(continued)

The problem was, I still knew nothing about beer. I'd managed, over the course of more than three decades, to find a whopping three beers that I liked. Hmmmm, they were all brown. Perhaps that was the secret.

I looked at the people around me, at what they were drinking.

Black, oily-looking beer. Fizzy pale beer in foofoo glasses. Piss-colored yellow lagers.

And one guy, one guy was drinking a brownish beer. Copper-colored actually. A lot like my beloved Alaskan Amber.

"Excuse me," I said to the guy. "But what is that beer you're drinking?"

"It's called Cone Smoker," the guy replied. "They make it here. It's pretty good."

I thought it was a stupid name for a beer, but I asked the bartender - I think it was FutureDude - for a glass of this Cone Smoker stuff. He gave me a dubious look. I was, after all, That Guy That Only Likes Newcastle. I don't blame him for doubting me.

"Have you ever had a smoked beer before?" he asked.

"What's a smoked beer?" I answered with a question of my own.

"You should just try a small sample first." He handed me an overgrown shot glass with about an inch of beer in it.

I picked up the glass, and held it up to my nose, and I smelled the beer. That's the way I'd seen the PBDs do it. Then I tasted it.

It was yummy. Yummy and completely different than anything I'd ever had before.

Back in part one of this entry I wrote that my discovery of Pete's Wicked Ale hadn't been very dramatic. I wrote that I'd liked to have compared it to having a blindfold finally removed.

Well, I couldn't say it when I discovered Pete's, but sure as fuck could say it when I discovered Cone Smoker.

And it wasn't because the Cone Smoker was that great. It was great, but that wasn't the point. That wasn't the light that I'd finally seen. Nope, what made my discovery of Cone Smoker so important to me was that I'd never known that a beer could taste so different and still taste good.

That got me to theorizing that maybe, just maybe there were other beers out there, each different in its own way, but each also good in its own way.

I went, quite suddenly, from being a guy stuck in a world of piss and swill, a guy who had occasionally lucked into finding something drinkable, to a guy in a world of different beers with different tastes and smells. A world of good, maybe even great beers.

The piss and the swill hadn't been the world. It had only been a very small part of it.

A part that I was quite happy to leave forever.

It wasn't beer that I didn't like. It was lagers.

Now when I made that realization, that was a dramatic moment. From that moment on, I didn't see Rich O's beer menu as a haystack of swill in which I'd be lucky to find a tasty needle. From that moment on I saw that menu as a list of possibilities. A constant reminder of just how many beers were available to try. I knew that there'd still be some that I wouldn't care for. But that was okay, because there'd always be something else to try. And there'd be some that I would like, and there'd even be some that I'd love.

Since then I've probably tried 300 different beers. I've sought out brewpubs and beer bars in Las Vegas. I've flown to Portland Maine because there was a bar I wanted to check out. I've found that, besides lagers, I don't care for IPAs either. Or anything too hoppy. I've discovered the wonderful beers of Belgium, and the dark and mysterious imperial stouts. Hefeweizens and Winter brews. My God, the Winter brews.

I've turned into a beer connoisseur. A beer snob. A beer nut.

And it all started, really started I mean, with that small sample of New Albanian Cone Smoker, way back when.

Anyway, the reason I started writing this entry is because Cone Smoker (1580) is finally back on tap at Rich O's. It came back on Monday. I had a glass after work, and I bought myself a growler, and I'm having a glass right now.

It's yummy.

When I was in sixth grade we went on a school trip to Chicago. All of the six graders in Floyd County went.

I don't remember much about Chicago except the museums and the Sears Tower, but I remember the bus trip back to New Albany.

There was a girl sitting in the seat across the aisle from me. She went to a different school, and she was a fox.

That's a word we used to say when we meant pretty back in the olden days.

Anyway, I had this pair of el-cheapo binoculars that I'd gotten at the Sears Tower souvenir shop, and I kept using them to look at the foxy girl sitting all of five feet away from me.

She didn't talk to me, and I didn't talk to her. We were like twelve, and we were shy. But her friend liaised between us and we learned that we each thought that the other was cute.

After a bit, FoxyGirl told her friend to tell me that she wanted to go steady with me.

