Ephemeral Retention

Seven Months and Four Days Later

2009-08-04T20:18:00.002-04:00

On New Years Day, I made the pledge to write more this year than last. Twelve days later, I met a girl and all of that fell apart. Six months after that, so did everything else. And now, on the fourth day of August, 2009, I feel as though I have finally picked myself up enough to put thoughts to words once again, and to try and make some sense of it all. Christ, what a year it's been.

Without getting into too much detail, I met this girl (who I will henceforth refer to as AP) at Nectar's on Monday, January 12, and I was crazy about her immediately, and within a week I was calling her my girlfriend. She met my family on St. Patrick's Day, and they instantly accepted her as one of their own. We spent most nights and available days together, and spoke on the phone constantly while apart. We watched movies and tried new beers together. We celebrated our birthdays together, with my gift to her being her first ever taste of lobster. We played catch. We played Scattergories and Scrabble and Gin Rummy. We skied together at Stowe and Sugarbush, and then partied late night with the locals. We went to Thunder Road and let out our inner rednecks together. I got her tickets to a sold-out Wailers show at Higher Ground, because I knew of her love for Bob Marley, and we went to see P-Funk because of my love for George Clinton (who we got to meet backstage, and who gave AP a big, wet kiss on the cheek in exchange for a small amount of my pot--she was sick afterwords for ten days). We went to Albany to see the remaining members of the Grateful Dead, and then to Boston to see Phish at Fenway Park, where I gave her her first ever dose of LSD. We even saw Touchpants together. It was perfect.

Or so it seemed. Looking back, I now see all the obvious cracks and fractures that I tried so hard to deny, and it's clear to me (in hindsight) it was never meant to be. She was seven years younger than me, and stuck in the mentality of the high school cheerleading captain that she was three years prior. She worked in a deli two days a week, getting paid under the table so she could still collect unemployment, and slept most days until two. She hated to be called lazy. She drank vodka by herself and snorted Vicodin out of boredom, but hated that I smoke pot. She wanted to get back on Prozac, and was offended when I suggested something more natural, like sunlight or exercise. She hated my car, but loved her Volkswagen more than anything. She hated my apartment, but hated it even more when I would comment on hers (she lived in a room without windows in the same house as her mother, along with four other people). She never wanted to do anything where drinking wasn't involved, and was openly offended when I suggested she might have a problem. She hated when I pointed out the obvious, and she loved to call me a hypocrite. But oh! I ignored it all, and I loved her just the same.

And then six months later, the bottom fell out. We were downtown for Burlington's Independence Day celebration and fireworks, and had a heated argument on Church Street over whose fault it was that we arrived too late to have dinner at Three Tomatoes; mine for taking too long to get beer, or hers for showing up at my house an hour later than she was supposed to. We ended up watching the fireworks separately and alone, in the rain, and then met up at Club Metronome later that night to drink beer and make good as though nothing had happened. As it turned out, though, she was giving her number out to random guys that night, and got so drunk that she got us both kicked out of the club. Once we were outside, she was picked up by the BPD for being so belligerent, and they thankfully gave her and I a ride to my house rather than tossing her into detox for the night. In the end: My fault for buying her that last shot of whiskey, because I should have known better.

A week later, we were supposed to go see Ween at Burlington's Waterfront Park for the Lake Champlain Quadracentennial Celebration, but we had another nasty argument the day before when she tried to blame something on me that was clearly her fault (I don't remember what, but it was clearly something stupid, and not worth arguing over). She told me that I should go to Ween by myself, which I did, and I found out two days later that she had a new boyfriend named Chad. This is when it all fell apart.

This all happened shortly after my car died (the water pump went 400 miles after hitting 200,000), which happened the same day that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died, and the day after Ed McMahon died. As if that wasn't depressing enough, I left my backpack in my cousin Rick's car, with my wallet in it, and when I went to call him to tell him, I dropped my phone in the toilet, killing it, too. Not only was I now without a phone, wallet, girlfriend or a car, but I had also lost everyone's phone number, because in this age of cell phones I don't actually know anyone's phone number except my mother and one of my two brothers. See also: Rock Bottom.

This all occurred in late June and early July, and it has taken me until now, August 4, to finally pick myself up enough to write about it. Where January through June was filled with so much bliss and denial that I never had time to write, July was filled with so much gloom and depression that I didn't want to do anything except sleep, which really has turned me into the hypocrite that AP so desperately loved to call me. On the flip side, though, I haven't drank or smoked in almost two weeks, and riding my bike back and forth to work for the past 6 weeks has been a blessing in disguise, I'm sure, but what that blessing is I still haven't quite found out. I hate it, and I hope to Jah that I find a car soon. Wish me luck....

By the way...Happy 48th Birthday to President Obama, who continues to run circles like a caged hamster on a wheel, trying so desperately to get us out of this mess that seems more and more likely to be inescapable. These are tough times we're in right now, for sure, and my poor little broken heart suddenly seems like spilled milk in comparison. Woe is me.

Two Thousand and Nine

2009-01-01T13:08:00.004-05:00

Here we are, on the first day of the year, and one of my many resolutions has been to write more. Like most others, though, one can only expect so much. A lot has changed since the last time I sat down to write, foremost being that I have moved. I no longer live in those prison-like conditions of a rented room in a total strangers apartment, along with her ballistic four year old son, and right before I left her brand new boyfriend ''B'' moved in, because he was under house arrest for selling cocaine and needed a house. So it goes. I now live in Burlington Proper, on the cusp of the New North End and the its older counterpart, and share a three bedroom apartment on Convent Square with my friend Christina; the spare room is for Haley when she comes over. Its the first time in over three years that Ive had a place to comfortably sit on the couch and feel at home, and its only fitting that its on a one-way street lined almost entirely with DayGlo houses from purple to yellow and blue and green, and with a roommate I've known for years. For what it's worth, ours is the bright blue house on the left....

More later.

Hey Mister Can You Spare Some Change?

2008-10-15T23:31:00.007-04:00

My my, how things have changed over the past couple months. I've been putting off the writing of this....post? column? essay? entry? what are these things called?...but I've been stalling myself on this installment for sheer fact that I have had no idea where to start, and as soon as I would get an idea in my head another gigantic asteroid would crash into the planet, changing the whole story all over again. As my personal life continues to chug at it's typically abnormal pace, the entire world around me is changing at such astronomical rates that I can't even keep up with all the crazy stories and updates. But ho ho! These sure are fun times we're seeing right now...

The DOW dropped 733 points again today, ending at just over 8500. Three days ago, Monday, it rocketed 936 points to close at just under 9400, after dipping as far as 7882 in the early morning hours of last Friday. One year ago to the day, it sat somewhere around 14,000. The word 'crash' comes to mind. This, of course, comes just days after George Bush decided that we taxpayers needed to pay almost a trillion dollars out of our pockets to bail out the likes of Lehman Brothers and AIG--two of the world's largest investment firms that have since collapsed--because they were "too big to fail. " The mindset, of course, was to keep the already-sinking economy afloat, but this bailout has clearly become a $700 Billion dollar gamble gone horrible wrong.

That's just a piece of the story, though. I suppose it could be traced back indefinitely, but just to get caught up, I'll go back to June 3, when Barack Obama officially beat Hillary Clinton in their bids for the Democratic Nomination. Two days later, Hillary conceded and withdrew from the race via email at 2am EST, setting the stage for what has since turned into a no holds barred round of Obama v McCain, with the old man getting dirtier and nastier and far more tired by the minute, and getting his privileged and pampered (ha!) ass kicked from every single direction. It's almost sad, really, to watch a 72 year old war hero this excited and this badly beat at the same time, but I still watch.

Skipping ahead to August 23, when Obama sent out a much-anticipated text message declaring Senator Joe Biden of Delaware as his running mate. Biden, who was born in 1942 [see also: Not Quite Perfect], was elected as the youngest US Senator in history in 1972, and now ranks sixth in longest running terms. An early contender for the Presidency this year, Biden dropped out in January, the same day that Obama won in Iowa, and has maintained a very low profile since. Two days later, the DEM-CON opened in Denver, with Obama becoming the first African American to be nominated by a major party in US History. On the 28th, he accepted that nomination in a HUGE speech at the Mile High Stadium, which drew over 84,000 people and was watched at home by nearly 40 million, plus the millions of viewings on YouTube. It truely was epic, and I try not to toss that word around often.

The next day, John McCain retaliated as only a delusional old man would: He introduced the world to Sarah Palin.....

more later....

Beer Month 2008

2008-08-23T13:54:00.009-04:00

Since June crashed through like a Gulf Coast hurricane, I vowed long before Independence Day that July was going to be a “work month,” if for nothing else than to let me catch my breath and maybe even save up a few dollars. And so it was, except for the parts about catching my breath and saving money, because both are merely a farce at this point, so why even bother? But oh! July sure was a “work month” indeed, with four solid weeks of living and working and learning more about beer than I ever thought my fractured brain was capable of learning, and I even managed to retain some it as well. Imagine that.

With a bare minimum of 40 hours a week (but usually closer to 50) being spent inside The Brewery, and at least that many being spent at the other end of the line drinking different beers at different pubs with different people throughout Burlington and beyond, and then moonlighting once a week to mix drinks and pull pints at The Pub in Waitsfield, one doesn’t have think far nor wide to see that the overwhelming theme of my existence right now is beer—sweet, delicious beer—and perfectly so. Do what you love, right? The month of July, though, was in fact a Beer Month like none other, ever. I spent most of its 31 days tired, stressed, overworked, and bloated, but always with a beer in my hand and the payoff at the end was greater than anything you or I could have ever imagined to come out of four short weeks, and holy shit I learned a lot.

When it was all said and done, I somehow felt like I was part of a really big thing, at a really important time, and sitting very comfortably in a very coveted chair. I'm still not sure how it happened, but I really did fall into a good thing when this job fell out of nowhere and into my front pocket eight months ago, and now that I know what I’m doing with some solid level of confidence, I now feel and appreciate the pride that this job had quietly promised and certainly delivered. And, most of my bills are paid, too.

The first day of July was indeed a day of celebration in the world of Vermont Beer, and a great way to kick off what will forever be known as “Beer Month 2008.” With the governor’s long-awaited signature finally getting inked onto a piece of legislation known simply as H.94, the state’s longstanding ABV limit of 8 per-cent for retail beer sale had officially been doubled, by law, to 16 per-cent, stirring up a whole new wave of “strong beers” that could now be bought at gas stations and grocery stores throughout the state--as opposed to being strictly regulated and limited to state liquor outlets only--as well as on tap at all pubs and bars, too. For long-spoiled beer snobs like myself, this was only part of the newfound excitement, as H.94 also meant that Vermont brewers could finally begin the collective pilgrimage into making strong beers of our own, with this new frontier opening up just as my own beer journey was beginning; the timing couldn’t have been any more perfect, in fact.

Of course, this timing also came perfectly aligned with the sixteenth annual Vermont Brewers Festival, which was still three weeks away but just time enough for the likes of The Boss to whip up something strong and new and different, because we could, and to have it come out of the tanks and into the kegs just in time for the Brew Fest. We decided for fore go this newfound Freedom of Excess, though, and instead made one 15 BBL batch of our long-awaited porter, which was brewed on Father’s Day and carried an ABV of “only” 5.6. We only brewed 15 Barrels because it was supposed to be a test run only, with all but a few small samples being dumped down the drain upon completion, but the end product was so smooth and impressive that we put most of it in kegs and stashed them in the cooler to bring with us to the Festival, where we would also be pouring the final remnants of The Red along with the flagship Ale. Many other Vermont breweries, though, decided to go for the top prize of absurdly strong beers, because they could, with Harpoon taking home the gold with a fourteen-point-something per-cent wheat wine, which was think and black and strong and harder to sip than bourbon. As novel as all these new strong beers were, I personally feel that anything over 9 is too much, and no longer pleasant. Hell, even 9 is a lot.

Following the opening night of festivities, Friday, all brewers were openly invited to a private gig in the parking lot behind the VPB, with the mutual and quiet understanding that each bring with them a little something special from their respective brewery, for all to taste and discuss. With a one-liter flip-top of The Porter in hand, I joined two of my coworkers and my cousin Mike—who packages once a week for another highly regarded Vermont brewery—to the parking lot, and found a small roped off area in the middle of the lot, with a picnic table covered with more than a hundred brown bottles and glass growlers, each presumable filled with something I’d never before heard of, let alone tried. I was already quite buzzed from my free reign at the Festival, so I can only hardly remember what I tried from that immense picnic table of choices, but I do remember the ourstanding highlights being a Maple Bock from friend’s friend in The Valley, and a “Bière à l’abinthe” from Quebec, the latter of which I stuffed into my coat to bring home for later.

In the weeks and days leading up to the Brew Fest, though, when most other brewers in the state were getting ready to transfer their new, strong beers from fermenters to bright beer tanks and then into kegs, we at The Brewery were still trying to get our new tanks all hooked up, online and full of beer. and then somehow worked into the brew- and pitch-schedules. Actually, it’s incredibly unfair for me to say “we,” as I had absolutely nothing to do with any part of this, but instead spent more and more time in the BrewHouse, getting more and more comfortable with the Lauter Tun and Kettle, and all the knobs, dials, valves and lines in between. By month’s end, I was in the BrewHouse five days a week, cruising through my shift with fair levels of comfort, ease, and confidence, always with either a beer or an energy drink in my hand and always, ALWAYS, with good music playing loud—which in July happened to be a lot of Ween, Beatles, and Gov't Mule. But I digress.

Just before Brewfest weekend, as it was, we had double batches brewed into tanks 16, 17 and 18, our three new fermenters respectively, each holding 30 BBL of new beer and each representing a new $6000 invoice at the end of every three-week cycle. The Boss, of course, was as happy as the other five of us were proud, and why shouldn’t we be? In a time of overall financial catastrophe in this country, any degree of success and expansion is certainly worth pride and celebration indeed. On the Monday after Brew Fest, though, just as things were beginning to feel normal again, the door gasket slipped on Tank 3—one of the old, original four--shooting 900 gallons of pressurized beer in every direction, with every one of us stopping what we were doing to watch as $6000 worth of beer quite literally washed down the drain. The Boss, still noticeably fatigued from a long weekend at the Brew Fest, sat on the crossbars at the feet of Tank 5, his face sunk into his hands, and quietly muttered “I’ve dreamed about this day.” We were all very quiet, and just stood and watched in bewilderment and awe.

Of course, the blood was on my hands, so to speak, as I was the one who brewed into Tank 3, and therefore the one who put the gasket on the door. The Boss, though, always the one to reassure, stated point plank that gaskets are either on or off, and that there is no way for me to “put it on wrong.” He assured us all that the gasket (a silicone one as opposed to rubber, as were all of the rest) had simply slipped, that no one was directly to blame, and that the only thing to do from here was to clean up and carry on. I still couldn’t help but feel awful about the situation, though, so after work I decided to take my mind off things by driving to Essex and trying to sneak into the highly coveted Elton John show at the fairgrounds.

Having just had a Ben & Jerry’s flavor named in his favor—“Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road—this seemingly random outdoors show at an empty fairground in Vermont was also special to the British pop star in another way as well. Much like President Bush [sic!], Sir Elton had visited and performed in each of the other 49 states, but not yet Vermont. With the completion of this show, on a warm, starry night in Essex Junction, a very major milestone would have been reached, so I imagine that the Rocket Man himself was just as excited as everyone in the crowd who paid $135 to see him that night, including my mother, uncle, sister-in-law and brother, as well as those of us who got in for free.

Always being one to create my own absurd challenges, I decided to drive to Essex and see if I could somehow finagle a way to get through the gate without paying, if for nothing else than to say that I did so. I figured that security would be tight and my chances dark, though, but knew full well that I would at least walk away with a good story about getting caught trying to sneak into an Elton John concert. When I got the first gate, I asked if there were still tickets available, because if there were then I would be far more likely to get a cheap or free one from a scalper. If it was indeed sold out, though, any extra tickets people might have would surely go fast, and at full face value.

There were tickets available at the window, the woman said, and she gave me a voucher to get through the first gate, where tickets were being checked but not yet torn. Before going in, though, I ran back to my car (parked a half-mile away outside the Backstage Pub) to grab my camera and a hoodie, and then walked back through the first gate as though I had actually intended on dropping $135 for a ticket. Once inside, though, I found myself amongst the food vendors and inside the beer tent, where I was fully content on staying for night and simply listening to the show for free as opposed to paying a lot of money for a far off view. And, it was far less crowded out here, too.

When I ordered my first beer—an IPA from New Hampshire—the bartender told me that the tent would be closing as soon as the music starts, which was scheduled to happen any minute now. I immediately ordered a second beer, and then double-fisted through the crowd while looking for any level of familiar faces. I drank my two beers as fast as I could, and then quickly ran back for another round while I still could. This time, though, I saw my visibly drunk brother in the line ahead of me, so I kicked the back of his knee to get his attention. He bought me a beer and we tapped our plastic cups together and offered each other a timely slainté before pulling ourselves away from the bar. The crowd inside the second gate erupted with applause, and the music began shortly thereafter. My brother pounded his beer and asked if I wanted a Vicodin for the show, which I gladly accepted and which he clumsily dropped on the ground for all to see. He laughed and said loudly “You dropped your Tylenol” or something to that effect, and then we exchanged laughs and high fives as he disappeared to go find his wife and our mother and uncle, who were somewhere inside the screaming mass of ticket holders within.

When I finished my second round of beers, I went back for another two only to get shot down by an out-of-breath bartender, who confirmed that they were indeed done. Instead, I wandered by the ticket window to see if there were any desperate scalpers trying to hock their extras in a last ditch effort before saying screw it and heading in, and found only one young-ish looking blond trying to get $50 for her one extra ticket. I told her that I didn’t have any money and planned to simply wander around out here and listen, and she gave me a skewed look as though she completely didn’t understand. I continued on, and went around the side of the bleachers to try and sneak a quick glimpse of the stage, and instead found myself in another beer tent, which was still open and virtually empty.

To my immediate surprise, I found the same bartender pouring drinks, still drenched in sweat and still out of breath, and I asked him how late this tent was staying open.

“I thought it’d be closed by now, but no one’s given us the word yet. You want two?”

I smiled and nodded without a word, and then pushed up to the fence with my two beers to get a sideways view of the stage and a clear wave of the music, and shortly others began to follow my lead. To the surprise of everyone, this second beer tent stayed open for the duration of the show, yet I continued to order and drink two at a time just in case. At some point late in the night, I saw the blond from earlier who tried to sell me her extra ticket, and I asked her if she sold it or ate it. When she said that she ate it, I asked if I could have the stub for my collection, to which she again shot me that confused look and exclaimed that it’s worthless to her, so why not. ZAM! Just like that, I had a free ticket.

I pounded my remaining beer and went to the gate into the grandstands, and asked the ticket ripper if they could let me in without ripping my stub so I could preserve it in semi-perfect condition.

“Nope, sorry sir. We have to rip every ticket. You can try one of the other gates, but I’m sure they’ll tell you the same thing.”

I tried the middle gate, where I got a straight up No, and then went to the third on the far end of the grandstand and pushed through aggressively with ticket held high, never stopping or slowing or asking anyone anything. So there I was, inside for free and with an unripped ticket, and so fall down drunk at this point that I didn’t know what else to do but continue pushing my luck and trying to get as far up front as I could. Again with aggression and with the mindset that I owned this entire fairground, I pushed onward and forward, and soon found myself in the forth row, just to the left of center, with some arrogant McCain-voting woman yelling at me that I didn’t belong here.

“We paid for these seats,” she kept yelling to me, but I simply ignored her and began snapping pictures as fast as I could. Her yelling got louder and louder, and when she shot her final, screeching “We PAID to be here and you didn't,” I shot back an equally arrogant “We ALL paid to be here,” which seemed to shut her up. The entire crowd then seemed to push forward at that very moment, and I suddenly found myself even closer to the stage, and now directly alongside Kevin Statesir, the owner of Higher Ground. Quite certain that he had seen or at least heard my confrontation with the bitch behind him, I said something to the effect of “I’m glad up here with you now,” to which he said something I could not decipher, but that I like to think was not negative. For the sake of my own peace of mind, let’s pretend that he was welcoming me to share his $135 seat, and encouraging me to continue taking as many pictures as I could. I assume, though, that this was not the case, but so it goes, and I even got a few decenet shots.

I don’t remember leaving the show, but I do remember being back at the Backstage Pub afterwards, with the bartender waking me up and telling me that I’m not allowed to sleep on the bar. I tried and failed to finish my beer, and instead asked the bartender if he could call me a cab back to Burlington. Much like the walk from the fairgrounds to the pub, the cab ride home was another forgotten blur, and when I got up at 630 the next morning to go to work, my car was still in Essex and I was still very much drunk. Within an hour, though, I would again be drinking beer, only this time for the true purpose of quality control, but also to subdue my impending hangover, which I knew full well was going to be a bad one. Beer, in more ways than one, had indeed kicked my ass, just as it had done all month long.

The rest of the month included a lot more overtime and a lot more beer, both on the clock and off, and a lot more building excitement for all the changes soon to come. The Brewery’s continual growth and expansion has thus far been perfectly aligned with that of the “small beer” industry, either by coincidence or otherwise, and this trend continues to be the case. Just as the papers were signed and ink still wet from our purchase of 1966 all-copper 60 BBL BrewHouse from somewhere in Germany, which is set to be upright and online by the start of the new year, the shattering announcement was made that Anheuiser Busch had been sold to some overseas company for roughly $70 per share, or somewhere around 60 BILLION dollars. This was just one more boost to our little beer seed and to the overall beer garden, with the shortage of hops in that garden not being nearly as severe as some have made it out to sound; if nothing else, it just means we'll all have to pay a little bit more for good beer. So it goes, right?

Independent

2008-07-14T20:32:00.015-04:00

For the past 58 years, July 4 has marked not only the anniversary of American Independence, but also the anniversary of my mother's birth. And for as long as I can remember, July 4 has been spent every year at my Uncle Rick's house in Milton, where my entire paternal family would converge for beer, barbecue and swimming, and to catch up on all that has happened since this same event one year prior. Keeping in mind that my father had thirteen siblings, and many of them had three or more kids, and then our kids from previous marriages and second-cousins' brand-new wives and good friends and neighbors with no known relation whatsoever, one can easily imagine that this simple Forth of July pool party can and will quickly boil over into something quite different indeed, with a lot of names and faces to try and remember. In case you missed it, my family is large and Irish, and we sadly live up to the harsh but true stereotype of being lush drinkers, but oh! We have such good times because of it.

I had to work both jobs on Thursday, the third, and didn't get out of The Pub until long after midnight. When I was done and closed up, I had a few bottled beers and expensive glasses of Scotch for my "shift drink," and then headed up to the Hyde Away to meet my friend Becki, who was up from New York for the weekend with her friend Liz. They arrived very conspicuously in a red Mustang convertible around 11, and both were drunk and very loud by the time I got there around 12:30. I stayed and drank on the porch with them and others until long after the bar had closed at 2, and then drove one mile up Seventeen to my old apartment on Old Mansfield, where I had given prior notice that I would be staying for the night. I crashed on the couch until about 9 the next morning, when my old roommate Jenn woke me up with a packed bowl of weed and a half can of Red Bull, and then I followed her into town. I ditched my car at The Pub and hopped in with her, and then rode into Warren and up to the school via back roads to catch the "World Famous" Warren Parade.

Jenn had to help pour beers in the beer tent--which was being run exclusively by The Pub--so I showed up with her around 10 and kicked my morning into gear with a freezing cold Otter Creek Copper Ale to wash down that piss warm Red Bull. Good Morning, and Happy Forth, indeed! I went down the hill and into town to watch the parade, which was quite good and had deep, blatant political undertones, and then quickly made my way back to Rt. 100 to hitchhike back to my car in Waitsfield. My friend Jodan, whom I worked with in the kitchen at The Pub and who was home on vacation from Johnson and Wales Miami, was among the first to drive by, and within 10 minutes flat I was in my car and on my way to the pool party in Milton.

I showed up at Uncle Rick's just before two, and immediately grabbed a couple burgers, a bunch of salads and a Long Trail IPA, and by 4:20 I had already smoked with at least a half dozen friends and relatives. After giving myself a full half hour to let my food settle (lamest excuse ever!), I joined the kids in the pool for a couple hours to escape the heavy, heavy heat. After I was out and my shorts were mostly dry, I followed a caravan of about a dozen to my brother's house three miles away to continue the caravan of moderate-to-heavy drinking. Mom mom, brothers, in-laws, daughter, nieces and nephew and a couple cousins played horseshoes and built a hot and modest campfire, and took many trips to my brother's small shed to smoke herb. By dark, everyone had a solid buzz, and we were all asleep by 11.

