This is a short story I wrote for  Ragbag Magazine. Last month’s issue was all audio/visual so I recorded myself reading the story out loud. Here’s that audio and a slightly edited transcription of the story. 

Sprint

St. Pat’s Invitational

There’s no gun anymore. Now the race starts with a loud electric beep. So, hearing the beep, he dives in.

He doesn’t arc over the water or break through a tiny piece of the surface; he falls in and ends up deeper than he should be. He’s still moving diagonally down when he sees other swimmers break the surface of the water. He doesn’t hear anything. The race just started and he’s already behind.

He breaks his streamline and starts to kick. He can tell he’s too deep. There’s no time to waste, this is a sprint, so he begins his first stroke. Unfortunately, he’s not really pulling himself forward, he is clawing his way up to the surface, fighting instead of riding the little momentum he got from the dive.

Pressure builds up in his chest. He wants to breathe, but he’s still too far from the surface, so he starts his second stroke.  His head breaks the surface and he takes a kind of straight ahead gasp, exhaling and inhaling before bringing his head back into the water.

His right then left arm comes around, back in front of him. His strokes are coming in a strange rhythm. It’s a frantic lope.

Now at the surface racing, he almost feels like this is what he practiced for. He’s kicking and pulling and looking forward out of his goggles, which have just a moderate amount of water in them.

But that comfort is only going to slow him down, and he thinks kick and pull and does more thrash and flail. But he flails mightily and purposefully and as he comes under the flags almost ready for the first turn, he sees the man in lane five coming back toward him, already off the wall.

He’s two body lengths back, there are still three more laps to swim, and this is a sprint.

—

David Christian weighed 110 pounds when he started high school. At 5’8’’ David was no shorter than most of the other incoming freshmen, but his voice wasn’t cracking yet and he felt very young.

David didn’t lean on his physicality. He never thought of himself as a physical force.  But in high school, where people seemed to be looking at each other more closely, and where the folks were just bigger, size and strength got to the front of his mind more often.

It took a crappy play and the better part of a semester to make him vulnerable enough to be talked into joining the swim team.

“Come on man, you’re tall.”

It didn’t start out being very much of his life. He was a terrible swimmer. Of course, he didn’t know that going in.  He had never needed to think about being terrible at swimming before. But he was personable, made a couple jokes, and the seniors decided they liked him.

So he swam the whole year and became more of a mascot for the team than an important teammate.  David said the cheer, he swam third in the JV relay, and he tried not to disqualify.

It’s not that bad to be a terrible athlete when you’re a freshman, because usually someone else is terrible too.  But as the season wore on, a lot of those terrible swimmers became ex-swimmers.

Then the season ended and Christian – everyone on the swim team was called by their last name – “Christian” was still pretty bad, and now the seniors were gone.

The rest of freshman year went pretty well. That spring and summer he grew five inches and gained twenty-five pounds.  When he came back as a sophomore he was taller than most of his high school.

He had also spent a season playing water polo (watching, really) and he was a lot more competitive than he had been.  He never liked losing, nobody does, but in water polo when you lose you are shoved under, you’re manhandled and it’s galling.  He was still thin, weak and slow, so he got as much shoving under as he could stand. After the season ended, he set about trying to become less weak and less thin, so that eventually he could be less slow.

His first idea was to do pushups.  Pushups were the most boring, difficult way he could think of to work out, so he pointed himself in that direction. The first week he did them, he gave himself terrible acne.  It took him another week to realize he couldn’t do them before bed and go to sleep in a sweaty heap.

He swam in the summer programs. They were far away. It took more time to get there on the bus than he spent in the pool.

He showed up on time, he stretched, and he worked the practices. He led his lane.  He pushed his intervals, and in every way he could think, he beat his body up.  He was breaking himself down as much as he could, straining his muscles and his breath, wanting, willing himself to move faster.

After practice he would come home and stink like chlorine. His hair got nasty and dry. First it turned blonder, then it frosted with a kind of white tip. His skin dried out and pieces of it flaked off in uneven little white sheets.

Then, when the summer ended and he couldn’t spend all day on the bus, he tried to cross train.  He ran stairs, he ran in the park, he ran home from school with a book bag full of books.

His body didn’t seem to change much.  He got faster at running home.

—

Then came the actual swim season and the real practices.  Now he wasn’t making things up as he went along.  He was doing the things that were actually supposed to make him a better swimmer with his actual team.  Putting in the laps, the work and the time.

