Have beer, will ride

 

At times, a fortuitous confluence of events will lead you to crack some hare-brained scheme that seems like a good idea at the time, when in the fact…

 

Since picking up a road bike in the late winter, I’ve been plotting different ways get more saddle time, either through frequency or distance.  Or both.  Right around the same time, I became friends with a neighbor down the street who’d been into home-brewing his beer, which alerted to me to the fact that these days, in the New York City area, there are more craft beer breweries than ever.

Now I, for one, have long held a particular disdain for this whole microbrew or craft beer movement.  Mostly because it seemed in the ‘90s that every other shitty microbrewery was bottling any manner of brown effervescent swill that seemed to taste like anything but beer.  You had beers that tasted like peaches, bubble gum, chocolate, you name it.  Fuck you, that’s not beer.  Beer shouldn’t taste like cherries.  Or bacon.  Or whatever the fuck they were putting in these beers and selling them to shitheads around the country who had an appetite for candy in a bottle that could also get them fucked up.

Fuck you, beer should taste like beer.  End of argument.

What’s turned it around recently for me is how these craft beer breweries seem to have abandoned the stupid fruity flavors, and have gone back to making beers that taste like fucking beer.

So, one day, I hatched a plan in which I’d ride my bicycle up 15 miles to Elmsford, NY to visit the Captain Lawrence Brewery to taste their wares, then shoot 10 miles eastward to the Craftsman Ale House – where they not only carry over hundred types of killer beers but they also brew their own – followed by a 10 mile ride home with a slight detour to the famous Walter’s Hot Dogs joint in Mamaroneck, NY.

I also knew the inherent risks of trying to do a 35-mile bike ride with two pitstops for beers.  I needed wingmen, so I recruited two buddies with equal senses of depravity to do this ride with me.

We chose a Saturday, and set off at 11am.  I figured it would take us about an hour to ride the 15 miles to the Captain Lawrence Brewery.  We kept a decent pace, around 15mph for the first 12 miles of the ride.  As we got towards Elmsford, the massive criss-crossing array of highways and winding country roads caused me to veer off the planned route, and we were suddenly – and painfully – faced with a hot and slogging climb up a mile-long hill.  It looked like an asphalt wall.  20mph speeds ground down to about 8mph.  Gears shifted to the smallest ratios, legs churned so slowly, and halfway up, all three of us were ready to puke.  And we hadn’t even had a drop of beer yet.

When I fuck up, we all suffer.

When we reached the peak, we welcomed the downhill rush down to the brewery, which was set in some industrial park.  It didn’t look like a brewery in the traditional sense at all.  More like a warehouse with a picnic tables in the back next to a bocce ball run.

“Hey, are you guys here for the beer?” a portly fella greeted us behind a table at the entrance.  Was this the stupidest question ever asked?  Possibly.  We told him we intended to have a quick pint or two before setting off again.

“Sorry, today’s a pig roast event, and it’s $40 to get in.  You can’t get beer today without paying for the pig roast.”

Are you fucking kidding me.  If it wasn’t for that ludicrous hill we just climbed, I might’ve had enough energy in me to dish out a cockpunch or two.  We still had 20 miles to ride, the last thing I need is to stuff my fat face with pig and beer – we weren’t even halfway through our ride, for fuck’s sake.

After a lot of negotiations, they let us in to “discuss the matter with the manager.”  We walked into the tasting room, and were made to stand around for about 15 minutes before the manager graced us with his presence.  The whole while, pints are being poured liberally for pig roast patrons in front of us.  Not one drop came our way.  Not even a sympathy pour.  Fuckers.

After 15 minutes, some bespectacled hipster with a metal bar through his septum came to speak with us.  “Sorry, we’re only doing the pig roast event today.  Each of you have got to pay the $40 if you want any of the beer.  It’s all you can drink.”  Which would’ve been a stellar deal if we were going to park our asses at the bar and didn’t have another 20 miles to ride, fucker.  After going back and forth with the beer overlord, he relents – “Your only choices are to pay the $40.  Or if you want, we can sell you bottles to go.”

WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT IN FIRST PLACE, DICK?!?!!  Why the fuck are you guys making it so hard for us to buy your fucking beer?!!

After I calmed the fuck down, we grabbed three large bottles, some cups, and settled into one of the picnic tables outside to quench our thirst.  It didn’t take long for one of their staff to come harass us about sitting at the picnic table without paying for the pig roast.  What the motherfuck.  After a brief negotiation, they left us alone to finish our beers, then off we went to the next beer stop.

While this leg of the ride was along considerably flatter terrain, it wasn’t an easy ride by any means.  The humid, midday sun was beating down hard.  The three large bottles of hoppy nectar – on empty stomachs! – weighed us down.  We coasted slowly through the next 10 miles.

