10% ABV bottled

This may or may not become a weekly, monthly, yearly, or whenever-I-feel-like-flaggelating-myself series.

MY WORST HOOK-UPS OF ALL TIME, Presented in Random Order

#2. Jersey City Heights Lows

Oh I used to be so innocent, so fresh-faced, so idealistic, and optimistic. My early twenties. Going out still meant something. It was still exciting to me. I ritualized it to extreme levels. Now? I’ll go out on a moment’s notice. Throw on some filthy jeans with a hole in them, a dirty t-shirt, old sneakers caked in mud. I don’t care. I may not even brush my teeth. But back then, no way. Joe DiMaggio, when asked why he played so hard, famously remarked: “There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time. I owe him my best.” Well back then, I thought if I didn’t try my best and look my best, ain’t no way I could possibly meet a girl that was seeing me for the first time. Of course, now I realize that’s terrible thinking.

I lived in Hoboken.  My roommate back then was Freddie, a clean-cut kid one year my junior who just looked well-scrubbed, the All-American boy. His hair was flawless, as if it was actually part of his head like a Ken doll, never a strand out of place yet it seemed as if he never needed a hair cut nor used any gels, mousses, or sprays. The hair simply was. Freddie made Richie Cunningham look like Marilyn Manson. He wasn’t necessarily good-looking, but he always looked good.

We’d start prebarring after dinner, always splitting a six-pack, usually of Yuengling. We were so concerned with our later-in-the-night dealings with women that we refused to allow ourselves any more than three beers while at home. We thought that to be the appropriate number of brews to have in one’s system before entering a bar, the correct amount of beer needed to correctly seduce a girl. Cause, man, if you had a fourth beer–a fourth beer?!–before you left the house, fuck, who knows how sloppy and insane you’d be once you got to the watering hole. You’d totally be too sloshed to have any sort of wit or repartee need to slay and lay a lady.

We’d pop beer #1 and begin shining our shoes. Yes, back then we actually wore shoes to the bar that necessitated shining. We actually had instruments. Smallish shine boxes. And every single time we went out we wanted the toes of our shoes to look like fucking mirrors courtesy of Spit Shine Tommy. On the day in question of this story I had just gotten a new pair of Kenneth Cole shoes I was quite proud of. $175 dress kicks that were on sale for only $80.

Beer #2 and one of us would head for the showers, taking our beer in with us, resting it on the sink ledge as we hosed off, reaching outside the plastic curtain for a tug every so often. The other man would watch TV. Then, the reverse would occur. Freshly showered, we’d pop #3 to imbibe as we got dressed. Always in a “nice” button down shirt with brand new collar stays added. In warm weather we’d ever-so-slightly roll our sleeves up in that way on-the-road politicians do to try and look like a “Man of the People” when they’re at an auto parts plants or meeting with a sports team. We all know, though, that if they were real Men of the People, they’d probably be wearing a Jimmie Johnson t-shirt and some Crocs. Likewise, if we had actually been cool back then we wouldn’t have dressed like such fucking tools. But I digress.

We’d finish beer #3, brush and gargle, ogle each other up and down to make sure we be lookin’ good, and head out. To the bar across the street from our apartment. Full of drunks and scumbags in Giants jerseys despite the fact it wasn’t a game day. Despite our naivety, despite our foolishness, we always did quite well with women back then. Freddie more so than me. A fact that always vexed me.

I thought to myself, neither of us is great looking, but we’re both decent looking. And I’m much more the talker than him. Much more the female strategist.  He was fine in talking with the boys, but somewhat shy and bumbling around ladies. I’d do the approaches for us, get us set up with women, and he’d kinda just coast on my coattails. Or so I thought. But the most attractive women always latched onto him, not me. I was perpetually confused.

On this occasion, an absolute knockout 10-out-of-10 with 400 ccs of sexiness proudly displayed on her chest just came over and literally dragged him away from me and our conversation, not a word even said.

After I regained my composure, found my bearings, I realized I’d had enough.  I had to know.  And when Freddie went to the little boys room, I approached the knockout, Katie.

“Let me ask you. Beautiful women like yourself always approach my friend Freddie…”

Histrionic pause.

“Why?!!”

As Freddie returned from the bathroom she studied him as if he was a model on the catwalk.  She deviously smiled at me.

“He’s just so innocent looking. We all want to defile him.”

If they only knew. He may have been innocent looking but he was just as depraved as me and every other guy our age.

Soon, with little effort on Freddie’s part, Katie was all over him and he was all quid pro quo back at her.  In the brief seconds in which the three of us actually conversed, we learned that Katie had just sold her company and was seemingly now quite loaded, despite being just 28. An age that actually seemed ancient and “MILFy” to us.  I was getting whiplash shaking my head in amazement at the beauty of Freddie’s life.

That was it, I was tired of my jealousy, I had to compete with the Joneses. Luckily, Katie had a friend. Not a knockout, but pretty damn cute. I would take her down.  Back then, I needed to hook up with women to feel good about myself.  I don’t believe that’s true any more but I could be wrong.

Of course, I quickly floundered, and the Silver Medalist rebuffed me with no prejudice, soon leaving to speak with a much taller, muscular, and stupider man.  Thus, I was left talking to Katie’s second friend who I, who Freddie, and even who Katie, had been ignoring the whole night, and who the world had probably been ignoring for her lifetime.  Katrina, a friend visiting from out of town.

Coco Chanel had a famous saying, “There are no ugly women, just lazy ones.”

I used to subscribe to that theory. Any women with a bit of a workout regime, a bit of pride, and a bar of soap in her house, should at least be passable. In fact, I’d always felt that so long as a women is within ten pounds of her BMI she could rate no worse than a 5 out of 10 on my scale.

Good lord was I wrong. This girl didn’t have an ounce of fat on her 5′5″ frame and she was the ugliest non-retarded, non-violently scarred human being I had ever encountered.  I don’t even wish to describe her.  Think of the ugliest female you have ever seen, now put her eyes, nose, and mouth in different places, make her hair even more like a bird’s nest, and her body even more like a Kenyan marathon runner.

And now I was forced to talk to her exclusively as Freddie and Katie had begun gloriously making out and pawing at each other in the corner. I’ll say one thing, Katrina may have been ugly, but at least she had a great personality. Ha. No she didn’t. Her personality was worse than her alopecia.  Worse than the hairy mole on her neck.

It’s commonly thought that less attractive people have better personalities than attractive ones. That’s not exactly true. I get why people think that. They believe that the Brads and Angelinas of the world have no need to develop a good personality since they can coast by on their looks in all facets of their life since day one. Meanwhile, a, say, Tina Fey would have to develop a great personality early on if she ever wanted to succeed at things. True. But at a certain point, an ugly person is so heinous that they don’t have a chance at constructing a good personality because no one wants to be around them. You can’t develop a good personality sitting in your room alone talking to your dolls.

I wanted to go home but Freddie forced me to stay.  Finally, last call came and I was free to go.  Wrong.  Once outside the bar, knowing his situation was potentially precarious–as all hook-ups are–Freddie became like Dr. Octopus, somehow using one arm to flag down a cab, another arm to prevent Katie from leaving without him, and yet another to stop me.

I was all but sprinting home and Freddie got right in my face.  “Katie won’t let me come over unless you come too.  She doesn’t want Katrina to have to be alone on her couch.”  He stared at me with a “Come on motherfucker, help a brother out” look.  I glared over Freddie’s shoulder at Katrina who was picking her nose.  “I’ll owe you.”  “You’re goddamn right you will.”

I have no problem “sitting on a grenade” so that a friend can hook up with an attractive pal.  It’s certainly been done for me, though I never expect it.  But Katrina wasn’t just a grenade, she was a fucking landmine.  We cabbed out of Hoboken, climbing up to Jersey City Heights and arriving at a stunning three-floor town house which Katie had just bought.  A panoramic view of Manhattan from her living room, it was one of the nicer apartments I had ever been in.

Once inside, Katie got through the formalities as fast as possible, not even speaking commas–”There’s the couch there’s the TV remote beer’s in the fridge liquor’s in the cabinet pillows sheets towels in the closet good night”–before ushering Freddie up to her bedroom on the third floor where they loudly began humping, rocking the entire house.

