My Funny Valentine

"My Funny Valentine
Sweet Colin Valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
Yet you're my favorite work of art

Why do bloggers take you to task?
Do they not know that you love cask?
In its conditioned glory you bask
You're so smart!
Don't change a thing for me
Not if you care for me
Stay, Colin Valentine
Stay.
Each day is Valentine's Day".

There's been a fair amount of t'internet kerfuffle about comments made by Colin Valentine, CAMRA head honcho, about bloggers calling for craft beer/keg recognition.

Yes, he spits out the word 'keg' as if he expects his audience to then stone him.
Yes, he'd probably sooner drink the syphilitic piss of the last leper in hell than drink 'craft keg'.
Yes, he's getting the craft keg/craft beer distinction wrapped round his neck.

But...

I don't want the National Chairman of CAMRA to recant his whole belief system before his AGM.

I want him to defend the divine right of cask to be the automatic choice at the right hand of every level-headed drinker. Defend it with all the passion, dedication and misinformation that noisome bloggers do when they herald the arrival of The Best Beer In The World Ever Until That 'Rare Keg' Release Next Week.

I love how he uses the phrase 'bloggerati'. Isn't that a compliment?

I like how he's clearly pissed off with Tim Webb for not being One Of Us.
(The day Tim Webb doesn't piss people off is the day I know he's stopped writing. More power to his, er, word processor).


And I'd love it if everyone could accept this:

Good beer is where you find it. As to what you find it in: that borders upon the immaterial.

If someone can find within a CAMRA policy document anything that prohibits the promotion of unfiltered, unpasturised KeyKeg, please let me know.

If someone, bloggerati or not, honestly believes that CAMRA ought to embrace brewery-conditioned beer served with CO2, please let me know.

In the meantime, I'm off to listen to My Funny Valentine. I haven't embedded a video. I haven't added a link. Sometime I prefer Chet Baker. Sometimes I prefer Miles Davis. Sometimes I prefer Hue And Cry. Sometimes I prefer the People's Front of Judea. Sometimes I prefer the Judean People's Front.

Even though the latter are just free-form acid-jazz splitters.



* edited 30th May to restore the missing opening paragraph, just in case you had no idea what's going on...