Coach talked about winning the work out, and David ate that shit up. But he didn’t see great times at the first few meets.

He felt better. His starts and turns were better, but he wasn’t swimming varsity times.

He wouldn’t have asked for anybody’s advice. He was embarrassed at what they might say. But they offered advice. “It’s early in the season,” they said. “You’ve been working hard. You’re breaking your body down now for races that come later on in the year.” “You’re in good position.” “It was 1.06, but it was clean.” “Don’t worry, you have nice balanced splits.”  “You want to peak at the right time.”  “Wait ‘til Conference.” “Wait ‘til taper.”

He couldn’t make himself believe that stuff. Swimming’s not subjective.  You’re good or you’re not. He knew what he wanted and he knew he didn’t have it.

He was getting good at practice.

The year before, practices had left him exhausted. Now he could lead practices, he could push as hard as anyone in his lane.  He asked for harder intervals. Yeah, it pissed off his lane, but he did it anyway. David still left practice exhausted, but now it was because he was pushing himself.

He had more meets and more mediocre results. Mercifully, time passed. He got over the hump of the season without noticing.  David pushed through the hardest practices of the season and afterward jogged home.  He broke his body down.  He wrecked the thing in traditional swimming style, hoping that he could come into his taper with more strength, more energy and more speed.

And then he was in taper, and he felt the boost in energy. Suddenly, he was restless in class.

Taper is the part of any training regimen when you practice less so that your body can restore itself and heal. You let your muscles rebuild. Boxers taper before big fights, marathoners run shorter distances in the week before an important race and swimmers swim less and less yards as they approach their final meets.

David wasn’t going to swim in sectionals or state.  He wasn’t fast enough to make that cut.  But he had conference coming up, and that was his Olympics.

—

On a Tuesday in an afternoon algebra class while everyone else was in the sleepy haze of an after lunch class, David fidgeted in his chair.  He had already asked to go pee once and walked around the halls.  Now he was out of excuses to leave class.

His body wanted work and practice, but during taper he didn’t practice enough to satisfy it.

Then the bell rang and he was free.  He went to his locker.  He already had his books for history, but why not? The locker is high school’s version of the fridge – you always look in whether you want something or not. He opened the locker.  It held a spring jacket and a stack of papers, folders and other things that might have been important.

He closed his locker. He went to class. Class dragged on. Class ended. He went to the locker room. He put his suit on. And for a blink, he swam.  He felt good, he felt fast, then it was done.

Walking back into the locker room, David wasn’t satisfied with his effort, but he did feel strong. After practice, he went through his daily routine: rinse, towel off, dress, run home.  But this was taper, so no running.  With that in mind, David was walking when he opened the door, stepped out of Sacred Heart College Prep onto Clark Street and got very wet.

He wasn’t thinking about the weather; he was in his routine. The water woke him up. Newly wet swimmer skin stinks of chlorine that can never be totally washed off. As he walked down the sidewalk, the light of the street lamps sparkled in his eyes. David reached behind his head for a hood but this jacket didn’t have one. Whatever, six blocks, he thought.

David got home, went into his room, peeled off the clothes he was wearing and fell asleep. Two hours later, he woke up when his mother came home from work.  David put his head out the door of his room and told her he’d make himself something to eat later.  They didn’t usually eat together anyway.

When he woke up again it was morning and he was sick.

His throat felt sticky and full. His eyes had sandmen that started by his nose and worked all the way out to the far side. He rubbed them. The left eye was less gross, less welded shut than the right, so he worked on that one first. Eventually he opened it, but the world wasn’t any prettier with his eyes open so he put his head back on the pillow.

He started to fall asleep again but he remembered about practice.  You couldn’t practice if you didn’t go to class that day, so he sat up again and started working on his right eye.  Eventually, it opened and he got out of bed.

“I checked on you, but I couldn’t wake you up.” His mother told him as he got ready to leave for the day. He didn’t have anything to say back.

—

Wednesday practice didn’t go as well as Tuesday practice did. But, it was taper so it was short. He gutted it out and went home.

He felt just as bad on Thursday as he felt on Wednesday. He gave his friends a wide berth, particularly teammates – nobody should be sick for conference. Practice felt shitty, but he was good at practice now and he could get through them on bad days.

Friday, he felt better. Maybe he would be healthy again by conference on Saturday. Taper was fucked. But, if he could be healthy by conference…

It wasn’t about taper, it was about conference.