I stared at Katrina.  Shivers went up my spine.  I went to the kitchen and poured myself several fingers of Katie’s expensive Port.  Threw it down my throat with authority.

After all I’ve told you, what I reveal next won’t make much sense but you must remember that back at this point in my life I did not cut my losses.  And if I took the wrong fork in the road I never turned back, I always forced my way on.  I returned to the living room to find Katrina watching “The Parent Trap” on the Disney Channel.  I sat next to her on the sofa.  She didn’t react.  I moved in to kiss this cold, ugly fish.  She immediately responded and began tonguing me down with a ridiculous force, she surely hadn’t kissed a man in ages, perhaps in her life.  The inside of her mouth tasted like a mix of Certs, burnt coffee, and cigarettes.  Yet I hadn’t noticed her smoking once that evening.  It was like making out with the high school janitor.

I retracted my head as far away from her face as possibly as I began to disrobe her.  She must have been drunk or simply didn’t care because when I unclasped her bra, tissues fell out.  She was stuffing like some 12-year-old.  And I soon saw why.  A chest so flat it was concave, topped off by areola as big as hockey pucks.

Yet I surged on.  A “treasure” trail creeping all the way past her outie belly button should have tipped me off, but I was still such a fool.  I’m sure some man has found the end of the rainbow only to see not a bucket of gold but a pile of shit.  I am that man.  Plunging my middle and index finger into something so coarse, so prickly, it was like trying to finger one of those “pin art” things executives had on their desks in the 1980s.  And her legs were so wooly I was getting cuts on my shins.

I had had enough.  But even in this I didn’t get to control my own destiny as she spoke up first.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have sex on the first date.”

HA!  Who knew this was a date?!

I rolled off the couch like I was a suicidal lemming plunging off a cliff, turned my back on her, and went to sleep fully clothed on the hardwood floor, using my new shoes as a pillow.

A couple of hours later at 6 AM the sun starts coming in through those same glorious panoramic windows, scalding me as I sleep on her floor. I have to get the fuck out of there. I stand, put my shoes on and go outside.

My cell phone is dead, I can’t call a cab, I don’t know how the bus system works, I don’t know where to get a bus even, so I have to walk. The three or so miles from Jersey City Heights back to Hoboken. It’s hot out and my feet must be swelling because my new and unbroken-in shoes are so damn tight, barely even bending with each step. I’m in intense pain.

At noon, I’m laying on the couch, hating life, icing down my bloodied and bruised feet, when I see a candy apple red Porsche pull in front of our apartment. Then, Freddie walks in, grinning ear-to-ear like he’d lost his virginity all over again. I could have killed him.

“Why’d you leave so early? You should have stuck around. Katie made Belgian waffles.  Fresh fruit, whipped cream, they were amazing!”

I could have murdered him.

“Oh, and those fake tits!  WOW!  Best I’ve ever seen.”

I could have defenestrated him.

“You should have seen her bed. California King, pillow top, sexy canopy. Unbelievably comfortable.  She even had a skylight above her bed.  Ha!”

I could have bludgeoned him.

“What’d you do?  Walk?!  It’s like four miles!  Katie would have given you a ride home in her new Porsche.”

I could have pulverized him.

“Oh, hey, you took my shoes by accident, we have the same pair. $80 on sale, right? Of course, you have a size 12 and I got a 9.  Ha, good thing I didn’t have to walk home in these big boats.”

I could have killed, murdered, defenestrated, bludgeoned, and pulverized myself.

BURTON BATON

I’d been anxious to try this beer for quite awhile now, especially since my friend Dave considers it maybe his favorite brew on the planet.  This is a blend of oak-aged English strong ale and DFH’s 90 Minute I.P.A., one of the most perfect beers around, one I will certainly give an A+ to whenever I get around to officially reviewing it.  Citrus notes from Northwestern hops meld with vanilla notes from the oak.  Very creamy but I felt that the boozy agressiveness of this one muted any hops.  This tastes far more like a strong ale than an IPA.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Quite frankly, while this beer was great, it wasn’t as unique as I expected it to be and wasn’t completely a tour de force.  I prefer the 90 Minute.  Burton Baton is still damn good though.

A

Feeling a little bit frisky on Saturday afternoon, I decided to buy every single Christmas/winter seasonal beer I had yet to have from the local supermarket and prebar with a cornucopia of the typically-spiced brews.

Blue Moon Full Moon

5.6% ABV

C

Abita Christmas Ale 2008

Unknown ABV (seriously Abita, list your fucking ABV, it’s like the only stat we all care about!)

Abita is another brewery that really rubs me the wrong way. Oh, how many times I’ve bought one of their beers, one of their countless new releases, thinking, “Hmmmm…that sounds interesting, that sounds good.” It never is. Abita is surely one of the shittiest prominent craft breweries in America. Nice labels, but everything they make is mediocre at best to absolute dreck at worst. Don’t tell that to a Louisianan though! Yet again, Abita tricked me here with their slick hologram-esque, unphotographable label*. This beer was just garbage. Not bad-tasting or anything, just not-tasting. Called a brown ale, it did indeed look that way, but tastes of absolute water. If the World Beer Championships ever held a contest to see who could make the darkest colored beer with no flavor, I think we might have our winner here. You fooled me yet again, Abita. What’s the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me for like the forty-fifth time, Abita, and…yeah, I’ll probably still take a whirl on your next shitty seasonal selection.”  Got anything in the works for Valentine’s Day?  Perhaps a beer steeped with those chalky little candy hearts?!

C-

Blue Point Winter Ale

4.5% ABV

With all these shitty Christmas beers, I was starting to be happy to be a dirty Jew. Also because I don’t have to hang out with people I hate on December 25th, I can just go to the movies, eat steak, get wasted, and hang with sexy Jewesses (no, that’s not an oxymoron you antisemite). Blue Point, unlike Blue Moon and Abita, is a brewery that I have actually found to have made some respectable stuff in the past. No masterpieces or anything, but alotta solid efforts. Here is another one. Good hops and seasonal spices, this is probably the only legit “winter warmer” out of any of these four. I liked but didn’t love this one. Needs a higher ABV quite frankly to keep you toasty during the Yuletide season. At a minimum, though, Sam Adam’s and Brooklyn’s winters are better.

B-

Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale

6.8% ABV

OK, nice red label with a wreath framing a pastoral picture of a snowcapped log cabin and the name “Celebration” would certainly make you think you’re getting a winter beer, full of nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and other egg-noggy type things. Nope. This is pretty much just a standard double IPA. And a good one at that. What in the world is Sierra Nevada thinking in making this their special winter seasonal? Who knows. But thanks, I guess.  Delicious and overhopped in a good way, sticky and full of citrus sensations, this one is worth searching out. As a “winter” beer this is an abject failure, but just as a beer, it is probably the best Sierra Nevada I’ve ever had and a damn fine IPA.  I can’t wait for Sierra Nevada’s summer beachtime seasonal release, tentatively slated to be a 13% ABV dark chocolate and coffee stout that actually give the inside of your stomach a sunburn.

A-

Final thought:  when are they ever gonna make me some Hanukkah seasonal beers? Perhaps a nice strong ale with tastes of potato latke, chocolate gelt, and dreidels? YUM.

*Perhaps they make unphotographable labels so that one can never actually prove they drank a shitty Abita beer?

10% ABV from a bomber

Like John Lennon I’m a dreamer, which means I come up with lotsa terrible ideas.  Though most of mine don’t involve helping poor people or creating communist societies.

I had neglected to shave for the previous two weeks and had become quite scraggly.  It was itching me which was exacerbated by some in-home drinking I was doing last night at a gal’s apartment as we watched “The Office” and “30 Rock.”  Drinking heightens most of my senses like I’m the Incredible Hulk.  Sounds become louder, foods becomes tastier, beards become itchier.  Thus, as we later got ready for bed (her removing five-hundred superfluous pillows from the mattress, me going to the bathroom to piss and flex in the mirror) I had a good idea.  I would shave before bed.  I drunkenly thought, all girls like a freshly shaved guy, this will be a nice surprise.  (Girl will claim to like scruffy guys but they really only like ones like Ryan Gosling or Sawyer from “Lost,” not regular guys like us.)

