I’m a Yankees fan, but sometimes my friends can talk me into joining them for a nice and relaxing minor league baseball game.  Such was the case when I made my first visit to the Mets’ new Citi Field last week.  A visit that I eagerly anticipated–not for the baseball, but rather upon learning that Garrett Oliver had crafted some special brews for the ballpark’s Danny Meyer-owned concession stands.  This was especially exciting considering new Yankee Stadium’s lackluster beer and food selections.

Shackmeister Ale  (The Shake Shack)

ABV unknown

The most “famous” of Citi’s beer and food selections, this pale ale is also available at Manhattan’s two Shake Shack locations.  Just like its out-in-the-real-world counterparts, The Shake Shack concession is known for its overwhelmingly long lines, up to two or three innings waits I have been told.  Thus, I had no plans to stand single file with the hoi polloi, especially considering I find the highly-regarded Shack burger to be just a tad overrated (Lucky’s in Hell’s Kitchen has a burgerstand burger just as good and the wait will be like a hour less for you).  However, that all changed when a light rain delay sent the crowds home early and I was able to unzip the nylon ropes, slap the stanchions out of my way, and march straight to the front of the line where Dat (pictured above) gave me a foamy pint of the Shackmeister as well as some acupuncture advice (thanks, Dat, my lumbar region has never felt better).  The Shackmeister is a solid enough beer, quite tasty with nicely balanced English malts and Glacier hops, and an unexpected lemony zest and summery spiciness.

B

Blanche de Queens (Box Frites)

4.5% ABV

I’m a sucker for common foods pronounced in their fancy European way–just makes them taste better–and such is the case with Belgian frites.  Most unfortunately, it’s a crime against Jean-Claude Van Damme to call these anything more than frozen bagged American french fries dropped into a ballpark frialator.  Available with countless dipping sauces, I was excited when the girl gave me an extra tub of their bacon mayo “just for bein’ cute,” but a few minutes later I would realize she had probably been hired for a contract hit against me by some angry Leinenkugel enthusiasts.  The bacon mayo is surely one of the most ghastly things to enter my mouth in a while.  Luckily, it’s “paired” witbier, the only-available-in-Citi(-at-least-under-this-name) Blanche de Queens  is a helluva of swell ballpark brew.  Very yeasty and full-bodied, at first I thought this might be a saison with it’s spiciness and smooth drinkability.  I grew bored of it after my first pint, but it’s still a terrific hot weather beer, a perfect example of what a Blue Moon could taste like under a master craftsman’s hands.  I think your macro-loving friends will enjoy this one.

B

Sabrosa Ale (El Verano Taqueria)

ABV unknown

The shortest line in the centerfield foodcourt is for the taco stand, but it shouldn’t be, as the food got rave reviews from my crew.  And its paired Citi-only beer was the evening’s clear winner as well.  The taste I could only describe as being that of a very flavorful and spicy lager*, like Brooklyn Lager mixed with a packet of taco seasonings.  A perfect complement to Mexican food but delicious on its own as well.  This is a beer I would gladly drink at normal bars and even buy bottled.  Very nice.  It’s great to have such desirable offerings at a ballpark.

B+

A few notes:

I never got around to having the Blue Smoke BBQ stand’s special blended beer, but that’s easily had at its Manhattan restaurant.

All the Brooklyn beers at Citi are a reasonable $7.50 while the cruddy Buds and what-have-yous are $6.

The concession workers are really happy and nice, and don’t even mind some a-hole holding up the lengthy lines to take pictures of taps.

*For the record, the one review of Sabrosa on Beer Advocate calls it an American Pale Ale, but I’m somewhat dubious of that style listing for the time being.

Nothing better than a surprise, and I answered the door a few weeks ago to find a nice little unexpected package from out of Houston.  My good friend Mike had packaged up a few of Blanco, Texas’s Real Ale beers and sent them my way.  Now, I’d heard of the brewery, but didn’t really know anything about them which–me being unfortunately intellectually hubristic and thinking I know all there is to know in the world–made me think these brews would be nothing more than mediocre.  Boy was I wrong.

(Besides the two below, Mike also sent me their Brewhouse Brown Ale which unfortunately was decimated in shipping)

Full Moon Pale Rye Ale

5.6% ABV bottled

Thinking I wasn’t about to pop anything special when I opened this one, I was floored by its great hoppy smell and its even better flavor.  A smooth rye malt sweetness makes this one tasty brew.  Quite unique actually and one of the best rye beers I’ve ever had.  Honestly.  I must admit I did not expect Full Moon to be this good, but it was simply delicious.  I could drink these all night, and was saddened to only have a single bottle.  If I lived in Texas, this brew would be in my fridge at all time.  Then again, if I lived in Texas, I’d probably do all my drinking in the back of a pick-up while armadillo hunting or somethin’.  Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good life actually.

B+

Rio Blanco Pale Ale

5.2% ABV bottled

After I sucked down every last drop of the Full Moon and stuck my tongue into the bottle to try to get even more delicious flavors, I was stoked to try their Pale offering.  Unfortunately, it was not quite as good as the rye beer, though still solid.  A tad too much unbalanced bitterness in its spicy hoppiness, I actually enjoyed this more as it warmed which, as you probably know, is fairly odd for an pale ale.  Another nice session beer from the folks in Blanco, wherever the hell that is.

B-

Aesop had his morals and, after enjoying Real Ale, I can have mine too:

There’s plenty of non-”famous” beermakers out there crafting really delicous shit.  Us beer geeks don’t have to be disappointed when we’re not drinking some, say, Dogfish Head, Stone, Three Floyds, etc.  Texas folks don’t know how lucky they are.  Or maybe they do.  I’ll need to get try some more Real Ale.

My good buddy Aaron over at The Captain’s Chair thought I’d do well to try some brews from Marshall, Michigan’s acclaimed Dark Horse Brewing Company, and being that we don’t get any in NYC, he kindly sent me a nice little passel of them.