—

Conference

He hears the beep and he’s off. For a long moment, he’s in the air, holding his body tightly in the streamline. He hits the water, glides, still in streamline, then, feeling himself slow down, he kicks.  He feels the pressure in his chest.  He wants to breathe but instead lets a little air out of his lungs.

His head breaches the surface of the water and he takes his first stroke, feeling the water in his hand. He still wants to breathe but doesn’t. The next stroke starts out as strong as the first but comes out a little short.  He finally turns his head to breathe on his third stroke.

Don’t slow down your kicking, keep the pace. He can see the swimmer in lane four. He’s right next to him, they are stroke for stroke, he must have dived a little to the right of the center of the land because they are very close. Now the other swimmer is a half stroke ahead of him. He shouldn’t have looked.

Ahead, the wall is coming, five strokes away, maybe six.

David tries to turn up his turn over, bring his arms through the air more rapidly.  He takes what will be his last breath before the wall.  He pulls, flips, and as he does the somersault that makes the turn, he can feel that his body is a little too close to the wall.  He unfurls awkwardly but with all the power he can muster.

Still, three laps to go.

—

He dropped seven seconds off of his best time.

At a higher level this would be a miraculous improvement, something beyond hoping for. But David wasn’t swimming at a very high level. Coming off the low base of JV swimming, it’s more like respectable.

Every swimmer mainly races himself, herself, or the clock. It’s as individual as a sport can be. Sure there’s a team, but you can barely hear them cheering. There are no cheerleaders, no fans at swim meets. When you compete, you mostly look down at the bottom of the pool.  It shouldn’t matter too much what place you come in. Seven seconds is the thing, and it wasn’t bad.

But David came in fifth.

In honor of the upcoming C2E2 comic convention this weekend I thought I would put up a quick post about comics. I love comics and comic culture, but it can be intimidating.  There are so many stories, and fans who have dedicated so much time to them, that it can seem like a lot of work just to check something out.  To make things worse, the world of comics is full of terms nobody else uses.  To remedy this, I’ve created a short glossary of words and phrases used in the industry.

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Sequential Art – This term, which I first came across in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, refers to any kind of work where images are collected in sequence and show the passing of time.  This could be a Spiderman comic or it could be a series of frescos telling a biblical story.

Graphic Novel – A graphic novel is a novel told in a single book through words and pictures, such as Blankets, or Watchmen

Ongoing Series – An ongoing series is a comic book series that has no predetermined end point.  It’s a serial that generally comes out every month, like Amazing Spiderman, or BPRD.  Sometimes abbreviated to “ongoing.”

Miniseries - A short series of comic book issues that tell one story.  Not part of an ongoing series.

Maxiseries – A long series of comic book issues that tell one story.  Not part of an ongoing series.

Issue – A soft-backed magazine-style episode of a comic.  Issues are often 18-22 pages long.

Continuity – The over arching story of a character or universe that ties many comics together.  If Spiderman breaks his arm in Amazing Spiderman and appears in a Captain America book with his arm in a cast, that is an example of a continuity between the two ongoing series.

Penciler – The first visual artist to draw the story.  Someone who creates the initial drawings of the comic, generally with a pencil.

Inker - The artist who goes over the art of the penciler with the darker ink line.

Colorist – The person who creates the color palette for the comic, filling in any colors for the book.

Trade Paperback - Comic book series are often collected into larger volumes.  These books often collect five issues into a single, soft-cover, trade paperback.   This term is also sometimes abbreviated to “trade.”

Trade Waiter – A person who prefers to read stories collected into trade paperbacks, rather than read individual issues as they come out.

Fanboy – A term for zealous comic fans.  Often used pejoratively to describe fans that are obsessed with continuity and averse to change.

Creator-Owned – Creator-owned comics are original content with characters that belong to the artists and writers who create the comics.  They are generally made outside the two largest comic companies, Marvel and DC.

Work For Hire – This term exists in contrast to creator-owned work and refers to a penciler, writer, or other artist who works on licensed properties for a company.  For example, any original comic work on Star Wars would be work for hire, unless the penciler was George Lucas.

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If you think of any terms I have left out please let me know in the comments. I would love to make this a bigger and better resource.  If you would like more comic book content you can check out some of the reviews I have done at World’s Strongest Librarian.

The Latino Caucus of alderman is considering opening up to non-Latino alderman who have majority Latino constituencies.  This move could expand the eight member group to as many as 15.

