Put down the Cosmopolitan

So I am sitting at my hometown watering hole the other day, Angelo’s Tavern. You may know the place, every man should at least know the type of place. Angelo’s is one of those great guy bars. It is sports themed. The owner is a friend and the patrons a real “bar community.” The bartenders know me and they know what I like to drink. You can come there and just B.S. with the guys, gripe about whatever sports team just cannot seem to get it together that week, play a game of pool, watch sports center on one of the many TV’s around the place, or challenge the reigning bar champion to a round of arcade golf. This is a place where guys should be able to be men in the very quintessential way.
So while I am sitting at the bar talking to the bartender sipping a scotch on the rocks I see a man walk in the bar. He was one of those burly types with tattoos, shoes that looked like they were meant for men’s work, and jeans that were worn in all the spots men’s jeans should be worn in. He walks to the bar and orders some girly fruity drink that you would expect to see a pink umbrella floating in the top of it when it is proffered by the bar keep. I took a moment to look up and down the bar and around at the surrounding tables and realized that more men had fruit in their drinks than I had realized before. Inspiration hit me and I thought to myself that this is one area where the “art of being men” had really been lost.
Let me offer this opinion before we get in to the meat of the matter. Real men do not abuse alcohol. They do not use alcohol to escape from their lives and woes. They do lose control of themselves from over consumption. Alcohol should be enjoyed in moderation, but if we are going to enjoy alcohol let’s enjoy it with some style, class and like men.
Men who have not forgotten what being a man is about know that fruit flavor liquors are on the shelves of this establishment for the wives and wives to be when they have come to this place with their men some evenings wanting to share in the joy their man finds in this atmosphere. I mean think about it. If a woman is going to a local watering hole that is sports themed they want to be with their man in an environment where they are men, so why would a man order the same drink his wife/girlfriend orders!? Let’s see if we can start a basic rule list for alcohol that men should drink. First let’s establish that the only things that are acceptable are beers (we will talk more about these later), vodka, bourbons, whiskeys, scotch, and tequila. Stick to these and you are on the road to the art of being men. None of these things should be fruit flavored. No… Bacardi Citron, no matter what you mix it with, should ever be ordered. Lime Bite is NOT alcohol. It is something mixed with alcohol so women can drink without actually tasting the alcohol. There should never be any pieces of fruit or fruit juices in a drink you order. If a drink is made in a blender, you better be ordering it on a beach in a tropical paradise. If you are going to mix your liquor with something it should be something that comes out of the little multi-selector nozzle that every bar is equipped with, i.e. Coke(never diet-REALLY!?!?! You just ordered bourbon that has more calories and carbs than 3 regular cokes in one shot) or tonic or soda. If you really want to capture the lost art of being men, then just order a Makers on Ice and let it be known to all that see it put in front of you on the bar that you are man enough to enjoy a good bourbon by itself.
The shot. Ordering shots are where I see men not being men more often than any other time. The definition of a shot, for a man, is 2 ounces of a single alcohol drank in one manly motion. If you walk up to the bar and say the words “4 lemon puckers please” it BETTER be followed by the words “for those 4 ladies at that table.” If you are a man and you want a shot, think about Josey Wales walking into a saloon and telling the bartender “give me a Lifesaver” and how quick every gun in the saloon would have been unloaded into him 2 seconds after ordering that shot. If any man EVER orders a “B.J.” shot, it is the duty of every other man in the bar to drag his ass out to the parking lot and kick the crap out of him and throw his butt in to his pink VW Rabbit and tell him to leave the premises. So men, just order a shot of whiskey with a beer back and tell them “that’ll put hair on your chest.”
Moving on to beers. This is probably one of the trickiest items for men. Just because it says “beer” on the label does not mean you should order and drink it. If there is a character of a fruit on the label, put it down. Beers should really follow the rules of alcohol, no fruit. There are places that drinking the mass produced “barley pops” are acceptable. To appease my fellow OstateIllustrated.com tailgaters I will say that football tailgates, bar-b-q’s, boat outings and sports events are places where the pale-yellow wannabe lagers are acceptable. But if you want to show some style, class, and taste choose a beer that does not come in an aluminum can, cannot be confused with urine, and actually has some taste to it also.
So if you are ready to rediscover the “lost art of being men” when you drink, come down to Angelo’s Tavern and we will sit at the bar gripe about our wives, B.S. with the bartender and drink our whiskey with a beer back as men.