5 O'Clock

It's 5 o'clock somewhere right?

A long time ago when my mother was in the Peace Corps in Jamaica (yeah, of all places), we found ourselves sitting in a dark, dingy bar with the locals drinking Red Stripe and playing these strange fruit slot machine contraptions with Jamaican dimes.  A Jamaican dime was worth about about a penny and a half back then, so when you hit it big you won about $2.73.

Nevertheless, we were there in the dark with our Red Stripe, the fruit machines, and lots of very fragrant and loud local people.  All was right in the Universe until the bartender informed us in thick patois that there was no more Red Stripe and our only other option for beer was Heineken in a can.  Well sure, who gives a crap when you've already had 8, 9 or 14 Red Stripes.  Beer is beer.

I had never had a Heineken before and frankly, at age 17-point-something I had less than a experienced palate for beer. In my mind, alcohol was alcohol and I was getting loaded in a foreign country with my mom while slightly underage.  The bartender slid over two sweaty cans of Heineken and I took a huge gulp of the frosty beverage.

My first reaction was to think, "Who farted in my mouth?"

My second reaction was to recoil in a pasty-faced horror at the terrible flavor explosion from the Heineken.  Heineken stinks pretty bad as it is, it's a pilsener, so it can be on the bitter side.  Couple that flavor with the probability that those cans of beer were without a doubt mishandled countless times on their long journey from Holland that resulted in an awfully pungent skunking of the beer.  Add to that the constant olfactory assault by the many unwashed locals, ganja, curried goat cooking in the back room and other foul smells, and this told me one thing:  I will never drink another nasty, smelly, fart-in-my-mouth Heineken again for as long as I live.

Never say never pal.

Fast forward 7 or 8 years and I found myself in a similar situation of beer drinking time vs. only one selection of beer.  Well, when in Rome. . .or D'Lo, Mississippi. . .

I cracked open a bottle of ice cold Heineken, poured it into a ridiculously over-sized stein my friend insisted we drink beer from (you know how guys are), and took a sip.  What happened then was unexplainable.  I tasted slightly sweet and bubbly notes on the front end that finished with a crisp, slightly bitter and medium-bodied back end.  And as they say, the rest was history. . .

Since then, I have probably purchased and drank oh, I don't know, maybe $20,000 dollars worth of Heineken.  I'll never put it down.  I enjoy doing odd jobs around the house like opertating heavy machinery while drinking it; the riding lawnmower, the tractor, the chainsaw, the gun.  Gotta live a little dangerously every now and then you know.

I've drunk it on airplanes and boats, in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, near a volcano, at the top of a mountain, on top of a house.  I poured it on my balls right before I was supposed to walk into a dance club and ended up walking home 3 miles through the ghetto in my own shame.  I drank it with a buddy while driving backwards up a lava rock formation in the dark in Costa Rica.  I had one in my hand as a friend got pulled over for drunk driving in Costa Rica who then blew into a breathalyzer the size of a Marshall stack in the trunk of a police car, paid a $50 dollar fine on the side of the road, had his drink returned to him, and we trundled on our merry way.

I've even tried to create interesting photographs of it:

I said all of this because I. . .well, what was the point of this?  I can't remember.

Is it 5 o'clock yet?  And do you have any Heineken?