So, without asking permission, I took from the bathtub ledge some Skintimate “Flirty Mango” shaving cream and her Venus Breeze razor.  I figured, despite the fact these products are intended for a woman’s legs, surely it will shave like a man’s razor.  Aren’t all female products strong enough for a man but made for a woman?  Most products are bogus too, the exact same thing just with different packaging to redefine it for a different market.  I figured the Venus would be just like a man’s razor only…like purple and pink I guess. 

Whoa boy was I wrong.  And I realized it instantly.  Ladies’ leg razor are so different from men’s razors.  The blades–of which the woman’s has less–are incredibly thin and placed much closer together than on a man’s razor.  The Venus was also far more flexible, like a violin bow.  I had trouble controlling it.  It was very hard to shave with and almost instantly my coarse black Jewy hair got stuck in the blades.  And I couldn’t clean them out no matter how much water I used and how many backshaving swabs I did on a hand towel. 

Each time I swiped my face, like literally only five follicles would be plucked out.  I kept hot-watering down my skin and adding more and more foam for lubrication, but it didn’t matter.  It was taking forever and I had like 25% of my beard removed.  Poorly.  It was patchy and I looked like a fool.  Eventually, I couldn’t get the blades clean enough to even use and I had no choice but to exit the bathroom and admit my folly to my bedmate. 

At first she laughed at me, foam skidding down my neck and onto my chest.  Then she realized that I had obviously used her razor.  Suffice to say she was not happy.  However, being a sweet girl–or perhaps not wanting to share a bed with a man that looked like the wolfboy attacked by topiary shears–she hustled down to Duane Reade and got me a Mach3 Turbo and some new safety razors for herself. 

Finally clean-shaven and smelling like delicious mangos, as we went to bed I promised never to use her products again…though I secretly knew I would use her Neutrogena Rainbath bodywash in the morning.  That shit is fantastic, a fresh scent and no lingering residue!

Another bad idea was having the highly-regarded Hop 15–currently a top 100 beer in the world–immediately after imbibing the monumental Surly Darkness.  A masterpiece like Darkness can make even a great beer seem like pisswater by comparison.  Luckily, Hop 15 more than held its own.  An incredibly bold double IPA bordering on a strong ale, action-packed with hops (fifteen different ones added every fifteen minutes!) and major maltage.  I actually felt the malts overshadowed the typical citrus and piney flavors you would expect in an IPA, but that didn’t matter to me.  This was a damn fine beer, something I’d put in the same class as the noted Dogfish Head 90 Minute.  Very boozy, a somewhat heavy mouthfeel, and it packed a major whallop.  A nice end to one of the better single drinking days of my life.

A

NOTE:  No companies paid for product mentions in the preceding piece.  I could only fucking dream.  I’m more than willing to be a shill!

6% ABV bottled

A friend had to go to her gynecologist the other day.  A small girl, she’s struggled in having her new boyfriend penetrate her.  The gynecologist insisted that was physically impossible, and her problems were all mental.  She insisted they weren’t to which the doctor finally replied, exasperated, “Tell you what then.  Go down to Eighth Avenue, buy a dildo, and come back here and show me you can masturbate with it.”

(Have you digested that…?)

I also have been getting into a lot of awkward situations lately.  Especially this time of the year.  Seems that every other night for the last few weeks I’ve had a birthday party to attend.  Birthday parties always bring out the awkwardness, not that a drunkard like me gets fazed that often.  One such recent soiree amazingly came on the exact same date as my last girlfriend’s birthday.  Instead of sending that ex a birthday card, I should send her a thank you card, because since she dumped me, I’ve never met so many women in my life.  It was one of these women, Angie, who I had only been dating for a week or two, who had her birthday on that formerly meaningful day to me.  I was loathe to attend a birthday party for a girl I had just started dating, seeing all sorts of problems arising, but, with a little prodding from her, I eventually agreed to.  I would almost immediately regret that decision when I then recieved the evite and learned the party would be less than a block from where my same-birthday-ex lives, putting me the closest I had been to her apartment since getting 86ed from her life.

Things got even worse when a huge college football game I really wanted to see got rescheduled for the same evening.  Obviously, I began pre-gaming by myself quite early to eliminate my nerves and inhibitions, polishing off several Ballast Point Big Eye IPAs my sister had bought on a recent jaunt to San Diego.  I’d asked her to find me some stuff from the area’s more famous breweries (Russian River, Alesmith, etc) so I was a bit disappointed when she only brought back the Ballast Point.  Oh, I’d heard of the brewery, sure, I just thought it was a “lesser” one.  However, simply based on their IPA, I was clearly wrong.   An incredibly frothy head, it smelled like a classic piney and citrusy California IPA.  Nice hops made for smooth session drinking.  I look forward to trying more stuff from the place.

After three brews, I headed up Amsterdam Avenue wearing a disguise* lest I run into my ex.  Knowing my fortune, I figured she’d be hosting a birthday party in the very same bar.  Luckily, that would not be the case.  But things would go nearly as badly.

Immediately upon arriving at the watering hole, I learned I had gotten there late.  Seems I had misread the stupid evite.  Her brother, Timothy, a man who resides in the Upstate sticks and who I had yet to meet, quite rudely and tersely informed me of this.  He must have stalked me on Facebook because he recognized me the second I entered the place, as he stood watch near the door like some overly-freckled, America Eagle-clad, miniature version of a palace guard.  I never understand brothers that protect their sisters’ vaginas like the Hope Diamond.  It’s peculiar.  Queer.  Your sister’s a grown woman, she doesn’t need your 155 pounds of protection and your lame insight in order to make romantic and sexual decisions.   She’s not Joanie Cunningham and you ain’t Richie, though, come to think of it, Tim did sort of look like him.

This little nerd immediately starts giving me the third degree about my “intentions” for his sister, a topic of conversation I’ve wasted far too many hours of my life having.  I could have quoted Lloyd Dobler when he was once asked a similar question (”What I really want to do with my life–what I want to do for a living–is I want to be with your [sister].”), I could have said something real nasty (”Fuck her while you watch since you seem to care so goddamn much.”) but instead I simply kowtowed to the mid-thirties apparent virgin and predicted a bright and innocent future with his kin (”Hey Tim, can’t wait to hear what you say at our wedding, heh heh.”)  Tim’s lucky I didn’t tell him what my intentions were for him as my mind was spinning with schemes.

Tim escorted me to a back private room where the party was already in full swing.  Angie was predisposed with some people so we were only able to have a second of loving eye contact, a friendly can’t-wait-to-shake-this-boring-dialogue-so-I-can-kiss-you grin from her.  Waiting for Angie’s conversation to end, I went to mingle and schmooze up some of her friends, none of which I had met before, nor even knew much of anything about.  However, the reverse was clearly not the case.  I was the star attraction, Angie’s mysterious new man, who she had already told them “so much” about.  They swarmed me like hungry pigs in a sty, I the farmer entering with a slop bucket.

I quickly found out that literally all of her chums were workmates.  That typically sends a signal to me.  It’s fine to have coworker cohorts, but when a person only has work friends they usually don’t have any real friends.  It’s one thing to make and cultivate a friendship in the real world, it’s another to have pals that you head straight from work to the bar together to get loaded and bitch about Barry your asshole boss.  All these friends were quite terrible, a real horror show of women.  Each being seemingly decent looking until you found that one single defect that overshadowed everything good.  There was the one with the highly visible gum line, the one that seemed to have fifty-five teeth in her mouth, the one with a prominent birth control mustache, and the one that wouldn’t shut the fuck up about her “recent” engagement (four months ago). 

The latter mentioned buddy, clearly with either some prompting from Angie or more likely some nosiness of her own, had friended me a week earlier on Facebook.  I thought that was sweet until my news feed began to fill up every single day with her every-five-minutes’ status updates, all about her upcoming nuptials: “Shirley is shopping for wedding gowns!,” “Shirley is meeting the flower guy,” “Shirley is deciding between band and DJ,” “Shirley is admiring the engagement ring her latently homosexual fiance bought her,” etc.  Aaron is…already hating you and wishing he could delete you as a friend without you finding out.

