Drink Beer, Think Beer by John Holl
An upshot of spending way too much time delayed in airports over the past few days: I’ve had a lot of time to read, and drink beer, and read about drinking beer while drinking beer. Last night in a miserable, overcrowded Denver airport, I completed John Holl’s new book, Drink Beer, Think Beer, and can say it’s a lovely, quick read that will benefit anyone aspiring to be more critical about their beer drinking. Holl’s greatest success is to encourage us to dive deeper into what’s in our pint glasses (or tulip glasses, he’d advise) without descending into snobbery. He’s an advocate for informed, thoughtful drinking, but also for the straight-forward joy of a pint that tastes good and doesn’t require a Ph.D. to enjoy. Cheers, we need more of that in the beer world these days. [Kate Bernot]
Vanderpump Rules rules
In a TV viewing schedule that’s more guilty pleasure than not if I’m being honest, Vanderpump Rules is on record as my deepest, darkest TV series secret. So I really enjoyed this long Twitter thread by BuzzFeed’s Louis Peitzman as he binged all six seasons of #PumpRules over about a month and commented accordingly.
For the fortunate unenlightened, Vanderpump Rules is a spin-off of Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, featuring the young staff of Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant. It’s like Real Housewives without the advantage of those people being rich, or even just married to rich people. The Vanderpump kids are almost without exception extremely awful people, and are given a public backdrop wherein they continually get into drunken arguments. You kind of wonder just how awful they can get, and they just get lower every season. I can only imagine the horror the uninitiated Peitzman experienced by getting slammed by Jax, Stassi, the Toms, et al. Which makes his screenshots and subsequent commentary so hilarious, I may have to get caught up on season six. [Gwen Ihnat]