Inside The Perimeter

They say what’s old is new, and what’s touted as new is really old. The newest trend in craft brew sales is rather an old concept.

Recently in Georgia we’ve been allowed to purchase 64-ounce bottles of draft beer, aka “growlers,” from retail establishments.

Fantastic! Well, maybe not.

On the surface growlers seem like a great idea. A growler contains draft beer, which is delicious, right? The draft beer is drawn from a keg, which should reduce the cost for the brewery, right? A growler is a refillable glass bottle, which is great for the environment, right?

But wait.

• The first time you buy a growler bottle you have to pay a nominal fee, $3 from what I’ve seen, for the bottle. Funny, when I buy six-packs of beer that cost is built into to total price.
• The normal growler bottle holds 64-ounces of beer, which if you do the math is 5.333 12-ounce bottles of beer.
• The average price for a growler refill is $12. The average price I pay for a quality six-pack of beer at a retail store hovers around $9 these days.
• Because the growler contains draft beer once you crack the seal on the bottle you have to drink the beer within a handful of days otherwise the beer will go flat.

So let me get this straight… After spending $3 for a bottle in which it’ll be poured I am paying $12 for less than a six pack’s worth of beer which I must drink quickly otherwise it’ll go flat?

Not any longer… I love craft beer as much as the next guy or gal but I’m going to refuse to throw money away in order to be trendy. I’ll return to buying my beer in bottles or cans, or if I want to spend the big bucks at one of the many local bars I enjoy frequenting.

Feel free to leave a comment and tell me how wrong I am…

I am not the most jingoistic person to whom you will speak. I do enjoy the benefits of living in the United States — I vote regularly, I pay taxes (boy, do I pay taxes!) — but it’s not like I love all things American. I drive a Honda (perhaps assembled somewhere in the US of A), before that I drove a Nissan, before that I drove a Hyundai (I was poor and in college), but before that I drove a Ford (1968 Mustang)!

There is but one National Anthem for the United States, “The Star-Spangled Banner”

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

(lyrics shamefully lifted from Wikipedia)

As songs go I give the National Anthem of the United States a “B” — it’s catchy, but really hard to dance to.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” is a tough song to sing, some of its words are from an (American) English language rarely used today (o’er, anyone?) and its vocal range is tough for many of us who attempt to sing it loudly. However, I believe that it should be sung in the way I was taught, the way that I’ve attempted to sing it before every sporting event I’ve attended during my life.

In recent years it has become fashionable to personalize the National Anthem — drag out sections too long, traverse the musical scales during one portion to prove that you can indeed sing, or out and out butcher the song as some personal assault against the listeners’ ears.

Last Monday it was quite in vogue to lambaste Christina Aguilera for screwing up the singing of “The Star-Spangled” prior to the Super Bowl (it’s all over YouTube if you are one of the rare people who missed this story). I am not a Christina Aguilera fan, but this rant is not against her, it’s against “Joe Six-Pack.”

Joe Six-Pack is your typical American who loves his (or her) country. However, during the last fifteen or so years I’ve been hearing the collective Joe Six-Packs do something which irritates me — they scream out to emphasize the parts of the National Anthem which they feel help prove their loyalty to Country, or more importantly, Team. I first encountered this behavior at an Atlanta Knights hockey game when fans of the team would scream “NIGHT” to show everyone that they:

• a) knew at least some of the lyrics to our National Anthem
• b) were sober enough to remember that they were attending an Atlanta Knights game

The Saturday night prior to the Super Bowl I attended an Atlanta Thrashers v. Carolina Hurricanes hockey game in Raleigh, North Carolina. As with every American sporting event the crowd was asked to rise, remove their caps, for the National Anthem. Some extremely talented young lady walked out onto the ice and performed a wonderful rendition of the National Anthem. The crowd, managed to ruin it for me. In addition to “NIGHT” (I’m assuming this was from the Thrashers fans who made the trip to Raleigh) the crowd also manage to scream the “YOU SEE” lyrics (I’ll make a wild-ass guess that this is some sort of University of North Carolina, which resides in neighboring Chapel Hill, reference) and the “RED” lyric (I’ll make a wild-ass guess that this is some sort of reference to North Carolina State, whose school color is red and which resides in Raleigh, in rebuttal to “YOU SEE”). Unfortunately for the Duke University contingency there is no reference to “blue” embedded in “The Star-Spangled Banner” lyrics so they are left to their own devices to prove their loyalty to Country and School.