(My usual caveat to those readers that skim over the beer review parts and simply read this blog for the humor, insight, and perversion:  skip this post*)

Plead the Fifth Imperial Stout

12% ABV bottled

From their limited Holiday Stout Series, I unfortunately did not love this much-adored beer.  But I still liked it quite a bit.  I found it a solid but unspectacular Russian Imperial Stout with a predominantly roasted malt flavor accented by a slight chocolate sweetness and a smidge of hops bitterness.  I did love its smooth booziness and I gots to tip my hat to any 12 ouncer of beer that can put me down for an evening.  Hope to give this brew another try in the future to hopefully find out if I’m missing anything.

B+

Fore Smoked Stout

ABV unknown and Dark Horse ain’t telling…

Another from the Holiday Stout Series, I solidly enjoyed this one.  Smoked porters and stouts are often a tricky exercise in brewing and all too often I find them poorly balanced in one way or the other.  Either far too smokey or far too sweet.  This one wasn’t.  It was very smokey, obviously, like a piece of BBQed meat, but well balanced with sweet tastes of licorice and chocolate malt.  A nice mouthfeel and quite drinkable, but I must admit, the smoked beer I drank immediately after this one I enjoyed a bit more…The Captain’s homebrewed smoked porter.**

B+

Crooked Tree IPA

6% ABV bottled

I’d had a worldclass IPA to-be-named-later previous to this one, so maybe that distorted my palate, but I still suspect that this is just a good, but not great IPA.  It smells fresh and fragrant but the taste is just too bitter and unbalanced.  Salty even with next to no citrus profile like you’d expect.  Nevertheless, it’s a nice drinking single IPA and I could polish off a tub of these in a night.  Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

B

All in all, none of this troika of Dark Horses floored me, but I dug them all and could tell this is a brewery with some chops and inventiveness.  I hope to try more of their intriguing brews in the future.

*And come back tomorrow.  I’ll have a tale.

**Suck up alert!  Send me more!

6.5% ABV from a 750 mLer

You know you’re a New Yorker when you sing and dance to your ipod while walking the streets.  I’m not talking a slight, unwitting head bob, a silent mouthing of the lyrics to a favorite song in particular.  I’m talking straight up, belting out the lyrics with a 90% accuracy aided by impromptu dance moves and shit like you’re home alone on a Saturday night, drunk on wine, with nothing better to do.  Or better yet, like you’re Tony Manero in that famous opening scene.  You’ve finally reached full uninhibition.  You don’t care that you’re on a packed Broadway sidewalk.  You don’t care that the M&M Store bag-toting tourists are gawking at you.  (It’s a story they’ll certainly share with friends when they get back to Tulsa.  Golly!  Get a picture, Suzie!)  All you care about is enjoying your music.  The way you want to enjoy it.  Everyone else around you be damned.

With minimal private living space in the city you have to live publicly.  Uninhibited.

Restaurants become your dining room.  Eating at home in NYC would involve cooking in a kitchen the size of a closet, chopping and dicing things on a precariously-balanced cutting board teetering on the edge of the sink, boiling water a few inches from a sauce sloshing around, having to actually back out of the kitchen to fully open the oven door, and if by some miracle you can actually prepare something edible this process is finished off by pulling up to the closest thing you have to a dining room table, the coffee table, where you knock a few magazines and Netflix out of the way to free up a plate-sized space to chow down.  Nah, not worth it.  But are restaurants really better?  You’re not doing the cooking but you’re jam-packed into a minuscule dining space.  You’re nearly sitting on someone’s lap.  You can’t remember if you’re on a single date or a double because another couples’ table is one inch away from yours.  Your business is everyone’s.  So you might as well make it that way.  You’re going to overhear what other diners are saying and they’re going to likewise overhear you.  All the lovey dovey shit you might say.  All the embarrassing “job interview” questions you exchange on a first date.*  Everyone knows the couples on first dates.  The lack of rapport is palpable.  However, this close proximity dining can be most embarrassing when you’re spatting with a longtime romantic partner, hilarious when other diners are doing the spatting.  There’s a million stories in this city and you can’t help but hear every single fucking one of them.

The bar becomes your living room.  I have countless friends in New York.  And in how many of those people’s living rooms have I stood?  Maybe two.  That’s just not how it works here.  My friends could be homeless for all I know.  No one wants to go to another person’s part of town.  And few have living rooms big enough to accommodate more people than the one or two that actually live in the pad.  Thus, you make bars your living rooms.  You go there to celebrate, to mourn, to watch sports and big events, play games, shoot the shit, catch up on old times, create new times, and just like Tim Riggins, to make some memories.  The drawback of this, of course, is that there’s gonna be a lot of people in “your” living room that you don’t necessarily want there.  Ugly people, loud people, smelly people, and dumb people.  You have to find the bar with the patrons, the ambiance, the culinary output, the TV setup, and the drink most simpatico with your desires.  And you will.

The subway becomes your car.  Instead of sitting in a car in bumper to bumper traffic, you’re standing crotch to ass, face to crotch, hand to crotch…goddammit, how come someone’s smelly crotch is everywhere I turn?!  Instead of perfectly modulated air or heat in a sealed environment, you’re…well you’re always sweating your ass off.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a dog day of summer or the middle of winter, you will be sweltering.  Instead of peaceful music on your ipod dock DJ’ed by you, you’re listening to white noise, and squealing teenagers, panhandling ragamuffins, and that Mariachi band that goes from car-to-car on weekends.  Damn, they’re good.  I always toss them whatever loose change I have.

The park becomes your backyard.  Instead of sitting peacefully on your porch smoking a cigar, laying in your hammock drinking a lemonade, grilling a big tenderloin on your massive propane grill, and playing catch with your Weimaraner, you’re mentally figuring out how big a chalk outline of your dead body would be and finding that requisite amount of hopefully dry grass space throughout Sheep Meadow, hopefully the Great Lawn, or maybe a Westside or Eastside pier, or some other place you know, and plunking down amongst all the other sweaty bodies.  Trying to read or do a crossword, but it’s too sunny.  Trying to wet your whistle, ah, but the closest vendor is one-hundred yards away and charges $4 for a Gatorade.  Trying to enjoy a bee-you-tee-full Padron but, “Hey guy!  Could you put dat fuckin’ see-gar out, before I snap it in two.”  And, grilling a nice steak, ha.  Yeah, right.  Get a reservation and have a good credit limit.  At least your teeny tiny dog found a rock to shit on.  Now does any one have a plastic baggy I can borrow?

