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Horrible Words I Learned In 2010

16 Dec

That I hope to forget as quickly as possible in 2011:

  1. “vajazzling“
  2. “vuvuzela“
  3. “Eyjafjallajökull“
  4. “squeakquel“
  5. “Cleggeron“

And We’re Back

15 Dec

I know. I’m sorry. It has been so long since my last post that I don’t blame you if you’ve moved on. It’s understandable if you’ve found someone new – a younger, sexier Danish beer/Japanese food/British pub blog that cooks and cleans and isn’t afraid to commit.

But still – remember what we once had? Maybe we can reignite that old flame… I’m still happy to be your blogger if you say you’ll be my bloggee. Please say you’re my bloggee.

From now on, things are going to be different – starting with the URL. Yes, it seems I am no longer master of my domain – iamaviking.com is kaput, but out of its ashes iamaviking.wordpress.com has risen like a Phoenix! Please update your bookmarks accordingly. And stay tuned – I’m off the blogoholic wagon and I’m going on a bender!

 

 

Dumb Beer Marketing of the Week: Stella Artois

26 Nov

In general, I like Stella Artois’s ad campaigns. I’m a sucker for the retro yé-yé style and screwball-comedic TV spots. Plus Stella, and its lower-alcohol version Stella 4%, are nice, easy-drinking after-work refreshers.

But this billboard is nonsense! “Contains only four ingredients,” it boasts. “Hops, maize, malted barley, and water.” First of all: they’ve forgotten yeast, which is arguably the most important ingredient in beer! Granted, Stella filters the yeast out of their beer, but it’s still an ingredient.

Okay, let’s say yeast doesn’t count because it’s not actually in the finished product. Even then, maize is not typically considered a component of high-quality beer. Quite the contrary, it is often used as a cheap adjunct to barley malts – American macrobreweries quite famously use corn and corn syrup to jack malt liquor up to grotesquely high levels of alcohol.

So maize is a silly thing to advertise. But even if it’s not, I haven’t addressed this ad’s most glaring inanity: who cares if it’s only four ingredients!? First of all, there are many, many beers out there that use only three ingredients (not including yeast) because they don’t include corn or other malternatives. But why is a low number of ingredients a selling point anyway? There may be dubious gastropolitical reasons or less-dubious health reasons for buying food and drink with low amounts of ingredients, but otherwise this one has me scratching my head. I’m not sure who’s the bigger idiot: the marketing director who came up with this advertisement or the mindless consumer who actually buys into it.

Marketing idiocy rating:

One Budweiser Frog (points awarded for clever art direction).

“Zack the Ripper”?

13 Oct

Attn: Loyal viking fanatics.

I am considering putting an end to this blog and starting a new one. Now before you freak out, I’d still keep I am a viking online as a sort of archive, but I’d migrate everything post-Japan to a new site. When I started this blog I meant to keep it thematic, and since I left Japan, I’ve had to stretch and bend the theme to such an extent that it’s become unrecognizably amorphous. This wasn’t meant to be a travel blog, a beer blog, or even just a food blog – it was meant to be an exploration of Japanese (food) culture and a showcase for the art that it inspired, and obviously it is hard to keep that up now that I’m living in London.

But I’d like to start another, more focused blog – and OH MY GOD THIS PUB HAS A CAT!!! Awwwwwesome. I will be coming back here!

Sorry. So I’d like to start a new blog, maybe two new blogs, more befitting my new habitat and my new creative priorities. I’d like to make a blog that can actually be a resource to people on some specific topic – like I am a viking was for risotto recipes or Japanese culinary tourism. Here are a few ideas I had for new blogs:

  1. West is West: Locating American West Coast food and drink in London, from burritos to Sonoma County chardonnay
  2. BYOLondon: good local BYOB restaurants, and what to bring as a proper pairing
  3. The Insular World of Mr. Squirrel: the webcomic
  4. some other webcomic, possibly autobiographical
  5. an illustrated guide to beer, from brewing to food pairing
  6. a guide to real ale in London: news, pub reviews, beer reviews, etc.
  7. A Few Good Men: in search of fine noodles in London, especially the elusive ramen (points to you if you understand the pun in the title)
  8. The Meibutsu Map: not a blog, but rather an interactive map of Japan highlighting the local specialities of each prefecture
  9. Last and least, Zack the Ripper – Observations of an American in East London: my flatmate jokingly suggested this, noting that “Zack” is possibly the most American name out there

Any other ideas? Any other names you think are distinctly American?

Follow @vikingtweats on Twitter

30 Jul

vikingtweats

I finally caved to the peer pressure and set up shop on Twitter. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with it, but I think I will use it primarily as an offshoot of this blog, posting little bits of news and non-news that aren’t quite important enough for a full post.

There will also be weekly features! So far I’m thinking:

  • #MeibutsuMonday, profiling a new Japanese local specialty each week.
  • #WeirdFoodWednesday, morsels of information about food you may not have tried and may not want to try.
  • #FermentedFriday, featuring a different product of that most exciting of culinary processes, fermentation!

Stay tuned! http://twitter.com/vikingtweats

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