My Thirteenth Entry - Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout

My daughter recently decided where she's going to college. She's been assigned a dorm and a roommate, and we're trying to pull together the hundred different things you have to get done before she leaves in the fall.

As I've watched my daughter cheerfully prepare, I've been thinking of this 2011 Suburu ad which broke my heart the first time I saw it:

The ad hit home then (and still resonates today) because I was that dad, and my daughter was that daughter, and after she got her license, I watched her disappear down the road with the same feeling of helplessness the dad in the commercial has.

For me, that day started with a trip with my daughter to Pasadena shortly after her sixteenth birthday for her final driver's test.  We rode together to the Department of Public Safety, got there and checked in, then returned to the car and pulled into a queue to wait our turn for the test.

I waited in the car with her, gave her some last-minute pointers, and then got out and stood on the sidewalk, watching.  Eventually, a trooper got into the car with her and they drove off.  I watched the car disappear around the corner of an adjoining street and hoped that she would do well.

She returned to view about five minutes later, pulling into the DPS parking lot and approaching the parallel parking poles. There's an urban legend that you can pass everything else in the driving test, but if you hit the curb or either of the poles during your parallel parking test, you instantly fail and have to try again another day.  I don't know if that's true, but I'd heard it enough that I held my breath while I watched her try.

She eased back into towards the slot, turned, and turned again, and stopped.  She wasn't perfect - she ended up about nine inches from the curb - but she passed. I exhaled.

After she got her temporary license, I got into the driver's seat, and we drove to our insurer's office to get her added onto our policies. After that was done, we drove home.

I pulled into the driveway.  Looking down at her phone, she said, "Katelyn wants to celebrate."

"Sure," I said. "Let's tell Mom, and then we can all get some lunch."

"No, Dad. Just me and Katelyn."

"Oh," I said.

We got out of the car, she got in the driver's seat, and I leaned over (just like in the commercial) and told her to be careful. She smiled, backed out into the street, and then zipped off, this tiny mercurial girl  enveloped by glass and metal and combusting gasoline, a thousand terrible things waiting to happen out there, not even wearing a helmet.

It's been a while since then. She's now about to go to college, she has a boyfriend and a regular part-time job, and to the objective observer, she's a full-fledged adult woman.

But in my eyes . . . she is still the tiny mercurial girl that I watched that winter afternoon, driving off into the world, oblivious to the dangers of the world, a gleeful smile on her face, and I am the proud, loving, and helpless dad in the driveway, hoping for the best.

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The boy she is dating, a tall handsome blond kid with a good sense of humor, is on the swim team at their school and will be attending UT in the fall.

As it happens, I was a tall blond kid with a good sense of humor who was on the swim team in high school and attended UT.  That's what worries me: I know exactly what this kid is thinking, and if it involves my daughter, I want to roll her up in bubble wrap and get a possessive pit bull to stand guard over her.

He came by one day as I was in my home office and introduced himself.

I asked him which strokes he swam. Backstroke and freestyle, he replied.

As this conversation was proceeding, I was engaged in my own conversation with myself, playing out the various lines of questioning, trying to decide what would work the best.  This is something that some of us lawyers are particularly good at because we're always evaluating where the next question is going, and where the next answer will take us, and editing on the fly.

In this case, I was trying to decide between the tough-guy Don't Break My Daughter's Heart or I'll Snap Your Neck persona or the slightly nicer We're All Buddies Here, But Seriously, Don't Break My Daughter's Heart or I'll Snap Your Neck persona. I liked this kid, so I went with the latter approach.

"I was on the swim team too," I said.  "My PR on the 50 free was 23.6."  (Actually, I don't know if that's true - it was something like that, but my recollection of my true personal best time fluctuates from 23.4 seconds to 24.6 seconds, depending on how desperate I am to impress.)

He nodded and we talked swimming for awhile. I showed him a picture of me on the team.

Me in 1981: second from the left, top row.

"You had a lot more hair back then," he said.

"Uh, yeah."  I started rethinking my We're All Buddies approach.

My daughter stood in the doorway, knowing what I was thinking.  "Daddy, he's not here to talk to you. Let's go!"

We shook hands and he left. Since then, I've beat him in chess and water basketball, and he declared that I was "way cooler" than he thought I was when he saw my badge from work.  Although I kind of recognized the backhanded nature of that comment ("way cooler" than what?), and my daughter told me that she thinks he let me win those games, I choose to believe that the old lion still has some teeth.

