perfidy

There's a certain inescapable sense of destiny to being named Thor. Indeed, it's hard to imagine the man from Canada named Jon Mikl Thor doing anything else with his life besides bodybuilding and playing heavy metal music. Such a name is a fait accompli. I mean, really... "Hi, I'm Thor. Have you considered refinancing your mortgage lately?" Not so much.

Some bodybuilders, once their career is over, open gyms. Others go into politics or pro wrestling (same thing). Vancouver's Jon Mikl Thor, former Mr. Canada, Mr. USA, Mr. North America, and Mr. Universe, went into metal. It only made sense. Blessed with a flair for the dramatic, a taste for the faintly ridiculous, and one of the greatest heavy-metal names since Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, His live shows are minor legends of excess, featuring amazing props (winged helmets, chariots) and incredible stunts (bending steel bars with his teeth, breaking bricks across his chest), and he has amassed a nearly thirty-year legacy of B-movie-tinged heavy metal, leaving in his wake a vast wasteland of vanquished demon-foes, busted mic stands, and leopard-print clad groupies panting in wonder at his awesome might.

Thor's latest album is Devastation of Musculation (Smog Veil, 2006), and insofar as it's accurate to say that Thor is growing as a musician (within the confines of traditional metal, anyway), he is. His last album, 2005's Thor Against The World, drew mainly on the glammy sounds of KISS, Alice Cooper and Sweet. It was a damn good album, but there were times when the metallic content dropped lower than might optimally have been desired. It seemed that, for all his talk of epic space-battles and Norse gods, Thor was going soft here and there.

Not so on Devastation of Musculation. The new album is harder, faster, and darker than its predecessor, and is evidence that, after decades of half-jokey and often-forgettable entertainment, Thor is figuring out how to do it right (albeit without sacrificing what makes Thor, Thor). The very first track, "Lords of Steel," stomps along in a Black Sabbath mode and features some very nice extended guitar wailing the likes of which have rarely been sighted since acid-washed jeans went out of style. Maybe it's not the greatest thing ever put on tape, but it's a damned entertaining invitation to bang your head. The rest of the album continues in a similar British Heavy Metal vein, galloping along with an array of galloping Maiden/Priest grooves, while Thor grunts about the Devastation of Musculation, The Queen of The Damned, Odin's Son, and Lies of Eternity in a voice that, for what it lacks in technical accomplishment, more than makes up for in personality and commitment to the moment.

After all, isn't that what metal is about? If you strip the music away from, say, a Slayer album, you're left with what amount to a bunch of supremely silly words. There's nothing inherently scary about

Trapped in purgatory
A lifeless object, alive
Awaiting reprisal
Death will be their acquisition

The sky is turning red
Return to power draws near
Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone

I mean, come on! Every high school has some trenchcoated dork who writes doggerel like this in his notebook and thinks he's being deep! And yet, throw in some manic drumming and heavily distorted guitars and the very same silliness that would get a dark and serious high-school poet laughed at, shunned, and these days examined by a team of psychologists, police investigators and anti-terror "experts," somehow transmogrifies into a pounding, sinister all-time classic of thrash metal.

By the same token, lyrics like the following from Thor's "Queen of the Damned"...

The deadliest of hungers
She feasts on human blood
The rapid sound of thunder
Bringing evil from above
The vampires all surround her
For the final feast
But she still holds the power
Until a new queen is released

... kind of suck out of context. But as hundreds of overly serious college theses and misguided poetry seminars have inadvertently proven, rock lyrics are not meant to exist apart from the music they are sung to. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, right? Write "Louie, Louie, hey, hey, wa ne ga go" on a page, and you've got nothing. But put it over that classic riff, and you've got magic, son. In the same way, once Thor puts his lyrics over thrashing guitars, a double-bass-drum attack, and presents them in his own powerful and guttural voice, those same stanzas become exactly what they should be: the audio equivalent of the best B-grade horror movie ever made (which, by the way, is Evil Dead II. No debate allowed.)

Oh, in case you're wondering, the phrase "Devastation of Musculation" refers to two things: the poorly defined retribution that awaits the foes of THOR as he rides the universe on his steed; and a story that Thor heard about a guy who pumped up his biceps so far with steroids, oil in injections, and heavy reps that his arm actually exploded. According to Thor himself,

"Everyone is under pressure to achieve the impossible every day. People risk their lives to be more beautiful, more handsome, more skinny, more muscular and faster, stronger, richer, and deadlier. Trying to make sense out of these desperate measures is what this new album is about. It is easily the darkest and most powerful album I've ever written."

Coming from a guy who used to pose in poodle hair and tiger-stripe bikini briefs, this kind of statement might be easily dismissed. But, even considering that metal at its finest needs to stay stupid in order to stay metal, there's something to this. Thor seemed to wear a smirk through half the songs on Thor Against The World. On Devastation, there's not much smirking. There's more skulls, smoking corpses, demons, and smoky battlefields. And if the music doesn't necessarily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Number of the Beast, Reign In Blood, or British Steel, it's still the best B-Movie Metal you're gonna find.

If you're looking for subtlety, I suggest you pick up Tool's excellent latest album. But if you're looking for well-done classic metal sung by a former bodybuilder who had the sense to stay out of politics, you're in good shape with Devastation of Musculation. Somehow, now, in his third decade of recording stone-obvious muscle rock for a parade of indie labels, Thor seems to be figuring out how to balance camp and carnage. By any standard, Devastation of Musculation ain't half bad, and as long as you take it for what it is - the aural equivalent of movies like Escape from New York and, yes, the animated classic Heavy Metal, you can do much worse than to heed the mighty word of THOR.

[Crossposted at blogcritics.org]

I love cable television. I love that we live in the future.

I am about to watch a world cup soccer match between Mexico and Iran. There are a dismayingly large number of people in America today willing to believe that the populace of one of these nations is conspiring to overrun us and tekurjobs, and the other is full of people all working in concert to make New York into a glowing crater.

Both those assertions are, of course, bullshit. Bigotry and economic illiteracy aside, the United States does need to get a handle on all the people who want to come to this country, but not by sealing the borders tight. And surely there are many nuclear engineers in Iran working on things that mean bad news for us. But the main body of the populace of each of these countries are just people like people everywhere.

Right now, as I watch the Mexican announcers on Univision flip out as Mexico prepares for its opening match against Iran, all I can see is a bunch of people really happy to be from where they're from, and ready to pin their national pride on a silly game. Some of you may know that I spent some time in Guanajuato as a teenager, and really dig Mexico as a nation, as a people, and as a state of mind.

I love that I can watch Mexican world cup action in Spanish, get the flavor of their fanaticism, soak in the love of the game, and launch myself off the couch screaming "GOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL! GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAL!" in support of my peeps to the South. And given that the USA is hard pressed to make it out of the first round in a group that's absolutely stacked with talent including a juggernaut of a Czech team and the Italians and Ghana besides, I might as well go ahead and throw my Cup support behind nuestros vecinos del sud.

¡Luchemos! ¡Luchemos! ¡Vencermos! And similar sentiments!

[wik] Advertisements for Nexium (the purple pill) are just as silly in Spanish.

