Ah, beer. If you really want to start brewing beer or mead, I suggest a copy of New Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. It's a good guide on everything you need to know, and you don't need to read the whole thing to get rolling.
Not ready to buy a book? Making beer is EEEEEEEEEEazy. Here's the basic process:
Boil water
put grains into a cloth bag and boil em
Add hops if needed - sort of a dried flower
re-boil the water - now called wort
Add malt extract
re-boil it for an hour or so
add finishing hops.
cool the wort
Once it's cool enough, add yeast and let it get to work.
After a week or so, the yeast will have converted various sugars into alcohol.
Bottling/kegging time:
Add priming sugar and bottle the beer or
add priming sugar and keg or
keg it and force carbonate it

The priming sugar gives the yeast a final snack to generate the carbonation.
That's it, you just made beer. The malt extract is a cheat, but you can make your own from grains, it's just another process.

Once you've familiarized yourself with the basics, locate a convenient home brew shop. My local store is 'Cool Stuff', not always the best on price, but it's fun to puruse the aparatus and the various beer kits.
At a minimum, you're going to need a big pot to boil your wort (beer bits), a big spoon and a bucket. I prefer to ferment my beer in a glass carboy - I hate plastic flavored water, and beer's got water in it.
Beer Mead
I started brewing in 2005. It's one of those rewarding hobbies that you can share.
I started by brewing mead, made from local honey.
Recently I've brewed a couple batches of beer.