A back alley becomes your love den.  A nice five-bedroom house with a massive bedroom, a canopy bed worthy of a sheik with nice silk sheets and fluffy pillows?  Yeah, right.  Neither of you have a car of course and she lives in Park Slope and you live near Columbus Circle.  Your place?  She’s not that kind of girl.  Her place?  Eh, I’m not interested.  And cabs are pricey!  The back alley seems perfectly fine for a quickie.  Ooh, and so romantic.  I guess it wasn’t garbage day today.  And did that cardboard box just rustle?  Why, it must be some poor fella’s house.  Just shut up and hurry up.  OK, I’m trying.  I’m sorry the brick wall is scraping up your palms and I’m sorry you’re tired of having that skirt above your head.  Yeah, I do agree, it does stink back here.  Whoops, just grafittied the wall.

I sit writing this in my detestable Starbucks.  For it is my office.  I have the absolute worst seat in the house, the one right next to what would be called the “Fixin’s” Bar if we were at a Jersey Turnpike Roy Rogers.  My back touches this counter, my laptop screen visible to every one that visits it after receiving their order.  You wouldn’t believe how long people spend there preparing their coffees.  What exactly are they doing?  I drink my coffee black so adding stuff to your coffee seems somewhat foreign to me.  Having said that, I drink my iced coffee with Sweet’N Low and a splash of skim milk so I know how long it takes to accomplish that menial task.  Like fifteen seconds.  Yet all these Upper West Side mommies, real-life Gossips Girls, wannabe artistic scenesters but really Central Park West trust funders, and lingering Columbia U students take upwards of two minutes to add all the ingredients they want to add to their coffees.  Cinnamon and vanilla and nutmeg and, well, I guess that’s just the cheapskates’ way of making their Joe more fancy.

But, alas, I still prefer being here to writing at my home office, i.e. my lap on my sofa.  I can actually focus better here, enjoy myself, put myself in that special little place I need to go to get writing done.  Sadly, I can’t stop my special little place from playing bad Muzak (on sale for just $11.99 at the counter!).  You win some, you lose some.  Each person at the Fixin’s counter, oh, and there’s a new one every twenty seconds or so, stacking up like lemurs at the edge of a cliff, tries to read what’s on my laptop screen.  It’s a natural human reaction, I understand.  Luckily, I have become fully uninhibited.  The most important thing in this tiny and cramped world I live in.  So I DON’T GIVE A FUCK–can you see that over my shoulder?  Should I bold that?–I DON’T GIVE A FUCK and have no problem if they read this.  If YOU read this, fat mommy behind me in ill-fitting Capris, revealing a little too much of your prickly bobby-socked cankles, chowing down on an 800 calorie Marshmallow Twizzle and frozen limeade on your emasculated working hubby’s dime, propping your Peg Perego “Duette” stroller with your in vitro-fertilized ugly twin babes right beside my right ear, allowing them to loudly bellow in off-key synchronicity the theme song to some show I’ve certainly never heard of nor ever will because I don’t have any fucking kids.  Lady, you punish me with all the above and yet you still want to read over my shoulder?  Well go ahead, I just don’t care…

My second career The Lost Abbey brew, kindly shared with me by my pal DW from his The Lost Abbey Patron Saints Club bi-monthly shipment.  I’ve just gotten into saisons hardcore this spring and early summer and this is a nice example of the style.  Very fruity with tastes of lemon zest and orange citrus, a mild spiciness, and a potent yeastiness.  Slight hops and a minimal sour funkiness, but I would have preferred a perhaps more bold use of Brett for added complexity.  Incredibly drinkable and refreshing, it smells a heck of a lot better than it tastes, but it tastes pretty damn good too.

B+

*I would never go on a first date to a restaurant.  Dumb.

5.75% ABV bottled

On First Dates

I’m an egotist, so unlike most people, I actually like first dates.  Hell, I downright love them.  On a first date I’m like an excited filmmaker unveiling his new movie to a test audience that’s never seen it before.  Like a comic who has been traversing the continent for the last decade, thousands upon thousands of jokes over the years in his repertoire now honed-down to a taut and flawless ten minute club act.  And now he gets to perform in a city he’s never played before!  Not that I go into any dates with scripted material or put on an act.  I’m like Popeye and I yam who I yam.  (Though it’s beer not spinach which gives me my bravado.)  I’m more like a besotted improvist able to carefully take my thirty years of material, stories, jokes, anecdotes, thoughts, feelings, ideas, and ideals and insert them whenever a conversation needs them, to weave them into the fabric of the night, wherever it may be headed.

It’s exciting to be with someone who knows nothing about you.  Your friends know all your material, stories, jokes, anecdotes, thoughts, feelings, ideas, and ideals several times over and quite frankly they’re kinda bored with them.  That’s why most longtime male friends simply go drinking together in loud and dark bars, sitting side-by-side and bending elbows but rarely talking, only occasionally injecting thoughts on women in the bar via head nods and guttural grunts, oohs and aahs toward sporting happenings on the big screen, and mumbled “igottagotakealeaksavemyseat.”  Many of my very best friends don’t even read The Vice Blog.  They don’t have to.  They’ve heard all this shit before.  Plus, several are illiterate.

In a few hours I’m going on a first date.  I don’t know what the girl looks like, nor anything about her.  I was at a party over the weekend and a friend of a friend–not even a friend, mind you–asked me if I would go out this week with a friend of her’s.  Thus a friend of a friend of a friend.  If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, what is the friend of the friend of my friend?  Alas, I agreed to go on the date.  Hey, I always need material and I like adventures.  Also, Tuesday night TV kinda sucks.  Any ways what’s the worst that can happen?  (Actually I know.  Maybe I should write about that someday.)  I don’t usually like writing about events in my life in real time because I don’t want to affect the events or shape them in any way by intellectualizing them.  You know, like Heisenberg’s observer effect?

