Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

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I love beer. I really do. And I didn’t really think about why until a friend of mine, who also loves beer —but in a decidedly different way — asked me to write about it.

There is just so much about this little beverage that turns me on. And it’s not just about the buzz or, on those rare occasions, the desire to drink this little liquid lotus to forget the day’s ills.

It’s got a crazy history, much crazier than wine, I think. It’s one of the first foods, in a long line of foods, that American manufacturers ripped the soul out of for mass-production ease. Yea, American progress. I mean, my god, one beer company’s tag line was even “Easy drinking.” What a strange dichotomy for American beer. “Be a man, drink beer. But drink this one because the others taste too much like beer.” Crazy.

Beer was originally a way to use up excess grain harvest. Liquefy it and it will last longer. At least the rats won’t get to it. But if you keep it too long it makes you feel funny. I like that. The serendipity of it. There are a couple of scientists/archeologists/brewers from Dogfish Head who have scraped the inside of some ancient pots, dibble-dabbled, then made a brew from that dibble-dabble called Ta Henket. They have a newish one called Midas’ Touch. That’s just fun.

Then you’ve got Jim Koch from the Boston Beer Company, who is brewing some crazy liquor beer (which I kind of question as beer). I actually drank one of his triple bocks. Nearly killed me. Like drinking liquefied Marmite.

Right now is a great time for beer. We are living in a creative maelstrom of brewing innovation…or insanity. I’ve tried something called Goat Scrotum Ale, which is brewed with both chocolate (not chocolate malt, but actual chocolate) and Szechwan peppers.

And then the names. I love the creativity with the naming, although my favorite beer is pretty simple. Falstaff. I haven’t even tried it. But the name and all that it means put in right in my heart.

For me beer kind of falls into three categories: Malty, Hoppy, Fruity. Yeah, I know it’s really Ales, Lagers, and Lambics, but that’s not how I think of beers. I break them down by how I like them.

Here is the thing; according to the classic German Reinheitsgebot, their purity law, there are only three ingredients that can go into a beer: water, barley, and hops…although they now allow yeast as well. And with those three or four ingredients they made an incredible variety of beer. It’s kind of incredible. Well, now we are throwing in all kinds of crazy hoo-haws just to see what happens. But it really always comes back down to those three ingredients.

I don’t like hops. I know, I know. Hops are one of the cornerstone flavors of all beer. It adds the bitterness. My “beer friend” loves hops. He likes beer that’s so bitter it turns your face inside out. I do not like that. It is bracing. It’s … it’s almost shocking. I also don’t like sour candy.

Thinking about why I don’t like hoppy beer really made me understand why I like beer. Hoppy beer takes me outside of myself. It’s stinging and eye-popping. It makes me shiver. It makes me feel my tongue. Yuck.

What I love is malt. I want sweet, malty, thick beer. I love Guinness, even the mock-Guinness we get here in the States. I love a beer that feels and tastes like loose molasses. This beer warms me and droops my eyelids. It makes me lean back rather spring forward. It makes me go mmmmmmmmmmm. And what all that means is that I find it comforting. A malty beer is like a warmed blanket on a chilly night. When I’ve had a bad day, a Guinness can do a lot to comfort me. Thick and sweet and warming, like a friendly hug from the inside out.

I do like some fruity beers too. I classify Belgian whites under this category with their citrus and spice. I do like those.

Mass-produced American lagers… not so much. It evokes the great Monty Python phrase, “American beer is like making love in a canoe; it’s fucking close to water.” But I am truly excited at the forays some of the big brewers have been making into non-water beers. I must admit to liking Amber Bock, which I’m sure you know is an Anheuser-Busch product. I have also glommed onto Shock Top this summer as a nice lighter brew — another Anheuser-Busch sortie into beers that taste like beer.

Finally, I love variety. My wife kind of goes a little crazy with my cooking (this tangent will come around). She would eat a core five meals for the rest of her life and be perfectly happy. I don’t think I make the same dinner above two or three times a month. I like variety. I like experimenting. The same with beer. If I can have a good solid malt-horse at home and weekly dabble in a new brew, I am quaff-happy.

Just don’t ask me to suck down an IPA. It hurts me.

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This has been a great summer for me. I had a second son born to me, I got one spiritual fix from the play at Brucemore —a fix much like walking into a cathedral, a physically numinous experience— and now I am getting my second spiritual fix — this one less physical, more of a psychical numinosum.