Finally, Angie was free and came over to me with a big hug and a sloppy, wine-soaked smooch.  She was well lit up already.  In our few dates together I’d never seen her so drunk.  In fact, for our first date we had closed a lower Hell’s Kitchen dive bar down drinking pitchers of beer with countless Jameson shots yet she had remained unflappable, something I perversely found quite fetching.  But this time she was quite flapped, drunk and moody.  She quickly noticed that I was empty-handed.  As in, I hadn’t brought a present.  Hey, I didn’t know it was one of those parties, what are we, fucking eight years old?  We’re in a bar, not a rollerskating rink or bowling alley.  And, any how, I kinda have a rule about not getting birthday presents for girls whose middle names I still don’t know.  Then again, I’m also arrogant enough to usually think my best gift to any one is my presence, and not my presents.  Having said all that, though, seemingly every other one of the two dozen invitees had brought a gift, rendering the “new boyfriend” the “big asshole.”  As Tim tsked tsked me with his beady eyes, Angie began yelling at inconsiderate me, the row only ending when she needed to go piss.

I headed to the bar to finally score a drink and there I learned two things, one horrible, one amazing.  Which would you like to hear first?  OK, let’s go with the horrible.  The fucking bar’s satellite is down and I can’t watch the football game I had so hoped to keep an askance eye on.  The football game which I now wanted to fully focus my attention on what with a girlfriend that is wasted, her friends that are lame and make me viscerally vomitous, and her brother who seems to have unrequited love for his sis.  As I mentioned though, there was some good, that being that her West Coast parents had the acumen to set up a $1000 bar tab for everyone to imbibe from.  The bar tab came with no stipulations so, while everyone else drank Bud Lights, garbage vodka drinks, and Lame-tinis, I like an asshole began ordering the best bourbon in the house, the small-batch Booker’s which comes in at a scorching 127 proof, all the while remaining incredibly flavorful and quite complex.  “Neat!,” I thought and “Neat” I said to the barkeep when he asked how I wanted it.

Returning from the bathroom, Angie had calmed down, heck, seemingly having forgotten about our fight just a few minutes earlier.  Things began going decently, we’re goofing around, getting loaded, hey!, this was the girl I’d had so much fun with over the last couple of weeks.  I guess there might not be a chink in her armor.  Unfortunately, that lasted for all of fifteen minutes before Trevor arrived and made a beeline for her.

Trevor, her college boyfriend, her “best” friend.  Right.  Let me tell you something, women, though the smarter ones of you know it already, former boyfriends that you dumped yet which still hang out with you like a pathetic puppy dog are rarely friends with you.  They are just losers with no other female options, with no integrity, confidence, or self-esteem that continue to have the hopes that one day you’ll fall back into bed with them, back into a relationship with them.  Today’s the day!

Angie leaves us to make another lap around the room and I’m forced to speak with the dullard Trevor.  The kind of guy who is so predictable, so two dimensional, so amazingly a living-and-breathing archetype, that one need only know him for a minute to know everything about him, to fill in all the blanks.  A neo-hippie from Brooklyn who spends every second he’s in Manhattan telling you how much it sucks compared to Brooklyn.  I let him do the blabbering because I like to let idiots blather so I will always have content to write about. 

Here’s a few things one quickly learns about Trevor.  He’s the kind of guy that wears an Obama pin every single day even though the election has been over for weeks, still so proud that he voted for him.  Oh, sure, he would never remain a fan of a band that suddenly became even marginally locally famous, but he’s really proud, thinks he really unique, sui generis, that he was one of seventy million to vote for Barack.  I ask him if he wants to get a drink with me.  Naw, not drinking now, he’s decided he should remain sober for the month, detox a bit for his cosmic health.  Then let’s have some mozzarella sticks laid out at that table in the corner.  Nope, he doesn’t eat “processed” foods either, which makes me now realize why he is such a lithe little pixie of a boy.  And with his intentionally scrubby vintage clothing he looked like a lank Tom Joad who had decided to go east, young man, instead of west.

In fact, Trevor doesn’t like much of anything.  Oh, but he’ll sure tell you everything he dislikes:  the nebulous idea of “corporations” (even though the dilettante of a musician is forced to work low-low-level for a Wall Street one), the nebulous idea of competition, sports, American studio movies, people with money, free market economics, and television (doesn’t even own one he proudly proclaims, though he must be a Marshall McCluhan fan cause later he talks about watching “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on his Macbook.)  When it comes down to it, Trevor is the kind of guy that adds absolutely nothing to a conversation, unable to generate anything interesting of his own, only able to snarkily, and poorly, critique things created by other people.  He’s like a blogger that is only able to reblog stuff from others with perhaps only a single boring caption added.

If he was a movie character, critics would deride him as being too wooden and predictable, saying that real life humans have much more depth than this.  Sadly, that is simply not the case.  In fact, I find Trevor to be such a detestable fucking loser–the kind of guy that thinks listing your sexuality status on Facebook as “swinger” as being the height of American comedy–that it makes me question if Angie is a loser for having once dated him (and still being good friends with him no less!) and whether I am a loser, quod erat demonstrandum, for now dating and liking her.  To make myself feel better, and not cause I completely believe it, I note to myself that college for the 28-year-old Angie was almost a decade ago and why judge her on her past actions, past boyfriends, I certainly wouldn’t want to be judged on my actions, my past relations.

That was dumb thinking, though, and I should have analyzed the situation more rigoriously.  As the party heated up and Angie started ignoring me in favor of her friends and Trevor, I do what I usually do when I’m bored at a party, wedding, or whatever, I headed to the bar.  I start gabbing with the bartender and find him to be a very cool guy.  We talk about the fucked up situation I am currently in.  He agrees with me that, yeah, it was dumb to come to the party and, yeah, both Angie and Trevor were dumb for feigning friendship and I should just leave them both to their own devices, that I’m better than that. 

Finally, he poured me a triple of Booker’s into a plastic cup and said, “Leave.”

“Leave?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen this story a million times before.  You’re just wasting your time here.  Take this bourbon, forget about that girl, and go to a bar that actually has satellite TV working.  And when you get there, could you please text me the fucking football score?”

He was a wise sage and I had to agree with him.

As I discreetly left the bar, I noticed Angie and Trevor in the corner now close-talking.  They would probably be kissing soon.  Pathetic.  Those losers deserved each other.

As I walked back down on Central Park West, sipping my bourbon, headed to a nearby bar I knew had good television screens, I deleted Angie’s name from my phone.

Just a few minutes before I began writing this, I was as per usual dicking around on Facebook.  Angie had finally gotten around to posting an album from that weeks-ago party.  Unsurprisingly, I was not tagged in any of the photos.  After looking through them, I revisited Angie’s profile.  She was now listed as being in a relationship with Trevor.  I spit my Starbucks Christmas Blend** across the room as I cackled heartily.  Crisis averted.

A-

*Sidelocks, curly black beard, tallit, and a wide-brimmed black hat.

**I am decidely not a Starbucks fan and I rarely get my coffee there, but I must say that their Christmas Blend is quite good if you’re like me and like bold punishing coffee that tickles once down your gullet immediately tickles your spine.

I don’t sleep well after a night of boozing which is fine because I like to get up fairly early on Saturdays and/or Sundays and hit the movies.  I’m a huge film buff and see several back-to-back-to-back every single weekend, starting early so I’m done with my double or triple feature in time to get home for sports.  I typically go alone because I both see oddball movies that no one else wants to see and because I like the solitude.  Sitting in the dark gorging on soda and candy, feeling my hangover dissipate as I drift away into a hopefully good film.  I also go to very early shows because I hate today’s cinema crowds.  Loud boobs that seem to enjoy spending $12 so that they can have a dark room to text in and gab with their friends.

I always sit in the same seat, the absolute back row, right underneath the projector.  I hate having any people behind me and I like hearing the whirl of the film reels, the flickering of light catching the dust in the air.  Today I went to see a double feature and upon getting to my theater I found a women sitting in “my” seat.  Though this doesn’t happen often as most people reject sitting in the back row it was still unusual for another reason:  it was another solo film goer, and one who appeared to be a smoking hot women too.  Flowing Playboy blonde locks and nicely dressed in a turtleneck sweater, a bubble skirt, and with black tights.   An undoubtedly fetching yet classy look.  Though I was surprised that she was never joined by a boyfriend or husband fetching the popcorn, I paid her no mind.

