I'm Seriously Asking Here

Is this year different? Or is it just me?

It could just be my increasingly waning interest in football. Or the lack of cable in my house, allowing me to more easily curate the media I absorb. I'd be happy to find out that it's just my feeling and not a wider thing. But the buildup to this year's Super Bowl has been... dimmed. Less bombastic. And when football coverage loses bombast, my instinct is to ask if it's feeling okay. Yeah, media week was still there in all its grasping, repetitive glory. It's all still happening: the game, the ads, the halftime show. But it feels to me as though it's going through the motions. It's happening because it's what we do. Market forces wouldn't have it any other way. And, really, we all need it, too. Or, at least, we usually do. The Super Bowl is always, if nothing else, a fun distraction from the bleak midwinter. But it's not enough this year. Even if it were enough, distraction is not what we need right now.

Drew Magary has already written about the incongruousness of all this:

"Things are NOT going smoothly right now. Right now everything is deeply fucked, and to willfully ignore it is either impossible or irresponsible. The last thing I need is the NFL trotting out a showy display of allegiance both to the flag and its own, relentless tunnel vision. The whole thing feels tone deaf at best and passive-aggressive at worst... a tacit demand that you sit there and adore all this pageantry, or else."

I can't quite bring myself to say that it all feels wrong this year; a few hours of frivolous fun is crucial to self-care. But I know that it's not right, either. There will be pageantry, the kind that pretends everything is okay. That everything is normal. And that's great, necessary even, when it comes at a moment in which we all need to be told that everything will be okay. But in this moment, everything is not okay. None of this is normal. The most important thing we can do this year is remember that.

Watch the game. I will. But in the down moments, (during commercials, if the score gets out of hand, while Joe Buck is throwing up on America between plays) plan your calls to your representatives, make some donations, and keep on top of the news. Because something will happen. What better time to make something truly horrifying happen than in the middle of the biggest TV event of the year. Recall that the Muslim Ban was announced on a Friday night.

I've said before that I love sports because they're not important. And that remains true. In the face of so much importance, in a world that's dangerously low on trivialities, we find ourselves fighting a two front war: to preserve our stupid distractions, while also remembering where they rate. And if we stay strong, if we resist, one day we can go back to enjoying our distractions like we deserve to. We can have our frivolous things again. I promise.

The President We Needed

Source: Getty Images North America

Just before taking office in 2009, President Obama attempted to reenergize the MLK Day of Service that had first been made official fifteen years before. This call came at an opportune time. A service holiday had always been a noble idea, fitting of Dr. King's legacy (hooray, another white dude expounding on King's legacy!). But by 2009, it was also a smart, practical way to get the country back to work in the middle of a biting recession. Get Americans to mend fences with one another as they pitched in to made their communities just a little bit nicer. Except a whole lot of us didn't do that. We continued to spend MLK Day the way we spend every Monday holiday: inside, bathing in the comforting glow of our screens. A day off means a day off, dammit.

That's a Royal We, by the way. I'm as much to blame as anyone. January is cold, man. And now that the Christmas lights are gone it's all grey, too, and you want me to go outside? And do stuff? Yeah, no thanks, Hussein. I did nothing this MLK Day except brace myself for... well, let's not get into that now, shall we? This is about positive reflection.

The point is, he looked at Americans and saw something better than what we were. Or maybe he saw what we could have been--and still could be. But we're not there yet. He expected Congress to act like adults who actually care about the people whose lives are affected by their work and they didn't. He expected his supporters to have his back in 2010 and they didn't. He expected his own party to unify and run an effective campaign to replace him and they didn't. That was the heart of Obama the Pollyanna: someone who counted on others to be the best people they could be. And kept doing that. Albert Einstein (who was not a mental health expert but was an accomplished guy in other disciplines so we keep quoting this) said something about the definition of insanity.

Looked at another way: Obama, Master of Cool, Calm, and Collected, was perhaps not ideally suited to lead a nation increasingly addicted to panic, outrage, and juvenile dramatics. He could try to talk us down from the ledge, and Lord knows he tried. But then one dipshit heckles him and then a lot of other people start yelling at the dipshit and then everybody's shouting and he's still standing up there, looking like he can distinctly hear the narrator from Arrested Development: "the nation continued to chant 'speech, speech, speech' for no one in particular."

So why would I have voted for him a third time? Because, in spite of all my liberal naval-gazing (do what you're good at, Mom always said), he was not the president we deserved, but the one we needed. And his was the example to aspire toward. Still is. That doesn't mean he always had the best solutions. You don't like his healthcare proposals? Find a different one and fight for it instead of torpedoing positive solutions and giving us a half-working sludge that'll be a nightmare to fix. Think he's too slow to get done the things that he promised to do? Call your congressman and tell them you want the work to get done, donate your time to organize marches and petition signings, show up to your bloody polling place. Life gets bad? Stand up, take a breath (or five; deep, slow, evenly-paced), brush it off, and get back to work.

None of this is new advice. You've heard it all before. They're the same positive-change platitudes that get proffered every time things look hard. They get repeated because we need the reminder now and again. They're creations of our better selves, yearning to break through from somewhere underneath, teased out of our evolved brains by our superegos. In other words, they don't come naturally. Our mammalian wiring, the stuff that still has us afraid of the dark and everything that's new and different: it's not far from the surface. It can take control very easily and will work to hinder every attempt we make at being better people. It's why we have the phrase "one step forward, two steps back." It's why we replaced a reasonable, stable, compassionate, classy, hyper-literate, upstanding citizen with his polar opposite. It would be hard to think up a more damning indictment of the man and his legacy, but here we are.

