micahsaul

I don’t remember when I started drinking whiskey. It was likely in 2001, during the first of my punk rock, dirty apartment, sleeping on the floor, sharing a small apartment with entirely too many fucking people phase. I know for a fact that it was certainly then or before, as I remember many nights during those six months spent kicking back glass after glass of Jameson or Macallan with my best friend Zane.

Well, seven years have passed, I’ve lived through two more of those phases, and Zane has passed away… but the love of whiskey remains, though it has changed form. I used to be an Irish man (not an Irishman, but a man who drinks Irish whiskey). Of course, that meant bottle upon bottle of Jameson, that particular tipple being the only Irish that deserves the name. I’d drink the occasional glass of Scotch, usually Macallan 18 year when we felt like splurging, but Irish was my drink. The reasons for this British Isles-centric taste were simple: 1) Scotch was expensive (excepting the shitty plastic jug scotch, but that stuff is glorified paint thinner, f’real) and 2) Bourbon was gross. Jack Daniels and Jim Beam, the only American whiskeys I’d tassted at that point, had about the appeal of an old southern man’s dirty bath water… and this is exactly what it tasted like. Ok, so in the later phases of my hipster lifestyle, I began to drink Ancient Age and Kessler’s, but this is merely because it was cheap, plentiful, and ironic.

Thus, my current love affair with Bourbon seems a tad incongruous. How did the lowest of the low become the highest of the high? In this case, I can remember exactly how it happened. And again, it is thanks to Zane. See, in 2003 I dropped out college for the second time, to travel across the country with Zane to go pick apples on an orchard on the New Hampshire/ Maine border. While living in his family’s old farmhouse, Zane introduced me to the most glorious liquid I had imbibed up to that point: Maker’s Mark. Here was an American Whiskey worthy of the name. Instead of Colonel Sanders’ bathtub, it tasted like a sunset as seen from the hills above Monticello. It tasted like what I’ve since learned the South to be: hospitable, beautiful, warm, inviting, dignified with a rustic edge. I was in love.

I’ve had many Bourbons since then, and have recently gotten into the small batch craft whiskeys. Often higher in alcohol, they are also head and shoulders above the cheaper, larger batch bourbons most people know in terms of flavor. If Jack Daniels is Budweiser (and Kessler and Ancient Age are PBR), these are the Fat Tires, the Chimays, the Red Hooks. They’re certainly pricier than Jim Beam, but quality doesn’t come cheap. Here are my favorites:

Black Maple Hill 21 Yr. (95 Proof) - First discovered this one at Alembic, in San Francisco. I asked for a Bourbon that would kick me in the teeth with a velvet boot and it does just that, coming in strong with a very full bodied flavor and a sharp tang that subsides and warms as it goes down your throat. According to the bartender at Whiskey Thieves, it’s been discontinued, which is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Made by Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, Ltd, who also make the excellent Rowan’s Creek.

Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey (90 Proof) - Found out about them through Metafilter years ago. I stole their recipe for Mint Juleps, which has since become my signature drink. Only recently tried the whiskey, when it became available at Safeway. Similar to Maker’s in many respects, it’s smooth as silk with some slightly fruity and peppery notes. Made by the Buffalo Trace Distillery, who also make unemployed-Micah’s standby, Ancient Age (it’s hard to beat $4 for a pint of tolerable whiskey).

Bookers (125 Proof) - This is the stuff. If Bourbon could be a schoolyard bully, it would be Bookers. A barrel proof whiskey, it is not watered down after distilling and aging like most other alcohols; what comes out of the barrel is what goes into the bottle. Despite the very high alcohol content, this is a nuanced Bourbon, with a strong, smoky, oaky flavor. Perhaps the best way to enjoy it is to take a small amount onto your tongue and just let it evaporate there. The flavor spreads across your palate and warms your entire mouth and throat. It’s part of Jim Beam’s small batch collection, which also includes the very fine Knob Creek and Basil Hayden’s.

All of the whiskey’s mentioned are available at BevMo, and I highly recommend giving them a try. After a long day of work, be it physical labor on an apple orchard in New England or hours in front of a computer screen at a tech company in downtown SF, nothing is quite as nice as a good book, some good music, maybe a good friend or two, and a glass of damn good bourbon. Cheers, y’all.

