Sometimes, it’s not easy to assemble the drinking Avengers.  Girlfriends, family, weddings, funerals, even work can prevent what is always your stalwart and reliable drinking team from battling the forces of sobriety.  However, just because you find your calls going to voicemail and your 5 pm bar check in met with long distance disapproval, doesn’t mean your light doesn’t shine as bright.  Like the Olympic torch, it’s your job to see it all the way to the grand spectacle itself, where a myriad bars representing countless cliques from near and far stand ready to challenge your resolve.  You may be tempted to sit at home with some bottles of wine and a fully charged laptop ready to write your Great American Novel, however, without venturing into the labyrinth that is your local bar scene I ask you: What are you going to write about?

And so that brings us to the Solo Mission: the calling card that beckons you to a landscape where only your imagination and wallet can take you; the place where without the usual crowd to laugh at your jokes and provide a foil to your wrinkled clothes and humor, you’re forced to engage in that most unholy and terrifying of acts- talking with strangers.  Well I’m here to tell you this: not only is it not unholy and terrifying, moreover- it is the wellspring from which your body absorbs the energy it will use to pound on the keyboard.  And if you do it right, perhaps it will pound something else.

Where do I start?

You might be tempted to hit your local.  Not a bad first thought, but chances are you 1) know all the bartenders anyway, so it’s not really a Solo and 2) you’re usually the first one there as it is, so nothing really would have changed.  Even more so, the usual happy hour crowd is probably there as well, and we know you also know all of them (you do- names don’t matter).  Rather, take this moment to hit a place you’ve never been or even better- a place you scowl at on your walk home from work.  Ever wonder what goes on in the trendy Irish bar on the corner? Time for a Guinness and a Jameson; curious about the spotlight and salsa music next to your office? Slink over as soon as the bell rings at 5. If you are complacent and routine with the Avengers then you’ll be complacent and routine at the local.  Tell Heimdall to open the gate: it’s time to explore Asgard.

They’re staring at me.

That’s the point!  The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, but the point is that someone has to come and do the hammering (preferably a chick).  Don’t act as if anything is out of the ordinary, even if you feel that way.  This is a bar, remember? You weren’t always a regular at the local- think back to those times.  Order something simple so the bartender knows right away that you aren’t a pain in the ass.  Play into your aura of mystery; say nothing, stick to bourbon and beer, and start to take in your surroundings.  Pretend you’re painting a portrait and this bar is a beautiful model; take notice of her every curve; grin at her flowing long hair.  After a few drinks, you may find this model staring back, and that’s when the cruise control of your night is set.

“Sup man?”

“The bottom of this bottle…”

Let your drinking be the spotlight that illuminates your brilliance.  At this point, you will have no doubt met a few strangers.  Let them take notice of the conveyor belt of awesome boom-shucking its way past your lips; ask them if they have a request as you stagger towards the Juke.  When they say “Dave Matthews,” tell them you ran out of credits.

Since you’ve been socially deprived without anyone to talk to till this point (save for bartender’s diatribe on the virtues of jam bands) you may find yourself enjoying the company.  But I’d never talk to a wino like this in real life! But again- that’s the point.  In college they emphasize diversity because the very act of being surrounded by people who are different enhances our understanding, and while that logic is total bullshit in college, there’s something to be said about its usefulness at the bar.  Learn all about Johnny’s failed art trip to France and how he eventually had to come home and work as a janitor in a graphic design firm, but at least I’m close to where I need to be and I’ll get there someday! as he shows you a pen with his website on it that you’ll promise to visit.  And now that you know he’s an artist you can tell him that you are too as you explain your shitty metaphor of you painting the bar like a model.  As he begins to wonder who the wino is he is talking to, laugh maniacally and finish your drink.  It’s time to say hi to

“Surrryeee I’ll take a picture.”

