Beer, Writing and Murder shows

Once again trying to be witty on line. Seems like such a great idea; drink beer, meet interesting people, watch others acting like they haven't any intellect at all and then blog about it. simple. any person, with any intellect can do it. It's the drink beer part that's difficult. No, no, you know better. The drinking beer is the easy part. Delicious, easiness. Like me on a Sunday morning. Cue background music. Writing after drinking beer is the hard part. Pounding on a keyboard while your head is pounding along with every keystroke. When all you want to do is sink into bubbly alka-seltzer, lie on the couch and listen to Bill Kurtis drone on about a small town murder, because you feel as if your liver has been part of the crime scene.  I'll try to drink less and write more in 2013. Or at the very least, take an extra strength pain reliever washed down with hair o' the dog and pound away. To get into the spirit of thing, I'm headed to a craft beer extravaganza 26 taps of Dogfish Head Beer at Coasters Pub in Melbourne. Good Times and Good Friends. Yes, I have morning after supplies. Alka-seltzer, Jameson, crackers and squirt cheese. At my age that's the only morning after I need. Drink Local, Drink Often!

WITH A TWIST: Enough Already

WITH A TWIST: Enough Already: I love a Friday night out, drinking a frosty cold libation while hanging out with my friends. Especially when I don't have to get up and go ...

Enough Already

I love a Friday night out, drinking a frosty cold libation while hanging out with my friends. Especially when I don't have to get up and go to work Saturday morning.
Now everybody knows ( I think) the unwritten rule about talking about politics and religion at the bar. You Don't. I'd like to add another rule. I know, I know. Not another rule. But I hate hearing about the Casey Anthony trial. The verdict was rendered over a month ago. She was acquitted. Move on, people. I don't care what you would do if you had been a juror- you weren't, should've lived in Tampa it would've increased your odds of being picked. Would you be so passionate if the case had been a minority, redneck trash, or just plain ugly? I think not.  The media wouldn't have touched it. "Kids will be safer now because they're going to change the laws." They? The legislature? Um, Hello? Bad people don't care about laws.  So, shut your pie hole, Mister and let me drink my delicious beer without your bar stool pontificating. If Casey Anthony is as bad as people think, she'll be just like OJ and one day end up back in jail.
Enough already. Please feel free to continue drinking your frosty cold libation.

Beer, Bacon and Bait

Since I deleted an entire post from the other day and now had to rewrite it, I thought it was only right to redo the beer that I wrote about.  Kaye's Place in Port Canaveral.  Kaye's is at the far end of the port near Jetty Park, away from the fancy, geared  to the tourists places.  It's a little white house with blue trim. I knew it was going to be good when I read the sign tacked to the post on the porch that read, Do Not park your bicycles on the front porch or lock them to the white picket fence.  Sweet! any bar that has to address bicycles is usually full of colorful characters that can't, won't or don't drive for various reasons.

It was 11:15 when I went in and Carol promptly set down a frosty cold Miller Lite longneck ($2.50), a tailpipe as my friends and I like to call it. I was impressed Carol, the bartender,  remembered what I had been drinking the day before. Didn't remember my name, but the drink is what's important.  The special was country fried steak, mashed potatoes, veg for $5.95. I had yesterday's special instead. Jalapeno Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato sandwich chips and pickle for $4.75.  Kaye's is a full liquor bar and a full fried menu as well. wings, cheese sticks, chili dogs, burgers, BLTs and a daily special.  And then the customers came rolling in for lunch and The Price is Right on TV.

"How much you think that blender costs?" says the man to his wife "I don't know? Where'd they buy it? Wal-Mart? Makes a difference." As if Drew Carey is pushing a shopping cart around Wal-Mart to buy stuff for the show. "Hmm, let's see. I need 50 blenders, 10 crock-pots and some Gold Bond lotion for the show." Price is Right is classic American entertainment, but watching it at Kaye's place, even better. One other thing, before I head off to the next bar. If you can't read, don't try and read the closed captioning out loud. It's Indianapolis, not Chicago, but she was close on the price of the showcase.

