New Year's Resolution for 2008

You may recall that each year on this blog I put forth a few New Year's Resolutions for myself, and since I don't really believe in the idea of a new year nor in being resolute, my past resolutions have been tongue-in-cheek, like resolving to eat more lobster. Yeah, I know. Ha ha really funny stuff, maybe I should quit my job and be a scab for Letterman.

But this year I wanted to take a different tack. I decided that, rather than make a list of real or fake resolutions which would invariably complicate my life and set myself up for failure, I would create ONLY ONE resolution. That way, it would be easy to remember, easy to execute, and thus easy to accomplish. It's all about keeping it simple here at the world headquarters at BBD.

So after about five minutes of heavy thinking, I am resolved to drink more water in 2008. That's it. Drink more water.

You may think this silly or stupid or both, but when you think about it, drinking more water, as simple as it is, actually encompasses several resolutions in one handy and easy behavior. It helps you lose weight, that perennial (and usually unaccomplished) resolution, as it fills you up before meals and has no calories. Water is good for health, it's good for the skin, and it's delicious. Oh, and it quenches thirst, which is always, like a hyena, nipping at your tail.

And since I'm a creative sort of soul, I am expanding my resolution to include all water, including the kind found in beer. So I'm also supporting my industry with my new resolution, as increased beer consumption will likely ensue.

So here's to water.

Remembrance of Things Past

The following article was first published in the September 07 issue of All About Beer Magazine, a great consumer magazine which celebrates the world of beer culture. Thanks to publisher Daniel Bradford for allowing me to also post it here. -HCS

Remembrance of Things Past

“When nothing else from the past subsists, after people are dead, after the destruction of things, smell and taste alone remain, like souls bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the vast edifice of memory.”

These poignant words appear at the beginning of In Search of Lost Time, the eternal if not interminable biographical novel by Marcel Proust. Here the narrator remarks how scents possess such a strong power, unique amongst the senses, to transport you to a time in your past, often formerly forgotten episodes in childhood.

For Proust, that scent proved to be the sweet-tart smell of cake soaked in tea. For me, it’s the smell of molded cardboard soaked in stale beer.

For going on four generations, my family, the Schuhmachers, had been carving their sustenance out of the arid lands of Texas as wholesale beer distributors. Some of my earliest memories are of playing hide-and-seek amongst the stacks of beer in my father’s warehouse in Houston. In a bustling commercial beer operation, tall pallets of beer are constantly in motion, so the child must be alert, lest he get run over by a forklift. But other than those trifling dangers, which necessarily heightened the excitement of the game, the beer stacks proved even better than a hedge maze for hours of entertainment for my sisters and me.

As in every beer warehouse, then and now, accidents happen. A forklift holding a pallet with 65 cases of longneck bottles of beer on it will hook a turn too fast, and the stack of beer necessarily fall to the ground based on the inverse square and Newton’s theory of gravity, smashing about half the bottles. The result is a messy mountain of soaked cardboard, glass, and beer. This mountain is pushed by a forklift into a section of the warehouse called the “breaker pile.”

This breaker pile varies in size and age at any given time, depending on how fast the workers in the breaker pile are able to “repack” the salvageable bottles and cans from those that are leaking or broken. The good cans and bottles are cleaned and repacked into cartons, while the rest is documented and destroyed (to regain the lost excise tax). It’s a tedious and time-consuming job, as you’re dealing with a lot of broken glass, stale beer, soggy cardboard, and those annoying tiny gnats that inevitably appear where there is spilt beer. But it’s an important job: No beer must be wasted, not one single bottle.

The breaker pile is where the wise beer distributor owner first puts his children to work. He does this for several good reasons: First, the breaker pile is the worst job in the warehouse and as the children of distributors are perceived—usually correctly—as rich brats by the other employees, throwing them to the breaker pile forces the children to earn their salt early on. Second, children are good at working the breaker pile for some reason: Maybe it’s their small hands, maybe it’s the fact they are fearless amongst shards of glass, maybe it’s their ability to make a game out of anything. But mostly I suspect it’s because children are dumb and don’t know any better.

