lastgreypoet

2023 Wind-down, 14: Good Cheer

A table with present-wrapping materials and a handy rum beverage.

Look at the picture (if able, or read the description).

<record-scratching>

See, it’s funny because “wrap” and “rap” are homophones.

Or maybe it’s funny because that isn’t my first rum drink today.

Let’s talk about rum.

It’s the first spirit I found a taste for, and these days it’s like an old friend I drop in to check on from time to time.

Our relationship started a loooong time ago, though.

Now, this may surprise you, but for ages — specifically until my 30s — I wasn’t really a drinker at all.

For a good while I even teetotaled, if you can believe it.

However.

Remember that friend I mentioned a couple of days ago? From middle school? Well, funny thing. We both made it to high school and remained friends. Friendly rivals, also, when it came to “who’s best in the band” — which, if you’ve never been part of a high school band a) My regrets, and b) It can be super cutthroat, albeit beneath an almost-Midwestern level of friendliness.

Anyway, one night we were hanging out at his place with his parents away, and he brought out a hidden gem, gifted to him by his uncle: a bottle of Pusser’s Rum.

Now, if you don’t know about Pusser’s Rum, the quick version is: It’s made from the same recipe used by the British Royal Navy for the daily rum ration until they decided — in 1970! — that maaaaybe it wasn’t a good idea to keep handing out a tot of rum to every sailor on the daily, especially given modern sailors spent a bit less time splicing braces and reefing sails than, you know, maintaining nuclear generators.

Pusser’s Rum was never available to the public until after Black Tot Day, when the Royal Navy sold the formula to a private company in exchange for an ongoing contribution to the Royal Navy Sailors’ Fund.

Where was I?

Right. High school.

So my friend brought out the Pusser’s, along with some official Pusser’s Painkiller Mix, and my love of rum was born.

I can still recall the numbering sensation on my lips from that first sip. Magic.¹

I’ve since moved on to “more sophisticated” drinking endeavors² like Scotch whisky, but that’s where it started. With rum. And I still — as evidenced above — enjoy the occasional rum drink.

Now.

You don’t need Painkiller mix, though if you’re going that route, get Pusser’s.

A Painkiller, per the originator, is made thusly:

2 oz. Pusser’s Rum
4 oz. pineapple juice
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. cream of coconut
Dash of nutmeg

Mix in a shaker with ice, pour into a swanky glass over crushed ice, garnish with a little umbrella and some fruit, if you’re into that.

Pairs well with wrapping.

Or rapping.

What I’m drinking: Pusser’s Rum. Sort of.

What it’s like: It’s sometimes marketed as a “sipping rum,” and I’ve even seen it referred to as “the single malt of rum.” Part of the charm of Pusser’s — aside from the neat historicals — is its manufacture in wooden pot stills and its aging (for a minimum of three years) in charred oak casks. That’s a lot more trouble than most rum makers go to for their products, and the difference shows in the way you can sip Pusser’s neat like a whisky, which is what I usually do, except when the need for a Painkiller arises, as it does during the holidays.

Today’s toast: To all of us covered in bits of paper and ribbon, wondering where the scissors went and who this just-wrapped present we forgot to label is actually for.

Just checking in? See yesterday’s post for more, specifically more about Bruce Campbell.

Quick note for the “I can’t believe he’s writing about underage drinking!” crowd: It happens. Pretending it doesn’t isn’t helpful. For the record, we didn’t overindulge, much less do anything so stupid as drive anywhere. ↩︎
Let’s talk some time about the social stigma toward some drinking behaviors versus the shoulder-shrugging toward others. ↩︎

2023 Wind-down, 16: Comfort Watches

Fireplace, with whisky and my Comfort Non-Watch.

Over at his site, John Scalzi is spending December doing his own sort of Wind-down, though he isn’t calling it such. Specifically, he’s writing about a movie each day — a “comfort watch” that he goes back to time and again.

I like the idea. I could maybe pass a month that way myself.

Today, though, I’m instead going to tell you about a Comfort Non-Watch.

So, I’m a big fan of Bruce Campbell, have been ever since a friend of mine in middle school invited me over to his house, which was near a video store, which we went to, where his friend at the register totally ignored the fact that we were well under 18 and rented us Evil Dead.

If you don’t know Evil Dead, I’ll just go ahead and tell you it’s the best low-(almost no)-budget made-in-a-random-cabin-in-Tennessee-by-two-lifelong-friends-then-in-their-twenties-with-a-camera-and-a-dream horror film ever.

