Max's Warm Tonic for Colds

My dad infected the whole family with norovirus. Just when we thought it had burned itself out and I'd made it into the clear, I came down with symptoms when I woke up on Christmas Eve (nausea, sore throat, fever, headache, sleeping a lot). I felt better that night and enjoyed a thoroughly delicious Christmas dinner with family. I woke up Christmas morning at four am to puke and continued to puke until noon.

I made it back to Davis on Sunday and the worst is over, but I apparently got a cold simultaneously (for a second my dad thought my respiratory symptoms ruled out norovirus, but I just got a twofer), so now I have a cough. I made this up a while back as a general cold remedy. Cheers to those of you who also feel like crap.

Add a dollop of honey to a mug of water
Boil in microwave
(Optional) Add some kind of black tea
Squeeze in a slice of lemon or lime
Add a drop of angostura bitters (a full dash if you skipped the tea)

This was originally devised for someone who was morally opposed to tea, but I like a little caffeine in mine. Fun Fact: I've actually used a scaled up version of this for hydration on bike trips. Beats the crap out of water.

Bri's Board and My Theory of Loss

I took Bri's board surfing with Caius and a friend while visiting home for Thanksgiving. There wasn't a very good break at the beach we went to, but the waves were medium-sized and surprisingly strong. I snapped Bri's longboard in half. I didn't do anything special, just got knocked off the board and dragged under by the leash. Another wave followed and snapped the board while I was underwater. That was it.

I really loved that board, which brings me to my theory on the nature of grief and loss. I believe that the emotional fallout of loss, which is to say grieving, is the process of disentangling the lost thing from your vision of the future. I didn't realize it until now, but I really wanted to hang ten off that board.

Bri wasn't overly bummed about losing her board. She had always magnanimously taken my board when the two of us surfed. Our surf guru, my mom's exboyfriend Bob, however, adored it. The board was a full length longboard, broad winged and thin with an extra-light shell. This made it particularly fragile and a rather elegant ride. The board was quite sensitive for its length and could turn as fast as my much shorter board. The broad nose always beckoned me to try and get my toes on it, but it also caught the breeze like a sail, which was especially inconvenient because of the ease with which the board turned.

After the board broke, I gathered up the two pieces and took them home. Caius asked if we could repair it, but breaking in half is universally understood as a surf board's death sentence. Once the wood stringer's integrity is ruined, there's no way to make the board whole again. Bob wanted to make sure we'd kept the pieces, though, because he had a friend who could make a replica based on them. Bob estimated it would cost four hundred to make (the price moderately-used longboards go for in retail surfshops). Knowing Bob and his trouble with alcoholism and, even when sober, with finances, Mom predicted that he'd never get the money together for the board.

That not-quite-loss makes the whole experience more agonizing. The possibility of riding a board like that again makes it that much harder to let go. But let go we must. No good will come from wistfully looking forward to a day that will not come. Unfortunately, Bob left that cursed glimmer of hope and I'll likely have trouble shaking the image of one day riding a board like that. Instead of dealing that loss decisively, that hope will linger and gnaw on dark cold nights. Sometimes I wish that board's reincarnation was impossible.

We also must remind ourselves that, excepting the people we had at birth, loss necessarily must follow gain, and for all that we've had, our lives have been richer for it and we are still the better for it. I'm a much better surfer than I was before I started riding Bri's board.

We should also remind ourselves of all that we still have. Though I transferred technical ownership of my board to Bri, I'll still be able to ride it whenever I get a chance. I've always really liked my board. It doesn't paddle quite as fast or have a broad, inviting nose, but it's a more durable and versatile board. I think every surfboard has something to teach the rider, so my surfing may ultimately benefit when I eventually buy a new board to replace the one I ceded to Bri. Of course, I'll have to return to living on the coast for that to happen.

Scary Movie Month, Year Four

For those of you not familiar with Scary Movie Month, check the original post that I wrote last year. It explains everything. It recently occurred to me that the story of Scary Movie Month is a really good illustration of my approach to appreciation of things in general.

Now, for the movies I watched October 2010:

Bride of Frankenstein
This is one of those unusual sequels to better the original. It's more thoughtful, horrible, and has more heart than the original Frankenstein. The plot of the original was so familiar, it took something away from the movie's grandeur. I didn't know what to expect with Bride.

Ringu
It was scary, as expected. The only part of the movie that really stuck with me, though, was the fascinating relationship between the protagonist and her exhusband while they try to unravel the curse on their heads.

Carrie
My favorite scary movie of the month, this is a movie about a high school outcast. The symbolism is beautiful, thoughtful and exquisitely disturbing. The tension is built over the course of the movie until the famous breaking point, which (surprise) involves a lot of blood, in case you hadn't seen the movie's cover.

Martin
Martin is a real-life vampire. As he states emphatically, "there is no magic". He doesn't have any powers. All he needs is a syringe of tranquilizer, a razor blade and some planning. The themes worked here reminded me strongly of Carrie-- an expose of the alienated, painfully shy teen with destructive antisocial tendencies. The audience is invited to pity and identify with both main characters. However, whereas Carrie is a fundamentally good person driven to those actions by circumstance, Martin is a sociopath.

Night of the Living Dead
This is the movie that established the classic zombie. In the last decade, zombies have been getting faster and more fragile, but there's a lot to be said for a zombie that will take a shot to the heart, pause, and keep coming. Eating people adds something too, I think.

Dawn of the Dead
George Romero returned to the genre that he had popularized with Night of the Living Dead ten years later with this sequel. The bulk of the movie is set in a mall. A lot had happened since 1968, and though Romero didn't change the premise or lore, he certainly doesn't take himself as seriously this time (rather than sobering black and white, blood is now a garish orange-red). As with Living Dead, if the social commentary of the movie wasn't already painstakingly obvious, Romero hammers you with it at the credits. Movies like Shawn of the Dead or Zombieland demonstrate a considerable debt to this classic.

Suspiria
This Italian film seems to be the best-regarded horror movie about witchcraft. It's set in a ballet school in Germany and the main character is American (though she almost only speaks Italian). The movie plays as a sort of boarding school mystery. There's a strong sense of apprehension and "weirdness" through the movie. I wasn't a big fan, but the movie is obviously well-made.

Poltergeist
Poltergeist comes off as kind of the flagship for the family-fun horror genre. The amount of special effects is competitive with contemporary popcorn movies, which is saying something. It takes you on a fun, fright-filled ride, accomplishing exactly what it set out to do.

Let the Right One In
This Swedish film is about a twelve-year-old boy befriending a vampire girl. The movie's as much an old-school romance as a horror film. I thought it was great.

The Descent
This keeps getting reviewed as the best horror movie of the 00's or in the words of a friend, "a horror movie that doesn't suck". As you would expect from one about spelunking, it is incredibly dark and claustrophobic. That pretty much sums things up.

Legalizing Pot

I thought this day would never come. Well, I at least thought it would take another ten or twenty years before a measure to legalize recreational marijuana would be seriously considered by an American constituency. I was wrong. California's Proposition 19, that will legalize recreational pot use, is just barely behind in the polls.

This is spectacularly cool for a number of reasons, the foremost being the realization of a truer liberty in America. I've long thought that our founding fathers must be rolling in their graves to know that an essentially harmless drug like marijuana would be made formally illegal. If Ben Franklin were alive today I'm sure he'd be a fan of pot.

I will grant that marijuana is not entirely harmless. Like caffeine, THC can stunt childrens' growth, like alcohol it lowers inhibitions and though there is no indication that extensive abuse causes brain damage the way alcohol does, residual THC (aka permastone) can dampen brain function for a month or two, though only noticeably so if epic quantities of pot are involved. I think every informed person will grant that the social risks of marijuana use are vastly overshadowed by alcohol and the health risks are overshadowed by tobacco.

I think it's fairly obvious that the decrease in price and increase in availability of pot will result in an increase in its consumption. I'd like you to pause for a moment and consider whether that's a bad thing. Prop 19 opponents will point out that many people have abuse problems with the drugs we already have legal, so why should we allow consumption of yet another drug? The answer is that while alcohol and prescription drugs do cause problems, there is an overwhelming good that comes from their being legal. I know I've enjoyed the benefits of responsible alcohol use.

THC is a non-habit forming drug, in contrast to nicotine, caffeine and, yes, alcohol. That means that consumers must repeatedly make the conscious, non-coerced choice to continue smoking pot. It is a drug consumed more voluntarily than any major legal recreational drug, to say nothing of hard drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin. Honestly, if not for the deference of American common law to consensus --that is, approaching this from a purely constitutional perspective-- marijuana use has far better grounds as a individual right than alcohol or tobacco.

