Ear to the ground:

“My own personal ‘Sign of the Downfall’ this week was when I typed ‘Einstein’ into the Google search bar, and the first autofill suggestion was ‘bagels.’”
– Local web surfer lamenting where relativity ranks on the scale of human accomplishments
 

Along for the ride

After months of stringing festivarians along with “line-up coming soon” messages on its website, the folks over at the Ride Festival have gotten their acts together – literally. Last week, the line-up for the 4th annual festival, which hits Telluride Town Park on July 11-12, was released. However, the alt-indie flair of years past has given way to a decidedly jammier flavor, with headlines such as Widespread Panic, Gov’t Mule, Jonny Lang and the North Mississippi Allstars. Other lesser-known (at least to us) acts with intriguing names include Trigger Hippy, The Temperance Movement and Moon Taxi.

Weekend passes for this year’s festival are $175, or $375 for the VIP treatment, and camping passes are $50 for the weekend. All go on sale tomorrow, Fri., March 20, at 10 a.m. at www.theridefestival.com.

Also, if you were lucky enough to procure a Bluegrass ticket way back in November, some new acts were recently added to that line-up, including R&B/funk performer Janelle Monáe, Texas singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen and folk-pop songwriter Brett Dennen.

Green beer

You knew it was only a matter of time before hop heads and pot heads got together. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Washington D.C.-based craftbrewers DC Brau and Colorado’s Oskar Blues released what is believed to be the first ever mass-produced “marijuana flavored” beer (we say “mass-produced” since we’re sure at least someone out there has tried to brew beer with pot.)
If it sounds like too much of a good thing, fear not. The new beer, called “Smells Like Freedom,” only is said to taste like marijuana – no real weed was used in the brewing process.

“The idea was to make a beer that, obviously, does not have cannabis in it but sort of could emulate that flavor or aroma profile as closely as possible, being that hops themselves are so closely related to cannabis,” DC Brau co-founder Brandon Skall posted on the brewery’s blog.
The 7-percent IPA, which was brewed in both Colorado and D.C., is described as “a big, juicy hop-bomb of an IPA with a nice medium body ... notes include resiny, piney, earthy, sticky, cannabis and white pepper with aromas of cannabis, tangerine and sugar-coated ruby red grapefruit to entice the drinker.”

Sure, it may smell like freedom, but one can’t help but wonder: Does it taste like bong water?