Urban Theater Project of Iowa —of which I am a member — is mounting David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole. Yes, it is a movie. But before that it was a Pulitzer Prize winning stage play.

I actually suggested we do this play — for a couple of reasons — and I was really excited when the company members went for it. It is perhaps the best contemporary play I have read in years, in staging, plot, character and dialogue. And I desperately wanted to play Howie, the father.

I’ve always felt that people view me as a comedic actor, probably because that’s how I view myself. I love comedy and think I do comedy pretty well. But there are a handful of straight roles that I have always wanted: Horatio (for which I am too old), Richard III (which is a tough production to get mounted), and Tom Robinson from Mockingbird (which…well, I guess you can probably figure that problem out on your own).

I read a review of the play Rabbit Hole and within about five minutes had ordered the script. When I read it I knew that I had to play Howie. The problem: I’m not a leading man type of guy. Granted, Howie is not really a romantic lead, he is much more developed and rich than just that. But if I were to audition for this play, no one would take a second look at me for that role. It’s just how the industry is.

Howie is thinner, taller, handsomer, and well-dress…eder. I am none of those. Nor am I a financial advisor. In fact, when I talk with our family financial advisor I always come armed with my anxiety meds. It helps to keep the stress-induced rash at bay.

But he’s also funny, sensitive, caring, hopeful, and he forgets to feed the dog. Essentially, he’s me…if I turned out to be a thin, tall, handsome, well-dressed financial advisor.

That’s one of the reasons I love Urban Theater. We get to do the kinds of shows we want to do. And you know what, there are a lot of Howies out there that aren’t thin, tall or handsome. I’m a little tired of the chiseled chins and wry grins that we see in film.

The other reason I really wanted to do this show is rooted in my spiritual belief in theatre. Aristotle wrote of catharsis, which was the idea that if people go see tragedy, they live vicariously through the specific destruction of the play’s main character. This act releases the viewer of their stresses and fears, specifically in line with the character’s hamartia, their fatal flaw.

As I said earlier, Howie is much like me. He and his wife Becca lose their four year-old son in an auto accident, and it has done a number on their marriage. I think I would react much as Howie has. He is particularly close to me.

My wife has gone on record saying that she will simply not be able to watch this show. She is so scared of this show that she won’t run lines with me, which is a first. I get it. I understand where she is coming from on this one. And I totally respect her position.

But for me, acting in this show is like washing in the Ganges. It is a spiritual restorative. I am living the sadder alternate life in the show, much like the universal rabbit holes discussed in the play. This play life is the sadder life of loss, so my real life can break free of that disastrous possibility.

It’s getting me cleaner with each rehearsal. I can’t wait for people to see it.

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Some of you may know that I have been commissioned to write a play adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for our local theatre. I accepted the commission with all the nostalgic memory of the book and the excitement that someone actually wanted me to write for them.

That was my undoing. I went back and reread the book: not at all meant for the stage.

The plot is so flimsy as to be nearly nonexistent. The conflicts are thin, abrupt, and superficial. I still can’t quite figure out what Alice wants, and I’ve been thinking about it now for a couple of months. She doesn’t, as Dorothy does, seem to want to make her way back home. She doesn’t seem to want to stay there. She seems really to not care that much either way. She is, in fact, a character that I don’t care that much about.

The action asks more of a community theatre —Alice’s growing and shrinking, in particular— than most are able to visually deal with. It’s a bit like putting Spiderman on stage. Sounds great, until you do it. Part of my concern with this aspect is that I really want this adaptation to “get legs” as those in the industry might put it. That means that I need to write it in way that makes it easy and interesting for other community theatres and schools to produce. I would like to make a little money from this piece.

And, most difficult, it is a book of its time, in that it moves from one Victorian allusion to another. For example, the most famous scene, the tea party scene, includes three iconic Victorian characters: a Mad Hatter, a March Hare, and a Dormouse. A Victorian might hear those words and instantly connect. Mad Hatter: hatters made hats using mercury, because of that they had a reputation for being a bit mentally unstable. March Hare: a rabbit during breeding season that jumps around like he’s suffering from St. Vitus’ Dance. Dormouse: known for its long hibernation. But for the contemporary kid —yea, I might say most contemporary adults — these allusions are lost. Not mention the Mock Turtle. Still can’t wrap my mind around that one, even though I know what it is.

So, I have spent the last two months absolutely bound up in creative paralysis, writer’s block, ineffectual plotting, and self-doubt. It’s been fun.