Of course you say yes to their request, but don’t let them off the hook so easily; while it’s nice to take a picture for a group of blurry eyed, sash wearing coquettes, it’s dumb to be a photographer.  Make sure to get one with them as well (“lesss takee one of uss!”) and of course they’ll agree because you’re just that nice.  And since you have such charming command of the English language and looks to rival the V-necked brute checking IDs, naturally you’ll find yourself in a limo.  Of course you may find the more responsible of the bunch staring at you and wondering who the guy with the neon blue top hat is, unlike earlier you’ll be able to brush this off easily thanks to the free-flowing champagne that’s spilled all over your shirt.  Perhaps as the limo departs from (where are we again?) you’ll notice an equally smashed guy with a neon blue top hat and champagned shirt smiling at you like some Napoleonic conspirator.  Smile back.  This guy obviously had the same idea as you, and considering how awesome you are right now there’s no WAY that guy can’t be cool.  Resist the urge to think it’s your reflection playing tricks on you between the fur and flashing LEDs- that last absinthe was killer, anyways.

Where are the cabs?  Are these woods?

Rats.  They weren’t going to a hotel, but to their friend’s apartment at…ah shit.  Well that’s ok buckaroo!  You got your cell phone don’t you?  When you’re done borrowing the bachelorette’s phone to call a cab, realize you’ve got at least 45 minutes, and start relishing that woodland air.  Guzzle down the beer you got from the best friend as she tried to coax you into the room; begin to process the marvelous adventure you’ve been on tonight; let it coalesce and distill itself down into something strong and sharp you can write about in the morning.  When your cab arrives, PROMISE to meet your new friends for brunch and laugh at the other guy from the limo getting down on the couch.  Stupid idiot! 

When you wake up on the couch the next day with 13 missed calls at 4:40 am, don’t be alarmed; instead of fiddling around for Advil or that woodland beer from last night, the first thing you should seek is a calendar.  Ahhh Saturday!  Which can really mean two things…

What the fuck did I do and when can I do it again?

Even the best hitters do it – feet planted, shoulders tense with the anticipation of the swing…what seemingly is a home run cocked and loaded ends up sending the ball shanking into the goddamn dugout.  Maybe it even hit someone in the face.  And as you watch them get carted out of the stadium you think, how, with the perfect position and form, did something go so awry?  Am I not a professional?  Where in the minor leagues of freshmen year did I not learn about foul balls?

Bar fouls are mostly contextual; while it’s almost always unacceptable to play “Money Money” twenty times in a row anywhere, with the right crowd it can send them into a dizzy delirium.  In short, it depends.  Drinking in a field with your sordid crew may invite the cops; drinking in a field during a festival invites drugs.  Everything has a context and so what you’ll read here as bar fouls can be bar triumphs in other settings.  There really is only one way to find out.  Nonetheless, there are some things you shouldn’t do, some lines you shouldn’t cross.  While every rule can be broken and ultimatums are a poor man’s logic, it doesn’t change the fact that shit – there are some things you just shouldn’t do.  I know, because I’ve done them all.

1. Walk out on a tab

If they haven’t taken your credit card up front, it means they trust you.  Maybe you’ve earned that trust through endless eye-crossed, slurring jukebox plays.  Maybe they’ve seen one too many times a stagger turn into a doctor’s signature, and so they focus on the tourists.  Don’t betray that trust on the one thing that makes them tolerate you.  Of course, there is a difference between ordering a tray of 30 Jameson shots and leaving, or drinking 5 High Lifes and leaving, however – the difference is slight.  These are the people who take care of you – who give you drinks when you’re not sure you can, who cut you off when you’re sure you can.  Your bartenders are the DD through the checkpoints of bad times.  Don’t make them pull over.

2. One night stand a bartender

How much do you like that bar?  You like it a lot?  Well congratulations because you’re never going there again.  While you may think, “ah shit, I’ll get drunk and that’ll get rid of the awkwardness” that is something a drunk person would say, so it’s false.  There’s a reason a bar looks like some impassable boundary – a trench between the battle lines of alcohol.  If you’ve managed to crawl on top of that trench you’ll find yourself in a barren land replete with customer/bartender hybrid drunken zombies, roaming the Earth unsure of their next drink.  Unsure because you now are a man without a country – existing in an unspeakable gray area.  You might as well write it off entirely.

Personally, I rather like mustard.

3. Take your clothes off.

Now I was kind of on the fence with this one, simply because taking your clothes off is completely ridiculous, and I am a fan of completely ridiculous.  However, the more I thought about it (before the wine completely took over the keyboard) the more I thought that this certainly falls under “things you just shouldn’t do.”  I mean, it’s kind of self-explanatory.  Nobody wants to see your fast food laden, High Life swollen body hopping around like Justin Bieber shoved into a piping bag.  Resist the urge to take a shower in the fountain outside of Pub 71 and you may just have a beer waiting for you.  Or, you may just have a beer waiting for you.

