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Mutineer Magazine’s Holiday Comedy Festival In Wine (& Beer) Country

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This should be a fun — and funny — event. Mutineer Magazine is hosting a comedy event to benefit A Child’s Right, an organization with a mission to ensure children have access to safe drinking water. The Mutineer Magazine Holiday Comedy Festival will take place at the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards in Sonoma on December 11, beginning at 7:00 p.m. In addition to Jacuzzi wine, tequila from sponsor Don Roberto and beer from Lagunitas and Firestone Walker will also be served.

The evening of stand-up comedy will include comedians Ben Morrison (host), Bryan Callen (co-headliner), Natasha Leggero (co-headliner), Ben Gleib, Greg Wilson, and Daryl Wright. In addition, the winner of a Laugh Factory contest is scheduled to appear. Also special guest Jonathan Goldsmith will appear. He’s the Dos Equis spokesperson for the “The World’s Most Interesting Man” advertising campaign. You can read more about each performer at the Mutineer event website.

Tickets are only $35 and can be purchased online.

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From the press release:

RARE LAUGHS, SPECTACULAR BEVERAGES

Performing against this fantastical blue backdrop (blue for water relief, naturally!)? An all-star lineup of standup comedians and special guests, no shortage of Hollywood-style glamour (think paparazzi-style photogs on the blue carpet) and outstanding libations from some of the finest names in beverage. It’s all in line with the publication’s rep for pushing boundaries and exceeding expectations where drinks and lifestyle experiences collide, and looks to be one of the wildest nights wine country will see this side of 2011. Los Angeles-based funnyman and festival host Ben Morrison – known as well for being Ashton Kutcher’s right-hand man on the hit MTV show “Punk’d” as for his prolific appetite for Single Malt Scotch – says, “It’s a totally rare opportunity to see this caliber of comedic talent all under one roof, in one night outside of Hollywood.”

Even better: it’s for a good cause.

LAUGHS TO BENEFIT WATER RELIEF

The festival is an ebullient catalyst for Mutineer’s 2011 trek to Nepal, where magazine staff, select “cultural influencers” and beverage industry reps will install five water filtration systems on behalf of relief organization A Child’s Right. The systems will provide clean drinking water to 25,000 children for ten years. To bring the full impact of the outreach home to readers, magazine editors will blog about the trip along the way and report on the endeavor with significant coverage in the May 2011 issue. Kropf sees it this way: “There’s nothing funny about the need for clean water. But bringing top comedic talent – and lots of laughter – to wine country to raise funds for water relief among at-risk kids? Priceless.”

FUNNY, SEXY & BLUE ALL OVER

Officially on the program roster: Cocktails by presenting sponsor Don Roberto Tequila and other select purveyors in the beverage tent, festive surprise guests, base-thumping holiday soul and funk beats, and lots of laughs. As for the show itself, the endlessly funny Natasha Leggero (as seen in NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and “Ugly Americans”) and Bryan Callen (“MadTV” and “The Hangover”) are set to co-headline an elite group of seven Hollywood humorists, all of whom have pledged to share with guests their most amusing insights into the theme of thirst. One of the comedians for the evening will be a wild-card performer selected at a Mutineer-sponsored search contest at LA’s Laugh Factory November 18, 2010, and a special appearance will be made at the festival by Jonathan Goldsmith, who famously portrays “The Most Interesting Man In the World” in Dos Equis’ advertisements.

A CHARITABLE GIFT EVERY HIP HOLIDAY REVELER CAN EMBRACE!

Best part of all? Festival guests will know that they’re laughing and sipping in the name of charitable water relief. And thanks to the show’s top-shelf talent, delicious drinks, eye-popping blue décor and insanely affordable ticket price — Mutineer tagged entry at a rightly reasonable $35 to make the show as millennial-accessible as possible — it looks as though everyone gets to have the last laugh come December 11. Cheers to that.

A Chanukah Whassup

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With Chanukah a.k.a. Hanukkah beginning this evening at sundown, I thought I’d share this gem, a spoof of the popular Budweiser Whassup spots from a few years ago, though they were actually called “True,” at least internally. The original is below in case you want to remind yourself what they’re spoofing. L’Chiam.

A Jewish Whassup

The Original Whassup — a.k.a. “True”

Bruce Nichols Passes Away

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I just heard a few minutes ago the sad news that Bruce Nichols passed away from leukemia. Bruce was one of the founders of Philly Beer Week and launched the annual The Book & The Cook event nearly two decades ago at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archeology & Anthropology where Michael Jackson did an amazing beer dinner each year. I last saw Bruce earlier this year during Philly Beer Week in July but, sad to say, we only spoke briefly, each of us on our way to different events. I’d heard he’d been ill but did not know the extent of it. Philadelphia’s beer community lost one of its leading lights today, and I extend my sympathy to Bruce’s family and all my friends in Pennsylvania and beyond who knew Bruce. He will be missed. Join me in drinking a toast tonight to Bruce’s memory.

