But somehow this mundane shot of an electric bass is the most-viewed. Thousands of looks at this unremarkable photo, followed by hundreds of others in the same set.

Posted only as a supplement to a for-sale listing on Craigslist. Yet orders of magnitude more attention than my funny Japanese signs or artistic shots of Vienna’s giant ferris wheel.

I’m guessing it has been linked from someone’s blog, or has been caught in some virtuous loop of search engine image search.

Time to pour some fuel on the fire. A gallery of the entire set is below (the three good ones in there – the final three – are just the stock catalog photos from Fender).

Ah well.

Here’s the whole gallery:

My dominant recollection of the trip was its overwhelming heat and humidity. But we managed quite a few activities in the midst of the oppressive weather:

• Hanshin Tigers baseball game in Tokyo
• Sumo wrestling tournament in Tokyo
• Yamazaki Whiskey Distillery outside Osaka (deserved its own blog post and photo collection here)
• Fish market in Tokyo – way early in the morning, followed by a sushi breakfast
• Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum
• Osaka Castle
• Karaoke – late into the night – with our Japanese friends
• The Akhihabara, Tokyo’s electronics district – the next best adventure after the Yamazaki Distillery

And various others too numerous to mention, even if I could remember them.

In any case, some good photos came out of our time in Japan. I’ve grouped the various sets into a Flickr collection here. I suggest visiting Flickr directly to page through the photos more quickly and in larger sizes. But I’ve also inserted thumbnail galleries of each below. If you use the the thumbnail galleries instead of clicking through to Flickr, then note that some galleries have multiple pages.

Various One-Off Highlights

Hanshin Tigers Baseball Game: Tokyo: September 22, 2007

Sumo Tournament: Tokyo: September 20, 2007

Fish Market: Tokyo

Funny Signs

Other One-Off Shots

As always, I recommend viewing the photos directly on Flickr here – especially in slideshow format here. But I’ve included a small gallery below.

Following are my favorite American whiskies that can be found for under $20 per 750ml bottle. Prices listed are current on the linked retailers’ web sites as of 15-December-2009. (By the way, WordPress’ thumbnail creator is cruel, chopping off lots of the images – if you click on them, you can browse the full labels and photos in all their glory.)

• Jim Beam Black Label (bourbon, $16.99)

  Jim Beam Black is one of my favorite bourbons at any price. Vastly better than the standard white label stuff. Big and rich tasting, but relatively little alcohol burn given its quite assertive character. In fact I think this whiskey might be from the same batches used for Booker’s – another favorite of mine – though in this case they make sure it’s least eight years old (+), dilute it down to 86 proof (-) and filter it (-). So what? Jim Beam Black is not just good – it’s great.

• Rittenhouse Rye Bottled in Bond (rye, $19.99)

  The world has found out about this great whiskey bargain, so the producers and distributors have kicked up its price from $12 a few years ago to over $20 in some markets. Oh well – Rittenhouse Rye 100 proof Bottled in Bond is still the best rye for the money available today. And it’s a nice introduction to the style generally. Rittenhouse BIB showcases the unique spiciness and fruitiness of rye grain without becoming edgy like some of its competitors. Drinks beautifully on its own, but also makes a wonderful cocktail. (Be careful not to confuse this with the 80 proof Rittenhouse Rye, with the tan label. I’ve compared them only once, but much preferred the 100 proof version, which is worth the extra couple of bucks over its little brother.)

• Very Old Barton Bottled in Bond (bourbon, $12.99)

  I love this hard-to-find bourbon so much that I wrote an entire blog post about it here. What are you waiting for? If Binny’s will ship to your state, call them up (or click on the price above) and have them send you a bottle. Even with shipping costs you’re still well under $20 to try this gem.

• Elijah Craig 12 Year Old (bourbon, $19.99)

  Sigh – another one whose price has skyrocketed in the past few years. I remember buying Elijah Craig for just $11.99 in 2002 – in New York City, even! Now it’s very hard to find under $20, though still not overpriced if you like its idiosyncratic flavor. Elijah Craig shares with many of its fellow Heaven Hill bourbons a minty overtone that I often like (but occasionally loathe). Your mileage will also vary, but at this price the risk is low.