I try to imagine how things might've been if Obama had had a fraction of his successor's talent for self-promotion, but I'm not certain it would've made a difference. His biggest hindrance was the hand he was dealt (nation in crisis, hilariously hostile opposition, fickle base, on and on) and self-promotion only goes so far. It's not much good at building bridges when the people on the other shore are already convinced you're the anti-Christ. And it wouldn't have helped Clinton: self-promotion isn't transferrable. And, just as importantly, that wouldn't have been him. We loved the cool Obama. Making him into someone desperate to impress others would've killed the insouciant image we fell in love with.

Here's the part where I say we'll never see his like again, but it's not so dark as all that. Measured calm, dedication, work ethic, and being a really great guy is not so unusual a combination. And good things don't last, but they can be brought back. He wasn't the first president to have that combination. So it'll be a while before it comes 'round again, but it will. And I hope she invites him back to the White House for a fist-bump session. Before putting him on the Supreme Court.

Thanks, Obama.

It's October.

The best record in baseball. The best pitching in baseball. The best defense. Two solid MVP candidates. Two (or three) solid Cy Young candidates. One mad genius of a manager.

And eleven wins to go. Eleven wins until a lot of heartache is relieved. Eleven wins until a century of faith is validated. Eleven wins until we, the fans, achieve new heights in the field of obnoxious fandom.

Let's go.

The Cubs Are The Reason I Drink... In The Summer

This winter has been horrifying. I usually like winter (I never got on well with hot weather), but goddamn if the last few months haven't been unapologetically awful. Not only has it sucked, it's still going. But now we have baseball back. And baseball thaws out winter. Not literally, of course. I've been to at least one game during which the wind chill was hovering in the mid 30s. And I was sitting in the upper deck. And it started raining as I was leaving the stadium after a drizzly, lifeless 2-0 Cubs loss.

Speaking of whom...

The Cubs have a second straight first year manager. There have been some injuries. And they've fallen back to 23rd on the payroll rankings, which doesn't mean anything on its own except that we can probably expect an even longer rebuilding process as they bring guys up through the system. The most exciting thing about 2014 will be Wrigley's 100th birthday. Love the park all you want (I do), but the stadium should not be the most exciting aspect of your franchise for the better part of the last century. I'll be happy if the Cubs top 70 wins. On the other hand, I chose Pittsburgh on a lark last year and it worked pretty well for them. So it can't hurt. Anyway, there are literally zero consequences for being wrong here. I could have the Cleveland Spiders win the AL West, if I wanted. Or the Montreal Alouettes. And nobody could do a thing about it. 

• NL East: Washington
• NL Central: Chicago 
• NL West: Los Angeles
• NL Wild Cards: St. Louis, Atlanta
• AL East: Boston 
• AL Central: Kansas City
• AL West: Cleveland Spiders
• AL Wild Cards: Oakland, Texas 
• World Series: Los Angeles over Boston 

By the way, love baseball's slow embrace of 20th Century technology. In another fifty years maybe we'll finally have the robo-umpires we should've had in 2010. And they'll all look like Bud Selig.

St. Paddy's 2014

I'm susceptible to cultural cringe from any number of directions, but the reinforcin' o' the stereotypes remains particularly galling.

I once said that "if you're the type to hit up an Irish pub on St. Paddy's, you're begging for an underwhelming night (you may also be a tool)." That last bit may have been harsh since, if you've attempted to engage an Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day (or in the preceding weekend, as the calendar has conspired to do this year--we can't all live in Boston), you've suffered enough without being called names.

Why do we require such a thin excuse in order to get plastered? We're adults--if we want to knock back a few at 11am on March 17th, let's go for it. But that's socially unacceptable unless we can peg it to a reason--holidays, weddings, not guilty verdicts, etc. The temperance movement may have lost, but it managed to leave behind acres of bad wiring in our cultural brain. It's a complicated relationship, but that's probably unavoidable. We're talking about a substance that tastes great and makes us feel temporarily invulnerable, before occasionally destroying us. In deference to that, let's acknowledge that hanging our binge drinking urge on a civilization that was partially devastated (and partially saved) by booze may be something like tempting fate. At the very least, and especially if you know you're a lightweight, don't pretend to be Irish while you're coughing up that half-curdled carbomb. It's embarrassing for everyone.

But I don't want to be gloomy on St. Patrick's Day. I really don't. To that end, I was happy to read that Sam Adams, Heineken, and Guinness (along with some local politicians) have pulled out of parades in New York and Boston today on the grounds that the Irish dons' long-standing stonewalling of the LBGT community is disgusting. Which it is. Check out the pious statement from the organizers of the Boston parade: "we must maintain our guidelines to insure the enjoyment and public safety of our spectators." As though anyone has ever enjoyed a parade. Anyway, this basic recognition of human decency seems a small thing, after an historic last few years for gay equality. But after such tidal waves, we may now have to measure these things in the micro-sense. And each one of those small things will be reason enough to hoist a pint. Or three.