4. Ask for shit

If you ask me to read your blog, not only will I not read your blog, but I will actively avoid reading your blog; if you ask me to follow you on Twitter, not only will I not follow you on Twitter, but I will block you.  The easiest way to get shit is not only NOT to ask for it (which is just plain goddamn dumb) but to not want it.  When Marcus Aurelius asks Maximus in Gladiator to be emperor, Maximus declines, to which Marcus Aurelius says, “that is why it must be you!” Don’t ask for shit in bars.  Despite what you may think, because you have a liver, a mouth, and a wallet, bartenders are not there to serve you – they are there to make money.  And if you happen to get drunk in the process, and tip, then everybody is happy.  But the moment you ask for something you wrinkle that fragile relationship, and remember – they already hate you.  Want to know what a beer tastes like?  ORDER IT.  Nothing destroys a bartender’s faith in humanity more quickly than someone tasting 5 wines and ordering Lambrusco.

5. Brood

“The grave is a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.”  Heartbreak and disappointment are more common than white people wearing sombreros on Cinco de Mayo.  And while it’s cathartic and/or enjoyable to wear the costume, it doesn’t change what’s underneath – the awesome person that made you go to that bar in the first place.  The bar is a lighthouse that keeps the shadows out – don’t invite them in.  Invite the boats of strangers who buy shots and in turn invite you to weddings they’ll forget about in the morning.  With any luck you’ll at least get on the boat, and we all know how goddamn fantastic that is.  Instead, let yourself be the beacon that beckons them to shore.  Tell them the rocks they see from binoculars are simply crystals lonely in their next drink.  Be the one who pours; be the one who turns bottles upside down, and they’ll turn you upside down.  A rush of blood to the head.  Just be sure when you reach for the $20, you play AC/DC instead of Coldplay.  And if you do accidentally?  Let’s hope it isn’t 20 times.

As we all know St. Pat’s falls on a Saturday this year, which means the bars will be even more packed as ever since there’ll be considerably less guilt involved.  While most people scoff in general at drinking at 9 am, it’s somewhat more depraved when it’s done on a Wednesday, so I’d like to thank Pope Gregory XIII, and of course St. Patrick, for allowing me to forego my yearly fake cough into the phone.  Being currently non-religious and sick with Cus Cough, it seems that the Christian calendar and my white blood cells are not without a sense of irony.

St. Pat’s usually gets a bad wrap from “true” drinkers – in that the day is filled with people who are loud and obnoxious – people who drink out of frosted mugs or generally don’t know how to act in a bar.  With that it’s usually given the name, “St. Amateur Day,” or the like.  Well, as someone who is loud and obnoxious, drinks out of frosted mugs, and generally doesn’t know how to act in a bar, allow me to address this crowd:

Fuck you.

Please enjoy your Smithwick’s and corned beef and cabbage from the comfort of your favorite recliner, because we don’t want to party with you anyways. If drinking is about thumbing your nose at the middle finger that is alcohol, then I will happily oblige you – as long as you are not a cop and that hand is not holding a beer.

So that said, I’m setting some goals this year that way I can keep boom-shucking my way through the Charlotte Pub Crawl and don’t end up on the shores of Blackout Island too early. They should be pretty easy to accomplish, except for the last one – though anything is possible. After all, I have won Beer Fest…

Goal #1:  Beat my friend Bob at darts

Bob has been beating me at darts for the past 12 years.  Coincidentally, our matches usually involved Guinness, so of course it being the flagship beer of St. Pat’s, we will be playing a shitton of darts, and it’s high time I took him down.

St. Pat's - 2002. We also liked Labatt.

Goal #2:  Have a Guinness at 8:30

Being that the goal of my goals is to encourage me to survive the whole day, you might think this is a bad idea, but I’d rather fail than skip this one. A tradition like no other, I’ll temper the excitement with some bacon and a few wins over Bob.

