CYOA Response: The French Fry Connection

Richard Read's expansive article on McDonald's french fries was in depth and informative, but felt as if lacking a concrete structure. His transitions from one topic to another often felt sporadic and rushed; this left me feeling confused about what his main focus was to begin with. Following the story was often a challenge because Read would introduce characters suddenly into his narrative without properly introducing them. It is clear that Read thoroughly researched his fries and their creation process, I simply would have enjoyed a more cohesive structure to his work.

The parallels Read draws between Oregon and Asian countries are fascinating, understanding the dependency both places have on each other was highlighted through focusing on the french fries. This is what I found most fascinating. The constant communication between the Northwest and Asia occurring through the fry market was something I previously had never thought about.

Brewery Process

Writing the profile on Bell's Brewery was an exercise in focus. For the longest time I did not know whether I wanted the piece to highlight the brewery itself or the wizard-like Larry Bell. Because I could not get an interview with Larry Bell, I decided to make the piece focus more on the brewery itself. But because Bell is such an integral part of his company, I could not spare mentioning him at least a few times. Lately I have been reading a lot of John Jeremiah Sullivan and am astounded at his ability to link two seemingly-unrelated things to discover a greater theme about both of them. This is what I tried to do with Bell's and Hedrix. Using the commercial as a launching pad, I tried to get deeper into Bell's as a company.

A Brewery Experienced

Cam Stewart

A man in classic German attire pumps his accordion. His face rapidly changes from somber to grimacing while the camera zooms in on his eyes and a red light burns from beneath. Then in a Hendrix-like fury he sets his accordion on fire and dances feverishly around his blazing instrument. While this may all sound bizarre (and it definitely is), perhaps what is most surprising is that this video is not an advertisement for spicy German sausage but for Bell’s Brewery. Or maybe it’s only strange until you really think about it for a moment.

Bell’s Brewery, Inc. makes beer like Jimi Hendrix played the guitar: both using a shared knowledge of classical rules with which to experiment to produce something that is wild and unique. But while Hendrix revolutionized guitar music, Bell’s founder Larry Bell focuses instead on ales and stouts, porters and lagers.

And his focus has met its bounty.

Recently christened the “4^th Best Beer Town in America” by Livability.com, Kalamazoo, Michigan owes this acclaim largely to Bell’s success. The award comes at a time when Bell’s Brewery is focusing on expansion and distribution, its product being sold in fourteen states and counting.

In 2003 Bell’s opened a massive brewing facility in Comstock, a neighboring town to Kalamazoo. Its exterior is like some military base where every person is stiff and upright, all walking in front of grey, dwarfing brewing barrels that look like upturned beer mugs. Comstock’s quaint atmosphere and its spanning open land make it an obvious choice for Bell’s main brewing facility. Here, nearly 180,000 barrels are brewed annually, allowing the brewery to be 8^th in volume out of all domestic craft brews in 2010. While downtown Kalamazoo could not facilitate such immense beer production, it is still home to the brewery’s main pub and eatery, the Eccentric Café.

Walk through the heavy doors of Bell’s Eccentric Café and see what appears to be a haphazard combination of company product, local art and 1930’s African Safari. A tribal mask hangs to the right of the chalk board on which the bar’s draft beers are written. In three columns the available beers and occasional sangria are listed. High on the back walls are large posters advertising the brewery’s beers. They hang like grand statements of some higher knowledge, like what you are looking at is the culmination of infinite attempts at greatness. To judge whether or not the brewery has reached that level, one must only shift one’s gaze downward, to the swarms of people that, in gleeful cycles, parade to and from the bar with plastic cups of amber liquid.

It is March 26 and is the official release day of Bell’s most famous beer, Oberon. A wheat ale robust in fruity aromas and spicy malt, Oberon is the ultimate sign of spring in Kalamazoo. The bottle’s label looks like a Michigan sun spread out against a pale blue sky. Looking at the bottle is like looking into a summer afternoon void of any predicament or bad news. Drinking the beer is like one’s first experience listening to ‘Purple Haze’: everything you tasted before it becomes stale in a wash of intense flavor. Just like many would argue “Are You Experienced” to be Hendrix’s best work, many craft brew fanatics would claim Oberon to be Bell’s master work. Looking around the bar on that Monday night in March, a scene more reminiscent of a rowdy Saturday night, one would be hard-pressed to disagree.

I approach the bar with my plastic cup, a material used only on Oberon day due to the high-volume of customers, and order an Oberon. The bartender, a tall man with focused eyes, asks me if I would like an orange slice in my beer. All around me I notice patrons with slices of orange in their ales, so I say yes, I’d like mine with an orange slice. I drink the beer and it is cold. Behind me four men are toasting one another, singing the praises of warmer weather all while holding cups of foaming Oberon.

The beer comes from the same Comstock plant roughly 20 miles away. The same plant that is faced with the riveting yet daunting task of expansion, of pushing one’s product further into the market. But doing so can often be met with conflict. In 2006, Larry Bell pulled his product from the Illinois market due to a dispute over distribution rights within the state. Bell felt that his product was not going to be thoroughly represented under the strict laws and therefore decided to withdraw completely from the state, a bold statement that embodies the passion Bell has for his product.