So I spent my childhood summers washing the shards of glass off bottles, getting blisters on my thumb from “ringing” cans into those plastic six-pack rings, gluing new twelve-pack carriers, and stapling cases shut. The smell of a ripe breaker pile is a combination of seaweed on the beach, boiling coffee, and a wet puppy. It’s not as disagreeable as you would think, but actually a very sweetly musty smell. Not too far, actually, from Proust’s cake dipped into tea, if the cake was actually a day-old Ahi tuna.

Today, I work as a beer industry trade journalist. My father sold his distributorship many years ago, orphaning me from the world of beer distribution forever. But my work takes me into many beer warehouses across the country, and each time I draw near to a breaker pile, it takes me back to my childhood. It’s the most powerful link I have to a time of innocence and wonder.


Harry Schuhmacher is the editor and publisher of Beer Business Daily, a trade journal for the U.S. beer industry. He can be reached at hs@beernet.com.

Dog eat dog

If, by chance, you die and are given the opportunity by God to come back as a pet in the Schuhmacher household, you may wish to gently decline the offer. We Schuhmachers are tough on pets. So tough, in fact, that we’ve rarely had a pet live more than a year due to various accidents and omissions. To wit:

Exhibit A: Boston. Boston, whom we purchased in Boston during the short stint we lived there when I thought I needed more schooling, was a little dog that was constantly under foot. Always tripping us up, Boston lasted six months before she got under tire. Yes, I accidentally ran over her, sending her to that great bone yard in the sky, where she is no doubt tripping up the saints.

Exhibit B: Wacky. This little nipper was a terrier of some sorts that we acquired in Denver. Don’t remember what happened to Wacky, but she didn’t make the one year mark.

Exhibit C & D: Fluffy I and Fluffy II. These were little hamsters. The first one we bought for WyWy and gave to him on Christmas Day. He accidentally stepped on it, sending it to that great mouse wheel in the sky. The day after Christmas we got Fluffy II, who lasted a few months until it died under mysterious circumstances after we were gone for a weekend. Both Fluffy’s got an honorable burial at sea, which is to say we flushed them down the commode.

UPDATE: A friend reminded me that we actually had another dog named Boston. Boston II didn't last a year either. Poisoned by a belligerent neighbor, we think.

Exhibit E: Shannon. Shannon was a lab mix that came the closest to lasting a year. But then, disaster. We left Shannon with our caretakers at the ranch, who also had dogs. We returned to find that not only was Shannon gone, but all the foreman’s dogs had vanished. Our poor luck with animals had apparently rubbed off. Either that or Shannon lead the other dogs on a Homeward Bound like adventure, only to be eaten by coyotes.

Today we have a yellow lab named Chica, and I am proud to report that this month marks the one year anniversary of Chica living in the Schuhmacher household, and she is not only still very much alive but in relative good health. Chica was given to us by my friend Diane, who only asked for a bottle of tequila in return (that’s the kind of friend she is). She was wary to let us have her, given our track record. But I think the curse of the Schuhmacher pets is finally broken. Victory!

Bad Santa

I dressed up as Santa Claus tonight so that I could have my picture taken with the kids at the local homeless shelter for children and moms. It’s a great program that lets those with resources provide gifts and amenities for families who are having a tough time. I don’t do much in the way of charity work during the year, so dressing up as Santa for an hour or so seemed like something I could reasonably pull off without a hitch. Once again I over-estimated my abilities and under-estimated the challenge therein.

There are really only three basic requirements to being a convincing Santa:

1. Be fat
2. Have a booming loud voice for the ho ho ho’s.
3. Be able to stare at a camera and have your picture taken without closing your eyes.

That’s it. You don’t even have to smile, because the beard covers your entire face below your nose.

The first requirement was no problem as I have been packing on the pounds like a blind pig with two heads since I injured my foot (see below). But the second and third were challenges. As anybody in the beer business who spoke with me on the phone today knows, I have a raw-throat laryngitis that I typically get this time of year, to where my voice was all but gone. Secondly, the nylon hair from the Santa wig got in my eyes, so I was constantly blinking for the camera.