When asked by Extra if this move would benefit the Latino Caucus Alderman Daniel Solis said, “It would be beneficial to the caucus, but more importantly it would be beneficial to the constituency.”  Alderman Solis went on to say, “It would create a better awareness (of Latino issues) for those aldermen with majority Latino constituencies.”

This plan to expand the caucus is contingent on the agreement of the current caucus members and the interest of non-caucus members in joining the group.  Solis said he thought it likely that the caucus would agree and that there would be some non-Latino alderman interested in joining.

The seven alderman who may be invited to join the caucus include Ed Burke of the 14th Ward, John Pope of the 10^th Ward, Richard Mell of the 33^rd Ward and four others. If these aldermen were willing to join it would not only increase the numbers of members in the Latino Caucus it would also bring influential members of the city council into the group, Solis suggested.

The plan to expand the caucus follows the city’s recent redistricting. This process redrew the wards, and using the new map and the census data it was to identify seven wards with majority Latino populations and non-Latino aldermen.  When asked about the timing of this move Alderman Solis said, “It’s a good time, but we haven’t decided yet.”  The Caucus has to convene to make an official decision, Solis said he thought that decision would come before the end of the first quarter of this year.

This article is also available en Español

Last Sunday when the Lions won and the Bears lost, the book was shut on any Super Bowl hopes for the Bears.  Scenarios in which the Bears enter the playoffs are now so improbable, that Sam Hurd is more likely to get into the Hall of Fame than the Bears are to get into the playoffs.

The season came to its climax in a series of spectacular failures.  With the playoffs out of reach, the last few games left in the season are only footnotes. It’s time to write the story of the season. No, the patient is not in the coffin yet, but it’s time to prepare the eulogy.

Expectations (Prologue)

After such an abysmal game against the lackluster Seahawks team, it can be hard to remember that this season wasn’t always a disappointment.

In the pre-season, the Bears were nobody’s Cinderella pick.  Still, most of Las Vegas, Grantland and I, myself, all picked the Bears to finish somewhere around 8-8.  They had a murderous first quarter of the season, an unhappy running back, coming off of a season that, by his standards, was below average. People also worried about the rule changes limiting the Bears on special teams, what’s more, the division seemed to be getting better all around them.

After the Bears went 7-3, expectations rose considerably, thanks to the continued success of an aging defense and the excellent play of that, as yet un-contracted, running back.

The First Ten Games (Acts 1 and 2)

The Bears worked their way into the front position for the NFC Wild Card with a record of 7-3.  While their rivals in Green Bay won the initial tilt and maintained a stranglehold on the Division lead, the Bears were able to beat the teams they were supposed to beat and rack up a 4-1 record against teams under .500.

The Losing Streak (Act 3)

The Bears season took a turn during the November 27^th game against the Oakland Raiders, when Jay Cutler succumbed to a shoulder injury.  This marked the first of a series of injuries to key offensive players including Matt Forte and Johnny Knox.

At first pundits argued that with a relatively weak upcoming schedule, the injuries were happening at the best possible time.  That did not prove to be the case and with the Sunday’s loss to Seattle, the Bears all but sealed their fate.

The Next two games (Epilogue)

Is it possible to have a good season after a series of crushing defeats that knock them out of the playoffs? No.  But, as Lovie Smith and other Bears players and personnel were eager to point out after the game, the Bears have the Packers next week.  And they always get up for their rivals, playoffs or no playoffs. Maybe, maybe not.

No one had to ask Lovie if he was disappointed after the game, the emotion showed on his face and in his voice.  Whatever joy the Bears might take in winning a largely meaningless game against Green Bay, will disappear the first time they have to watch the Packers play in the playoffs.

Cutler’s break-out season (Appendix)

Before the year began two sentiments were unavoidable:

1. If the Colts go 0-16, Peyton Manning should get the MVP by default

2. This was Cutler’s year to break out with the Bears.

After the Colts’ victory this Sunday, Peyton won’t be getting the MVP in absentia that he may deserve, but few players’ reputations can have benefited more from their injuries and the teams resulting incompetence than Jay Cutler’s.

Cutler played well this season (though not transcendently), his injury was the turning point in the narrative of the Bear’s season.  For better or worse, the story of the 2011 Bears season will split into “pre-injury” and “post-injury. “ Cutler’s ability will be remembered as the key component to the Bears success.  At least somebody gets a happy ending.

