An Open Letter to Robin Williams

An Open Letter to Robin Williams.

Dear Mr. Williams,

Hi, how are you? Oh, I'm fine, and thank you for asking, but this really isn't the type of letter that is going to be of a familiar or congenial tone, because I've just read that you've been asked to portray Susan Boyle in an upcoming movie about her life. Speaking for no one other than myself and a handful of people I'm happy to call my friends, I'd like to ask if you could, please, turn this one down. To quote the anti-drug television commercials of my youth, "Just say no!"

I know, I know, it would be a chance for you to stretch your acting chops in a direction they've never been stretched before, but if it's handled incorrectly it could end up playing out as a miserable sequel to "Mrs. Doubtfire." ("Doubtfire 2: Doubtfirerer", or, possibly "Mrs. Doubtfire 2: Doubt Harder") Do you really want to be associated with something that has so much going for it in the wrong direction? I'd like to think that you don't, but from what I can tell you've already started practicing "I Dreamed a Dream" in front of your friends. Man, that is just sad.

I understand that when a man of your stature gets to a certain point in his life and has gone through the trials and tribulations that you have its easy to get inspired by almost anything that looks remotely inspirational. But, this, my one time idol, is not that inspiring. Just because the music scene of today is overcrowded with uppity sex symbols singing pop songs on auto-tune doesn't mean the world needs to gush over a frumpy Brit with a legit set of pipes. For the love of Dog, man, it's not like she was blind, battled drug addiction or even had a severe mental illness to overcome; she's just, you know, not that great to look at.

"Hi, how are you? I'm a genius. Have a nice day."

I personally have nothing against Ms. Boyle and the fame that she has garnered from appearing on "Britain's Got Talent," but do I think her life story deserves an over the top, Hollywood style biography? No, I don't, and neither should you, Mr. Williams. Is it really all that awe inspiring for a dowdy looking woman of some talent to finally get a break on one of the biggest television shows in the U.K? Need I remind you of the one time Ruben Studdard chaos that swept over America when he was voted the winner of "American Idol" all those years ago? What's he been up to lately? Other than eating Cheetos and wishing he was Clay Aiken, I'd wager Mr. Studdard has done very little with the "charmed" life he was given since winning "American Idol." Does that make him any less talented? Not at all, he is for sure capable of singing songs, but, would I pay $8 to go to the local multi-plex to watch Denzel Washington portray him in a blockbuster biopic? F_ck no! It's just not that interesting.

Denzel Washington in "I Ain't Done Sh_t: The Ruben Studdard Movie"

Mr. Williams, again, I'd like to implore you to turn down this role. It will not be good for anyone involved. You're already catching flak for "insulting Ms. Boyle" by merely being cast in the movie (she's a woman, by the way, and you, sir, are a man). You haven't even shot a promotional still for the movie and people are up in arms over the decision, so imagine what it is going to be like when you don the drag and go parading about as SuBo in all her frumpy glory? I don't think I need to explain to you that people tend to get a little agitated when their favorite quasi-celebrities are made fun of( "leave Brittany Alone!" Anyone?), even if it is by accident, so why put yourself in that position? I'm not saying you wouldn't do a tremendous job, but hey, why take the risk? Everyone and their cousin knows a movie can be ruined in post-production when the studio steps in with their notes and their 'sposedahs and their audience polling, so even your most brilliant performance could get chopped down to nothing more than a musical farce of damning proportions. Sir, you are better than that.

Okay, I might be coming on a little strong, but let me just say that I still have the highest possible hopes for you and your career. As much as I feign to despise you, I secretly envy you and your ability to make audiences laugh out loud. So, I'm offering up this simple solution to the Susan Boyle quagmire that has presented itself: Let's see how "World's Greatest Dad" plays out before contracts are finalized and you are committed to appearing in a worthless pile of drek that would be the signal light for the end of your amazing career. So far the buzz generated by "World's Greatest Dad" has been positive despite the fact that it contains some risque material that is usually reserved for movies of a more hardcore nature. C'mon, man! I know how good you are, and I know you are going to knock this movie out of the mother f_cking park and for some reason my uneducated, un-credentialed and unappealing mind seems to think that if all goes according to plan you're going to be recognized by the Academy and at the very least get another nomination. I'm still not sure how you were overlooked for "Insomnia," but "World's Greatest Dad" could right that wrong! Think about it, man! You could be the king of the world again. The toast of the town, even. And, why not? You deserve it because you are just that good. Sh_t, you even made "Death to Smoochy" watchable, you can do anything, but this SuBo Bio is going to wreck you, sir.

