Tag Archives: beer

An interesting crossing

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I sit now in a large plaza in the town of Maó, the largest town on the island of Menorca. Pigeons strut about in idle hunger or relax on the warm ground; they take no notice of the older one in their midst. The elder bird scruffy and worn, but the others do not see their own futures in the other bird; they are not reminded of their own mortality. They are just pigeons, after all.

I am partially in the shade, with my legs protected but my black sweatshirt soaking up the sun. I sit, uncommonly comfortable, and I ask myself, “what happened last night?” I’m not sure, really, but something happened on the boat between there and here (whoever here is). Alcohol happened, that I know. A pretty girl cried on my shoulder. I stood in the wind watching the sea slide past. All those things happened without a doubt, but I think maybe something else as well. I just can’t put my finger on it.

Alcohol happened, and plenty of it. Alcohol on a boat, on a moonless night. On deck, near the bow, I the professor (“Is that Mars?” “Actually, that’s Antares, who’s name means ‘Not-Ares’, the greek name for Mars.”), enjoying the night with Cassius and Brutus, and of course dear sweet Emily. (Some characters in this little drama may have appeared previously in this blog under different names, but that’s not important.) We gathered, a tight little bunch. Emily is a proper and well-spoken English girl, and the rest of us, well, we are who we are, only last night all the more so.

We met Emily as we marched out to board the bus that would take us to the boat. Brutus was immediately very solicitous and helpful (as the married member of our little trio he obviously knew more about how to treat women than Cassius or I), and we learned that she was coming to Menorca to be with her family, and that she had just broken up with her boyfriend two days prior. As Professor, I prescribed her medication: alcohol. She was already ahead of me, and specified gin and tonics.

Alcohol happened. We sat in the bar for a while, then adjourned to the walkway outside, standing in the warm Mediterranean breeze and mist, chatting and laughing. The bar closed, we covered our rather astonishing tab, and still we stayed out there. After a while Cassius disappeared and returned a short time later with more beer. I received this bounty with joy, and didn’t ask too many questions. Cassius, crafty and fearless, had found a way to overcome the classic “Closed Bar” problem, a conundrum which no member of Star Fleet had ever managed to win before. And so, alcohol continued to happen.

As did Emily. Emily happened; dark-haired, blue-eyed, witty and intelligent, she happened. Brutus connected with her easily, attentive and helpful, friendly without being forward. Cassius, well, there’s a price to be paid for being crafty and daring — it leaves one cynical and acerbic as well. Not the way to win over the ladies, which just feeds the cycle. Finally there was Professor, me, exercising my limited knowledge of astronomy and other subjects, a roller coaster of lugubrious prattle and long silences. In the course of things, while alcohol continued to happen, Cassius left to liberate more of the beer unfairly trapped behind the closed bar’s bars, and Brutus went to bid farewell to some of the beer that had already served its purpose. I was alone with Emily. I asked a question — I don’t remember what — and she began to cry, happening in great sobs. She missed her ex. She was not happy about the breakup, not at all, and had been soldiering on with strength and courage before my question broke through her crumbling defenses.

Awkward, uncertain, I stood close but very far away, wanting to offer comfort, baffled, afraid. This is where you make a gesture, this is where you give someone what they need without thought of yourself. But, but… She’s a stranger, she’s a pretty girl, she’s a wounded bird, vulnerable, and anything I do is open to misinterpretation. (And, come on, let’s be honest here, it’s not like the thought of sharing a bonding moment with her didn’t spin enticing possibilities deep in my head. I’m not dead.)

I did what any silver-tongued smooth operator would do. I asked her permission to give her a hug. Holy crap, of all the things I could have done, short of pitching her over the side of the boat, that had to be about the lamest thing possible. Pathetic.

She didn’t answer, so I bit the bullet, swallowed hard, and hugged her. She really let loose then, and there’s nothing to say but she loves him and they’re broken up and she feels lost and alone and she wants him back and he was supposed to be traveling with her and and and…

Things I didn’t say: “It’ll be all right.” “I’m sure you will get back together with him.” “You’ll feel better in the morning.” I couldn’t say those or a hundred other things. Empty words, signifying no more than do the grunts and squeaks of a monkey at the zoo. Or, at best, lies. So I held her, searching for something to say that would make her feel better, but there was nothing, nothing but pain and contact, tears and silence. It was an honest silence, though, and it was the best I could do.

Brutus returned and immediately offered up the phrases I couldn’t. Perhaps she needed to hear them, perhaps they would even turn out to be true through some blind chance. Who was I to say? At that moment, however, his words felt hollow. Cassius returned, beer-laden, and after a couple of attempts Emily recovered her game face and banter slowly got back to safer topics. When she pulled away from me I felt the place she had been, empty now. Again.