It’s not even exactly a real date, not like I ever go on “real” dates.  You won’t find your venerable Vice Blogger ever nervously pulling out a girl’s chair at Olive Garden and making inane small talk.  For this “date,” I am simply supposed to meet up with the girl at a Happy Hour her former college’s alumni club is hosting.*  Fine with me, alcohol is a must on a first date, if not all dates.  I have nothing to do right now but wait, so I’ll start early.  I don’t really get nerves, but lowering the inhibitions is never a bad thing in most anything you do in life.  As I write this I sip a Bitter Woman sent to me by the smartly-named Aaron over at The Captain’s Chair.  Silky, almost creamy, bitter almost sour.  A very good sessionable IPA, though I’ll only have one.  Eh, maybe two.

But I’ve spoken about myself too much at this point, something I would never do on a first date.  As much as I like controlling and dominating conversation, I also like learning about new people.  Everyone, even incredibly boring people, should have a few interesting things to say the first time you meet them.  And I want to hear these things.  I’m not interested in typical “getting-to-know-you” job interview type questions like most nervous blokes launch into after having pulled the girl’s chair out so she can sit at their reserved Olive Garden table.  “What do you do?”  “Where do you work?”  “Where do you live?”  “Where were you born?”  Boring.  I want to know my counterpart’s material, stories, jokes, anecdotes, thoughts, feelings, ideas, and ideals built up over a period of eighteen to, eh, let’s say thirty-five years.  By golly, entertain me woman!  I’m entertaining you, let’s have a little quid pro quo here.

Luckily, I’m usually so relaxed (read: drunk) that my dates instantly become relaxed (read: drunk) and things flow swimmingly.  Yes, my dates usually seem to go “well,” however you want to define that, because I’m interesting, excitable, “different,” a little weird, slightly transgressive, and hopefully not too drunk.

Eventually, after my date has spoken about herself for awhile, she’ll wonder what I “do,” and my hubris will of course lead to me telling her about The Vice Blog.  Then, later tonight, or perhaps tomorrow morning in her office–assuming she works in an office setting, recall I know nothing about her as of this second– she’ll pull this entry up on her desk computer and read it and hopefully still be reading it as we reach the end here at which point she may scroll down to the comment section below and write:

“Aaron you were such a(n)…”

?

B+

*OK, I guess I do know one thing about my date:  she went to a much better college than me.

Within the last month, Sam Adams released a new series of imperial brews in order to “offer beer lovers’ an intense version of some of their favorite traditional beer styles by boosting the ingredients and testing the limits of each traditional style” said the press release robot employed by the brewery.*

I was excited to try all of these as I can’t help but love Sam.  Sure, they aren’t the most adventurous beermakers in the world–save the brilliant Utopias–but they always make quality stuff and you have to admire the heights they’ve attained in the world of beer while not making watery swill.

Double Bock

9.5% ABV

I don’t particularly love most bocks, but this was a pretty good effort.  Incredibly malty, the bottle actually claims you could make a loaf of bread with it.  I believe that!  So rich, I honestly struggled to finish the bottle and liked it less and less the more I drank it I was so overwhelmed.  Though the initial flavor is admittedly pretty solid.  Robust and syrupy tastes of malts, caramel, and spices.  Worth trying, though I’d recommend splitting a bottle.

B

Imperial Stout

9.5% ABV

Inexplicably, Sam had never had a major release stout before this.  Odd for one of the most common and desired style.  Thus, I was excited to see what they could accomplish with this release.  I found it very boozy and harsh tasting for the not-to-so-high(-for-an-impy-stout-at-least) ABV.  Still, not bad.  High level of roasted coffee notes and malted chocolate but not much else going on.  It actually reminded me of a less polished version of Founders Breakfast Stout with a mouthfeel and a drinkability like a Guinness Extra Stout.  This would be a splendid “starter” imperial stout to give to a friend you are trying to get into craft beer. A worthy effort fo’ sho’.

B+

Imperial White

10.3% ABV

What a shocker!  I was least interested in trying this one of the three.  I mean, what do you think of when you hear American white beer?  You probably think nothing.  Flavorlessness.  The bland faux-micro macro Blue Moon.  Again, nothingness.  No flavor, just nothing.  Imperializing a white seems like an oxymoron.  How can something so bland be made “bigger” and “bolder”?!   Ultimately, what I’m saying is that I hate whites and much like two times zero still equal zero, I figured two “times” white would still equal shit.  It’s like imperializing tap water.  I saw no way this would be good.   Boy was I wrong.  This was incredibly flavorful, complex, interesting, and potent.  Tons of orange with strong coriander notes.  A hyooooge mouthfeel and body.  And the ABV!  Wow.  I will definitely get this again, and, actually, I kinda want one now. Truly one of the bigger beer surprises of the year.  I don’t even feel foolish saying this is one of a kind.  Beer Advocate actually may now have to create an “imperial white” style category.

A-

*He cost $2.5M to design but his brilliant and totally human-sounding statements meant to inspire customer loyalty and create a new fan base has paid off ten-fold!

8% ABV bottled

I don’t claim to be an expert at anything, save disappointing my parents, but my rampant autodidacticism has allowed me to become somewhat knowledgeable in quite a few fields.   Beer is one of them.  So is film.  Talking to women is yet another thing I seem to be fairly decent at.  And, you know, after something that happened to me a few weeks ago, I’m starting to think I’m actually falling better than “fairly decent” on the talking to women bell curve.  Though that has less to do with me and more to do with the rest of the populous.

Scooter, a good friend I rarely see, invited me out to a happy hour for his company over in the Turtle Bay part of town*.  I’d never met any of his work chums being that they are [blank] fund guys and rarely get out of the office.  Which also meant that they are still kinda fresh-faced when it comes to normal New York bar culture.  Not nerds by any means, certainly not by their mere appearance.  Not asocial either, just a little…out of place and wide-eyed if you got talking to them.

Nevertheless, we were all having a good time, especially the miserly Vice Blogger since these well-to-dos were putting his glasses of Jameson 18 neat on the company card.  Any how, after a few drinks everyone becomes virtually the same.  The sharp and cool become more bumbling and thus less cool, the stuffy and nerdy become looser and thus cooler, and pretty soon every one is pretty close to each other in a besotted middle of sophomoric behavior.  Alcohol is the one true equalizer in this world, especially the more it is drunk.

