9% ABV from a bomber

Tradition can be great if it involves eating delicious foods, getting presents for eight straight nights, or singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch.  Likewise, it can suck if it involves sitting at a Seder table with relatives you hate, getting your foreskin chopped off by a drunken moyel, or asking a father “permission” to marry his daughter.  The most fun, though, is starting traditions of your own.  Which brings us to the 2nd Annual Apartment 17C Thanksgiving Beer Pong Tournament.

Last year, I found myself alone on Thanksgiving day because I wasn’t allowed to accompany my girlfriend home for the holidays being that her parents are antisemites.  No, not really.  They just viscerally hated me for nebulous reasons and wouldn’t allow me in their home.*  Thus, I found myself dining with my good friends from Apartment 17C, a married couple K and J, along with J’s visiting brother and his girlfriend, and two other rollin’ stones AJ and Andy.

Thanksgiving day 2007 had started off “normal” enough.  In a traditional manner.  Gorging on turkey, stuffing, and all sort of other tasty things sopped in gravy.  Drinking fine wine in a refined manner.  Watching the Detroit Lions lose.  But after a few hours we were bored.  In Manhattan, no one has the space for a dining room table and most people are forced to eat their meals off of coffee tables.  But for this feast, J had been clever enough to rent a table which she placed in the middle of her living room.  After the meal, once the plates had been cleared, and the plastic tablecloth balled and stuffed into the garbage, one of us noticed that the shape, size, and length of the Thanksgiving table sure resembled something else:  a beer pong table.  And, thus, an impromptu tournament was quickly put together.

As AJ and Andy rushed out of the house to find any place that was still selling macro crap on a Thanksgiving night, J and her brother went searching for ping pong balls and Solo cups, while I stuck behind to craft the double-elimination tournament bracket.  Drawing up a bracket is a tougher skill than most realize, and I’m quite good at it, my masterpiece being a fifty some-odd person triple-elimination ping pong bracket I once made for a freshman year all-dorm ping pong tournament.

After the reconnoitering we all reconvened with our findings.  AJ and Andy had scored a bulk of Miller Lite cans, while J and her brother had struggled in their endeavors.  To get ping pong balls they had snuck into the highrise’s game room, feigned playing table tennis for a bit, and swiped the orbs, but had found less success in Solo cup scoring.  Ultimately, they were forced to beg a deli guy to give them a stack of tall cardboard coffee cups.  It wasn’t perfect but the tournament went off swimmingly, leaving us all shit-faced by the end of the evening, a night we would never forget.  Especially me, because I was the inaugural winner.

This year we were much more prepared, acquiring the balls and cups earlier in the week.  The one rub this time was that only five of us were dining, returnees J and K, AJ and I, plus a new addition in my sister.  With only five we would have to make the Second Annual tournament a round robin format:  everyone would play everyone else once, and the two leaders in the final standings would square off for a one-game championship.

It’s funny when the Thanksgiving meal acts as a mere prelude to the day’s real events.  The meal is usually the centerpiece of Thanksgiving day, but not in our case when they are bigger fish to fry.  Speaking of fried, we had a Cajun fried turkey which was scrumptious, one of the best birds I can ever remember having.  Nicely spiced and incredibly succulent.  Before the tournament we drank classy, the highlight being when I finally cracked a precious bottle of Theobroma which my friend Derek had generously nabbed for me.

I’d been aching to try this brew ever since I first saw the press release about its release, but I found myself somewhat disappointed.  Yet another archaeological recreation beer from the good folks at Dogfish Head to sit beside their earlier Midas Touch.  The company’s literature notes:

Theobroma, or “food of the gods,” is brewed with Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs from Askinosie Chocolate, honey, ancho chilies, and annatto. The recipe is based on chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras, which scientists claim is the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink.

I expected a dark, rich beer and was stunned when it poured a thin orange-yellow color.  I didn’t smell or taste chocolate at all, either.  In fact, the flavor I most got out of this beer was that of cheese queso from a Mexican restaurant.  I just couldn’t avoid it.  Every fucking sip I felt like my tongue was a nacho chip and I was dipping into some liquid queso.  That isn’t quite as damning as it sounds, but I really was not floored by this beer and my drinking partner and I struggled to finish the entire bomber.  Dogfish Head is always interesting and I’m glad I got to try this, but probably never would again.  It’s not even as good as the likewise oddball Midas Touch.  Having said that, here I sit typing this some six days later and I can still mentally taste the beer in my mouth, it has truly left its mark.

Once the meal was done, you’ve never seen a group of people, especially men, so anxious to clear a table and clean up after their feasting.  Everyone had to play everyone once, so for scheduling purposes we just randomly drew names out of a hat.  As mentioned countless times before, I am a classic overcompetitor in all aspects of gaming.  I’m just like the father in Pat Conroy’s masterpiece “The Great Santini” who refuses to relent when playing his milquetoast teenage son in driveway basketball, browbeating him the one time he finally loses.  Luckily for me and my prodigious ego, I rarely lose things.

I drew host J in the first match-up and she absolutely took me to the wood-shed.  Destroying me by four cups as all her shots went down while mine harmlessly bounced off the edges of the iconic red cups.  Finally, in a fit of frustration, I lashed out at the cups.  I was not playing poorly, I was making fine shots, it was the fucking cups!  I went so far as to claim that they were not even Solo cups.  And you know what?!  They weren’t!  AJ, perhaps to save ten cents, perhaps to screw me over, had purchased America’s Choice knock-off Solos!  Call me a bad sport, but I knew we were playing with inferior equipment, it was surely the only reason I had been upset in the first game.

