Category: booze

goin gin

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

At work, we use a Microsoft Access database to keep track of the cases we investigate. It’s a simple database. It’s designed to give us a case number for each investigation, record the type of case, has a place for us to make notes. Very basic stuff.

In The Before Times, everybody would keep the database open on their desktop for convenience, but when we started working from home we discovered that Access doesn’t work well over the VPN we’re using. It’s very slow and when more than one person is in it, it gets very janky and sometimes makes records disappear, so we adopted a policy of only one person in the database at a time, and we would notify each other in a chat room when we were going in.

One of my coworkers has a set of fingers which almost always fumbles the phrase “going in” so it comes out “goin gin,” and whenever she does that, I feel it’s my obligation to find a gif of somebody hoisting a cocktail glass in salute, or mixing a cocktail, or drinking straight out of a gin bottle. Turns out there’s an infinite number of gifs out there on the subject of drinking liquor. I wonder why.

new years eve

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

I thought I would have to fire up the snow blower for the first time in 2019 when I woke up in the morning of the very last day of that year to a fresh snowfall. My snow blower’s gasoline engine is reluctant to start after it’s been sitting unused all summer, so I dressed up in my warmest winter coat, knowing I could be out in the subfreezing weather for a while. As it turned out, I didn’t so much as lay a hand on my snow blower. There was less than a half-inch of snow on the driveway; if I had wheeled out the snow blower to remove that, it would have seemed to me at least like the most egregious misuse of a power tool imaginable. It was a preposterously simple matter to clear the driveway in just five minutes using the snow shovel. I wasn’t even winded when I finished. I probably could have used a push broom.

One of my neighbors, who owns one of the largest snow blowers I have ever seen, does not have the same reservations about how and when to use it that I had about mine. He’s one of those “I paid a lot of money for this power tool and I’m going to use it” kind of guys. His snow blower is taller than he is, and has a mouth wide enough to clear half his driveway in a single pass. After a heavy snowfall, witnessing it make short work of waist-high drifts of snow is an impressive sight to behold. Seeing him use it to clear a half-inch of snow is another thing entirely. I was at the end of my drive, clearing away the inch-high ridge of snow left behind by the city snow plow crew after they cleared our street, when I heard the roar of his snow blower coming to life. I stopped what I was doing and used my shovel as a prop to rest my arm on while I watched him follow his behemoth to the end of his driveway, maneuver it through a 180-degree turn, then follow it back up to his house, all the while wreathed by the faintest haze of snow thrown into the air as a thin, insubstantial whisp that blew apart in the breeze the moment it exited the chute off the top of his snow blower. He tried to make a bigger production of it by spending some extra time at the end of the driveway making sure he got all the snow left behind by the city plow, but it hardly took him five minutes to do the whole thing. I bet the engine on his snow blower didn’t even get warm.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have even bothered to shovel so little snow off the driveway because I’m pretty lazy when it comes to yard work, to be frank. I should probably hire some of the more enterprising neighborhood teenagers to cut the grass and shovel the driveway, but as well as being lazy I’m also a skinflint, so to this day I still do my own mowing and shoveling and other yard work, but only when I feel I absolutely have to. Yesterday afternoon was one of those times. Our good friends, Becky and John, were coming over later in the afternoon to go out to dinner with us, then come back to our little red house to spend new year’s eve playing games, and I didn’t want them to have to trudge through even as little as a half-inch of snow, because who would do that to their good friends?

We had a very casual dinner at a popular local pizza parlor not far from our house. We figured we’d have a quick dinner there, then return to play games while we noshed on some snacky foods and finally toast the new year, not necessarily at midnight because none of us are spring chickens any more. We ended up spending a bit more time at the pizza parlor than we had planned, about three and a half hours! I can’t account for this. It’s normally a popular place but there didn’t seem to be any more customers than we usually saw; in fact, I spotted empty tables and stools at the bar from time to time, but the wait staff were obviously running their legs off. We didn’t even see our waitress until about fifteen minutes after we were seated when she paused briefly — and I mean very briefly — to apologize for then wait, then add she’d be back in just two more minutes before she dashed away again. She didn’t give us enough time to ask for water. And she wasn’t back in two minutes.

