Beerfest: Day 1

Here is a preliminary look at the 2008 Montreal International Beer Festival – going by the name of the Mondial de la Bière de Montréal – and the beers I tried while I was there today, the 29th of May, 2008. For those in the area who might want to attend, it is still running until the 1st of June.

Of Montreal’s festivals, the beer festival is one of the largest, attracting thousands of people every day for five days and crowding them into a space half the size of a football field. It is an especially crowded event and picking out a space to call your own can be problematic, nevertheless, it is thoroughly worthwhile.

As this is merely a preliminary review, I will stick with the beers that stuck out for me (there is a list of nearly two dozen beers in my notes and to run through all of them would be a waste of my time and yours):

La Bock de Joliette – 6.1%: Made by a local Microbrewery called L’Alchimiste, this one’s my hands-down favourite so far. Its taste is smoky, with a hint of caramel and zero aftertaste. It is nearly like toffee going down and the blend of smoke, malt, bitter and sweet is nothing short of flawless. If I had to recommend the beer festival for any one beer, it would have to be this one.

Aventinus 8%: A german beer from the makers of Warsteiner Premium, this one is strong and fruity. The aftertaste is a little odd, though not at all unpleasant and the scent of it before the first sip is absolutely divine. The amount of sediment this one leaves behind is almost disturbing and was worth a hearty laugh upon discovery.

Bog Water 6.6%: An Ontarian brew, this one is chocolaty in the extreme; it actually tastes like dark chocolate, though it retains the memory of its origins and the caramel stout base comes through clearly. A thoroughly enjoyable brew. Unfortunately, the line up at this particular kiosk was long and crowded, so be sure you really want it before trying to get a hold of a glass.

Delaware Fort 18%: That’s right, eighteen percent. This is an unbelievably strong beer, with an almost winey taste to it. The malt, as you might believe, comes through quite clearly and, in spite of this, it manages to be very enjoyable – mostly due to a pleasant, fruity bouquet and an aftertaste which I’d qualify as enjoyable, if a little long to dissipate.

There were others, but I think I’ll wait until Saturday has passed and I’ve had another day of sampling all the delightful brews on offer at the Mondial before writing up my final report. If you do decide to go, I hope to see you there and I sincerely hope this review helps. What a fantastic way to spend the day!

It isn't Over... Yet.

An acquaintance of mine, a certain Seth Eagelfeld, recently wrote an interesting article for his blog entitled Is It Over?, which addressed an issue which most people with a nose for history have at least managed to get a vague sense of, in recent years. Specifically, he lamented what he perceived as the death of progress and originality in American culture, referring briefly to most, if not all facets of that culture.

His editorial began my mind working and here I present the results of my musings; there is a flavour of this in my comments to his post, but I wish to elaborate.

American culture (and I refer here to North American, english culture, generally), or the industry of culture in North America, has changed narrowed its focus since the golden ages of the sixties and seventies and, in doing so it has essentially removed art and beauty and most importantly content from almost every artistic & literary medium available in the mainstream today.

The focus, of course, is profit margins and dollar sums; every year must bring more revenue and satisfying content does not accomplish that - or at least, it doesn't appear to do so. The angle of attack has been, in all appearance, to make consumer culture (culture made for consumption, that is) addictive, in the same way that heroin or nicotine are addictive and with a similar result:

The products sold are disposable and contribute nothing to the growth of intellect or imagination, they are quickly purchased, quickly thrown away and by the time they've made a dull thud at the bottom of the waste-basket the next generation is ready for public consumption and that many more dollars change hands in an arrangement which has become almost entirely one-sided.

The social reasons for this I cannot begin to fathom, although they would undoubtedly make for a fascinating sociological research paper, but the economic reasons are obvious; they are a natural result of the capitalist drive to produce more for less while all the while charging ever more (I respect the value of the market to our society, and the fact that consumers are willing to purchase the refried crap being sold to them does seem to indicate that it isn't entirely without merit, but there is certainly something to be said for the art of less commercial times).

That being said, there is hope in the form of the less popular, less well known bands, artists and writers who - by virtue of being "undiscovered," must work many times as hard to attain even one tenth of the popularity and acclaim of their corporation-backed colleagues. It is in these people that the truth of our society and politics and families can be found; they offer us our real, true culture and it is because of them that people of intellect can, after a fashion, remain sane.

One thing Seth referred to in the link above that strikes me as almost anthropic is that the music and literature we have from decades and centuries ago is almost all of a quality that modern artists cannot hope to match in their lifetimes; it could well be that a sort of historical natural selection has already killed and weeded out all the unpleasant swill from ages past that people of that generation saw with the same uncompromising, critical eye that Seth himself uses to view the products of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Montreal is Burning

Habs fans should be ashamed. This is not how we should be comporting ourselves. We've seen second round meltdowns before; the Habs have a long way to go and undignified, evil disregard for people's property in celebration(?!) is hardly warranted at this point, let alone justifiable.

