Author. Educator. Musician.
The story of how I got my greedy mitts on a bottle of Pliny the Elder is almost as integral to the mystique of the imperial IPA as the complex taste wave the beer possesses. In some camps, there’s an argument that Pliny’s stories of inaccessibility — it’s only available in parts of California — …
Continue reading “Does Pliny the Elder Stand Up to All the Hype?”
Sunday’s finale of Mad Men’s penultimate season showed anti-hero Don Draper commit two of the most evocative acts in the show’s history. He told the truth. Twice. Well, that’s evocative for him anyway. He’s the ultimate liar. Here are some facts on his dubious nature. Fact One: His name is Dick Whitman, and he’s gone …
We all ache at our own frequency. Maybe it’s the suffering Buddhism talks about. Maybe it’s Christianity’s Original Sin. Maybe it’s simply the pain of being on a lone planet in an ever-expanding universe. Whatever you want to call it, the important fact is that it’s there at the edge of all our moments of …
Continue reading “Album Review: American Kid, Patty Griffin”
There’s a Nutella commercial on tv right now that grinds my effing gears. Click on the link to watch this domestic drivel, and then I’ll tell you why this commercial makes pure anger run through my veins. Enraged? I wasn’t the first time I watched it, but then the commercial kept playing, and, instead of …
Continue reading “Nutella’s Assault on Writers and Husbands”
The Moth is a storytelling godsend. For those who haven’t listened to The Moth Radio Hour on NPR (Sunday nights at 7 on MPBN), here’s how The Moth works: a storyteller takes the stage without any notes and tells a true story for ten minutes or less. Other than that, there aren’t any rules. Their …
Continue reading “Concert Review: The Moth Main Stage Event at the State Theater (6.6.13)”
Summer in Maine is a cold IPA on the back deck of In’finiti. It’s dreamy drives home from Crescent Beach. It’s blue sky views from the top of Bradbury State Park that make you feel infinite. Most importantly for this nerd, Summer is reading beach-appropriate books. You know, it’s tossing aside the dense copy of …
Since it came to my attention two weeks ago that Heady Topper has been named the best beer in America and the best IPA in the world by some beer rating outlets, it became my unbridled mission to get my hands on a can during my Vermont trip. As a Vermont ex-pat living in Maine, …
Continue reading “Is Heady Topper the Best Beer in America, Nay, the World?”
I avoided the smartphone for as long as I could. As my friends worked their way from iPhones 1 to 5, I held on to my dumb-phone. I didn’t take a high road hipster stance about purity or blah, blah, blah. I just saw the smartphoners crouched in coffee shops engaging with their phones instead …
There’s no way Matthew Weiner and the other producers of Mad Men could have planned it. Two weeks after our country endures the Boston Marathon Bombing and the ensuing manhunt, AMC airs “The Flood,” an episode in which the mid-century modern clad characters in the show grapple with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The …
Dear Mr. Youkilis, Remember 2007? That was the year that Yankee pitchers tried to take you down. Literally. I remember it well. Scott Proctor hurled a pitch that smacked your helmet. A few months later, the overzealous, cornfed Joba Chamberlain tossed two pitches over your noggin. Both clocked in around 98 mph. Both intended to …
Continue reading “A Yankee Fan’s Open Letter to Kevin Youkilis”
DAVE PATTERSON 