At one point, Scooter headed to the bathroom leaving me alone for the first time all night in a circle with his chums.  Conversation died down for a bit as we watched a first round Horizon League Tournament game on the big screen.  I’d been admiring a girl at the bar for the previous few minutes.  Actually, I hadn’t been capable of admiring the girl as her back had been to me the whole time as she swigged a vodka martini, but I had been admiring her eye-popping boots on her legs hanging and dangling from the bar stool.

Finally, she turned to mindlessly look around the bar and I stepped in.

“Hey, I like your boots.”

She smiled wide and pulled me to her.  Fifteen minutes later, after our pleasant conversation had run its course, I returned to my new friends who were absolutely busting at the seams, greeting my voyage back to the group circle with a raucous round of high-fives as if I had just hit a game winning shot in Bruce Bowen’s face.

“Holy shit, how did you do that?!”

“Scooter, is your friend for real?”

“That was caaaaaa-razy!”

What in the world were they talking about?

“And that ‘boots’ line you started with!  Amazing!”

Oh, I see.  They were actually impressed I had talked to an attractive girl.  Even more impressed I had just cold opened with her using a “line.”  But you see, that wasn’t a line.  I did actually like her boots.  Bright, shiny, red cowboy boots.  Not ostentatious or anything, but with the rest of her conservative outfit they really popped.  Made her seem interesting, quirky, unique, or, at least, manufactured sui generis.

Even more amusing, I hadn’t hooked up with her, made plans with her, hell, even gotten her phone number or e-mail address.  Or caressed those lovely cowboy boots.  I had simply had a nice, little conversation with her.  Yet the [blank] fund guys were impressed with me.  Which raises the point of how sad it is how most men interact with women.  How most men think one has to interact with women.

Listen up:

YOU CAN’T “FAIL” IN A CONVERSATION WITH A STRANGE WOMAN.

How silly does that line read in print?  Incredibly silly.  Yet I meet so many men that are absolutely frozen and lock-jawed at the idea of simply talking to a woman they may or may not have an interest in.  They think they need strategies and “games” and lines, but it’s not that hard.  Conversation is incredibly basic.  Does one struggle to speak to an elderly woman or a dude or the guy at the deli counter?  Well, maybe the last one, his accent is very thick.

But you do talk to all those people without nerves and sometimes the conversations are great and sometimes they are terrible but you never “fail” in them.  Because you pretty much can’t fail in a conversation.  I’ve talked to thousands of strange women in my life–as have you–and what’s the worst thing that has every happened?  The worst?  Maybe the girl was a slight bitch to you?  Maybe she walked away?  Maybe she snickered at you with her friend once you left the scene?  Wow.  Big deal.

If that’s the worst that happens that ain’t so bad.  You can’t fail in a conversation.  You simply can’t.  You can only succeed if you want to, but you can’t fail.  So don’t worry about coming up with a perfect line, don’t worry about strategies, and for God’s sake don’t pay attention to what nerdy and creepy pick-up artists on VH-1 or the internet say.  Don’t be scared and just start conversations with women the same way you do with men, taxi cab drivers, and the guy slicing you some roast beef.  Next thing you know you’ll have a whole website full of stories.

And if you ever see a girl wearing some boots you like, go up to her and say, “Hey, nice boots.”

Portsmouth Belgian Dubbel

The same friend that scored me some Kate the Great also grabbed a bottle of the brewery’s dubbel when he was up in New Hampshire.  As much as I love a artistic label, I kinda dig how Portsmouth humbly uses the same label for every single beer they produce and then simply Sharpies in the style of beer.  (Notice how it only says “imperial stout” on the Kate the Great with ‘09 penned in.  Most breweries would celebrate such an iconic beer with a flashy label and a wax dipping and all sorts of other bells and whistles, but not Portsmouth.)  I was slightly disappointed with this brew as I’m a huge fan of dubbels.  A splendid smell but a little thin on the mouth. Still a nice taste of fruity banana esters, dark fruits, and candi sugar.  Thought it lacked a certain richness and boldness though, but still a worthwhile effort.

B+

*Have you ever heard ANY ONE call it Turtle Bay in conversation?!

9% ABV from a bomber

I’m not sure if this will be a popular sentiment, but I fucking hate St. Patrick’s Day.  More specifically, I hate the buffoonery surrounding the faux-holiday.  Most specifically, I hate the buffoonery surrounding the faux-holiday celebrations in Manhattan.

As early as daybreak, college dropouts from all over the east coast deluge Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, and the Staten Island Ferry before slowly woohooing their way toward midtown and Fifth Avenue, clad in their dumbass green t-shirts adorned with dopey sayings (”Erin Go Braless”), ludicrous floppy hats and preposterous glittery shades bought from a street vendor or the Spencer’s Gift at their local shitty mall, and all sorts of other unnecessary accouterments from wristbands to forearmbands to headbands to neckbands.  Perhaps even a special “drinking” glove.  All green, natch.  Many a cliched tattoo will be seen residing on these gents’ and ladies’ fakely tanned anatomies.  Very few non-accented sentences will be heard spoken.

My fellow New Yorkers aren’t a happy bunch on weekday mornings, clad in uncomfortable “work” clothing, crammed into mass transit, waiting in long lines for a coffee and a bagel, and nothing is more grating than some spiky haired dolt with a minimal grasp of the English language loading up on a Diet Red Bull mixed with an illicit hotel-sized bottle of Absolut getting in their way as they try to make it to their jobs.

Sitting in their offices, no matter how high of a skyscrapered floor, the bag pipes and plastic horns and drunkener woohooing will have made work today a near impossibility.  Looking out the window and seeing the top arc of some tramp’s areolae oozing out of her tank-top (”Irish You Would Buy Me a Beer”) will not make up for such a productiveless day.  Lunch will be ordered in so as to keep further interaction with these future reality show contestants minimal.