There is some concern that legalizing pot would increase availability of the drug to minors. If Prohibition was any indication, though, bringing pot consumption above ground will make it easier to control who the drug is made available to. Right now minors have better access to pot than cigarettes or alcohol.

One figure I heard estimated the annual value of the Californian pot crop at twelve billion dollars. That's roughly three times the value of every other field crop in the state combined. That crop's value will diminish considerably if Proposition 19 passes. A modest chunk (1.5 billion) will go into taxes. Based on a projected 80% decrease in marijuana prices, that only leaves about one billion for the pot growing industry. Granted, these figures assume no increase in consumption, but these figures project a collapse in industry value by a factor of ten.

Of the original 12 billion, 1.5 billion will go to taxes and around a billion will go to run the industry. The remaining nine billion will be stolen back from the black market economy. Mexican drug cartels make a majority of their income from marijuana trafficking, so we can be sure that a significant amount of money will no longer be making it southward or indeed into organized crime across the state. Further, the profit margins that growers, distributors and dealers once made will disappear in the blink of an eye. Without the risk of incarceration those jobs will no longer pay unreasonably well. It is worth mentioning that Kush Magazine, everybody's "premier cannabis lifestyle magazine" had an ad in it opposing Prop 19, paid for by a medical marijuana dispensary. Middle school dope peddlers and Mexican drug lords won't be the only people suffering if Prop 19 is passed, let's not forget California's newest capitalists.

Voting for Proposition 19 is the correct choice from both a practical standpoint (improving government finance at the expense of cartels) and a civil liberties one. Legalizing a relatively harmless recreational drug like marijuana is fundamentally American and would make California a beacon of liberty. It would also probably set up a Supreme Court battle worth talking about.

Though September polls showed Prop 19 leading in September, it has slipped since then. Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a consolation prize should the Proposition fail-- decriminalization. A fairly even vote will also get people thinking about the ins and outs of legalization. There's a decent chance that a loss now will set up a victory later. That said, don't plan on losing this quite yet. The vote is still close and a recent study showed that Prop 19 polls are subject to a strong social desirability bias.

Logistics of Drinking: Glasses

There are those of you who will know me as an aficionado of jam jars. That element of my ghetto chic has persevered since Brandon and I's days of Seagram's martinis.

My jam jars comfortably hold about six ounces. That makes them ample for stiff drinks like martinis. It may have influenced my arrival on the 2:1 rule of cocktails, which is two parts mixer to one part liquor. Judging from other peoples' tastes, the 2:1 ratio is not arrived at without some guidance.

The size of my jam jars also lends itself to drinking wine. Though the glass is too thick for chilled whites, room temperature reds are perfect in my sturdy little declarations against pretension.

My jam jars are practically indestructible. In all my time in Davis, only one of them has broken (and not for lack of being dropped). They're further practical because they fit the universal mason lid, which I usually acquire by way of Classico pasta sauce. All kinds of things have been stored at some point in those trusty jam jars.

At six ounces, however, they do have some limitations. When it comes to drinking orange juice, milk or water, you need a glass with some capacity. Classico pint jars work great for water, but they're a bit hard to clean for milk and OJ. For that I've used more conventional glasses wide enough to be scrubbed out by hand.

The real journey in the world of drinking glasses has been with beer. In the beginning, I drank out of the can or the bottle, as befitted my no-nonsense "living light" attitude. Later, we occasionally drank out of glasses just for fun. At some point Brandon and I noticed the difference in flavor between pale ale out of the bottle and out of the glass. Aromatic beers need a glass to show their full flavor. I still drink non-aromatic light lager out of cans without qualms (though cans warm beer up quickly).

Quart or pint mason jars are great for drinking beer out of. I've had less luck with thick plastic cups, which tend to quickly decarbonate beers because of their many surface imperfections. I also have had the use of Brandon's legendary beer stein and a variety of typical pint glasses. Surprisingly, neither of those worked well as beer glasses. Because of the thickness of the glass, if they're not prechilled before use they'll quickly warm the beer to swill. I just don't have the kind of patience required to prechill glasses.

Everything changed a year ago when Jill brought back a couple of fluted glasses with short stems, courtesy of her study abroad class field trip to the San Miguel brewery in Burgos, Spain. The glasses were thin enough to keep the beer cool, wide enough to sniff and comfortable in the hand.

Part of these beer glasses' attraction was the sense of class. I still have no complaints about mason jars. They also are lightweight and keep beer cool, but short-stemmed beer glasses are more comfortable in the hand and way too much fun to drink out of. I've bought a few purpose-made stemmed beer glasses since then and I now have enough to host small tastings in style. I'll probably be on a constant hunt for elegantly shaped beer glasses for as long as I'm obsessed with beer.

On the Persuasion of Words

My friend Rob prefaced a confessional story with a preamble about how the use of words is nearly always an attempt to persuade people to like us and love us. He explained that he did his best to use words for the greater good and ignore what light his confessional story might portray him in. This was my response, cleaned up for your reading pleasure.

Your discussion about the persuasion of words was an awesome thought, but it's hard to be convinced that your attempts at making people love you with words are anything other than more complex and self-consciously twisted than the majority of people's. Attempts to subvert the impulse to try to be loved are never true subversions. I don't think we can free ourselves of that motivation and our resulting actions to even a small degree, only try harder to cover our tracks.

I can strongly empathize with your thoughts. I think I've tried harder to subvert those impulses in myself than most I know. I've watched my smartest friends go through the same calculus, though. That's had the dual benefit of showing me what it looks like from the outside and illustrating to me that the impulse is completely normal for individuals of our intellect. It also illustrates that the impulse makes people's personas far more interesting even if they never succeed in displacing, subduing or even hiding their selfish desire to be loved.

I remember my effort at that began with Christianity. I remember being in catechism, wondering whether good deeds counted if they were based in a desire to feel better about oneself and/or be treated with the gentleness reserved for "nice people", to say nothing of being motivated by the promise of heaven. Because God knew our motivations perfectly, I concluded they did not qualify as truly good deeds.

The next step in my thought process was that the only way to do good things without the inevitable morally-compromising reward was to play my good intentions off as bad ones and convince both those around me and myself that my actions were selfish and wicked. This corresponded with an increasingly perverse altruism that I mixed freely with my most overtly evil impulses as well as an increasing obsession with compartmentalizing my mind for the purpose of insulating my conscious from the fact that I was doing things that I believed to be good.

This formed the basic tenets of my high school class persona that earned me so much hate and ultimately love. I managed to almost perfectly conceal that I was an essentially loving, conscience-driven individual haunted by insecurity and loneliness. I came across as an arrogant, self-obsessed dick who was too smart for his own good. The persona meshed smoothly with my slacker-who-loves-school thing. I refused to take notes to my teacher's chagrin and asked hard, merciless questions that sometimes went over the teachers' heads and always kept them on their toes.

Picking at flaws in logic and person became a favorite outlet for many impulses at once, including my altruism, though I would have rightly insisted then that I was venting displaced anger by pointing out my teachers' weaknesses. I did the same essential thing to fellow students for even raising their hand if they wasted class time. Not only was there such a thing as a dumb question, there was such a thing as people too dumb to be entitled to a voice.

By the time I entered college, I'd entered a new phase of activism that was more nuanced and less overtly conflicted and confrontational than my high school days, but I still have great respect for the person I was in high school. I've only built upon the moral calculus that formed my high school persona. I've given up on thinking that compartmentalization or cultivated hatred will allow me to do good without reaping the benefits. I've given up avoiding the benefits. Part of that is probably because of how high school ended. I was eventually respected and adored for my refusal to conform or parse words.

My blog is a complete embrace of the "look at me" and "love me" implicit in writing so many words in a place where so many people can see them. I make no bones about trying to persuade people that my way is the right one, but more importantly I make no bones about playing up the quirky charm of my personality. I am shameless about my efforts to persuade people into loving me via my blog. Haven't I already earned your liking?

That persuasion has always been a filtering process, though. I've never had any ambition to be loved by all or even most. When somebody thinks I'm insane, sociopathic or perverted my normal reaction is to say screw you. I work hard enough at being correctly understood that when explanation fails I have few qualms about judging people for judging me. Were I not so articulate and careful to justify my thoughts, I might be more lenient, but as it stands, fuck'em.

September Update

It's been a long and interesting month. I'm just starting to feel settled into my new living arrangement.

This September was immediately preceded by moving out of my old house and moving Jill to Santa Cruz, where we broke up. After a week chilling with my sister, I returned to my new house. My three roommates were near-perfect strangers, my room was too full of boxes to fit a mattress and Jill wasn't the only person close to me to have moved on from Davis, just the most recent.

