Darrington, WA

Suffice to say, I don't think I'll be extended an offer to host a game show any time soon.  So, Alex, Drew and Marc- You can sleep the sleep of confident men.  I'll keep my pursuits confined to eating, drinking, having an Awesome Time, and drinking.

That being said, this guy:

managed to stop licking his pecker long enough to pick a winner.  Just long enough.  And there's some hastily shot video to prove it.  The winner of the Dog Bowl Challenge is...

So yeah, that's it.  If you didn't win, head over to my buddy Narm's place; he too is giving away a pair of Golden Tickets to Brewzilla.  If that doesn't work out, you're guaranteed to win a ticket at the box office; just bride them with $50 and I'm sure they'll let you in.

Denver, CO

Wow.

That....that was a terrible way to start a new patch of internetz.  Two piss-poor posts... aaaaaaannd I’m out.  I mean, I don’t even have half the links working.   Like, what if you want to find out what people have frequently asked me, or you want to clicky that little RSS button?  Well, until now, Piss Off! (Editor's note-buttons still not fixed)  I think the combo of trying to cram my brain through a literary Plah-doh Fun Factory for what amounts to little more than a cheap, ripped-off gimmick, along with the social pace of a Honduran sweatshop left me a bit impotent of the written word.  But I’ve finally gone to the doc, gots me a script, and now I’m ready to pop some virtual Viagra.  So much like Ike Turner with a raging digital boner, I swear baby, this time is gonna be differents.  Come back to me again.  I ain’t gonna hit you no more.   Promise.

Because it is October.  

October is my favorite page of the 12-Month Cookbook.  It’s like a perfect pie- crisp on the outside, gooey on the inside, and filled with...stuff.  Apple slices of Baseball postseason, Football in full swing, My birthday (not that I don’t spend the other eleven months celebrating the piss outta life...), and Hallo-muthafuckin-ween.  A couple of weddings, the Cleveland Wine Opener, and Shelf Night IV bubble over this year like a caramel topping that’s been liberally applied.  But the bacon-lattice top crust for the second year in a row is Cleveland Beer Week, the now annual craft-beer (birthday) party/orgy that this fair city has decided to throw (for me).  

Last year, LN and I attended the Avery Experience at Bier Markt, which unlike the pure gluttony that’s planned for the Experience this year, was a low-key, small crowd affair of slinging beers and stories with Adam Avery.  A super nice-guy and charismatic speaker, Adam brought with him a huge twelve-beer slice of his brewery’s catalog, and and an appropriately sized hangover for the next day.  But anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right?  Yeah it is.  So this year, Mr. Avery is sneaking in three extra beers and Beer Engine is pairing each brew with a dish.  Or as it should be called Inducing a Food Coma You Are Likely Not To Recover From.  Which means I’ll probably be there.  Should be a helluva night.

But the Monster of Cleveland Beer Week, the Party to End the Parties, is Brewzilla.  Serving as Last Call for the week, Brewzilla raises its big gnarly head on Saturday, the Twenty Third at The Arcade.  Want Details?  Brewzilla is: 80 craft breweries.  Shit-tons of food.  Enough fun to make a public intox arrest well worth it.  What, you need more info than that to check it out?  Click one of the several links peppered through out here.  (They do a better job of explaining the details.  I kinda stopped reading after “Beer”.)  Oh, you’re still hemming and hawing about whether or not to go?  Are you under house arrest already?  Are you six years old?  Are you Jordan Shipley and you still don’t know where you’re at?  If those three things don’t apply to you, Capt. Picky Pants, then you probably should just put on your big boy/girl/thing undergarments and go.

And to help you share in a birthday hangover with me, I’ve lucked/bribed my way into Eddie Money status as I have Two Tickets to Paradise/Brewzilla  to give out.  That’s right, I want to ply for your affections with a cheap and shameless gift in the hopes that you can forget about all the abusive times we’ve spent together.  Think of them as Beer Roses.  Ya want ‘em?  Entering this little giveaway is easy:  Leave your name and a method of contact in the comments.  That’s it.  That’s all you have to do.  (Winning will be more difficult: Next Wednesday, I’ll take everybody’s name and write it on the bottom of a dog food can.   Whichever can my friend’s dog/giant retard Deiter picks for dinner that night will be the winner.)  Even if your can of Beef & Liver with Gravy doesn’t make it on the menu next week, you can still get come hang out with a Dude in a Suit (and a bunch of other people too) because tickets are a completely reasonable $50 (or you can do it right and hit the VIP circuit for $75).  

So start wishing Deiter Bon Appetit!

(So...this ish is way more broken than I thought it was.  Maintenance request has been sent.) 

Euclid, OH

There are some people out there who are perfectly happy with their current state of employment. The mind numbing work. The status quo paycheck. Company cook outs... These people are fucking weird. (ed note- Yes, there are actual jobs out there that are fun, pay well, and don't require pants. But they make up approximately point oh three eight percent of the job pool, and statically don't fucking count. It's a fact. Look it up on Wiki.) Those people can go find another piece of the internet to read (and not on Company Time, motherfucker!). This is for the ninety six percent of us that whore ourselves out to The Man on a daily basis, clutching at whatever personal time and bits of soul we can scratch and tear back for ourselves at the End of the Day.

Would you rather have a Twenty Five percent raise, or have an extra day off each week?

