Bourbon Trail Day 2

The second day of my Bourbon Trail Tour in Kentucky back in April had a very ambitious itinerary. We had stayed in a bed and breakfast in Lexington because that was very close to the three distilleries seen on Day One as well as Woodford Reserve which we couldn't do on Sunday.

From there we had to dash over to Bardstown and finally south to Loretto before heading up to Louisville for the night. It was a lot of driving which kept the tasting to a minimum, but here is what I remember from the day:

Distillery	Woodford Reserve	Heaven Hill	Makers Mark
Giant Conglomerate Which Actually Owns The Distillery	Brown-Forman Corporation, the same people who own the much larger Jack Daniels in Tennessee, which is also technically a bourbon but sold as Tennessee Whiskey.	Private family owned business which brands more than a dozen different bourbons including Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, and Henry McKenna	Fortune Brands which among many, many other liquors owns the much bigger bourbon brewer Jim Beam.
Photo Of Me Doing Something Silly
Grounds	In a heavily wooded hilly area deep, deep into horse territory, Woodford Reserve is a boutique small batch distillery specializing in the rustic traditions. While the distillery was rebuilt on the inside in 1993, the building dates to 1838 and they look it.	Heaven Hill is large sprawling area filled with storage rickhouses on a breezy hilltop. The grounds are decorated with whimsical sculptures made from bourbon barrels.	Maker's Mark is way, way out of the way. It's over 45 minutes from Heaven Hill and it's all narrow country roads. The site was built as a tourist destination and it shows. All the buildings have a distinctive black and red decor.
Pre-Tour Movie	Fifteen minute movie emphasizing the age of the distillery and the old-fashioned techniques used.	We missed the movie so we could catch a tour that was just starting, but by now they were all looking the same.	They dispense with the movie, instead the original family house has been converted to a museum with all sorts of interactive exhibits.
Production Area Tour Bourbon is made by malting and then distilling a mixture of grains which must be at least 50% corn. The distilling process also has odd arcane rules.	The only tour to charge money, it costs $5 to take the standard tour. The production area is all vintage style equipment including cedar fermenters and pot stills.	After a massive fire in 1996 which destroyed the distillery and several warehouses to the point the nearby river caught on fire, production was moved into Louisville, so the actual distillery can't be toured.	The production area is very polished with lots of copper and brass but they don't let you get close to much except the giant fermenting vats.
Storage The other crucial definitive aspect of bourbon is that it MUST be barrel aged in virgin white oak for at least four years.	As a small batch distillery, they have only one storage warehouse and it is just as vintage as the rest of site. The warehouse is just as old as the distillery and the rails they use to move the barrels between the two are very cool.	The landscape is littered with warehouses and the smell of the "angels' share" is overwhelming. Since the tour basically consists of just the warehouse it is very detailed with examples of the ramps and lifts that used to be used to move and rotate the barrels until modern machinery took over.	Most of Makers Mark is stored in off-site warehouses that litter the road as you drive up but they do have one display warehouse with a lot of tools and paraphernalia on display.
Bottling and Labeling Bourbons would all just be fancy brown booze if there weren't cool labels and improbable stories about the founders for the fancy shaped bottles.	They were upgrading the equipment when we took the tour so it was closed but on a previous visit I had seen them empty a barrel into the trough for the small batch mixing.	While bottling and labeling are done on site, it is not part of the tour.	Bottling is done on site but was not in production the day we were there so they skipped it.
Tasting There is no reason to go to a distillery if you aren't going to get to sample the goods.	Since they really only have one brand, the sample is just one shot of the bourbon. That's pretty chintzy for a five dollar tour. They do have ice to add and bourbon balls to sample. The gift shop also has a sandwich bar where you can buy picnic supplies to take or eat on the grounds. Surprisingly it was one of the few places which sold food. It seems the local laws often don't allow that.	The tasting room seats about two dozen people and is in the shape of an enormous barrel. The tasting consists of two premium bourbons including an 18-year-old Elijah Craig which was the second best bourbon we had. The tour guide gives a very detailed and entertaining talk about the enjoyment of a fine sipping bourbon. It really evokes the genteel snobbery of bourbon drinking.	The tasting room is one corner of the gift shop with a large bar and seating area. Kids (and there were a surprising number of them on our tour) are kept across the room. They sample Makers Mark and the specially flavored Makers 46. Since it was near Derby time they also gave a shot of their mint julep flavored special edition which was awful.
Gift Shop	As the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby, they had all sorts of Derby related special edition bottles. They will also emboss or engrave bottles for you. Most of the accessories for sale were very high end.	The gift shop is right outside the tasting room and is Disneyesque in its displays and merchandise. They had a very wide array of the brands they sell including some very expensive special batches. Also a lot of different bourbon flavored foods and sauces.	Lots of branded merchandise. Since their 'mark' is the wax sealed top, they have a special area where you can wax your own bottle (and that's not meant to sound dirty) but we didn't see anybody doing it.
Tour Highlights There is a lot of repetition to the shpiels and patters from each tour, but they each do a good job getting across what is unique about their brands approach to making a product which is rather tightly defined.	The most vintage of the distilleries, if not really the oldest, it gives a good feel for the original methods and systems used. Definitely the most picturesque production area. They even have a cat who has the run of the plant.	While the warehouse is very generic, the tour talk was one of the better ones and the tasting talk really helps you appreciate fine bourbons.	The place is out of the way but worth the extra drive just for the overall picturesqueness. Personally I use Makers Mark as the dividing line between mixing bourbons and sipping bourbons. It's upscale but not wildly pretentious.
More Photos	Woodford Reserve	Heaven Hill	Makers Mark