But before that I had a bizarre thing happen to me. I was sitting on the stairs in a dark stairwell, waiting for my cue to enter the dining hall. Suddenly I look up and a little boy sees me and cries, “Santa! Santa!” and runs off to return with a posse of about 10 other little boys. By this time I had run up the stairs and hid in a door jam. “He’s gone. I swear I saw Santa,” the boy said to his friends who were incredulous. They came up the stairs but couldn’t see me in the dark door jam. I felt like a cross between a spy on the lamb and the Beatles. A rock star…..who hides. How great is that?

The biggest problem I faced was I couldn’t wear the Santa booties because of my foot, so I wore my Salomon tennis shoes, which my little boy WyWy recognized immediately and busted my cover. “Daaaad, why are you dressed like Santa?” he asked, rolling his eyes as he got in my lap for the photo. I say to him in a low voice out of the side of my mouth, “Ix-nay on the Dadnay, WyWy-way.” Turns out homeless children know pig latin too. What a small world. We’re all of us not that different.

It was a gratifying and, yes, fun experience, but exhausting. I croaked out about a hundred times. “Ho ho ho, what does this fine young boy/girl want for Christmas?” No matter how many times I asked this, the answer was the same: “Playstation”. Way to shoot for the stars, kiddos. One little boy came back to have his picture taken no less than five times, and I worked hard to appear spellbound as he told me of his little sister’s rock collection…..five times, wiping his nose on my sleeve each time. Cute little bugger though.

Afterwards I changed back into my street clothes in the same darkened hallway and returned to the dining hall and plopped down next to my friend Phyllis, who patted me on the knee and said, “Good job, Santa.” I sighed and took a sip of my Diet Pepsi. I suddenly turned sentimental and reflective:

Me: That was a very cool experience.
Her: Yeah, makes you feel good to help people.
Me: Yes, and the kids were so grateful, and they even loved my grumpy Santa interpretation.
Her: You really knocked ‘em dead, Harry.
Me: Yep. Children are truly God’s creatures. [long pause] Got any hand sanitizer?
Her: Purell’s in my purse, side pocket sweetie.

Comfortably numb

I want to talk to you about pain for a minute. As you know by now because I tell you every five minutes, I injured my foot a few weeks ago. I was given pain medication which I stopped taking two weeks ago because, honestly, what I don’t need is yet another addiction in my life.

So I’ve just been living with the pain in my foot, which ebbs and flows in terms of intensity but is always there in some fashion. At first the pain made me belligerent and cranky, and like a petulant child I kept alternating my thinking between “why me?” and “poor me”, and I welcomed with open arms whatever pity I could muster from my friends, even polite insincere pity, which as time went on seemed to be the majority of the pity I received.

But after a while my brain stopped registering the pain consciously. Oh, it’s still there, lurking like your bastard half-brother in a dark corner, and I wince when I put too much pressure on the foot or I knock it on something, but I don’t actually think about it usually. It’s more like, “I'm thinking of something else, and I know there’s pain down there and I know it hurts, but I’m going to continue thinking about something else and just not acknowledge it.” At this point you don’t welcome any more vocal pity, even the rare sincere variety, because it returns your conscious mind back to the reality of the pain. Ouchy, your foot says, and I'll be damned if you don't start listening when your foot speaks to you.

When the pain subsides, you feel at ease. When it throbs, like at the end of the day, you still go on with your thoughts and activities, but you’re kind of on this little edge. Beer and wine sometimes helps, but only in moderation, because I’ve found that when one over-indulges, one becomes careless with the foot, putting weight on it and banging it around on bar stools and the like, and the next morning not only are you groggy, but you have this painful appendage that was ill-used and is letting you know about how it feels about that.

I've also noticed that I've gained weight, not just because I'm immobile. The fact remains that I wasn't too mobile before the accident. I think it's related to the pain, because when it hurts I tend to shove things in my mouth to compensate, and I'm not talking brussel sprouts, but rather Godiva chocolate or cheeseburgers. What's that about? I think it must be related to dopamines or something. The pain hurts, as pain normally does, so I overcompensate by eating a cheeseburger which feels good going down. I ain't no doctor but damn I'm smart.

