Going Fourth!

I often opine on Independence Day as an inspiring holiday for our nation, but today I found myself thinking about it as the thing itself and how it's been in my life. Like Christmas -- we all know the difference between the story of Christmas (awesome) and the actual celebration with loved ones (dicey). Every holiday has that kind of dichotomy -- the thing for what it celebrates and the thing for how it is. 

And I have to tell you, my Fourths of July have been a mixed bag. 

Never works out exactly as I would like.

I don't remember doing much at all when I was a kid. When I was little more than a toddler, I think I was at a parade, a big town deal with floats and stuff, but it was so far back I can barely remember anything. Later my family really didn't do anything. No parades, no fireworks. We visited relatives because it was a day off and Mom could go see her family. Then, as adults do, they sat around and talked. BORING! 

Later on there were some winners. I went to a Mets game one year, and while I don't even remember if they won the game (I think they won), the fireworks show at Shea afterward was spectacular. In 2002, my wife and I went to the local kaboomery show and it was great -- the patriotism was still thick on the ground here in the lower Hudson Valley, where many locals had been lost on 9/11. 

One July 4, after my first year in junior high, my family spent the day with a family that had enough fireworks to invade Canada. I shot off more bottle rockets in one evening than I have the entire rest of my life. Almost burned down their house, but not quite (a bottle tipped backward after I lit the fuse). In fact, it was a miracle that with alcohol-consuming adults and explosive-armed children there were no major disasters. 

For a few years the Fourth was spent at a relative's cabin in the country, something I would enjoy much, much more now than I did as a kid. Very quiet.

One year, as the Fourth loomed, I convinced a friend to get a party going at his house -- and then my parents informed me that we were going out of town for the holiday. I have never lived that down. But my friends all got even a year or so later, when I threw a party in my parents' backyard and all the guys decided to bug out because they wanted to play basketball in the park. So my parents were looking at me like Don't you have any friends anymore? It was humiliating. The guys returned later out of pity, or hunger.

More recent years have found our family unit with dogs, and we usually spend the holiday making sure no canine freaks out and goes running wild. Usually it's okay, but about five years back the idiots up the street were blowing up enough stuff to -- well, invade Canada. Poor Nipper took it hard. And it sparked an argument between my wife and Mrs. "Deuce" Baggio nearby, which my wife decidedly, comprehensively won. I could have warned the Baggios not to argue with my wife, especially when she's defending one of our dogs. 

There were other summer parties that were eventful, and even near terrible, but I think they did not land on the Fourth, so I'll leave them for another time, if at all. This year I just want to make some decent food and distract the dog when the bombs go off. I love you, America, but your birthday is not always my favorite day. 

Bath or shower?

Commercials sure like to show gals soaking in the bathtub. I wonder. My mom always considered it akin to stewing in your own filth; she was a shower-taker exclusively and encouraged same among the rest of the family. My wife has no interest in baths -- she just wants to get clean, not make a big production out of it. (She saves the big production afterward, for her hair.) 

Me? I used to like a good bath sometimes. Like, when I'd worked out too hard and everything hurt. Or when I drank too much and had one of those killer hangovers, the kind where you have stopped feeling nauseated but want to sweat the remaining booze out of your pores. A bath could be very therapeutic at times like that. These days I don't drink and barely exercise, so I pretty much stick to the shower.

I do remember a bed & breakfast we stayed in years ago in which the bathroom had no shower. It had a huge clawfoot tub with shower attachment on a hose, so you could wash your hair and I guess spray off any filth you'd been stewing in. I loved it -- as a moderately big guy it was great to be in a tub that fit me so well. (Shower/tub combos always skimp on the latter.) My wife wasn't so keen for reasons cited above, but she did admire the decor. 

The last one to use an actual tub in our house was the dog. Izzy had gone beyond the friendly confines of the backyard, into an area where runoff goes from the pond, and became blackened from the chest down. Of course it was very cold outside, so there was no bathing him out there; I had to de-mud him just enough with old towels to get him inside to the bathtub where I could do the rest of the job. Normally he gets a good scrub-down once a month at the groomer, but here his perfidy resulted in an unscheduled and more thorough bathing. Puppy, thy name is mud!

I guess I would tell the would-be homeowner or apartment hunter that it's always good to have a tub in case of such emergencies. You never know. One time when I was a kid, Mom and I picked up a big feast from a restaurant and drove it home -- or rather, not all of it, because a loose lid led me to a bath of chowder in the passenger seat of the car. Fortunately it was not hot enough to cause serious burns, but getting into the tub back home and letting the cold water do its thing may have saved me from worse injury. 

