Oh Canada...

That's all I know of the Canadian national anthem. And that makes me pretty damn knowledgeable in the category of Canadian culture, if you ask me. In addition to learning virtually of their anthem I have also recently enjoyed a steady intake of Canadian beers. As I have done this a few things have become clear: 1) Canadian beer tastes like a smoother, yellower version of almost every American pilsner 2) Canadian beer lends itself perfectly to social gatherings, particularly those involving camping 3) Perhaps #2 on this list is because Canadian beer mixes naturally with sand.

Whatever the reason, I have loved my experiences with Canadian beers. There's nothing that gets you in touch with your redneck roots (which we all have) more than a Labatt Blue by the campfire, sand and ash blowing in your face, creating the perfect cocktail for the senses. Combine this with the 6% alcohol content of the beer and the altitude of the mountains and life is pretty good. It's almost like you're in Canada yourself, moose freshly shot, turtleneck securely on, tuque keeping you warm, reminiscing of camping trips past. So let's raise a bottle, eh, to our neighbors to the north and their uncanny ability to make watered-down yet tastier versions of American pilsners!

Asian beer or American Lager?

Tonight I went with a good friend to Sawadee Thai Restaurant in Salt Lake City. As I always do when eating at Asian restaurants, I ordered the local beer, in this case the Singha Beer from Thailand. As I drank this light colored beer, it reminded me of other Asian beers, namely the Sapporo and Kirin Ichiban from Japan. These beers all share the light, smooth drinkability of the American Lager and I couldn't help but make a comparison to the yellow beers of the US, such as Budweiser and Coors. Now, I don't think it's a secret that these beers get very little respect in the international community. When one is talking about prestigious beers, the ales of European countries or even some American microbreweries come to mind. So I couldn't help but wonder why it is that Asian beers seem to resemble the lesser-favored lagers of the United States.

In answering this question, I looked to the brewing history of Asian countries, starting with Thailand, as it was the beer of the night. I was interested to learn that brewing in Thailand first started in 1934. This is quite a long while after brewing in the US and, as such, would help to explain where they got the idea for the American style lager. In addition to being relatively new to the brewing scene, they have traditionally only brewed lagers with low alcohol content (Singha is brewed at 3.5% ABV). This isn't to say that all Thai beer is low in alcohol. Boon Rawd Brewery, the maker of Singha, also brews a lager at 6.5% ABV called Leo Super, which is a premium Thai beer, and not one offered at Sawadee.

In researching Japanese beers, it is interesting to discover that beer brewing in Japan was first started by the Dutch, during the time when sailors were commuting between Japan and the Dutch empire. This would explain the Dutch-style lagers one finds in Japan, but it's also interesting to note that the Germans also have a strong brewing presence in Japan. Like Thailand, Japan tends to brew lagers, although their alcohol content tends to hover in the 4-5% range (5% when consumed locally, 4% when exported).

So I guess this does answer my question and confirm my suspicion that, yes, Asian beers are very similar to the American lager. After dinner, my friend and I went to the planetarium to see a movie, Magnificent Desolation about astronauts going to the moon. I was feeling particularly dorky and my friend was awesome and accommodated my wishes. To close this post, I'd like to share this video trailer of the movie we saw about the moon. I should also probably tell you that I'm one of those people who's not really sure the Apollo landing really happened, so take this with a grain of moon salt. Enjoy!

Who am I, sir?

A Utah man am I, sir, and will be til I die!

I had the pleasure of attending Utah basketball's win over Wyoming yesterday. It's always great to get back to the U of U campus and it's always better when they win. I think this is the 4th time I've gone in the last 12 months and the Utes have won every time I've gone. I guess Coach Boylen's motivational speeches of "Win this one for the D Train" are really paying off.

In addition to the game, the University of Utah was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Jon M. Huntsman center. This brought back memories, for me, of going to basketball camps there during the Rick Majerus years. In addition to the jolly fat man, I was also privileged enough to learn from such Utah greats as Keith Van Horn, Michael Doleac, Hanno Mottola, and perhaps the greatest guard in Utah history, Andre Miller.

Meeting and learning from Andre Miller is of particular fondness for me as I was able to see him as a truly poor college student. I remember during basketball camp, some of us had some down time and we went into the Utah locker room. I saw in Andre's locker a notebook filled with doodles, among a few actual notes. As I was leaving the locker room and passing the south doors of the Huntsman Center, I saw Andre roll up in a gray/silver car that looked to be either a Gremlin or a Yugo. This dude was POOR. And incredibly unassuming. When he would coach our team during camp, he spoke so softly that he sounded like he was whispering. In addition to this, I don't think anyone realized how good he was really going to be. Coach Majerus, when talking about Andre, said, "We expect pretty good things out of this kid." How about leading the Utes to the National Championship game in 1998? Keith Van Horn only ever made it to the Elite Eight.