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On an actual beer topic, next week Saint Arnold Brewery releases its Divine Reserve No. 14. When and where the bottles will turn up is a mystery, however.

The Divine Reserves are Saint Arnold's one-off limited release specialty beers, and over time, getting a six-pack or a bomber has become its own event, a scavenger hunt for beer aficionados. The smart hunters use Twitter with the hashtag #DR14 and wait for the word to get out about when a shipment arrives nearby. Here's a good article about the search process in the Chronicle.

My co-worker Brian and I will be monitoring the availability of the beer and if the conditions are right, we may just dash out of court proceedings to get a couple of six-packs on Monday morning. When we do get some, I'll do a special review.

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One other thing. Last Saturday was Record Store Day, so I went to Cactus Records near Shepherd and 59 to see what was up. The ad said that there would be live music, and that they would be serving Saint Arnold Santo, and there were supposed to be some deals. So, being the cheapskate I am, I seized the opportunity.

Although I get most of my music these days online, I think I was inclined this year to go to Record Store Day because (1) I have a love/hate relationship with Internet stores (I think we're slouching towards total depersonalization of commerce, which is bad for society); and (2) I wanted to relive my old college days in Austin, when the local record stores would have their once-a-year super-sales and you could get a new LP for $3.99 or less. We'd brave the crowds and pick the store clean. I remember loading up in my first such sale in the basement store at Dobie Mall, getting Brian Eno's Before and After Science, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's self-titled debut, and a compilation record that included Adam Ant and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

(Did I say that I went to college in the Eighties? And now you know.)

I visited Cactus last Saturday after playing basketball. I had changed my shirt, but I still had the post-workout funk and I hoped to be in and out, maybe with a cold one and a couple of CDs. I lucked into a pretty good parking spot and ambled in, no line at the door, about 1:00 p.m.

When I walked in, I saw a poster for the Ry Cooder Live in San Francisco CD and immediately started jonesing for that record. (Ry Cooder is the world's greatest slide guitarist, and he was doing worldbeat explorations decades before Paul Simon and David Byrne did.) I found the CD in a rack, costing probably about six dollars more than I would have paid on Amazon, but I was in the spirit of the day, so I picked it up.

I also found a used CD of Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club in 1963, one of the greatest soul concerts of all time (only James Brown Live at the Apollo might be better, but that depends on what your mood is). I hadn't listened to it in twenty years, so I grabbed it too.

I then found myself at the end of a line that appeared to be something related to Record Store Day with about twenty-five people. So I got into it. Shortly afterwards, I turned to two guys who were behind me in line as we approached the tables and I asked them what I was in line for.

"Um, this is the line for the Record Store Day merch."

"Uh-huh. What merch?"

"The stuff they're selling today, sir." (Throughout the conversation, one of the guys kept calling me "sir" even though he looked to be about thirty-five. The other guy just looked at me as if I was slightly demented.)

I looked at the tables, but all I saw were some t-shirts and some small picture disks.

"What are they selling?" I asked.

The guy I was talking to got excited. "Well, we were at Vinal Edge [editor's note: that's the correct spelling, by the way] before here and we got a Devo concert disk from 1977. The cover is excellent."

"Any CDs?"

(I later found out that this one question marked me as a fogey more than my graying hair, my growing middle, and my total lack of style.)

He paused. "Um, they have the new Pixies CD, sir." The other guy rolled his eyes.

I finally got to the table, where an impatient clerk asked me what I wanted. I saw a box of vinyl records behind him, but nothing was displayed, no labels, no poster. Apparently, you were supposed to know what they might have and that was the fun of Record Store Day - knowing to ask for a special release and, by chance, maybe actually getting it.

I asked about the only special release I knew about. "Do you have the Devo record?"

"Which one? Max's Kansas City or 'Gates of Steel'?"

"Um, both?"

He turned around and pulled Devo Live at Max's Kansas City - November 15, 1977 from a box on the floor. From a different box, he pulled out a gray vinyl 7-inch single with Devo performing "Gates of Steel" on one side and the Flaming Lips performing it on the other side.

"Anything else?"

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I shook my head, took the records, and moved down the line to the next table.  There I saw a David Bowie picture disk, a single of the song "1984." It looked cool, so I asked the next clerk for one.

"That's the last one," she said, smiling. I took it.

Time to pay. I looked for the cash register. There was a line disappearing around the corner into another room. I went into the other room.  The line snaked around the room, about 150 people.