I started work again with Monsanto on the seventh. I'd gotten the job on the basis of an excellent recommendation from my old boss Staci, who I worked under during my internship. I knew I'd be facing a cut in pay, responsibility and interest of work. I'll be doing a complex assay to detect disease contamination in tomato seeds all year. I recently told Staci that my erratic thought-patterns are sub-ideal for the rather meticulous job, but that I'd get the rhythm of it soon enough. The tediousness of the job is saved by the pleasantness of the work environment. Everyone there is very cool and the nature of the job affords us some opportunity to talk.

It also turns out I won the roommate lottery. Mike is a nerdy but affable guy of understated intelligence that I think I could eventually become good friends with. Mereb and Celeste have the master bedroom. I was concerned that their hippy quirks might drive me crazy, but they're really open-minded and not even vegetarians. They turned me onto an awesome beer made by Pabst called Olympia. It's just as good as PBR, but the flavor is corn-driven instead of rice-driven. I suspect they used Cascade-style hops, which is kind of cool. Everyone is interesting to talk to and has a surprising number of things in common with me. I finally have a player for my records, I got my butt handed to me playing Axis and Allies and we might even get chickens soon.

Most of my free time this month has been spent in long conversations with old friends and writing this blog (four thousand unique hits and counting). A few you who know more than how to count will observe that it's been my most productive month of blogging thus far.

I've also been dabbling in TV shows, music and bonding with my new people. Mereb picked up a ping-pong table this weekend. I'd forgotten how much I liked that game. I went to Fry's with Mike on Sunday to check out computers. Yesterday I went to Vacaville Outlet Mall with coworkers and picked up some new shoes (green and white plaid converse, fyi).

I went to a KDVS show last week in Sac with Kern that his band was playing at. He and I both loved one of the bands there (Fall of Electricity), which embodied an intense, proggy drummer/guitarist formula that I've seen work really well a few times (other notable examples being the two-person incarnations of Afternoon Brother and Lightning Bolt). I bought Fall of Electicity's cassette, but I don't have a cassette player, so I'm going to download the mp3's it entitles me to and give away the cassette to the first person who asks, as per the guitarist's suggestion.

Howard has reclaimed an old mini-fridge and is trying to splice in a thermostat so that we can temperature-control fermentation for making sakes and lagers. The plan is to start a doppelbock this weekend and have bottles of it ready for Christmas. I've been scurrying to put together a recipe worthy of my "North Swell Bock" concept.

I've been thanking my lucky stars that Howard ended up sticking around for at least a little while longer. New friends are great and phone friends are great, but having a concrete piece of familiarity is priceless. It's interesting to chat with Howard on a one-on-one basis too. I've hardly ever had conversations with him as personal and thoughtful as they have recently been.

I've kept in contact with Jill and I think there's a decent chance the friends-afterward thing will work. She visited me last Sunday, partly to drop off the next books of a series she got me addicted to. We walked to Borders and talked. We don't talk like nothing's changed, but the familiarity is still there and it's nice. The whole visit was intensely bittersweet, though. Our hugs were the stuff of poetry. After she left I took a nap to both sort out my thoughts and disrupt their endless flow. I was off balance the whole rest of the day.

For those of you who keep asking me why we didn't stay together, please go back and read this. The reasons haven't changed and I have yet to (seriously) reconsider the decision.

For those of you who keep asking me how I'm doing, I'm doing fine. I'm doing better with each passing week. I have my moments, but mostly I feel surprisingly okay and that's getting more true with time. I think the good terms we parted on and the constant talk with friends has helped a lot.

That said, I've been dwelling a lot on the past and it is occasionally depressing. It's not just Jill, it's everything. I miss college things like watching TV and drinking beer with Brandon, bullshitting late at night and John Lazur giving me dubious advice. My being disgruntled about change should be neither surprising nor worrisome to any of you. I never pretended to like change, just to know it's good for me.

Eighty-Six Bottles of Beer on the Wall

I remember. Oh how I remember.

The last few weeks and indeed the last few months have been a time for reflection upon my time in Davis. It is, as I have already said, the end of an era. When Howard and Brandon and I moved to the Apple House, we started lining up beer bottles on top of our kitchen cabinets. A year later, when my mind was also looking backwards because of my upcoming graduation, I started telling Brandon stories I associated with various bottles. I realized how good a storytelling device they were and resolved to write this post in the future.

Yet another year later, Howard was the last of us original three to leave the Apple House and I got those charmed bottles. They had a crust of grease on their shoulders from their lengthy existence in that kitchen. I lined them up (mostly) chronologically and photographed them to tell you their stories. This is a long post, full of stories both momentous and trivial whose value lies in their significance to those who played roles in them.


Stella Artois was the first beer I ever bought. I got it while in the dorms through Brandon's high school friend Tyler. Tyler ended up introducing us to craft beer while we lived in the dorms because periodically he would visit his girlfriend Erin at UC Davis and we'd all hang out in Brandon's dorm and drink Tyler's beer. I remember it took me months to acquire a taste for any beer, but I left the dorms a fan of Sierra Nevada and Fat Tire.

My first visit to Nugget Market, I bought a battery of craft sodas, my interest a relic from my days in high school. I tasted them with my roommates one by one over the course of a week, setting the pattern I would later revisit with single-bottles of beer after I graduated.

The standout was an old soda I'd wanted to try since those high school days. Moxie has become synonymous with spunk and determination in vernacular and it frankly tastes medicinal. The thing is, it tastes medicinal in a completely awesome way. I'd drink it periodically if Nugget would freaking stock it again (more than can be said of all but a handful of craft sodas), but I haven't seen it on their shelves since.

Later that sophomore year, I got Allison's roommate Emy to buy us alcohol. She recommended New Belgium's 1554 from the Coop, which was excellent.

We became fans of Gordon Biersch Marzen among other things. We started saving bottles so that we might insinuate ourselves into brewing beer of our own some day. I remember Brandon thought Stone IPA was too bitter, but I tried to approach it with an open mind. He liked Red Hook, though, and three years later we had a pitcher of it with his family in Dana Point while they were visiting for a cousin's wedding.

I also remember when Allison's mom visited (but I forgot why) with a bottle of Skyy vodka and we made lemon drops at my house.


Our junior year Adam was old enough to give us the hookup. We liked Gordon Biersch's Marzen enough that we tried out Sudwerk's. I though it was relatively boring, but Brandon liked it.

Seagram's Gin should be in the lineup somewhere, because it was that year that Brandon and I started making martinis regularly, sipping them while we watched Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond.

Howard's girlfriend Tammy turned twenty-one late in the year and I remember sipping Pyramid Apricot Ale with she and Howard at her apartment.

Soon after we'd graduated, the household turned twenty-one all at once. We stocked a bar and purchased some liquors I'd read about, including Rye Whiskey and Brazilian Cachaca. We had a cocktail party for Howard and I's birthday with our newly stocked bar. John Lazur, Adam, Greg Webb, Russell Manning and Jill were all there. Russell and Jill were dating that summer and I became friends with both of them through my involvement with DCD (the Davis College Democrats).

Brandon bought a Japanese White Ale called Hitachino's nest on some DCD escapade and I remember it tasted great.

Caius came to visit me that summer, twice. He made me a blackberry pie the first time and I documented a bike trip he and Brandon and I took up the American River. We also tried some beer and cider from the coop. Caius loved hard apple cider.


I took my new grill for it's first spin, grilling $4/lb New York Strip on the patio at Kingston Apartments. Brandon and I bought Pilsner Urquell on a whim. The steak turned out great. Though the beer was awesome, it didn't pair well at all. This inaugurated both my love of Pilsner and my long and unsuccessful search for the beer that would pair with American steak.

I also remember the love-at-first-taste I had with New Belgium's Skinny Dip.

When I visited home that summer, I bought Virgil's Cola at Farm-to-Market with my sister. The cola wasn't half as good as their root beer, but I had a great time hanging out with Bri.

Howard brought some Kirkland beer that he'd discovered at his hometown Costco.

I vividly remember shoving a wedge of key lime into a Corona on my way out the door to ride with Brian Ang and Matt Takaichi to see My Bloody Valentine in San Francisco. I remember sharing my jam jar of rye, the incredible volume of the show and the absolute hordes of kids dressed in their scene best.

Brandon and I ended up becoming big fans of Cachaca and the cocktail made from it called a Caipirinha. Before long we had to replace the old bottle we'd bought on my birthday.


At some point, John Lazur and I's boss, Richard, brought a few bottles of beer back from a visit to Jack Russell brewery. He told us that we could drink them together after closing up the chemical dispensary (John acted as manager for the closing shift). The two of us had a wonderful time discussing the beers. After that, we made a semi-regular thing out of it. John also introduced me to Dogfish Head brewery by giving me their fall seasonal.