Now, my comedy snob friends out there are probably going to give me an atomic wedgie for pleading with you to come to your senses, because it's chic in their world to hate on you as often as possible. They see you as a one trick motor mouthed pony with nothing left in the tank. They think you fell off the face of the Earth years ago and no one should bother pulling you back in, but I am not them. I begrudgingly felt the full force of a table full of stand-up comics telling me I'm an idiot for defending you, but I never back down. I, unlike so many others, would never walk off stage because you entered a room and would be happy, nay PROUD, if you saw fit to use some of my material without my permission. After all, you're not blatantly stealing like Carlos Mencia, you just can't control what comes into your mind and how it comes out of your mouth and I dig that. Also: You are ROBIN WILLIAMS.

I know I kind of trashed you in a previous post I wrote about you, sir, but I was trying to get a cheap laugh and I'm not a good enough writer to have conveyed what I truly feel without it coming off as weird. I thought I saved it by explaining the only reason I started to dislike you was because I'm an ass, but after re-reading that post I realize it's just a brush off and an easy way to end a sentence that should've been more carefully thought out. The truth is, Mr. Williams, you still are an inspiration to me, and even at your age with a monkey valve in your heart you could still beat the living sh_t out of me in a fight. You are still funnier than 90% of the people out their who make jokes for a living, and I'd be willing to trade in all my hipster cred to defend that point. I don't care if David Cross hates me for liking you, because he's kind of a prick anyway. I don't care if Zach Galifianakis thinks I'm a loser, because... well okay that one would hurt a little, but still, I'd be willing to trumpet your prowess no matter whose company I kept.

I'm from a different era, sir, and as much as I claim to be inspired by and influenced by the contemporary group of comedians working the circuit today, it was you, Mr. Williams that kick started my comedy bug. If you weren't doing stand up when I was a little boy I never would've sought out Andy Kaufman, George Carlin or Richard Pryor. I can never thank you enough for opening that door for me, so please, one more time, don't take the part of Susan Boyle. Please please please please please please please please please reconsider... unless of course they offer you some exorbitant amount of money (nothing less than $20 million to keep your dignity) then by all means, go ahead and do it. Hell, even the king of hipster d-bag comedians, David Cross, was in "Alvin and the Chipmunks," because they paid him a sh_t-Ton of money. So, I can't fault you there, but if this is an art house piece and you're getting paid scale to trot around in drag to tell the tale of a mono-browed Scot that is your fault for committing to it, sir. For that I will eventually forgive you, but it's going to take time for myself and the movie going public to gather up the eye bleach required to sanitize the image of you playing Susan Boyle from our minds. Think about it, okay? That's all I'm asking. Just think about it and when you're done thinking about it think about it some more, because hopefully you'll come to the same conclusion I have and you just won't do it.

Thank you for your time and for all the years of entertainment.

Yours Truly,

Jimbolaya


p.s- nice job on Conan a little while back, you made the other interview ( I won't name names because it was a British judge from a very, very popular reality show (not "Idol")) sufferable, it was really nice to hear you laughing again. -J

*UPDATE* As of this morning, according to Mr. Williams' representatives via a NPR broadcast I heard on my way into work, R-Dub will NOT be playing the role of Susan Boyle in an upcoming movie about her life. You can read all about it here. Sorry for taking you down the forbidden path of false information and immediate reaction, reader, I swear it will only happen almost daily.

Science! # 1.5

"Science!" is an ongoing feature of "Where the Wild Things Were Last Thursday Around 8" that covers the mystical world of science in all it's God punching glory.


When sitting down to think about what I was going to write for the next issue of "Science!"I initially thought of doing something a little more serious than the healing powers of beer. I was thinking it would be a good idea to write up a P.S.A about the recent outbreak of cancer that is wiping out the the Tasmanian Devil, but luckily for you I came to my senses and decided to stay within the Jimbolaya wheelhouse and get right back to writing about something I actually know a thing or two about.