[alsø wik] Latin American soap operas are priceless entertainment.

[alsø alsø wik] Mariachi music is oddly compelling. Much like polka, which I find to be a balm to the hung-over mind, mariachi is somehow comforting yet energizing. I clearly have brain damage.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] Aside to Buckethead: you should know that I've started playing pickup soccer at lunchtime, hence my sudden interest in the game. I have realized that it's as poetic as baseball and as exciting as football. The only drawback, the one thing that seems wrong to this American mind is this: no professional sporting event should ever end in a tie.

[see the løveli lakes...] Strikeouts, as Crash Davis said, might be fascist, but ties are socialist.

[the wøndërful telephøne system...] Unlike my esteemed coblogger Patton, I love our freedom. And I hate ties.

[and mäni interesting furry animals...] Patton likes ties, value-added taxes, international condom-size harmonization standards, national shoe production quotas, and Volvos.

[including the majestik møøse...] Iran's national anthem is quite lovely. I have no idea what the words are.

[a Møøse once bit my sister...] Evidently, the lyrics in English run

Upwards on the horizon rises the Eastern Sun,
The sight of the true Religion.
Bahman - the brilliance of our Faith.
Your message, O Imam, of independence and freedom
is imprinted on our souls.
O Martyrs! The time of your cries of pain rings in our ears.
Enduring, continuing, eternal,
The Islamic Republic of Iran.

So there you go.

[No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"] Wait'll you get a load of the lyrics to the Mexican anthem! Iran is all about submission to Allah and martyrs: Mexico's is about fucking rivers of the blood of their enemies.

CHORUS:
Mexicans, when the war cry is heard,
Have sword and bridle ready.
Let the earth's foundations tremble
At the loud cannon's roar.

May the divine archangel crown your brow,
Oh fatherland, with an olive branch of peace,
For your eternal destiny has been written
In heaven by the finger of God.
But should a foreign enemy
Dare to profane your soil with his tread,
Know, beloved fatherland, that heaven gave you
A soldier in each of your sons.

CHORUS

War, war without truce against who would attempt
to blemish the honor of the fatherland!
War, war! The patriotic banners
saturate in waves of blood.
War, war! On the mount, in the vale
The terrifying cannon thunder
and the echoes nobly resound
to the cries of union! liberty!

CHORUS

Fatherland, before your children become unarmed
Beneath the yoke their necks in sway,
May your countryside be watered with blood,
On blood their feet trample.
And may your temples, palaces and towers
crumble in horrid crash,
and their ruins exist saying:
The fatherland was made of one thousand heroes here.

CHORUS

Fatherland, oh fatherland, your sons vow
To give their last breath on your altars,
If the trumpet with its warlike sound
Calls them to valiant battle.
For you, the garlands of olive,
For them, a glorious memory.
For you, the victory laurels,
For them, an honoured tomb.

CHORUS

So, I guess the lesson is, never date Mexico's sister.

At 9:00 AM this morning, give or take a few minutes, Paraguay and England started a first-round World Cup match. David Beckham and Michael Owen leading an all-star English team in the biggest sporting event in the world.

Now, I accept that Americans don't give a crap about soccer, on the whole. Fine. But it's the fachrissakes World Cup! And right now, I am half-watching that match on Mexico's Univision network, because NBC is carrying the French Open (okay), ESPN is showing Sportscenter (for the 10th time in a row), and ESPN2 is showing... bass fishing???

Je-sus. A country fulla rubes is what we are. In Somalia, the populace is rioting against their new Islamist overlords, because said overlords have banned watching Cup matches. Surely we would do the same if the Superbowl or the World Series were similarly threatened, but c'mon! The best soccer in the world, and ESPN2 preempts it for... bass fishing?

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it is important that all the Ministry's readers, ministers, and minions be aware of the events of the past two weeks.

A few of you may have noticed that the Ministry of Minor Perfidy's website went down last week for several days. This was most regrettable.

The outage was the unfortunate result of a negotiation gone bad between myself, an interdimensional supercomputer which calls itself Sheridan, and one of the more testy Ancient Outer Evils. One thing you need to understand about interdimensional supercomputers is that the concept of latency takes on a whole new meaning. Here on Earth, we are accustomed to network latencies on the order of milliseconds, gaps of time that are nearly imperceptible even at their worst. But when the computer is both sentient and relying on logic processors, language interpretation software packages, and RAM caches residing in a cool half-dozen parallel universes, latencies can range from the normal milliseconds to minutes at a time. The net result - get it? Net result? - is that sometimes the right hand literally does not know what the left hand is doing. And this time, as the right hand was agreeing with me and this particularly testy Ancient Outer Evil on the main points of our proposed cross-temporal profit sharing scheme, the left hand was simultaneously insulting the same Evil's mother and trying to impregnate one of our receptionist.

Long story short, I zigged, Evil zagged, and in the ensuing chaos our server room was on the receiving end of some accidental gunplay. I would have thought that a few extra air holes would merely have aided in cooling our massively overclocked machines, but nooooooo, both scrutator and snoogums (ah, stalwart servers both!) went to that great gig in the sky.

It took many thousands of sprite-hours of work and the regrettable deaths of millions of code-gnomes to reconstruct the trillions of bits of data the Ministry has collected over the years. Hard work, backbreaking work, frequently fatal work (ah! brave code-gnomes!), but necessary work if we are to bring you the content, wisdom, and dubious counsel you have grown to depend on (or at least tolerate).

Many thanks to Ministers Ross and Patton for their yeoman's work in repairing the site, to Buckethead for spearheading the entire venture, and to GeekLethal for locking, loading, and figuring out a way to rescue me from Sheridan's hordes of gorgeous yet deadly fembots.

Brew #10 - St. Anky Dark Ale

Anyone meow remember the great American film "Super Troopers" meow?

6.6 lbs Munton's liquid malt extract, light.
3/4 lb crystal malt, 40L
1/4 lb chocolate malt
1/4 lb black patent malt
1 oz Eroica hops, 12% AAU (bittering)
1/2 oz Hallertau Mittelfreuh hops, aroma
1 oz Hallertau Mittelfreuh hops, flavor
1 packet Safale S-04 dry ale yeast (Whitbread strain)

Steeped specialty grains in 1 gallon filtered tap water for 60 minutes at 155-160 degrees. Meanwhile, brought 3 gallons filtered tap water to boil in kettle, and added steeping water. Rinsed grains off well. Added malt extract at the boil. Returned kettle to boil and added Eroica hops. Added 1/2 oz HM hops (real German ones) for the last ten minutes. Added 1 oz HM (real German ones) for the last minute. Nummy num num num.

Removed kettle to ice bath with 30 lbs ice and a couple freezer packs. Added 1 gallon 50 degree water to the fermenter, and added wort, filtering out the trub using the showercap-like contraption I have. Poured back and forth between kettle and bucket to aerate wort. I tried an experiment this time - I sprinkled the yeast into the bucket when most of the beer was in the kettle, and let the turbulence of pouring the beer back in dissolve and disperse the yeast. Twenty minutes later, I shook the bucket some more to make sure the yeast was fully distributed throughout the wort.