By now many of my friends are heading home, the end to a shitty day, trekking though the vomit of morons, stepping over the prone bodies of eighteen-year-olds that have never drank more than a few Solo cups of keg beer before today, gasping at the wasted frat boy from some community college digitally stimulating the shitfaced sorority girl from some cosmetology school right out in the open on a Hell’s Kitchen stoop.  The regular and usually sedate after-work bars now filled with the few retards whose mothers didn’t give them a curfew to get back home in time for supper.  The imbeciles perhaps pressing their luck to catch a later train back to Secaucus while they make one last ditched effort to score with the Rutgers University (major undeclared) chick they first met in some alley around noon as she tried to empty her bladder into a Gatorade bottle (32 oz).  Doing shots of Jaeger and slugging cheap macro swill doused with a one-cent drop of green food coloring which causes the chemical reaction of making the pint shoot up to $9 per.  At least the city’s tavern workers are making some nice money for a Tuesday.  I pity them nonetheless.

This day has obviously been a wash for any one with gray matter between their ears and a lack of venereal disease.  That’s life though when your home city is essentially America’s theme park.

Amazingly, I’ve had several people say to me today, “I’d assume you’d like St. Patty’s Day, Aaron.”  Do you really think that little of me?  Yes, I like booze, revelry, and women of questionable morals acting questionable, but that can be found any day of the week here in the greatest city in the world.  (I’d wager those things could be found in your cities as well.)

And as much as I like those things, I hate idiocy, loud obnoxiousness, unskilled imbibing, punny t-shirts and novelty clothing, and especially scheduled fun.  I detest St. Patty’s day just like I detest the scheduled “fun” of New Year’s Eve, Fat Tuesday, Saturday nights, and bachelor parties.

Don’t get me wrong, don’t think me a grumpy old curmudgeon, for I’m not above celebrating on those days, but they are just other days to me.  Why does one need an event to get drunk, have fun, try to see women’s bare breasts?  Do you have that little control over your boring life that you can only party on those mandated days?  I know you do, and that’s what makes you an amateur, and that’s what makes those days and nights into amateur days and nights.

As for me, I wouldn’t hit 5th Avenue or enter a Manhattan bar today if you paid me.  I’d rather sit at home relaxing and drinking a nice beer by myself such as Flat Earth’s Winter Warlock English barleywine.  Dirtyspeed over at Friday Night Beer hooked me up with the semi-rare local Minnesota brew I’d been curious to try for awhile as it is my favorite beer style.  Poured much lighter than expected though the bottle does label it a “golden” barleywine which I suppose explains that.  I typically expect good barleywines to be a rich amber, a glowing ruby color, so I was a little reluctant.  Nevertheless, Winter Warlock was solid.  A nice taste of pale malts and candi sugar with quite a bit of yeastiness.  Very little hops come through though.  The major debit is the beer’s thinness and lack of bite despite the ABV.  Pretty good effort though.

Soon, this day will be over and trains, cabs, and street sweepers will eject the St. Patty’s Day nincompoops from our fair city for another 364 more days.  And the buffoons will wake up tomorrow, green face paint embedded onto their pillow, woohoo just loud enough to not rattle their hangovers, and spend the rest of the year talking about “The most sick day evah, yo,” praying they can repeat it again next year and continue to annoy us all.

You know what I really like, going out on the day after these amateur drinking holidays.  Yeah.  That’s when the real pros show up.  Sunday night,  January 2nd, Fat Wednesday, and St. Patty’s day plus one.  So see youse tomorrow.  Woohoo!

B+

Epilogue:  This is nothing against the actual holiday, which I quite frankly don’t even know what its purpose is.  But I’m sure there is one, or was one before it got bastardized by goofy trite white people.  I’ll go read about it on Wikipedia.

7% ABV on draught

My Sick, Perverted Fetish

No, it’s not as bad, or perhaps the correct word is as “weird” as BDSM or footjobbing or something hirsute-related, so I suppose my sexual fetish is more akin to dudes that love big asses or big breasts.  Let me backtrack for a second.  For my entire postpubescent life I have been most attracted to skinny, tall, long blond-haired, big-busted women*.  Ha!  Aren’t we all, you say?  But have I just been kidding myself?  Ignoring my true carnal desires?  No, I don’t completely think so, but I finally must come out of the closet and admit that, aside from the aforementioned archetypal women, I do have a secret outlier sometime fetish for a certain type:

Big-nosed Jewish gals.

Is it something in my Deoxyribonucleic acid?  An ingrained part of my Semitic libido?  I’m not sure but I can ignore it no longer lest I be considered a self-hating Hebe.

I no longer can deny that when I’m riding on the subway, sitting across from a big-beaked lady, kinky sidelock-esque hair cascading over her face like the Holy Ark’s curtains shrouding a nasal Torah, yeah, I get a little titillated.  And when I’m forced to party in Murray Hill, I may be outwardly smarting, acting vexed at being in the crummy establishment, when I’m secretly a little turned on watching the Toucan-faced recent GW or Michigan grad poorly shaking her gelt-maker to an ironic (or is it?) playing of R. Kelly’s “Ignition.”  Or when I’m grabbing some Jewish donuts on a Sunday morning at H & H on the UWS, I can’t help but feel like I’m in line at a Judaic orgy, a slew of sweatsuit and Uggs-clad equine-faced cuties spending their daddy’s shekels on a sack of cinnamon raisins.

Oh lord, Elohim, it’s only getting worse, my desire for these beautiful exotic creatures with their conical goat faces, too poorly bred or raised by too practical (cheap?) of parents to have gotten rhinoplasty for them as a Bat Mitzvah gift.  What can a boy do?

I know what you’re saying, “You are an insensitive asshole.”  Correct.  I know what else you are saying: “How can you like such flawed, if not downright ugly, women?”  Well first of all, fella, watch it with the anti-Semititism.  Second of all, though, I hear you.  I used to feel the same way, sort of.  But I believe you may be thinking about the absolute worst of the breed.  Those 4′11″ and squat, hippy and big-assed and huge titted, natch**, annoyingly nasal girls with hair like Hurley from “Lost” and a constant scowl on their mugs.

But I’m not talking about those Chosen lasses.  No, sir.

I’m talking ’bout Mayim Bialik as Blossom.