What happened last night? Perhaps the question seems strange, since I just told you what happened, but there, alone in the darkness, it seemed like something else had moved, something I still can’t put my finger on. Alcohol happened, and a pretty girl cried on my shoulder. In the end she was grateful to all of us (especially Brutus — cheerful, giving Brutus). After everyone else went to sleep I returned alone to the walkway. I, Professor, stared ahead into the moonless black, and failed once again to determine if the sea foam was luminescing or just reflecting the last of the lights on the ship. The answer was inconclusive, as was the answer to the more pressing question: what just happened?

She had asked for my email address and this morning I gave it to her, but I don’t think I will hear from her again — unless, perhaps, she knows the answer to my question.

1

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How To Tell If You’re Living the Good LIfe

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The day before yesterday, a bunch of us met to go bowling. We sat around upstairs too long, however, and missed our chance. We made reservations for the next day and repaired to a beer garden nearby to enjoy the springtime sun while sipping Gambrinus. Plan B was an unqualified success; we shifted from table to table as the sun went down, clinging to its rays until there were none left. After I took my leave from that group I stopped off at the Little Café Near Home to write for a bit, but I was immediately sucked into conversation with other patrons. Lucky thing, too, because I had forgotten I had agreed to meet Martín the next day to go over the English subtitles he was writing for a short film.

The next day (the “yesterday” referred to above) I woke up bright and early to get some work done before the training session at the bowling alley. Yes, that’s right — this wasn’t just a bunch of people hanging out drinking beer and bowling, this was a group of potential recruits for the Czech national ice bowling team. Sheboygan, here we come! (I don’t think people have quite realized how serious fuego is about this. He’s recruiting the documentary team already.) Training was fun, but boy did I suck. I was drinking non-alcoholic beverages; maybe that was the problem. While I did my best not to fall down, fuego burned up the lanes. After that (and the obligatory beer and pizza tactical session that followed) it was off to the little café for me.

I started in on a pesky sentence until it was time to take a break to work on the subtitles for the decidedly odd short film. For instance, toward the end the main guy wakes up and finds that forty-seven girls have moved into his apartment. They don’t speak at all, they just stare at him in silence. It’s really quite funny. That was fun, and then it was back to work on the sentence. I spent a total of about two hours working on the thing; it’s almost right, but not quite.

I wound up staying at the Little Café Near Home for seven hours, editing, editing, endlessly editing. It was quiet in there, and the new new bartender (as opposed to the now-old new bartender) is starting to figure me out. I had too much tea, then poured a beer or three on top, in what I have dubbed the “poor man’s speedball”. Toward the end of the evening I was just reading parts of Monster that I especially liked, and not really pretending to be working anymore, although I did pick up a couple of errors.

Then it was home, where I talked Soup Boy’s ear off for a few minutes (I blame the chemicals), followed by sweet slumber. A good day, indeed.

Thanks!

You know you have the right sorts of friends when…

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Beer consumption:

Negra Modelo: 38
Fat Tire: 33
Red Stripe: 31
Bud Lite: 0

Not one Bud Lite for the entire three hours of the ho-down. Sweet.

Thanks!

Bevins

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It’s taken a few days for me to feel this. John Bevins was a friend of mine. I sat on the bar stool next to his, listening to his stories. I went to parties at his house, where he always put on a good spread. He was a nut, and occasionally a right bastard, but he was always a friend. He was the kind of man whose passing the world should mourn.

I don’t really know that many facts about him. Facts, perhaps, are not as important as understanding, but here are the facts I know:

But through a miracle of logistics, he would have died with all his friends when an artillery shell hit his tent, tearing the rest of the occupants to little tiny pieces.

He was a patriots fan.

He liked Amstel lite, from the bottle, in a chilled glass.

He smoked dope.

He loved his son.

When he needed space, you gave him space.

When you needed a good word, he gave you a good word.

He once chased a man half his age down Garnet Ave in Pacific Beach after the guy had hit a girl. Bevins looked out for his own, and he was generous to those who needed his help.

He is gone now, and the world is less for it. I will miss his passion, I will miss his quirks. Most of all, I will miss his friendship. And his boat. John Bevins, here’s to ya. You were a good egg. The rest of us, this weekend, let’s hoist an Amstel from the bottle, in a chilled glass, and henceforth September 2th shall be Bevins Day.

Patriot, drinker, fisherman, friend, he shall be missed.

Thanks!

Cheap Beer Place

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After writing that last bit I stayed in Cheap Beer Place perhaps a bit longer than I should have. I was nursing the beers and nursing the batteries, giving me plenty of staying power, but the ol’ laptop had been in my backpack quite a while when the three guys asked if they could share my table. Things were getting crowded in my section of the bar, after I had spent the afternoon as king and sole patron. Time had passed, shifts had changed, and my favorite waitress had given way to some new guy, who was obviously a rookie.