Stop it, people!
Stop it!

Lighten up Francis, it’s just a song…

Perhaps you are right. However, for me it’s a very important song. Perhaps I’ll belt out a few lines the next time I stand in line so that I can go through a metal detector, after emptying all items from my pockets and placing them into a plastic bowl, just for the pleasure of attending an NHL hockey game.

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]

I’ll start my rant off by absolving Adobe’s Lightroom from some of the blame related to this problem. For those of you who do not know, Adobe’s Lightroom application helps a photographer catalog and make edits to his/her photographs. The original photos along with all of the non-destructive edits to those photos are stored in a Lightroom catalog. I’ve started each of the past three/four years with a new Lightroom catalog. It just makes sense to me to start a fresh year with a fresh catalog, so 2010 was no different.

If Only The Default Setting Were Different
When creating a new catalog in Lightroom the user is asked where he/she wishes to store the catalog. Since I keep all of my photography-related material on an external hard drive (called “Media”) which is backed up nightly I naturally selected a path to “/Volumes/Media/2010″ and Lightroom obliged by creating a catalog file there.

However, for some inane reason when importing photographs into a Lightroom catalog the default path into which they are stored is not the same path as the one defined for the catalog. Instead, the default path for photo import is “/Users/USERNAME/Pictures” and because I’d just rebuilt the machine on which I’m editing photos I’d yet to set up the proper backup procedures for this path.

Last night I noticed that the recent photos that I had imported and edited were not in the proper place and set out to correct this.

A Little Knowledge And A Little Bravado Make For A Big Error
A week or two ago I watched a video about correcting Lightroom Import errors. I vaguely remembered the solution dealt with moving the directory while in Lightroom. So, when I incorrectly renamed the directory instead of moving it I made a bad decision to delete the directory and start again.

When I cranked up Lightroom the next time it corrected the catalog and when I imported all of the files once again, all of my edits were lost. Undaunted I recovered the catalog file from my nightly backup drive to try again.

Workflow, Sometimes It’s Best To Leave Well-Enough Alone
Sometime last year I followed the “bright” idea posed to me at a workshop, that is to rename the files imported to reflect the date and sequence number in which they were imported. I’d suggest NEVER doing this!

When I imported the photos I’d saved off earlier into the catalog which contained all of the edit information, the import process renamed the files again. Now the photo files no longer had names that matched the names in the catalog which contained all of the editing information. DANGEN!

After Much Consternation, A Solution Was Found
So there I was.
I had a catalog containing all of the edits I spent hours making the other night.
I had a compact flash card containing the unedited versions of those photos, all named with the names originally given to them by the camera.

If I attempted to re-import the photos the sequence numbers would be incorrect, so I decided to attempt manual correction.

I imported the photos into the Lightroom catalog without altering their names. And, for those photos I tagged as “keepers” I determined which original photo corresponded to the final edit name that my now-former workflow had assigned to it and changed manually changed its name on the hard drive. Miraculously this worked.

Thankfully I only felt compelled to recover the five photos that I’d tagged as “keepers” as the process of changing the names on the hard drive was frustratingly slow.

The Future And Beyond
I’ve learned two valuable lessons from this fiasco:

1. Pay attention to where your photos get placed when importing them into Lightroom!
2. Do not attempt to be clever by assigning imported photos with new names, let them keep those assigned by the camera in case you need to re-import them.

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]

Let me get this off my chest first, if you are going to open a business in the 2000s you should have a fucking website!!! I don’t know if webdesigners are that slow or if it’s cool not to have a site these days, but lately I have been thwarted often when trying to get a weblink for new businesses in Atlanta. In this piece you will see nfws which means that I have searched for a website, but have found no fucking web site.