At the end of the 10 miles, I promised the lads a second oasis of craft beers.  Craftsman Ale House in Harrison, NY boasted their own collection of brews in addition to hundred of other primo beers.  When we got there around 2:30pm, the place was empty, and we were more famished than buzzed.

As a stark contrast to the Captain Lawrence joint, this manager couldn’t possibly be more welcoming.  We pushed our collection of carbon fiber and titanium rides into the bar, and pulled up to three adjacent stools.

Polite banter, perusal of the massive beer list, three even more massive cheeseburgers (including one unceremoniously and viciously halved), and quick brew samples ensued.  Here’s when our next installment of downers took place: turns out that while the Craftsman Ale House brew their own beers, they do not sell their brew.  What the fuck.  So we were left with their confounding list of beers brewed by other folks… and this fucking thing on the right.

Time flies when you’re having fun and before you knew it, all three of us were getting buzzed on our phones.  Text messages galore, each with similar queries from our old ladies – “where the hell are you guys?”

Over an hour after we settled into that bar, we grabbed our bikes and started the final leg of our ride – the 10-mile slog home.  10 miles is nothing.  Correction: ordinarily, 10 miles is nothing.  It’s a ride that most cyclists can do on autopilot and barely break a sweat.  But 10 miles on belly full of hearty craft beers, cheeseburger and fries – that’s a different story.

Fuck, was that a sloooow slog home.  In our opening leg to the first brewery, we averaged just under 15mph.  On the final leg home, we average 8mph.  That is some pathetic decline in pace.

So, 6 hours later, we all finally returned back to the spot from where we started our ride.  6 hours later, we had made 2 lengthy stops for beer.  6 hours later, we had no interest in that final detour for hot dogs.  6 hours later, nothing had worked out as planned.  6 hours later, we were 3 hours late because I’m such a fuck up.  6 hours later, each one of us was in the fucking doghouse.

6 hours later, we decided we’re gonna do it again.

 

 

Ring of Fire – The Event

 

CONTINUED FROM: Ring of Fire – The Lead-up

 

Three weeks passed, and Phaal Day was upon us.  I did my best not to psych myself out, but the imminent horror was hard to push aside.  We all gathered at the restaurant a little after 6pm – there were eight of us in total.  By the time I got there, everyone was already about two drinks in and feeling loose.  And why wouldn’t they – most of them were there to witness insanity, not dive into it.

I took my seat at the table, doing a piss poor joke masking my nerves.  I started to ask our server about the phaal challenge.  How big of a bowl of curry are we talking about here?  “16oz.  And you have to finish everything, including all the sauce.  You can order it with vegetables, tofu, chicken, lamb, goat, any of that.  And you have 30 minutes.”  Jeez.

I started running through the game plan in my head:

• I needed to finish this fast.  Get it down my throat and be done with it.
• That meant now minimal chewing.  So no chewy meats.  Tofu would be a good choice.  Fish a second.
• No rice, no naan, no starchy medium.  Again, I needed this to go down fast to minimize in-mouth burn time.  The more I have to chew, the longer I’m prolonging the burn.  Rice is bullshit.
• It’s 16oz of molten nightmare.  That’s two cups of food I’ve got to inject.  That means there’s no way I can afford to drink much to put the flames out.  Just shovel.
• There are two kinds of burn – the spices, and the temperature.  Why add to the spice burn with a temperature burn?  I would let the phaal cool off a bit before I dug in.

The three of us who were competing all sat in a row, with our backs against the wall.  As if before a firing squad.  Backed into a wall with no means of escape.  When our three bowls of phaal were laid in front of us, everyone’s iPhones came out and I felt like The Beatles at a press conference.  *flash* *flash* *flash* *flash*  The pictures hit Facebook before I even took my first bite.

The other two dug right into their piping hot curries.  I think one of them might’ve actually squealed a little, completely taken aback by just how searing hot the phaal was.  I held back.  Stirring the curry, watching the steam waft up, but careful not to inhale the sharp aroma too much – that shit’s like a spike up your nose and into your brain.

After letting it cool off a bit, I scooped up a spoonful and took a bite.  Oh, the pain.  The startling immediate pain.  Like eating thousands of shards of glass in the form of a thick gravy.

I kept working at the bowl in front of me.  The other two would stop to converse but I ignored them – I had a job to do.  I had a strategy and I was sticking to it.

I scooped, I ate, I scooped, I ate.  We had 30 minutes to polish this off.  About 10 minutes in, I was about halfway through my bowl.  My mouth felt like the bowels of hell, my throat was charred raw from swallowing the molten earth, and my stomach started to feel like I’d swallowed a hot brick right out of a kiln.

