Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives

Apropos of nothing 5 [cranky-d] Updated

When he’s in a bar and has been waiting too long for a beer, my father might say, “Hell of a place to start a bar.” I have been continuing the tradition.

Update: added “in a bar” because otherwise this makes no sense, much like everything else I write.

58 Replies to “Apropos of nothing 5 [cranky-d] Updated”

  1. alppuccino says:

    I never understood the expression “Nowhere to go butt-up.”

  2. JD says:

    I seem to recall the terms “butt up” and sashal being bandied about quite freely, al. NTTAWWT.

  3. alppuccino says:

    Alright JD. I “think” I know where you’re going with this, and like I told you on the golf course, as you were constantly offering to “clean my ball”, I stay in my own fairway.

  4. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    If you guys are going to start talking about strokes, shafts, holes, shanks, wood, and foursomes, I’m outta here.

  5. Carin says:

    OMG, I HATED that line when I was a bartender. HATED. Of course, being the excellent bartender I was, if I didn’t immediately serve someone it was because I was REALLY fraking busy.

    I got my payback. My favorite line, when asked if I had a “match” was — yes, my ass and your face. I never used it, but THOUGHT it about a billion times.

  6. Ouroboros says:

    .. or he might say “Hell of a place to WAIT FORTY-FIVE FREAKIN MINUTES FOR A FREAKIN COORS LITE !!!! GODDAMN-IT!! WHO THE FUCK DO HAVE TO BLOW TO WET MY WHISTLE AROUND HERE??!!” … or somesuch..

  7. urthshu says:

    “Hell of a place to start a bar”?

    /not getting it

  8. Carin says:

    If Karl were here we’d prolly have a piece about this

    The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.

    This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3 (see recent daily results). Tracking Polls are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day.

    A week ago today, Obama had a three-percentage point lead and the candidates were even among unaffiliated voters. Today, McCain leads 52% to 37% among unaffiliateds.

    So, yes, sure it’s a statistically insignificant margin, BUT, a week ago, Obama had a three point lead. That’s a four point swing in one week.

  9. cranky-d says:

    We’ll subtitle my “bar series” “Stuff Carin Hated When She Tended Bar,” I guess. BTW, the line usually gets used when the bartender is sitting at the end of the bar yammering with the more attractive/moneyed guys in the place.

  10. B Moe says:

    My favorite line, when asked if I had a “match” was — yes, my ass and your face. I never used it, but THOUGHT it about a billion times.

    That one doesn’t really work when a woman, especially a cute one, says it to a dude.

  11. cranky-d says:

    Callback to “my ass and your face” would be, “then you must have one of the ugliest asses in town.

  12. Sdferr says:

    If Artur Rubenstein were here, he’d prolly play something like this:
    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=y1qch7SwFiM

    Apropos of nothing

  13. Ouroboros says:

    “If you guys are going to start talking about strokes, shafts, holes, shanks, wood, and foursomes”

    … not to mention ‘The Mulligan’ ..hahahahahahha! ahahh.. ha..
    Get it? A mulligan.. like when you get a bad stroke off… ?
    Am I the only one that claims mulligans in the bedroom???

    Damn!…Nevermind..

  14. happyfeet says:

    I agree with Carin.

  15. happyfeet says:

    oh. at #8.

  16. Carin says:

    tuff Carin Hated When She Tended Bar,” I guess. BTW, the line usually gets used when the bartender is sitting at the end of the bar yammering with the more attractive/moneyed guys in the place.

    Huh … kinda long. I’m sure you only use the line in proper circumstances, but I’ve met bunchs of yahoos that LOVE their clever lines, and are determined to use them whether the situation fits or not ;)

    Honestly, I could tell stories. My favorite was when I bartended downtown (Detroit) and a gang fight broke out. I was about 8 months pregnant, and a guy grabbed a liquor bottle from my well, and smashed it against the bar so he could use it as a weapon.

    Oh … good times …

  17. Carin says:

    I’m no Karl, Happy, but figured it should be brought up.

  18. happyfeet says:

    It’s just tragic, Carin, is what it is. I are already less informed. I feels it.

  19. Carin says:

    We gotta fight it. We shall overcome.

  20. happyfeet says:

    It’s just such a waste I think. I am disheartened.