Goal #3:  Take at least 20 pictures with strangers

I actually accomplished this one in the 2008 Charlotte Pub Crawl, only to leave my camera in a cab.  I remember it being an excellent way to garner free Car Bombs as well as some strange numbers that I never would have called anyways.  No better way to enjoy the crowds than to simply absorb them.  Perhaps this is where the obnoxious part comes in?

Goal #4:  Get behind the scenes with a bar owner and/or organizer

Of course this is so I can convey my gratitude, but really it’s to try and score some free Jamesons.  Then I can tell said strangers from above and proceed to get free Jamesons from them as well.

The lights are on, but nobody's home.

Goal #5: Perform the Pants Drop Maneuver

This may seem difficult now, but after the Jamesons from earlier it will be easier than sharing the Kony video and calling myself an activist.  As you can see I’ve done this before, but it’s much easier at your local than in the jam-packed pubs of one of the most famous crawls in the country.  Caveat emptor bar owners: I ain’t neva scared.

Goal #6:  Win a chugging contest

I’m not the chugger by any means that I once was, and even got beat by my buddy Brett once, but I’m thinking the adrenaline/whiskey fueled peer pressure on one of the greatest party days of the year may relax that gag reflex just a little.

I’ll let you know how I do, for the same reasons that you put pictures of your baby on Facebook:  we all have our little bundles of joy to share.

It was around the time I found myself shirtless at 2:15 pm, High Life belly spilling over the sides of my jeans, that I realized New Orleans was not quite Las Vegas.

Tough to realize anything actually.

This is not the forum to recount the time when I stared in blackout shock at Playmates dressed as woodland nymphs at the Palm, or the porn stars throwing mini fridge bottles off our balcony.  They have movies for these stories, and now they’re more ubiquitous than cardboard flyers advertising $5 blowies in front of the Luxor.  What happens in Vegas, ends up on Facebook or dissected into bite-sized pieces for the masses.  What I want to tell you here involves the gritty magic of mysterious puddles and flaming absinthe on Bourbon Street.  I want to get at the grounds, man – the stuff that made it past the filter in the machine, and now sits at the bottom of my cup, waiting to be drank.

All good trips start with the airport cocktail.  It’s where the torch is lit, before being passed on in that bastard relay race called the bender.  Then that fucker starts to burn quietly, even on the plane…and they say you can’t bring explosives on board?  Not if you hide them in yourself.

Like most places you want to visit, it helps to have a local.  Even Dante had Virgil to guide him through Hell, but we’d need more than a poet to traverse the rain and beer soaked buildings of those worn-out neighborhoods.  And while Dante didn’t have a soundtrack, we did – sliding between saxophones that seemed to slur and flow more fluidly through the streets than my slushied stupor.  I know very little about jazz – or wine, scotch, beer…however, I do know what pinches my cheeks; I do know what makes my eyes go glassy as they take in the melting reds and blacks and purples and yellows that is the underbelly of New Orleans.  Well I was going to scratch it, and it was going to purr.

Vegas, on the otherhand, stands more erect and forceful than the bouncers who tell you to tuck in your shirt.  You go looking to cast it all overboard, and find yourself not in the dregs, but in the shining high rises of clubs sipping $12 vodka tonics.  Sure it has an underbelly as well, and if you’ve seen Casino you know that it used to be ALL underbelly, but the artifice has taken over – an anti-saheel spreading over the desert of not giving a shit.  My $130 wristband speaks to an ironic bacchanalian that doesn’t quite exist between the living Roman statues that dance for me as I walk on the red carpet.

So as the advent of wedding season starts to fill up my mailbox, and bachelor party email threads start multiplying, we’re left with an overwhelming question, which a thousand visions and revisions a minute will reverse: where, exactly, do we want to get broken?  Where is the boundary between Law and Order reruns on a Wednesday night and drinking 14 shots of Everclear out of an electric guitar in a bathrobe?  Do we draw that line in the desert or in the swamp, or furthermore—do we draw it at all?

It was when I was drinking absinthe in a bar with lanterns instead of lights, next to a fireplace with a group of girls dressed as pirates, that I had my answer.  In Vegas, you need to be good at something: good at gambling or dancing; good looking or simply have good endurance. In New Orleans, you need to be good at precisely nothing.  Put on a red dress or a feather boa and buy 4 drinks for $5.  It’s still the only place where I’ve actually ordered a daquiri, gotten hammered and ordered another (and for once my lips were blue for a good reason!)