So I guess since I'm writing on my beer blog, I should tell you about the beer of the night. I, of course, wasn't able to drink at the game, but afterward I had the extreme pleasure of going with my good friend Jill to the Red Butte Cafe. Red Butte is a member of the Pub Group Restaurants and, as such, has both amazing food and amazing beer. The beer includes those from the Desert Edge Brewery and the Moab Brewery. My consistent favourite, and possibly the best beer in Utah, is the UPA (Utah Pale Ale). When in doubt, I always order this and last night was no exception. Perfect balance of hops, with the unfiltered bitterness of a lighter ale. Truly delicious and I enjoyed every part of dinner.

Cheers to the boys in red! Here's to 40 more years of basketball mediocrity (with the occasional great season), football superiority, and gymnastics domination!

Mo's on Sundays

I know I've talked about Mo's Bar & Grill on Sunday nights before, but I don't think many people get how fun this endeavor really is. Let me tell you what this place offers, in a nutshell. A FREE comedy show featuring some of Salt Lake's Finest. In addition to my brother, regulars include the up and coming Cody Eden, Christopher Stephenson, Levi Rounds, Ryan Doud, and the frat boy Josh Whitaker. On top of this, you get some of the cheapest beer and food served by the coolest bartenders and servers. Yours truly goes there, snags some beer, and gets caught up on grading while being entertained by the truly raw Salt Lake comedians. You see, this place isn't censored like other comedy clubs around. And it's on a Sunday night so you don't have to deal with...families. Yeah, families.

Anyway, come out to Mo's on Sunday nights starting at 10:00 for cheap drinks, cheap food, and free local comedy. Always a good time!

Here's a video of Cody Eden at Mo's. As honest a portrait as I could give you, and for once, NOT my brother. Enjoy!


Fast food and fun science facts.

Cody Eden | MySpace Video

Ah, the Birthday Beer

I had the honour of celebrating not one, but two birthdays this last week. The first was that of my very dear friend Shance. As some of you know, Shance is a bartender at The Woodshed, formerly owned by my other friend and basketball teammate Benny. Well, Benny sold the bar and the new owner, coincidentally, hired Shance. Luckily for us, though, Shance was not working that night, but was rather the guest of honour. I had the whole night planned out so I wouldn't have to drive. I walked to the bar while my brother, John, had taken the car to do comedy in Tooele. John finished his set at about 11:30, which got him to the bar just in time to drive my drunk ass home. Shance hired a great DJ for the night and I had a fantastic time. In addition to catching up with old friends, the drinks at The 'Shed really are some of the cheapest in the city (Voted best Cheap Drinks 2008 by City Weekly).

Then on Saturday it was time to celebrate the 21st birthday of my good friend Anna. This girl is stunningly beautiful, as evidenced by her being a contestant in the Miss Utah USA pageant in October. It was so fun to see her drinking legally and the night was highlighted by her dancing on the piano to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back". Effing hilarious and it fulfilled my fantasy of singing that song as if in natural conversation ("So Fellas." "Yeah?" "Fellas." "Yeah?" "Has your girlfriend got the butt?" "Hell Yeah!" "So shake it." "Shake it?" "Shake it." "Shake it?" "Shake that healthy butt. Baby got back!")

Now here was the tricky part with both of these birthday celebrations. I'm BROKE. Couldn't afford birthday presents and could barely afford to by birthday beverages for the guests of honour. Luckily I have the world's coolest friends and Shance was a cheap date (again, Woodshed is THE place for cheap drinks) and Anna had enough people buying for her that I snuck by without buying (I owe her). Great times were had by all and I had more than my fill of beer.

Happy Birthday Shance and Anna! This one's for you!

Bring it on out, how about this Jazz!

John: "You sure? We still have two more quarters of basketball."
Me: "Good point, better get a tall boy."
And thus I drink 24 more ounces of Budweiser as the Jazz take care of the Rockets in Houston. It was an ugly game, but it was made less ugly by my second favourite basketball companion, ice cold beer. My brothers and I have it worked out to a pretty exact science. When we go to Jazz games in person, we get good and hammered at home and then TRAX it to the game. Once there, we like to average a beer per quarter. This is easily accomplished by taking advantage of the ESA's policy of 2 beers at a time. Snag 2 before the game, snag 2 more at halftime. This leads to full enjoyment of the contest while minimizing the effect on one's wallet (we always buy cheap seats too).