Anchor Christmas Ale

 
I first had Anchor Christmas a couple of years back. I wasn't impressed. Christmas beers are hard, either nothing special or too heavy on the nutmeg. A few manage to get it about right, but for the most part it's nice packaging around something that would work just as well any time of the year (I'm looking at you, every brewery that puts out a passable porter/stout and tells me it's holiday-themed). But in the spirit of seasonal forgiveness, I decided to give Anchor another chance to get me drunk this Christmas.

The winter warmer-style beer pours medium dark; I'd call it mildly translucent.

It smells heavily of malt (in deference to the style), with light hints of some vague spice.  Let's call it clove?

Nutmeg (here we go) hits the tongue first, but is soon washed away by dry, hearty malt, which dominates the flavor until the end. The post-malt swim is short and dry, like the ghost of a beer.

Medium-bodied, the beer feels like it's aiming for heaviness, but falls a little short. It's makes for a decent session beer, good news for those who run the family-presents-meal marathon today.

Overall, this one is mild and inoffensive, but short and pleasant enough that a second may well be in order for a Christmas afternoon.

Grade: B

Baseball Happens

Baseball is the only sport I miss when it's gone. I'm excited when football returns in the fall, but I never pine for it between the Super Bowl and Week One. I'm happy when I'm reminded--usually on a monthly basis--that Premier League soccer is a thing, even if I'm destined to quit focusing at the end of the weekend. Only baseball carries any consistent twangs of nostalgia for me.

It features none of the apocalyptic melodrama that football embarrassingly thrusts at the viewer every week. It doesn't require the energy commitments that an American soccer fan has to make just to keep up. Baseball doesn't pressure the fan; the fan pressures herself. A fan doesn't have to apportion time and energy for baseball, though she's more than welcome to. And the fan don't have to dig through the weeds of history and statistics to understand the game, though that effort is often its own significant reward

Baseball happens. At a slow, comforting pace in the middle of summer, it is punctuated by fleeting moments of genuine excitement that refuse to be predicted or promised.

It's my opinion that Opening Day--less than a week away--is one of our greatest national holidays. Because I am a Cubs fan. And Opening Day is all I have.

This year can't be a lot worse than last: 61-101, the first 100-loss Cubs team since the mid-1960s. Hopeful Cubs fans (read: older generations that weren't raised on years of teasingly competitive teams) will point out that that debacle preceded the fabled 1969 team. With respect to the poetic, cyclical nature of the sport, once does not establish a pattern. And, anyway, things didn't exactly end well for that '69 squad*. But things are looking up. The Cubs have good, promising talent in Starlin Castro, Anthony Rizzo, and Jorge Soler. The only remaining bloated contract is Soriano's; he might be good for a veteran presence in the clubhouse, anyway. Overall, Epstein's doing a generally respectable job in the front office and the future is bright not bleak. But this is not the year. Maybe 2014.

So who do I like?

• NL East: Washington
• NL Central: Pittsburgh (sure, what the hell?)
• NL West: Los Angeles 
• NL Wild Cards: Atlanta, San Francisco 
• AL East: Toronto 
• AL Central: Detroit 
• AL West: Anaheim 
• AL Wild Cards: Tampa, Baltimore 
• World Series: Anaheim over Washington 

Sorry to disappoint, Nats fans. You know who to blame.

*The fact that many Cubs fans still hold an ultimately heartbreaking season forty years gone as a high bar is as much a cause of the problem as it is a symptom. 

Your Peace Offering Stepped on My Testicle

It's tempting for many, especially at this time of year, to fall back on Charlie Brooker's eloquent position regarding love. After all, it's a loaded topic, forever imprisoned on a pedestal by both the lucky and unlucky in love, many of whom know better but act otherwise. We pretend that love isn't susceptible to the same power relationships and false advertising that our other institutions are infected with. So, when love falters (as it will, from time to time), we get huffy and disillusioned. Because love is supposed to be different, it's supposed to be too important for that. And because every one of us occasionally mistakes cynicism for wisdom. Our standards for love are high because what sets love apart as a value is that when love is real, it endures through the storm in a way others won't. It might come out bruised and dented, but it's there.

I'm 26 and I'm happily married and if I think that I know more about love than anyone else, I should be struck through the scrotum with a fish hook and dragged into the Potomac.

Speaking of my scrotum, here's a story:

Mrs. Half-Drunken Scribe and myself got married last May. In September, we moved into our new apartment. A few weeks into our tenure at the new place, she and I are feeding the cat (you remember Olivia, I trust--she'll be important later), brushing our respective teeth, and generally doing the things that are a part of our process of going to bed on a weeknight. Because we're multi-taskers, we're also arguing about something. I can't remember what. No, really, I can't. And neither can she. Why? Because it was a small and stupid argument. The kind of small and stupid argument that spelled the end my relationships once upon a time. Whatever it was, she and are going back and forth, very likely knowing that the argument is stupid. But we remain entrenched in it because neither of us can handle the psychic impact of the conclusion: one of us winning a stupid battle and the other--horror of horrors--being wrong.

A part of me, I think, senses the impasse. It's the same part of my brain that's always eager to play this next card. And though it means I'll be forever bad at arguments and extemporaneous debate, I can't bear to shut this part of me off, for fear of losing an integral part of who I am.