As I said, after a while the pain starts to take on a persona of its own, as if it’s your bastard half-brother named Clyde that comes and goes throughout the day, and sometimes you consciously acknowledge Clyde, because, you know, he’s your brother and all, which puts you in a bad mood but makes him happy, and sometimes you ignore Clyde, which is good. It’s better to ignore Clyde when he comes a’knocking, but he’s there. You see him out of the corner of your eye, eating fish sticks with his mouth open or burping the Star Spangled Banner or whatever image you would find irritating, and you try to ignore it, and sometimes you succeed, but sometimes you turn your head and see him, and he opens his mouth and says, “see food, get it?” And you grimace because you can’t believe you fell for it again. That’s what chronic pain is like for me.

The View from the Top

Have you ever had one of those weekends where everything was perfect, and you never wanted it to end, and so you don’t let it end, and you take Monday off, and then you regret doing that because now it’s Tuesday and now you really really don’t want it to end?

Well, last weekend wasn’t really one of those weekends. But I must admit I had a decent weekend, and I did take Monday off. Two things happened to me this weekend that were kind of special: I got to witness my youngest boy WyWy make the game-saving shot in his first basketball game ever, and I got to drive a top-drive.

Because highly descriptive writing is hard work, and I try to avoid hard work whenever possible, I won’t attempt to describe the pure bliss in watching my boy make two free throws in a row in the last seconds of his very first game. No, I’ll just show it to you, because I filmed it on my cell phone. I did add some inspirational music and response cuts in order to give you the full effect:

Isn’t that just fantastic? And I need not remind you that I’m the Head Coach, so all glory reflects back on me. But wait, there’s more!

That’s right, I got to drive that vehicle you see on the left there. In the event you are not from South Texas, let me first explain how this vehicle works and its stated purpose, and then let me fill you in on its real purpose.

This vehicle is called a top drive. It’s a converted truck which has steering, a gas pedal and brake all up in the front of that single-family condominium you see attached to the roof. I told my friend Trey, to whom this monstrosity belongs, that perhaps he could house a homeless family in there in the off-season and write it off as a charity.

So you can drive this thing from the condo on top, hence the name, top drive. Clever, huh? Its stated purpose is to hunt deer out of it like a sort of mobile blind. You drive it around and if you see a deer, you shoot it. Sounds like fun, right?

Well, if shooting deer doesn’t suit your fancy, what else do you think we could do with a top drive? Come on kids….put on your imagination cap. That’s right: it’s a perfect booze cruise wagon……a veritable mobile party on wheels. Take a cooler of beer up there, a few girls, crank up the XM Radio top 40 station, designate a driver of course, and drive around the ranch looking at wildlife and having a great old time. Which is exactly what we did, except that we didn’t have any girls except for a dog named Sadie, who ended up doubling as our designated driver. We had so much fun on Sunday, we did it again on Monday.

The pictures don’t do it justice. It’s truly a remarkable machine, and fairly common on South Texas ranches nowadays. It was first invented years ago by a San Antonio car dealer who liked to hunt but didn’t like to sit in blinds (boring) and was frustrated that he couldn’t see over the mesquite brush from his truck. So he did what any self-respecting car dealer would do under the circumstances, and directed his chief mechanic to make his dream of a deer blind on wheels a reality. One can only imagine how that conversation went:

Car dealer: "Hey, I've got an idea! And it will be fun! Why don't we take this 800 pound deer blind and affix it to the top of that truck.

Mechanic: "Uh....."

Car dealer: "You know what, let's also rig it so you can drive from up there..."

Mechanic: "Is that all?"

Car dealer: "Oh hell, go ahead and put a wet bar and a stereo up there too."

Mechanic (sarcastically): "Would you like me to add a disco ball?"

Car dealer, (completely missing the sarcasm): "Naw, that'd be tacky."

Mechanic, (under his breath): "Jesus H. Christ."

This was the first time for me to ride in one and certainly the first time to drive. It’s an odd sensation, driving a truck from 30 feet in the air. Everything is sluggish, like I’m driving through a vat of molasses. Or maybe I was driving through molasses, who knows. It was just great fun.

These are the times when I wish I was Big Rich so I didn’t have to come back to work, and could just drive around in my own top drive for the rest of my life. I would take my top drive everywhere. Going through a fast food drive through, “Hey down there, earthpeople, we mean you no harm. Pass up the burgers and we won’t destroy your facility.”

