Details after the jump.
506 N. Ashley St., between Kingsley and Felch (near Kerrytown)
Saturday, May 30, 10-5
Sunday, May 31, 10-5
A downsized economy is forcing us to downsize our lives, with lots of items to appeal to all manner of savvy sale hounds:
The forecast calls for awesome this weekend at 506 N. Ashley, so stop by and check out some great stuff before or after you peruse the Farmers Market, wait in line at Zingerman’s for a $15 sandwich, sample a Taste of Ann Arbor, celebrate Washtenaw Dairy's 75th birthday, or whatever other way you choose to enjoy what promises to be an excellent weekend.
Mahalo!
What Are You Doing This Weekend?
Spring Cleaning
This week I'm going through my old clothes, CDs, books, DVDs, and other miscellaneous stuff to identify what to sell at a joint garage – well, OK, yard – sale on Saturday and Sunday. Max has been helping me with this laborious task:
With all his "help," there shouldn't be any problem being ready by the weekend. (Max himself, however, is not for sale.)
Memorial Day Brewin' and Grillin'
My brother the master homebrewer threw a Memorial Day weekend party in honor of his 300th batch of homebrewed beer. With my lovely sister-in-law (head chef), he worked tirelessly to offer guests 11 different homebrews and many awesome delicacies, including seafood gumbo, grilled salmon, smoked turkey legs (pictured right), and some big old slabs of lamb, among many other things. There were no survivors.
My small photo gallery of the event is on the Book of Faces.
My brother's account of the festivities is on his blog.
Out and About: Ye Gods!
From an interesting front yard on Spring Street:
Red Pen Diaries: Reign O'er Me
Do you know the difference between "reign" and "rein"? If not, you're in good company: The Associated Press doesn't, either..
Today, while logging into my Yahoo account, I was greeted with the following AP headline: "Senate OKs bill to reign in credit card practices."
I intended to take a screencap, but unfortunately I navigated away from the page to do something else, and minutes later someone at AP had corrected the mistake by changing it to "rein in."
What's the difference?
The relevant definition of rein is as a verb: "to control or direct with or as if with reins."
When you rein in a horse, you are directing it to slow down or otherwise exercising control or authority over its actions. Congress is attempting to control or direct the practices of credit card companies "as if with reins."
When you reign, you "possess or exercise sovereign power: rule." Louis XIV said, "L'etat, c'est moi." He reigned over France... for more than 72 years, still a record for European monarchs.
In other words, the king reigns and the carriage driver (or legislature, apparently) reins (in).
Being a libertarian, I can't resist saying that we must rein in the ambitions of anyone in government who would reign over our country. ("Here, sir, the people rule!")
Your political mileage may vary, but your grammatical usage should not!
Eating at the Ann Arbor Book Festival
Saturday was the annual Ann Arbor Book Festival writers' conference and street fair. I didn't attend the writers' conference this year, but it sounds like it was as jam-packed with great guests, lecturers, and practical advice as was last year's.
This year's highlight for me actually had more to do with food than books: a cooking presentation moderated by Zingerman's co-founder Ari Weinzweig and featuring delicious (and generous) samples. (Pictured at right: Laura Stec.)
Unfortunately, beyond a few ingredients like kale, nuts, chives, baby asparagus, and corn, I can't say what exactly I ate. (I'm sure if I had purchased the cookbooks on sale there, I would know!)
What really stood out, over all that nice healthy stuff, however, was Ari's fat-soaked bread topped with pimento cheese and a strip of bacon. Some version of this is served at Zingerman's Roadhouse, and man is it good, again confirming one of my main Rules of Life: "There is nothing that can't be made better by adding bacon to it."
Following our freebie meal, my fellow adventurer and I headed to Ashley's for something to wash it down with. Sometimes when I go into Ashley's, it can be hard to decide what to order, so we decided on a "beer flight" of Brooklyn Savoir Faire, Arcadia imperial stout, Dogfish Head's Aprihop ale, and Arcadia Big Dick's Bourbon Barrel Olde Ale.
There's nothing really wrong with Arcadia's stout, but it wasn't what I was in the mood for. The Big Dick was most decidedly bourbon-flavored, which pleased my not-really-into-beer lady friend, and Aprihop and the Savoir Faire (a "French farmhouse" style ale) were a lighter, refreshing counterpoint to the stout and old ale.
To wrap up the perfect afternoon, at Ashley's I ran into two more friends who I haven't seen since they left town, one for the UP and the other for Howell, where she lives, and Battle Creek, where she happens to brew for Arcadia.
All in all, it was another great Ann Arbor-centric day.
Grilling Season Begins!
Well, I've officially been grilling for a couple weeks now, but last night's episode is worth mentioning because it was my first time ever grilling salmon.
The occasion? Farm-raised Norwegian salmon is on sale at Hiller's for $5 per pound through Memorial Day, offering Your Poor Correspondent a less expensive opportunity to try his culinary experiments on this sublime fish.
I am happy to say it worked out great; the three pictures below pretty much sum up the meal.
Before: A plate full of grilled salmon, beer-steamed potatoes, grilled corn on the cob, and wasabi coleslaw.
During: Mmmm, salmon.
After: Ten minutes later, nothin' but skin and cob!
Bad Ass Beer or Just Plain Bad Idea?
First, I'm not a fan of Kid Rock. I think he's unappealingly crass and I'm not fond of his idea of music. Part of me is appreciative that he uses his puzzlingly huge celebrity status in part to help boost Detroit, but another part of me usually just feels embarrassed that he's the face of Michigan for so many people. (Still, I admit the fogeys of the 1970s probably said the same thing about Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper.)
Well, as originally reported in February on my deceased blog, the Kid is working with Michigan Brewing in Webberville to create his own brand of what I am guessing can be described only as craft swill. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, he describes it this way:It just tastes like good American light beer, a regular beer and a light beer, an everyday beer ... we'd like to pair a shot of Jim Beam and one of my beers. Get off work, get a 22-ouncer and a shot, you’ll be all right.
He goes on to say it "actually tastes good, it has no aftertaste," which suggests to me he really does mean for this beer to compete with the watery, bland product of the megabrewers. (The obvious question of why America needs another one of those comes immediately to mind.)
Eyebrows are further raised when he discusses the marketing for his "Bad Ass Beer," which is typically Kid Rockean in its white trashy awfulness:There's one where it looks like the Budweiser horses, and they're all up in the air, just freaked out, like they went haywire, and whatever they ride on is smashed up, and it just has my beer sitting in the front, it says "Bad Ass." ... We've got another one with the Bad Ass beer simulating like it's fucking the St. Pauli's girl.
Depressingly, he attributes these ideas to a creative agency he's working with (although it's apparently a guy who lives next to him). Yikes.
The big Bad Ass Beer rollout is targeted for Labor Day, according to the head Bad Ass. I may have to pick up a sixpack myself and stow it away as a collector's item, because I can't imagine this will be much more successful than was, say, Billy Beer. On the other hand, Kid Rock understands his audience way better than I do, so who the heck really knows?
Red Pen Diaries: A Fistful of Dollars Bucks
I see this one everywhere – signs, print ads, TV commercials, restaurant menus, everywhere.
It's a simple proposition: The dollar sign by a number means that number of dollars. Someone reading, e.g., "$35" will say "thirty-five dollars."
So why do so many ads, etc. insist on saying "$35 dollars"? Last night a TV commercial even referred to "$50 BUCKS." Dollars bucks? Oy vey!
Make sure your writing is always money – don't write that redundant "dollars" (or bucks, smackeroos, samoleans, etc.) after the dollar sign.