I begin deliberately irritating her. Not pissing her off, mind you, that's different. I don't believe in picking fights. But, I will sometimes try to annoy her with little things, like responding to her serious inquires by reenacting this scene. Or replying to her questions as Batman (if she says "I swear to God," how am I not supposed to respond with this?). What can I say? She's cute when she's mildly aggravated. A lot of guys do this in relationships, responding to her every groan with a bemused laugh until she's genuinely angry. I don't know how that works with gay couples--some kind of ongoing loop of childish antics, I guess. Although, without the reaction, what's the point?

Anyway, I retreat to bed because that seems the best place to avoid the discussion. At least until I remember that it's also her bed. Before long, L walks into the bedroom, holding Olivia aloft and says "I bring you a peace offering." She plunks Olivia down on to my chest and the cat, as she often will after being involuntarily transported, turns around and walks away. Struts away, in fact, in that way that cats do when they don't have any place to be but don't want to be where they are. Cats live in the moment; there is no past, there is no future, there is only "I'm not involved in this shit." So she's strutting away. And, maybe this is just the way she's walking, but as though making a point of doing so, Olivia's back paw lands on my right testicle. Righty, the one that hangs a little lower than the other.

She doesn't step hard, mind you, and most of her weight had landed on my thigh. Everything's still intact. Pain signals move slightly slower than the "something happened" signals.

The wife takes her first cue from my wince. She's grown kind of fond of me and wants kids one day, so, for a second, she genuinely feels bad for Righty. Then she sees me unclench and knows everything's fine and breathes a sigh of relief. And then she laughs, evolution's Everything's Okay alarm.

This symbolizes marriage. Somehow. Karma is involved; you act like a dick and get it back in a note of imperfect poetic irony. There's fleeting physical pain that's so superficial, it demands laughter for medicine.

It's also beautifully mundane. She and I don't have the independent wealth-financed lives of leisure, world travel, and gym time that either of us would like. We go to work every day and come home tired and sometimes resentful of whatever the Metro's cooked up for us. We drop our shit on the floor in the entryway, collapse onto the sofa, and together we summon the necessary strength to cook dinner. And she does grad school on top of it all, so the amount of room I have to complain about any of it is about as roomy as a... not-so-roomy thing.

While not every day is wine, roses, beer, and X-Box, we do the banality together. If that seems unromantic, well, it is. She and I do romance, sure, but that's our business. The point is, the fictionalized exaggerated version of love that we're sold from childhood is fine when kept in context. But it's as much about the everyday trivialities; sharing a fridge for seventeen years, as Brooker says. In between, you buy her flowers, just because. And you let him play video games for another hour or two, just because. If you can't do that, then the better parts of it--the big moments you've been promised--won't mean a thing, if they happen at all.

Are you upset because it's Valentine's Day and you're alone? Because you're disappointed? Because you're expected to put in some effort? Yeah, fair enough. But remember that Valentine's is just the avatar of the entire concept we've bought and sold to ourselves since forever. If you want to be cynical and say that you're not buying into today, go for it. Post those "Fuck Valentine's" Facebook statuses (that's sure to stick it to The Man). I don't have the moral ground to hash that out with you and it's probable that you've earned your dyspepsia. However, it might pay to consider how you ended up here. And remember that you can only blame an abstract concept for so much.

"It's not all Disney princess shit," as the wife says. She's so sweet. On the third anniversary of the day I proposed to her, I love her as much as I did then. Happy Valentine's Day, kitten.

Football Is A Drug, Super Bowl XLVII Edition

A few months ago, the 2012 NFL season began and I and millions of others magically regained the ability to ignore the realities of the brutal, multi-billion dollar game we love. It's a talent we've been forced to utilize every fall, because for many of us, we can't help it. Speaking for myself: I can guess at the potential consequences every vicious hit carries and I keep on watching, anyway. I mean, c'mon, it's exciting. And the hits play a large roll in that excitement. I watch a highlight reel like this and my human brain knows this isn't right, but because my adrenaline is pumping, it's my lizard brain that's in control.

It's a drug and we're addicted. It's not like we're stupid (well... most of us aren't); even those of us without medical training can look at the punishment being sustained and know on some level that this isn't healthy. Players know the risks when they sign up, we tell ourselves (maybe). But whether or not that makes it okay to watch is another question.

I recommend perusing Ta-Nehisi Coates' rundown of the NFL's recent history of concussion evasion. You should also check out Bob Costas on The Daily Show earlier this week. Or you can trust your own eyes and watch the play from this year's AFC Championship game that Costas discusses with Jon Stewart, in which Ravens safety Bernard Pollard clobbers Patriots running back Stevan Ridley. Watching live, I was expecting to see Ridley still prone on the field, surrounded by team trainers and doctors, as soon as the replays ended. By the grace of football's traditionally generous gods, Ridley walked off under his own power almost immediately. It says something--I'm not sure what--that Pollard has since acknowledged the potential consequences for the NFL's style of play.

Some will argue that anyone cheering for Baltimore this Sunday (as I am) is rooting for a murderer. Or at least a team that is led, physically and emotionally, by a probable accessory to murder. And there's some validity to that, just as there's some validity to the idea that cheering on any football team might lead one to incidentally root for a criminal of one class or another (somewhat greater odds for Cowboys fans). That's a gruesomeness that we as fans have learned to live with ignore. What happens off the field stays off the field, we rationalize. But on the field, we're watching men kill each other. Slowly but inexorably. We sit, not exactly passively, and watch these athletes devastating each others' mortal, if gargantuan, bodies and turning each others' brains into scrambled eggs in ways we're only just beginning to grasp. I'm not much for hashing out moral comparisons, but certainly we can't all claim to be clean.

