Happy Holidays

Here are some selected shots from the 2009 Winter Holidays. In addition to Christmas and New Year's, our holidays include Dadmas (my father's birthday, December 27th), Beckymas (January 4th) and Elvismas (January 8th). Enjoy!

Eagle Rock Mug Club

Attention beer lovers in the greater Los Angeles area! 2010 promises to be a very Happy New Year indeed as we are on the verge of having our very first craft brewery open within the city limits.

Jeremy Raub, his wife Ting, and his father Steve have been fighting the good fight against L.A.'s beer hating bureaucracy for over two years now, and last weekend they were finally able to stage their "Pre-opening" event. As a homebrewer and beer lover myself, I bought a membership in the Eagle Rock Brewery Mug Club, which got me an engraved mug with my name on it (pictured above), and an invitation to the exclusive pre-opening mug club party.

After meeting Jeremy at L.A.'s first craft beer fest, held last spring at the Echoplex, he was kind enough to invite me and my partners in Steverson Brewing to take a tour of their brewery while it was still in the early stages. They had just gotten all of their equipment, and they were working furiously to get their brewery tasting room up and running. Almost as noteworthy as Eagle Rock Brewery itself, Jeremy and Ting have documented their struggles to get up and running in great detail on the brewery's blog at www.eaglerockbrewery.wordpress.com. It's no accident that their flagship beer is named Solidarity.

Congraratulations to The Eagle Rock Brewery team for fighting the good fight and for giving LA a brewery they can be proud of. The tasting room is going to be open limited hours over the holidays, and their black mild ale Solidarity is now available on tap at Verdugo Bar in Glassell Park. Trust me, It's worth the trip.

While Visions of Megamergers Danced In Their Heads

How do you celebrate your purchase of NBC-Universal while you cross your fingers and hope that the appropriate Federal agencies will approve it? By getting a head start on corporate synergy by mailing out dvds of second rate Universal movies to every Comcast employee? Exactly! But which second rate Universal DVDS to pick? While I can't say for sure if every employee received the same titles (although I'd bet money they did), this Comcaster received...wait for it...The Bourne Ultimatum and Evan Almighty!

To be fair, I heard that Bourne Ultimatum is a pretty decent action picture, but I would love to know how the powers that be decided on those two titles. Evan Almighty's much easier to figure, as Universal must have warehouses of that one sitting around.

But there's more...the letter accompanying these major motion pictures is priceless. The fist two paragraphs read:

"When Comcast brought cable to Tupelo, Mississippi in 1963, we had an innovative idea to bring full network television to this rural community for the first time. This simple idea became the foundation for the innovative company we have become.

That same year, a few thousand miles away, Gregory Peck won best actor in Universal Studios' "To Kill A Mockingbird," and The Beatles made their U.S. television debut on NBC News' Huntley Brinkley Report. As Comcast grew and added more subscribers, we were able to share these historic events with more consumers than was ever thought possible in new and exciting ways."

So just to review, we have Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis, The Beatles, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Comcast. Dream big, indeed.