Monday 29 July 2013
Pisanthrophobia.
For those who were struggling, I took the title from an obscure facts generator I follow on twitter, which informed me that "Pisanthrophobia" is the fear of other people due to bad experiences.
I guess we all get it, to a degree.
It also, coincidentally, contains the phrase "piss ant", at least as closely as makes no difference, and that's a phrase that crops up often in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," which might well be my favourite book.
I bring all of this up because I was reading an online diary by someone whose mother died slowly in hospital, and he mentioned that, amongst the Intensive Care Unit staff, his mother didn't have any strangers; she'd come to know them all well. It made me think about basic humanity - that in the face of her own death, this woman was taking a polite interest in others - and so, for probably the first, and almost certainly the only, time on this blog, here's a very personal story about me.
A few years ago, late at night and half-cut, I was temporarily separated from my girlfriend.
I'd been separated from her for a while at the time and in all stages of sobriety, in fairness, but this story takes place late one night when I'm half drunk, and we'd not long split up, and to the eternal detriment of my dignity I was screaming things down the phone to her. Angry, mean things - mostly about the guy she unsuccessfully tried to leave me for, but ugly things nonetheless - and when either she rang off or I ran out of steam, I was left alone, and spent.
In a doorway, behind me, was a homeless guy, and he asked me if I was alright.
Honestly, I wasn't. I was a mess, emotionally and probably physically. But he asked, and I ended up sitting down next to him and pouring my heart out to this poor man who had nowhere to live. Every few sentences I'd pause and apologise - profusely, earnestly - to someone who was clearly worse off than I was, for even daring to complain to him about my problems, which were, in comparison to his, negligible.
At the end of it all, he just offered me a hug.
I accepted, too.
It still bothers me that I had nothing to offer him in return. It probably meant nothing to him; the next time I saw him he was drunk and didn't remember me.
I guess basically, people can always surprise you. I nearly threw a guy out of the bar I work in tonight because he was obviously a crazy bum, and as it turns out, I was right. Would have saved a lot of people time and hassle if I'd gone with my gut and told him to fuck off right from the start.
But every so often, people surprise you.
Dying old ladies in ICU want to know about your life. Homeless drunks will listen to your relationship problems and offer you a hug.
People are amazing, and we all have it in us to be bigger than we are.
No matter how hard your day has been, we can all find the grace to be nice to each other. Sure, sometimes a crazy guy in a bar is just a crazy guy in a bar, sometimes a homeless guy is just a slouched drunk in a corner, and sometimes a person in intensive care is just a human clock, winding down.
But let's not give up on each other just yet.
Sometimes, we can all surprise each other. Maybe we shouldn't wait until we're at our lowest to do it.
Saturday 20 July 2013
A Performance That Will Probably Never Happen.
[Int. Night. A blues club with an empty stage and a lone stool in front of the microphone.]
ANNOUNCER: Please welcome to the stage, One Eyed, Homeless Jones!
[A blues singer appears, looking suitably shabby. The audience applauds politely as he sits and assumes a guitar playing position, despite clearly not having a guitar with him.]
JONES:
[Making noiseless strumming gestures, begins to sing]
My baby done left me, she took my guitar!
[He plays invisible, silent guitar where there should clearly be a musical line]
My baby done left me; she took my guitar!
[Plays another silent line. Audience seems confused.]
I don't know where she gone to; but I know she traveled far!
[JONES plays another extended guitar line, silently, sans guitar.]
JONES: cont'd
That woman left me, took my harmonica too!
[He makes a blowing noise where one imagines a harmonica would be, but isn't.]
That woman done left me, Lord, took my harmonica too!
[Continues playing no instruments. Audience shifts uncomfortably.]
She took my guitar and harmonica; left me sad and blue!
[Continues his noiseless blowing and miming]
JONES: cont'd
My baby's gone, left her accordion behind!
[Another silent fill]
Yeah, my baby's gone; left her accordion behind!
[Stops "strumming"]
But I still wouldn't play it. I got SOME fucking dignity, dammit.
