What can brown do for you?
Well, first off, it can provide a good 20-post pad or so where I don't have to worry about the boss coming down on me for not being friends with the shining lights of wireless technology and failing to provide scoops (or, barring that, bothering to point out how sad defending Dana Vachon is, or is not). It also gives me a chance to skirt the line of copyright infringement, a DIY proto-punk stance girded by our recent foray into Big Time Blogging (Scooping Valleywag! And Giga-AhAhOm! Watching Nick dispatch Nick to cover something to hide his shame! Ack ack manages to go 24 hours without noting this! Atta-boy!) in the event of corporate C&D's (issued by hated ex-employer, whom, I have it on good authority -- that, of all things, is a Peanuts reference -- shoved the need for an 'updated logo' down the throats of over-anxious over-night titans, shitting, brownly, all over the hallowed legacy of Paul Rand), and, best of all, it gives me occassion to write introductory paragraphs that even I can't sort out -- would some one please give me a blow job? Hi.
I can't write the history of bourbon -- there are more than adequate resources for that. I prefer to think in terms of brown. This allows some outliers (Jack Daniels and some Irish, though not much), in my entirely idiosyncratic and besotted mind, to be collected into a loose group that extends the series a bit. And allows me to talk about black bush. Heh heh. That is not an Imus reference.
Though there are the stray incidents of guzzling Jim Beam back in college, I became a consumer of spirit about ten years ago, working my way in tentatively: Jack and Ginger, and then soda, finally to ice. And the wider world of brown.
Even prior to this, I always wanted a proper bar. I considered it to the be the best measure of civility and adulthood. Along with sleeping with your friend's wives, it struck me that a cocktail party and the bringing of a decent bottle of liquor to any social event was about as good as it would get in this life of diminished expectations.
So, if it isn't apparent -- well, the Fuzz complained in an internal memo that we weren't providing enough servicey bits (apparently servicey bits comprise asking me to whip up photoshop jobs with next to no commentary), so of course it isn't -- this is the inaugural post in what will, by the end, seem like an entirely interminable series of, um, reviews, of brown, all of it an attempt to avoid the churlish and entirely unfun process of describing getting drunk as a series of increasingly esoteric adjectives that make you wonder: you guzzled two ounces of bourbon and thought what?
The ground rules: I've drunk a bottle in the past year, though not necessarily at one sitting. All candidates are consumed in an old fashioned glass, amply poured, on the rocks. I do not drink spirits neat. Special editions will address the few instances where a cocktail is justified. If you prefer your brown in the form of 'X and coke, or X and ginger, or, god forbid, a whisky sour' save yourself the trouble and request the bottomest of the barrel. Note, there is some allowance for 'X and soda' and is a whole other order of consideration, taste-wise. I just found it difficult to keep myself stocked with fresh soda.
Don't wait for my pronouncements -- if you find something you like, stick to it. Having traversed a good portion of the ladder of conspicuous consumption, I can't say the money makes any one brown more worthy than others. But if you are looking for a place to start, this is as useful as any. All we are really looking for is the most stylish way to drink ourselves into existential oblivion.
I can't write the history of bourbon -- there are more than adequate resources for that. I prefer to think in terms of brown. This allows some outliers (Jack Daniels and some Irish, though not much), in my entirely idiosyncratic and besotted mind, to be collected into a loose group that extends the series a bit. And allows me to talk about black bush. Heh heh. That is not an Imus reference.
Though there are the stray incidents of guzzling Jim Beam back in college, I became a consumer of spirit about ten years ago, working my way in tentatively: Jack and Ginger, and then soda, finally to ice. And the wider world of brown.
Even prior to this, I always wanted a proper bar. I considered it to the be the best measure of civility and adulthood. Along with sleeping with your friend's wives, it struck me that a cocktail party and the bringing of a decent bottle of liquor to any social event was about as good as it would get in this life of diminished expectations.
So, if it isn't apparent -- well, the Fuzz complained in an internal memo that we weren't providing enough servicey bits (apparently servicey bits comprise asking me to whip up photoshop jobs with next to no commentary), so of course it isn't -- this is the inaugural post in what will, by the end, seem like an entirely interminable series of, um, reviews, of brown, all of it an attempt to avoid the churlish and entirely unfun process of describing getting drunk as a series of increasingly esoteric adjectives that make you wonder: you guzzled two ounces of bourbon and thought what?
The ground rules: I've drunk a bottle in the past year, though not necessarily at one sitting. All candidates are consumed in an old fashioned glass, amply poured, on the rocks. I do not drink spirits neat. Special editions will address the few instances where a cocktail is justified. If you prefer your brown in the form of 'X and coke, or X and ginger, or, god forbid, a whisky sour' save yourself the trouble and request the bottomest of the barrel. Note, there is some allowance for 'X and soda' and is a whole other order of consideration, taste-wise. I just found it difficult to keep myself stocked with fresh soda.
Don't wait for my pronouncements -- if you find something you like, stick to it. Having traversed a good portion of the ladder of conspicuous consumption, I can't say the money makes any one brown more worthy than others. But if you are looking for a place to start, this is as useful as any. All we are really looking for is the most stylish way to drink ourselves into existential oblivion.
