Your new party trick:

I caught an amazing show in Chico last night. Three Portland bands played Cafe Coda. There were no local support acts, so the show wasn’t very well attended, but this didn’t stop Nick Jaina, Weinland and Norfolk & Western from putting their hearts into it and digging into their strings, horns, drums and woodwinds. Nick Jaina, playing as a seven-piece, stole the show….for me, my girlfriend, and three or four other people who were in there not working or playing in the band. Then Weinland tore it up as well.

Weinland had stayed at my house last time they were through Chico and shot a bit of video. I’m not much for sports, but drinking games? Solid. Here my room mate Paul Valadon explains to touring band Weinland (nee John Weinland) the rules of Putt-Putt Drink-Drink.

Be sure to check out http://www.myspace.com/johnweinland, as they will be on tour for the next seven weeks.

This is the first time in awhile I’ve been ashamed of being a Democrat.  A lopdick state assemblyman by the name of Jim Beall is proposing in a new bill to increase the tax on a can or bottle of beer from the current $.02 to $.30, making a six pack $1.80 more expensive:

The people who use alcohol should pay for part of the cost to society, just like we’ve accepted that concept with tobacco,” Beall said.

Beall has already successfully convinced the Franchise Tax Board to raise the taxes on so-called “Alco-pops,” the sweet tasting malt beers that teenaged dudes in Willows use to get high school girls drunk enough to let them touch some whiskers by $2 a sixpack, an increase that will take effect later this year.

It’s no wonder that beer drinking can be dangerous, but Sam Adams drinkers now have more to fear than just cirrhosis of the liver. The Boston brewing company issued a voluntary recall of a number of 12 oz. beer bottles today after it was discovered that some third party manufactured bottles have to the potential to contain shards of glass.

During a routine bottle inspection at one of our breweries, we detected possible defects in a small percentage of bottles resulting in the random presence of bits of glass, most the size of grains of sand, but some small slivers in some bottles as well. Based on this sample, we quickly began testing bottles of Samuel Adams at all of our breweries and identified that the problem appeared to be isolated to a single glass plant of the five that supply us…

The potentially affected bottles are easily identified by a raised letter and number visible on the bottom edge of the bottle. Affected bottles are embossed with the digits “N35” followed by the letters “OI”. Please see the photo below. Bottles with this coding should not be drunk. SamuelAdams.com

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Three quarters of a century ago America was in a state of turmoil and disarray. The Great Depression hit about five years previous, and times were tough. Though the Stock Market began to improve in early 1930, Americans were still reluctant to incur debt and declined spending coupled with the Dust Bowl drama in the south kept unemployment at an all time low. As if that weren’t enough to make a man crazy, our belt-tightening ancestors also had to deal with prohibition. I can’t imagine much worse than losing all your worldly possessions, failing to provide for your family, and having to cope with all that sober. No beer to take the edge off of stark destitution and that’s just tragic. But on April 7th of 1933 some relief finally came. (more…)

Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties & local bars to be alert and remain cautious when offered a drink by any woman. Many females use a date rape drug on the market called “Beer.” The drug is found in liquid form and is available anywhere. It comes in cans, bottles, or from taps and in large “kegs” Beer is used by female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and sleep with them. A woman needs only to get a guy to consume a few units of Beer and then simply ask him home for no strings attached sex. Men are rendered helpless against this approach. After several beers, men will often succumb to the desires to sleep with horrific looking women whom they would never normally be attracted. After drinking beer, men often awaken with only hazy memories of exactly what happened to them the night before, often with just a vague feeling that “something bad” occurred. At other times these unfortunate men are swindled out of their life’s savings, in a familiar scam known as “a relationship.” In extreme cases, the female may even be shrewd enough to entrap the unsuspecting male into a longer term form of servitude and punishment referred to as “marriage.” Men are much more susceptible to this scam after beer is administered and sex is offered by the predatory females.