Pssst! Wanna buy a bourbon?

So — she started a sentence with, even though she hates when that happens — the other day, I made a Facebook post about the ridiculousness of all the niche distilleries that think their sourced bourbons are all worth $90 a bottle (or more).

The American Woman Spirit Co. bottle lineup.

I suspect a lot of these “distilleries” are little more than drop shops that source liquor from factory distilleries and slap their private labels on the bottle filled with someone else’s product. I don’t have any proof of that but I just don’t think all of these places are actually producing their own booze. As sort-of proof, I know of one local, rather high-profile distillery that used whiskey from other sources for the first several years it was in business because aged whiskeys don’t just happen overnight. Throw in the need for machinery, barrel storage, tasting, monitoring and tinkering with the batches along the way, to say nothing of the distilling experience and expertise needed, and I just don’t buy it. But I digress.

Within 10 minutes of publishing that post, my feed was filed with advertisements for all things bourbon. I’m not exaggerating. A bourbon- or liquor-related ad popped up almost every other post. I took screen shots as proof!

The ads ran the gamut from niche distilleries and online liquor stores to specialty offerings like bourbon brownies and bourbon salted caramels. I was enticed with the perfect glass from which to sip my chosen beverage and encouraged to buy granite stones for chilling. 

This is just one of four pages of notes resulting from Facebook ads.

I would imagine most of these labels are not available in the corner liquor store. Some of the ads were for Wyoming Whiskeys, Mythology Distillery, Nelson’s Green Brier, American Woman Spirit Co., Traverse City Whiskey Co. and Milam and Greene Whiskey. Trust me when I tell you this list is just a small portion of the flood of offerings.

Some of these companies have marketing hooks to grab a portion of the market. American Woman Spirit Co., for example, puts its product in a bottle in the shape of the female form. Knobel Spirits appears to be owned by Baltimore native Mike Rowe, perhaps best known for hosting “Dirty Jobs.” Knobel Tennessee Whiskey is named for Rowe’s grandfather and while the whiskey is pricey, a portion of online sales benefits the mikeroweWORKS Foundation. The website provides a little bit of the story behind the name of the product but doesn’t really explain who actually distills the product and where that happens, other than using “the finest ingredients from local farmers in Tennessee.”

Mike Rowe with Knobel.

Much of American Woman Spirit’s online story is dedicated to the story of the “unique custom sculpted bottle.” The company “collaborates with an esteemed U.S. distillery” to produce its products, which include two varieties of tequila and a rye whiskey in addition to three bourbon offerings. The basic bourbon is $74.99 and the cask strength is $99.99. The tequila ranges from $80 to $120.

But the bottles are pretty.

The custom sculpted American Woman Spirit Co. bottle.

I’m not going to bore you with similar details for all the bourbons that decided I needed to know about them, but it was fun to check out their websites, read a little of the history and ogle at the prices.

As I stated in my original post, I am far from a whiskey snob and I do not have a refined palate. I enjoy single malt scotches but usually settle for Chivas Regal, my favorite blended scotch. I’m a scotch on the rocks drinker, so watering down hugely expensive labels insults the distiller and takes away from the intended flavor. My consumption of bourbon tends to be in the form of Manhattans so again, I would be doing a disservice to a high-end whiskey by adding vermouth and throwing in — gasp — a cherry or two.

I marvel at the folks who can take a sip of any fine whiskey and then talk about the notes of dark chocolate, cherry, vanilla, nutmeg, brown sugar, toffee, butterscotch and caramel detected as the liquid hits the front, middle and back portions of the tongue. They can identify the percentages of grains used and know that it was finished in a port barrel. And that’s after they identify the 27 elements of the nose.

Me? I know smooth versus rough, and quite simply, whether or not I like it. I’ve spent big money of some niche bourbons that I assumed, based simply on price, would be good sipping bourbons. I was wrong — like lighter fluid wrong — and learned not to buy expensive, boutique booze untested. Many liquor stores, including Midway, offer free in-store tastings from time to time, with an expert on hand to teach the characteristics of each offering. That's a much cheaper way to learn what you like and what you don't.

Honestly, my favorite common bourbon is still Wild Turkey 101. Prices vary from store to store, with some little neighborhood shops charging as much as $27-30. Total Wine and More offers a 750 ml bottle for $21.99 and Wild Turkey Rare Breed, which I do enjoy as a sipper, is $55.99.