P’cheen Keen
On Saturday evening my friends Stacey (preggers), Andy (her husband the culprit) and I went to see Wanda Sykes at the Tabernacle (nfws). After the show we were feeling a bit peckish and decided to grab a bite to eat and a beverage.

P’cheen is a relatively new bar / restaurant in the Old Fourth Ward (Highland Av) which was once known for housing Roman Lily Cafe and the original location of Jake’s Ice Cream. In recent days this section is mostly recognized as the home of Zuma Sushi (nfws).

P’cheen (Gaelic for “moonshine”) is a small space which uses every inch effectively. There are ample tables for diners, a sit-down bar, and a small window space which (much to my surprise) was big enough for two turntables and a microphone DJ.

I originally planned to order the fish and chips (which Stacey ordered), but was lured away when I decided that I wanted an appetizer of pomme frites with three dipping sauces and a panini consisting of Merguez lamb sausage, bleu cheese, caramelized onions and jalapeno marinara with a side of onion rings as my entree. I highly recommend ordering either, or even both! The fries were delicious, slender and wilted when picked up; some might say that they needed to be fried again, I disagree. The dipping sauces provided were a mustard based sauce, a sweet and spicy sauce, and a slightly chutney-flavored sauce (this is the best that I can do to describe these sauces since it was late, dark inside, and my palette is not that sofisticated). The panini was fantastic, even with the strong flavors of the bleu cheese, onions, and marinara I could taste the delicious sausage.

As I mentioned, Stacey ordered the fish and chips with sides of British chips and mushy peas. I managed to get a taste of the peas which I found to be as tasty as peas can be. Stacey said that the fish was good, but that the chips were a bit too large to be cooked properly.

If I remember correctly, Andy ordered the shepard’s pie. It appeared tasty, but I am rarely a fan of shepard’s pie so I don’t see myself ordering it any time soon.

My only disappointment of the evening was that my first choice of beer, Asheville North Carolina’s Highland Brewery‘s Gaelic Ale was out of stock. This is not an unusual occurrance for me however. Instead, I drank a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Overall I had a wonderful time at P’cheen and can see myself inventing an excuse to go back soon.

We all have people who we have met during our lives who have changed us. For some it’s a teacher, minister, love interest, etc. For me, it was my former-best-friend Mike.

I don’t really recall exactly when or how I met Mike, but my best guess is that we became friends when I was eighteen doing my first stint at Toys ‘R’ Us.

Mike was about my age then, a tad shorter than I was, had sharp sense of humor, a skateboarder, and budding guitarist. Mike had blonde hair which he could make stand on end, and when he would scrunch his face and make it turn red he’d look like the Heat Miser song from A Year Without A Santa Claus.

Mike was the one person to alter my taste in music.

As a youngster I was into the music that my New York friends and our brothers liked. We were into The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Kiss, David Bowie, etc.

paulie fact:

• first purchased cassette tape: Alice Cooper – “School’s Out”
• first purchased album: Emerson, Lake and Palmer – “Brain Salad Surgery”
• first purchased cd: Pink Floyd – “Dark Side Of The Moon”

As the early eighties rolled around my parents finally introduced cable television into our household, and the world of MTV was brought to my world. While I was still interested in the music that I had grown up listening to, I found that there was a whole new world known as ‘alternative’.

It was this music that solidified the bond between Mike and myself. Mike opened my eyes to Husker Du, Aztec Camera, Devo, Los Lobos, The Minutemen, REM, to name a few.

Mike and I would both read Spin Magazine and The Village Voice wishing that the bands that we liked would come to Clearwater, Tampa, St. Petersburg, anywhere near by so that we could see them. Mike was the reason I went to see Jason and the Scorchers perform at the University of South Florida back in ’86.

The only Spring Break I ever spent in Daytona Beach was the trip I took with Mike, circa 1986. During that Spring Break we drank Shaefer Light ($5 a case!), saw Jay Leno perform for free and went to see the Golden Paliminos and 10,000 Maniacs perform for free at the stage on the beach.