When watching the Jazz on TV the science is a little less exact. As evidenced by the conversation between John and I during Tuesday's game, the main goal is to always have a beer in hand. I had run out of beer at halftime and was toying with the notion of watching the second half without said libation. John took good care of his brother and the situation was quickly remedied at a reasonable $2 cost.

Now, before I had the pleasure of watching a game on my brother's new 46" high def flat panel TV, I had the privilege of attending not one, but two Jazz games in person. To make a long story short, I was trying to meet up with a friend who had season tickets both times and failed as a result of not knowing how to work my new phone. I did, however, have two of the best Jazz game experiences I've ever had. The first was made fun by the constant pursuit of my friend with absolutely nothing to go on. I had 1 beer that night and it was delightful (Bud Light Wheat). The second was made fun by giving up on my friend early and instead trying to find my brother. I had two beers this game (Budweiser both times) and ended up sitting alone in a sea of awesome, younger fans. I've gotta tell you, there is nothing like being surrounded by young fans, many of whom are attending their first game. They get excited about absolutely everything, and every chant you do is new to them (they had seriously never chanted "DEFENSE!" before).

So there you have it, watching the Jazz with my old friend beer. The only thing better is watching them with friends, and I always make sure and have them handy. Cheers to our boys in blue!

Had an amazing night out.

At Avenue Q with a great friend. No beer, but this still seemed like the best place to post. Enjoy!

This is why I love Dane Cook.

I'm completely sober.

One for the Ages

Don't even know where to begin. This has been the most beautiful pain I've ever felt. And I owe it to knowing all my friends. I don't play favourites, but you know who you are. You leave me alone with nothing but scars. You gave me this face so I could use my ears to let you use what I like to choose. I only choose when I have no choice, and lately I've felt that I have no voice.

So this one's for you, and you and YOU, and especially me because you know what's true. So here goes nothing it's a Cat in a Hat. If you like it then you dig it and I'll give it right back.

Peace and Love

D Train

Lady Gaga, Poker Face Riff

A Cause for Celebration?

It has been quite a little while, but I finally had another blog-worthy beer. Two, actually. The first came at the amazing establishment of Mo's Bar and Grill (358 S. West Temple). This beer is noteworthy for two reasons: 1) It was my first beer in over two weeks (story to follow). 2) I discovered one of Salt Lake's best kept beer value secrets; the personal pitcher. Let me tell you about this pitcher. It works out to be the maximum allowable beer to be consumed by one person at one time in the state of Utah, at roughly 2.5 beers. And you get this at the more-than-fair price of $6.50. And I'm not talking about yellow beer here peeps. I enjoyed myself Uinta's Gelande Amber Lager. Now let me explain why it had been so long between beers.

On the evening of 5 January, yours truly lost my marbles. And I'm not talking about the, "oh look, Danny's doing something adorably crazy" losing marbles, I'm talking full nudity, slight hallucination, days without sleep, very little food, committed by my own brother crazy. This resulted in my spending a week in a psych unit in Utah County (yes, you read that correctly). No need to delve into more details than that, except to tell you that I have the world's most amazing friends and family and I am now a fan of the people of Utah County. I got out of the hospital on Saturday, 16 January while my brother John was in Vegas doing comedy.

So upon John's return from Vegas, my ever-so-sweet mother decided to treat the entire family to dinner at her favorite restaurant, Buca di Beppo. In addition to this, my amazing brother Robby bought us a pitcher of Bohemian Brewery's Viennese Lager (easily one of Utah's best beers). Now, what's most interesting about this night is there was some confusion as to what we were actually celebrating. You see, I had just returned from a week in a psych unit. Not something I would usually think to celebrate. John had returned from a comedy tour that took him to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Las Vegas, Nevada. He had made some money on this trip, but spent virtually all of it on his airfare home. The best thing about this is that he ended up missing his flight, wasting the ticket, and getting a ride home from a most charitable friend.

So my question remains, what exactly were we celebrating? The answer, of course, is who gives a shit? Does anyone really need a reason to get together with family and drink beer? I love beer, I love my family, and when the two of these things join forces it is a most blessed event.

Happy drinking!

Happy New Yeer!

Don't worry, your favorite 6th grade teacher hasn't forgotten how to spell even remedial words over this holiday break. No, instead my long talked-about blog is now a reality, "A Yeer in Beer." For those of you who are lucky enough not to have heard about this, let me explain to you how this came about. I have always had a mild fascination with the question of "how many" things have happened in a certain period of time. I don't think I'm alone in this curiosity. How many of us, when presented with the possibility of life after death, have said, "Man, I hope when I get to Heaven/Hell I get to see how many times I said 'I love you,' or how many times I've been kissed, laid, punched, etc." I took this type of questioning at the start of 2009 and asked, "I wonder how many beers I drank during 2008?" I decided that in 2009, not only was I going to count how many beers I drank over the year, but I also gave myself a goal of 1000 beers for the year (2.74 beers per day, for those of you counting at home).

