Day 27 - Of The State of The (Jack's) Union and Spousal Knife Fights

Borrowing from J. Robert King here: Garrison Keillor wrote that reading a self-indulgent poem is like finding a condom on a beach. You know someone has been there and has had a good time, but it doesn’t mean that much to you.

Hee hee this aint poetry, but I'm as self-indulgent in my writing as they come. So mind your step as I guide you along the sandy beaches of my mind. ;) 

And if you can't hack it, just drive yourself to Jack's Bar & Lounge instead. Whole lot less dirty that way.

So I feel better about walking in to Jack's. Kinda like I got my groove back after a rough, uncertain week, you know? Just don't call me Stella ....well, wait: you can call me Stella, if you also buy me a beer.

Speaking of strong, sexy, intelligent and opinionated women, I had a nice conversation with Lisa (who's happily married btw; all you Lotharios can look somewhere else--and besides, I saw her first) at the bar this evening.

Lisa gave me permission to use her first name in the blog (lolz The Naming Conspiracy is somewhat on hold, though there was universal agreement tonight that Travis would be better described as Jack Black, as opposed to Sean Connery or Burt Reynolds).

Lisa has some definite ideas about why people come to neighborhood bars. As she wisely pointed out, we all of us have excellent home stockpiles of liquors and beers, thus we can basically buy or mix the drinks we order at Jack's for a lot cheaper than the bar charges.

The reason people drive to a bar and pay more for their drinks, Lisa says, is because of the most basic benefit a good bar provides: socialization.

People come to the bar to meet other new people and to talk. Lisa pointed out she would have never met me had one or both of us not chosen to visit Jack's occasionally. We'd have not given each other more than a second look on the street if we'd walked by each other.

But because we visit Jack's, we've come to know each other and benefit from each other's company by being able to gripe about work, gripe about life, share the things that make us happy and talk about the things we each are doing like house projects, planning for and taking vacations and so on.

She agreed with me that some people come to a bar to disappear, so to speak. But even these people open up eventually and get to know those around them (yours truly being just such an example).

Aimee was tending bar and had the guns out (Ron Burgundy style). I've not actually seen all of Aimee's tattoos on her arms, so it was cool to be able to check them out finally.

A shift change was just around the corner, so the night crew arrived in short order: Rina to take over for Aimee (enjoy your trip!), Dank for door duty and DJ Benofficial to spin.

Met a guy named Mike and his two buddies, also JT, his girlfriend and their two friends. Major fail on writing names down. My bad.

My bar buddy Christian arrived soon after and spent the better part of the night giving me pointers on how to meet women. Lord knows I need them.

Thanks to Christian for the beer, the whiskey shot, for buying late night Der Wienerschnitzel and for telling me the story of how you met your incredible wife.

You had me totally fooled on the spousal knife fight and duct tape story, too.

I only hope my advice was as much use to you as yours was to mine.

Anyway, I'm late for my next trip to Jack's. See you there!