Cleveland Beer Week Beckons

Oh what a time to be a beer lover in Cleveland...

Though we missed out on the Bourbon Barrel Blackout Bombers at Great Lakes this week (they sold out in under two hours!), the future looks pretty bright. Cleveland Beer Week, which is exactly what it sounds like, begins today (in four hours and fifty minutes, but who's counting) and runs until Saturday, October 24th. Scheduled are a plethora of events, the choicest of which (in my humble opinion) are listed below:

Friday, October 16th: Dogfish Head Event at Southside
The beloved brews of Dogfish Head will be on tap and in the bottle, including relative rarities like Sahtea and the mysteriously promised "special releases". Unfortunately however, Ohio's archaic liquor laws prohibit the selling of the uber-high octane 120 Minute IPA.

Showing Some Moxie
A little rich for my blood, but sounds suspiciously like heaven: "Join Moxie The Restaurant for a 4-course dinner with beer selections from Merchant du Vin, including breads and meats paired with Lindemann's Cuvee Renee, mushroom fondue with Ayinger Weizen-Bock, fondue with roasted shallots with Ayinger Octoberfest, domestic raclette with Rochefort 8, imported raclette with Samuel Smith's India Ale, and chocolate fondue with Celebrator Double Bock. $45/person. "

Saturday, October 17th: Fat Heads Gets Hoppy
Ohhhh lordy... Relative newcomer Fat Heads hosts a (wait for it) IPA festival featuring more than 30 (!) different brews. On top of that, for the $25 entrance fee, you get a t-shirt, tasting glass, and 6 drink tickets. (To my imaginary secretary; "Cancel all my appointments, something important just came up.")

Sunday, October 18th: Kegs and Eggs at Beer Engine
Preempt your sorrows of another Browns dismal performance (hey, I'm hopeful, but realistic) with more Dogfish Head, poured through the magnificent Randall the Enamel Animal (if you don't know what it is, you don't need to). Plus, eggs.

Monday, October 19th: So Good, Why Not Go Back?
Beer Engine again, but this time with the pro's: "Meet Ron Jeffries of Jolly Pumpkin, Greg Gireszal of Hofbrau Beer, Isaas Hartman of New Holland, Veronica Sanders of Bells Beer, Jim Lutz of Flying Dog, Michael Bell of Founders, Adam Avery of Avery, Pete Larsen of Global, Garin Wright of Buckeye, and Brad Clark of Jackie O's, and tast their brews along with those from Unibroue, B. United, Dogfish Head, Stone, Breckenridge, Two Brothers, Clipper City, and Brewdog." They even have a photo booth on hand, which is weird.

Okay, if you hit all these events, you need to take a break, so I'll skip to the main event:

Saturday, October 24th: Cleveland Becomes Beer Mecca
The underutilized and gorgeous Arcade downtown will host BREWzilla, showcasing more than 50 different breweries, hundreds of brews, and providing general euphoria. Incroyable...

So, like Christmas in October, Beer Week descends on Cleveland with a fury. For (much) more information on the literally hundreds of different events, go to http://www.clevelandbeerweek.org/. Happy hunting!

City Says Good Riddance to Braylon's Rubbish

As a devoted Browns fan, I cannot tell you the elation that I felt when it was announced that the team had rid themselves of the cancerous butterfingers, Braylon Edwards. Now, if the trade works out like typical Cleveland sports moves, he will become the greatest receiver in the history of the world and bring 10 consecutive Super Bowl wins to the New York Jets (for other examples, see: Sabathia, C.C.; Lee, Cliff; Ramirez, Manny; Thome, Jim; Colavito, Rocky). Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, yes, but you know what I mean...

But, you know what? I DON'T CARE. Mr. Edwards consistently acted like spoiled, petulant child, and fit in in blue-collar Cleveland like a Budweiser at a beer festival (that is, not well, not well at all). He complained about the team, the city, the fans; just about anything and everything but himself. And to top it all off? He could barely catch the damn ball, which is what the Browns were paying him millions of dollars to do! He led the league in drops last year, and is well on his way again in 2009. I cannot tell you the frustration when a third down pass bounces off his chest/helmet/hands/etc. and we're forced to punt, yet again.

Now comes the revelation that he punched a man in the face who weighs 130 pounds for basically being friends with Lebron James and having the nerve to be entrepreneurial and capitalize (with the full blessing of LBJ) on the relationship. Not everyone is blessed with the millions of dollars from the genes their parents provided them.

What an insufferable human being.