After the first film I headed across the hall to see my second movie of the day “Slumdog Millionaire.”  This time, I was first in the theater and got my coveted back row seat.  Then, not two minutes later, who should enter the theater and head straight for the backrow but the fetching blonde!  With me in “her” seat she was forced to sit two seats over.  With such kismet I wanted to talk to her and the gods quickly conspired in my favor.  With “Slumdog” being one of the hottest flicks in town right now the theater quickly filled and after several “Is that seat taken?” and “Could you scoot over?” negotiations, the blonde was forced to hop one over and was soon sitting right beside.

I made light of the rudeness of people, arriving seconds before the film and then expecting us early-arrivers to move for their every whim.  She agreed that it was indeed rude.  I goofed on all the old people at the screening, loudly chomping on food and talking about their bone density depletion.  We began chatting.  It was quite dark so I could barely see her, just the glamor lighting corona of light surrounding her mass of blonde hair.  She was so sweet and had a tender accent.

I wondered if she was a tourist.

“Not exactly.  But I just moved here last year.”

“Yet you already hate tourists, correct?” I remarked.

She embarrassingly admitted that she did.  Once you’re a Manhattanite it’s impossible not to.

And where was she originally from I wondered.

Kentucky.

My heart melted.  I love blonde Kentucky women with an ever-so-slight accent.  Neil Diamond was surely right and I made her know this fact.

She explained that she had gotten her undergrad degree at the University of Kentucky and her doctorate at Northwestern.  She was a child psychologist and helped orphans with coping.  On weekends, always alone, she liked to spend either the whole day watching movies or at Barnes & Noble reading historical biographies.

I was fucking smitten.

As the lights dimmed, I had no choice but to go for it:

“My name is Aaron Goldfarb.  After this movie, would you like to join me for coffee?  Or, if you’re in the mood, perhaps something stronger.”

She smiled at me.  “We’ll see.”

You would think it would be hard to focus for the next two hours, wondering about my future, but “Slumdog Millionaire” was so goddamn good that I was instantly drawn in.  You know how blurb whores–lackluster film critics that LOVE ever movie just so they can get their name on the advertising–will sometimes say, “People were cheering in the aisles!” in order to note how great a movie was?  Well, I certainly had never seen that literally happen until today.  “Slumdog” is so life-affirming, so touching, that, yes, I saw several people actually pump their fists, actually stand up and celebrate in the aisles.

Once the credits began to roll she turned toward me.

“I loved it!”

I remarked that I did too.  Perhaps the best film I’d seen in ‘08 in fact.

“I think I will take you up on that drink offer.  Let’s go have some bourbon,” she said as she anxiously grabbed my forearm.

We headed across the dark aisle and down the dark stairs to exit the theater.  Once we got into the light we turned to each other and our giddy smiles instantly became shock.  She was tons older than I thought she was and I was tons younger than she thought I was.  Damn the darkness!

“What are you?!  Like 30?”

“Close.  29.  You?!”

“Remember those ‘old people’ you were making fun of earlier?  I’m one of them.  Just turned 50 last week!”

I have to say, she was twenty to twenty-five years older than I thought she was in the dark, but she was a fantastic-looking 50-year-old.  Glowing and lustrous blonde hair, minimal wrinkles, a damn good-looking gal.  Why…she could easily convince people she was…43.

“You still want that drink?,” she chuckled, clearly expecting me to say no.

Well, you’d certainly be my record, I most certainly DID NOT say.  But I did surprise her by saying, what the heck, and accepting the date.  Variety is definitely the spice of life.

We headed to a nearby hotel bar and each had a $15 Blanton’s Old-Fashioned.  I wish I had a funny, surprising, unexpected ending to this story, but when you write about true life, you sometimes don’t get those endings.  After our drinks we laughed about the weird events of the day and parted ways.

“Maybe I’ll run into you again on the back row,” she said as she sweetly kissed me on the cheek.

As I said earlier, variety is the spice of life, so I was quite excited when I arrived at my friend’s house in Philadelphia last weekend and his wife had picked up a variety case of Victory brews for me to drink.  What a sweetheart she is.  Almost enough to make me consider marriage.

Victory HopDevil Ale

6.7% ABV

In this author’s opinion one of the most underrated IPAs around.  Why does this beer get so little credit?  It’s damn good.  Nice balance of hops and malts and very drinkable.  I plowed through the six in the variety pack.

B+

Victory Golden Monkey

9.5% ABV

A very respectable American version of a Belgian tripel.  Creamy and sweet with some great yeastiness.  The spices tingle as they go down your throat.  Pretty drinkable too for the ABV.  I finished all six of these too.

A-

Victory Lager

5.2% ABV

Lagers are a most lackluster style of beer, so you can’t expect much better than a C or so.  And that’s about what this is.  More interesting than a macro lager but nothing special.  I only handled these after 2:00 AM when the Philadelphia bars closed and I was already loaded.

C+

Victory Prima Pils

5.3% ABV

One of Victory’s most highly-regarded beers which is weird because next-to-nobody regards pilseners as anything special.  They’re the dumb twin brother of the lager.  I don’t see what the fuss is about, I found this to be just a typically boring pilsener.  Far too skunky and bitter.  I certainly wasn’t dancing in the aisles drinking it.

C

5.9% ABV from a growler (sorta)

There’s a lot of obvious reasons why alcohol is so grand.  It calms, soothes, eases the pain, uninhibits, takes away fears and neuroses and self-consciousness, makes your arm steadier and your nerves steelier for bar games, allows you to dance without feeling like an asshole, and is the only reason why you have so many friends on Facebook.  It gives you liquid courage and the famed beer goggles.  Both to the women around you and even to yourself.  (I surely can’t be the only person who after pre-gaming at home, goes to the mirror for one final check before heading out and thinks, “Goddamn, Goldfarb, have you gotten better looking in the last hour?”)  And, yes, I cherish and agree with all those reasons.  But an oft-underlooked aspect of alcohol consumption which may be most crucial is that it turns one’s brain off.

When I’m sober my mind is racing, cunning, conniving, scheming, improvising, scrutinizing, analyzing, calculating, Machiavellian, and generally being too smart and clever for mine own britches.  But when I drink, I love everyone, and everything, and I’m interested in only the most non-cerebral, reptile brain, visceral pleasures in life: those gastrointestinal, bacchanalian, carnal, and Syracusebasketballal. 

My mind sober is scary, frantic and racing with creativity.  It won’t stop coming up with ideas.  Some genius (BallooNYC, Manhattan’s first and only hot air balloon tour*) while some less-than-stellar (cloth candy bags at movie theaters as to prevent the loud and annoying noise that comes with the repetitive crinkling of plastic during the snack’s consumption).  I had no idea where a recent idea I had would fall on the scale.

After scoring six cherished bottles of Surly Darkness (review soon!) and being a prince of a man to actually send me one, The Captain wanted a few more Minnesota beers to include in his package.  I had noticed that a seemingly obscure Minnesota brew loomed at #10 on the Beer Advocate’s Top 100 list.  I questioned The Captain on that, could he get me some?  He noted that the brewery was amazingly just a few miles from his house, yet even more amazingly he had never had the beer before.  He made a phone call and learned that it only came in a growler, which he would gladly send me.  I had to quickly put the kibosh on that.  True, I am selfish and care about my needs above all others’, but I simply hated the idea of the poor guy having to lug a no-doubt fifteen pound block of unwieldy glass and beer to FedEx and then pay probably $50 to ship it.  Oh well, guess I’ll never have it, I thought.  Then, I had a Eureka! moment.

Realizing that The Captain is an accomplished homebrewer and that he has bottling capabilities, I asked him if he couldn’t just buy a growler for himself, make me a bottle, and then enjoy the rest of the growler at his leisure.  It was so utilitarian, we would both benefit!  He readily agreed it was splendid idea.

The Captain bought the growler on Thursday, transferred it to bottle that night, mailed it on Saturday, I received it on the next Thursday at about 11:45 AM, I refrigerated it at 11:46 AM, and by noon I was drinking it.

Before he’d even shipped it he had warned me of potential issues.  The Masala fresh has such high levels of carbonation that after the bottling it settled down to filling only half the bottle, about six ounces.  Air and space is anathema to keeping beer fresh so this was a grave concern.  The Captain said he would normally put corn sugar (live yeast) in his own beers to keep them fresh, but in this case he didn’t want to taint the sample.  He was almost certain the beer would be flat by the time it got to me.  I actually kinda prefer flat soda to fresh stuff (the sugariness shines through a bit more while my sensitive esophagus isn’t pelted by the prickly carbonation) so I thought this might still work.

