Scary Movie Month, Years Five and Six

For newcomers, please read this post for an explanation of Scary Movie Month, which also includes the movies from the first three years. Those interested can find the fourth year's post here.

I'd like to play a little Scary Movie Month catchup today, sharing the last two years of scary movies to get you revved up for this, the spooky seventh annual month of terror.


October 2011:

Godzilla
The original Godzilla turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. I'd never thought of the Godzilla franchise as anything but B movies, but it turns out that the original is as reputable of a franchise kick-off as the best of them. By modern standards it may favor story too much over terror, but it's a good story and a fascinating peek into the post-nuclear Japanese zeitgeist.

The Dead Zone
Christopher Walken stars in this psychological thriller about a school teacher with psychic powers that allow him to foresee the future of the people he touches. It's a solid movie, and the election theme that wraps it up makes it particularly seasonally-appropriate.

Creepshow
From the first few minutes it is clear that this movie is absolutely essential-- four scary Halloween stories told well. What more could you ask for? This is a perfect movie for October.

Fright Night
This is a solid 80's family horror movie. It's fun and charming and interesting. In a way, it's a send-up of classic Halloween season television programming just like Creepshow.

The Return to Oz
This is a remarkably dark Disney fable. It isn't going to give you nightmares quite the way Alice in Wonderland did, but it succeeds in feeling like the cracked, corrupted successor of The Wizard of Oz. The fact that this Dorothy is so much younger makes it more real. I found myself wondering at the fucked-up-ness of the very premise-- that a little girl keeps being transported to this alternate world to solve its problems. This doesn't strike the rich chords that the first movie did, but it's an imaginative, symbolically rich children's coming of age story that will go toe-to-toe with anything this side of Disney's golden age or Miazaki.

The Blair Witch Project
This was not an especially pleasant movie to watch, though that could be said of many excellent horror films. Unfortunately, this is also one of those movies whose influence dwarfed the movie itself. It's a good movie to be sure, but what made it revolutionary is no longer revolutionary and that takes something important away. Yet, it is a good movie and worth watching for the enormous influence it had on American film-- big and small screen both.

The Night of the Hunter
This is one of those movies that doesn't fit into any set of expectations, but which would blow any expectations I could have had. It was made in the 50's and is set during the Great Depression. The story is about a preacher who marries a woman with kids for her money, kills her and hunts the children. The themes of good and evil are black and white, but delivered with delicacy and thought.

Labyrinth
A classic coming-of-age fable, complete with puzzles, faith trials, new friends and being whisked back to real life at the end, this movie is of course enhanced by Jim Henson and David Bowie's presence. Honestly, the only thing I found genuinely exciting was all the goblins in the movie. Too few movies feature goblins.

Dracula
Like most dramatic movies of the era, the original Dracula has the feel of a play-- there is a sense of dramatic staging. The movie is excellent, and I can't find much to say about it that hasn't already been said, including that it suffers slightly when compared against the first two Frankensteins.

October 2012:

Gremlins
Gremlins is a perverse premise for a horror film perversely set amidst the backdrop of a classic down-and-out Christmas tale. They start out so cute! There's some goofy filler sequences with the gremlins trashing a bar, but this is undeniably a classic.

Army of Darkness
It may have been watching this with Sarah, who "gets" camp and B movie appeal, but this final installment was the most fun I had with the Evil Dead trilogy. Bruce Campbell is a pip as always, delivering some profoundly stupid lines with enough earnest enthusiasm to make you double take-- was that actually a cool thing to say? I think I should probably re-watch the first two of the trilogy, as I may appreciate what I didn't the first time in.

The Devil's Backbone
This Guillermo del Toro bears a strong resemblance to his Pan's Labyrinth. It's a ghost story, and an investigation of what a ghost is. Like Labyrinth, it's set during the Spanish Civil War and also strikes the theme of an adolescent-- this time a boy-- first encountering the harsh realities of the adult world. Unlike it, there is none of the fairy tale imagery or tones of familial love. This is a darker, more desolate movie. As with Pan's Labyrinth, it was a movie I more respected than enjoyed.

Hellboy
I chose this partly because Guillermo del Toro directed it, even though it wasn't a perfect fit for Scary Movie Month. The script was pretty terrible-- any "serious" dialogue or monologue was pure nonsense and there's no explanation why they're eventually able to kill the resurrecting hellhound. Ironically, this is the only movie that gave me a nightmare. Karl Ruprecht Kroenen was fantastically creepy in conception (a conception entirely of del Toro's by the way) and the ineffable Jeffrey Tambor's brief presence added a lot.

Something Wicked This Way Comes
This was based on a Ray Bradbury novel, and it bears certain similarities to the one Bradbury novel I've read through-- Dandelion Wine. It's a story set in a small town about strange things happening. It ends up being a reflection on life and on hope's dark side-- how it can eat people from the inside out and the only way to confront this danger is to come to terms with who we are. The movie is just as windswept and wonderful as the October imagery that pervades it.

Re-Animator
I guess I wasn't sure whether to expect more Frankenstein or Night of the Living Dead, but this movie is absolutely original. A med student has developed a "reagent" that can bring the dead back to life-- imperfectly. The only thing more disturbing than the evident agony of the newly-undead is the magnetic temptation to use the reagent. The movie is tempered by plenty of dry, pitch-perfect humor that leavens the mood but only intensifies the philosophical themes lurking beneath.

An American Werewolf in London
In a similar vein of fun, kind of bizarre 80's horror movies to Re-Animator, this one is more explicitly colorful and goofy. The black humor is great, the American-in-England angle is done tastefully and you genuinely care about the characters.

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage
This Dario Argento film is supposedly a quintessential Italian Giallo-- a mix of film noir-style detectives and stalking, bloody horror, with some European sexiness to top it off. The movie was all of those things and gorgeously, flawlessly executed.

Jaws
This classic has been in my scary movie month queue for a while now, and it more than lived up to the hype. The first half of the movie is thoughtful, subtly creative and genuinely scary. Without every coming across as "artsy" or "serious" there are reflections on responsibility, parenthood, and insider/outsider mentalities. The second half is more balls-to-the-walls terror, but the entire movie is remarkably well crafted and executed. I'm sure the shark they used looks ridiculous in person, but the movie's special effects were well-done. This is my pick of the month.

