Making amends for violating principle #2

Yesterday's post repeatedly violated "Principle #2" from The Declaration.  Now I must make amends to this blog.  And the only way to apologize and properly cleanse a blog is to post an adorable baby animal video.

Please enjoy the following 28 second video of a cat hugging a tiny kitten having a nightmare.

We cool now?

When St. Bernardus and I assembled a grill

Happy Labor Day!

In honor of this last good weekend of grilling for many Americans, I’m posting this live diary that I wrote on the evening of June 10^th.  Please note, the following contains language that is NSFW (not safe for work). Though this violates Principle #2, I've chosen to present this unedited.

6/10/2011

Okay, here’s the situation.  Kristen is away on an extended business trip.  Kristen wants a grill.  It’s Friday night.  I need to combine all of these elements.  So this is what I’m doing:

A bottle of St Bernardus Abt 12 (delicious!) Belgian Ale and I are going to assemble a Char-Broil 2-Burner Grill…unbeknownst to my travelling bride.  (I can still call her my bride as we haven’t been married for a year as of this typing.)

I’m not the handiest of men and my 750mL bottle of Patience is always half-empty.  It’s not that I’m trying to prove my virility to my woman, but I seem to turn into a childish dingbat every time I’m left to myself.  So this time, I going to prove myself useful and get drunk while doing it.

Here’s the bottle:

The bottle on the right

Here’s the box:

(Terrible pictures courtesy of my terrible BlackBerry Bold)

One thing to note, the majority of online reviews for this grill state that the assembly is unnecessarily complicated by poorly labeled parts, bad directions, and missing pieces.

So this should turn out well.

8:45pm – Going to the bottle.  Going to the box.  Charging my phone in case I lose a finger.

St. Bernardus 12 is 10% alcohol by volume (3x the strength of Amstel Light).  The bottle is 25.4 fluid ounces.  So this will be like doing five shots.  Good for coordination and dexterity.

How genteel it looks in a wine glass.

There are a lot of parts.

There are A LOT of parts.

Already found a piece that’s not part of the parts diagram.

9:30pm – So, I finished my first drink before starting step 1.

And it took 45 mins to complete 1 & 2.  The parts take up the entire living room.  I have found the pieces I’ve needed, but really after 45 minutes I’ve only partially assemble the two legs.

Already bent the metal on a support beam, out of brute fucking strength or maybe just on accident.  Time for another round.

9:45pm – So, yeah, step 3.  First cognitive issue...

Ever stare at a three-dimensional illustration and not see the exact three dimensions that the artist(?) had intended? Apparently the M.C. Esher-motherfucker who drew diagram 3 had me seeing the legs inverted.  I got concerned that the hole were misdrilled in the main front piece, but once a gained a moment of ocular clarity, I realized that I was screwing in the wrong holes…

10:10pm – The girl’s got wheels! And by girl, I mean grill.  And by grill, I mean this thing that looks nothing like a grill.

Had my first stubbing-of-the-baby-toe.  I think I wept blood.

And by the way, what’s up with Step 4?  Step 3 required two actions.  Step 4 requires TEN actions.  What’s up with that?  Fuck you, Step 4.

10:25pm – Step 5 & 6 had fewer actions combined than Step 4.  Fuck you, Step 4.  

The grill now has the hose attached as well as the ignitor!

Had a moment of panic because I didn’t think they’d included the Stamped Nut (GAH!).  I searched the floor, the packing, the bags, the counters, my pants, and my empty glass.  And then at the most desperate hour, I found the Stamped Nut (GAH!) already screwed onto the piece that it needed to be screwed onto.  Good sentence structure, there.  Comma.  Drink break.

10:35pm – You ever find yourself in a situation where you’re assembling something, then you discover a whole bunch of parts are missing, so then you freak out thinking that the manufacturer forgot to include those parts, and you panic for ten minutes, only to realize that you fucked up an earlier part of the process?  Yeah, I used the wrong screws in Step 6.

Did I mention that I had a generous glass of Guinness an hour before starting this drinking?

10:40pm – Step 7 complete.  You may be wondering how many steps there are.  The answer:

More than 7.

I haven’t looked.  I just want to be done by midnight so that I won’t be an asshole neighbor to my Asshole Neighbor.