I knew I had no choice but to drink the Masala Mama immediately upon its arrival, despite having a lot of stuff to do for the rest of the day.  I gotta say, The Captain probably did as good of job of re-bottling as possible.  As I opened the unlabeled bottle a surprising *pfffffffft* of air was released.  Hmmm… this was promising.  The dark amber pour, however, showed not much fizz left and next-to-no head.  This coming from a beer more famous for its head than Monica**.  But, it smelled fantastic, bordering on world class, one of the best IPAs I’ve ever had the pleasure to stick my face into.

The taste though was “eh.”  Off.   Flat beer just has a weird mouthfeel.  I told myself I was drinking it from a poorly-managed cask.  Nevertheless, it was still very flavorful.  Beautiful hop bitterness along with orange and lemon citrus zests and a nice hint of caramel sweetness.  I can tell this is an A/A- beer when it’s fresh, perhaps even deserving of its top ten legendary status.  Even a week old and flat, I’d still say it’s better than maybe 95% of beers out there.  Glad I got to try it even in a distorted way.  I refuse to give an official grade to this sample so let’s call it:

INCOMPLETE

(with the note that I suspect it’s an A- at the least, though probably higher, something I hope to confirm one day)

*Seriously, you don’t think this would be a smash hit?!  In New York City, one can pay to utilize all of the following vehicles for either tours or travel: train, subway, tram, limo, black car, taximeter cabriolet,  bi-plane, ferry, cruise boat, rowboat, powerboat, sailboat, kayak, boat-bus hybrid, bus, double-decker bus, bang bus, motorcycle, Vespa, bicycle, tandem bicycle, scooter, helicopter, Rascal, horse, hansom cab, pedi-cab, rickshaw, rollerblades, zeppelin, and motherfucking GOB Segway.  Yes, there’s only one vehicle in the world not on that list.  And it ain’t llamas steered by Nepalese midget jockeys.  It’s hot air balloons.  How awesome would it be if hot air balloons were going off every half hour from the Columbus Circle and Plaza corners of Central Parks?  Drifting high above the park to get a better bird-eye’s view of the city than even those rubes that wait for hours to go to the Top of the Rock or Empire State Building.  And tourists will over-pay for anything.  They already pay $50 for Top of the Rock, $30 for a hansom cab, and actual money to shop at the Hershey’s store.  I figure we could charge them to the tune of $200, perhaps $500 to even a grand per basket.

I know your next question:

“Is that even legal?  You can’t just have balloons hovering over the city!”

To that I say, I’m not sure, but my research shows that it isn’t illegal.

Whatever the case, I have this brilliant idea protected so if you want to steal it from me, don’t.  However, If you are a VC that wants to produce the idea then please contact me and let’s talk.  I even have a logo I’ve already designed.  It would look quite swell on our company Polos.

**Did he really make a Lewinsky joke?!  In 2008?!

8.7% from a canned four-pack

In the past I’ve discussed mingling with transvestites, proudly jogging shirtless through Chelsea, and my unabashed love of fruit beers, but this may be my “gayest” post ever. Fans that love me for my machismo please avert your eyes and surf to another site before I tell you my darkest secret, a secret that will leave many of you cold and stupefied…

…

…

…

Are you ready?

Here it is:

I love “Gossip Girl.”

A ladyfriend of mine was curious about the phenomenon and quite frankly I wondered what all the fuss was about too, thus we decided to catch up on “Gossip Girl.” And, courtesy of Netflix and iTunes we tore through the entire series up to the present in just a couple of weeks, culminating with the three most recent episodes last night. A triumph I celebrated with some Oskar Blues’s Gordon, but more on that in a sec. (If you just read the Vice Blog for the beer reviews and tales of wine and roses, feel free to hit the page down button five consecutive times.)

Suffice to say, I quickly fell in love with “Gossip Girl” and though you may think that I like it purely as a “guilty pleasure”–akin to liking a bad reality show, anything on MTV, or Sparks malt liquor–I don’t. I legitimately enjoy this show. It’s an inconsequential program that knows it’s inconsequential and revels in that fact.

There are four kinds of shows. Important shows that don’t act like they’re important, that don’t preach messages to you, that simple let you decide what they mean (”The Wire,” “Mad Men”). There are “important” shows that are smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous, sanctimonious, pedantic, and let you know in every scene that they are (in bright lights) *IMPORTANT* (Sorkin’s “West Wing.”) Then, there are unimportant shows that think they are important. These may be the worst offenders. “Sex in the City” fits the latter bill and though it deals with the same topics as “Gossip Girl”–fashion, upper class NYC living, promiscuous sex, recreational drug and alcohol use, and “the pretty people”*–the second’s always-playful treatment of those topics makes the show vastly superior. “Sex and the City” acted like it was unlocking the secret to human existence every week. “Gossip Girl” is just trying to entertain the hell out of you.

Now, while I enjoy the show, I do have some gripes. It’s almost silly to complain about an intentionally over-the-top show where teens live more decadently than Jay Gatsby, but whatever.

Here then are ten nitpicks I have with “Gossip Girl”:

1. Myspace–The characters on “GG” don’t surf the internet much, but a few times I’ve caught them checking out a person’s profile on Myspace. Seriously?! There is not a chance in the world that Manhattan’s well-heeled teenage elite would use Myspace. Nowadays that site is for amateur porn stars, professional pedophiles, and people that like their computer to shut down every time they visit a website. The show’s characters would obviously be Facebook users. And it’s quite possible that they wouldn’t even use Facebook but rather some social networking site that is so trendy and new that I have yet to even hear of it.

2. The Humphreys’ “Poorness”–It seems like in every single episode of season one, every single person–including the Humphreys themselves–must discuss how goddamn poor the family is. First of all, father Rufus was a moderately successful nineties musician judging by the magazine covers and gold and platinum records hanging on his wall. So unless the record company screwed him–feasible–there’s no way he wouldn’t have some loot. But aside from that, the Humphreys live in, and I believe own, a fucking enormous, and badasssssssss, townhouse in Williamsburg. A place that would surely cost a few million. So while the Humphreys are nowhere close to as rich as the Basses or Waldorfs, neither are they the Ingalls.

3. Travel–The Humphreys live in Brooklyn, all the other characters and their high schools are on the Upper East Side. Yet characters travel between these two places like it’s nothing. Fuck, in one episode, Nate was back and forth between Brooklyn and the UES like 5 times in one afternoon. Not only impossible, but ridiculous. We New Yorkers are like pre-Genghis Khan Mongolians, very clan-like, refusing to ever leave our neighborhoods. I have friends that live just across town from me–under two miles in distance–but I see them only a few times a month cause I hate crossing Park Avenue. Friends in Queens that I see only a few times a year. And friends and relatives in Brooklyn that I’ve never even visited. And that’s the typical behavior of a New Yorker. So even assuming that the teens on “GG” are using their chauffeured cars, they still wouldn’t be going to Brooklyn as often as they do and in such quick fashion.

4. Schooling–Has there EVER been a scene on the show inside a classroom? Likewise, in a late-season one episode they just throw it out there that Vanessa is home-schooled. I think the writers were like, “Shit, we’ve forgot to ever have Vanessa in a school scene. Whatever, just say she’s homeschooled.” Not that we’ve ever seen any one teaching her. She’s too busy running art gallery cafes, videotaping things, setting up blackmails, and traveling to the UES.

5. Obscure references–Likewise, despite the fact that these characters are never in school and, aside from Dan, seem to have no real interest in learning, they are some of the most educated characters in TV history, throwing out obtuse references left and right. Really, Chuck Bass knows who Bertie Wooster is? And Serena has heard of Robert Mapplethorpe? And I still struggle to believe that Blair knows so much about 1940s through 60s cinema such as “Charade” and “Roman Holiday.” Most of my intelligent and well-educated friends don’t understand those references, hard to buy that seventeen-year-old profligates would.