Inspired by John, I hosted a "six-pack party", where guests where instructed to bring a six-pack of a beer they had never tried before. The hit of the night was Laura Nevins' Prohibition Lager, which I thought tasted like strawberries.

Before that fall, we made the big move from our run down apartment to a duplex that we called the Apple House. The last day of the move, Brandon went to pick up some McDonald's (having not unpacked the kitchen yet) and as such things go that time of year, a few friends dropped by and we had a housewarming party. Among those friends was Jill. We cracked open a sixer of Leffe, which Brandon claimed tasted exactly like creamed corn when he drank it in Europe with Tyler. Jill and I got to chat when the others made a trip to the store and the two of us hit it off. She'd broken up with Russell earlier that summer and I remember thinking to myself that I should go after her.

There were two impromptu get-togethers around our kitchen that September and Jill was at both. On one Jill formed her first opinion of Leffe and on the other I invented my Christmas Punch in the process of playing bartender to Jill, trying to mimic a cranberry vodka with limited ingredients.

Later in the fall I remember discovering Hefeweizen playing a drinking game with Sudwerk's at Don Gibson's house. I soon got bored with the style, though.


At the beginning of the fall my sister and Aaron Robinson visited for ORMF with Bri's friend Lauren and Aaron's then-girlfriend Jill Hardy. I cracked open one of my dad's more prized red wines (I'd taken a case to Davis with me).

The next day we went to the show and the brief romance I'd had with Lauren came back to life, Lauren's affection growing more pronounced when the the only one of the many Davis friends I invited to show up turned out to be Jill Miller.

A few weeks later, Brandon and I planned to visit our respective siblings in Santa Cruz. We hadn't found anyone interested in gas-sharing with us by that Friday, when by chance I ran into Jill between classes. I invited her and she said she'd come along. The three of us chatted enthusiastically the way there, bickering about whether Jill had good movie taste and agreeing to host a movie marathon. Lauren happened to have dropped by to visit Bri for the weekend, so the dynamic resumed. This time, though, while I put my arms around Lauren, Brandon put his arms around Jill. That night was when Jill decided she didn't actually like Leffe. The following night we picked up some "Oktoberfest" from Trader Joe's that Brandon and I agreed tasted a little like raw meat.

It wasn't until later, when Bri asked me if I liked Jill that I realized how obvious our chemistry was. Lauren certainly noticed. The similarities between the two outings are astonishing. In both cases, Jill was the only person of many invitees to show and Lauren happened to have dropped in on Bri. In both cases I was more ignorant of the dynamic than Lauren or Jill.

After we'd dropped Jill off at her house (and Jill and I had agreed to have a movie marathon the next weekend), I asked Brandon if he was interested in Jill. Brandon said definitely not and I said good, because though he had first dibs, I really wanted to go after her.

My new roommate Greg Webb had run a bruising independent campaign for ASUCD Senator. He announced that regardless of the outcome, he'd be hosting a "Moral Victory Party" and that he would drink a shot of tequila for every twenty votes he received. He got three hundred votes and was just eight votes short of winning.

We measured off the small amount of extra tequila from a fifth and Greg started to drink. Everybody drank (Brandon and I as always playing the role of bartenders extraordinaire), but Greg made it halfway through the bottle within an hour. We decided to move our small party to check out a handful of large parties we'd heard about. Greg was shouting a continuous stream of slurs and insults about the candidates that had beaten him, insisting that we go to the victory party for LEAD (the winning party) so that he could cuss them out in person. We steered Greg to my friend Kern's party. I had an involved albeit tipsy discussion with Jill about "las otras", trying desperately to convince her that she was my first pick. We danced together at Kern's party. By the time we left that party, our numbers had thinned considerably. By the time we arrived at Greg's friend's "wig party", it was just the three of us.

Drunken Greg looked like ET in a hot pink bob. We mixed and chatted, but mostly Jill and I's conversation continued. By the time we left, I was easily the most sober of our trio, Greg still weaving precariously as he continued hurling a stream of insults into the empty streets. Jill and I felt a sense of teamwork as we shepherded him home. For about half the walk I pushed Greg in a grocery cart. In the last leg of the trip Jill and I held hands. It was at that moment that I knew for sure that we had mutual interest, though later she would say it hadn't meant anything.

Jill and I had the long promised movie marathon and though it went otherwise swimmingly, Jill rebuffed my attempt to put my arm around her. We agreed to do it again the next weekend. The second time Jill's friend Lazzuly joined us and Jill snuggled up to me until I put my arm around her. We watched a couple of movies like that. Lazzuly left to get ready for a DCD party that night and I fed Jill a potato with cheese. We walked to the party holding hands.

At the party we danced only with each other. A DCDer named Shane mistook me for Colin Doyle, who'd been hitting on his girlfriend. He tipsily apologized for the mistake later, forcing not one but two bottles of Mirror Pond on me. I didn't care. By that time dancing had turned into making out and I was practically floating.

A few weeks later the Apple House hosted its Christmakah party. This was the third we'd hosted and by this time my roommates were pulling more weight in the preparation than I was (I who'd gallantly started the first one). That Jill and I were dating was made apparent to DCD that night. I busted out some of my dad's wine, making the mistake of letting a stranger open one of the bottles. The only way to salvage the resulting split cork was to push it into the bottle. I was pissed at the time, but I'm amused to see that cork half still sitting glumly in the bottle (the Chardonnay, btw). The next morning I asked Jill, (with a note of exasperation) "What are we?". She seemed surprised that I wanted to date exclusively. I was surprised that she'd allowed it to go this far without demanding some kind of commitment. I'd wanted a long term relationship all along (since that first hang-out at the Apple House) and wanted to lock her down before winter break.


That winter quarter, I took "Introduction to Beer and Brewing" with funny British professor Charles Bamforth. I was immediately excited by the sound of the bocks, starting off with the ubiquitous Shiner Bock.

That Valentine's day was my first worth celebrating and I pulled out the stops to make it special, more for me than for Jill. We went to Seasons for dinner and watched a playing of A Winter's Tale. The next day we decided to go to Napa, though it was raining. We bought a couple bottles of wine and some nice cheese, including the Chardonnay pictured.

I also remember having Adam over for a more modest incarnation of the "six-pack party". He brought Henry Weinhard and I got some Red Seal. Talk was good and the Red Seal was great.

That winter, my sister came to visit. I'd promised to bake her cookies if she visited me (and actually stayed with me, instead of spending all her time with Allison), a promise which she was quick to remind me of. I fondly remember sipping Red Tail while baking cookies (another terrible pairing) while it softly rained outside. I think probably the other time she came and stayed with Allison we drank the Kriek Boon, kriek being another beer style I'd been introduced to through my class.


At some point I hosted a beer tasting of various bocks. Allison, Jack, Brandon, Howard and Jill were all in attendance. I do love getting all my favorite people in one place. Add that to a wealth of delicious new beer and I'd have to call my state one of bliss.

After I graduated, Jill went to study abroad in Spain. I knew her being gone would be hard on me. She actually left the morning of my birthday. That afternoon I called John Lazur to come over and hang out. I made him try my newly invented Black Bayou with my purpose-purchased bottle of Maker's Mark, which isn't in the lineup because I still have some left in it.

We were having a great time chatting. One thing led to another and we cracked open a forty of Old English while Howard and Greg prepared a feast of different dishes all made with zucchini (you know how it is with zucchini). John left at eight or so and I passed out on my bed around ten. I woke up at four AM feeling like I'd been hit by a cement truck. Since I couldn't get to sleep I screwed around online and feverishly read the pulp fiction Jill had left me to read. In the next couple days I burned through her sizable stack of books, sleeping erratically and feeling like shit the whole time.

While Jill was gone I drove with my mom and sister to Wisconsin. Driving in shifts, we did it in thirty-two hours. It was the first time I'd been to Wisconsin since I'd turned twenty-one. I drank a local beer by New Glarus with my cousin Eddie, which felt like some kind of rite of passage.

I'd heard that Coca-Cola's formulation varied from country to country. I'd told Jill to bring back a coke from every country she passed through. She brought back a Spanish coke and a French one. I added in a bottle of Mexican coke and a can of Americana and we had an old-fashioned Apple House taste test. We couldn't really tell the difference between the Spanish and French cokes. For that matter, except the obvious difference of sucrose vs high fructose corn syrup, I couldn't detect a difference in the formula between the European cokes and our American one. The Mexican coke was definitely different. It drew the most polarized response, but we all agreed that it was "weird". It tasted warmer, like a fiesta (more cinnamon?). Whatever it was, I think Mexican coke was my favorite of the tasting.

