Daisy Duke and BEER2WHISKEY: What?

I'm not the kind of guy to give up on things. I'm a stubborn S.O.B. when it comes to not backing down from accomplishing something I have set my sights on. (Pretty-strong words for a slacker of my caliber.) Perhaps this should have been my approach when pursuing a career, but, yawn, nope. No, this never-give-up attitude is more about projects I begin.

I have found that solving many problems is much like trying to remember the name of that actress who played Daisy Duke in the 1980s TV comedy Dukes of Hazzard or any other actor in any other show or movie. If you stop thinking about it and let the old subconscious do the heavy lifting while you turn your attention to other pursuits, the answer will, at some point, pop into your head. It was Catherine Bach, by the way. And, for some odd reason, I didn't have to think about it or look it up.

When needing to get over some hurdle in a home-improvement project, I'll try the solutions I can think of; but if they fail, I will put the project on pause, noodling over a solution for the next hours, days or, sometimes, even weeks. Eventually, a way through will come to me. I'm not just going to throw in the towel. I have been struggling with such a problem in my greatroom-ceiling project for a year.

I installed bead board with the help of a fraternity brother over the entire greatroom ceiling a year ago last month. I just finally got around to painting it the end of September. I hung the light fixtures and ceiling fan. Now, I need to install crown molding. The issue: It's a vaulted ceiling. The extra angles created by a vaulted ceiling are a major problem. I'm no professional. Perhaps a professional finishing carpenter has a ready-made solution. I don't. Yesterday, however, I messed with it again for a while and think I've got this critter tree'd. I'm going to go ahead and order the materials and work on it during a little down time in December. We'll see.

That brings me to my video YouTube project BEER2WHISKEY. When a friend first mentioned the concept, suggesting I give it a go, I was skeptical. Would anyone really be interested in watching videos of breweries and distilleries where one or two of the core people (owners, managers, brewers and so forth) would sit down with me and sometimes a sidekick to talk about the business, their backgrounds and the products? I seriously considered the idea for a couple of months as I researched similar video projects on the Internet. The more I pondered it, the more the idea appealed to me.

I shot the first videos for it on my annual trip to the Florida Keys in July of 2017. I had a graphic artist whip up a logo over the next few weeks. In the meantime, my buddy Big Jon agreed to do a series of short videos where he and I sat down and talked about a specific beer (today's “Big Jon in 5” segments) and I schlepped my video gear to my annual fraternity brothers getaway where four of us sat down with different bottles of whiskey and talked about them. By mid September 2017, I had enough segments in the can and edited to launch the channel. A new segment has gone live every Thursday since.

I shoot these segments with two cameras. Two cameras makes editing out things much less noticeable because you can jump from one camera to the other when cutting. It also means you have backup audio. Two cameras also adds a bit of production quality sadly lacking on most YouTube videos. I invested in a second camera, tripod, lights, a 4-station wireless mic system, assorted odds and ends like extension cords and a small monitor. Of course, you need cases to cart all of this crap around. I invested in a couple of large, hard-sided Pelican Cases. This was a huge outlay of cash for a guy who at any given time is one major-appliance replacement away from bankruptcy.

As is the case for most people who launch a YouTube channel, my ultimate goal was to monetize the channel, either with enough views to begin making money from YouTube or with some sponsorships, or, a combination of the two. Yahtzee! 

Platypus Brewing in Houston, Texas.

 I decided to really put the pedal to the metal in 2018. I did a series of shoots in Houston, Dallas and Northwest Montana. These were trips on which I usually shot two videos per day over a three- or four-day period. I dragged my gear along on carmaker-event trips and shot segments in Hawaii, California and Kentucky. To date I've shot roughly 70 segments and edited 60 or so of those. They range from 6 to 35 minutes in length. I figure just editing requires approximately 15-20 minutes of my time for each screen minute. This has been a huge investment of time and capital.

What in the wide, wide world of sports does BEER2WHISKEY have to do with the first four paragraphs of rambling prose? you may ask. Well, simple, even with all the effort and investment, this YouTube channel hasn't gotten any traction. It picks up 3-5 new subscribers each month, but in the world of social media, that's like sap rolling down a tree.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast doing this. And that's a good thing because with each passing week it looks as though I'll have to settle for the joy it gives me. I may have to let virtue be its own reward.

I get all manner of suggestions from well-meaning friends about how to grow the audience. Most of them require sinking even more time or money into this project for which each segment requires about an 8-hour day total to shoot, edit and upload. I still need to work for a living.