[Audience erupts in applause, JONES leaves the stage.]
An Advert That Will Never Air.
This occurred to me whilst waiting for a swing bridge. As I don't own a production unit (or even a functional camera) it'll probably remain "just an idea" for the rest of time. Still, this is an advert someone should make.
[Exterior. Night. A city street. Close up of running feet. We cut to a man, running, desperately, his breathing ragged and panicky. He is hurling himself through darkened roads and alleys. The camera pans up and over his shoulder and we see three other men, chasing him, equally desperate.]
[The first man comes to a crossroads and barrels into it, at the last possible second diving out of the way of an oncoming car and then throwing himself for the opposite pavement, just in front of a bus. Horns blare and the three men chasing him are momentarily brought up short, forced to stop to let the bus pass as our hero widens his lead away from them.]
[The Runner continues his frantic flight through a tree-lined square. One of the chasers stumbles and falls, and his comrades glance back briefly before leaving him in pursuit of their quarry.]
[The Runner has almost escaped his pursuers, but there is a bridge over a river ahead which it out; a boat is coming through and the bridge has been rotated to one side, leaving twenty feet of open water. Warning lights flash and crowd-control barriers have been lowered. The runner stops, desperately assessing the situation, and then glances behind him. Two of the chasers are closing on him, fast, with the third back on his feet and running behind them. He glances at the oncoming boat, the bridge, the gap. Comes to a decision.]
[The runner vaults the barrier and runs at the gap where the bridge should be. He throws himself desperately forwards, and lands on the roof of the passing boat. Pauses for a beat, regains his footing, and then charges and leaps for the opposite bank.]
[Cut to: Shot of the railing on the opposite bank in slow motion as the Runner's hand manages to grab the lower rung.]
[The runner hangs there for a moment, looks back at the Chasers and gives a mock salute and a wink. He hauls himself up and runs off into the night. The Chasers watch him, their frustration palpable, and then throw themselves into the water to swim the gap and continue the chase.]
[Cut to: The Runner, now sprinting down a cobbled street which ends in a pub.]
[Cut to: Interior, Pub. The Runner enters and orders a pint of Nonspecific Beer. As he raises it to his lips, the Chasers burst in the door, soaked, bruised and exhausted. The barman rings the bell and calls time at the bar, and all three Chasers give a groan of despair.]
NARRATOR: [Voiceover as The Runner smiles at the Chasers and drinks his pint] Nonspecific Beer. Worth the effort.
Friday 19 July 2013
An Open Letter To The Mayor Of Bristol.
[I've sent this to the Mayor via the Bristol Council website. I honestly have no inclination to take it further, as any response on his part would be PR bullshit, but maybe it'll get me fired from work and I get to add "argument with the mayor" to my CV under "reason for leaving last job."]
Dear Mr. Mayor,
I feel I should open with a confession: I didn't vote for you. Pretty generally, I don't vote for anybody, as I've long been of the considered opinion that anyone who is involved in politics is ultimately in it for their own gain and glory, and has inevitably lost touch with the common man.
Thank you, then, for proving my point for me last week during a meal at the restaurant I work in. I won't name the venue, but after a long night for me and the rest of the staff, I was less-than-shocked to notice that you and your friends didn't deign to leave a tip.
Granted, you were there on business. I know that you yourself, as a successful architect, are probably short of money. Architecture is a notoriously hand-to-mouth business, and by the time you've priced up marble slabs and concrete pillars for other people to install, you can scarcely be expected to put your hand in your pocket for the minimum-wage staff who are waiting on you. I imagine this is also the case with your friends and colleagues, who I'll assume were a procession of extremely well-dressed vagabonds and hobos who had been saving up all year for the meal.
It's not that I or the other staff need tips, you understand. We get paid. Tips just help with little things, like paying for parking, which I'm now forced to do as you've eliminated basically any free parking spaces I might once have used. As my working day habitually stretches for ten to fifteen hours, this means my driving to work and parking usually costs me the better part of twenty pounds.