Refocused, and now forced to adopt a new throwing method to deal with the cheap cups, I dug myself out of a massive 0-1 hole to make it to the top of the round robin standings and eventually cruise to my second straight title.  How ’bout them apples?

B-

*Because I’m Jewish.

4.74% ABV canned

Yesterday’s post reminded of an even more interesting tale of Super Bowls past. May I present…

The Hooker Lottery

In Super Bowl XXXVII the Tampa Bay Buccaneers scored early and often on Bill Callahan’s pathetic Raiders’ defense and the game was rendered quite boring quite quickly. Likewise boring were the commercials, finger foods, and lite macro beers we consumed. Our beer of choice at the time was canned PBR, which I still think is the best macro on the market by an order of magnitude. It was just a bunch of slovenly guys, not a single member of the fairer sex in the tiny UES apartment where we watched the game. JT, despite being a major league deviant was also a helluva classy guy, even from an early age. Wanting to spice things up, with a thought he went to his kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a nice sterling silver serving tray heavy with a few decanters of booze: Scotch, bourbon, gin, vodka, maybe something else.

As we got loaded on liquor, we did as men are want to do and the conversation became ribald if not downright sleazy. Tales of conquests past beget tales of scandalous sex beget tales of downright sordidness. Eventually, the conversation turned to a discussion of prostitutes. It was not unknown that JT had had numerous in his life, but we quickly learned a few of the other fellas had as well. Even more guys had gone as far as semi-prostitution in visiting an Asian rub ‘n’ tug. About half the room, me included, had never paid to ejaculate.

Regardless of our level of hooker expertise, JT was the connoisseur and we pelted him with questions:

“Where do you find one?”

Village Voice. Back pages.

“Are they attractive?”

Sometimes. Sometimes not.

“Do they look like their pictures?”

Again, sometimes. Sometimes not.

“How long do you get?”

Depends. Usually an hour. Or til you come.

“Diseases?”

Believe me, they are just as interested in not getting a disease as you.

“And the cost?”

$200 on average.

Upon hearing that, every guy in the room had the same thought. We all looked around, silently counting the attendance in our heads. The tally ended up coming to twenty of us. $200, twenty guys, that’s ten bucks a head. Highly doable.

I’m not sure who came up with the stroke of obvious genius, but in the future we would all take credit for it, all co-creators of the idea: the hooker lottery.

Each man pulled a $10 bill from his pocket, a Sharpie was passed around for us to put our John Hancock on Alexander Hamilton, and then the bills were thrown into a hat.

First, though, we had to pick out the girl and come up with some stipulations. Jonathan sprinted down to the lobby to grab a Village Voice while the rest of us debated the logistics. Blond or brunette? Asian or Eastern Bloc? Lithe or voluptuous? Fake tits or real? And what would the nineteen losers get as a consolation prize for their efforts?

Ultimately, we decided on a fake-chested Ukraine beauty and the rule that the lottery winner would have to convince said escort to do ten (10) naked jumping jacks for the entire room before he fucked her.

Girl picked, rules set, we drew from the hat: Fred.

Looking around the room, you quickly could tell for what reason each man entered the lottery. Upon Fred’s name being drawn about 33% of the room gritted their teeth in anger, while the other two-thirds discreetly breathed a sigh of relief, they wouldn’t have to puss out, wouldn’t have to admit to their friends that they didn’t want to, that they were scared of having a hooker and were just paying $10 for the proxy thrill of saying they had entered a hooker lottery.

Fred had no such qualms though, turning his victory down briskly, and with no prejudice. The hat was shook again and JT’s brother Terrence won, gladly accepting his prize, dancing around the room like Warren Sapp.

Thirty minutes later, we buzzed in our hooker and Terrence answered the door. We couldn’t see the apartment’s entryway from the living room, but we could hear some negotiation, some haggling, going on in the foyer between Terrence and the prostitute.

After a few minutes, a pencil thin Asian hooker with a pageboy haircut came into the room and did a truncated set of ten naked jumping jacks. “You see me nekkid now, OK?” she said in a heavy accent as she sprinted back to the bedroom.

Giggling like children, we then listened for the next ten minutes as Terrence loudly railed the hooker, intentionally slamming the headboard into the adjacent wall so that we were forced to hear all the gory details.

As the wall reverberated like a metronome, I think all twenty of us realized that a new tradition had just begun…

4.5% ABV on draught

Sunrise on a foursome ~ Murphy bed ~ Brian ~ Brazilian meats ~ Umbros as underwear ~ Brian’s tippling caveat ~ Meet Market Adventures ~ The seduction(s) ~ Boutique hotel rooms ~ Bathroom coitus ~ What the fuck? ~ Breakfast and laughs

The sun came in through the eastern exposed window, hitting the four sleeping people crammed onto the small Murphy bed which housed from right to left, easterly to westerly: me, my one-night stand, Brian’s one night stand, and Brian, all of us in various and unfortunate states of undress. The previous night had begun so normally, so PG, so unceremoniously headed toward mundaneness and early bedtimes.

But then, ain’t that how the best nights always begin? With the lowest of low expectations?

On Thursday morning I received a text from a good out-of-town friend Brian. He had been handed some spur-of-the-moment meetings in New York and was on the Acela en route. His night would be free though and he thought we should grab dinner. On the company card, natch. He enlisted me to pick a place. Living in Hell’s Kitchen near Little Brazil, I instantly offered the idea of a churrascaria, otherwise known as stuff-your-face-with-skewered-meat-until-you-are-supine.