Jill also returned from Spain with a taste for Spanish Tempranillo. We were always trying to drink it with pork. I'm not sure if we ever actually did.

On the edge of the picture is a bottle of Stone Pale Ale. Caius and I picked up a six pack of the stuff on our way to a backyard folk show. This must have been the summer before, because the occasion provided the inspiration for I BUI.


That summer, Jill's mom kind of turned on me without my realizing it. Jill wanted me to make my delicious grilled steak for her mom, so I made steaks for Jill, her mom and her friend Myranda Hunter (who happens to be my kind of people). I picked one of my dad's Bordeaux's for the steak (Jill's mom likes Merlot). Out of the gates I was criticized for burning the steaks. The night went downhill from there as Jill's mom became more drunk, more belligerent and more appalled by my nonchalance (any chance at diplomacy on my part being similarly buried in wine).

The night ended with Jill's mom telling Jill to break up with me and insisting that she was ok to drive home. Jill would hardly look at me until she got a text the next afternoon saying, "I was only kidding. Don't break up with the boy."

A few weeks later Matt Gribble visited me along his way from Stanford to grad school in Baltimore. I took him to a KDVS house show. He was pretty critical of the music, but he loved the lambic he'd bought (I did too, enough to ask to keep the bottle for my wall) and had a great time unsuccessfully chasing this scene kid who "wasn't out of the closet yet".

Matt Wingert finally visited me as he'd been promising for years. We chilled out with Brandon's brother Spencer and watched the first two seasons of the Venture Brothers. The last night we picked up a variety of mostly German lagers from the coop and he, Brandon, Jill and I had a tasting. The equation is simple: good beer plus good friends equals awesome. Works every time.


After a summer's growing anxiety about my continuing unemployment, I ran smack into the most unlikely of jobs. DCD had decided to encourage it's members to work for a housing measure on the ballot called Measure P. The project was sustainable and the campaign very well funded. I think somebody in DCD's leadership mistakenly hoped the club might get some portion of the $15/hour that the campaign was paying its workers.

Working the campaign was great. It got me out of the house and also off Jill's nerves (it was a hot summer). Flyering was a beautiful excuse to walk around Davis's idyllic neighborhoods. "Walking" and phone banking got me chatting with the town's residents. In addition to paying us well, the campaign was generous about taking us out to lunch. I acquired great respect for two of the three eateries we had accounts with: Steve's Pizza and Zia's Deli (the latter superb). Somehow, they even let us order beer for lunch, so I got a taste for Boont Amber Ale along the way.

I liked the hours, the people and the job itself. Because I was one of the few nonstudent campaigners, I eventually took a greater level of responsibility within the campaign. I organized walks, discussed strategy and even wrote campaign literature. I remember getting home completely windswept after acting as a bike messenger (eat your hearts out, fixie kids!) and immediately loving Sam Adams' Octoberfest, which fit the season and moment so perfectly. Did I mention October is my favorite month?

Towards the end of the campaign, the more regular among us went out to Little Prague for beers after a long day. On David Urhausen's suggestion, we got all three of the Chimay brews they offered. It was all very bittersweet, so I took home the most expensive bottle to memorialize the parting. Because Little Prague had recently decided to stop stocking Chimay, the bartender let us have a Chimay glass each for a couple dollars.

I gained an appreciation for the vast beauty of Davis those two months. I also gained an appreciation for the intelligent and ornery citizens of Davis, who voted our Measure down by a landslide. Things had to come to an end sooner or later. The campaign managers had slowly let on how unlikely it was that we'd win, but even they were unprepared for the decisiveness of the rebuke. It didn't sting as bad as the fact that the campaign ended. David hosted an end of campaign party with a keg of Sudwerk Pilsner, which was about the most jaw-droppingly awesome party provision I'd ever heard of.

Soon after I joined Jill and DCD for their Tahoe retreat, where young democrats from across the state rubbed shoulders. I don't think we brought it along, but I remember buying that bottle of Grolsch with Brandon around the same time. The beer itself was terribly skunked. The story of note from the retreat was my increasingly hostile disposition towards Andrew Peake. I'll just say that I guardedly liked him for a long time and that changed dramatically.

In December I finally retook the GRE (after bombing because I'd gone in cold). A weekend's prep and I increased my math score by 130 points. All told it was a raging victory for me. I cracked open Anchor's Christmas Ale with Brandon and Jill. It was quite good.

I decided to scale down last year's lavish Valentine's day celebration and work on a budget. Jill and I went to dinner with a coupon to one of our favorite Indian restaurants. The Indian lager tasted divine alongside the curry and the lamb special we ordered was quite delectable.


I remember buying and drinking the Red Bull Cola while still living at the Apple House, but I'm pretty sure I was already making arrangements to move out. The cola was really good. Pity it was too expensive to buy again.

Probably around the same time I remember drinking another Dogfish Head brew at Jill's house, this one inspired by ancient Mesopotamian beers. I'd started buying single bottles since Jill moved so close to the Coop and I discovered the cheap single bottles at Save-Mart. That trend would increase considerably once I'd moved away from my beer buddy Brandon.

My replacement at the Apple House was named Alberto. He took Brandon's living room and Brandon took my room, which Brandon was stoked about. Alberto brought with him a single bottle of Amaretto. I always coveted a taste, but never asked in my subsequent visits to the Apple House. Eventually it was added to the wall in my absence, and I find that somehow fitting.

Logistics of Drinking: Container Size and Material

I've counted drinks carefully since I started drinking in college and it has served me well since then, provided I didn't overwhelm my reasoning by drinking too quickly. However, while vodka may not go bad after it's been opened, most nondistilled spirits do, and this places constraints on the control you have over your own consumption, because even after four years of college there are still sober kids in Africa.

I can tell you from experience that it took a lot of organization and a little pain to empty my two brewing vessels, which I bought from the store filled with four liters of wine apiece. While there's no perishable alcohol in as big a container as jug wine, almost all wine and some beers pose similar logistical challenges.

As romantic as a picnic basket for two with a bottle of wine poking out the top may be, I've never really enjoyed drinking half a bottle of wine on such occasions for reasons both obvious and subtle. A bottle makes much more sense for a European-minded family, a double date or an intimate dinner with friends. Wine is still dictated by tradition and I have no expectation for unit sizes to change. On the plus side, I have high hopes for the emergence of screw caps as the industry standard. Synthetic corks are cool and all but once we've admitted that real cork is outdated, I think the leap to screw caps is a short one.

Beer, once again, is that exemplary form dominated by reasonableness. The classic unit-sizes of beer are either single-serving, keg or the forty, the former being perfect for friends or a rager of one. Much of beer is packaged in the most economical and innocuous of containers-- stainless metal. All of this is worth applauding. Aluminum cans reduce the impact on both the environment and the consumer. Single servings allow us to drink like the gentlemen we are.

Craft brewers are still worthy of critique, however. I understand the calculus that goes into choosing glass bottles-- they are still a symbol of quality and respect ingrained deeply in every American consumer's psyche. That's a hurdle worthy of sympathy. It's also a hurdle worth hurdling. Nobody is better positioned to break that psychological association in beverage packaging than the American craft brewer. A few brave breweries have gone to cans, primarily motivated by facilitating beer consumption in the great outdoors. I recommend looking for a 12-pack of cans the next time you're thirsty for New Belgium's Fat Tire. Anderson Valley is another notable brewery that's dabbling with the crinkly stuff.

I've also been fascinated by the role of the bottle size that's alternatively called a bomber, a growler or simply a double-- the 22 oz bottle. For the purposes of discussion I'm going to lump in 750mL bottles too. It turns out to be the bottle of choice for specialty productions by craft brewers. Rogue and Stone practically subsist off the format.

The association with small batches is partly for historical reasons. Bigger bottles mean fewer crown caps, less cleaning and less chance of contamination, which is great for the home or small-scale brewer. Furthermore, the size comes with the liberty of nonstandard pricing. Because the beer contained in doubles is often more expensive to make and distribute, the price ranges from $3-15. That's a far cry from the relative uniformity of $7-10 per six-pack. Releasing 22-only beers is also a perfect way for a brewer to force cheapskates like me who'd buy a single 12 oz into paying the full price of admission (and distribution), a business model which I grudgingly respect. My roommates can thank enterprising business models for their intermittent supply of free beer.

Finally, the bottle style comes with the cache and genuine charm of being similar in size to a wine bottle. While it's not uncommon for these specialty runs' abv to run into wine territory, there are plenty of 5-7% abv bottles that make a perfect treat for two. That fact endears them to me above all else. The format practically forces social drinking. Though I'd prefer the stronger specialty beers be packaged in more modest pint bottles, I think the format is generally awesome.