I was going to use some liquid ESB yeast for this brew, which probably would have been very good, but there were two reasons not to. First, the batch was a little old, and I wasn't totally confident of getting a good fermentation from the yeast. Second, since I was using Hallertau hops I wanted to have a crisper finish than the softness of ESB yeast would afford. Whitbread should do very well on that count.

This is basically a rerun of Brew #2, which I called a porter. I mean, it was a porter, but lighter than the usual American porters that are around these days. Generally people use roasted malts for the browned, toasty flavors they impart, and I haven't really done that here. Moreover, I tend to like a lot of hops with this grainbill, more aroma hops especially than are really acceptable for the porter style. So, I've decided instead that what I'm making here is more of a Dark Ale. Why the hell not? My Brew #6, Joey Porter, was more in the porter style since I used a bit of darker crystal malt as well as a London Ale yeast that offered nice, round, soft, and minerally notes. It's amazing how basically the same exact grainbill can taste completely different using a different strain of yeast, even if both strains are from the same region of the same country. I love yeast.

I love yeast.

[wik] Ok, so not great. The yeast was nice, but high-attenuating, and the quarter pound of black malt came through too much. Also, the very estery and fruity flavor profile completely hides any hop aroma. I'd need to use some flavoring hops and a load of aroma hops to get a hoppy nose out of this. Worst of all, the batch was contaminated and I had to dump the last case before the bottles blew. Dang dang dang dang.

Holy shit! Johno's posting again! I thought he was dead! Shuffled loose this mortal coil and joined the heavenly choir! Deceased! Defunct! An ex-pundit!

In troof, I was merely... resting. And I do have lovely plumage.

The fact of the matter is, I started a new job a few weeks ago that has monopolized all my daytime brainspace, and have been moonlighting in a gig that has taken up the rest. So, sorry everyone. It's Friday, I'm dead-dog tired, and I'm drinking a homebrew.

And in a bizarre peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate moment, I have made a discovery.

Two weeks ago I bottled my latest pale ale. The first couple were absolutely delicious. Go me!

The third, that's where it gets interesting. Remember my Belgian Ale? Well, an unsanitized bottle from that batch that I poured and merely rinsed out must have made it into my batch of sanitized bottles on bottling day. Because the beer I am right now drinking is fascinating, an American pale ale with the crisp bite of Chico ale yeast and the soft citrus notes of Cascade and East Kent Goldings hops, and the spicy tang of Belgian ale from the oopsie-left-over yeast in the renegade bottle. Apparently that Belgian yeast is a fierce competitor, because it's what did the work of fermenting the priming sugar and left its very prominent stamp on the beer as a result.

I have to say, for this being a real no-no in homebrewing terms and proof positive that my sanitation could be better, it's one hell of a delicious mistake. Seriously, next time I might do this on purpose just for larfs, because folks, my mistake is goooooood.

Sometimes an album comes along that catches you totally by surprise. I mean, I'm ready for anything: Balinese gamelan music, recordings of shortwave static, German industrial music, Ace of Base, but I wasn't ready for Bobby Previte's Coalition of the Willing.

I don't know much about Bobby Previte. I know he's from Buffalo. I know he's a drummer and that he's big on the downtown Manhattan jazz scene. I know he's got a reputation for being a great player, a pioneering composer, and a freaky cat. He has interesting hair. But beyond that, the music of Bobby Previte is terra incognita to me.

I'm up for third stream, new wave, nu metal, Japanese dance, Greek art music, art house, acid house, acid jazz, jazz flute, Malinese song-flute, Hawaiian nose-flute, power pop, hard bop, Billy Joel and Iggy Pop, rockabilly, punkabilly, Carter Family, Manson Family, the Family Stone, the Stone Temple Pilots, Temple of the Dog, and antisocial synthesizer belches from two-person bands from northern Vermont.

But I never expected surf music.

Surf music! And psychedelic garage rock! And Miles Davis-style chugging electric glowering! And, and spy music! Like James Bond! And remember Lalo Schifrin, the guy who wrote the "Mission Impossible" theme, whose personal style mixed Continental snazzery with Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass and a dash of neatly tailored rock and roll? Him, too!

When Bobby Previte's new album crossed my decks, my first thought was, verbatim, "... The hell is this?"

Mainly, this was brought on by the cover art and album title. Previte's current band is called the Coalition of the Willing, which on its own is kind of funny, a gloss on a phrase that's been around since the 1980s, but which George W. Bush catapulted to fame (or infamy) when he applied it to the nations that backed the libervasion of Iraq in 2003. Fans of Robert Anton Wilson will remember the running joke toward the end of the Illuminatus! trilogy with all the bands named after real-world things, like "The American Medical Association." Other, less nerdy people might be familiar with Dave Barry's running joke that things like The Coalition of the Willing "would make a great band name." Either way, "Coalition of the Willing" is a great name for a band.

However.

Over the last five years or so my patience for all things Orwellian has run thin. This goes both for actual pieces of Orwelliana like the fatuously named "Department of Homeland Security" as well as pretend pieces of Orwelliana, like albums that take half their song titles from the pages of 1984. Indeed, The Coalition of the Willing features the titles, "The Ministry of Truth," "The Ministry of Love," "Memory Hole," and "Oceania," as well as an album cover in the classic Che/Castro/Anarchist hues of red, white and black and festooned with raised fists. Ugh. Whatever they were going for with the cover art, what they came up with makes my eyes roll, my gorge rise, and awakens an urge in my heart to grab a truncheon and stand guard on the nearest barricade on behalf of The Man, The System, and capitalist pigs anywhere. Filthy lucre forever!!

Oh, right. The music. What's the music like?

It turns out that The Coalition of the Willing features one of the largest differentials between cover art quality and the quality of the music inside since Guns & Roses scrapped the original "robot rape" cover to Appetite For Destruction for the less awful version we all know and love.

That is to say, The Coalition Of The Willing is a damn good record, eight long instrumental slices of jazz-inflected rock spiked with liberal dashes of surf and spy music, fusion a la electric Miles Davis, and even house and reggae. There's not a slack bit, there are no twiddly precious solos, and all the genre-hopping manages to add spice, rather than just confuse matters.

Previte is a sensitive drummer with a great sense of groove, and the players he assembled for this project are uniformly top-notch. Notably, guitar wizard Charlie Hunter plays on every track, even choosing to lay aside his trademark eight-string guitar for a standard six-string model. And although he is by far the best-known musician to grace these tracks, he doesn't overshadow the other contributors, who include Steve Bernstein (of the unfortunately-named New York group Sex Mob) on trumpet, Jamie Saft on the Hammond organ, Stew Cutler on occasional harmonica, the one-named Skerik, a tenor saxophonist who plays with Les Claypool of Primus, and Stanton Moore, drummer for the jammy New Orleans funk outfit Galactic.

Anyway, about the music. Given that Bobby Previte and Charlie Hunter are pretty well known for playing hip, cerebral and challenging New York jazz, the last thing I expected when I popped this album in the player was to be met at the door by a groove that is about 50% "Incense and Peppermints" and 50% theme music to some lurid imaginary Roger Corman film with a title like "Surf Nazis Run Wild!!!" or "Bikini Girl Go-Go Shootout!!!"