Now what? I had two CDs, and three apparently rare vinyl records, and I was going to have to wait about an hour to pay for them. Or I could leave, knowing that I didn't have a working vinyl record player anyway, no loss to me.

I looked at the Devo LP. The guys were walking through Manhattan in their uniforms with stockings over their heads. A label said, "Limited to 2000 - Liner Notes by Gerald V. Casale." Only 2000 in the whole world, and I had one of them! How could I leave it behind? And the last David Bowie picture disk?

(In retrospect, I now realize I was acting like this guy.)

I got in line. We moved at a stately pace around the room, and I struck up a conversation with the guy behind me. He was holding a couple of LPs by bands I did not recognize. We talked about our hauls and then he said something that made me feel really, really old.

"Look at all of these CDs!" he said, gesturing towards the racks and laughing. "I don't know anyone who buys CDs anymore. I get all of my music on Spotify. This is old technology." He drew out the word "ooooooold" as he said it.

I chuckled and nodded in agreement, slowly shifting my Sam Cooke and Ry Cooder CDs behind the Devo LP.

We eventually got to the cash register, stopping midway as we passed a guy pouring cups of Santo, which was cold and refreshing, particularly since I was still in my basketball gear and hadn't had anything to eat or drink since breakfast. Beer: lunch of champions.

And now I own these vinyl records. And now I have to decide whether to buy a record player, and whether I should break the seal on these special releases, or hold them as collector's items. I'm not sure I get the fetish of vinyl, but I have a closet full of old LPs that haven't been listened to in decades. Maybe it's time to dust them off and see what I've been missing.

And on Record Store Day next year, maybe I'll know what to ask for.

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This week's beer is the Black Chocolate Stout from the Brooklyn Brewery.  If you remember from my discussion of the history of IPAs, stouts used to be what beer was, a product of the "kilning" of barley malts in ovens to stop germination. Because kilns were not terribly sophisticated back in the day, the malts often turned very dark and passed along that color and taste to the finished product.

(c) JDurfee99

I was not a fan of stouts when I started this blog. I have now come to appreciate their special gifts, however, and the Black Chocolate Stout is a great example of what stouts have to offer: a sweet pungency, like dark chocolate or molasses, with a warm alcohol finish.

This is a beer that begs to be paired with cured meats and cheeses. I almost want to go to a Renaissance Festival and buy a smoked turkey leg to gnaw on while I drink this. I want to grow a thick beard and bushy eyebrows and wear hand-tanned animal pelts and . . . well, you get the idea.

According to the always-helpful tasting note on the label:

In the last century, British brewers made strong stouts for the Czar's Court. They were called Imperial Stouts. Our Black Chocolate Stout, brewed once yearly for the winter season, achieves a chocolate aroma and flavor through the artful blending of six varieties of black, chocolate, and roasted malts.

(c) JDurfee99

Yep - the chocolate is here in the taste, the look and the aroma. At 10 percent ABV, I'm also feeling it as I drink it. It doesn't leave the funky thick aftertaste you get from some stouts either - I don't feel like I've just swallowed a tablespoon of Hershey's Dark Cocoa.

I like this beer. In fact, I like it enough to make it our new champ. So long, Lenny's Bittersweet - you had a great run, but there's a new big dog in the house.

In fact, as I stand in line on Monday for the Divine Reserve No. 14 at Spec's, I might very well pick up another bottle or two of the Black Chocolate Stout as well as a whole salami to bite into as I drink it in the parking lot. (That's a joke, by the way, if my boss is reading this: I don't actually eat salami during office hours.)

See you soon!

My Twelfth Entry - Rahr & Sons Texas Red Amber Lager

All right, I'd like to say a little bit about my band here.

We're not your ordinary group of instrumentalists.

Everybody here one time or another was putting people in prison.

This song is about a murder case that happened a few years back.

Every woo-oord is true.  It's a documented fact.

            - Introduction to "Don't Say Nothing 'Til the Lawyer Come," David Mitcham

I'd like to say a little bit about my band here.

In 1995, two things happened that changed the direction of my life: then-District Attorney Johnny Holmes asked me to leave the Appellate Division and be his General Counsel, and Bill Delmore, the guy I replaced, asked me to replace the keyboardist in his band, Death by Injection.

How could I have said no?

