beer festival, karnes?

i guess going to a beer festival is kind of the mother of all beer runs. predictably, it was a damn good time. innumerable selections i had never seen, and plenty of solid standby brewers with the occasional odd batch. i realized early on i would have to make a lot of choices. i'm bad at choices, but this was about as easy as it could get. no way to lose. the only "problem" was getting too many generous pours. it seems nice, but when you really just want to try 2 oz. of something, a double dose on an already full stomach is a little much. one of the best beers i had was actually my kickoff sample. southampton publick house. french style called biere de mars i had not previously been acquainted with. not too surprisingly, the translation is beer of march. i preferred it vastly to most of the "spring" beers i've had, mostly decent bocks (just not my thing usually) and a few normal styles simply market as spring-seasonal. i went in looking for hops, and i hit a few real good ones. one vermont place i hadn't heard of before the festival, rock art brewery had a brew called vermonster that i particularly enjoyed, just what i was looking for at the time, double ipa. dude servin' it up was in some sort of vintage naval uniform and had the longest beard i have ever seen. lots of interesting looking people at the event, and plenty of people who seemed confused, but mostly people seeming tipsy. this place represented for milwaukee with a solid ipa and an anniversary (20th!? i never saw these guys back home) belgian strong. both big and balanced. arcadia was even there, and i got to grab a hopmouth. you can see where i might think i wound up going too heavy on the hops even for me. i was rewarded for my perseverance later in the evening when i tracked down the green flash table. true west coast ipa. sometimes nothing is better. they were only pouring bottles, but the aroma was still incredible. nothing but pacific northwest hops as far as i could tell at that point. the server told me "the search is over," which is a great slogan but a little presumptuous, given the ambiguity. however, if he meant the most west coast of all ipas, then i would really have to agree. other than my hop gluttony, i had a lot of mediocre belgian styles. on the other hand, my palate got a little tore up. a price i'm willing to pay if i can still select from a couple dozen beers so bitter i can still taste anything from that selection after having a couple of them. on the other hand, there were also a couple others that do not have the excuse of some minute delicacies that still failed to pass muster, before, during, and after all the international bitterness unit blowout. i had tried three purported rye beers, all of which disappointed. i don't know what founders did, but that was my primary reference and i expected some serious rye. letdown. but they were beers i tried, and now i know. these are some of the many highlights. i cannot recommend the experience enough. from the opportunity to gain a spectrum of experience across a particular style to being in a giant room full of people (kind of felt like a busy train station, long and with really really high ceilings, but like if EVERYONE had been drinking) who eventually do the beer fest wave of raising your glass and yelling whoooo with all the enthusiasm of people who are pretty much a) beer geeks in heaven b) people who think beer fest is a great movie and thought it would be sweet to get as hammered as possible at this thing or c) people who went along to fit in and necessarily co-operate. almost, but not quite, too much fun to handle.
i finally got a hold of a couple of wilco's residency shows. first night and the last night are all i have so far. next one i get will probably be an '01 show. from detroit, no less.anyway, i got to listen to tweedy bitch and moan about how bad "i thought i held you" is. the funny part is that he must have always thought so, and yet he put it on the record. wilco had never ever in any form played that song on stage. the only wilcobase entry was from some radio live in-studio shit. he literally calls it dog shit before they play it on the last night. he sings it halfheartedly and in a borderline mocking tone, but the band plays it really well and he does make note of that. the thing i've enjoyed the most about hearing cuts that aren't in normal circulation is the inherent diversity of the set lists. this version of the band does an amazing job of demonstrating the deceptive continuity of records that all have a different style. most of all they're having fun, and it makes for some fun listening. the horns are really the perfect touch on some things, i can almost even listen to 'i'm the man who loves you'. almost. i like rapidly approaching zero things about that song. but they really pull some things together, especially a couple of the new tunes. it really does make 'walken' sound like a little feat song; one of the trib's reviews mentioned that. the recordings are as pristine as i hoped. wilco in chicago is pretty much a foregone conclusion: it is gonna sound sweet. the band and the tapers both know the venues there so well. but sound is nothing without playing well, and much of this was ideal.
i don't really have a whole lot else to report; i've been spending a lot of time on the inevitable brief. i'm getting there, but progress is painfully slow. it happens so slowly and painstakingly. no flow to the process, terminally boring at points. i'm happy with where i am mostly. a lot better than i was off with this much time left on the memo last semester. tomorrow will mostly be the assemblage of information in obscure formatting. totally a pain in the ass nobody needs. but the court cannot do without it, and so we have to do it this way this time even though jurisdictions vary greatly. the ultimate in hoop-jumping. well, whatever. i'm sure i'll manage. i also need to find blue card stock for the front and back covers. of six copies of the same thing that i have to turn in. awesome. the battle against word has been going well. i am sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but i got the goddam tabs to be where i needed throughout the whole document. i save so compulsively now. waiting for another word processing terrorist to bomb a few more paragraphs.
as you may have noticed, this blog has finished determining why, and the answer is that's just the way it is. i personally voted for something else, just so i could complain about whatever won. if i would have needed to modify the poll for some reason, i could have done that too i guess (and i have reason to believe someone else manipulated it as some sort of statistical joke). but really, that's just the way it is deserves to be the answer because it was the only one with a well-known theme song. an excellent theme song. another poll is hardly worthwhile once we've answered the ultimate question, but we'll see. that answer was sort of a fallacy...