And yet, the very first track overcomes its Orwellian title ("The Ministry of Truth") with just such a sound, a snazzy, tacky vibe driven by the jet-setting Hammond organ of Jamie Saft and a foursquare beat from Previte that would be equally at home on a Lalo Shifrin album or some lost track from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. Over this, Charlie Hunter spits edgy chromatic James Bond-theme-style melodic fragments until he is mugged by a scratchy harmonica solo from Stew Cutler. The whole thing brings to mind a dizzying array of great pop culture moments, from the original Batman TV series to Ren & Stimpy, and that's just in the first five minutes of the record.

Throughout, Previte and his band switch gears without even trying. "Oceania" jams a 12-string guitar riff that sounds like a broken-down Midnight Oil song right next to more spy music right next to reggae without even blinking. Impressively, this all sounds perfectly natural. None of the transitions anywhere on the record sound forced or awkward, no matter how unrelated the two sections might be. Whether it is Hunter's metal riffage on "The Ministry of Love," the atmospheric house-inflected groove of "Anthem for Andrea" or Skerik's ruminatory make-out sax on "Memory Hole," there's not a moment where the album sounds flat or self-indulgent. For an instrumental album made by a bunch of serious jazzheads, that's flat out impressive.

The final test, of course, is to try this album out on someone unsuspecting. Someone whose relationship to music is less fanatic than mine. Someone who doesn't dig on modern art-music that sounds like you've stuck your head in an air duct. Someone who doesn't get the melody lines from archival Frank Zappa live performances stuck in their head for days on end.

What I'm trying to say is, my wife dug this album too.

The Coalition Of The Willing features players of fearsome talent playing stylish, sinister, beautiful, fractured, epic music with a sense of fun that dumps any consternation caused by the strange song-title and cover art choices right down the memory hole.

This post also appears at blogcritics.org.

It really is.

Two-Cycle Cream Ale

4 lbs dry malt extract, light
1 lb rice extract solids
4 oz Crystal malt, 10L
4 oz Crystal malt, 20L
1 oz Perle hops, 7.8% AA (bittering)
1.5 oz Liberty hops, 3.8% AA (aroma)
1 packet SA-56 American ale yeast (dry)

Since summer is coming, I decided to make a decidedly light and dry-finishing beer with moderate bitterness and a light hop nose. Lawnmower beer! I used a pound of rice extract in place of some of the barley malt extract to both lighten the body and dry out the finish, and added a good amount of Liberty hops to provide the floral, crisp nose I'm after. Basically, I'm after a homemade version of Ballantine's or Genesee Cream Ale but with, you know, flavor.

Procedure:
Brought 2.5 liters (10 cups) water to 160 degrees, added the Crystal malts in a muslin bag, and held at temperature for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, began to heat 3.5 gallons water in brew kettle. Swished grain bag around in brew kettle to get all the sugars out of the malt, and discarded. Added crystal malt tea to brew kettle and brought to boil. Turned off heat, added dry malt extracts and Perle hops, and set the boil clock for 60 minutes. Added Liberty hops for the last 5 minutes..

Removed kettle to bathtub with water and 35 pounds of commercial ice. I had the temperature in the kettle down to 79 degrees in about 40 minutes.

Added one gallon of chilled spring water to fermenter bucket. Added wort, and topped up to 5.25 gallons (approx) with some more spring water. (I like to add a little extra water to my recipes to make up for what I'll lose to the yeastcake and general inefficiency in the racking and bottling process. It makes very little difference to the final flavor, in any case no difference that I'd ever notice.) Poured back and forth between kettle and bucket to aerate wort, and pitched yeast at 69 degrees.

Here's the description of the yeast I'm using: "Produces well balanced beers with low diacetyl and a very clean, crisp end palate. It accentuates the hop flavors and is extremely versatile. Sedimentation is low to medium, and final gravity is medium."

I don't think I'll put this one in secondary fermentation. Although it would probably benefit from a couple extra weeks conditioning time off the yeastcake, I don't want to risk oxygen-damage or contamination upon transfer to the secondary vessel. In a beer this light, any off-flavors have nowhere to hide. Also, I'm running low on beer in the cellar, and it'd be really nice to be able to enjoy this batch a month from Friday.

This recipe is very similar to the Cream Ale kit recipe that my beer supply store sells. The only difference with theirs is they use even lighter Crystal malt (3 degrees Lovibond, the very lightest) than I do, plus some Carapils malt. Also called Dextrin malt, Carapils doesn't contribute sweetness as much as it contributes unfermentable starches that give a beer some body. In a cream ale, that would be very welcome: as long as this recipe works well, next time I'll use his grainbill and some spicy German Tettnanger hops for the nose.

[wik] On bottling, the beer is very good - light malt sweetness upfront with nice soft spicy complexity from the hops, and crisp and dry on the finish with more hop notes. Pretty much exactly what I was going for. It might be a shade too bitter - not a dealbreaker, especially since Perle are a fairly polite bittering hop, but we'll have to see how things develop in the bottle.

Primed with 4 oz corn sugar at bottling.

[alsø wik] The final estimation was "ok, not great." I would have done better to use a cleaner ale yeast, like a Kolsch or Chico strain, and some more flavor/aroma hops.

ABC News has excerpts from a - no shit - Zarqawi Blooper Reel up on their website. It's evidently outtakes from one of his anti-American screeds, featuring hi-larious incidents like: Zarqawi trying to shoot a Kalashnikov, failing, and being shown how by an associate; that same associate grabbing the gun back and being burned on the barrel; and a pair of amusing bright blue tennis shoes that just totally don't make it with the post-Viet Cong black pajamas ensemble our boy Z is rocking.

Remember, people, this is the face of our enemy. Anyone got a cream pie?

(h/t QandO)

While reading something else entirely, I learned a very welcome fact. If the second Death Star was actually as close to Endor as it was depicted in Return of the Jedi, that is, a miles-wide sphere of metal, advanced polymers, and vast nuclear and future-tech reactors orbiting a mere 500 miles above the surface of the moon, then the debris and radiation fallout from its destruction almost certainly sterilized the planet and killed all the Ewoks still living there shortly after the Rebel forces departed. In an ideal world, Jar Jar Binks and his family would have crash landed on the far side not long before this incident.

No, it falleth as a gentle rain from twelve honest men and women. Or something like that. I haven't read The Merchant of Venice in, well, ever.

I'm sure that everyone has heard by now that Zacarias Moussaoui will not be put to death by the state for his alleged role in 9/11/2001. Now, you didn't ask for my opinion, you don't care about my opinion, but you've read this far so why not further? I think this was a good decision. To begin with, I'm not a big fan of the death penalty in most circumstances. It often reeks too much of vengeance, and justice and vengeance are mutually exclusive concepts. But moreover, Moussaoui asked for the chair, arguing that he wants to be a martyr, and also arguing, in essence, "f*ck you, America." (Is that an argument?) So what better than to extend him mercy?