You could say that I’ve seen the wrong parts of Vegas, and you’d probably be right.  After all, everywhere there’s an underbelly.  Maybe it’s just that Vegas’s is harder to turn over – it doesn’t quite flop over the lip of its Diesel jeans.  New Orleans flashes it in front of your face from every balcony, street vendor, and stripper; it spills and froths over the levies we put in ourselves.  When Hunter S. Thompson spoke of the “high water mark” that was the doe-eyed dreams of the 60s, he should have picked a place where the water isn’t piped in, but out, and everyone gets wet.  It’s goddamn democratic debauchery, and in an election year, that’s one party I can support.

There had been more than one trip down that hill.

The long trees split the darkness that seeped into the road.  Especially at the bottom where it would pool, forcing you to cut it with instant yellow razors.

The car would slow emerging from the other side, and I’d fight the urge to let it shift down.  There must have been enough energy left to make it to the top, where it’d be lighter, and I could coast.  Nonetheless the car could be fickle, and sometimes I simply had to press my foot, surging up.

I would leave a stillness of my own making, so easily observed and present as to be moved around like smoke – resting like a motionless cloud on a fall day.  I’d know this from the first sounds to blip in the late night, and as I now drove it wasn’t the stillness or the sounds that made me think of the words bubbling to the surface.

And so I drove as it simmered – the night air, the heavy, humid breathing of an expired day now soaking behind the dimly lit trees.  It was always the first thing I noticed, but it never lasted, as the city began to peek over the hill.  This was where I was going – into the roots – into the vertical reachings of a thousand different things.  I knew which one would stop me, soon enough.

It was never hard to recognize the impatience of the things that tried to satisfy you – on corners, the flickering signs didn’t care, which is what they did best.  Inside there was a place that craved the late night drives of people who thought about trees.  I knew this, not containing a smug smile as I turned into the city corridor.  If you were smart, you went, if not fully with a purpose, then at least the template of one.  Otherwise, there would soon be a vodka tonic in front of you, and that’s not what you wanted, tonight.

Inevitably it would appear, and the slow realization that there’d be no dinner tonight arrived.  Not for a lack of means, rather here was this thing cracked open now, and if I didn’t sop it up, it’d bleed to death.  And so I hunched over the burnt mahogany bar, doing triage.  Me on it, it on me.  It felt like that cheesy scene in Titanic when Rose and Jack spin each other around in the barrel of the ship.  Well there’d be spinning, soon enough.

I always felt that the door opened for me, when I left.  The fuzzy space between my hand and the dirty glass seemed to push it for me.  Or I was drunk.  Anyways, here I was , up Browncroft Blvd, trading food for drinks, even though it seemed, like that fuzzy space, that something was pushing me away from both.  I thought about the Tao – the thing that cannot be named, the thing that moved water from a high place to a low place, seemingly without reason, but maybe a reason all its own.  Or maybe it was simply gravity.  Maybe they were both wrong – East and West – two sides of a coin that couldn’t buy a stick of truth.  Maybe that’s why I spent mine on drinks.

It was then that I had an idea.

Some places exist in more than their location.  Some places we visit at the bottom of a glass, as if we’ve put a part of ourselves in a cupboard, and now it speaks to us, like magic.  This idea was now alive – a paper doll that spoke to me as we went back down the hill, back down and up to the other side where normalcy waited under the stars.  Two sides, two sides, each on the same level, attempting the same thing, attempting to iron out all the wrinkles of our daily moving, our daily thinking.

I wanted a goddamn garbage plate.

Fill me up as we travel through the artery.  The dark path, the old, bare trees.  We were gonna be full tonight.

As National Hangover Day quickly approaches, I started to think about whether January 1st is indeed worthy of the nickname.  Surely there are other times of the year more deserving?  I’m not sure…what do you think?

First off, I wrote in a couple earlier posts that at some point the wheels on the bus would go merrily rolling down Peachtree, and the flag-carrying, once-more-unto-the-breach-dear-friends mentality would land me squarely on the Homeless Stairs.  Well, while I didn’t quite end up licking used butter packets from IHOP for sustenance, I came pretty damn close.  When you write a blog that celebrates everything tomfoolery, eventually the sandy foundation on which that blog rests will go out with the tide.  These things are, for lack of a better phrase, to be expected.  It’s akin to walking on hot coals and wondering why you burn your feet: if you’re going to jump in, jump in eyes open.

