One for the road.

A few years ago, I read Greil Marcus' The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, another one of those life-changing reads. Marcus posits that there's an American collective unconsciousness lurking in the folklore of Dylan's music, and it's especially strong on The Basement Tapes, the record he made in 1975 with The Band in Woodstock, N.Y., while recovering from a motorcycle accident.

I contextualize Marcus' thesis like this: Have you ever heard a song, especially an old song, that you have no recollection of hearing before, but it gives you a sense of familiarity? It's a part of an American collective unconsciousness.

As a child, I remember looking at the cover of The Band's self-titled LP and hearing the music and thinking, for years, that it was from another time in America. That time was the 1960s, not the 1860s like I imagined. But the experience that record created was another place and another time -- the American collective unconsciousness at work.

I get the same feeling from places in America, too. Everywhere I've been, I try to absorb as much of the local folklore and history as possible, try to connect the dots to reveal the greater mystery of what it means, on a psychological level, to be an American. I'm sure I'll be doing the same thing in Louisville tomorrow.

Lucky for me, bourbon, like baseball, is exclusively our invention.

Intentions | Mirth.

I've been friends with the best man of my bridal party since second grade. From my absolute lowest to the highest, he's been a friend I could count on. And this week, he's throwing me a bachelor party where my groomsmen and I are going to get to, in his own words, "see and do some things not a whole lot of people get to see or do." When he says something like this, he means it.

We'll be meeting with Jim Rutledge, master distiller at the Four Roses distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. And we'll making the next barrel selection for TalkBeer. (As an aside, if you're into craft beer or whiskey, check out TalkBeer. You will be educated and amused.)

The image at the top of this post was our prep work, if you could call it that. We sampled 23 different barrel proof bourbons, comparing strains and mash bills. Calibration is tough work, I know. Needless to say, it was awesome. And it's only a preview of what we'll be doing.

With friends like mine, and an opportunity like this on the horizon, there can only be one intention this week, and that's mirth.