During one of our many trips to the shed that night before passing out, though, my brother, ever the one to try and impress, took charge from my "Bike Week Sucked" rants and gave us a quick glimpse of what Laconia used to be like. Without even backing it from the shed, he fired up his new-to-him 2002 Harley Davidson 1450 "Deuce," and put on a five minute smoke show that drew many hoots and cheers from the kids and cousins, and looks of sheer disapproval from both his mother and his wife; he clearly pretended not to notice. It was the first time he had smoked the new bike, and he was beaming about it for the whole rest of the night.

I spent the next day nursing a could-be-worse hangover and laying low with my friend Victoria, and then had to work bright and early Sunday morning because we had to get our test run of Porter out of the tank and into kegs so we could clear up space for our heavily-demanded Flagship, which we still can't make enough of. When I got home around 3, I took a quick nap until about 6 and then headed downtown for the much-anticipated return of 90's punk-metal comedy troupe Green Jello, my favorite band by far when I was a prepubescent lad of about 13, after growing out of KISS and having not yet discovered Phish. Green Jello was the short-lived limbo between the two aforementioned obsessions, so you can imagine how taken aback I was when I saw the poster downtown advertising their gig at 242 Main, a room that holds about 70 people uncomfortably, and doesn't sell booze. My first thought was "tribute band," but figured I'd still go check it out regardless. After all, it was only $7.

But no! It was the real Moronic Dictator and the real Green Jelly, still having to commercialize themselves with a 'Y' due to a long-past lawsuit with Jello Brand Gelatin, but still calling referring to themselves both onstage and off with an 'O' because, simply, they are Green Jello. I showed up around 6 for the advertised 7pm show, and found heavy irony in the large, sleek tourbus parked out behind 242, and knew immediately that it had to belong to Jello. The last 'big name' show at 242 was probably a hardcore Vanilla Ice in 1999, also a show that I was at, but the crowd for that outpassed 242's capacity, so they set him up in the basement of Memorial Aud next door, in the area that is usually the beer tent for bigger shows. Strange, indeed, and I hoped the same wouldn't happen tonight.

I did a quick walk-by at the bus to see if anyone was hanging out that I could ask about a photo pass, and as I walked by some dude with a shaved head--save for three blue braids right at the peak of his cone--bounced off the bus to greet another dude, who was riding up past me on a bike and wearing a pinkn one-piece, zip-up pajama suit with giant gorilla feet slippers, mirrored aviators and a can of Steel Reserve clutched in one hand as he unsteadily peddled up to the bus. Wow, I though. These guys really are fucked up. I should go say hi.

It didn't take long for me to figure out that Pink Pajamas was selling a bag of weed to the band, and that he was in no other way affiliated. I walked up just as the exchange was taking place, and neither showed much concern. Pajamas shot me a welcoming glare and said something about me looking like an undercover cop, and I quickly snapped back that that's only my part time gig. I was off duty, I said. Blue Braids looked at my black t-shirt with a long-faded head shot of George Carlin on it, and demanded that I tell him one of his jokes. Not missing a beat, I rattled off the line Why is it that most women who are against abortion are women you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place, and was immediately welcomed into their small circle, which now included a normal looking longhair who I would later learn is the guitarist.

After Pajamas chucked his half-full Steel pounder into a bush and fell backwards out of the circle, catching himself of the bus' mirror and spinning himself into the grill and bumper, I asked Braids if I was allowed to bring my camera into the gig. He said that it shouldn't be a problem, but that he'd get me a sticker as soon as "the man in charge" showed up. That, as I would also later learn, was "Moronic Dictator," Chris Green. A few more people slid out from inside the enormous bus and joined the circle, and within a few minutes a joint was rolled, lit, and being passed amongst us. Chris showed up in a cab and kept asking me where the nearest liquor store was, and I repeatedly gave directions to Pearl Street Beverage three blocks up Union Street. As far as I know, he never went, but Christ it was obvious that the man needed a drink.

Apparently, the show had only been booked a few days prior, and today was supposed to be one of their ultra-rare "nights off." But at $1000 a tank for gas in the bus, they openly admitted that they were literally playing for fuel money only, and this was indeed a super-budgeted tour in a super-massive tourbus. It was sadly ironic to think that this band had returned from the dead for the sole purpose of burning up diesel fuel, but sadly, that was my favorite activity when this band was big in the early 90s. Irony prevails.

As the band got things ready to head inside (there were 2 opening bands that night as well), I reminded Braids to ask Chris for a sticker, and he happily handed over a green, injet nametag with JELLO, MY NAME IS: written on it, and a large black Sharpie. I thanked them both and headed down to my car for my gear, but quickly detoured into Mr. Mike's Pizza for a beer and a shot instead. I ran into my friend Johnny Murphy and a couple of his friends from the coffee shop, and the four of us each drank a fast round of beers and an even faster round of Jamie shots, and then headed up the hill to 242 together. The walk took us directly past my car, so I grabbed my camera bag and stayed with them until we were inside, when I immediately pushed my way up front to get a good spot in the "photo pit" [see also: "mosh pit"]

Much like the lovable pop band GWAR, Green Jello also dresses up in absurd costumes to enhance their stage shows, but to a much different degree. Instead of 8-foot tall foam-rubber demon suits that squirt goo all over the crowd, the boys in Jello come out dressed as paper machet Jews, Cows, Chickens, and Elmo. And a carrot. And a Goat-Man thing. And then they choose someone from the crowd to don the infamous "shit suit" for the 1992 smash hit "Adventures of Shitman." Clearly a spectacle to behold, to say the least, and for a brief moment while I was sweating my balls off and being tossed around by moshers young and old, I almost felt bad for using that JELLO, MY NAME IS: sticker to get in for free, when it clearly wasn't meant for anything of the sort. Give me an opportunity to get into a show for free, though, and don't for a second expect me to pay.
They played for about an hour and half, with a 50-50 mix of songs I knew and ones I'd never heard before. I kept snapping pictures as fast as I could, but having only my 1.8 lens I couldn't nearly capture all that was happening on the stage at once, including the beating of "Pinata Head" with a wooden cane until potato chips flew everywhere and then when Chris...I mean, Moronic Dictator...ran offstage and into the crowd, disappeared for a bit, and then came back riding someone's 10-speed, got yelled at by security(?), ditched the bike, grabbed a folding ladder, climbed to the rafters, got yelled at again, and then ran back onstage to grab a handful of crushed chips, shove them in his pants, and say something about plain chips becoming salt and vinegar. Fucking hilarious. At the end of the night, they finally played their one true "hit single," a punk rock version of the Three Little Pigs that included members of the audience raping and molesting the three pink pig puppets, and everyone in the room over the age of 26 feeling like they were 13 again. The entire night was well worth the $7 I was supposed to pay, and I can only hope that if and when they come back to Burlington, they find a place bigger and better than 242 to play....and one that sells booze.

Happy Independence Week, indeed. Cheers.

June: The Six Month Revue

2008-07-02T23:26:00.022-04:00

Half way through 2008, for better or for worse, with June weighing in as the best of the year thus far, and one of the most speedtrain months to date. Like a thirty-day free-fall down some spastic rabbit hole to oblivion, last month seemed an endless journey through some of the most spectacular and bizarre that I've ever seen, and Oh! It was beautiful. It was laced very heavily throughout with fantastic music and some of the greatest people I know, and laced heavily in other ways as well. It started at Mountain Jam in New York and ended with NASCAR in New Hampshire, but there was so much wonderful music and scattered confetti in between that I have no choice but to break it all down by category, piece by piece, in order to try and stir it all up inside my head; there's a lot to remember. Christ, what a summer!

BEER NEWS:

As of July 1, Vermont's non-liquor stores (ie: gas stations and supermarkets) can carry and sell beer with an alcohol content over 8%, which has been the state's limit for well over umpteen years. Very cool. As for news from The Brewery, we have our first 15 BBL batch of Porter in the tank right now, with each and all of us tasting plenty of samples since it was brewed on Father's Day, June 15. Latest sample: smooth and creamy, dark black with a nice cascade and a very subtle taste of very different malts. With this and The Red both on tap for the Brewfest, people very may shit themselves, and I can't wait to see it happen. I also discovered that one of my may first cousins is the main electrician at The Brewery, and one of The Five--the first brewer that The Boss hired, way back when, and the one who just had a baby named Finnegan on oh-six oh-seven oh-eight--announced that he's going back to school and cutting back to full time; another announced that he's getting done completely at the end of August, after getting married under a full moon on August 16. Yesterday, the high-stressed groom-to-be told The Boss (and me, but apparently no one else) that he made a dumb decision, and wanted to rescind his decision, which makes me very happy. Good kid, no doubt about it, and the other half of many fantastic conversations I've had this year. The Boss spent the third week of June in German helping disassemble our "new" 1960s 60 Barrel Copper BrewHouse, and labeling all the parts in English for someone to put back together when it arrives in Burlington sometime this fall. While he was gone, we received shipment of three new 30 BBL fermenter tanks and a second Bright Beer tank for double-time packaging, and it was quite fun to watch them all get dragged in by the riggers and fork lifts and slowly inched into place. I helped greatly by staying the fuck out of the way. And, as if The Boss doesn't have enough on his tray already, the price of hops have apparently risen over 500% with the bitterer that we use being among the most difficult-slash-expensive to find, with the concept of us having to blend bittering hops becoming quite real for us. Gigantic bummer, indeed. And then there's the Forth of July beer demand without any shipment on Friday, and one doesn't have to look very hard to see The Boss sweat.

MUSIC EVENTS:

Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY. 5/30/08 through 6/2/08

June came in like a shotgun blast to the face, and Sweet Aphrodite was it beautiful. May 30 was a Thursday, and I worked both jobs just like every other Thursday. Different, though, was that I had Friday the 31st off at The Brewery, by request, because Friday was Day One of Mountain Jam. When I got done at The Pub around 11, I followed a very drunk Homeless Thom to his cargo crate in the woods for an eighth of really stinky weed, with my very dear houseless friend refusing to accept any money. A former DeadHead from Colorado via New Hampshire, he knew very well how important it was for me to have cash on me for this little shindig in New York, and even tried to give me his last twelve pack taboot. I refused, but did accept his offer to borrow his MP3 player, which was new and confusing to him but came chock full of really good Dead and bluegrass. Yes Thom, I will gladly take that on a 4 hour road trip with me, but you can keep your cans of Bud. No really, please, keep your cans of Bud. From Thom's, I went to the Hyde Away for a couple quick Oatmeal Stouts and a heated Phil vs Bobby discussion with a couple of classic old DeadHeads--as I was on my way to see RatDog headline Mt. Jam--and then went outside to smoke a few quick bowls in the parking lot with them before heading four-plus hours southwest towards a little ski town in the Catskills called Hunter.

Less than a mile out of the Hyde Away parking lot, heading West on 17 toward MRG and, eventually, Lake Champlain, something let go in my exhaust, with the trusty old Corolla belting out a solid roar that would stick with me all the way to Hunter. With Red Bull and good stinky weed keeping me focused, I made it Lake George, NY, where I had intended on stopping for sleep before hopping south on 87 for the next couple of hours. When I reached my vague destination, though, I was so wired on sugar and caffeine that I decided to push on until Albany, and then at that point there was no sense in stopping but rather continuing the push another hour straight on into Hunter. At just past four o'clock, I was parked in the first row outside the lodge at Hunter Mountain ski resort, and certainly ready to pass the fuck out.

By seven I was wide eyed and wide awake, and immediately started strolling the more-filled-than-it-was-last-night parking lot for anyone I might know. At nine, I was pushing my way through a building crowd to be among the first into the camping area, and by ten I had my tent set up on the tree line alongside a narrow ski trail, and Home Base fully declared. By eleven, I was back in the parking lot, beer in hand, smoking a bowl in the back of some hippy's van on the offer that he would give me a small chunk of white-on-white blotter if i got his girlfriend stoned; fair trade, my friend, fair trade indeed. By noon, my eyes were Oreos. I quickly ran into a few good friends from the days of SYB tour, and ended up spending most of the weekend with them, together or separately, and sometimes--since they had hotel bracelets and I did not--not at all. Luckily for me, though, I had a cozy tent site just up yonder, and my car was very conveniently parked just a few steps outside the main campground gate. I spent much quality alone time at both that weekend, and every single second was perfect.

With the northeast music scene finally getting our first chance at letting out some pent-up and deep-set winter aggression, there were a lot of faces on The Mountain that weekend that I knew either by name or certainly by face. I even saw a girl named Danielle who I graduated high school with, which is particularly noteworthy because that was the weekend of our tenth reunion, which we both obviously skipped in the name of good, live music. "Wasn't a tough decision," she said with a grin, which I quickly returned in full.

On Friday, I wandered around the mountain with a growler of The Red hanging from my fingertips and an LSD smile in my eyes, and managed to catch sets by RatBoy, Phonegraph and the Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad before retreating to the parking lot for more beer. I came back into the concert grounds around six to catch Grace Potter's set--which included an appearance by Mr. Ivan Neville--and then got up real close and danced real hard for Neville's Dumpstaphunk. Umphrey's McGee was up next, but I opted out of their set and instead chose sleep in my car, and subsequently missed the first set of Gov't Mule, which included Little Gracie Potter on board for Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love and a whole slew of those kids from Umphrey's sludging things up as well. Bummer I missed a full set of Mule, but apparently I picked a good set to miss. The next set was a good solid set of Mule, and the late-night set of Lotus was fair but the later-night set of Galactic was way funkier than I thought it would be, which got me grooving for sure because this kid certainly likes his funk funky.

At some point that night I slept in my tent, and the first thing I did the following morning was walk to the nearest gas station for strong coffee and large, cheap sunglasses to replace the Bolles I left at The Pub. I came back and popped another growler of Ale, and popped myself in and out of the concert grounds to catch sets by Ingrid Michaelson, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, JJ Grey, and Jackie Greene, with Ray LaMontagne's set being quite literally washed out by the rain. The quick but heavy downpour gave way in time for Michael Franti and Spearhead to start their set, on time, with everybody's dear friend Mr. Warren Haynes joining them for at least a couple songs.

At some point following the rain, I matched a single dose of Skull and Bones paper with my dear teacher friend from Upstate New York, and we waited patiently together for The Mule and for The Ride. We pushed forward to about forth row center, and were somehow soon joined by our very good friend Glad, who handed over another couple doses of far better liquid. Needless to say and ridiculous to type, the second set was epic, and I had indeed reached Wonderland. Dark Star Orchestra's late night set bored me almost as much as the going on in the lodge by Pnuma Trio, so I skipped out on going back up to my inevitably wet tent and slept in my car instead.

Sunday, being the Day of The Lord, I decided not to eat any L, but brewed up instead a single size serving of good, blue psilocybin tea. I dragged myself and my bulky camp chair up the side of the mountain until I found a spot suitable for a long, exhausted mushroom ride, and watched the subsequent sets of Larry McCray, the Felice Brothers, Dr. Dog and the Drive-By Truckers, and then moved up close to catch the small-stage set by Medeski Martin Scofield and Wood, again with our good friend Warren Haynes. Sick SICK SICK!!! After their set, Levon Helm's Ramble on the Road played for a solid hour and a half, with Mr. Haynes again popping out for an absolutely beautiful version of I Shall Be Released that I'm eternally happy that I was able to witness.

"Three" with Billy Kreutzmann, Oteil Burbridge, Scott Murawski and Phriends. Higher Ground 06/07/08

One of the brewers I work with watched his wife give birth to their second child and first son that day, and on the suggestion of the yet-unnamed baby's two year old sister, they named him Finnegan; slainte, indeed. Not that this has anything to do with the show that I saw on that night, but it's still a fun little side note to start out with.

Seth's brand new band was playing the first-of-two gigs that night down in Willmington, but I opted instead to stay local and catch Billy Kreutzmann's new band with Scott Murawski and Oteil Burbridge, unofficially dubbed "Three." Distinct memories from the night are few and far between, but I do remember seeing a bunch of people I knew, and catching wind early of Page and Mike rumors. The Mike part was obvious, as he has played with Billy a lot lately and is about to start up a band with Scott, but the stories about Page sitting in caught me completely off guard. When he came out in the first set for Bertha and the Other One, I was right up front snapping shots with the XTi and grooving like it was my job. His keys weren't turned up enough and Scott was trying too hard to be the rockstar that he isn't, Languadoc and all, but the blend still worked and the entire night rocked indefinitely.

When Mike came out in the second set and played Oteil's six string for a few songs before moving on to a white-on-black Telecaster and then to Page's keyboard, the crowd was gung-ho into it and Mike's newfound ego was oozing off from every corner of the stage and sticking to my feet. It was really weird.

Phil Lesh & Levon Helm

I could still taste the nitrous balloons on my lips and feel the speed trembling in my muscles from that crazy free liquid I ate, and I knew full well that it was going to be a long day at work, spending eight sweating hours leaning over a boiling kettle of sugar water, and holding on as best I could. But Christ, eight hours of Hell is a small price to pay for a full weekend in Eden, and this particular weekend was worth all of that and then some; I had fun at Phil.

Solstice Weekend had kicked off like any other, with Haley and I waking up at eight and being a week early for Bernie Sanders' open door forum at City Hall, focusing on the Food Industry and with special guest speaker Eric Schlosser. I was really psyched to go and could have sworn that the postcard I was mailed said the 21^st instead of the 28^th, but either way we were still a week early, when we both thought we were 45 minutes late. So it goes.

Instead, we watched some unknown funk band play in The Park, which was part of some CFL bulb giveaway that also included free Flatbread and free Ben & Jerry’s, which was a deal too good for us to pass up. We got lemonade and iced coffee respectively, and then walked through the Farmers' Market and saw my friends Jess and Chief from college, the first time I'd seen either in far too long. Also at the Market, I saw State Rep Dave Zuckermann, Progressive, and discussed how strong fellow Prog Anthony Pollina's run for guv is going in comparison to Lady Dem Gaye Symmington, who Zuck correctly proclaimed is "not tough enough" to be governor. Also, she's not campaigning enough, and has yet to do a goddamn thing to get her name out there. But I digress...

After more aimless wandering around downtown Burlington, Haley and I went to my brother's house in Milton, where she was to spend the weekend and where I was to leave my car in exchange for my mom's 05 Subaru. Everyone had left and was already at my aunt/uncle/cousins' house three miles away, where my cousin Kari was celebrating her High School graduation and where everyone else was celebrating the start of summer with a swim in the in-ground pool. I stayed long enough for a burger and a beer, and then left Haley in the care of my mother and took her car south on 89, onward towards New Hampshire.

When I made it to New London, NH, I stopped for a beer at the Flying Goose BrewPub, just off Exit 11 and directly alongside Route 11. I had a dozen messy wings and drank three different beers,--the Ragged Mountain Red by far beats out the Stout and IPA--and then got a quick and dirty tour of the basement BrewHouse from Rocky, the restaurant's manager. I paid twelve bucks for a growler of the Red and left Rocky with a sticker from our Brewery, and then continued East on 11.

There were a lot of bikes heading towards me and away from Laconia, which made me fully expect a fizzling dud for Bike Week at Weirs Beach. I arrived at the beach just before 9, in time to see plenty of bikes both parked and cruising, and with one Five-Oh for every 25 bikes. Lame, to say the least. I watched one guy get cuffed and stuffed into a Paddy Wagon already manned by another bloody-kneed and handcuffed "criminal," and I stayed long enough to walk the strip twice and gawk mildly at all the black and orange leather, scratched and polished chrome, and cheap and cheaper memorabilia. Out of a possible 10, I give Bike Week 2008 a generous 4, and I was on my way back to the car long before midnight; six pack of Sierras in one hand and an open Sparks in the other, and a look of disappointment spread widely across my face. No biker skanks showing their tits, no Haley Davidson smoke shows, no stockpiles of white drugs being given out to the highest bidder and not a single blatantly drunk drunk to point and laugh at; Hell's Angels or not, this party was a bust.

On my way back up to my [mom's] car, I asked an onlooking firefighter where Meadowbrook Farm was, and he pointed me up the hill "almost exactly two miles." Sweet. Ten minutes later, I was pulling into the quiet and vacant parking lot, with no idea where I was supposed to go, but knowing full well that I was allowed to be there. Not only allowed, but welcomed, and fully expected. My good friend Bishop is going with a girl who knows the owner of the venue, and they were part of a small group camping out on the owner's lawn the night before the big show, and Bishop had informed me long in advance that I was fully expected to be part of the festivities. My ticket was bought and paid for, he said, and all I had to do was show up and bring a tent. Ever the surrenderer to any adventurous flow, I promised that I would be there, but made a point never to say when. I pulled up alongside their small tent village at a little past midnight, with a few cold ounces left in that first can of Sparks, and joined them at the lantern to drink Sierras to their Bud. We took turns riding around the yard on someone's off-road Segway, and then stayed up until 3 smoking and talking around the dim-lit lantern about absolutely nothing at all. As with above, good friends I hadn't seen in far too long, with a lot of aimless catching up to do.

The next morning, we were all up by nine, welcoming in yet another heavy, muggy day. Someone made egg sandwiches for us all and Bishop and I both laced ours with healthy, blue mushrooms, and then we all went to a nearby beach to try and cool off. Some of us swam while others of us drank, and our crew of about seven stayed until the thunder clapped and the lifeguard told us to leave. We made it back to Meadowbrook just in time for the downpour, and foolishly passed up our chance to huff it through the rain in exchange for a chance to watch both Phil and Levon take their Thunderstorm Soundchecks, up close and very personal. Instead, we stayed at Camp Shelter and smoked and drank and waited for more friends to arrive, as they all slowly did until Showtime at 8.

Since I had to work the next morning, my plan was to drink and smoke moderately before the show, behave during, and then drive the three-plus hours home after, hopefully making it in time for a solid 3 hours of sleep before work at seven. As it turned out, though, I drank more than expected and the mushrooms hit harder than I had planned, and by the time Levon Helm took the stage with his Ramble on the Road, I had somehow accepted a foolish offer of free liquid from someone in the seats behind me. I remember asking for just a tiny drop but instead getting a pool that flowed down my arm, and franticly asking Bishop if he wanted to share. "I'm not going to lick your palm, dude." So I lapped my self clean and waited for whatever ride this free liquid was about to take me on, for better or for worse, so I focused on The Better. I'll worry about the drive later, I remember thinking. Until then, it's all about Phil.

Levon's set was a beautiful blur that stands out only because I was forth row with my friend Glad Mike, and John Molo played drums while Levon played mandolin. Sadly, Phil's sets are both blurs that hardly stand out at all. I remember drinking Coors Original in the beer tent and seeing a few friends from Waitsfield, and then regretting not buying a bunch of of the Czech Paper that some random hippie had offered Bishop and I at setbreak. Foolish, indeed. I remember the second set Shakedown opener and Jackie getting all into a really groovy Sugaree, and Levon sitting in on drums and vocals for a first-set W.S. Walcott Medicine Show, but the rest of the show is a total loss. Nothing. The acid was so speedy and wild that I probably spent the whole show talking at Bishop and looking at the floor, and my next solid memory is hanging out back at Camp Shelter with a handful of nitrous balloons that I had bought on my way out. My thirteenth time seeing Phil, and the first that didn't fully absorb. Maybe it's because the line up wasn't as strong as Friends Of Past or maybe it's because Phil is getting old, but I think it was just a shitty batch of acid. I really should have bought that Czech Paper.

We spent the next few hours sucking down balloons, first at three for twenty, then five, then six, and finally seven for twenty sometime around three, and I think it was around four when I finally tore down my tent and headed back towards home. The LSD buzz had fully deflated, but the lingering burn from the nitrous and marijuana was still in full swing, and the supplemental speed from the acid was was still shaking me around like an epileptic at a KISS concert. I bid farewell to all my spun-out friend and they all bid me the best of luck with my drive and the job that followed, and I spent the next three hours wide-eyed and white-knuckled, driving north toward Burlington and stopping at every rest area I passed just to rest my tired and ragged eyes; I was still unable to sleep, but Christ my eyes HURT! I finally making it to work five solid minutes before I was supposed to be there at seven, and to put it as simply as I possibly can, the next eight and a half hours were indeed hell. But, with my eyes melting beautifully out of my head as I drove home and again later as I brewed the morning batch of that day's beer, I knew that I was a lucky man for having been where I just was, and seeing and hearing what I had just seen and heard, and despite the weak music and dirty drugs, I had indeed again toed the line of Eden, with Phil holding the gate open for me to peek inside, if only for a brief moment or two. And oh it was beautiful, even more than I would dare put to words, so I will leave off here without even attempting to try. Thank you again, Phil, just like always, for showing me that light. Thank you.