I’m talking ’bout Lizzy Caplan or Kat Dennings.***

I’m talking ’bout Leelee Sobieski, Sarah Silverman, and House’s boss on “House.”  Helen Hunt, Sarah Jessica Parker before she started looking like a drag queen (we’re talking “Honeymoon in Vegas” days), and Jennifer Grey in “Dirty Dancing” before she went under the knife and never got booked again.  And let’s throw in Soleil Moon Frye for good measure.

It’s feels good to finally admit this, to no longer have to agree with my friends that, yes, she’d be perfect if she just had a normal schnoz.  No, she already is perfect!

Finally, I know what you’re thinking, sicko, and, no, I don’t want them to do anything unseemly with their nose whilst in the bedroom, that’s not why I like them.****  It’s just something visceral.  Something that can’t fully be explained unless you feel the exact same way I do.

Now I guess I should finally meet one of these dames.  I’m heading to my local Hadassah meeting.

Russian River Damnation

My first ever Russian River beer on tap.  I’d heard a rumor that Philadelphia was one of the rare cities that would be getting the coveted Pliny the Younger on tap and, finding myself conveniently in town a couple of weeks ago, I had hoped to score some.  Scouring the city, however, I came up dry.  I did find Damnation, though, at the marvelous Tria and quickly ordered it with no prejudice.  Unfortunately, it was not as good as I had hoped and now stands as the first Russian River beer I haven’t unequivocally loved.  Thinner than expected and quite mellow.  Almost felt like a very weak tripel.  Not much taste, not much complexity, light Belgian spiciness, slight sourness, some citrusness.  It was closer to “refreshing” than delicious.  Not what you want from a 7% Belgian strong ale.  Comparing it to Country Time lemonade also is probably not what we’re looking for here.  Having said that, the across-the-board reviews of Damnation seem much better than my initial experience so I do hope to try it again.

B+

*And, yes, agreed, you should really like women for what’s inside of them.  Sure enough–and you should also probably like a movie for its plot and not how many fiery explosion, scatological jokes, and bits of gratuitous nudity they include.

**Yes, all Jewish women have gargantuan breasts.  It’s a stone cold fact.  I don’t know why this is, it just is, perhaps something in the Manischewitz, maybe an evolutionary adaptation dating back to the wandering the desert days when it would be quite swell to have two large milk canteens strapped to one’s chest.

***Ibid.  And, Holy.  Shit.

****Jewish women also have gargantuan sexual appetites.  Another empirical fact.  I have no explanation for this one either.  I welcome theories in the comments.

photo credit:  Brian B

5.8% ABV from a six-pack

My Porno Hook-Up

You won’t believe this story, so you might as well just pretend I made it up.

I have a lot of friends and I get invited to a lot of parties, especially as the holiday season heats up. And just like Kim Kardashian won’t turn down an invite to a lame awards show, I will pretty much show up at any shindig. Which is odd since I often have a terrible time. As an eternal optimist though, I always think I am going to have a blast, regaling the men with great stories, beguiling a multitude of sexy women, ending the night drinking champagne out of a stiletto as the sun comes up, and waking up on the host’s sofa with a lampshade on my head.

However, as we get older and older, the problem becomes that the parties become more and more boring. For one simple fact: everyone is a couple. And couples are inately boring. Our early twenties big beer blasts full of 90% single people become quiet couples’ dinner parties with a lot of hummus and toasted pita points. Not that I’m complaining about hummus, that stuff’s delicious.

The starts of these parties are always fun as people first dig into the food and the wine and start loosening up, introductions made by the host. “And here’s my boring friend ____ who has this boring job and there’s his boring wife ____ who has that boring job.” Quite frankly, unless you’re a stripper, astronaut, or professional football player, I really could care less in hearing about your occupation. Sorry, it is what it is.

In attending these parties stag I’m always treated like some member in a freak show, the werewolf boy or the world’s tiniest monk. My ostensible peers pelting me with questions about my lack of marriage, my lack of kids, my lack of owning anything nicer than some Ping irons. At the beginning of most parties, I always become the focus of attention. I have interesting stories, caaaaaaaa-razy stories, even transgressive stories, and the buttoned-up types want to hear them. In the same way they get a vicarious thrill out of watching an action movie or late-night softcore on Cinemax. An egomaniac, it is usually this part of the party, the only part of the party, I actually enjoy.

But after a half-hour or so, every one starts ignoring me, and the “adults” start having “adult” conversations, I forced to go stand away like a child shuffled away to another room during a dinner party. They drinking one or two glasses of boring wine while like a fratboy I brought a six pack of beer. At least it was good stuff. Sam Adam’s highly respectable version of a winter warmer. A lager but full bodied and flawlessly spiced. I really like it.

As the adults talked about the holograms used in CNN’s election coverage, and the sonograms from their recent visit to the doctors, and the “darling” monograms on the items they received as wedding gifts, I skulked to the corner to get drunk and try to figure out what girl I should text for a later-night meet-up.

There was actually one other single in attendance, Annie. A rarity for most of these boring affairs. Usually the two singles are drawn to each other like magnets, but I was less-than-interested in her. A freshly-minted doctor, she seemed boring as hell. Then again, most doctors are. Years of study, sitting in libraries, a lot of handwashin’ and scrubs-wearin’ do not lend themselves to creating social superstars. Then again, would you want a practicioner that could schmooze up a room like Dean Martin or Jackie Gleason? I doubt I would, but, then again, I never go to see health professionals.

Earlier in the evening, when it was her turn to introduce herself, the shy Annie had noted that this was her first time “out” in 40 days. We noticed she had a pager on her jeans’ belt loop and made as-would-be-expected jokes (”What are you a drug dealer in 1992?”). Trite and obvious jokes but we all laughed because they were still kinda funny and because you laugh at people’s jokes early on during dinner parties before you realize you hate them all. After the barrage of jokes fizzled out, Annie had explained it was because she was on “emergency emergency” call, assuring us that the beeper would only come into play should two others doctors fall ill that night. Which never ever never happened.

With the adults discussing whether they should move to Westchester or the Jersey suburbs to start a family, I had no choice but to approach Annie.