  With Elijah Craig 12 Year Old you also get some nice oaky tastes uncommon in younger, less expensive bourbons. The distillery that used to make Elijah Craig burned down some years ago, so the current bottlings come from a different distillery (owned by the same company, using the same recipe and warehouses). Of course various Internet conspiracy theorists and curmudgeons claim the older stuff was better, but I’ve no idea how to tell from the label which distillery a particular bottle came from. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Beautiful bottle and cork stopper (the only whiskey on this page I would recommend giving as a gift), distinctive taste, still nicely- though not super-bargainly-priced.

Don’t forget, you can click these images to get a better sense of what each label or bottle looks like.

And a few runners-up in the category:

• Old Grand-Dad Bonded Bourbon (bourbon, $19.99)

  An unabashedly rye-heavy bourbon made by Jim Beam. Old Grand-Dad Bonded (like all bonded bourbons, this is 100 proof) tastes wonderful to me – full of grain, confident in its old-school personality. But the texture is just a little too thin for it to make my top list in this price range. The Old Grand-Dad 114 is much richer on the palate (and comes in a fancier bottle), but sells for 25% more.

• Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey (bourbon, $21.99)

  Diageo’s answer to Beam’s Knob Creek brand. I much prefer Bulleit to its hipster competitor. Though the (excellent) packaging implies this is a rough-and-tumble whiskey, it’s actually quite gentle. Floral, with lots of the fruit that I associate with rye-heavy bourbons. Listed as a runner-up only because I can’t find it consistently under $20 (sometimes dips to ~$18 in California when there’s a mega-sale on).

• Jim Beam Rye (rye, $14.99)

  With its former bright yellow label and super-low price, Jim Beam Rye was the sort of thing you might skip over at the corner bodega. But you would have been wrong – in its day this stuff was downright great. Meaty, sizzling, in your face (in a good way). Unfortunately this whiskey seems to have fallen on hard times in recent years. Even before Beam switched to the gentler beige label shown here, I tasted several bottles that were too young. Lots of banana esters and other immature unpleasantness, though with an overall reticence unbecoming of this former muscleman. Still, if you’re on a dark street corner and the shady liquor shop has Jim Beam Rye, then it’s worth taking a chance on.

• Old Overholt Straight Rye Whiskey (rye, $14.99)

  Another Jim Beam product, Old Overholt seems pretty much synonymous with rye whiskey in every bar. It is absolutely fine for a Manhattan or Old Fashioned – preferable to even high-end bourbons in those particular drinks. I’ve tried it neat only a couple of times, but found the finish too quick. So while I wouldn’t recommend it on its own, you shouldn’t hesitate to try it as the base of your cocktails.

(Side note: earlier in 2009, John Hansell of Malt Advocate started a couple of good conversations about whiskey prices and high-value whiskies on his blog here and here.)

My blog includes posts on all sorts of unrelated topics. You can find just the whisky posts here.

Disclaimer: I am not a guitarist. I am barely a bassist. But over the past couple of years, as I’ve picked up the bass again, I’ve been dabbling a bit with guitar on my own while jamming with guitarist friends of some ability. So several dozen guitars have passed through my hands.

The 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard is probably the most famous and certainly the most sought-after electric guitar model ever. The topic of at least three books and subject of several lines of “reissues” over the years, original ’59 Les Pauls sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars when they’re available at all. Gibson’s most recent 2009 50^th Anniversary reissue retails for more than $5,000.

Epiphone themselves didn’t produce a Les Paul style guitar in 1959, so this model isn’t technically a reissue. But Gibson deserves some credit for attempting to distill some of the ’59 LP mojo into their affordable, made-in-China brand. (You can read Gibson’s description of this guitar’s unique ’59-specific features here.)

This guitar is unlikely to be collectible. Sure, each is numbered from a series limited to 1,959 (mine is 223). And sure, 2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1959 original. But this instrument is still just an Epiphone-branded copy of a Gibson original – with various corners cut to keep the price down.