I was still twelve, so I just played it cool and said some lame crap like, "Whatever."

After about an hour, during which absolutely nothing happened, FoxyGirl's friend told me that FoxyGirl had changed her mind, and that she wanted to break up with me.

Still twelve, still playing it cool, I said something brilliant like, "Whatever" once again.

But inside, inside I was devastated.

I just couldn't believe that I'd been so brutally dumped. And I hadn't even got to hold her hand. That being the most erotic scenario that my twelve-year-old mind could conjure up at the time.

This was, I was certain, the low point of my entire life. Nothing would ever affect me this much again.

I remember looking at all of my classmates on the bus with me, and thinking how I was so much more grown-up than they were because I'd had my heart broken so badly. I felt so sorry for all those children. They'd never known love the way I had, and they probably never would.

The following year, FoxyGirl and I ended up at the same Junior High. She was as foxy as I remembered, maybe even more so because of the tiny yet shapely breasts that had sprouted on her chest.

We didn't have any of the same classes, and our lockers were nowhere near each other's. So I hardly ever talked to her. I winced every time I saw her, but I didn't let that stop me from trying to see her at every opportunity.

I was the jilted lover, and I pretty much behaved as such.

Problem was, I was pretty sure that she barely remembered me at all. Other problem was, I was almost certain that she didn't know how I felt about her.

That second problem I could do something about. That second problem I did do something about.

I wrote her a love note. I wrote her a love note and I shoved it through the slot in the door of her locker.

And then I waited. For a conversation. For a love note of my own. For any reaction whatsoever.

I got nothing.

After about a week, I simply gave up. This girl had torn my heart out and shredded it to bits and dumped the bits on the ground and set fire to the bits, and she didn't care at all.

So, like I said, I gave up.

I stopped watching her. I stopped talking to her. I stopped hanging around where her locker was. I stopped telling my friends about how we'd hooked up on the bus ride from Chicago.

I stopped everything.

I remember being so proud of myself. For having gotten over her so completely. For picking up the pieces of my life. For moving on.

We shared a study hall in 10th grade. She was a cheerleader. One of the rah-rahs at my school. She was just incredibly beautiful. I still never talked to her.

As Seniors, we had the same English class. Damn she was good-looking. As pretty as any movie star. I still never talked to her.

In fact, I never talked to her again until my 20th High School reunion. I'd been talking with some dude that I didn't recognize, and he turned out to be FoxyGirl's husband. She joined us and we chatted briefly. I told her and her husband how FoxyGirl had been my first love, before I had any idea what love was. They both smiled at that. She said it was a sweet thing to say.

She said she remembered me, and I walked away smiling.

I forgot about this until just now.

My friend MusicalHippieDude's band is going to be featured on our local Fox in the Morning TV show later this Summer.

That's pretty damn cool.

They'll also be playing at a bar close to Rich O's this weekend, so I'm sure I'll be there nodding my head to the beat like the lameass that I am.

I often wonder what people are looking for when they read what I've written.

Sometimes it's because I genuinely care about my readers, and want to make them happy, but usually it's just basic curiosity that I feel.

I seriously doubt that people come here because they want to know what beer I just drank, or what I watched on TV, or how hot that one chick at Cumberland was a couple of weekends ago.

The only things that I've ever written that were worth the electricity used to bang them out have been those entries about you know who and the surrounding drama.

Maybe that's what people are looking for. Tales of loss and longing and lust and love and liability, as those bottles still stored inside me are labeled.

Maybe that's why people are leaving. Because those bottles, no matter how tightly sealed, those bottles still allowed pressure to escape.

And now there's no pressure left to write anything at all.

So I write crap like this entry right here, just to pass the time while I wait to see if anything interesting is ever going to happen again..

I was thinking the other day. I was thinking that it would be funny if I never wrote another word about her or the turmoil that I've gone through. What would make it extra-funny would be if I saw her, or heard from her, or whatever, and still I never mentioned it here at all.

Well, it would be funny to me, and at the rate I'm going I'll be the only one reading this crap before too long anyway.

I wanted this pain to end. I keep telling myself that.

Is losing readers worth the knowledge that I probably won't die the next time I see her face? That I can close my eyes and picture another woman in those fantasy places where for so long only she appeared? That I can have hope, not for her and me, but simply hope for me?