Happy Belated Birthday, Robert J

2008-05-19T22:51:00.008-04:00

Christ, wasn't it just Paddy's Day, and now we're already at the end of May? How the hell did that happen? And where the fuck did April go?? This whole fifty-hour workweek bullshit on top of my long-steady drinking schedule is really making the calendar pages fly by like an out-of-the-garage stock car. Plus, since getting my IRS refunds, I've also received my first quarterly bonus from work, with which I paid off a large chunk of the balance on my new Camera and bought a used Univega mountain bike for a hundred bucks, which in theory will also help me spend less money. But, with more money in hand there is always likely to be more booze in the liver, and of that I am surely guilty. I've been drinking a lot lately, both at work and at whichever local hole has the best live music each night, but in turn I've seen a dump trunk load of good music over the past few weeks. I've also been rocking the new 55mm 1.8 lens at a lot of these shows, getting another dump truck full of good shots, and I also had it on me when I was in Littleton, NH and at the Oasis Brewpub and later at "The World's Longest Candy Counter" at a place called Chutter's. I also took a few decent shots at Thunder Road with the old G3, which was theirs and my first race of the season and Haley's first stock car race ever; she was quite impressed. So, even though the past month has flown by quicker than a hyena in a lion chase, at least I have a few good shots to remember what an awesome time I've had. Oh, I also learned on May 8th--the day before Mother's Day--
that it was Robert Johnson's Birthday, which is very cool, because up until this year the only other things that made my birthday noteworthy were the births of Harry Truman and Candice Bergen, and the the end of WWII in Europe--Victory Day, indeed. Happy Belated Birthday, Robert J!

4/2-4/22...Tales of Moose, Music, and a Whole Lot of Beer

2008-04-22T17:35:00.013-04:00

4/2 - Supposed to be my first day of training in the BrewHouse, but it got pushed until tomorrow; fill kegs and clean & pressurize bright beer tank instead. Article in BFP about the expansion of another Burlington brewery (SoBurl, actually), but Our Brewery is mentioned first, in the first paragraph, putting us against Schlitz as the two ends of the beer spectrum. Nice. Expanding competitor about whom the article was written, probably not so psyched. After work, got my first haircut since October (Halloween & April Fools = twice-yearly haircut days), then go home and get online to do my own taxes for the second year in a row. Unless I fucked up somewhere, which is more than likely, George W & Co. owes me money, which is good. I should give some of it to Obama...

4/3 - First day in BrewHouse; mostly standing aside and watching closely with my hands in my pockets, and saying "uh huh" a lot. Got to dump the bags of grain into to mill, weigh out the hops and clean out the Lauter Tun. The rest was all numbers and temperatures that I didn't even try to remember this early in the game. After work, I showered, changed into my cleanest jeans and green hemp button up, and head to Waitsfield to work Open Mic night at The Pub. Moderately busy, decent music, poor money.

4/4 - Friday; get to sleep in until 8. Fill kegs, clean BB Tank, dump and rinse grain bins, home at 3:30 with a solid beer buzz. Nap until 7, go to Nectars for Seth Yac. MLK's 40th Deathday; Tommy Cogg's 40th Birthday. TC very drunk & disorderly at Nectar's. I join him & others for a few rounds. Listen to That Toga Band. Goofy looking kids with a terrible band name, but they played mellow instrumental jazz that I was really digging on. Stay until 11:30 & drink a lot, then go to The Roxy to see midnight showing of Bittersweet Motel with Christina. Pass out halfway through the movie.

4/5 - Spend the day downtown with Haley, then go to Nectar's late night to see Midnight Spaghetti. Good, loud, whiteboy funk, and I drink more than I should have. While at the bar waiting for a drink, a girl in a 21st Birthday hat comes up with a couple friends. I offer to buy her a shot, and order 2 rounds of Jameson. Clink them together, shoot them together. She looks at me, turns around, and pukes on the floor, then immediately runs off with her friends. Best $5 ever!

4/6 - Spend the day at Dobra Tea, drinking numerous mate gourds and catching up on some writing. Hesitantly pass up an invitation from my brother to ski Burke for free, knowing that this is their last day of the season, and that it was sunny and hot out. Perfect spring ski day that I missed out on, but at least the mate was good.

4/7 - 75th Anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Thanks FDR! 2nd Day in the BrewHouse. Asked upon arrival: "Did you bring any music?" No. "Why the fuck not? That's The Brewer's responsibility." Nice. Go to Flatbread after work for a burger and a beer. "IPA Month." Read beginning of Charlie Papazian's book and drink Sierra's Celebration and Flatbread's Sim City. I like very much the hoppy beers. Is nice.

4/8 - Fill kegs, clean & pressurize tanks. The Boss tells us that the bank has approved our request for a "seven-digit" loan, which means we will soon be acquiring a new-to-us BrewHouse from Germany, much larger than the 20BBL one we have now. Nice! Tis the season for VT Breweries to expand. Come home after work and sleep.

4/9 - 3rd day in the BrewHouse, and things are starting to click. More hands-on with pumps and valves, still a lot of "uh huhs" and blank looks. Go to Subway after work with Haley, then go downtown to buy Vegas '96 CD/DVD combo. Come home and watch DVD, then watch Robot Chicken and go to bed.

4/10 - On the floor filling kegs again. Come home and change, then go to work at The Pub. Very slow night, with a lot of stank oysters on the raw bar. Make $10 in tips, and then go spend it all on beer at Slide Brook with Ray. Two guys under the names Tim & Huff were playing drums and keys, and it was so loud no one at the bar could talk. Good stuff. Leave after 2 beers, inside Nectar's an hour later drinking another and eating a portabella burger. Didn't catch band's name, but they weren't worth remembering anyway.

4/11 - Another day on the floor, noticeably tired from staying up too late on my computer. Drink NOS and Vitamin Water all day, and eat PowerBars like they're candy corn. Make it through the day, and then pick up Haley and drive to Milton for a night at my brother's. Asleep on his couch by 9.

4/12 - Take Haley to the mall for Taco Bell and new sneakers, and she chooses a pair on clearance at PayLess for $7. Sure beats the $30 I almost spent on a pair of Vans. Thanks Haley! Lauren and her daughter Cailin meet us at 6, and Haley spends the night with them. I go to the Skinny Pancake for beer, dinner and music [The Willoughbys--generic, geriatric bluegrass], and then to Nectar's for more beer and more music (Township--a very loud, denim-clad rock band that someone beside me called a "poor man's Black Crowes." Since the Black Crowes have been called a poor man's Led Zeppelin since their tour with Jimmy Page, and a poor man's Rolling Stones long before that, I'd say that being pinned as a poor man's Black Crowes is a high and mighty complement, and actually quite fitting for these guys called Township). Run into one of the other brewers from work, and talk shop for a couple rounds. Match each other on shots of Jamie, then head our separate ways; we both have to work in the morning.

4/13 - Sunday, but have to work anyway because of Fermenter Rotation. Not as hungover as I planned to be, but far more tired than expected. Warm and sunny outside, but spitting snow all day long. Strange. Homeslice calls on my way home, and says that he just saw a moose by the airport, out near Pizza Putt. I go home and grab my cameras, and when I got to Pizza Putt, the moose was still where Homeslice said he was. I try to snap a few shots, but he's too far into the brush to get anything good, so I sit and watch instead, waiting for the South Burlington Police to come and shoot the poor bastard. They never show up and the moose never moves, so I leave after about 25 minutes and go get high with Slice. On the way home, the moose still hasn't moved, and no new onlookers have arrived. Stop at Barnes and Noble on the way back for a copy of the new Black Crowes album [Warpaint], and a copy of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, which I have strangely not yet read. I then go to the laundromat to was about three loads of clothes, towels and blankets, and read the first 50 pages of FC.

4/14 - In the BrewHouse again, brewing The Red. Completely different recipe with completely different times and temps, and I was confused as fuck all day. Accidentally added the specialty malts for the afternoon brew to the morning brew, AS WELL AS all the malts intended for the morning brew. The Boss says that it should balance out when the two brews are mixed in the fermenter, and I feel like a douche for the rest of the day, and pay extra close attention for the duration. More things are starting to click, and I still fully enjoy it all, even raking out the lauder tun; it's like a big, warm Zen Garden, only with wet, warm barley instead of dry, white sand, but still just as relaxing. And oh, that sweet and comforting smell...Go to Best Buy after work to swap the MP3 player I got for Christmas for one that has voice recording, and the girl at the desk tells me that I can't return anything after 30 days. My twenty minutes of pleading didn't change her mind, so I bought a $30 analog voice recorder instead. Then to Mexicalli for a chicken sandwich and a couple of The Reds, because all VT beers are $2.50 on Monday. Very nice! I stopped by Borders on the way home and bought Palahniuk's Rant, and then went to the Daily Planet to read and drink. When I walked in and headed towards my usual corner seat at the bar, Page McConnell was getting up from sitting alone the seat next to mine. His hand was wrapped in a bandage, and had I been five minutes earlier I could have sat and drank and talked with his casually, and asked if we was still going to play at Higher Ground tomorrow as the heavy rumors indicated. Instead, I just nod and say "hey" as he walks past me and towards the door. Meet up with Christina after dinner and go to Higher Ground for BassNectar and Pnuma Trio, and I was heavily bored by both. Subsequently, I ended up drinking a lot, and wound up dancing up front with some under-twenty-one girl with big black X's on both of her hands. Her name was either Alex or Alice, I was too drunk to deceiver which, and I lost her number as quickly as she gave it to me. Left HG with Christina and her friend whose name I also don't remember, and get denied access into Nectar's because it was too close to two. We go next door to Esox instead, and do a quick round of Jamie shots that I think I paid for. Talk with some random guy outside Esox about who-knows-what, and he somehow ends up in Christina's truck with us smoking my weed and giving out little yellow Kalatapin like business cards. We drop him off on Battery Street, and he gets all pissed off that we're ditching him, and asked for the pills back. We handed them all back, and I think that the squirrelly bastard stole my pipe, too. Fuckin' junkies.

4/15 - Wake up on Christina's couch, still drunk and an hour late for work. Fuck! Spend the day hungover and filling kegs, and I don't remember the first three hours of my shift. Come home and nap, and Nicole wakes me up at 6:30 and asks if I wanted a new pipe. "I bought this last weekend when I was in New York, but I don't really need it, so I'll give it to you for ten bucks." Sold! The timing on that one couldn't possibly have been any better. I went back to bed until 9, and then went to Al's for a burger and fries. Then it was back across the street and back to Higher Ground, this time for their 10th Birthday Party with the "Higher Ground Family Allstar Birthday Band," which was rumored to include members of Turkey Bouillon and the Seth Yac Band, as well Page and Mike from Phish and possibly Gracie Potter as well. Shortly after I got there, with Grippo Funk playing loud and sounding goooood, I was sipping on a Sierra Pale when a deep-eyed girl came up and asked me for a sip, and then used my beer to wash down a white pill she took from her pants pocket. She then took out another identical pill, looked at it, dropped it on the ground, picked it up, looked at it again, and put it back in her pocket. She then looked back up at me with those same deep, distant eyes, and then walked off. Strange, but it certainly set the mood for the kind of night and that lay ahead. After Grippo finished up around eleven, the "Birthday Band" started their three-plus hour set, which essentially broke down to continuing segues from the Turkey Bouillon Mafia > Seth Yacovone Band > Honky Tonk Tuesday > Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, and ended with an Allstar Jam with members of each. There were also many guests scattered throughout the set, and as scattered themselves as Mike Gordon, Fattie B, Joe Moore, Aram Bedrosian, Lowell Thompson, Kevin Shapiro, Tim Sharbaugh, Rob O'Dea, Matt Sutte and Chris Friday, but no Page McConnell...The entire set consisted solely of cover songs, from everyone like The Band, John Fogerty and Neil Young to Black Sabbath, Stevie Wonder and AC/DC, with Seth playing lead on most and at least rhythm on all, and singing lead most of the night as well. It was a pretty killer set of music, to say the least, and I hope it's up on the internet somewhere sometime soon. At midnight, it was my good friend Bishop's 30th Birthday, and at midnight, SYB--our mutually favorite band--was tearing through a version of "Fairies Wear Boots" better than any I've heard in a long, long time. After the show, I gave Kevin, the owner, copies of pictures I'd taken over the years of the HG road sign--where they display the names of each night's performance--and told him to stick them in the archive somewhere. He in return gave me a copy of the North Mississippi Allstars Live at Higher Ground DVD, and a 10th Anniversary poster with the names of every band that's played HG since 1998. He personally signed the poster "Thanks for the support and the photos. Keep coming back!" and seemed very happy with the pictures. You're welcome, Kevin, and don't worry, I will. On the way out, I was walking with Bishop's girlfriend to go get high, and we saw two cute, blond, college-aged girls making out next to a jeep, and they got all flustered and embarrassed when they realized we had seen them. Good stuff! It was closing in on 3 and I had to work at 7, so I went home and managed to get three full hours of sleep before work. Hurrah!

4/16 - Fifteen minutes late for work, and get spoken to about my reoccurring tardiness from two different people. Whoops, sorry folks. In the BrewHouse again, and start taking notes and writing down temps and numbers. Went to RiRa after work for a Wednesday-night half-price burger and a couple pints of Guinness, and was home and asleep before 11.

4/17 - Spend the day filling kegs, cleaning tanks and starting the transfer, and by one we were all drinking beer and tossing the frisbee around inside. I was out by 3 and went to see Haley, but she was gone for ice cream with her mom's new boyfriend, who I get sketchy vibes from. I wasn't happy, and words were spoken between Haley's mom and I. Go home and shower, then drive to Waitsfield to work The Pub again, and it's a total bust again. $18. Got high with Ray after my shift, then drove home to drink PBR, eat Oreos and play on my computer.

4/18 - Fill kegs, and talk with The Boss about the Pennsylvania Primary on Tuesday. He thinks Hillary is going to win by 10 points, I say 4. Time will tell. Pick up Haley after work and drive to Walden, and see about 15 deer on the way. Hung out with my mom and built a small campfire just hot enough to roast marshmallows, and then douse it quickly because it was starting to spread. Asleep by 10.

4/19 - Up at 9, Mom made coffee and pancakes. Help her rake and clean up the yard, then go to Hardwick to bring back recycling and get burgers at the Village Diner. We came back to Walden and Haley and I took a quick walk to Lyford Pond, but the mud was deep and snowbanks still too high to get to our usual rock-skipping spot, so we came back and cleaned out my car instead. I managed to get the hatch open and load up my summer tires, and then "fixed" the broken hatch handle with a whole lot of black electrical tape. We left at 3:30, and stopped for a while at a playground in Morrisville. The sun was too blazing hot to stay long, though, so we left after less than an hour and met up with Haley's Mom in Johnson at 5:30. By 6, I was at The Hub on Main Street, eating pizza and drinking beer with a few good friends while waiting for Bishop to show up for his surprise 30th Birthday Party. In all, about 25 mutual friends showed up, and Mark Bigelow and the Bluesbusters played in the corner. Mark, who apparently just recovered from a near-tragic car crash, was Seth Yac's guitar teacher, and a few songs into the set Seth plugged in his Stratocaster [see also: The Tiffany Guitar] and started trading some blue-hot notes with his former mentor, and with everyone in the joint listening closely. It was good. "You should turn 30 more often," I told Bishop, to which he wholly agreed. At midnight, when the calendar officially turned over the over-hyped Four-Twenty, I was moderately buzzed, and sitting by the PA with Cogg, talking politics and loudly defending Obama to his McCain. When things finally wrapped up at 2, I brought in a jug of beer from The Brewery for Bishop's gift, and bid everyone adieu. Deb, a very good friend from long, long ago, gave me a nugget to celebrate the next day with, and I left The Hub and made it as far as Cambridge before pulling over to sleep in my car. The moon was full and bright and my car was hot and sticky, and I hardly slept at all.

4/20 - Four-Twenty! The stoner's equivalent of St. Patrick's Day. It's also Hitler's Birthday and the Anniversary of Columbine, but I digress. By 8 o'clock my car was so hot that I had to get up and drive to get the air moving, and by 10 I was in the parking lot of Mad River Glen, gearing up for what would no doubt be my last ski outing of the season. There was no snow anywhere except for the spotty white lines that made up the trails, and after a free quick wax (thanks Glad Mike!) and cashing in on one of my vouchers, I was on The Single and on my way up. I skied in Carhartts and a Tshirt until 12:30, then went in for a couple beers and to buy a MRG shirt. By 2, I was in the parking lot at Sugarbush, changing into shorts and getting ready to cash in one of those vouchers, too. Spring skiing (it was 70+ degrees and HOT) in shorts and a Tshirt, and skiing for free at two different mountains in one day. Happy 420 indeed! I took a sliding digger on Jester when my camera bag swung around in front of me, clicked out of my right ski and skidded about 15 yards on my arms and elbows. I now had ice burns and sun burns on both of my arms, and ironically, the ice burns hurt more. But spring strawberries are free, as they say, and there's something particularly sweet about battle wounds. I spent the rest of the day skiing Organgrinder, then went into the Castle Rock Pub for a couple beers with Johnny Long. He had just gotten a new tattoo on his tongue (six small, blue dots, two by three like the boxcar side of a die), and was proudly showing it off to all, which would have been weird had he been anyone besides Johnny Long. I left the mountain at 3, sunburned and torn up from the ice, and tried to find Ray to smoke a bowl and celebrate the holiday. He wasn't home, though, so I headed down the hill towards home, stopping only to take a few quick pictures of the switchback road signs. While I'm pulled over and snapping pictures, and as if on cue, Ray comes driving around the corner in his red Subaru with the big orange kayak on top, just as the clock hit 4:20. Cheers! Went to his place to smoke, and got a call from Mom wishing me a happy 420. Too funny. Went to The Pub for tofu and a beer, then drove back to Burlington for some much needed sleep. My roommate Nikki could tell by my gleaming red neck that I was in sunburn hell, and gave me a Vicodin to smooth the edges a bit. Slept well that night.

4/21 - Normally I'd be in the BrewHouse today, because it's Monday, but because we're filling kegs with the final batch of Red, the Bright Beer tank had to be cleaned and prepped for tomorrow. Fill only 13.2's and 15.5's, and no logs. Thus, the "sample" keg for us to drink is a 15.5. Nice. Home by 3:30, change, and go get pictures of road sign developed to hang on the wall at work. Get a burrito and a Red at Mexicalli while I read Palahniuk and wait, because Mondays at Mexicalli are $2.50 Vermont Beer Nights. Cheers to that! Back home at 6 and asleep by 7, wide awake and bored stupid by 11. The heat still hasn't let up (70+ again today) and my sunburn still hurts like a bastard.

4/22 - Earth Day. In the BrewHouse again, with things really starting to fall into place. I'm still not sure of a lot of the "whys," but I've got a pretty good handle on the basic "hows" of making beer. Grain in the mill, auger up to the Lauder Tun, hot water added, stirred, vorlauf, transfer to kettle. Repeat. Boil. Add hops. Whirlpool. Pitch yeast to empty fermenter, transfer boiled wort to the same fermenter. Three weeks later, remove. Voila! Beer. After work, I take a quick nap then go downtown to drink beer and watch CNN coverage from the Pennsylvania Primary. In the end, Hillary won 55-45, taking 85 delegates to his 73, but he's still in the lead with more delegates, superdelegates and the popular vote. After results were in, I was walking down Church Street near City Hall when I saw a skinny, lanky moose run up Main Street and hang a right at Manhattan Pizza, with two BPD cruisers following slowly behind him. It was a scene straight out of Northern Exposure, and like everyone else nearby I followed the scene until it stopped on the grass between the courthouse and the Kinko's building, where the moose decided to take a rest and gnaw on an apple tree. There were about 100 people standing on the sidewalk, with the police and one TV News camera huddled closely behind the Broken Democracy Puzzle monument. The moose hung out for about 40 minutes, laying down and smiling for all the flashing cameras (mine was in my pocket, sans memory card....how pissed was I?), and then got up and slowly ran off into the old Hood Plant parking lot, where the police somehow lost him in the dark with him jumping a fence and again being on the lam somewhere around Adams and Church. Too funny. When the fiasco calmed down and the crowd started to break up, I hopped in my car and headed home, ready for some sleep before rushing back to The Brewery again the next morning. As for the moose, I'm pretty sure he was simply run out of town, and I can only hope he was proud of the excitement he caused. It's not every day that you encounter an urban moose, just as it's not every day that the ten point primary winner walks away the loser. So it goes, I guess. So it goes.

We All Hit A Tree [the quarterly review]

2008-04-06T13:49:00.009-04:00

Can it really be that 2008 is twenty-five percent of the way over already? Jesus that went fast. Seems like only a couple weeks have passes since I rolled the proverbial dice and moved to Burlington, hoping to land a decent job once I got here. Now, three months later, I have the greatest job in the world, and I just started training to be a brewer of the world's greatest beer... or at least Vermont's. I have money in my pocket for the first time since I used to steal it from my dad, and I feel as though I have just grabbed hold of a whistling rocket that's about to explode into a very good light. I love my job and my job loves me, I'm happier, healthier, and more financially sound than I've been in a real long time, and I'm back in the city that I love, and that loves me. Subsequently, of course, I've also seen a whole lot of good music. The state of my state, therefore, is very, very good.

The first day of spring this year was on Thursday, March 20, and I was sort of sad to see winter go. It was the first winter at least 3 that we had ample snow to play in, and I hadn't been out to play nearly enough. On that Thursday, with the sun sitting directly over the Equator and the day being split perfectly in half with dark and light, I worked at The Pub, and it was dead. Three days later was Easter, and I again found myself at my brother's house in Milton, drinking beer and eating ham and potatoes with our collective family and families, but I didn't stick around long. Monday was another day at work, as per usual, only with bank reps coming in to check things out and talk to The Boss, and his "business-savy" friend from Connecticut, who owns have of The Brewery. They were shooting for a million dollar loan to buy a new used brewhouse from Germany, and the reps were there to take notes to bring back to committee; time shall tell. After work I took a quick nap and quicker shower, then drove to The Needs to pregame before heading up to Higher Ground to see Back Door Slam.

It was the second time in three months that I'd seen them, and even though that baby-faced kid named Davey Knowles still ripped shit up like it was his job, he didn't quite tear the flesh from my face like he did back in January, but probably only because I went in expecting him to. I saw a bunch of people I work with at The Pub as well as a shitload of familiar faces from throughout the Burlington Scene and beyond, and everyone who was seeing this band for the first time was clearly as impressed and awed as I had once been, too. The kid still looks 14 and I heard more than one person utter the phrase "White Hendrix" that night, and in short, the show was great at the very least. However, it was still too neat and similar to the one I had already seen a month ago, which is a certain trap for many young and suddenly-popular bands. Keep writing new songs, boys, and playing until your fingers bleed, then give me a call when they're ready to be heard. And please, for Christ's sake as well as your own, stay away from that evil light we call fame, because you're all far too young to have your careers killed this quick. But I digress.

After the show I went to Price Chopper for some late-night sushi, and left work the next morning at 10 with suspected food poisoning--I spent the next eighteen hours puking, shitting, and sleeping. I was fine again on Wednesday and on Thursday I worked both jobs, just as I do every week, at The Brewery during the day and at The Pub almost immediately afterwards. The Pub was quiet and we ate more oysters off the Raw Bar than we sold, and I was cut loose at a little past 8. I called my friend Ray afterwards to see if he wanted to meet up for a quick beer, and he said that he was on his way to see Vorcza at the Slide Brook Inn. I pulled a U-Turn and met him there about 10 minutes later, stayed long enough for two beers and maybe a half-dozen of the band's funky numbers, and then drove over The Gap towards Burlington, and headed home.

I worked at The Brewery again on Friday morning, and then went to pick up Haley. Nicole and Taysean were both going to be in Boston for the weekend, so I had planned on a quiet Friday night at home with Haley, ordering Domino's Cheesy Bread and watching Stephen King's IT. When we got home, though, Nicole and Taysean were both on the couch, with their plans for Boston falling through at the last minute, and they were watching something far more suitable for his three year old eyes than an evil clown in the sewers. Thus, Haley has still yet to see her first real horror movie, but I suppose that'll happen in due time. So we all hung out in the living room and watched Dan In Real Life, and all four of us were asleep before 10.