My server came by for a bit of encouragement.  “Actually, you’re doing quite well.”  He then handed me a small bowl of yogurt dressing.  Decorum be fucked, I took out the serving spoon and chugged the whole thing and asked for a second bowl of the cool dressing.

I looked over and my partners-in-crime were grinding to a slow halt.  10 minutes in, and they were looking done.  One was casually swirling around a piece of naan in her curry.  The other was taking his time carving the goat meat from the bones.  Neither seemed in a particular hurry.

I, too, was slowing down at this point.  I contemplated throwing in the towel.  On account that I now felt like the fiery member of the Fantastic Four.  This was too much.  My mind started to toggle back and forth – slow down and dull the pain, or power through and compound the pain?  I looked down at the bowl, and I realized that I maybe had about three spoonsful left.

I had come too far to turn back now.  I made the three scoops, and raised my arms in victory.  “Holy shit, you’re done?!”  “WHAAA?!!”  Oh my God!”  iPhone popped out again. *flash* *flash* *flash* *flash*

I asked the server over to evaluate.  I looked in the bowl, and I realized I hadn’t done a great job polishing the bowl.  A true competitor – and a goddamn sadist – would have scraped up the remaining bits of gravy.  My server gave a half-hearted approval of my feat.  Fuck it, I’m not tripping into the finish line, I’m marching right through it.  I grabbed my spoon, scraped up all the remaining curry in the bowl and let the burn in my mouth one last time.

Now, I’d fucking earned it.

I was the first to finish.  But as it turned out, I was the only one to finish.  That’s when I also learned that there was money on the table – $40 to a winner.  I grabbed the cabbage, then grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste that I’d packed and ran to the bathroom to clean the hellfire from my mouth.  I was a puddle of sweat, and I was in agony, but I’d done it.  I made phaal my bitch.

Now, just because I had hastily inhaled my meal didn’t mean that dinner was over.  Everyone was only just getting started on their chicken tikka masalas and their saag paneers and their rogan josh.  I sat there, with 16oz of pure grade, uncut curry hell in my stomach.

That’s when the staff showed up with my rewards.  A massive mug of lager and a certificate with my handwritten name on it.  Nice gesture, but easily the most pointless reward ever.  Where the fuck was I supposed to put that lager after I’d wolfed down all that blistering curry?

 

The pain wasn’t sudden but it was fast.

I excused myself to the bathroom, and that’s where I started to fall apart.  I started to feel woozy, nauseous, with a growing pain in my stomach.  I made a slight vurp, and quickly realized that hurling the contents of my stomach wasn’t an option.  That’d be going through the whole phaal consumption experience again, in reverse.

I stumbled back outside and crumpled into a chair, a big sweaty heap.  Which promptly freaked everyone the fuck out.  I have no recollection of how long I was out, but after a while, I got up, we walked out of the restaurant, poured into black limo that took us all back to the suburbs.

That’s where the full force of the phaal was realized.  I was soon to learn that the great lie ever told about phaal is that it’s an extremely hot curry.  What no talks about is what phaal does inside your body.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink.  One might expect that I was kept awake because I was terrorizing my bathroom.  In fact, the bathroom offered no comfort.  The pain was buried deep in my gut.  Through the entire night, I was able to plot exactly where the curry was, as it made its slow trek through my innards.  The pounding pain just below my sternum slowly crept downward toward my navel.  There, wave after wave of dull, cramping agony ensured that there’d be no comfort anytime soon.  Sitting upright didn’t help.  Lying down didn’t help.  Laying on my side did nothing either.  Curled up like a ball?  Nothing.

I suddenly started think back to all the childbirthing classes the missus and I had taken just before our first kid.  The short, rapid breathes.  Ice chips, my kingdom for some ice chips!!  I was convinced that this was the closest any dude would ever get to experiencing labor pains.

When the night passed, and the sun came up, I had gotten no sleep.  Slumber was replaced with crippling agony and a million questions all centered around the same idea, “Why the fuck did I do that?!”

Why the fuck indeed.  I had just put some of the most hostile material created by mankind – highly questionable if it should’ve even been edible or not – into my body, paid the price for it, and for what?  For the satisfaction of having done it?  Exactly what part of it was satisfying?  I couldn’t even enjoy the beer I was rewarded at the end.

Now, 24 hours later, I still question whether or not it was a wise stunt.  Wise?  Well, most stunts aren’t exactly grounded in wisdom.  The best ones are grounded in some manner of insanity.  In this case, it sure was.  Mission accomplished, that case.

Now, if anybody needs me, I’m going to take a bath in a milk shake.

 

 

Shit I thought about when riding the subway

• This morning, I saw a dad checking to see if his kid had a poopy diaper.  No biggie, just pulled the top band and peeked into the kid’s crack.  I’m so fucking grateful I never ever have to do that again with my kids.  The next time I have to do this with my kids, the roles are gonna be reversed.