The Bears came into Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks as the 4.5-point favorite.  A few weeks ago that would have seemed an insult to Chicago but with injuries to Bears quarterback, Jay Cutler and running back, Matt Forte, as well as one-sided losses to the Chiefs and Broncos, the situation had changed dramatically.  As it turned out, by making them favorites at all, the odds-makers were still overestimating the Bears.

On the other side of the field, Seattle came into Chicago on an upswing.  They had won four of their last five games and running back, Marshawn Lynch, scored a touchdown in every one of their last nine games.  Their winning ways would continue in Soldier Field.

The Bears offense got to work first on Sunday’s game, winning the coin toss and electing to receive, but they failed to score on their opening drive.  After a short gain on a running play by Marion Barber, Caleb Hanie missed badly on his first two passing attempts and the Bears were forced to punt. This drive would be indicative of the offense performance the rest of the game.

Later in the first quarter the Seahawks would take the lead on a running touchdown by Marshawn Lynch.

The Bears got back into the game by scoring a defensive touchdown after a Tavaris Jackson fumble caused by Julius Peppers.  Chicago went on to take the lead when Kahlil Bell made a touchdown catch (the Bears heavily featured Bell after Marion Barber’s gaffe-filled performance last week against the Broncos).  The Bears took this 14-7 lead into halftime.

That lead, however, did not last long. The Seahawks scored on their initial drive, moving the ball eighty yards.  The drive culminated with another Lynch touchdown.  On the ensuing possession, Caleb Hanie was intercepted by 323-pound defensive end, Red Bryant, a play which Bryant called “a fat kid’s dream.”

For the Bears, however, the nightmare was just getting started.  They were unable to score again, while Seattle went on to notch up 17 more points, six of which came from another interception that was returned for a touchdown.  The Bears ended the half with 31 unanswered points, for a final score of Seattle 38, Chicago 14.

At the post-game press conference, quarterback, Caleb Hanie, was asked to describe what was going through his head while throwing the Pick 6’s that sealed the Bears loss.  He quickly described the two plays and then joked “That’s it… seemed like more, huh?” It did indeed.

With Chicago’s loss on Sunday and Detroit’s win, it became almost impossible for the Bears to go into the playoffs.  Lovie Smith was noncommittal when asked what quarterback he would start next Sunday against Green Bay.  Considering the Bears’ play this Sunday, it’s difficult to imagine any of the active quarterbacks achieving success.

—

Originally published at Chicago-Latino.com

I remember feeling trapped at grandma’s house, 13-year-old Casey, trying to figure out how to play Uno by myself. Columbus Nebraska has never been a playground for the rich and famous, but when I was 6 it was great fun. I remember my pre-puberty self digging through dusty crates of old toys, finding my fathers discarded army men or walking around in a “little backyard” that could have fit my house twice over.  But all of the sudden, at 14, this little town wasn’t exciting anymore.

It’s an awkward age. At middle school in the interval between being a kid and a full on teenager, it’s hard to know which childhood things will still be fun and which will feel remedial. Being stuck in the middle can be particularly confusing when traveling.

When you’re a tween, a lot of culture is pointed above or below you. Children’s museums are generally for children a little younger than you, more adult museums can be hard to access, or boring. Historical sites are as interesting as you are interested in them, concerts are often 18 or 21 and over and (in this country) they won’t let you into a bar.

For adults traveling with a kid (or a tween) can have unexpected perks. A kid with a good attitude can lead you to do things you wouldn’t think to do otherwise. Going to a zoo, a carnival or a toy store, but these stops can be the most fun part of a trip.

Adults often forget the things that liked so much as children. And it is during those years between 12-15 that they do that forgetting. As adults, we don’t deal with bullies or peers who would make fun of us.

This week I have the pleasure of hosting my girlfriends little brother who’s in Chicago for Thanksgiving.  He’s staying in an apartment with his mother for most of the trip, but she has a couple of things to do in Chicago and I am the closest thing to a responsible adult that they can find. Trying to think of what to do with him I remembered all the things I loved to do when I was in eighth grade: hanging out at the zoo, the beach, the comic shop, or the conservatory. I was so excited. There are some things I grew out of. I don’t think I will want to sit in the massage chairs at the Sharper Image for an hour like I once did, but for the most part the thought of doing the things I did when I was 14 excited me.

I suppose the trick to traveling as a tween is not getting to caught up with trying to be an adult, the trick to traveling with a tween is to get as caught up as possible with trying to be a tween.