Playlists: Jack 1

Jack is a person of discerning tastes, but for reasons that he will happily explain to you, he mostly just listens to radio pop and neoclassical shred metal. For all of Jack's intimate understanding of SciFi, he has no schooling in punk. This has put me in the strange position of explaining punk to him. This series tackles punk in the very broadest sense-- one sure to ruffle the feathers of any "actual" punks out there.

The "punk vs. metal" dichotomy dates to the 80's, when the two camps were at each other's throats, no matter how similar thrash and hardcore began to sound. That false dichotomy died its final death with Pearl Jam, but I've resurrected it as a lense through which to view rock. Metal and punk represent two illustrious rock traditions-- the former grounded in virtuosity and artistic ambition and the latter grounded in anti-beauty and self-conscious simplicity. Much of the rock canon can be casually divided down these lines. For this reason I've subtitled the Jack series "Phooey on your Metal... let's listen to some Punk!"

The Jack series was composed as a single five hour ride through various manifestations of "punk" that was subsequently cut into four CD-length playlists, each with their own distinctive character. This the first of these is the most abrasive, most coherent, and the least representative. It tackles the complex between noise rock, math rock and emo that forms the core of post-hardcore (punk), with an emphasis on emo. Emo deserves a post and a playlist of its own a la my old radio show The Odyssey, but for now please rest assured that this playlist hardly constitutes what most people think of as "emo". This is a playlist of intricate, furious, guitar rock.

Playable playlist
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Jack+Punk+1/81909679

Official tracklist
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ye5seas58jtk0on/Jack1playlist.xls

The Ramen Project

On my first trip to the Manila Oriental Market in Excelsior last year, I discovered something wonderful-- an entire store aisle devoted to instant noodles. The store offered an impenetrably diverse array of ramens, with flavors I'd never run across, like "cuttlefish" and "pickled cabbage fish". Sarah and I first just tried the ones that sounded best to us and tried to keep mental track of our favorites. It wasn't until I was on my own that I decided to take a more systematic approach to dealing with the intimidating breadth of options. By then it had become apparent that memory alone would not be sufficient to map out the best and worst of instant noodles. At the suggestion of a coworker (Laura Ray), The Ramen Project was born. This post is its ultimate fruit. I bought one of each of about two-thirds of the aisle's offered instant noodle varieties (the poor girl at the checkout looked ready to kill me) and began to work my way through the pile one lunch at a time at work, saving the packaging with brief post-it reviews affixed. After months of careful study, the results are in.

The survey covers 39 flavors of instant noodles, all single-serving with one exception. Prices mostly ranged from 39 cents to 79 cents, with a couple of standouts costing over a dollar. Ramen noodles are generally fried in saturated vegetable fat like palm oil and the broth typically includes flavor-enhancers MSG, Disodium 5'-Inosylate, and Disodium 5'-Guanylate (which is actually a component of DNA/RNA, interestingly). The artificial meat flavor is non-vegetarian, which means it includes animal products and isn't fully "artificial" in the classic sense, but only a couple of brands included such luxuries as straight-up crab meat or beef extract and forwent synthetic flavor enhancers. There's nothing really dangerous or unhealthy about synthetic flavor enhancers, but as a rule I tried not to consume ramen more than once per 48-hour period, as the calories are pretty genuinely empty and it would have made me feel "off". Noodle packages typically included 2-3 packets inside them in addition to the bare noodles, usually powdered broth, garlic or soy-infused palm oil, and freeze dried garnish. The survey includes "glass" noodles, rice noodles and noodles intended to be served without broth, in addition to the more classic ramen noodles.

I've condensed this to the "discoveries" or "best-of", but you can find the complete unedited reviews here. Below are the highlights:

Both Thai brands (ZoZo/Wai Wai and MAMA) were consistently excellent, and the general sour/tom yum genre is pretty solid.
-ZoZo/Wai Wai Sour Soup Flavour Instant Noodles- Good. Spicy, delicious and simple.
-MAMA Shrimp Creamy Tom Yum Flavour- Creamy, delicious, appropriately spicy, and with good texture. This is probably my favorite Tom Yum of the lot. Note that my coworker Jeri's favorite ramen is the non-creamy variant, but I prefered this by a slight margin.

Vietnamese company Vina Acecook has a few brand name titles, including Hao Hao, which was uniformly mediocre, and Daily, which had its moments (see below). Vietnamese brand Vifon was ok, but I wasn't especially fond of the mealy texture of their rice noodles and they didn't quite rise above "good" anyways.
-Daily Beef Ball Flavour- Surprisingly delicious, with complex spicy herbal seasoning.

Both soup type ramens from Filipino brand Lucky Me! were excellent, but the chow meins (served without broth) tended to be rancid for whatever reason. It wasn't the only brand for which I ran across a rancid one, but these were pretty consistently rancid. Otherwise the chow meins were quite good, but I'm only featuring the soups.
-Lucky Me! La Paz Batchoy (La Paz Style)- Fancy! Four packets, including one with little balls of textured soy protein. Rich and garlicky broth.
-Lucky Me! Bulalo (Bone Marrow Soup)- Smells fantastically savory. Great flavor, salty.

Indonesian brand IndoMie's chow meins were excellent and it is the brand I'd recommend for the chow mein style. The process of straining the water from them was a bit tricky to do at work with nothing but a microwave, a fork, and long sweater sleeves to insulate my hands, but the results were great. Note that these and the Lucky Me! chow meins are Sarah's favorite instant noodles.
-Mi Goreng BBQ Chicken- Absolutely delicious.
-Mi Goreng- Excellent, sweet and peppery.
-Soto Mie Flavour- Sesame and chili flavor. Delicious as always.

Unif is a pretty gigantic brand out of Taiwan, with a lot of different packaging configurations. It's offerings range from outright "meh" to quite good.
-Unif Tung-I Chah Chiang Flavor- I believe this is seaweed flavor. Dark, savory and surprisingly unsalty (relatively speaking) soy sauce-derived broth. Would pair well with Californian hops, esp Simcoe or Citra.
-Unif Tung-I Instant Bean Vermicelli Mushroom Flavor (Bean Thread)- Good, interesting nutty mushroom flavor.

As I am sure will surprise no one, the Japanese brands were the most expensive, nutritionally substantial and reliably delicious. I decided that udon took a bit too long to cook to be practical for work.
-Tonkotsu Artificial Pork Flavor- The "nondaily creamer" milk solids make it pretty chill. Nice and garlicky and sesame-y.
-Shin Ramyun Noodle Soup "Gourmet Spicy"- Totally excellent in flavor and texture. Pleasantly spicy, but otherwise fairly normal.

