I don't know what was going on at Rich O's last night. But I didn't like it very much. And I'm glad I didn't have to stay.

I arrived at about 9:00. I parked in Northern Alberta and hiked in. The new front area For Special People Only was crammed with Special People. The loser area was crammed with losers, the regular front area was crammed with strangers. Rich O's proper was crammed with strangers and, I immediately suspected, woohoos.

I spent about 10 minutes wondering if (a) a bartender would ever notice me, and (b) if I'd have time for a beer before it was time to leave, and (c) where the fuck all these people had come from.

I ended up leaving and going over to this Main Menu place early.

The Main Menu is an oddity to me. I don't know why. I guess partly because it's so close to Rich O's and Jack's but nobody from Rich O's ever goes there, unless we know people in a band that's playing there. Like last night, MusicalHippyDude's band OTTO was playing at 10:00.

The band was getting set up, and I talked with MusicalHippyDude briefly. GlassesGirl was there too, but the other people at the groupie table I didn't know.

So I sat at the bar next to an improbably hot girl and I ordered a Newcastle (1900). There was something wrong with it - like it had been in the keg for 10 years or something. I did manage to finish it though.

I also had the very cute bartender take a glass out of the freezer for me so that my next beer wouldn't have to suffer being poured into a chilled glass.

Speaking of next beers, my next three were all Blue Moons (258). I like Blue Moon. I especially like it when I remember to ask the bartender to leave the fruit out of it, as I did for the second and third glasses. For the first glass I forgot, but I fished the offending citrus wedge out before it completely ruined the taste.

I spent some time talking to ImprobablyHotGirl and her friend while the band continued to get ready. A few more Rich O's people came straggling in, and they kept bugging me to go join them at the groupie table.

See previous entry.

Once the band started I moved over to a table with PhotoDude and bobbed my head to the beat and stuff.

The band is good. They play all original stuff though, and this means that there weren't any people dancing.

I have the same problem with all live bands, and OTTO is no exception. The music is too damned loud, and it completely drowns out the singing. I'm sure that the lyrics were great and all that, but you just can't hear them. I'd like to see every band in the world cut the instrument volume in half and leave the vocal volume as is. But, last time I checked, I was not in charge of every band in the world, so I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for this to happen.

When the band got down to just a couple of songs left, I drove the short distance back to Rich O's.

The vast majority of the strangers and the losers and the Special People had all left.

Yay!

I sat on the sofa (the throne was occupado) and ordered a half-glass of Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Dunkel (75), on tap for the first time in over a year I think.

I'd just gotten settled in, and DooRagGirl came in.

Yay!

I gave her some shit for being such a stranger lately and then we just talked about various crap with the three strangers sitting in the living room area with us. Once the strangers left I moved to the throne.

At one point, DooRagGirl asked me how I was doing and I said that I was "about the same." So she said something like, "Oh, pretty bad then."

This was a bit of a shock to me because I realized that I'm not "pretty bad" anymore. Since this wall went up I'm actually doing pretty well. Better than I should be doing certainly.

Once DooRagGirl left I drove back down to The Main Menu, but ImprobablyHotGirl wasn't there anymore, so I came home.

For a while, after she got her hair cut, her hand would still move to her shoulder, and her fingers would twirl hair that wasn't there anymore. She did it all the time, and then she'd laugh at herself because she forgot.

I remember how she looked in my bathrobe. How it would never stay closed. I remember hiding the belt so it would never close again, and how she laughed when I told her what I'd done.

She'd take her finger and trace soft circles on my arm, or on my hand, or on my chest. It wasn't enough for her to touch me - she always had to give it that little bit extra.

In my peripheral vision, I'd see her looking at me, and when I'd turn my head and catch her doing it, she'd always blush.

I remember how she'd fall asleep in the car, no matter how short the drive was.

She would grab my hand, and hold it tightly when we had to walk by strangers on the way back to our cars.

I remember the little dance she did once when a song she liked came on the radio.

One morning I woke up to her whispering my name. My cat had finally allowed her to pick him up, and she was standing by the bed holding him. She was so excited.

When she was struggling, trying to think of the perfect words to say, her face would get all contorted, and I'd mimic her expression until she caught me.

She was so very nervous, that first time, and when we were done the sweat glistened on her skin like a million tiny stars.

I remember all of these little things, and so many more. I think that I will remember them forever.

It's such a cruel world that let's me love every single thing about a person, but that won't let my heart take that extra step.

Such a cruel fucking world.

(continued)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A part that I was quite happy to leave forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's yummy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But inside, inside I was devastated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I got nothing.

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

So, like I said, I gave up.

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

I stopped everything.

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

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

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

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

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

I forgot about this until just now.

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

That's pretty damn cool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You bet your ass it's worth it.

(continued)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until this one time.

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

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

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

Newcastle Brown Ale, it was called.

It was yummy.

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

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

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

In other words: Heaven On Earth.

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

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

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

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

But I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

Like I said, it sucked.

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

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

(to be continued)

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

It looks yummy!