When she did come back, ten minutes later, she stayed only long enough to get our drinks order before rushing off again. We managed to slip in a request for some fried cheese curds, too, but just barely. She swooped in to dive-bomb the table with John’s beer minutes later, explaining his order was easiest to fill because it came in a bottle. Becky got her cocktail about five minutes later, while Barb’s sat at the end of the bar at least ten minutes, for some reason. I got my beer last, many more minutes after B’s cocktail was delivered. If I recall correctly, the cheese curds arrived after we all raised our glasses to toast the new year, but the waitress didn’t take our dinner order until we were burping contentedly after finishing off all of the cheese curds and had nearly made our way to the bottoms of all of our drinks.

So you get the idea: service was slow and the main courses didn’t arrive until well past the time we thought we’d be on our way home. We weren’t in a terribly big hurry, though, so it’s not like we felt like complaining about it, but damned if we wouldn’t make fun of it a little bit.

Back at our little red house, I popped open a bottle of bubbly, poured a glass for everyone and we shared a toast to the new year, again. Then we played a very silly card game that required us to shout out words and phrases that were improbable under any other circumstances that didn’t involve prosecco, and had a pretty good time doing it.

getaway

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

My Darling B and I drove up to Door County last weekend to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and to get away from the rat race for a while. We both took Friday and Monday off, then planned to drive up on Friday and stay Friday and Saturday night, returning on Sunday afternoon so we would still have Monday to do weekend things around the house like clean and garden and be lazy.

To stay true to our natures, we waited until the last possible minute to book a place to stay or even to choose a place to go. About two weeks before our anniversary B googled a few tourist destinations in northern Wisconsin she might possibly be interested in, but that was just about all either of us did until two or three days before we were thinking of leaving. When it finally came down to the moment when we had to shit or get off the pot, I believe I was the one to suggest doing to Sturgeon Bay and bimbling around Door County for the weekend, an idea B was happy enough about to go along with me.

gratis

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

My Darling B and I went to the El Dorado Grill for dinner on Thursday night. It was restaurant week, as if we needed an excuse to go out to eat. We were looking over the menus when the waitress came over to ask if we wanted to start off with something to drink, which sounded like a great idea to me, so I ordered a martini. B told me later that when she asked, “Do you have a preference on the vodka?” I made a face like she’d just waved a dead squirrel under my nose. That must be the face I make when people ask me a question that seems to be completely disconnected from what we were just talking about, because at that moment I was thinking to myself, “Vodka? Is there vodka in a martini? I don’t think so. Why is she asking me about vodka?” It came and went, a quickly-passing senior moment, when I remembered that vodka martinis are a thing, but I still fumbled around for a bit trying to tell her that I wanted a martini made with Hendrick’s gin. Turned out that I got all the Hendrick’s gin left in the place, about two or three ounces, which they turned into an acceptable cocktail, but because it was smaller than they usually make them, they treated me to it, on the house! The best-tasting martinis are Hendrick’s martinis, but the most delightful are free martinis.

booze

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

In a scene from an episode of True Detective that we were watching the other night, the characters played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey passed a pint bottle of Jim Beam between them, each taking a generous swig at the end of each line of dialogue before passing it back.

This was not the first television show or movie where we’d seen people knock back the hard stuff like it was water. And no, I’m not stupid, I know it was water, like I know it’s a television show. But I have to wonder, are there people who really drink like this? Or even close to like this? If I drank like that, I would be unable to speak by the time we got to the fourth swig. I like a drinking buzz as much as most people, but one beer and I’m already there. There is no way on earth I can drink a half-pint of whiskey and keep on talking so it makes any kind of sense. I have my doubts that anybody can. Not only that, but in the show we watched the other night, Matthew McConaughey’s guy kept not only drinking but snorting coke and remained lucid. I’m pretty sure nobody can do that. But what the hell, it’s television.

bourbon jenga

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

We played Bourbon Jenga last night, which is like regular Jenga but with cherry-infused bourbon. You can use regular bourbon if you like; it doesn’t have to be infused with cherries. It doesn’t have to be bourbon, either, but then it probably wouldn’t make sense to call it Bourbon Jenga. You still could call it that, I’m not going to stop you. It’s a free country, theoretically.