Honestly, the most promising (and as-yet unexplored) frontier in ramen at this point for me is the multi-serving packages. These tend be on the higher end of the price range per serving, include some of the most unusual flavors and the quality has so far been remarkable. Only one multi-serving noodle was included in this survey, and it certainly makes the list. The brand is unclear but it was manufactured by Sichuan Baijia Food Co., Ltd.
-Artificial Pickled Cabbage Fish Flavor Instant Sweet Potato Thread- Unique and utterly delicious. Cabbage and beans and sour and spicy oh my! Note this is vegan and rather oily, with chewy clear noodles

Below is the full array of recommended noodles. Hopefully this will prove useful to everyone who has access to an asian grocery store. It's a great way to keep your lunches at work cheap and interesting.

Advertisements and Feminism

This post is a response to the below video, promoted by Upworthy here. While Upworthy's take on it was pretty obnoxious, the video itself is charming:

Ketchup Bottle Ad
This ad is actually still funny-- though it was probably a lot more true at the time than it is now since opening ketchup bottles has as much to do with force of will as it does with physical strength. The ad would also never appear in modern advertisement, and this is a testament to the cultural changes wrought by second wave feminism. A modern counterpart to the ad might be the "strong enough for a man, but made for a woman" deodorant campaign-- once again they are playing off the fact that men are generally stronger and bigger (and consequently stinkier) than women. Of course, the fun part is that the deodorant campaign's trick plays into the "ra ra" of feminism. Appeals to feminism are not at all uncommon in modern advertising. I'm sure plenty will gripe that it's a cartoonish kind of feminism, to which I say if you're going to complain that media is obnoxiously cartoonish, then you're consuming the wrong media. Vote with your feet.

Sexualization and Objectification
Regarding the sexualization and objectification of women-- this is true and this is long-standing and this is near and dear to advertising, which seeks to seduce. As women make an increasingly significant proportion of the national income (projected to make more than men for my generation), you can also witness the increasing objectification and sexualization of men in the exact same mediums. That trend will undoubtedly continue.

There is a lot of hand-wringing about this trend, seeing it as "making men more effeminate". I think calling it that is missing a lot. This issue touches on a question at the heart of a lot of feminist debate-- how much should equality involve women becoming more like men or men becoming more like women? The other big question of course being "How far is far enough?" I think the end result of feminism will be terribly nuanced, and that in some ways men and women cannot but help to retain distinct identities, and that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with people associating one gender more with some things than others.

To those who feel that objectification itself is inherently masculine, I say that while this is an essentially sexist sentiment, it probably has some merit. You'll note the brief portion where the video discussed the presentation of men as strong, dominant and aggressive-- this is an objectification of character, which may perhaps be an oxymoron, but as the video points out it is certainly an idealization that impacts men's aspirations and expectations, and not necessarily positively.

Mock Rape and Debasement in Fashion Magazines
First of all, its worth noting these are advertisements that are meant to appeal to women. Now you can't take that at face value because they are also self-consciously high art, and the intention is to provoke/confront rather than to please the audience persay. These ads are are playing off feminist  ideals. They aren't going up against them as much as they are forcing the audience to think about sexuality and submission/dominance. To treat these ads as merely anti-feminist propaganda is to give the ads' makers and their audience too little credit-- this is part of the modern conversation about sex relations, and it is excruciatingly self-aware.

Role Reversal
The role-reversal is hilarious and perhaps the most educational part of the video, because it inspires reflection on a couple of interesting points.

First, the pictures (for sake of humor, I'm sure) mostly illustrate fat not-especially-attractive men, which is demeaning in its own right and obviously inverts more than just the subject of objectification's gender. It's an unwitting commentary on the too-close relationship between feminism and what I'll call male slobbism (it could less charitably be described as female chauvinism, though it is by no means specific to women).
 
Second, with the more attractive men playing the role of women, I was struck by how closely they mirrored many fashion ads for men's clothing and accessories (Ambercrombie comes to mind). This comes back to the point that equality in advertising seems to be following right along with growing equality in broader culture, driven of course by the desire to sell things. Advertisements must work within the cultural norms of the time and often, if it is to catch the audience's attention, play off of them. In my humble opinion, the influence of culture on ads and ads on culture constitutes a feedback loop, but a fairly benign one in which the former influence acts as primary driver.

Television in the Twenty-First Century

It didn't come out of a vacuum, of course. The nineties can boast some absolutely stellar television, especially The Simpsons and Seinfeld. However, there is no denying that American television has blossomed in the twenty-first century into true art. It's no longer just a couple of shows or just the comedies that are totally leveling any conception of what could be done on the small screen anymore. American television has gone nuclear. There are shows running right now that stand up to the best of the big screen in terms of brilliance of conception and narrative, and they aren't stopping after a 90-minute run time and they're not running out of ideas. Many of them are hard to watch, but that hasn't stopped at least the dramas from receiving great ratings. Just as with the 60's when the Beatles were able to challenge their audience and still succeed commercially, the American public is keeping right up with the increasingly challenging and complex television being put in front of them.

Before you sicken from my effusive optimism, let me put some names to faces, that I might justify my premise:

Arrested Development
It may not have the overflowing genius of The Simpsons or the gentle extremism of Seinfeld, but Arrested Development stands shoulder-to-shoulder with them on its own terms. It's among the finest dramedies ever made, and certainly the funniest, and that is saying something, because the dramedy is a beautiful invention. Unlike those other two eminent comedies, Arrested Development has a cohesion of purpose and a synergy of interlocking parts that is extremely gratifying-- jokes are carried over entire seasons without dulling or misstepping. Storylines weave in and out and always complement each other. It's also just wickedly, unrelentingly funny. Oh, and something about the image of the show-house on the desolate hillside really resonates with me.

The Wire
This show epitomizes, perhaps better than any other, the extraordinary change that has occurred in television. The show is grim, demanding, proceeds at a glacial pace without ever making an explicit point, and our nation was absolutely enthralled by it. I can't think of any show from the previous century that could compare to its intricacy, subtlety and symbolic depth. It is, quite simply, a show that redefined what was possible in the medium of television. I love how McNulty sometimes comes across as, not quite two-dimensional, but flat in a way that is somehow more genuine than if he were rounded. Real people are simple at the same time they are complex. And of course Omar rocks my socks.

