It’s been about a week, but I’m still recovering from my three-city tour of Colorado based around the Great American Beer Festival. And I’m still amazed, after more than ten years of writing about beer (among other topics) for the likes of Food+Wine, Men’s Journal, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and many others, that it was my first ever trip to the Big One, the mother of all beer events, the endless pour…
Big it is. Surreal, too. Moments after I checked into Hotel Teatroin Denver I found myself with some 160 other accredited journalists (from the beverage media trade, mostly, including some familiar faces I was glad to see) in a white-tablecloth dining room beneath the Marriott. Denver’s popular Democratic Mayor, John Hickenlooper, was about to make some remarks. I’d barely shaken off the general skeeziness of flying and my airport “breakfast” at 7AM when I sat down to a remarkably haute beer and food pairing. Buffalo carpaccio, meet Del Norte Brewing Co.’s Mañana Amber Lager. Tender Beef Cheek, meet Deschutes Black Butte Porter. Things were off to a good start, indeed… (more…)
One night of insomnia can mean a rough morning. Three months can be fatal.
By Christian DeBenedetti | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 24, 2009
It’s official. Today, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office reported that Michael Jackson died of an overdose of propofol, an anesthetic most often used during major surgery. Why he was using this drug at home is still unanswered, though reports indicate that the pop superstar hadn’t properly slept for years, maybe even decades. Is it possible that Jackson’s quest for shuteye may have ended his life? The same questions surround Heath Ledger, who died last year of a prescription-drug overdose. At one point, the young actor told The New York Times he was only getting two hours a night. Director Terry Gilliam told Vanity Fair that Ledger was overusing prescription sleep aids in search of rest. “It was a combination of exhaustion, sleeping medication … and perhaps the aftereffects of the flu,” said the director, speculating about Ledger’s death. “I guess his body just stopped breathing.” (more…)
Let posterity show that the last week of July, 2009, beer and its mythical powers to unite the irreconcilable became the number one conversation in America. Earlier this week I got an email I won’t soon forget, from NIGHTLINE, offering me a chance to comment on the so-called Beer Summit at the White House, which, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will recall was convened by President Obama to diffuse the tension following his comments on the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge, Mass., Police Officer Sergeant Jim Crowley. Phew. So how could I resist? In the end, the three guys and Vice President Biden joined each other for an awkward exchange on a ridiculously small picnic table for beers, the brands of which threatened to overshadow the Very Important Reason for their little brew down in Obamatown. Here’s the result. Blink and you’ll miss me, right after Barbara Walters and Barack himself raise their eyebrows at all the considerable fuss.
The best kind of travel is the least-expected. Even if it means narrowly escaping disaster. Especially if it means narrowly escaping disaster. Ever think to yourself, “I shoulda stayed home”? Tell your story over on my new blog, The Accidental Extremist.
Think of it as the online home for misadventure. Stories about the wheels coming off and what happened next. Cultural gaffes. Cautionary Tales. Submit them, especially if they’re funny. Make them compelling. (And yes, make them true, or risk the lash of karmic whips). This is the place for off-the-road tales of the outlandish, the ridiculous, and the embarrassing. Basically everything that daily life is not. Snapshots, videos, links, cartoons, postcards all welcome. We can use your name, or not. Your call. And Happy Trails!
It’s a rare film about haute cuisine that manages to come down to Earth and stir deep emotions, too; Big Night is an easy exception, but there are many more misses than hits in the ouevre. And great documentaries about food are rarer still. So I was pleased to see the excellent documentary LE CIRQUE: A TABLE IN HEAVEN on the schedule for HBO on Monday, December 29th. This is a great one to watch at home over Christmas break, and you’ll want a good bottle of red wine to go with it.
Completed in 2006, the film, which debuted at IFC’s Stranger Than Fiction series in April of 2007, documents the rise-and-fall-and-rise-again of restaurateur Sirio Maccioni and his famed eatery, Le Cirque, once the most celebrated restaurant in New York. Catering to celebrities, Presidents, and, famously—thanks to Sirio’s legendary hospitality—seemingly anyone who walked in the door, Le Cirque became a symbol of the good life, dreams achieved, abbondanza.
The film opens with scenes of Le Cirque 2000’s heyday at the Palace, when Henry Kissinger was a regular, and jumps to its closing in 2004, beset by the cold financial realities of Post 9/11 New York. Much of the rest of the film depicts the fraught lead up to its glittery reopening 2006, on East 58th street, and the internecine conflicts among Maccioni and his three sons that tear at the very fabric of the family. And then there’s the bruising two-star review from Frank Bruni after the party’s over, since upgraded.
On newsstands and online tomorrow, November 20th, I have a new cover story for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE: the Best of Adventure Annual (December/January double issue). It tells the tale of the unsung hero of August’s disaster on K2, the worst climbing accident in over a decade and one that generated front page and primetime news around the world for days on end. But this is the first time Pemba Gyalje Sherpa himself has gotten his due for his extraordinary selflessness. Below, a teaser.