She stood in the corner like a classic wallflower, uncomfortable in her own skin, unsure where to put her hands, her feet, her eyes. I didn’t think I had much interest in her sexually, romantically, as a friend, a conversation partner, a golfing buddy, a tennis companion, or anything else, but she was the only single and all the well-lubricated couples had begun talking about topics that I would probably never been mature enough to waste time discussing.

I opened my foray to Annie by remarking that she wasn’t drinking, which I didn’t remark was making her even more boring.

“I’m technically not allowed to…”

She explained that, yes, though there was only like a 0.000001% chance she would have to work that night, she really couldn’t drink “on the job.”

I mocked her piousness. I’m good at peer pressuring people and soon I had whipped her up a gin and tonic, one a tad dryer than she probably expected. She was undoubtedly a novice drinker as she was clearly becoming intoxicated after just a few sips.

She was kind, but didn’t have much to say. Attractive too, but stuffier than a plush toy, more prim and proper than a Quaker. As I said, I don’t go to doctors for “check-ups.” Just seems like a bit of a scam. Something to keep up the medical industrial complex. I’ve always agreed with a friend who once told me you only need to go to the doctor if you break a leg or get AIDS. Seems about right. And in Manhattan, forget about it. I’m not spending all day sitting in a waiting room reading “Redbook” just to see if I might possibly have some problem.

So, with no other conversation topics, I asked her:

“I NEVER go to the doctor. Haven’t been to a general practitioner since I was like 19. So break it to me. Give me the real answer. I don’t want the answer you’re supposed to give in order to make perpetual money for your industry, I want the real answer: how often should a guy like me be going to the doctor?”

She impassively looked me up and down, scrutinizing me like a piece of Kosher meat.

“You can hit me with it,” I said, fully expecting bad news.

“A guy like you? Young, healthy, and robust looking…

She cutely crinkled her nose for one final study of me.

“You seriously don’t need to go more than once every five to seven years. Assuming you feel fine of course.”

“I KNEW IT! I’ve been telling everyone this for years! What a fucking scam!”

“Shhhh…” she smiled for the first time. “Don’t blow up our spot.”

And she even makes a little joke!

It’s funny I never go to the doctor because I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. I know the statistics, I know likelihoods, I know the odds, and I don’t fear death or pain, it’s just I watch “House,” and I read so many goddamn books, so many science and medical papers–yes, I consider that “fun”–that I know about all sorts of strange and terrible ailments which I then transpose onto myself.

For the last two years I’d privately thought I had testicular cancer. I found a smaller-than-a-ball-bearing bump one evening while self-abusing myself and had been certain it was the big C. But, of course, I never went to the doctor, instead just reading about diagnoses online. I must not truly be a hypochondriac.

But here was my chance. And, luckily I’d drank enough alcohol that I had the balls to ask about my balls.

I looked around to make sure no one could hear me. I looked Annie in the eyes. She could the tell I was sincere, about to confide something important to her.

“I’m sorry if I’m out of line…but…”

After I gave her the scoop, she looked around the room. Was she mad?

“Follow me.”

HUH?

She marched off to the bathroom. The host’s bedroom bathroom that no guests had been using. I trepidatiously followed her.

We got into the bathroom and she locked the door. Though seemingly impossible, she instantly had become even more prim and proper and she was already like a fucking 1800’s school marm. The expression on her face was completely placid, completely focused.

“Drop your pants.”

Wow. Free medical work is even better than free drinks. And far rarer. I did as I was told.

Without looking down, without looking at me, just staring off toward the medical cabinet mirror on the wall, she reached into my boxer briefs and rolled my right testis in her hand for a minute. I too looked off into space. It was surprisingly awkward, surprisingly clinical. It didn’t even seem that inappropriate. I heard some guests laughing in the distance.

“You’re fine. That’s probably just a minor varicocele, a vein enlargement. Nothing to be concerned about. If it gets bigger or actually starts to hurt, you should see your doctor. A doctor.”

I looked at her relieved. I exhaled and smiled.

“Thank you, Annie.”

Her hand was still on my junk. I looked down, taking the scene in. I looked back into her eyes. She moved in for a kiss. WHOA! It had gone from clinical to inappropriately pornographic in seconds. One of those rare porno hookups where innocuous situations escalate to sordidness at the drop of the hat, and completely unexpectedly, as if poorly scripted by a hack.

We made out for milliseconds before she removed her hands and went to the sink to scrub up as if preparing for surgery.

“Come on, pull your pants up, we better get back to the party.”

She quickly left and went back outside, leaving me in the bathroom.

What the fuck? I quickly analyzed the previous minute or two. Unsure what had gone wrong. Unsure what had gone right.

I returned to the party a few seconds after her. I stood in the corner by the door, sweating, thinking, antsy as I slugged my beer. What was I supposed to do next?

Annie moved to the finger foods table and had some guacamole, totally ignoring me, nonchalantly talking to another party guest.

**BEEP!!**BEEP!!**BEEP!!!!**

Everyone turned as Annie’s pager blew up. We all knew what it probably meant. She seemed more surprised than any one. She looked down. “Shit!” She got frantic. “Unbelievable!” She gathered her stuff–”Fucking Joe!–and began going around the party, quickly saying “I’m sorrys” and “goodbyes” to everyone.

I was the last person she encountered on her way out the door headed back to her hospital. Just as she had done to everyone else, she held out her hand professionally, coldy.

“It was GOOD to meet you, Aaron.” She stared deeply into my eyes. “I hope to SEE you AGAIN.”

I thought I got what she was hinting at, what words she was stressing and for what purpose, but I’ve been wrong before. Especially while drunk. She left, and two minutes later I snuck out the door without saying goodbye to my friends.

Once I got outside I stood in front of the UES highrise looking around. Son of bitch! I had been wrong. I had totally misread her implications, or apparent lack thereof. And it was only 10:00 PM. With no other plans for the evening, I was going to have to go back up to the party with my tail between my legs and lie about why I’d been outside. Would people believe I had just taken up smoking?

PSSSSST!

I turned. Annie stood at the corner peeking her head around the building.

I was elated.

We quickly grabbed a cab and went back to her University Hospital’s resident housing where she showed me her diplomas.

B+