11:00pm – So yeah, I screwed up something royally somewhere around STEP ONE.  Spent the better part of the last 20 minutes attempting to fix it.

Step 9 is like Finnegan’s Wake.  There are like 50 actions that are diagrammed non-linearly.  Just like Finnegan’s Wake.

11:40pm – It’s been 40 minutes.  Step 9 was as epic as it had seemed.  I assembled the firebox (not a venereal disease).  The whole contraption is beginning to look like something that could be used for something useful.

Poured an extra large final glass.  Dexterity failing slowly.  Neighbor just came home.  I’ll bet he’s gay.  Pride Weekend started tonight, locally, and he just came home late.  Do the math.  In Bewitched the nosy, pushy neighbors were the Kravitzes.  Bunch of anti-Semites wrote that show.  Or Jews, I don’t really know.

12:05am – Fuck the neighbors I’m going to complete this damn thing right now.

At 12:32am Pacific Daylight Time I id it.  I really can’t believe I finished it.  The bottle of ale, i mean.

Sincerely, though, I really dint foresee actually finishing the grill.  But instead, here it is:

I don’t recommend what I did, though I do recommend St. Bernardus if you like your Belgian Ales like you like your men, pale and emotional, I mean, dark and strong.

I needed to accomplish something this week.  And I’m glad that this was it.  I’m reminded by a quote...... that I can’t fucking remember.   Sweet dreams.

Postscript:  Though the legs were assembled backwards, the grill works very well.

BRONSON review and The Rum Diary trailer

Happy Friday!

The only bit of booze in today's entry arrives in the form of the newly released trailer for The Rum Diary, adapted from Hunter S. Thompson's novel.

I would pay to see this movie:

If I were to have provided career advice to Johnny Depp back in the '90s, I would have recommended that he focus on playing Hunter's drunken alter-ego and ignore offers to play a drunken pirate.

And that is why I am not a talent agent.

The Rum Diary opens in theaters next month.  Opening this month: Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn; and Warrior, starring Tom Hardy.  Hardy and Refn actually once worked together on BRONSON to which I now awkwardly segue...


BRONSON

92 minutes of untempered unexplained rage.  And in its depiction of this rage, the film is wholly successful.

In the UK in 1974, Michael Peterson was given a seven-year prison sentence for robbing a bank.  Due to his favorite pastime of delivering vicious beatdowns to prison guards, he's been in various British prisons ever since.  In the process, Peterson gave himself the moniker of Charles Bronson (after the late star of the Death Wish fascist wet dream series) and gained considerable notoriety in the UK press for his persistent violence.  The film, BRONSON (2009), is a first-person portrayal of this deeply unhinged individual.

Tom Hardy turns in the most physically intense performance that I have ever seen.  That's not hyperbole.  He spends most of the film howling, screaming, singing, and getting bludgeoned.  And he's naked.  Yes, European naked.  A lot.

While heaps of Hardy penis might be a draw for many of you, keep in mind that while the penis is out, Hardy is bleeding from the skull and screaming, "YOU F***ING C**TS!"  For an hour-and-a-half.

Though there is little doubt of writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn's immense talents, the dialogue is Guy-Ritchie-meets-Coen-Brothers, the violence staging and pop music utilization is Scorsese heavy, and the fantastic fourth-wall-stomping storytelling device vanishes abruptly for almost the entire second half.  His visuals and editing are plentiful though occasionally strain towards quirk.

There's an epic sequence based on an actual prison riot for which the production clearly did not room in the budget.  Refn's bargain depiction is brilliant, complete with singing, face paint, and real life footage.  He also works wonders in tandem with Hardy, creating a stunning performance -- which clearly won over Christopher Nolan's heart -- so one can't complain about Refn's actor-direction.

So is it good?  It's effective.  (I wanted to smash something after it was over.)  Because Bronson/Peterson purposely remains a mystery, there's no character arc.  When he gets his Bronson moniker, we see that there's no profound explanation behind it.  Similarly, there's no profound meaning behind the man's rage.  It's just there: an extreme depiction of the volcanic force inside us all.  And the film hangs it out there for us see, every inch.

