was no looking back – except at those embryonic years of preparation, perpetually trapped in adolescence, but looking enviously at juicy adult privileges just around the corner.
Apart from wee nips taken during childhood from bottles of my father’s Oertels 92, my first real "cold one" was consumed at a junior high school party. Actually, four of us split a single can of Budweiser while hiding in the woods, safe from the prying eyes of the hostess’s parents, ostensibly attaining instant credibility by boasting of beer on our breaths and inexpertly mimicking the outward appearance of drunkenness.
Later, like so many generations of New Albanians, my gang ascended another rung around the time that our first driver’s licenses were issued. Wheels meant easy access to the bountiful paradise of Louisville’s west end liquor stores, just down Vincennes Street and across the claustrophobic steel lanes of the K & I toll bridge.
Raging acne and social ineptitude generally precluded my being chosen as the one to go inside Liken’s or the Corner Store. Consequently, I was at the mercy of my companions’ tastes in beer, and this was problematic, because at this early stage of my palatal development the "flavor" of a beer was the single biggest impediment to ingesting its desired alcohol. My friends liked Sterling and Pabst. I didn’t, but they were doing the heavy lifting of acquisition. Being in no position to argue, I learned to adapt by chilling.
The colder the beer, the less “flavor” it had, and the more I could drink of it. Accordingly, my mission in life became Styrofoam cooler maintenance – to nurture it, to protect it from harm, and most importantly, to keep it filled with ice.
But in high summer the cans got warm very quickly. Crammed into the back seat of a late model junker, and pulling the tab on an ice-cold can straight from the ice, I managed to down the first frozen gulps before being overwhelmed with the dismaying recognition that in spite of all reasonable precautions, the can still contained rapidly warming Sterling or Pabst.
Chugging made me gag. What to do?
A sufficient interval would pass, enough to encourage a carload’s presumption that the warm and thoroughly vile can in my hand had been emptied, and then the time would arrive for throwing it out the window. This called for consummate skill. In the fetid humidity of a hot summer evening, misjudging the distance from the open window of a moving car to the muffled cushion of a grassy rural roadside meant disgrace if a loud "thump" echoed through the valley as the half-full can struck unrelenting pavement.
The verbal abuse to follow was not at all good-natured. After all, hadn’t we driven all the way to Louisville to spend every last dime on beer?
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And so it came to pass that in this manner, slumped shamefully in the back seat trying desperately to choke down a warm Sterling, I resolved to become a better beer drinker than all of them.
Granted, the precise meaning of “better” remained unclear, but as the others began to plan their careers in physics, cosmetology, and insurance sales, I worked at developing a feel for the generic concept of beer, which I came to understand as light-bodied and usually bastardized when compared to the golden continental lager that inspired it, and a taste for its flavor, or at least those discernable qualities differentiating it from cola and orange juice.
After turning pro, these youthful stumbles were brushed aside in favor of broader experiences. It was hard work to progress from the degradation of Schaefer "Weekender" 30-packs to the sublime pinnacle of Belgian Trappists and American Barley Wines, but at least those swill-soaked years of my youth were not wasted. Unless they were. I’m glad I’m older now.
In today's benumbed America, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, just baffle them with a work ethic. Here's a News and Tribune column from 2009, once again topical in a time of bile and masks.
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BEER MONEY: Muh-muh-muh-my thesaurus.
By ROGER BAYLOR
Local Columnist
Five years ago, I began publishing an Internet blog called NA Confidential. Given my meek proclivities for expressing typically understated, mild opinions, I found blogging to be a perfectly wonderful venue for self-expression.
Not unexpectedly, I also found that blogging inspires passionate reactions on the part of readers. In the five years since NAC’s founding, I’ve been amply exposed to the rough and tumble world of Internet discourse, much of which is only slightly less violent than YouTube videos of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Judging from the venom that oozes from the information superhighway’s more poorly maintained turn lanes, one might conclude that all of its denizens are terminally angry and innately maladjusted, but while it’s undeniable that ticking time bombs abound (look first for those who write entirely in capital letters), I believe the phenomenon is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
That’s because so many of the enraged lifters of pudgy middle finger lifters opt to express their terminal anguish while masked, choosing the sheltering cowardice of anonymity instead of the integrity afforded by unflinching exposure to the light. In short, they give flights to malicious thoughts while hooded that they’d never, ever say to you while seated across the table.
Much like your brand new puppy, these anonymous character assassins simply haven’t yet been trained, but unfortunately, cute little Fideaux has a statistically better chance of being taught to refrain from soiling the carpet than his “mad as hell” human owner.
Nevertheless, I am able to appreciate finely crafted rebukes even when they seep from anonymous sources. One of my perennial favorites went straight for the liver:
“We acknowledge, of course, that (Roger's) skewed sense of self is most likely the result of the continuous consumption of his beverage of trade.”