Through clever labeling tactics Bell has begun to reintroduce his beer into the Chicago-area market. Under the guise of “Kalamazoo Beer,” Bell has put two new beers back into the state of Illinois, a move that proves his desire to become a national institution.

I return back from Oberon night at Bell’s and think again about the online commercial and its intended message. Why am I so convinced of the image of Larry Bell bent over his voodoo potion like Hendrix knelt before a guitar engulfed in flames?

Maybe there truly is an existent parallel between Jimi Hendrix and Bell’s beer. Something in the wailing blast of wheat and orange notes would make Jimi smile. After sipping his beer, that is.

CYOA:This Must Be the Place

When watching Prime I was astounded by the sense of intimacy the filmmakers achieved in their work. In under ten minutes I felt like I had a good sense of what Prime Burger was like. The interviews were calm and natural and the immaculate camera work was captivating and revealing. Many of the slow pans across the front of the restaurant were effective because, to me, they reflected the relaxed atmosphere of the place. Shots varied from close-ups on food to minute capturing of wall fixtures.

Film as a profile has a visual element working to its benefit. Where lines of words would normally need to be deployed, the filmmaker can instead just show this through the lens. But Prime did not feel like a lazy documentary; the cameramen used their equipment like pens to craft a cohesive narrative. The interviews augmented the work as well and tied everything together.

CYOA Response: Gamer

"The Most Dangerous Gamer" felt more like a portrayal of Taylor Clark's admiration of Jonathan Blow than an in-depth depiction of his character. Perhaps what made me think this was her choice to insert the bit of dialogue in which she analyzes the meaning of his previous game. I get it. This what supposed to inform non-gamers about Blow's past work. However,  instead of being intrigued by the atomic bombs, I was appalled by Clark's blatant bragging. You made Blow smile. Great.

And if that was not enough self-indulgence, Clark transcribes Marc ten Bosch's rant about some 'fourth dimension.' The article lost me here. Because Clark did a poor job of earning my attention and trust in the first part of her profile, I was not willing to attentively read about game play-intensive analysis.

Clark clearly admires Blow. She at one point in the article calls him a "Spiritual seeker," an alliteration I find vague and inaccurate. That Blow could be pursuing profound spirituality through the context of a video game was not justified in her article. I felt as if I hardly got a handle on Blow, perhaps knowing only that he was, as Clark constantly reminded us, very wealthy and successful.

Maybe this is all just a reaction stirred up by the fact that I am an outsider to the video game world. A non-gamer. But Clark could have at least extended a hand and invited me in, if only briefly.

Reading Response: Telling True Stories

Because there were so many disparate messages and bits of advice in our reading for the week, I am going to focus on one story in particular to ground my discussion. Phillip Lopate's "The Personal Essay and the First-Person Character" was a useful article on the multifaceted nature of the word "I" in a personal essay. Lopate begins by acknowledging the importance and basic need for a writer to use the word when writing about one's self. The problem is not in the usage of the word but rather in the assumed weight it carries. Lopate says in page 78, "I swarms with a lush, sticky past and an almost fatal specificity, whereas the reader encountering it for the first time in a new piece of writing sees only a slender telephone pole." What Lopate is saying is one must build up this "I" with specific details that distinguish the first person in the narrative. This resonated with me because I will often drop an "I" in a personal essay and assume it says more than it really does.

To remedy this problem, Lopate suggests we strengthen our work with conflict. Through conflict an original narrator is born. Conflict in a story has the potential to both test the narrator and cause specific details about one's life to be revealed. To fully achieve this status of well-rounded narrator, one must distance one's self from the writing in order to better understand how the reader will view your work.
Lopate's article was a useful tool for sharpening my first-person narration and like the rest of "Telling True Stories," is something to which I will be often referring.

Response to Shooting an Elephant

Orwell's brilliant narration and gift for story-telling are seen throughout "Shooting an Elephant." Having read his memoir, "Down and Out in Paris and London," I was accustomed to Orwell's no-nonsense style of non-fiction. In "Down and Out," Orwell recounts his experiences of poverty in the two cities to expand upon a greater theme of human suffering. In "Shooting an Elephant," Orwell uses his experience as an officer in Burma to critique imperialism and its effects on everyone involved. What was most climatic for me was when he was holding his gun and looking at the elephant, realizing that he was there against his will, feeling mainly like an 'absurd puppet.' His pressure did not come from his higher-ups but instead from the thousands of natives around him. He felt compelled to shoot the elephant because it was what the people expected him to do. The image of a single British officer surrounded by a crowd of Burmese citizens is very striking and potent. It symbolizes the absurdity of the British rule in the area. How so few people could rule over such a populous country is as amazing as it is perplexing. Perhaps in Burma the British were not so different from the mammoth elephant at which Orwell shot: a dwarfing power whose presence would soon be terminated.