The next weekend, my friend and I watched Evil Dead 2, but, like the movie itself, that’s another story.

Anyway, since that fateful underage viewing of Evil Dead, I’ve made an effort to watch most everything Bruce Campbell has been in. It’s the rare case where I follow an actor rather than a writer or director. He’s just damned good, certainly the best B-movie actor of his generation.

There are a few things I’ve missed along the way, though.

I’ve seen most of his films, and most of the TV series he’s been in¹, but the gaps, naturally, bug me.

One of those gaps is Running Time, a low-budget, black-and-white heist film from 1997 with a running time of 70 minutes.

I mention the running time because the entire film, in keeping with its title, is presented in real-time and as one continuous take.

Now, I’d heard of this, of course, and it was on my “get to it eventually” list — where it had so much company it would never want for conversation — but I hadn’t gone to the trouble of tracking down a copy of the DVD, which is rare and also the only way to watch the film. (I scoured every streaming service. Nobody has it.)

Then I found out that the role Campbell plays — Carl, the just-released-from-prison thief who gets pulled in for a job — is one of his top five² favorite roles from his entire career.³

Well, then.

Off to eBay I went, and after some searching and waiting I scored a still-in-the-shrink-wrap copy for less than the cost of a good bottle of whisky.

And it’s been sitting on the shelf since, waiting for its moment, my Comfort Non-Watch, that movie which I am excited to see but hold in reserve for a day when I really need it.

Here’s what I’m drinking today: J.P. Wiser’s 18-Year-Old Canadian Whisky.

What a minute!

Yes, that’s what I was drinking yesterday.

But why?

Well, a few reasons, starting with the fact that I didn’t really feel like cracking into something else this evening and ending with the fact that if I don’t get ahead of The Empress of Whisky I might not get another pour off this bottle.

Will you have something new tomorrow?

Probably not. I’ve got some family holiday shenanigans to get through, which, while they may very well involve whisky, might not leave me with time to write about it.

I’ve decided not to push myself the way I used to when it comes to writing these. I’d like to have one each day, now that I’ve started, but I’m not going to eat that pressure this year.

If I do have whisky this weekend, I’ll take pictures and catch you up later.

Check out yesterday’s post for a story about my dating anniversary, as well as my tasting notes on J.P. Wiser’s 18-Year-Old Canadian Whisky. Or skip ahead to a tale of rum.

I’ve been making my way through Burn Notice off and on this year — it’s not bad, if formulaic; Campbell is excellent as Sam Axe — and I’ll eventually force myself to watch the episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess in which he guest-starred as Autolycus, King of Thieves. ↩︎
Carl Matushka in Running Time; Brisco County, Jr. in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.; Sam Axe in Burn Notice; Ash Williams in the Evil Dead films and the TV show Ash vs Evil Dead; and Elvis in Bubba Ho-Tep, a criminally underrated film featuring an aged Elvis and a black man who claims to be John F. Kennedy facing off against an ancient — is there any other kind? — Egyptian mummy in an east Texas nursing home. ↩︎
I know this because I heard the words from Bruce Campbell’s own mouth when I saw him at Bruce-O-Rama at The Caverns this summer. He did Q&A, ran a quiz show, and introduced a screening of Evil Dead 2. It was awesome. ↩︎

2023 Wind-down, 17: 18 for 18

J.P. Wiser’s 18-Year-Old Blended Canadian Whiskey

That title is not a randomly generated number string.

Bear with me.

17: That’s how many days are left in the year.

The first 18: This refers to the whisky at hand, J.P. Wiser’s 18-Year-Old Blended Canadian Whisky.

The second 18: This refers to the fact that 18 years ago, this gal and I started dating. These days I call her The Empress of Whisky.

Now.

When I used to do this regularly, I’d tell you a bit about the dram, then a bit about why I chose it and whatnot.

So.

To be bloody blunt about it, J.P. Wiser’s 18-Year-Old Blended Canadian Whisky was the most affordable 18-year-old whisky at the bottle shoppe where The Empress and I found ourselves a couple of evenings ago.

18 years is a significant point in whisky, especially Scotch whisky. Not every distillery has an 18-year-old offering, but if they have an offering beyond the common 10, 12, and 15, it’s likely an 18. I’ve had some quite fine ones over the years.

But.

We’re usually talking three figures.