6. Teen drinking–I have a decade of prolific drinking under my belt and I couldn’t handle the imbibing “GG”’s characters do. Chuck Bass throws back Scotch like it’s bottled water yet remains unflappable. Serena can drink Belvedere martinis left and right and stays indefatigable. Have you ever seen a real-life teen try to drink straight liquor? They can’t handle a sip of it. And after a glass they are passed out and vomiting uncontrollably on their parents’ basement sofa. Shit, I got thirty-year-old friends that wince at just the sight of straight booze. Yet, these “GG” characters are better drinkers than Bukowski. Riiiiiight. I see why parents are outraged by this show.

7. Sexy underwear–I’m 29 so I’ve dealt with my fair share of scantily clad women, of all ages. And very few times have I found anything interesting about their underclothes. But the girls on “GG” wear some of the most violently sexy undergarments I’ve ever seen. Every single time a character has to strip down, wouldn’t you know it but they are wearing some absolutely insane burlesque house, satin, ornately ruffled panties. Doesn’t any one in “Gossip Girl” land ever just pull on a pair of Hanes Her Way cotton underwear for the day? But hey, I’m not complaining.

8. Dan’s vests–Of all the absurd fashion on the show–Chuck’s ludicrous suits and bow-ties which I actually kinda like, Blair’s “Alice in Wonderland”-like frocks, Serena’s 1920s one-piece swimsuits which I think are meant to hide her inexplicably giant ass–it’s Dan’s vests that drive me most insane. I just have a visceral hatred toward them. He looks like a goddamn organ grinder.

9. Jenny’s Weight Loss–I swear to god, between seasons one and two, Jenny Humphrey lost at least forty pounds. She went from a cute well-formed girl (I say this completely asexually, Chris Hansen) to a scrawny little stick figure. At first I thought the part had been recast with a new actress, like when they switched Aunt Viv on “The Fresh Prince.” But, nope, it’s still Taylor Momsen. What I don’t understand is why no character mentions anything about it. “Hey, Jenny, you’ve lost a little weight over the summer, everything alright?” Maybe an episode about how she’s on crystal meth. Or contracted AIDS. We could at least get an anorexia scare episode with some Karen Carpenter playing in the background. I’m starting to think that Jenny’s weight will fluctuate more from season to season than Meadow Soprano’s did.

10. No one ever refutes the posts on Gossip Girl–This drives me nuts. How come ever single teen on the show accepts the Gossip Girl’s posts as 100% dogma the second they are put online? These characters are masters of lying–or, at least lie a lot–yet no one ever calls bullshit on a Gossip Girl post. Why is that? All of them are based on a rumor that usually only one person has proof of. Wouldn’t be too hard to get away with denying allegations. It’s what I’d do.

But despite these nitpicks, I still love the show. In fact, the nitpicks make the show even more enjoyable.

Also enjoyable was the Oskar Blue’s Gordon I had while catching up on the series. My first two beers from Oskar Blues, especially the Dale’s Pale Ale, were such successes that I knew I had to try the IPA, possibly my favorite style of beer. I expected a potential masterpiece so I did something I almost never do–I bought more than a single. Oskar Blues beers come in canned four-packs and with Gordon weighing in at 8.7% that would be more than enough to make me forget that I’m twofold the age of some “GG” characters. My belief in the product was rewarded when the dumb Whole Foods register girl rung the four-pack up at $3.99. No clue what she was thinking, that’s nowhere close to a correct price.

Ultimately, I liked Gordon but never fully loved it. Making it surely the first time ever that I have enjoyed a brewery’s pale ale more than their IPA. Weird.

B+

*I know what you’re saying: “SJP, Cattrall, Nixon…SaTC was about pretty people?!” Yeah, I never got that either.

10% ABV from a bomber

I’m not gonna lie, I bought this beer because it was cheap. I wasn’t in the mood to shell out for a Thursday night buzz and at $3.99 for a 10% bomber, well…wow. The PPAP was off the charts! We’re talking in the malt liquor/fortified wine price point. And though this beer wasn’t anywhere on my “on-deck circle” of brews I was interested in trying in the immediate future–also known as a nerdy little cheat sheet list I keep in my wallet–I have had and enjoyed Shmaltz offerings in the past. This was supposed to be their masterpiece. Also, I thought it befitting that a stereotypically cheap Jew would get a cheap Jew brew. Ha!

Named in honor of famous Hebe Lenny Bruce, this rye IPA has an “obscenely” (har har) potent smell. Me like. In fact, it’d be easy to think you were having a barley wine based on pour, smell, and taste.

Tons of hops and rye malts, hints of caramel and citrus, and a liqueur-like thickness and alcoholic heat to it. I loved this one at first, but like Shmaltz’s Rejewvenator, I liked it less and less the more I had it. It’s just so much!

Shmaltz is legitimately making a claim to be the king of “extreme” beers. And by that I mean, beers that nearly cause you to OD. It’s amusing to me that Jewish boys are often considered to be frail, nerdy, and neurotic little pussies, yet the Chosen People’s unofficial brewery is making beers that could upend Andre Rene Roussimoff. Seriously, split a bomber of this with a friend and you’ll enjoy it far more than if you attempt it onanistically. The Vice Blogger is not ashamed to admit it absolutely kicked my toosh and I was even a little off for the entirety of the next day like I was coming down from an acid trip.

Simply put:  it’s a very, very good beer in small doses.

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6.2% ABV from a one-pint can (”Beer for a glass, from a can”)

If this is a practical joke being played on me, it is one of the most subtly diabolical ever conceived. You see, I hate Time magazine. Hate it with a passion. I think it is a woefully out-of-touch, dated, and worst of all boring periodical that is about as maturely written as the Scholastic News. I won’t read it for free in the dentist’s office when the only other choices are Seventeen, AARP Monthly, and a brochure on gingivitis. Yet for the past decade or so, counting all the way back to my sophomore dorm room in Syracuse, I have been getting a free subscription to Time. It makes no fucking sense to me. During that time I have moved on five occasions in three different cities and though things I actually care about (bills, good magazines, my sex-toy-of-the-month-club shipment) struggle to find me, Time never fails to locate the Vice Blogger. They are like the mob relentlessly going after Henry Hill in witness protection. I’ve gone so far as to call, e-mail, and send a letter to Time Inc. begging them to please leave me alone, but they refuse to cease sending their semi-glossy rag to me. I’ve finally learned to live with it*.

Each week I take Time from my mailbox, perhaps briefly snicker at the lame cover story (usually on one of their four perpetually rotating topics, all of which necessitate derisively mocking quotation marks: the obesity “epidemic,” new “findings” on Jesus’s life, a “special” issue on going green, and “how” the brain actually works) and put it straight in the lobby wastebasket. There is only one time I so much as read a page of Time. That is when I am taking public transportation to go out drinking. Typically I read a book or listen to nerdy podcasts on my ipod (TED Talks!) when riding the subway, but since I won’t want to lug a massive tome around a pub, nor do I trust myself to not lose an ipod during my wily tippling escapades, an issue of Time is perfect. I can read it for five or ten minutes then immediately discard it. In fact, most trips are so short that I only have enough time to read the only legitimately good section of Time, the letters to the editor. Nothing better than reading rubes’ complaints about the east coast media’s evolutionary and homosexual “agendas.” I only wish Time would print the letters as they actually appeared at their offices. It would be funny to see whether they are written in crayon or Magic Marker.

However, the other day I was stuck at the worst train station in Manhattan (the Columbus Circle 1, coincidentally located underneath the Time Warner Center, home to the offices of…you guessed it) for an interminable amount of time and forced to venture further into my shitty magazine. Glad I did because I stumbled upon an amazingly interesting piece penned by never-amusing hipster doofus columnist/gadfly wannabe Joel Stein in which he drank a bottle of wine from all fifty states, reporting on the good, the bad, the ugly, and the surprising.

Having just received a package from Minnesota in which I got to sample my first ever Gopher State beers, I decided to see how much fifty-state beer drinking I have so far done in my life. Using Beer Advocate’s state directory as my main tool, I got to counting between TV timeouts during Monday Night Football.

I came to find that 48 states produce beer, and that I have had pops from 29 of them. Not quite as good as I would have thought, but decent considering the evidence.