Anyway, Tim came over last night, thinking that he was going to have dinner with us but finding out as he came through the door that B & I were just on our way out to yoga class. Our instructor was recovering from a sinus infection that knocked her out for last Monday’s class but she was feeling well enough again to talk us through some restorative yoga exercises that mostly involved very heavy breathing and trying turn all the way around to face the same way as my butt. Couldn’t do either very well. I’m not a huffer-and-puffer kind of yoga guy; I think I get the importance of controlling my breath, but I don’t see why it’s important to make a big production out of it. Maybe that understanding will come later. And I’m not flexible enough yet to turn all the way around like an owl. I’m not sure that’ll ever come to a guy with a back as tired and crooked as mine, not that I won’t keep on trying. Our instructor can fold herself all the way over so she can stick her head between her knees, so I can see with my own eyes that it’s possible. I just can’t comprehend doing it myself yet.

By the time we got back home from yoga it was almost eight o’clock. Sean announced almost as we came through the door that they had been too hungry to wait for us, so Sean fed himself from the kitchen and Tim ordered take-out from the Indian place up the road. And kudos to him; that’s some of the best Indian take-away anywhere in the city. B & I were mighty hungry, though, so we sat down and tucked into the sloppy joes that B made earlier and left warming in the oven. When Sean caught the aroma, his face lit up and he took a seat at the table to devour a sloppy joe, too.

Then came the Jenga. I’ve wanted to play Jenga for weeks now. Can’t say where I got the hankering, but it’s been there long enough that I mentioned it to B a week or two ago and she put in an order with Amazon last week. I think it came in the mail the next morning. Same thing happened to the cook book I ordered and wanted to give to B for Christmas. I thought it would come maybe a couple days later and I would be able to fish it out of the mail before B would see it, but no, it came the very next day and was in a big bag with all the other stuff that she ordered from Amazon, so naturally she opened it. I didn’t even know it was in there until I heard her say, “What the hell?” and turned around to see her holding the cook book with a look on her face that went from puzzled to shocked realization to Oh Shit I’ve Opened My Christmas Present Early. I kissed her and wished her a Merry Christmas.

Okay, so back to Jenga, which became Bourbon Jenga when B got out the jar of infused bourbon and ladled out a shot for everybody while I set up the Jenga tower. We didn’t make it a drinking game; there weren’t forty-two overly-complicated rules about when you had to drink, it was just Jenga with drinks. Play the game, enjoy the bourbon, have a good time. Those were the only rules. We had a little trouble with the first one because I just wanted to play the game but B wanted to follow the instructions. Who reads the instructions for Jenga? But eventually we sorted that out and the game was played, the bourbon was enjoyed and I think everybody had a good time.

adventures in brunch

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

Note to self: Merchant does not open at nine o’clock Saturday morning for brunch, as I thought because that’s what they advertised on their web site. We found a somewhat cryptic explanation for this on their front door where, etched in the glass under the Saturday hours, it says they open for brunch at nine on “farmer’s market Saturdays.” We had to guess that they were talking about when the farmer’s market is on the square because, as it just so happened, one of the reasons we went downtown this morning was to visit the farmer’s market at the Monona Terrace, where they meet during the fall months. In the winter, the market shifts to the senior center down the street from the Overture Center. There’s a farmer’s market every Saturday year-round. So Merchant shoulda been open. So there.

But they weren’t, and we had our hearts set on brunch and besides, we were hungry. My Darling B suggested we could visit either Marigold Kitchen or Graze; I plumped for Graze because I love their bloody Marys (do you drop the y and add ies for more than one bloody Mary? There’s a Will Safire column out there somewhere that covers this, but I’m not going to stop right now to look) and off we went.

Except that Graze didn’t open until nine-thirty. Figures.

Options: Wait outside Graze’s front door until they opened. Pros: Tasty bloody Mary; delicious food; one of our favorite places to eat. Cons: Waiting sucks. And there was the weather to consider. Specifically, it was twenty-five degrees outside and we’re both great big wimps. We bugged out in the direction of The Old Fashioned. Sorry, Tory. Maybe another time.