Pictured Above: Evolution

You'd never know it, but that beer you and I can't wait to pop open at the end of a long, hard day of work has been around for thousands of years (not that specific beer, just beer in general). The earliest chemical evidence of what you and I know as "happiness" dates back to roughly 3500-3100 B.C, and was found in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, but it has been suggested that a form of beer has been in existence since as far back as 9000 B.C. Ancient civilizations like the Sumerians and Babylonians were sitting around getting drunk just like you and I. It didn't stop there; ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian writings are full of references to a type of beer; which, let's be honest, probably isn't even close to resembling the wonderful, sudsy brew we've all come to love, but it got the trick done and probably tasted better than Bud Light. Hell, the Mesopotamians even had their very own beer goddess, Ninkasi whose titular hymn serves as both a prayer and a way of remembering the recipe for beer in a culture that had very few literate people.

"You put the lime in the coconut..."

If it wasn't for the discovery of beer modern civilization as we know it may have never developed, because back in the olden days when humans were nomadic by nature and survived by following around herds of animals, they didn't have a reason to set up shop in one location. Then one day Jeb was out shootin' at some food when out from the ground came a sprout of barley and much like the pivotal scene in Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" the monkeys went ape sh_t and figured out how to make bread, and later on beer. Well, not beer-beer, but the bread they made from barley could be crumbled and converted to a liquid that would make them a little less likely to feel the need to pack up and move because they could plant and grow the barley crops for future use (thus inventing farming), and it also had the added benefit of making ancient cavemen and women appear more attractive for small amounts of time, thus greatly contributing to the reproductive rates of the human species. Okay, I made the last part up, but it makes sense right? Cavemen were ugly as sh_t.

The first ever "walk of shame"

Think about that for a minute: if it wasn't for beer (and bread too if you want to be a dick about it) proto-humans would never have learned the skills to farm, or pushed themselves far enough to create primitive technology that allowed them to do more work with less effort. In other words; man would never have evolved past praying to some ridiculous god for food and moving from place to place, grazing on the land like a bunch of hopeless sheeple. When the food ran out in one area they just packed up the tents and it was splittsville, baby. Leaving the entire area barren of edible foliage and meat, but, beer let them keep the tents up and form villages and those villages eventually became towns and so on and so forth once again allowing civilization to jump up a few rungs on the evolutionary ladder. Since the old tribes were now sticking around they had to develop a way of defending themselves from predators and the elements, so they must have used their tiny almost-monkey brains to figure out a way to shield themselves from intense heat, cold, rain, sun and the hamburglar. This must have provided them with an unforeseen side-effect, because the animal herds they were following weren't running out of food so quickly, they would stick around longer and possibly long enough for a few of them to get caught; meaning it could be argued that beer is responsible for man developing livestock (meaty, succulent livestock) that would feed them indefinitely. And that all happened before Beer made it's way into Europe.

Beer made its way to Western Europe via ancient Germanic and Celtic tribes sometime around 3000 B.C, and was mainly brewed on a domestic scale and distributed among the tribe. By most accounts the ancient brews of yore were nothing like today's beer and contained a sh-t load of fruit, honey, spices and even narcotics (sounds fine to me). Missing from the ancient recipes were hops; which would be added later on and were first mentioned in Europe around 822 A.D by a Carolingian Abbot. The production and distribution of beer remained a local enterprise until around 7 A.D when European monasteries started to sell off some of their excess ale, and even then it took the mother f_cking Industrial Revolution to spring board beer into mass production.

By the end of the 19th century domestic manufacturers stopped being relevant to the beer consuming world, and with the introduction of thermometers and hydrometers the brew master was allowed more control over the entire brewing process and the outcome it could produce. I don't want to say that the need for a better beer led to the invention of thermometers and hydrometers, but the need for a better beer led to the invention of thermometers and hydrometers (not really, but really). Before the hydrometer, beer was brewed as a single malt, meaning that if you wanted a brown beer you had to brew a brown malt, if you wanted a Labatt Blue you had to drink water from the Hudson (I hate Labatt Blue), but when the hydrometer was introduced into the mix (pun not intended) brewers could calculate the yield from a variety of malts. So, that's exactly what they did.