So I didn’t buy the Epi ’59 LP to collect it. I bought it to play it (and paid nearly the full asking price of $899 from Sweetwater). I was especially excited about the neck shape, which the spec sheet says is the “1950′s [sic] Rounded ‘D’ profile”. The marketing copy waxes poetic, even if the author has trouble punctuating the possessive:

True to it’s [sic] heritage, the neck features an authentic, 1950′s [sic] rounded neck profile. Often referred to as “the baseball bat”, this neck feels beefy yet comfortable in your hands while adding warmth and sustain with it’s [sic] greater mass.

I love the neck on my friend Colin’s Gibson 2009 50^th Anniversary Les Paul. Round, thick – yes, even warm – unlike any guitar’s I’ve ever played. I was willing to pay $900 for a guitar just to get that neck. But the neck on this Epiphone is noticeably flatter and overall slimmer than the thick neck of the “true” ’59 LP reissue. The Epiphone ’59 LP’s neck is rounder and fatter than my Gibson Les Paul Classic Custom’s (listed as “1960s Slim Taper”) or even my Epiphone Dot’s. It’s just not what I was expecting based on the description.

Build quality is generally excellent. No cosmetic flaws to be found. I’m not sure the flamed maple veneer top is quite AAA – maybe AA – but that’s subjective (and you can judge for yourself in the photo gallery below). I ordered the “Faded Cherryburst” finish, because I prefer the rimburst/perimeterburst pattern to the more authentic “teardrop” shape of the “Faded Ice Tea” finish [update: although early Gibson product shots showed the Iced Tea model with the more traditional teardrop pattern, reports from the wild imply that both finishes are in fact rimburst]. The Epiphone feels a touch plasticky compared to the Gibson 50^th Anniversary version – perhaps a result of all the veneers used to mask the underlying cheap “mystery wood” – but overall it looks and feels like something in this price category should. Nice work by Epiphone.

The only outright build flaw is the neck pickup’s volume control, which functions essentially as a binary switch. From 6-10 it’s all the way loud, anything less it’s nearly silent. I would return it the store for adjustment if I had bought it locally – now I might ask a technician to fix it.

Otherwise I would say the guitar sounds pretty good, though it’s not a patch on either of the Gibson/Epiphone guitars mentioned above. I prefer my “real” Les Paul (a Classic Custom Silverburst from the now-defunct Guitar of the Week program – which sold for $2,400 new, I think) and even my Epiphone Dot (the Korean-made ES-335 clone easily available for $400). Unfortunately I haven’t been able to compare the sound to any other Epiphone Les Pauls. Unlike those, the ’59 is stocked with USA-made pickups, which in theory should get it closer to the classic Les Paul sound. They’re very true to character – nicely hot, distorted and grainy – you’re certainly not going to think you’re hearing a Strat. But a little trebly for my taste, less mid-range punch than my actual LP, and nowhere near as nice a ringing sound as my friend Rob’s stylistically comparable PRS (which, to be fair, sells for twice as much as the Epiphone).

So is the Epiphone Limited Edition “1959″ Les Paul Standard worth $900? Or even $800, which a 15% discount will get you from an online retailer like Musician’s Friend? On paper, yes. Relative to the typical Epiphone Les Paul, you get a flame veneer top, USA-made pickups, a nice rounded-top case, supposedly upgraded electronics, a few stylistic nods to the real ’59 (like green tuner pegs), numbered certificate from a limited edition run, and a deeper-set neck that may positively affect the sound. Not to mention that it’s significantly cheaper (and more attractive) than the least expensive American-made Les Paul.

But in practice, it’s not worth that price for me. I wanted a beefier ’59 neck profile. And if I have to compromise at all on the LP sound, I would go farther down the Epiphone line and get an Ultra-II – at least it also comes with a faux-acoustic pickup.

I’m on the fence about whether I’ll keep mine or return it. Though Sweetwater is nicely hands-on and full service on the sell side – this is how they try to head off discounting – their return policy is customer-unfriendly at best. You pay for return shipping, and then, unlike their competitors, they further deduct a fee for the “free” shipping they gave you on the way out. [Update: I decided to return the guitar. Though I'll likely stay a customer of Sweetwater's, given their return policy I'll stick to electronics or other items that don't vary much - very uncool for them to secretly charge a restocking fee and call it a non-refund for "free" shipping.]