I...yeah, this is not that hard of a choice. Well, for me. Fuck money. I mean, I'm sure my answer might change if I was wondering where my next beer was coming from, or if I couldn't scam my way outta the red for two more weeks. Or just plain greedy. I'm not trying to say I make big bank, or even above average, but I've gotten to the point in my life where my modest paycheck allows me to be an overweight male with a full calendar and a thirst for scotch and beer (please, no hate mail about how I consider my position in life. You can go hang out with rejects that like the Mouse Wheel. Now get the fuck off my lawn.) Not that I've always had this luxury. I've been broke, broker, less broke, comfortable, broke, and now back to comfortable. It's...been interesting. I appreciate what I have now and for what I've lost. You can feel the edge that comes from having a negative account balance for more than four days. It...definitely heightens the senses. Brings out the wolf. Improves the taste of blood.

But it's never the focus; it's the dramatic score in a tense scene. It's the short breath before getting punched. The scene, the hit is the goddamn job. It's the piece of shit boss, the one that has such a hard-on to wear a white collar that he's indecent to be seen by children. It's the all-too-important customers that all-too-often have all-too-little an idea about what the fuck they're even asking for. It's the grossly incompetent co-workers, the ones that cause you wonder what kind of employee are you if these are your contemporaries. And to get a day off from this? A day off from ten hours of self-loathing? A day off from throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler, stomping my feet and screeching, “I don't wanna go!” as I drag myself to my car? To keep the same money and save my soul from the jaws of that machine for one day would be...fantastical. Like, finding a unicorn that shit gold and pissed Jameson.  Fantastical, man.  Shit, I'd pay some money back now if I could get a freebie a week...

That's enough hate to segue nicely into the next post: Five Signs You Need A New Fucking Line Of Work.

Dublin, OH

How ya like me na?

-or-

Damn it feels good to be a gangster.

-or-

Ta Da!

-or-

About fucking time.


However you want to say it, This. Is. It.  The grain of sand that started in the oyster of my brain over a year ago is now...just a bigger piece of shitty sand; the oyster died and this is all that's left.  Another piece of sand on Blog Beach.  My small piece of ocean front property.  But man, what a view.


It became difficult for me to write about my life; not because it was emotionally tough, or I couldn't expose myself anymore, or I got tired of sharing everything.  Damn it, Eat, Drink, Sleep, Rinse, Repeat can only be expressed in so many ways and I just fucking ran out of metaphors and stupid pop references to make things interesting.  So here we go- I've got a brand new bag, full of all my old, vulgar tricks.

Better Holiday- Saint Patrick's Day or Halloween?

I fucking love Halloween. It's spooky. It's a close to my birthday so I can party two, sometimes three weekends in a row. I can dress up like a woman without too many people giving me the stink eye. It's the drinking, the parties that people have, the fact that every and any body worth even a little bit is in for It. Who the fuck, other than Dr. Loomis, doesn't like Halloween?

But St. Pat's has that going for it too. Name me one person who doesn't profess to be Irish on March Seventeenth? Go ahead. Tell me. Oh wait, you can't. Because at the end of the rainbow is piece of land Thirty Two Thousand square feet big that magically gave birth to a population of Six billion strong.

So you brought The Ruckus- now what are you going to feed them? Jello Brain Mold? Candy? Bobbing for apples? That's...not going to cut it. That's like trying to serve Oktoberfest with a bunch of Fun-Dip. And somebody just vomited in the apple barrel. St. Paddy's offers up a whole cow, corned and deli-sliced, and loaves of soda bread to the Drinking Gods. This pleases them. This makes the drought go away, the sun shine, the flowers blossom. This makes life good. And where the booze flows like a busted fire hydrant on Halloween, St. Paddy will see you bet and raise you with Day Drinking. Day Drinking, the rare event when it's okay to be wasted before McDonald's serves lunch. You can puke in your plate of eggs, and nobody thinks bad of you, except that you wasted perfectly good eggs. And beer. And that you can't hold your liquor, you fucking toddler.

And look! You're still in costume! Except that it was easier to find! Instead of trying to pick between the transvestite French maid and the giant chicken with Fortys for hands, you can just wear Green. Anything. Green. Shirt? Yes. Eyes? Lucky. Jockstrap? It finally pays off. It's like getting dressed for any other day, except that you have to match colors.

But St Patty's has parades...and that's a, yeah, that's a toss up. Like Hey, Sweet! There's something going on! I get that. I can even appreciate it. Drunks need spectacle. But it still feels a bit gimmicky, like its trying too hard to be festive. It's like St. Pat's is at Last Call, not wearing any pants, trying to go home with somebody. Nobody wants to acknowledge that their friend is making an ass of themselves.

And that's the thing- St. Pat's doesn't take much effort, besides getting the day off and trying to muscle down your fifth corned beef sammich of the day (although, you know you can eat six, no problem). To pull it off, Halloween takes planning. Foresight. A bit of ingenuity and savvy, and a willingness to look like a fool. St. Pat's takes a bit of green and semi-healthy liver. Halloween is the more satisfying hangover, whereas on March Eighteenth, I just wish I drank more water the night before.

But as much as I admire and respect people taking that extra step, the initiative to do more...I'm a lazy muthafucker. Please believe. That's why I've been a nun, twice, for Halloween. I like to get as much Rock for as little Roll as possible, and that puts St. Patty's right in my fucking wheel-house. It's like my calendar grooved a breaking ball to me on Opening Day, and I just have to park it in the bleachers.  Game over.  Meet me at home plate.    

Or the pub.  Who's got my car bomb?

Winner: St. Patrick's Day