So my prediction for Sunday is: injuries. Lots of them. All of the injuries will happen and no one will be spared.

And it'll be exciting as hell.

Baltimore over San Francisco, 31-23.

In Praise of the Gym

I topped out at about 270 pounds in high school. So when I say I'm in better shape than I was then, I'm telling the truth, but that truth doesn't mean a lot. I'd been a fat kid since third grade or so, but for most of my youth, the fatness would be covered by a series of growth spurts. Gain forty pounds, grow a few inches, repeat. As a result, I was usually just "the big kid:" obviously fat, but literally heads and shoulders above my peers, so it was a wash (also, basketball was awesome). However, some time into high school--10th grade, maybe?--I leveled out at 5'11" and it was clear that my luck had run cold.

I don't recall what my wake-up call was exactly, but I knew that I didn't want to be relegated to a Rascal scooter before the age of thirty. So, the summer after 11th grade, I would go out running every morning; walk-running at first, building up strength until my fat didn't hurt and I could run a few miles without blowing out a lung. I also cut my meal portions down. Way down. Honestly, it probably wasn't the healthiest way to lose weight, but teenagers can get away with that type of that thing more easily.

Over that summer and into the fall, I lost 65 pounds. The first comment I got upon my return to school was "Did you just get out of surgery?"

I've fluctuated up and down in the years since, most notably in college, where chicken tenders were plentiful and the gym was all the way down there. Then I graduated into the sort of plush office job that the human body has in no way evolved for (eight or nine hours sitting in a chair; who'd have thunk that would've been deleterious for our health?). Turns out that losing weight is relatively easy; the body responds well to minor shocks and the first weeks of a resolution pack enough adrenaline to help you fight through the irritation of hunger pangs and the indignity of shorts. It's maintaining any loss that's tricky.

Still, I've never gotten back to anything like what I was as a teenager. It helps, in some ways, to have that low bar. As long as I don't drift north of 230 or so, I always felt okay. But a low bar is still a low bar. Just because I'm doing better than I was in high school, doesn't mean I don't look like hell compared to other people, particularly my own wife, who kicks her ass a few times a week to continue looking hot.

Last New Year, sitting at 225 pounds, I resolved to drop twenty. I lost twenty-six. I then gained back eleven. Score this year as another wash. Now, I don't like doing endorsements, but I can't not recommend myfitnesspal.com, which despite its irritatingly twee name was crucial to the weight loss I did achieve. I only really started gaining it back once I stopped using their calorie counter. I never saw myself counting calories because I hate dieting and math (in that order). But with their exercise calculator I discovered something about myself: I like working out. While the thought of dieting in any way makes me want to punch celery sticks and rice cakes, an hour or so at the gym actually sounds kind of nice. More time at the gym in order to eat some cake? Why the hell wouldn't a person do that? Obviously going to the gym will not excuse every sin of ingestion and there's no good reason for some of the portion sizes we foist upon ourselves, but if I need to hit the elliptical a little harder to work off an anticipated beer night, I will gladly make that trade.

And once I started going to gym, I discovered other benefits of shape-building that blubbery, 13-year-old me would've dismissed as the rationalizations of a sell-out; seriously, that version of me and the current version of me would come to some serious blows... and current me would totally win. Getting up at 5am on a weekday does suck, but not only does it beat going after work (time which belongs to my precious X-Box and/or wife), I feel more awake when I finish at 6am than I do when I try to wake normally at 6am and that alertness remains throughout the day. Plus--while this should sound incongruous--I get better sleep at night, too. Repeated over time, it gets easier and easier to force myself out of my comfy, comfy bed, which, really, is the hardest part of those mornings. Everything after is pretty smooth sailing.

And weekends, though most gyms are usually busier then, allow for longer workouts, incorporating different exercises--cardio and weight-training. Weekends is actually when I prefer to do weights; you can dismiss this as my hatred of math shining through, but reps are harder to count at 5am than at any other time of the day. And back to that whole dieting thing that I hate: when I've gone to the gym and I'm better rested, I get fewer hunger pangs during the day. Not to mention the psychological aspect of not wanting to blow burned calories on the more fleeting culinary pleasures. I love you, Cheez-Itz, but damned if I'm going to undo my work on the treadmill for a few handfuls of you; better to save that for something more satisfying. Burger and a beer, perhaps.

Really, my hopes are relatively simple. I don't want a bro-ish P-90X type system, whose results are negligible and bank account clearing at best. I also don't want to slim down; I have a larger than average-sized head, something that could be quickly spotted on a smaller man. And I certainly have no interest in becoming an engorged anatomy chart. My ideal body type for myself is early 20th Century boxer: square, blocky muscles separated by formidable strips of fat. A solid, utilitarian machine fueled by whiskey, flapjacks, and mustache wax. The kind of thick and impenetrable torso advocated by Ron Swanson.

My goal this year is to drop fifteen pounds and then maintain that. One I'm pretty sure I can do. The other, we'll see.

