Tag: NIck Diaz

NoIPApril: 30 Days With No IPAs

Dontbescared

This month I am encouraging everyone to join me in 30 days of IPA-free drinking. Let all those who see my words heed the call and take part in the first annual NoIPApril. Want to participate? It’s easy. Simply drink other styles of beer for the entirety of April.*

Why? IPAs have simply become too easy. They’re easy to find, they’re easy to drink, they’re easy to select. Walk into any bar, brewery, or taproom and you are sure to find one; more often than not you’l have several iterations to choose from. For general purposes I take no issue with this. They’re big and tasty and can encompass a wide range of flavor profiles. But they have also become the de facto choice for craft beer enthusiast across the country. While I celebrate the search for a beer containing enough hops to pull the teeth out of your head, a month off will be a marvelous thing.

Moreover, it will reaffirm why you started drinking craft beer in the first place: the choices. After cutting your teeth on fizzy yellow lawnmower beers, the craft beer movement showed that you can get a buzz on and discover something completely new. Realizing beer could taste like something other than Budweiser was profound and it drove the hunt for evermore new taste sensations. So this month, rather than scanning menus and boards for the IPA with the highest ABV or a clever name, eschew them altogether. Pick a style you normally wouldn’t. Branch the fuck out. Give your overwhelmed palate a break and use this opportunity to embrace subtlety and nuance. Seek out some Old World Styles. Try that blonde you’ve been ignoring. Delve into different yeast strains and get into Belgians, Bretts or some kind of mixed fermentation brews. There is so much beer out there that isn’t loaded with lupulin, and every bit as delicious. You just have to open yourself up to it.

Times might get tough during NoIPApril and you’ll likely find yourself needing a piney, resinous hit of the good stuff. Fear not! This doesn’t require you to forsake hops altogether, merely one particular vehicle for them. Need to feed that IBU addicted monkey on your back? Get a hop-forward pale ale. A hoppy wheat. A hoppy red, a hoppy amber, and so on. Hops are plentiful in enough other styles of beer that even in IPA’s absence you can get your fix.

Think you like IPAs now? Wait until you’ve given them up for thirty days. Come May 1 you’ll find yourself embraced in their loving, bitter arms once again, and your relationship will be that much stronger as a result. That time you bought a shelf-turd with faded, muddied flavors? All in the past! Remember when you opened that ill-advised 11% triple IPA bomber at the end of the night and woke up wanting to die? Forgotten! The two of you now have the rest of the year to become reacquainted and grow to love each other even more. If you love something, let it go they say, despite the uncertainty of its return. No worries here. You know exactly when IPAs will be back.

We all love IPAs. It is the craft beer style of choice and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. And I’m not here to encourage such a thing. But the other shoe is always waiting to drop. Tastes will change, styles will come in and out of favor. Sooner or later brewers will move on and something else will occupy 8 out of 12 taps you have to choose from. Start preparing now. Open your heart and mouth to something new. The possibilities are endless, but to experience them you might need to close the door on something else, if only for a month.

So join me, friends, and say no to IPAs. The sacrifice will be great and so to will the rewards.

*As with any rule, there are exceptions. If you need to taste IPAs for work, go right ahead. If you are at a festival, indulge. Come across something rare? Don’t pass on the opportunity to try it. If someone who doesn’t know about NoIPApril buys you a nice hoppy DIPA, drink it; good brewdiligence doesn’t mean you have be to rude. Beyond those circumstances, however, once you’ve read this you are bound by blood to comply with the month’s restrictions. Harsh penalties will be levied on anyone found in violation of the rules.

Former Boxing Champ Pascal Piles on to the Ignorance and Homophobia

Former boxing champ Jean Pascal jumped on the ignorant, homophobic train many in his sport seem to be aboard, when earlier this week he gave an interview calling out UFC star Nick Diaz.

In the video, Pascal says he would fight Diaz in the octagon, but under boxing rules. He goes on to say that UFC fighters “claim they can box. But I don’t see that,” before following up with the now tired, and not so subtly homophonic aspersion that too many boxers levy against ground fighting: I don’t get on the ground with other men.

 

“To go on the ground with another man, it’s not my thing. I’d rather to go on the ground with a woman.” he said, laughing. “I’m a fighter,” he continued. “I’m not a UFC wrestler….boxing, it’s art.”

The homophobia laced throughout, coupled with his willful lack of knowledge about grappling and insistence that real fighting takes place on the feet is as offensive as is the public’s continued tolerance of such drivel.

If one’s personal preference is for stand up fighting, that is fine. However, it is incumbent on the combat sports community to stop allowing the “grappling is gay” trope to be an acceptable thing. To say grappling is not an art, or not a “fight” is one thing; statements of that kind only demonstrate how clueless the person holding such an opinion is. But when we allow people to imply they don’t grapple because it is somehow gay, is to be permissive of a level of homophobia that has no place in 2017.

Diaz, a long time fan favorite, has yet to take a fight since serving a suspension for marijuana use. In spite of the lack of activity, there is no shortage of potential opponents. He has been called out by UFC Welterweight Champion Tryone Woodley, along with a number of UFC fighters seeking out their own “money fight,” which Diaz is perceived to be.

Pascal’s call out is further evidence of the Stockton native’s drawing power, and the depth to which  escalating talk of a super fight between Connor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather has penetrated both sports.

To paint the entire boxing community as homophobic because of comments like Pascal’s would be as closed minded as his belief grappling is gay. I’m certain there are plenty within the boxing world who respect it as a fighting art. I’m equally certain there are people in MMA with less than tolerant views on same-sex relationships; they just don’t express that by decrying ground fighting. Neither fact absolves either sport from taking responsibility for policing this kind of hate-speak.

It’s time to start calling these people out the way they are calling each other out for these much sought after money fights. We cannot respond to their subtlety with our own. They should be put on blast, their fear and ignorance hyped up like pre-fight trash talk. Don’t be scared, homie. Let’s hit these creeps where they live.