Michelob on Monday

Remember when Michelob came in a bottle like this? Of course Anheuser Bush has changed the bottle now. The new bottle is pretty standard with reinforced glass at the bottom of the neck. I can't understand why they would change the bottle since the old design was an icon of American beer culture and the new bottles is obviously manufactured exclusively for the Michelob line. Ah well, we don't drink the bottles do we, the packaging has very little to do with the product it contains.

I also remember the Michelob always had a very fresh taste too. The beer was less hoppy than Budweiser and, in fact, tasted more like Miller Lite. I was shopping for beer last weekend and was going to purchase a Yeungling twelve-but I noticed, the Michelob twelve-pack cost only fifty cents more than Yeungling. What the heck, let's relive the beers of the past!


Michelob produced a good foamy head unlike most American style Largers. The carbonation also lasted ‘till the last sip. The beer tastes much as I remember but with a hint more hops. I suspect, due to the clean, less sweet taste, that Michelob has a bit more barley than a Budweiser. The big American breweries have made an art out of producing beer with a minimal amount of hops and barley which is the reason I mainly avoid the mega-breweries. The cold carbonated, sweet and sour qualities do make these great beers for the heat of American summers. This weekend I went back to my European Lager knockoff brand, Hollande. I'll be enjoying the full hops flavoring with no complaints. I enjoyed the Michelob too but I've had enough of that style for a month or twelve, or twenty-four.

-Near Beer Monday: Part 2-

I got an idea when I noticed the bill boards of Bud Light. The Bud Light ad theme is now "Here we go!" The plot of the t.v. ads seems to be; "We have some schwill, here comes trouble" or "Irresponsibility due to malted corn products." So, I thought, why don't they just call it "Here We Go" Beer?


Beer for people who just like to pee a lot.

Second Anniversary

This Monday, August 30th, will be the second anniversary of my marriage to my lovely assistant Sally Ruth Pangle, or as I've been known to call her; Sally Wally Hot Tamale. She and I are very philosophically compatible, a point which was proven by our anniversary gift exchange today. I thought she would buy a book for me as a gift which she did. I was surprised because she did not get the book which I had anticipated. She got me Spectrum 1: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. She also purchased the Agent Orange recording Living In Darkness and it was a very big surprise. I listened to this cassette tape quite a bit in my youth and had the CD on my Amazon wish list. She also surprised me with a gift card for one of my favorite local restaurants, Veg-O-Rama. I would say that Veg O Rama is one of our favorite restaurants but I know Sally isn’t as fond of it as I am. But, the Agent Orange CD and the Spectrum volume were both real surprises!

I got Sally a hammock and a hammock stand for our tree encircled backyard. (White Pines and White Maples) I'm certain she'll enjoy lying in the hammock and reading and alternately taking naps . I also got her the book Drawing Down the Moon, the Art of Charles Vess. I feel the fact that we both received fantasy art anthologies as anniversary gifts is not ironic, but it is indicative of how compatible Sally and I are.

Happy Anniversary Sally Wally Hot Tamale, Happy Anniversary to us!

Paperback Friday - Poul Anderson

I thought I'd start posting these pulp scans in alphabetical order this week. Most of these are books that I have not read. I'll provide some details for the books which i have read. So, we have Poul Anderson this week and these are two of his works from my shelves which I have not read.

The Broken Sword: originally published 1954. This edition published 1977, Del Rey.

Ensign Flandry: copyright 1966, Poul Anderson. The edition published 1979, Ace Science Fiction. Dedicated to Frank and Beverly Herbert.

Pop Culture Shirts

Posting four shirts at a time will help get through the shirts quickly. But, I'm beginning to wonder if I do have 365 shirts?

This week have four shirts with pop culture themes. The top left is a Hard Rock Cafe T which was a hand-me-down from a relative. The dragon disign is on the back of that one. Top right is one of two Rolling Stones Tees. The black one was purchased from K-mart in the past five years. Below the map of the U.S. it says, "North American tour 1981." The front of the shirt has the R.S. lips with an American flag tounge. The red Stones shirt I purchased at a resale shop here in Knoxville. The bottom left is a Napoleon Dynamite Tee from Wal=Mart. I just wish that shirt was blank rather than having Napoleon's name as part of the design.

19 shirts down and 346 to go.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover wrap-up

The Penguin Twentieth Century Classis edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is 302 pages long and I threw in the towel after 213 pages. I had heard enough of Lady Chatterley’s self centered complaining about her marriage. She admits that she no longer loves her husband Clifford. He was paralyzed during World War I and is confined to a wheelchair. His is a situation of potential misery but he makes the best of it and is truly happy with his intellectual pursuits. Connie Chatterley, on the other hand, is self serving and obsessed with fulfilling her sexual desires. After 213 pages I had read enough of Lawrence’s social theories and complaining about the plight of the labor classes. At that point in the book Connie had planned to take a holiday with her sister, I was tired of waiting for this trip while reading about Lady C’s dalliances with the groundskeeper.

I’m sure this was one of the first English novels concerning the topic of modern sexuality and it was certainly one of the first, on this topic, to become accepted as literature. Lawrence has also written Study of Thomas Hardy (1936) and I would like to offer that Lady Chatterley… is a reworking of Jude the Obscure with the addition of sex scenes. It’s the Twenty-first Century now and I don’t need D. H. Lawrence to explain human sexuality to me. If Philip Roth has learned anything from Lawrence it is to keep his stories short and to the point. If Lionel Fanthrope has learned anything from Lawrence it is to ramble on like an Irishman on holiday.

Paperback Friday

Today I introduce another of my luxuries, along with t-shirts and beer, I love books. One of the reasons I'm the luckiest man in the world is because I'm married to a reader too. I'm also lucky that we have a great retail book warehouse here in Knoxville where I can find these pulp novelties, often, for one dollar or less. So, on Paperback Friday, I'll post the covers of the books from my pulpy fantasy and sci-fi collection.

This week we have two works from the genius that is Lionel Fanthorpe. Mr. Fanthorpe wrote under many pseudonyms and, I suppose, he could be known as the king of the modern pulps. I'll occasionally find his books at McKay Used Books and bring them home for later consumption.

Here is Time Echo, published by Arcadia House in 1964.


Orbit One, Arcadia House 1966.
Both these books indicate that they are duplications of "the original text of the hardcover edition." I honestly doubt that either of these where ever printed in a hardcover edition.

The Real Beer Shirts

Here are four more shirts and these are some of my most prized recent acquisitions, the real beer shirts. We have The Union Jacks beer challenge completion shirt at the top left. At top right is the Great Smokey Mnts. Brewgrass Festival shirt from 2008. We missed the festival last year but will get to attend again next month. The bottom row has a shirt from Molly Macpherson’s Scottish Pub in Savannah Georgia and a beer themed shirt from Khols.

15 shirts down and 350 to go!