DoppelBacchanalia: The Sixth Annual Bootlegger's Bliss is Almost Upon Us......

"The majority of wines, almost all spirits, and every one of the beers whose memory I have evoked here have today completely lost their tastes — first on the world market and then locally — with the progress of industry as well as the disappearance or economic re-education of the social classes that had long remained independent of large industrial production, and so too of the various regulations that now prohibit virtually anything that is not industrially produced. The bottles, so that they can still be sold, have faithfully retained their labels; this attention to detail provides the assurance that one can photograph them as they used to be, not drink them." 
—Guy Debord, "Panegyric - Volume I" (1989)
"Suffering results from constraint. A portion of pure delight, no matter how tiny, will hold it at bay.  To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable from preparing for a general insurrection."
—Raoul Vaneigem, "The Revolution of Everyday Life"
"Sooner barbarity than boredom."
—Theophile Gautier


This then, is it.  Again.

Fall returns. Leaves renounce their lofty perch and drift (dérive! dérive!) like wayward angels to the waiting earth.  The air, cool and crisp and clean, beckons smoke from blackened chimneys.  Autumn skies whisper elegies to summer evenings past.  The moon is a melancholy mirror.

And the dirt in Pennsylvania, the very dirt to which we all return one day, is already like poison in the wound.*

Now is the season when the Bliss reigns supreme.  Post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving, its timing is nothing if not divine.  And this year is different.  This year, the preternatural power of the Bliss to renounce the anhedral, stultifying grip of modern culture is two-fold.  The late, great Terrence McKenna, in speaking of hallucinogens, said, "When in doubt, double the dose."  Indeed.  The Bliss, second to no substance in its herculean ability to transcend the ordinary, to burn the paper throne beneath the ego's bloated ass, to rouse the sinful spirit from the plastic puppet that dutifully bends to the might of the moneyed marionettes, the Bliss, the Bliss is racing toward you on a fat-tired tandem, and over its shoulder can be seen a diabolical double, a dastardly doppelgänger, a querulous Quilty to the hapless Humbert at the helm, leering and drooling and laughing maniacally.  And hell-bent on destruction.

This, my friends, is going to be good.  Stay tuned.

*With profound apologies to the Potentate of Parody, the Prince of Prose, Vladimir Nabokov.

Brews Cruise...

"Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us."
—Guy Debord

Get your brew on. The Third Annual Bootlegger's Bliss will be launched upon an unsuspecting and largely uncaring world on SATYRDAY, NOVEMBER 1st. Information on registration and other event details will be posted soon.

In the meantime, and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with this mid-Atlantic rolla-puh-brewza, I've resurrected below the official Maniblissto from a past post. For a broader understanding of the Bliss, go here.

The history of all hitherto existing cycling events is the history of competitive struggles. Not so with the Bliss.

The Bootlegger's Bliss is a social event, designed to bring together people who share (or are simply curious about) two seemingly disparate passions: homebrewing and mountain biking.

The Bliss is not a race. It does not suffer elitist competition. There are no medals, no podiums, no bragging rights, no prizes. No one's "in it to win it," as the dreadful cliché goes. No one trains for the Bliss. There are no "winners." Or—more precisely—everyone is a winner.

The Bliss is not a drinking contest. It does not suffer wanton drunkenness. It is a tasting, and if you don't know the difference between a tasting and a drinking contest, the Bliss is not for you.

The Bliss is about fun for fun's sake. It is the arrowhead forged in the smithy of the soul, honed in secret, dipped in curare, then trained on the heart of the ogre Boordumb. The lifeblood of the Bliss is participation. There are no spectators; everyone is equally a "criminal" and delights in it. Everyone rides, everyone tastes. Participants are encouraged to front their very best brew, in keeping with the concept of the potlatch, whereby prestige is gained not by amassing coveted property like some plutocratic piggy, but by giving it away.

Leave your money at home. The Bliss is not about commerce—quite the opposite, actually. Aside from the homebrew and homecooking you're asked to bring and share, the Bliss is a free event, generously and officially sponsored by Absolutely No One®. That's the point. From a philosophical perspective, the Bliss was conceived as a small step outside of commerce—a tick in the matted hide of mass-production—and as an appreciation of highly personal craftwork against the backdrop of some sweet singletrack. It's a celebration of use value, that immeasurable quality that fills the soul with a sort of natural, ineffable satisfaction too seldom felt in the cold void, the funereal absence, the blanched banality that clings to exchange value like stench to carrion.

As Raoul Vaneigem put it, "We have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom."

— 23 September 2007 —
On a marginally related noted, who the hell knew? Sweet home, my ass.

Oh, and from the makers of Hedonism comes Hoptimus Prime. This double IPA from PA's Legacy Brewing Company is strong, sturdy, and deeply satisfying. A heavy lupulin payload (as the name suggests) produces a strong, grapefruit-rind bitterness through which the malt sweetness barely musters a trickle. If my buds don't decieve me, there's more than a smattering of Simcoe in the mix. Try you some.

Burn a Bowl for Guy Debord...

On the Passage of a Single Person Through a Brief Unity of Time:

It's the birthday of the founding father of the Situationist Internationale, champion of dérive and détournement, staunch and unapologetic enemy of the Spectacle, director of the provocative Hurlements en Faveur de Sade, impetus behind the Paris Revolt of May, '68, accidental progenitor of punk rock, and lover of all things alcoholic.

Guy Ernest Debord would have turned 76 on this day, had he not removed himself from an increasingly artificial and artless world some 13 years ago with a single squeeze of the trigger, simultaneously perfecting and concluding his lifelong efforts to disappear.

Guy Debord, whose early work Mémoires had sandpaper covers, so that its removal and replacement on the bookshelf would gradually erase the titles of other works surrounding it.

"The economic system founded on isolation is a circular production of isolation. The technology is based on isolation, and the technical process isolates in turn. From the automobile to television, all the goods selected by the spectacular system are also its weapons for a constant reinforcement of the conditions of isolation of "lonely crowds." The spectacle constantly rediscovers its own assumptions more concretely."
—The Society of the Spectacle, 1967

An obituary for Debord can be found here.