As we crossed East Washington Avenue, we passed a woman who was perhaps in her 80s and dressed rather flamboyantly in a lime-green dress, red jacket and a wide-brimmed red hat. When she was just two or three steps away from us she shouted at the tops of her lungs, “I’M RED HAT MAMA!” My Darling B, to her credit, didn’t react at all, just kept on walking. Turned out that Red Hat Mama wasn’t shouting at us; it was just something she shouted at irregular intervals. She shouted the same thing again when she was about twenty feet past us, and kept on shouting as she walked down the street.

The Old Fashioned was virtually empty when we got there. If you’ve ever been to The Old Fashioned, you know that this is very weird because the place is usually packed to the rafters. The Old Fashioned is everybody’s favorite place to eat and drink on capital square. The host seated us at a table in the front by the window and there were just two other people seated there, but that didn’t last long. In the hour that we were there, the place went from nearly deserted to standing room only.

Apparently there was a Badger game later today, which I cleverly deduced from all the people dressed in red and wearing Bucky Badger hats. I’m pretty sharp that way. It’s also my guess that it must be something of a tradition to eat brunch at The Old Fashioned before the game, because groups of five to ten people dressed in red were walking in the front door more or less continuously the whole time we were there.

The bloodies at The Old Fashioned were quite different from the bloodies we’ve had just about anywhere else. They weren’t as boozy, for one thing. Our favorite bloodies are the ones they make at Stalzy’s Deli. They’re very tasty, but they give me just enough of a buzz that sometimes I wonder how much vodka they dump in those things. The Old Fashioned makes a nicely spicy bloody topped with a pickled egg, a skewer of cheese curds and a dill spear. There’s also a thick slab of beef jerky jammed down one side of the glass that’s maybe a little more than casual drinkers like us can handle. Not saying it was bad, just that maybe it’s enough to say we saved the jerky for our doggie bags with the rest of the leftovers. Maybe I’ll get around to gnawing on it later tonight for a bedtime snack.

It’s worth noting that our meals were eye-poppingly huge. Seriously, our eyes popped out of our heads and wagged back and forth on stalks. Everybody was pointing at us, but we couldn’t help ourselves. I generally think of brunch as a light meal. I ordered ham & eggs. The ham slice was three-quarters of an inch thick and about six inches across. Who eats that much meat at a single sitting? I ate about a third of it; I’ll be eating another third tomorrow for lunch and the final third on Monday for lunch. B ordered chicken fried steak; she took home enough to feed Coxey’s army, too.

The walk back to the car was long enough that our lips were numb and we opted to skip the farmer’s market this weekend and just pick up what we needed at the grocer’s. Told you we were wimps.

pacnw day 1

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

We thought we were making pretty good time to the airport, but it turned out we weren’t: We arrived shortly after 4:30 am and got through security by 4:45 am – not enough time, unfortunately, before the announced 5:00 am boarding time for us to kick off our annual vacation to the farthest reaches of the known world (aka the Continental United States) in our most traditional manner, breakfast sammies chased by a couple of bloody Marys at the Great Dane brewpub.

And even if we’d had enough time, the Great Dane was experiencing a few technical glitches that would have prevented them from obliging us. They were serving complimentary coffee only because the people at the cafe across the hall let them borrow a couple big insulated pump-carafes, or whatever they’re really called. We grabbed two cups to go and tried to sip them as we hurried to the other end of the terminal, but that didn’t work out too well, and to avoid having to fly all the way to Portland soaked in coffee we’d managed to splash all over ourselves, we nonchalantly dropped our cups in the garbage and speed-walked through the airport.

With high hopes, we boarded our plane. Frontier Airlines promised us when we bought our tickets – promised us! that there would be free drinks on the plane, but if we’d read the small print we would have learned that they ended their free drinks policy the week before we started our trip. Bummer, again.

Grabbed a banana and some OJ while waiting at Denver International Airport. Just wasn’t the same. Heavy sigh.

The only available seats on the flight from Denver to Portland were singles, but the nice lady at the boarding gate changed seats around so we could sit together, so there’s one other good thing that happened to us in an airport today. Still no free drinks on the plane, though. Gripe, gripe, gripe.