A business junket which included a tour of Woodford Reserve was what inspired me to take the entire bourbon trail and if you can only visit one distillery, this would be the one to go to. But each of the others has its own merits as well. I wish Heaven Hill had more to their tour because the knowledge of the guides and the tasting experience was the best of all the stops. This is all getting me thirsty.

Women of AfterMaximEllen

You would not think the readers of Maxim magazine, typically hormonally flush and barely literate young men, and of AfterEllen.com, a lesbian entertainment site, have much in common but they do. They both appreciate incredibly hawt women. Each annually publishes a list of the hottest 100 women in the world.

The Maxim list typically includes a mix of movie and television stars as well as a bevy of models the normal person would not be familiar with unless they kept scrupulous records involving the Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

AfterEllen's list tends to be more eclectic. The typical Maxim reader is not going to get that worked up over Rachel Maddow (#22) or the lesbian twin sister folk-rock duo Tegan and Sara (#12 and #11 respectively. The do have the courtesy of noting the 28 or so women on the list which are officially 'out' as bisexual or lesbian so readers know when to get their hopes up. Although hope can spring eternal.

So as a service to the lesbian-friendly but testosterone laden community I have painstakingly combed both lists and compiled all the overlaps between the two. In order to rank them I have added their place on the Maxim list with the AfterEllen count to come up with the PanSexualHotnessQuotient (PSHQ). So without further ado here are the hottest women regardless of the equipment you are wearing.

Rank	Hottie	Maxim	AfterEllen
16	Zoe Saldana	37	93
15	Sofia Vergara	29	82
14	Emma Stone	42	68
13	Lindsay Lohan	38	67
12	Emma Watson	69	33
11	Anna Paquin	68	23
10	Scarlett Johansson	14	71
9	Megan Fox	17	50
8	Evan Rachel Wood	31	36
7	Jordana Brewster	11	49
6	Sarah Shahi	24	28
5	Naya Rivera	43	1
4	Natalie Portman	8	35
3	Lea Michele	28	10
2	Mila Kunis	5	19
1	Olivia Wilde	16	5

So Olivia Wilde is the woman that cranks everybody crank. Just in case the name does not mean anything to you, here she is in her best known movie role as Hot Tron Girl Who Lounges Sexily On A Sofa.