• It should be perfectly alright to make fun of a guy who wears pleated trousers.

• If you shoot a video with your camera phone in vertical orientation, the phone should prompt you, “Are you sure you wanna shoot it this way, stupid?”

• It is entirely too fucking soon to have pumpkin beer on the shelves.  It’s fucking August, for fuck’s sake.  First of all, pumpkin beer is for assholes, so let me get that out of the way.  Beer needs to taste like beer, not like a pie.  There are rules for this shit.  But if you must stock pumpkin-flavored beer, August is too soon.  Everyone bitches when Santa shoves his ass into our faces by Halloween – selling pumpkin beer before Labor Day is exactly the same fucking thing.  Fuck off with pumpkin beer.

• You know what I really need?  A Michigan filter.  This time of year, every insufferable Michigan fan farts their fandom to make sure that everyone knows that they went to Michigan.  Fuck Michigan.   No one – NO ONE – is more annoying than a Michigan fan.  They go on about the motherfucking Big House.   Good one, Michigan – the prison metaphor fits you assholes perfectly.  Yet, you’re like boneheaded Raider fans who are too pussy to earn proper criminal records.  “Go Blue” is such a fucking stupid pointless chant.  Last time I checked, this little bitch team had two colors – blue and yellow (fuck off with your “maize” – that’s corn, motherfucker).  Why the fuck are you ignoring the yellow?   Dipshit NY Giants fans also holler “Go Blue”, so way to go, Michigan.  Way to set yourselves apart.  Fuck Michigan.

You drink like an asshole

This past weekend, I went to a large birthday party-slash-reunion party.  A ton of folks showed up, most were local, and quite a few from several states away.  It was big affair, and everyone showed up ready to party.

The fact that it was a big and well-attended affair didn’t mean that it was an overly fancy party.  Not in the least.  A modest buffet, a couple of kegs and a cash bar for mixed drinks.

That last part – the cash bar – is where it started to go pear-shaped.  Not because anyone got supremely blottoed (I fucking wish).  But because there were drinks ordered that NO ONE in this universe or the next should ever fucking order.

People have no fucking idea how to order mixed drinks at a bar.

It’s fucking deplorable that there are drinks that you’re allowed to order, and drinks no one should ever order, and no one knows this shit.  Maybe an easy way to determine between the two is to use a few rules.  These are my rules, I made them up.

• If you order a drink that requires more than 3 ingredients, you’re an asshole.  In other words, fuck your Singapore Sling.

• If your drink order takes more than 90 seconds to make, you’re an asshole.  You’re twice the asshole if it takes you more than 90 seconds to order your stupid drink.

• If your drink has more than four syllables, you’re an asshole.  I hope you choke on your Long Island Iced Tea.

• If your drink has some cute name, you’re an asshole.  You know what’s the best way to make a Fuzzy Navel?  You get a bottle of peach schnapps.  And you shove it up your ass.  Past your freshman year in college, there’s no fucking way you have any business ordering a Fuzzy Navel or a Sex On The Beach.  It’s your freshman year, you’re supposed to do stupid shit you know nothing about.  After that, if you order a Fuzzy Navel, you need to be stabbed.

• If your drink order has to come from a “mixologist”, you’re an asshole.

• If you call yourself a “mixologist”, you’re a huge asshole.  And a huge dickhead.

So, what does this mean?  This means no more fucking Mojitos.  The fucking things are so 10 years ago, at best.  I read this tweet the other week and it made my fucking week.  Enjoy your herpes in a glass, losers.

Nevermind how much trouble it is to make a mojito, the goddamn mojito is such a pretentious asshole drink to order.  “I want you to make me a rum drink that cloaks the rum taste with a mass floating bits of leaves.  It makes me feel sophistimacated.”  Fuck off.

And don’t you fucking dare order a Cosmo.  That drink violates the 4-syllable rule, and Sex And The City is pretty much one of the worst shows of all time.

Also off-limits are Whiskey Sours, Mudslides, Kamikazes, or anything with fucking Kahlua in it.  If your drink has part of a plant or, a flower in it, or it has different swirly colors, you’ve made a grave error, and you need to send that sumbitch back and order yourself a proper fucking drink.

Another thing you’re not allowed to order anymore: a martini.  You can’t be trusted to order a martini properly.  Because all of you fuck it up with vodka.  Fuck that.  Martinis are made with gin.  Only gin.  James Bond is a colossal douche for getting the martini wrong for 60 years.  Also, of course you fucking shake a martini – who the fuck stirs one.  Bottom line is if you’re not gonna get a gin martini, you’re not getting a martini at all.