But I’m not Big Rich so I’m back at the platinum keyboard of BBD. My oldest son, who is wiser than I am even though I’m 37 and he’s 13, told me, “Dad, if you did that all the time, it wouldn’t be special anymore so you would stop appreciating it.” Wow, what a great young man to know that already. I was much older when I learned it….okay I never learned it. But from the mouths of babes comes the truth.

Gimpy in Costa Brava

It’s been a tough week for your favorite beer blogger. Yes, that’s right, I hurt my foot…..again. Here I am hobbling along the Mediterranean with a cane Lulu bought off an old man with gout in London for ten quid.

How did I injure myself, you ask? Let’s just say it involved a motorcycle, Buckingham Palace, gravity, and a 9% ABV Spanish malt liquor called Doble Malta. No matter, let’s not get bogged down in details. The fact is I hurt my foot and so I was forced to cancel my trip to China. That’s all I have to say about that.

The worst part about this is that now I’m not able to run my usual five miles a day on the treadmill, go mountain biking in the hills, roller-blade by the beach, play hop-scotch with the neighborhood children, run with the bulls in Pamplona, or perform gardening, like I normally do each weekday.

The good news is that I’m back in front of the platinum plated keyboard of Beer Business Daily a week earlier than I thought, and with so much beer news going on, it hasn’t taken me long to get back into the groove of things. This morning an interview with JB Shireman of New Belgium, later an off-record chat with Joe Thompson, a foot x-ray at lunch, and then back at the platinum keyboard, working the golden BBD bat phone, unearthing hidden beer industry nuggets of information. God I love this job.

(Un)Dignified in the Journal

Proving that there perhaps is such a thing as bad publicity, the Wall Street Journal last week reported that your editor, me, has made a bet with Miller president Tom Long that Miller Lite won’t swing five percentage points before the end of their fiscal year in March, otherwise I am to appear on my website drinking a Miller Lite……wearing a pink mankini with red hearts on it, kind of like Borat.

So this bet appears on Page Two of the Journal and I’m so proud that I email it around to family and friends. My mother, who is a world class snob, rang me today to remind me to get my flu shot and to castigate me for being mentioned in the Journal in such an undignified way….. “Your grandfather, who I need not remind you was an esteemed and respected newspaper publisher before these days of that yellow journalist Murdoch and that communist Ochs, would not approve. You should never be IN the paper, you should own the paper,” she said, to which I replied, “Mother, I DO own the paper, it’s called Beer Business Daily,” to which she retorted, “Well, you certainly don’t own the Wall Street Journal.” I couldn’t argue that point.

Nonetheless, I think this mention in the Journal will go down in the annals of Schuhmacher family history as a…..what? A turning point? “And this marks the start of the decline of the Schuhmacher family name.”

Fabulosa

Last night I attended a charity banquet where I was lucky enough to sit between these to lovely ladies. On the left is the chief meteorologist for our local Clear Channel TV and radio stations, Jennifer Broome, and on the right is…..well, I’ll get to her name in a minute.

I found Jennifer Broome to be a delightful and interesting dinner companion, AND she’s a local celebrity, and I love celebrities. But she was to be on the news at 10 to give her 4 Warn Storm Report, and I was constantly checking my watch and asking her, “shouldn’t you be on your way?” I just couldn't imagine what would happen if the cameras started rolling and there was no Jennifer Broome to bring us the weather. She was hilarious and a good time. And she made her appearance on the news.

But this blog isn’t about Jennifer Broome, more’s the pity for you. This blog is about me. And I will now reveal to you the pretty brunette to my right. Her name is…..drum roll please….Fabiola Rock. Yes, that’s right, I’m not kidding. Fabiola Rock. Is that not the absolute best name you’ve ever heard?

Here is another picture of me, Fabiola, and an unidentified woman. I told Fabiola that if she marries, she ought to consider keeping her maiden name, because it will never get any better than Fabiola Rock. Unless she marries somebody named Love.

But by the end of the night even I was screwing up her name, alternatively calling her Fabianna and Fabulosa, the latter of which is a floor cleaner that is a knock-off of Pine-Sol. Actually, it’s quite different. For one thing, it’s a shade of purple not normally found . When Pine-Sol’s ads depict a child watching her mother mop the floor, asking sweetly, “Momma, how do they get a pine forest in the bottle?”, Fabulosa’s ads would say, “Momma, how do they get an industrial chemical plant in the bottle?”

