How appropriate that I finally picked up Inglourious Basterds on DVD this week. In a town where you can hear great music cheaply any night of the week, I ended up listening to some of the chaff at an in-house performance.
And much like Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz in the Nadine tavern, a flogging would have felt more soothing.
It hearkened back to the Coffeehouse Nights the college hosted every Wednesday. Yeah, most of the music was weak, but at least it swelled with youthful exuberance. This batch of noxiously bad performance poetry, some about rambling through Nashville, couldn't escape its own odors.
Luckily, my purpose at this secluded house a hop-skip from my own had nothing to do with music. When my buddy Brett invited me to sample the homebrew, I had no idea what else would transpire at this party. Otherwise, my ears might not recover from the damage.
Brett's buddy Chad had tapped a fresh keg of homebrew, and it smoked. His Before Noon Molasses Porter has just the right balance to become a session beer, albeit a dark one. The molasses chilled out all the roasted and chocolate malt flavors swirling in this dark ale. It only took 8 ounces to sweeten a 5 gallon batch; that is trick to most beer extras. It only takes a four or five ounces of roasted flaked oats to craft an oatmeal stout. But Chad hit all the high marks.
We endured random folkies and barely palatable noise guitar progressions. The most interesting thing in the room was Josephus, a fresh amateur wrestler who had just begun a career on the local circuit.
By the time I left, some random drummer pounded away, with an small synthesizer wailing next to him. He needed a band, just as others needed to bury their poetic dreams. There comes a time when only a few can fill their coffers on those clumps of words, and the sooner you recognize it, the sooner you can enjoy the porter.
Strands of verse come to me sometime, but I usually find other uses for them. Rather than let them rot in a drawer, those poetic flourishes, the remnants of a bygone hobby I once thought had money-making potential find their way into this blog, freelance stories, and even articles about value-based insurance design.
Even if people consider our gifts a waste, there's no sense in throwing away the whole without salvaging some of the parts.
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