I could, of course, take the bus, but as mayor you probably haven't used public transport for a while, and as such may not be aware that to travel by bus in Bristol is staggeringly expensive. My local route charges a minimum fare of £2.70, even if I'm only traveling one stop. I admit, the need to travel one stop might come off as lazy, but years of standing up for twelve hours a day and running up and down stairs fetching wines for wealthy architects have left my knees in surprisingly poor condition for someone my age.
Still, I shouldn't expect someone of your stature to understand the plight of the working man - it's not like you're a trustee of a Marxist think-tank, like, say, the Marxist think-tank Demos. Of which you actually are a trustee.
Nonetheless, maybe your objection is more along the lines of social pressure. Tipping automatically has become customary and can be seen as a sort of socially prevalent emotional blackmail. Indeed, the large corporate function I served tonight seemed all-too-willing to leave a generous tip, but again, they were only a group of neuroscientists, the saps. Their work saves lives and has implications for the future of humanity, and doesn't even begin to have important consequences like changing parking restrictions or causing massive traffic jams as a glorified publicity stunt.
In summation, I hope you enjoyed your meal and the drinks that came with it. I also fervently hope that one day I can be as successful as you, just so that I can avoid the kind of hectoring, blinkered champagne socialism you've so obviously fallen victim to.
Sincerely,
A Proletariat Barman.
Dear Mr. Mayor,
I feel I should open with a confession: I didn't vote for you. Pretty generally, I don't vote for anybody, as I've long been of the considered opinion that anyone who is involved in politics is ultimately in it for their own gain and glory, and has inevitably lost touch with the common man.
Thank you, then, for proving my point for me last week during a meal at the restaurant I work in. I won't name the venue, but after a long night for me and the rest of the staff, I was less-than-shocked to notice that you and your friends didn't deign to leave a tip.
Granted, you were there on business. I know that you yourself, as a successful architect, are probably short of money. Architecture is a notoriously hand-to-mouth business, and by the time you've priced up marble slabs and concrete pillars for other people to install, you can scarcely be expected to put your hand in your pocket for the minimum-wage staff who are waiting on you. I imagine this is also the case with your friends and colleagues, who I'll assume were a procession of extremely well-dressed vagabonds and hobos who had been saving up all year for the meal.
It's not that I or the other staff need tips, you understand. We get paid. Tips just help with little things, like paying for parking, which I'm now forced to do as you've eliminated basically any free parking spaces I might once have used. As my working day habitually stretches for ten to fifteen hours, this means my driving to work and parking usually costs me the better part of twenty pounds.
I could, of course, take the bus, but as mayor you probably haven't used public transport for a while, and as such may not be aware that to travel by bus in Bristol is staggeringly expensive. My local route charges a minimum fare of £2.70, even if I'm only traveling one stop. I admit, the need to travel one stop might come off as lazy, but years of standing up for twelve hours a day and running up and down stairs fetching wines for wealthy architects have left my knees in surprisingly poor condition for someone my age.
Still, I shouldn't expect someone of your stature to understand the plight of the working man - it's not like you're a trustee of a Marxist think-tank, like, say, the Marxist think-tank Demos. Of which you actually are a trustee.
Nonetheless, maybe your objection is more along the lines of social pressure. Tipping automatically has become customary and can be seen as a sort of socially prevalent emotional blackmail. Indeed, the large corporate function I served tonight seemed all-too-willing to leave a generous tip, but again, they were only a group of neuroscientists, the saps. Their work saves lives and has implications for the future of humanity, and doesn't even begin to have important consequences like changing parking restrictions or causing massive traffic jams as a glorified publicity stunt.
In summation, I hope you enjoyed your meal and the drinks that came with it. I also fervently hope that one day I can be as successful as you, just so that I can avoid the kind of hectoring, blinkered champagne socialism you've so obviously fallen victim to.
Sincerely,
A Proletariat Barman.
Wednesday 17 July 2013
Tuesday 9 July 2013
A Drunk Reviews The New Jim Beam
[For those who don't know: An alcoholic drink's strength is measured either in ABV (alcohol by volume, AKA percentage) or in "proof," which is basically half the ABV. For example, a 100-proof liquor is 50% ABV. As a long-time barman, I alternate between the two below with the assumption that an audience can work this out for themselves.]
