as we continue my walk down memory lane, let’s look at another bit from the early astrowhore years about drinking, since i know most of us had at least a little this past weekend…
04/08/2002: “beer joints (NOT about weed you smoke when you drink, folks….)”
so, i just sat through the movie “poor white trash”, which is a LOT better than you’d think it is. an example of the script; when the boy bound for college dislikes the idea of robbing townspeople with his mom to get his college tuition, and call her a “housewife”, she rebuts with, “son…have you not been paying attention? your daddy (a pro wrestler in training) left me, so i’m NOT a wife..and we live in a TRAILER not a house”. this is after she goes off to a beer joint and picks up the ex-jock that used to beat him up at school, takes him back to the trailer, and well, you know what happens…i KNOW you’ve watched a springer episode or two in your lives. but notice he wasn’t picked up at a bar. he was picked up at a beer joint.
you DO know the difference, right?
after the willie show on saturday, josh (raised in longview, tx), myself (a native of lockhart, tx) and nate (from a ritzy part of austin) were all having dinner at a jim’s coffee shop and we (as in josh and i) brought up beer joints. nate just stared blankly. when i asked him if he knew what we were talking about, and how they were different from a bar, he replied, “oh yeah…like a pub, right?”
no, my dear boy, no.
okay, so we ALL know what a “bar” is. and a pub is just a euro-version that they’ve erected all over the place (usually with the word, “irish” in front of it) where you’re typical jack black and coke will run you $7.50 instead of $5.00, and they look at you funny if you order bud instead of guiness. it’ll have crap on the walls from england, or ireland, or some other euro “land” (kinda like disney, but not as homogenized) and milk your wallet dry in the name of you getting toasty in a more “cultured” environment. the bartender will call soccer “football” (even though he’s actually from waco) and they basically exist for two reasons…
a. so dot-commers can get good and fucked up and drown their fears that their company will be the next one that i’ll be buying pcs and office chairs from when the inevitable auction takes place…
and…
b. so that your alcoholism can seem just a bit more high-brow when you bail your desk saying you’re, “off to the pub” instead of “off to the bar” it’s all syntax…nothing more.
it’s like buying an acura instead of a honda or a lexus instead of a toyota. it’s the same damn thing, just re-badged and re-priced to help you feel more prestigous. a beer joint is not a honda or an acura or a toyota or a lexus. it’s a 1982 chevy stepside with kc lights, three bald tires and a paint job that’s 40% bondo, 40% primer, and 20% paint.
beer joints are just what they sound like….a joint that serves beer. to them, wine is what people do when their lives suck and the buzz hasn’t kicked in. and guiness? isn’t that the first chapter in the good book or something? it’s bud or miller. MAYBE coors, but then you’re bordering on “bar” status. want liquor? bring it in your damn self…you can, and it’s LEGAL. you just buy what’s called a “set-up”. that’s a glass with ice, that’s about 3/4 full of coke. and it’ll cost you about $3.50…normally what you’d expect if you were the poor designated driver on a guys night out, and you were gonna get some titties in your face….except you WILL be drinking, and you SO don’t want any beer joint titties in your face. and if you DO end up with them in your face; or, god forbid, take someone HOME, well, you’ll be there forever…and probably end up in the sequel to the movie i watched earlier. in the simplest of terms, you don’t want none of that….although the “pick-up” tips i SARCASTICALLY wrote in the “get you some…” piece actually will work here…this is the problem with me spending my whole weekend either in L-town or with a willie crowd….