Well, one way or another, you gotta get clean sometimes, a sometimes a bath is the way to go. Just don't forget the ducky, and the soap. 

Too white to live.

Of all the BS articles I've seen condemning white people and white culture, this has to be in the top ten, maybe the top two: 

Alcoholics Anonymous more likely to benefit White Americans

Written by a typical media ignoramous, the article tells us that 

Alcoholics Anonymous is a key means by which millions of Americans deal with drinking problems.

However, White Americans are much more likely to engage in the trusted "12-step" program than Black of Hispanic drinkers, a new study finds.

Oh, so I guess AA is now "problematic." These non-white boozehounds go into the meetings and hate what they see, I guess? 

Black and Hispanic alcoholics are about 40% less likely to have ever attended an AA meeting, compared to White drinkers, according to analysis of data from the National Alcohol Survey.

Wait -- so they're less likely to even try AA, and that's AA's fault? What else can we blame on AA?

Among adults younger than 30, less than 5% had ever attended AA versus about 12% of those 30 and older. After accounting for other factors, younger adults still attended AA at a third of the rate of older adults.

You see, the well-known fact that the disease of addiction progresses with age has completely stumped the band here. The fact that heavy drinkers don't usually start seeing serious problems until they're over thirty is data that cannot compute. Therefore, Alcoholics Anonymous must be repelling the youngsters. 

"This is concerning, because the disparities suggest that these groups -- Black, Latinx and emerging adults -- are not receiving optimal care," said lead researcher Sarah Zemore, a senior scientist with the Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville, Calif.

"Not receiving optimal care" is a nice touch. Like AA is a government-run outfit that needs Congressional oversight.  And "emerging adults" is an interesting term for people who in any culture would be called "adults." "Latinx," of course, is a term of art used far more by white people than anyone else. But that's irrelevant; the point is that Zemore gets to dump a bucket of fecal matter on the heads of an old established white-American-origin organization to boost her own career. Keep your eye on the prize!

Gaps in AA attendance could not be explained by factors like the severity of a person's alcoholism or whether they'd received specialty treatment. After accounting for those factors, researchers still found that people of color and young adults were less likely to have attended AA.

I completely doubt that they've "accounted for" anything. That's become a handwave in the press for We already thought of that so nyah nyah nyah. But let's allow it for the moment. You're saying that these people were less likely to have even gotten in the door of AA because of their own prejudice. Is AA supposed to drag them in with chains? 

What else can you tell us, o sage?

For example, past studies have found that people of color attending 12-step meetings have reported conflicts with the program's general philosophy, or have felt scrutinized or discriminated against, she noted.

A typical alcoholic, shaky and miserable, everyone at home angry, his or her life falling apart, who walks into a room full of strangers who look like normal, happy people is going to feel "scrutinized" and "discriminated against" by everyone. Everyone in the room feels sorry for the guy and wants to help him, but he sees threats -- and would love an excuse to say This doesn't work and go drink.  

And young adults may be turned off by the religious nature of the meetings. Participants have to acknowledge powerlessness over alcohol and give their lives over to a "higher power."

The fact that the program has wrestled with this from its founding in the 1930s, has a chapter called "We Agnostics" in its main text, insists throughout its traditions that it is not a religious or religion-affiliated organization, and hosts meetings specifically tailored for atheists and agnostics cuts no ice with these people. 

On the other hand, the nihilistic culture of today's youth does indeed make it hard for them to believe anything, even that their own lives are worth saving. That tells us less about AA than about youth culture, which is a stew of envy, self-hatred, political correctness enforced without mercy, empty laughs, environmental panic, and meaninglessness. 

The report doesn't say much about why black or Hispanic people shun AA except to indicate that they won't go and if they do they feel paranoid about it. Have the researchers wondered if there are elements in those cultures that make them resistant to a program that believes in surrender, humility, and selflessness? Maybe those cultures are a little "problematic," hmm?

No, that can't be. Only white cultures can have flaws. 

In the end, this is just another academic hit job, aided and abetted by a compliant media. White people bad, old people bad, American things bad, anything to do with God bad. 

If their little study makes just one person less likely to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and get help, and instead encourages him to slide into the depths of depravity, despair, ruined health, and destroyed family, and into a shameful and grotesque death, then their work is done. Take a bow, creeps.

Jitters.

I'm not sure what Dunkin' (née Dunkin' Donuts) is trying to do here, but I think it's a bad idea. 