So — and there’s another “so” beginning sentence — I guess the point of this post is that my online bourbon bashing had to become your bashing. Share and share alike, right?

But about those bourbon brownies …

An Easter egg hunt for the ages

I hard-boiled some eggs the other day, and I guess the proximity to Easter brought back some memories of a recreation council Easter egg hunt that went terribly wrong.

Travel with me to the late 1970s, when the Bengies-Chase Recreation Council’s annual Easter egg hunt was a pretty big deal. It was held at Seneca Elementary School and attracted a huge crowd — more than 100 kids in each of about five age groups.

I spent most of my college years working as a part-time rec leader for the Baltimore County Department of Recreation and Parks. You name it and I did it: I lined baseball, softball and soccer fields, ran drop-ins and after-school programs, was a summer playground leader, I set up chairs for dance recitals, cleaned up vomit, cradled and consoled crying kids, administered first aid and sat on curbs with kids whose parents were a “little late.” I’m Facebook friends with a lot of the “kids” from the best roller skating program ever.

The day of the egg hunt, I arrived at Seneca at the crack of dawn (or so it felt to a 20-year-old) to start setting up and organizing for the oncoming crowd. The rec center supervisor (and my boss) was Kathy Tully. She handed me a cup of coffee and we got to work. Registration tables needed to be set up, bathrooms needed to be opened and inspected, the eggs had to be “hidden,” the Easter Bunny had to be greeted and hidden for her big entrance, the bullhorn needed to be tested.

After most of the more mundane tasks had been completed, a crew of volunteers started hiding eggs. While there were a few nooks and crannies in which to tuck eggs, hiding eggs basically meant rolling them out across a roped-off grassy area.

So with that mental picture in mind, time-travel again with me to the previous week. As hard as it is now to believe, back in the day most public egg hunts used real eggs. That’s right — the real McCoy, bought by the pallet (I exaggerate slightly) at the local grocery store.

Just a couple of miles from Seneca Elementary was the Bengies-Chase Community Building. It was a former two-room Black schoolhouse that was preserved and cherished as a community hub. At a renovation ribbon-cutting much later in my full-time recreation career, I observed in my comments how appropriate it was that a building that once stood to keep people apart now stood to bring them together.

The building housed the council’s community office and also was home to a variety of programs, including Tot Fun Center, tap and ballet and two longstanding Golden Age clubs. 

Those Golden Age clubs played a vital tole in the egg hunt. Members hardboiled and dyed the hundreds and hundreds of eggs for the big day. The community center had a pretty big kitchen with a huge commercial-grade stove. The seniors would come in every day of hunt week, hunker down in that kitchen and get to work. Boil the eggs, cool them, dye them, repack them in the original cartons and refrigerate them.

The seniors loved their role in the annual event and they looked forward to contributing each year. It was a fine-tuned machine, a choreographed production of volunteers carrying out their assigned tasks.

Or so we thought.

Travel forward again now to the morning of the hunt. The landscape of the school campus has been transformed, the parking lot is filling early with families who don’t care they’ve arrived an hour early with hyped-up kids they expect us to entertain. Volunteers grab armloads of egg cartons and head out to set up the various age-group areas.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime during the hiding process, a volunteer who accidentally dropped an egg discovered it was raw. We tested every egg in that carton and all were raw. Beautifully dyed but nonetheless raw. We threw that carton away and hoped and prayed that it was an isolated incident.

It was not.

Pretty soon, volunteers all across the hunt area were reporting raw eggs. After a quick meeting of core organizers, we decided we would carry on with the hunt, announce before hand that eggs might be raw and if eggs broke after kids found them, we’d count the shells so they got credit for all the eggs they found.

The hunt went on as planned, many more raw eggs were found and counting eggs was a messy task. The Easter Bunny made her appearance, photos were taken, prizes were distributed, crowds dispersed, cleanup commenced.

Raw eggs aside, the hunt was a success. Hundreds of community children had a blast, area volunteers turned out on a Saturday to serve their community and they earned their pay in the currency of smiles, giggles and hugs.

A gentle investigation the following week uncovered a not-so-surprising reason for so many raw eggs escaping the boiling process. The problem was traced to one particular day when there were literally too many cooks in the kitchen. Someone would put a pot of eggs on the stove, walk away and someone else would walk in, take that pot off and put a new pot on. The eggs were extremely clean but no less raw. Looking back it seems strange that no raw eggs were discovered during the dying process because they get banged around quite a bit. Who knows? Maybe there was a coverup??