You bet your ass it's worth it.

(continued)

So I figured What the heck? At least I knew it wouldn't kill me. I ordered one.

Either it was different, or I was different, because this time, this time it was delicious. After 15 minutes I was thinking Fuck Pete! After an hour I was wondering Pete who?

So just like that, I switched beers. I never drank anything but Alaskan Amber until I moved away from Seattle three years later.

I hated Memphis. Part of the reason that I hated it was because it wasn't where I wanted to be. Part of the reason was that everyone seemed racist to me. Part of the reason was that there was no beer worth drinking. Not that I found anyway. My own stubbornness kept me from ever really getting out to explore that city.

Nope, I spent most of my weekends during my Memphis tenure back home in Southern Indiana. Sleeping on my Dad's couch, and hanging out with my sister Dina and my cousin Jeff. With the latter, and a couple of times with the former I guess, we'd go out to some bar and I'd drink whatever there was. It didn't seem to matter anymore. There was no Alaskan Amber. A couple of places had Pete's, but the recipe had changed since their sale, and it just didn't seem the same. Plus you couldn't get it on tap anywhere that I ever went.

And to me, no Pete's and no Alaskan Amber meant that there was nothing at all. I resigned myself to drinking swill and that's pretty much what I drank when we went out.

Until this one time.

This one time we all went to this weird little bar with the weird little name of "Rich O's" and played euchre in a weird little area that was set up with living room furniture.

Sofa and loveseat and a padded chair. In a bar. Pretty damn strange.

This place had dozens of beers. It seemed like thousands to me. I was overwhelmed by all of the choices. I asked the bartender for a beer recommendation and he brought out some foreign beer that I'd never heard of.

Newcastle Brown Ale, it was called.

It was yummy.

So just like that, I found a new favorite beer.

Newcastle and I were inseparable for years and years. I moved back to Southern Indiana, hung out even more with my sister and my cousin, but I didn't drink swill anymore. I drank Newcastle Brown Ale, by God.

Usually, right after I moved back home, I hung out at this place called Bailey's in Clarksville. At first, Bailey's had been more of a pool hall than anything else. A pool hall with Newcastle. A pool hall with Newcastle and hot waitresses.

In other words: Heaven On Earth.

But all good things must be ripped away from me eventually. Bailey's went through several management changes and, after several failed attempts to become a date bar, it closed for good. But by that time I didn't really care that much. I'd stopped going soon after they stopped taking care of the pool tables. I'd stopped going out altogether, and I'd stopped drinking completelly. It was a happy time in my life though. I was perfectly content just being by myself, playing pool in my basement and watching TV with my cats.

But I did start to get bored with it. So, every now and then I'd go down to that weird Rich O's place and have myself a Newcastle.

One of the times I went down there fairly early in the evening, and I saw a pretty girl sitting off to the side, typing into a laptop computer.

I wish I could remember the date, but it happened before I started doing this 'blog stuff.

But I digress.

Because of the Newcastle, and maybe partly because of the pretty girl and the hopes of catching another glimpse of her, I became a bit more of a regular at Rich O's. The PBDs in there would all look down at me and my beer choice, but I was perfectly content.

Like I said though, all good things must be ripped away from me eventually.

Rich O's started brewing its own beer. It was decided that one of those beers was too close to Newcastle in style and flavor, so Newcastle was pulled from the draft list.

I thought that decision fucking sucked back then, and I still think it fucking sucks now. The reason that I was given was the Newcastle sales suffered when the NABC Community Dark was introduced. Well, duh. Of course people are going to try a new beer brewed in-house. Of course sales of an allegedly similar beer will suffer initially.

But it seemed to like they only gave it a week. It seemed to me like Newcastle never had a chance. It seemed to me like the decision had been made months earlier.

Like I said, it sucked.

But I had become accustomed to Rich O's, and I had gotten to meet some interesting and nice people. MisunderstoodGirl and DooRagGirl were among the first. As were ElPresidente and FirstLady.

I kinda liked the place, and so I didn't venture back out into the world in search of another bar with Newcastle. I stayed, and I looked for something else to drink.