I wouldn't join in, but I believe that if you are going riot over the playoffs, you might aswell wait until we win the fucking cup.

This is the greatest hockey city in the world; it is home to the greatest, most storied hockey franchise the world has ever seen; we should hold ourselves up as an example to the 29 other NHL cities. This type of crass, uncivilized, barbaric behaviour is unbecoming of soccer hooligans and we shouldn't tolerate it from our own compatriots.

If you know someone who was involved in the rioting, hit him/her. As hard as you can. Smack the spit out of his/her fucking mouth so that they know that they behaved unacceptably. And then shun them, shun them until they admit their mistakes and/or decide to turn themselves in to the god damned law. Then hit them again.

This stuff is terrible.

NHL Again; it's playoff time, sorry.

Alright, so this weekend wasn't a great one for the Habs; yes, we won one of the two matches - but we didn't deserve to win. The Habs played like pure shite and if Kovalev wasn't as good and lucky as he is we'd be trailing this series, not leading it.

Part of it is leadership. I've said it before, Kovalev is one of the greatest players in the NHL today; he can outskate, outshoot and outmuscle just about every other player there is and has hands which can best be described as being magical. I've seen him - in the last two seasons inclusively - lose control of the puck to another player a grand total of three times; I watch 70 games a season. That being said, he is a poor leader for the team - a poor captain; he's an emotional, selfish player who focuses his game on his own success, not on the success of the team and so, when the team faces well organized resistance, as it did over the weekend, the offense tends to collapse (luckily, Komisarek and Price keep things together on the defensive side of it).

Which is why the team needs Koivu back.

If you were to define your perfect team captain, you'd come up with Koivu; he's unselfish, setting up plays, passing and assisting more than scoring (look up his career stats); he is inspiring to his teammates because of his toughness, grit and determination in the face of adversity; he reads the ice like no one else and is in constant communication with his coach, the referees and his teammates (watch him play, some time).

So if there's any player out there who could pull the Habs back together and turn them into the game-winning machine they've been all season, its Saku Koivu. We need him back from his injury. We need him back before the next series, that's for fucking sure.

Children & Miracles

Every year, CHOM (97.7 MHz FM), along with its sister stations Mix96 (95.9 MHz FM) and CJAD (800 kHz AM), hosts a pledge drive for the Montreal Children's Hospital; it's called the Caring for Kids Radiothon and it's one of the most worthwhile causes I've ever heard of. It's goal is to maintain a supply of new and modern equipment in what has become (thanks, at least in part, to exactly this kind of charity drive) one of the best and most prestigious Children's Hospitals in North America.

Part of the programming for the pledge drive is a series of testimonials from parents and children who've been through terrible ordeals with illness and have found help, hope, caring and good medicine within the walls of the Children's; without exception, parents & patients alike laud the staff, the doctors, even the support personnel, for their kindness, professionalism and skill; these testimonials will tear your heart out. They could leave you literally weeping. It takes a cold heart - a heart which's humanity has been completely leeched away - to remain unmoved.

But what has struck me - and this is an artifact of the organizers' understandable goal of getting as much money as possible from as many people as possible - is the constant use of the word 'miracle' when dealing with acts of human kindness; from the donations of listeners to the skill of the doctors involved. The reason this has struck me is not because I'm a theophobic atheist with no morals who wants everyone to bow down to my way of thinking (although the only reason it might have struck me if I wasn't an atheist is if I were a philosopher or theologian), but rather because it seems inappropriate in light of the drive's stated goal (which is a bizarre paradox):

Assuming God does exist and is omnipotent and does interfere in our world through the use of miracles, then he is responsible for everything. Philosophers and theologians call this The Problem of Evil. Thanking God for saving your child - all the while belittling the actions of the men and women who were, through their expertise and professionalism, directly involved in saving that child's life - is tantamount to thanking an arsonist for calling the fire department after setting your house ablaze.

I think the facts of the situation are pretty straightforward; there are no miracles here. The Montreal Children's Hospital, its doctors and staff, work exceedingly hard in a market that does not favour them (Québec's doctors are the worst paid north of Mexico) for children who deserve as much health and happiness as everybody else. Calling their work a miracle cheapens it - it says that their skill and talent and work ethic is inconsequential, that whatever happens, God will intervene; this is, of course, wrong. These men and women are some of the best people our society has to offer and our city would be poorer without them - let's honour them properly.