With the hydrometer firmly in place the post-industrial revolution brewers started to experiment with different types of malt, and they noticed that the more pricey, pale malt produced more product than the less expensive, brown malt (about 80 pounds/Pale Malt vs. 54 pounds/brown malt) and once they figured this out everybody and their annoying cousin switched to the pale malt (supply and demand, people). Because America was still a bunch of puritan jerkfaces at the time, the majority of beer science was coming from Great Britain, and they didn't f_ck around about their beer, or the way you were allowed to make it.

Ye olde beer making robot

If you thought prohibition was bad, imagine not being able to enjoy a variety of wonderful beers, because that's what England decided it was going to take away from its citizens. An 1816 British law forbid the use of any ingredients other than malt and hops, so of course the beer making community went a little nuts trying to figure out a way to color up their pale, mass produced beer. Thankfully a cheeky fellow by the name of Daniel Wheeler invented the drum roaster in 1817 that brewed very dark, roasted malts that heavily contributed to the flavoring of the popular at the time porters and stouts. The day was saved and England continued on the path to rotting teeth and warm beer like nothing had ever changed. All hail the queen and what not.

America, being what it is, caught on quickly and prior to prohibition (1920) there were literally thousands of breweries across the country that made heavier, darker beers than we see or are used to today. Unfortunately for us, prohibition forced most of these noble brews-men to go out of business or switch to making soda and other soft drinks (hey, anything to feed the kids, right?). This also marks the point in history when beer went from deliciously filling, dark, heavily flavored alcoholic greatness to watered down, urine colored and barely tolerable shite all thanks to bootlegging.

This man hated good beer.

Anyone who has watched "The Untouchables" or the "Beer Baron" episode of "The Simpsons" knows that there is a certain art to bootlegging that was rarely perfected by anyone not named Kennedy or Capone, but was it worth it? Sure, you could get cheap whiskey on the skinny from some guy at a speak easy and still get sauced enough to do the jitterbug with some dame, but beer isn't whiskey. Beer is beer and when you put water into beer you've broken the 11th commandment (thou shalt not ruin beer), and that's exactly what the prohibition era bootleggers did. Why? Because when you add water to something it makes more of that something and allows you to make a larger profit by selling a ton of watered down grog (or, Labatt Blue). Capone did it. Joe Kennedy did it. And in the process the art of the American beer was set back decades.

When you have such a definitive law as prohibition in place and the only way you're able to enjoy your favorite beverage is by going to the black market and picking up a cask of watery, tasteless brew chances are after a decade or so you and the entire country are used to it. So when the modern day breweries started to pop up when prohibition was repealed they sort of forgot about the old ways to make beer that didn't include ruining it in the process. The consolidation of the brewing industry allowed for gigantic distribution of incredibly light beers; which all but rendered the American palate useless against the onslaught of actual flavor that non-American beers provided, a trend that is still in place today. Shame on you, America. Shame on you!

It was almost 50 years before America caught on to their mistake and started making micro-brews for those of us that didn't want to drink piss-water anymore, and as of now there are over 2,000 regional brewcrafters servicing the needs of those of us who actually want to drink beer the way it was meant to be drank. Chances are if you live in a city or near one you can go to a bar devoted entirely to beer and only beer. Generally they serve a variety of hard to find ales, lagers and barley wines that would make anyone not familiar with great tasting beer wet themselves. Luckily for me I live 4 doors down from just such a place and every time I go in for a pint I feel like I've been taken to beer college. I love it. Obviously. I don't even care that I sound like an arrogant prick right now. I love good beer, and you should to.

See that up there, that's what beer should look like.

The next time you decide to head out to the bar with your buddies to grab a few rounds don't sully your name and order something yellow and watery and made by retarded Canadian hop jockeys. Step up to the plate and order something a little bit more expensive that tastes a lot better (and, is usually more alcoholic, so win-win-win). It will be worth it. Think of this brief history of the worlds oldest man-made beverage when you're sipping on your Coors Light and wonder if your ancestors would be hanging their heads in shame if they could see you now. Don't be an idiot, be a scientist and drink good beer, it's in your genes.

"It's not your fault..."