I haven't given up. I'm too damn stubborn for that, but I have shifted into pondering mode. Coaxing a brewery into hosting a shoot during the holidays is next to impossible. So, I've got a month or so before I do another shoot. I still need to edit a segment each week, but I'll use the extra time I have to re-evaluate this project and my expectations for it.

In the meantime, I'll keep cranking out the videos. Maybe there will be a Christmas miracle. Even if there isn't, I'll be back at it in January.

The Holiday Season: Here We Go Again

I'm not the kind of guy who humbugs his way through the holiday season (Thanksgiving through New Year's Day), but I don't look forward to it either. Until 15-or-so years ago, it was my favorite time of the year. Today: not so much. Now this five-week period is more of an interruption to my schedule and a drain on my bank account than anything else. I don't dread it, but I could easily do without it.

Here's a breakdown by “special” day.

Thanksgiving. I vaguely remember, as a young whippersnapper (Only the second time in my life I've written that word and both times were today. Kind of catchy. I like it.) when we lived within a couple hours drive of family, doing actual extended-family Thanksgiving meals. You know, a kitchen full of older female family members creating traditional family dishes while the men sat around smoking cigarettes be'essing about life and the kids played outside.

When I was age six, we finally moved sufficiently far away that more often than not, Thanksgiving was just my parents and me. My sister and her family made the trip for Christmas. Working solo, my mother continued making all the dishes to which we were accustomed: turkey, chestnut dressing, Pennsylvania Dutch dried corn, jellied cranberry sauce and so forth. From that point forward, the day became more about the food than family for me.

By the time I was 23, both my parents were gone. With my mother's passing in 1975, I was cast adrift for Thanksgiving. As a Thanksgiving orphan, I've always had friends who invited me to their homes for their Thanksgiving meal; but it was their Thanksgiving meal. I gratefully accept an invitation each Thanksgiving, but it's just not the same because the meal isn't the same. Often I try to preserve some of my family's tradition by whipping up some dried corn and bringing my own cranberry sauce, but it's still not the same.

Christmas. My father died in 1973. I spent that Christmas and all but two Christmas holidays since with my sister's family in New Mexico. The two I missed fell on the Christmas after I relocated somewhere new: South Florida in 1984, and South Carolina 10 years ago. I just didn't have the money or the motivation to make the trip.

My sister's family does Christmas the way it should be done. Christmas is such a big deal to them, historically the house is completely decorated by Thanksgiving. And, I mean completely decorated. Outside and inside. My brother-in-law spends days putting a train set under the tree with its very elaborate village. There are lights, candles and poinsettias all over the house. Her adult children follow suit in their own homes. This will be the first year my sister isn't hosting the Christmas dinner. The family has simply outgrown a sit-down meal at her house. This will be yet another change.

Because I'm never home on Christmas, I don't decorate....much. When living in Florida, I threw a big holiday wine tasting and decorated for that. I don't entertain at my Greenville home. Other than some out-of-town guests, I've had people over maybe half-a-dozen times since moving here. It's not a house set up to entertain. I usually put up some outside Christmas lights, but this has more to do with making it look like someone is home during the 10 days I'm gone than it does about dressing up the house for the holiday. Taking down Christmas decorations makes me melancholy. I've always hated it. I now use the fact that I'm never home for Christmas day as an excuse not to decorate.

Along about Thanksgiving, I begin stressing out about the gift giving aspect. To whom do I give and what do I give them? The family just keeps growing. I used to have 6 people to concentrate on and now there are about 20. That doesn't even count nonrelatives. It's just a lot of pressure.

There is no way for me to look at the Thanksgiving-New Year's holiday period any differently than I do any other holiday, which is that it's a huge interruption to my revenue production. Not only am I spending all this money on travel and gift giving, but I'm not making any money. It's a double whammy. In fact, the not-making-any-money part oozes into the first week or two of January. This brings with it a lot of stress. Not that I don't have savings, but that I must dip into savings to survive this six-week or longer revenue drought. This sucks much of the joy out of the Christmas season for me.

New Year's. This is a day that to me simply means I advance the year when dating a check. At my age, I don't view the new year as a fresh beginning. I see it as being a year older and more likely that something is going to go wrong with my health, my house or a loved one. Although no one would ever accuse me of being the glass-is-half-full guy, I have always been basically optimistic that things will somehow work out. They always have for me. How else can you explain my freelancing for basically the last 20-plus years and still having my nose above the water line? But I long ago quit waiting for my ship to come in. I don't think it ever set sail.

