Tag Archives: Dave Allred

Anyone Can Bartend…Unless You’re This Guy!

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Hi, my name's Bad Brad. Order a drink or I will shoot you in the face.

Hi, my name’s Bad Brad. Order a drink or I will shoot you in the face.

Since writing my book on how to bartend, It has been my contention for some time that anyone can do this task successfully and learn it in a relatively short amount of time, which is why it was so disconcerting when we recently brought on a guy named Brad to help cover some shifts and, despite his appearance as a full grown man, I discovered that teaching him to pour drinks and help guests was not unlike asking a small dim-witted child to whip up a chicken risotto for dinner.

The first thing Brad ever said to me while shaking my hand was, “I was in the Marines.”  He also told me that some people liked to call him “Bad Brad” and that I was more than welcome to partake in this whimsical nickname which I assumed he created for himself after several days of heavy thought.

Brad recently returned from the Middle East and after settling in he got a bouncer job at a bar around the block from us.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, Brad’s dad and the owner of our bar were roommates in college together, so less than six weeks after his return, an arrangement was made so that Brad in all his muscled glory was offered a bartending position at my bar based on no criteria what-so-ever.

To say that Brad is a bit sluggish upstairs would be tip-toeing around the obvious.  I imagine there is a hamster wheel where his brain is supposed to be except that the hamster powering the wheel is about 96 years old and uses a walker to make it go round. This information was made painfully clear while teaching him how to use the POS system.  He would stand and stare at the screen for a good thirty seconds looking for the correct drink to ring in, his finger poised in the air as if he were contemplating his next thirteen moves on a chess board.

“It’s ok,” I told him, “you can touch the screen. It’s not a mine field.”

“I can’t find the Captain Morgan button,” he said.

“It’s right here,” I said.  ”Under the Rum tab.  You’re in the Burgers section.”

“Oh yeah,” he laughed. “That makes sense.”

The following day I foolishly left Brad behind the bar for longer than 90 seconds so I could change a beer keg in the back.  Just as I finished tapping the keg, Brad came into the beer cooler and said, “Something happened.”

“Something happened?  What happened?”

“The beer wand fell off.”

“The what?  The beer wand? What’s a beer wand?”

“You know,” he said, making a pulling motion toward him with his fist.  ”The shaft thing that you pull to make beer come out.”

“Oh, you mean the beer handle.  It fell off? How did it fall off?”

“I was trying to be fast like you taught me and I poured a Coors Light and it fell off.”

“It fell off or you broke it off?”

“Ummm…I don’t know. There was like this cracking sound and then it just kind of fell off.”

This is Brad’s other downfall. He has lifted so many weights that walking behind the bar in a narrow space is like Godzilla trying to walk through downtown Hong Kong without stepping on or killing anyone. Negotiating simple things like handling glassware or pouring a draft beer without ripping the handle off its socket is remarkably difficult for him. This is because Brad was built to destroy things, not provide polite and delicate service to nice people looking to have a pleasant night out on the town.

On a brighter note, Brad is quite artistic, choosing to decorate his arms, legs, back and neck with a variety of  tattoos–mostly of daggers and guns and skulls and one large “Semper Fi” tattoo which arcs from armpit to armpit across his massive, hairless chest.  I know that he has this on his chest because Brad likes to spend approximately 97.6% of his time discussing his tattoos and his life in the Marines with anyone who comes within 100 feet of him, and at the request of a young lady (and before I could intervene) Brad unbuttoned his shirt and opened it up so she (and the other 120 guests in the bar) could see it.

“Brad,” I said calmly. “Please button your shirt up. This isn’t Thunder From Down Under.”

“I was in the Marines,” he said, as if this excused him from being held accountable to remained dressed during his shift.

“Yes, I think you’ve mentioned that once or twice, and I thank you for your service. Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if you served your fellow countrymen with your shirt on.”

“Ok, no prob,” he said, and then he promptly buttoned up his shirt in just under four minutes while telling the same young lady a story about the time in the Iraqi desert when his Marine buddies pushed him down the latrine hole as a prank that left him standing in the entire platoon’s shit and piss for approximately 3 hours in the 110 degree heat. This was all the guy sitting at the bar eating nachos needed to decide that he was no longer hungry.

Two days later I came back from the kitchen to find Brad making a mojito that a server had ordered for her table.

“What are you doing,” I asked.

“Whatta mean? I’m making a mojito.”

“You’re muddling it with a fork.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t find the stick thingy. In the Marines we were taught to improvise.”

“That’s a great lesson, but the ‘stick thingy’ is actually called a muddler and it’s right here,” I said, pulling it off the rail 12 inches in front of him.

“Awesome, thanks.”

“And what is it you’re muddling?”

“Limes and stuff.”

“Is that parsley?”

“Ummm, yeah. I couldn’t find the mint either. I’m hoping they won’t even notice.”

“I’m pretty sure they WILL notice. I don’t know if you’ve ever tasted parsley and mint before, but they’re quite different.”

“So, should I stop?”

The next day I made sure that Brad stopped everything related to bartending. After speaking with our owner, it was agreed that Brad would no longer be allowed to bartend but that we would keep him on as a bouncer. So now he stands outside our door and checks ID’s and during slow times admires his tattoos and shadow boxes with imaginary Al Qaeda members, I assume.

All I can say for Brad is that he does his best with what he’s got. I still have moments when I require several deep breaths to calm myself down, like the other night when Brad let in an underaged girl after she presented him with a library card and a photo ID of her high school student body card.  When questioned about it Brad’s response was, “Yeah, but she was smokin’ hot, and besides, she shouldn’t have lied to me. I’m a Marine.”

I guess it just goes to show you that getting a job really is all about who you know and not what you know, and I suppose that means there are some people out there who think Brad is pretty fucking awesome!