Dunkin' Spiked is the latest spinoff product from America's favorite coffee place (they endure Starbucks but they like Dunkin'), and this tower of caffeinated power was in the local supermarket. The iced tea seems like an okay idea, along the lines of Twisted Tea, with the same amount of alcohol by volume, 5% -- identical to lousy commercial beers like Budweiser. But the iced coffee concerned me. What's the caffeine in that? Can you drink a six-pack without getting the jitters? You're not supposed to get the jitters until the morning after. 

The iced coffee is 6% ABV, just a tetch higher than Bud, but each can contains about 30 mg caffeine, compared to 100 mg in a cup of coffee, per Delish (whose reviewer was not impressed with the product). Therefore, if you drank a whole six of Dunkin' Spiked Iced Coffee, you'd get 20 mg less than the caffeine in two cups of coffee. That would probably help you stay up and drink more, but it's not like taking amphetamines or snorting coke. 

For another comparison, think of the cocktails made with energy drinks like Red Bull that have become popular in the last couple of decades. A typical cocktail might have two ounces of vodka and the rest of the 12-ounce glass filled with Red Bull. That results in a single drink with:

1) 6.6% alcohol by volume; 

2) 93 mg caffeine; 

3) Lousy flavor because Red Bull tastes like a petroleum product. 

So, more potent in every way. 

To each his own, but I'd prefer to keep using coffee as God intended -- as a means of waking up and staying awake through life's more boring moments. I have no intention of counteracting that gift with alcohol, but your mileage may vary. Just make sure you get a designated driver for that mileage! 

Crate day in the mornin'!

Another trash day, another morning inspecting the neighbors' garbage. And what an interesting find we have here! 

Forty crates of wine grapes, emptied and waiting for the trash collectors. A veritable 6x8 wall of wine. It was a magnificent and imposing structure, like the ancient menhirs, Mesoamerican pyramids, or the monolith from 2001. What kind of wino lives here?

Actually, probably not a wino. For an active alcoholic, making your own wine is one of the worst ways to feed the disease. Takes too long. This is the kind of project the wine enthusiast engages in, and I have no problem with that (except it would have been nicer for the garbagemen for them to not put ALL FORTY crates out at once). 

This family is from Eastern Europe. I have a friend who grew up in Communist Yugoslavia, and his family made vast quantities of wine, as well as grappa and olive oil. In a Communist country you did as much off-the-books work as you could. Everyone did. The black market was probably twice as big as the legit market. He's been a proud American for a long time, but for years he still made his own wine because it was a family tradition. 

I personally also made alcohol -- I used to make beer at home, home being my apartment. I did get some really good results, and I enjoyed the process. I made mead, too. Like any great hobby, you can start with a small stake and escalate it to massive proportions -- the way with fishing, you can start with a rod and work your way up to a boat. But I gave it up after a few years. Too much work for too little booze. 

But back to these forty crates. Each was sold as containing 42 pounds of grapes. How much wine could you actually make from that? Well, I looked around at some winemaking sites, and found out that you could get as much as three gallons of wine from each crate. So this wall o' boxes would translate to as much as 120 gallons of wine. Federal law allows more than that per year for households with more than one adult, so they're not considered bootleggers. However, maybe for the alcoholic this could work out after all. 

I wish them well in their winey efforts. I used to do odd jobs for a family that made their own wine, and it was pretty weak, watery stuff. I hope this family gets it right. 

And I hope I don't awaken to an explosion one night, with bits of fermented grape raining over a four-block radius. That would be hard to hose off the roof.

More Napoleons of crime.

Puppy dog Izzy and I usually are out when it's not too bright, before any other dog-man walking combos in the morning, because we are early risers and maybe not too bright either. It's not so bad at this time of year, but in the winter, when the sun comes up around noon, it's a little depressing. 

Being out early, though, we're usually the first to see what the nocturnal drivers have left around. For a while we had a run on banana peels, when the local 24-hours gas station/convenience store was selling bananas at the register. But lately we're just back to the old favorites -- cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, and beer cans. Although these days we're more likely to see abominations like White Claw or hard seltzer represented than Coors Light. 

I can't complain too much. As I've noted in the past, one of my first cars had a hole rotted out in the passenger seat floor, so when I wanted to empty the ashtray at a light I would just lift up the mat and dump it through the hole. I have a long, sordid history of litterbugism, for which I am trying to pay bit by bit, picking up trash. 

It's the beer/other booze containers that make me laugh. You know the geniuses are thinking that if they're pulled over, but there's no empty container, there is absolutely no way the officer will suspect they've been drinking at the wheel. 

"No one will EVER KNOW!"

The drinkers of things like White Claw or Twisted Tea also believe that they don't smell of alcohol regardless of how hard they've been pounding the juice. Okay, kids, you just keep on believing. Might as well start to practice standing on the side of the road, reciting the alphabet backward starting with V.