Here’s the thing: a drink is a rite of passage.  It’s not a fucking toy.  It’s a several ounces of fulfillment you sip out of a glass to replenish yourself, physically and emotionally.  It’s something you should take some goddamn pride in.  How the fuck are you supposed to take some pride in yourself when you waddle up to some barkeep and order yourself an “orgasm”?

Stop being a douchebag to yourself.

But I don’t wanna come across as being some persistent naysayer, only harping on shit you can’t drink.  There’re a ton of drinks that are perfectly acceptable.  Again, these are my rules, I make them up.

• You want something brown, get a Manhattan or a Sidecar.  These are classics that’ll never earn you a frown from your barkeep.  Too complicated?  You can NEVER go wrong with a single malt, neat.  Ever.  And don’t ever put your single malt on the rocks.  That’s like putting A1 sauce on a porterhouse.  Shitheads do that.  Don’t be a shithead.

• You want something red, order a Negroni.  Done.

• You want something green, fuck your Appletinis.  You get your hands on some absinthe or you can just fuck off.  You’re lucky I’m not putting brake fluid in your glass.

• You want something blue, fuck you, you don’t ever fucking drink anything blue, dipshit.

• You want something with tequila in it, try a tequila and tonic.  That’s right, tonic with fucking tequila in it.  Not gin, and not vodka, you unimaginative wank.  And stop being so scared of tequila.  Some of you treat tequila as if one whiff of it will send you into some PCP ragefest.  Calm the fuck down, it’s just tequila.  Tequila and tonic – with a slice of lemon – is one of the greatest summer drinks, so fucking get to it.

There you go.  Sort your shit out, and stop ordering dickhead drinks.  No one ever got in trouble ordering a beer (unless it’s got fruit in it, or needs to be served in stemware).  Or wine (although it may not yet be safe to order a Merlot).

So don’t say I never did anything for you.

 

Paris and London: just the lowlights

Let me start by getting one thing out of the way.  That old adage about how Paris would be wonderful if it weren’t for all the French?  Bullfuckingshit.  Paris blows because it’s filled with Americans.  Everywhere you go, it’s Yanks all over the place.  What the fuck, I thought we were in some massive sinkhole of economic diarrhea – yet, Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the motherfucking universe, is filled to be brim with holidaying Yanks.  Fucking blows my mind.  Granted, I was there to do the same, so I’m not gonna begrudge someone else’s holidaying shenanigans, but goddamn there are a lot of Yanks in Paris.

Anyway, two weeks in Paris with a slight detour to pre-Olympic-bullshit London yielded some entirely pointless observations:

French countryside.  For all talk about the visual orgasm that is the French countryside, it’s remarkably dull.  You might as well be driving through the middle of New Jersey.

British graffiti sucks.  Banksy notwithstanding (which is technically is street art, not the sort of graffiti I’m talking about).  On the left is what was scrawled on the back of a loo in an average pub right off Greek Street in London’s Soho.  Compare that to the right, taken from the bathroom at Max Fish in New York’s Lower East Side.

When you make the mistake of going to see the Mona fucking Lisa, you usually have the misfortune of getting crammed with about 150 other boneheaded tourists all clamoring to see the same stupid painting.  Problem is, every single of one of them will be a complete imbecile.  Not only are they pushing and shoving, you get dipshits like this trying to take a picture of the painting from about 30 feet away.  Using an iPad.  Took every ounce of self-restraint not to swat that iPad out of his hands and send it hurtling towards the Mona Lisa itself to test out the painting’s perspex shielding.

 

This fucking guy at Versailles.

Café du Flore, Café Deux Magots, Brasserie Lipp – apparently this view affords you a tiny lukewarm cup of espresso that’ll set you back 10 euros.  We hit all three landmark restaurants in one sweep one lazy Tuesday afternoon.  Sure, they were lovely and boasted all sorts of literary history, but holy shit do they know how to work the whole tourist trap thing.  In fact, all the tourist traps are finetuned to perfection.  We hit a whole bunch of them – Au Pied du Cochon, Bofinger, Chartier, the three above.  You walk in and not a single Parisian is to be seen in any of these places.  Yet, somehow they make you feel OK sitting down and having an unspectacular yet unoffensive meal.  You know full well that you’re in a tourist trap, for some fucked up reason, you’re OK with it.  Which is heaps different from any given tourist trap in New York.  I think.  I haven’t been to New York tourist traps in a long while, so I’m just projecting here.