Continuous?
I hardly resemble that remark, although the merits of practice still make for ultimate perfection, and three decades of continuing education in the world’s barrooms and beer emporiums have taught me that there are far worse states of human existence than those brought about by intoxication with alcohol.
After all, Adolf Hitler was pretty much the teetotaler, wasn’t he?
Be that as it may, when it came time to answer my camouflaged critic, I recalled Hitler’s arch-enemy, Winston Churchill, and his response to a woman who accused the bibulous British Prime Minster of being drunk.
“But I shall be sober in the morning and you, madam, will still be ugly.”
Here’s the genderless paraphrasing: I shall regain sobriety, but you will remain anonymous, a condition far more wretched than mere ugliness, because while ugliness denotes an appearance, anonymity is an alibi for disappearance.
As an aside, permit me to marvel at the quintessential Englishness of Churchill’s rejoinder. Indeed, from William Shakespeare through Samuel Johnson, and recalling “Lucky Jim” by Kingsley Amis as well as the ascendency of Dudley Moore’s drunken cinematic Arthur, our English cousins have an innate way of expressing themselves when it comes to alcohol.
Accordingly, Churchill summarized the entire topic of my “skewed sense of self” with a sentence I wish I’d written:
“I take a lot more out of drink that it takes out of me.”
Anonymously or otherwise, during 2009 some Tribune readers have berated Coach K (Steve Kozarovich) for his decision to place me atop this traditional newsprint soapbox, but as I noted in my very first column, Socrates is the one to blame.
In fact, most of his neighbors considered (Socrates) not only an annoyance, but a heretic, too, and if there’s anything to be gleaned from reading history, it’s that there’s always time enough for a priest to throw another heretic on the fire.
So goes the eternal tyranny of the majority, and yet thanks to Plato’s writings, we now recognize Socrates as a peerless moral and social critic. Appropriately, he has been honored by the tag of gadfly, a term for describing “people who upset the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or just being an irritant.”
As gadfly, I’m not remotely worthy of comparison with the master, and yet I deeply appreciate the opportunity to write this column and to ply my favored hobby of poking sticks through the bars of the Open Air Museum’s numerous self-limiting cages.
The predictable venom duly generated by this sort of serial prodding, whether in the newspaper or on my blog, is both extremely funny, and also serves as definitive proof that the agitation is fully necessary.
Meanwhile, during the past year, amid a full slate of problems and unresolved difficulties, there has been slow and incremental progress in New Albany toward toppling that 800-lb gorilla still ensconced high atop the Elsby Building.
This petulant gorilla (I like to call him King Larry, not King Kong) symbolizes the city’s ingrained, ages-old defeatism, and the tendency of the city's own residents to insist, usually anonymously, that progress is impossible, and that there’s no choice except to squat, benumbed, in 19th-century alluvial mud as the calendar pages inexorably turn forward.
Pfui. I simply refuse to accept the bile and animus of the city’s frightened, discredited wannabeens, and in 2010, I suggest that you reject it, too.
If this constitutes an expression of raging, uncontrolled ego on my part – on all our parts – then so be it, because life’s simply too short to heed anonymous dispensers of insults, emanating from those who perpetually mistake their own feelings of inadequacy and discomfort for universal conditions. It’s time they became part of the solution, and that’s impossible without shedding their masks.
Needless to say, selective samplings of my “beverage of trade” will continue, for quality control purposes only. The higher the alcohol content, the longer the words.
... It was one of those years — strike that; it was one of those decades. Whenever I was in my cups, that comfortably numb region conducive for enduring brain-dead patriotic platitudes and acute disgust with condescending Falwellian theocrats, and while toiling multiple jobs to accumulate enough money to travel somewhere in the world more civilized, I’d grimace, stare balefully at the date, and rationalize: Just four more years.
NA Confidential's mask-free policy on reader comments.
NA Confidential believes in a higher bar than is customary in the blogosphere, and follows a disclosure policy with respect to reader comments.
First, you must be registered with blogger.com according to the procedures specified. This is required not as a means of directing traffic to blogger.com, but to reduce the lamentable instances of flaming and personal attacks on the part of the anonymous.
Second, although pen names are perfectly acceptable, senior editor Roger A. Baylor must be informed of your identity, and according to your preference, it will be kept confidential.
To reiterate, I insist upon this solely to lessen the frequency of malicious anonymity, which unfortunately plagues certain other blogs hereabouts.
You may e-mail Roger at the address given within his profile and explain who you are. Failure to comply means that your comments probably will be deleted -- although the final decision remains ours.
Thanks for reading, and please consider becoming a part of the community here, one that is respectful of the prerequisites of civilized discourse, and that seeks to engage visitors in substantive dialogue.