The three guys were all right. They were younger, Slovak, and there for the dancers. I’ve never been able to figure it out. Cheap Beer Place has, on seemingly random nights, girls who dance without very much on. They do this as the rest of the bar continues its normal vibe, ignoring them completely. They’re just part of the background. I think, if I was hired to be sexy (no worries there), it would suck to be completely ignored. But that’s how it goes, there.

The lads I was with actually approached the evening with much more gusto than the average customer. When the first dancer started they all moved their chairs around for a better view. They made little effort to include me in their conversation, but that was all right with me. Striped-shirt-guy even went over and talked to the dancer for a while, joking and chatting and getting nowhere with her. The dancer did her job, however; I decided to stay for one more beer. As my refreshment arrived so did three more guys, older men, also Slovak.

The mood at the table instantly soured. Striped-shirt-guy in particular was not happy to see the newcomers. One of the new three sidled up next to him and put his arm around the young guy. They left for a while. One of the other youngsters explained to me that we were the only two heterosexuals at the table. The elder batch gave off a predatory air. It gave me the creeps.

I don’t get hit on in bars. It’s just a simple fact. Well, while I was trying to flag down rookie waiter to pay and get the hell out of there (Prosim! Prosim! Zaplatim! dammit!) and the mood at the table was swirling down the crapper, I was hit on. Hard. With no subtlety whatsoever. He wasn’t vulgar (that I could tell), but he was persistent. I tried to absorb myself watching the dancers to, you know, give a hint. I’m not sure why I thought a hint would work, since “I like girls” and “NO, NEVER, EVER” (with gestures) hadn’t seemed to get the point across.

Finally rookie came by with my bill (prices have gone up at Cheap Beer Place). I stopped on the way out and told the dancer I thought she was very pretty – not a lie at all. She smiled and thanked me, also sincerely, as she slipped out of her top. What a crazy place.

Thanks!

Bud Light is Horrible

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I got some decent work done tonight, hanging at my new Ocean Beach headquarters, getting my baseball fix. I moved one short story to the next level, thanks in large part to Jojo’s criticism. (There is nothing more valuable to a writer than a good critic. I am blessed with several. Friends who back you no matter what are one thing, friends who tell you when you’re full of it are another, and are infinitely better friends.) It was not a word count day at all, I was weighing each word carefully, climbing inside its implications, weighing the symbolism, and generally having a good ol’ time.

Amy called. “I left the door open for you,” she said.

“So, then, you’re going out tonight.” She is still trying to make things work with her ex. Last night it was “Screw him! I don’t need that shit!” Things have changed in the last 24, it seems.

“Uh, yeah. But help yourself to anything in the fridge.”

I am home now. The beer in the fridge is not beer. It’s Bud Light. I popped a bottle open, thinking to myself, “I’ve had worse,” but swallowing was difficult, and I can think of no reason to put more of that into my mouth. It is bad. Really, really bad. It redefines awful. In the short term, it is worse than getting your teeth knocked out by an angry Russian hockey player who hasn’t bathed since 1984. Long term, it’s a tossup. [Exercising the journalistic restraint for which I am justifiably well-renowned, I have deleted the reference to the vomit of a rabid pit bull who ate a skunk road kill that had been baking under the Texas sun while buzzards pooped on it.] Bud Lite is bad, bad, bad.

If Bud Lite had no taste at all, that would be an improvement. But for all that it doesn’t have very much taste, what little it does have is retchingly nasty. I am staring at the new stylish bottle, and I know I am looking at one of the world’s most popular beers, and I am flabbergasted. People drink this crap on purpose! I’ve heard them, in bars, requesting the stuff when other beers are available.

That’s not to say that any other pisswater lite beer is any better; I just haven’t had the pleasure lately. But people, please! When you drink this stuff, the terrorists have won.

Thanks!

Shooting – Day Two

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After a successful first day and a good night’s sleep I was floating across the clouds, feeling the return of prose to my cluttered and overtaxed little brain. The drive out to the location was glorious, and (as I have already written) I felt like a writer again. When I reached the White Horse Mesa Bar things were just getting underway. Pirates were milling about, waiting for makeup. “How’s it going, Jerry?” asked Nobby Pete, shaking my hand.

No need to feign enthusiasm. “I feel friggin’ fantastic this morning,” I said, or something like that. I went through them like a tornado of enthusiasm, and I could feel the mood lifting in my wake. Not that the mood needed much lifting anyway; things were going well and the pirates were already building up their reserves of chaotic madness. Today we would be shooting interiors, picking up from where we left off the day before.