I'm not much of a Christian, but I still organize my life around the ethical priniciples of Jesus, y'know, the red words in the old familiy bible. They're the best thing going, bar none. And mercy is one of the fundamental precepts of that ethical system. (Leaving aside the moral dimension, of course. I'm not qualified to talk about that.) Turn the other cheek. Exercise forbearance. Restrain from vengeance, no matter how incredibly good it might feel, because down that road is barbarity, chaos, and anarchy. Mercy is one of the precepts that has smoothed Western civilization's road to greatness over the years (though it sure can be discarded at the drop of a hat, I tell you what, whenever it's time to kill a few of the guys in the neighboring city).

But a funny thing about Christian mercy is that it can also amount to a big old "f*ck you." Killing Zacarias Moussaoui wouldn't make much difference in the larger scheme of things; some people would feel vindicated, others downright happy. And though it's probable that were he put to death, the glorious shining martyrdom he seeks would actually work out, and we'd have to see his ugly mug again and again and again on posters, banners, and painted bedsheets every time Hizbollah staged a damn rally, it's far more likely that the Legend of Zac would die with him.

But in not putting him to death, in choosing not to martyr him, we have taken the opportunity to reaffirm the core values of our society, to exercise patience and forbearance against crimes which are done and cannot be undone, to avail ourselves of the better angels of our nature, to reaffirm the fundamental difference between us and him, and best of all, to say to Zacarias Moussaoui, "Fuck you. We grant you our mercy."

Later this year, I will be travelling on official Ministry business to Prague, jewel of Bohemia and former site of one of the Ministry's finest and most active field offices. Unfortunately, that office was closed rather bloodily by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, not long before his untimely but incredibly welcome assassination, and its wealth of occult and scientific knowledge was lost. Alas, the Iron Curtain fell before we could get another office satisfactorily established, and so our presence in Czechoslovakia and now the Czech Republic has been for six decades informal, ad hoc, and highly erratic.

(One rather tragic outcome of der Wixer's sacking of our office was that the Ministry lost track of the Golem of Prague. Although we of course had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of the Golem, nor with contributing to nor puncturing the enormous corpus of legends, wives's tales, bedtime stories, parables, and plain out tall-tales that have accreted over the centuries since Rabbi Judah Loew first created his monster, through a remarkable twist of fate we were among several parties entrusted in the mid-eighteenth century with the knowledge of the Golem's long-term resting place within the Old-New Synagogue. But the ravages of the Great War and then the coming of Heydrich led to the loss of that knowledge and many, many more secrets of great and terrible importance.)

Although we at the Ministry have long since given up our ongoing search for clues as to the current resting place of the Guardian of Prague, feeling it is a secret much better left to others, there is much business for us in Bohemia, matters that have gone unseen-to in the more than sixty years since Hitler's filthy butcher came to town. The city has awakened by degrees from the stultifying effects of decades of totalitarian rule, and is once again the scrappy, proud, and vibrant seat of independent Czech identity. Its hard times are not entirely behind it, but good times are ahead.

This brings me to my point. If any of the Ministry's readers have been to Prague in the recent past, do kindly let me know if there's anything I should, uh, know, before I go. There's nothing like greasy food, dumplings, smog, puppet shows, smoky bars, spectacular lager, and long, long walks to set my soul to rights, but since my talent for Slavic languages is limited and my knowledge of the terrain very small, any experiences you might care to relate would be greatly appreciated.

End transmission.

Summer's coming, and with it, a desire for lighter and fizzier beers that both taste great and are less... filling. I haven't made a light beer since the fall, having stashed away enough stout (sort of stout, anyway...), porter, and Belgian strong ale to last me through the cold months. But with the warmer weather it's time now for lawnmowers, short pants, and deck chairs, and with them, brews like...

Atlantic Pale Ale

Ingredients:
5 lbs Munton & Fison Pale Dry Malt Extract
1/2 lb Crystal malt, 40L
4 oz Crystal malt, 20L
2 oz Crystal malt, 60L
1 1/4 oz Northern Brewer hops, 7.6% AAU
1 oz Cascade hops, 6% AAU
1 oz East Kent Goldings hops, 6% AAU
White Labs #0001, California Ale Yeast (liquid)

Steeped crystal malts in muslin bag in 1 gallon water at 155-170 degrees for 45 minutes as I brought 2.3 gallons water to a boil in my main brew kettle. Added steeping water to brew kettle and swirled muslin bag in water to get all the delicious, delicious malt flavor out.

Brought wort to a boil; added 1 1/4 ounces Northern Brewer hops and started the brew clock. At 40 minutes, added 1/4 ounce each Cascade and EKG hops for flavor. At 55 minutes, added 3/4 oz each Cascade and EKG hops for plenty of aroma.

Cooled brew kettle in bathtub with cold water and 25 lbs ice and a few freezer packs just for the heck of it. We got down from 212 to 110 degrees in about half an hour. Added wort to fermenting bucket and added 2 1/2 gallons chilled boiled water to make up about 5.2 gallons total. Pitched yeast at 76 degrees and stashed in the closet where the hot water pipes run. Let's see how this goes...

OG: 1.049

I'm going for a pretty standard American Pale Ale, on the golden side of the color spectrum and with a good balance of light malt sweetness and a forward but not overpowering bitterness. Cascade hops have that characteristic citrusy/floral scent that we all know and love from Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and East Kent Goldings have a grapefruity, fruity, spicy flavor that melds well with them. One's the defining hop of American brewing, one's the defining hop of some of the greatest beers the Empire ever produced, so, Atlantic Pale Ale.

[wik] Fermentation began in about 12 hours and the 24 hour mark is going nuts. Nuts!! Moved it out of the closet to a cooler area once fermentation began - I don't want to make the yeast overexcited so that they produce funny tastes. It's fermenting at about 74 degrees, which is a little (lot) high. Ehh. It'll be fine.

[alsø wik] At bottling it was... fine. In fact better than fine. Totally delicious. Fantastic. Unbelievable. Ambrosial. So that's nice. Um... ahem. Primed with 4 oz corn sugar at bottling. Made a short recipe - only about 4.75 gallons at the most for some reason. Hm. Better make more!!

This is just about the dorkiest thing I've seen since, well... ever. Captain Ed has started a group he's called the "101st Fighting Keyboardists. they've got a logo and everything.

Our friends on the port side of the blogosphere have had quite a time tossing around funny little nicknames for those of us who support the war on terror and use our blogs to express our convictions about it. We've seen the names here at CQ in the comments section -- the term "chickenhawk" has appeared more than once, and others in the blogosphere have assigned us to a unit called the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.

I've thought about that for a while, wondering what exactly about both epithets appear so fascinating to left-wing bloggers. As a middle-aged grandfather supporting a chronically ill wife, I have few options for doing my part in the war on terror. After 9/11, I spent weeks looking into different options for service while trying to balance my family obligations. Our family found out just three weeks after the attack that the Little Admiral would soon join us, and the implications of terrorism and war weighed heavily on my mind. I resolved to use the skills I had -- writing -- to make the case for fighting a forward strategy against terrorists. Eventually that led me to this blog, but in the interim I argued for a continued muscular offensive against the Islamofascists that had murdered thousands of our fellow Americans.