In the nineteen years since then, I've played nearly a hundred shows with Death by Injection. I've played on three different keyboards (a Yamaha SY-22, a Yamaha SY-35, and a Korg SV-1), and I've learned all the words to the three songs I sing with the band ("Start Me Up"; "For Your Love"; and my original song, "Witness Stand.") We've played gigs in tuxedos and gigs in swim trunks. We've played in front of hundreds at Splashtown, the Galveston Sandcastle competition, and the Italian Festival, and we've played for less than five people at the Continental Club and other hole-in-the-wall bars. We've played outside at golf courses, inside of residential homes, at Rice University, at political fundraisers for both parties, in my own backyard for my wife's birthday, and at church bazaars (where we try very hard to remember not to sing the dirty parts of our Rolling Stones covers). For about a year, we changed our name to the Convictions and then we changed it back (potential clients kept passing on the Convictions and asking whatever happened to Death by Injection).

The five guys I play with in DBI - Doug O'Brien, David Mitcham, Glenn Gotschall, Hal Kennedy, and Bill Delmore - are my brothers in arms, my mates.  They are endlessly patient with my efforts, letting me noodle around the best I can, as long as I somehow remember to pound out the chords to "Louie, Louie," "Wooly Bully," "Hang On Sloopy," and the keyboard solos in "Centerfold" and "Pipeline."

I have learned that band chemistry can be volatile and that success is based as much on compatibility as it is on talent. In this respect, our band is remarkably stable and balanced. We have some characters, but no jerks. We argue, we mope, we make bad jokes about each other, but we still enjoy making music together. Having been through nineteen years of practice, some good gigs and some really, really terrible gigs with them, all I know is that I love, trust and respect each of them like my family. No matter what happens - boos, arguments on stage, complaints about the volume by blue-haired society women at the Westin Galleria - we still have each others' backs. That's why our band works.

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Although we are pretty much a cover band, we did make our mark on posterity in 2001 when we recorded a CD of original songs called Down at the Courthouse (which you can find on iTunes and CDBaby). My song "Witness Stand" is the fifth track on the CD, featuring my basso profundo growl about the travails of testifying in a criminal case. 

The melody to "Witness Stand" came to me in a dream: I was watching a woman with her back to me (it might have been Lisa) swaying slowly next to an old-fashioned jukebox in the corner of a Florida beachside bar and the melody was something I'd never heard before.

I woke up, ran to my keyboard and tried to remember the chords.  In thirty seconds, I had it: Bbm7, Eb7, resolving to an F.  I wrote the lyrics that morning and we recorded the song that night.  It sounds like what it is - a crude blues with a pretty neat bass line - but it is one of the four works of original art of which I am most proud.

Here's a performance of the song that my daughter and I taped in 2002 (she was seven years old, so cut her some slack on the shaky camera, and I am a big goose, so cut me some slack on my lack of charisma - I reserve all of my stage flair for when I sing "Start Me Up"):

Why all this about the band?  It's because we're playing a gig at the St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church at 8200 Roos Street in Sharpstown from 11 to 1 on Sunday, May 4.  We'll take your requests from the set list - heck, if you buy us a beer, we'll even let you sing with the band.

How can you say no to an offer like that?

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The other three works of original art of which I am most proud?

(1)  A kind of dirty haiku I sent to my wife that only two legal scholars like us could fully appreciate:

Her (cite) form is great.
His briefs are packed with content.
It's appellate love.

(2)  My Dishonorable Mention entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in 1982, in which the competition was to write the first line to the worst novel ever written.  My nearly-winning opening line:

In the city of lost souls that was Los Angeles, the silvery halo glittering above Kitty Gillis's head blinked out a neon message to every two-bit grifter and pimp in sight: "I'm alone, I'm from Kansas, and I'm a virgin."

I still hope to write the rest of that novel someday.

(3)  An insult poem I wrote to a defense lawyer who made a snide remark about one of our Appellate Division lawyers who had used poetry in her motion to extend time to write a brief.  At that time, I was also in the Appellate Division and we were all greatly offended.  I decided to fight fire with fire, and I sent the commentator this poem:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
I think that I also shall never see
A more pusillanimous jerk than you.

In my old age, I think I'd now be honored to get a poem like that from someone.

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This week's beer is from Rahr & Sons Brewing in Fort Worth.  It's the Texas Red Amber Lager and it's pretty good.

(c) JDurfee99

Rahr & Sons is coming up on their tenth anniversary, having been founded by Fritz Rahr and his wife Erin in 2004, shortly after his graduation from TCU.  On the bottle, Rahr claims a brewmaster lineage going back to his great-great-grandfather in 1847.  I love these origin stories because they say so much about the motivation and the passion of the people who start these breweries.