Obviously, the solution to this is for us all to drive Peel Tridents. 

Not only is there no window to throw garbage through, but for about half of the year the weather in New York wouldn't let you even get that thing on the streets unless you carry it there. What are you going to do then? Sink it in the snow? And in the summer, that bubble bakes you like a potato.

Besides, there's no room in it for a fully grown man and a six-pack of anything except wax bottle candy. If you drive it drunk and hit a pedestrian, it's 50/50 which of you will die. Plus, with all the gas we'd save, John Kerry could fuel his private jet for a hundred years. 

Modern problems require modern solutions! 

One memey moisty morning.

Greetings, my friends! The weekend was acceptably lovely and busy. I did pick the winner of the Kentucky Derby, but only because a friend of mine was once really into an independent comic book by the same name. Alas, I put no money on the horse. Did I spread mulch this weekend? Yes sir, I did. Just ask my back! 

Today, I offer fresh picked memes to start your week. Don't all hurrah at once. 

\

Thanks to fellow Bleatnik rbj13 for the otter picture

Maybe it comes with the name?

De-meme-ing! Part 1.

A friend of mine (let's call him Philbin) wanted to post my super-hilarious and super-dated meme about Tommy Chong and Foster Brooks on Facebook. Much to our mutual surprise, Facebook's idiot censors rejected the post, saying it was offensive (violating "community standards," which would imply that the "community" is made up of drooling morons).

So, as a public service, I thought I had better explain this joke. I figured that they didn't get it. I have often said that dissecting a joke is like dissecting a frog, in that you can do it, but don't expect the frog to jump afterward. Nevertheless, since our Social Betters are A) stupid and B) ten years old and "literally know nothing," I thought I had better explain it from top to bottom. 

Don't worry, Facebook censors -- I am typing this slowly because I know you don't read very fast. Okay, here goes:

1) Tommy Chong:

Tommy Chong is a comedian and comic actor, best known as part of the duo Cheech & Chong with Cheech Marin. Chong was born in 1938, so he's not exactly some brash newcomer of whom Facebook could not be aware. Cheech & Chong were famous for drug-centered humor, as witnessed in their first comedy album, 1971's Big Bambu. They later made the most marijuana-soaked film ever, 1978's Up in Smoke. The movie was well-regarded among connoisseurs (my elder cousins) for gags like the pot-smuggling van made entirely of compressed marijuana and the drug-sniffing dog that gets killed just smelling it. Chong wasn't just kidding around -- he became a marijuana activist and longtime fighter for legalization. So Chong's connection to marijuana has been pretty well established for more than fifty years. 

2) CBD:

As has been recounted on this blog, CBD, or cannabidiol, is the magic compound in marijuana that doesn't get you high (that's Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC) but supposedly cures everything. Maybe some people really have found relief from these CBD products, but the few people I know who tried them thought they were disappointing. I begin to suspect it was just a means of promoting the agriculture of marijuana, as George Washington Carver developed more than 300 uses for peanuts to help peanut agriculture. The difference is, most of Carver's inventions were useful. Be that as it may, Tommy Chong went all in on this, promoting his line of hemp-based products, notably those containing the magic ingredient CBD. So it's no offense to anyone that this former star stoner is promoting CBD; it's exactly the truth.

3) Foster Brooks:

Foster Brooks (1912-2001) was a comedian who had one schtick, but he was exceptionally good at it: He was a drunk. He had the knack for coming across as a cheerful, befuddled drunken man trying very hard not to appear drunk, and would stumble over words and make unusual statements in a way much funnier than any real drunk. In reality, Brooks was not a drinker, or had not been for many years when he became famous doing this bit. 

4) O'Doul's:

O'Doul's is one of the first successful U.S. brands of nonalcoholic beer, or rather beer with trace amounts of alcohol in it. This Anheuser Busch product has an alcohol content of .4%; a regular Budweiser has an alcohol content of 5%. So to get the buzz from one lousy can of Bud, you'd have to drink 12.5 cans of O'Doul's. It's still not recommended for people in recovery from alcohol addiction, but you can imagine how insanely difficult it would be to get loaded on O'Doul's. 

5) The Punch Line:

The comparison, then, is a simple one, that of a famous stoner who sells marijuana products that don't contain THC to a famous drunk selling beer that doesn't contain alcohol. Both guys were comedians who made a lot of comic hay playing people whose addictions were way out of control but were still funny to watch. So the meme is challenging others to disprove that this is a valid comparison. (This could be done by pointing out that Chong is still using pot while Brooks was not using alcohol, for one thing.)

