I am a fairly avid homebrewer. I make no secret about the fact that one day, I’d love to have a little pub or brewery (or both), crafting fine pints of beer.

A friend of mine - the eternally-affable, pint-quaffing, fish & chips eating limey Alex Purkiss - has become a rather vocal mouthpiece for my kitchen concoctions, and has gone ahead with designing a logo for one possible public release….

I’ll let you know how that goes. Perhaps you might find a beer in a bottle (or drawn from a tap) emblazoned with the following logo at some point in the future…  

I grew up in Golden, in the shadow of the mighty Coors Brewery. I can’t tell you how many items emblazoned with the Coors brand I encountered in my childhood. One only had to walk into Foss Drug store and check out the array of promotional items available to the garden-variety tourist, or proud hometown resident.

My wife Lisa recently took up knitting (she’s already made me a scarf) and her new hobby dredged up a memory from early childhood, and something that qualifies as potentially the high-water mark of 1970’s Golden: The knitted beer can hat.

Maybe these will jog your memory too… 

Even as a kid of 5 or so, I recognized that these things were an anomaly. What I am trying to reconcile today is that I actually want one, not necessarily to wear, but to have as a memento. Perhaps it could be a part of a full ensemble from the era, which also include the hunter-orange down vest, clutter boots and “elephant bell” jeans. 

Now this is just darn funny….

Woot! 

It’s fun to be anonymous: You can say and do whatever you like without fear of consequence. Such is the appeal of any form of communication outside of a face-to-face interaction.

Take comments on a blog:The blogging world is a strange place sometimes. Just like many aspects of technology, blogging (the Internet in general) affords folks a sort of cloaking device. With this invisibility mechanism in place, folks often say and do whatever they feel like doing. Anyone who has bothered to read the comments posted beneath a politically-charged online article can see the vitriol that often accompanies said postings.

I was updating some posts and checking comments today, and a comment struck me as a little odd. In the comments section of my first post on the blog, you will see \’)/* ekibastos. Yes, strange, to say the least. With great curiosity and expectation, I googled this (seemingly) gibberish, to find that if you maintain a blog, this \’)/* ekibastos person has hit a lot of blogs and message boards online for a while now, but always with the \’)/* ekibastos post, and nothing more. I seem to be in a large contingency of folks who post articles online that have been visited by this entity/person/mystery organism. Strangely, I don’t feel special as a result…

Andy Warhol talked about 15 minutes of fame. Assuming ekibastos is in fact a person, I wonder - because there is always a trail of binary code out there in cyberspace from all of our respective Internet pithering - if this is ekibastos’ attempt at immortality? Is this the modern equivalent of the carved bust, or a Great Pyramid?

Anyone?

Ekibastos?

Bueller??

…Well, not exactly. But, my cappuccinos come from a cow-colored apparatus.

 There is a bit of a connection though. Please allow me to dissert… The coffee itself is a roasted bean from the coffee plant, in this case grown in Chiapas, Mexico and is organic, fair trade and pretty much guilt-free. The other component - the juvenile bovine nutrient - comes from one of these. Combine the two and one is transported to caffeinated Nirvana: Heaven in a mug with froth.

My loving spouse - we’ll call her Lisa (’cause that’s her name) - ordered me a Mukka Express cappuccino maker as an early birthday gift (it’s October 20th, in case you wondered…)  Apparently, the way this worked out was that originally, I WAS to get the stainless steel version, but the cow-colored one is what arrived. Now, rather than wait for my birthday to lay this particular appliance “mootif” on me, Lisa opted to spring it on me now because she felt that I ought to at least know that she’d been shipped the wrong thing. I thought it was kinda cool, and to boot, it actually makes a killer cappuccino, which I think was the real reason behind her wanting to open the package: She simply wanted to put it to use.

I wasn’t being afforded any real consideration. My wife wanted at my birthday gift…. As a result of our severe caffeine addiction, it’s seen a lot of use in the last day. I lost count after 20, but bear in mind: I didn’t drink all of them myself. Check it out: It is chic…

Mo Mo - one of our two cats - doesn’t seem the least bit interested in it though, despite their similar aesthetic…

My wife has pretty good taste. 

Of course we Mountain Guides are SUPPOSED to remain apolitical, but in this instance, I couldn’t contain myself. I work (very) part time at Stomp Them Grapes, and this was the sign the owners Brian and Richard wanted the delegates and revelry-seekers in town for the DNC to see…