Mad Men
It started with a gimmick, executed with unanticipated commitment-- setting a show in history and letting the characters act culturally backwards in ways the writers knew would bother the audience, but doing so with such a light brushstroke that it felt subversively natural. The rest of the shows I discuss did things that had never been done in television before, but I'm not sure this particular twist has precedent in any medium. Of course, the show is a heck of a lot more than a gimmick. It has this uncanny way of presenting people in single moments. Just as people make all kinds of decisions in real life, Mad Men's characters can be characterized, but not anticipated. Further, their actions don't always have consequences. There isn't really any poetic justice, which turns out to be jarring as fuck. The loose treatment of character makes it nearly impossible to make moral judgements and gives a certain starkness to characters-- when they repeat a bad decision it feels excruciating. It's an intriguing approach to narrative-- almost abdicating narrative. Of course, that is more sensation than reality, as the show is tightly controlled and threads play off one another with worthy synergy. Episodes have themes, but it feels like ambiguity could swallow up anything so simple as a theme at every turn, and there is something thrilling in that. Also Joan. Sometimes I just watch for Joan.

Breaking Bad
Moral ambiguity has been the order of the day for contemporary storytelling. We are no longer content with anti-heroes. We want to see ourselves at our worst. We want to find ourselves doing genuine, unalloyed evil. Breaking Bad takes that farther than any show by following the evolution of Walter White from sympathetic victim to villain, without ever losing the thread of his humanity. The show bears an obvious resemblance to Weeds, but like the drug it's about, it is light-years more intense and dangerous. Where Weeds equivocated or intentionally delayed character progression, Breaking Bad never flinches. If anything, Breaking Bad moves faster than the audience is ready for, giving them the emotional bludgeoning they didn't even know they craved. Of course, it would be disingenuous to describe the show as being about one man's descent. Jesse and his relationship with Walt is fundamental to the show. I've heard people call Jesse the heart of the show and the moral center, and he is, but that is perhaps the most terrifying thing, because in his own way Jesse is also a monster, and unlike Walt we love him without reservations.

There are other shows that probably deserve to be among the ranks of these shows-- West Wing and the Sopranos get a lot of lip service, and in some ways Firefly was the perfect dramedy. There are also a lot of shows that could have never existed ten or fifteen years ago and betray inspiration without the same consistent brilliance as the first tier, like Dexter or Game of Thrones. I've always thought Malcom in the Middle was under-appreciated and I can't pretend to discuss the wonders of modern television without at least name dropping the TV micro-revolution that was Adult Swim. Louie has a breathtaking sincerity that is uncomfortably, unflinchingly real. There is also the holy trinity of cult comedies-- Community, Parks and Rec and 30 Rock-- whose era is finally coming to a close.

I've thought about why television experienced such a revolution around the millenium. I think some credit can be given to reality TV, whose success influenced scripted television-- most notably oh-so-influential The Office. Probably even more important, I suspect, is that DVD sales changed how TV-makers thought about television. Cohesive, broad narratives with long story arcs began to make more sense once people began watching multiple episodes in a sitting, and writers could demand greater attention and devotion from their audience. This made room for the soaring ambitions of shows like The Wire.

I'd like to end this meditation on modern TV's awesomeness by bringing it back to my friend and favorite TV blogger, Myranda, whose tireless championing of and sincere respect for television continues to inspire me. Keep fighting the good fight, Myranda.

Try Anything Once

When my sister and I were growing up we couldn't stand to eat certain foods. Brussel sprouts, onions and tomatoes were a few of my personal enemies. Our parents would good-naturedly lecture us about how as you get older, your taste buds change and you grow to like things you once hated. While they tolerated and accommodated a certain amount of our stonewalling, at least once a year my mom or dad would say, "Just eat one bite. You can't have dessert until you at least try it." Try we would. Then we usually retched, spit it out or just made a horrible face. With parents satisfied, life would go on.

Somewhere along the line I remember my mom intoning with an unmistakable air of pride that we weren't picky eaters compared to most of our friends. We ate seafood, most vegetables and a host of gourmet and ethnic food that our parents had been gradually introducing us to. Among the mythology of my childhood was a story about me as a toddler, picking apart sushi rolls. When my parents were distracted, my two-year-old-self snatched up a ball of wasabi and swallowed it entirely. My dad still loves to describe the look on my face and how, admirably, I didn't even cry.

Dad instilled in me an enthusiasm for spicy food. I originally approached it as a macho thing. I'd sneer at my sister for complaining about spiciness and load my gumbo with as much Tabasco as I could stand. I remember, in a Chinese restaurant, bravely trying one of those Szechuan peppers after seeing my dad toss a couple back. Sometimes Bri and I would dare each other to eat one. To this day I occasionally eat a Szechuan pepper, just for kicks. The sensation is always one of terrible burning, but you never know if your taste buds have changed. A behavioral psychologist would say that in my family the social dividends of brave experimentalism outweighed the danger of an unpleasant taste.

Once our parents divorced, Bri and I's cultivated non-pickiness became tangibly useful. Our bachelor Dad would take us to Costco for a food run. He'd tell us to "get kid food" and we'd come back with boxes of fruit loops, "granola bars" made mostly of corn syrup and puffed rice and veritable tubs of jelly bellies, gummi worms, etc. Dad would buy it unquestioningly. If dinners weren't consistently a family affair of meat and vegetables, we might have ended up inches shorter than we are today. When the "kid food" ran out, as it inevitably did, we resorted to experimenting with Dad's leftovers or tolerating his offered concoctions, even violating the breakfast-must-be-sweet principle universally understood by children across America as sacrosanct.

Thus it was that open-mindedness established itself as not only a source of pride for Bri and I, but as a necessity for survival. Experimentalism became a sort of religion for us, a direct product of our father's influence. Chicken feet, pig's ear, pigeon, escargot, beef tongue, raw oysters (<3!) and all forms of sushi were things we not only ate, but actively sought out to try. By the time I was in high school, our open-minded food tastes were integral to our self-identities and our family culture.

It was about that time that my dad organized a multi-week backpacking trip to Wyoming with his longtime friend Jack Kisslinger. For that trip, we treated him as family. In restaurants, when Bri or I requested a taste of Jack's meal, we had no expectation that he might refuse. We took it for granted that everyone was entitled to a bite of each other person's meal. Agreeable Jack gracefully adapted to this after a few nights of confusion. Bri and I would also angrily squabble amongst ourselves and, in the case of Jack or Dad, diplomatically implore about what dish the other person should order. You see, we wanted to maximize the number of dishes we got to taste of the restaurant's. If two people got the same dish, we would only have three unique entrees to try rather than four. So it was that Bri and I would identify the most intriguing dishes and often fight about who got to order the most-desirable of the remaining dishes after the adults' choices (in the most memorable example, this came between meat loaf and baby back ribs, so you can understand the passion). During those next few weeks, Jack's presence and semi-voluntary inclusion into our family culture elucidated our culture's uniqueness to Bri and I, which increased our family food culture importance in our identities.

