lukegilman.com : High on the Hog Blog

Purveyor of Idle Observation

BeerWars the Movie

“All most all our beer now is coming from Budweiser, Miller and Coors. It’s as if all we knew about food we learned from McDonald’s.”

That’s the kind of war I can get behind.

I don’t often find myself agreeing entirely with the irascrible Christopher Hitchens but I have nothing but full-throated affirmation for his most recent diatribe Wine Drinkers of the World, Unite: You have nothing to lose but inflated bills and interrupted anecdotes

The vile practice of butting in and pouring wine without being asked is the very height of the second kind of bad manners. Not only is it a breathtaking act of rudeness in itself, but it conveys a none-too-subtle and mercenary message: Hurry up and order another bottle. Indeed, so dulled have we become to the shame and disgrace of all this that I have actually seen waiters, having broken into the private conversation and emptied the flagon, ask insolently whether they should now bring another one. Again, imagine this same tactic being applied to the food.

Now perhaps someone can explain to me the reason so many places have started pouring me a glass of wine not from the bottle where (I hope) it just came, but from a mini-carafe which might as well be a glass since that’s certainly all the wine it can hold. Is this some mysterious new way of aerating the wine or is this merely to disguise the fact that you just squirted some in from the box o’ wine dispenser in the back?

Via Slate I’ve discovered Wine Library TV, a web-based video show hosted by the delightfully maniacal Gary Vaynerchuk among others. Give it a looksy…

Metro: Drunk man rides horse into bank

when he left the pub he realised he was too drunk to ride all the way home - and because it was cold, he decided to use his bank card to open up a nearby bank foyer and take himself and Sammy inside to sleep it off.

And then there’s the kind of line that I would live for if I were a journalist…

…bank staff were less than impressed when they arrived and had to clean up after the horse, who had left a deposit of his own on the foyer floor.

Great idea.

So says the Men’s Journal. 25 Best American Beers. Isn’t that a little like winning the NIT?