Not only am I no guitarist, I’m no photographer. But I took some photos of this 2009 Epiphone Les Paul next to its Gibson big brother reissue. You can see the gallery below, though I recommend viewing them in full size directly on Flickr here.

Following are photo albums of each.

The Liberace Museum (originals on Flickr here, slideshow here):

The Hoover Dam (originals on Flickr here, slideshow here):

Bamberg is a charming small city of about 70,000 in northern Bavaria. It’s reminiscent of Bruges in that it escaped bombing during WWII, retaining a twisty medieval character. Bamberg is home to eight old German breweries (plus a modern brewpub), two of which specialize in Rauchbier (smoked beer).

For a non-beer tourist, Bamberg is worth a day trip if you’re already in Bavaria – perhaps touring Neuschwanstein castle or other local attractions.  The old city hall, towers, and other medieval buildings are just wonderful to see and explore.

For beer aficionados, Bamberg is an absolutely required pilgrimage. A unique bit of beer history preserved here (by the way, Evan Rail wrote a superb overview of beer travel in Germany, including great pointers to Bamberg and Rauchbier, in the New York Times a couple of years ago).

Here are a few of my notes and recommendations, followed by a photo album:

• Take a cab from the train station to the old part of the city or to your hotel. The station is just far enough away from the action, and in a relatively grim-looking part of town, to make walking unpleasant.
• Stay at one of the breweries. At least two have guest rooms – Spezial and Mahr’s Bräu. A very nice way to get at heart of what Bamberg’s about.
• Try some Rauchbier at the source. Spezial (my favorite) and Schlenkerla (better known) are the only two breweries that make it. Rauchbier is described in many ways: “bacon beer,” “like licking an ash tray,” “the beer equivalent of a peaty single malt Scotch whisky, like Ardbeg, Laphroaig, or Lagavulin.” A must-try.
• Visit the Geyerswörth Palace. I’ve no idea if there’s anything worth seeing in the actual buildings, but you should climb the tower (key is available from the Tourist Office a block or two away) and take in the beautiful views of the town and the hills around.
• The Weyermann Maltings is a can’t-miss destination for the beer geek. Professional- and home-brewers both will know the Weyermann name – one of the world’s best-known and highest quality malted grain providers. Call in advance to arrange a tour. They’ll happily show you around if you give them at least a day’s notice, but are much less willing to accommodate immediate requests. The well-stocked gift ship is open only on Fridays, but you might be able to get them to open it for you on a different day. Amazing selection of beer-related gear, the most interesting being beers brewed at their pilot brewery on site. The only ales I saw in Bavaria. Weyermann beer is ultra-rare, sold only at this gift shop.
• Our favorite breweries, in descending order: 1) Spezial (definitely smoked beer, but not over-smoked), 2) Mahr’s (try the “ungespundet” – head and shoulders above their others), 3) Schlenkerla (the classic richly-flavored Rauchbier), and 4) Klosterbräu (decent all-around lagers).
• We did not like any of the beers at Fässla, and we tried them all. The service was also distinctly unfriendly.

Here are some of my photos from Bamberg. As always, I suggest viewing the slideshow directly on Flickr here, but you can also get a sense from the gallery I’ve pasted below (note that there are two pages of photos):

A few months back I went to Munich for the world’s oldest and greatest beer festival. I loved it – Oktoberfest wildly exceeded my expectations.

I had been to Munich at least once before, but not during this time of year. I expected a New Orleans Mardi Gras-like crush of drunken screaming twenty-year-olds to ruin the vibe. But no – though things were occasionally rowdy, the entire feel was one of, well, gemütchlichkeit! Just lots of happy folks celebrating beer and food in a Germanically-organized way.