My dad loved to regale us with his adventures traveling the world. He almost never turned down bizarre local delicacies, but he did tell of one restaurant in China that he turned down. He and his friend looked into the window and watched as a spider monkey was clamped by its head to a tray, the top of its skull was popped off with a knife and its quivering brains were eaten with spoons as the monkey screamed its head off (pardon the pun) and thrashed in evident agony, trying to escape. My dad told his friend, "let's eat somewhere else". Thus did I learn the limitations of my dad's considerable zeal for adventure.

In his stories of travel adventures, I made the inevitable connection between trying food and trying things more generally. The quote, "try anything once" may have originally been made by him in reference to food, but it was a short leap to apply it to everything. "Try anything once" was the refrain running in my head as I ran out of a pool in Utah to roll in the snow, rode Supreme Scream, jumped off a sea cliff, ate a peanut worm whole, hopped a fence to go night swimming in my school's rec pool and consumed enough cyanide to flush my face and quicken my breathing. The principle cemented by that Szechuan pepper a decade earlier became the rallying cry for a broader life philosophy in my late teens. I still remember the look of betrayal my father gave me as I took a puff of his friend's offered Cuban cigar at age nineteen. Evidently, it hadn't occurred to him that "try anything once" might be taken farther than he had taken it.

This isn't to say that I had entirely missed the principles that counterbalanced my dad's experimentalism. I know perfectly well why he, unlike most of his family, didn't smoke, why he refused to join his school football team or was glad to avoid the Vietnam draft. The message that there was a difference between bravery and stupidity came through loud and clear. In college I didn't shy away from trying cigarettes, but I made certain that I would never become addicted to them. I won't ever touch heroin or meth, but it's not because my experimental drive doesn't implore me to try them, it's because they entail unacceptable risk.

Somewhere along the line, my "try anything once" philosophy was augmented by a corollary-- the fact that many tastes need to be acquired necessitates trying some things more than once. I think of this as the "Pixies principle" because it took me many times hearing the Pixies before I started to like them, but they ultimately became one of my favorite bands. It could just as easily be called the "Big Star principle", the "beer principle" or the "scary movie month principle". In all cases, demanding that something be immediately gratifying would have denied me great joy. Patience and an open mind eventually paid dividends.

This principle implies its own corollary, though. You can't appreciate many things unless you approach them with the right attitude, so this principle also necessitates an amount of self-policing. Do you genuinely want to like something? Do you possibly dislike something because you want to dislike it for outside reasons? I mean, how could any hipster honestly say that they don't like Nirvana? Every American our age has been sufficiently exposed to Nirvana, those with a taste for indie and alternative rock styles like the sound, and Nirvana is patently awesome. The best explanation for indie hipsters who claim they don't like Nirvana is that they don't like Nirvana because they don't want to like Nirvana. It's a terrible tragedy for somebody to not appreciate Nirvana, so we must fight this mind-over-matter selectivity in ourselves. Thus we have the "Nirvana principle".

Two of my best friends don't like things for transparently mental reasons. The first, a nonpracticing Jew, hates the smell and taste of pork. The second, an ex-Mormon, hates the smell and taste of coffee. These are intelligent, thoughtful people, but I have never met a single person who disliked pork free of religious or near-religious (aka vegetarian) motives. This is a depiction of the mind's potent effect on our perception of smell and flavor, akin to how a person can't stand the smell of a liquor they overindulged in the night before. When, the day after a night of lots of beer and puking, beer smelled like vomit, I said to myself, "don't be a bitch" and I finished the beer I'd opened in spite of my revulsion. By the next day I could enjoy beer again because I had refused to be slave to my own mind.

I've found that the best way to deal with the open-endedness of the Nirvana principle is to assume that deep down everyone's the same. Of course, we're not the same. To what extent is up for debate, but at the very least we know that some people have or lack specific taste receptor genes. Broccoli tastes qualitatively more heinous to some people than to other people. Some men are wired to be exclusively attracted to men instead of to women, etc. I think that's where our fundamental differences end. I think that, unlike taste receptors, our brains are complex enough that we have the capacity in us to enjoy just about anything. If somebody else can enjoy something, so can I. At the very least, common humanity is a worthy assumption.

But where do I draw the line? Am I obligated to like everything or to die trying to like everything? Well, no. It is a legitimate question, though, and one without a perfect answer. The way we should choose what to try to like lies in practicality. Because my musical enculturation was grounded in classic rock and classical music, it is easier for me to acquire a taste for, say, new wave than for reggae. Assuming that I will derive the same joy from new wave as reggae, it is simply practical to choose the easiest one to acquire. I am also more likely to find friends eager to talk about new wave music, which is again a purely practical consideration.

I'm not arguing that obstacles to appreciating things do not exist, but that such obstacles are quantitative rather than qualitative. That is, that the question isn't whether or not it is possible to overcome an obstacle, but rather how much effort and time are required to overcome something. What I disagree with is the defeatism of "this is just how I am" and "I can't change who I am". Tastes may define a person's persona, but they do not define one's personality. Personality is a far more slippery quality.

For both vanity and personal-compatibility reasons I prefer confident women unafraid to speak their minds. For natural reasons I prefer more attractive women, but nature does not specify what kind of beauty I should like. Most of my preferences for women's appearance, other than attractiveness, exist because they correlate with personal compatibility. I'm more likely to get along with a girl who typically wears little-or-no makeup than one who wears a lot. I'm more likely to enjoy the company of a girl who wears sensible, fashionable clothes than one who wears either tacky or markedly conservative garb. These sorts of judgements are ideally where my prejudice ends, however, because I have a vested interest in considering the maximum range of women for romance. I can be picky later. Sometimes the process of determining my taste involves thoughtful self-analysis. I can acquire a taste for a "type" of woman if I want to and I generally want to if I think it will increase my range of options without significantly decreasing the quality of my options in terms of likelihood for personal compatibility.