Andouillette.  Speaking of restaurants, my typically brave demeanor when it comes to food finally betrayed me.  On my final night in Paris, having already tried so many typical French foods, opted for one of the few remaining things I had yet to try: andouillette.   Sounds like an andouille, right?  And I fucking love andouille.  I had to try it.  Even if the description is nothing like andouille – andouillette is a sausage that’s constructed of chopped up tripe stuffed into an intestine.  Not just a natural gut casing, but the whole fucking intestine.  Filled with chopped up tripe.  How bad could it be?  Holy shit, never ask that question when it comes to andouillette.  Because the andouillette will punch you in the mouth with a definitive and declarative answer.  It tastes like you’ve just eaten the toilet from Trainspotting.  And you can’t swallow it because it’s all hard and crunchy and it tastes like shit and you start to gag and the combination of gag and a mouthful of shit causes you to asphyxiate, and your only solution is to wash it down as quickly as possible by guzzling wine right out of the bottle which causes you to instantly become the ape-like retarded tourist in the restaurant.  Everything is horrible and you want to die.  After coming to, I politely sent the plate of Satan’s pinched loaf back and ordered a steak tartar instead.  You have no idea how delicious a raw hamburger is after you’ve tried andouillette.

The subway music is much more interesting.  That’s not to say that any halfwit walking around with an accordion equals something good.  In New York, half these schmucks on the subway create some indiscernible racket and demand loose change from you.  Parisian minstrels, on the other hand, often sound like they might actually be good at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Deodorant.  Europe is gonna be so awesome when they discover deodorant.

QR codes = Hoboken’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade

 

This evening’s silly conversation:

TW:  “Dude, when was the last time you used a QR code?”

Me:  “Actually, the last time I used one was this weekend.”

TW:  “Really?  What for?”

Me:  “Well, I bought a new coat and it boasted some fucking snazzy heat-reflection technology bullshit.  And it came with a tag with a QR code on it.  So I clicked the code and a video played on my phone showing how this heat-reflection technology worked.”

MS:  “And that was the clincher?  The video?”

Me:  “No, the clincher was that the coat cost $25.  Where the hell are you gonna find some space age coat for $25?”

TW:  “I dunno, I hate QR codes.”

Me:  “No, don’t hate QR codes.  QR codes are great.  QR codes are fucking awesome.  Hate the douchebags who misuse QR codes, don’t hate the codes.  I love clicking on a code, and then it takes me to some cool content that probably can’t be accessed some other way.  That’s the whole point of QR codes.  That’s when QR codes are cool as fuck.  Instead, 99 times out of 100, what happens when you get when click on a QR code?  You’re taken to some stupid homepage.  Like I need your fucking code to take me to your homepage, especially when you put the code right next to your URL – assholes.  And half the time, it’s not even a mobile site, and everything’s fucking microscopic on your screen.  Die, you mobilephobic site, die.  Or you’re taken to something that takes a day and a half to load.  Or you see a QR code in a subway car – what fucking genius thought that one up?!  It’s just such a gross misuse of QR codes.

“I tell you what – QR codes are the Hoboken St. Patrick’s Day Parade of the digital world.  You have something that’s all nice and cool and properly organized for you – you get to drink in the streets for an entire day, for fuck’s sake! – and you have an opportunity to do lots fun and cool shit with it, make it somewhat exclusive or special… But instead, you act like a complete imbecile and you misuse and abuse the fucking thing, and you treat it like a little bitch, and you end up puking all over your girlfriend’s sister and her best friend, and wind up in the ER, and eventually, the mayor’s gonna come around and say, ‘Fuck you, this is why you can’t have nice things, you shitheads.’  And this is why QR codes need to die.”

 

Everyone:  “What is wrong with you.”

 

I am a fathead: Week 3

Day 14:  Weigh-in day.  Down another 4lbs.  I take the lead in this contest.  I worry I’ve peaked too soon.  However, everyone’s starting to plateau.  Everyone starts to convince each other that this is typically the way manic weight-loss programs go – you drop a ton right away, then skid to a halt.  Truth is, I don’t think any of us were trying as hard in the second week as we were in the first week.  I know I wasn’t.  The minute a curry or Mexican showed up, I was like Blutarsky at the cafeteria line.   I just keep thinking about how hungry and grumpy (more than usual) I’ve been the past two weeks, and I gotta look ahead to doing that for another three weeks.  Three more weeks of this bullshit.

Day 15:  Did you know that if you eat a lot less, you poop a lot less, too?  It’s totally true.  When you think about it, it makes sense.  Less going in, less coming out.  I have no more epic poops.  None.  What a goddamn killjoy this is.  The thrill of colossal dumps is a totally a guy thing, by the way.  If you have any doubt, just watch the South Park episode where Randy takes the most epic shit, then enshrines the deuce for his buddies to marvel at.  It’s one of the most brilliant episodes of all time.  There goes one of the few things I’m good at, right out the window.  Or rather down the toilet.  It’s like there is literally no fun to be had whatsoever when trying to lose weight.  I’ll bet Kate Middleton poops just one chocolate chip every three weeks.

