drinking

BROKER’S GIN—Part 5!

Things are looking up at LBHQ—I think. If I weren’t such a dumbass about checking my Twitter account, I would have realized days ago that the lovely Julia Gale, Business Development Manager at Broker’s Gin, had tweeted me:

“Greetings young Liquorstore Bear! Please may I have your contact details?… We’d love to call you.”

Two days late, I scrambled to reply. (Julia had told me previously that Martin and Andy, the owners at Broker’s, would be visiting my home province to rectify the gin situation—i.e., the absence of this elysian gin from our government liquor store shelves.)

For those of you who haven’t been following our correspondence, here’s a recap from November:

JULIA:

Greetings from Broker’s Gin!! Dreadful to hear that you can’t get any of our fine gin at the moment, especially as you’re obviously a fan. I know that Ontario is awash with the stuff at the moment so maybe you’re from another province. If you drop us a line to broker@brokersgin.com with some more information, we’ll try to help!

LB:     

Julia, delighted to hear from you! You’re right; it is dreadful that I can’t find Broker’s Gin at the moment. Ontario is full of hooligans so I wonder why they have it and we don’t here in beautiful British Columbia, where it is mild all year and perfect for making a gin-and-tonic every single day. Of course I also wanted the little hat from on top of the bottle. I thought that after finishing the contents I could wear the little hat and look like you, Andy, and Martin—all so smart and British-looking.  

These pleasantries carried on for a while, with a few solutions being proposed:

  • Cross the border to buy Broker’s in the US
  • Ask Santa for some
  • Chain myself to government liquor store railing to demand reinstatement of Broker’s Gin

What with potential cross-border cavity searches, a disheartening Santa spoiler, and my failure to find a pair of small handcuffs, these ideas weren’t quite doing it for me. Then Julia emailed about Martin and Andy’s visit to BC.

I really wanted to talk to Julia, to hear her lovely English voice (even with the post-flu pornstar/Barry White gruffness she says it’s acquired over the hols). I can’t fathom why she isn’t joining Martin and Andy on their visit. Anyway, my parents would never let me answer the phone—they say I’m a mouth-breather. So I gave Julia my parents’ numbers, and she said Martin might phone. This makes me a little nervous…

  • What if my parents don’t answer the phone? Take my dad, for example, who just yesterday ignored an unknown 604 number. What if that was Martin from Broker’s Gin? OMG!
  • What if we don’t click? I don’t know Martin quite the way I know Julia. He might not enjoy talking to bears the way Julia does.
  • What if he’s very serious? Broker’s Gin has a web page dedicated to humor (“I’ve gone on a gin and tonic diet. I’ve lost two days already!”) but what if Martin turns out to be very stern in person? (Mind you, it’s okay if Julia’s stern, so long as we establish a “safe” word.)
  • What if Martin and I do click, then spend the day getting drunk, betting at the casino and regaling each other with stories—and he’s too hungover to attend his meeting, and fails to get Broker’s Gin back into liquor stores here? OMG!!

So it’s a very anxious day, my fellow inebriates. If only I had some gin to take the edge off.

MONT GRAS SOLEUS Cabernet Sauvignon (2009)—Not art, but that’s okay because I HAVE art

“LB! Wake up, LB!”

It was the six-year-old. I figured she had a frilly dress ready for me—as good a reason as any to yank me out of bed. I had a crashing hangover thanks to my parents’ wine snobbery, but more on that later. I went submissively with Miss P.

She carried me to the kitchen table, on which sat an envelope, addressed to LB (!). And inside….

Yes, yes, YES! A replica of Dan Lacey’s Obama Unicorn Nude Baby Jesus Manger Christmas Card Art Painting, kindly autographed by the artist.

I am so happy.

My joy almost negates the ill-effects of drinking the lion’s share of the Chilean cab we had last night. I was excited when I saw the bottle of MONT GRAS SOLEUS Cabernet Sauvignon (2009)—every Mont Gras product I’ve tried previously has been top-notch for the price point. Organically grown grapes seemed a further plus. The Los Guindos vineyards were planted between 1998 and 1999 about 50km from Santiago and managed organically from the get-go. SOLEUS is made from 100% hand-picked organic grapes and goes for $13.99 at our local booze shop.

A lucky string of excellent sub-$15 red wine finds (reviews to come) over the holidays had perhaps jacked up my expectations, as well as those of my parents. We don’t typically let wine languish in this house, but when the SOLEUS was poured…it sat.

Why?

The color is ruby red and enticing. In the glass the wine sheets, with legs quickly forming. From three feet away it induces salivation.

Three inches’ distance is another matter. Intensely aromatic, SOLEUS has an unfortunate petrol-like topnote with chicken-coop accents. These oddities—fortunately—are caught up in a dried-fruit onslaught, a heavy abundance of ripe red berries with lashings of tobacco and vanilla. The effect is disconcerting and palate-bothering. If you can get past the initial aroma, the front sip is quite acceptable, followed by a confusing mid-palate jockeying of flavors and a borderline-offensive ending.

