Weekend Review

My old friend Jason owns a business in Cincinnati, and he brought some of his staff up here to NYC last week to work on a big account for two weeks. I told him he could count on me to help a few times after I got off work. I went down there for four hours on Thursday and 2.5 hours on Friday. I feel like a loser, but I'm not a manual labor guy, so I quit. What an a-hole.

Because of my active imagination, my skill with the spoken word, an overall self-centered attitude and sometimes whiny disposition, I seriously thought of four or five solid reasons why it would be OK to ditch my commitment to a friend like that.

So I left him a voice mail.

I left his joint at about 5:30 p.m. on Friday, and hoped to get home for about a 60-minute nap before two social engagements. Remember how I got turned down for that reality show? Well, the casting gal's assistant called to say I could either put myself back in the pool, that I had a good chance to be on a future show, or I could take myself out of the pool so I could ask out the casting girl, who apparently has some ethics. That should be a red flag right there.

So I met the casting girl for a drink at a very cool bar in what I'd either call the Lower East Side, Alphabet City or the East Village. I still don't have my NYC geography down just yet, but this bar, The Bourgeois Pig, was very cool. Casting girl and her friends were plenty of fun before I stepped out at 10 to meet friends Mary and Frank so we could hit a co-worker's holiday party, which we stayed at until about 3 a.m.

Saturday was quiet and somewhat productive. A friend came over and we watched "Reign Over Me." I've got a note for those of you who like Adam Sandler movies: He's supposed to be a funny guy, and he's not. And he keeps trying to make serious movies, and he fails at making them good. The story could have been good, and I even feel guilty ridiculing his effort in what has a 9/11 element to it. I just don't think I've ever enjoyed one of his movies.

Sunday was outstanding for one reason: The Cleveland Browns were on television. I got the groceries done, packed my lunch and got a few other things accomplished -- even hung some Christmas lights around the crib -- so I could get horizontal and enjoy that game.

Afterward, I was looking forward to watching the "60 Minutes" interview with NFL star LaDainian Tomlinson, but it turns out that wasn't Bob Simon's best story. He'd be a good softball pitcher, what with the following questions to Tomlinson, who's very active in the San Diego community with kids and charities:

+ "What's more important, what you do on the field or off of it?"
+ "Who gets more joy out of handing out toys, the kids? Or you?"

Dude, you don't ask questions when the answers are obvious. Of course LT is going to say off-the-field is more important, and that he gets more out of his community service than do his beneficiaries.

And though it was clear Simon put a lot of effort into the story -- they showed him interviewing LT back in the preseason -- that's no excuse for an out-of-date voice-over on television's most successful news magazine show. Simon's narration included a note about how the Chargers were struggling to match last year's success, that they "still might make the playoffs." The show aired a few hours after San Diego clinched the AFC West Division and a spot in the postseason.

Netflix gave me "Superbad" over the weekend as well. Much like its predecessors "Knocked Up" and "40-Year-Old Virgin," I wouldn't call this a very good movie, but there were certainly plenty of entertaining scenes or lines that juvenile men would appreciate. Which is why I would recommend it.

Interesting Evening

I get a fair amount of press releases from PR people. I did PR in my first real job out of school, and it sucked. So I empathize with those who do it. Journalists typically aren't a nice bunch; they often speak ill of those who e-mail out a release and close it with, "I'll follow this note with a phone call next week."

I don't mind it. They're doing their jobs, and I'm glad that some cat named Charlie was doing his job last week because it allowed me to attend a pretty cool event Monday night.

Remember those radio commercials in the 1990s, where you had a very polite-sounding man named Jim Koch talk about the beer he loves so much? Yeah, that Jim Koch (pictured right, standing, speaking, with beer in hand, being rich as hell).

The proud founder of Samuel Adams was at a pretty hot American restaurant called davidburke & donatella on the Upper East Side to tout a new product and to introduce some food pairings with some of his already well-established beer flavors.

About 40 people -- mostly hungry media folks -- gathered Monday, including seven at my table. We were all pleasantly surprised at how well the beers complimented the appetizers. My favorite was the Samuel Adams winter lager with the lobster risotto.

Koch and restaurant chef and co-owner David Burke spoke before each pairing was served, passionately describing the food and drink we were anxious to inhale. Koch was actually pretty funny and you could tell he loved beer so much because the first words of each of his four or five short speeches were always something like, "Sorry to interrupt your drinking, but next on the menu is . . . ."

The last of the many highlights of the evening was the blind tasting of Koch's new Utopias beer, a 54-proof number that tasted more like a cognac or a brandy. Servers delivered three snifters -- one with a cognac, another with the Utopias and the third with a port. The cognac, we later learned, is rated one of the world's finest, tho I can't remember its name. Same with the port, which was a 1994 Fonseca, as if I know what that means. If it's not beer or Ketel One vodka, I'm hardly an alcohol expert, but apparently that 1994 Fonseca is the shiznit, in technical terms.

But this Utopias, according to Charlie's press release, is an uncarbonated drink that blends several brews -- some aged more than a decade -- and it ended up getting more votes than those other two highly acclaimed liquors. It's still considered a beer, and apparently will make a great gift for alcohol lovers this holiday season. They're available in a collectible, brew kettle-shaped, numbered bottle and will retail this season for $120-$140, despite that eBay listing above that at last check had it at more than $300. Only 12,000 bottles will be available.

And of course I couldn't be out at a social event without embarrassing myself, so . . . the lovely gal at the restaurant next door who directed me to DBD four hours earlier was still outside when I came out, so we resumed our conversation. In her heavy Italian accent, we talked about Europe and foreign languages. Again, I'm a little buzzed at this point, so after she told me that Spanish and Italian have many language similarities, I started dropping my limited Espanol on her. And when two tourists approached us, I assumed they were Italian as well, so here's how my introduction went: "Me llamo Juan; mucho gusto." Her reply: "I'm Israeli, but that's cute Juan."

Review: 60 Minutes, Vanity Fair

I seldom go political over here, but did anyone see "60 Minutes" last night?

As if I needed more reason to be skeptical of the Bush administration, Katie Couric got Valerie Plame Wilson's first interview since conservative columnist and part-time a-hole Robert Novak outed her as a CIA covert operative in 2003.

Obviously, the scandal is far from new, but it's always interesting and important to hear directly from the source, especially when we haven't yet had the privilege until now. And personally, I'm a little bit interested in this story, because her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was taken hostage in Kuwait along with my friend John Charlton, the son of a diplomat, in 1990.

Now I know the right will again stop at nothing to discredit the Wilsons, but in our culture of endless political denials and short memories, the one, simple question that needs to be asked is, why smear the Wilsons? What did she do? What did he find?

The answers are easy: Nothing, to both, that could merit a deliberately egregious leak from the White House to a self-proclaimed journalist like Novak.

And when I got in bed a few hours later, after watching my Cleveland Indians intentionally lose Game Seven, I continued reading a story (Vanity Fair, November) I'd begun last week about a Halliburton spinoff and its fraudulent practices that have led to dozens of lawsuits against the contracting giant in Iraq. If you have the time, it's really worth the read.