When I think about it, the raw eggs perhaps served a purpose. Many special events just blend into one another — they tend to be the same version, year after year. Maybe a new element gets added from time to time, but the formula remains the same and they get carried out almost by muscle memory.

Thanks to the raw eggs, maybe folks still think or talk about this particular hunt from time to time, as I do.

But we started using plastic eggs the following year. The Golden Age Club members gladly embraced the task of stuffing the plastic orbs with goodies and the hunt with multi-generational involvement carried on.

The characters and other fun of March Madness

March Madness is underway. For the one or two of you who need the explanation, MM is the trademarked named of the annual NCAA basketball tournament (and is finally able to be applied to the women’s tourney as well). March Madness travels into April, but that’s a whole different story.

For the first time in a while, I actually filled out a bracket this year. I’m having a friendly competition with my friend Jody. No money involved, no prize; just a reason to pay attention to all the games. I’m the “commissioner” of our little competition, so I get all nerdy tracking the games, recording scores and keeping track of our individual wins. At the end of the Round of 64, we were tied with the identical score of 22 (one point for each win). After the Round of 32, I hold a slight cumulative edge at 30-29. In other words, neither one of us is doing well.

But as with most sporting competitions, the athletic contests themselves almost take a back seat to the characters that blossom in the background.

Who doesn’t remember Sister Jean, who became synonymous with the Loyola University Chicago? The nun, who held many professional roles on the campus, including assistant dean and academic advisor, attached herself to the men’s and women’s basketball teams in 1994, according to a university website timeline. She served as academic advisor and worked with student-athletes to keep their grades up and remain athletically eligible. She dubbed herself the “Booster Shooter.” In 1996, she became the official team chaplain for the men’s team.

Sister Jean became a ubiquitous presence at NCAA tournaments and was soon a national treasure. She died last year at the age of 106.

Sister Jean was honored with her own bobblehead. Photo Loyola website

Already this year, the Miami (Ohio) men’s swim team has endeared itself to the nation, as have the student radio broadcasters of High Point University. 

The swimmers made quite a splash (you knew I had to go there) when they stormed the arena aisle to camp out behind the hoop, with the goal of distracting opposing free-throw shooters. In a really tight play-in game, the Speedo-garbed guys jumped up and down and waved their arms to distract the shooter.

The Miami of Ohio swimmers are big supporters of the basketball team.

The distraction was successful in a critical moment and the Redhawks hung on to defeat Southern Methodist University to notch their first-ever NCAA tourney win. They lost to Tennessee by 22 points in the Round of 64, but school history was made.

The boys of water first started expressing their support of the hoopsters in January, according to online reports.

I say the swimmers should get an official assist in the scorebook.

High Point University, described by clueless network broadcasters as a "small Methodist school," was the decided underdog as a 12-seed, going up against No. 5 seed Wisconsin of the Big 10 conference. I’m sure most pundits — and bettors — expected High Point to get blown away, but the plucky Panthers more than held their own against the Badgers. Down by as many as 10 points, the Panthers battled back on the back of some hot three-point shooting and the team won by a point, 83-82, in the last few seconds of the game.

But while the players were doing their job on the court, student broadcasters Jimmy Rosselli and Griffin Wright were doing their thing on the sidelines. As the team made its way down the court in the contest’s waning seconds, the two announcers called the action with professionalism. But when backup Chase Johnston delivered a layup that put their team up by a point, the two young men went nuts and their reaction went viral. They have been interviewed by a variety of media outlets, including Fox News, Sports Illustrated and Yahoo Sports.

Johnston made some personal history with the game-winning layup. It was the first two-point bucket of the season for the three-point specialist.

I’m sure High Point’s victory broke an awful lot of brackets (including my friendly opponent’s).

My favorite image so far is video footage of Prairie View A&M’s Hassane Diallo staring up at Florida’s Olivier Rioux, who measures up at 7’9”. Diallo, who at 6’8” is probably accustomed to being the tallest person in the room, literally cranes his neck to look up at Rioux’s face. In almost comical fashion, Diallo gives Rioux a nearly head-to-toe glance, as if to say, “Is this guy for real?”

Rioux later dunked a ball after barely leaving the floor. It looked like a two-inch vertical jump was all it took.

Betting and other side activities and competitions have branched out from the tourney. Folks will bet on or rank anything, including school mascots.