This article was originally published by Extra and is also available on their website. 

This feature originally appeared on the cover of Extra Newspaper. 

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Brewer Randy Mosher is a partner at the new 5 Rabbit Cerveceria but he has been known in homebrewing and “Beer Nerd” circles for years.   Mostly because Mosher  wrote and designed the eye-catching and popular home brewing guide “Radical Brewing” and “The Brewer’s Companion.”  He recently sat down with Extra to talk about brewing beers with a Latin theme here in Chicago, Aztec Gods and why craft beer has grown so much in the last few years. 

…

Extra: For people not familiar with 5 Rabbits what’s the elevator pitch or short summary of what you’re doing.

RM: We are bringing the fun and excitement of Latin cuisine and culture to the fabulous world of craft beer.

Extra: So what are the 5 Rabbits, does that tie into the Latin theme?

RM: First of all, it is not a quantity its 5 Rabbit singular, and this is based on Aztec mythology.  It’s very common for pre-Columbian personal names to have numbers in them.  So, the numbers usually refer to some kind of calendrical name (having to do with the birthday) they were really involved with all the cycles of time: The earth and Venus and the moon and everything.

Five in particular is a number that was associated with days that represented a loss of control.   What the five are well there are actually five gods of excess of which 5 Rabbit is one.  There is 5 Rabbit, 5 Lizard, 5 Vulture, 5 Flower, 5 Grass, and each one of those represents a different type of excess. I suppose you could say they are like the seven deadly sins in Christian mythos.

So the rabbit for example represents excess of pride.  The big ears are symbolic that we should listen more for messages from the community and our inner selves theirs a beautiful story behind all of this

Extra: I see you also work in design did you also design all the packaging?

RM: Yes I did

Extra: Did you take Aztec images and other images from the past?

RM: Well, we looked at all of that.   You know it’s our goal to not be too fussy about the past.  We’ll take inspiration from it but we really intend to be very much a 21^st century project, very much a kind of a fusion thing.

Extra: Where else does that Latin influence touch the beer, besides the name?  Is there also an influence on the beer itself?

RM: Well, we have three beers.  In our portfolio right now although one of them is on vacation for the summer. But the 5 Rabbit is a golden ale that is a beery beer.  Really in Latin cultures the most popular beer that’s drunk really the only beer that’s drunk (with a few exceptions) is that yellow beer that has that golden color that was influenced in some way by pilsner.  So we felt that it was important for us to have a beer that had that look.  But we didn’t want make something timid or do something that we thought would be boring and easy.

The other beer that we have out this summer is the 5 Lizard and this one is a little more obvious in its relationship to Latin culture and cuisine especially.  We are calling it a Latin style wit beer.  So Wit is that really delicious wheat beer from Belgium that is usually spiced and so we used some coriander with a really crisp character to it and instead of the traditional orange peel we used lime peel.  We use about 60 limes per batch of beer.

The beer is very light in alcohol 4.2 % it’s very light very crisp then we spike it with passion fruit pulp during fermentation. It’s very well integrated, and its super super dry.  We’re calling it a fruit beer for grown ups.

Extra: In describing these both it seems like there’s this dichotomy between doing a way out there novelty beer and a boring timid beer.  How do you keep that balance?

RM: Well that’s the trick.  All along for me that has been one of the more interesting things.  How do we express the Latin culture in a beer and do it in a way that’s not just a novelty or gimmicky that really creates things of beauty that have depth and drink ability, beer that you can have 2 or 3 pints of and don’t wear out your pallet.

Extra: What do you think is fueling the popularity of craft beer.  Do you think we are in a growing trend, is this a fad or the height of something that is always going to be around?

RM:  It’s a huge question and no one can totally predict the future.  But here’s how I see it. I think this is a kind of hundred-year-long pendulum swing.  If you go back to the early 19th century breweries were all local.  People knew their brewers they went to church with him or went to the bar with him. They were there in their community.  And in the 19^th century with the scaling up of all kind of industries we developed a very different relationship with our suppliers and the idea of nationally branded products really took hold.

They served in the USA anyway a way to kind of hold people together in a funny way.  If you think of people as coming from Poland and Mexico and Ireland, Germany and every where else they became real Americans through a lot of different ways but one of the things that they did was they shared this real kind of progressive modern industrialized brands like Heinz ketchup, Campbell’s soup, and eventually Budweiser bee things like that.  People were really looking for modernness in their product: efficiency and economy and canned beer.