The Half-Drunken Scribe will not become a weight loss blog, I swear. I don't do peppy boosterism. And tracking my own progress is likely to attract even fewer page hits than my usual topics. But putting this in writing, in front of tens of regular readers, should help keep me more honest this time 'round. Too many people to lie to, you know.

Corsendonk Christmas Ale

Corsendonk's Christmas Ale pours reddish brown, a shade or two lighter than their flagship Tripel.

Caramel greets the nose first, followed by some floral alcohol notes, the only hint of the Strong Dark Ale's 8.5% ABV.

Whatever promise is offered by the Monastic pedigree and agreeable nose is dulled in the taste, however, hitting the tongue first with a nice, wheaty character that is supplemented with a bit of fruit. But the beer follows up with a sugariness that borders on too sweet, smothering the few hints of smoky spice that--with a stronger presence--might have made all the difference.

The smooth, light-body is pleasant enough, but seems to belong to another ale, not something meant to satisfy yuletide appetites and warm the Christmas spirit.

A promising yet ultimately disappointing Strong Ale doesn't quite match the spirit of the season. Too bad it doesn't seem to fit anywhere else on the calendar, either.

Grade: B-

One Week Till Christmas

Kids like Snoopy. They might like Woodstock, too, I don't know. But they definitely dig Snoopy. More so than they do Charlie Brown, who, analyzed as the ostensible child that he is, always seems soaked in a self-pity that keeps him ever at a distance, however much we might want to relate to him. Or Linus, a savant who swaps back and forth between eloquent wunderkind and eminent pushover. Lucy's just a bitch. No, the World War I Flying Ace was always more relateable to a seven-year-old Half-Drunken Scribe than the rest of the gang ever was.

The staying power of Peanuts has always been its nostalgia, fueled by adults who strongly identify with Charlie Brown's myriad plights of conscience. Christmas is one week away, and while the smaller, Snoopy-liking version of myself would be ready to burst at the seams, adult-ish me frets and stresses over all that must be done in the meantime and all that will have to be done afterward. Kids don't have an after-Christmas. There is no after-Christmas for them. School just sort of starts up again. But adults have pre-Christmas, Christmas, and post-Christmas. And while our yuletide responsibilities change rapidly, our expectations are much slower to adapt.

At the risk of invoking White People Problems, I, like Charlie Brown (always full-named, by the way, never "Charlie;" Peppermint Patty calls him "Chuck," of course, but that's the joke... I think), can't help but wonder how much of it is worth it. How much should be scaled back, just so the holiday can have a chance to meet expectations without killing us. Because Christmas is a perfectly fine holiday. There's just too much baggage (sometimes literally).

And I don't even have kids.

Anyway, here's Linus' from-memory recital of Scripture, overdubbed with Orson Welles' "cuckoo clock" speech from The Third Man. Crude? Maybe. Childhood wounding? Definitely. Briefly funny? Oh yes. And in the end, isn't that what the holidays are about?

Probably not, no.

Thanksgiving Kills The Expectations Game

Thanksgiving is the most underrated holiday. This is not to be confused with "the best holiday." Thanksgiving, in fact, earns most underrated because no one ever expects it to be the best.

Think about Thanksgiving. All those extra portions you wish you could eat the rest of the year, but think better of? Jiminy Cricket is visiting family for the day, so everything goes. Annoying dinner guests? Tryptophan is a miracle drug--if they can fight through a coma, you might want to consider inviting an exorcist, too. You have to watch the Lions? View it as an exercise in schadenfreude: "take that, Michigan; produce Mitt Romney, will you?" The annual embarrassment of seeing the President pardoning a turkey? Think of it as the best argument for legalizing pot (it makes so much more sense when you're high). And, yes, the Black Friday nonsense and looming Christmas pressure hanging over everyone because Santa can't keep his bitch mittens to himself. But I'd wager that I'm not the only private sector employee who gets the day off just because his boss hasn't yet discovered that Black Friday deals can be found online.

You may have noticed that there's some significant qualifying and hedging going on here, but that's the point of comparative ratings. Especially as they apply to the expectations game. I'm not arguing that Thanksgiving is perfect; I'm not sure any healthy and fulfilled adult is. But no one in history has ever had their pristine perception of Thanksgiving shattered by having a bad one. Charlie Brown never worried himself into an hilariously premature ulcer about the corruption of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving wins because, like going to a Judd Apatow movie, you go in with middling expectations, you get what you expect, and you leave happy.

And consider the competition. Proceeding chronologically from today:

Christmas is clearly the most overrated holiday, so we can throw that out immediately. And I don't have a lot of direct experience with Chanukah, but being perennially stuck in Christmas' obese shadow doesn't help; you know why there was no Chanukah door in The Nightmare Before Christmas? Trick question: there was a Chanukah door. You just couldn't see it through the Elven black magic laid down by the fat man. As for Kwanzaa, you know there's a problem when Futurama has covered you better than anyone ever--and even that ended up having more to do with giant space bees than holiday send-ups.

New Year's is a fine holiday. Taking off the day after the celebration? Brilliant. And that move nearly gives New Year's the win. But the holiday is ranked about where it should be, given that the celebration has to cover for the disappointment of Christmas. New Year's does that job admirably, but it's a steep hill. Maybe if we could do New Year's as well as the Scots...

