Rumors

"the rumors of my sobriety are greatly exaggerated" - Keith Richards

Good to hear.  No one likes a quitter, Keef.

Source

On a related note, a few weeks ago, Richard Dicks had an alarming bout of sobriety that lasted almost 48 hours. I wholly supported his effort, but it still failed. All it took was accidentally wandering into some joint called The Hop House. Why he thought no temptation would lie within a place called The Hop House, I don't know. Nice place, though. Good food, good beer, they still let you smoke but it's not too smokey. Looked like some darts and such diversions in the back room. Maybe we'll hit there again this weekend.

I wasn't looking too good but I was feeling real well

Bored waiting for a Windows update to install on someone's computer, I opened a browser and sought to entertain myself in a manner that was more-or-less safe for work.  Then I came across a headline that made my heart sink: after decades of making every other drinker on the planet look like a fucking lightweight, Keith Richards is on the wagon!

There's been a lot of trouble lately with The Stones other guitarist Ronnie Wood ditching his wife for a young Russian "waitress" and proceeding to generally wreck everything in his life by drinking alcohol faster than the maximum output of Seagram's.  Rumors were The Stones were going to tour again soon.  They have now officially said that is not the case, and speculation is it's because the insurance company won't insure the tour with Ronnie's drinking problem.  Why is that the speculation?  Because it's happened before. 


Ronnie has thrown his life into such disarray with his drinking, that it has allegedly scared Keith and he quit drinking completely.  He says he's been dry for a few months now.  Seriously, how fucking bad is your substance abuse problem when Keith fucking Richards says "Holy shit, dude, you need to slow down!"?

I find this news kind of sad.  Not just because things are falling apart for Ronnie, but that Keith has gone straight.  Why?  Well, I'm kind of working on that question myself.  Maybe because Keef is a symbol of responsible irresponsibility.  He always appeared to ride things on the ragged edge, but he always pulled through somehow.  He indulged in whatever he desired, but never to the point that things completely fell apart.  Personally, I've always felt abstinence was a sign of weakness.  You need to eliminate temptation from your life because you can't be trusted to keep your shit together.

But now he's not that symbol, and that makes me sad inside.  Not that I thought of him as a role model.  Fuck no!  I mean, you're a cool guy, Keef, and it would be awesome to meet you; but I think it would be folly on a grand scale for someone to pattern their life after you.  Still, it somehow seems like a little sliver of fun and freedom just left the world.  A good friend of Keith's once rhetorically asked "Where were you when the fun died?"  Well, I guess I was installing Windows 7 on some dude's computer at work.

Still, one gets the sneaking suspicion that Keef is mainly doing this to try to encourage Ronnie to get his shit together.  And that is highly commendable.  Think about it for a minute.  How much would you give up to help a friend?  Would you quit your favorite habit or passtime?  Would you quit smoking, or watching football, or whacking it to bestiality porn while your wife is in the shower?  More to the point, would I give up alcohol if Richard Dicks or M. Randolph was acting like Ronnie?

I'd tell them I did. 

Maybe.

What's in a name?

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. But Shakespeare neglected to have Juliet explain that the contrapositive is not necessarily true. Just because you call something a rose, doesn’t mean it smells sweet. Try it the next time your dog takes a crap or you drive past some ripened roadkill. Ahh… the smell of roses. Doesn’t work does it?

But that doesn’t stop people from trying. I just came back from a new deli in town (no names, they were nice people). It was a very classy looking joint. Fancy sponge-painting effects on the walls, expensive ingredients proudly on display, clean, tidy, friendly, treats for your dog if you brought him, even a scented candle flickering on a wooden display unit. I purchased a "Five-cheese Panini With Bacon". The place was expensive and we had come on many recommendations. What culinary masterpiece did my immediate future hold for me? I brought it back to the office, and proceeded to chow down on what I’d have to call a kind-of shitty grilled cheese sandwich with some crumbled bacon in it. So if it wasn't really that good, why had people told us this place was amazing? Fancy sponge-painting effects on the walls, expensive ingredients proudly on display, clean, tidy, friendly, treats for your dog if you brought him, even a scented candle flickering on a wooden display unit.

What does this all have to do with booze? Patience, grasshopper.

Mr. Dicks just posted a preemptive rant about (rī)¹, the whiskey so cool it can’t even spell its own name. He hasn’t tasted it yet, but he suspects shenanigans are afoot. And as much as I love Jim Beam, I have to concur. The outlook isn’t rosy. So often in the liquor business, they try to wow you with their image and not their product. Two huge examples of this are Grey Goose and Michael Collins. They are the brain-child of marketing wizard Sidney Frank. He imported the finest French blah blah and distilled it in a yawn, who gives a shit. The end result, as I’ve ranted about before, is flavorless Everclear cut with mineral water, forever reducing the public image of vodka from an exotic alcoholic beverage to a more efficient way of delivering drugs to the bloodstream. Kind of like crack. Where was the real innovation? The price. He set the price well above the existing top-shelf vodkas like Stolichnaya and Absolut. It was so expensive, it had to be good, right? Throw a few ads in some magazines, bribe some rappers to include it in their lyrics, and then you sell the whole puppy farm to Bacardi for $2.2 billion. And as I said before, Grey Goose isn’t shit and even has a place in my home bar, but is it really worth what you pay for it? Before his death, Sidney followed up this (and many other) success(es) with Michael Collins Irish Whiskey. This time, he was less successful because the existing niche market valued flavor. And not just flavor, but a very specific flavor. Sure, it was dressed up fancy and put on the top shelf just like Goose, but once the Irish Whiskey lovers of the world sipped it, the cat was out of the bag and the brand failed to perform as anticipated.

There are, as I stated in my comment on Richard’s post, top-shelf brands that don’t follow that plan at all. Jim Beam itself has Booker’s, Baker’s, Basil Hayden, Maker’s Mark, and Knob Creek; all bourbons, all value the flavor of the product over the image, and none of which shun their bourbon heritage one bit. One look at the bottles, and you know what’s inside. Hell, the company's motto is “The stuff inside matters most” and I’ll drink to that with any of their bourbons. But something about the sleek, minimalistic, hip packaging of (rī)¹ gives me doubt. And just to make sure I’ve made my point, let’s have a little visual demonstration of what I’m talking about:

You pickin' up what I'm puttin' down? It's a slippery slope, people. When you concern yourself with appearance, it's easy forget that what's inside is what really counts. It's easy to be lulled into the false belief that you can just slap a label on a dog turd that says "Rose" and everyone will say it smells terriffic. Sure, some people wearing fuzzy orange visors might, but not everyone will. And if you've completely missed the mark - if your product has no merit other than its packaging, you might just go down in flames. Not having tasted (rī)¹, I can't say for sure if this is the road they've chosen to go down, but I sure hope it isn't. I hope when I take my first sip of it, I sputter and cough a little bit, Richard and Paddy laughing at me before taking sips and doing the same. I hope it's strong. I hope its bold. I hope spicy and kicks you in the teeth just like spirits distilled from fermented rye should. I hope Jim Beam Brands Co. hasn't forgotten their own motto: The stuff inside matters most.