Before Brian’s communique, I had planned on doing laundry that night, having no underwear clean. I hate going commando, especially on a hot and sticky night in the city, so I rummaged through my dresser for the most undergarment-like thing I had to don. Eventually, in the back, back, back of my dresser, I found a pair of high school-era tight-like-the-Europeans-wear Umbro soccer shorts. Shimmery, shiny, overly colorful, and with a long drawstring, they would have to suffice. And, since Brian had already explicitly stated that we would under no circumstances be drinking alcohol due to the fact that he had a bright-and-early Friday meeting, I figured I’d only be out wearing my soccerwear for an hour or two. Hey, what could go wrong?

Soon, I would see how Murphy’s Law would lead to Murphy’s bed.

We met at the Brazilian joint, asking to be sat in the dark basement so impressionable youths would not have to witness our savage destruction. For those of you rubes that have never ate churrascaria before, it essentially works like this: for a single price (usually in the $20-25 range) you get an all-you-can-eat of carnivore’s delight. On your table you have a card, on one side a green “go” light, on the other a red “stop” light. As numerous ESL waiters walk through the dining room carrying countless skewers of differing meats on a stick–beef, chicken, pork, lamb, shit wrapped in bacon, etc–a green light-turned card tells the gents to keep piling portions onto your plate. Not expecting to drink, and showing amazing discipline in spurning offers of delicious Caipirinhas, Brian and I must have put down a dozen pounds of animal in under a half hour. It was glorious. And, oddly enough, over oh-so-quickly.

Our bellies bulging like Buddha, we listened to a seemingly endless loop of “Girl from Ipanema” and “Mas Que Nada”–apparently the only two Brazilian songs ever written and performed–being played by the bossa nova band out front, laying back in our chairs and gasping for air. The night was still very young. What could one drink hurt?

I hate to transgress my friends, so I refused to broach the subject. But I hoped. I sent ESP signals across the entrails, viscera, and meat-laden spittle covering our table. Finally, Brian reacted, a neon bar light going off beside his head–an idea!

“Let’s go get A drink,” he said, accenting the “A” with a long-vowel stressing–as opposed to the typical schwa pronunciation–that one only uses when they are truly fucking serious.

Nearby on Eighth Avenue was a bar where Brian and I had had some fun times in the past and he quickly offered up that joint for my approval. Now, for whatever reason, I–like most locals–never go out on Eighth Avenue. Eighth is for the bridge-and-tunnel, the happy hour heroes, the tourists with just enough balls to venture to a tavern outside of Times Square, and flight attendants in town for the night and staying at nearby midtown hotels. In other words, a perfect storm of deviant, don’t-know-when-they’ve-had-enough, easy lays. Fun times are always had in Eighth Avenue bars, I should go more often. This time would prove to be no exception.

As we entered the classless and sterile pub, a stream of all-dolled-up women spewed out the front door like a bison herd. “Did a pipe carrying noxious gases just burst in back?” we wondered. Nope. Seems a Meet Market Adventures speed dating event had just ended. We would quickly realize that the girls leaving the bar were the ones that still had a shred of dignity, a sliver of confidence still inside of them. These were the girls that wanted to at least cry about their romantic failures in the privacy of their own homes. What remained in the bar was a gaggle of desperate women who had amazingly not found “Mr. Right” during the event and were now content to get shit-faced while singing along to “I Will Survive” off the Bose jukebox.

We pushed through the failed would-be Mr. Rights, milquetoast dorks dressed as if they were attending a wine tasting, blazers and khakis galore, all smarting after having been rebuffed by the female speed-daters, and hit the bar to get our drinks and scope the scene. With no great tap offerings we went with Swithwick’s, the ubiquitous and usually mispronounced beer* that is satisfactory enough in a pinch.

Brian and I quickly showed our speed-seduction prowess by becoming the life of the bar, the bon vivants of the party, the idols of every girl in attendance. We are funny and scene-stealing enough in normal crowds, but going up vis-a-vis with pathetic speed-daters was as if you had planted a steroids-era baseballer back into the 1940s. We quickly had our pick of the litter. And I don’t mean litter (def. 1), I mean litter as in garbage, rubbish, refuse.

Brian went for the queen bee, an actual employee of Meet Market who was running the whole sob-fest. With 300 ccs of confidence injected into her chest, I was quite jealous of Brian’s score. I found myself with a cute but pathetic speed-dater, too shy to flirt and do much talking, malleable to my every whim. In other words, perfect for me, as I adore the sound of my own voice and I very much like to tell women what to do as though I’m Patton.

Not surprisingly, only A drink became huge tabs replete with pint after pint and shot after shot. Soon we were the last in the bar and the party needed to move elsewhere. Brian suggested retiring to his nearby hotel room to hit the minibar and play some “party games.” Of course, upon arriving at Brian’s hotel, I learned that it is what is quaintly known as a “boutique.” Which, in Manhattan, means a tiny, shithole. The room was as small as a janitor’s closet with nothing more than the aforementioned Murphy bed, a mirror, a rabbit ears TV, and of course nothing even remotely resembling a minibar.

The four of us stared at each other with dumbfounded, what the fuck do we do now?, looks on our pusses. It was near 4:00 AM and our options were limited. Fortune favors the bold, and followers need leaders, so I had no other choice. I ordered my girl:

“Go to the bathroom, strip naked, and I’ll be in there in a sec.”

