Saturday, September 17, 2011

Drunks

I don't drink beer. I never have, mostly because when I was 20, I backpacked through the desert for 3 months, getting my water from cattle troughs and out of seeps in canyon walls. You didn't know that about me, did you? Well, the reason I don't eat beef is that I've had to drink cow poop at about 50% potency, and I the reason I don't drink beer is because it tastes like cow poop water at about 50% potency.

Anyway, today was my sweet Kerry's birthday, and her plan was to go over to Terrapin Brewery and get hammered out of her tree. I had never been to this place, but I love me some Kerry Steinberg and, whatever--I'd find something to do. Hell, I'd bring Odessa. She'd find something to do, too.

So, at this place you give them $10 and they give you 8 tickets for "tastes" of beer, which is basically an entire pint of beer if you can successfully flirt with the right bartender. So all of my friends kept going back and returning triumphant with full glasses and smug, fluffy expressions on their faces.

I should mention that all this drinking was taking place on a big, flat, brown lawn. There were maybe 150 people there, all throwing frisbees and footballs with the kind of forethought, aim and trajectory you'd expect from mid-sized adults on their 4th high-gravity beer. Everybody was talking louder than was strictly necessary. This 4-year-old girl named Karma correctly identified me as the only sober adult on the premises and sat on our picnic blanket watching Odessa with laser-focused intensity, periodically asking, "Odessa, why don't you talk to me? I'm Kawma. Your fwend." When I told her Odessa wasn't very good at talking yet, she didn't take her eyes off Odessa but told me, "that's what you think."

It's actually pretty funny to be sober in the midst of a bunch of drunk people who aren't creepy. For instance, Kerry had a temporary tattoo of a shark on her right bicep and kept asking people if they wanted to see her "make it swim." Ricky spent a lot of time thoughtfully planning my birthday party at Medieval Times on his iPhone until he found out it would cost $50 per person. Jess got pegged by a football but didn't spill a drop of either of her beers. The whole scene reminded me of that island in Pinocchio where little boys smoke cigars and play pool and cuss, generally making jackasses of themselves until they're magically transformed into actual donkeys. Only this was cuter than it was in Pinocchio.

In other news, who knew Steve Winwood was a damn genius? Not me. But somehow this cover convinces me.


1 comment:

  1. Noooo! My only solace at having gotten irresponsibly tipsy was that hopefully everyone else (barring Odessa) had too. D:

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