Well the rubber is now on the road, as my first due date is nigh approaching: August 14^th. I need to have the characters and treatment done. I have been riding a system of rogue waves with crests of relief at new ideas and troughs of despair at my inability to work this thing out. It’s a bit tiring.

This is what binds me; The issue: Do I try to stay true to the script and let the director deal with the issues? or Do I rewrite the story into a more stage-friendly format and, in doing so, change it from its original intent, molding it into a totally new story, that simply nods to the original. The binding agent is audience expectation. What will they come expecting to see? Should I take that into account, or just blaze away and hope they find substance and entertainment in my take on the story.

In an odd way making this decision takes courage. And I’m finding that I am not as courageous as I would like to be.

On a side note —or maybe not— we were sitting down to dinner the other night. My wife and I were talking about our day, our six week-old eating at the mom-buffet, the other in his food-chair, babbling contentedly to himself. Suddenly my two year-old thrust his left arm into the air and shouted —clearly and unmistakably— “Chaaaaaaaaaarge!”

Neither my wife nor I have ever said that to him. We don’t know where he got it. Sometimes he speaks like an elemental conduit to the powers of the universe. So I got the message.

So, whether Alice becomes my victorious Omaha or my disastrous Waterloo, I must charge ahead. I just hope I’m one of Henry’s valiant Band of Brothers, not Tennyson’s ravaged Six Hundred.

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Several of you have asked me to bring back Pieday Friday. Alas, the unfortunately timed post-pie bout with the stomach flu has kept me from embracing your entreaties. However, I have decided on a new food-themed serialized post. For now I am calling it For the Boys.

The idea is this: Both my family and my wife’s family have deep food traditions. Her grandfather owned a diner and supposedly made donuts that people traveled a tri-county area to get. And my family…well they’re from the South which means food is in the blood.

Some of my favorite and closest memories are of food. Some dinners I can still conjure scents from. It’s that strong to me.

Very early in my two year-old’s life my wife started the spice game with him. She would hold him, standing by the spice rack and pull down spices, letting him smell them as they went. Some of the first things he could tell by sight were spices. He was never too keen with the whole baby rattle routine, but he loved to shake his cinnamon sticks. There was a time when he couldn’t sleep without them.

I’m pretty sure my boys will love their food. So I thought I would begin compiling a family cookbook for them. Since my mother’s birthday is on the first of July, I thought I would run each new recipe on the first posting of each month, so here it is.

Nearly every night my mother asks my father what he wants for dinner. Nearly every night he says, “Whatever.” One night she put together a heinous dish—I still don’t remember what was in it, but I think it might have had shrimp cocktail sauce and mini-sweet gherkins— which she called Whatever. No one ate it. But it did not have the affect she wanted. He still answers whatever.

There are only three things that my father asks for: Cornbread-beans-n-potatoes, sheet cake, and rum cake. I’ll hit all of these as the months go on, but I will begin with my favorite:

Dad’s Rummyrummy Rum Cake

This was probably the first alcohol I ever had. I love this cake. It is the special cake. Mom will make dad a sheet cake at the drop of a hat. But Rummyrummy Rum Cake—it only comes out for special occasions. That’s because it takes time. It doesn’t take time to bake, oh no. The time it needs is to soak, so enseep, to ingest the heady rum and sugar so that your head will begin swimming well before the fork reaches your mouth. Oh, god! I love this cake!

The Cake

I like to toast the walnuts and cool them before chopping them.

Preheat oven to 325ºF.

Grease and flour a 12 cup Bundt pan.

Sprinkle the chopped nuts into the bottom of the pan. I like to roll the pan around a little.

Mix the rest of the cake ingredients.

Pour the batter into the Bundt pan.

Bake for 1 hour.

Cool.

The Glaze

Melt the glaze butter and stir in sugar and water.

Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. No longer! If you go too long the sugar will recrystallize.

Remove from heat. Stir in rum.

The Magic

Turn cake out onto a serving plate (I prefer something with a ridge to hold the glaze in). Poke the top with a toothpick. I like to use a skewer because it gets in deeper.

Pour or brush the glaze all over the cake. I like to pour some around the ring of the cake. Then I like to brush glaze along the sides so that there is glaze all over the cake.

Allow it to soak up the glaze, then repeat until it’s all gone. This can take a while.

Sometimes, if I don’t think the cake has the right, shall we say, nose, I will pour rum directly onto the cake. It should smell rummy.

I like to let this cake sit for a day before serving. It really makes it delectable.

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