Haley shook me awake at 8 the next morning, and by 9 we were both up, dressed, and on our way to Sugarbush. I had a stack of vouchers from The Brewery for both Sugarbush and Stowe, but since my friend Leigh works in Sugarbush's rental shop, and could easily hook Haley up with free rentals, we decided to head there instead. Plus, we both skied at Stowe exactly a month prior, on Leap Year Day, and Haley had never yet skied The Bush, so there was really never any thought or discussion to begin with.

We got to Warren around 10, and at a quarter-past we were at the tail end of a long line in the rental shop. Leigh saw us and waved us through, sans paperwork, and by 10:30 we were back outside, changing into our boots and strapping on our boards. The sun was out but the wind was sharp, so we took it easy and never left the Village Double. We went in around noon for pizza and hot chocolate, then came out to watch the Pond Skimming contest at the bottom of Gate House and Bravo. It was too cold to stand still (and FAR too cold to ski across an oblong reservoir in a bikini, as many foolish fools were doing that day), so we left after watching only about 20 attempts, and headed back over to the Village Double.

We skied until 3, and then headed back to the rental shop to return Haley's skis and thank Leigh for the hook up. She was nowhere to be found, though, so I left them at the counter and walked out before anyone noticed that we weren't in the computer. From there, we headed back to the car and down the hill to The Pub, which I had to open at 4. Sarah showed up at about ten-past to pick up Haley, and I worked with Wendy all night until 10, when I cut her loose. We got hit hard for a late dinner rush around 8, but otherwise the night was quiet, and I hardly needed a second bartender. Things were quiet after Wendy left, save for two joeys from Boston who stayed and drank until I locked the door at 12, but even they were relatively quiet.

As Joey 1 and Joey 2 moved from beer to vodka to Jamie shots and back to beer, I eavesdropped on their conversations about nothing, interjecting when and where I felt necessary. As to be expected at any bar in any resort town, conversation started with skiing and beer, moved shorty into sports (NCAA March Madness was in full swing, but none of us present gave an honest shit) and quickly segued into drugs and music. When Bathtub Gin came on the radio (and by 'radio' I mean Sirius), Joey 1 got all excited and started singing along. That's when I started to interject more seriously, and when the conversation fully switched gears. We talked about Phish and The Dead and LSD for about an hour, and when I locked the door at twelve with them still inside, I went out back to smoke some of their weed, then came in to kick them both out. I finished up all the necessary cleaning, restocking and computerized paperwork, and then threw in an order of maple sesame wings and poured myself a heavy pull of Oban over a tall glass of ice, and then sat alone at the bar to indulge and enjoy, which I most certainly did.

It was close to one by the time I left The Pub, which meant that I only had one full hour left to get to another bar and drink. Ray had told me a few days prior that his friends' band In This Century was playing at the Phoenix, and that I would be a fool to miss them. So, naturally, I accepted the challenge, and showed up in time to catch their last few songs and to push as much alcohol down my throat as I could in the small window of time I had left before the Phoenix closed at 2. With a pint of Murphy's and a shot of Jamie in hand, I grabbed a seat alongside Ray, shot my shot and started to say something irrelevant when I was immediately accosted from behind by Leigh.

She had just finished her shift behind the bar at Phoenix, and was already well into a heavy beer buzz. With her loud, low, and unmistakable New York accent, she happily announced that she had walked out of the rental shop shortly after Haley and I did, and never went back. "Fuck that place," she said, loud enough for plenty to hear, with a big, proud smile. I clinked my beer against hers, and then ordered a round of congratulatory Jamie shots for her, Ray and myself. As soon as the fire was down our hatches, Ray ordered a follow up round of Jager shots, and told the bartender to put it all on his tab. Thanks, Ray! When the shots were poured, Leigh bumped my chair and I spilled half of my shot onto my arm, and she quickly and instinctively leaned in and licked it off, to which I made some off-color joke about dumping the rest of it, too. I was starting to feel drunk.

The bar closed shortly thereafter, with all three of us trying at least twice apiece to get one last round. With the lights turned up and the bartenders pushing us towards the door, we all retreated together and walked towards Ray's condo, up the stairs and about a hundred yards from the Phoenix's front door. There were about five or six people passed out on the couch and living room floor, so Ray, Leigh and I all went into his room to take bong hits and ride out our collective whiskey buzz without disturbing the others.

....more later.

Booze, Drugs, Guns, & Gravestones (It Must Be Paddy's Week!)

2008-03-19T23:07:00.023-04:00

As per usual, the madness began long before the Seventeenth, with Paddy's Week coming to a crashing close on The Day Itself with a strange and magnificent party that cannot and will not ever be matched, for better or for worse, and a moonlit and unaccompanied trudge through three separate, snow-packed cemeteries, bottle in hand, in search of four different gravestones. This, of course, was Monday night, St. Patrick's Day, after work and following a smoke-filled Paddy's Weekend that was packed with so many separate barrelrolls and side stories that I can only hope to remember them long enough to write about, because if I don't write it down, these stories will surely be gone forever. Then again, that may be a good thing.

The previous week was a big one at work, as we released the first and much-anticipated 30 Barrel batch of Red on Tuesday the 11th, just in time for it to be in bars and online for Paddy's Day. It was also the last week of our "seven-in-six" schedule, which meant that we would finally be getting our weekends back despite never touching our goal of building up an inventory of beer; simply put, the more we made, the more we sold, and it's going to be a while before supply catches up to demand. Hence the new brewhouse we're looking at, but more on that as it develops...

The rest of the week rolled on as usual, with me filling kegs, cleaning tanks, taking gravity readings and "sampling" beer all day (the release of The Red significantly bumped our daily samplings), and on Thursday I drove to Waitsfield to break oysters and shake martinis at The Pub. We had a good dinner rush but things slowed fast, and I was back in Burlington long before midnight. Friday, it was up again early and back to The Brewery, for another quick yet monotonous day of clamps, gaskets, hoses and chemicals, followed by an early afternoon social of beer and talk while watching the clock push on towards the end of the shift. With mild yet steady beer buzzes abound, we ended the day by dumping bins of spent grain into Roger The Farmer's trailer, just as we do twice every week, rain, snow, shine or otherwise.

Friday night, after a shower, change of clothes and a couple solid hours of downtime, I headed into Burlington to catch The Dead Sessions at Metronome, featuring the Turkey Bouillon Mafia and a whole host of friends, both on stage and off. As the music started and the room quickly filled, I saw close to a hundred familiar faces and exchanged almost as many hugs and hellos, clinking drinks with everyone all night long. With payday still a week away and the last check almost completely spent, I was sticking with PBR pounders all night, which to my chagrin were suddenly three dollars each, up from a lifetime plateau of two-fifty.

Friday night also marked the Grand Opening of "The New Nectar's" downstairs, ending their week of closure and renovations to the restaurant side. The bar had stayed open and unchanged, but the restaurant had been completely changed over, with new seats and tables, new faux-walls and a bigger archway into the bar, and an overwhelming sense of Change; for better or for worse, Nectar's has become a whole new french fry joint. But it's still my favorite french fry joint, even if they did jack the price of Peebers and discontinue my turkey reuben on rye, and I will continue spending my paychecks there for as long as I live in Burlington.

As the night progressed, I ran back and forth between the Dead Sessions upstairs and Tommy Coggio and the Nerbaks downtairs, often sneaking my Peebers with me. By midnight I was too drunk to negotiate the stairs, and was feeling The Mafia way more than The Nerbaks anyway. The bar soon ran out of PBR so I upgraded to Long Trail, and started shooting the shit with my friend Taper Dan, who was clearly just as buzzed as I. Having used to live in The Kingdom and sharing a very similar live music addiction to my own, conversation between us comes easily, and usually revolves closely around upcoming shows or ones recently past. We also both recently started working for small yet prestigious breweries in the area, which opened up a whole new world of drunken discussion that neither of us will likely ever remember.

The one thing that did stick, though, was his suggestion to hit up Parima the next night and see Japhy Ryder. I hadn't seen them since their ultra-intimate show at Sugarbush on New Years, and figured that a Saturday night at a Thai restaurant would be as good a follow up as any. I bought Dan a Long Trail and said I'd see him at Parima, and then pushed my way up into the crowd to drunkenly dance to The Mafia as they ran through their last few numbers of Dead classics. During Stella Blue, at the tail end of the second set, I was up front and shaking what I've got when the starry-eyed college girl in front of me pushed back and started to grind up against me. I played along and ground back, and before the end of the song she turned around and stared at me with blank, empty eyes, and then leaned forward for a kiss. By the time the band had rolled into US Blues, another drunken blonde came along and pulled my new friend away from me, and I could tell by the look I got from both that my new friend had clearly thought I was someone else. They quickly disappeared back towards the bar while I stayed up front with my drunken groove, and I haven't seen either of them since. I wonder if they even remember....

When the band stopped at 2, I fell out of the bar along with everyone else and then foolishly drove home. Saturday morning I had to work at 8, which would be the last Saturday in many that I would be required to come in. I pushed my way through an eight-hour hangover and was home and asleep by 5, with my alarm set for 7. By 8, I was back downtown and back at Nectar's, sitting in the upstairs office with talent-buyer Alex as he searched his computer for the file to print out a copy of last night's poster for me. After about twenty minutes of searching, we mutually gave up, and he said that he'd email me when he found it.

I left Nectar's and headed to New World Tortilla for a burrito and Vitamin Water, then ran across the street to Parima for Japhy and a Guinness. The bartender was zealously eager to show me the new "Guinness surger" they had, and proceeded to pour a flat pint into a glass and then place it on an electronic pad that somehow zapped nitrogen through the glass to cloud the beer and start the cascade process via electricity. The process thoroughly weirded me out and the pint subsequently tasted a little off, so I quickly finished it and then switched over to a local amber for the remainder of the night.

I sat and drank and shot the shit with Will, Pat, Jay and Jeremy for a while, trying subtly to get them to book another gig at The Pub. Every time they've played there thus far, the music has been fantastic and the acoustics as though the room was built specifically for their band, but alas each of those shows also provided a near-null audience, and hardly any money for the band. They also have the luck of always playing there on the night of a really heavy storm, which translates to a really heavy drive back to Burlington afterwards. Thus being so, none of the four were quick to show excitement about booking another night, and so my work continues.

When they started playing at 10, tip-toeing through some brand-new instrumentals and stomping through old ones, I sat by myself and marveled at how underrated these guys really are. When I got up for another beer, I started chatting with another friend and fan of their, who clearly shared the same notions as I about this band. The conversation quickly spilled over into other bands and music, and eventually to festivals, which he said is the topic of a book he's been writing and is hopefully about to finish. He asked for my number and said he wanted to "interview" me for the book, and get some good stories regarding my experiences at Vibes, Mt. Jam, Big Cypress and the rest, but as of yet I haven't heard anything back from him, and I'm willing to bet that he was simply too drunk to remember. So it goes.

I sat back down and saw Taper Dan across the room, sitting alone and looking far more haggard than myself. I went over to say hello, and watched as he painfully pushed through a half dozen wings and a ginger ale, clearly still struggling with the ramifications of an earlier hangover. He draped his cloth napkin over the remains on his plate as though he were covering a body, said that he wasn't going to make it, and then left after fewer than three songs. I stayed and drank for the duration of the setbreak, and then I too left and headed towards Nectar's, hungry for louder music and a more vibrant scene.

I made it only as far as the top of Church before getting sidetracked, when I heard a voice squeak out of the dark doorway of one of the long-closed shops, saying the word "mushies" and nothing more. I stopped and looked towards the voice, and saw a skinny blonde kid of about 20 push his way out into the light.

"You have some, or you're looking for some?" I asked, cynically.

"I have some." He paused. "Well, kinda. I know where to get some."

"That's a lot different than having some. You're not a cop, are you?"

"No. are you?"

"Absolutely not."

"Okay, good. So do you want to get some mushrooms?"

"I don't know. What's the story?"

He went on to tell me that he had just arrived in Burlington via bus from Springfield, after getting kicked out of rehab for refusing to take his meds. Ironic, no? He wouldn't say what he was rehabbing from, but I immediately and accurately predicted crack, which he would later confirm to be the case. He said that a friend of his had a half-ounce of mushrooms to get rid of, at forty bucks a slice, but that I could probably get a deal because said friend needed quick money to pick up a few more rocks.

"I bet you can get the whole half for a hundred," he said with a sketchy little grin. "If not eighty."

I said that if he could get me a half ounce for eighty bucks that I'd hit up an ATM and walk with him, otherwise I was going to Nectar's to get drunk. Using my cell phone, he quickly called his friend and said that he had an "old friend here" who wanted the boomers, but couldn't get him to dip below a hundred. With no further discussion about the matter, he hung up and told me to find the nearest ATM, because if I showed up with $80 cash there would be no way his friend could say no.

"He's so lit up on crack right now that he can't possibly refuse your money. Trust me, I know this guy."

I figured it was worth the gamble, and the two of us walked down Bank Street to the surcharge free ATM near the back entrance to the mall, then walked together in the rain down Pine towards his friend's house on Marble. Without having to push at all, he was quick to offer up that his motive to sell drugs for his friend was to hopefully be able to eat a few small mushrooms for free. I assured him that if he could indeed get me the whole bag for eighty dollars that I would throw a few his way, and that I'd eat a few as well and hang out with him for the night.

I think his name was Chris, which hardly matters now, but when we got to his friend's house we had to pretend to be longtime friends and cohorts; drug-dealers high on crack, apparently, aren't too keen on strangers coming over to visit. Within ten minutes, I had bought the entire half-ounce for eighty dollars, and Chris and I had eaten a couple caps and stems each. We sat back and waited, smoking someone else's pot from my green glass onie while the two other kids in the room were forming makeshift pipes out of tinfoil and tearing through their small gray rock as fast as they could. The room was soon filled with a mixture of smoke, and all straight lines had begun to wiggle. Business time was over, and I told Chris that I was headed back towards the bars.

Within a few minutes, the two of us were walking back up Pine, with Chris being very loud and vocal about how hard he was tripping. I was certainly feeling the buzz but still had full control, but when he stopped to tell a tall, dark stranger that he had eaten more mushrooms than he could count, I knew that we would soon have to part ways. We turned onto Main and headed up towards The Flynn, and when Chris saw the plethora of BPD cruisers that are always parked on this block on late Friday nights, he was immediately swept with The Fear and conspicuously hunched over and scurried into Manhattan Pizza. When the door closed behind him, I tipped my hat and walked onward, knowing full well that MP was about to close, and that he would certainly not be allowed to stay.

I felt bad, but never looked back. Sadly, I will never know how his end of the story finished that night, but I sure am glad that I got to have had a peek at at least part of it, and I sure am thankful to have enough mushrooms to get me through mud season. After the two of us parted ways, I continued to wander the quiet streets of Burlington until about three, when I tapped on the passenger's side window of a cab and asked for a ride home. I'm sure that I could have driven, but in all honestly, I simply didn't want to.

The next morning, I was up at 10 and immediately packed my laptop into a bag and walked downtown to retrieve my car. I spent two hours at Dobra, writing about nothing and sipping on a mate gourd, and then drove to my brother's house in Milton for corned beef and cabbage. After too much food and just enough Guinness, I bid them adieu, and was home and asleep long before it was even dark. I had to work in the morning, and being The Day Itself, I knew that it would be filled with lots of beer and shenanigans, not the least of which would be at Wardy's Party in Eden that night.

Work was standard, with all of us finishing up the day with a few extra pints of The Red, and I left at 3 with a growler full of both Red and Amber. Without even stopping at home for a change of clothes, I drove straight to Eden, and to Ward's new house upon a foundation that I helped him dig the summer before last. It was the first time I had seen the place since it had become more than a series of concrete basement walls, and I was immediately very comfortable and impressed. Wardy, as spastic as bipolar as he is, is a man who truly and fully sticks to his will, and when he said that he was going to build a big, grand house, I knew that such would be the case, and so it was.

I walked in with a growler in each hand, and was immediately accosted by Wardy. He was clutching a half-full bottle of Cuervo Silver and had a clear and evident tequila buzz in his eyes, and demanded that I take a pull from his bottle before being allowed inside. I was quick to appease, and then walked in to join everyone else at the kitchen table. My two brothers were there, along with Uncle Pat and my brother's friend John, whom he works with at the Post Office. The Pogues were blasting from the small cd player on the counter and the table was covered with cards, bottles and various sized piles of money, and I immediately changed in a ten for quarters and sat down to join in the game.

We played a few rounds of straight-seven, and quickly plowed through the growler of Red. Before opening The Amber, though, we all took a walk upstairs to the master-bathroom, the only room in the house where Ward allowed us smoke, with cigarettes being barred completely. As soon as we were all plenty red-eyed (John and Uncle Pat sat this session out), Ward disappeared into the basement, obviously up to no good and in search of a reaction. There was suddenly a loud and thunderous rumble from below our feet, and there was no doubt in the house that Tequilla Drunk Wardy had just fired up his custom/homemade Sportster from the early 80s, which was packed away somewhere deep in his heavily-cluttered basement.

All of us ran down to see, and Jerry, a fellow Harley owner, was clearly the most excited. The two of them began shouting at each other over the rumble, and I only vaguely make out something about a new racing clutch. Jerry, with a look not unlike an excited Retriever, stood in front of the bike and pushed forward on the handlebars, with Ward revving the engine even more before releasing the brake, and filling the entire basement with blue smoke and that sweet mixture of exhaust and burnt rubber. Smoke detectors upstairs starting going off in staggered unison, and I was the first to run up and deactivate them. As soon as I pushed their buttons, though, they would go off again, so I gave up and started opening windows instead.

The house was quite large and equipped with close to a dozen smoke detectors, and every single one of them blared the whole rest of the time I was there. I would love to say that I quickly got used to it, but that was hardly the case, and even by turning up The Pogues there was no escape from the piercing buzz. We all tried our best to forget about it, though, and sat down to play more cards. After fewer than two rounds of one-on-one black jack, Wardy again got distracted, and again disappeared with his bottle of Silver. Giving it little though, we continued to play until he bounced back into the kitchen, sans bottle, but brandishing instead a .380 automatic and a half-box of rounds.

He mumbled something about having to save a clip's worth for the boyfriend of his current crush, and then we all went outside to squeeze off about a dozen rounds each at one of the signs on his road. When the box was empty, we all came in to drink, smoke and gamble some more, and every single one of the smoke detectors were still beeping loudly. The growler of Amber kicked just before darkness had set in, and I announced to all that I would be leaving. Unlike everyone else who was there, I had yet to complete the Stones Tour, which had become a very important Paddy's Day tradition in our family.

Referred to also as "Drinks on the Rocks," the Stone's Tour is our yearly trek to the graves of my father, my grandmother and two of my cousins, all of whom are buried within ten miles of each other, at three different cemeteries. My mother, two brothers and I usually make the rounds together and early, along with whomever wants or cares to tag along (Wardy is a yearly regular). We usually start at my dad's stone and crack open a bottle of Bailey's, passing it around and officially starting out Paddy's Day drinking. From there we visit our grandmother and then our cousins, and then move on to wherever the day brings us. This year, however, they had all gone without me, forcing me to end my night on The Rocks rather than begin it, and to do so alone.

I grabbed the half-full bottle of Bailey's from the kitchen counter and said goodbye, with Uncle Pat asking if I'd give him a ride home. I said yes, of course and without hesitation, and then left the party before it got any later, and before things started to get weird. I dropped Patsy off and went in for a quick nip with him and my Aunt Joan, and then drove back towards Hyde Park and started The Tour at my grandmother's stone. The moon was bright enough that I didn't need a flashlight and the snow hard enough that I didn't need my Tubbs, and being alone in grave yards this late at night didn't feel nearly as creepy or dark as I imagined that it would. The only evidence of any recent visitors to either of the cemeteries were there foot tracks of Mom and my Brothers before me, all of which eliminated my need to actually search out any of the four stones.
I finished up The Tour at my dad's stone in Morrisville, and then tucked the near-empty bottle of Bailey's in the back seat and headed west towards Burlington. By the time I got into town, I was ready for another drink, so I grabbed a prime parking spot in front of Nectar's and went in to see if The Red was on tap yet. Unfortunately it was not, so I had a Guinness instead and sat at the heavily vacant bar and listened to some band called Silent Mind play a number of covers old and new, with me fulling believing their act that they were infact from Ireland, and in The States specifically to play at Nectar's on Paddy's Day. How cool, I thought. How cool.

As the clock hit midnight and the calendar rolled over to March 18th, Paddy's Week had officially come to an end, and so had I. I paid my tab and headed out to my car, knowing full well that work was going to come early in the morning, and that it would indeed be another long day. Such is the price I pay, though, when such is the life I live...

Turkey Bouillon Mafia Presents...
"Dead Sessions" March 14, 2008. Club Metronome, Burlington.

The Band:
Benny Yurco - guitar
Adam King - keyboards
Dave Diamond - guitar
David Hyman - bass
Trevor Ainsworth - drums
Steve Hadeka - drums
Christina Durfee - vocals
*Dave Grippo - alto sax
**Brian Wade - guitar
***Kevin Shapiro - drums

(Set I)
Viola Lee Blues
Jack Straw
Crazy Fingers
Sugaree
Help On The Way > Slipknot! >
Franklin's Tower
They Love Each Other
Mississippi Half-Step
Let It Grow

(Set II)
Shakedown Street*
Playin' In The Band** >
The Wheel** >
Playin' In The Band
High Time
Tennessee Jed***
St. Stephen >
Not Fade Away
Big River
Stella Blue
U.S. Blues
(Encore)
Might As Well

Daylight Saved

2008-03-16T15:46:00.004-04:00

Sunday began my first two-day “weekend” in almost a month, and my plan was to not make plans. It was also the first day since October without Daylight Savings, a man-made creation of convenience that amends the calendar to our liking--much like a Leap Year--and shows just how easy it is to manipulate time. Here and now, in March 2008, changing time is but the least of what we can do, on so many different levels, but I digress. With Sunday being our first day back on real time, so to speak, I didn’t feel bad about sleeping until one, because one was really noon, sort of, which is still fairly early for what was essentially my Saturday morning; clocks and calendars in my world are clearly obsolete. I’ve stopped wearing my watch everyday like a nuisance appendage demanding attention, and my 2008 appointment book is already long outdated, so living my life day by day and minute to minute is quite literally the best I can do, and the best that I can hope for. So it goes.

When I got out of bed on Sunday, I crawled into my dirty Carhartts from work the day before, pulled my black Nibus hoodie over whatever t-shirt I had slept in. I wrapped my blue Colombia ski parka over that, and went downstairs to start chiseling away at the layered glaze of ice on my car. Burlington and beyond was hit hard Friday night and into Saturday with a nasty ice storm, with wet rain falling onto sub-cold surfaces and freezing on impact, shellacking everything it touched with a heavy coat of smooth, clean ice. Trees bent and broke, power was cut and travel wasn’t without heavy trepidation, and the whole beautiful mess greatly resembled The Ice Storm of 1998 here in Vermont, only on a much smaller scale; the ice ten years ago wiped out the whole state for upwards of a week, whereas this ice only hit the Champlain coastline and a few miles in, and at worst slowed things down for a day. It still left its mark, though, both figuratively and quite literally indeed, with a solid inch of ice coated around everything, and a lot of small trees weighed down enough for their apexes to touch the ground, and good god was it beautiful.

I made my way through the ice and into the front seat of my car, and I started it up and let it run while I crawled back out and scraped defiantly at the windshield, to little avail, and couldn’t help but picture Bill Macy’s character in Fargo. Bill actually lives here in Vermont, just down the unpaved road from my friend Timmy Higgins in fact, but I digress, and appologize. Rather than one solid layer of breakable ice encrusted over my car, as is usually the case, this particular day offered many thin layers of solidified rainwater infused into and on top of one another, creating a bulletproof shield of frozen armor around my entire car. I scraped for a solid ten minutes before I managed to break through and open up a hole the size of my hand, and decided to give up with that and let the defrost blast on it from the inside. I cranked the heat and it opened up the small hole just as expected, but five minutes later when I heard a small and subtle ‘snap,’ I cringed and knew exactly what had happened. My first though, of course, was how happy I was to have gotten that inspection sticker when I did.