6) Facebook:

So what's the problem? Does Facebook just not have a sense of humor? Well, no, it doesn't, because it's run by SJWs, but is that the whole problem?

Well, Philbin continued to investigate, and what he turned up is shocking! Tune in tomorrow for the revelation -- it's amazing! And if you disagree, change my mind! 

Meme streets.

Have to get out of the house early today, so I spring-loaded these memes to pop out at you when you opened the page. Enjoy your Saturday! 

The one was making the rounds thanks to Elon Musk--story of my career

More old drunks than old doctors?

In 1953, American businessmen and civic leaders began an anti-littering organization called Keep America Beautiful, which persists to this day. It got a large boost in the sixties, when First Lady Lady Bird Johnson began a campaign called the Beautification Project. The whole ball o' wax probably hit its zenith when a public service ad -- probably the most famous ever -- featuring fake Indian Iron Eyes Cody made everyone feel guilty. 

And yet the litter keeps showing up all the same. 

Usually the stuff I see by the side of the road includes fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts. Sometimes there are soda cans, but more often beer cans, little airplane liquor bottles, and other open containers that would get you in trouble with the cops if they pulled you over. 

So this surprised me. 

I was walking Izzy early in the morning, and he was poking at something on the ground. I wasn't surprised to see it was a bottle, but was surprised to find it was a bottle of Ensure, the nutrition shake generally used by the elderly and other populations who have trouble getting adequate calories. We were on a stretch between houses, so it wasn't likely to have rolled out from someone's garbage. But who would pitch this out of the car?

Ultimately I decided it was an old drunk, a guy whose doctor told him he needed more nutrition and also needed to stop drinking vodka. Well, our drunken driving friend decided he would meet the doctor halfway, and mix vodka into the Ensure while tootling about, making a Poor Old Man's Black Russian. (I guess if he wanted a White Russian he'd use the vanilla.) Having consumed the cocktail, he pitched the vodka-scented bottle out the window and hid the remaining vodka for his next drink. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But if you're abiding out there, Dude, please remember, you're too old and weak to go to prison for killing someone driving drunk. You wouldn't like it a bit. Save your POM Black Russians for home. And please: Keep America Beautiful. 

(NB: The bottle was not actually tested for vodka scent; I pitched it in the trash when I got back home, just in time for the garbage collection.)

The old standby (post-Christmas edittion).

Merrrry second day of Christmas! Well, yesterday was festive, or certainly busy, so I'm falling back on that old standby, the post-Christmas meme! What can I tell ya -- it was that or stories about everything I ate, and I'd bore myself. (Plus -- this is stupid but true -- I managed to burn the tips of my index and middle fingers on my right hand, so it hurts to type today. And I sprained the ring finger on the same hand bending it back on a drawer. And then Izzy yanked the leash so hard -- excited to get a treat -- that I stumbled on the walkway edging and skinned my knee. All very holly jolly.)

Putting in the work.

I guess it's a sign I'm a hopeless ignoramus that I would like to see evidence of work put into a piece of art. It is called a work of art, after all. 

It's like that test I wrote about back in '17, the test used to determine whether an activity is a sport or a game. It's called the Pancake Test, and its premise is simple: Can you eat a stack of pancakes before playing without noticeable diminishment in your play? If the answer is yes, play is unaffected, it's a game. If play is affected, it's a sport. 

My test is the Booze Test of Art: Could a work have been created as is if the artist had been drunk off his ass at the time he created it? If the answer is yes, then I just can't take it seriously. 

Let's have a look at two famous paintings and see how this checks out. 

First we have The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:

This famous oil painting, in the collection at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, might not be the sort of thing you'd like over the dining room table, but there's no question that it shows the work. It has a complexity of light and shadow, it shows personality and expression, and it is so stark and realistic as to be an anatomy lesson all on its own. Talk about a "body" of work! There is no way Rembrandt could have done this loaded. You can't even say "Harmenszoon" while loaded!

And then we have Untitled (ca. 1949) by Jackson Pollock, from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art:

And... yeah. I think the only way you could make this was hammered. More than 70 years later and it's still a mess. You may, as many do, cite the passion this this drip-canvas thing, but you can cite the passion in a restraining order as well. Work of creative genius? I'm apparently too much of a bonehead to say; I think Remington's pretty good, and that would get me thrown out of any critics' gathering. (Gawd, next he'll say he likes Thomas Kinkade!) I see a lot of laziness here, though, right down to not even putting in the effort to give it a title. Call it The Rage, call it Monday, call it Mildred, but call it something. We don't even know for sure when it was finished. Rembrandt's painting could have taken as much work as building a house; Pollock's, about as much as opening a lawn chair. 