So I will be looking for more from her in the future. Or perhaps looking for less.

The Women Of Weiner

There are many angles to the latest news scandal about how Congressman Andrew Weiner allegedly sent a college co-ed a photo of his semi-turgid member underneath his underwear. Now the actual origin and vector of that photo will be Zaprudered for weeks to come, but one interesting point was made by recent college co-ed and Washington Post humor blogger Alexandra Petri about the composition of Rep. Weiner's twitter followees.

And of the 200 people @RepWeiner follows on Twitter, a surprising number (well, more than zero, at any rate) do seem to be what might be termed nubile out-of-state houris.

Deciding to not take her word for it, I conducted my own independent investigation. Here is a smorgasbord of the people Weiner finds interesting.


Representative Capps is a coworker and colleague. Nothing out of line here.


Another fellow congresscritter. Arguably cuter. And single.


A CNN anchor. A guy has to stay informed. Who cares if she's a newsbabe? It's the quality of the reporting that counts, right?


An up-and-coming journalist. Makes sense to have some friends in the Fourth Estate.


A New Yorker. Possibly a constituent. You have to keep up with the common people.


I gotta dispute the 'body of a trucker' description. She seems pretty cute and at least she's a New Yorker.


Another New Yorker. Who cares if she's in the fashion industry and blazing hott?


A woman with a strong opinion on an important issue.


Another political junkie. One who wears really cute hats.


A lot of enthusiasm, but it seems to be mostly for the internet start-up she's associated with as evidence by this tweet elliptically referencing the current kerfuffle:

I'm pretty sure I only have room for one Brooklyn Weiner in my life...@DoSomething CTO George Weiner. Follow him @GeorgecaWeiner #15minutes

Now we are moving into some dangerous territory. There is no obvious connection to politics or New York but she does rock the brainy glasses.


At least we are back to politics. Incidentally, Lady Fox Fyre's twitter feed is invite-only and she only has 30 followers, so our congressman is in pretty select company.


A college student from Pennsylvania. Tsk, tsk, these are the sort of follows that get you a reputation, Andrew. Ms DeVinney does have this to say:

I normally TRY not to generalize but anyone who thinks Weiner sent a picture from his TWITTER is an idiot. GOP care about something real.

At least she is a college professor but there is a little bit of a come hither tone in the profile.


A cutie with this to say as well:

Poverty, education, healthcare, corporate greed, & Snooki's car accident. Seriously, there are way more important things to report about.

Another invite-only feed, but once you have 'kitten' and 'X' in your handle, there some innuendo going on.


An anonymous woman with no profile photo but a twitter handle that is brainy and sexy.


When it comes to suggestive handles and profile photos, it doesn't get more risque that this.


And once you have hearts and a call-out to Anaïs Nin in your profile description, a line has been crossed.

Perhaps I'm following the wrong track. Maybe the issue shouldn't be who Weiner would like to tweet his wiener to, but who would appreciate such a tweet.


Weiner and Stewart are actual friends so it seems odd that he follows the gay parody twitter feed rather than the real thing.


Not sayin' a thing.


If you are tweeting crotch shots as a constituent service, this would be the place to send it.


Only because when you are discussing Weiner, there is a legal obligation to make a Boehner joke as well.

From this rather prejudiced and selectively organized sub-list feel free to draw your own conclusions. But, please, please, please, do not stalk these otherwise innocent bystanders and by all means don't try to frame any outspoken congressmen by faking a junk shot and framing them as the recipient.

Obama Watches Glee

This photo:



Made me have this reaction:



Which raises another important question, since Obama is a government employee, does he have to contribute to the White House coffee fund?

Finally, do not skip the funniest 'Situation' Room meme mash-up ever. Make sure to scroll through them all.