We have this phrase the greatest thing since sliced bread.  For them it really was great you didn’t have to slice that old bread and it didn’t go stale as fast.  But when you look at what you have to do to make sliced bread you get bread that’s not really all that bread like.  Garret Oliver has a great statement “You look at a loaf of wonder bread and it looks like bread and it has a crust it has an interior and its kind of spongy but it’s not bread.   It’s a chemical system that is held together in a way that makes it possible to package it, cut it up, put it on the shelf and have it last for two or three weeks.  Its very different from what our great grandfathers had for example.

Extra: Being on both sides of brewing as both a home brewer and a pro brewer what do you see as the relationship between growth of home brewing and the growth of craft beer?

RM: They’re two sides of the same coin.  The forces that drive people to home brew are the same forces that drive them to take it a little bit further to take it into the commercial realm.

It’s a bit of an obsession to be an honest.  For a lot of people it kind of takes over there life and makes them question things.  Maybe you take a look at that job as a computer programmer and its not as interesting as it used to be.  When you’re a brewer it’s very easy to see what your doing is making people happy

Extra: How many iterations do you go through to get to the finished recipe that you actually bring to market?

RM: for us that really wasn’t a difficult process.  My partners are beer enthusiasts but not necessarily super beer knowledgeable.  So what I did we sat down at my dining room table and I blended commercial beers and spiked them with different flavorings to try to put them in a glass so we could all taste and discuss.  We tried different fruits we tried the chilli ancho that we have in the 5 Vulture.  And so in a couple of hours we were able to go through a dozen or more beers and once we got to the point where we had something that we all liked and agreed on then it was up to me to cook up a recipe.

For some it took one or two to get it right.  But then we were able to scale up.  We are still doing some tinkering but the changes are on the order of 10% more or less.  In a range that most consumers aren’t going to notice.  But we want the beers to be as good as  we possibly can so we see something that could use some improvement were going to do it.

Extra:  Is there anything big coming up for 5 Rabbit?

RM: We will be brewing up the 5 Vulture that was previewed and put on vacation for the summer.  That’s a 6.4 % dark beer spiked with a small amount of chile ancho which is that really dark leathery smoky chili that you see in a lot of Mexican especially Oaxacan cuisine.  We’re calling it a Oaxacan Ale.

We are also working on a beer for Dia de los Muertos, something along the lines of a bent October-fest.  We’re not sure its gonna work, but it probably will so that’ll be something to look forward to maybe second week of October.

Extra: It’s appropriate that a Dia de los Muertos beer be shrouded in mystery?

RM: I think that’s appropriate.  We are gonna have some fun around it.

Josh Locks is the coach of the boys sophmore baseball team and a teacher at Whitney Young High school.  In the wake of Chicago Public Schools considering cutting all Sophmore sports for boys and girl across the city I caught up with Josh to get his take on the situation and ask what could be done to help.

To contact the Public School system directly to let them know that you value Sports you can write them through this link.

Wrote this post on December 28^th, but didn’t have the gall to put it up.  Then I saw my blog buddy Josh Hanagarne’s post on goals for 2009 and the success he has had with his list.  So I decided, what the hell.  Also, I am hoping the added pressure of putting this list in public will give me a little more resolve.

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I have not done a lot of new years resolutions in my life because I am pretty ok with where I am and generally don’t like throwing down the gauntlet before a year is even started.

But, there is so much that I want to get done. I think if I write down some goals and orient myself toward that list it may be easier for me to do the things I want in the year that’s coming (already here).  Also, with a blog I have a few more witnesses to hold me to it.

Finance

• Be less broke (in terms of liquid assets) at the end of the year than at the beginning

Fitness

• Bench my weight
• Do 12 clean pull-ups
• Bike a century (100 miles)

Blog

• 120 posts
• 40 interviews

Music

• New Set (12 – 14 new original songs)
• Play 4+ gigs
• Learn basic piano composition

If you live in Illinois, today is the deadline to register to vote in the primaries.

If you live in Illinois and want to vote but don’t want to go to some horrible bureaucratic hellhole simply print of the form you can get here and send it in today.

Voting in primaries is especially important in states like Illinois and Texas where one party dominates, so if you share my interest in complaining about local politics please register.

That goes for: liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans, ninjas and pirates.

Also: socialists, libertarians, Unitarians, librarians and septuagenarians.