. Further Doodles

. Favourite Beer of The Week

Today I cleaned the fridge. It's a big fridge and it takes a long time to clean.

While I was cleaning it, Nif was at the Berkeley Bowl grocery store buying beer (and some other stuff).

She was in the chutney aisle, examining chutneys, when some criminal type stole her shopping cart. She found it much later, two aisles away, recklessly abandoned beside the organic Zinfandels. Only when she got home did she realize that the perpetrator had made off with the bottle of Grand Teton Sheep Eater Scotch Ale that she had very kindly picked up for me. Grand Teton make "Howling Wolf" which as I'm sure you will recall, was my favourite beer on last year's favourite things of the year list.

Fortunately, the dirty shopping-trolly joy-rider did not rob the bottle of BrewDog Punk IPA that Nif had also picked up.



BrewDog is a Scottish brewery that make the 41% abv "Sink the Bismark IPA," a beer recommended to me by our good friend Erik Marr, who also promised to visit us this summer with his lovely family. Let's hope they follow through on that promise and don't leave us lonely and disappointed.



Punk IPA is a welcome change from all the strong beers I've been drinking recently. It's only 6% abv. But very flavourful. And very colourful. And very lacy, as they say in the beer world when they are describing the frothy bits that stick to the side of the glass, I think.



It came third in the Scottish division of the supermarket chain-store Tesco's 2008 World Beer Cup.


These days Tesco owns most of Britain. One pound in every seven spent in UK retailers is spent in Tesco. That's £1,117 every second.

Three years from now, Tesco plan to expand into Denmark.




Also today, I made Moussaka.


I've never made it before, and I think it came out okay. We didn't have any arrowroot powder for the pine-nut cream topping, but cornstarch seemed to do the trick. I think arrowroot might be cornstarch for the rich and famous.

You can find it in the baking aisle of a Tesco near you.

Just keep an eye on your cart.

And clean your fridge. It's filthy.

. My Nephew Ben

Here are some photos taken by my 3 year old Nephew, Ben. The kid is clearly a genius.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Be careful of this beer.


It's another Mikkeller from Daneland.

This one's an Imperial Stout. It's thick like oil. And sweet like chocolate. And strong like a pint of port.

You've got to sip it slowly.

The day after I drank it I had a cold which lasted a week.

I'm not blaming the beer.

Just be careful.

. The Addict

This is the first bit of stop-motion I ever did, back in 1991.

Were you even born then?

It's quite awful.

. Book of the Month

I had read John Cheever's short stories. They reminded me a bit of Raymond Carver's. Carver is my favourite. Cheever and Carver were alcoholics together at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1973.

I didn't know Cheever also wrote novels, but I do now.


The Wapshot Chronicle was his first, and it starts off more like a bunch of short stories than a novel. The beginning 60 pages are not unlike last month's Book of the Month - they create and populate the world, and there's a whole load of begetting going on. Some seemingly important characters have entire chapters devoted to them, then they disappear, never to be seen again.

I'm not sure why that didn't annoy me. Maybe it's because I read most of the book while I was on holiday - a good chunk of it while I was hiding out in Chelsea Market waiting for the rain to stop.


When it does finally focus, Wapshot is mostly about two brothers growing up and going off into the world to discover life and love and all that. It's tragic and comic. There is a general tone of melancholy about it. The language is wonderful. It's hard to stop reading even when the weather clears up.

The only thing I did not love were the number of "wildly eccentric" characters. Being a grumpy old bastard, I have a hard time with eccentrics. I think that's why I don't enjoy Dickens.

Cheever wrote a sequel - The Wapshot Scandal. I might read it.

I still prefer the short stories though.

You?

Next month we will be reading New York Times bestseller "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave.

. intro/duction

With 4 weeks left in the semester, we slipped in a First Year MFA exhibition in a vacant 7 days at the Martin Wong Gallery on campus. This fleeting exhibition features free wine, and chips & dip tonight, followed by an artist talk in the lecture hall. Though, you don't need any more incentive than hanging out on a college campus on a weeknight, do you?

. NYC

Nif went to New York City for a week with her art school chums. See how arty they are.


I went too, and wandered the streets. See how street I am.


We blew all our air-miles on a schmancy hotel in Soho.


Then we stayed for a few days in Brooklyn with our lovely friends Tina and Colin and Una.


Here's a movie I made -