So, I’d like to apologize to my loyal readers and comment-spammers who’ve continually checked for posts.  I’d like to blame it on any number of things, but really what it comes down to is the server that hosts this blog actually requires money from time to time, and the past few months that money was spent keeping the lights on.  Say what you want about creative types – no one likes writing in the dark.

Now that we’re working with a full head of electric steam, I turn to the holidays, the pseudo-holidays, the list-making, nog-vomiting nostalgia otherwise known as the end of December.  Maybe it’s time for something different, something fancy…

Here's something different: drinking 18 year old scotch at the Biltmore. Can you spot my crew? Hint: we're the ones not looking at the presenter.

There’s something to be said for returning to your old haunts over and over; when was the last time the liquor store comped a part of your bill? ~FKR

It’s almost inevitable that as New Year’s approaches, murmurs start bubbling to the surface about wanting to do “something different” – which usually means donning a jacket and tie and dropping $125 on some all-inclusive event.  There’s something about the arbitrary moment between an arbitrary separation of time that makes folks want to step outside the norm.  At first glance, I am not opposed to this; familiarity often breeds contempt and life is all about gathering new experiences.  Hell, if it wasn’t for this mindset I wouldn’t have moved to Georgia.  Who doesn’t like trying new foods, jumping off new cliffs, or rafting down new and dangerous rapids?

Booze is especially good for escorting you into the dark and ominous forest of concrete trees, or into the much scarier pit of the self.  Set loose on the wind, we can aim ourselves in a certain direction but we know all along that we are subject to the ever-changing winds swirling around in the bottle.  In this sense, every uncorked chardonnay or shot fired at the throat is something different, something fancy.  Each drink is a lottery ticket that may contain a fortune, or a loss—though I’d like to think the odds are much, much better.

The arrow of time itself is really just the product of entropy—of moving to a less ordered state—so when you casually smash some plates or completely whiff a punching bag, nowhere else are you in such accordance with nature.  Thus the very act of following orders is a kind of heresy—which is exactly what I’ll tell the cop when I’m scolded for dropping my pants.

And what could be more disordered than the unknown?  In a new place, you don’t know the stool with the rickety leg, the bartender who makes the best shots or whether the juke is worth dropping $20.  The very act of doing the unpredictable is exactly what the universe wants, except…

…it doesn’t work that way.

If familiarity breeds contempt then what breeds familiarity?  Comfort.  A place would only be familiar if you went there a lot, and you would only go there a lot if you were comfortable.  And when we’re comfortable we take off our shoes, our shirt – we dance in our underpants.  Where else are we wild but in the confines of our favorite drunken cage?

Regulars get benefits—both in the bar, and in the universe.  And so what if inducting the whole from the part is more cliched than starting an essay with a quote?  It just feels…comfortable.

So this New Year’s, as your differently-pointing eyes stare lovingly at your date and the coquettish shot of rumple at the bar, take a look at the person who poured it:  if you know who they are, chances are it will taste that much better.

Tragedy is a fact.  We pass into and out of the things we cherish – a tiny occupant of a cruel revolving door.  Seemingly what is settled in our heads, or on our heads, really is waiting for that rush of air to send it flying off – as if it were startled from one giant collective exhale of breath.

So it was with you, pink cowboy hat.

I met you at a beer festival; I was the brash, ripped-jeans wearing hooligan, you were the coquettish minx winking from the hippie tent.  Our eyes met under the flashing LED displays on that clear, blue day, and I knew then that I needed to possess you – physically and spiritually – we were bound to become one.

It took barely a second to hand the mustachioed vagrant $16.  From there, I inhabited you, I filled you with my dreams and wild tuffs of hair.  I noticed not the gentle pressue of your lithium battery pressed against my forehead; I revelled in your tight polyester stitching.  And so we journeyed together amidst the Sweetwater and Whynatte displays, laughing together at the cheap jam band antagonizing the crowd.  This was the start of something that we both dared not name.