When I moved up to Gainesville to go to the University of Florida I lost touch with Mike. While at Florida I ran into Mike a few times, once when he was working at a used CD store across the street from campus, and once when he was working at the Media Play. We never hung out together again as time had changed us both.

It’s been nearly twenty years now that I’ve seen Mike. I have no need to ever run into Mike again in my life, but if I do I think that I will thank him for helping me get on the music trail that I have been following for so many years.

Welcome to the first if a new series of articles that I will randomly throw onto Inside The Perimeter. These “Struck On The Connector” articles will be longer, more in-depth articles that will cover one topic — usually a review of a CD, concert, restaurant, etc.

btw- Today’s “normal” entry is below this and is called “Point And Shit!”. Just in case you were wondering….

I Want Revenge, No I Want More Sleep
I made my first good decision last night to decide to walk to The EARL. Yes, I know I live close enough to always walk to The EARL, but when the weather is questionable I occasionally drive (oh, how Alpharetta of me). Knowing that a 9pm “doors open” at The EARL means a 9:45pm-10:00pm first band start, I left the house around 9:15pm.

The first thing I noticed upon entering The EARL’s music room was the presence of 99x banners. “Ugh”, was my first thought. “Am I going to have to suffer through an introduction from Barnes Toucher, Leslie, or Jimmy?” was my second. [paulie note: I was a dedicated 99x listener from 1995-2004, and moved away when I just couldn't stand their limited playlist and inane banter.] Luckily I was spared. Along with the banners I noticed the arrival of the hormone-driven, tattooed, smoking, sluttly-dressed, young girls with their equally body-modded emo boyfriends. When I am sixty and they are forty and complaining about their tattoos and lung disease I am going to smile and tell them all to go fuck themselves. But I digress…

During my trip to the bar to purchase my third Miller High Life I noticed that there were far more “older” people entering the room than I would have imagined. [paulie note: I am forty, so these people were probably younger than me but didn't look it, or were the parents of the aforementioned 99x kiddies.]

At that time I started playing one of my favorite games at The EARL called “I wonder if that guy is in one of tonight’s bands.”

Finally, the first band Rock Kills Kid, took the stage. They are a five-member band from Los Angeles who provided a seven-song set of decent, guitar and synthesizer driven rock. I wouldn’t call their set “groundbreaking”, but I enjoyed their sound and considering that they were the opening band I was rather impressed.

She Wants Revenge was next to take the stage. Given their current groundswell of popularity I was a little surprised that there wasn’t a billing swap much like the one that occurred when the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah / Ambulance Ltd tour swung through The EARL last summer. I wanted to take a snapshot of SWR’s playlist so that I could document it here, but couldn’t get that close to the stage. Because SWR has only one CD out, it suffices to say that all songs they played were from it. SWR’s sound was awesome, but never swerved far from that found on their CD. While I enjoy when bands prove that they can recreate the sound caught on their CDs, I also appreciate when they personalize the show for the crowd and take known songs in different directions. The four-man band seemed comfortable and tight on stage. They also looked like they were a bit warm from the heat generated from the small venue, large crowd and copious amounts of cigarettes being smoked. After playing a set appropriately long for a second act, She Wants Revenge the left the stage and at least half of the crowd left the building.

I considered an early jettison from The EARL myself (it was a school night), but while unloading my Miller High Lifes I heard this guy telling other guys just how much better Electric 6 would be, so I decided to stay.

At the start of E6′s show I noticed how much fun their lead man, Dick Valentine, was having. This is always pleasing to me. At one point he even asked the crowd “Who came to see She Wants Revenge and are now seeing Electric 6?” From the involved reaction of the crowd during the songs played prior to this question being asked, I would have to say “not many of those left in the room.” Because I was completely clueless about E6 prior to this show, and was obviously in the minority amongst this crowd, I had flashbacks to when I saw Lucero last year at The EARL. [paulie note: at least I had heard two of Lucero's songs prior to seeing them in concert.] As much as I wanted to enjoy E6′s fist pumping, party-style, rock and roll, I could only last for four songs before I considered it to be “late” (12:05am) and determined that it was time for me to walk home.

And there you have it…
Paulie [eat/ga]