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

10 Rules of Etiquette for the Clueless Man

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images - pants

A week ago one of my readers emailed me a question about bar etiquette, which I answered in a most knowledgeable and proficient manner, as I have been in this profession for quite some time.  This got me to thinking about common day to day rules of etiquette and courtesies in general, which upon deeper analyzation I realized that I am not proficient at in any way whatsoever, and never have been.  I’m talking about the simple trivialities that we all agree should be obeyed lest we be judged by our peers. I am an admitted minimalist, so to tell me that I can’t use the soap or the towels hanging in the bathroom because they are decorative causes someone with my stunted pedigree to stand there and blink stupidly.

Growing up, I was never one to devote much time to social graces, but in my defense I was raised in a hickish town where people possessed a fanatical adoration for camouflage caps and vests and mounting mule deer heads over the garage.  The notion of being fancy where I grew up meant that you agreed to wear jeans without holes in the knees when attending a prom, and/or possibly opening your date’s can of Schlitz for her before the drive-in movie started.

My lack of refinement caused a great clash when I met my wife in college.  Born and raised in Walnut Creek, she was far more savvy in the ways of decorum than I, which was only natural considering the cosmopolitan surroundings she was brought up in.  It’s not that I was a mannerless brute without decency, it’s just that certain rules of etiquette were, to me, silly and superfluous.  Can you really enjoy BBQ chicken without licking your fingers clean?  There is nothing sadder to me than wiping them off on a napkin and watching all that good sauce go to waste (I see the same looks on my guests’ faces when I pour the wrong mixer in a cocktail and dump it down the sink:  longing and regret at such senselessness).

And yet despite my obtuseness, I have always fantasized since I was a boy about being a distinguished secret agent like James Bond, the kind that continually adjusts his cufflinks and raises a demure finger to servants who rush to provide me with whatever I desire without ever having to provide verbal direction.  I often imagined people talking about me as a mysterious guest who had arrived at their dinner party:

“Who is that distinguished looking gentleman? The one drinking Louis XIII and speaking with the Duchess?”

“Oh, you mean Mr. Allred.  The international debutant.”

I do not share such fantasies with my wife, as the very notion that I would ever be viewed as “smooth” would cause her to fall to the floor in a ball of hilarity, laughing and choking on her own hysterics until her spleen exploded.

It was plain from the very beginning when I met my wife at Chico State that she wasn’t going to tolerate my social impairments for long.  Seeing as we were still in the fragile stages of getting to know each other, she was sensitive enough not to come right out and state what was so obviously out of place to her.  Instead she would drop passive-aggressive hints in hopes that she would eventually mold me into the man she had always dreamed of marrying one day.  On the way to a movie she’d say something like, “I love how you can just wear anything and not care what people think.”

Looking down at my faded pink t-shirt and purple cut-off sweats, I couldn’t have been more confused.  My philosophy on being cool was to avoid looking like you were trying to be cool, which is to say my style at the time could best be described as a sort of grungy aloofness.  It had taken me years to perfect this style of genius, and now I was being subtly ridiculed for it. Nevertheless, I patiently suppressed my damaged ego and went to change into something less relaxed, as my newly acquired girlfriend was absolutely gorgeous and I really wanted to get into her pants.

As time moved on, my wife continued to try and mold me, but eventually she realized that molding a country boy in the ways of proper civility is about as easy as shaping a shard of glass with your hands. And it wasn’t just a “which-fork-do-I-use” thing either. It was more of a human relationship thing.  Whereas most people instinctively knew to leave the toilet seat down, I had to be educated on this bit of folklore.

“Why do I have to put it down,” I asked one day, early in our relationship.  ”Why don’t you put it back up for me?”

“Because I’m the one who gets up to pee in the middle of the night and practically falls in the toilet trying to sit down on the rim of the bowl which is drenched in your pee because you can’t fucking aim.  That’s why!”

Ok, she had me there. Still, I was resistant.

“It’s because I have a penis, isn’t it?”

“What’s because you have a penis?”

“That you think I do everything wrong.”

“Yes, I’m quite sure of it.  Most every thoughtless act derives from the penis.”

Even so, when I tried to blame future blunders on my penis, she failed to acknowledge us as separate entities.

For the rest of you who also have a penis and who are as clueless as me when it comes to proper social customs, allow me to share with you what I’ve learned, at least as I understand it.  Perhaps I can save you some pain and discomfort early on in your relationships.

1.  You can never have too many decorative pillows on the bed or sofas (side note: it’s a sofa, not a couch), as if the number of pillows directly reflects your level of success.  I imagine couples leaving our house after dinner parties:  ”Did you see how many throw pillows they had?  I didn’t know bartenders did that well.”

2.  When in-laws visit, it is not ok to disappear upstairs and watch re-runs of The Andy Griffith Show for three hours.  Or so I am told.

3.  Clothes must be segregated into different colors before you wash them. This is not only tedious, but it borders on discrimination. I’m still fighting the injustice of this chore today.

4.  When having guests over for dinner, it’s not ok to simply put the condiments on the table in the form of jars and bottles.  Apparently you must use nice little porcelain bowls. And real silverware, not plastic, as if we were royalty.

5.  You must clean the house before the maid comes over….to clean the house.

6.  Never invite people over to your house without first consulting your wife, even after she tells them, “You guys should come over soon.”  As it has been explained to me, what one says and what one means are not always congruent nor consistent with each other, and therefore you must first check with your wife to sort out which is which.

7.  It is absolutely prohibited to sit in your underwear and play poker at www.partycasino.com while your mother-in-law is visiting (you’ll sadly discover that there are many things you cannot do when in-laws are around).

8.  Learn how to fix things around the house or your manhood will be questioned on a weekly basis. My basic skills are bartending, telling stupid stories and watching tv, none of which turn my wife on.  If only building a fence were directly related to one’s knowledge of Seinfeld episodes, our house would have beautifully surrounding boundaries and I would SO get laid all the time. (Bonus advice:  though you might think so, relying on duct tape or staple guns as your indisputable resolution for anything that is broken or maimed is not as good of an idea as you might think, so if I were you I’d tread carefully with this line of strategy).