The Aimee Mann Journey

I played an album on low volume while going to sleep from freshman year until I started sharing my bed. I have returned to that tradition since moving to my new room. Last night I forgot to search the album to exclude the rest of my library, so I woke at one in the morning to the crooning of Aimee Mann, remembering a dream that involved her.

I was trying to get across San Clemente to an Aimee Mann house show. I remember images of different parts of the city that I passed through. I remember kids playing at a park/beach and climbing up the slide to get to the street. I remember trying to get my bearings from the remarkably mountainous coastal hills. I remember the frustration of being lost, of being late and wondering whether I'd ever get there.

Then I was there. I was talking with Aimee Mann about some promotional chocolate she'd given out at her last show. It had been really good and I wanted to know where I could get more. I wanted a pound-- no, maybe more. It was, after all, really good. I remember deciding I'd be willing to buy a hundred dollars worth of chocolate, whatever the rate, so that I could distribute it to friends. That's when I woke up and realized my itunes was still playing.

I've been unsuccessfully trying to get myself to go to some KDVS house shows recently. Jill seemed to like the few shows I took her to, but I suspect she unconsciously let house shows die. I could never get my roommates to go with me before Jill, so most of my memories of house shows are going on my own, chatting sporadically with acquaintances but mostly feeling alone in a crowd. The music was always interesting and usually worth it. It seems like an appropriate thing to pick back up now that I'm on my own again. I'm going to make a point of at least attending the upcoming ORMF.

Practical Intimacy

I have been having some very long conversations with some very good friends, partly because I'm bored/lonely and partly because I have something worth talking about. Going out with and living with Jill was an amazing experience. I think I matured a lot and learned even more. Because of our personalities it managed to be both intense (who on earth can handle THAT much time together?) and sober. Last week I managed to surprise even Howard with a few examples that demonstrated the degree to which we'd meshed our lives together.

One of my favorite things about moving in with Jill was the communality that far surpassed what I'd shared with my roommates. The prototypical example was washing our laundry together, because it allowed me to complete my partial loads of whites and reds (yes, bleeding opposite colors will dull each other so it makes sense to segregate them. my mom with the degree in painting says so, so there) and pretty much almost always have a full load of blues/darks on hand in need of washing. It also allowed me to wash laundry while she was in school or her to wash laundry while I was working.

Obviously the meshing went a lot farther. While we always split rent evenly along with every other major expense, we did away with keeping track of what was who's expenditure. The effect of this was to force us to compromise on what we spent money on. Considering that when I met her she spent her financial aid money freely on convenience food, generously on alcohol for other people's parties and gas to give people rides, this was actually quite a feat. We had sharp differences on how our parents had taught us to spend money. Compromise turns out to be surprisingly gratifying when it's grounded in goodwill and honesty. By the end of this past summer, our values (and not just spending habits) had moved a long way towards common ground.

Frankly, Jill and I had gotten much closer to embodying the "unmarried partners" tag we checked for a lark on the census form than I think either of us could have anticipated. Closer even than two of my best friends' relationships that have lasted over five years (this is opinion and not fact, but hey, Howard was impressed). Jill and I half-seriously joked that our relationship was stronger and more stable than one unnamed pair of newlyweds.

I feel like I got a window into what marriage must be. You console each other when the other's bummed, prod them to send in their graduate applications and they in turn make sure you're civil enough at social occasions not to make unnecessary enemies (go elitism!). I must confess the experience has left me eager for when I finally do get married. I'm pretty sure I'll love it.

Logistics of Drinking: Buzzes and Hangovers

People are quick to associate different kinds of alcoholic drinks with different kinds of nights. Much of this comes from how people approach drinking each beverage. A night of shots will classically leave you passed out on the floor because, according to culture, shots are consumed in quick succession, which is the best way to bypass any sort of consumption limits you may place on yourself. Wine gives many people a headache because they drink it so damned delicately that they get the effects of a hangover without their blood alcohol ever passing threshold.

That said, a lot of these effects are also tied into the beverages' water content. Shots, with hardly any water of their own, will hit you fast and leave you completely dehydrated if you forget to drink water. Hence the association of tequila shots with wild nights and regretful mornings. While sulfites are the foremost reason to associate wine with headaches, their high alcohol/water ratio is also to blame. Ever since watering wine went the way of the Romans, wine has been far too alcoholic to be drunk on its own.

Beer, on the other hand, is traditionally much lower in alcohol. There's enough water in beer to mollify hydration problems. Also, the carbonation ensures the alcohol still hits your system quickly so you can get your buzz on. Basically, beer is the best way to consume alcohol for its positive effects, or at least the most foolproof against hangovers. Frankly, the fact that keystone light is the lubricant of choice at frat parties is incredibly logical. It's cheap and has a relatively low alcohol content.

That said, there are some important rules that are worth observing with all alcoholic drinks. First of all, don't nurse your drink. No matter how precious that scotch may be or how important it is to be able to drive home, below a certain rate of sipping, most of us can get a mild headache from alcohol without even feeling buzzed. If you're a designated driver, just have your drink early and at a normal pace. You'll probably engage your smooth ER at capacity either way. Secondly, it's always a good idea to drink water at the end of the night. There's nothing like waking up with a two-drink hangover. The good news is that mild-offense hangovers will disappear soon after drinking water. Lastly, I know there's a time and a place for drinking to lose. Just make sure it's actually the time and place. I've only regretted about half of my worst hangovers...

Born to Drive

I missed my bus home today by a couple of minutes (after biking like a madman into a gusty headwind). I ducked into Woodland Mall to use their facilities and I returned to find the "Davis Express" idling at the bus stop. I'd never run across this line before in my few months riding Yolobus. I shrugged my shoulders-- a lot of fates were better than waiting an hour for my next bus.

I asked the driver if he could take me to Davis. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to take passengers on his way to his first official stop, but he'd call in to ask. I thought that was friendly of him. Dispatch assented and the bus driver warned the other guy who wanted to go and I that he had to go through "downtown". I didn't think there was a way this could be a less pleasant route home than sitting around waiting for my bus.

Once underway it became quickly apparent that "downtown" meant Sac and my bus driver was a bona fide character. He talked about how his most valuable possession was his driving record and that while he wasn't very athletic or otherwise talented, he was born to drive. He rapped off how he made it his business to drive well and safely, and that he had faith that Jesus would not disappoint him. Reciting bible verses in his rolling black voice and speaking enthusiastically about how there's a right way and a wrong way to take a turn, he reminded me of my uncle Pierre, who's a Catholic apologist.

The man had energy. Every eccentric's starting point is inborn energy. He told us how he loved this (coach-style) bus because it "turned like a car". He told us that we were coming up on his "favorite turn in the world", which was a left at a streetlight, the outer arc of the turn marked with reflective bumps. He prepared us to appreciate its magnificence with a "wait for it, wait for it" and then we rolled around the turn. We turned gracefully and smoothly at a fairly moderate speed without hitting a single reflective bump. He then enthusiastically exclaimed, "Did you hear me hit one of those bumps? Did you? That's right! I was born to drive!" I suspect the feat was more impressive if you drive buses for a living.

He stressed out about running behind schedule (because he took us on) and talked about ways to get more speed out of his bus. He criticized drivers on the freeway for not signaling and cutting in front of him and detailed the subtleties to driving well. Quite a few subtleties, in fact. He also reminisced about his younger days as a truck driver. He'd traveled through forty-six of the forty-eight continental states (only missing Washington and Oregon, we learned). He wistfully said that he'd have kept driving trucks if he had stayed single and suggested that it may have been a better decision.

Besides energy, he shared with my uncle and I a faith in purpose and grace. I always respect a person who lives with so much of themselves on the surface for all to see and comes across so whole and beautiful. That's another thing I think he shared with Pierre and I. There are a lot of times when I wish my persona held more mystique, but occasionally I remember to ask myself "What use is mystique if you're plain awesome?"

In the end, I guess I'm not really surprised so many people play life close to their chests. I'm more curious why so few people believe in purpose and grace.

The Chime of Silver

There's no easy way to get through a breakup, but every cloud has its lining. The silver lining of breakups is that they make music sound fantastic.

Did you leave those mopey, angst-ridden bands of your youth behind? Does that magnum opus no longer sparkle with the immediacy you remember? I'm here to tell you to take them for another spin in the midst of a breakup.

Talk about power. It's like there's a twisted monster crawling through those once-too-familiar chords making them seethe with new and dangerous life.

And if, after awhile, the music recedes into normality as you slip into the comfort of denial, just think about the person you've lost and all the things you'll miss about them and how you'll never have them again until your eyes begin to prick with tears.