The odds simply aren't with next year being better than this year. I'm no longer in my 30s. Things are winding down and not up. I'm not sad about this. It is what it is. I don't even dwell on it, but it does frame my perspective on the new year. I don't hate it. I just don't care about it.It is meaningless to me.

And there you have my thoughts on the next few weeks. I'll be glad to spend some time with my family in New Mexico and tip a few in honor of the holidays with assorted friends. But, this time of year just doesn't mean to me what it once did. I have lost my enthusiasm for the holidays.

Steelers: My Obligatory Commentary on This Season

I'm not the kind of guy who puts a lot of stock in professional sports teams. Those who know me, recognize that I care little about sports on much of any level. I know people consumed by college sports. I am grateful that I matriculated from a small, private Midwest college with no national profile. I don't even need pretend I care about what its competitive teams are doing.

I am the same with professional sports. Although I get the poetry of baseball, it puts me to sleep. Basketball: I barely understand the difference between a lay up and a dunk. I never liked the sport growing up and certainly don't waste my time with it as an adult. I am amazed by what hockey players can do while balanced on a razor-thin steel blade, but I'm done when the first (of several) fights breaks out. If I want to watch fights, well, I'll watch real fights. All of the ice ballet in the world can't outweigh my loathing for the constant fighting and the NHL's apparent lack of interest in really correcting the issue.

Then there is the NFL. And, I suppose, CFL (Canadian Football League) for those who simply can't get enough of following competitive sports. I am, what I would call, a casual Steelers fan. That is, I follow the Steelers, but I don't lose sleep over missing one of their games. My (whatever day of the week they play) day doesn't revolve around making sure I'm in front of a TV at kickoff. If I get to see them play, fine; if not, I'll survive. I have become even more lackadaisical about following them since I moved to South Carolina. I left my Steelers-following friends with whom I watched most Steelers games behind in Florida. Football is more fun to watch with fellow travelers.

This is my 10^th football season in Greenville. For the first nine years, whoever at the local CBS affiliate made the decision about which games would air on Sunday afternoons, no longer seems to be calling the shots. I judge he/she was a Steelers fan. Probably no more than two Sunday afternoon games a season weren't offered locally. That same person either moved on or was struck down by a bus. So far this season, only two Sunday-afternoon Steelers games have been televised locally, and I was out of town for the first one.

I'm not a fan of sports bars, particularly on “game” days. If to see a Steelers game I have to go to a sports bar by myself, chances are pretty good that I'm going to miss it. I will watch other teams play if I'm somewhere and a game is on the TV. But, I really don't care about watching other teams play. On game day I root for two teams: The Steelers and whichever team is playing the Patriots. Otherwise, I have nada real interest.

I used to usually pepper my daily then weekly Clanging Bell posts with two or three Steelers blogs during the fall and winter. Mostly they consisted of rants about what I considered to be poor play, coaching and/or officiating. I've missed so many games this season that I just haven't had much fodder for a blog. My knee-jerk reaction to the sorry-ass Browns playing the Steelers to a tie in the season opener was to fire off a scathing blog, but there is simply too much talent among the Steelers roster for me to believe that game was anything but an anomaly. Of course, at the end of four games the Steelers had racked up only one win. I was tempted to blog that Tomlin was, perhaps, looking at overseeing his first losing season as Steelers head coach. I resisted that urge; although, I did say that privately to a couple of people.

Quality of play has relentlessly improved since that second loss. The Steelers offensive line is turning in brilliant work in both pass protection and opening holes for the season's biggest surprise, running back James Conner. Le'Veon who? Big Ben is still razor accurate (mostly) and he and Antonio Brown finally seem to be on the same page. It seems no one who plays a position qualifying them as a potential point maker doesn't have at least one TD under his belt. There is no shortage of heroes.

This is how Newton spent much of his evening.

After last Thursday's robust 52-21 blowout of the Carolina Panthers, I felt compelled to blog. It was an awesome performance marred only by a questionable TD call that wasn't overturned by a review. So, maybe it was actually a TD. Otherwise, the Steelers were firing on all cylinders. Panther quarterback Cam Newton never seemed more than a half-an-arm's length from being dragged down and was sacked five times. He was hurried multiple times and hit more often than not. On nearly every Panther offensive play there were at least two or three black jerseys running around the backfield.