You would think I would have known better than to mix hot air and cold glass, or vice versa, because the day before at work I did the exact same thing, only the exact opposite, while cleaning out an old growler I had planned to refill with beer. I filled it with hot water and caustic, let it sit all day, and just before I left I dumped it out and rinsed it aggressively and excessively with 180 degree water. Not wanting to fill a clean, hot growler with clean, cold beer, I ran some cold water over it to cool it down, and heard that same delicate snap that I would hear again the next morning from my windshield. Bummer of a weekend indeed. When the sky and weather are as cold and nasty as they have been these past few weeks, though, one has to expect a little broken glass, and some heavy trees, to boot.

So now it’s Monday, and the ice has mostly melted and what’s left is dripping loud and fast. My ceiling still has noticeable water damage from where it leaked by the skylight, and my box of clean clothes that the sheetrock-laced rainwater dripped on still have a dried white residue splashed all over them. My windshield also still has a big U-shaped cracked across the bottom and up both sides that resembles a wide, sardonic grin, and I wasn't able to bring home any free beer because I broke my only growler. My first two-day “weekend” in nearly a month and the only real accomplishments in my world were nature’s destruction of my own valued property, and my own self-deprivation of the beer I needed to cope with it all. So it goes, I guess, and go it shall, just as it has all along, but christ almighty I hope I never run out of beer again.

Much like my windshield, the first two weeks of March have been frosty and cracked as well. I’ve already seen a month’s worth of good live music, saw more than one great movie, dunked my head in the murky waters of politics and then somehow ended up in Ticonderoga, New York behind the wheel of a nearly-stolen car, with the front end buried in a snow bank and with a town cop spotlighting us from behind. That was the same day I saw There Will Be Blood, and the same day I made phone calls from the Obama office; some would call that a big day.

This all happened on a Sunday, the second day of the month. The night before, Saturday, I went down to The Skinny Pancake to drink beer and hear Hunter Robertson (think: a thirty year old longhair with a voice that sounds eighty, who has Robert Hunter’s grace, Hunter Thompson’s grit, and Tom Hunter’s benevolence, only with a voice and banjo instead of cash and charity, and a vintage sound that’s impossible to walk away from), and got home much later than I had planned. Sunday morning I worked as usual, from 7-3, filling kegs, cleaning the tank, starting the transfer, pressurizing the next day’s kegs and then cleaning the fermenter, only far more tired and beat up than usual.

After work, I swung by the Obama office on North Ave to grab a few buttons and stickers, and saw a couple kids from the campaign that I had met the previous Tuesday at Honky Tonk. I impulsively decided to sacrifice the next two hours and grab a seat, a cell phone, and a list of registered Vermont Democrats, and started my first ever political phone canvas. I started with page one, logically enough, and dove right in, face first and with my shoes still on, and called about sixty different VT Dems, delivering the exact same line to each and every one of them.

Hi. My name is Sean and I’m calling from the Obama office here in Burlington, and I was just wondering if you’ve voted yet, or if you’re going to wait until Tuesday. [Pause] Do you mind if I ask who you’re going to be supporting on Tuesday? [Pause] That’s great. So you’ll definitely be supporting Senator Obama on Tuesday? [Pause] Excellent. Any chance you’d be interested in volunteering a little bit of your time between now and then? [Pause] I completely understand, but as long as you get out there and support Obama on Tuesday, then that’s all that really matters. Thank you, [name]. Have a nice day.

Most of the people I called were in either Johnson or Eden, and most were enthusiastic Obama supporters. We were told beforehand to use the word “support” instead of “vote,” because it softens the blow to the person on the other end, and makes the invasive phone call sound a little less like part of the political machine it really is. I had a few people refuse to discuss the matter with me, or just hang without saying a word, and one guy who said that he won’t tell me who he is going to vote for, but that he’s been strongly against the war since the start, and that I was free to speculate from there. It was interesting to see what people had to say, because this was the first primary in many, many cycles where Vermont’s strong vote and feeble delegates would actually matter, and also the most important election in modern history. Also, it was clear long ago and without a doubt that come Town Meeting Day--two days later, on the second Tuesday in March, just like always--his state would go in favor of Barry O over that cold-hearted senator from across the lake, because, and if nothing else, even the most uneducated Vermonter is smarter than your average bear, and we’re all far too busy for bullshit.

After two solid hours in a makeshift cubicle and on someone else’s cell phone, talking politics with a bunch of people I’ll never meet, I left Camp VT Obama, but still never got my stickers or button. I went home just long enough to change my clothes and grab my weed, and then drove down the road a piece to Cinema Nine, behind the McDonalds on Shelburne Road, with twenty minutes to spare before the movie started. I smoked a quick bowl in my car and then went in by myself, got one ticket, a medium popcorn, and large pack of Twizzlers to accompany the Mountain Dew I was smuggling in through my jacket, and then sat alone and watched one of the best movies I’d seen in a long, long time. There Will Be Blood definitely deserved all the awards it won, and it was certainly worth the weight of its hype; Daniel Day Lewis, you sure pick ‘em good.

After the movie, I came home seemingly for the night, but realized that I didn’t have any beer but sure as shit wanted one. It was too late to shoot over to Price Chopper for a six pack (Vermont Law prohibits the sale of alcohol after 11:45pm), so I put on some clean clothes and drove around the bend to Franny O’s, where I knew I would find at least another solid hour of service and beer, and hopefully a little interesting talk as well. But, at the very least, there'd be beer.

There were two other people at the bar when I got there, plus Bartender Mike. One of the two was my age, dressed in a collared white shirt, backwards white-on-white Yankees hat and an over zealously manicured pencil-line beard that it made it impossible to take anything he said seriously. The other was about a dozen or so years my elder, hard-worked and devoid of a front tooth, and clearly in the midst of a Silver Bullet blackout. I pulled up a stool on the far end of their conversation and ordered a Hibernator, and quietly eavesdropped as this FedEx driver and out of work trucker talked deeply and loudly about nothing at all, but as though they had been friends for twenty years; I would learn shortly that they had just met that night. When Collared Shirt got up to go feed quarters into the box and play some really bad Top 40 for all to enjoy, Jessika walked in and grabbed a seat between Tooth and myself, as we were the only signs of life in the entire bar; and at 1:10 on a Monday morning, I guess that's respectively so. Cheers, my friend. Have a seat.

None of us knew Jessika, except for Mike, and she didn’t know us. So, bartender aside, the scene is set with four complete strangers at a dive bar just off the highway in South Burlington, with just under an hour of Sunday night drinking left before Mikey has to close shop. Drink lots and drink fast, kids, so that’s exactly what we did. Tooth and Shirt started buying rounds for everyone, and in the hour that I was there, I only paid nine dollars for four beers and a pomegranate Smirnoff for Jessika, plus tip. When Mike called last call at 1:50, I had a full pint in my hand and another on the bar, and Jessika said that we should all go to New York, where the bars stay open for another two hours. Tooth, who was still drinking bottles of Coors Light as fast as Mike would let him, was the only one who took her seriously, which is the only reason I played along in the first place.

After some garbled talk and drunken noise while we all finished our drinks, the three of us were suddenly in Tooth’s white Monte Carlo, and on our way to New York. He was sprawled out in the back, mumbling quietly and on the sharp edge of sleep, and I was riding shotgun. Jess, the least drunk of the three, was behind the wheel, driving fast and recklessly down Route 7 with a clear goal in mind. Looking back, I realize now how naïve I was to think that her headstrong mission, as she drove that stranger’s car at 80 miles per hour with a Parliament hanging from her lip and the worst hip-hop imaginable blaring from the speakers, and with a dead gaze on the road and her hands clutching the wheel as though it might actually roll away, was to get one more bottle of Pomegranate Smirnoff. It should have been clear to me from the start that there was an ulterior motive bouncing around in her head, and that she went into Franny O’s that night specifically to steal some poor drunkard’s car--with his full permission and quite possibly with him as well--as happened to be the case that particular Sunday. I, on the other hand, was simply the third-party bystander, taken along not for the proverbial ride, but rather for just a simple journey with two random folks, who happened to be going to Ticonderoga, New York. No harm, as they say, no foul.

By the time we got to Ti, at a few minutes past three, the bars were dark and locked and Tooth was long passed out. As we drove through “downtown” and past the empty pubs, with ne’er a shrug or say-so from Jess, I began to realize that something was off, and that’s when she told me her real reason for “borrowing” Tooth’s car that night. As far as I could decipher from her cigarette-chewing rants that were being drowned out by the loud, awful music, she wanted to go see her ex-boyfriend’s mom, who was pregnant and living in Ti, so the two could hopefully make amends. Apparently, when I mentioned to her at the bar that I had a little bit of pot on me, Jess thought that my pot would be the perfect bridge back to a copasetic relationship with her ex’s mom, for whatever that may possibly have been worth, which is why she orchestrated the whole trip to begin with. Not only was I was supposed to be there, but I quite simply had to be there, or else her scheme would have never worked. Brilliant!

Everything in her loosely drawn blueprints worked out perfectly, except that her ex’s mom wasn’t home, and it looked as though no one had been there all winter. The driveway hadn’t been plowed since long before the last storm, but Jess, driving Tooth’s late-model Monte Carlo and with him passed out in the back, gunned it through the snow anyway, and made it have way through the loop-around drive way before burying the front end in a wet, heavy snow bank. Fuck, we’d better wake up Tooth.

He was luckily in good spirits over the whole ordeal, and immediately got out to help me push. Neither he nor Jess understood the notion of "rocking," and that the car should be slowly eased back and forth and pushed until it’s out. Instead, they both took the "gun it" approach, red-lining the engine and digging the all season radials even farther into the bedrock of ice. Within less than four minutes, it was clear that we were stuck, and that we were fucked. Somehow, though (marijuana?) morale managed to stay high, and we were all in good humor. Then again, it was all too absurd not to.

It was close to four at this point, and when it was clear that the three of us were never going to push ourselves out of that snowy driveway, Jess flipped open her phone with an exaggerated sigh, and called the Ticonderoga Police. When the first cruiser showed up twenty minutes later, I was behind the wheel, red-eyed and deliriously tired, and no doubt with traces of beer still on my breath, and Tooth was in the back making jokes. Jess was sitting shotgun, and noticeably annoyed that the bottom had rotted out on her foolproof plan; the bars were closed, her ex’s mom wasn’t home, and Tooth and I had smoked all of my pot, and now we were stuck in a snow bank with a town cop pulling in behind us, and it was all quite literally her fault.

The temperature was holding steady in the single digits, so the cop never got out of his car. Instead, he and I talked back and forth through open windows and over our respective heater fans, with him never smelling the burnt smoke or stale beer breath, and with us subsequently avoiding all sorts of unwanted trouble. Rather, he said that he would call a tow truck for us, and when I yelled that I had AAA, I wasn’t entirely sure if he had heard me. If not, I told myself loudly inside my own head and for no one else to hear that there was no way that I’m paying a nickel towards the tow, or anything else for that matter. It was Tooth’s car and Jess’ mess, and certainly no concern of mine, and if the shit happened to fall I would have had no qualms with dropping thumb and hitchhiking back to Burlington. That was a big If, though, and I was really hoping that it wouldn’t turn out like that. But regardless, I was ready.

Forty minutes later, the cop returned with a large snow plow in tow, so to speak, and all three of us questioned what would happen next. Mr. Plow backed in behind the Monte Carlo, jumped out with a chain and crawled underneath the car, with the cop again staying inside his heated car; I even got out to watch and feel somewhat involved, but mostly to be out from behind the wheel in case Rosco did decide to come poking and sniffing around. Within seconds, Mr. Plow had the chain hooked onto the car’s frame and was working the other end onto the trailer ball of his truck, and in less than a minute the car was out and free. When I leaned in for the obligatory thank you and handshake, he gave me an uncertain look and asked how we were going to be paying him.

He wanted a hundred dollars for the thirty-six inch pull, but when I handed him my AAA card instead, he gave me a very insincere smile and said that that’ll work, too. I could hear Tooth sigh from the back seat, because all three of us knew that he was the only one with enough cash on him, and that he was quietly prepping himself to hand over a hundred dollar bill to rectify a total stranger’s fuck up. When he saw that my card had covered the tow, he happily volunteered to pay for gas, so I jumped back behind the wheel and drove into town, where we waited until five for the first gas station opened. Then we went to McDonalds together for breakfast.

A half hour and a whole stack of breakfast burritos later, we were all back on the road, and I had apparently been chosen to drive. The car floated like a paper airplane, and with full reign of the Sirius Radio, I didn't mind being chauffeur. Tooth rode shotgun and Jess slept in the back, and it was just past six with the sun peaking up when we got to my car in the Franny O’s parking lot. I shook Jess awake and offered her a ride home, but she insisted on walking, so the three of us went our different ways, with the high likelihood that neither of us will ever see each other again. Then again, this is a small state, and Franny O's is a very small bar.

The next day was Monday on most people's calendars, but for me it was a Sunday. I had planned to spend at least a few hours that day back down at the Obama Office making phone calls, but since I didn't get back from New York until long after the sun had come up, I spent most of the daylight hours at home and in bed, and didn't do much after dark, either. The next morning, Tuesday, I worked my Monday at The Brewery, and then drove straight to the Burlington Electric offices on Pine Street, directly adjacent to the creepy, old General Dynamics building where two of my uncles work. The Electric Company has housed the Ward 5 voting booths for a longer period of time than I can tell you, but I have voted here in every single election since 2003, including the many months that I lived in either The Kingdom or The Valley, but would still happily drive to Burlington and take thirty-five seconds of my time to fill in little black dots.

This year, in 2008, The Biggie was of course to determine The Party's nomination for Presidential Candidate. Because I'm a registered Democrat, I was offered only the choices of Hillary Clinton (Sen. NY), John Edwards (fmr Sen. NC), Barack Obama (Sen. IL), or Other, in that order. I, of course, voted for the man from Illinois, and so did a lot of other Vermonters--almost 92,000 of them, in fact [which, in a state of just over a half million people, is pretty good].

He beat Hillary 59-39, but sadly Vermont's was the only primary he won that day. He lost in Rhode Island 58-40--despite my good friend Spike's door-to-door efforts--which for some reason was the biggest blow for me all day. I was pretty confident that Hillary had Ohio, but equally confident that Barry had Texas, so when he lost all three I somehow took it personally. I talked to Spike that night, and he was just as depressed as I was, but--and as he kept reminding me--at least my state won. But his win in VT only gave him 9 delegates, and also gave another 6 to Hillary, whereas the 54-44 loss in Ohio gave Hillary 74 delegates and Barack 65. His 51-47 loss in Texas still gave him 61 delegates and gave her only 65, and the loss in Rhode Island was still worth 8 for him and 13 for her, so despite his first three losses since Tsunami Tuesday--eleven primaries ago--he still came out with only 15 fewer delegates than her, 158-143, and still held the overall lead. Also, Texas had their state caucus the same night, with Obama winning 56-44, and taking 38 delegates to her 29. So, all said and done, Hillary walked away from our Super Tuesday with only 6 more delegates than Obama, but since then he has come back to win 61-38 in Wyoming (7 delegates to her 5) and 61-37 in Mississippi (19-14), and left the squirrelly bitch splashing around like a skunk in a swimming pool.

The next vote isn't until April 22, when Pennsylvania gets to have her say. With Obama going into the state strong and with an even stronger 16-- lead over Hillary's 14--, one can only imagine the battles that will go down over the next five weeks, and those lucky bastards get a full month of the circus, whereas I had to drive all the way to Manchester last month, just to catch a small piece of the corner; there were no ferris wheels in Vermont, only a few detached carnies, and the thrill-junkies chasing them down.

But alas, those carnies did their jobs and did it well, and Vermont still went for Obama. And even though he didn't come visit us on the trail, I wonder if when the polls closed on March 4 and the results slowly leaked in, and Vermont eventually proved to be the night's only winner, that he thought back to shaking some kid's hand in Manchester, and that kid offering a sincere "Come visit us in Vermont again real soon." Then again, I'm not even sure if he heard me in the first place, but it's still fun to imagine, and imagination comes easy when you've shaken hands with the next president. And besides, in a land and age where we can change the time to better suit our needs, I should certainly be able to imagine what just might be, even if it's not. But it might.

February Review

2008-03-16T15:12:00.003-04:00

On both Julian and Gregorian calendars, February is always the shortest month of the year. Even with the extra day that it had strapped to its back this and every other leap year, it always falls short of the other eleven, but at the same time it always goes so goddamn slow. Being at the tail end of winter, during the coldest and darkest time of the year, February used to mark the end of the calendar year rather than the beginning, and was in fact a supplement to the old ten-month calendar along with it's close friend January. The primary use of a written calendar was originally as an agricultural timetable, and since there was no need for such a timetable during this cold and dark time of year, “winter” was the slow and monthless period between December and March when little happened outside the home, and far less happened within. The calendar year thus began with the birth of spring on the first of March, when farming resumed as usual and when a calendar was once again a necessary tool. With a full cycle coming to consist of 365 days, though, plus one every fourth “leap” year, that monthless period had to be solidified, and thus the birth of January and February, with February getting the shaft with only 28 days, and so it has gone for many calendars since, for anything that that may be worth.

February remained at the end of the year until the time of the Roman Decemvirs, when the last day of December was officially declared the end of the year, along with many other relevant declarations. As this sudden and apparently significant change shows, and as one must not forget, a year only lasts as long as the cycle of twelve moons, and that the entire concept of calendars and “leap” years are created entirely by man, and thus only half real at best. That being said, the month of February on my calendar was a crash-filled speed race, and I’m very happy to report that it is now over.

With the demand at work still far outweighing the possible supply, we set our goal to brew and package seven weeks worth of beer over the course of six, from February first until the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day. Hence the Pub Crawl last month, I suppose, to butter us all up before shoving us in the oven. So instead of the usual Monday through Friday schedule, it was every single day and full steam ahead, with a random and occasional one-day weekend thrown in for each of us whenever it was feasible. I managed to get two Fridays off in a row, and I used both to go skiing; with the free corporate tickets that The Brewery got from Sugarbush and Stowe, respectively, and of course. The weather and skies were clear both days and the snow and trails were both perfect and empty, and if those happen to be the only two days I get out this season, then I sure as shit picked two good ones. I also still have two tickets to Mad River in my wallet from my other job, and an unlimited stack for Stowe and The Bush in The Boss' office, so as long as the snow and cold hold out until after Paddy’s Day, I should be all set for a triple crown of good, free skiing. Now if only I could get a free ticket for Burke…

Besides a lot of work and a couple quick affairs with ski hills, I also got to see a shit ton of good music last month, whatever and how much a shit ton may be. Since I moved, I’ve gone to every single Honky Tonk Session on Tuesdays at Radio Bean, and with the possible exception of the Starline Rhythm Boys, saw some of the best Waylon, Johnny, Elvis and Merle covers anywhere in the North East. I would usually meet up with my friends Christina and Casey, and we all drink Ridge Runners and play Trivial Pursuit to candle light while grooving to whatever band of locals Brett Hughes has thrown together that particular week. One week Tyler Bolles would be on upright bass and Mike Gordon on upright piano, and a week later Chris Michetti will be on electric guitar, with Jared Slomoff on keys and Led Loco’s Jeremy Frederick on drums, opening the second set with a honky tonk “Whole Lotta Love” per my request for Zeppelin. It’s definitely been a fun weekly tradition, and the gem gets a little more polished every week, yet still stays perfectly rough and dirty on the edges. Unfortunately, the room also gets a little more crowded each week, and the line outdoors a little bit longer. Honky Tonk Tuesday, sadly, is no longer a quiet secret, but I guess that happens with all good music, especially in a town like Burlington.

I got to see a lot of other good music in February, too. I saw Seth Yacovone three times and the Old Silver Band twice, on consecutive nights, with the second of the two being a Saturday in a Waitsfield movie theater. Earlier that night, Seth played a mile down the road at The Pub, where I was bartending and getting paid good money to pour drinks and groove to the loudest acoustic guitar and gravel voice for many, many miles. I also saw the Old Silver Band the night before, Friday, at Club Metronome in Burlington. I was on a quasi-date with this girl named Meagan, whom I had met about a week prior while skiing my first outing of the year at Sugarbush. The two of us happened to be taking a break between runs at the same time around noon, and we both happened be spending said breaks in the bar for a quick and dirty liquid lunch. Either luck or misfortune sat the two of us next to one another, and quick conversation taught that both lived in Burlington. We exchanged numbers and skied the rest of the day together, until just before last lift at four, and I was incredibly happy with the performance of both my feet and my knees, as the two of us were aggressively hitting diamonds by day’s end.

So aside from our few runs at Sugarbush together, our first and thus far only date has been this one, where we went to The Needs for some beer and then Metronome for live music. We unexpectedly stumbled onto the Old Silver Band, and got to see a great set of high energy and slightly offensive bluegrass that really, really wanted to be rock and roll. OSB’s late-night show on Saturday at the movie theater, the night after Metronome, was apparently an open psychedelic party, with a hi-def video about insects on the theater screen behind the band and free mushroom chocolates for anyone who knew enough to ask. The band is usually a guitar-mandolin duo that plays and covers the most non-bluegrass music imaginable, but at the theater that night they announced through both their mouths and oreo cookie eyes that for at least that one night, they had indeed become a “jamband\,” and brought out a host of friends to prove the point. They had a drummer and some dude on upright bass, and Gordon Stone even sat in on pedal steel, and they did in fact jam their way through the set until they shamelessly stopped around one, an hour short of when they could and should have. They kept talking about how fucked up the mushrooms had made them, and it was clear that many in the crowd shared the same sentiment, so I can’t blame them, and I really wished I was right there with them, but god damn them for denying me another full hour of full on rock, mandolin and upright or any otherwise. This shit was HOT.

I showed up long after midnight, though, after a long night at work, so it was probably for the best. We were slammed at The Pub with tourists for dinner, who were all in Vermont skiing with their obnoxious kids and families for President’s Week, and then with local drunks stopping in to see Seth play from eight until eleven. By I got to The Theater, I was too tired to even think about the free chocolate candy, so I opted instead for a four dollar stout. Mostly, though, I declined because I had to be at work in Burlington in fewer than eight hours, but if that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have left that theater until long after the moon had set and Sunday was upon us.

I knew about a third of the people at the theater that night, and about a third of them were on Cloud Nine; the others were just drunk. I danced and grooved my way through the most trance-like and almost-bluegrass Snoop Dogg covers until whenever they stopped, and then followed my friend Ray down to The Smokehouse, where some band called Funk Collection was just wrapping up. We each had a quick pint or two there, and then I invited myself to follow him to his condo at Sugarbush, where I could hopefully smoke weed and crash on his couch for a couple hours before driving back to Burlington; I had to work at seven.

I woke up at six-fifty, an hour away from work, and shot like a 12 gauge down the mountain and toward the city, praying that my Hakkapellittas had full control over the snow covered roads. I took German Flats to 17, and made it up past Mad River Glen and over the notch by the tower, and I was coming down the other side when the road gave out from beneath me and I thought for sure that it was all over. I went to make one of the switchback turns down towards _____ and either my tired didn’t grip or my breaks overtly did, but my steering wheel locked and I kept going straight through the curve and mashed hard into a solid brick wall of snow. The hit was hard and my engine was dead long before the car came to a stop, and I thought for sure that the entire front end was fucked. When I got out I expected to see and smell burning coolant everywhere atop the crushed metal, but things looked okay and everything that wasn’t buried in ice and snow seemed to be in tact.

What made this crash all the more ironic was that it happened the morning of the Daytona 500, which I was to go watch in my brother’s basement and on his new big screen after work. Maybe it was coincidence or maybe it really was because I yearned to see 200 mile per hour crashes on a twenty inch TV, but I couldn’t help but feel a couple small slaps in the head from dear old Mother Karma, and thank Her and whomever else that my car looked thus far okay.

I knew without looking that my phone wouldn’t work here in the snowbank, and that I wouldn’t be able to call and tell work that I’d be late anymore than I’d be able to push myself out, but before the anxiety of it all even started to appear, a guy in a Honda mini-SUV came by and stopped, asking if I want a pull.

“I’ve got a chain in the back,” he said, “which will sure beat the hell out of pushing.”

I insistently agreed, and he pulled in behind my car then jumped out with a ten foot chain, hook on either end. Four minutes, a thank you and a handshake later, I was back on the road, with no noticeable damage done to any part of old black Peter. It somehow didn’t seem right, but it really was. Everything was okay. Only 66,000 more miles until this pearl hits a quarter million miles, which is my ultimate goal for that $2,000 gem, and I’m not going to let a snowbank or icy mountainside stop me. I somehow managed to be only forty-five minutes late for work, and being that it was a Sunday and knowing that I worked late the night before, everyone was sympathetic, had gotten my station set up for me, and we all carried on as usual. No hard feelings. Glad you could make it. Thank you. Cheers. I love my job. I really do.