9.  Staying in hotel on vacation is really just like being at home in that you will still get yelled at for leaving your underwear and clothes strewn about. You might as well send me to balloon camp with a  5-inch needle and tell me I can’t pop anything.

10.  Learn what RSVP means.  And then tell me, because I still don’t know. My wife often tells me that we must RSVP to parties and weddings by a certain date, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to not know what those letters mean. I could look it up on Google, but for now, a certain element of mystery keeps things exciting and unpredictable for me.

In some ways I am still quite obstinate when it comes to following customs which I view to be quite ridiculous.  To this day I refuse to wear a tie and no manner of cajoling or persuasion from my wife or anyone else will steer me otherwise.  I’m not sure how it ever came to be that a piece of cloth dangling from one’s neck became the social barometer that measures cultural refinement and sophistication.  It could just as easily be agreed upon that hanging it out the back of one’s pants like a motley tail is the reflection of civility.

To this day I am still learning what it takes to step outside my cave and live a life of cultivation, or at least compliance. There are things I will never understand, nor do I care to understand them.

What it really comes down to is that I love my wife to no end, and if she tells me that we must place doilies on every door and wall in the house, I will run and grab my duct tape and simply ask her where and how many.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

Rise of the Lake People

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If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, I went camping this past week (yes, the barman gets time off too, you know) at Collins Lake near Oregon House, CA. For those of you who don’t know, camping at Collins Lake is like camping in a giant parking lot, except with dusty trees and a giant lake.  Everyone is packed into a campsite the size of most bathrooms and you have to whisper your conversations if you don’t want your neighbors to join in because they are RIGHT THERE.

I’m not sure if camping has changed since I was a kid or if the experience is just different now that I’m an adult.  As a ten year old, camping consisted of sharpening sticks and throwing rocks at squirrels and other wildlife. Lord of the Flies sort of stuff.  All we needed was a tent, a sleeping bag, a flashlight and a small stove that could fry an egg in just under an hour.  Nowadays it feels more like I’m pretending to camp. I construct the tent, collect firewood, whittle marshmallow sticks for the kids, until eventually I look at my friend and say, “Are you ready for a beer,” to which he answers, “Jesus fucking Christ, what do you think?”

For me, camping is all about stripping away the complexities of everyday life and living with the bare essentials for a few days while appreciating the simplicity and majesty of nature.  Pulling into the campsite that first day, the first thing I saw was four kids sitting at a picnic table at their site watching Sponge Bob on a 40-inch flatscreen TV.  I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a camping purist, but somehow this seemed to be one of those “defeats the purpose” type of moments, and so I judged them and whined about it until my wife reminded me that we had chosen to camp at a place that serves ice cream and makes cappuccinos at the camp store just a few hundred feet away.

Ok, fine.  Community camping.  I can dig it.  I understand that there are different levels and intensities of camping. There is the casual camper, like myself, who hypocritically likes the idea of seclusion and nature as long as there are comforts and amenities to go with it.  Then there are the die-hard campers:  mountain men and women with wooly beards and body hair who sleep on the side of cliffs and only need a sack the size of a sandwich baggie to carry their supplies in.  And then…well…then there are the lake people.

I have encountered these people since I was a kid but have never taken the time to study them or question their existence.  After very little research and plenty of thought, I’ve decided that lake people are the biggest conundrum since the Y2K fiasco.  To this minute I sit here scratching my head trying to figure out what it is about large bodies of water that attracts this curious breed.  Looking at them, I could swear these were the same families operating the ferris wheel and bumper cars at the county fair we attended last month, yet parked in their campsites were $15,000 campers and $25,000 speed boats.  And they were everywhere, these large powerful machines owned by a group of people who, instead of going to the trouble of buying shorts, simply cut off whatever pants they happened to be wearing last winter. Jeans, slacks, tuxedo pants. All styles and fashions were represented with non-prejudice.  And shirts?  Puh-lease!  How else are you supposed to exhibit your tattoos and flabby rolls spilling over your cutoffs to the rest of the campground if encumbered by any sort of cloth draped over the upper body?

The scary thing is that lake people possess a sense of entitlement when around water.  It’s almost like they draw power from it, like Superman does from his fortress of solitude.  This is their dominion and if you don’t like it you can fuck off.  Nearly all of them own gargantuan stereos at their campsites or on their boats that blare AC/DC and Dokken throughout the day with no regard to anyone’s possible preference for peace and silence while camping.

Fisherman experience these same problems out on the lake as ski boats churn up water 20 feet from their boats without so much as an “Excuse us, coming through”.

Where do they come from, these lake people with raggedy clothes and expensive toys? Are they like National Guardsmen:  during the week they work as mild-mannered real estate agents and court reporters but once Saturday arrives they strap the confederate flag to their RV’s and head for the water?

While they are most certainly harmless, looking around I couldn’t help but think we were residing in a carnie village and that at a moment’s notice any one of them might take their anger out on all the people whose vomit they may have had to clean up on the rides they operated.  While my family dozed off at night without any such thoughts, I laid awake wondering what I might use as a weapon if a mob of blood-thirsty lake people were to break into our tent trailer.  Despite my eternal desire and fantasy to be Jason Bourne-esque in moments of chaos, I don’t imagine that my skills with a Coleman lantern would hold them off for very long.

For our next camping trip I believe we will head towards the coast and camp on the beach where the weather is cooler and people are more apt to keep their shirts on. Coast campers seem to be a more subdued, take-your-dog-to-the-beach bunch whose main goals extend beyond getting plastered and yelling, “Whooooooooooooooo!!!” far into the night.  I prefer for such idiocy to be reserved for my bar, far away from lake water and coarse, pebbled sand beaches littered with cigarette butts and Schlitz beer cans. I guess I’m just old-fashioned that way.