There were some worries – flat performances by Ruthie and Miguel the day before threatened to undermine the production, and there just wasn’t enough food.

For all I appreciate the good work that the Duke City shootout is doing, and the unbelievable opportunity they are giving fuego and me, I do have a couple of bones to pick. One of them is about the food. I was told the catering budget for each crew was $200 a day. We have a big crew and we knew that we would have to pick up some of the slack, but this has just been ridiculous. Next year I’m going into the catering business. If Duke City Shootout is paying two hundred clams for peanut butter sandwiches, somebody is getting rich at their expense. At lunchtime Rudolph drove to the Route 66 Casino and rounded up a buttload of tacos to supplement the meal. That made him very, very popular with the crew.

Partly because of the lack of food I skipped breakfast and left the set before lunch time. No sense making things even worse. I had things to do in town anyway, and I wanted a chance to do some writing. I headed for our “Production Office”, the Flying Star Café on Central, where they have free Internet. I took care of some communications, farted around for a bit, and set to writing. A good way to spend an afternoon. I was in my happy place when I got a call from Rudy: “Can you go to the Bird and get us another keg?”

My stress level jumped in an instant, partially fueled by one too many free refills of Iced Tea. Imagining that production had come to a screeching halt I hustled over to the place we had purchased the first keg. “I’m working on the movie with Rudolph,” I said. Rudy had told me they would know the name and could put the new keg on the same tab.

“I don’t know anyone, and I don’t know nothin’ about no movie,” the man answered, responding to my stress with stress of his own. I took a breath to calm myself. It didn’t matter. I just needed to buy a keg. They were out of the sort of beer we had started with, so I explained that we needed whatever beer looked most like the first. It took them a moment to realize I didn’t care in the slightest how the beer tasted. We would just be pouring it out, anyway.

Finally, armed with a few gallons of crappy American light beer I was on the road, gobbling up the miles between the suds and the stymied crew. I blew into the parking lot in a cloud of dust, jumped out and hauled the keg out of the passenger seat. Other people watched me with vague disinterest. “Do they need that inside?” Charles the First asked.

They were not out of beer. They had been planning ahead. Imagine that.

I stayed at the location for the rest of the day, generally not being helpful but enjoying watching the process. After we wrapped for the day, even farther ahead of schedule than the previous day, we paused and had a couple of beers. We were in a bar, after all.

I gave Giovanni a ride back into town, talking shop, mostly. He was on the phone, trying to arrange his next paying job, hoping to exchange the work for more equipment. He was thinking about how much better our opening car shot would have been if we had a longer boom and a remote-control head that could move the camera as it hung way down in the car, tilting it as the boom lifted and the car pulled away. We talked a little bit about writing; he asked if any of my novels would make a good movie. “Yes,” I said with complete confidence. I may be the wrong guy to ask, but The Monster Within would make a great movie. My answer got Giovanni to thinking. “fuego thinks it would take about $80 million to do it right.” Giovanni was a little taken aback by that, but not too much. “Keep making contacts,” he said.

1

Thanks!

Gold Class, Baby!

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fuego and I went and caught the new Star Wars movie the other night. I’d heard it didn’t suck as bad as the previous two, so I was up for it. It was the day for my czech lesson, and that just happened to be in a part of town with a theater fuego had been telling me about.

Gold Class.

Here’s how it works: You pay too much for your movie ticket, then before the movie you hang out in the lounge paying too much for beer. While you’re out there, you tell them when during the show you would like them to bring you more beer. You give the staff your seat number and pay too much for the beers they will bring you. Not American prices, mind you, just more than you’re used to paying here.

When the time comes they open up the doors and everyone goes in. By “everyone” I mean all forty people, if the show is sold out. it doesn’t take long for everyone to make their ways to their La-Z-Boys, settle in, and get comfy. Feet up, reclining, appreciating the sound system, I was ready to do some serious movie-watching. Well, almost ready – the previews were just finishing up when the first beer arrived. Bravo!

I suppose I should say something about the movie as long as I’m here. I’m happy to report it did suck less than episode 1. I never saw Episode 2 (not in English, anyway). fuego and I exchanged some snide comments during the movie; at one point the Obi-Wan has nasty little robots crawling around on the outside of his spaceship. Skywalker pulls off some flying miracles to clean them off. You know, because Jedi knights can’t manipulate matter from a distance. Oh, wait. they can. They just seem to forget that at the most inconvenient times. Yoda, at least, seemed to keep some grip on his own abilities when faced with crisis. It was the same in the Matrix sequel: If the power you have imbued your hero with is inconvenient, pretend it never happened. Didn’t someone ask the writer, “Hey, wouldn’t he have used the Force here?” And probably someone did, but the writers were too lazy or not creative enough to invent situations that would truly be a challenge to a jedi, instead hoping that we wouldn’t notice.