After work I went to my brother’s house in Milton, where he had a gang of about ten friends in the bar downstairs, playing poker, drinking beer, eating venison chili and watching the race. The mob consisted of postmasters, housewives, unemployed drunks and retired ones, and everyone was well into their respective glow by the time I got there. I stuck around just long enough to watch Ryan Newman win the five hundred mile yawnathon, and then drove straight to Higher Ground to see the Charlie Hunter Trio play another one right behind it. I was so strained by that point that I only made it through the first set, and couldn’t start to imagine drinking another beer. As great as Charlie is, he needed to pick it up a notch for me that night, because I was fading fast, and needed to see some real face-melting solos in order to stick around and get my money’s worth. There were nothing great by setbreak, so I left and no doubt missed a blowtorch of a second set, but I couldn’t hold on, and the twenty-eight bucks I spent that night were hardly worth being spent. I mean no disrespect for Mr. Hunter, but it wasn’t he just wasn’t where I was at that night. I had officially hit the wall, Daytona style, and I needed to go home. Goodnight, folks. DNF. See you in Richmond.

The next day was Monday, and I worked as usual, filling kegs and cleaning tanks, then came home and slept; I did the same again Tuesday. Tuesday night, though, after my nap, I went down to Radio Bean for Honky Tonk Tuesday, with Brett Hughe’s Telecaster the lone guitar that night along with Mike Gordon’s mini-bass, Joe Cleary’s fiddle and Marie Claire’s fingers slapping against the room’s old piano, and some drummer friend of Mike’s whose name I never caught and whose drums never caught me. It was a good Honky Tonk for sure, and since I had the next two days off at The Brewery, I stayed out late, and I drank a lot, which only made it a whole lot better.

The next morning was HST Day. I had the day off so I spent it inside The Kitchen Readings, bouncing all over Burlington while drinking coffee and booze and reading the entire 274 page book about the dearly departed Doctor. That was the same night as the eclipse, and the same night Haley’s cat Felix got out. He got out around midnight, and hasn’t come back; and it’s been cold out. Really cold. After a week, we all pretty much gave up hope, and poor Haley wanted to get another tuxedo kitten and name him Felix. I assured her that that would be a bad idea, and to simply think positive and look forward.

I had the next day off too, Thursday, which I was going to spend skiing, but I pussied out to the cold and slept most of the day instead. I had to work in Waitsfield at The Pub that night, so I slothed around Burlington all day and then showed up early for work anticipating a big crowd, due solely to the killer bluegrass lineup we had booked.

We had Danny Coane from the Starline Rhythm Boys on acoustic guitar, Andy Satcher from the Bluegrass Gospel Project on mandolin, and the one and only Gordon Stone on banjo, and they brought along a friend named John DiSabido and his thumpy upright bass. The band was tight and the music was solid from the start, but for better or for worse there were only about a dozen of us who got to hear and enjoy it. Apparently, though, Gordon was sick as hell and not really enjoying himself, and Danny was all discouraged that the masses who usually show up for the SRB shows were not there tonight. I was there, though, I sure as hell enjoyed myself. I got cut early because the bar was so slow, so I ordered myself a Thai noodle and tofu dish from the kitchen (with zero intent on paying for any of it), and then sank into the leather couch by the fireplace. I ate my tofu and drank several rounds of free Guinness, and then blissed out on the couch for a couple solid hours to some really, really good bluegrass. It's a shame you all missed it.

....more later.

Three Years Without The Doctor

2008-02-21T13:03:00.007-05:00

My car was in the shop all afternoon having the catalytic converter welded and plugged enough for it to pass inspection, and since today was my unofficial Saturday, I had the whole day anything I wanted, so long as driving wasn’t a factor. I decided, then, to spend the day in Burlington and try to do something that I have never done before, and that I would have long thought impossible for me to accomplish: to sit and read an entire book in one day. I’ve never even come close to finishing a book in a day, or even a week, and anything over 35 pages in a single day is a lot of reading. I come from the Nintendo Generation, so one can only expect so much.

After dropping my car off at Duncan’s on St. Paul, I walked in the bitter cold towards Church Street, and spent the next six hours bouncing from coffee houses to bars to tea rooms, loading up on as much Yerba Mate and coffee and beer and pizza as it took to get me through the 273 page book; my attention span needs all the help it can get, and caffeine and alcohol seem to help a lot. I had actually gotten a head start, and read the first sixty pages the night before, and read the other 213 today in 60-page intervals, which timed nicely with two drinks per establishment.

I started out at Muddys for Mate and a multiberry scone, sitting at my favorite table near the counter, and by the time Duncan’s called six hours later to say that my car was again legal, I was holed up in a corner at the Daily Planet, sipping on a Scotch with less than 40 pages to go. I had also hit up the Church Street Tavern for a chicken wrap and a beer and Mr. Mikes for a couple slices and a beer, and in between I went to Uncommon Grounds for free Peaberry and a couple solid hours. After UG I went to Dobra for more mate, but I was out of cash and headed over to the Planet instead, hoping that my friend Minkus would be around. Minkus is my old whiskey buddy from The Valley, and he’s also The Chef who runs the entire kitchen. He apparently has Wednesdays off, though, so I sat alone, reading and drinking moderately. Contently.

It was the first time I had let whiskey touch my lip in many months, and I was essentially breaking a New Years Resolution. Due to the book that I was reading, though, and the nature of the day—specifically, the date, and the faux-holiday that I had created around it—I felt that a Chivas on the rocks with a tall glass of water was not only acceptable, but somehow warranted; it was, after all, Hunter S. Thompson Day, and good god, that Chivas tasted good.

It wasn’t a coincidence that I was drinking Chivas, or that I chose today to read The Kitchen Readings: Untold Stories of Hunter S. Thompson, written by Thompson’s close friends and neighbors Mike Cleverly and Bob Braudis, the latter of whom was also Thompson’s Sheriff. Three years ago today, on February 20, 2005, a wheelchair-bound and agony-stricken Hunter Stockton Thompson wrapped his mouth around the business end of a revolver, and repainted the walls in his kitchen with blood, brain, and little chunks of skull. It no doubt resembled the “shotgun art” that he made and sold (he would hang vials of paint in front of certain “targets,” and then blast them both with number six birdshot), and I’m sure that that is exactly how he wanted to go. On His terms, of course, and with His finger on the trigger, but with a nice report and display.

The Doctor sure picked a rough time to check out, though. I understand that a broken leg and wheelchair immobilized him to the point of insanity, and that his body had given out long before his brain, but I’m still not sure why he picked the 20th of February, and a lot has happened since 2005. By the way, Fidel Castro officially resigned yesterday; kinda big. You missed that one, Doc. Same with the Independence of Kosovo and all the bullshit in Pakistan, not to mention this little presidential race going on here in The States (Obama won Wisconsin and Hawaii, by the way, for ten straight). It's all gotten kinda big, Doc. You’d of loved it, and I sure hope that you’re still watching it all unfold from somewhere, because this is as good as it gets.

I was sipping Chivas at The Planet when Duncan’s called, and they said that my car was once again legal, and that I owed them eighty-five dollars. Fair enough, I though. Fair enough. I walked over and paid in full, and then drove off. I came home and started drinking PBR and finished the book, and then fought with my internet connection and smoked and wrote about it all, taking a break in between to go outside for the last lunar eclipse in almost 3 years. It was too cloudy to see anything, though, so I shrugged it off and came back in to drink, smoke and write, and now I’m going to go pass out and get some much needed sleep. Cheers, goodnight, and happy Hunter S. Thompson Day.

"It never got weird enough for me."
-Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Not Quite Perfect

2008-02-18T00:56:00.012-05:00

Two Sundays ago in Arizona, the New England Patriots took on the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII, and the Pats were the fourteen-point favorites to win. The game was a rematch of the final game of the regular season, when the Pats pulled off a narrow but historic 38-35 win and sealed the envelope on their perfect 16-0 season. Two months later, New England was coming into the Super Bowl still with a perfect record, and all signs pointed towards them becoming the first team since the ’72 Dolphins to sweep an entire season as well as all three postseason games. They would also be the first to go undefeated since the regular season was extended from 14 games to 16 in 1978. The first-season pairing of quarterback Tom Brady and receiver Randy Moss seemed unstoppable and the Patriot’s momentum was as strong as coal-fired train engine, and every single person watching the game had perfection on their mind. It really was the biggest game in the history of American football, if not sports in general, and aside from the 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H, it was the most watched TV event ever. In a single word, it was epic for sure, and this coming from someone who doesn’t give two shits about football in the first place; I just like to see history.

The fact that this was the 42^nd annual Super Bowl as opposed to any other is not to be hastily overlooked. In his book A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams proclaims that 42 is “the Answer to the Ultimate Questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” as it is a composite number and also a sphenic, pentadecagonal, catalan, meandric, open-meandric, harshad, and self number as well. It is also the perfect score at the US and International Math Olympiads, and the combined total of all the dots on a pair of six-sided dice. There are 42 perfect squares formed by the grid on a regulation sized board in the game of Go, 42 eyes on the face cards in a standard deck of cards, 42 holes in the game Connect Four, and 42 territories in the game of Risk. All canines have 42 teeth, there are 42 lines per page in the Gutenberg Bible, 42 gallons per US barrel of oil, and (according to Wikipedia) there are 42 landlocked countries in the world. Baseball great Jackie Robinson wore the number 42, which has since been retired by all Major League teams, Napoleon graduated 42^nd in his class at the Military School of Paris, and Elvis Pressley was 42 when he died; so was his father.

The game began with the Giants calling tails and thus winning the coin toss, and then recording the longest opening drive in Super Bowl history with a 16-play, 77-yard, 10 minute push with four third-down conversions. As strong as their opening drive was, though, the Giants had to settle for a 32-yard field goal, only to be topped by the Pats in the second with a one-yard touchdown, bringing the score at halftime to 7-3, New England. There was no scoring at all in the third, and then the low-score, ho-hum-at-best game finally gave way to what was quite possibly the greatest forth quarter in the history of the sport. With eleven minutes to go in the game, Eli Manning through a 5-yard touchdown pass to David Tyree, and the Giants regained the lead until eight minutes later, when Brady threw a 6-yard pass to Moss and the Pats were back on top 13-10, with an extra point for Stephen Gostkowski’s kick. With less than two minutes left in the game, it looked as though the Pats were on their way to making history when Manning through a 32-yard completion to Tyree, who kept the ball pinned between his helmet and fingertips as he fell to the ground. The Giants ended the 12-play, 83-yard drive with Manning throwing a 13 yard pass to Plaxico Burress, who caught the ball in the end zone and brought the score to 17-14 with 35 seconds to go. The Pats again had possession, with less than a minute to go, but the Giants didn’t allow them to gain a single yard, and with one second to go in the game the Giants retook possession as players, media and fans all crowded the field as though the game was officially over, which, in a sense, it was. The field was then cleared just long enough for Manning to kneel the ball, and with that the New England Patriots became the first undefeated team to lose the Super Bowl since the 1942 Chicago Bears.

Following this biggest upset in football history, the ring-bearing Giants held their victory celebration two days later, the same day as Mardi Gras. “Fat Tuesday,” as it is also commonly known, was also the same day as “Super Tuesday,” with primaries or caucuses being held in 24 states across the country (including the home states of both the Patriots and the Giants, regardless of whether you consider their “home” state New York or New Jersey) to determine who will get the nomination in each of the two major parties for the upcoming Presidential Election. Going into what was quite possibly the biggest day in American Politics thus far, prompting many to instead call it “Tsunami Tuesday,” as the outcome would no doubt change the face of the political landscape forever, there were top running candidates on both sides of the aisle that even the greatest character developing screenwriter in the world couldn’t imagine in his most wildest dreams.

In the GOP, there was the one-term Massachusetts Governor and Mormon extremist Willard “The Devil” Romney, who goes by his less-than-appealing middle name, Mitt, and who uncomfortably reminds me of Rich Tarrant. There was also the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who plays a mean electric bass and whose speeches remind me of Kevin Spacy's monologue in American Beauty, and the Constitution-preaching Senator from Texas Ron Paul who I think shares more than just the initials, physical resemblance and home state of our dear old friend, Ross Perot.

These three contenders, of course, were all going up against the sudden Republican frontrunner John McCain, the 70-something POW Senator from Arizona whose campaign floundered early in the race and was written off as dead long before the first vote was cast in Iowa. Hollywood actor and the former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson had already conceded, as well as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani--who, throughout 2007, I would have bet top dollar on being the Republican nominee. By and by, the entire 2008 GOP race seemed like little more than a bad season of Survivor, with each contestant hungry only for that million dollar prize and 15 minutes of fame, and a quick shot at being on TV.

On the other side of the aisle, only two Democrats were left in a race that would very likely ship its winner off to Washington in 2009. New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton (whose husband, Bill, was the 42^nd President) was leading a tight race with the first-term Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who was 42 years old when he first ran for the Senate and first came into the spotlight of national politics. John Edwards, the former trial lawyer, one-term North Carolina Senator and 2004 candidate for Vice President, dropped out of contention following a poor showing in his home state of South Carolina a week prior, creating a two-way, neck-and-neck race into Super Tuesday between a black man and a white woman; the times, as they say, are a’ changing.

Up to this point, Obama had won in Iowa, then Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada, Obama again in South Carolina, and then Clinton in Florida. But since Florida had moved their primary date ahead of Super Tuesday-- in an apparent attempt at having their vote “count,” and also to draw into the state as much of the candidates’ campaign funds as possible--the Democratic Party had stripped them of all their delegates, which virtually nullified Clinton’s 50-33 victory over Obama. Also, even though she technically won in Nevada, she walked away with only 12 delegates to Obama’s 13, yet she still still held a slight lead over the junior senator from Illinois thanks namely to her last-ditch and teary-eyed victory in New Hampshire back in January.

When Tsunami Tuesday was over and done with, Obama took home victories in 13 states to Clinton’s 8, further strengthening his already-solid momentum (his January reportings for supporter donations topped $32 Million—over a million dollars a day!—whereas Hillary “donated” $5 Million to her own campaign out of her own pocket). Even though the former First Lady won the delegate-heavy states of California (204) and New York (139), Obama’s win in 5 additional “small states” let him walk away from this massively historical day with 847 delegates to her 834, yet Cold Hearted Hillary still held a slight lead in what has become the tightest primary race in modern history, and the greatest sporting event since Super Bowl 42…

As for the Republicans, John McCain took 9 states to Romney’s 7 and Huckabee’s 5, but because the Vietnam War hero claimed all the big states and most of the “medium” ones as well, he walked out of Tuesday with 511 delegates to The Devil’s 176 and Huck’s 147, respectively, as well as a commanding lead in the GOP race. Not only did this all but solidify McCain’s nomination at the Republican Convention, but it also firmly pissed off many a Conservative voter who feels that Johnny McC is far too moderate to represent their party in Washington, with many openly admitting that they would sooner vote for Obama than McCain. So it goes, and go it shall.

In the days following The Tsunami, The Devil officially walked away from the race, saying that if he stayed in any longer, it would only make things easier for both Obama and Hillary, and that he couldn’t let his campaign “be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.” He then went on to say that either of the Democratic candidates would likely turn America into “the France of the 21^st Century,” and on Valentines Day, he publicly endorsed John McCain--sounds like somebody wants to be somebody else’s running mate, eh? As for the Obama/Hillary race, the man from Hawaii has surged out of Super Tuesday to pick up wins in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington and Maine, and the entire Potomac Triple Crown of Maryland, Virginia and DC. Not only do these wins represent a perfect seven-of-seven run over Hillary since The Tsunami, but also the official lead in the race with 1253 delegates to Hillary's 1211, which, of course, is a difference of 42 delegates. Onward now to Wisconsin and Hawaii on the 19th, and then Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont on March 4. Onward, indeed.

Will Work For Beer

2008-02-04T21:57:00.000-05:00

The last thing I remember is Nectar’s, but only barely. I was so blind drunk and far enough into my black out by that point that I can only imagine what I might have done or said, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't puke, and thank god I didn’t piss myself. However, my drunken antics were witnessed only by a couple of close friends, the bar staff, the musician on stage, and every single person I work with, owners included, so I suppose, somehow, like maybe if my mom or my daughter's teacher were there, it could have been worse, but it was still pretty fucking humiliating. Luckily, though, I've been drunk and disorderly in Nectar's countless times, so the staff knows me and wasn't about to kick me out into the cold, and the musician, Seth, is a good friend of mine who's also seen me at my absolute worst, but the coworkers...It’s not so much that they all got to see me belligerently drunk and acting like a retarded circus monkey on angel dust that bothers me, but that they all got to see me that drunk by eight o’clock, when the rest of the town was just starting. Everyone else from work definitely had a heavy beer buzz strapped to their head too, but it was the first time I’d ever hung out with any of them, let alone all of them, and I was the first and only one of us to lose control. Friday night, the first of February, was my one-month anniversary of moving back to Burlington, and the four even-week mark of me working at The Brewery, but far more imperative to this story, it was also the night of the annual Company Pub Crawl for everyone at The Brewery; and crawl we did.

All seven employees, including the two owners, were to meet up early for lunch, and then hit all of our top accounts in Burlington for at least one beer at each. The full intention was to drink as much beer as possible and for all of us to get extremely drunk--on the company’s dime, of course--and to hopefully spread a little fun and nondetrimental publicity for ourselves. There's a chance, though, that I may have fucked that last part up at Nectar's. My only real hope is that nobody else noticed how drunk I was, or at best, wouldn’t remember, but I'm such a self-conscious pessimist regarding my public blackouts that I always assume circus monkey, and quietly pray that my clothes stayed on.

We met up at Reuben James around two for lunch and a couple beers, and drank there until all seven of us had arrived. The second owner/Vice President came up from Connecticut for the occasion, but because Friday also marked Vermont’s first real shitstorm of the year, the roads [and everything else] were glazed with a thick, jagged ice, and his drive to Burlington took nearly twice as long as expected. It was a little before four when he finally showed up, and The Boss quickly payed our collective tab and the seven of us left RJ's and headed towards our next consecutive account. Three Needs, on College Street and just off Church, didn’t open until four, so we went next door to Finnegan’s instead, breaking our set agenda after only one bar. After a couple rounds apiece at Finnegan’s, we went back to The Needs, but the place was suddenly overcrowded with college students for "Duff Hour," and our beer was suddenly no longer on tap, so we moved on as quickly as we had arrived.

We went back down to the Church Street Tavern, where we were greeted upon arrival like a caravan of political heavyweights ('the people from The Brewery are here!'), and we were quickly ushered into a small, private room off from the dining area and immediately served our first round. We each polished off a couple more beers at the tavern, and when I noticed that the “Extreme ESB” from another Vermont brewery was on tap, I got all excited and ordered one. What makes this beer extreme is that it is a one dimensional, full-on hoppy beer that boasts an alcohol volume of eight percent, and packs a punch like a pint of whiskey. Unlike our beer, which is available exclusively on tap, these "Extreme" beers from this rival brewery were once available only in 22 ounce bombers, and this was the first time I had seen one on draft. When I asked the waitress to bring me one, I became the first [and only?] one of us that night to deviate from 'our beer,' and everyone immediately started to give me, the new guy, a whole bunch of shit. "That that alone is grounds for termination," they said, but then laughed it off communally. I did suddenly feel like a douche bag, though, and even somewhat of a double agent, and then began to realize that an "Extreme ESB" at this point could very well send me into oblivion. I immediately regretted my choice, but drank it, smiled, and loved every bit of it nonetheless.

After The Tavern, we either went to RiRa and then Sweetwaters, or else it was the other way around. I think we went to RiRa first, though, because I have a slightly higher recollection of being there, and the drunken photos on my camera didn’t start until Sweetwaters. Whenever I get that drunk and have my camera on me, my Mr. Hyde becomes Mr. Paparazzi, and seems to think that everybody loves to have their picture taken, which in turn makes me look like even more of a douche. Fuck, I need to stop taking that thing out with me.

I remember saying earlier in the night that I wanted to hold off on Nectar’s until after seven, because that’s when the music starts. During lunch at RJ’s, The Boss muttered something along the lines of music being his religion, to which I fully concur, so while I could still speak coherently I suggested that it might be a good idea to save Nectar's for later so that we could all catch some good music. Seth Yacovone, the singer-songwriter-guitarist from Lamoille County who happens to be a friend of mine, plays an acoustic set every Friday at Nectar's from seven until nine, and it seemed logical to me that we should catch his free weekly show as part of our downtown adventure. By the time we got there, though, at a little past seven and only slightly after dark, I was such a drunken puddle that I began yelling out song requests mid-song, and then started singing along to them as though each song were my own. I’m also pretty sure that I began blatantly hitting on one of my coworker’s girlfriends, and anything beyond that is forever lost. I do remember, though, slumping myself into a chair because I knew that I was too drunk to stand, and that’s when the lights went out.

I woke up the next morning on my friend Christina’s couch, but initially had no idea where I was or how I got there. My first thought was that I had staggered into some random house downtown and flopped down on the couch, or got dragged home by someone from work, and it wasn't until I saw Christina—who I definitely don’t remember seeing at Nectar’s--walk through the living room towards the bathroom that I realized where I was, and put the pieces together to figure out what had most likely happened. She had apparently arrived shortly after I had passed out in the chair, and like a good friend scooped me up and walked me the five blocks back to her house, with me slipping and falling hard on the icy sidewalk no less than a half a dozen times, fucking myself up even more in the process, but clearly too drunk to notice or care.

When I woke up on the couch the next morning, though, my head was thumping and stomach churning, my eyes burned from leaving my contacts in and I could barely force them to open. My hand was badly scraped and crusted with dried blood, my elbow was bruised, and I couldn't move my right leg because I had apparently fallen and smashed my cell phone into the side of my right thigh. I was still a little drunk and didn’t quite know how I ended up at Christina's house in the first place, and then I suddenly began to fear how stupid I acted in front of my entire crew of coworkers. Fuck!

When I got to work this morning, though, nobody said anything beyond the obligatory "how'd you feel Saturday morning?" or "Friday was fun, huh?" There was no blatant finger pointing or laughing, so either they were all too drunk too notice or remember, or maybe I really didn't act like a fool in the first place, but rather just passed out in the chair without ever any embarrassing antics at all. With a huge sigh of relief, I started right in with filling kegs from the bright beer tank, as I do first thing every morning when I get to work, and never another word was mentioned about me or my Mr. Hyde, or the gigantic purple bruise on my elbow. Just another night on the town, I guess, and today was another day.

Alcohol, in any form, really is The Devil, and I will worship this devil to the end. He is the only one who I cannot control, yet He can take hold and fully control me, which is something that no other drug or product or dogmatic belief has ever done before. That alone is worth the utmost respect and devotion, which is why, for better or for worse, I will worship It and Him forever. Incidentally, by working at both a brewery and a pub (which, by the way, is illegal), production and distribution of this devil is how I pay my bills, which is yet another reason why I will continue to march on in the name of this devil. To sum this all up, and to try and make sense of the illogical, I'll end by saying that I love my job at The Brewery, and I think that I've finally found a career worth selling my soul to. I hope to be there for a long, long time. Cheers!

They Call Themselves The "No Miss Allstars" For a Reason

2008-01-29T00:10:00.001-05:00

North Mississippi AllStars
Higher Ground Ballroom
January 30, 2008

The Meeting
Oxford Town
51 Phantom
Everybody Needs Somebody To Love
Shake
Take Yo' Time, Rodney
I'd Love To Be A Hippy
Keep The Devil Down
Mean Ol' Wind Died Down
Freedom Highway
Moonshine
Snakes In My Bushes >
Po Black Maddie >
Skinny Woman >
Po Black Maddie
Soldier
ML
KC Jones*
Big Mama's Door*
Eaglebird* >
Blow Out*
Meet Me In The City*
Mississippi Bollweevil*
Stray Cat Blues*
Shake 'Em On Down*
All Night Long* >
Lovelight* >
All Night Long*

Psychedelic Sex Machine
Shimmy She Wobble >
Station Blues >
Mississippi Party >
Preachin' Blues

*w/ Alvin Youngblood Hart

Back Door Slam 1/27/08

2008-01-28T22:50:00.000-05:00

My first Holy Shit concert of the year was this past Sunday in the small room at Higher Ground. Much like Rob Zombie two weeks prior—to the day—Back Door Slam sold out well in advance, and I showed up three songs in without a ticket and bought one at the box office. Unlike Zombie, though, this show was only five dollars as opposed to thirty-six, so I had enough beer money left over at the end of the night to buy a CD, because they really were that good. I got their debut--and thus far only--release, Roll Away, which I still have yet to hear in its entirety, but what I have heard I really dig. These guys definitely won’t be playing rooms the size of the Showcase Lounge for long, and they rocked so hard that I even forgot how much I hate that room to begin with.