Cheers, until next time,

The RB

P.S.  I understand that some of my stories have nothing to do with a bar or my job, but there’s only so much you can talk about when it comes to drunken morons.  I do not discriminate and will discuss morons of all kinds, regardless of sexual orientation, color or creed.  Amen.

My Days as a Porn and Drug Pusher

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One thing you learn at college after your sixth year of taking classes and your fifth time switching your major is that your mom doesn’t want to pay for you to drink beer and play in weekend whiffle ball tournaments anymore. She sat me down one summer morning and told me over waffles that she loved me but that it was time to find a career path.  I thought it was a peculiar way for a mother to show love to her son; nevertheless, I relented and put a resume together and within a few weeks I had landed a part time job at a used CD store as a sales clerk making minimum wage with the possibility of earning a 2% bonus if I met some sort of sales quota which I believe could have earned me an extra $6 per month had I ever taken the initiative to explore that possibility.

The store didn’t just sell used music.  It was one of those college town stores where all the workers except me had dreadlocks and pierced noses and wore hemp sweaters or panchos and bathed as often as cattle.  Besides new and used CD’s we sold a potpourri of worthless crap, including t-shirts, posters, jewelry, incense, candles and gag gifts.  Oh yeah, and porn.  And drug paraphernalia.  In our secret back room. Did I mention the porn?

Perhaps you have visited a store like this before.  Perhaps you have not. Basically, for those of you who have not, it worked like this:  once your age had been verified, we buzzed you through a door that led to a room with shelves and wall pegs filled with X-rated movies, dildos, vibrators, blow-up dolls, accessories and just about any sex toy you could imagine and then some.

Also in the back room was a display case of bongs in various shapes and colors.  Neither we nor the customer were allowed to call them bongs or anything that involved illegal terminology whatsoever, such as marajuana or dope, etc.  We were reminded constantly that if we violated these rules that the store was at risk of being fined and even shut down.  We were selling “tobacco” pipes, and in fact, you couldn’t even say the word “glass” because that implied using the bongs for smoking crack cocaine.  What this meant was that we were happy to openly discuss the 14-inch, supercharged vibrating anal probes we sold, but if you said the word “glass” I was allowed to grab you by your collar, escort you out of the back room immediately and ban you forever.

When I first started working there, I felt awkward and embarrassed as people perused our wall of porn, and so did the people who were looking. It was like being on a first date, neither one of us quite sure what to say.  Fortunately for me, the customer was far more vulnerable than I was.  The moment you picked out something to buy, it automatically became part of your identity and that object or video exposed your innermost thoughts and desires.

After a couple of months working there, I became indifferent because I saw the same thing every day.  Some college boy would come in and look around for ten minutes, sheepishly grinning at me every so often, and then he would eventually and hurriedly grab a pocket pussy and hold it out to me saying, “It’s not for me, it’s for a joke…for my buddy’s bachelor party,” even though I knew that fifteen minutes later he would be locked in his room making love to latex.

Despite the oddity of this job, I got used to most of the screw balls and stoners who came in to purchase their underground product of choice, but I was never prepared for the guy who came in one Tuesday afternoon and fucked my world up.  He was a middle-aged guy, nicely dressed in slacks and a business shirt.  The sort of guy who comes in to buy a little something to bring home to the wifey to spice up their sex life. It wasn’t uncommon to see a husband or a couple come in and pick out a vibrator or even a movie.

Seeing as it was still morning on a weekday, there was nobody else in the store, so I buzzed him in and sat down at my customary stool behind the “tobacco pipe” display case. Normally I would pretend to clean the case or adjust and rearrange the pipes and tobacco on display to make it easier for the customers to look around without feeling like they were being watched and judged, but before I could even slide the glass door open, this nicely dressed man loosened his belt, reached down the back of his pants and pulled out a giant butt plug. “Do you have any more of these in this size?” he asked.  If you think I would make up something this disturbing and disgusting, you don’t know me very well (ok, maybe you know me a little, but this isn’t one of those times).

Any normal person would have been furious and yelled at this perverted degenerate to get the hell out of the store or perhaps stomp over to the nearest phone to call the cops.  What I did was stand there awkwardly for a moment before asking him if that was the 10 or 12 inch model.

“I don’t know,” he said, rather annoyed.  ”Look at it!”

He held it out to me as if it were a rare, sanctified artifact that had been unearthed from Egypt, and I was half-expecting him to blurt out “BEHOLD!”  Even as a young, scared kid I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that he didn’t really expect me to determine its size.  After all, this wasn’t a shoe store.  I didn’t have a little device with a sliding metal cursor to measure its length.  We didn’t store our dildos and toys in boxes in the back, organized by size and stacked in neat, economical rows.  This man had an agenda, and it wasn’t to buy something sexy for his wife.  I, in no way, wanted to see the endgame to that agenda, so I simply pretended that this was totally normal, that men like him came in everyday presenting their butt plugs like defective hot dogs.

“Uummm…let’s see,” I said, opening a drawer in the display case which held nothing more than extra packs of tobacco in them. “What color would you like?”

“What?  Whatever.  I don’t care.”

“Is that latex or rubber?” I asked, still shuffling through bags of tobacco as if I were looking through our giant inventory of butt plugs.

“I don’t know,” he snapped.  ”Latex, I think.”

“Did you see our special on flavored condoms?  Buy four get the fifth one free.”

“No, I don’t need any condoms.” He was getting flustered now, I assume from my method of trying to get through this thing the only way I knew how, which was to distract him and me from what was really going on, and what was really going on was that this guy was getting off on his public display and my squirming discomfort.  Personally, I would have rather rammed an ice pick down the shaft of my penis than participate in public humiliation of this magnitude, but that’s just me.  I really wanted him to put the damn thing away, but certainly not back in its sheath where it came from.