Say what you will about Koons or even the lowly Kinkade being factory artists, but there's a plain economic reasoning behind this kind of modern art, and that's that it simply does not take that much time or work. Why labor over a canvas for a year and find that no one wants it? Toss off one, move on to the next; maybe the folks who decorate hotels may will them by the bushel. (Although even that's a questionable hope these days.)

I'm not picking on Pollock or his fans with meanness or spite. I'm just saying we instinctively appreciate something that we can tell took a lot of effort, skill, and thought. Most people will be more intrigued with buildings of stone or brick than reinforced concrete. The latter may have provided more shelter for more people in this busy world, and that's great, but which connects to the soul?

Pour one for the big guy.

Readers of a certain age will remember President Jimmy Carter's beloved but somewhat bumbling kid brother Billy Carter. Billy seemed much more like a good ol' boy than his big brother, and that in an era that honored rural down-home working folks.

Typical of Billy, though, he got in trouble. He once peed on an airport runway in full view of the press; worse, he got a $220,000 loan from Libya after registering as a representative of the country. That led to a Congressional investigation into Billy's influence peddling, which kind of ruined his good-ol'-boy-ness. It's not a good look for American small business owners and sons of the soil to represent OPEC nations. 

But while Billy's star was in the firmament, he inspired and recommended a beer called Billy Beer, sold in fine stores everywhere. 

Sure, the Secretary of the Treasury signs the money, but does he get to sign beer cans? No way.

Anyway, I've come up with a real winner of an idea. There's a little-known relative of the president, a son named Hunter, and I hear he likes to have a drink or two himself. I think we can make a deal to get him to endorse something like Billy Beer, maybe a malt liquor. Maybe a "fortified" malt liquor, you know? The way some delicious wines like M/D 2020 and Wild Irish Rose are fortified. And of course he would be paid in Fredcoin, the world's most Fred-like crytocurrency. 

Here's a mock-up of the label:

Trying to think of a good slogan, like "It'll Get You There" or "Throw Away Your Laptop and Forget Your Troubles" or "It's Like Kissing Your Sister-in-Law." I'm sure we can come up with something better. 

I'll be reaching out to the younger Biden soon to see what we can work out. Apparently Congress is just great with influence peddling now, so I doubt anyone will give him a problem on that end. And you know, they tell me that this Hunter fellow is a successful painter, which is great. My bathroom could use a fresh coat -- maybe we can add that to the deal.

Fizz.

I wrote last April about Coca-Cola's weird Starlight Coke, which was like cotton candy cola. Now I have an equally bizarre item from the competition, Pepsi. I give you Nitro Pepsi. 

Available in vanilla (shown) and
non-vanilla

I thought that this was another product with amped-up caffeine, like Coca-Cola Energy or Diet Coke XTRA (they leave off the E for Energy!). But no, nitro is referring to actual nitrogen, or as the label says, it is "nitrogen-infused cola." So I thought I'd see what it was about.

I should have read the back of the label. I didn't know there were instructions!

You see, there's a second lid beneath the lid of this soda, and popping it open seems to nitrogenate the soda, making for a thick head of tiny bubbles. You pour it into a glass, and you get a very rich, foamy consistency in your otherwise typical Pepsi. Or, like me, you drink out of the can and get a mouthful of bubbles and wonder what the cryin' hell this is supposed to be, because you didn't look at the can for instructions. I'd never seen a can of soda with instructions, but I have now. 

It should have been obvious to me, though, because I believe these are the same cans that Guinness used when they started selling their famous stout in cans. They'd invented of means of simulating that rich stout foam from the tap in your very home, and it was abundantly clever. It looks like Pepsi is in on the game. 

So my review: If you like the taste of Pepsi, you may find this an enjoyable experience. But I don't suppose there will be a Diet Pepsi Nitro; I think you need the sugars in order to help generate the foam. Nitro Pepsi actually has more calories and it does have more caffeine than a regular 12-ounce can of Pepsi -- a 12-oz can of Pepsi has 150 calories and 38 mg of caffeine; a 13.65-oz can of Nitro Pepsi has 230 calories and 73 mg of caffeine. Budget accordingly. 

The kids are all tight.

A few days ago Ann Althouse linked to a New York Magazine story about young professionals getting their drink on in a most serious fashion -- the martini. It's behind a paywall, but we get the gist from a Brooklyn bar owner: 

I watch these kids hammering martinis and I’m like, good Lord.... I think it is a perfect pressure valve for everything people are feeling. Everywhere you look you see war, you hear ‘keep your mask on,’ or ‘don’t keep your mask on’ — people are tired of toeing lines. They’re just like, 'Give me something that transgresses the bounds'.

