The April Fools prank I helped a friend with

The other week my very good friend Eric Smith (yes, the same one who also made a campaign commercial during that VERY wacky school board race years ago) approached me with a project.  Could I help him pull off an April Fools stunt this year?  I said absolutely, that it would be an honor and a pleasure to work with him.

Along with being an expert welder, Eric is also a professional Santa Claus (the reason his beard is so big and bushy).  And he's a certified beer expert (no really, you can get certifications for that) who regularly posts videos on YouTube as "Beer Santa".  So he came up with the idea for Duke's Mayonnaise Beer.

Here's the video he published two days ago.  Looks and sounds pretty convincing aye? :-)

Maybe next year I'll come up with another prank.  It's been too long since I've pulled off something.  I think my favorite was when I got everyone thinking that I was joining the Amish and turned this site into "Plain Blog by Brother Christopher Knight".  And then there was that other year's prank that got the Vatican's attention... but we won't go there.

So on your way home this evening, stop by your local grocer and pick up some all-natural Duke's Mayonnaise Beer.  Made by Sloof Brewing in Piedmont, Georgia.

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Tammy Tuesday this week is brew-ing up trouble

So Tammy decided she wanted to try some beer...

She ultimately decided that she didn't like it.  After one whiff of the bottle, she ran away from it as hard as she could!  Wish I could have gotten that on camera.

A friend made an observation: what kind of a German dog wouldn't enjoy beer?  I think the photo speaks for itself: it's light beer that Tammy recoiled from, not a dark hearty pint of true ale.

Incidentally, with all of the interest in home-brewing lately, I'm considering making some beer myself.  The thing is, I've never been able to develop a taste for the stuff.  So I figured that'll be one hobby which if I'm bad at, I'll never have to know...

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North Carolina Beers: A good blog about Tarheel brew

Please note: I am not a beer drinker.  In fact, it's very rare that I'll drink alcohol at all.  There's nothing I hold against those who enjoy it (in moderation 'course).  And I know next to nothing about what makes a good beer.  The first time I tried drinking any, it was in Belgium in 1993.  To this day I still cannot adequately describe how dark that stuff was...

Even so, lacking knowledge and experience hasn't been an impediment toward enjoying Eric Smith's new blog North Carolina Beers!  A home-brewer for well over a decade, Eric's new site is "dedicated to North Carolina Beers and Breweries. Over the next year or two I plan on visiting every brewery in NC and writing a review on each of them. I will write about as many beers as I can and there may be some beer specific post as well."  In less than a week he's already got four stories up: the latest is a review of Natty Greene's Greensboro.

It's this kind of spotlight on local culture along with the history behind it that I've always enjoyed finding.  There's plenty of it already on North Carolina Beers.  Go check it out and tell 'em that Chris sent ya :-)

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POPE SMOKE WATCH 2013 #2: More black out of the Vatican chimney

The two sessions of morning ballots have been cast by the cardinals sequestered (that seems to be the popular buzzword of late) inside the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. What sayeth them?

Nope. No pope...

Two more ballots this afternoon. They should begin being cast around noon EST.

UPDATE 9:27 a.m. EST:  Hey, they've got BEER in there!!  The monks of Norcia at the Monastery of San Benedetto serve the Lord while also making Birra Nursia: their own brand of brew.

Here are Brother John and Brother Francis dropping off several cases of Birra Nursia beer at Domus Sancta Martha (where the cardinals are staying) on Monday, the day before the Conclave began.

All those cardinals, deliberating about the next pope while downing some suds.  Hey, it could happen.  Lord only (literally) knows what is going on inside the Sistine Chapel during Conclave.  Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with that particular imagery.  But then, I'm not much of a beer drinker anyway.  Never have been able to develop a taste for any of that stuff.

But if the cardinals approve of it during their discussions, hey... why not? :-)

And if you want some Birra Nursia for yourself, here's the official website where you can order it.  If it's good enough for the princes of the Church, it's good enough for you!

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Les Misérables: Woman steals 12-pack of beer between her legs

What a year for weird crime. Back in February it was a robber armed with a Klingon sword holding up 7-Elevens in Denver. But the story out of Zachary, Louisiana is even more bizarre...

Lisa Newsome (shown in the surveillance camera still on the right) has been arrested for theft. The crime she has confessed to police: stealing a 12-pack case of Miller Lite beer from Crossroads Grocery and attempting to leave the store with it... by carrying the beer between her legs and hidden under her oversized house coat!

If you look carefully at the photo you can clearly see the crate of Miller Lite protruding from... well, under her attire.

Police in Zachary are reporting that Newsome "attempted to show us how she did it, but we told her not to pull her pants down."

I wonder how far she got walking away with that thing?

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A "beer summit"?!

So in a little more than a hundred years we have gone from President Theodore Roosevelt negotiating peace between the Russians and the Japanese, to now President Barack Obama inviting Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley to the White House to drink some beer.

(Read my original thoughts last week about this whole inane situation.)

If this is what it now means to be President of the United States, then perhaps Jimmy Carter didn't fully employ the assets available to him. He should have turned his brother Billy Carter loose onto the international stage... and we could have had world peace within a few short months!

Can anyone honestly imagine Ronald Reagan or Harry Truman doing something like this? Not as President, anyway. The office carries with it a kind of dignified weight that, unfortunately, I'm not seeing honored very much at all lately. Then again, this sort of thing has been building/devolving for years anyway, so I guess it's only a natural progression.

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