“How much were you looking to spend?” I asked.

“I don’t care,” he yelled.  ”Just…LOOK AT IT!”

It was at this exact moment when I realized that people who say human beings are just a different version of the same thing don’t know what the fuck they are talking about.  This man wasn’t a version of anything I had ever come into contact with. It wasn’t a gender thing with him either.  He didn’t care if I was a man, woman or giraffe.  He simply needed a witness in order to get that adrenaline flowing, but instead here I was asking him if he wanted to save a buck on flavored condoms.  I didn’t mean to, but by trying to avoid the horrific awkwardness of the situation, I was fucking up his shock value.

“We have flavored lube too, if you’d like. I could give you a deal.”  He just stared at me with unblinking eyes, his lips locked together in a tight, bloodless line while still holding the plug out in front of him.  I knew he didn’t really want another one of the same size.  What would he do with two?  Still, he wasn’t leaving, so what was he hoping for?  Did he want me to jump up and eagerly perform lewd acts with him right there in the store?  Was he taking a mental picture of this moment so he could recall it from his memory files for later enjoyment?  Or was he planning an assault?  I felt a sinking sense of dread as I pictured the front page headlines in tomorrow morning’s paper:  College Student Bludgeoned to Death by the Buttplug Bandit.

Of all the subjects I had studied and switched my major to, at that moment I wished I had stuck it out in psychology so I could fuck with this guy’s mind like Hannibal Lecter and get myself out of this situation.

“I think we have a shipment of vibrating ones coming in tomorrow if you want to come back then,” I said.  I was running out of stall tactics, and I was afraid if I stood up he might interpret that as a signal for him to engage me and then he might start trying to kiss me or caress me or something that causes you to need therapy the rest of your life.  So I stayed seated where I was and just kept looking through the same ten baggies of tobacco in my 8 x 12-inch drawer, hoping he wouldn’t notice that the only way we would store butt plugs in something so small would be if it was some sort of Narnia drawer that opened up into a world of snowy porn.

Just when I thought I might have to make a run for it, someone from the front of the store yelled, “Is anyone here?  I need to buy this CD?”

This jarred my creepy friend back from his perverted world and he quickly shoved his toy into his pants pocket and hurried out of the store.  And just like that it was over.

After the incident, I was embarrassed of what others might think so I never told anyone.  I’ve never devoted much time to guilt, but that’s exactly how I felt and it wasn’t fair.  I hadn’t done anything wrong, yet I felt like I was a willing participant in this man’s dirty little scandal.  Was this what rape victim’s went through but on a much more severe level?  What was the lesson I was supposed to learn from the man who went around terrifying college boys with his greasy toy?

Perhaps I’ll never know, but until I do figure it out, be very cautious around me when adjusting your belt.  I get very jumpy around anyone who I think might loosen their pants in a moments notice. I guess in a way that makes me damaged goods.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

10 Things You Are Certain to do When You’re Wasted!

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1.  Lose your hearing.  Either that or you become extremely nearsighted because when you are wasted, you will shout at someone standing two feet away from you as if they are on the other side of a stadium.

2.  Make out with someone uglier than your great aunt Edna. Unfortunately, there is no stronger force in the universe than drunken horniness. Just let it happen and move on.

3.  Buy drinks for total strangers.  This is a wonderful gesture until you wake up the next morning and find a credit card receipt in your wallet resembling your car payment.  I’m still paying for shots I bought ten years ago.

4.  Have sex with someone uglier than your great aunt Edna.  Don’t act like you haven’t, and if you haven’t, you will.

5.  Put your face in a place someone’s ass was just 2 minutes before. Would you EVER do this sober? If your answer is yes, please leave my blog right now.

6.  Eat all of your roommate’s food in the fridge when you get home from the bars. Not only will you eat their food, you will eat leftover, crusty nachos that have been sitting on the counter for the past 14 hours.

7.  Make outrageous commitments with your friends.  Dude, I’ll totally get up and run up Mt. Diablo tomorrow morning at 7:00 am.  Ok, me too.  You’d better be there.  Oh, I’ll be there, you can count on that.  You just worry about yourself.  I’m so there.  I swear on my mom’s life.  In fact, let’s make it 6:00.  You’re on.  Duuuuuuuuuude! (Broski fist pound).

8.  Pee anywhere. Buildings and sidewalks suddenly become your toilet.

9.  Argue your point to the death.  No facts, reason or common sense will persuade you to believe otherwise. You will throw blows before you admit Bert and Ernie were gay.

10. Claim that you aren’t that drunk.  ”I just need a minute,” you’ll say, and then you’ll lay your head down on the bar and go to sleep.

Duane the Mixologist

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I LOVE MY LEMON ZESTER SO MUCH I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH IT.

Hello, my name is Duane.  I am a mixologist.  People call me Duane the mixologist.  If you need a cocktail, please do not call out, “Hey bartender,” because I will not respond, as I am not a bartender.  Please call me Duane, or Master Mixologist and I will be happy to serve you (sometimes when I’m feeling fun, I tell people that my name is Sir Mix-alot or Dr. Mixy and I get a fun reaction to my clever banter).

I work with Dave, but I do not like him very much because he calls me Sewage Duane and makes fun of me when really he should be making fun of himself because he is only a bartender.

Some people think it is fun to go out and have drinks at a bar, but I have found a way to make it an agonizingly slow and painful experience. Before this I worked at Applebee’s as assistant to the assistant head mixologist where I was in charge of filling the ice bins and stocking glassware.

In case you are ignorant, mixology is the process of making drinks exactly the same way a bartender does only taking much more time to do it. Mixology is very difficult and consists of putting ice in a glass and pouring alcohol over it.  If there was such a thing as a double PhD in Mixology, I would probably own a degree in it right now.