And she wordlessly did as she was told, shutting the door behind her. I shrugged at Brian and he shrugged back. Quite frankly I was a little impressed by myself. Brian’s girl had a leery look on her face, wondering what deviant things were about to occur. “Hey, you run these Meet Market Adventures. You should be happy she’s about to get laid.”

I followed my girl in, indeed finding her naked and standing in the bathtub. I liked this one!

We began to ravenously make out and as I reached down to unbuckle my jeans, for the first time in twelve hours I recalled what I was wearing under them. I snickered in my head, a tinge of worry, predicting that nothing kills a drunken 4 AM mood faster than hot pink and purple soccer trunks. Thus, I was forced to pull everything down at once, in the blink of an eye, totally breaking hook-up protocol but thus never giving her a chance to see my embarrassing Umbros.

When we finished, I no longer cared. I threw on my Umbros and we headed back into the room, finding Brian and his girl missing. We collapsed on the bed, my girl kindly insisting that the two of us only take 50% of the small sleeping space, should we doze off and our friends return. Of course, that is exactly what happened, and that is exactly how just a few hours later, I woke up in a tiny Murphy bed, me, my girl, Brian’s girl, and Brian, all in various states of undress. God, I don’t want to know what happened on the 50% of bedspace open beside me. Then again, at least I had my girl as a buffer, like those bumpers you throw up to help kids and retards bowl better. Likewise, I couldn’t complain as it was possible I had caused Brian’s company to get charged room damages for my bathroom dalliance.

Somehow, Brian woke the exact same time as me, and over top the shoulders of our sleeping lasses, we looked at each other and laughed. And then, OHHHHHHHHHHHH!, collapsed back to our shared pillows, our heads throbbing with the most epic fucking hangovers ever.

“SHIT!” Brian’s meeting was in just fifteen minutes. As he scrambled to get dressed, I tried to shake the bitches awake. I’ve always been amazed by how deeply somnolent my one-night stands can be. Girls are just wired differently than us I suppose.

By the time the girls were awake and tidy enough to walk of shame back to Yonkers and Hoboken–each of them cutely giving their respective man a business card should we ever want to have future contact with them (we wouldn’t)–Brian had already decided he wasn’t making his meeting and would just call in sick, cementing his status as a legend of vice.

We headed to a diner to grab brunch and recount the past fifteen hours ad nauseum.

B-

*Smi-dicks

5.1% ABV bottled

I continue to be stunned how watching this year’s political debates has become appointment television for most people. These same folks who I’ve never once heard utter a political thought in their lives are now rushing home, setting up spreads of food and drink on the coffee table, even hosting parties and gatherings like it’s the fucking Super Bowl, in order to watch two losers debate. Ha, “debate.” Political debates are not debates. They’re nothing but carefully orchestrated and choreographed theater. High school forensics leagues are more riveting and exciting and unpredictable. Does any one watch a debate nowadays and have their opinions swayed? Of course not. Because it’s not a debate, it’s two people standing on the same stage kinda near each other and shoe-horning their already well-tread platforms into brief snippets of answers to questions. It’s a vanity contest, no more significant than the speaking portion of a beauty pageant. A sound and a fury signifying nothing. You know who the winner of these debates is? The person who speaks clearest, who smiles the most, who looks up the most, and who has the nicest suit on. It’s ludicrous. George H.W. once “lost” a debate because he checked the time. Nixon lost one because he forgot to shave. And someone will “lose” tonight because they farted. Or sneezed. Or said Gesundheit to that sneeze instead of “God bless you!”  (”‘Gesundheit?’ What are ya’, a German atheist?!”) Or wore clashing socks. It’s insane. But, the biggest crime is that it’s just fucking boring.

Your Vice Blogger will be out getting loaded tonight. Something actually fun. And though he probably won’t be voting–nevertheless, as Marx said (I think) “We are all political animals”–so it’s certainly possible he’ll get into a drunken political debate with a buddy or two. Now that would be riveting television. That I would understand if all of America wanted to watch me drunkenly debate my likewise-drunk friends.

The only thing worse than watching a modern-day political debate is when you go to a bar and they have the debate on, muted, with the fucking closed-captioning scrolling. Are you fucking serious?! Like I want to drunkenly read the no-content ramblings of Joe Biden*.  Sure.  This happened to me last week and I was gobsmacked. I will not allow that to happen tonight. Any bar that does that will be quickly 86ed from my life.

And now I come to the penultimate beer review from the big care package of Minnesota brews The Captain sent me so long ago. The EPA has not much of a smell. Faint hops and pine scents. It tastes a little bland. Earthy, pine hints, slight orange tastes. No carbonation, no alcoholic bite, no bitterness = about as drinkable as a halfway decent beer can be.

A pleasant enough little pale ale. Very easy to drink and enjoy. I don’t know how any one could NOT like this. Then again, I don’t know how any one could LOVE it. And I still don’t know how any one could love political debates.  Please, just don’t watch them.

B-

*Cuse alumni shout out!

5% ABV

When I was younger, I thought there would be nothing better than if I could one day live above a bar.  I would walk down there in my slippers and a bathrobe for a quick nip.  I could tell women I met there that I literally lived upstairs.  And if I got too wasted and passed out on the bar, my kindly bartender friend would excuse himself for a minute and fireman carry me upstairs to tuck me in.

I currently live above a bar.  And despite the sandwich-board advertised obscenely cheap drinks and quite raucous atmosphere, I’ve never been inside once.  You see, I live above a gay bar.