Then we get into the slushy soup of the late Winter holidays. MLK Day: good, if you get the day off, which I don't. Super Bowl: I'll admit that this one hasn't been the same for me since I had to endure that Packers-Steelers match-up a few years back, but when you consider that the best-played games of recent memory were the twin Giants-Patriots match-ups, it really underlines the bittersweetness of the day. President's Day: kind of a gip, even for those of us too young to remember when that was two holidays. Groundhog Day: who the fuck are you kidding?

Then we get St. Paddy's. Look, I'm half-Irish and (probably not entirely coincidentally) I like to drink. So I kinda get this one. But if you're the type to hit up an Irish pub on St. Paddy's, you're begging for an underwhelming night (you may also be a tool). They're all crawling with green-clad drunks making a mockery of Irish culture. And while a non-Irish bar is marginally better, it never feels right, does it? And then you're expected to show up at work the next day... hangover or no. That's called entrapment. There's a recent movement underway to get March 17th made into a federal holiday, which would be nice but, as with New Year's, shouldn't we aim for the day after?

And that would be a good time for another holiday, during the long Spring slog between President's Day and Memorial Day. Not that Memorial Day is much of a contender. According to my rigorous market research (hint: it's all about projection), if you're reading this blog, you're the type to take Memorial Day for granted and feel guilty about it, but not guilty enough to actually do anything. So you spend the last day of your three day weekend in a funk.

The Fourth of July: another very good holiday that tends to get rated exactly as it should. Unless something magical happens, which no one can fairly expect. So that one's out.

Labor Day: see Memorial Day, except apply this more broadly to an American public that's blithely ignored the systematic neutering of the labor movement. Honestly, I'm surprised Labor Day hasn't yet been moved to Black Friday, just to rub some salt in the wound. But that would screw with the beginning of the school year, which is exactly why the day never reaches public acclaim: kids get conditioned to know what's coming and that wiring remains intact through adulthood.

I've already covered one of Halloween's major pitfalls. The expectation-to-satisfaction ratio for Halloween often seems to approach Christmas levels.

And then Veterans' Day: see Memorial Day. Also, not a universal day off.

Which leaves us with Thanksgiving: the feast day smart enough not to promise you the world. It tampers down your expectations and apologizes for not having done better. It stands amidst the onslaught of the end-of-the-year holidays and does... alright. Enjoy today. If for nothing else then because at no point all year will your expectations be so thoroughly matched.

Halloween Costumes

(Image via WTF Costumes)

Is it possible for a person who doesn't wear a costume to a Halloween party to avoid being labeled "the asshole?" Sure, if someone else decides to forgo the ritual, in which case you're merely "an asshole." But the directness of the article is probably not the bit you're concerned about.

It doesn't matter if you can be considered --in most respects--a functioning adult (Lewis Black has covered that point). Or that you like Halloween but your time/money/creativity is a little short. Or that you--really and truly--just could not be bothered this year. Or that you know from hard-won experience that, halfway through the night, any decent costume will prove bothersome to yourself and perhaps also to others; and that the resulting irritation will be remembered long after people have forgotten how impressed they were when they first saw your get-up. Or that it's not actually Halloween but the weekend preceding Halloween or, heaven forbid, the weekend after Halloween, like some latter-day Treehouse of Horror. Or that it's a Friday and you've come straight from work (you might get that one to fly if you show up late enough, but really, why?). None of this matters. Because everyone must don a costume. Because it's fun. And if there's anything Christmas has taught Halloween, it's that fun can be--and, yes, must be--made compulsory.

Some of you are saying: "This is America. I'm as free as I please to not wear a costume." Certainly. As free as you are to express yourself in any other way in a country with a First Amendment: at the risk of some minor, if pointed, abuse. Because if you chose not to wear a costume, in a roomful of costumed revelers, you are the freak. And people notice freaks. Especially when your lazy freak ass thinks it's entitled to the same candy everyone else has earned.

"Hey!" you'll hear, "someone went to a lot of trouble to set up this party and you couldn't even be bothered to make yourself into whatever the hell topical thing that guy over there did that seemed clever when we first saw it, even though none of us will remember it when we look at the Facebook pictures four months from now."

You can reply with any of the excuses above--even the good ones--and you only dig a deeper hole. Because, even if you actually like Halloween and appreciate what others do with the holiday, you're the Halloween Hater. And the only thing worse than a Halloween Hater on Halloween is a Halloween Hater making excuses on Halloween. "Don't commit your hate crimes here! Hate crime!!"

Then there's the way that even reasonable people react if you tell them that you didn't want to wear a costume: put off by your attitude, dispirited by your indifference. The only person whose face brightens when he gets a load of you is the guy who spilled the punch on the host's new sofa (a tragedy that could've been averted if Captain Hook were allowed to have two hands)--you've taken a lot of heat off of him. And it's the silently disappointed ones who bring the point home, making you feel like the bad guy. "I guess I could've found a funny hat... or something," you mumble, knowing deep down that you brought this on yourself.

Or consider the pitfalls of your explanation for not attending the party, just so you could avoid such a situation: "I didn't want to put on a costume;" really, say it aloud and try not to punch yourself. No self-respecting person could ever say "I didn't want to put on pants" to avoid a regular party and expect to be allowed back into decent society again and the same applies to Halloween and... Halloween society... that's a thing, right?