There were times the writing was terribly hackneyed, and times good writing was massacred by bad acting. Samuel L. Jackson put in his worst performance ever in any movie, somehow caught at the center of the vortex of stupid lines delivered badly. It hurt to watch sometimes.

On the other hand, Sith-boy (I must confess I don’t know the actor’s name), the new Emperor who will take three more movies to overcome, did a really good job. So many movie productions forget that not only do you need a star as the hero, you need a good actor for the villain. The power of Star Wars has always been the bad guy: Darth Vader, Darth Maul (I was sorry to see so little of him), and Sith-Boy. This guy has been all that’s buoyed up the last few episodes, though Frank Oz has helped as well.

I was interested in seeing this movie because it presented a great storytelling challenge: spin a good yarn that holds up even though everyone in the audience knows the bad guy is going to win. Send people home satisfied. But it’s a great opportunity as well, to write a story where the good guy wins but the seeds of his destruction three movies later are planted. “Into exile go I must.” “He still has good in him, I know it.” “Don’t you remember? you killed her.”

One more bitch: R2-D2, in this episode, could fly, combat dozens of war-droids, and generally kick ass. I missed one part where he got away from a bunch of bad guys or reduced them to scrap or something because my next beer had just arrived, but you get the idea. Compare this to the little trash can that gets captured by the glowing-eye guys in episode IV. Did all those systems break in the intervening years? Sure, sure, I know it’s hard to keep a story consistent over that great a scope, but don’t you think as they were writing R2 into the prequels they would have asked, “hey, why didn’t Obi-Wan recognize R2 in episode IV?”

Call me a nitpicker if you want, but stuff like that bothers me. I know what it’s like to try to get all the little pieces of a big story to work together, but they had friggin’ years to get it all together. The last night before they called their script final, they should have sat down and watched the original Star Wars. Their best work. They should have asked themselves two questions: “Do they fit?” and “Does this cheapen the original?”

Of course, episode IV, the original, had nothing to live up to. Partly because of that, because there was nothing to compare it to, it became the definition of the best, and Lucas has been behind the eight-ball ever since, getting castigated for making movies that are merely good, and hearing people like me say “Back when I was a kid your movies weren’t nearly as childish.”

In the end, I think the difference comes down to acting. The original had a bunch of unknowns (not for long) and one recognized great, who played in an action movie with grace and aplomb. It is unimaginable to me that lame, flat, dead, stilted acting like I just saw would have been tolerated on the original production. If you’re blowing a million bucks a millisecond on VFX, perhaps you could say, “Let’s do that scene one more time. This time, pretend you’re acting.”

It may not sound like it, but I really didn’t think the movie sucked. It was better than most other pre-constructed blockbusters. I’ll tell you this, though: I could have done a lot better. A lot better. I could kick that movie’s ass at a fraction of the cost. With a mere seventy million dollar budget I will make a movie that outgrosses all the Star Wars movies combined. I guarantee it. So come on, Hollywood, put your money where my mouth is.

Meanwhile, if the movie’s huge, spectacular, and overhyped, there’s only one way to go. Gold Class, baby.

Thanks!

Hollywood Nights in Prague

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Today began the shooting on fuego’s Top Secret movie project. They didn’t mention to fuego at the start the Top Secretness of the movie, which led to an ugly moment for the wayward Second AD, but now things are safely under wraps again and you can rest assured that none of the details of the film will be revealed herein.

There will be a few details about the kickoff party, to which fuego graciously invited me. I met lots of cool film people, mostly on the production side, and I enjoyed myself quite a bit. When we first arrived a very pretty girl greeted fuego warmly, and when her hints went completely ignored there was no ruboff on me whatsoever. It was only a matter of moments before she was being groped by the director and the director’s brother. The director, who I believe fuego now refers to as “Barbara” (rhymes with knee-high sloth), had his name on the back of his t-shirt and I think the shirt had his picture on the front but I may be wrong about that. It was dark and beer was free.

After Barbara (rhymes with knee-high sloth) and the girl disappeared for a while the director returned and came over and sat where fuego and I were hanging with some other folks. Actually, he didn’t sit, there was a couch along one side of the table and he sacked out on it. Maybe sacked out isn’t the right word, either — his posture wasn’t sleepy but he was very relaxed. He didn’t sit, he didn’t sack out, what he did was lounge, and he did a damn fine job of it. We talked for a bit and he seemed like a good guy, considering his name is Barbara (no offense, Mom). He even seemed genuinely interested when I said I was a writer, but his interest waned when I could cite no major publishing credits. By then he’d partially opened his fly and had his hand down his pants, making extensive and protracted adjustments. I found it difficult to converse in those circumstances.

