Lèse Majesté

Something rotten in the state of Oregon

Oregon is one of my favorite places. Among the first things that come to mind when I think of the place are beer and wine - they make great examples of both there. And state fairs are all about showcasing the agricultural products and the crafts of a state, right? So the Oregon State Fair has long included both in the crafts of home brewing and home winemaking. The Homebrew Beer Competition has been going on for 22 years. The Amateur Wine Competition is even longer-lived - 2010 would be the 31st year.

So it comes as a shock to find both have suddenly been canceled out of the blue. A brand new interpretation of existing state law by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and the state's Justice Department determined that the competitions were illegal. Why? Because you're not supposed to serve your home-made alcohol to the public under the law, and some genius decided that the judges in the competition are the public. So they can't taste the beer or wine, because that would be serving them.

Local news reports on the lunacy:

Sorry, Greater Minnesota and elsewhere

From Surly Brewing's blog:

Not enough Surly
April 21st, 2010

Due to overwhelming demand, we have halted beer shipments to our distributors; South Dakota, Western Wisconsin, Chicagoland, Duluth & the North Shore and Southern MN. We have also sharply curtailed shipments to the NW Twin City Suburbs and Mid-MN. Our 4 new fermentors are on-line and we will have additional beer soon. More fermentation tanks are on the way. It seems that the increased Spring demand for Surly has caught me slightly off guard. The waiting list of 3+ years continues to grow as our increased production has been drank up by increased same-store sales. Talking to some of our liquor store customers, we find that they have increased sales of our beer anywhere from 25%-70% in the last year. Keeping up with the insatiable demand of the Twin Cities for craft beer has been a challenge. We hope that we will soon be able to return to all the markets we have been in. In 2006, our first year of production, we sold 1600 kegs of beer. Last week we had over 2200 kegs of beer in production in the brewery. We can’t grow any faster!  See you drinking, Omar

There are worse problems for a young business to have!

Next to Normal wins Pulitzer!

I've been raving about the musical Next to Normal for the past year to anyone who will listen, although perhaps not as much as Passing Strange. I've seen it twice on Broadway and the cast recording has been in my car's CD player for months. It's that good. And unusual - it's the story of a family devastated by the mother's bipolar disorder, told almost entirely through song. Not your typical feel-good musical. Frankly, it's the only musical to leave me with wet eyes - both times I saw it.

So it's a real surprise to see it announced as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama today, all the more so because it wasn't even a finalist in the category. The jury put it into contention on its own and selected it as the winner. And it deserves all the acclaim it has won, including this award.

Here's a clip of Alice Ripley as the mother, singing about how unhappy she is on medication because it takes away the manic highs in addition to the lows:

Another clip, this one from the Tony Awards, a medley of songs featuring the parents and their son:

The Pulitzer went to Brian Yorkey, book and lyrics, and Tom Kitt, music. Kitt was the composer on two other recent musicals I loved, Cry-Baby the Musical and High FIdelity. Both were slaughtered by the NYT critic Ben Brantley, inspiring a previous rant of mine. Fortunately he didn't decide to kill this masterpiece.

You tell 'em, Mo

Maureen Dowd can be irritating, but she gets things right an awful lot of the time. Lately she's been focusing on the Catholic church's cover-up of sexual abuse by priests. Her column yesterday described the flash of insight she had about the whole mess while talking to a group of educated professional women in Saudi Arabia:

I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.

How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?

I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.

Read it. It's worth a few minutes of your time.

Bet Against the American Dream

This week's episode of This American Life is about Magnetar, a hedge fund that arguably is at the heart of the economic meltdown we're supposedly recovering from. By way of illustration they included a Broadway-style show tune about the company's manipulation of derivatives, and this video shows the recording of the tune:

As entertaining as it may be, it's pretty derivative itself (you should pardon the expression) of The Producers, and the lead singer does a pretty good Nathan Lane, I'd say. Not surprising since he was one of the actors who took over the role of Max Bialystock after Lane created the role in the Broadway musical version of the show.

The story was a joint effort by This American Life, NPR, and ProPublica. A text version of the story is up now on ProPublica's Web site. Makes for good reading, if it doesn't make you want to head to the ramparts in revolution.

Paint an "S" on my forehead for "sucker"

I had a few hours to kill before my flight home from San Diego. So I stopped by the Apple Store in Fashion Valley to see what the chaos would be like. Turned out to be no real lines so I got to play with an iPad for half an hour. And I was hooked. So here I am at 33,000 feet or so somewhere over Nebraska blogging away on one using the wifi on the plane. Sigh. Anyone wanna buy a slightly used iPod Touch?

Tweety Bird gets it wrong yet again

The Daily Kos has a good piece on just how badly Chris Matthews got it wrong in discussing the healthcare endgame with Congressman Alan Grayson. Not only gets it wrong, but browbeats the guy who is on the inside and knows the planned strategy:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What a jerk. Matthew proves himself once again to be the evil love child of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, dedicated to embarrassing the left on a daily basis. Care to lay odds whether his colleagues at MSNBC will call him out tonight for being so utterly wrong on this? Or whether he'll provide anything remotely resembling an honest apology to Grayson?

Quote of the week

From Kung Fu Monkey:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Repo Chick trailer released

One of my favorite movies of all time is 1984's Repo Man. It's one of the great late-night adventures, following a grizzled Harry Dean Stanton and his apprentice, Emilio Estevez, around a lunatic Los Angeles as they repossess cars and try to hit big bounty for a '64 Chevy Malibu which may or may not contain the remains of extraterrestials. It had a great soundtrack inspired by punk rock, and even featured appearances by the Circle Jerks. (The director Alan Cox's next film was Sid and Nancy, based on the life and death of Sid Vicious and his girlfriend.) Cameo roles feature Jimmy Buffett and Michael Nesmith, among others.

There have been rumors of a sequel for a while, and now it looks like they're real! A trailer for Repo Chick has hit the street, written and directed by the same guy. Here it be:

Sadly, the trailer looks far less inspired than the original flick. The apprentice role seems to be a Paris Hilton knock-off, learning the repo trade in the midst of the current economic melt-down. And instead of aliens, we have some odd terrorist group trying to force the U.S. government to close golf courses, ban golf, and go vegan. A member of Chumbawamba is supposedly putting in a cameo appearance.

Could be a total dog, or maybe it'll be another piece of brilliant weirdness. Who knows? But I can't wait to find out.

The April Fools

Too good to be true: Sarah Palin is coming to Minnesota in April to campaign for Michelle Bachmann! It'll be like an intellectual black hole. Will anyone be able to escape the stupidity horizon?