Look, I obviously have no problem with gays or gay bars, in fact, one can quite accidentally wander into gay bars in NYC, missing the tiny rainbow decal on the front window, and find themselves drinking there and enjoying themselves for quite awhile before noticing that the clientele is 100% fabulous men save a fat fag hag or two.  But this gay bar I live above is flamboyant gay.  More like Elton John than Lance Bass.  Blowjob-in-a-dark corner gay.

I sit in my bedroom drinking a bottle of Schell FireBrick as I prepare to go out.  A hearty pour with a foamy head.  Decent smell with a bit of skunk to it.  A pretty good taste, an all matl Vienna-style lager, like a slightly worse Negra Modelo.  I’ve been impressed with Schell’s offerings so far.  My room abuts the bar’s patio and its already starting to get rowdy down there.  I’m guessing they ain’t watching the South Florida/FIU game.

When I return tonight I will be greeted outside the bar stretching to in front of my building’s stoop by a herd of transvestites and transsexuals smoking Virginia Slims and cat-calling all the straight men that pass, trying to solicit them.  Even though I know the score, returning drunk at 3 AM I will always see one of those gender-reassigned, DD-siliconed, shaved-down Adam’s apple, flowing blond hair extensions “women” from afar and think, “Goddamn, who is that piece of ass in front of my building?!,” getting closer only to realize it’s clearly a former man.

However, most of the bar patrons hanging out front are John Waters’s Divine-style drag queens.  Personal performance artists not even trying to pretend they are female.  6′5″ with green wigs, stuffed to the gills bustiers, and sequined gowns.  I’ve started to know some of the regulars.  Nice gals and boy are they funny.  On occasion I’ll even find myself chatting with the trannies late at night, only waking the next morning hungover thinking, “Why the fuck did I talk to ‘Jasmine’ for fifteen minutes last night?!  What were we discussing?!”  I wonder if these drag queens think I’ll fuck them one day.  God I hope not.

B-

8% on draught

Friday I went to Dinosaur BBQ Harlem to have my death row meal, their Jumbo Roaster Bar-B-Que chicken wings, spice rubbed, pit smoked, then finished on the grill. Were I about to be put to rest, for my final feast I would simply have the prison officials pry open my gullet and dump several hundred of these wings down my throat (with a gallon of Maytag blue as lubrication) in the same way they feed a foie gras duck or goose. But this would not be gavage, it would be pure ecstasy. I wouldn’t even need to go to the electric chair or get a lethal injection, I would eat these wings until my liver exploded and I perished. The foie gras I created no doubt sold off to rampant Vice Blog fanatics in some charity auction at the next VBCon.

While sitting at Dinosaur’s better-than-you-would expect bar waiting for my dining companions to arrive, I marveled at the terrible drink selections everyone was making. Dinosaur has a quite respectable craft beer menu yet everyone was getting shit. Blue Moons and Stellas aplenty. I thought of the reaction of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” character Jimmy when Vincent and Jules are so impressed that he actually has some good coffee to serve them.

Jimmy: I don’t need you to tell me how fucking good my coffee is, okay? I’m the one who buys it, I know how good it is. When Bonnie goes shopping, she buys shit. Me, I buy the gourmet expensive stuff because when I drink it, I want to taste it.

Well just like Jimmy, I drink the gourmet expensive stuff while everyone else seems to drink shit. Why is that? I suspect it’s because most people don’t truly like the taste of beer like I do. That’s cause all they’ve ever had are crummy macros. But they like to get drunk–without the liver-scorching potency that hard liquor brings or the effete stigma that delicious fruity cocktail concoctions bring–and thus are forced to drink beer. And so the number one thing I suspect these people look at when ordering a beer is what is the cheapest shit in the place. Thus, they order macros.

Now this always amused me. True a macro is almost certainly going to be the cheapest beer in the joint when ounce-age is the only factor considered. But is that what should be measured? I propose these folks should look at PPAP (price per alcoholic percentile). As in, where I live in New York, Bud Light is usually $5 a pint. At a 4.2% ABV that’s $1.19 cents per alcoholic percentile. Meanwhile, at Dinosaur the ubiquitous Blue Moon was $5. At 5.4% that’s 92 cents per alcoholic percentile. But what I got was Dogfish Head’s Raison D’Etre. True, at $6 the most expensive pint on the menu, but at 8% ABV it was also the most alcoholic beer on the menu giving me an PPAP of 75 cents! By far the best value in the place gettin’-drunk-wise.

You would think these people that are only concerned about alcohol as a vessel for drunkenness would use their basic math skills and figure out that in the long run it would be much more thrifty to drink “expensive” craft beer all night than “dirt cheap” piss water macros. And, then, they might realize–shit!–these microbrews are so vastly superior in flavor than the swill I’ve been drinking my whole life.

Back to Raison D’Etre. Dogfish Head is one of my favorite breweries but I’d avoided this beer for years for reasons twofold. Firstly, it’s so easy to find that I never saw any urgency in picking it up, and secondly, it gets pretty mediocre reviews online. I really don’t understand that at all. From the first sniffs and sips, I really liked this one. Pun-ish raisins (not raisons), chocolate, and maybe a little coffee immediately nail you. Tastes like some unique stout/strong ale hybrid. A sweet finish and a sour aftertaste.

I must admit I liked this beer less and less the more I drank it, but that’s just cause it’s so overwhelming. The first 8 ounces or so were flirting with greatness indeed and I would definitely have this one again. Just not so much of it again. And I would also tell amateurs to totally avoid my earlier PPAP treatise because there is no fucking way you macro-drinking lifers could handle this one.