BooksFirst - February-April 2011

Books Bought
A Hole At The Bottom Of The Sea by Joel Achenbach
Bossypants by Tina Fey (audiobook)
American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson (audiobook)
Little Dorritt by Charles Dickesn (audiobook)

Books Read
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Troll Bridge by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple
A Hole At The Bottom Of The Sea by Joel Achenbach
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Final Crisis by Grant Morrison

Books Heard
Bossypants by Tina Fey
American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson

As a follow-up to my annual Just Read More Novels Month, I gave myself the challenge to read all of Neal Stephenson's Anathem in less than one month, and that month happened to be February. I did make the challenge, but only just barely. The novel is nearly 1,000 pages long and is a sweeping science fiction world with tons of new jargon and concepts. But I did make it and I'm glad that I did.

The central conceit of the alternate world where Anathem is set is that science and math and many other forms of learning are restricted to monastic orders. They have a complicated hierarchy based on how extreme their isolation from general civilization is. But then inexplicable events start happening and the order of the world that had kept civilization from self-destruction for three thousand years begin breaking down.

The first hundred pages of the book are tough slogging as the reader has to piece together the social structure and the relationships of the characters. And then the roller coaster ride begins. Each chapter unfolds a little more and an epic journey begins. This is classic world-buidling science fiction at its best. The only rough point is that there is a poorly handled romance that runs beneath the main plot line. These monastic scientists seem to not do well with the ladies despite their co-ed enclaves.

Other than that, everything in this world ties together. It is tightly plotted so that events and casual conversations tie into events later in the book. There is also a great deal of philosophical noodling going on. It helps to know enough to figure out who the Anathem world analogues are to our philosophies and philosophers, but it's not entirely necessary. Just be prepared to have your thoughts provoked on this wild ride.

As a palate cleanser I picked up Troll Bridge a "young adult" novel which looked like a modern update on the Three Billy Goats Gruff story. I love that story. I used to re-enact the story with gummi-bears with the troll (me) eating lots of gummi-goats.

In this version of the story, the goats have been replace by a boy band suspiciously similar to the Jonas Brothers. While this is a clever concept, it's never really exploited well. Instead the plot riffs on some other much less known fairy tale about dairy princesses and and deals with trolls.

Jane Yolen is a well known children's author and Adam Stemple is her musician son. While I assume his role is to add lyrics for the band in the book, the overall effect is a disjointed mess. I just wanted to hear some clip-clopping across the bridge and I end up with fiddle playing evil foxes and trolls stupid even by troll standards.

Joel Achenbach is a star reporter at the Washington Post, and while he doesn't like me saying so, he's their best reporter who has never won a Pulitzer. And in a world where Gene Weingarten has two that is a major oversight.

One of his many beats is natural disasters of all kinds. He has written for National Geographic about the Yellowstone supervolcano caldera and covered Hurrican Ike for WaPo from Galveston. He spent much of last spring and summer (with Stephen Mufson and others) covering the disaster which was the BP Macondo Oil Spill. For months he translated the lingo and the technology of the oil well drilling business for all of us wanting context and information.

He has leveraged his research into a book which in his glorious trademarked understated style is titled A Hole At The Bottom Of The Sea. Rather than delve into the minutia of the crisis, he gives a broader big picture of the players and the forces at work. After the initial tour de force you-are-there account of what actually happened that fateful night, he focuses on the interplay between BP and the government. While both parties wanted the oil well capped, there was a lot of tension between the groups. Achenbach has captured the interplay between the dirty fingered roughnecks of the oil industry and the ivy tower Whiz Kids of the Obama administration riding herd on them.

One of my obsessions during this crisis was the ongoing circus sideshow about how much oil was actually flowing. BP had a clear fiscal interest in either never finding out or doing there best to minimize the estimate. Portions of the book do go into the wrangling over how and what was released to the public.