As the plane was getting ready to depart Denver, we overheard a couple of the flight attendants saying that a fire at a Chicago air traffic control building had forced airports all across the Midwest to shut down. Suddenly the no-drinks policy didn’t seem like such a big deal. We got out of Dodge just in the nick of time!

The taxi ride from the Portland airport to the B&B was pretty dull. Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s just that we’re used to a much more, shall we say, thrilling experience. Other cabbies seem to have trouble dividing their attention between driving and talking, for instance, and end up wandering from lane to lane, or narrowly missing a collision. Cabbies in Portland, by contrast, are deliberate, careful and not very chatty at all. Thanks, Portland cabbies!

The driver who picked us up at the airport had some kind of Slavic accent and at first didn’t seem to understand our directions, but when we offered to repeat them he waved us off, saying, “Okay, okay, okay!” Swell, I thought. Here we go on a scenic tour of the city, and fired up Google maps on my smart phone to see where he was taking us so I’d be able to call for help. Damned if he didn’t drive a beeline across town straight to the street our B&B was on. Okay! Okay! Okay!

While we were in Portland, we stayed at a B&B that was different from all the other B&B’s we’ve ever stayed at in that it hadn’t been all dolled up; it was just a great big house with lots of rooms upstairs. No themes, no showcases or shelves heaped with nick-knacks, just a big house with clean rooms at a decent price. I would recommend it if I didn’t think people would be disappointed that there wasn’t at least a collection of old tintype toys in the parlor.

After dropping our bags off at the B&B, we found the bus stop and rode into town, our destination being the Deschutes brewpub in the Pearl District of downtown Portland. We were starving for some grub and, well, it just so happened that they also brewed beer there, so we figured we’d try some of their beer too. If we had to. But when we got there, we found it wouldn’t be open for almost twenty minutes, so with time to kill we doubled back one block to Powell’s Bookstore.

All we were going to do was take a quick look around to see if it was as fabulous as we thought it would be, and OH. MY. GOD. It was more fabulous! I wandered further and further away from the lobby, getting flashbacks to the days and weeks we used to spend wandering the aisles of The Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver. When I realized how far away I’d gone, I doubled back to find My Darling B, but she had apparently wandered away, too, so I walked up to one of the many desks where the staff sat waiting to help people like me and asked, “If I were a used hardcover copy of The Caine Mutiny, where would I be?” The young lady behind the counter punched the name into her computer and asked, “Is that the one by Herman … Wouwulk?” (She couldn’t figure out how to pronounce “Wouk.”) (To tell the truth, I’ve never been able to, either.) Long story short, I walked out with a copy of The Caine Mutiny that very night, and not just any copy but a hardcover of the first printing with the original dust jacket, wrapped in cellophane. Squeee! That was literally THE book I most wanted to find at Powell’s.

B&O at Deschutes Brewery Portland ORWhen I finally caught up with B again we both really badly needed something to eat and drink, and it was past time for Deschutes to open, so out the door we went. The brewpub was just a block from Powell’s, so we didn’t have to walk far to satisfy any of our cravings. Before we even glanced at the menus, we ordered tasters from the tap list, a pretty slick move on our part, I gotta say. They served a half-dozen on a time, served on a wooden paddle with numbers seared into the little cutouts that held the glasses, each number matching a number on the drinks list so you could tell what you were sampling. This is why drinking beer is so much fun.

The food, it has to be said, was delicious, too, or maybe it was just that we were so hungry and the beer was making us happily relaxed. No. It was good food. It was bar food, sure, but good bar food. B had an elk burger, because what else are you going to have when there’s elk burger on the menu, and I had the special, something marinated pork something, and ate every bit of it. Gad, that was good.

We took a stroll around the neighborhood after lunch, partly to get the lay of the land and partly to walk off the food and beer. Or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever. We ended up walking along one of the main thoroughfares in this part of town, West Burnside Street, and I figured out (by Googling “portland sign”) that the big “Portland Oregon” sign we saw on the way into town was on top of a building next to the Burnside bridge, so we kept on going.