I met another girl who fuego told me was the girlfriend of another friend of his. I’m guessing that won’t be the case much longer, although I suppose that depends on the sort of relationship they have. At one point, briefly, I thought she was hitting on me. I convinced myself that couldn’t be the case and at any rate I wouldn’t do something that could put fuego in a bad spot with his buddy. When she started hitting on the other guy there was no doubt. Sorry, Mortimer (rhymes with hairy).

This pseudonym thing is fun!

My mistake was going to Roma while I waited for fuego to finish work. It’s not that I had very many beers at Roma, and I didn’t have that many at the party, but combined, it was just too much. As far as I know I only made a complete ass of myself with one other person, but the potential number of people who are now saying, “I like fuego (rhymes with pill) but his brother (rhymes with dairy) is a jerk” is pretty large. I think for the most part I was fine, but that one chick was annoyed, if not downright cheesed. We won’t go into it. Other people were still smiling at me at the end of the evening, and at least I kept my hand out of my pants. And everyone else’s pants, for that matter.

Luckily it was about two and a half kilometers home from the second bar; a walk through the cool predawn air was just what I needed.

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Thanks!

Welcome to Moravia. Do you want beer or wine with that?

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Now that my hosts are back in town, I will have no choice but to have a social life again. The day they arrived back in country, weary from their long journey, we were invited to a party hosted by Marianna’s mother. The travelers tried to weasel out of going, but Jirka, Mariana’s stepfather, would have none of it. Eventually we headed over there “for half an hour”. I knew before we started that this would not be the half hour that the Assyrians invented so long ago. It was more a company party than anything else; not too crazy but not many people there that I could talk to. No biggie, I had some munchies and a couple of beers and fun was had by all. At the party Jirka insisted that the next day (yesterday) we go down to their house in Southeastern Czech Republic, the region of Moravia, to pick up a car that Phil (still working out what to call my brother these days) and Marianna will now have to look after (and, worse, park).

The adventure expanded (unbeknownst to me) into an overnighter. As the time to leave approached I was finally informed that we might be spending the night down there. Despite some anxiety about stayiing in touch with Piker Press (I have a new bit coming out today and I was worried about some edits) I packed up the laptop and toothbrush (what else could I possibly need?). We packed into a car and away we went.

I was rather surprised that wedged into the car, unable to see much in the darkness, not driving, I still got some of the road feelings as we headed out.

First stop was a 24-hour roadside cafe next to the motorway that Jirka had been visiting for years. Better by one beer and one schnitzel I squeezed in with my fellow travelers again and off we went. It was dark by the time we got to the smaller roads, so I didn’t see much of the farmland. We went around a giant Soviet-built nuclear power plant (since then the good people who built Three Mile Island have checked it over and declared it safe) and to a little village not far away. Before going home we stopped off to visit the villiage priest, whose name is also Jirka. That’s when things started to get interesting (sorry about those previous paragraphs).

We went up the stairs to the priest’s rooms and when we opened the door we were met by the small of cooking sausage. Jirka the priest is fairly tall but doesn’t look it because of his big belly. He sweats a lot, and his diet seems to be composed mostly of cooked meats. His slightly shaggy dark hair is in full retreat from his forehead. After he made us comfortable he left for a moment and came back with a bottle of wine from the vinyard of a friend in his home town. Then there was the next bottle of wine. There was an unlabeled bottle of what I assumed to be homemade slivovitce (distilled plum hootch) sitting on the table, but Marianna’s mother nixed the idea of breaking that out. Still, I’ve never hung out drinking with a priest before. He was a good guy.

Just up the road was our final destination, and after more snacks and beer we went to bed. In the morning after breakfast Jirka was trying to feed me more of the sausage I had complimented the night before, and I jokingly said, “No, beer is all I need.” I thought I had made it clear that I was joking, but not too much later I was wrapping up breakfast with Pilsner Urquell. As my brother pointed out as he raised his glass to mine, “You’re not in California any more.” That’s also what he said when we passed the fitness center/bar.

Thanks!

Dateline: Prague, 6 a.m.

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I spent the afternoon writing at Crazy Daisy yesterday, sipping cool Gambrinus and trying to reconcile what I thought I ordered with what they brought me. I’ve never had deep-fried turkey before, but it was pretty good. A woman who acted like she owned the place (could she be Crazy Daisy herself?) parked in the middle of the road outside and unloaded supplies, then left her car sitting there while she sat for an hour and had a couple of cigarettes and talked to the bartenders. She just left her car there, right in the middle of the road.