Day 16:  I think I may be developing an eating disorder.  There is such a small window of contentment each time I eat.  Because I’ve got to eat less, my meal usually consists of about three bites and then I’m done.  I’m done before I can even figure out what the fuck it tastes like.  Then I’m still hungry afterward.  So I get something else to eat.  But the minute I’m done with the second thing, I’m racked with guilt and I feel like a fat, lumpy turd.  If I could draw this on a scale, it’d probably look like this:

In three weeks, I have yet to finish a meal feeling, “I’m satisfied, I’m done.”  I’m either still hungry or I feel like I gorge my fat face.

Day 17:  I met an old friend for lunch today at The Breslin.  I’d been wanting to check this place out for ages, so I thought, fuck it let’s do it.  If I weren’t in this contest, I’d help myself to all the rich goodness on the menu – anchovies, bone marrow, you name it.  Instead, I got the special that sounded like a typical English breakfast.  Baked beans, eggs, and sausage.  Except the sausage – oh glorious pork sausage – was crusted and DEEP-FRIED!  Washed it all down with a unexpectedly delicious Empire Cream Ale.  Oh my God, was that lunch practically orgasmic.  I spend the rest of the afternoon contemplating the repurcussions of my indulgence.  I’m so overcome with guilt again, the minute I get home, I bolt right back out and head to the gym.  Punish myself with a 45 minute workout.  But I got some extra punishment – some jerkoff was bogarting the remote and kept the TV tuned to some fucking hockey game.  Hockey!  Who gives a shit, we’re still in the midst of football season.  I know there wasn’t any football playing at that very moment, but I sure as fuck didn’t give a shit about hockey!   A bullshit workout made worse by stupid TV.

Day 20:  Epic fail to see out the week.  I end the week with a four-day binge.  It was the Breslin one day, Keen’s the next, then it was a Chinese New Year dinner hosted by my local Chinese restaurant (I’m tight with them), followed by another epic Chinese New Year’s eve dinner in Chinatown.  Four straight days of stuffing my fat fucking face.  In the four days, I devoured fried sausage, a bloody steak, fried lobster, greasy noodles, ribs, curry, abalone, and whole fish.  Chinese New Year is all about food.  Why can’t I come from a culture where it’s all about having great shoes or where short people get laid all the time?  This is bullshit.  It’s like I’m doing everything I can to lose this contest.  Today, I might as well have helped myself to a pound of chicharrón and washed it down with a pint of clarified butter.

 

My less-than-epic American weekend: Part 1

It started as a grand ambition.  To squeeze some major Americana into one weekend in some distant city.  I scoured the sports schedules.  MLB schedules, NFL schedules, NASCAR, you name it.   After several evenings of fucking around with dates and events, it came together:  I would go to Chicago one September weekend.  A Cubs game on the Saturday, and a NASCAR race on Sunday.  Two of the most Yanktastic sports imaginable: baseball and idiot car racing.  If we were a smarter nation, we’d combine the two – baseball car racing.  Both sports involve going around in circles anyway, how hard would it be to drop a dozen cars in the middle of a ballpark and go nuts.

Anyway.  Cubs and NASCAR.  The sports of kings.  No, I don’t mean “kings”, do I…  The sports of Larry The Cable Guy.

 

The Cubs game was superb.  The bonus bit was that the Cubs actually won (!!!).  I was convinced that they’d find a way to choke (you know, like the Mets’ season-long game plan), but holy shit, they won!  Truth be told, I didn’t give a shit if they won or lost, it was being at Wrigley Field that made it such a goddamn thrill.   The ivy-covered wall in the outfield, the absence of a blinding jumbotron or other gratuitously shiny gizmos, and… the Old Style!  Ohmigod, where have you been my whole life, Old Style?   The ridiculous cheap-ass cans, the crisp yet watery flavor, the logo that looks like it was lifted from Medieval Times?!  It fuckin’ made the ballpark for me.  It allowed me plenty of visits to Wrigley Field’s famed piss troughs.  And that was fucking awesome.

After the Cubs won, we wandered down the street and checked into some lively bar.  It was a glorious moment when I realized that we’d walked into a Michigan State bar.  Michigan State and the Indianapolis Colts bar, actually.  How the fuck you put those two together I have no idea.  But I didn’t give a shit – on every screen in this place was the Notre Dame-Michigan State football game and I was surrounded by stupid Spartan green.  Fuck it, I was going to ride this game out in this bar.  It was a peculiar thrill ‘cause I had never been around so many Michigan State fans before.  This was going to be awesome!  Many, many, many, many pints later – and some hot wings that seemed to be made of molten lava – Notre Dame soundly spanked Michigan State.  And with that, we took our leave.  But not before we were treated to some of Chicago’s finest partying heavyweights:

500 lbs of grain-fed, alcohol-marinated Iowa football fanatic, sprawled in the middle of Clark Street with such finesse and grace, it took half a dozen pedestrians (who themselves were a right mess) and two squad cars to drag this lifeless lump off the asphalt and onto the sidewalk.  Well done, Hawkeye, well done.  I, for one, have never seen a beached whale this far from the ocean.