Jim Beam has always been the great underdog of bourbons.
It never quite achieved the premium success of Maker’s Mark, nor did it capture the elitist, over-rated snobbery of Woodford Reserve. It certainly never came close to the way Jack Daniels - which isn’t even a true bourbon - has managed to dominate the market.
Despite all this, it has a certain charm. If Jack Daniels is Arnold Schwarzenegger - huge, brash, charismatic and known the world over - then Jim Beam is Sly Stallone. A little less self assured, a little less bombastic, but with a little more depth and still fighting a similar corner with undeniable charm - even with lower success rates and elevator shoes.
Then again, maybe this is the wrong analogy. Jim might not be the runner-up, the also-ran, the lesser star. It could be that Jim Beam is the Velvet Underground to Jack’s Beatles; dismissed initially in the face of a wildly popular alternative, only to gain in success over the years as the zeitgeist finally caught up.
It’s worth pointing out that Jim Beam’s flagship White Label, whilst rougher than Jack’s ubiquitous “Old No.7”, is still operating the way it was designed to. Jack Daniels has watered down by 10% ABV in the last 20 years, and as such has cornered the market on bourbons, even though it is technically a Tennessee whiskey. Jim, by staying true to its roots, has come off as a rougher, harder hitting spirit that is less suited to the mass audience palette. Jim never sold out the way Jack did, and has paid the price in sales, but never in dignity.
In recent months, things in the bourbon world - which I cheerfully inhabit about 30% as often as I do the sober one - have gone from bad to worse, as Maker’s Mark, always a solid, smooth, 90-proof, luxury bourbon, announced it was watering the product down to a more market-friendly (not to mention less-heavily-taxed) 80-proof. After outcry from drunks and whiskey fans everywhere*, Maker’s Mark relented and vowed to keep their established ABV, but only in America. In other markets, such as “all other nations on the planet earth,” the watering-down would go ahead. This means drunks in the UK, for whom I happen to be a spokesman (or, more accurately, slursman) are being cheated.
Credit, then, to the plucky folks at Jim Beam who, having seen their greatest competitor water down and kowtow to the bastardised market years ago, and who are now watching one of their other competitors undergo the same pointless, petty neutering, have decided to buck the trend and release Jim Beam: Devil’s Cut, a bourbon 5% stronger than their normal product.
Sure, it’s rougher than some high-proof alternatives. This is because it’s made from bourbon pressed out of the walls of the oak distilling casks. In distilling, over a number of years, the inevitable evaporation caused by keeping a barrel in a warehouse over time is referred to as “the Angels’ share.” This is the alternative. Whiskey that didn’t evaporate into the ether over time, but soaked into the hard oak of the barrel to be forced out, alive and seasoned and spoiling for a fight.
This is then mixed with 6-year-aged Jim, which, in my humble opinion, is a mistake.
Jim Beam Black, the lesser-known cousin of Jim Beam’s usual bottle, is chemically indistinguishable from Jack Daniel’s. Every bit as smooth, but without that annoying, unimaginative quality or, again, the knowledge that Jack sold out years ago. This is because Jim Beam Black is aged 8 years, and mellows accordingly.
By combining the Devil’s Cut with a relatively raw six-year-old bourbon, Jim Beam has made a minor mis-step in creating a product that should be saluted universally.
As such, Devil’s Cut is a little rougher on the palette than it needs to be. Then again, Jim Beam has never been about subtlety. It is a brand built on good, honest Kentucky bourbon, which has never sold out like others did.
As such, I salute - and will continue to support - Devil’s Cut as a bourbon that had the balls to stand up for itself.
In an age when “X-Treme Heatwave” means “mildly warm” and “Extra Strong” means fuck all, Jim Beam have quietly rolled out a product that bucks the trend, increases the alcohol content and makes it very clear that if you want more booze in your booze, then you don’t want Jack.
Good luck to ‘em.