What Are You Drinking? -- Part Three

This is the third installment of a three-part series.  Part One is here.  Part Two is here.  I'm including a link to the Google Docs file on which the table screenshots are based.


Part 3:  A Slender Bender

Looks like Saturday's spoken for. What'd you get for Sunday?

You will hear from every fitness maven, nutritionist, diet guru, and many other well-intentioned but spiritually-confused experts that alcohol is nothing but empty calories.

They are correct.

But, you don't drink so that you look sexy.  You drink so that I look sexy.

And may I say we're all looking quite fine tonight.

Here's the truth that the sad people are referencing:  Ethanol = 7 calories per gram.  Carbs are 4 cal/g, proteins 4 cal/g, and fats 9 cal/g.  You can hit the gym to burn off those nutrients.  Alcohol doesn't make it so easy.  Due to the depression of the drinker's synaptic transmission (mentioned in Part One), the booze doesn't promote activity.  Instead it slows things down.  A canter along the beach isn't a bad idea, but drunken sprinting on the treadmill would be a poor decision.  And lifting weights would be downright hazardous.

Those calories that are neither burned by exercise nor processed in your body's daily needs are stored up as Tubby molecules.  Happily, due to the laws of physics, energy still exists in the Tubby.  So nothing (except life) is stopping you from exercising vigorously when you're sober.

What most of the diet folks are not divulging is that caloric value between drinks varies considerably.  Two-and-a-half shots of tequila still has fewer calories than one serving of Baileys.  And don't get me started on whiskies.  Sweet sweet whiskies.

The table!

Orange = beers; Purple = wines; Pink = liqueurs; Blue = spirits; Brown = whiskies

As you may note, the caloric differences in this chart quickly become significant at the bottom.

"Why do spirits and whiskies fare so well, calorically?"
Hello again, Blue Text.  Due to distillation processes, liquors are just ethanol, water, and microscopic natural favor and aromatic compounds.  No lesser sugars, no proteins, and no fats.  So their calories come from alcohol, nothing else.

Beer contains a small amount of sugars from the barley and hops needed in its production.  For instance, Budweiser has 10g of carbs and Miller Lite has about 3g.  Those carbs exist because they haven't been distilled into ethanol.  Wines still have a little sugar left from their grapes.  Liqueurs like Amaretto are generously sweetened with sugar.  Bailey's has been fattened and sweetened; that 2oz serving has 8g of fat and 10g of sugary carbs.

"What about mixers?"
Here's about mixers:

Sour mix (4oz) - 107 calories (water, high fructose corn syrup & chemical additives)
Coke (8oz) - 100 calories (water, high fructose corn syrup & chemical additives)
Ginger Ale (8oz) - 84 calories (water, high fructose corn syrup & chemical additives)
Tonic (8oz) - 88 calories (water, high fructose corn syrup & chemical additives)

A wise Wonka once whispered, "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."  If you're adding mixers, they almost always have more calories than your booze.  More calories in the tonic than the vodka.  Many more calories in the sour mix than the tequila.  If you're tarting your tipples (drinking mixed beverages) every night, consider what the double-barreled blast of corn syrup and ethanol is doing to your liver.

Here are the ingredients to the real skinny Margarita: tequila, shot glass.

Thus ends my health-nut-style diatribe.

"Getting a little amorous with the hyphens today?  Next thing you know, I'll be Blue-Text."
Do you have something meaningful to contribute?

"Club soda, ice, or lime squeezes make healthier mixers."
Thank you.

So let's pull this all together:

• Alcohol content:  Wine, and strong liquors (like gin, vodka, and whiskey) have more alcohol in their single servings than sparkling wines, light beers, and liqueurs.
• Cost per serving of alcohol - Strong liquors (especially gin) and beer provide more buzz for the buck.  Liqueurs, not so much.
• Calories per serving of alcohol - The spirits win again, thanks to the magic of the distillation process.  While beers and liqueurs get to be on the heavy side.

In the end, drink what you enjoy.  Take pleasure in the unmeasurable.

Now, let us return to our regularly scheduled drink.



(Sources: my liquor cabinet; Tap 'n Track App by Nanobit Software;
beveragewarehouse.com; beer100.com; caloriecount.about.com;American Medical Association; Indiana Prevention Resource Center;
Feller, Robyn. The Complete Bartender. New York: Berkeley Books, 1990.
Pendell, Dale. Pharmako/Poeia. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009.)