Coach Schuhmacher

My friend Kenneth and I both have six year old sons. “How much fun would it be,” Kenneth said one day, “to coach the boys’ basketball team together this year.”

I indicated that I most certainly would not find it anywhere close to fun. I dislike basketball and I dislike children, at least other people’s children, and I understand it takes a village, or more than two, to make a basketball team.

But he hemmed and hawed and said it would be a hoot and I wouldn’t have to do much but occasionally show up to practices. After all, I’d only be the Assistant Coach. Finally I acquiesced just so my son couldn’t claim in therapy after he grows up that I never coached any of his teams. Better to do it while they’re still little and cute. Plus, I’d get to blow a whistle.

So you can imagine my surprise last night when I returned to my hotel room late in Boston, after a long day of meetings with the folks at Heineken. I received a broadcast email from Karel, my friend’s wife. Here is what it reads:

Hi everyone! Here is our roster for the boys’ basketball team. Harry Schuhmacher has agreed to be the head coach. Please let me know of any additional information you may need.

Thanks!

Karel on behalf of Harry Schuhmacher

Whaa? I don’t remember agreeing to being head coach. I thought we had agreed that KENNETH was to be head coach and I was to be a sort of belligerent Coach Friday standing off in the corner, blowing my whistle and occasionally slamming a yard stick on the bleachers to frighten the louder children. And is it me or is her email a little overly chipper, in a mocking sort of way, with all its happy little exclamation points?

Now, Karel is cool and pretty and a good friend, so I sent her back an eloquently written and subtle email to get my point across, as one friend to another, while also attempting to catch a tone that contradicted her mocking chipper tone:

KAREL, WHAT THE F***?! -H

Satisfied that my meaning, however subtle, would be clear to her, I popped open a cold Heineken that somebody had graciously thought to put on ice by my bed and turned on CNN.

Then I started thinking. You know, I’ve never liked the way the other dads who coach kids teams make it so serious and practices so boring and military-like, with their stupid soul-less humorless wicked fat faces incessantly shouting from the sidelines, “Billy get back there! Charlie move over there! Wyatt, stop scratching your butt!!” (that last one’s my boy……and I resent it when some fat-face tells my little brilliant baby bear that he can’t scratch what is evidently a chronic itch). I’ve never said anything about it, because I’m firmly of the belief that you really can’t register a complaint if you’re not willing to step up to the plate yourself.

I popped a second Heineken. Maybe, just maybe, there is a better way. Maybe instead making every drill a chore, every game a shouting match, every season a relief that it’s over, we can change the way it’s done. Maybe we make each drill a little game. Maybe we dole out candy and trinkets as prizes for each drill. Maybe we create funny nicknames for each player. Maybe we pepper the practices intermittently with fart jokes—because six years olds can never resist a well-rendered fart joke. Maybe we create a secret unspoken code, like professional baseball players do, so there’s zero noise from the sidelines. Maybe the players can scratch their butts freely without being harassed by fat-faced dads.

Maybe my revolutionary new coaching tactics work, and we actually win the championship and all the glory of this falls squarely where it should, on the shoulders of their head coach, whom they come to idolize. Maybe one of the players—maybe even my own boy—eventually becomes fabulously wealthy and famous and tells a black-tie crowd at some prestigious awards ceremony that he owes it all to his Kindergarten basketball coach, “my loving father, Harry Schuhmacher, who taught discipline and competitiveness”……. or whatever basketball is supposed to teach you. I’ll of course be long dead by this point, sitting on a mantle of clouds next to George Gervin, the legendary San Antonio Spur, the ICEMAN:

ICEMAN: So which one’s your boy?
ME: The one giving the speech.
ICEMAN: The one scratching his butt?
ME: Yeah, that’s my boy.
ICEMAN (inching away): You must be proud…..

So, I popped one more Heineken, excited about my new endeavor, and penned the following email to Karel.

Dear Karel,

Upon reflection I have come to the conclusion that I don’t wish to deny those boys the absolute best coach they can have, nor my son an education in discipline and competitiveness, so I agree to serve as head coach, with a few conditions.