  21. Sdferr says:

    Oh, and here’s what Vlad Horowitz had to say about that: “Oh, yeah? he says, “well take this, Artur!”:
    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UtbF78NApmQ&NR=1

    Apropos of nothing in particular. ‘Cept them guys.

  22. Carin says:

    But, look on the bright side. We still have Thor.

  23. commander0 says:

    I wanna hang with your old man, Cranky. You? Not so much

  24. Carin says:

    I never understood the expression “Nowhere to go butt-up.”

    Were you ever similarly flummaxed by the question “Supersalad?”

  25. Aldo says:

    Mexican bar: As soon as the bottle in front of you is half empty the girl brings another. If you start nursing them she gets pouty.

    American bar: Spend ten minutes trying to flag down a waitress for the first beer. Spend twenty minutes trying to flag her down for the second. On number three she says, “I’m sorry sir we’re not allowed to serve you another drink so quickly.”

  26. Carin says:

    flummoxed? Oh, I don’t have spell check on this computer.

  27. Carin says:

    Aldo, you never hung out at my bar ;)

    Part of the problem, is that a lot of people become bartenders to pick up chicks, etc. I HATED getting stuck with stud young guys, because I knew he was gonna stand in front of the cute blonds all night (who wouldn’t tip for shit) while I busted my hump.

  28. Carin says:

    And, usually attractive female bartenders were picked for their looks and not their skills. I once worked with a bartender/model who made drinks so bad, they were constantly returned.

  29. happyfeet says:

    I tried this stuff called nance on Sunday. It was frozen from Guatemala. They are the little fruits here. I just tried them raw. Very pungent I thought and sort of sweet but mostly an odd sort of texture and I threw most of them away. I guess from the freezing when they thawed they looked more like flesh-colored than a cheery yellow. I have another bag left still. I might try cooking them but they have little pit thingers so it all seems sort of like a hassle.

  30. Carin says:

    I think the weirdest thing I ever bought on a whim was fiddleheads. I can’t remember really liking them.

  31. cranky-d says:

    Well, commandero, you little pussy, my dad would not want to hang with you.

  32. cranky-d says:

    Aldo, if they won’t keep them coming in one place, there are plenty of other places that will.

    Except trendy clubs, I imagine. I don’t go to them. Because they’re trendy.

  33. happyfeet says:

    I had no idea you could eat fiddleheads. Interesting.

  34. happyfeet says:

    Like here. In Texas they were just ferns. We never ate them.

  35. Salt Lick says:

    So a guy brings a monkey into a bar. Monkey jumps on the bar and starts sticking cherries and olives up his own ass and then eating them.

    Another guy says, “Why’s he doing that?”

    Guy with the monkey says, “Last week he swallowed a cue ball. Now he always measures his food.”

  36. Salt Lick says:

    Bar-keep Carin — sorry I left you to explain my Mississippi lynching nuance back at Solsynitzen. I dodge in and out out here. Drink and run.

  37. N. O'Brain says:

    Well, like my Dad always said, “It’s all downhill from here on up.”

    Apropos of nothing.

  38. Carin says:

    Happy – I’ve got a zillion (wild) ferns on the property. I lurv them. But, I let them mature into ferns, because I didn’t think the fiddleheads tasted so good. But, I was in a grocery store in Ontario (which has excellent grocery stores, BTW, although the quality of meat SUCKS in Canada), and saw the fiddleheads right there with the beans and cucumbers. It said on the little info label that you could saute them (like your link) or just throw them in with a salad.

  39. SarahW says:

    I didn’t know you could eat fiddlehead, either. Fractals for lunch, they would be pretty. What did they taste like?

  40. SarahW says:

    I didn’t know you could eat fiddleheads, either. Fractals for lunch, they would be pretty. What did they taste like?

  41. Sdferr says:

    fiddlesticks

  42. SarahW says:

    Maybe they taste like pine cones.

  43. Sdferr says:

    That’s retsina, I think.

  44. Carin says:

    They tasted very, very green.

  45. happyfeet says:

    Other Guy at work said he saw them in a market out here. He goes to better markets than I do though.

  46. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Drunk walks into a Polynesian deco bar, gets directions to the mens room, and a few minutes later walk back out and up to the bar, asks the keep “Do you have green toilet paper that says ‘fuck you’?

    – Barkeep says “No….why?”