Drinking craft brews has opened my eyes to how much of this kind of small-bore artistry is out there in other fields.  It's the same with small mom-and-pop restaurants, food trucks, butchers, and artists. They do it because they love the work - if success follows, great, but it's not what got them into the business in the first place.  Now that I think about it, there are some lawyers who are like that.

The Texas Red bottle is old school: a pen-and-ink drawing of two men on horses guiding a herd of Longhorns. The tasting notes are kind of helpful:

(c) JDurfee99

This amber lager is a tip-of-the-hat to our home state. It's got a balanced flavor with notes of caramel and a sound malt character that's perfectly balanced with just a bit of hops. Super-smooth and very drinkable, this is a beer just for Texans.  (And anybody who wishes they were one.)

I concur with the drinkability comment: this is a smooth, almost non-hopped beer that goes down fast (and its 5% ABV keeps it from hitting too hard). I think I drank it in about four minutes. I also liked the color of the beer: it had a rich reddish-brown glint that gave the beer an attractive glow in my pint glass.

I'm not sure it beat Lenny's Bittersweet - this is a really good beer that I could drink all day, but it's not very complex, and thus not as interesting as some of the other Fifty Beers. I liked it a lot, but it's not enough to dethrone the champ.

Till next week, this song should hold you over.  Cheers!

My Eleventh Entry - Independence Brewing Co.'s Stash IPA

After careful deliberation, I have decided to reveal where I was last weekend.

I was in New Orleans for . . . Wrestlemania XXX.

I hope you do not think less of me for this.  Or for the fact that this is my fourth Wrestlemania.

I've been to two Wrestlemanias in Houston:  Wrestlemania 17, which featured a match between "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and the Rock; and Wrestlemania 25, which featured a match between the Undertaker (Houston's own Mark Calaway) and "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels.  I went to Wrestlemania 26 in Phoenix for the return match between the Undertaker and Michaels, and now New Orleans for the matches involving Triple H, Bryan "Daniel Bryan" Danielson, Dave "The Animal" Batista, and Randy "The Legend Killer" Orton.

It's hard to explain why I like this stuff.  I've never been a mark, which is the term wrestlers use for the people who actually believe the storylines.  (I love the carny talk in the wrestling business, by the way.  My favorite: if you're a wrestler who "shoots" (tells the truth) about the business instead of "working" (conning) the marks, then you have broken kayfabe (the Omertà of wrestling).)

My first memory about wrestling, in fact, is based on my youthful skepticism about the reality of wrestling.  I was working as a garbageman for the City of Lewisville's Parks and Recreation Department during the summer after my freshman year in college.

It was a great job - we rode around in a flatbed truck emptying out oil drum trashcans in the city parks, which were filled with beer cans, rotting fish guts at the lake parks, and all kinds of weird stuff thrown away during summer weekends in the pavilions.  Work days started at 7:00 a.m., and we took a lunch hour at 11:00 a.m. and spent it playing three-on-three basketball in the parking lot of the truck yard on a nine-foot extremely dunkable rim nailed to an upright railroad tie, and then, in the hot summer afternoons, after most of the trash had been emptied, we drove around Lewisville on park maintenance jobs, but mostly goofing off until quitting time. Sitting around in the picnic areas, we talked about the things you talk about when you're young and have all the time in the world.

One day, the conversation turned to wrestling.  One of the full-time guys (the guys who worked year-round instead of the summer guys like me) announced that he had been to the Sportatorium in Dallas to see the rasslin' show and he went on about the moves he had seen.  This guy - Eddie - looked like a smaller version of Moses Malone: he had huge hands and thick arms from the manual labor he did while working for the city.

"That stuff's bull****," I said.  (I swore a lot more back then than I do now.)

He turned to look at me.  I was about 6-2 and 180 pounds in those days, still wiry from my time as a varsity swimmer in high school and in really good shape from the hours of basketball I played at college and during the summer lunch breaks.

"I call bull**** on that stuff, Eddie," I repeated.

He grinned.  "You think it's fake?"

"Yep.  Iron claw, my ***."  (That was the Von Erich family's submission move, a big hand clutching the top of his opponent's head and jamming a digit into his temple.)

He moved closer.  "You think this is fake?"  He quickly reached over, put his big hand on my head, and squeezed, his approximation of the Von Erich iron claw.  It turns out that the iron claw really hurts when applied by someone who's mad enough and strong enough. Eddie was both.

The guys separated us, laughing at me.  Eddie grinned again and walked away, point proven.