Once you realize how very much control you have over your own tastes, you can consciously broaden your tastes to suit your needs. The way to find out to what degree you can is to try. Try not just with your physical actions, but with your mind and soul. Have a little faith in me and a little faith in your common humanity. Remember, there is no specific taste receptor for pork.

It is to my abiding shame that I cannot like raw tomato, but I am proud of having shame for a shortcoming of taste. I suspect it's a result of some rogue taste receptor gene of mine, but I cannot be sure, and every year or so still, I try a bite of good, raw tomato. I haven't yet been able to enjoy it, but I lose nothing in trying it.

All of this is to say, don't be picky. Don't be a slave to your mind, because you can like whatever you set your mind to like (except maybe broccoli or tomato). As important as it is to know your own limitations, it is also important to search out and eliminate false limitations. Open yourself up to the world as much as you can stand and do your best to appreciate it in all its glory. You will be rewarded. This, I promise you.

And when you're eating at a restaurant with me and I ask for a bite of your meal, say yes. Please also ask for a taste of mine. We can discuss our food. It will make me happy.

Beer Styles: Amber Ale

Amber Ales are the most center-field beer style in the world of American craft beer. They are the Goldilocks of craft beer-- malty but not heavy, hopped but not abrasively bitter. Their moderate alcohol and flavor make them the most sessionable major style of American ale. The style is extremely flexible, but because Ambers represent one of the most understated styles in the American beer pantheon, they rarely receive attention from the beer elite.

It is my not-so-humble opinion that there is a beer for every occasion and that every style can boast some great beer. While many Ambers (read: almost all brewpub versions) are made simply, thoughtlessly and according to style protocol, the best are subtle and quietly innovative. Reputable Ambers are a thinking man's session beer that pairs well with most brown-colored foods especially those with meaty, spicy, nutty or strong vegetable flavors like hummus or gumbo. Because of their flexibility and understated nature, Ambers stand as one of my three favorite beer styles, along with North German Pilsner and Strong Dark Belgian-Style Ales.

Before I get into the heart of what makes an Amber Ale, I'd like to address Red Ale, which is often treated as synonymous with Amber Ale. Red Ales have more in common with Red IPA's, Double/Imperial Reds and even American Pale Ales because they are all built on the common paradigm of clear, caramelly malt (unmuddied by roasted, biscuity or earthy malt flavors) playing off of fruity yeast esters and a strong hop flavor and bitterness. Red Ales are typically higher in alcohol than Amber Ales and, crazily enough, are copper-red rather than brownish-amber. It is true that there are examples of intermediate beers (as well as mild British-style Red Ales, which are painfully boring), but as style distinctions go, this is not a hard call. Red Ales rarely use herbal or earthy hops and never use roasted or dark crystal malts. It's very simple: Reds thrive on fruitiness and zestiness.

There are some excellent Red Ales available. Lagunitas's Censored runs to the malty end of the style, but still is prominently fruity, boozy and estery in ever-so-delicious ways. More classic examples of good Reds are North Coast's Red Seal Ale and Mad River's Jamaican Red Ale. They both run about 6% ABV, sport a fruity nose and an exquisite balance between hop bitterness and sweet malt backbone. Pyramid's Juggernaut fits perfectly within this style, but Juggernaut is uninteresting swill. Frankly, I consider the striking difference between Red Seal and Juggernaut the clearest testament to the talent and quality brewing required to make good ale.

True Amber Ales, because of their more complex malt profile, can never achieve that razor's edge sensation when it comes to balancing sweetness with hop bitterness. Breweries that have tried to do this have only ever succeeded in spite of rather than because of the attempt to hop an Amber-style malt base up to the brink.

Most Amber Ales use hops with herbal and earthy flavors that add another dimension to a complex malt profile. These hops typically play a supportive role rather than competing with the malts for the spotlight. Just like Red Ales, Ambers are built on a caramel malt backbone, but good Ambers also have small amounts of darker specialty malts that contribute dark fruit, toffee, nutty, biscuit, chocolate and roasted flavors.

Below are reviews of the most memorable Amber Ales I have tried:


Fat Tire- The flagship of New Belgium, this is one of the most widely available craft beers on the market and most peoples' introduction to Amber Ale. Fat Tire is also one of the best Ambers, but the trouble with Fat Tire is that it is not typical of American Amber Ale. Unlike most American Ambers, who trace their descent from English Amber Ale, Fat Tire is an American take on Belgian Amber Ale. Fat Tire is lighter in body and alcohol, which makes it disturbingly easy to toss back. Rather than making it weak or flavorless, the lightness allows the beer to sit back and let its considerable malt complexity rise to the fore. Toasty, earthy, warm and with a hint of raisin, no other American beer manages to simultaneously be so mesmerizingly malt-driven and light on its feet.

Boont Amber- This is the flagship of Anderson Valley Brewery and at least in Northern California it seems to be the go-to Amber Ale. Boont is a quintessential American Amber, and among the best. It has a richer malt body than Fat Tire. The malt is balanced by modest bitterness. The overall effect refreshes when it's hot and sticks to your ribs when it's cold. Two things separate Boont from the ubiquitous brewpub Amber: a cleaner alignmeent of flavor (essentially, brewing and ingredient quality) and a nutty, almost a buttery flavor in the malt that characterizes Anderson Valley's whole lineup. My friend Myranda gets credit for suggesting it as a breakfast beer at an English pub brunch. I have discovered few better beer pairings than Boont with greasy eggs, potatoes and sausage.

Full Sail Amber- Like Anderson Valley, Full Sail's Amber is characterized significantly by the Brewery's unique trademark style, which in this case means that it's built on a rich, light, ebullient malt base that's set off by a dry, roasted flavor in the malt. The hops set off that roasted flavor, making the overall effect one of balance between hearty-but-light-colored malt and the dark, dry bitterness of the hops and roasted malt. This sits on the heavier end of the Amber spectrum and would be perfect for the Christmas season.


Rogue American Amber- I have an enormous hard-on for Rogue Brewing. Like Boont, theirs is a quintessential Amber Ale that sports its brewery's trademark spin. Rogue American Amber has that air of delicacy associated with their proprietary yeast strain "Pacman". The malts subtly play off one another, the hops and that characteristic yeast nose. This is not their best beer, but it is among the best Amber Ales. Were it priced competitively with Boont and Fat Tire, it would be my Amber of choice.

