The Whiskey Chronicals

Leave the bottle

If you watch any good western, a bottle of Whiskey is part of the plot.  “Leave the bottle” is akin to “you know…it’s been a really, really bad day”.

Now, often in a good western, there’s a complete idiot who thinks “Leave the bottle” means, “Hey, come over to me and say something stupid”.

Buffalo Bill and I had that kind of day Last Saturday in Golden, Colorado. After being in the portrayal competition all day (which is very stressful) we decided to visit a saloon that we had never been to and drink a few beers.   Now, keep in mind we stay dressed in older fashioned cowboy clothes.  We both have large mustaches, like the old west.  We both have big knives hanging from our belts, like the old west.  We both just wanted them to “leave the bottle”, just like the old west.

Will and I chose a booth and started to talk.  A woman at the bar turned around and just stared.  Not the polite “quick-glance”, or even the slightly longer “turn the circle so it looks like you aren’t looking”.  Nope, this was a 2 minute “what the hell” stare.  Will looked at me and glanced his eyes towards her and back at me.

“She’s staring” he said.

“Well, you are pretty ugly” I said.

He then scrunched up his face and stared back at her. She turns quickly back. We laugh.

The next few minutes are sort of a blur. But soon she is at the end of our table, bent down and staring at him, almost face to face. But no words. Nothing. Will has sent his signal “Hey, come over to me and say something stupid”.  She didn’t disappoint.

“You freak me out”.

Always a strong pick-up line.

“You look like someone very special to me”

Better.

“He’s dead. I think you are his ghost”

Uh-oh.

I come in to diffuse the situation. “You are pretty old Will, maybe you are dead” I smile to him as I say it.

If looks could kill, I would be dead myself.

She finally left, and sat back down after some tense minutes.  A few minutes later, a drunk walks by the booth , does a Charlie Chaplin put-on-the-brakes and backs-up.  “Whoa. You guys from the hills?”

“Yep, been panning all day, only found one nugget” Buffalo Bill doesn’t even look up as he mutters it.

The drunk does a long stare.  Head darts back-and-forth between both of us. He Shrugs and walks away. We both left the bar before anyone else blew smoke up our dusters. “Just leave the Bottle”.

The art of the Mustache

Before I started with this group, I was a respected, well shaven American Male.   Oh, I would grow the occasional beard and mustache combo, and once by accident shave to the goatee and mustache combo (which was well received).  My mustache education came from Buffalo Bill during a two-week trip to Texas. It was there that I was introduced to mustache training.  It begins by placing your index finger just below your nose, and then running your finger along the top of the mustache hairs towards the outer edge.  Repeat on each side 10 strokes per hour.  Once the mustache gets to the proper length, you can enhance the experience with the Snidely Whiplash finger-thumb swirl.

Once you reach that level of sophistication, there are products to make your mustache more trainable: Mustache wax, found only at the finest barber shops or the kind of drug stores where the pharmacist still remembers how to mix their own drugs. Mustache wax is a manly product for real men. Only real men use it, or very cheesy used car salespeople.

Lately, I have found mustache wax to be a difficult product to find, since the manly drug store has been replaced with drive through pharmacies staffed with high school students. A solid replacement is a small round of Carmex. The odor reduces your chances with legitimate marriageable women, but works fine for the girl who is late on her rent, mortgage or is tied to railroad tracks.