Having only heard the last few notes to one of their songs on the radio, once, I really had no idea what to expect when I walked in. I knew only that they were a blues-rock trio from somewhere in Britain, and that I had better see them now before it’s too late. Anything beyond that was either gristle or gravy, so to speak, and as the night went on, it turned into really, really good gravy.

I showed up at a little past nine and got my five dollar ticket, and then walked into “the small room” as though I owned the entire building. The crowd was far older than I had anticipated, and I quickly decided that excessive radio promotion on The Point—the show’s primary sponsor—and an absurdly low ticket price probably had a lot to do with who showed up, as well as the rate at which tickets sold out. I had my ticket ripped and got my wristband at the door, and then raced to the bar as quickly as I could for a Sierra Nevada. With beer in hand, I settled in and hung towards the back, watching this really young kid named Davy Knowles play some slow and cheesy tune on his acoustic; three minutes in, and I wasn’t impressed.

As I neared the halfway point of my beer, though, he traded in his acoustic for a white-on-blue Stratocaster, and immediately grabbed hold of my face. This kid with a peachfuzz babyface and Xs on his hands—which, at HG, means Too Young To Drink--looked like a 14 year old Dean Ween, but was tearing into his Strat like little white Hendrix, and even had the young and modest British accent to match. It was pretty intense, to say the least, and this might even take top prize for Best Five Bucks Ever.

I was so locked into this kid’s guitar that I only drank one beer, but instead pushed forward to try and snap a few pictures and [hopefully] get a good, quick video clip, too. I had just gotten my G3 back from the camera shop after more than a month, so I was eager to get new clips up on YouTube, and watching this kid play made that drive ten time stronger. I made my way to the front row, but none of the salt-and-peppers around me were willing to give up an inch of their space, so I pushed my way over to the side of the stage and asked the sound guy if it was cool for me to take pictures there instead. He gave me the thumbs up, so I started snapping, but the lighting was far too awful for me to get any good shots without a flash. I clicked my camera over to video, which does three minute bursts with audio, and hoped to catch at least a little bit of something good that way, instead.

By this point, I knew that the set was almost over, so I had no qualms about being conspicuous enough with my camera to get kicked out, as HG is usually quick to put the kibosh on anyone taking video. I was able to record most of the song “It’ll All Come Around” without incident, and as I was about to drift back into the crowd and hide before getting evicted, the young guitarist said something about Hendrix, so I immediately said ‘fuck it’ and started my camera back up. I ended up getting a good chunk of the nearly ten minute “Red House” that he took over like it was his own, including a short harmonica solo and some crazy sick guitar work that ripped every inch of flesh off from my face. As soon as the song was over, the sound guy smiled and leaned over, and asked me if I got any good harp pictures. When I said that none of my pictures came out, but that I had almost all of “Red House” on video, he looked as though he was about to piss himself and said that that was Davy’s first time ever playing harmonica on stage. For a first-time harp solo by a prepubescent looking British kid, I’d say that I was quite impressed, to say the least. And his guitar work wasn’t that bad, either.

After “Red House,” the band left the stage to enormous applause, and then quickly came back for a two-song encore. Although the rhythm section was mediocre at best, this Davy Knowles kid from the Isles has definitely caught my attention, and I’m pretty certain that the next time I see him or Back Door Slam it won’t be in the Showcase Lounge, and it probably won’t cost five bucks, either.

BACK DOOR SLAM
HIGHER GROUND’S SHOWCASE LOUNGE
SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT
JANUARY 27, 2008
*as per the setlist from sound guy*

1. Real Man
2. Heavy On My Mind
3. Outside Woman Blues
4. Gotta Leave
5. King
6. Stay
7. Come Home
8. Back Door Slam
9. What in the World
10. Too Late
11. Hoochie Coochie Man
12. It’ll Come Around
13. Red House
---
14. Down So Long
15. Hometown

Rob Zombie, Sunday the 13th.

2008-01-20T11:13:00.000-05:00

Tickets had been sold out for weeks, pretty much since the day they went on sale, and the sign when I got there said that no more would be released. There was also a line out the door, from the box office and into the parking lot almost all the way over to Burger King, so I knew that my chances were slim, but I also knew that I had to stick around and try. After all, I’ve never not gotten into a show, and I wasn’t about to break my perfect record on this cold Sunday in January. One way or another, I was going to get in.

I waited in my car rather than standing in the cold, and once the line had dwindled I made my way towards the box office, knowing full well the answers to my two projected questions. My first question, which I thought incredibly foolish but a necessary lead in, was for a reaffirmation that all tickets were indeed sold out. When I asked, though, the girl behind the glass gave me a quirky eye and a half-hearted shrug, knowing full well that I knew the answer.

“Well, I can sell you one,” she said with a touch of cynicism, and with that peculiar look remaining in her eye as though I had asked to buy one with rocks instead of money. I shot back an enthusiastic “awesome!” and handed over my MasterCard, not knowing and only slightly caring how much the ticket actually cost. I signed the receipt, took the yellow ticket and went through the mandatory ID checkpoint, and then into the Higher Ground Ballroom, where Rob Zombie was already on stage and two songs into his set.

I had spent the entire day downtown, poaching free internet and alternating between Yerba Mate and La Minita, and by the time I got to HG I was so high-strung and over-caffeinated that my eyeballs hurt. I had no expectations whatsoever for the show, but because I had just seen and loved Zombie's Halloween remake, I knew that it was going to be good regardless. It was also his first ever performance in Vermont, but the only reason I know this is because he asked the crowd shortly after I walked in.

“I have a question that I hope you can answer,” has announced between songs, “because I certainly cannot." The crowd cheered in anticipation. "Have I ever been in Vermont before?” The Zombie Faithful blasted back with a fiery ‘no,’ to which he supplemented with “well, as a musician, that is.” He then went into a short rant about coming here as a child because his mom wanted to see the foliage, and immediately went right back into the music. His guitar-bass-drum trio smashed onward while he jumped and bounced and ran across the stage screaming into his wireless mic, and the audience lapped it up like warm milk.

I somehow expected to feel very old at this show (as was the case with GWAR and most other metal bands I’ve seen), but there were in fact a lot of clean cut and even slightly-graying men in the crowd, along with a steady mix of pale white emo chicks, tattooed metalheads, and clueless teenagers, yet I never once felt awkward or out of place. I saw and exchanged smiles with my friend Very Pierced Sarah, but it was far too loud for any sort of conversation, so we left it at that and I headed to the bar for a bottle of Sierra Nevada.

They were sold out of Sierra so I had to settle with Long Trail, and with beer in hand I pushed through the crowd and towards my usual spot, up front and by the speakers, stage left. For a sold out show I was shocked at how close I was able to get and how easy it was to get there, and for the rest of the night I was pissed that I didn’t try and smuggle in a camera. There was a mass of equipment on stage with Zombie on the lip, and behind him were two large projection screens showing clips from his movies and bludgeoning, psychedelic anime. There were also framed American flags and silver garland hanging from the amps, and at one point Zombie himself apologized that there was not enough room left on stage for his usual display of dancing girls. Instead, though, he had his bearded and overweight road manager (?) come out and dance like a cheerleader, which lead to a number of hoots and screams from the blood-thirsty crowd. It was quite strange indeed, to say the least.

At about 10:30, just over an hour after I got there, he finished his encore and the house lights came on. As I stood there soaked with sweat—some mine, some no doubt not—I wondered how much I had just paid for one hour of music, and whether or not it was worth it. The metal scene is definitely not home to me, for sure, and I only recognized about a third of the songs that were played, but I still danced hard all night, and had an undeniable good time, so I was satisfied.

As I was standing there waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light and ears to the silence, the girl from the box office appeared in the crowd with a stack of square, white posters, which she was quickly handing out to whomever was close enough to grab one. I leaned forward and extended my arm, and within seconds had one in my hand. At first glance, it looked like a random assault of black paint by a child with a wide brush, but after looking at it closer I saw that the brush marks were in fact smeared handprints, and that they spelled out the words ROB ZOMBIE in an even 3x3 tier of letters. I was quite impressed.

When the roadies came out to tear down the stage, I leaned over the metal barrier and asked if I could snag one of the set lists that were taped to the floor. At first I was blatantly ignored, but when it was clear that I wasn’t going to give up easily, one of them finally pealed one up from the floor and held it out to me. He said that I could have it for thirty bucks, and I smiled and said that the check’s in the mail, to which he laughed and handed it over. As I grabbed it and quickly looked it over, Liggy (HG’s lighting guru) came up and handed me the light chart for the night, saying that no one else has one of those, either. And even though the complicated diagram meant very little to me, I folded it up with the set list and stuck both in my pocket, and headed happily for the door.

When I reached my car at the far end of the parking lot, someone from the fully-packed pick up beside me asked if I enjoyed the show. I told them that even though it was really short, I did indeed have a good time, and then paused for a second before asking them if they had any weed.

“You’re not an undercover cop are you?”

“I am definitely not an undercover cop.”

“You got five bucks?”

I handed five singles through the window and they handed me a crumpled up cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack, with a small green bud inside. I thanked them and they thanked me back, and I hopped in my car and drove away before the engine even started to warm up.

I drove from there to Three Needs for another couple beers, and then finally went home around one. After smoking in the new apartment for the very first time, I killed the lights and crawled into bed, having to be at work in less than seven hours. Just before I passed out, though, I noticed that my fancy new Rob Zombie poster also glows in the dark, and that's when I decided that I had indeed gotten my full $36 worth out of that ticket. And, I'm still batting 1.000 on sold out shows...

No Time To Talk About Football

2008-01-14T16:54:00.008-05:00

Somehow, I really wish I gave a shit about football. Two days ago, the 2007 New England Patriots beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 31-20 in the Playoffs, and are now two games and three weeks away from the Super Bowl. Just over two weeks ago, on the 29th of December, the Pats also beat the Giants 38-35 in New Jersey, and completed the first perfect season since the 1972 Dolphins. New England also set new records in that game for touchdown passes and touchdown receptions, with Tom Brady throwing a 65-yard bomber to Randy Moss for the go-ahead, which instantly nullified the records previously held by Payton Manning and Jerry Rice, who before this game both sat on top with 49 and 23, respectively. And although it wasn't the Pat's most stellar game of the season, it was no doubt the most important, and certainly one that will sit on the shelves of NFL history forever. Now, if they go all the way and win the Super Bowl on February 3rd--just as those '72 Dolphins did twenty-six years ago today--they will be following up a World Series sweep by the Red Sox in October, and will thus bring the biggest party in the world to Boston for the second time in under four months. Oh, if only I had time to follow sports, and if only I didn't hate the entire commonwealth of Massachusetts...

Here we are at an even fortnight into the new year, and only my second post. I really would have liked to start this thing out with a better run than that, but who am I kidding? I’ve been living out of boxes in the spare bedroom of a complete stranger and her three year old son’s apartment, pulling eight hour shifts of grueling, warehouse labor at a job that I still know very little about, maintaining my Wednesday and Thursday night bartending shifts 45 minutes away in Waitsfield, and library hopping just to check my email. And other than the move from mountain to city and bar to brewery, 2008 hasn’t exactly been a carnival of excitement yet, although I did get to take one quick, cold swim in the cesspools of American Politics, but more on that later.

New Years Eve was my final night in the Mad River Valley [see also: Bad Liver Valley], and I decided to spend the evening nearby, partying at Sugarbush with the four-piece groove machine from Burlington known collectively as Japhy Ryder. They were playing at the Gate House from nine until after midnight, and Pat the bass player had sent me a formal and personal invitation via Myspace, to which I replied with a simple "I'll be there." Although I had also toyed with the idea of driving to Stone Church in Newmarket, New Hampshire for the now-semi-defunct Seth Yacovone Band, I was pretty certain from the start that I was going to welcome in the new year with the jazzy funk of Japhy Ryder as opposed to the funky rock of SYB because, quite simply, Sugarbush was a hell of a lot closer than Newmarket, and my car wasn’t [and still isn’t] legal. So it goes.

I pre-gamed at home with Jenn and Courtney, and then went to Sugarbush alone around nine. I showed up anticipating an even mix of drunken locals and obnoxious tourists alike, as is usually the scene at The Bush, but when I got there the room completely empty, save for a handful of Sugarbush employees and a few families with loud, screaming kids. Japhy’s equipment was set up along the far wall, and they had yet to play their first note.

Accurately self-described as an "instrumental rock hybrid" whose sound falls "somewhere between Miles Davis, P-Funk and Sound Tribe," Japhy Ryder is a guitar, bass, drum, and trumpet outfit that never ventures far outside their comfort zone, but will plow through the room like a bulldozer. I'd seen them about six or eight times before, mostly in Burlington, and was thoroughly impressed every time, so there was no doubt in my mind that their New Years Eve gig would deliver like all the rest.

I said a quick hello to the four guys in the band when I got there, and then bought an overpriced beer at the bar and claimed my spot by the window at a long, empty banquet table. Just before ten, and as soon as the band began to play for an audience of about a dozen, I pulled a crumpled up plastic baggy from my pocket, pinched out two dried mushroom caps, and then chewed and washed them down with the Long Trail I had bought upon arrival. I was ready for music, and 2007 be damned.

At the point of Peak Audience, there were maybe twenty people in the room, band included, and with the exception of two skittish looking soda-drinkers from Cleveland, I was the only person in the room who wasn’t close to and tight with the band. Everyone else was clearly friends with them whereas I was a mere acquaintance, and aside from being the only person sitting alone, drinking alone, and getting ready to welcome in the new year alone, I was also undoubtedly the only person in the room with more than a simple beer buzz going, and life was good.

It was without question the strangest New Years concert/party I’d ever been to, and although the music was fantastic (and the acoustics in that high-ceilinged, timber-framed room were just as good), the was a very awkward vibe that even the band picked up on. They played a number of new songs that I (or anyone?) had not yet heard, and made a lot of tongue-in-cheek remarks thanking everyone for coming out to this less-than-extravagant New Years Extravaganza.

The first set ended sometime around eleven, and after mingling with the crowd for a bit and joking about how lame of a New Years party it was, the band started their second set around 11:30, to a crowd that was now down to about eight. They played until just before midnight, upon which everyone in the room counted down the last ten seconds of 2007, followed by Will playing an obligatory Auld Lang Syne trumpet solo while the rest of the band tore down.

By 12:30, the gear was packed and room was empty, and everyone who hadn't yet left was out in the crisp cold January air smoking joints slopeside. Both Pat and Will invited me to follow them to the Slide Brook, where they would be drinking, smoking, partying and ultimately sleeping their way into 2008, but I was still real high from the mushrooms and in desperate need of more music. I was in no mood for idle chitchat with people I barely knew, so I instead drove the extra three miles to Route 17, then up to what was officially no longer my apartment on Stark Mountain View Road, just off Old Mansfield. The New Year was now upon us, ready to deliver its feast, famine and fury however the cosmos deemed necessary, and I was ready to embrace it however it happened to come.

My now-former roommates Jenn and Courtney were home and awake when I got there, so the three of us gathered in my now-former kitchen to celebrate the end of the old and the beginning of the new by jumping face first into a bottle of Trul 1792 Absinthium, sugar cube and all. With my synapses still inverted and submerged in the neon glow of psilocybin, beer and pot, it was hard to tell if I “got” anything from the milky green booze, but if nothing else, it tasted good, and it sure was a nice send off to 2007 and my past eighteen months in The Valley.

The next morning, New Years Day, I was up by noon and immediately started in on The Move. While the rest of the free world was either watching the College Bowls or simply enjoying a quiet Tuesday at home, I was shoveling my car out of a knee-deep snowdrift, and then cramming it full of cardboard boxes and random loose belongings. Having little to my name besides books, music, movies, a few pairs of pants and about sixteen thousand Tshirts, I was able to move everything in two loads with my trusty Corolla wagon, and having to rely on no one else for help.

After making the thirty mile drive from Waitsfield to Burlington on shitty roads, then turning around to go back and do it all over again, phase one of the Grand Transition was now complete. And strange as it was, drinking Coronas that night on my new couch with my new roommate (who I still knew nothing about, including her last name), while her son tore around the living room and climbed on and over both of us while dressed as Spiderman, wasn’t nearly as weird or uncomfortable as it probably could have been, but Christ, it sure was awkward! But for the time being at least, and for better or for worse, this is home, so I sat back and sipped that dirty Mexican beer like it was a bottle of Dom, and made myself as comfortable as possible.

I had “found” the apartment through my friend Maeghan, who had casually told me a few weeks prior that her friend Nicole was looking for a roommate. Nicole was the behavioral specialist at the school where Maeghan is a full-time student-teacher, and she lived off Shelburne Road with her three year old son Taysean. Although the situation wasn’t exactly ideal for my drunken, nocturnal lifestyle, it was at least a catalyst to get me back into Burlington, which had suddenly become priority number one for 2008. Plus, there was no lease and the rent was cheap (four hundred, all inclusive), so I had the option of bailing whenever I wanted, but honestly, how bad could living with a random single mom and her spastic three year old really be...??

The next day, Wednesday, I was on my way to meet with the owner of a local microbrewery, where I was naively hoping to secure full time employment. On the drive over, though, the front left CV joint on my Corolla snapped, and spent the next two hours freezing my ass of while waiting for a tow truck, and then dealing with a mechanic who had initially told me that I had probably blown my clutch apart. Upon further inspection, though, he discovered that my clutch was fine, and that I had simply “broken an axel.” He had it fixed by ten the next morning ($230), and by eleven I was again driving towards The Brewery in search of a job.

I had met with the owner briefly a few weeks before Christmas, and he said to come back after the Holidays when he would hopefully have time to stop, think, and talk about bringing someone new on board. The Brewery is only five years old and only produces one type of beer, and it doesn’t bottle. The novelty of this beer, then, is that you can only get it in a bar, and it's still new enough to not be on tap in every single pub. Naturally, then, as the beer drinking nostalgiamaniac that I am, I had great interest in becoming part of this new yet firmly planted establishment, despite not knowing a single goddamned thing about commercial beer production. My naivety and lack of useful knowledge, though, worked in my favor, because I was hired on the spot with a handshake to seal the deal, and with the mutual agreement that I could and would be taught everything I needed to know, without bringing any “bad brewing habits” into The Brewery--save possibly for mild alcoholism and a detrimental love of beer--and that I wouldn't be allowed to step foot near the kettle or lauder tun for a long, long time.

I showed up for my first shift the next morning, on time and with coffee in hand, and was introduced to the rest of the crew as they shook my hand and hastily explained what they were doing. I was immediately buried in terminology and covered with caustic, wort and trub, while having zwickles, sightglasses and bunging devices shown to me, and I knew before the first hour was up that I had long reached the point of retention. The sciences and densities of what they told me were so heady that by day’s end I still had no idea what my job really was, but I still wasn't nearly as intimidated as I probably should have been. And, being Friday, I now had the entire weekend off, and two full days to forget everything that I was just shown. But all that hardly mattered at this point, because I had officially secured stable, full time employment, Monday through Friday, and begun what would hopefully blossom into a solid career in beer. Life, as they say, is good.

On Saturday morning, I got my first haircut in many months--two days after the job interview--and then went my brother’s house in Milton for his son's third birthday party. Then I came home and showered, and drove to Waitsfield to work at The Pub. Sunday was a wide-open wild card, and I had tentatively planned to spend it at one of the local Burlington coffee houses, drinking Yerba Mate and poaching free internet. Around 1:30 Sunday morning, though, after locking up The Pub and pocketing over $250 in tips, I drank a couple shift drinks at the bar by myself, then went up the road a piece to the Smokehouse to see some funk band that I had heard people ranting about earlier. By the time I got there, though, the band was done and the server had already called last call, but with a little luck and sympathy, I was able to get one quick beer, which I drank in about as much time as it took to pour it. I thanked and tipped the man excessively, and then went out to my car to decide where to go from here.

As I sat behind the wheel, watching it snow and waiting for my car to warm up, I considered my options: drive shitty roads back to Burlington and get a much-needed night of sleep, or drive two miles up Route 17 to the Hyde Away for another drink or two, and hopefully meeting up with someone I know who would let me crash on their couch. Before the thermostat needle even began to move, though, I decided against both, and instead followed my ever-reliable impulsiveness. I popped open and drank one of the “emergency” Red Bulls that I always have stashed somewhere in the car, and headed south on 100, through the Granville Gulf and on icy, snowy roads, aiming for I-89 in Royalton. My plan, which was still completely fluid at this point, was to followed 89 south for about an hour, and then stop and sleep at a rest area near Concord, New Hampshire. It was idea too foolish to pass up, and I never once gave it second thought.

In addition to the Football Hoopla and being the first weekend of 2008, it was also the final weekend before the New Hampshire Primary. With only two days before the Big Vote, Manchester promised to be a circus of political and subsequent media debauchery, so even if I wasn’t able to get close to any of the candidates, I knew that I would be able to find some kind of trouble, or at least something fun to do for the afternoon.

Barack Obama was giving a speech at the Palace Theater at nine that morning, and I really wanted to see and hear him. He was coming off from a solid win in Iowa, taking 39% over Johnny Edwards with 30 and Hillary's seemingly-baneful 29, and he now lead Hillary in New Hampshire by “double digits" according to those now-famous polls. If I didn't make it in to hear his speech in Manchester, I thought, I could always follow the caravan to Keene or Exeter or Portsmouth, or wherever his next stop was, and hopefully get into one of those shows instead. But, I figured, if i didn't get into the Palace, I'd probably just hang out in the lobby bar of the Manchester Radisson, drinking Smuttynose while listening to the Press Corps discuss tomorrow's news about the race. Either way, it sure beat another weekend in Vermont, and I wasn't quite ready to hang out on the couch with the new roommate anyway.

I slept in my car for three hours, freezing cold and waking up every twenty minutes to readjust, but by seven o'clock Sunday morning I was in downtown Manchester and drinking coffee at the Merrimack Diner. Thirty minutes and two cups later, I was standing outside the Palace Theater on Hanover Street with about twenty other people--most students discussing their school's debate team--and by eight a line had grown to the far end of the block. There was an even mix of old and young, black and white, and male and female, and most of those around me were were young and overdressed, and extremely eager to be seen and heard by the onpouring media. When the folks from MTV News came around, though, and asked these students if this was their first presidential election, the kids all blabbed like the hormonal teenagers they were, and said that they were high schoolers and not old enough to vote; they were just here to support Obama. It was kind of strange, and seemed a little bit like a waste of seats that undecided voters could have filled, but somehow it still gave me hope for the future.

I got to talking with an older couple in line beside me about the campaign thus far, and they told me that they were Socialist Democrats from New York who worked with some sort of communist organizations in Manhattan; I could immediately feel the ears and eyes of Big Brother pressed tight against me. Their names were Sam and Elena, and we stood outside together for over two hours, talking about everything from Reagan and McGovern to The Band and Neil Young to beer and pot. I had my "I Smoke Pot & I Vote" button pinned to my jacket, which drew a lot of praise and positive attention over the weekend, and Sam was quick to say that he liked it.

When the doors finally opened at a few minutes after nine, I managed to push my way through the teenagers and media onslaught, and to a seat in the second row, dead center in front of the stage. My new Commie friends from New York had landed the seats right directly behind me, and the most obnoxious of the teens was beside them, already yapping into her phone and telling whomever was on the other end to record MTV News for the rest of the day, so that she could see her own face and hear her own voice yammering on to the camera about nothing at all. Oh, to be so self important.

The speech was scheduled for nine, but it was almost ten by the time everyone was settled, and by quarter past The Man still had yet to arrive. There was a lot of yawning and idle banter, and I shuffled around in my seat trying to forget that I had to pee, and at 10:20, Joe Keif came on stage and announced that “Someone is here.” The crowd went nuts.

Joe was the campaign manager for Chris Dodd, who dropped out of the race after Iowa, and told the crowd that he had endorsed “the next president of the United States.” He then went on to compare Obama to Kennedy and Lincoln (a scary thought, considering that a black man is running for President during the 40 year anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr), and then throngs of suits and sunglasses poured in from stage left and right, German Shepherds in tow, and you could feel the clamp squeezing tighter.

