Me and my big mouth...

Boy do I wish I hadn't come across that last article that I blogged about. Part 2 of George Lenker's series on amateur beer writers started an avalanche of crappy reading to clog up my browser windows.

First off, I finished Part 2 and couldn't believe what I was reading from a professional journalist. I was actually looking forward to reading some constructive, well-thought-out criticism of amateur beer writing - the kind of thing you'd expect from someone who is a "real" journalist. Instead the article/blog post/whatever it was turns out to be some stream of consciousness bellyaching. I mean, if you're not going to give us at least one concrete example of what you mean, who cares? What's the point? The whole thing comes off as more amateurish than the writing he's complaining about.

Of course, it looks like it took no time at all for the bloggerati to start the attack. And for Lenker to respond, blaming everyone else for mis-understanding him. If he were smart, he'd use the hereforthebeer blog post as an example of what's wrong with amateur writing. On the internet, everyone is an expert, and you can put words in someone else's mouth (never said they sucked, never called them losers) without any real repercussions. And the tone of their response was even more childish than Lenker's original piss-into-the-wind complaint.

Thanks for nothing, guys. Now where will I get those precious minutes back....

What's that you say? It gets worse?

Of course, from the hereforthebeer post, I wind up linking over to an article recapping an incredibly important moment in craft beer history that went down at the most recent Savor event in DC. I'll let you read it for yourself. I know, this is big time stuff. I hope you're sitting down....

The great Sam Calagione, the greatest brewer of all time, the most important and handsome man in craft brewing today, gave us the formal definitions of Beer Geek and Beer Snob. I'm sure that as this happened the heavens parted and Sam touched the Lord's finger like in Michaelangelo's Sistene Chapel, and the $115 that all of the attendees paid for admission (plus the additional cost of attending the Salon) were simultaneously used to wipe the ass of some yuppie event planner.

I'll spend the rest of my day trying to figure out what important piece of information was shuttled from my brain to make room for the Beer Geek and Beer Snob definitions.

Seriously - do people really care about this shit? I have to be honest, all of this garbage really got me thinking. It just seems like a funny sign to me. It made me think back to the '90's when the microbrewing scene experienced an adjustment (went bust, whatever you want to call it) because there were a bunch of people involved for all of the wrong reasons. All of this attention paid to a bunch of trivial shit feels wrong to me. That plus the recent BA numbers and some other things I've seen in the news gave me a funny feeling that maybe we're peaking here. Maybe I'll post on that later.

Sorry, now I'm getting all stream of consciousness myself. Who cares, I'm an amateur!!!!