(to be continued)

Anybody ever have one of these Asian salads from McDonald's?

It looks yummy!

Back when I was young, shortly after the glaciers retreated, I would drink whatever I could get my hands on.

For a long time, whatever I could get my hands on was Jack. My friend Eddie's dad owned a liquor store in Louisville, and we could get all the Jack we wanted. It was weird. Eddie's dad knew that we were going to steal something from the store, and he told us to just stick to Jack and to never, never take any beer. I never did figure out what that was all about.

So anyway, we drank Jack and we drove around in Eddie's van with all of our friends and generally amazed ourselves that we never got arrested or worse. We didn't drink Jack because we particularly liked the stuff, but because like I said - we could get all we wanted.

Which was a lot.

After Eddie joined the Army and disappeared from the face of the Earth, I switched to beer. Swill, actually. Whatever I could get my hands on. Whatever was available. Budweiser at a friends apartment. Little King's down by the river. It didn't matter what it was, I didn't like any of it. But at that age I already knew that beggars could not be choosers.

And so it began.

Eventually, my taste buds having been completely pussified by swill, I actually convinced myself that there was nothing wrong with what I was drinking. That there was something wrong with me. That for some reason I didn't like beer, but that I could at least tolerate it when necessary. To keep up appearances. Or whatever.

Well beyond my 21st birthday, I still drank Bud Light. Or Coors Light. I actually thought that there was a difference between the two, but I can't for the life of me imagine what that difference might have been.

Beer was just something that I didn't like. And forget about anything stronger than beer. I've always been a lightweight, and once I finally realized it, after rolling Eddie's van into the Ohio River, I never drank the strong stuff again.

Except for shots. With Holly. But that's only for special occasions. Like when I'm with Holly.

I miss Holly.

Anyway, when I lived in Omaha, I'd often go for months at a time without a drop of alcohol. Not because I'd become a Jesus freak or anything, just because I never liked the stuff and I didn't see the point of drinking something that I didn't like. Plus I had this crazy idea that it might affect my pool game.

When I moved to Seattle, I ran a pool league for a while. It was called The Bud Light Pool League. So, guess what beer I drank? Bud Fucking Light of course. Gallons of it over the course of a year or two. I still didn't like it, but I drank it out of loyalty or some bullshit like that.

And then, in 1994 or so, everything changed.

I was shooting pool at my regular bar in Kent Washington and this chick came in. A hot chick. I say that now but I really couldn't even begin to describe what she actually looked like. I just know that she must have been hot. She must have been hot because she offered me a weird beer, and I tried it.

I tried it, and I liked it.

Me. The guy that had never had a sip of beer that he liked in his entire life. The guy that only drank because everyone else was doing it. The genetic freak who lacked the ability to enjoy beer at all. That guy had a glass of beer, and actually enjoyed every bit of it.

Then that guy had another.

That beer was Pete's Wicked Ale.

My first non-lager.

Wow.

I'd like to say that it was like being blindfolded for my entire life and then suddenly being given the gift of sight. I'd like to say that, but it wasn't nearly as dramatic.

I'd simply found a beer that I liked. So I drank it. And nothing else.

There was no need for anything else. The way I saw it, I'd disliked 99% of all of the beers I'd ever tried, and I'd finally found something that I enjoyed. So why tempt fate by trying anything else?

There was no reason that I could think of, but eventually fate came up with a reason that I couldn't ignore.

I was in Juneau Alaska, and none of the bars had Pete's.

I asked one of the bartenders at one of those bars for a recommendation, and he poured me a pint of some stuff I'd never heard of.

Alaskan Amber. "Brewed right here in Juneau," the bartender told me. Like I was going to be impressed or something.

I don't think that I really cared too much for Alaskan Amber when I first tried it. I certainly didn't start seeking it out once I moved back to Washington. What I did was I went back to Pete's Wicked Ale until that fateful day when the owner of my favorite bar told me that they'd stopped carrying it forever. Apparently I was the only one drinking it, plus the entire Pete's operation had been sold to some outfit back East.

When you're in Western Washington, just about everywhere is back East.

So, desperate to find something, anything to drink besides Bud Fucking Light, I looked at the taps along the bar. I mean, for the first time I really looked at them.