The narrative has a crisp fast-paced tone. Achenbach lucidly tells a polemic-free tale of people banding together to solve a crisis which had many fathers. Perhaps the one weakness of the book is that it eschews finger-pointing and blame-placing. And maybe it truly is too early to resolve those issues. But the book is a good clarion call about how we need to have better responses in place so that future crises such as the post-tsunami nuclear event in Japan can be more effectively dealt with.


I recently watched the film version of Ghost World costarring a young Scarlett Johansson as a bored teenager dealing with the bleakness of modern existence. To get a better feel for the story, I read the collected graphic stories the movie was based on.

The movie has a stronger narrative arc than the comics which have a bleaker angstier feel. The pages just drip with disaffected ennui. The stark black and white graphics are particularly good at evoking a moody sterility.

Most surprising to me was how few Ghost World stories there are. The actual stories don't even take up half of the super-sized Special Edition which I read. The remainder is extra material as well as the movie shooting script which I did not read. Clearly the characters of Enid and Rebecca resonate and feel very real.

For quite a while the comic book universes have been goosing sales with epic multi-issue Event storylines where everything as you know it is overturned. One of the most recent of these in the DC universe was called Final Crisis, which I suspect is a little disingenuous since crises are part of their stock in trade.

Once again an evil force threatens to destroy multiple universes and only the combined might of Every Hero Ever can stop it. Part of the fun of these over-the-top exercises is playing trivia in trying to identify all the odd cameos. And this one meets that and more. For example, Black Lightning who I had never heard of gets nearly a whole issue to himself. Part of the fun is trying to figure out if the more obscure characters are just forgotten trivia items or ones invented solely for this story.

For an epic storyline to succeed it has to wreck major havoc and changes which won't be retconned out the next issue. In the case of Final Crisis, the major change seems to be the return of the Barry Allen Flash who met his end in the granddaddy epic story Crisis on Infinite Earths about thirty years ago.

Other than than that the rest of the seven issues seem to just be an exercise in excess. Once the universe has been nearly destroyed dozens of times earlier, it's just hard to work ups some suspense over yet another Final Crisis.

Perhaps the best way to enjoy a book by a comedian is to listen to the unabridged audiobook by the author and there is no better example of this than Bossypants by Tina Fey. While the words are hilarious, her inflection adds miles. Roughly autobiographical, it details her rise from summer drama camp fag hag to the star, writer, and creator of the most inventive sitcom on television.

Along the way she peppers the story with sidebar stories and digressions which all seem to be about the hurdles women still have to face in a post-feminist working environment. This quiet undertone of rage permeates the book. She talks about her time with Amy Poehler on the Second City tour bus and the disgusting sanitary habits of the Saturday Night Live male writers.

The book is perhaps a little guarded. There is as much she leaves out as she puts in. In some cases, such as the childhood attack which left her permanently scarred, she says she won't talk about. Other events she just doesn't mention at all like cutting Rachel Dratch from the cast of 30 Rock.

It's a rollicking hilarious book and well worth listening to in her own words.

Another hilarious comedian with a memoir is Craig Ferguson, the Scotland born and recently naturalized host of The Late Late Show. Contrary to Tina Fey, there seems to be nothing Ferguson is not willing to air. He narrates every drunken binge, bad acid trip, and ugly relationship break-up he ever had. At some point the tales of his bad behavior become a little tedious, but that all makes his decades of sobriety all the more amazing.

The rough narrative is about his youth in Glasgow as an aspiring punk rocker and the transition to stand-up comedy which leads to his becoming a minor star in Great Britain before breaking into the US market as the foppish jerk on the Drew Carey Show. The book is alternately funny and maudlin. As a writer, Ferguson is overly fond of the adjectives 'farty' and 'wee', but I will attribute that to his Scottish background.

As the title American On Purpose attests, the undercurrent of his book is his long-abiding and deep love for all this American. Throughout he talks about his love of our freedom and opportunity. After all, in a country where Craig Ferguson can become a late night talk show host, anything is possible.