Happier times

I don’t know where you were made…does it matter?  Why tempt the curious hand that brought you into being?  Perhaps the Angel Art would realize its genius, and take you from me?  No, no…this was our time – you on top and me on the bottom – a union that would not be denied.

So I write this for you now that you’re gone.  Perhaps the wind will once again blow in our direction, and we will set out in the vodka fueled city together once again – dancing like two furious fools in a rain that we make.

Fall is here, and as the bright greens and pastel colors of summer melt into a deep orange and mahogany quilt, our tongues begin to crave more complex and hearty tastes to warm the crisp, autumn air.  Gone are the tank tops and bathing suits; arriving are boots and thick denim.   Of course our bodies aren’t the only thing requiring a change, or some fresh looks to make the dull, dangerous, or the dangerous, dull.  Fall, as a transitional season between the jubilence of summer and the more pensive winter, needs cocktails that are similar.  Here are some of those cocktails:

1.  Beer, in a glass

This one is fairly easy to make.  Simply take a beer and a pint glass.  Open the beer and pour it into the pint glass.  Enjoy.  Take notice of the earthy bouquets that dance around your nose; giggle at the bubbly foam that tickles your lip.  Gradually, the sharp, cold feel will be replaced by the warm hue of a cozy apartment.  Of course being Fall, I like to enjoy this particular cocktail within the familiar walls of the local bar, where most likely there is football on, and the spills caused from too many smiles and high fives will seem as normal as the bum outside asking me for change.  “I don’t have any change dude – I left it all in the bar.”

“Well I have $4…wanna get a 40?”

“Sure.”

Am I probably the only person to have a homeless guy buy THEM a beer?  Yes, yes I probably am.  We drank it in an alley next to the pub – I in my polo and he in his moth-eaten flannel.  I felt kind of bad for taking his money at first until I didn’t anymore.

2.  Vodka, on ice.

This is a more advanced cocktail that has 2 ingredients, so don’t panic.  Take some ice and fill up a rocks glass about ¾ of the way up.  Then fill the glass with vodka, and wait 5 minutes.  Why 5 minutes?  Well this is something I heard Frank Sinatra used to do:  he’d wait 5 minutes before sipping his drink because he wanted “everyone to get to know each other.”  Honestly, it does taste better once you’ve given some time for the ice to make introductions.  It certainly beats my method of making introductions in real life by bursting into a bar and screaming “TOMORWOW ISS NOT TO-DAAAY! Rarhgh!” and then spilling my drink all over myself.  Of course you could make the argument that this approach cuts right through to the people who actually appreciate this kind of behavior, and thus saves time.  I guess that explains why my favorite bars don’t have a coat-check, but a dignity-check.

3. Whiskey and pickle juice

So this one has 2 ingredients also, but with the added advantage of not having to mix them together.  All you have to do is simply drink some whiskey and then drink the pickle juice.  You’ll find that the vinegar in the pickle juice serves to amplify, and then subdue, the various burns and complexities of its brown brethren.  I have to credit either Tyler Dirico or Rob Zushma for turning me on to this, and I must say – the last time a strange, green liquid tasted so good was Ecto Cooler in the 3^rd grade.  And this is not to say that we didn’t have our strange, burning foods back then either – I seem to recall Warheads being our weapon of choice back then.  And they say marijuana is a gateway drug.  You can also substitute pickle juice for any variety of hot sauce, like Frank’s, although all this will do is amplify, and not subdue.  (This is a particular favorite at Bills Backers).

4.  Cider

Go ahead, drink a cider.  Grab that Woodchuck or Strongbow or Magner’s and sip it down.  Notice the clean, smooth feel of the apple-flavored mead.  Lick your lips with its sweet aftertaste.  Revel in its cold grip around your fingers.  You know, there was a time when drinking a cider made you a pussy.  Maybe that time is still occurring, but you know what?  Who gives a shit.  Ciders are delicious and when you pair it with a fried cake from Schutt’s, you might as well be sitting on a hayride right then and there – creaking your way into a witch-filled forest.  If your belly is full from downing liter after liter of of lagers at Oktoberfest, you may find that the lightly carbonated cider is the best way to mix up the flavors.

Remember – it can always get dark earlier, and you can always venture into monster-ridden forests, if you drink enough.  Just be sure to write your address on your hand.