Is that the same as military service? Of course not. The men and women of the military do the real fighting, and we salute them and support them by supporting their mission. Milbloggers give us the best of both worlds by not only defending our nation and fighting (and beating) terrorists around the globe, but also by reporting on the fight first hand. There is honor in engaging in public debate for policies which we believe are in our nation's best interest as well. For many of us, we know that without presenting our arguments in the national forum, many in the media and the public will quickly overpower the debate and threaten the policies we feel give us the best long-term opportunity to defeat terrorism and the states that fund and shelter them.

....

That's why Frank J of IMAO, Derek Brigham of Freedom Dogs, and I have decided to create -- for real -- the 101st Fighting Keyboardists and adopt the chicken hawk as our mascot. First of all, the term "fighting keyboardist" describes our efforts pretty well, and we think the pseudo-military terminology is pretty danged amusing. Derek himself designed the logo.

....

Make of that what you will.

I mean, my esteemed coblogger Buckethead jokes about being a "Chairborne Ranger" or a member of the "Keyboard Brigade," (okay, half the time it's me calling him those things, but that fact is inconvenient to my current point so let's overlook it, mmkay?), but that's with the understanding that blogging is in no way a noble sacrifice that contributes in any way whatsoever to the actual shooting war that's going on half a world a way. Because that's the actual situation.

Anyway, hop over there and read the comments, which are totally priceless: "sign me up!" "Can I join?" "John Kerry, reporting for duty!!"

As a liberal who never trusted the Bush administration to not f*ck up there little adventure in Iraq, and who has said so publicly while simultaneously mocking the overwrought conviction of the loony fringes on each side (which evidently makes me one of the people they think can go suck it), I am frankly cowed into silent submission at the resolve and frankly incredible insight of these men, these dorks, this band of brothers. Or whatever.

Well, really it just makes me tired.

[wik] idiosynchronic of low and left (coblogger of our valued loyal reader "iamcoyote") notes something I'm grateful I didn't have to point out myself, because the fishinbarrelicious frission of the whole deal would make me feel a little dirty. That is, idiosynchronic noticed something I was trying not to notice, being the sporting and fair-minded chap that I am, namely a surely unintentional resemblance between the Chickenhawk logo and the German Eagle, a national symbol that once symbolized the stiff-necked greatness of the Empire, but which came to seem unspeakably crass circa, oh, 1946 or so. Its use by the Chairborne Rangers (unofficial motto: "We'll Beat You Down With One Hand Ti... Well, Let's Just Say The Other Hand Is Busy!") has to be the single shiningest example of AutoGodwinPwnage ever seen in the history of the internets.

[alsø wik] Dr. Sanity, now of the "Fighting Keybees," as the 101st is styling itself, want us all to know that they

stand for TRUTH, JUSTICE, and the ultimate DEFEAT OF TYRANNY. [And, that includes all of you tyrants or tyrant wannabees out there in the blogsphere who are completely without a sense of humor; and/or who take those vapid and banal exhortations for "peace" so seriously you are unable to see that you represent the greatest threat to peace and freedom in the universe. All humorless and ideological cretins can just suck it up--because we mean you!]

Oh, I got a sense of humor all right. I think all this big-talkin' steely-eyed internet resolve to fight 'splodeydopes and liberals alike through their heavy, heavy words is hilarious.

Oceania has always been at war with... ahh shit. Who'm I kidding? Here I am with a story about a new video display in development by Apple that contains image-collecting cells interlaced with the image-emitting ones, thereby permitting a fully functional two-way video screen, and all I can come up with are Yakov Smirnoff and George fricking Orwell.

Is there an office I need to report to, to have my pundit-pass torn up? Or at the very least stamped "HACK" in giant red block capitals?

[wik] Speaking of George Orwell, I just read a fascinating brace of books. First was Orwell's debut novel, Burmese Days, drawn from his experience in His Majesty's colonial service, and about the deranging effects that colonialism has on colonizer and colonized alike. Apparently Orwell had some problems with the system.

Shortly after reading that, my loving wife the librarian handed me Finding George Orwell in Burma, by Emma Larkin, an American author raised in Southeast Asia. A few years ago, Larkin returned to Myanmar in order to visit all the places that George Orwell either wrote about or himself visited while in the Service, with the notion of making a book out of the trip. Along the way she uncovered the terrible and disheartening fact that Orwell is viewed by those few intellectuals who manage to endure under Myanmar's insane regime as a veritable prophet of their misery. In the back rooms of shops, in apartments with the shutters closed, in groups of two and three so as to not require an official "gathering" permit, people meet to read, exchange, and discuss books, handing moldering paperbacks by Western authors from hand to hand, racing against time and mildew to absorb the text before the books fall to pieces or they are discovered, detained, and disappeared by the government's vast network of informants. In this sub-sub-sub culture, this demimonde of intellectual resistance, they treat 1984 as though it were the roadmap to the system that rules their world.

Being that Myanmar's military rulers do in fact intrude in thousands of ways into every moment of every person's life, spoon feed the populace "news" that advances their purposes, mandates constant public displays of love for the rulers and hatred of the enemy (both internal enemies of the state and the puppeteers that ostensibly move them from abroad) and acts vigorously and without scruple to crush out every spark of independent thought, it turns out that in Myanmar, 1984 isn't merely a chilling if slightly hokey novel for seventh-graders. It's goddamn holy truth.

Via unfogged, I give you the number one reason I'm thankful not to have been born a female hyena: "imagine giving birth through a penis."

Wait'll you read the part about the fatal tearing.

I have now taken the same quiz as my compatriots, and it is clear that, far from dying peacefully in my sleep well into my second century of life, surrounded by loved ones, I'm destined for a grisly and chillingly newsworthy end.

You scored as Gunshot. Your death will be by gunshot, probably because you are some important person or whatever. Possibly a sniper, nice, quick, clean shot to the head. Just beautiful.

What the hell? Where'd I get so many enemies?!? Guess I'd better start sitting with my back to the wall down at the local Thai/sushi joint and tiki bar that is my usual watering hole. Don't wanna die with a tall glass of Singha and a plate of o-toro sashimi in front of me. I mean, there's worse ways to go, I guess, than enjoying a plate of fatty tuna belly. I could die at MacDonald's. At least bomb or bullet is quick, right? Mebbe I better start looking for that land in the woods of Nova Scotia I've always wanted. Big fence. Mean dogs. A moat.

There's more than one song in the world that can make me tear up like my favorite dog done died. It's in my bones. I was brought up on country music, and as a descendent of Welsh-Irish-German-English-French farmers-miners-clergy-unlettered rabble, I am very much genetically disposed to break into maudlin song at the drop of a hat given the opportunity and a surprisingly small quantity of strong drink.

Nobody in the world does a good weeper better than the estimable George Jones, possessor of the greatest voice in the history of country music, and arguably deserving of a mention as one of the best interpreters of song - period - in the entire twentieth century. You take Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, all your operatic divas and even Ol' Blue Eyes too. Me, I'll take the mysterious man with the close-set eyes from the hardscrabble pine barrens of East Texas.