*The distinction often boils down to exactly WHERE you’re drinking at any given moment.
Jim Beam has always been the great underdog of bourbons.
It never quite achieved the premium success of Maker’s Mark, nor did it capture the elitist, over-rated snobbery of Woodford Reserve. It certainly never came close to the way Jack Daniels - which isn’t even a true bourbon - has managed to dominate the market.
Despite all this, it has a certain charm. If Jack Daniels is Arnold Schwarzenegger - huge, brash, charismatic and known the world over - then Jim Beam is Sly Stallone. A little less self assured, a little less bombastic, but with a little more depth and still fighting a similar corner with undeniable charm - even with lower success rates and elevator shoes.
Then again, maybe this is the wrong analogy. Jim might not be the runner-up, the also-ran, the lesser star. It could be that Jim Beam is the Velvet Underground to Jack’s Beatles; dismissed initially in the face of a wildly popular alternative, only to gain in success over the years as the zeitgeist finally caught up.
It’s worth pointing out that Jim Beam’s flagship White Label, whilst rougher than Jack’s ubiquitous “Old No.7”, is still operating the way it was designed to. Jack Daniels has watered down by 10% ABV in the last 20 years, and as such has cornered the market on bourbons, even though it is technically a Tennessee whiskey. Jim, by staying true to its roots, has come off as a rougher, harder hitting spirit that is less suited to the mass audience palette. Jim never sold out the way Jack did, and has paid the price in sales, but never in dignity.
In recent months, things in the bourbon world - which I cheerfully inhabit about 30% as often as I do the sober one - have gone from bad to worse, as Maker’s Mark, always a solid, smooth, 90-proof, luxury bourbon, announced it was watering the product down to a more market-friendly (not to mention less-heavily-taxed) 80-proof. After outcry from drunks and whiskey fans everywhere*, Maker’s Mark relented and vowed to keep their established ABV, but only in America. In other markets, such as “all other nations on the planet earth,” the watering-down would go ahead. This means drunks in the UK, for whom I happen to be a spokesman (or, more accurately, slursman) are being cheated.
Credit, then, to the plucky folks at Jim Beam who, having seen their greatest competitor water down and kowtow to the bastardised market years ago, and who are now watching one of their other competitors undergo the same pointless, petty neutering, have decided to buck the trend and release Jim Beam: Devil’s Cut, a bourbon 5% stronger than their normal product.
Sure, it’s rougher than some high-proof alternatives. This is because it’s made from bourbon pressed out of the walls of the oak distilling casks. In distilling, over a number of years, the inevitable evaporation caused by keeping a barrel in a warehouse over time is referred to as “the Angels’ share.” This is the alternative. Whiskey that didn’t evaporate into the ether over time, but soaked into the hard oak of the barrel to be forced out, alive and seasoned and spoiling for a fight.
This is then mixed with 6-year-aged Jim, which, in my humble opinion, is a mistake.
Jim Beam Black, the lesser-known cousin of Jim Beam’s usual bottle, is chemically indistinguishable from Jack Daniel’s. Every bit as smooth, but without that annoying, unimaginative quality or, again, the knowledge that Jack sold out years ago. This is because Jim Beam Black is aged 8 years, and mellows accordingly.
By combining the Devil’s Cut with a relatively raw six-year-old bourbon, Jim Beam has made a minor mis-step in creating a product that should be saluted universally.
As such, Devil’s Cut is a little rougher on the palette than it needs to be. Then again, Jim Beam has never been about subtlety. It is a brand built on good, honest Kentucky bourbon, which has never sold out like others did.
As such, I salute - and will continue to support - Devil’s Cut as a bourbon that had the balls to stand up for itself.
In an age when “X-Treme Heatwave” means “mildly warm” and “Extra Strong” means fuck all, Jim Beam have quietly rolled out a product that bucks the trend, increases the alcohol content and makes it very clear that if you want more booze in your booze, then you don’t want Jack.
Good luck to ‘em.
*The distinction often boils down to exactly WHERE you’re drinking at any given moment.
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