In the same issue I also profile Olympic Silver Medal-winning snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler as well as French Crazypants “Speed Flyer” Francois Bon, who parachutes off of Death Zone summits wearing skis—on purpose. The 12 pp package also features the tales of teenage Brit explorers who trekked from magnetic pole to magnetic pole; daring Amazon river scientists tracking pollution; a journalist tracking the human slave trade; and a profile of Emma Stokes, a field biologist who discovered 125,000 previously unknown lowland gorillas in the Congo, among others. Please pick up a copy!
PEMBA GYALJE SHERPA On August 1, 2008, at just about 8 p.m., a massive serac cleaved from a glacier near the summit of K2, the world’s second highest mountain, and barreled down a section of the Cesen climbing route called the Bottleneck. In an instant, one climber was dead, key safety lines were swept away, and 17 climbers were trapped above 27,000 feet with little chance of escape…
This week’s New Yorker features an unexpected treat by staff writer Burkhard Bilger. Call it the Barack Obama of beer articles: a ten-page analysis of the craft beer industry—and one of its provocateurs, Sam Calagione, of Dogfish Head—that sucker punches conventional wisdom. There’s much to savor here, with passages such as the following:
“Calagione strapped on a pair of safety glasses and peered into the oak and hickory embers. “If there are no second-degree burns, I’ll call this a success,” he said. Then he heaved in a rock, sending up a shower of sparks. “Let me know if they start to explode,” he told one of the cooks.”
Bilger’s descriptions of Calagione’s unorthodox brewing methods, including the use of Palo Santo (a rare, aromatic Uruguayan wood three times harder than oak) to ferment a burly stout are riveting—and brings back a lot of fond journalistic memories. My oft-beer-writing-partner-in-crime Seth Fletcher and I wrote about Calagione’s use of Palo Santo back in the October issue of Men’s Journal in which we named the resulting beer one of the best in America, only after tasting it with Calagione while huddled at the tiny copper-topped bar of Dieu De Ciel, a brewpub in Montreal’s Plateau district. We’d ventured up for the Mondiale Du La Biere Festival, and arranged to meet Calagione, well armed with samples—including the Palo Santo-aged beer. Another interesting passage for me was Bilger’s on-site interview with Brasserie D’Orval brewmaster Jean Marie Rock, who I met, too, in 1997 while on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship doing research that would become the basis of my first published article, from the (now defunct) Brewing Techniques magazine (and an award-winner). A toast to Burkhard, Sam, and beer drinkers everywhere who’ve been calling for full respect of the good stuff for a long time. I’ve got to sign off now, or I’ll be late for a tasting at Gramercy Tavern. On the menu? Beer, of course.
The sky may be falling on Wall Street, but we’ll always have beer. It makes us happy; it’s inexpensive; it’s readily available. What’s not to like? And fall is an especially good time to drink it. The Great American Beer Festival is in just a few weeks; the traditional Oktoberfest in Munich started just two days ago—and will go for another 13—but there are plenty of reasons raise a glass of beer right now, and close to home instead.
For the last five years I’ve had the incredibly good fortune to join my friend Seth Fletcher in rating the best beers in the land (or sometimes the world) for MEN’S JOURNAL, a somber task we approach with monkish restraint (OK, we enjoy it mightily, but if we actually finished the hundreds of bottles we sample each summer the story would never happen. Much returns to Earth from whence it came. And we have notebooks, piles of them. We swear.)
This year’s list is on newsstands now, and this time, the premise was deceptively simple: if you like ‘X’ mass beer, try ‘Y’ craft variation. Are you a Guinness drinker? Then try Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter, available in 19 states and counting. With an eye toward America’s smallest, most artisanal craft brewers—some with only a handful of employees—we dedicated ourselves to coming up with a list of exceptional American (and in one case, Quebecois) craft beers that are a bit harder to find, but so worth the effort. Many of these beers are available in NYC, on tap or in bottles at bars likeThe Blind Tiger, Bar Great Harry, DBA, Against The Grain, Spuyten Duyvil, The Diamond, the Brazen Head, and more. There’s also a mini-profile of beer provocateur Vinnie Cilurzo (of California’s Russian River Brewing Company). Enjoy!
just accepted a position in Vancouver for the Winter Games covering snowboarding - any one else going to be up there? 5 days ago
Yosemite, the Getty, Death Valley, the Hollywood Hills, swimming pools & towncars, golf courses, smog, and Crenshaw, Home of the Faith Bowl. 1 week ago
On my 1st flight attendant's name was Tennille (she didn't sing, alas). On my 2nd is a notorious scandal-magnet ex-Senator... 2 weeks ago
comfortably positioned in the "lowbrow-despicable" quadrant right next to Michael Steele and the Olsen Twins...http://tinyurl.com/yzra74l 2 weeks ago
It’s a rare film about haute cuisine that manages to come down to Earth and stir deep emotions, too; 
This week’s 