Which, well, I don’t know your economic standing or spending philosophy, but that’s the point where mine says OUCH.

I don’t doubt the quality, necessarily, but I do begin to doubt — What’s that economic term? Oh, “marginal value.” — the marginal value of the drinking experience beyond the three-digit price threshold.

I’m also reminded of a favorite line from a favorite book, which is:

I passed him the bottle and watched as he decanted two careful fingers. Jimmy de Soto had always said it was sacrilege to sink more than five fingers of single malt on any one occasion. After that, he maintained, you might as well be drinking blended.

— Takeshi Kovacs,
narrator of Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

See, at a certain point, you have to ask yourself why you’re drinking: Is it for the fleeting sensations of taste experienced in the moment, or is it for the butterflies and rainbows in your head afterwards?

It’s okay to say both.

Thing is, if you’re spending into the triple digits per bottle, I think you’d better:

a) Really damn appreciate the dram.

AND

b) Just appreciate the dram, singular, not plural.

So.

This is the point where I bring it all together.

We bought this bottle of 18-year-old J.P. Wiser’s Blended Canadian Whiskey for less than a three-digit price.

Which is fine and understandable because:

a) Canadian whisky isn’t Scotch whisky, in terms of price or quality.

AND

b) Blended whisky — even the aged stuff — isn’t single malt, in terms of price or quality.

Nonetheless, for the act of getting out of the bottle shoppe without dropping a hundo, there was much rejoicing.

But there would have been regardless because, as noted above, The Empress and I have been together for 18 years now.

Which, to those who scoff at dating anniversaries, I say: Avert your eyes. Or learn to have fun. Preferably the second.

Yes, we have a wedding anniversary, and, yes, we observe it. But there’s something simple and pure about marking the point each year when we can add up our total years in one and another’s company, appreciate the fact that we continue to appreciate each other, and have a dram.

And the fact that we’re just fine with a sub-$100 dram for the occasion is just one note of the success and maturity of our 18-year-old relationship.

Or, as The Empress herself put it when we filled our glasses tonight: “We’re not just wiser — we’re J.P. Wiser.”

You can see why I love her.

The dram: J.P. Wiser’s Irish Whiskey, aged 18 years.

The drink: Warm and full and malty-sweet in a way that Canadian whisky often isn’t while still incredibly smooth in the way that Canadian whisky always is.

The dream: This is only the first 18 years.

The toast: To love, of course!

New here? Or just not sure what the hell is going on? Check out yesterday’s post for a few answers. And look! Here’s tomorrow’s post! It’s editing magic!

Winding Down 2023

Hi.

I used to do this thing where I spent the month of December winding down the year, writing little bits each day, using a particular dram of whisky as a prompt.

If you missed those, or would like to revisit them, you can find links at the bottom of this post.

I won’t be doing exactly that this year, but I will be writing some stuff, possibly each day, through the end of the year. Will whisky find its way into my musings? Come back tomorrow to find out.

This is the first new post here in two years.

I wasn’t going to mention that — you can read the dates on my latest posts just as well as I can — but I figured I should, since I usually do. And yes, I rather dislike having to acknowledge that this has happened often enough that I can use the phrase “I usually do.”

Ugh.

I’m not going to dwell on it. As usual, stuff happened, mostly within the walls of my head, that kept me away awhile.

Not to worry. Life is good, and I feel like writing a bit. See you tomorrow.

Note: Within each category below the posts are sorted newest first, so if you want to read them in order, you’ll need to do some scrolling. Sorry. It occurs to me now that it would have been a good idea to include forward/backward links in each post to ease the reading experience, but I didn’t think of that at the time. Maybe I’ll go back and add some, but if you’re reading this I haven’t yet.

Whisky Wind-down 2016

Whisky Wind-down 2017

Whisky Wind-down 2019

Following Al: Weird by Northwest

(Note: This concludes my “Following Al” trilogy of posts. If you missed them — which is totally understandable given I started this two years ago — here are part one and part two. For the curious, it was this announcement that got me off my duff to finish this post.)

What’s wilder than driving 550 miles over three days so as to see three “Weird Al” Yankovic concerts in one weekend?

Waking up that Monday, tired, but wanting more.

That feeling led to me looking at the remainder of the tour schedule to determine a) where in the world “Weird Al” would be wandering, and b) whether I might want to wander there, too.

Turns out, Al had a few shows coming up in the Pacific Northwest.