There's a good reason why. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of George Jones crooning his towering hits "A Good Year For The Roses" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today" over the staticky radio my father kept on the workbench in the garage right above the ratchet set. The first of these two was probably one of the first songs I ever heard in my life, and the second was, when I was six, one my very first favorite songs not produced by Disney. (Just to prove that I had unimpeachably excellent taste in music even at that tender age (oh, yeah), two other favorite songs from my kindergarten years were "Cloudy and Cool" by Chet Atkins and "There Ain't No Good Chain Gang" by Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard) The keening string sections and Jones' over-the-top vocals made a big impression on my young mind and had two long-term effects. Aside from leaving me with an unfortunate and abiding affection for the schlockier output of 70's-era Nashville, those garage days also made me a George Jones fan for life.

Since that time, I have gone through phase after phase, getting way into Pink Floyd, hair metal, Wax Trax industrial, punk, 'grunge', Neil Young, Zappa, Elvis, Tom Waits, Charles Mingus, and so on and so on world without end amen. And yet, time after time I return to the music of my early childhood: I always return to rockabilly, honky-tonk, and especially the music of Johnny Cash and George Jones.

What is it about George Jones that's so alluring? Honestly, seen from a distance he's almost comical. If any fan of his ever wants an unpleasant shock, I recommend playing one of Jones' more purple performance (say, "The Grand Tour" or "He Stopped Loving Her Today") back to back with one of Jim Nabors' bigger slices of schmaltz, such as "The Impossible Dream" or "You'll Never Walk Alone." Although the two men approach a song differently, there are similarities: each is gifted with an absurdly resonant voice that they use to maximum effect, and they share a knack for working the hell out of a song. But most importantly, the two have done their very best work when trying their damndest to get into self-parody's pants.

In a deeply perceptive essay collected in his book Grown Up All Wrong, the venerable Robert Christgau (longtime music critic for New York's Village Voice) captures what, aside from his voice, makes George Jones so compelling. Although his technical prowess and the unique timbre of his voice (seeming to emanate not from the head or chest, but from a constant sorrow choking his throat into a sob) would be enough, that's not all there is. It's the strange feeling that there's something off about the incredibly harrowing performances he turns out at the drop of a hat.

Christgau notes, as many have noted before, that Jones is a famously shallow character. Those close-set eyes don't seem to hide stunning depths of emotion that he can call on to fuel his histrionic ballads; instead, Jones' most intense performances always seem to be just that, astounding performances, feats of technique and talent that can be turned on and off like a spigot. Put a song in front of him, and no matter whether it's a goofy jingle or a musical setting of a Donald Hall poem, he'll turn out a performance that sounds like it comes straight from the heart.

In short, the man seems to lack introspection. While it's tempting to hunt in his famously dissipated biography (for example, his tumultuous marriage to Tammy Wynette, or the time he was kidnapped by some business associates and put in a room with a pile of cocaine until he was high enough to agree to their wishes) for clues to the wrenching pain he can communicate in song, those clues seem to be false leads. Instead, we just need to take George Jones at face value: if the song makes you sad, why bother asking whether that comes from the singer or from you?

What the appeal of George Jones all comes down to, at the end of the day, is those immodestly emotive performances delivered in that voice, that astonishing voice, deep and full and rich and sounding as though every syllable is wrenched from the throat of a man caught between desperate prayers and miserable sorrow.

George Jones started his singing career in the saloons and honky tonks of East Texas as a teenager, and after a stint in the Marines (partly to escape the aftermath of his first doomed marriage), he signed with the local Beaumont, Texas label Starday.

At first, there was little hint of the full depth of Jones' talent. His first few recorded sides were masterful impressions of other singers - Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, and Roy Acuff among them - but nothing that sounded like George Jones. Still, between 1954 and 1960, Jones started to build a pretty good career as a hardcore honky-tonker, turning out worthy slices of rockabilly that contained few hints of the full measure of his talent.

But around 1961, Jones turned a corner. Under the guidance of producer "Pappy" Daily (also his former label head and producer at Starday), Jones released three crucial singles - "The Window Up Above," "Tender Years," and "She Thinks I Still Care." In them, he made two great breakthroughs. The first was musical. By slowing the music down from a gallop, and making some more pop-oriented choices in the instrumentation, Daily gave Jones' voice more room to play with the melody. The results were his first fully realized vocal performances, and although his voice hadn't yet deepened into what it would become, there were finally glimmers of his fabled tone.

The second innovation was the material. Jones has always thrived on love songs, especially the hard parts of live, but these songs were more plaintive and descriptive than some of his other singles had been. "The Window Up Above" was about a man watching his woman cut his heart out with another man, "Tender Years" was a noble if surely vain pledge to wait for a woman who was still sowing her oats, and "She Thinks I Still Care" was a masterful song full of (naturally) empty denials that he still carried a torch for the woman who'd left him.

It's at the end of "She Thinks I Still Care" that the first big moment happens, at least to my ears. After a string of protestations, "just because I asked a friend about her," "just because I saw her out somewhere," Jones delivers the last line of the song like he had never sung anything previously: "just because I saw her and went to pieces, she thinks I still care." On the word "pieces," his voice breaks, falls down an arpeggio, and melts into nothing, all without sounding forced, silly, or out of place. Like the sun breaking through the clouds, it's the first time we really hear Jones learning what he does best.

After this point, Jones began a two-decade run of wild success, racking up dozens of top-ten hits, touring widely, and continuing to refine his style. He released some very successful duets with Melba Montgomery (including the rough but ready "We Must Have Been Out Of Our Minds"), and cut album after album after album for Musicor Records. The Musicor years saw a number of hits, including "A Good Year For The Roses" and "Walk Through This World With Me," two of his very best ballads, and a boatload of the novelty songs that have been Jones' stock in trade. The best of these, like "The Race Is On" and the fantastic moonshinin' song "White Lightning," rank among his best stuff; the others tend to be completely forgettable.

But at the same time, Jones was beginning a long, slow death-spiral into drink and drugs that soon began to overtake his career. Many of the albums he cut in this period were second-rate affairs, compiled from sessions tossed of with whatever material was at hand when he sobered up enough to realize he was low on money or when his management decided to flood the market further.

By the late 1960s, this had taken its toll. Jones had earned a reputation for missing live dates (and the nickname "No-Show Jones") and decided to make a change of venue by moving to Nashville. There he formed two of the most important relationships he'd ever make: he met his third wife, country singer Tammy Wynette, and his long-time producer, amanuensis, and creative better half, Billy Sherrill.

With Wynette, Jones began to record a number of very successful duets that also seemed to parallel the arc of their relationship, such as "Take Me" and "The Ceremony." Unfortunately, after a few years of whiskey, cocaine, and hijinks with handguns and car wrecks, Jones and Wynette were singing "We Loved It Away," and Wynette was writing for George a solo hit called "These Days I Barely Get By." As the drugs took deeper hold of him, Jones entered a two-decade career twilight, punctuated by moments of genius and moments of utter ruin.

The greatest of the strokes of genius was 1980's LP, I Am What I Am. Billy Sherrill was an in-demand Nashville producer, key inventor of the "countrypolitan" sound and devotee of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. Consequently, he sought to stuff every crevice of every track he produced with a panoply of strings, steel guitars, keyboards, choirs, and drums saturated with acres of reverb and echo. Although had Jones initially balked at Sherrill's sound and his autocratic way of running sessions, by 1980 their working relationship had become deep and strong.

