Think I need a sunrise...
And currently one of the myriad of books I'm plowing through is Killing Yourself to Live, I hate Chuck Klosterman, he steals all of my thoughts somehow and writes them down with much better syntax than I. Which in actuality makes him awesome.
I was in Seattle this past week, I am decidedly neutral about Seattle, and for that I blame Seattle. There's some sort of impasse between the region and myself, supposedly it's beautiful, I can't say I disagree, though I can't say I myself found it to be a beautiful place. The feeling is like early November, the clouds seem real heavy, like a storm is near, but nothing really happens; two days of that is more than enough for a mindset like mine.
But I'll digress for a moment, in the interest of sounding interesting, and relate the events of Thursday evening as I found them to be, well, interesting, for lack of a more interesting turn of phrase.
The evening started off well, as it had been a long, yet successful day of work, my esteemed colleague, Chad and I decided it best to partake in the Greater-Seattle scene, and enjoy a friendly bar and grill. No sooner had I begun to discuss my burgeoning proclivity for Asian women than one happened to be sharing a stop light with me, being in the next car over. I for my part am sure I had some sort of self-possessed look on my face, which revealed the humor of the moment, and she in turn obliged with a wink and a smile: lady luck was upon us for the evening. As an aside, I have never had a stronger desire to yank the steering wheel out of someone's hand's than at that moment, but being a law tolerant citizen I merely said awww for five straight minutes which amused Chad.
Very quickly downtown Bellevue was upon us, and we set upon some sort of lumber-jack inspired micro-brewery which was featuring live music, a decent "Mary Jane's Last Dance" was being covered. All that remained was the displaying of proper identification, which of course is no problem, as I am of the legal age to drink alcohol in all places throughout this world, and I'd wager the greater cosmos as well, but I'm not certain on that score. Of course the young lady behind the bar had other designs, and explained that she would have to show the "manager" my ID, as it didn't pass muster. Upon hearing this I popped out another form of photo identification as well as multiple credit cards, I even went for the Avis Card for good measure. Off she went to go have a pow wow with Glenn, or some other 20something year old hipster in the back.
Now up to this point, I've learned two things; a cute little girl winking and blowing kisses means yes. A bartender emerging from the back holding my tattered ID like it's a corpse means no.
- At this point I'm sure you're asking yourself, besides whether or not this is going anywhere, what the hell happened to his photo identification. And that's a good question, I knew you guys weren't as dumb as you look, so I'll let you all in on a little secret. You see, when I am inevitably questioned by your average, run of the mill bouncer, or security personnel at a work site (one sweet pseudo cop in St. Louis had the gall to inform me that the problem seemed to be in fact "boy, this Id is tired." I'm not really sure that's true, however) I simply tell them that my ID went through both the washer and the dryer, and I make a sheepish face and shrug my shoulders, then pop on the charming smile. But this is not the truth, the truth of the matter is that I had the privilege of attending the 2005 MLB HOF Game in Cooperstown, which featured none other than the Boston Red Sox, coincidentally Kevin Millar enjoys cutting out of exhibition games featuring minor leaguers and going to the bar as much as I do. God Bless America. Anyway, seeing as I'm a rather irreverent guy, and Kevin Millar by that time was somewhat of a shitty hitter, I decided to be Joe Cool Guy and have him sign my Donor Card on the back of my ID. Which he also thought was a good idea (I thought of it, of course it was). Similarly, a certain special lady in my life whose name I won't mention, though it rhymes with tom and involves the letters m-o-m, thought it would be a good idea to laminate said ID, and I said sure, that sounds like a good idea, and if Kevin was there I'm sure he'd think it was a good idea too, being as getting a couple of base hits down the stretch was out of the question. So we went for it, except the ID didn't really go for it, rather it decided to get stuck in the laminating machine, and took the sort of beating people take from Steve DeAngelo on the fooseball table. So now my ID sucks, and that is how Kevin Millar caused me to get refused service at some bar just outside of Seattle.
Also pertinent to this story is the not so insignificant fact that my partner Chad, also happens to be a cop. Chad decided he'd like to speak to the manager, so as to vouch for the veracity of my two forms of picture ID, and my two forms of credit card. None of this impressed the manager however, because he was just too cool for school, and was proficient in nonsensical laws that he made up, at the expense of the by this time now tarnished state of Washington. So now I have that this is nonsense grin on my face, you know the one, and if you don't just picture the expression I'd be making if I lost any sort of trivia or physical competition to a girl, while the Pope looked on, well now you get the picture. So whilst deciding that "this place [was] lame, let's go," we asked the fugazi manager if there was any place else we could go to maybe finally get a drink, seeing as I am a legal pariah in the Seattle area. He hemmed and hawed and made excuses before saying no, in fact he did not know of any other places where we could get a drink or two.
Luckily Chad and I have pretty solid vision, as we exited this lame establishment we spotted a bar and grill next door. It wasn't too bad or anything, it only had 160 beers on tap, not like that's anything special or way cooler than the place next door. I don't remember much at this point, being as I was too excited to think straight, but I believe I ordered multiple orders of chicken wings, and Chad kept ordering some stroke of genius known as a beer sampler, where they bring out four different beers on this cool holster looking thing, and I think I thought of my lucky Asian lady from a few hours earlier, and how I wanted her to get me a beer and maybe some more chicken wings. By this time I only had eyes for two things, nope three, one was the menu, the second was the 160 taps on the wall behind the bar, the third was the angel who doubled as our waitress/omnipotent beer-heaven tour guide. Had I anything greater than the courage of a mere mortal I'd have asked for her hand in marriage, but that might have interrupted her flawless service, and that'd be unacceptable.
At one point though, my hubris got the best of me, and I asked her to bring me a sampler of the four worst beers in this sacred bastion of beer. She didn't even bat an eyelash, god bless her. And when she came back she even posed this great riddle of the magi: What do PBR and Sex on the Beach both have in common? I was in love at this point so I couldn't answer the question, but apparently they both taste like water, I probably would have agreed if she told me they both tasted like lamp. In any case the fatal foursome of beers included something Chipotle, Hair of the Dog Fred, Pabst Blue Ribbon (thank god for that, I'll explain later) and some AmberBock. The lead-off and two hole hitters did not disappoint, not one bit. I think I may have commented that they tasted like "wooden death smothered in furniture polish and more death," and mumbled something else about how the tastes "expands, painfully," Chad nodded in complete agreement. The course of action at this point was kind of like what Jim Brown had to do for the Dirty Dozen in order to wipe out the Nazi Bunker, I was going to have to down those horrid death-tasting concoctions in shot fashion, lest the Goddess of Guinness think lesser of me. Thank God for that water, errr, PBR, the greatest chaser I ever tasted, though it was only partially capable of muting the dour taste of death. Shortly thereafter wonder-waitress was relieved of her duties, I'm sure she had to go handle some important matter of national security or mediate some other such paramount issue in time, because you know a chick that smart is fully capable of time travel. I think her real name is Awesome, but I'm not really sure. So we left our rental car where it lay (in a parking lot) and got a taxi back to the Silver Cloud Inn in Bellevue, because we were drunk, and my mouth tasted like PBR and a petrified forest.
The next day was spent bumming around Seattle, the fish market sucked, people were taking pictures of big fish and throwing shit around and I had a wonderful mojito in a Mexican Restaurant and some whispering lady almost bit my ear off, but those are just details. The bigger picture here involves that Bar, and those assholes in the next bar over, those beautiful assholes who denied me a drink, but poured me a kick-ass time.
Comments