I love the Pacific Northwest. I don’t think I’ve taken the time to write about that love, but it’s a passionate long-distance relationship we have. I try to get out there at least every couple of years, and since Al’s tour was taking the band there about two years since my last trip the whole thing seemed kismet.

All I had to do was convince The Empress of Whisky that it was not unreasonable to spend a week of vacation and a lump of my savings on such an adventure.

It wasn’t a hard sell.

She is a huge Phish fan, and we have regularly planned travel around that band, so she very much understood where I was coming from.

Thus began a week-long trek during which I followed Al across two states, taking trains, planes, and automobiles, whilst interspersing visits to friends and conducting other fun activities with The Empress.

We landed in Portland (PDX), hopped in our rental car, and headed west for the coast, stopping only for cheese and ice cream in Tillamook — yum.

We spent a night in a small beach town, enjoying seafood, local beer, and some dune hiking.

Next day we headed down the coastal highway, leisurely making our way through that beautiful landscape for a couple of hours before making a sharp turn east and setting our sights on Eugene, Oregon, where a small theater played host to Al and the band that night.

I’ll say this about Eugene — it’s flat. The city-part between the mountains, I mean. Not much in the way of trees. Not much in the way of buildings taller than three stories. But it’s a lovely town, with a great pizzeria right next to the theater — perfect for a slice and a pint after the show — and a wonderful little cafe that is the first place I ever had a stroopwafel. (They’re delicious.)

Next morning, we turned our rented auto north to Portland, where we would spend a couple of nights in a wackily-decorated micro-hotel, visit friends, see the truly awesome Portland Japanese Garden, browse several nifty local shops, drink some fine local beers — and a whisky! — to fill all the hours that weren’t spent watching two shows in an old high school gymnasium-turned-music venue. Oh, Portland.

After Portland, The Empress and I parted ways with a kiss and plans to see each back home. She stuck around to go on a hiking adventure with local friends, and I continued to follow Al.

His next show was in Spokane.

Getting there from Portland was fun. I walked to a light rail station, hopped aboard a very clean train (using the pass that came with our hotel room) and rode that down to PDX, which, by the way, is a helluva nice airport. It’s open and airy, and it has things like free wine tastings inside. Also? There is a small (20 seats or so) theater that shows short films all day.

All of which is to say I had some fun things to occupy my time while waiting on my flight.

When it came time to fly, I had an experience approaching “old time” air travel. First, I had to actually walk onto the tarmac to board the plane via a set of steps hanging out the side. Compared to the gates and walkways used to board modern commercial aircraft, that was a little strange.

Of course, my first flight was aboard a World War II era Czechoslovakian spy plane,* so I’m not fazed by much.

*(Note to self: Tell story of my first flight.)

Anyway, the plane was a small, 50-seat propeller-driven relic. Once aboard, it was like being in first class, as there were few of us, and the seats were old-timey large.

I tried not to think too much about what this said about the plane’s age, or its odds of making it over the Cascade Mountains.

Really, I just thought of what they’d say if I died in a crash.

“He was following ‘Weird Al’ around.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

Others nod along.

“Pass the whisky,” someone would say, as this whole daydream takes place at a funeral that is more like a good bar party.

Anyway, the plane landed — with an authentic tiny-plane bump on the runway — and I was soon headed to my hotel room for a nap before the show, which was held in another quaint small-town theater. No cool pizzerias or diners here, but I did find a dive bar for a burger and beer before bed.

I didn’t get to spend too much time in bed, as I had to be up stupid early — I think it was 3 a.m. or so — to walk over to the train station where I would catch my ride over to Seattle.

I love riding the rails, and it was beautiful to doze a bit before waking to the sun coming up over the Cascades, through which we were traveling. If the occasion presents itself, I highly recommend that Tacoma-to-Seattle excursion.

Upon arriving to Seattle, I had a free day and night, so I spent them prowling old book stores, eating way too much good local food, and winding up watching Solo: A Star Wars Story, thus making me a perfect (at the time) 10-for-10 on seeing Star Wars films during their initial release weekend.

Next day I did some more city wandering — Seattle is awesome for just walking around and seeing neat stuff — before catching up with a local friend to visit her neighborhood brewery before seeing the fifth and final show of my weird week in the Pacific Northwest.

Next day it was back to life, back to reality, which in my case meant wondering whether I could extend my vacation, change my flight back, and maybe squeeze in the next show, which was, wait, in Calgary.

Maybe if it had been in Vancouver …