You can find tons of Oktoberfest travel/tourist information all over the web. The official website is excellent and a great place to start. But here are a few tips from my experience:

• You can enjoy yourself mightily without ever getting a tent reservation – the outside Biergartens always have space, and they serve the same food and beer as inside. And the regular Munich beer gardens, like Augustiner and Hofbräu, are going full tilt, so you don’t even have to be at the Wiesn to have fun.
• However, you should definitely get at least one reservation for at least one tent, just to have the full experience. You haven’t been to Oktoberfest until you’ve sung “Take Me Home, Country Roads” alongside an oom-pah band and 4,000 of your newest friends.
• Eat the chicken. It’s amazing. We called it “crack chicken”. No idea what they do it back in the big rotisserie areas, but it tastes like no other food. Downright sensational.
• The BMW Museum has been around for more than thirty years, but has recently expanded with some new buildings (essentially comprising a fancy dealership). Worth a visit – most efficient way to get a feel for the Bavarian fetish for engineering.

There are six breweries allowed to brew and serve Oktoberfest-style beer for the festival. I tried five of them in situ at Oktoberfest tents. Generally I found them much lighter in color and dryer in both flavor and texture than American renditions (Sam Adams does a great Oktoberfest in the richer style I’m used to).

Here’s my force-ranked list of Munich Oktoberfest-style lagers, in order of preference (loved one, liked three, disliked one). German beers tend to be more alike than different (largely due to the preference for lagers, and the ongoing oppression of the Reinheitsgebot), so we’re looking at a relatively narrow spectrum here:

1. Augustiner: head and shoulders above the rest. Had it at one of their beer gardens, at one of their tents, sought it out again several times. Scrumptious.
2. Hofbräu: tasted at the one tent in the Wiesn that pours it. Very well made. No sense that they’re phoning it in given the popularity of their eponymous Hofbräuhaus.
3. Spaten-Franziskaner: better-known internationally for their Weissbier (wheat beer), which our hotel served at breakfast. But Spaten-Franziskaner also does a nice job with the Oktoberfest style. A touch too dry for my taste, but still excellent.
4. Paulaner: one I had liked a lot in bottle in the USA, but a bit disappointing compared to the others. Quite drinkable, just not the “a-ha” I got from Augustiner.
5. Löwenbräu: probably the neatest-looking tent (see photos below), but by far my least favorite beer. Tried it twice at two different places. Just harsh and unpleasant to my palate.

Now to the photos. As always, I think they look much better in full-screen slideshow format on Flickr here, but I’ve inserted a gallery below if you would rather poke through that (note that there are two pages of the following gallery).

However, the menu at the Yamazaki tasting room (“Whisky Library”) contains hundreds (thousands?) of other Suntory whiskies, including the sublime Hakushu, which I will review here shortly.

One of the best distillery tours offered in any country – absolutely worth going out of your way for.

Unfortunately my photos are not of the best quality, but they should give you some feel of the experience. I always suggest viewing the Flickr slideshow here, but you can get a feel for the photos from the gallery below.

(In related news, Vienna’s Riesenrad is the inspiration for the logo on this blog.)

So on April 10, 2009, I went out to the Prater to ride the Ferris wheel. That afternoon I took nearly 400 photos, just a fraction of which are in the set highlighted here. It’s still an exhaustive (exhausting?) study of the wheel itself, with a few other skyline and park shots sprinkled in. At least it completes the collection of five photo sets I made on that short visit to Vienna!

These photos look best at the largest size possible, for which purpose I suggest using the slideshow on Flickr here. But I’ve also inserted a gallery below. I hope you enjoy seeing this century-old attraction through my eyes.

Of the three nights I was in Vienna this time, I bought an actual ticket once (Night 3), the opera house was closed once (Night 2), and I stayed at the bar once (Night 1). I had intended to get a standing room ticket that first night, but traveling got the better of me.

However, the standing room ticket process seems the same now as it was fifteen years ago, according to the excellent guide on the Mostly Opera blog here.

April 11 (and April 9, for that matter) was a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal, his final opera and by far my favorite work in the medium by any composer. You can see the cast list in a photo of the poster in this album (view the original size on Flickr if it’s hard to read at the small default size). A decent performance in a mostly bad production (see the ominous disco ball on stage in a photo from my camera phone, taken on a backstage tour on Good Friday, April 10).

While studying abroad in Vienna I spent more hours waiting in line at the Vienna State Opera than any other activity – including (especially) studying. Hence the shots of colonnade outside the standing room entrance – my real home away from my home away from home. This building is notoriously hard to take in at a glance – there’s just no good angle on it – and therefore also hard to photograph. I’ve seen no good modern exterior shot of it, and certainly didn’t get one myself.