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Bruce with Don Russell and Tom Peters at the opening of the first Philly Beer Week in 2008.

Tom Peters, owner of Monk’s Cafe, posted the following on his website today:

I lost a good friend today and so did the entire Philadelphia beer community. Bruce Nichols lost his battle with leukemia. Bruce was president of Museum Catering Company and co-founder of Philly Beer Week. Bruce was a voice of reason, always calm and had an innate ability to bring people together.

Bruce, myself and Don Russell organized the first Philly Beer Week with the help of many bars, restaurants, distributors, brewers, etc. Bruce was always a driving force behind the Philly beer movement. He was also adept at keeping us crazy beer people organized and on-point. Philly Beer Week would have never happen without his ideas and positive energy.

Bruce is the person that brought famed beer writer, Michael Jackson, to Philly, way back in 1991. Bruce Nichols hosted Michael at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology for a “The Book & The Cook” event. That single beer event drew more people than any 10 food events combined. Thus began the real emergence on the Philadelphia beer culture. Bruce & Michael combined for seventeen annual beer events, each more challenging than the previous. Bruce really helped push the boundaries of beer culture in Philadelphia. We are all thankful and grateful to all that Bruce has done for us.

Bruce will be missed by all who were close to him and the beer community has lost a good friend and champion.

I raise a glass to your life. Goodbye, my friend.

And thanks to Jack Curtin for letting me and everybody know.

Colorado To Make Session Beers Illegal In Bars & Restaurants

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This should give anyone who loves session beers or groups trying to keep people from getting blotto a case of apoplexy. A new law in Colorado, actually a bill amended last spring, “now requires the state to enforce license restrictions to a T.”

The law requires to-the-letter enforcement of the state’s existing beer regulations. Bars, restaurants and liquor stores can sell only beer that is above 4 percent alcohol by volume. Grocery and convenience stores are allowed to sell only alcohol with less than 4 percent alcohol by volume.

So this is coming from the C-stores and groceries trying to protect their turf of low-alcohol beer. But the consequences are absurd, and will make it essentially illegal for any restaurant or bar to serve patrons beer that’s below 4% a.b.v. According to the Denver Post’s report, Stout Opposition to Looming Limits on Selling Lower-Alcohol Beer in Taverns, Restaurants, “[t]echnically, bars, restaurants and liquor stores in Colorado should never have sold the lower-alcohol beers in the first place, though no one ever paid much attention. Their licenses allow them to sell spirits, wine and beers that fall into the ‘malt liquor’ category.”

The original purpose of the law stems from the post-prohibition period when many laws enacted to regulate alcohol tried to limit access to it. Though Prohibition was a rousing failure, temperance groups merely shifted tactics and locally many of those early laws were an attempt to make it more difficult for alcohol to flow freely again as it had prior to 1920. Colorado’s answer was to enact laws that strictly specified which products could be sold where and that’s why modern Colorado has its peculiar alcohol landscape. But until now, the law restricting beers below 4% a.b.v. in bars and restaurants was not enforced. Increasingly, convenience and grocery stores saw that as a threat to their exclusive right to sell low-alcohol beer but were blocked time and time again from doing anything about it … until now, that is.

As is often the case, following the money does lead us to the answer. It’s about business, of course. I love this quote from Jason Hopfer, a C-store lobbyist. “Either stop selling the product we sell, or let’s stop having this false delineation on beer. Let’s let beer be beer.”

Yes, let’s let beer be beer, by all means. That is the obvious solution. To do that, we’d have to do away with Colorado’s ridiculous division that brands “beer” as anything under 4% a.b.v. and anything over it as “malt liquor.” That would be best for society as a whole, for the brewers and anyone who believes drinking lower alcohol beer while out in public is a safer idea. But as you might expect, the businesses that have benefited from these state-mandated monopolies for over 75 years are loathe to level the playing field. I think it’s simply an unknown. It doesn’t appear certain who would benefit or be hurt the most if all Colorado businesses could sell any strength beer. But it would change things considerably. And change is scary.

As the Denver Post story makes clear, nobody in the effected trade groups seem particularly concerned because they believe that when the next session of Colorado’s state legislature begins in early January, that the obvious absurdity of what this law would create will be addressed and fixed. Maybe, I’ve never followed Colorado’s state politics too closely so it’s hard to know how reasonable that belief is. But surely some of the politicians who supported this amendment with the language it currently uses had to know what the actual consequences would be. That’s perhaps the scariest thing of all, that they could accept the business argument in this case, ignoring the all too obvious negative repercussions. Save the Session Beers!