Well. The stretch of Burnside leading up to the bridge is in quite a colorful part of town, let me tell you. Leaving out the dozens of people laying on the sidewalk, almost all of whom want to know how much money you’ve got in your pockets (is it just me, or is that creepy as hell?), there are a number of establishments offering to satisfy your desire to stare openmouthed at women who have the skill set to work in a place called “Pussycats Live Nude Review.” And standing just outside these places are men talking about the show. Not barkers trying to talk you into going inside, just guys – they were all guys – talking about the show in no uncertain terms. We hurried past.

A little further up, closer to the bridge and on the north side of the street, is the entrance to Chinatown, flanked by stone dragons guarding either side of a tori gate that has seen better times. Lots more people were camping out on the pavement in front of the boarded-up shop fronts. We got the feeling that Portland’s Chinatown has seen better times.

B&O at the white stag sign Portland ORTo go the final hundred yards up the ramp to the bridge we had to step over a dozen or two more campers before we were finally, finally far enough up the road to snap a couple selfies with the sign in the background.

Just to fill space here, I’ll tell you that the sign has only recently been changed (in 2010, according to Wikipedia) to read “Portland Oregon,” and that it seems to be known most widely as the White Stag sign, after the sportsware maker that used to occupy the building under the sign. Not that we knew that when we took the photo. We just wanted something to remember Portland by, and the sign looked too cool as we rode the taxi into town.

It was getting on in the afternoon by this time and we needed a pick-me-up. B did a little Googling – we love our smartypants phones – and discovered there was a cafe run by Stumptown Coffee Roasters not far from the bridge. All she had to say was that it was one of the places in Portland that we had to check off our list and I was in it!

Our route to Stumptown took us past a Voodoo Doughnut shop. This was also one of those places that visitors to Portland feel they absolutely must check off their list. We saw more tourists with pink Voodoo Doughnut boxes than we saw homeless people; that’s a lot! But we were still full from Deschutes, and I didn’t feel like standing in a line for doughnuts, even if they were infused with more testosterone than a teenaged boy. Honestly, a hot espresso sounded much more enticing right then.

Stumptown didn’t disappoint. I’m no espresso connoisseur, but I liked what they were serving. B was happy with the chai latte, too, although they didn’t do much with the foam art at this particular place, I have to say. I don’t know from beans, but I know they’re supposed to draw a leaf or something on top.

Our pick-me-up gave us the steam to get back to Powell’s, this time for an extended visit. We both wandered the stacks until about five o’clock, picking out a few choice books for souvenirs. B bought a cookbook so big, there are killer asteroids that can only dream of having the mass of this book so they can smash planets to rubble. I found a set of Time-Life books about the moon landings that were almost as big and heavy. Powell’s shipped them all back home for about twenty-two cents. I don’t know how they do that, but wow.

We wanted to stop for a beer before we went back to the B&B and the guy behind the cash register at Powell’s recommended Bailey’s Taproom, which looked pretty cool but was jammed full of people when we got there. Right across the street, though, we found several tables open at Tugboat Brewing Co., a microbrew serving some yummy brown ales and stouts. The place doesn’t get a lot of love on Yelp but we thought it was just the place to rest our weary bones for a half-hour or so after walking all over downtown Portland.

We at dinner on the back porch of Caro Amico, a little neighborhood restaurant not far from the B&B. Cozy place, good food, and they’ll let you take the rest of the wine home if you don’t finish the bottle. A+++ would definitely slurp up a bowl of spaghetti there again.

cheeseball

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

It’s been kind of a long week, so it wasn’t surprising that last night after we got home, we kicked off our shoes, found a couple of cocktails and settled in to the most comfortable furniture in our Little Red House to watch Rio Bravo.

I’m sure something’s wrong with the commas in that sentence, but I can’t figure it out right now and anyway, My Darling B will drop me a note with all the necessary corrections after she reads this.

The work last week wasn’t particularly grueling, but there was a lot of it, so knowing that we wouldn’t have to go back for a couple days was a special kind of relief, and we celebrated it with something like cosmopolitan. I have no idea what a cosmopolitan is other than a cocktail that was apparently made famous by its association with the television series Sex And The City, or maybe it was Sex In The City. That particularly crucial cultural touchstone didn’t get touched by me, so all I know about it is that it has something to do with sex and cities and maybe cocktails.