Which was super for me, because my parents quietly abandoned their glasses, leaving the wine for me to finish. I got freaking wasted, my fellow inebriates. I have no idea what time they carried me to the bed I share with three other bears (who were probably relieved that I was too insensate to grind up against them).

All in all it was an awesome evening. The hangover was par for the course, and it was ameliorated wonderfully today by the contemplation of art.

UFO? Or schnapps? Only your anus knows for sure

My Fellow Inebriates,

My friend Violet Purplebunny told me one of her friends posted a Facebook status update about UFOs over Taos, New Mexico. This got me wondering why we don’t hear very often about aliens visiting southwest British Columbia.

Or do we?

It’s overcast here most days, with measurable precipitation a fur-wetting 50% of the time and what seems like perpetual cloud cover. This makes many Lower Mainlanders depressed and pessimistic, but not my dad—he bought a telescope. And not some dinky little spyglass thing—a big R2D2-like thing with GPS and the works. So now we don’t just get to see clouds—we get to see them very close-up.

Still, there are some clear nights when reports come streaming in to whoever will record them that UFOs are here.

28-Dec-2011, Abbotsford, BC

I was driving on the highway with my sister when I saw to my right a bright, white round light with kinda a less bright light around it and it just shot into the sky unlike anything Ive seen before! It travelled a great distant in a second and It just disappeared!!!!! I asked my sister if she saw it but she didn’t. Im never going to forget it.

Blackie in a sober moment

This totally freaks me out. The last time I saw a round light like this I was partying in the woods with my buddy Blackie Bear. We had a whole bunch of Kriek and a weird blue bottle of mescale. When we mixed them it tasted pretty foul, so we added orange juice. Shortly after I saw a peculiar round light; it whipped around and vanished. Unlike the sister in the report above, Blackie also saw the light. AND something even stranger happened to him—he lost his apostrophes. I don’t know how, but suddenly he was saying things like “Ive” and “Im” and, OMG, I could hear that they didn’t contain any apostrophes. And when I asked him about my speech, he said my apostrophes were gone too—he couldn’t hear them at all. Holy crap!

I don’t want to sound mean, but I hope the guy who made this report wasn’t the one doing the driving—I hope it was his sister and that, in addition to not seeing the strange light, she retained the ability to form grammatical contractions as she drove the two of them safely past the Abbotsford airport.

21-Dec-2011, Coquitlam, BC

…my adult daughter was having a cigarette when she looked up at the sky and saw 2 pulsating red lights. The lights moved strangely…became 5 lights…faded away until there were only 2 lights left…continued to dart around until they merged into one and disappeared.

When Blackie drinks absinthe he looks more like this.

I’ve never started smoking because I’m terrified of catching fire and because my mum would throw me in the washing machine every day. But I’ve certainly seen stuff like this. One day Blackie and I decided to mix absinthe with Jack Daniel’s. The key is to pour the absinthe first, then let the JD settle on top. Blackie had never tried absinthe before, but it appealed to him because he has some writing aspirations and associated it with Hemingway. You have to knock this mixture back with lightning speed or it will come back up and stain your fur. After a few of these, Blackie lost his apostrophes and stomach control. I saw spots for quite a while, and they did dart around in strange configurations.

22-Dec-2011, Kamloops, BC

“noticed a bright orb-like object in the sky with strobing colors…. Blue, red, white…. It moved very slowly, possibly at the same rate as the earth was turning. I took a couple of video but all I had was my Android phone so the quality is very poor and I chose to watch it with my eyes mostly.”

The video link doesn’t work, which makes me wonder if the Android people used their muscle to have it removed from the web. It’s pretty damning for them if people claim their phones can’t capture UFO images properly, right? I like this witness’s resourceful choice to use the eyes (mostly) to watch the phenomenon. We do this from our balcony all the time because we can’t be bothered to set up the R2D2-like telescope. Those geosynchronous UFOs are especially tricky because they seem pretty boring until you finish a punchbowl full of Stoli and Malibu. Then they get much more lively and they even start strobing.

"Drop your pants"

17-Dec-2011, North Delta, BC

I have been seeing greenish dots (objects) high in the sky…a single object was surrounded like a cluster by approximately 5-10 identical green objects. It looked as though the centre one either controlled the outside ones or it was being contained by them….

These objects appear to be 3-5 times higher than the moon. I’m talking outer space where satellites are.

I would give my ass fur to be able to make a visual calculation of an object’s distance from earth—but 3-5 times lunar distance isn’t quite where the satellites are, buddy. The very highest satellites fly at an altitude of 22,000 miles—a tenth the way to the moon at perigee (closest approach). If those choreographed lights were that far away, well, they must have been some big-ass lights.

Did you get probed while you were unconscious? Only your anus knows for sure.

I asked Violet Purplebunny what she thought about all this, and she said it sounded like a case of “too much DeKuyper Hot Damn.” I say she’s partially right—a big dose of cinnamon schnapps could certainly induce a mental light-show. But she’s partially wrong—there’s no such thing as too much.