Stone Levitation- As you might imagine coming from Stone, this is the most bitter Amber Ale I've yet to try. Of course, it's impeccably balanced. It manages to firmly stand as an Amber even with an inverted (hop>malt) paradigm. If you're the kind of beer-drinker who demands the teetering bitter edge, this is the Amber for you. It may even be the only Amber for you, because I know how stubborn you hop heads are.

Ballast Point's Calico Copper Amber Ale- Befitting it's San Diego origins, this is also a relatively bitter Amber. Rather than inverting the paradigm or attempting a "bleeding bitter edge" brew, Calico is simply a combination of strong hopping with a strong and diverse malt base. This sacrifices the natural give-and-take dynamism of Amber Ale for forceful flavor. I have had a few Ambers brewed in such a maximalist style from smaller breweries on the West Coast, but this is the first one to not suck.

Drake's Amber- This is more of a Brown Ale than an Amber because it has a high ABV, substantial hop bitterness, a medium-full creamy body and an abundance of rich malty flavors. Treated as an unusual Amber, it has greatest resemblance to the maximalist school of Amber Ale. This is a solid beer in terms of concept and harmony, but it wasn't especially complex. That's a criticism I could level more broadly at most Brown Ales, even respectable ones.

Red Tail Ale- This Mendocino flag ship is an even lighter Amber than Fat Tire. It is labelled as an "American Ale", but this beer's aesthetic definitely aligns it with the Amber camp and I'm pretty sure "American Ale" is made-up. Like classic Ambers it's laid back and malt-driven. There's some malt complexity, but I don't think the flavors really gel into a compelling greater whole. This is a good session beer that I'm unlikely to ever buy again because it's short of amazing in a world of amazing craft beer. I imagine some people will really like this beer and this brewery, so it's worth trying, but it's not the beer/brewery for me and I'm willing to wager that it's not the beer/brewery for most beer people.

Budweiser American Ale- Again, "American Ale" is code for lightweight Ambers. As you can imagine, coming from Budweiser, this is insipid. It serves as a pointed reminder that (with the solitary exception of Coors' Blue Moon lineup) macros should stay the hell away from craft styles.

I am aware that I have already reviewed some of these beers in previous posts, but these reviews treat them in the context of their style. Plus, my palate has matured. :P

Making the Classics

When I wrote my first comprehensive cocktail post I figured I needn't post how I made those classic cocktails. I mean, they're classics, right? Two years experience being over twenty one and I know differently. I don't go to bars very frequently, but I've ordered two Martinis. First of all I had to specify and confirm that I wanted them made with gin. When I finally got my Martini, not only was vermouth almost nonexistent, but the drink was iced so thoroughly that instead of tasting like uncomplemented gin it tasted mostly like ice water. That's for both instances. One of those was from Sophia's and cost $7. Their Mojito was also off-balance (mostly mint and soda water). At a bar in Dublin (CA) I ordered an Old Fashioned and was similarly displeased.

It seems to me that bartenders accustomed to "pinky up" drinks that are incredibly hard to mess up are now ruining the last respectable cocktails on the house books. Fine cocktails are difficult to balance and I suppose bartenders have incentive to make drinks as quickly as they can, but I don't mean it lightly when I say they were nearly undrinkable. All of those drinks were travesties. I know there are good bars out there that still take cocktails seriously. I've promised myself to investigate one sometime when I have the extra arm and leg required to pay the tab. Until then, I'm going to err on the side of beer. They still haven't figured out how to mess that up.

Those of my readers who've been around the block are welcomed to weigh in here. I could be totally off-base. For those pinky-uppers and non-cocktail-drinkers among you, don't hold bar failures against a good cocktail.

The Martini was the first cocktail Brandon and I got into. It took us awhile to get the proportions right and it took us awhile to figure out how to drink them properly (small sips, guys). Though we did the vermouth by eye, we learned quickly enough what amount made a good Martini. That amount ended up remarkably close to IBA specifications: one shot gin, one quarter-shot dry vermouth. When done right, as you roll the fiery liquid around your mouth, you can bask in the divine balance of sharp juniper with the nutty/fruity/spicy flavors of vermouth.

Since our early days using Seagram's Gin for our Martinis, Brandon and I have moved to "swanky" gins, which really comes down to deciding between Bombay Sapphire and similarly-priced Tanqueray. I'm partial to the latter as it tastes more like gin. I don't think the flowery flourishes of Bombay Sapphire lend themselves to Martinis, though they work better in Gin and Tonics (one of the more foolproof cocktails, fyi).

So, my rules for Martinis are as follows:
-When left unspecified, a Martini is made with gin, not vodka.
-"Martinis", as a category, includes various vermouth-containing cocktails such as the Vodka Martini and the Dirty Martini, which is to say "Martinis" do not include most cocktails served in martini glasses or with the suffix "-tini". Too many times have I heard beer or whiskey snobs refer derisively to "Martinis", alluding to their syrupy ways, and it gives me a sad.
-Vermouth should make a 1:4 ratio with the gin unless specified "dry" or "wet", which I do not recommend and I certainly don't recommend starting off with.
-The gin should be shaken or stirred with ice straight out of the freezer and for a short period of time. The primary ingredient in a Martini should be gin, not melted ice.

Brandon and I also took the foundation for our Manhattans from the IBA via wikipedia. I've found the ratio of vermouth to liquor is a little more forgiving than with Martinis (unlike dry, sweet vermouth is pretty good on its own). We ended up eyeballing about the same amount of vermouth for both Martinis and Manhattans.

My dad serves Manhattans on the rocks without bitters rather than the IBA-recommended straight up. He's also a fan of a variant he picked up from my Wisconsinite maternal grandfather, Grandpa Pee Wee, which uses sweet white vermouth aka Bianco. Between the ice, the lack of bitters and a more liberal application of vermouth, the whole thing comes out much milder than my don't-shake-it-too-long-or-it'll-be-watery Martinis and Manhattans. Personal taste aside, my dad makes an excellent Manhattan, which I guess is a testament to the drink's flexibility.

I'd also like to mention the Sazerac, which is reputed to be the oldest cocktail and the catalyst for the first time I stocked a bar. It's how I got into rye whiskey. While there is no IBA-official recipe, I'm very happy with the Wikipedia recipe. I often simplify the process to resemble how I make Martinis/Manhattans (though the Sazerac is more complex), but I've found that it is absolutely necessary to first add the Absinthe/Herbsaint (or Pastis or any anise-flavored liquor) by coating the glass. I've also found that releasing the lemon peel's oils onto the drink is essential for the overall effect.