B-

4.5% ABV bottle-conditioned sixer

My stay in Kansas was never to end! We’d only been there for a mere 15 hours and it felt like an eternity. If you want to become immortal, just move to Kansas and your life will never end. We woke up at 7 AM on Saturday to get an early start on our google-map-claimed two hour drive to Manhattan*. The drive west was generally boring, it was raining torrentially and there was nothing on the side of the road except wastelands and a remarkable amount of halls of fame and museums. Off the top of my head we saw several for aeronautics, one for agriculture, an insect zoo, and a Wizard of Oz museum. Not to mention two wineries. We somehow managed to resist these remarkable temptations and only make two stops along the way.

First, a breakfast run to Sonic. My friends had seen the irreverent commercials for the fast food joint for years up here on the eastern seaboard but had never once encountered an actual restaurant. Suffice to say, we were all greatly pleased by our sublime breakfast burritos with a side of tots. Our other stop was in Lawrence to see the University of Kansas’s Phog Allen Fieldhouse. We struggled to locate it, especially when the only people on campus we could ask directions of seemed to be Nigerian exchange students with no clue about where a “baw-skeet-bol jeem” might be. Nevertheless, we eventually stumbled upon it. And, so glad we did, it was a beautiful facility with an amazing museum that all other college programs should strive to have something as good as. We were in awe at seeing The Big Dipper’s jockstrap, Bill Self’s spare toupee, and the school’s 2003 second place trophy.

We soon got to Manhattan which was uneventful but the wedding was indeed fun.

Back awake at 7 AM on Sunday, we hungover sped back to Kansas City to catch our noon-time flight. Then, all the trouble began. Getting off the rental car agency-to-airport shuttle bus at our airline, I was stunned to see that my bag was no long on the luggage rack. Some dunce had apparently mistakenly taken my bag instead of his own. My bag was big, black, had Midwest Airlines tags, and had a bum wheel. His was tiny, squat, black, and had no wheels. It was inconceivable to me that he could have mistaken my bag for his. I sprinted down the length of the airport, searching for the stupidest-looking human being I could find.  I was finding those wherever I looked however.  Luckily the entire length of KCI is shorter than a football field so I could check everyone and every visible bag, but unluckily I never found him or my bag.

I was fuming. Apoplectic. If I had come upon this guy at that moment I surely would have popped him. My flight was taking off in an hour or so but it didn’t matter at this point. Especially since the departures monitor had “LGA - DELAYED (INDEF) on them.  The only time a delay has ever been welcomed.

After a four hour circus which involved me speaking to idiots on the white courtesy phone, idiots in the airport police department, idiots in the lost and found department, idiots at Northwest Airlines, idiots at United, and the extraordinarily helpful NON-idiots at Midwest, I finally heard a nearly inaudible public address system announcement (from another idiot natch) that my bag might be at US Airways.

Sprinting down there, I saw my bag, and standing next to it, the doofiest motherfucker the world has ever known. You remember how Gary Larson would draw troglodytic morons in his absolutely brilliant “The Far Side”? Yeah, that’s exactly how this guy looked. Slack-jawed, buck teeth jutting far out of his mouth and over his front lip. Messy bangs down to his brow with a cheap mesh hat on his head and a t-shirt from some vacation decades ago on his torso. He spoke a near foreign language to me.

DOOFUS: Where’s ma’ bag?

AARON: Excuse me?!

DOOFUS: ‘ah got yer bag, so where’s ma’ bag?

AARON: Listen idiot, I don’t have your bag cause I don’t take the wrong bag cause I’m not some dumb motherfucker.

DOOFUS: So wha’ shud ‘ah do?

AARON: I’m guessing your bag is still on the rental car shuttle, taking perpetual loops from airport to rental center and back.

A 5 watt lightbulb went off in his head like the idea had never occurred to him in the previous four hours to call the rental car place.

AARON: Dummy, I just got one more question for you. At what point did you realize you had the wrong bag?

DOOFUS: When ah’ went to the secur’ty line and dey said I had wine and beer bot’les in ma’ bag. I ‘as like, no I don’t…then I ree-lized, hey, this prolly ain’t ma’ bag.

My vices actually saved some retard from unwittingly taking my bag full of an expensive suit, an ipod, and, yes, wine and beer bottles, back with him to Little Rock or Knoxville or wherever the fuck he was from. You see, I had overaccumulated wine and beer to drink before and after the wedding and thus, thinking it a sin to toss the stuff, I had packed it onto my bag which I had planned to check.

Relieved, I went to the shitty airport pub to unwind and wait for my flight to become undelayed. At a certain point, I’d been in the bar so long that I got concerned. I asked the racist bartender*, “At what point of drunkenness will they not let a person on a flight?”

“Yer fine, honey, just don’t wobble.”

I wasn’t, in fact, fine as our noon flight was eventually canceled by 7:00 PM or so. Weather issues in New York. My other delayed friend and I scrambled to find a hotel room to share. Seems the airlines don’t comp you unless your plane is delayed due to malfunctions. At this late of notice, we were only able to get a small single-bed room at the airport Marriot.

We sequestered ourselves back in that room, furious at spending another night in the city, not wanting to ever leave the room til morning. Stripping down shirtless and into gym shorts since it was so freaking muggy, ordering room service so as not to deal with any more locals than necessary, drinking beers and complimentary wine to relax, and watching Olympic men’s gymnastics….well, because there was nothing else on, I swear!. Suffice to say, when the room service waitress arrived with our salads and baked potatoes–us trying to eat healthy after a weekend of decadence and a day of deplorable airport food–she gave a smirk, looking at the two shirtless men watching gymnastics, drinking wine, and sharing a bed. I could tell she thought a lot of sodomy would be happening that night, no doubt taunting the maid on her walk down the hall, warning her about all the anal flowback she would surely have to clean up off the two “New York City fruits’” comforter.