There are more cars in this town than there are places to put them. Before Marianna left her folks took us out to dinner, and we cruised for some time looking for a place to park, all the while listening to Jiri say that there were too many cars and that there should be a massive automobile tax to discourage any more cars from coming in to the city. An interesting idea to discuss while in a car looking for a relatively less illegal place to park. In many areas you see signs instructing drivers to park on the sidewalks.

In a few more years there will be more parking places, I’m sure, as demand increases even further. If I were king of Prague I would prevent that from happening. Lack of parking is the only thing that stands between Prague and gridlock. (Luckily for all concerned, I am not King of Prague.)

Prague Rain, 5:30 am Well, after čty?i piva (four beers) at the bar I dropped by the pivo store and picked up je

Thanks!

Bella Roma

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I’ve gotten some good stuff done there lately. There’s still some stuff to work out in The Monster Within, but I made some serious progress tonight. There was a pacing issue at the end where it when bang-bang! and now it goes bang, rest, rest, blammo!

That’s the idea, anyway. I still have to finish writing it.

There is a Gambrinus shortage here. At the grocery store yesterday, no Gambrinus. That’s OK, there are plenty of other beers and I like to experiment. There’s one beer that’s not so great, but it’s not bad, and a half-liter bottle costs twenty-five friggin’ cents. I got one of those and a few others that cost marginally more, splurging for the Budvar.

Tonight on the way home from Roma I stopped at the little beer store on the corner (New beer run – start with no pants and no shoes. Put on shoes (pants optional), grab two empties and head out. Throw both bolts on the flat door. Elevator optional on the way down. Unlock and relock both doors in front. Sprint to the beer store on the corner. Trade in the two empty bottles and twenty-nine crowns for two full Gambrinuses. Yeah, that’s pricy compared to the grocery store two blocks away but this is a beer run. Return home, negotiating all four locks. No elevator on the way back up. Timer stops when one beer is in the fridge and the other in the freezer for rapid cooling.) and they were out of Gambrinus as well. Choices were limited, so I scooped up a pair of Pilsner Urquell. In general at the store there’s either a kind of grumpy guy (he may not be grumpy at all, he might be telling me all kinds of funny stuff in his gruff voice for all I know) or there’s a woman who calls to another woman in the back for everything she does. Tonight I got some kid. He asked me “blah, bllah blah?” which I think is “Are you returning any bottles?” because the only time they don’t ask me anything is when I return bottles, I made a sweeping negative gesture, he nodded and punched 27 into the register. 27 isn’t a bad price for tow of these beers, considering it’s not the grocery store. Then he hit the button again and I was staring a 54. Two bucks. For two beers. Granted, they were good beers, and large, but I’ve gotten used to paying a lot less, and I’m not going back baby, not in this country. Still, I bought the beers. But just for tonight.

Today must have been some sort of special Sunday. Start of Advent? I thought that should have already happened. On my way home from the bar I met a group of happy kids, dressed like angels and stuff, lighting off really big firecrackers. I had heard distant reports, and then when I was walking past the group I saw that several of them had fingers in their ears. Suddenly, KAPOW! The little bomb went off even as the kids were lighting the next one. Oh, I miss those days. Wher I got to the building there was a van parked on the sidewalk outside, and they were unloading christmas decorations. Apparently we get the christmas cheer here as of tonight.

Working back in time, I observed tonight that when frost and fashion collide, fashion wins. A couple came into the bar while I was writing. The guy looked like he had just come off the windswept tundra; he was wearing an enormous parka with a hood. He was with a tall blonde wearing her kicky little leather jacket over tight-fitting jeans, with a little midriff exposed when she held herself just right, which she did most of the time. I’m not sure they were actually a couple, because while he went to the back part of the restaurant she hung out at the bar, preventing me from writing for quite a while. But my point still stands.

So, uh, happy advent or whatever. Any excuse to blow things up!

Thanks!

Tranquility Base Here, The Eagle Has Landed

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The air is brisk today, but when I get walking I keep warm. I cut quite a figure, at least in my own imagination, walking down the street, hair and long coat blowing behind me, scruffy two-level beard (need to get some tools), and purpose in my stride. Apparently 3pm is when pretty girls take their dogs for walks. None of them so much as glanced at me. They must have been intimidated by that ineffable machismo I was exuding.

Or something like that.

Anyway, after one small memory lapse (26, 16, whatever) sent me into a fancy little wine store I found the place I was looking for. I opened the door and walked down a few narrow steps and took a left into the quiet room, found a table, and sat down.

I’m back where I belong.

I’m in a bar, with my laptop, writing. I could get to like this place. Not smoky, not crowded on a weekday afternoon, decent tunes playing, good beer. No danger of me falling in love with the bartender, either—he seems like a nice guy, but, well, he’s a guy. He just brought my pizza, a fine looking pie. He also brought a bottle of Kečup. There’s an American stereotype I had forgotten. The beer is good, the pizza is good.

Life is good.

Thanks!

Pivovarský Dům

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Snow is falling wetly outside my window, though it is still too warm for it to stick to anything. I get the impression that Prague rarely gets the winter wonderland look. I am sitting in my bed, 1.5 liters of Dobrá Voda at my side, replenishing my precious bodily fluids. They seem to be depleted this morning.

Pivovarský is Czech for brewery. Dúm, I believe, translates to “One heck of a good time.” Or was it “Yummy?” I know Marianna used that word more than once as we reduced the world beer supply half a liter at at time. At some point during the exercise we ordered fried Camembert with cranberry sauce – also yummy. “We already have bread,” Marianna said, pointing to her beer. I had several orders of bread last night.

Another reason I need to learn czech quickly: over the course of my journey I have become mildly skilled at flirting with waitresses and bartenders. It’s going to take some intensive study before I’ll be able to do that here. The waitress last night wasn’t really a flirtation candidate, but I realized that an important part of my bar-going experience was missing.

When we got back home Marianna pulled a big ‘ol bottle of Gambrinus out of the fridge. Of course, I couldn’t let her drink alone, so she pulled out a bottle for me as well. Yummy indeed. The stockpile in the fridge was greatly reduced last night. We talked about stuff and nonsense and listened to Irish music. Dang, I love Irish music. Out on the road it served as a great loneliness enhancer. It seems even in the happy songs there is a trace of sadness, and in most songs someone either dies or leaves home forever. Good stuff.

I have not heard Marianna stirring yet this morning. If she is suffering any ill effects, she will blame the fact that she had two different kinds of beer, not that she had so many beers. I think she will miss the snow; the flakes are fewer and falling faster as they melt on their trip down from the featureless gray sky.

Thanks!

Halloween

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I went out with Jesse to Joe and Jo’s last night. We sat in the cool, misty night air under the awning on the front patio and enjoyed the smoke-free atmosphere. We talked about a lot of stuff, like being happy and liking beer, about the perfect buzz, about the past and about the future. There was no table service out there, but Kelly brought us one round after I reminded her that we were her favorite customers. How that fact had up until then escaped her I’m not sure. It was a fine evening, and most congenial.

After a while a large group of kids (they seemed like kids to me anyway) gathered on the patio, all in costume. It was a birthday party. I remembered why I like Halloween so much. I’m not into getting all dressed up myself (the time I went as a ho to a Pimp ‘n’ Ho party notwithstanding), but I do enjoy seeing other people all dressed up. Especially people younger and more attractive than I am.

“That girl in the black angel costume is really cute,” Jesse said. “You should hit on her.” I just laughed. Jesse perhaps had been misled by my easy banter with Kelly the waitress and thought I could use that ability to cut a particular woman out of her party and strike up a conversation. I bet you could train a sheepdog to help with something like that. It would make a good beer comercial anyway – you could start with footage from a real sheepdog competition where the dog is separating the indicated sheep from the rest of the herd and cut to some jolly happy outdoor party scene and have a guy indicate which girl he’s interested in. The dog would run off and be cute and adorable and all that, and slowly pull her out of the party so the guy could strike up a happy jolly conversation with her. It has nothing to do with beer, but not many beer commercials do.

But I digress. Something about the beers last night is making it hard for me to stay on one subject this morning. I had no specially trained border collie, and really no urge to even try. Anyway, there is a crucial difference between chatting with a waitress and striking up a conversation with a stranger. The hired help has to laugh at my jokes and at least stay close long enough to see if I need anything. They’re a captive audience. That gives me the time I need to wear them down to the point where someday they actually are happy to see me. I estimate that takes about three and a half weeks of regular exposure.

In fact, this is a measure of just how successful I was with Kelly. I had the camera with me last night, so I decided to take her picture. She was bussing tables on the patio and I held up the camera and said, “Hold still.” She held still and smiled dutifully, but it was gloomy outside and my first attempt didn’t come out well. “Can I move yet?” she asked. “Hold on one more sec,” I said. “Because it’s raining out here,” she finished. I made some big points then. (In my own defense she did come in under the awning and give me another chance to take her picture.)

It will be interesting to see how much the process is further slowed when I’m unable to flash my rapier wit in Czech. (When I put it that way, maybe it’ll help if they can’t understand what I’m saying.) I should be working harder to learn the tongue of my soon-to-be-adopted home. They conjugate nouns there, those wacky czechs.

I wonder if American Culture Poisoning has grown in the Czech Republic to the extent that people dress up for halloween. I hope so. That’s something I’ll miss.

See? I got back to the original topic eventually.

I’ve noticed a lot of people here in the coffee shop with buck teeth this morning.

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Thanks!