The Mug Club

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice party Black Lotus throws every year for the "Mug Club" members. This is when "The Gift" arrives, their Belgian Ale that is so yummy.

Seeing Is Believing

In a previous post I mentioned my nephew Erik's beer, and how good it was...well, now you can see for yourself...

Prolific

Sorry about the wave of posts yesterday, but as the great blues guy John Lee Hooker once said:

"I heard papa tell mama, let that boy boogie-woogie. It's in him, and it gots to come out!" - Boogie Chillin', 1948

Hello Pollen

Well, I see allergy season is in full effect for me again. It always hits me sometime around late May, early June. And it hits me hard, like a big old nasty lead pipe. I get all the various flavors: sneezing, red runny eyes, terrible itchy mouth and ears. That's the worst part, the itching. It makes me want to take a big wire brush and scratch the roof of my mouth like I was trying to get burnt chicken kabob residue off the grill.

It makes me really tired too. And it's hard to breathe. I feel like a bull sea lion is up on my chest, relaxing in the sun. Reading a magazine. Drinking a Corona. Chatting up a cute cow.

Allergy meds make me even more tired, so I'm in the waiting-for-it-to-stop phase.

Moving to Antarctica is a serious possibility.

Growlers

growler n. One, such as a dog, that growls. A small iceberg. Informal. A container, such as a pail or pitcher, that is used for carrying beer.

Dennis brought some summer beer over this week and we got the season kicked off in grand style. The stories and adventures are always bigger and better in the summer. Summer is my favorite season. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I love to eat outdoors, and we have a rule that unless there is hail, rain, pestilence, or perhaps a tornado, the family will be out there, sipping and eating and talking about larger-than-life summer things.

Nice Girls & Flappers

It happened in a darkened, cave-like basement bar in Tempe, Arizona, popular with the college kids, sometime in 1991. I think it was called "The Rat Cellar", or something. My mother and brother Brian were both visiting from Michigan, and we were out getting a bite to eat.

At the table next to us, five or six cute ASU girls were drinking beers, from the bottle. Nothing unusual for a child of the 70's like myself. But for my mother, raised during the depression and dust bowl years, that was atrocious. Like smoking, swearing, and listening to Jazz, "nice" girls just didn't do that back then. Flappers did.

Not able to take her eyes off the offenders, she said "Look at that...Brian, have you ever seen girls drink beer from a bottle before?"

Without pausing, my brother said "Mom, I've seen girls drink beer through a funnel!".

The look on my mother's face can not easily be described. It was somewhere between surprise and bewilderment, with a touch of disgust.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Brian has accused me of revisionist history, and says this really happened in an Indian Restaurant in Michigan. Perhaps, but the story is still funny as hell. So there... :)

Big Butt & Smooth Skin

OUT ON THE TOWN

Act I
Scene I

[Cozy but drafty pub on Woodward Avenue. Old warehouse with high ceilings and highly varnished wooden floors. Second floor with a nice view down darkening Woodward. A guy and his pretty wife are sitting at a booth having micro-brews and eating better-than-average bar food. They are ready to move on to their next adventure but the waitress is nowhere to be seen with the check. A mid-90's alternative rock song plays in the background, something by Collective Soul.]

Dave, getting a little anxious: "Where is that waitress with the big butt and smooth skin?"

Heather: "Smooth skin?"

Dave: "Yes, and big butt."

Heather: "Smooth skin?

Dave: "Y....yes."

Heather: "You noticed her skin?"

Dave: "Yes....er...um...and her big butt?"

[The big butt is irrelevant to the issue, and is summarily dismissed by Heather. It's the skin that matters here...]

Heather: "The big butt is out there for anyone to see, but you really have to look hard to see that she has smooth skin. I would rather have you say she had nice boobs."

Dave: "She reached her arm right in front of me, and I saw her skin! Big deal. Besides, she doesn't have nice boobs..."

[Guys. We never learn, do we?]