I have an excellent memory and can hold up to two drinks in my head at any given time.  If I can remember how to make the drinks without consulting The Bartender’s Guide, I am usually able to finish them in just under four minutes.

If you are interested in becoming a master mixologist like me, you probably won’t be able to because it’s more difficult than Navy Seal training, but here are the list of requirements anyway.

1.  Spend at least 8 minutes talking about mixology and the forces that influenced you to arrive at this point in your life before making the drink that was ordered.

2.  Tell the other bartenders what they are doing wrong every time they make a cocktail.

3.  Bring your own Boston Shaker and Hawthorne strainer to work in a case you purchased from BevMo.

4.  Wear a gay apron to hold your tools in.

5.  Always carry a lemon zester in your pocket or apron, even when you are not working.

6.  No matter what topic a guest brings up, steer the conversation towards things that you like and possibly any problems you are experiencing in your life at that moment.

7.  Let everyone know that you are a mixologist by telling them over and over that you are a mixologist, and then show them your lemon zester.

8.  Say things like “tinctures” and “flavor profiles” and “Please stop calling me bartender, I am a mixologist.”

9.  Pull out your 15 mixology tools and describe in great detail their many purposes to guests until they want to wrap their lips around a tailpipe to end their pain.

10. If you come to my bar I will create a classic cocktail for you, but if you don’t like it, please don’t return it because I cannot afford to pay for it out of my tips, as I currently only work lunch shifts on Mondays and Tuesdays.

I wish they would fire Dave so I could have his shifts, but the owner says people always ask for him to make their drinks because they say he makes them fast.  This is not fair because Dave hides my mixology tools which isn’t funny because the guests have to wait longer to get their drinks while I search for my tools, and usually while I’m searching for them, Dave makes them their drinks and takes credit for helping them.

I once offered to teach Dave how to properly craft cocktails, and he told me, “Sure, just let me go drain my main Duane first.”  Then another time I asked if he wanted to borrow my lemon zester, and he said, “Hold that thought,” and then he started singing that Prince song really loud so I couldn’t talk, except he changed it to Purple Duane instead and everyone was laughing, but really I think they were laughing at Dave because he is only a bartender.

My mixology mentor’s name is Brad.  He still works at Applebee’s and knows everything there is to know about cocktails and mixology.  He lives in his mom’s basement and plays Farmville on his computer until 6:00 a.m.

One thing you should know about us mixologists is that we don’t “make drinks”.  Instead we “craft cocktails”.  I am writing a book about this very thing and I’m calling it Krafting Kocktails With Duane.  ”Crafting” and “cocktails” both start with a “C” but I am using “K’s” because I am super “Kreative”.  Haha, see what I mean?

Brad says lots of people will buy my book because it is so rare and valuable.  My mom has already told me that she will buy three copies when it comes out.  I have been working on my book for threes years now and it already has 31 pages and has much better writing than you will read on Dave’s blog. When I’m a best selling mixologist author I will come order a drink from Dave at his bar and not tip him.

If I had one piece of advice to pass on to aspiring mixologists, it would be this:  Do not order drinks from Dave anymore or read his blog. He is an asshole.  Also, get a lemon zester.

Sincerely yours forever,

Duane The Mixologist, a.k.a. Sir Mix-a-Lot (Haha)

The Bourne Mis-Identity

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When I was born a terrible mistake was made and God failed to include enough common sense and logic in my DNA to allow me to think and function like a normal adult.  What this means is that I am interesting enough and have the ability to generate compelling and original thoughts, but I’m lucky if I can remain focused long enough to remember to pull my pants down when I pee.

My most crippling characteristic (or possibly greatest superpower; it’s yet to be determined) is that I seem to be missing the Reality gene.  Translation:  I participate in the grandiose fantasies usually reserved for ten-year-old boys.

Movies are largely to blame.  Growing up I dreamed of being Luke Skywalker, Rambo, Steven Seagal, and more recently of course, Jason Bourne. (That reminds me, I should warn you about something:  approaching me right after I’ve seen an action movie is risky to say the least, as this is when my kick-ass emotions are at their peak which means I am more than likely to see you as an undercover operative rather than my son’s teacher, and when you ask me if I’m coming to back-to-school night I will say something in my “important voice” like, “You tell Vinnie the Sausage and his goons that I can’t be bought.”  Either that or I will kick you in the stomach and search you for a hidden wire.)

I’m not saying that dreams are unhealthy or damaging, because for most people they aren’t.  They propel us to grow and achieve and envision the possibility of success every morning when we crawl out of bed.  Nevertheless, dreams need to be categorized.  For instance, there are dreams like becoming an architect and designing bridges or one day owning a vacation home in Costa Rica, and then there are dreams like the ones I have where I foil corrupt CIA agents by employing brilliant tactical strategies that keep my three steps ahead, as well as using freaky-swift hand-to-hand combat that snaps the necks of anyone trying to bring me in.

Since some people are more visual, allow me to externalize the visions that go on inside my head (luckily this drawing only took me six hours to construct).

This is me taking down corrupt CIA agents, or possibly large oil company CEO’s who have sinister laughs and jack up gas prices for no reason at all.  I ran out of room for further description, but my backpack is full of Jason Bourne high-tech assassin shit like tracking devices and those things that look like hockey pucks that you stick on the sides of buildings so you can blow a hole in the wall.  I also feel the fossil is a pretty sharp addition, and perhaps even thematic when you consider the oil company angle.

Though I am capable of hallucinating on every level, I seem to specialize in disaster situations.  I’m not sure I even have a choice in the matter.  I enact entire scenarios in my head in which I take down terrorists and save dozens of hostages at least once a week, and afterwards the hostages fawn over me and the terrorist curse me and shake their fists like the villains at the end of every Scooby-Doo episode.

If I’m not saving hostages, I’m toppling corrupt government officials who try to pass shady laws or prevent gay marriages.  They come to me and threaten to harm me and my dog if I don’t keep quiet about their top secret and controversial issues and I respond by turning their fucking universe INSIDE-OUT!