My lesson for that day: live and let live.  If Eddie wanted to believe that wrestling was real, who was I to ruin his fun, especially if it was going to result in a thumb to my temple?

(These days, I try to remember that when I talk politics and other fraught topics with my relatives.  Life is too short to antagonize the ones you love, and while they might not be able to apply a painful wrestling hold to you, the guilt they can inflict after you've hurt their feelings burns just as deeply.)

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After Eddie taught me the power of belief, I watched wrestling a little more closely.  I began to appreciate the psychology being applied, the manipulation of feeling, the cultivation of trust and the suspension of disbelief.  There was something primal about how conflicts arose and were resolved - always with words and action, the strong often losing to the clever even in physical confrontations.  There was something for everyone to relate to.

Plus, it was just fun to watch.

As the years passed, I learned that there were others like me out there.  Smart marks, they call us.  People who recall the Boesch shows in Houston fondly, who remember the touring stars like Ric Flair, Bruno Sammartino, Harley Race.  We don't usually advertise our affection for this rogue sport, but we're also not apologetic about it.  Live and let live, we say - let us enjoy what we enjoy.

Juan

This year, I went to Wrestlemania with my friend Juan (an IT professional) and his friend Xavier (a radiologist and Rice MBA student). We arrived in New Orleans on Friday and did the touristy things: beignets at Cafe Du Monde, the Audubon Aquarium, the Harrah's Casino.

Xavier

By a weird coincidence, my wife and her partners were in town for a convention taking place the same weekend.  They were staying at the Ritz Carlton . . . so, I bid Juan and Xavier a good night at the hotel I had booked for the three of us, and I decamped to my wife's hotel and we had dinner at one of Emeril's restaurants in the French Quarter.

Juan with Mr. Wonderful and the Dragon

The next day, Juan, Xavier and I went to WWE Fan Axxess (WWE likes to spell things phonetically for reasons that I guess are all too clear).  The lines were long for meet-and-greets with the wrestlers, but Juan persevered and got to have his picture taken with Larry "Mr. Wonderful" Zybysko, the Wild Samoans, Lanny "The Genius" Poffo, and Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat (whose real name, Richard Blood, is as good a wrestling name in my opinion as his kayfabe name).  I bought a t-shirt and just enjoyed the people-watching.

After a quick dinner at the Ritz club room (the only way to live), we went to the Hall of Fame induction at the Smoothie King Arena.  WWE inducted the female wrestler Lita (now an aspiring punk rock singer), Mr. T (who headlined the first two Wrestlemanias), Jake "The Snake" Roberts (whose heartfelt story of addiction and redemption was marred by a boob in the audience who asked him where his snake was), Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall (another recovering addict whose gimmick - a Tony Montana-type tough guy - had uncomfortably racist overtones that most of his fans try to ignore), Carlos Colon (a Puerto Rican wrestler and promoter with several sons in the business), and the Ultimate Warrior.

Warrior bears special mention because he passed away yesterday, two days after his special weekend.   He traded the back end of his life for the fame and fortune he acquired in his youth, a trade too many wrestlers make.  If there is a real reason to be contemptuous of wrestling, this is it - it's too hard on the men and women who perform 300 nights a year on the road, taking hits in fake fights that would put professional football players on the DL for months.  I am sorry for him and I am sorry for his family, and, as I do with professional football, I hope things get better for the performers who sacrifice so much for our entertainment, but I have no reason to believe that they will in either sport.
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On Sunday, we went to the big show at the Superdome. I won't go blow-by-blow through the show - suffice to say, it was great fun, with lots of surprise endings to the matches, and a communal sense of enjoyment being amidst 75,000 other unapologetic wrestling fans.

The highlight of the show was when the Undertaker lost, for the first time in 21 years, to former MMA star Brock Lesnar.  When the final bell rung, there was an incredible hush in the stadium as we all digested the significance of this entirely predetermined outcome. Some people cried, some people left the building in disgust, some people just shook their heads - none of them believed it to be a real fight, but their feelings were still real and heartfelt.

You may think this whole thing is silly.  Sometimes, I do too.  But who am I to judge how these wrestling fans truly feel?  If they're happy, if they're sad, if they're outraged: the common factor is that they feel.  That's what fascinates me about wrestling to this day and it's why I really had a great time this weekend in New Orleans.

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Before I go over this week's entry from the Fifty Beers, I want to make a note about the beer that kept popping up this weekend wherever we went in NOLA: Abita, a craft brewery 30 miles north of New Orleans.  I had two Abitas with my meals: an Amber and a Strawberry Harvest.