Sports Illustrated recently published an article ranking the mascots of all of this year’s tourney teams. The. Clemson Tiger was rated the No. 65 mascot (three participating teams were listed in another ranking as having no mascots at all.) Apparently, according to the accompanying blurb, the tiger, for whatever reason, has occupied the mascot basement for several years. 

Iowa’s Herky the Hawk is ranked 54th, with critics thinking he needs to smile more. Villanova’s Will D. Cat is no. 47 and TCU’s Superfrog is no. 21. Missouri’s Truman the Tiger sits at no. 20, with a snarky note to Clemson saying “these are tigers done right.” Ohio State’s Brutus Buckeye is no. 11, while Akron’s Zippy the kangaroo is the bridesmaid at no.2. You can read the article to see what SI thinks is the tourney’s best mascot.

St. John's University's Johnny Thunderbird.

In full disclosure, there are many online mascot rankings, with vastly different results. I’d guess there’s more than a little personal bias in such “rankings.” For example, Yahoo Sports published a list that would make you think the two entities were writing about the proverbial apples and oranges, the differences are so great.

Finally, because this post could go on forever, I’ll share with you a compilation of some of the most unusual names of this year’s players: Solo Ball (UConn), Chandler Bing (Vanderbilt), Ben Humrichous  (Illinois), Michelangelo Oberti (Penn), Penn’s TJ Power, forward, (ha ha! Get it?), Poohpha Warakulnukroh (UCF), Federico Federico (Texas A&M) and Oluwabukola “Bukky” Oboye, Santa Clara.

PA announcers have probably been rehearsing them for days.

Go Chandler!

And go Duke, for the sake of my bracket!

Do be a Becorn

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I’m having serious trouble coping with the current events of our country and the world. I find myself in an emotional condition that is totally new to me — seriously pent up anger, hatred, disbelief, frustration and incredulity are consuming me.

I just can’t any more with the political landscape of these less than united states, and I have found myself enjoying guilty pleasures provided by the sweet creativity of others.

So I’m taking on the task of sharing these sweet discoveries with you, because I’m sure I’m not the only one suffering from the catastrophic news of the minute.

Today, I’m introducing David M. Bird, artist and creator of Becorns. 

Photo credit: David M. Bird Facebook page

“Becorns are characters made from acorns and sticks, then photographed in the wild with real animals,” Bird states on his Facebook page. “The process usually involves a study of animal behavior, bird seed, and a lot of patience.”

I’m thinking patience doesn’t even begin to describe the work of this man who has brought so much pleasure and enjoyment into my life. The characters themselves are thoughtfully designed, painstakingly assembled and lovingly stored when not tasked with an outdoor assignment.

He surveys his property for the exact right spot for a scenario he has planned, he creates a drawing of the scene he hopes to capture photographically, he sets the scene up and then camps out with the patience of a monk to capture the desired image.

Photo credit: David M. Bird Facebook page

Anyone who has ever attempted nature photography knows it is a game of hurry up and wait. It is a lonely, mostly thankless task that involves early morning and late night treks into wilderness areas, with no promise of return on time investment. For every single image that a photographer puts forth for public consumption, there are probably a thousand others that never see the light of day. My friend Kevin Moore, a well-known street and nature photographer, says he often depends on the photographic technique known as “spray and pray.” Roughly, that translates to quickly shooting a bunch of frames and praying there’s one good one. The great shot of the eagle in flight, with a perfect wing-spread, is not a one-and-done lucky shot. It is the result of squatting in the woods for hours, in all weather conditions, hoping to spot an eagle, let alone getting a decent shot.

So with that background, I pay homage to the efforts of the Becorn creator. Bird is at once an artist, a builder, a costume designer, a carver, a scriptwriter, a director, a set designer, a photographer and editor.

And after all the planning, building and shooting, he shares his work with us. I have spent more hours than I care to admit with the likes of the Jon Jon brothers, GoGo, Lord Gourdon, Kipling and a host of other characters. The Becorns are guards and protectors, they are companions and witnesses and sometimes they are hosts, offering seeds or berries to birds and small woodland creatures. I’ve sadly watched one be torn apart by a squirrel, but they are made of acorns, after all.

On top of the great content, Bird's narration on each video is a medicine all of its own. His soothing voice is the icing on top of the multi-layered video cakes he serves. He is indeed just what this nation's collective physician called for.

I don’t want to give too much away. I encourage you to visit David M. Bird’s Facebook page and immerse yourself in the adventures of the mighty Becorns.

The little creatures are an innocent and benevolent distraction from the evening news!

Enjoy!