In all likelihood, he is thrilled with the trade, as it puts him in the bright lights of the Big Apple. But, like the republicans during the Obama administration, I hope he fails. Huge. For someone of that talent to have such a disgusting personality and still be paid handsomely is a smack in the face to every hard-working Clevelander. So, good or bad, we'll see how he responds. In the mean time, we'll work on incorporating our newest team members to the Browns (which shouldn't be difficult, because half the team played for the Jets last year anyway).

Oh, and thanks to musiccitymiracles.com for the pic below:

24 Days and Counting...

If this gives you chills, then you're in the club... God I cannot wait for 8.

Holy. Cow.

The romantic notion that one's ancestors were royalty is not entirely implausible. Through the many generations of marriages and births, different bloodlines become intertwined. Corroborating the fact is another problem entirely, as it can be rather difficult to trace a family lineage through the intractable lines of history. I realize that I'm lucky in that regard, because after some research, (and a stumbling block in the Dark Ages) I pieced together that through my Mother's side of the family, we are nearly directly descended from royalty in Denmark, Sweden, England, Norway, and Holland. But it doesn't end there...

Incredibly, the records for this lineage, for which I traced back without a break, date to 30 AD. Unbelievable, but true. The royal lineage is initially linked through King Valdemar II Valdemarsson of Denmark, who was born on June 28th, 1170. What I pieced together from there is that for the preceding five hundred years, my ancestry was the head of state and ruler of the country (whether it be Denmark, Sweden, England, or Holland by virtue of marriages of allegiance and political gamesmanship). Being that I only discovered this familial linkage yesterday, I don't even pretend to know anything about the actual history of Europe through this time. Other than the broad strokes, the likely mounting of armies for the Crusades to the Holy Land, and the survival of the lineage through the Black Plague of the Middle Ages, I'm pretty clueless.So, after the briefest of searches, here are a few of the more intriguing people that dot my ancestry.

King Valdemar "The Great" I of Denmark (Born January 14, 1131, Died May 12, 1182): "Valdemar's father was murdered days before his birth; his mother, Ingeborg, daughter of Mstislav I of Kiev, named him after her grandfather, Vladimir Monomakh of Kiev. {Vladimir's father in law was King Harold Godwinson of England. Vladimir 's grandfather was Constantine Monomachus, Byzantine Emperor}." (Wikipedia)


Canute Lavard "King of the Slavic Odobrits": "On 7 January 1131, Canute was trapped in the forest of Haraldsted near Ringsted in Zealand and murdered. Some sources attribute the murder to Magnus, some to (King) Niels himself. The murder provoked a civil war that intermittently lasted until 1157, ending only with the triumph of Canute’s posthumous son Valdemar I. The fate of Canute and his son’s victory formed the perfect background for his canonisation in 1170, which was requested by the same Valdemar. His feast day is celebrated on the day of his death, January 7." (Wikipedia)

So, what that means potentially is that my Great (to the 14th or 15th Great) Grandfather was both a King, and posthumously, a real-life, Vatican approved Saint, which is just surreally unfathomable.


Moving on down the line, we have King Sweyn I Tjúguskegg "Forkbeard", who was "king of Denmark and England, as well as parts of Norway. He was a Viking leader and the father of Cnut the Great. On his father Harald Bluetooth's death in late 986 or early 987, he became King of Denmark; in 1000, with allegiance of the Trondejarl, Erik of Lade, he was ruler over most of Norway. After a long effort at conquest, and shortly before his death, in 1013 he is said to have founded Swansea (which is often said to come from "Sweyn's Ey"), he then became King of England. In the last months of his life, he was the Danish sovereign of a North Sea empire, which only his son Cnut was to rival in northern Europe." (Wikipedia)

Wow.... just, wow.

I could go on about this forever, but let's face it, it's probably only interesting to me and whatever family member might happen to see this post. So, I'll close with the earliest ancestor I could track down, one Scaldea Trojan, who literarally, lived during the life of Jesus Christ. I don't know anything more than his name, but if this page is correct, is the 16th generation removed (directly) from Memnon Trojan, King of Troy...

At this point, legend, myth, and reality are all intermingled, but what I read when I researched Memnon very nearly blew my mind...

"Brazen-crested Memnon, a comely man according to Odysseus, is the King of the Ethiopians who came with a great force to help Troy against the Achaean invaders, and was killed by Achilles." (Greek Mythology Link)

This of course is both fantastic and fantastical, astounding and unbelievable, all at the same time. The two things I do know for sure are this: if you don't have a strong and sudden desire to research your own family ancestry, you never will, and that I have a whole hell of a lot of reading to do...