For an entire decade of my life I was a Robin Williams super-fan. From the ages of 8 to 18 I went to all his movies, saw any appearance he made on T.V shows and watched any episodes of "Mork & Mindy" I could get my hands on. I was, for lack of a better education, addicted to Robin Williams. There was something about his wild, frenetic energy and manic line after line delivery that made the younger me want to be exactly like him, and much to the dismay of my mother I could spout out quotes from "Aladdin" and "Mrs. Doubtfire" so easily and quickly that eventually I was banned from ever saying "Ooooooh, Helloooooo" in a high-pitched, faux British accent ever again.

My R-Dub obsession was so all consuming that I thought "Toys" was one of the best movies I had ever seen and spent several years defending that belief. That's right, "Toys," and no one should defend that movie. I don't even think Robin William's himself would defend "Toys," if only because it gave us L.L Cool J the actor and forever set in motion a string of events that would lead to a surge in rapper/actors like Ice T, Ice Cube, Tupac, Eminem, Ludacris, that guy from "Pimp my Ride" and Lyle Lovett cashing in on various minor and major film roles that through their involvement resulted in at least 1 decent franchise (i.e: "Friday" ) and several terrible franchise (i.e: anything else Ice Cube has been in).

You see, because black people be fixin houses like this... and white people be fixin' houses like this...

I can't honestly blame Robin William's for the boom in rapper/actors, but part of me wishes I could, because there's really nothing Robin William's has done that has made me dislike him the way I do now. Not even "Jack" or "Bicentennial Man" or "Man of The Year" pushed me over the edge. No, it wasn't until I started doing stand-up and started really watching Robin Williams do stand-up that I completely lost all respect for the guy.

My reasons for the about face are still unclear to me. It's not that he's a noted joke stealer , because everyone in stand-up comedy is stealing someone else's material whether they think they are or not, and at least R-Dub pays the comedian when he does it. It's not because whenever he's on stage I wish I could punch him in the face and tell him to "slow the f_ck down." It's because at some point in time he stopped making me laugh and started doing things like the "Meet Robin" ticket package for his stand-up gigs (yes, the prices are very, very high, about $435 last I checked) and naming his tour some trite piece of word-play like "The Weapons of Self-Destruction Tour." The Robin Williams I came to know and love would never have stooped so low... or would he?

B-b-but, pants don't go on your head, Robin... oh I see. Good one.

Before I lay into the man that used to be my idol I want to say that I still believe Robin Williams is one of the best actors of the past 25 years. No, he's not on par with someone like Daniel Day-Lewis or Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but he's a tremendous talent when he works with a director that can harness his energy and put it to good use. Hell, the man has an Oscar for "Good Will Hunting," and should have at least been nominated for his uber creepy, exceptionally well done role in "Insomnia," because he actually out acted none other than Sir Loudy McScreams a lot, Al Pacino. Have you seen "The Fisher King?" If not, I suggest you put it in your Netflix queue and watch the sh_t out of that, because that's how you make the most of Robin Williams' talent, and once again, he outshines a brilliant actor in Jeff Bridges. If it were up to me, R-Dub and Terry Gilliam would do nothing but make movies with each other for the rest of my life and I would die a happy man. Do you have any idea how awesome he would have been as Sancho Panza in "Don Quixote?" No, you don't, because it never got made. But I digress...

I'm not sure but I think 1982's "An Evening With Robin Williams" was the first taste of R-Dub's brand of stand-up comedy that I ever sampled. I saw it at least 10 years after it was released to video when I was a running around acting like the Genie from "Aladdin" half the time (yep, I memorized every single song that Mr. Williams sang in that wonderful movie), so watching him do stand-up was more a retrospective initiation than an actual orientation into the manic genius of Mr. Williams and his style of comedy. As a 10 year old boy with a vivid imagination and an unquenchable hunger for comedy of all kinds, Robin Williams sated my appetite adequately enough for me to mimic his rainbow suspender wearing, Jew-fro having, cocaine snorting ass (minus the suspenders, Jew-fro and cocaine). So, the next day at school I got in trouble for swearing and making a joke about cocaine during recess. Did this deter me from loving Robin Williams? Nope, it made me love him even more, because my 10 year old brain thought it was awesome. Just. Plain. Awesome.