You like candy, you like booze, and you like socializing where there's candy and booze. Isn't that what Halloween is about? Wasn't that the moral of It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? No, it's not, and no, it wasn't. Never has been. This is the sick pact we made with one another a long time ago when mortality rates started to plummet and we needed something to keep ourselves entertained during what used to be harvest season. Dress up for Halloween, or be a temporary pariah. A few hours of relative discomfort in a costume, or a few hours of relative discomfort for not having worn a costume.

So, no, there's no way to avoid the "asshole" label.

But you can turn it around and own it, making the label work for you. Just remember the MBA curriculum: embrace the asshole you were going to be anyway. So, this Halloween, do something to make people remember what you did, at least until Thanksgiving. Make people spew their winter beers in stunned wonderment when they see how much you missed the point of Halloween. Shoot the moon and travel so far into "asshole" territory that you come out as "magnificent bastard."

That's why, this year, I'm dressing as Santa Claus.

Seasonal Beer Creep

I've long been a fan of the Boston Beer Company and I enjoy many of their beers.  The Octoberfest is one of their best and I look forward to it every year... to a point.  See, the problem is: I'm seeing it in stores already.  In early August.

The Munich festival for which the style is named doesn't start until late September (September 22nd, this year).  The Oktoberfest, or "Märzenbier," style is a traditional one for the autumn months: it's toasty, to welcome in the cooling weather, and heavier-bodied than the lagers and lighter ales that dominate the summer; it's also darker and richer, prepping the body and the palate for the richer winter beers that follow.  The average temperature here in DC is still in the upper 80s/low 90s and it's not much better through most of the contiguous United States (including in Boston and Cincinnati--where most Samuel Adams beers are brewed).  This can be expected to last through August and probably into September, when it'll rarely dip below 70 or 65. 

In sum, it's too damn early for Octoberfest.

You'll reply, "Well, you'll still drink it."  Yes, I will.  But only because it won't be there when I actually want it, replaced by Christmas beers in time for Halloween.  And I have no interest in drinking Old Fezziwig on Veteran's Day.

I understand that the Boston Beer Company is not the only guilty party; I saw Blue Moon's Harvest Moon (a beer I don't care for when it is the right time of year) in a store just the other day.  But Boston is, in some ways, the exemplar of what microbreweries can be--and what many of them strive to be.  It's larger than the other guys, of course, and it's continuing status as a "micro-brew" was as much a mutually-beneficial political decision as anything else, but they do set the trend.  It won't be long before we start seeing Bell's Oktoberfest and Brooklyn's Oktoberfest and other fall beers like DFH's Punkin Ale, all before their ideal time.  Because no one can afford to be last to the shelves. 

Something is very wrong here, Sam Adams.  Fix it.

All The Fireworks Go Off At Once

A few years ago, a friend and I stumbled upon a Bangladeshi street festival on what happened to be Bonfire Night in East London.  The show runners clearly had enough fireworks to make for a ten to fifteen minute show, but they apparently decided to crunch it down into two minutes and it was the greatest fireworks show I'd ever seen.  That is, until I found these videos from yesterday's San Diego Fourth of July celebration. 

Behold the new champion: 

Look, when it comes to fireworks--there aren't a lot of surprises left.  We've seen the tricks, we know the deal.  Bright lights and loud noises for twenty minutes.  We're wowed once when we're four years old (those of us who aren't terrified, which is a more reasonable response, anyway) and then pretend to be awed by them every year for the next seventy years.  It's time for the farce to end.  At the very least, let's not waste so much time anymore.  There's no point in building up to a grand finale when the beginning can also be the finale--fireworks shows shouldn't require foreplay.  And we're not talking about a subtle medium here--there's no dramatic storytelling element to respect, at least not in the modern American version.  So why do we, as a culture, insist on stretching these things out? 

As San Diego proved yesterday in a beautiful accident--not unlike a younger sibling--less is more.

Happy Fourth

We've been spoiled the last couple years with a lot of holidays falling on Mondays, Fridays, and weekends proper, giving us natural three to four day weekends.  Today we get the Fourth of July on a Wednesday, breaking the week into even halves, neither of which will prove productive for office drones (such as myself).  Could be worse, I suppose.  Christmas this year will be on a Tuesday, forcing many to take Christmas Eve with their earned time off, or otherwise go in and pretend to work while their minds swim in the void that stands between a not so regular weekend and Christmas Day.  That''ll be worse than this.  Even so, this midweek holiday is hardly ideal.

Personally, I'm with Mike and Mike's idea of treating the Fourth like we do Thanksgiving--give us the first Thursday of July and let American commercialism create a de facto holiday on that Friday--"Trade-In Old Grill Friday."  Yes, it doesn't make as much sense with the Fourth, since the Fourth represents an anniversary/birthday that we can mark on the calendar, while the exact date of the first Thanksgiving is muddier in large part because there was no single Original Thanksgiving.  But people do often push birthday celebrations to the nearest weekend for similar reasons: doing it during the week doesn't work as well.  And the food hangover that Black Friday is supposed to help with?  You mean to tell me that we couldn't use the same for our sun-baked barbecue/beer hangovers, made worse by a late night drive home from the fireworks display? 

Anyway, just a thought.  Happy Fourth, everybody.