The player here is Veho because I burnt most of my megs at vimeo. Nice thing about Veoh is that you can play the vid full screen and it allows you to run longish vids with fairly high rez. I con’t much like the player bar at thebottom, but it’s servicable for todays blog diptyque.

The Video is from today when I dropped the dog off to cut a summer trim (and stop the pant pant) I went walkabout to the park and museum and Library (there to check on possibly showing the Library Project collabs… got to contact the currator). I found the Technology Share Fair for Brooklyn Schools while walking the halls of Brooklyn Museum… I ran into Cash while wanting something to quench my thirst. He offered up lemon ginger ale… it has been the basis of my ever evolving liquids all day (adding coke and lemon juice and wine sorbet and only leaving it for Miller Time).

The music here is from Dave Chapelle’s Block Party CD (from Brooklyn Public Library) and is Mos Def and posse. Bill Batson gave me Mos Def shirt years ago when the Queen kicked me out of the Kingdom and had me Siddhartha sleeping on couches without clothes or money. I always wore it with pride… but am only learning why now. Mos Def is most def…. Busy Bee me. No sleep in Brooklyn.

Every year my friends Tom and Sharron have a party on Superbowl Eve. It is more or less a recap of the December and January parties…. only much later. They find a tree at the end of Christmas and keep it up till the party. Santa shows up (he gave out Lotto tickets this year… other years have been cigarettes and airline sized bottles of booze) and at midnight it’s new years again with all the horn blowing and kissing, etc. Then we dance. Sometimes there’s just too many parties during actual Holliday time and it all can become a sort of social chore, but by now everyone is getting depressed and house bound by the cold and just ready for a party again. Plus it’s nice to be a little hung over and nurse the wounds with beer and wings and football the next day.

I go down to the bar and the beer helps as long as the money holds out and that’s not very long. I’m drinking Budweiser because it’s cheapest and the guy next to me is drinking Bud too.

“It’s beer at least,” I say to him.
“Right,” he says, uninterested.
“It’s the cheapest stuff here,” I say.
“I like Bud,” he says.
“Have you ever had the real stuff?” I ask.
“Iâ€m having it now,” he says.
I start explaining how the real Budweiser is from a city in Czechoslovakia: Budweis … and is one of the oldest and best Lagers in European history… That’s why the American’s stole the name for this rice and corn beer shit… It’s nothing like the Czech beer which is lagered in enormous pitch lined barrels… full of flavor.
“I like Bud,” he says…. And besides we all rest on the shoulders of giants. A lot of great things were inspired by Europe. You seen that hotel in Las Vegas? Looks just like Venice, but clean and with gambling and strippers. Awesome.”

I start explaining how the name Budweiser has been used for hundreds of years to describe beers from Budwies, but only since Prohibition here. Nobody cared with all the troubles in Europe. It only became an issue since the Iron Curtain fell and the Czech republic looks to export the few things it has to export… which is more or less: beer, vodka, and guns. Anhauser Busch sued them to prevent them from selling their beer under it’s traditional name… “the name they stole. It’s one thing to rest on the shoulder’s of giants, but the reality is that Bud is now the giant and it won’t get off the shoulders of Budweiser… it’s trying to keep them down…. I’d like to live in a world where we all just rest on the shoulder’s of average sized men.”
“That sounds like Communism,” the guy says.
“No that sounds like democracy.”
“Tell the truth. Are you or have you ever been a Communist?”
“No. Just an average sized guy who likes decent beer, but can’t afford it.”
“I’ll buy you a Bud,” the guy says. “It’s decent beer.”
“Why not?” I say.
It’s cold and actally tastes delicious and we talk and drink and smile and later I stumble home half drunk in a whisper of snow. In the morning I’m miserably dry mouthed from the kicking steam heat and the anesthetic qualities of Budweiser.