It was Jones' trust of Sherrill that led him to cut for I Am What I Am a song he wasn't too sure about, an absurdly maudlin, mawkish, pathetic, bathetic, over-the-top ballad called "He Stopped Loving Her Today." It was the story of a man who pledged eternal love to a woman who refused to love him back, until he finally died of his broken heart. On paper, it seemed to be much the same as dozens of other songs Jones had cut over the last quarter-century, only twice as sentimental. And yet somehow, over months of drunken missed takes and coked-out false starts, "He Stopped Loving Her Today" emerged as the probably the greatest performance of Jones' career, and one of the finest vocal performances ever committed to tape.

(An aside. What is it about geniuses with drug problems? The mental image of George Jones peeling himself off a sticky studio couch with a crushing hangover and stepping up to the microphone to unfurl a searing and perfect vocal take reminds me of the legendary session that bassist James Jamerson played for Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On. Jamerson reputedly came up with the perfect and eternal bass line of the title song in one heroic take from the floor of the studio, lying flat on his back because he was too high to get up. What is it about geniuses with drug problems?)

Since the high water mark of his "He Stopped Loving Her Today," his last #1 single, Jones has aged into a gray eminence of country music, releasing decent-to-good albums that sell okay and are mostly totally ignored by the country establishment. His voice has somehow only deepened and become richer with age, even as Jones gets well into his seventies. He has also become one of the great touchstones of country music, a wellspring from which scores of younger musicians have drawn inspiration. And yet, Nashville treats him like a leper. In one telling incident from 1999, the Country Music Association refused to let Jones sing all the verses of his latest hit, the CMA-nominated "Choices," at the Country Music Awards, citing time constraints. Jones chose to boycott the show instead, and in a surprise move, singer Alan Jackson sang a verse or two of "Choices" at the end of his own CMA performance, in a show of solidarity with one of his idols.

In the same year, No-Show Jones almost lived up to the promise of his other nickname, The Possum. Newly sober yet somehow hammered on vodka, Jones wrapped his car around a Tennessee underpass and very nearly died. Although he had been through countless close shaves and near-death experiences in his career, this one seemed to bring it home to him that it was finally time to straighten up and fly right. With each passing year, it seems more and more likely that The Possum will die peacefully in his sleep rather than as a pink smear decorating a quarter mile of lonesome highway.

Any serious fan of American music really needs to have some George Jones in his collection. But knowing just what to buy can be rough. Jones has recorded dozens of LPs in his half-century career, and the majority are wildly uneven affairs that aren't really for novices. On the other hand, the greatest hits collections also tend to have drawbacks: they are poorly selected and cheaply licensed, confined to one era or one label's output, or too broad and expensive for beginners.

The new Epic/Sony Legacy collection The Essential George Jones nearly overcomes all these pitfalls. Like the rest of Sony's Essentials series (chronicling artists like Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, Herbie Hancock, and Dolly Parton), it does a pretty good job of introducing novices to the high points of Jones' career. But at the same time, there are some glaring omissions that keep it from being the one-stop bargain it wants to be.

For this to be the perfect Jones best-of, there are some requirements that must be met. One of them is fidelity. The people who put together The Essential George Jones had the good sense and grace to kick things off with early songs that weren't big hits, like the non-charting half-berserk rockabilly of "No Money In This Deal," and the Hank Williams clone, "Why Baby Why." Although these songs didn't get a lot of national play, they are crucial to a fair treatment of Jones' career.

But if you've only got two discs to work with, a fair view of Jones career means a nearly unbroken string of slow weepers and mid-tempo duets about love gone bad, going bad, or doomed to go bad someday soon. And indeed, of Essential's forty tracks, about thirty are of this ilk, and it's worth it. On slow songs, Jones' rich tone and unique way of pronouncing lyrics so that the vowels come out rounded and full are presented to their best advantage, and even though the entire second disc is twenty slow ballads right in a row, Jones' superhuman talents make sure that every song stands on its own as a fully realized little story.

However, there are a couple areas where Essential falls down. Most importantly, it appears that the compilers weren't able to secure the rights to any of Jones' sides recorded for the Musicor label. Although that era of his career, covering about 1965-1971, was one of his most uneven, it's also an era that contains several stone classics. Any truly essential collection absolutely must include "A Good Year For The Roses" and "Walk Through This World With Me," to name my two favorites But since these songs aren't here - and believe me, I'm not just picking nits - this collection isn't the only George Jones you'll ever need.

The collection also includes only three songs from the nearly twenty albums Jones has recorded since 1986. In fairness, I understand the need to bias a collection of this kind toward the hits (and indeed, the collection is thick with number-one hits), but in my opinion three songs over twenty years is hardly a fair representation of Jones' often respectable output in that time.

The Essential George Jones is pretty good, and almost even good enough. But since it skips right over his Musicor years (not to mention most of the last twenty years), it falls a little short in being the only Possum you'll ever need.

Via Fark I find this list of things a man should never do past the age of 30.

Some are perfectly sound:

Ask a policeman, "You ever shoot anybody with that thing?"

Ask a woman, "Hey, you got a license for that ass?"

Skip.

Take a camera to a nude beach.

Let his father do his taxes.

Tap on the glass.

Use the word collated on his resume.

But others make no sense to me. For example, why not

Hold his lighter up at a concert.

Shout out a response to "Are you ready to rock?"

Name pets after Middle Earth characters.

Publicly greet friends by shouting, "What's up, you whore?"

Call "shotgun" before getting in a car.

Dispute someone else's call of "shotgun."

Purchase fireworks.

Say "two points" every time he throws something in the trash.

Purchase home-brewing paraphernalia.

Request extra sprinkles.

Air drum.

Choose 69 as his jersey number.

Eat Oreo cookies in stages.

The John Travolta point-to-the-ceiling-point-to-the-floor dance move; also that one from Pulp Fiction.

Refer to his girlfriend's breasts as "the twins."

Own a vanity plate.

Well... I have many, many, many very good reasons not to refer to my significant other's, erm, chestal region, as "the twins," and I would never do so, but as a theoretical notion divorced from any reference to actual chestal appurtanances belonging to any person either real or fictional, the joke still makes me, um... titter. As for a vanity plate, I think that Buckethead, who is even further from 30 than I am, would argue that a well chosen vanity plate can really hit the spot. Also, I have air drummed, purchased homebrewing paraphenelia, made 69 jokes, disco danced, and done the "two points" and "shotgun" routines all within the last month. And what's wrong with that, really?

What kind of a world are we living in if a grown man can't write the name "Heywood Jablome" on a petition, or make the same old funny-every-time joke whenever someone says they live in "Bangor"? Isn't this America? And isn't our crass brashness as much a part of our heritage as is the British stiff upper lip, German punctiliousness, French superiority, or the way Canadians think they're being funny all the time?

I tell you what... every time you don't slap a "kick me" sign on your buddy, belch the alphabet, bump chests after a touchdown, urinate on someone's hedges, wear a backwards baseball cap in the Sistine Chapel, or loudly proclaim "yeah, I'd hit that" when looking at the Venus de Milo, you're hurting America. Why do you hate our freedom?