There are three people I look to as role models for writing non-fiction and criticism, all for different reasons. The eternally clever gentleman and essayist Tom Wolfe (and in particular his book The Painted Word), the hilarious, biting, and spot on Nikki Finke, and Michael Jackson, the man who loved, wrote about, and saved beer.

The way I write about wine has everything to do with an old, water-logged copy of The World Guide to Beer I found in a biker bar. I worked the flat grill; the book held up the prep table.

On Michael Jackson
in this issue of the Seattle Weekly

I just got around to opening my August shipment of Michael Jackson’s Rare Beer Club. Jolly Pumpkin’s Bam Noir, a dark farmhouse ale, exciting. (And the little goth girl inside me’s a sucker for a terrier in bat wings). But it also made me sad, reading an old article of Michael’s included in the newsletter, about beer descriptors. Yet another one of my heroes that I’ll never meet.

I can’t wait until it dips below 50 degrees. I’m gonna make a pot roast, light a fire, and drink all three bottles.

**Stan, from Appellation Beer suggests drinking them separately: “Jolly Pumpkin’s beers are constantly in transition.” Would that I’d had them enough to know. You learn something new every goddamn day. Thanks Stan!