goddamit. I love Matt Jumago, and I want to start by saying that. He is keeping the blog alive (contrary to what I commented recently) while 50% of the bloggers are only at the internet intermittently in Southeast Asia. However, he sparked a fiery fiery rage in me with his recent wine post. See, I like drinking wine, I like drinking most things in fact, but I hate wine. If that makes sense. See Matt and Drew both have been working in the wine industry in Walla Walla recently and it does strange things to people. I think wine and the industry makes people turn very inward and become insular and semi-uninteresting because more and more of what they think about becomes wine. That is like how I work at summer camp every summer and all people wanna talk about on our DAYS OFF is what is happening with their kids or whatever, it drives me crazy. With wine though it's even more ironic because wine is supposedly a drink of culture and people who are very interesting, with varied interests and what not. Now the title of this blog post is out of order for the most part because I opened with the rant. The apology is that Jumago doesn't deserve to be pooped on completely because I think he understands some of this ridiculousness which is why a closer read of the post lends itself to some hilarious humor, some lyrical miracles and overly bullshit descriptions that honestly made me laugh. At first when I see our beloved underdog blue collar blog reviewing wine, I gag, but when I see it done our way then I start to choke but get Heimliched by the gods of sanity and reason. However, I think I was at a wine tasting workshop at Whitman last year when I actually heard an "expert" ask if anyone else tasted "locker room or socks" on his wine so who knows, jesus. Here is a list of my own, 5 college beers, cuz good beer is for people with jobs.
1. Keystone Light- no thought goes into this beer, the lowest of low prices and easy to drink as it is pretty much piss colored water. Freshmen year my roommate Ben Reiber and I had no fridge so we just stacked our key-lites on the window sill in the winter with window cracked in the winter. After about a week of the beers heating up during the day and cooling down at night Ben tried one and noticed a hint of honey taste, we may have unlocked a secret.
2. Coors Light- In a world where Keystone Light won't do and you want to increase the class a little bit, go for Coors Light.
3. Bud Light- see # 2
4. PBR- If you want to get away from the sensitive northwest college frosh image and seem gritty and uncaring get a case of this and drink 19 of them.
5. Budweiser- This is a beer that is drunk with a purpose, especially outside of places where the 10 commandments are publicly displayed. Make a statement with this beer that this is America and even if you smoke bidis you can still enjoy a goddam budweiser and then drive your race car home.
6. Natural Ice- This is actually a 6th entry when I only promised 5, and that is for a reason. Where Keystone Light is the "cheap" cheap beer that is bought without a thought, you have to really be down on your luck + depressed + intentional to get into this selection. This is actually on par with the black case of Keystone, jesus.
and now...proving I can use technology on the blog and steal a photo from Adam Sachs that shows 4 monstronauts + sachs frolicking in the roots of a tree at Ta Prohm in Angkor, Cambodia.
From Sachs:
ReplyDeleteI think I'll have to agree with Mandel that the wine industry turns people inward, which was what helped push me away from it for awhile. When I started working at wineries last summer, I remember having a couple discussions with Drew about how wine was elitist and not as down-to-earth as beer. After this summer our boy Drew got exposed to much of the ancient fluid of grapes and has eyes and cravings for it like I'd never before seen from him. Wine has not yet done such a thing to me, but as Drew pointed out, I was a part time worker, so who knows what could happen when I return to the States and perhaps pursue a position as a sommelier.