Doc's Bait House has to be one of my all time favorite dive bars. Ever! Located at the base of the bridge over the Banana River on 520 Westbound next to to the crab shack. It's a concrete building, beige, with teal blue burglar bars on the windows-all of them. Walk in the front door and to the right it's bait- minnows, crickets, wigglers, earthworms, pinheads, rods, reels, nets, crab baskets, lures. Everything you need to go fishing. To your left a Formica counter top, nails with foamy coozies shoved on them, bar stools and beer! Tall boy PBRs for $1.75, ML tailpipes for $2.00. They even carry Sierra Nevada in the bottles as well. Fresh, not sitting on the shelf since 1949 when the place opened. I know because I was there when the beer guy made his delivery and saw for myself. The bar was full of good ol' boys, and I use the term boys very loosely, sitting at the bar with their beards, ball caps, plaid snap front shirts, and summer teeth. (some are here, some are there) Half the boys were drinking tall boy PBRs, the others Busch in a can. Now that, my friends, is a sure sign you are in dive bar territory.  As you come around the bar into the open area, there's a pool table, a shelf with 3 or 4 crock pots lining it (don't know if Drew Carey bought them) a fireplace with a 33lb mounted salmon over it that Doc 3, the bartender, caught in NY, fishing poles leaning against the walls, 50lb sacks of catfish food and of course a jukebox. The odd decoration was the big Tommy Bahama beach towel hanging on the wall with a sailfish and the word Relax printed on it. The towel costs more than all the boys snap front shirts put together. I grabbed my PBR and headed out to the deck.

Now why I decided to go outside in the God-awful heat of a Florida August afternoon is beyond comprehension. It's not like I haven't seen water before. I live on the freakin' water, but Doc had given me a bucket of catfish pellets and I felt it was my duty to dump them in the river and see the fish come nibble the nuggets. There are picnic tables in the shade as well as bench seating courtesy of seats from a van. Having dumped the pellets, I went inside to finish my beer and talk with the boys. Now Vernon stood out from the crowd. He had on a Hawaiian shirt with buttons, a straw fedora, not to mention most of his teeth and a stack of quarters in front of him to pay for his next beer. Vernon works for a company that makes handrails and guardrails, but he's also a painter. As in walls, buildings, rooms. " I painted all this in here and fixed the leak in the ceiling." Wasn't sure which leak he meant as there were several patches in the ceiling that looked leaky. "Everybody thinks they can paint, but they can't. That's why you need to call down here and ask for me if you ever need paintin' done." Guess Doc's is his office and showplace. I finished up my PBR as the song Kung Fu Fighting was finishing up on the jukebox.  Nice to visit old Florida and good ol boys, but it was time to get back to the beach.

Two for Tuesday

Since yesterday didn't go as easily as I thought, well, the beer drinking part did, but not the blogging part I am going to do two places today. Overachieving! First. must get the laundry done or you will see Dive Bar Girl (DBG) running around without any clothes. While, that may make it easier to overindulge in fried deliciousness because my waistband will not dig into my delicate skin, it will not endear me to local law enforcement.

And that being said, let DBG say this, I do not condone drinking and driving. Call a taxi-help our economy, know your limit, bring a friend.

Cheers!

Not so Easy

Hey, you should write a book. Or a blog. something. I think a book would've been easier seeing how I managed to delete a post from earlier. If I had written on paper I probably would've left it in the car with the top down and the pages would've gotten soaked and you wouldn't be able to read it anyway. That's what I get for dinking around and not leaving well enough alone. time for a pork dinner and quit sticking my tongue in this toothache.

Trial Run!

Not sure where I am going with this other than to a dive bar to live true to the name as well as the grocery store and see if I can get the hang of writing what I think and not just babbling it out loud.