The beer keeping us company and sane was the final Boulevard we tried that weekend, their Lunar Ale. They call it brown beer but everyone else simply calls it a dark wheat beer. I thought it oddly enough smelled, and tasted, like a poor man’s (a very, very poor man’s) La Fin du Monde though. Which isn’t a bad thing to aim for as it’s one of the finest beers in the world and probably one of my top ten favorites. Of course, at a paltry 4.5% ABV, it lacked the potency, bite, and flavor that La Fin has and which all other Boulevards seem to also lack. I really wish the company made beers in the 6 to 8% range cause they might then actually craft something great.

Monday, we were back up at 4:30 AM, trying to get home. Further delays, a plane running out of gas, and later being diverted to Pittsburgh, were all par for the course on this trip, as we finally touched down around 5:00 PM, nearly thirty hours after we were supposed to have seen Kansas in the rearview forever.

B-

*With completely empty highways, speeding along at like 90 MPH in a cheap rental car, we were there in like 85 minutes. I’m sure the record cannonball run from KC to Manhattan is under 45 minutes.

**Indeed she freely tossed around the n-word as if us white folks had some inside joke.  When I told her we had gone to the Isle of Capri and it had sucked she said, verbatim, “Well a course it sucked.  Dat’s da n***** casino.”  Yes, she got a bad tip from me.  Fight the power.

4.5% ABV

The Abercrombie & Fitch store on Fifth Avenue has got to be the most deplorable retail space in the entire world. Unfortunately, I have to pass it most every single day. The first thing you notice is the stench. Depending how the wind is blowing, you can smell this store from as far north as Central Park and as far south as the NBA Store on 52nd. The odor is that of a cheap cologne factory explosion. It’s noxious, penetrating your nostrils and sticking to the fibers of your clothing, making any person you interact with for the rest of the day wonder why you smell like a Maxim Magazine cologne sample. Then, as you get closer, you notice the blue velvet-roped off line. You think, “Weird, is there a ‘hot’ new nightclub for douchebags, touristy yokels, and fanny-packed moms that now opens on Fifth Avenue at 1:00 PM on Wednesdays?” Nope, A&F literally has a queue–and usually a lengthy one at that–waiting to get into a fucking store that every mall in every shitty town in America already has. Unbelievable. I thought the lamest thing a tourist could do while sightseeing on Fifth was to stand across the street from the Trump Tower and take a picture, but nope, this trumps (actually not sure if I intended this pun or not) even that. Of course, every place with a velvet rope needs someone standing guard, and the “bouncers” for this stinky dump are shirtless concave-chested and prepubescently hairless nineteen-years old “models.” The little tourist girls seem to love to get Polaroids taken with these chaps. Firstly, I can’t believe Polaroids still exist, but secondly, I’ve now decided getting your picture taken with a shirtless A&F “hunk” is the lamest thing that can possibly be done on Fifth. These models are the kind of guys that only a fourteen-year-old from Wichita would find attractive. I see the braces-wearing gals giggling with glee as they leave the store, staring at their autographed keepsake as ambiguously dirty thoughts run through their minds. Within a year or two, the girls will stumble upon this souvenir at the bottom of their desk drawer and chuckle at themselves, embarrassed for being so silly back when. By this same time, these effete little 130 pound boy bouncers will either become like the 90-97% rest of us, start reading The Vice Blog, drinking beers, and developing nice little guts. Or, they will become like the other 3-10% rest of us and admit they are homosexuals, maintaining a lithe muscular physique. I’ve never been in the store but I bet further atrocities lurk within. Maybe I’ll visit one day, wasted, just to see what the bouncers will do if I start going apeshit, wondering why they won’t change the TV monitors to the damn Yankees game and bring me a gin. I’m guessing it would take like fifteen of them to bounce me. It would be like the Lilliputians tying down Gulliver.

I usually have a slick little segue to advance from my opening anecdote into my beer review, but not this time. I just fucking hate this Abercrombie & Fitch store so much, it is currently my biggest bane in the goddamn city, and I really felt like blasting it*. Ah, now I feel better. Onto the beer…

I thought I’d read something, somewhere, that some British magazine or newspaper or website had called St. Peter’s Ale the best beer in the world. So you can imagine I was pretty excited when someone gave me a bottle. The bottle is cool fo’ sho’. Looks like some sort of apothecary’s magic elixir. And, after I’d poured the bottle into my pint glass, I noticed that, now empty, some odd, latticy, crystalline bubble formation had remained.

Not sure if you can tell from the picture, but it was very cool. Very odd. I’d never seen a beer bottle do that before. It was hypnotic. Is that a sign of a good beer, or just a weird fucking one-time quirk? Who knows.

Immediately, upon consuming this so-called highly regarded beer, I was kinda confused. It has a skunky, semi-woodsy smell. Taste is much more muted however. Very thin, very light. Really nothing special. Kinda just tasted to me like the sort of beer British people have been going to pubs to polish off fifteen straight pints of for the last several hundred years. And, with such a low ABV, that is definitely doable. Don’t get me wrong, though, this is a vastly superior beer to the kinds of beer Americans polish off fifteen straights pints of.

Having said that, the brew is decidedly not spectacular, and it’s certainly not the best beer in the world. Afterwards, I searched out that article I thought I’d read. Aha! It was The Independent and they had actually claimed that St. Peter’s IPA was the best beer around. That make a little more sense.