The music will perk right back up. It will sing to you symphonies of life and love and pain. It will tell you stories of anguish like caverns and thorn bushes, of loss like the ocean and you, the boat on its storm-harried surface, flying through space with the deftness of the waves that chase you. And when those waves catch you, as they inevitably and repeatedly will, it will feel so good and right and the sky will open up and every star will burn so brightly that heaven will buzz with electricity and sparkle like the sea.

While a good sad-song mix cd has its charms, there's nothing like a depressing or just thoroughly perturbed album to set a mood and carry you through it in beauty. Here is the list of albums that have done right by me:

Radiohead - OK Computer and The Bends
Radiohead - Kid A and Amnesiac
The Beta Band - The Three EP's
Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider
REM - Automatic for the People
Wire - Chairs Missing
His Name is Alive - Mouth By Mouth
Big Star - Third/Sister Lovers
Catherine Wheel - Ferment
Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster
The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Weezer - Pinkerton
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
-round 2-
John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
Old 97's - Too Far to Care
Sunny Day Real Estate - The Rising Tide
Finn - s/t
Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball

Ever since the breakup I've had an appreciation for love songs that I've never really had, happy and sad ones both. I've long been a fan of songs about "new love", but the ones about old love finally speak to me. Also, I think I've been paying more attention to lyrics.

The Hey After

After nearly two years since our first date and having lived together since March, Jill and I broke up on the 28th after I moved her into her Santa Cruz apartment. It was an amiable breakup, as I mentioned previously. This is an edited version of my first correspondence with her since that fateful Saturday.

Hey Jill,
I want to talk to you SO badly, but like I promised I won't call you until the denial has passed more completely. Tell me if this is cheating too much. I graduated to using the correct tense in reference to our relationship, but I know it's still only partially sunk in.

I've talked about you a lot, such that I feel like I understand you and what we were better, but it was really just putting words to things I'd known deep down. I talked about all your flaws and all your good qualities and all the things I love about you. The tragic irony is that we broke up when the good things outweighed the bad by far (as they always did), something I've long said was true and something I've always been terrified you didn't truly believe. Bri says that amiable breakups heal cleaner and faster.

I think about you at least every few minutes. At the same time talking has confirmed to me that the things I liked about you far outweighed anything I didn't like, it also confirmed to me that breaking up was the right decision. My increased confidence in the wisdom of that decision has come hand in hand with doubt so severe I frequently feel like a ship without a rudder near shoals. I doubt the decision every few minutes. I'm constantly afraid that I'll betray myself and what I know is right to chase those things that I miss so much. Of the stages of grief, I think I've moved past outright denial through anger (which flashed in the last few seconds before you walked out the door) to bargaining. I keep trying to think of ways that I can have you again.

Bri's done a better job taking care of me than even you could have hoped, I think. That girl has wisdom beyond her years. She shamed me out of writing this letter (while tipsy) Sunday night. Now I'm taking advantage of having woken up before her, but I think her main point was that one day was too soon, even though the thought of you unpacking your room alone after your mom left was tearing me up.

We saw Avatar in 3D yesterday. It was everything you or anybody else said it would be. Twice in the movie theater, I forgot that Bri wasn't you next to me and did a double take. We made intricate plans to backpack to Santa Cruz from Monterey and plans to go home to SoCal. Both fell through, so now we're just going to chill for the remainder of the week. It's probably just as well. I don't think seeing my parents would be helpful.

As much as I look forward to the day when I can look upon these times with a knowing smile, I want to remember you and our relationship in all the beauty and color you and it deserve, and I will do you and it justice by embracing the pain of loss with curious wonder and a desperate thirst (anguisette that I am).

Please tell me how you're doing and call me if it'll help even a little. I'm sure you know I'm secretly hoping you will.

Love,
Max

Brewing: California Sunshine Ale #1 and #2

The results are in. Howard and I's first outing with brewing was a modest success. We cracked open our first beers with Matt Smith and Cory Logan, whose considerable brewing expertise informed a lot of my beer-making decisions.

California Sunshine Ale recipe #2 was the Amarillo-only version of the recipe. The fermentation had stalled according to the gravity when we were preparing to bottle it. Since we'd already added the priming sugar, we added boiled water to keep the gravity from blowing up the bottles (though a few blew up anyways). The final product didn't end up tasting as watered-down as I'd worried it would, but there was a slight odor of foot instead that I suspect came from brettanomyces contamination. Matt and Cory kind of liked the foot thing. The Amarillo hops imparted a open, bittersweet flavor that I have come to identify as the taste of the color blue. While they didn't taste exactly like grapefruit as they are reputed to, there was enough resemblance to make it the obvious descriptor.

California Sunshine Ale recipe #1 was the basic scale down of the posted recipe. We accidentally doubled the priming sugar for this one, but otherwise things went without a hitch. The Cascade-Amarillo blend came out fruity. Fruity enough to compete with the sober end of the hefeweizen scale. Matt and Cory, who are obsessed with the impact of yeast strain on beer flavor, thought a lot of the fruitiness had to do with the less-than-clean yeast we used, Dan Star's Windsor Brewing Yeast. The beer also came around the darkness of a brown ale, which was a little darker than we were shooting for. The body was a tad too light, but I'd expected body to be tricky. The recipe is supposed to push the edge of acceptable body for a pale ale.

All told, I think recipe #3 of California Sunshine Ale should have half the chocolate malt and an additional part biscuit malt equal to the crystal malt. I'll definitely keep the Cascade-Amarillo pairing, but I think I'll scale back the finishing and bittering hops overall and push the Perle hops forward in the mix and later in the hop schedule. I think we'll also add a secondary fermentation to clarify the beer before bottling.

End of the Davis Era

There's suddenly a chill to the dawn air again. To be sure, there are still hundred degree days ahead of us in Davis, but the worst of the summer is over. As with every year, I face summer's end with the melancholy of anticipated change.

This year I have particular cause for melancholy. Jill starts a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz this September. Brandon left for Washington DC in June and Howard will be leaving for home when his lease finishes at the end of the month. My job with Monsanto finishes this Friday the 13th and after that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not going to Santa Cruz. I'm not staying at my house in Davis either. My lease finishes the same time as Howard's. I plan to help move Jill into Santa Cruz and then take the month of September off, backpacking with my sister and maybe surfing a little back home.

After that is anybody's guess. I've started applying to Monsanto full time positions, microbreweries and tech jobs. I'm at a stage at my life where I can take a job anywhere in the country. We'll see what comes of it. Cross your fingers. Whatever happens, even if I get a Monsanto job in Davis for the year, the end of this summer marks the end of an era. There's no longer anything left for me in Davis in terms of people.

Jill and I are parting ways when she moves to Santa Cruz. It was something we'd known was coming since we started going out, but it's been a year longer than originally envisioned. As you can imagine, too, it's something we've made an effort to blot out. It's coming quickly and soon enough denial won't be sufficient to insulate us.

My sister wisely pointed out that mutual breakups are hardly ever mutual. I think Jill would very happily do the long distance thing. I however, besides hating the idea of a long distance relationship, need more diversity of experience before I can contentedly commit. The idea of marrying my first girlfriend is many times more terrifying to me than a return to loneliness. Between you and me, that is saying something.

So I can look forward to either moving back in with my parents to a town I love but with only a handful of friends remaining or a year of gainful employment in a place completely without friends. Gosh, guys, post-college is a blast from start to finish. Tell me when it's over.

The Love Revolution

It seems an age ago that I was sitting with Marisa on our high school bleachers during lunch period, discussing love. It was a conversation that had been waiting to happen for a few months. She kept telling me, "I love you, Max." I never knew how to respond. I didn't feel like I understood what love was well enough to profess my love for someone.

So there we were, five years ago, Marisa finally asking me why I wouldn't say I loved her. I explained that I wasn't sure I loved anyone and that I didn't want to say so until I was sure it was true. She pressed on, "What about your family? Don't you love them?" She asked with the incredulity of a Mormon and ultrafriend. I thought for a minute, mulling things over, and decided, "I guess I love my sister. If I love anyone in the world it is my sister." "Don't you love your parents?"

So often love appears like water. Clear and invisible when we're standing still in the midst of it. I told her that I wasn't sure. I told her that I supposed I must, but if love was there I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for. This was how I assuaged one of my best friends about refusing to say I loved her back.

I think at the time I thought she might use the word love too liberally. I was also wary because just a few months before my friend Caius had broken her heart by telling her he didn't love her anymore, concluding their brief, intense relationship. I didn't think love should be the sort of thing that could be recanted, so I gave the word extra caution, sometimes even hostility.