What Are You Drinking? -- Part Two

This is the second installment of a three-part series.  Part One is here.  I'm including a link to the Google Docs file on which the table screenshots are based.

I  <3  California grocery stores

Part 2:  What'd you pay for that?

In this troubled economy we should consider where we're putting our money.  Buy a sixer of Miller Lite?  Or a mid-range whiskey blend?  Miller's going to set you back $6.  Johnnie Walker Black's on sale for $28. Then there's that $8 wine at Trader Joes.  What's going to give you more booze for your buck?

OR sometimes a opportunity comes around to buy something nice for yourself.  Are you going to go for that bottle of great real champagne for $35 or how about that good bottle of 18-year-old single malt for $100?

"$100!  That's ridiculous!  Why would you dump so much money into some liquid that you're just going to drink up anyway?  Let's skip the middle man and flush that cash directly down the toilet."
Good question, Blue Text.  We'll get to that.

Now, assuming for a moment that you enjoy all of these alcohols relatively equally, how much drank can you actually get for your dollar?  See here:

Orange = beers; Purple = wines; Pink = liqueurs; Blue = spirits; Brown = whiskies

To answer the first question: While it's closer than some may expect, Miller Lite does give you more for your money.  The beers tend to.  So do the mid-range liquors, as can be expected.  It's interesting to note how close everything lines up at the top.  That makes it convenient to choose whatever your tastebuds call for.

Beers hold their own pretty well throughout.  The liqueurs really don't, again due to their low alcohol by volume.  Conversely due to its higher content, gin shows up as a cost-effective option, whether you're aiming high or low.

Now, to address the second question.  Compared to the $35 champagne, that $100 whisky doesn't seem so bad now.  Alcohol content is 16% more expensive in the bubbly.  Meanwhile the whisky is an investment.  And that's a major premium that's difficult to measure.  To note:

Once you open that champagne, it must be finished within the next couple of hours, even if you seal it up Vacu-Vin-style.  But that whiskey?  You can go back to it whenever you like.  A pricey bottle like the one in the example above can last you two months if you don't abuse it too badly.  Liquor bottles thus become luxurious.  A long-term relationship, as opposed to a one-night stand.  Something you don't have to rush.  Did your work day suck?  Enjoy a sip.  Is it Friday yet?  Have two sips.  How much are you willing to pay for that?

"But you can't drink liquor with a meal!"
Yes, you can.  Vodkas are designed to be flavorless -- they're basically ethyl and water -- so you can enjoy it with anything you like.  No two decent brands of gin are the same, resulting it different balances of herbs which in turn can be paired with the herbs and seasonings in your dish.  Great whiskies are known to have 10-15 separate flavors and aromas that can in turn be matched to nearly every food.

"But a glass of wine is romantic!"
Perhaps.  But Oban 14-year served neat is damn near erotic.  And it's not $100.

"But I like Budweiser."
Don't tell me you like it.  Tell me you bought it because you were financially responsible and reviewed my chart above.

Have I sold you on liquor yet?
"No. I like Budweiser. And Baileys. Together."

Wow.

Well, wait until you see Part 3...

(Sources: my liquor cabinet; beveragewarehouse.com; American Medical Association; Indiana Prevention Resource Center;
Feller, Robyn. The Complete Bartender. New York: Berkeley Books, 1990.)

What Are You Drinking? -- Prelude and Part One

This is the first installment of a three-part series.


Deliciousness is subjective.  To some, Budweiser has a repugnant flavor and an aftertaste that makes one reach for coarse sandpaper to scrape one's tastebuds off.  Others like it.  Some find an Islay single malt a good match with barbecue and will drink it even if it risks one's wife avoiding kisses for 48 hours.  Others don't like it.

So you should let your mouth and tummy guide you where my simple math dare not tread.  But I will discuss quantitative decisions that can accompany one's drinking choices.  I've included a link here to the Google Docs file on which the screenshots are based.  Someday, perhaps, Google will allow bloggers to insert Google Docs into Google Blogger.  Right.