Here are the 19 states I have never imbibed from and their most noted (or “noted” brewery)**:

Alabama — only two breweries producing ten total beers, perhaps due to the most asinine beer laws existing in perhaps any non-Muslim part of the world

Alaska — Alaskan

Arizona — Four Peaks maybe

Georgia – Sweetwater

Hawaii — Mehana

Idaho — Coeur d’Alene

Indiana — Three Floyds, I’m ashamed I’ve never had one of their supposed-to-be-miraculous offerings

Iowa — Millstream

Kentucky — only two breweries producing eight total beers, meaning you should just drink bourbon when you’re in KY

Mississippi — only one brewery, so congrats Lazy Magnolia!

Montana — with an impressive 18 breweries, the king would appear to be Big Sky

Nebraska - Empyrean

Nevada — Ruby Mountain

North Carolina — Carolina Beer Co.

North Dakota — as far as I can tell, one of only two states with ZERO breweries!!!

Rhode Island — only one brewery, so congrats Coastal Extreme!

South Dakota — I bet you’re not surprised that this is the other state with ZERO breweries!!! Dakotas, get your shit together!

Tennessee — Yazoo

Utah — Utah Brewers Cooperative, cherished makers of Polygamy Porter (”Why Have Just One?”) and Evolution Amber Ale (”…intelligently-designed just for intelligent beer drinkers.”) I think I like these guys!

West Virginia — only one brewery, so congrats predictably-named Mountaineer Brewing!

Wyoming — Snake River

If you are wondering if I now have a goal to drink a beer from my remaining untried states…absolutely not. That’s a pretty lame ambition for a 29-year-old who actually has things going on in his life. And Jesus Christ some of these states have some abominable-sounding offerings. Having said that, I’m always willing to drink liquid garbage for a funny review if VB fans from any of these states wish to send me some local swill.

Now let’s get back to the impetus for these state beer musings–no, not Jewish embarrassment Joel Stein!–but Surly Furious, the craft beer in a can. I was squeamish at first, but I for one have come to like the microbrew-in-a-can mini-revolution (Oskar Blues, et al). Much lighter for shipping, lugging around, and disposing of. Nothing more embarrassing than clinking a giant Glad bag full of bottles to the garbage room on a Sunday night (NOSY NEIGHBOR: Oh! You musta had a big party this weekend. You guys were sure quiet though. Except I heard crying several times. AARON: Yeah…heh, heh…party.)

Furious, as of today BA’s #49 ranked beer in the world, poured out a lot darker than I expected, a rich caramel or perhaps maroon. A foamy, foamy head with tons of lacing. Its smell was right up my alley. Exactly how I like an IPA to smell. Incredibly fresh and floral, akin to Maharaja or Captain Lawrence’s DIPA, two of my absolute favs.

For a certain kind of IPA fan, I could see this being their absolute holy grail, but for me, it’s just a tad too lacking in sweetness and alcoholic potency. Still stellar though. I’d love to get “session” loaded on it. This is a great one and the people of Minnesota are lucky to have it right in their backyard.

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*I seem to be a victim of oddly diabolical practical jokes. Last year around this time I received an unlabeled package which had in it nothing else but a dozen pair of some brand-new high-end socks. Who could have sent these to me? I questioned family, friends, my girlfriend at the time, but they all insisted that they were not the culprit. I still have no clue who sent these to me, especially since next-to-no people knew my home address back then. It still baffles me to this day. Oddly enough, I was really in need of some socks at the time.

**Just for craps and laughs, here’s my top five beer-producing states:

1. California — the unquestioned king with 84 incredible breweries, most notably Stone, Russian River, and Bear Republic to just name a few, as well as Lost Abbey and Port which I hope to finally try within the month.

2. New York — call me a homer, but the Empire State kicks ass with an amazing amount of top-notch breweries: Southern Tier, Captain Lawrence, Brooklyn, and Ommegang, to just name a few.

3. Colorado — good chance if I lived in Colorado they would finish second, but I don’t, so they’ll have to settle for the bronze with such great breweries as Great Divide, Avery, and New Belgium.

4. Michigan — Bell’s, Jolly Pumpkin, Arcadia, and New Holland. And I still have never tried a single Founders or Kuhnhenn beer so I couldn’t factor those highly-esteemed breweries into my rankings. Consider that for a second before you write me an angry letter to the editor (and, yes, I do have an evolutionary and homosexual agenda).

5. Oregon — Hair of the Dog, Rogue, and Deschutes to name a few.

Notables:
Maine — Allagash, Bar Harbor, Shipyard
Massachusetts — Boston Beer Co., Harpoon, Wachusett
Pennsylvania — Troegs, Victory, Weyerbacher
Wisconsin — New Glarus (points deducted for harboring the dreadful Leiny)

9% ABV from a bomber

You live in New York City cause you don’t wanna grow up. And that’s not cause you’re a Toys “R” Us kid, it’s cause you don’t want to spend all Saturday afternoon mowing the fucking lawn. You’d rather actually enjoy your weekend, spending it relaxing on the lawn, as in the Great Lawn, which is mowed by a grounds crew out on work release from Queensboro Correctional, allowing you to do more important, fun things, such as nap in the sun, smoke cigars, day-drink, and block out the prattle of untalented amateur street musicians.

And you don’t want to own a five bedroom house. I’m sure that’s nice, but what do you need all that space for? It’s more fun to still be 30 and renting a shoebox filled with rats and roaches, living next door to a bunch of weirdos. Leads to better stories and always keeps you on your toes. Comfort begets the atrophy of mind, body, and soul.

And you don’t want to drive places. God driving sucks. You can’t do anything while you drive but…drive. And listen to miserable local radio DJs that couldn’t hack it in a real market discussing all the miserable things occurring locally. Mass transit is the way to go. You can read and do crosswords, ogle women, touch germ-laden poles and straps to contract oddball strains of disease, and ignore bums’ poorly-crafted sob stories.

And you don’t want to eat a square meal with your old lady after work. You want to hit happy hour! And get shit-faced. Grab some jalapeno poppers and chicken wings for dinner. And then some pizza afterwards for dinner number two. Aren’t you a little old to still be doing that?! Fuck no, this is New York City, we all still do that! We’ll never grow up!!

And you don’t want to be fat. Yeah, you really don’t want to be fat. I’m no scientist, but I am an anecdotal observationist and I have a little theory that suburban living directly leads to fatness and baldness. And you don’t want that. You want to live in a city with thin people who have lustrous heads of well-coiffed hair. It makes for a nicer general aesthetic than having to reside in a place with 300 pound orcas holding Cold Stone in their right hand, Chipotle in their left, and Quizno’s in their fanny pack.

And you don’t want to deal with fucking babies. Ever been to a party or get-together outside of Manhattan? There’s fucking babies everywhere you look! Like goddamn Gremlins. You’re trying to relax, tell a bawdy story or two, maybe get loaded and attempt to fornicate with a stranger, and then a fucking toddler comes over yanking your jeans leg. Good lord! Children are neither to be seen nor heard in New York. We are children ourselves, we don’t want any more of them.

And you really don’t want to have lights off, stone-cold sober, Jay Leno on in the background, missionary position, rhythm method, vaginal intercourse with your wife-you-no-longer-love 2.5 times per month. Yeah, you pretty much want the polar opposite of that.

But mostly, you just want excitement. Every single day to be different. A surprise around every corner. And bars that are open to dawn.

You don’t wanna grow up, because if you did, you’d see how boring the world can truly be.

But beer is always exciting!

My e-friend, the Drunken Polack, one of the few beer bloggers online that doesn’t suck, told me to explore some Weyenbacher brews, starting with this one. I listened to him, he knows his shit.

Simcoe has a very piney smell, like a Christmas tree. Or at least how I recall a Christmas tree smelling on the few occasions that your humble Jewish narrator was allowed into a Christian home during Noel. That’s cool, I’m not bitter, that’s not the reason I moved to the Tel Aviv of America once I got my walkin’ papers. We never let the un-Chosen People into our home to light the menorah either.

The brew’s taste is equally piney. A nice simcoe hoppy bitterness as well. Not that I knew what simcoe was until I acquired this beer.

Not that potent for a 9% DIPA. Which is quite shocking actually as that’s a pretty prodigious ABV for even a double. It’s very drinkable and I really dig the mouthfeel of this one. It tingle the insides of my cheeks and tickles my tongue. Nice! Like the first time I got French kissed under the bleachers during the ice cream social sock hop. I’ll never forget you Gladys!

Simcoe IPA is very good, but it feels a tad “one-note.” Nevertheless, I look forward to trying more Weyerbachers.

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