First, will you please Google and print out the rules of basketball and some basketball drills that six year olds can do. Second, instruct Lulu to please go to Wal-Mart and buy me some cool sweat pants, blue, with the cool stripe down the sides, a cool matching jacket, with matching stripes down the arms, a loud-ass whistle, a loud-ass megaphone that can also play military marching songs, assorted candy (hard), assorted trinkets, a yardstick (just in case), some red cones (not sure why, but I think you’re supposed to have red cones), a George Gervin poster, a case of Heineken, a propane tank, and one (1) glazed donut.

Those are my terms. K, looking forward to your birthday party…….being over.

Yours,

Coach Schuhmacher

I added the donut just as a demonstration that Coach Schuhmacher’s decisions will not be questioned.

Shake 'n Bake

Tomorrow I am to appear on a local AM radio show in Annapolis, Maryland, broadcast to the Washington DC area. They are interviewing me on a show that features “successful entrepreneurs, how they did it”. I had met the producer of the show at a prestigious publisher’s conference about a year ago in New York where I gave a speech, and he apparently thought I’d be an interesting guest.

You may be asking how in the world I was asked to speak in the first place at a prestigious publisher’s conference last year. Let me back up to give you a perspective that has some reality attached to it. This conference had speakers who really do publish the top notch online publications: WSJ.com, DowJones.com, Hoovers.com, Time.com, People.com, Playboy.com, ESPN.com, etc.

I was the token “small B2B niche publisher.”

At the time, I thought, hell, it’s still really cool to be asked to share a podium with these publishing heavyweights, even if I’m the token “small niche publisher”. Later I found out that the original “small niche publisher” they had lined up had backed out at the last minute and they needed to find a replacement pronto. So they thought, what would be an interesting niche? The pizza delivery man, who happened to be in the room, yelled out “beer!”, as pizza deliverymen often do when asked any generic question, so they Googled “beer publications” and found my web site and that’s how I got asked. No kidding. Fate is a good thing, sometimes. Or Google is a good thing. Fate and Google, I find, often amount to the same thing.

So I gave a decent speech, made some jokes, met some big online publishing and broadcasting honchos, one of which hosts a radio show on “success” in Maryland, and so consequently I am now to wax brilliant on the secrets of success to the poor unwitting citizens of Annapolis, where they have the elite West Point Academy, the height of discipline in the U.S. armed forces.

[UPDATE: Actually, an alum of West Point sent me a cordial email informing me that West Point is actually located in New York, while the U.S. Naval Academy is in Annapolis. This man, now an officer in the Army, sent an email that was kind and gentlemanly, but I could tell that behind the scenes he may have been slightly insulted at being confused with the webbed feet salty dogs at the Naval Academy. My apologies for the confusion, although I honor both the Naval Academy and West Point equally, I stress to note].

I’m actually nervous that some Naval Academy (not West Point) cadet will hear my honest answers to the prepared questions clearly geared toward classic self-improvement doctrines, straight out of “The 7 Habits…” and “Think and Grow Rich”, and fall into despair:

Q: So, Harry, do you view ‘success’ as a noun or a verb, a journey or destination?
A: Well, it’s currently very much a verb, unfortunately, but I very much would wish it to be a noun. If Marvin Shanken suddenly appears on my doorstep with a check for $20 million to buy me out, I am so out of here and tanning my noun on a corral beach in the Keys.

Q: Did your family support your move to entrepreneurship?
A: Actually, no. We were constantly short of cash and my wife and children complained incessantly about it. Apparently they’re too good for Campos Pinto Beans with Schuhmacher secret sauce……five days a week. Today we are doing better (we now eat Bush’s Baked Beans…..with Schuhmacher secret sauce) but they still complain that I travel too much. Do you call that support……or attempted career sabotage? I thought so.

Q: Tell our listeners how the epiphany occurred? When did the proverbial light bulb go off in your head to create your first publication on beer?
A: I was sitting on the toilet reading the competition, and I thought, ‘Dang, he’s good. I’ll never be able as good as him.’ But I started it anyway, because I had no other options at the time, and struggled through five years of not beating him. Today, I still haven’t beaten him. I’ve now grown very accustomed to being a loser……”

Q: Uh, yeah, but doesn’t your competition drive you to higher spheres of excellence?
A: Not exactly. I find that when my competitors experience victories over me I break out the aluminum foil for my windows and curl up in the fetal position on my bed sucking my thumb, sometimes for days on end........or I fly to Las Vegas and blow thousands on gambling and whiskey…..just kidding, I blow it on gambling and beer of course……..