The Amber was good - smooth, not super-hoppy, pulled from a tap into a plastic glass.  I'd drink it again with my jambalaya.

The Strawberry Harvest on the other hand . . . it was like they had dissolved a strawberry fruit chew into an otherwise decent Amber.  Awful.

A piece of advice to the Abita Brewery: pass on the fruit in the beer concept.  If I want to put some strawberry juice into my beer, I'll do it myself (but I won't, and you shouldn't either).

(c) JDurfee99

(c) JDurfee99

This week's beer review will be short and sweet, mainly because there's not much to write about.  It's the Stash IPA by the Independence Brewing Co. in Austin.  Lots of hops - according to their webpage, it's a "dank, resinous and enlightening hop trip" (resin, enlighten, "Stash" - what do you think they're alluding to here?)

I liked it as much as the various IPAs I've sampled so far.  I drank it with a plate of fajitas tonight, and it held up to the strong Tex-Mex flavors.  The only downside: by the end of the drink, my tongue felt like I had been licking a pine tree. Resinous indeed.

Better than Bittersweet Lenny's, our current champ? Not by a long shot.  But I wouldn't mind drinking it again if I was at Chuy's in Austin.

Till next week, keep your iron claw to yourself.  (And Bert: congratulations on your new grandchild. He is starting life out way ahead of the game to have you in his life.)

My Tenth Entry - Avery Brewing Company's Joe's Premium American Pilsner

If you had asked me last year (or pretty much any of the last ten years or so) what kind of blog, if any, I'd be writing in 2014, I would not have laid claim to beer writing aspirations. I've always liked beer, but it was not my raison d'être.

Food, glorious food, would have been my first and only answer.

It has been, as it is for most of us, a lifelong love affair. My first job was in the food industry - cleaning grease traps and doing general maintenance at age 16 at a Grandy's Fried Chicken in Lewisville, Texas.  I graduated to better jobs in the restaurant, doing counter work, salad bar, rolls - everything but frying the chicken itself.  That was hazardous duty reserved for the big bicep guys who could lift the huge fryer basket with one arm and dump the chicken in the eye-level window, laughing as the grease splattered their arms and faces - not in my wheelhouse being 6-2 and 130 pounds in those teen years.

It was at Grandy's that I learned about the subtleties of comfort food. I remember one lunch break when I sat down next to an assistant manager who looked at my plate and shook his head.

"Four breasts and a roll?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," I said. "They're the best part of the chicken."

"Give me that plate."

He went back to the counter area, shoved the breasts to the side of my plate, and, reaching over with his tongs to the small trays on left side of the heating window, he filled the remainder of my plate with wings, livers, and gizzards, then poured cream gravy into a cup.

"Okay, taste test," he said.  "Take a bite of the breast."

I did.  It was delicious.

"I'll bet you think that's delicious," he said.  "It's not. It's boring. I've worked here for three years, and I stopped eating breasts two-and-a-half years ago. We marinate the [bleep] out of them and they're still just one note."

He then pointed to the knob of one of the wings. "That piece right there is the sweetest part of the whole chicken. Don't know why, but it is." I tried one. I may have been suggestible at that young age, but it sure seemed like he was right. It was like that knob of meat was where all of the chicken's, well, chickeniness was concentrated.

He took a second wing, twisted the middle part from the drumstick and the flapper, and deftly yanked the two bones out of the breaded meat.  "Instant McNugget," he said and laughed, popping the whole piece into his mouth.

He then forked one of the livers into the gravy, which he had sprinkled with black pepper.

"Try this," he said.

I looked at the liver. My mother cooked beef liver now and then, and I was no fan of the mealy organ meat. But I recognized this as a learning opportunity from an adult who was, in his way, trying to mentor me.  I ate the liver.

It was good, better than I expected. There were textures - the liver was smooth and firm, and there was a nice crunch from the breading - and the peppery Southern gravy softened the metallic taste of the meat like a thick patchwork comforter over an Army cot.

I grew to love those livers and wings, but I never understood the appeal of eating the gizzard.  It was like chewing on a deep-fried rubber eraser.

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When I graduated from high school, I turned down the assistant manager job Grandy's offered me and went to the University of Texas.  There, I learned how to cook on the cheap - food like chili dogs, mac and cheese, ramen soup, and an occasional freezer pie made from Cool Whip, Eagle Brand, and concentrated limeade.