It wasn't until midway through college that I began to respond "I love you too" on the phone to my parents. By then there'd been enough motion and distance between us for me to witness the invisible bonds of love I had for my parents. It wasn't until a few months ago, between Marisa's return from her mission in Czech and my trip to the Lost Coast with Caius, that I finally admitted I loved my close friends. At the beginning of the summer I broached the subject of love with Jill and over the course of the conversation decided I loved her and told her so. That adds another first to the long list of firsts that Jill has on me.

Recently, I've been paying attention to older-fashioned uses of the word love. People used to use the word so much more freely. They talked about love of friends, cousins and their favorite possessions. Love is now used in romantic comedies as something earth shattering and singular. It may be irrevocable, but love is not singular. I think I've been shielded from the nature of love by hyperbole. I've been divorced enough from the source of the word that I've had trouble recognizing it in my own life. Love happens every day.

To some extent I guess I love everybody. That's not to take anything away from the people I first declared love for. They were first for good reason. I love you guys. I just think we should approach love in that old fashioned way. Not the way hippies treat love as if it's some supernatural, omnipresent, omnipotent force and not the way romantic comedies elevate romantic love to the point of alienating all other forms and degrees of it. I want to reclaim the word from poets, panderers and theorists back to the simple meaning it began with. I want it to refer to the affection we feel for the people around us.

Brewing and Retroactive Idea Theft

Howard and I finally did it. We finally brewed some beer. We bottled it yesterday, so we've just got a few weeks until it's carbonated and ready to drink.

We made two one-gallon batches of my California Sunshine Ale. The first was a simple scale-down of the recipe I posted earlier. The second was a variant that completely dropped Cascade hops for Amarillo.

It's pretty uncommon to brew in one-gallon batches. Practically every recipe online is written for five gallons. Brewing at all is a lot of work, so people try and make it worth their while. Larger batches are also more stable and, according to the owner of our local brew store, a difference of scale changes extraction rates and thereby the recipe requirements.

I decided to brew in small batches knowing full well the reasons it was uncommon. I didn't get into homebrewing to save money. The ingredients for making beer cost roughly half the retail price for buying craft beer from the store. That may sound pretty good, but when I take into account the work and risk involved in the process and the superior quality and variety of beer available at the store, it's barely breaking even. Five gallons makes fifty beers and that is a heck of a lot of any single kind of beer for a person who's accustomed to buying single bottles. The fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing my beer was made with my own hands only gets me so far. I decided to start homebrewing to learn more about beer and to kick around my own recipe ideas. We may have had to borrow Howard's lab scale to measure hops in hundreths of an ounce, but I'm a scientist, after all.


So after one and a half hours of driving and one and a half days' work, Howard and I have twenty-three bottles of beer to show for it and that's fine by me.

Above: Our cooling system to keep the beer around 70 degrees in the middle of the Davis summer (my idea)
Below: Our chicken wire drying rack (Howard's idea)

On a separate note, it has come to my attention that American brewers have been time traveling from years past into our present future and viciously stealing my beer ideas from this blog. It turns out that Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA is an established northwestern variant on the IPA style that uses dark malts to conjure an intimidating color. While it sounds like a lot of breweries are using debittered black malt to give the maximum color without affecting flavor that much, some have actually embraced the pairing of hop bitterness and roasted maltiness.

Also, on the day before we bottled our California Sunshine Ale, I happened across the spitting image of my concept for the beer. Deschutes Brewery's Twilight Summer Ale is an APA that lightens up on the crystal malt, adds something toasty to pair with grilled food and relies on a combination of four hops with emphasis on Amarillo.

To counterbalance said losses from my creative stable, I'd like to present a new beer concept. I was idly reading the ingredient list on Barq's Root Beer and noticed that the last ingredient was acacia. For those of you who don't know, acacia is planted as a shrub all over orange county hillsides for erosion control. It has oval grey leaves and little fuzzy yellow flowers that get pollen all over the place. It has a very distinctive smell, like a dirty, grainy version of some platonic true herb. As soon as I'd read it I started to either imagine or taste it in the Barq's (to my satisfaction).

Acacia would be great in a light summer porter. You heard it from me first, somebody should brew a summer porter with acacia leaves.

On Dana Point

I lived in Dana Point from the age of 11 until I left for college. My mom still lives there and my dad still lives in the neighboring town of San Clemente. The pictures were taken my senior year of high school.

Dana Point is a coastal town in Southern California, located almost exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. Dana Point sits at the southern tip of the greater LA/Orange County metro area along with neighboring San Clemente. To the south of these two beach cities lies a wilderness area dominated by Camp Pendleton. Dana Point gets its name from a mention in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, where he described throwing cowhides off the bluffs of a cove that served as port for Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Dad, Donna and Bri in the foreground, Dana Point bluffs and harbor in the midground and Catalina Island in the background, January

San Clemente brags that it has the best climate in the world. Both cities have an average 342 days of sunshine and typical highs in the high seventies/low eighties in the summer and low sixties in winter, respectively. Like all of California, the bulk of annual precipitation falls in winter months. However, among the cloudiest months is June, a phenomenon known locally as "June Gloom" and caused by warming ocean temperatures.

Matt Wingert in my front yard, December

Trees commonly planted in Dana Point include palms, eucalyptus and coastal pines. Subtropical and Mediterranean plants are easily grown. Some classic continental plants that require chill or extreme heat are difficult to grow, like cherries and watermelons (though that didn't stop me from growing a 94lb pumpkin). Undeveloped headlands and canyons are mostly coastal sage scrub, a chaparral-type mixture of californian sage, sagebrush, lemonade berry and coyote broom.

Demographics in Dana Point are mixed, not possessing the wealth of northern neighbor Laguna Beach. A significant number of Mexican immigrants and lower-middle class whites live in apartments, while professional class people commute to central Orange County and live in hillside houses with ocean views. The local economy is driven primarily by tourism and the aforementioned commuters. The worst traffic jams in our area happen on sunny Saturday afternoons.

Many neighborhoods in Dana Point were developed slowly enough to evidence an eclectic mix of social classes. The oldest houses are beach cottages, built in the 50's with low square-footage and flat roofs. Many of Dana Point's N-S streets are named various colors of lanterns (ie Blue Lantern, Golden Lantern, Amber Lantern). The town's decor is mariner themed, and houses are frequently painted marine blue-grey. The town has approximately reached build-out, though adjacent landlocked cities demonstrate textbook McMansion sprawl, particularly Laguna Niguel, a place that handily manages to be both much wealthier and much uglier than Dana Point (I have a lot of high school friends from Niguel and that is fact, not opinion).

The local public education system is excellent. Dana Hills High is both a Blue Ribbon and California Distinguished School. It offers a large number of Advanced Placement courses and produces high standardized test scores. The school football team has always sucked. The school surf team is pretty good, but never beats neighboring rivals San Clemente, who frequently contend for the State Championship title.

Prom photo, taken at one of the half dozen locations commonly used for weddings within walking distance of my house, May

The two cities collectively lay claim to a handful of excellent surf beaches that host annual surf contests including Salt Creek, Doheny, T-Street, Trestles and San Onofre. Dana Cove was famous for a surf break called Killer Dana until the harbor was built. Surf culture is everywhere, most visible in the many local board shops, board-laden cars and the popularity of the word "surf" in mostly taqueria restaurant names (one Dana Point restaurant, in fact, succinctly named "Taco Surf"). In addition to both Mexican-owned and white-owned taquerias, the region has a lot of local burger joints that recall the glory days of Southern California car culture, as well as a mix of 20$ entrée restaurants with an emphasis on California cuisine and sushi.

The overall culture is laid back. Politics are mildly conservative. In spite of those politics, hostility towards immigrants is remarkably low. Upper-middle class people either appreciate the Mexican immigrant population for services rendered (though I don't know anyone with an in-house maid, as pop culture might have you believe of OC, even in Laguna) or respect them for their strong work ethic. The stereotype of the lazy Mexican has always struck me as a foreign idea, product of Los Angeles demographics.

View of my neighborhood from my front yard, February

I live in a beach cottage in a mixed-income part of town. The yard is fronted by a couple of Canary Island Date Palms. It takes me 20 minutes to walk to Doheny with my surfboard underarm. I love the diversity of houses here. I love the weather, especially the foggy and cloudy days. I love the smell of sagebrush. I love getting burritos after a day at the beach with friends. I love walking downtown to pick up avocados from little Mexican markets. I love that my prom photos have a backdrop most wedding photos would be in envy of (in fact, Brandon's cousin flew from the east coast to get married in Dana Point this weekend). I love hearing Bandas on the neighbor's radios. I love Dana Point.