The Butt-Heads’ 2019 comeback show; photo by Anna Blanton. That’s the perennially debonair founder Sidney King on the left.
Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 66: The Updated Good Beer Guide to Louisville (1996).
We shouldn’t attempt to fashion the elusive silk purse from a sow’s ear, which is to say that Christmas has seldom been “the most wonderful time of the year” for me. There comes a time each holiday season during an otherwise random conversation about sports, movies or the ongoing decay of Western civilization when someone looks at me with palpable dismay.
“Roger, you’re such a Grinch.” My response has never varied: “Thank you very much.” After all, I was raised to be polite.
The roots of my longstanding Yuletide antipathy might be traced to Freudian conceits, Jungian counter-thrusts, references to childhood toilet training habits or the sheer pervasiveness of psychological repression stemming from residency in the USA amid all these crazed theists, but in truth it’s far simpler.
1994: Frequent co-conspirator Doug Elmore, longtime (and award-winning) director of the orchestra program at Floyd Central High School, my alma mater.
The gist of it is the original, defining moment in every American boy’s life — not when it becomes clear that...
Read more