When Big Ben left the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter, he had thrown more touchdown passes than incompletions! Even the Steelers kicker Chris Boswell, unreliable this season, was seven for seven point afters and nailed a 50-yard field goal.

After the game Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said something to the effect of “We're really not that good.” Soundly thrashing a 6-2 Panthers team maybe something the Steelers couldn't do on a weekly basis, but for sure, this is a significantly improved team than met the Browns in week one. And, the really good news for Steelers fans, the team just seems to be getting better and better.

Retirement Is for Quitters

I'm not the kind of guy who wishes he was playing golf or fishing rather than working. Yes, oh, to be well enough off financially to laze around and not worry about money. Sadly, a misspent youth, and quite frankly a misspent middle age, put the whole retirement thing permanently out of reach. Sure, I know that unless I'm lucky enough to be struck down in the street by a runaway sanitation truck, at some point I won't be physically able to sit upright at my keyboard and peck out revenue-producing prose. I get that. If I was a roofer, I'd already be done. But fortunately, I've made a living the past 30 years sitting on my ass. I can probably eek out another decade or so doing the same. Fingers crossed.

The real issue, however, is that I'm often busier than I wish to be. Don't get me wrong: I'm not busier inflating my cash flow – not by a long shot. I am always on the market for more paying work. I challenge you to show me a freelance writer who isn't. Nope. Most of my scheduling issues are of my own doing.

I currently have two video projects demanding a fair amount of time each week. My BEER2WHISKEY YouTube channel must be fed on a weekly basis. That entails a two-to-three-hour shoot and between four and six hours of editing, depending on the subject matter. I also have my somewhat neglected of late just3thingsvideo.com that doesn't usually involve any dedicated shooting time, but does eat up two or three hours editing time. Currently, most of my just3thingsvideo.com shooting is done on carmaker media events, which adds another schedule-eating component to my work week.

Carmakers have media coming-out events for all-new or totally redesigned vehicles. These are typically two-or-three-day affairs that are scattered all across the country. On average in any given month I attend three such events. I could turn down many of these invitations, freeing up nearly a week most months, but, hey, I enjoy them. Also, at least one or two of these trips each month are at the behest of my biggest client. They are big revenue makers for me.

In the midst of all of this work and work-related travel, I always have at least one home-improvement project underway. I am still struggling with my greatroom-ceiling project that began more than a year ago. All that remains is trimming it out, but that will be a huge undertaking.

Then, because I do need a little R&R on occasion, I have a number of annual trips baked into my scheduling pie. I make a trek to New Mexico to visit my sister and her extended family twice each year: summer and Christmas. Each trip is 7 to 10 days long. I get together with a group of my fraternity brothers every year, which is a four- to seven-day commitment. For the past four or five years I have also been spending between 10 and 14 days each summer in the Florida Keys. Although the Keys trip is up in the air for this year, I'll go if the opportunity arises.

Plus there are shorter long-weekend side trips to Louisville, Knoxville and a couple of other destinations to visit friends.

Then there is this damn blog. It is my Frankenstein monster. I began Clanging Bell eight or nine years ago when work was agonizingly slow. I started it primarily to give myself something to do, as well as keeping my writing skills at least somewhat sharp. Writing, as with any skill set, must be nurtured on a consistent basis to keep it honed. Now, if I take a couple of weeks off from blogging – often because I'm just plain tired of writing – I receive verbal and e-mail grumblings from people complaining about my lack of motivation and ambition.

To all of that add that I've been attempting – not succeeding mind you, but attempting – to recapture Saturdays as a MY DAY. A day to do whatever I damn well please without remorse or guilt. If I want to sit in my recliner all day and watch movies, by God, I'm going to sit in my recliner and watch movies. I don't have anyone nagging me about raking leaves or fixing that dripping faucet, and I don't even have a pet making demands on my time. It's just me and more often than not, I still can't pull it off. There is just too much to do.

That leaves Sunday afternoon as my last oasis of Uncle Russ time in an otherwise slammed week. Come hell or high water, by noon or so on the Sundays I'm in town, I'm on my designated stool, which they save for me, at the bar in Smoke on the Water in downtown Greenville sipping a brew. Ahhh....

So, it's probably some sort of unconscious self-preservation process fogging out any wishful thinking about a life of leisure. I find fishing utterly boring. And, golf! What a colossal waste of money and time just to work myself up into a ball of raging frustration. I'd much rather work; thank-you very much.

Click here to watch the latest BEER2WHISKEY segment on the Blue Stallion Brewing Co. in Lexington, Ky.