However, there are a couple of interesting views inside the opera house, and one of Mahler’s piano.

As always, in my opinion the set is best viewed in slideshow form on Flickr here (be sure to watch in full screen mode), but I’ve pasted in a gallery of thumbnails below.

Mostly exteriors, focusing on Jugendstil (art nouveau) buildings, with some other sites mixed in.

The set is on Flickr here. I generally recommend using the Flickr slideshow over the gallery inserted below.

1. 1516 Brewing Company in the First District. My full review is on BeerAdvocate here. To summarize, an American-style brew pub in Europe. Everyone speaks English, styles are generally highly varied (and highly hopped – they even brew Hop Devil IPA from Pennsylvania’s Victory Brewing), and the food is generically average. The beer is overall superb, though – I tried everything on the menu and the blackboard and didn’t have a single clunker. Just don’t come here expecting to explore the nuances of Austrian beer history or culture.
2. Siebensternbräu in the Seventh District. Still an easy(-ish) walk from the center of the city. Absolutely charming inside, with a tendency toward more European styles in the beers. I had a couple of very good lagers there, and an awesome Käsespätzle (cheese noodles) with bacon. Went beautifully with their signature Hemp beer.

My general sense was that Vienna doesn’t have much of a craft beer culture, that big-company lagers (and some macro wheat beers) are the main offering nearly everywhere. I couldn’t even find a good, “native” Vienna lager anywhere – one of my favorite styles when produced by American craft brewers.

You can’t go wrong with the beers at either of the above-two brewpubs, though, nor the food at Siebensternbräu.

My photos are probably best viewed directly on Flickr here, but I’ve also inserted them as a gallery below. (Most of them were taken with my BlackBerry, so they’re not the greatest quality.)

Thanks again to the authors of the web pages below, which helped me quite a bit on such a short trip:

• BeerAdvocate BeerFly
• Vienna Beer Gen
• Vienna Pub Guide

(P.S. My blog covers all sorts of unrelated topics. If you’re interested in just the posts about beer, you can subscribe to those here.)

My primary activity was attending performances of my favorite opera, Wagner’s Parsifal, at the Vienna State Opera. Photos and information on that to come.

But I also spent the better part of the day at the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna’s largest and best-known cemetery (there are several dozen major graveyards in this death-obsessed city).  About sixty-five photographs seemed worth sharing.

The bulk of the photos are of the church at the center of the cemetery. This building was originally known as the Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche, but in an apparent bit of whitewashing (Lueger, a much-loved mayor of Vienna, was a notorious anti-Semite) is now formally called the Friedhofskirche Zum Heiligen Karl Borromäus. Designed by Max Hegele, this church is one of the most spectacular examples of Viennese Jugendstil (art nouveau) architecture.

Most of the others are of grave sites. Hundreds of notable Austrians are buried in the Zentralfriedhof. I focused primarily on composers, opera singers, and other musicians (Beethoven to Falco to Zawinul – they’re all here).

More photos from Vienna to come, but here’s the best I could do at the Central Cemetery. (The photos are probably best worth browsing directly on Flickr here – the Flickr slideshow in Full Screen with “info enabled” is excellent – but I’ve also inserted a three-page gallery below.)

While in The Smoke I took some photos, a handy ninety-two of which I deemed suitable for the public.  The focus is primarily on the Fuller’s Brewery, the last major brewery operating in London (and always my first stop when I visit the city), with some shots of St. Paul’s, The Vintage House whisky shop in Soho, and a random burnt up Ferrari on the street in St. John’s Wood.

You’ll find it easier to browse the photos directly on Flickr here, but I’ll insert a gallery into this blog post, too.

A few weeks ago we visited my parents-in-law there. I took two small collections of photos.

The first includes some signs from a shooting range that we visited one morning. Way out in the boonies.

And the other is of an abandoned Taco John’s. My wife and I both love Potato Olés (though not quite to the point of joining the official fan club), and were of course disappointed to see what happened to Pocatello’s Taco John’s. (By the way, do you think that television was in their break room?)