For whatever reason, I have found that my most vivid fantasies are formed while I’m either driving or in the shower, which means I will stand under the spray for 45 minutes until the water turns cold and jars me back to the present, or you can find me happily cruising along in the fast lane of I-680 at a comfortable 35 MPH.

My greatest fear is that I will wind up like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind where the line between fantasy and reality fades gradually each day until I wake up one day in a padded room hugging myself in a white coat with buckles while my family looks at me with pity through that ridiculously small square window in the door.

This is not one of those vague fears either.  I have actually pictured the moment in my mind when I’m too far gone to recognize a phantom truth:  The phone rings, I pick it up and a voice on the other line says, “Hello, Dave. This is Agent Callahan.  The oil companies are planning to raise gas prices to $7 per gallon.  Also they are holding a room full of orphans and nuns hostage in the infant ward at the hospital. The world needs you…immediately!”

Then I slowly rub my chin and consider the risks.  ”$7 per gallon, eh?” I say.  ”We’ll just see about that.”

And then I am gone…until the water turns cold and I am forced to dry off and get dressed for work.

Cheers, until next time (unless I’m sent to an asylum),

The RB

TheRealBarman Voted Best Bartender in the Bay Area by Some Drunk Guy who Likes to get Drunk

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Finally, after all these years I’ve received the recognition I deserve.  This guy told me last night that I was the best bartender in the Bay Area.  I’m not sure what his credentials are, but I’m assuming he must be on some important committee, panel or academy to be so astute in finding me and recognizing my hard work and skills.  He was so excited after the announcement he couldn’t contain himself and he promptly stumbled to the bathroom and vomited in our sink.  I’m very honored and humbled.  Thank you, drunk guy.  Thank you very much.

The RB

The Misguided Wave

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At the beginning of my shift last night I looked up and saw a girl across the bar whole-heartedly waving and smiling at me, and even though I didn’t quite recognize her from that distance, I returned the wave with childish enthusiasm , only to realize a sickening second later that she was waving to someone right behind me.

Yeah, that actually happened to me, and I’m not sure why a genuine mistake like this would make me feel like the biggest donkey in the stable, but it totally did, and so I had to quickly pretend I was shooing away some imaginary stench in the air, and then I buried my head in the sink and pretended to clean out the drain for like twenty minutes so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone who had witnessed me wave at the girl who had no intention of being my friend.

It wasn’t fair, to be caught in this predicament, to be feeling this way.  I was just trying to be friendly and now I’d been tagged as the guy so desperate for companionship that he had to resort to acquiring friends by intercepting waves from people.

The worst part is that the girl who waved to me–or should I say “waved in my general direction”–saw me wave back which means she was perfectly aware that I didn’t know her and that by me waving back I was fully prepared to pull the whole “I-have-no-idea-who-you-are-but-I’m-going-to-pretend-I-do” routine, which makes me look like a moron AND a liar.

Wait, I take that back.  The even worst-est part is that even though she saw me wave at her, she chose to participate in our little charade, acting as if she didn’t see me either, so now we’re both doing this pretending game, only she has actual friends who are receiving her warmly and all I have is this cold stainless steel sink I’m pretending to scrub.

So I have my head buried in the sink while she heads in my direction to hug her friends and all I can think is, Please don’t order a drink from me, and now I double-take-it-back because this is where it could actually get worse than the previous two worsts because I just know that the second I look up she’s going to be standing there staring at me with a holier-than-thou smirk on her face, and she’ll say, “Did you really think I would wave to someone like you, idiot?”

Thankfully she was merciful  and now we have a really clean sink at the bar.

I can’t figure out why something like this needs to be embarrassing at all, but it is.  It’s like when you stumble on a sidewalk crack while you’re walking down the street and you either 1) stop and look back at the crack like you’re all baffled and angry and thinking “Who the fuck put a sidewalk crack right there in the middle of the sidewalk?” or 2) you break into a light jog and look down at your watch as if you suddenly forgot that you were late for a meeting even though you’re wearing sweats and a baseball cap backwards which means there’s no way you’re going to a meeting unless you were meeting with Run DMC or something, and now you’re committed so you have to keep up your run for like two-hundred yards to get out of site from anyone who may have witnessed the initial stumble because you have to make them believe that you really are late for something because who runs ten feet when they have to be somewhere?

The moral of the story?  Be very careful when dispensing waves to your friends by making sure no one is in the line of fire.  Or maybe the moral is to learn some humility by learning to deal with embarrassing situations in a mature manner.  You know what?  I don’t really care what the moral is.  Just don’t fucking fake wave at me if you come into my bar because it’s MY goddamn bar and I shouldn’t be made to feel small and friendless in my own bar.  Not to mention I hate fake cleaning drains and sinks because it’s both humiliating that I’m hiding from you and it’s also often disgusting.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

Fucking With Drunk People

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 I’m not sure why, but lately I’ve become more irritable about the fact that I spend five nights a week in a place where I’m sober and everyone else is flying high and yuckin’ it up.  I understand that it’s my job, but after awhile it feels like I’ve been invited to a party but when I arrive, I’m told I should stand out front and wait for guests to arrive so I can park their cars.  I hate it I hate it I hate it!!!

Let’s not dilute the facts, being drunk is stupenderrific!  You’ve all been there, you know how it is:  that sensational feeling of perceived invincibility you experience after five or six drinks.  Even better is if you compound that experience by drinking with a group because the camaraderie shared between buffoons slopping alcohol on each other can only be compared to that of championship sports teams.

That’s why bars are so popular, because being drunk with a group is so much more badass than being drunk alone.  Everything is hilarious and fun and no matter what fucked-up shit you’re dealing with in your every day life, at this moment you and your drinking clan are downright convinced of your indestructibility, so much so that you find yourself discussing scenarios to prove it. In fact you’ve all agreed that, under the right circumstances, if you had a titanium body suit, a utility belt, and a Peter Pan-sized boy with a yellow cape to watch your back, any one of you could easily transition into the role of Batman.