(Disclaimer: If you, dear reader, choose only to drink until you black out, vomit, weep, and forget the very drinks you've drunk, then these posts will only be tangentially related to your choices.)



Part 1:  How much alcohol is in your alcohol?

(Source: http://blake-theethanolmolecule.blogspot.com/)

Ethyl Hydroxide is a protoplasmic poison that can be metabolized at a rate of approximately 0.5oz per hour. When consumed at a greater rate than this metabolization, it enters the bloodstream where it then affects synaptic transmission. Therein lies the magic.

It is from this metabolization process that the American Medical Association, state highway patrols, and I get our official single serving of alcohol: 0.5 fluid ounces.

Interestingly, one established serving of wine (5oz) does not equal one serving of alcohol. It's more, as are most servings of alcoholic drinks.  See table pic below:

Orange = beers; Purple = wines; Pink = liqueurs; Blue = spirits; Brown = whiskies

You may notice a few things here.  Firstly, the prevalence of the blu-ish and brown rows at the bottom of the table, showing more alcohol per serving.  These are the spirits.  You'll also notice Bailey's way up at the top with the lowest alcohol per serving.  You may wonder, why isn't its serving size larger, like 3 ounces?  That mystery will be solved in Part 3.

The argument can be made that the listed serving sizes -- while considered standard by bartenders, calorie counting programs, and general etiquette -- are arbitrary when the drinker is at home.  "I can pour me a double whenever I like," one may say.  That's fair.  But there's only so much booze in your bottle, as per the "Servings of Alc" column.

So what can we learn here?

• Champagne, light beers, and some liqueurs have one standard serving of ethanol per pour, or a little less.
• Spirits tend to have a little more.  Example: Five shots of vodka (ugh, flashback) equal six servings of alcohol.
• If you're popping open a beer, then you're getting pretty close to a 1-to-1 ratio.
• That good bottle of Cab sitting on your shelf at home may hold just five glasses of wine but it has seven kicks of ethyl.
• Or if you're pouring spirits at home, the higher the alcohol content (even if the difference looks minuscule), the more buzz in your bottle.

So take another look at the table in the picture, peek at the Google Doc, or let me know if you'd like the mini-spreadsheet.  There's more fun where that came from.

In Part Two I will take a look at economic factors...

(Sources: my liquor cabinet; beveragewarehouse.com; American Medical Association; Indiana Prevention Resource Center;
Feller, Robyn. The Complete Bartender. New York: Berkeley Books, 1990.
Pendell, Dale. Pharmako/Poeia. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009.)

The Recap

As I was saying, distractions will corrupt one’s intentions.

But conversely, one’s intentions must shift with life. This is a little more personal than I usually get with my posts, but the last three years have been full of life:

My career:

As the 2008 election was in process, I wrote a political thriller. In June ’09 it got to a well-respected management company and scored me my two awesome managers.

In 2010, I wrote a script (for money!) for an independent producer.

This year, I’ve been writing a spec script for another producer that could lead to bigger and better things.

I quit my production accounting position with Discovery Studios so that I could focus on writing full time.

* * * * *

My family:

My family navigated financial troubles. My parents divorced. My grandmother passed away, age 92. The greatest cat in the world passed away, age 17. Keep moving. Nothing to see here, people.

* * * * * 

My international travels:

Italy (Rome, Tuscany, Naples, Amalfi Coast), United Kingdom (3^rd time, but 2^nd trip to London), Ireland (3^rd time, sigh).

* * * * * 

My new family:

In March ’09, on Crisy Field in San Francisco, I proposed to Kristen Perry. She said yes. She got a ring. We had ice cream sundaes. It was a pretty good weekend.

In June ’10 we invited family, friends, and a rabbi, threw a killer party and called it a wedding. I am married. Michael Kravitz is married.

(Buried that lead nicely.)

“When I said, I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.” Right. That’s exactly what Benedick and I meant.

Kristen is a special person. If you haven’t met her yet, I hope that you have the opportunity soon. She’s brilliant, funny, peaceful, and beautiful. And the family that I have joined is fantastic.

* * * * *

I would be remiss if I didn't reference the hundreds of hours of film, music, and whisky that I've enjoyed as well.

Now that Diving for Pearls has been pulled from the mothballs, let’s get some work done.