By 10:30, The Man Himself was on stage, and went right into his unread, off the cuff speech about change that not only reminded me of the old Howard Dean, but also floored me like the old Howard Dean. Obama told us (as well as the billions watching on CNN) that ordinary people can do extraordinary things if only given the chance, and that even if we weren’t going to vote for Barack Obama, we still need to vote for someone because this is too important of an election not to. His speech was still far from over, but goddamn that was a good start.

He went on to say how now is the time to put aside the “partisan food fight” and come back together as one nation, as one people, and to end the days of lobbyists setting the agenda in Washington. “The will not run my White House,” he proclaimed, to thunderous applause. He went on to talk about watching his mother die from The Big C at 53, and how she melted away while reading and fretting over paperwork from the Insurance Companies. He said that she died not from Cancer, but from a broken Health Care System, and then promised all Americans a plan that was “at least as good as my Health Care as a member of the Senate.”

He pushed on and up in his speech, speaking of Dr. King’s “Fierce Urgency of Now” and there being such a thing as being too late. He spoke of change coming from the bottom up, and that any destiny can be fulfilled. He said that Americans have a good reason to be angry, but to be happy that the name George W. Bush will not be on the ballot in November. “Neither will my cousin, Dick Cheney.” In an obvious nod to the “perfect” Patriots, he followed that comment up with something about being related to someone much cooler, “like Willy Mays, or Tom Brady.” The New England crowd rightfully applauded, and Barry O no doubt won at least a few simple New Hampshire votes. Mention Brady or The Pats, and you’re in. Simple, indeed.

He then spoke about kids sucking on toys from China covered with lead paint and the war in Iraq that should have never happened in the first place, and said that change will not come just from anger or from turning up the heat on the Republicans. “We don’t need more heat,” he demanded. “We need more light.” Amen. He talked about other campaigns going through his kindergarten papers and mainstream Washington trying to “boil the hope out” of him, and went right into a powerful tirade about his parents splitting when he was two, and about being raised by grandparents who had nothing to offer but love and hope. He said that many have made him out to be a “hope monger,” and claimed that hope is nothing more than naïve, wishful thinking, and that this biracial man from Hawaii must clearly have his head in the clouds.

“Hope is not blind optimism,” he fired out, as he went into a spell about Health Care and Global Warming. “I know how hard this will be, and it will not be without cost.” He went on to say that no change in this great nation has ever happened without a few people trying what has never before been tried, and doing so with a lot of hope, and an imagination for what has never been done before.

“New Hampshire,” he bellowed, “this is our time. This is our moment. If you believe, we will deliver.” Thunderous applause once again, followed by a wild standing ovation, and I sat there in awe over what was no doubt the greatest speech I had ever heard, live or on TV, and didn’t quite know how to react. No drug or anything else had ever been that good, and I was paralyzed. I was high.

Forty five minutes after it started, the Powerhouse Speech had reached its conclusion, sans Q and A, and Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered blared out over the PA. Everyone rose from their seats as Barack bounced down the steps towards the crowd, where he immediately started shaking hands of those lucky enough to be in the first few rows. I, of course, was second row center, and managed to lean in for a solid, full-grasp handshake.

“Come visit us in Vermont again real soon,” I said as I leaned in for the shake. The Senator smiled, tightened his grasp on my right hand, and said that he appreciated that. I’m still and forever under the impression that he didn’t hear me, and was saying “I appreciate that” to everything that everyone said, but it was still a big moment for me, and in a little tiny way, I like to think that it was a big moment for my home state. It was overtly obvious that neither of us had the time to hang out in a limo together and talk about football or anything else, but in all due respect, a quick exchange about Vermont is good enough for me, and I’m pretty sure that old Barry will visit us here a whole lot more than his future predecessor did [Vermont remains the only state that Bush has not visited since being sworn in as President in 2001, and of that we are quite proud].

I was outside the Palace by 11:20, and the commotion amongst fellow Junkies was that John Edwards was giving a speech a few blocks up in ten minutes, at the Franco-American Center on Concord Street. I followed the herd and made my way inside, where I found myself in a drab open room with the cinder blocks painted in a faded shade of Depressing Yellow, and with a semi-organized pile of folding chairs set up in the middle. Most of the seats were already full, so I pushed my way toward the far corner and settled in under a giant American flag.

From where I was standing, I was looking straight into the lenses of the entire Press Pen, and directly in front of them I saw my friend Sam and Elena. I made a mental note to try and catch them at the end to swap phone numbers and hopefully meet for a beer, but that quick blip before the show was unfortunately the last time I would see them, so I can only nod and wish them well. Slainte. Unlike the Obama Show at The Palace, the crowd at the Franco-American Center was 100-percent white, and mostly over forty. I was by far amongst the “younger crowd,” and with my camera and notebook dangling from my person, I was hardly the weirdo outcast that I would otherwise be. In fact, I was more The Norm than anyone; it was the father-son duo from Jersey next to me who stood out.

Dad was a Jewish lawyer, who kept yelling out “Yeah, John!” as loud as he possibly could, and Son was a sixteen year old sophomore who was just starting to catch The Political Bug. He said that he first caught the fever in 2004, when he was on the Wes Clark wagon, but is now in the John Edwards pool with both feet and loving every second of it. The more I talked with the kid, the more hope I had for tomorrow’s generation, but the more his dad yelled at Edwards, the more I wanted to clock him on the back of the head with my camera. God, I hate New Jersey, and I hate lawyers even more.

There was a sudden blanket of weird energy thrown atop the room as Edwards’ volunteers began to usher in a small crowd. There were about twelve in all, including a wide-eyed Latino family, a very large white woman and a very small white man with a cleft lip, and they were all lead to the Reserved seats in the middle. This heavily-choreographed photo op was almost too much for me to stomach, and I could only imagine what last year’s losing VP had in his quiver for this year’s fight. He was second in Iowa and New Hampshire was two days away, so it was now or never. He wanted blood at any cost, and this was going to be a good show no matter how vile it gets; last minute desperation at its absolute finest.

Before Johnny E came out, The Dad and I started to shoot the shit about the other race, and how we thought things were going to play out. I pointed out that I had once pinned Giuliani as the run away with the GOP bid, but that I was now starting to fear Romney more than ever. This lead to a deep conversation about the FDNY on 9/11, and how Rudy had denied them the radios they wanted and requested, leaving them with something far shittier and as a direct result losing many of their absolute finest. Fault: The Mayor. The two of us then went on to talk about McCain, and The Dad made the provocative yet obvious point that no matter how good he is, you simply don’t make a 71 year old CEO of your company, but rather let him step aside and slowly and drift into a comfortable, well-proofed state of oblivion. Such is life, and life, for the rest of us, does go on; John McCain take note.

At 12:30 on the dot, John Edwards and his dear wife Elizabeth marched in towards the center of the room, to enormous applause; John Kerry’s losing runningmate, alive and in person. Most of these people were headstrong Kerry supporters in ’04 and Eddy supporters now, and I couldn’t help but wonder which wagon they would all jump on if and when Edwards drops out. It was still only Round Two, and Team Edwards was in second, but the cracks were visible, and desperation had clearly taken hold; this yacht IS going to sink.

And it’s too bad. Edwards is a good guy with a great message, despite his being a super-rich lawyer douche like all the rest, but he just doesn’t have the titanium backbone that a good politician needs and that a good American voter looks for. His speech that day in Manchester was rightfully held in a room that looked like a big, cement vault, because I knew by the end that it really was The End. It was hands down the most awkward and uncomfortable public and/or political display I have ever seen, in person or on TV, and it told us very little about the candidate, and absolutely nothing that we didn't already know. Yes, we all fear and loathe the Health Care Industry, John Edwards included, but he's a slick-haired lawyer who is willing to exploit the most vulnerable of the vulnerable for his chance to go up against them. He doesn't care so much about Heath Care For All as he does about Heath Care v. Edwards, and he can already smell the blood as the ship sinks beneath him.

It was the most horrific display of shameless exploitation that I have ever witnessed, and I couldn't really tell if everyone was else was seeing the same thing or not. As soon as John as Liz entered the room, from the corner nearest me no less, the Jewish Dad beside me went completely ballistic. He frantically waved two campaign posters as high up as he could, yelling "Yeah! Yeaaaahhh!" so loud that his voice would crack, and I didn't know whether to laugh or hide. His poor kid was clearly unaffected, having lived a life with this man and facing far worse humiliation than this; he was beyond that, and I applaud him immensely. While Dad carried on and acted like a fool, trying his all to be on C-SPAN for half of a nanosecond or more, The Kid and I watched closely as John and Liz took to the middle of the room, alongside the entourage of minorities they brought with them.

Liz had the mic first, and she proudly thanked everyone for being there. In her warm, southern drawl, she then thanked all the health care workers from southern New Hampshire who were there, and then handed the mic over to her impatient husband. Johnny E immediately went into a rant about there being two candidates in this race who stand for change, stopping just short of mentioning Obama's name, and also of mentioning Hillary as being Out. "This fight is not just mine," he told us, with January sweat on his brow and with the darkest fires of Washington in his eyes. "It's ours."

Sticking with his blatant and reoccurring theme of "Fighting" [see also: Lawsuits], he went on to ask if we wanted a president with the right ideas and philosophies (again, barely holding back from using names), "or a president with the right ideas, philosophies, and a fight?" Christ, I thought, this guy is almost as bad as Romney, only FAR more delusional. And can all of these white-skinned and dead-eyed followers of his really not see this? Jesus, we really are fucked! Help us God!!

After spending twenty minutes telling us how and why the status quo in this country is history, Edwards finally introduced the somber looking folks sitting alongside him. Most noteworthy among them was the family of the late Nataline Sarkisyan, whom Edwards plans to make so much more in death than she could have ever imagined in life. For better or for worse, this is how he thinks.

Maybe it was the speech, or the lack of fresh air, oxygen, and personal space, or maybe the lack of sleep combining with a crashing caffeine buzz, but when I left the Franco-American Center that afternoon, one hour after I got there, I was so nauseous and light headed that I almost took a self-guided digger into a snowbank just so I could sit and catch my breath, and try not to remind myself that what I just saw was real.

Threshold

2007-12-30T17:08:00.007-05:00

With the dawn of a new year less than 24 hours away, my mind can't even begin to grasp the thoughts of what the next twelve months (and even the next seven days!) have to offer. New home, new roommates, new city (but not really), and all of this with no job as of yet. Anything is possible in 2008, absolutely anything, so let the games begin.

I have decided to mark this New Beginning by squeezing the trigger of a self-threatening explosive that I've been fingering for many years now; a live and [hopefully] active online journal. Unlike most modern "blogs," though, Ephemeral Retention is going to simply be an online storage unit for me, where I can write and store stories that I would sadly otherwise forget, simply to remember the story itself. The primary focus will be to document the live music that I'm lucky or unlucky enough to see this year, but hopefully subjects beyond music will filter through on a regular basis as well (sex, drugs, and politics, etc); there is, after all, a major, major election this year, so be forewarned, and enjoy.

At some point tomorrow, New Years Day, I will be moving out of my apartment in Fayston, Vermont and back to my old college town of Burlington. I will be sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with a complete stranger named Nicole and her 3 year old son, Taysean, and I really have no idea what to expect. The apartment is subsidized and I am not--nor will I be--on the lease, so I have to move in at night and live there in complete secrecy, and I'm not really sure what will happen if They find out that I'm living there. I will also be making the move with roughly $40 in my pocket after January's rent is paid, and I have yet to secure a job. So it goes.

I'll worry about all of that later, though. I'm going to keep my Wednesday-Thursday bar tending shifts at The Moon in Waitsfield for the time being, and I'm pretty sure that I've got my foot in the door at a very small yet very respected microbrewery in Burlington, which would honestly be a dream job come true. But even if that keg goes flat, so to speak, I'll stay at the pub until something else comes along, and I can always hop back on board slinging java at the coffee joint I worked at in college anytime I want. So even though securing employment is one of the many unknowns that I'm about to jump face-first into, it's hardly one worth drowning in, bill collectors and utility companies be damned. Besides, it's New Year's Eve, and not a time for being cynical.

Tomorrow is going to mark the threshold into a new and very important chapter of my life. With my chin held high and the wind at my back, I'm going to walk down this snow covered mountain in Fayston and into Burlington with rose-lensed sunglasses strapped on tight, because 2008 is going to be such a profound and monumental year that I'll even need that day in February to squeeze it all in. In a nut, I can't even imagine the multitude of what lays ahead of me, and I'm frankly a little bit scared, but at the same time I can't wait. I'm going to get every last drop out of the next 366 days, and hopefully I remember enough to write about it, too. Full steam ahead, boys. Full steam ahead.

As infinitely excited as I am about the prospects of 2008, I can't help but know that 2007 is going to be a tough one to beat. Last year, I was living in the basement apartment of a mountainside chalet with two like-minded friends, paying only $300 a month for rent, everything included, I only had to work part time, manning tables and the mahogany bar at a swanky little pub in Waitsfield. I also helped book and promote music, and meet some of the most fascinating musicians, architects, real estate agents and common drunks around, and also eat and drink every day for free; a privilege that I beat, drugged and raped for all it was worth.

Even more defiantly than the great job, the fancy home, and all the free beer and Scotch I could stomach, 2007 will mark the year in which I saw, felt, and experienced some of the most powerful and soul-jolting music that I have ever seen: Neil Young and his wife Pegi on Broadway; Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard at Vermont Fair; The Pogues in Boston a week before Paddy's Day, and the Dropkick Murphys in Burlington a week after the Sox won the Series. I got to see Page McConnell and Mike Gordon play at the Simpsons Movie Premiere in Springfield, where I also got to meet and shake hands with Matt Groening. I took my mom to see Bob Dylan, and also got to see Phil Lesh play a show in Glens Falls with "The Felon" Trey Anastasio, in the exact same room where Phil and the Grateful Dead played the night that I was born. I got snuck in to see Ratdog in Burlington by a guy I've never met before, and Mike came out as the "Special Guest." Then later that same night, I got to see Page sit in with George Porter Jr., Russell Batiste, and Brian Stoltz , a half a block down the street at Club Metronome.

I saw Gov't Mule only three times in 2007, which is slightly under par, but I did get to to see Warren play two cosmic sets with Phil Lesh and John Scofield at a ski resort in the Catskills, as well as sit in with the New Orleans Social Club, Michael Franti, and even G Love, respectively. I also saw The Allman Brothers in New Hampshire, with Luther Dickenson sitting in on a couple tunes. I saw Seth Yacovone acoustic fifteen times and electric seven, including a colossal three-set New Years show one year ago today at Nectar's, and another not-so-colossal three sets in September at the most awkward wedding reception I've ever been to. I saw Japhy Ryder six times and the Turkey Bouillon Mafia five, the Starline Rhythm Boys four, and Grace Potter three, and twice each the North Mississippi Allstars, Assembly of Dust, and Vorcza. I got to see John McLaughlin, PFunk, Ozomotli, the almighty Ween, and even GWAR, as well as the Sound of Urchin, Spookie Daly Pride, U-Melt, RAQ, Tea Leaf Green, acoustic moe, Ray Price, Jimmy Vaughn, The Machine, Lotus, and Shake It Like a Caveman, plus all the unnamed local bands that I have already forgotten about. But no matter how much these forgotten bands may have rocked or sucked, I'm sure that I had fun while I was there, whether I was blackout drunk just simply ignoring them, because even bad live music is better than no live music at all, and you can quote me on that; I'll stand by that statement forever.

So without further ado, here's to 2008. May it be bigger, better, and louder than any year before it, and may we all find ourselves the healthiest and happiest we've ever been. Slainte, and good luck.

---
Music I saw in 2007...

12/31/06-1/1/07 Seth Yacovone Band. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
1/6/07 Starline Rhythm Boys. Local Folk's Smokehouse, Waitsfield, VT
1/10/07 Seth Yacovone. Langdon Street Cafe, Montpelier, VT
1/18/07 Vorcza. Slide Brook Inn, Waitsfield, VT
2/1/07 Grace Potter w/ open mic house band, Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
2/12/07 moe.acoustic. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
2/17/07 Japhy Ryder. Nectars, Burlington, VT
3/3/07 Starline Rhythm Boys. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
3/9/07 William Elliot Whitmore. Avalon, Boston
3/9/07 The Pogues. Avalon, Boston
3/11/07 Spookie Daly Pride. Pickle Barrel, Killington, VT
3/31/07 Mile 21. Sugarbush, Warren, VT
3/31/07 Lucid. Sugarbush, Warren, VT
3/31/07 Twiddle. Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, S. Burlington, VT
3/31/07 Japhy Ryder. Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, S. Burlington, VT
4/3/07 Les Nubians. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
4/7/07 Seth Yacovone. Cider House BBQ, Waterbury, VT
4/13/07 Seth Yacovone. Nectars, Burlington, VT
4/14/07 Japhy Ryder. Sugarbush, Warren, VT
4/14/07 Assembly of Dust. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT (w/ Scott
Tournet on guitar)
4/27/07 Seth Yacovone Band. Stone Church, Newmarket, NH
5/17/07 Eric Squindo. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
5/19/07 Seth Yacovone. Private Wedding aboard The Spirit of Ethan Allen, Lake
Champlain, VT
5/19/07 Seth Yacovone. Cider House BBQ, Waterbury, VT (w/ Brent Weaver on accompanying guitar)
5/23/07 Oak. Langdon Street Cafe, Montpelier, VT
5/30/07 Page McConnell. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT (w/ Mike Gordon on bass)
5/30/07 The Decoys. Nectar's. Burlington, VT
6/1/07 New Orleans Social Club. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY (w/ Warren Haynes on guitar)
6/1/07 Gov't Mule. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY
6/1/07 RAQ. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY (late night set)
6/2/07 Assembly of Dust. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY
6/2/07 U-Melt. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY
6/2/07 Ozomotli. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY
6/2/07 G-Love & Special Sauce. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY (w/ Warren Haynes & Ozomotli horns)
6/2/07 Tea Leaf Green. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY
6/2/07 Gov't Mule. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY (w/M.Franti; J.Cinninnger; J.Clark; Ozomatli horns & Machan)
6/3/07 North Mississippi Allstars. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY
6/3/07 Michael Franti & Spearhead. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY (w/ Warren Haynes on guitar)
6/3/07 Phil Lesh & Friends. Mountain Jam, Hunter, NY [Phil, Warren, Scofield, Molo & Molitz]
6/16/07 Sugarshack. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
6/22/07 Seth Yacovone Band. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT (w/ Adam King on keys)
6/22/07 "Liggy's First Waltz Superjam" Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT (w/ SYB, Turkey Bouillon Mafia, Dave Grippo, Brett Hughes, Lowell Thompson, Marie Clair, Tim Sharbaugh, Kevin Shapiro, Chris Friday, & Mikey the Bouncer emceeing, dressed as Gene Simmons & intermittently blowing fire.)
7/1/07 Jimmy Vaughn. Champlain Valley Expo, Essex Junction, VT
7/1/07 Bob Dylan. Champlain Valley Expo, Essex Junction, VT
7/6/07 Seth Yacovone. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
7/6/07 Starline Rhythm Boys. Breakwaters, Burlington, VT
7/20/07 Seth Yacovone. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
7/21/07 Page McConnell. Simpson's Movie Premiere Party, Springfield, VT (w/Mike Gordon)
8/3/07 Andromeda Taxi. Meadowbrook Second Stage, Gilford, NH
8/3/07 North Mississippi AllStars. Meadowbrook US Cellular Pavilion, Gilford, NH
8/3/07 Allman Brothers Band. Meadowbrook US Cellular Pavilion, Gilford, NH (w/Luther Dickinson)
8/13/07 Seth Yacovone Band. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
8/13/07 Turkey Bouillon Mafia. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT (w/ Seth Yacovone BandLowell Thompson on guitar and Chris Friday on vocals on guitar, bass and second drumset, )
8/17/07 The Machine. Waterfront Park, Burlington, VT (w/ Pink Floyd Laser Light Show)
8/19/07 Grace Potter & The Nocturnals. Waterfront Park, Burlington, VT
8/26/07 Blues & Lasers. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlingotn, VT (The Nocturnals with Benny Yurco (guitar, Turkey Bouillon Mafia) & Steve Sharon (second drum kit))
8/26/07 The Samples. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
8/31/07 Seth Yacovone. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
8/31/07 Bad Suit. Club Metronome, Burlington, VT (w/ Todd Stoops on keys)
8/31/07 Shake It Like a Caveman. Club Metronome, Burlington, VT
8/31/07 Japhy Ryder. Club Metronome, Burlington, VT
9/1/07 W.E.S.T.. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT (Japhy Ryder without guitar)
9/2/07 Ray Price. Champlain Valley Expo, Essex Jct, VT
9/2/07 Merle Haggard. Champlain Valley Expo, Essex Jct, VT (w/ Willie Nelson)
9/2/07 Willie Nelson. Champlain Valley Expo, Essex Jct, VT (w. Merle Haggard & Ray Price)
9/2/02 Myra Flynn with Nick Cassarino. Red Square, Burlington, VT
9/5/07 George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
9/5/07 The Brew. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
9/8/07 Seth Yacovone Band. Randi & Joe's Wedding, Lincoln, VT
9/8/07 Tons of Steel. Randi & Joe's Wedding, Lincoln, VT (Dead cover band w/Seth Yacovone)
9/12/07 Seth Yacovone. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
9/15/07 Gov't Mule. Memorial Auditorium, Burlington, VT (w/ Mike Gordon)
9/19/07 Wise Rokobili. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
9/24/07 Okkervil River. Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, S.Burlington, VT
9/25/07 John McLaughlin & 4th Demention. The Egg, Albany, NY
9/28/07 Seth Yacovone. Nectar's. Burlington, VT
9/29/07 Grace Potter & Nocturnals. Burke Mountain Music Fest, East Burke, VT
10/3/07 Wise Rokobili. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
10/7/07 Japhy Ryder. Mad River Glen, Fayston, VT
10/9/07 Brian Kenney Fresno. Langdon Street Cafe, Montpelier, VT
10/17/07 Turkey Bouillon Mafia. Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, S.Burlington, VT (w/ S Yacovone, S Hadeka & "Mr. Charlie" Frasier. All Grateful Dead music, for "Big John's" 30th Birthday)
10/19/07 Seth Yacovone. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
10/19/07 Starline Rhythm Boys. Charlie O's, Montpelier, VT (night 1 of a 2 night live album recording)
10/19/07 Nick Cassarino & Friends. Positive Pi, Montpelier, VT
10/19/07 Sessions Americana. Langdon Street Cafe, Montpelier, VT
10/19/07 Calamity Janes. Black Door Bistro, Montpelier, VT
10/20/07 Phil Lesh & Friends. Glens Falls Civic Center, Glens Falls, NY (w/ Trey for whole show)
10/24/07 Seth Yacovone. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
10/27/07 Roots of Creation. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
10/27/07 Spiritual Rez. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
10/31/07 Lotus. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
10/31/07 Sound of Urchin. Nectar's, Burlington, VT
11/2/07 Ratdog. Memorial Auditorium, Burlington, VT (w/ Mike Gordon on bass)
11/2/07 Porter Batiste Stoltz. Club Metronome, Burlington, VT (w/ Page McConnell on keys)
11/6/07 GWAR. Higher Ground Ballroom, S.Burlington, VT
11/9/07 Seth Yacovone. Nectar's. Burlington, VT
11/18/07 The Briggs. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
11/18/07 Dropkick Murphys. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
11/26/07 WEEN. Higher Ground Ballroom, S. Burlington, VT
11/27/07 Nothing About Grover. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
12/6/07 Turkey Bouillon Mafia. Club Metronome, Burlington, VT
12/8/07 James Kinney. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
12/12/07 Seth Yacovone. Purple Moon Pub, Waitsfield, VT
12/14/07 Secret History. Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY
12/15/07 Peggy Young. United Palace, New York, NY
12/15/07 Neil Young. United Palace, New York, NY
12/20/07 Vorcza. Slide Brook, Warren, VT
12/31/07 Japhy Ryder. Gate House at Sugarbush, Warren, VT

Chuck Garvey (moe.) South Burlington. Feb. 2007

Shane MacGowan (The Pogues) Boston. March 2007

William Elliot Whitmore, Boston. March 2007

Reid Genauer, South Burlington. April 2007

Seth Yacovone, Newmarket. April 2007

Page McConnell, South Burlington. May, 2007

Warren Haynes (Gov't Mule) Mt. Jam. June 2007

The Machine, Burlington. August 2007

George Clinton, South Burlington. September 2007