In watching "An Evening With Robin Williams" as an older gentleman it still stands as a great hour of stand-up comedy with everything you would expect from R-Dub. For a while the only way the world was able to watch Mr. Williams perform his stand-up routines was to wait for "Comic Relief" on HBO or a similarly themed show of some kind or re-runs of "An Evening With..." on Comedy Central. It was in that "Comic Relief" atmosphere that Mr. Williams was honestly and truly head and shoulders above the other participating comics. I remember watching the 80's holy trinity of stand-up comedians (Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams) one night back in the day and thinking to myself "this Billy Crystal and this Whoopi Goldberg kind of suck," and I was no more than 10 years old.

"Will, between you and me, Whoopi is a hack."

Then came the 90's, and the only time we got to see Robin Williams be Robin Williams was when he went on "The Tonight Show" or "Late Night with David Letterman" or made a mad-cap, off the wall comedy like "Hamlet" and just let it all hang out, and this, coincidentally, is when I started to realize the man I grew up worshipping was kind of unhinged and possibly insane. For minutes at a time during these interviews it seemed as if R-Dub had no brain to mouth filter like you and I probably do, so the audience would be treated to a 5 minutes laugh riot, rambling monologue about the intricacies of flatulence.

Perhaps the fault is mine. As I aged my tastes changed and I didn't find "Father's Day" as funny as I did the year before and even "Mrs. Doubtfire" seemed a little too... how do I put this... wacky for my tastes. I was into things like "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons" and other high brow, artsy comedy fare that would lead me down the path to the comedic stylings of "Monty Python," Richard Pryor, George Carlin and eventually Lenny Bruce, Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, David Cross, "Arrested Development" and a bunch of other more adult oriented comedy that played to my ever increasing snobby side. This got so bad that when people brought up Robin Williams I would snort loudly and chortle out some crude remark about how he "just isn't funny," and eventually I would get mean about it and say "listen, if you like Robin Williams you'll love 'According to Jim," or 'Two and a Half Men.' " Let's face it, nobody loves "According to Jim," and the fact that "Two and a Half Men" is still the most watched comedy on American television means way, way too many Americans think Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer making unintelligent boner jokes is funny and that's just blatantly untrue.

This makes you laugh, America? THIS! Have you even heard of "The Office," America? Have you!?

So, Mr. Williams I want to ask you a direct question: Why, after all those years away from mass consumption stand-up comedy, did you decide to do "Robin Williams: Live on Broadway?" I had heard for months that you would be performing on Broadway in New York and even considered flying down just to see your show until I heard that it would be on HBO at some point. I waited patiently and thoughtfully, hoping that you would regain the form you had when you made "An Evening With Robin Williams" and beofre then when were so f_cking funny Richard Pryor himself thought to put you in his T.V show, but did you deliver? No. No you didn't. I think it was after you used one of your 400 water bottles to simulate male orgasm that I switched off the television and started to softly cry to myself while I wondered what the hell I wasted my childhood idolizing. I needed answers and I needed them sooner than later, so I went to the only person who could answer a question of this depth and meaning: My Father.

Now, I haven't mentioned my father around this blog at all, so I should start by letting you know he doesn't laugh easily, but Robin Williams always seemed to get him going. One night 18 months ago I asked the old man what he thought of R-Dub and he summed it up beautifully, "I think he's great, don't you, you used to love everything he did." I then told my father, "Well, over the past few years I've started to, kind of, hate the guy." At this my father looked me dead in the eye and said "Well, that's because you're an ass." He couldn't have been more right.

Jimmy Carter and my father are giving me the same look right now.

Science! #1

Allow me to introduce yet another episodic feature of "Where the Wild Things Were Last Thursday Around 8;" "Science!" highlights some choice news and findings from the magical, God-Punching world of scientific research and discovery.


I can't express to you, my reader, how much I love beer, so I'm not even going to try; other than to say I'm thinking about the first time I ever sipped from my father's can of Genny Lite and tears of joy are streaming down my cheeks. Of course, later in life I'd find out that beer also causes uncontrollable tears of a different, more pathetic sort, but then again, this post has nothing to do with the downside of beer and everything to do with the most recent beer affirming discovery from Science Land.