B-

*Amusing footnote: Headed to a wedding this weekend where it stands a good chance I will find myself at the hotel pool taking a dip at some point. I will ironically be outfitted in an A&F swimsuit, a faded pair of trunks I think I purchased back in 1998 or so for a college spring break trip. What can I say, I don’t go swimming a lot and I’m pretty lazy in updating my wardrobe.

7.6% ABV from a brown-bagged bottle

Ah, the “road soda.” Beer for the drunk on-the-go. Wrap that sucker in a paper bag and all of the sudden it’s invisible to the world and you’re not culpable. What was that Bunny Colvin said on Season 3 of The Wire, “There’s never been a paper bag for drugs.  Until now.” He was referring to his creation of an ad hoc drug-selling zone malapropriously nicknamed “Hamsterdam” in which street thugs were free to sling rock without any consequences from Baltimore’s po-lease. Of course, this is a brilliant plan and all sorts of major crimes plummet in Baltimore. Nevertheless, and as expected, the stupid city government doesn’t actually care about improving the city but, rather, in lording over people, so they force Bunny to retire and put an end to the Hamsterdam experiment. Soon Baltimore is back to the its status quo shithole existence.

Luckily, with rare exception and despite Mayor Bloomberg’s occasionally terrible ideas, New York refuses to be a nanny state. In a way, New York City is a more upscale Hamsterdam. Crimes that don’t harm other people–smoking weed, drinking in public, jaywalking, not wearing helmets, pissing on bums, fucking hookers, getting an Asian rub ‘n’ tug–are de facto legal here as police and the government turn the other cheek. And rightly so. I’m a grown man, why should I feel like I’m committing a crime by simply sipping a beer as I stroll down the street on a relaxing Saturday night?

Is there any dumber, more draconian law in America than it being illegal to publicly drink? Is there any other law that more shows how out of touch politicians are in thinking they can rule us with a mighty iron fist while attempting to make the world a better place (ha ha) than by not allowing a 29-year-old man to calmly sip a drink on a street corner?  Yeah, probably.  But not being allowed to publicly drink irks me a whole lot more than having to wear a seatbelt in the front seat of a car.

We dined at the decent RUB on Saturday night and afterward we wanted to hit the revamped Frying Pan, an old boat docked in the Hudson near Chelsea where you can get drunk on terrible, terribly overpriced, and terribly small beers while ogling prudish bitches on Girls Night Outs or simply while absentmindedly staring across the river wondering if you could ever truly handle commuting from Jersey (so close, but yet…so far!).

Even though RUB is on 7th Avenue, the hike all the way to the complete westside of the island is remarkably long and pretty much only accessible by foot. We would need a road soda to sate us on our voyage. We hopped into the nearby Whole Foods to grab a pop. My drinking buddy, a public tippling neophyte and a very straight-laced and honorable citizen, was a bit scared about boozing on the sidewalks of Manhattan. He has a wife and a good job and I think fears of ending up in the Sing Sing slammer and losing it all waltzed through his mind. I assuaged his fears that nothing would happen, but I don’t think he was truly at ease until we passed through the Chelsea Projects en route and saw pretty much every single building resident outside BBQing and getting loaded* as cops nearby on horseback just monitored the scene. Not concerned by any means, not trying to stop the technically “illegal” fun, just making sure everything was cool, like they were at a parade or something.

I must admit that most of the projects denizens were getting shit-canned on cheap malt liquors, while I selected a yuppified California microbrew I’d been wanting to try every since I first saw it on the shelf. Perhaps not the most thematically appropriately beer to brown bag, but I’m not gonna slum it just for accuracy’s sake. The Sirius was creamy, though not so creamy that it tasted like anything other than a normal ale. Pretty hoppy I guess, with a decent finish. I was shocked as just seconds ago I looked up the ABV of this. Boy is it masked well. I would have guessed this to be in the 4.8 to 5.2% range or so as it had absolutely no bite. Decent and I’d have it some more if it was handed to me at a party or orgy, but I doubt I’ll ever buy it again. It’s kinda boring and unremarkable but it did get the job done for the 15 minute voyage. Then again, it’s hard to fully analyze a beer while you’re walking over bums on an overly dark 24th street trying to reach your destination.

B-

*Yo, don’t accuse me of racism with my seemingly stereotypical observation. Projects life looks awesome. I WISH I could score an invite to a PJs BBQ: booze, ribs, weed, lasciviously dressed women, dominoes, and hoops. Sign. Me. Up.

4.4% ABV

Yet another blueberry beer.  I’m starting to think I should have a special category for blueberry beers!

My friend claimed this is the best blueberry beer around, but New England people are committed homers so you have to take what they say with a gigantic grain of Kosher salt.  Wachusett Blueberry has a great smell and a solid taste.  Kinda sour finish.  No hops, pretty light, too little alcohol, very drinkable.  I didn’t want to insult my pal but I think this beer is simply average.  Nothing spectacular.  Or maybe I’m just totally burned out on blueberry fucking beers.  Yeah, that might be it.  In fact, I think I’m burned out on the blueberry altogether.  I gotta take at least a one-month hiatus from all things blueberry.  So I don’t want to see no blueberry pies, cobblers, cakes, crumbles, crisps, pancakes, waffles, muffins, breads, crepes, compotes, bagels, yogurts, parfaits, jellies, jams, ice creams, milkshakes, frozen yogurts, edible undergarments, or certainly fucking blueberry beers any time soon.

B-