The cocktail My Darling B mixed wasn’t quite a cosmopolitan because she was missing one or more of the ingredients, so she improvised and christened it a Mononapolitan. It was tart and it had a lot of vodka in it. I had just one. One was enough. Two or more of those and I probably would’ve ended up sleeping on the bathroom floor. I’m too old for that shit.

But I did pop open a beer just before we started watching Rio Bravo, because we rustled up some grub from the chuck wagon just before we hit the trail. If that sounded really corny, it’s probably because it’s a really corny movie. Wikipedia says Rio Bravo is considered Howard Hawks’ best film. I haven’t seen a lot of the films Howard Hawks made, but I would guess there weren’t any cornier than this one, so I’d change “best” to “corniest.” And I mean that in a good way.

It’s also the longest western I think I’ve ever seen. No, wait, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was way longer, by about forty-two hours. That’s got to be the longest movie ever made. But Rio Bravo is plenty long for a cheeseball western. They could have easily shortened it to two hours if they’d cut the musical numbers – Dean Martin sings a duet with Ricky Nelson, then Ricky sings a duet with Walter Brennan; I told you it was corny – but then you would’ve had a movie starring Dean Martin without a Dean Martin song, and what sense would that make? Or they could’ve cut the many scenes where Angie Dickinson sashays around the room in her underwear, but same thing about not making sense.

Altogether after the long week, the Mononapolitan, the long, cheesy western and the beer, I was ready to hit the hay. And I’m here now to tell you that hay was well and truly hit.

left hand

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

smiling daveI think we spent more on taxis last night than we did on beer! We grabbed a cab into town for our nightly visit to Madison Craft Beer Week because we planned on taking advantage of the shuttle bus that Hop Head Beer Tours was running between cap square and the near-east side of town (thanks, guys!). We wanted to stop at four different places, and it would have been rude to stop and not sample the beers at each place, so we incurred a little added expense getting there and getting home again, but it was definitely worth it.

We started at The Old Fashioned, where Central Waters was pouring many of their tastiest beers. They have so many tasty beers, it must have been a tough job picking the ones they wanted to feature. Wonder how I can get that gig? I tried a very hoppy session beer that I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve forgotten the name of. I can enjoy hoppy beers but My Darling B, delicate flower that she is, can hardly sit across the table from a glass of hopped-up beer. “Smells like armpits,” is her comment, every time. I kinda like the smell of my armpits. Guess that explains that.

Then we ambled down the street to The Cooper’s Tavern to see what Left Hand Brewing was offering, and got the most pleasant surprise of the evening: Good Juju ginger ale. Just delicious! I would have sworn there were orange peels in there but the brewer said nope, just ginger. Very nicely done! (Their Milk Stout Nitro wasn’t too shabby, either!)

Feeling mighty peckish after that, we crossed the square to Natt Spil for a bite to eat. Note to self: The chips & salsa platter is a LOT bigger than you think it will be. Plan the rest of your menu accordingly. (We were satisfied with just ordering a hummus platter to round out the meal. I think we got our recommended daily allowance of carbs. Maybe even weekly allowance.) Oh, and the beer: we sampled several draughts from Widmer Brothers Brewing. Marionberry and Raspberry Imperial Stout, to name just two, but unfortunately none of them were strong enough to dominate the chips & salsa so I can’t say anything about them, really. Bad move on our part.

Then we jumped on the shuttle bus to ride down to Schenk’s Corners where B wanted to try the bourbon barrel-aged stout offered by One Barrel Brewing. I’m not discerning enough to notice much difference between beers aged in bourbon barrels – they mostly give me the impression of sticking my head in a bourbon barrel, not that I’m saying that’s a bad thing. Well, if it were full it might be a bad thing. Never mind. B liked it but thought it would be a lot better if it aged a year or so.

We called Union Cab to pick us up from One Barrel, then stepped out to the curb just as a cab was pulling up! “Did you just call a cab?” the driver asked us after rolling down the window. B told him that she had. “He’ll be along any second,” he explained, then drove away. Odd. But then another cab appeared just minutes later, so the first guy was right. Still pretty weird.