Red Hook? I'd tried it once and it was swill.

Sierra Nevada? Give me a break. Everything I'd hated about beer for years, condensed and magnified.

Henry Weinhard's Hefeweizen? At least it wasn't a lager, but my friend John already drank that, and I didn't want to simply copy him. Plus the citrus wedge it was always served with seemed a little gay.

And, of course, there were all the obligatory taps for, as Roger calls them, mass-produced industrial swill. I didn't even consider those.

Then I saw a tap that caught my eye.

Alaskan Amber.

(to be continued)

It's not so much that we lie to ourselves - it's that sometimes it works.

How is that even possible?

Mind vs. spirit. Instinct vs. intellect. Brain vs. heart.

No matter what words you use to describe it, we all find ourselves at war with ourselves at some point. Not a physical war, usually. Though sometimes it can escalate and bring disastrous consequences.

More of a war of words.

Our heart wants something it cannot have, and our brain just keeps buying time. Making excuses. Putting it off. Anything but simply telling the truth. Because to just blurt out the truth, to just come right out and say no, you cannot have that so stop asking - that's just too much for the heart to bear.

So we lie.

Kids in the back seat of a car will keep asking, "Are we there yet?" And the parents will lie. "Almost," they'll say. "Just a few more minutes." They'll say it even though they're not even close to where they're going. They'll say it because it will shut the kids up for a little while.

It's the same thing.

It's amazing to me that we can lie to ourselves and get away with it.

It's more amazing to me that we ever feel the need to do it in the first place.

I mean, who the fuck do we think we're fooling anyway?

Our feelings are hurt, so we tell ourselves that it'll be okay? That we'll get over it. Even when we know damn well that it won't be okay, not for a very long time. That we might get over it, but we'll never be the same again.

We lie to ourselves, and sometimes it makes us feel better. This is beyond ludicrous to me. If I told myself that I had a zillion dollars in the bank, I wouldn't be fooled at all. I'd go on no extravagant shopping spree. I'd quit no job. I'd hire no hit-men.

But when I tell myself that - scratch that - when I told myself that there was hope for the two of us, that I just needed to be a little more patient, that bullshit I believed.

What a load of crap it was. But I fell for it each and every time. I believed it each and every time. And the only reason that I don't believe it any more is because of this stupid wall that some asshole put in front of me. This stupid wall that even my heart can't ignore.

So, we can successfully lie to ourselves, but only about the most important things? That's pretty fucked-up.

And there are people who claim we're designed this way?

Intelligent design, my asshole.

Why is it easier to be honest with another person than to tell the truth to ourselves? Why are our emotions and our logic so often at odds with each other?

Why can't we all just get along with ourselves?

A while ago, I mentioned that the board outside the New Albanian brewery listed their ConeSmoker beer, but no date.

I figured that this was done to annoy me.

Back on April 27th Roger, the owner of the place, wrote this in his blog entry about an ale festival to be held that weekend:

As NABC's contribution to the fest, and as befits our commitment to "go high, or go home," Brewmeister Jesse Williams is taking a few gallons each of our Hoptimus (Double IPA), Thunderfoot (Cherried Imperial Stout) and a special preview of the this year's edition of ConeSmoker.

If you've never been to Rich O's you may not know this. Besides the main beer board out front, there's another board in the back. This second board is for the bartenders. It lists which beers are on which taps, and how many kegs of that beer are left in stock. It also lists which beer is scheduled to be up next on a given tap.

I've gotten into the habit of checking this secondary beer board for my information, mainly because I can read it from Rich O's proper without having to go out front where all the idiots are.

Last night, this is what I saw when I looked at that board.

Okay, I guess that's a pretty shitty picture.

What it says, down at the bottom, in a box labeled S7 I think, is ConeSmoker.

I immediately ran out front to make sure that I hadn't missed ConeSmoker being listed out there. Nope, it wasn't there.

So I asked the bartender, "Hey, what's the deal with having ConeSmoker on your board back there? Does that mean it's on and I'm wasting my brain cells on Smithwick's?"

The bartender assured me that it was not on tap.

So my questions for Roger are:

Why is it listed on your employees' board?

Why is it not available if this tap S7 is otherwise open?

Why must you tease me like this?