Other, also respectable, cocktails that lean harder on water and sugar are more forgiving to make and more approachable for those with weak palates, but there's nothing like classic straight up cocktails with that heady mix of spices, fruits, herbs and aromatics only they have to offer. Nothing else takes the taste of alcohol to such a pure, high glory.

The Coca-Cola Fiend

Back in the 80's, Coca-Cola tried to change their formula to so-called "New Coke", the fallout of which is why, until the last couple of years, cans of coke were labeled "Coca-Cola Classic". The rather compelling story of "New Coke" can be found on Wikipedia (of all the unlikely places to find a compellingly-written story).

I have said previously on this blog that Coca-Cola is awesome and I am here to say it again. Coca-Cola is fucking awesome. I'd like to elaborate on that starting premise.

Coca-Cola, as declared by a paper airline napkin, is "zesty and refreshing on the first sip and full and rich on the last". It has an impenetrable depth of flavor that, far from being intimidating, tastes easy and approachable even as it dares you to bury yourself in it's complexity. It complements most food and liquor remarkably well (my favorite pairing being with Chinese food). It has mild medicinal effects. In short, Coke is everything I believe a beverage should be.

My fascination with Coca-Cola led me to discover that different countries have been permitted to tweak the original formula for local tastes. Despite Andy Warhol's rather inspiring quote, not all cokes are created equal. The Apple House tasting team had one of its more epic sessions comparing cokes from the US, Mexico ("Mexicoke"), France and Spain. I must be getting spoiled by all of the options available to me as a resident of a major US city, because I think there really should be a store/soda bar somewhere in San Francisco that sells Coca-Colas from every country that coke is bottled in.

I'd also love to be able to taste older formulations of Coca-Cola, particularly the very earliest incarnations that still contained modest quantities of cocaine. In fact, crazy as it may sound, I would like to see that oldest formula reintroduced. At low concentrations, there's no reason that such a soda would be particularly dangerous or addictive. Coca-leaf tea is still consumed all over the Andes without causing problems. It is treated like coffee is treated here-- as a mild stimulant to power people through the working day. Of course, I expect that this retro coke would have considerably more kick than the current formula.

Flavor-wise, coke holds up well against craft sodas, though there is a key difference in approach. Like a good second-day gumbo (gumbo is always better the second day), Coca-Cola's flavors are married such that the individual ingredients cannot be parsed out. This is ideal for easy drinking and culinary harmony, but it plays poorly with gourmets who've been taught to pick out flavor notes, as with wine. Excellent craft sodas like Virgil's Rootbeer and Red Bull's Cola make their concoctions' individual components as clear as possible in the tasting. To sip one of these sodas is to take a tour of the ingredients proudly labeled on the back of the container: nutmeg, cinnamon, anise, clove, cardamom, cassis oil, etc. While purported ingredients for Coca-Cola's famously secret recipes are similarly complex and exotic (neroli oil, anyone?), the difference is one of taste rather than of quality. Coca-Cola produces a more harmonious soda while the best craft soda makers sacrifice harmony for a more explicit complexity. With the notable exception of Coke's choice of sweetener, there are no culinary grounds to fault or marginalize the quality of Coke as a world-class soda. Anyone who has, as I have, made a point to compare every available cola must inevitably recognize the resounding excellence of Coca-Cola.

Pitchfork and Allmusic

It all started with Sufjan Stevens.

Sufjan Stevens was at the height of popularity when I was finishing high school, having just released the second album in his fifty states project. All of my hippest friends had him in heavy rotation on their iPods, right up there with Radiohead. The next year, in the dorms, I used iTunes's network to view and listen to the libraries of fellow students. It became apparent that Sufjan was among a group of bands whose popularity could be traced back to heavy promotion by Pitchfork Media. It also became apparent to me that Sufjan Stevens was a sort of fraud.

His music was all surface and no substance. That was notable enough, but my real epiphany was the realization that his music's surface catered to the sensibilities of critics and aspiring pretentious white kids everywhere. The elaborate arrangements, unusual instrumentation and hyper-empathetic vocals broke through bored critics palates and bypassed well-rehearsed cynicism. This would be all well and good if most music critics emphasized songwriting/musicianship over the progression of music's sound. Sometime before they actually wrote a review that sounded like a fourteen-year-old having a wet dream, they would have realized that the songs just weren't that great. It wasn't that Sufjan Stevens was bad, he just wasn't the musical genius he got billed as.

In the last couple of years Sufjan has admitted that the fifty states project was a publicity stunt that he never actually intended to carry out. At the end of last year he released his densest, most use-weird-noises-to-cover-a-lack-of-underlying-talent album ever, to an excellent reception by Pitchfork.

Hype is a pretty natural tendency of art criticism, especially when the critics in question are relatively young (when I was finishing high school the mean age of Pitchfork staffers was in the mid-20's). Some amount of self-policing must exist for an organization to produce a thoughtful body of criticism worthy of respect. The "Pitchfork band" phenomena indicated that shiny new, rapidly rising Pitchfork Media was (and continues to be) the most prominent, most irresponsible perpetrator of music over-hype in the industry.

Sometime during my freshman year, I started reading AllMusic. They gave the Queens of the Stone Age respectful reviews, said nice things about Sufjan without implying that he had any real talent, and panned Radiohead's alleged masterpiece Kid A. That last bit caught my attention and it earned my respect, even though I disagreed with their review right up until they backtracked and conceded to the album's greatness last year. In short, AllMusic embodied the contrary, thoughtful kind of snobbery that I saw in myself.

With the aid of dorm broadband, I was downloading music about as fast as I could keep up with. AllMusic provided comprehensive artist bios, discographies and a wealth of internal hyperlinking (genres, similar bands, bands influenced, etc). It's design was ideal for me to rapidly sift through music and investigate and expand my tastes into unknown territory.

It soon became apparent that I faced a dilemma. If I continued to blindly trust AllMusic's reviewers, my tastes would quickly become beholden to and bounded by the tastes and knowledge of a small group of individuals. I had to decide whether or not to sell my soul to AllMusic.

I mulled the decision over for a couple of weeks, but in the end it was an easy choice. I was fresh off my discovery of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. I was eager to develop a taste for the "classic" bands and albums of rock and roll. I never put much stock in individualism and indeed, I'm irritated by the definition and cultivation of "personal taste". Personal taste should be treated as bias that must be filtered out of any final, "true" assessment. There is such a thing as great art in absolute terms.

I sold my soul to AllMusic. And I never looked back.

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.

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.

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.