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A week or so ago, I had dinner with my girlfriend, her family, and the family of her close friend. The father in said family happens to be a professor in the Stanford Creative Writing department, and we got to talk about writing: how to teach it, how to force yourself to do it, how to stay in practice when you’re no longer required to do it, etc. And I realized that it has now been several years since I finished a piece… poem, play, short story, anything. Thus:

My Resolution (which happens to have taken effect on the new year but is not, in fact, a capital letter New Years Resolution because said New Years Resolutions are destined to fail (see 2007s quit smoking resolution) and really, January 1 is such an arbitrary and occidental-centric milestone):

I, Micah Saul, do hereby swear to do the following three things every day of the following year:

1. Write at least two “observation journal” style entries per day in the newly purchased Moleskine 2008 Daily Planner.

2. Upon arriving home, regardless of how late it is or how tired I am, write for at least 20 minutes. This time need not be spent working on a project, but at least 20 minutes must be spent writing.

3. Update this blog with either the output of item 1, item 2, or a separate text unrelated to the previous two items. In addition, keep status updates on this blog, perhaps in a Twitter side-bar.

4. Invite all and sundry to taunt me mercilessly if any of the above three items are not performed everyday.

Until the sidebar is added, updates will go here:

1. Wrote two journal entries.
2. Spent 20 minutes composing this blog entry.
3. See item 2.
4. No taunting today!

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So, about 10 years ago I made a terrible new years resolution. Despite it’s terribleness, it is the one resolution I have ever stayed true to. The resolution was this:
I, Micah Saul, being of sound body and mind, will never leave a book unfinished once started.
See the issue here? Even if the book is god-awful, unreadable, etc. I must finish it. It’s bit me in the ass a few times. There are three books that I have not yet followed through with this plan on. I will finish them eventually, because I have to, but it hasn’t happened yet:

The first is The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. By all rights, this book should be awesome. Gibson and Sterling writing a steampunk novel. Turns out, it’s unreadable. I’ve attempted it twice, and have never got past the first 25 pages.

Next comes Trickster makes this world: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde. Again, should be awesome. Traces the trickster myth throughout history, from Apollo and Prometheus through to Legba and Brer Rabbit. But the logical leaps and ridiculous claims littering each page again make it unreadable.

And finally, we have Ulysses, by James Joyce. The greatest book of the 20th century. The masterwork of one of the English language’s greatest authors. And guess what. Completely incomprehensible. I am currently on my fouth attempt. And, I’ll admit, I’m getting it a little more than I did previously. Because I’m cheating. I’m reading The New Bloomsday Book with it, which is a line-by-line interpretation of the whole damn thing. I finish a chapter of Ulysses, then read a chapter of Bloomsday, back and forth, back and forth, ad infi-fucking-nitum.

Now, I’m a fiction guy. It’s what I read, it’s what I write. And difficult books don’t stop me, normally. Pynchon is my favorite damn author, for Christ’s sake. Gravity’s Rainbow is the best book I’ve ever read, and I remain one of three people I’ve known that finished that book. But Ulysses is still virtually unreadable.

All that said, it should probably come as no surprise that the other book I am currently reading is almost infinitely more readable and more enjoyable. Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications, by Patrick Lenz is the ideal starting point for people who, like me, have some basic understanding of programming but no actual experience, and want to get going with Ruby on Rails. From a crash course in OOP concepts and the MVC model (using examples from Knight Rider, no less) to building a non-trivial web app (in this case a clone of digg, called, a little too cleverly, shovell), the books guides you by the hand through the framework. The back of Thomas and Hansonn’s Agile Web Development With Rails has a little meter indicating required experience for using the book. It is almost entirely green, except for a tiny little sliver greyed out at the Beginner extreme. Lenz takes his reader through that grey area and firmly into the the green.

And that’s the difference between Lenz and Joyce. Actually, perhaps its the difference between modern fiction and technical writing. Technical writing is designed to help the reader find himself in the complex world of computers and engineering and technology. Modern fiction is designed to show the reader how lost he is in the complex world of persons, places, and things. I still love fiction, and despite what I said earlier, I do not hate Ulysses or Joyce, but the fact that I’m reading a programming guide for fun and a great work of fiction because I feel obligated to clearly shows a disconnect somewhere. Probably in me.

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