 

But you can never get too from the hipster douchebags.  Here were two of the top candidates who sauntered right by me.  It was interesting how these two bros were playing off each other.  I really didn’t quite get the vibe they were going for as a unit.  Was there a costume party that spontaneously broke out in the middle of a Saturday afternoon?  Did Chicago have its own Running Of The Bulls event that hadn’t been savvy to?   ‘Cause I’d love to have seen that – several hundred shitheads getting mauled by tomorrow’s Applebee’s combo dinners.  What of the colossal douche in the hat, sportcoat and penny loafers?  Maybe these two assholes confused a bull run with a bull fight.  How I wish the shithead with the hat was on his way to a bullfight.  Those red shorts would be the most perfect target for getting cockpunched by a raging ox.

 

 

Tomorrow: I fail to take a bite out of the chicken-fried steak of American sport

 

I like beer

I was in a bar at Harvard Square recently – the well-known, well-loved Grendel’s Den.  I hadn’t been to this place in about 15 years, since the missus was going to school in the area.

On two chalkboards – one behind and one above the bar – they have a list all the beers have they.  And a brief of beers that they don’t – Coors Light, Miller Light, Bud, you get the idea.  And the list ended with the phrase, “BASTA”.  Not knowing what it meant, I enquired of our skinny, bearded, saggy-jeaned super-hipster barkeep.  “BASTA, it’s a Spanish-Mediterranean acronym meaning, “Enough!”  Whatever, jerkoff.  “Enough”, as in, enough with the piss-poor brews for the unwashed masses.  Of course that’s what it’d mean.  For fuck’s sake.

While I agree with the general sentiment of striking the Buds and Coors and Millers off this earth, I shudder to think of what I’m left with as an alternative.

And that’s because 99% of the beers out there are complete and utter shite.  Thoroughly undrinkable.

It’s just that the age of good and simple seems long gone.  Make it good, and make it simple.  I like a proper lager.  Just something simple, something not terribly foamy, something with a nice crisp bite to it, and something that’s yellow.  Not amber, not brown, not pale, not clear, not muddy, not red, not magenta, not mauve, not caramel, not black and fucking tan.

And I want it taste like beer.  Not chocolate, not oatmeal, not gooseberries, not apples, not lime, not honey, not bubblegum, not bread, not muffins, not cheese, not walnuts, not bacon, not clams, not anise, not mint, nothing but fucking beer.  I mean, what is it with putting extra shit into beer that makes it taste anything other than beer?  That’s like going into a store to buy a pair of sneakers and the sneakers come with a pashmina sown to it because they think you’d probably like that, too.  Fuck off.

Which means that if I order a beer that’s not fruit flavored, please don’t fucking put a slice of orange or lemon in it.  If I wanted a beer with fruit in it, I’d have ordered a fruit-flavored beer.  In which case, I wouldn’t have ordered it at all because fruit-flavored beers are for wankers who don’t like beer, and I fucking love beer.  Beer with no fruit.  So please stop forcing your rancid orange slices which your disgusting fingers have been fondling all night into my beer – just because it’s summer – asshole barkeep.

I don’t need my beer extra hoppy, whatever the hell that means.  Extra hops – what am I, the Easter Bunny?

And stop with the stupid fancy glass you insist on pouring my beer into.  Beer into a proper pint glass, thank you.  The sort with the slight bulge around near the top would be nice.  No fucking stemware for beer, you hear me.  Fuck you, Stella, Sam Adams, and whatever other fucking beer company that insists that their beer gets poured into these fucking ridiculous glasses on the pretense that they boost the flavor their beers or something.  Fuck you, if your beer needs a stupid-looking glass to be palatable, you’ve failed at brewing it right the first time.  What a crock of shit.  Pint glasses.  Full stop.

And about that pint glass, here’s another irritating trait amongst Stateside barkeeps – the consistent inability to fill that pint glass right to the brim.  These fuckers will fill the glass and leave about half an inch of space from the top.  What is that space for, assholes?  It’s a pint glass, you’re supposed to be serving me a pint of beer, if you don’t fill it to the top, you’re not serving a full pint of beer.  If I wanted 9/10ths of a pint, I’d have asked for 9/10ths of a pint.  Or they’d make smaller glasses.  But they didn’t.  They made pint glasses.  Fill it to the top, assholes!

Case in point, look at this fucking beer:

I know it’s a Leffe, and yes, Leffe is usually delicious.  But holy crap, everything about that beer right now screams asshole.