As Althouse wrote, "Is 'wellness' dead? Ironic if all these precautions in the name of health led to a higher and higher tolerance for alcohol."

This isn't the first time the martini has made one of its many comebacks. In the 1990s, when I worked in the magazine biz, the martini and the cigar bar were suddenly all the rage. It tied in with the widespread fin de siècle zeitgeist of the decade. Even the Trump-owned Hyatt Grand Central had a cigar bar, and Trump himself famously neither drinks nor smokes. It wasn't long before the anti-smokers got their feet back under them and the cigar bars and shops faded or became displaced. The death of the Nat Sherman store down the street near Bryant Park in 2020 was a blow to the recreational smoker. 

Anyway, the martini got another boost following 9/11, when pressure valves also seemed desirable. Personally I can mark that era's end to 2005, when I was at a large business meeting to announce that the great company I was working for (yay!) had just been acquired by an evil company I had once fled (boo!). As we exited, the reception area was full of waiters with martinis for celebration. I dodged through them and fled to the safety of my desk. There was nothing to celebrate. Further, the evil company was so damned square that if they were pushing martinis, the drink's days in the sun were over. 

Which brings us to now. I find it interesting that young folks would want a pricey drink that is essentially solid booze. It's great if you want to get drunk fast, sure. The thing is, even experienced drinkers know to treat the martini with respect, not slam them back like some girly Bailey's shot. I suspect that most of these kids wind up even worse than Nora Charles did in her first scenes in 1934's Thin Man, after she tried to catch up with the six martinis Nick had already consumed. 

The difference is that, being in an old movie, Nora just woke up the next day feeling ill with vague memories of the night before. She didn't throw up all over everything, drunk-dial all her friends, throw up again in the taxi, start a fistfight with the driver, wake up with some ugly stranger, and feel completely wiped out and full of shame all the next day.

Brooklyn cab drivers, take warning! Put plastic sheeting all over the backseat of your cars.

Country roads.

I was walking around a country road in Pennsylvania with large economy size dog Tralfaz when I noticed something that made me curious.

I couldn't figure out why the intersection up ahead was supposed to be dangerous. I'd been there before. It's a two-way stop with pretty good visibility in either direction. To your right is a downward slope, but it seems to me that only pea-soup fog, exceptionally bad ice, or the Dukes of Hazzard driving up the hill would make it dangerous.

I wondered if the sign was just a means of the local highway department using up its budget so it wouldn't see a cut the next year. The irreplaceable Mark Steyn has had some fun with America's stop-sign statism over the years: "I quickly appreciate being on a country lane and able to see the country, as opposed to admiring rural America’s unending procession of bend signs, pedestrian-approaching signs, stop signs, stop-sign-ahead signs, stop-sign-ahead-signs-ahead signs, pedestrian-approaching-a-stop-sign signs, designated-scenic-view-ahead signs, parking-restrictions-at-the-designated-scenic-view signs, etc."

And sure enough, we have one of those great "Stop Ahead" signs, because it's not enough to tell drivers to stop anymore. We have to be alerted to start stopping so we can stop completely at the stop sign. Before we stop stopping. And here is the stop sign itself.

hooray

The speed limit is set at a leisurely 35, as is typical for American town and rural roads that are not main thoroughfares. 

After looking hither and yon, there was only one thing I spotted in the intersection that would indicate any particular danger to the intersection.

Yeah, that could have something to do with it.

Bad New Year's I have known.

I've been thinking back to New Year's Eves of the past, partly because I am thinking this could be the first year since toddlerhood that I don't make it to midnight. I've been dragging around all week, the weather is gloomy, I'm still on the anti-neuropathy drug that makes me sleepy, and I have two dogs that will want to be up early in the morning no matter how late I stay up at night. And let's face it--I ain't no kid anymore. Who is? If you were ten in 2000 you're in your thirties now. 

Looking back, I realized that while I had some great New Year's -- a couple of parties were legendary, including one we threw while our parents were out of town -- a lot of them were pretty bad. 

Times Square, 1937. No, I wasn't there. I've never been there for New Year's. 

One year I spent New Year's in a dumpy hotel in New Jersey with my parents. It was supposed to be a party atmosphere, but it actually seemed to suck joy right out of the air. Passing cars would feel a joy drain. Another year, when my folks were older and living in Florida, I was visiting for the holidays. Both of my folks were asleep by ten, right in their chairs. I loved my parents, but they weren't a ball of fire to be with for a young guy on New Year's Eve. 

