If you’re a reg, and you are a fun person, you’ve been receiving one or two of these lately (even The King himself had one last night). Some bread and butter pickles with a half ounce of bourbon between courses. Sure, it’s got some of my favorite things, namely vinegar, sugar, cucumbers, and bourbon but…

A year ago today I walked in to my jiu jitsu class, got changed, went out onto the mats and started doing my regular mediocre type warmup. A routine developed from laziness and knowledge from a dude on instagram, a physical therapist over at Vert in Santa Monica, that I had a private training session…

Your friendly neighborhood aging bartender went on a little 15 hour field trip yesterday. From LA to Lompoc, CA, on a fourth of July weekend. Yup. The Perceived Stress Scale ticker went through the roof as me, and my trusty, beautiful assistant, Jo, sat in gridlock traffic for almost five hours on our way into…

Woke up this morning after two days off with nothing to say here. In terms of the usual inspiration and how drinks come about, I’m not much of a wanderer when it comes to going out and seeing what other people are doing in their cocktail programs. Yeah, I guess that’s not good on my…

To say this man, Anthony Bourdain, had a profound impact on my life would be a massive understatement. In 1999 I was handed a torn out copy of the New Yorker article, Don’t Eat Before Reading This, by my boss, Tom, chef and owner of the Trattoria Delia in my hometown, Burlington, VT. I took…

Some thoughts here about the introduction to the book and what it wants to be. Just going to free write from here, release some of the hounds inside my head. I’m thinking now it will be stories intertwined with recipes. I have all of the recipe stuff finished and when I come up with new…

Up early to pee. 7:12 a.m. sharp. A quick diagnosis of the aches and pains of the morning. The outside bottom of my left foot…Quite puzzling–potential emergence of gout? The outside of my right knee, the lateral collateral ligament (LCL) feels slightly sprained. Something is going on with the tendons in my left bicep. A…

Like the blurb says, the above picture is from the dust jacket photo from Blood Meridian, 1985. It was the first McCarthy book I read. Handed to me by my ex-girlfriend, N. It was one of those deep winter relationships that lasted just until spring. The woman, not the book. You’d have to live in…

Yes, fellow Angelenos, I’m sure at some point you’ve heeded the call and ended up at a 24 hour Ralphs at some point. Oh yes, the despair, the hilarity, the drunken fools you’ll see! For those of you living in other, less pre-apocalyptic places, Ralphs is a lower-mid grade grocery store on the LA food…

The two of us were introduced by my friend, Ryan LaRoux. It was a party on a hill overlooking the Winooski River. My friend Sean and I had this older dreadlocked dude, Island, living on our couch. Island was a wanna be reggae singer who played the melodica and he invited us to go to…

There’s some days when I have no idea what to write for this blog. There’s many things I want to write, but at this point in time, it would be very difficult to pull off. I’ve said before I have this book that’s been burning my brain for awhile. I haven’t got it all figured…