I liked to cook (because I liked to eat), but I was intimidated away from serious cooking. It seemed like a vocational skill not for dilettantes, kind of like metal shop. It wasn't until Esquire Magazine, of all places, told me that men could cook too that I tried my first sophisticated recipe.

It was a pecan pie. Thirty years later, it's still the best dessert I make, and I've made it probably two hundred times (as you can see from the condition of this recipe card).

I remember the first time I made it: I was in my mother's kitchen with the store-bought pie shell, the bag of pecans, the mysterious Karo syrups (light and dark), and a bottle of "fine bourbon," the secret ingredient the recipe called for.

"What's a jigger?" I asked my mom.

She handed me a shot glass.

I was not a stranger to shot glasses after my first year of school. I had thrown back tequila, rum, Jagermeister - even ouzo at a Greek restaurant where they smashed plates - with the same panache as men drinking rotgut whisky at saloons in old cowboy movies.

But not bourbon. I had no idea what that stuff tasted like. It wasn't something me or my friends indulged in.

My mother was watching me cook this pie with the expression of a scientist watching a brain-damaged lab rat trying to navigate a maze. I decided to impress her.

I poured a jigger of Old Granddad into the shot glass.  "One for the recipe," I said, and poured it into the mixing bowl.

I poured a second jigger into the shot glass.  "And one for the cook!" and I threw the bourbon into the back of my throat.  And I promptly started coughing.

Turns out that there's a reason they call it sipping whiskey. My mother tells this story to this day, describing my face in great detail. Ask her some time, and she'll tell you. She tells everyone.

After the EMTs revived me and left our kitchen, I finished making the pie, which turned out to be first-rate. The bourbon offset the treacly sweetness of the brown sugar and corn syrups and complemented the woody notes of the pecans.  And the broken pecans in the filling kept the pie from being gelatinous goo, like the pecan pies you get at Luby's.  It's my second-favorite dessert and writing about it makes me want to make one right now. (My favorite dessert?  Tres leches, which I still haven't learned how to cook correctly, but which is sublime practically anywhere I get it in Houston.)

I still trust Esquire's recipes.  Here is a super-simple roast chicken recipe I do about four times a year (and should do forty times a year), and which you should try on your next dinner.

Enough of my food saga for today. Next time I write about food, I'll detail my man-crush on Alton Brown, who is living one of my alternate reality lives, the one where I went to culinary school and learned how to charismatically deconstruct a recipe and make millions of dollars on the Food Network.

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Time instead, at 10:11 p.m. on Tuesday night (I know, I'm late again, but the weekend got away from me) for this week's beer, which is Joe's Premium American Pilsner, the second entry in the Fifty Beers from the Avery Brewing Co. in Boulder, Colorado.

I would not have chosen a repeater this early in the blog, but I dispatched my daughter to get me one from the garage refrigerator, and this is what she brought me. Who am I to quibble with her choice?

The can has panache. Don't know who the Joe is on the label, but the rakish tilt of his fedora tells me that he's good company (or a dangerous guy with good stories). The tasting note (always a plus) is helpful:

You're holding a contemporary rendition of a classic style. Hopped with purpose, Joe's is beautifully bitter and dry with an abundance of floral, Noble German hops. Über-sessionable. Utterly American. This is Premium American Pilsner.

Brewed with Rocky Mountain water, malted barley, imported German hops and German yeast.

It makes me wonder whether the Rocky Mountain water is actually a significant ingredient, like New York City water is supposed to be for bagels.

And it also makes me wonder how a drink that is based on imported Noble German hops (Bravo and Hersbrucker, according to the webpage) and German yeast is "utterly American." Pilsners are actually Bohemian, according to Beer Advocate, but Steve Breezley's helpful video on the Avery Brewing Co. webpage for Joe's Pilsner explains that the beer is "a nod" to the light American lagers the brewers at Avery grew up with. I guess that's the American side of it.

The beer itself is just fine. Not much happening in the nose as I sniff into the glass (even though Breezley promised a "blast" of Hersbrucker aroma), but the drink is hoppy and nicely fizzy. It's light on the alcohol too, with an ABV of 4.7%.

This is a good beer, well-intentioned and worth trying. Not better than the Bittersweet Lenny, which remains the champ, but just what I needed for a Tuesday night before an early-Wednesday morning run.

Good night for now, and wish me luck.  I am on a trip east this weekend to see something I can't decide whether I should share with you.  We'll see.

See you then.  (And ten beers down, forty to go!)