On the other hand, being sober around drunk people is like trying to fit into a clique you were never invited to join, except this clique has the maturity equivalent of nine year olds.  Disorderly nine year olds.  With brain damage.  That’s me, every night (the guy-hanging-out-with-disorderly-drunks part, not the brain damage part).  We bartenders are like matadors armed only with one of those flimsy piece of crap Zorro swords trying to hold off a ring full of dazed, irritated bulls.  Except replace “sword” with “bar rag” and “bulls” with “vomity, cursing drunks”.

Being sober around drunks is boring, which provokes me to spice up the action, which is why I have a serious problem that some of you may have identified already, and it’s that I can’t help fucking with people who take things too seriously (See “Peta Girl”).

I can’t decide if it’s a disease or a superpower, but I do know that I’m addicted because every night before I go to work I choose some mantra to repeat to myself that might help me overcome my problem (something along the lines of, “Bar patrons are my friends, not toys for my amusement”) but every night I somehow become misaligned and betray that mantra which means I have to start my 12 steps over again and apologize to people I’ve wronged and make amends with Jesus in a non-sarcastic way that shows him I’m not fucking with HIM.

I try to leave people alone, really I do, but please remember that I work in a bar with drunk people and telling me not to fuck with them is like placing a ribeye in front of a tiger and saying, “Now when I get back, that steak had better still be there, mister.”

Yes, I understand that drunk people are vulnerable in their state of cheery befuddlement, but you should know that I leave 98% of them alone, the ones who are lovable and considerate and sometimes even offer to buy me a shot.  It’s the 2% that I fuck with, the ones who are determined to destroy everyone else’s good time.

This brings me to Artie, a decidedly irate and spiteful individual who enters my bar about once a week so he can try to drink enough to kill whatever’s inside him that he hates about himself.  I won’t waste your time with too many details except to say that Artie is the type of man that I imagine pulls the wings off butterflies for the pure joy of performing reverse evolution.  Sometimes I want to stab a pacifier into his mouth because I’m fairly certain he would immediately and innately start trying to suck all of his anger out through the rubber nipple like a teething baby.

Like most people who have issues with the world, Artie communicates his problems without bothering to pay attention to what anyone else has to say, which manufactures entertaining conversations where he attempts to recruit misery to accompany him at the bar and I do my best to derail and distract him.  This is what happened that last time Artie stumbled to the bar, already a bit schnockered, trying to tell me about the car accident he had that day:

Me:  How’s it going, Artie?

Artie:  It’s going shitty.  Some jackass smashed into my Porsche today.  Three months off the lot, and he totaled it.

Me:  Wow.  That’s too bad.  Were you alone or by yourself?

Artie:  I was…what?  I was by myself.

Me:  What happened?

Artie:  Asshole ran a stop sign and smashed into my passenger side door.

Me:  How did he smash into you if he was at a stop sign?

Artie:  No, idiot.  He ran through a stop sign.

Me:  I thought you said he was driving.

Artie:  He WAS driving.

Me:  You just said he RAN through it.

Artie:  That’s what you say when you drive through a stop sign without stopping.  What the fuck is the matter with you?

Me:  I don’t know.  My father used to hold me under water for long periods of time…

Artie:  ANYWAY…I jump out of the car and I’m getting ready to beat this punk’s ass.  He’s like 18 years old with tattoos all over the place, and he starts running for these stairs…

Me:  What kind of stairs?

Artie:  What?  What do you mean?

Me:  I mean did they go up or down?

Artie:  They’re stairs…what the fuck? They go up and down.

Me:  Come on.  How do stairs go up and down at the same time?

Artie: Are you retarded? It wasn’t an escalator. They’re just STAIRS!  FUCK!

Me:  Don’t escalators have buttons and sliding doors?

Artie:  Can I finish?

Me:  I wish you would.

Artie:  So then I chased him up the stairs into an office building.

Me:  So they were “UP” stairs (I cleverly used my quotation fingers for this).

Artie:  Will you forget about the stairs, for Christ sakes?

Me:  What stairs?

Artie:  Are you serious?  What the fuck?

Me:  No, you don’t understand.  You said “forget about the stairs”, so I was like, “What stairs?” like I already forgot about them.  You know, like when someone says, “Promise me you won’t tell Jane about the secret passage way,” and you say, “What secret passage way?” because it’s like you’re telling them you’ll pretend you know nothing about it. It’s a clever way to say that I’m on board with you.

Artie:  Jesus, forget it.  I’m done talking to you.  You’re missing out on a goddamn good ending too.

Me:  I know, it sounded like a good plot.  What was the name of it?

Artie:  The name of what?

Me:  Hello?  The movie you were just telling me about with the guy running up the stairs.  Did you forget already?

At this point Artie slammed what was left of his Sierra Nevada down and started to stomp out the door, but I reminded him that he hadn’t paid yet so I ruined his dramatic exit because he had to rummage through his wallet for some time before he found the right credit card.  The great thing about Artie is that he drinks so much he usually doesn’t remember what he’s mad at me for and I’ll see him again in a week when he’ll tell me some other story about how everyone in the world is an asshole except him.

I know what you all are thinking and you’re right, I need help.  I’m going to ask Jesus* to guide me.

*By Jesus I mean our dishwasher, not the real Jesus.  He’s studying psychology at the junior college so maybe he knows some stuff about “fucking-with-drunks syndrome” or whatever.  Again, I’m talking about our dishwasher, not the main Jesus.  I assume the real Jesus already has psych figured out pretty good which is why he mind-fucked everyone by allowing them nail-gun him to lumber instead of using his superpowers to turn them into salamanders.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB