Tag Archives: booze

A Pair of Brown Eyes

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The bar at the Montana Ale Works is a rectangular version of King Arthur’s round table. The beeristers and beeristas scurry about inside the beerena, flashing smiles to the regs when they can afford the time. Kristin is one of those in the middle. She remembers my name, she remembers my beer. But by now, that’s not a surprise. I have achieved accelerated regularization with the help of John.

One the other side of the elongated rectangle is a pair of brown eyes. Dark eyebrows arch. Long hair cascades over bare brown shoulders. Between the expressive eyes and the spaghetti straps crossing the graceful shoulders is a giant horizontal stainless steel pipe, punctuated with taps. The space between her graceful neck and her intriguing eyes is a mystery.

In front of her is a drink of tantalizing color. The simple amber of whiskey. She dangles a finger into the hooch with languid nonchalance, swirls it around, then lifts her graceful digit, pregnant with suggestion, to her lips. At least I assume that’s where it ended up. We can only imagine what that was like when her finger reached her lips. It was slow. It was beautiful. It was all in my head.

Still, sitting where I was, I was finally privileged to see her smile. Toothy. Confident. Happy. I bought her another scotch. Anonymously. I made extra-double-sure that Jen would not rat me out. Why, why would I buy a woman a drink and work so hard to make sure I gain nothing from it, not a thank you or even a glance in my direction? (There certainly were no glances my direction, either before or after the drink arrived in front of her.) Why? Because I’m stupid. Or maybe I’m just chicken. I’d never sent a drink over to a stranger before, so maybe I just need practice.

No, it was just stupid. I’m just not a buy-a-drink-for-a-stranger kind of guy. Buying a woman a drink is step one to picking her up, and that’s something I’m hopeless at. My style is more the wear-her-down-over-the-course-of-weeks kind of style. It doesn’t work very well, I can tell you that.

Thanks!

Get Drunk!

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Chris just got dumped by Christina. Or something like that. His buddy is trying to take his mind off his woes.

“It’s Saturday, you don’t have anything to do, you don’t have a girlfriend, so get hammered.”

“Chris, have self-control. Get shit-assed.”

“Chris, I won’t get you any fries until you finish that up.”

“It’s summertime! It’s warm out, you’re wearing a white shirt, let’s hit Hops.”

“Get stumblin’ drunk, Chris. Get druuuuuunk.”

“They’re all waiting for you. Janine, Laura, Natalie, they all want to see you drunk. I promised them I’d get you drunk.”

“Heather’s a beautiful bartender. If she says drink, you drink.”

“What shot do you want? I’ll get you a shot of Johnny Walker Red.”

To Heather: “He has an evil girlfriend. An evil imaginary girlfriend.”

“Dude, Chris, get down to it. Get into it. Get it done. I bought you a cigar, I bought you some drinks, let’s do it. There’s many beautiful girls waiting for us.”

“I’ve got my Dao. I passed out, I didn’t even touch her.”

“Dude, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you out if you need it.”

(Holding a basket of fries away from Chris) “Every drink, you get a fry.”

“You’re an amazing guy. Just fucking start drinking.”

“You used to be great fun. Then you started dating these horrible women and they sucked you dry.”

“Hey, dude, you’re the one that determines when we get to start eating the fries. I’ll give you twenty seconds to finish that drink.”

“If you don’t drink I’ll give the fries to the guys at the bar.” He turns to a couple of guys at the bar. “Hey, dude, you want a fry?”

They have joined the guys at the bar. Buddy: “do you remember the days when you used to be a man, and you used to have fun, and you used to go fishing? These guys heard your story. They feel your pain. They want to buy you a shot.”

All I can say is, I want a friend like that in my corner. It makes breaking up worthwhile. The buddy is now pimping his friend to the cute women at the bar. They’re interested.

Chris, through all of this: “I have to stay in control, man. I have to keep my head.”

My message to Chris: Take it from a guy almost twice your age: keeping your head only goes so far, buddy. I was married, and I was the one that kept my head. I was the one who stayed calm and in control. Through the swings, through the ups and downs, I was constant, conservative, and predictable. I never raised my voice and never held a grudge. Solutions to problems were negotiated rationally. For that very reason the marriage was doomed to die, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Chris, you have to open up sometimes. You have to howl at the moon and make a stand. You have to do stupid things. You have to beg for forgiveness and you have to forgive. You have to let the passion inside show on the outside.

I think back on some of the times I’ve gotten butt-royal wasted (man, what a good phrase) with some of you out there that read this. We’ve all had our moments in the sun and in the gutter. Sometimes you have to let go. If that means your buddy carries you out of the bar over his shoulder, well, all right then. If you don’t let go, if you don’t trust your friends to catch you when you fall, you’ll hurt your buddy’s feelings, and, worse, you’ll forget your own.

Thanks!

Oooooh, My Head

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I’m not suffering, but I certainly feel less than tip-top. My concentration is shot, my eyelids are on the scratchy side, and my brain feels like something you find at the back of the fridge.

What’s your favorite hangover cure?

Thanks!

Wine Tasting

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Miles: 315.3
Location: Grover Beach, just south of Pismo Beach in Central California.

Went wine tasting. It was good. I didn’t drive. That was good. Sentence, three words. Three words good. Right now the other five people in this house are all packed in the kitchen, making dinner. The ingredients going in are excellent; it remains to be seen they can compensate for having five (argumentative) chefs to make a meal for six people. Oooh, it’s complicated.

By the time I got up this morning (6:30), Mikie was heading out to go fishing with Art, who was already long gone (He gets up at 4:30, and he’s retired. How messed up is that?). When questioned by the distaff about what he would do with any fish he caught, he said, “It’s all catch and release.” Since none of us believed that he would catch anything, we were prepared to take him at his word.

When he showed up 45 minutes later with two fish in his bucket, No one seemed surprised that the “and release” part of his plan went out the window as soon as he managed the “catch” part. It seems Art decided that he would clean and eat the fish rather than buy a lobster for the big seafood dinner we were planning for the evening.

We spent the afternoon in the Templeton area visiting wineries. Had a lot of different wines, some very good, others not. We stopped by the pier to get our seafood but lobster season ended last week. We got a ton (… well, OK, 5 pounds) of shrimp and a load of clams as well. Dinner was good, and the wine drinking continued apace. Fun was had by all. Fell asleep watching Amazon Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.

Hmm… A relaxing day, but not really the kind of entry that’s going to keep you glued to your set, is it?

Thanks!

A Czech Tale

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The first night we stayed with Marek (pronounced marrrk), and there is a story there, but not the story for today, children. It ended at 6 am with a long cab ride. Ask me for the story of Marek’s parents some time over beers. Weird.

So a couple more nights like this follow, and Phil and I are feeling pretty run down. We decide to head over to Telc (pronounced teltch), as it is a very nice little traditional czech (pronounced check) town with a very old town center. Phil (pronounced fill) called his focus-puller and cameraman friend Tomas (pronounced toMAHSH – it would be more obvious if I could type the accent marks) to see if he wanted to come out and play. He replied that he could join us for a while, but that he had been up all night playing bluegrass music with his old band, and he was very tired, so couldn’t stay out late. Whew! An easy night at last.

We met up with Tomas and his girlfriend Dasa (pronounced dasha) in the town square, and went to the restaurant owned by a friend of Marianna’s (probably not really spelled that way) named Ivan (pronounced eeVAHN). Dasha was heading back to Prague that afternoon, and once she was gone Tomas seemed much more interested in hanging out. He cancelled plans to go and edit a documentaty he is working on and invited us over to his house. Uh, oh (pronounced here we go again).

At his house we met his parents, who were really very cool. They gave is beer, and after a little conversation Tomas’s mother complained that we weren’t drinking them fast enough. Tomas and his father played some music for us, and dad showed us some of the american folk and bluegrass albums he had collected quite illegally during the communist times.

After a while Mom came back from the kitchen with some sausage and bread and cheese, a traditional czech snack. The sausage had been made from wild boar by a friend of theirs only the day before. I’m no sausage expert, but this was pretty tasty. Then dad got up and came back with a vodka bottle. Not to worry, he quickly said, this was not vodka but slivovitce (pronounced, more or less, SLEE-vo-vit-seh), a drink made from plums (was it plums? it’s all so hazy now) and very alcoholic. This had been made by a friend of his. It was pretty tasty, but I had to be careful – if I let my guard down for a moment, my glass was refilled. There was some other really sweet cherry booze that we tried also, but apparently it’s purpose is to give the women something to sip while the men drink their slivovice. Talk about your good hosts. There was also plenty of good conversation, with Tomas and Phil being very diligent with translations.

Well, of course after that there was nothing Tomas wanted more than to go out drinking. We went to a little bar near the center of town (the town is small enough that almost everything is hear the center of town), and bellied up to the bar. Tomas is the only czech I have been with that even considered sitting at the bar. Tomash was barely staying awake until a bunch of women showed up. Nothing came of that, but that got him going again and then there was the whiskey… It’s hard to find good scotch in the czech republic, but that night we did. We had a good time discussing movie stuff – My brother (for my sake) and Tomas (for his own) thought it would attract the women over to us if we were talking like we were going to film a movie in town. Of course it didn’t work, but we did come up with a really good steadycam shot involving two cranes and all kinds of people moving around. (Apparently cable cams aren’t good for shots that require tight sound synchronization. Who would have thought?)

So there you have it, just another day in Cesky Republiky (prounouced Cheskie rePOOblikie).

Jerry (pronounced jerry)

Thanks!