On the other hand, as I've gotten older myself, I'm no ball of fire either. I enjoyed watching the Thin Man marathon on TCM for a few years with my wife; they skipped it last year but are back to it tonight. I also thought of a New Year's long ago when I just hung around with a friend's younger cousin all night, talking about comics, Dungeons & Dragons, playing video games, and watching TV (1967's Camelot was on, and as bad as I'd always heard). He was a good kid. We met up again a few New Year's Eves later but it wasn't the same; his interests had drifted and so had mine. 

Good or bad, though, one thing I have always done on New Year's is make it to midnight, at least since I was a little kid. Not sure about tonight. I guess we'll see. But I expect to be here on the 2022 side of things, and God willing it will be a good year for all of us.  

Elves I have known.

Anyone can claim to know Santa Claus. "Sure, me 'n the big Ho Ho Homeister go back to when I was a little tot," one might say. And why not? Santa goes to every house that celebrates Christmas and dumps some gifts, he's available for visits in public shopping centers everywhere, and he even makes appearances at parties. He may be stealthy, but he's not exactly shy. 

I, however, can claim to have known a number of the North Pole elves, due partly to my work with the Elves Tool and Dye Union Local 34. They liked to have their meetings off premises where the bosses wouldn't be able to butt in, so they would go to one of the watering holes frequented by the Teamsters and other mobsters in the city. I met a few of them there. Most of them were lightweights, drinking wine spritzers and frozen daiquiris, but a few of them could hold their weight. 

Pretty typical scene at the end of the night.

Here are a couple dozen of the gang that I got to know over the years. Most of them were all right, but some, sheesh, you shouldn't meet in a dark alley. At least not if you're under two feet tall. 

Alex Zingy

Fat Joe (shop steward)

Splink

Frenzy McGee

Little Pierre

Stiiv McQuiin

Fat Joe Jr. 

Godzilla

Zesty McGee (a real knockout)

Pow-Pow

The Yuling Idiot (not sure what his real name was)

Hasty Puddin'

Elrond

Cornhole

The Situation

Meriwinkle (kind of quiet, drank sherry)

Texas Prairie Chicken

Flangepart

Pesky McGee

Fat Joe III

Rondo Hatton 

Peewee 

Little Peewee

Ying Tong Iddle I Po

Duck Bharma

Like I say, nice guys for the most part. However, Pow-Pow and Godzilla still owe me bail money. If you see them at the mall with Santa, let them know I haven't forgotten. 

Heads up!

 

Women.

Today is International Women's Day, and good for them. 

Some guys think a holiday like this is silly -- women outnumber us in America by 50.8 to 49.2, and since when do we celebrate a special day for the majority? There's no White Folks Day or Hetero Pride Day or Lottery Losers Day or People Who Hated Algebra Day. Special days are reserved to give minority groups attention.

Well, I don't care. Honestly, I don't personally know any women who are going out there to make a big deal of it. In New York we can barely go to a restaurant, never mind a parade. I think women, including my wife, will be happy to take pride in the advances that they have made in society in the last 150 years and see what Google is doodling for it, and that's about it. I'm just glad I don't have to buy anything. 

Tobacco Celebrates Women, 1984

This still sounds like I'm being a typical patronizing caveman, doesn't it? I guess so. No offense is meant, though. I just don't get excited over dates that have no religious or national significance. Women's Day's date of March 8 doesn't commemorate the day women went over the hill to defeat the forces of the International Men's Army or something; they just picked March 8 for no reason I can find. Russian women seem to have been the ones who settled on the date, which is even stranger to me, since March 8 is still very cold in most of Russia. I guess they had their reasons. If I were looking for a date that would be good to get a parade and show of force up, I'd go with June 5. 

Again, I'm not picking on women. I barely commemorate my own birthday. My ancestry is a mixed bag, so I don't get worked up over ethnic holidays. Even St. Patrick's Day has lost its pride of place for my Irish side since I stopped drinking. 

 

I think women are pretty awesome, and I know that women are as smart as men, and particular women are smarter than every guy I know. I'm glad women can stand on their own without men, own whatever they want, do whatever they like, and so on, and I'm sad and angered for societies where they can't. And I dislike men who put on a dress and pretend to be female so they can gain unfair advantages in sports or make their stupid résumés look better to get government jobs. That's as bad as a white guy painting his face and applying for minority grants.

So that's all I got. If you are a woman and you're celebrating the day, enjoy it! You won't hear a bad word out of me about females. If you want to hear someone say anything bad about them, ask my wife. She thinks teenage girls are evil and women are worse backbiters, backstabbers, and passive-aggressive manipulators than men; that men are liars but aren't nearly as good at lying as women. But you didn't hear that from me.