As I began my frivolous quest, I began to notice inherent problems with this task, not the least of which being that I was usually in an altered state when it came time to tally the day's beers, especially on party nights. I had tried keeping a mental tally, and when that failed, I tried text messaging myself after every beer. Again, in an altered state, the phone would come out, and instead of texting myself, I'd end up drunk texting some random chick. In this process, I learned two very valuable lessons: 1) The union of drinking and cell phones is not a productive one. 2) The union of beer and good people is an extremely entertaining one.

So, with this, I altered my goal of simply counting my beer consumption for the year, and instead decided that a fun and interesting way to document interesting happenings in life would be to relate interesting stories that happened either because of beer, or had beer as a prominent component. The title of this blog would be "A Yeer in Beer."

The format is simple. Each entry will have a title, referring to the theme or purpose of the beer interaction, i.e. "Catching up," or "Celebrating a Promotion," and include the date of the interaction. In addition to this, the timing of the blog will be completely random; when something noteworthy happens involving beer, I'll blog about it. I'm guessing that will happen with frequency, given how much beer I drink (when I gave up counting, I was averaging 2.82 a day, before Summer had even started)

And that leads us to right now and my first entry: Starbucks Family Reunion, 2 January, 2010

My beautiful, charming, stunning, amazing, insanely-talented, virtually-perfect friend, who we'll call Kylie (I will be using pseudonyms throughout the blog, unless otherwise noted), had her 30th birthday on Tuesday, and we decided that Saturday would be a fun time to get together to celebrate. We decided on The Woodshed (800 S. State St.) as the venue for the evening. This was a logical choice, as our friend Tyler is a bartender there and he was working as a backup bartender that night, so we'd be able to see him as well. The evening had a second purpose as it was a way to bring all of the Starbucks family back together for a little reunion.

The night started with hearing about my friend Erin's travels to Amsterdam last year as well as some of the struggles she's overcome in her personal life, particularly in relationships. Her perspective on everything was incredibly refreshing and I left the conversation feeling inadequate in my relationship "maturity," while also being utterly and completely impressed by hers.

Next, as more friends filtered in to the evening, the conversation turned to what I've been up to. I related stories of teaching and how much I'm loving my classes, but as much as I tried, I couldn't help relating how amazing my last two weeks have been, culminating in John's and my writing what we feel will be an amazing book and movie. I had just gotten finished with two days of, hands-down, the most creative, inspired writing session either of us had ever had. I had a basic idea and outline for a story and its themes, but I was lacking a strong plot to drive the theme. John (not a pseudonym) and I had talked about co-writing the book and adapting it into a screenplay, but we hadn't actually sat down to write anything yet, other than me having written a very short, somewhat vague, outline and synopsis. John had been working in various cities across the US doing comedy so this writing session was the first time we had had a chance to really tackle this project together. The result was nothing short of inspired.

John brought elements into the story that I hadn't even dreamed of and we now have a project that we are incredibly proud of, including character profiles, a very detailed outline and synopsis, and ideas for the music and art direction of the movie. I've even begun writing songs for the score and soundtrack and I can't believe how well this is coming together. After my story, we were 2 for 2 on people kicking ass since the last time we had talked, and it was now time to hear from the guest of honor. Little did I know that she had a trump for my exciting news. Although this shouldn't be at all surprising to anyone who knows Kylie, including myself.

Kylie has been working for Starbucks for roughly 6 years now, while graduating in ballet, moving all over the country, and dancing with various dance companies. When I say "working at Starbucks," what I really mean is "running the store and holding it together." Recently, she has also been teaching dance part-time at a local private school ("sleep"? What? I'm sorry I don't follow you). She announced that, starting Monday, she will be teaching dance full-time at the school and cutting back to one day a week at Starbucks. In addition to this amazing news, her boyfriend is now a licensed general contractor and doing all kinds of amazing work. Kicking ass tally: 3 for 3.

These stories, among countless others, were held together by amazing conversation, ranging from the political, to the religious, to the artistic, to the simply hilarious. The overall feeling I was left with after the night was that I am so proud, impressed, blessed, and humbled to have the people in my life that I do. We're all doing what we love to do and we're all doing it well.

2010 is not 2009. Good things are coming and my amazing friends are proof. So grab a beer, grab some friends and keep kicking ass. Happy New Yeer!