    – Drunk says…”Well then maybe I owe you some money….I think I just flushed one of your parrots down the toilet…”

  47. urthshu says:

    Damn, missed a good food discussion, it seems.
    Fiddleheads aren’t bad. I sometimes grab all kinds of “non-foods” out of my yard for dinner or garnish, etc. Dandelion greens, grape leaves, violets.

    The dandelion greens are easy. I make bookmaker subs or greens and beans with those, mostly.

  48. easyliving1 says:

    http://www.literaturepage.com/authors/Mark-Twain.html

    Next time you want to comment to a pan, think of Fennimore Cooper.

    Poor bastard.

    A sample:

    “Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in ‘Deerslayer,’ and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.”

    ” My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses “verbal,” for “oral”; “precision,” for “facility”; “phenomena,” for “marvels”; “necessary,” for “predetermined”; “unsophisticated,” for “primitive”; “preparation,” for “expectancy”; “rebuked,” for “subdued”; “dependent on,” for “resulting from”; “fact,” for “condition”; “fact,” for “conjecture”; “precaution,” for “caution”; “explain,” for “determine”; “mortified,” for “disappointed”; “meretricious,” for “factitious”; “materially,” for “considerably”; “decreasing,” for “deepening”; “increasing,” for “disappearing”; “embedded,” for “enclosed”; “treacherous;” for “hostile”; “stood,” for “stooped”; “softened,” for “replaced”; “rejoined,” for “remarked”; “situation,” for “condition”; “different,” for “differing”; “insensible,” for “unsentient”; “brevity,” for “celerity”; “distrusted,” for “suspicious”; “mental imbecility,” for “imbecility”; “eyes,” for “sight”; “counteracting,” for “opposing”; “funeral obsequies,” for “obsequies.”

  49. Clint says:

    Fiddleheads out your way? They’re huge in New England. In Maine there’s even a fiddlehead season for a few weeks in May when people go out and pick ’em and sell ’em to high-end restaurants. Where they’re served as if they were caviar.

    Rather amusing, really. But yeah, green tasting and once you’ve had them, well, you’ve had them.

  50. Clint says:

    I started typing that comment about an hour ago, and then the tornado warning siren went off. That was exciting.

  51. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Was it a tornado warning siren, or a tornadic alerting device?

    – Since tonight is thesaurus night apparently.

  52. Clint says:

    Device? Possibly. Horn would also work, I think.

  53. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Also probably apropos of nothing, Gallop has McCain up +1 over Obama. Thats a drop of something like 9 or 10 points in 1 week.

    – Of course O! started talking drilling and reserve today.

    – According to all the TV talking heads McCain is running an absolute abysmal campaign and doing everything wrong. If so then maybe he should just keep on doing wrong what ever it is hes doing – wrong.

  54. The Lost Dog says:

    Ouroboros,

    You may have been the only one to claim a Mulligan in the bedroom, but you aren’t any more. F’ing beautiful!

    And, Carin.

    My favorite answer in a bar was: “Right. I’m an asshole, and you’re not”.

    It was a pretty good way to confuse obnoxious drunks.

    And how much did you like someone snapping their fingers at you? Always a great way to get a quick drink, if I recall.

  55. The Lost Dog says:

    Carin,

    You tended bar in fucking Detroit?

    Are you out of your fucking mind?

  56. The Lost Dog says:

    Part of the problem, is that a lot of people become bartenders to pick up chicks, etc. I HATED getting stuck with stud young guys, because I knew he was gonna stand in front of the cute blonds all night (who wouldn’t tip for shit) while I busted my hump.

    You have a hump?

    No Mulligan for me tonight!

  57. The Lost Dog says:

    Last one, but late to the party as usual, so once again it appears that I am posting to myself.

    Damn! I thought fiddle heads were some kind of fish that hillbillies eat. And BTW, I love hillbillies. My first girlfriend was a “blow the top of your head off” hillbilly.

    Unfortunately, I saw her last year, and now she is absolute living proof that global warming is a myth. I’m still shivering.

    G’day!

  58. Carin says:

    Lost Dog – yes, the snapping of fingers is a SURE way to piss off a bartender. The best way to get good service for a night, is to tip ’em heavily the FIRST time. He/she will know you’re not going to keep it up all night, but you’ve bought their loyalty.

    And, yes. I bartended in Detroit. It was a good place, but around 11 the crowd would change and often become a tad rough. It was right near Greek Town – a place called Fishbones for those who know the city.

Comments are closed.