Which means, dear readers (all two of you) I can again get excited about beer. For some reason, I am a seasonal beer drinker--it's not that I don't drink beer in the winter, it's just that I tend to prefer wine during the colder months and beer during the warmer months. Anyway, I say this because: 1. I got excited this morning about a beer-related email from Binny's, particularly the following entry. Do any of the beer geeks out there (and you know who you is) know anything about Ballast? This whole 'best IPA in the world' business is, if true, interesting...
Ballast Point
Fortunately the rumblings & rumors turned out to be true, as the official release date for Ballast Point at Chicago-land Binny's locations is Wednesday, May 8. Currently Ballast Point beers are only available at our two downstate locations in Bloomington and Champaign. Get ready to experience one of the best IPA's in the world, Sculpin, at a Binny's near you. See the events section below for information on our Ballast Point release party at our South Loop tasting room.
and
2. There's a new brewpub opening up soon just around the corner from the
Thesignificant otherhas been watching their progress closely and even met the brewmaster and tasted some in-progress batches a few weeks back.
I am super-stoked for them to open and per their blog, they just got their 'Basic Brewers Permit' from the TTB or the Alcohol and Tabacco Tax and Trade Bureau. That whole process sounds exhausting and Stalin-esque, but at least it sounds like now they're good to go.
And if they're anything as awesome as Solemn Oath's Naperville outpost is ("Naperville" and "awesome" are two words that should rarely, if ever, go together)...I'll be a very happy quaffer these next few months!
Lest you think my newly launched blog is just a place for me to spew endless fountains of negativity and bile, I offer this: Please Subscribe, a new documentary about YouTubers from filmmaker Dan Dobi (@dandobiif you do the Twitter thing).
I watched it yesterday and it filled me with love.
The doc, which is available for purchase through Chill, profiles the lives of 8 twenty/early-thirty-somethings who have hundreds of thousands of followers (some have millions) for their weekly one-man/one-woman YouTube shows.
I found out about the film a few months ago while following my all-time favorite internet personality, Mitchell Davis. He's 22, from Ohio and has never had another job...you read that right. Posting videos on YouTube and making money from allllll those online viewers is the only job this kid has had. For the last five years.
If you're reading this thing, you know me and you know what have done for money in the past. (Let's not talk about that now.) That said, I have spent more time than I care to remember in edit bays or development pitch sessions with deeply unfunny people, trying like hell to think up ways to be funny...or at minimum: finding ways to not be so egregiously (criminally?) unfunny. The whole exercise was a shame-filled, ego-dashing shamespiral and the only cure for it, I often found, was a Silkwood shower followed by some wood grain alcohol of dubious origin to help further wash away the pain.
It's hard to be funny while also attempting to have/create a personal style, is what I'm saying.
And yet, through the magic of the quick cut, Mitchell pulls it off. And it's not like his material is high concept...if anything, he's mastered the art of KISS—that's, "keep it simple, stupid"—and capitalizes on the low-fi fun of YouTube vlogs...or shows. Or show vlogs. Whatever. (Even the folks in the movie struggle to come up with the words to adequately describe just what they are and what they do...)
This kid routinely makes me laugh. Really.
Whether or not you agree with me is on you, dog. Personally, I give it up to Mitchell and the other YouTubers—creating your own work week in and week out ain't easy, but these guys are doing it and generating some good stuff in the process.
Big hugs, guys! LOL, OMG, etc. etc. etc.
*Ahem*
In sum, if you like keeping up with what the kids are doing on the YouTubes and you like documentaries, then check out Please Subscribe—a digital download will cost you around $10, but you can take pride in knowing that the money goes directly to the filmmaker. (Who, unlike the 'Veronica Mars' Rob Thomas guy, is actually an indie maker of content and not a big studio masquerading behind the pose of an 'indie' project. Whole 'nother post, ya'll.)
"Seems legit," as my niece would say. (And no, her real name is not "Biscuit Bottenhagen." But I give her points for originality.)
Jesus Christ. Like anybody cares about another freaking blog. The internet, once so full of promise[1], is now home to an ever-growing collection of yahoos spewing mind-numbing bullshit (like this, this and this) 24/7/365...all in the hopes of racking up the pageviews/clickthroughs which, in turn (if you're lucky), translate to $$$. And that's just the productive side of the web. Some sites seem to exist solely for someone's not-so-buried, yet-deeply-troubled/ing subconscious to scream pointlessly into the void.
Horrifying.
And yet. I figure, if you can't beat 'em...join 'em.
Welcome to my blog, you sorry, sorry bastards.
So, here's to mediocre personal journaling masquerading as witty cultural critique, here's to wasting your precious time, here's to ad infinitum relinking...here's to my not-so-buried, yet-deeply-troubled/ing subconscious screaming into the void.
Yeah. And: here's a picture of Jesus. Because the nice older lady who knocked on our door the other day gave it to me. I didn't have to heart to tell her that my soul is already spoken for...by Satan.
[1] As if. If you truly believe the internet was ever destined to be a virtual Valhalla filled with wisdom and good feelings on every page, then I invite you to check out this short history of the Internet. For an old fuck like me, it's interesting to remember that Drudge started peddling his rightwing bile in 1998 and to see that the financial possibilities of the web started way back in 1995 when both eBay and Amazon got their start.
Fortunately the rumblings & rumors turned out to be true, as the official release date for Ballast Point at Chicago-land Binny's locations is Wednesday, May 8. Currently Ballast Point beers are only available at our two downstate locations in Bloomington and Champaign. Get ready to experience one of the best IPA's in the world, Sculpin, at a Binny's near you. See the events section below for information on our Ballast Point release party at our South Loop tasting room.