You get the picture. A show like that may push some poor homesick young aspiring Admiral to quit the academy and take a job as a postal worker, and we all know where that leads.

So I will endeavor to remain upbeat and, how do they say in Maryland? Chipper. Yes, I will be chipper, and I will give a rabble rouser that will elevate even the most lugubrious sailor to his feet:

“Yes, success is a verb, Mark, and I’ll never quit, EVER, because money is so transient and unimportant to me. You know how I keep it real, Mike? Here in my heart? [pound chest gently with fist]. Yessir, for this hombre it’s the challenge of climbing an impossibly high and freezing mountain that gets my juices a’flowin’. And when Debbie Downers say, ‘Hey, you can’t climb that mountain Harry, you’re really out of shape and have asthma and short legs and no athletic ability’, I reply, boldly, chin up: ‘Sir, I can and I WILL climb that mountain, simply because it’s there, even if it kills me from an asthma attack and I leave my children fatherless and my wife penniless’. And speaking of, I just want to take this moment to thank my wife and three sons [shake and bake] for always being there for me when I needed them, and never asking for a dime when times were rough, and always eating beans and tortillas five days a week without nary a complaint. I love you, my little gassy bears. And now that I’ve reached the apex of my career, I want to especially thank my worthy competition for constantly driving me to perform at a higher level of excellence. Without you, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to attempt to climb that mountain and die of hypothermia. God bless America and a shout-out to my home-boy, Alan Greenspan, for keeping interest rates so low and for whoever invented the high def flat-screen LCD TV……Peace out.”

Aspen Edge

Well, my big mouth got me into trouble again. I got yet another humiliating public thrashing by members of my industry. I’m starting to think that maybe it’s not everybody else that is crazy, but maybe, just maybe, it’s me that is off the mark.

Nah.

This time my public dishonor was at the hands of liquor people. In Aspen. At the St. Regis Hotel. I suppose if you’re going to be made an ass of in front of your peers, the St. Regis in Aspen is about as good a place as any. When disgraced, I always prefer to do it in style.

I was delivering what I thought would be a quaint little speech to the liquor control authorities who preside over their respective state alcohol industries at the mercy of a state’s legal ability to create state-run liquor monopolies, a sensitive point which has been brought into question by the courts lately. During the course of my speech, I casually questioned whether the distillers, at their home offices (read London), where really, truly, honestly, in their heart-of-hearts supportive of the rights of states to regulate alcohol within their borders.

I’m afraid this gave offense to the distillery executives in the room, which I was soon to regret. Each distillery executive there, and there seemed to be an interminable quantity, each took it upon themselves to take turns treating me, as I stood alone at the podium with the bright lights trained on my furnace-hot cheeks, to lengthy lectures and interrogations about their respective wild enthusiasm for state-based regulation. Just as soon as I thought we could change the subject to something more pleasant, like cadavers, yet another would stand up and declare “for the record” that such-in-such distillery’s home office not only is supportive of states-rights but would rather burn down their distillery than lose one single control state jurisdiction. I bring you joy of this, as I took their conspicuous silence during the Costco and Granholm cases as, well, something less than screaming support for the current control systems.

I was gratified that a major brewery executive called just a few hours after my speech, having already heard about my trial by fire through the grape-vine, to tell me not to sweat it. I was also gratified that a few control state executives privately approached me afterwards to say they essentially agreed with my original assessment.

But I guess this ordeal has taught me that words do matter, and some things are really just very sensitive. I really meant no offense, but was just giving flight to my gut feeling on a matter, a gut feeling that I still believe may end up having at least some truth to it. When push comes to shove, we’ll see soon enough which of our alcohol suppliers, and that includes our brewers, are on board with state alcohol authority. I'll apologize for offending anybody, but I'll not apologize for calling those to the carpet to see where they truly stand. We'll see who crosses the line in the sand, sooner rather than later I think, unfortunately. I do hope I'm proven wrong.