| The best movie ’Ol
Hop has seen in a while wasn’t “Star Bores”
or that “kids getting laid” movie with the pie or
the idiot-savant “wandering around with a hand-held camera
in the woods” $30,000 wonder-grosser project thing. Nope!
Just saw a 1933 vintage flick called “What! No Beer?”
starring Jimmy Durante and Buster Keaton. Got it at Blockbuster.
Jimmy knows that Prohibition is coming to an end and talks his
buddy Buster Keaton into financing the purchase of a defunct
brewery so they can start brewing and beat the other brewers
to market. The hijinks (as they say in the reviews) begin when
they start to brew beer at an old, long-shuttered plant. The
wacky piece is peppered with Durante screwball observations
like “I’d give ten dollars to be a millionaire”
or “You can’t make dark beer in the daylight!”
Jimmy’s recipe to make beer: “Two cups of sugar,
one can of malt extract, yeast, five gallons of water.”
Finally, the old brewmaster shows up and starts making brew
for the beleaguered partners. They start selling it at the brewery
with a sign saying “Real Beer, 5¢.” The last
scene is a close-up of Durante, who looks at the camera and
says, “It’s your turn next, folks. It won’t
be long now!” He then blows the head off a mug of dark
beer. Four stars, no breasts, Hop Bob sez check it out…
Talk about “getting in Dutch”:
Julia Carling, a TV personality living in New Zealand, is
set to shed the surname she acquired from her ex-husband,
former rugby star Will Carling. But rather than a sign of
further disenchantment with the man she divorced in 1996,
the television presenter's name change is part of a sponsorship
deal. The 33-year-old will be known instead as Julia Heineken,
losing her surname — which she shares with a rival lager
brand — in a cheeky tie-up with the beer firm. (Go ahead,
make up your own jokes!)…
Farting is such sweet sorrow Dept.: It may
not be socially acceptable, but passing gas is good for your
health, according to Australian corporate nutrition consultant
Matt O'Neill. “Better an empty house than a bad tenant,”
said O'Neill, in New Zealand to promote a national fit-food
campaign run by health agencies. O'Neill said that flatulence
was so common for men that it was an effective icebreaker
for them to discuss their bodies and male health issues. “If
you ask people to count how often they pop off in a day, it
would be double figures.” If frequency isn’t the
problem, then how about the odoriferousness? “If men
eat more fiber, they will be producing a lot of hot air, and
that's about it — it won't be as smelly. It's the pies,
beer and steak that make the smelly ones.” But, Mr. O’Neill,
we LIKE pies, beer and steak!… I’m still hard
at work on my new book, How to Relax and Enjoy Involuntary
Flatulence. It’ll be a gas…
The Celebrator Beer News has received its
share of kudos over the years but none stranger than
the review from Las Vegas City Life, the alternative news
weekly in the city that never sleeps. In praise of an article
by our own Bob Barnes on the beer oasis in the desert kingdom,
the journal opined, “Local news racks are cluttered
with seemingly thousands of free publications, some worth
picking up, most not worth wiping your ass with. One that
definitely merits an occasional perusal is Celebrator Beer
News.” Hey, that’s US! Aside from some awkward
grammar, I guess we can rejoice in the knowledge that we ARE
worth “wiping your ass with!” Watch out for those
staples…
If the millennium weren’t difficult enough
(it isn’t really until 2001, ya know…), leave
it to the Scots to have their own unique twist to it. Are
you ready to celebrate Hogmanay? The term comes from the Gaelic
“oge maidne,” meaning “new morning.”
Of course, any such celebrating involves copious quantities
of “uisge beatha” (Gaelic again), or “water
of life.” The Dewar’s folks want you to employ
their stuff and have sent out “First Foot Kits”
so that the uninitiated can do the Hogmanay thing in proper
fashion. The kit contains a wee dram of Dewar’s White
Label, some salt, some pure butter shortbread cookies and
a lump of coal. After “the bells” ring in the
New Year and the assembled (and well-lubricated) celebrators
have sung “Auld Lang Syne” (you guessed it, Gaelic
for “old times”), the First Foot (the first person
to set foot in the house after midnight) will bring good luck
to the household in the year to come. The shortbread is offered
for hospitality, the coal represents light and warmth, the
salt dates to Roman times and represents wealth, and the Scotch…
well, you know! So gather your own First Foot Kit and prepare
yourself for Hogmanay. (The coal came wrapped in plastic with
a note: “Do Not Eat!” We can thank the lawyers
for that.)…
And, in the words of Robert Burns, “And
surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp, and surely I’ll
be mine; we’ll tak a cup ’o kindness yet, for
auld lang syne.” Happy New Beer! |