Spanish researchers have recently discovered that drinking beer, even in moderation, could help stop bones from becoming brittle. Apparently beer is made up of things other than the freshest hops, finest barley and the snow lined waters of the Colorado Rocky Mountains; in fact, beer contains something called "silicon" which is a vital element in bone formation. Of course, I'm not a scientist and the only frame of reference I have for silicon is breast implants and computer chips; so needless to say that words means absolutely nothing to me, but beer is lousy with the stuff, so it must be awesome.

Pictured above: The atomic structure of silicon

Silicon is, in fact, awesome and a huge contributor to the health and wellness of your bones, but it's not the only beneficial member of the chemical contents of your average ale. Beer is also rich in photoestrogens (the plant version of oestrogen) which help to keep bones healthy. The article linked to above goes further into the particulars and describes the methods used by the Spanish researchers, so I won't bore you with the minutiae, but beer is a multifaceted health helper. I bet you didn't know that you could drink a pint of beer each day and still get the heart healthy benefits of a glass of red wine; did you know that? I didn't until I read this article from Forbes Magazine by Allison Van Dusen. Also: this is the only time I've actually read an entire article in Forbes Magazine without feeling like I owed someone money, so, win-win-win.

His left arm will be stronger, but his right arm will be happier.

I'm so excited about all this pro-beer news that I'm shaking with anticipation for my post work brew, but all the articles I keep reading about beer mention this thing "moderation;" which I'm assuming is another science-y buzz word that doctors and Spanish researchers insert into random sentences to make themselves sound smart. As evidenced by this quote from Dr. R. Curtis Ellison "Alcohol, including beer, in moderation raises high-density lipoprotein or HDL, known as good cholesterol." If you, like me, initially thought Dr. Ellison is just another quack working for "Big Ale", you'd be wrong; he's actually chief of the section of preventive medicine and epidemiology and professor of medicine and public health at the Boston University School of Medicine. Aside from having the longest title in the history of administrative titling, he's the real deal, and not to be trifled with about beer and it's healthy consequences. The man actually studies the relationship between moderate (whatever that is) alcohol consumption and it's relationship to chronic diseases; otherwise known as "the best research science job ever."

In the Forbes article by Ms. Van Dusen, it goes on to mention that beer appears to favorably affect the lining of the blood vessels, meaning a clot is less likely to form, or for a clot to burst and clog an artery, and may help protect against Type-2 Diabetes. Also, men who reported drinking alcoholic beverages 120-365 days a year had a 20% lower cardiovascular death rate than those who reported drinking alcohol 1-36 days a year. This explains why Jesus ran around turning water into wine all the time.

King of the Brews

Oddly enough drinking beer does have it's downsides. According to a research study conducted by the National Institute of Health, men who drank 5 or more alcoholic beverages when they decided they wanted to tie one on were 30% more likely to die from some form of heart disease. This is bad news for me and pretty much everyone I hang out with, and when you add in the cigarettes and lack of exercise we're all just wasting time before the "big one" hits and we're forced to stop smoking and drinking all together so we can squeeze out a few more years. Here I am again talking smack about the best beverage in the world, but I wouldn't feel responsible if I didn't mention the side-effects of too much consumption.

Anyway, back to what makes beer the greatest. Studies have shown that men over the age of 65 who drink 1 to 6 alcoholic beverages over the course of a week turn out to have a lower risk of dementia (but a much higher risk of "drunkenly yelling at the T.V") than non-drinkers according to the study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2003. I, for one, was startled by this particular revelation, because I grew up going to the Country Club watching old men drink 1-6 alcoholic beverages and by beverage 2-3 none of them made any damn sense. Of course, my perspective was that of an underage young man belligerently watching generations past deteriorate into husks of their former selves; I had no idea that through the magical, healing powers of beer they were actually working diligently to conserve their precious memories. I was so young and naive.

"So, that's where I left my keys! Thanks, Beer!"

I hope anyone reading this has the smarts to know that I'm not in any way, shape or form a man of science (as I've said before). I'm just a hapless blog writer with an undying love for beer and will go to great lengths in order to justify my passion. So, please, don't take me seriously, drink at your own caution and never, ever drink and drive. If science has taught us anything it's that in order to respect the world around us we have to start with respecting ourselves, and only then can we investigate the mysterious inner workings of wonderful things like alcohol. In other words: Don't be an idiot, be a scientist!