Blackfive and Good Drinking, Good Food, and Coleman Grills

I had the recent pleasure of interviewing the blogosphere's own Paratrooper of Love this last Friday. This will be a bit out of order and, well, disjointed, but it's more fun that way. The later the entry, the more alcohol was consumed, and so on, and so forth.

It began as naming good drinking cities. It went elsewhere but stayed mostly on topic; we tried to hit all 50 states.

• Boston - "#3, home of Sam Adams."
  
  
• Chicago - #1 - great! [interviewer thinks he's biased]
  
  
• Milwaukee - [Has a #2 by it but my notes say that Brian says "no." I don't remember Matt giving it a #2...how'd that get there?]
  
  
• Philly - "#11 - "Claim to fame - beef with fried cheese - I love it." [Interviewer cringes again]
  
  
• Cleveland, St. Louis, Denver - [All get "ok" ratings.]
  
  
• Boulder, CO - "Big party town if you have a big trust fund."
  
  
• Ames, IA - "Not so horribly bad."
  
  
• Ann Arbor's "Great."
  
  
• Lansing - "Cheap."
  
  
• Arizona - "Nothing there." I don't think we ever even got to towns.
  
  
• Annapolis - "Top 20." [He has an ex-girlfriend there - Sherry (I gave her the nickname of "Cooking") who sings in a bar.]
  
  
• DC - "No, but Georgetown" [censored]
  
  
• Virginia - Richmond - "Too many Marines"
  
  
• Texas - [he transitions to food yet again] - "good BBQ"
  
  
• Austin, San Antonio - "Okay."
  
  
• Dallas - "Overrated. Cowboys suck. It'd be good for the sport if Troy Aikman" [censored]
  
  
• Tulsa - "Not such a bad drinking town." [Brian noted that "it's a slut backwards."]
  
  
• Tahoe - "Pretty good place." [censored] "But the lake is beautiful."
  
  
• Las Vegas - "Never been."
  
  
• Nona Rosa, San Francisco - "Great. Ask for Chris if you go there."
  
  
• Malibu, LA "Okay" [Interviewee ranks beer above random women in this conversation. He likes grills, though. Something was mentioned about Armorall and Salma Hayek. Matt said, "You can Armorall her, too." [I don't believe this was a euphemism; it would have to be censored then, and I don't have a notation.]
  
  
• Portland, OR - "#25. As weird as San Francisco, but not as expensive, not as big."
  
  
• Seattle's "Okay - good place." [Matt then went into tour-guide mode, mentioning Pioneer Square, Gasworks Park, Fremont Republic. He mentioned "diverse" and used the words business suit and Rastafarian.]
  
  
• Vancouver - "Great drinking town." [More tour guide stuff - buildings, cobblestone streets.]
  
  
• Missoula - "Kinda okay. Bottom 100. But if you're in Montana and you have to go somewhere, it's a good place to go. Helena, no."
  
  
• Wyoming? "No." [Somehow we digressed to a skiing tangent. I have no context.]
  
  
• Utah - "Mormons." [He'll pass. Maybe ski there someday.]
  
  
• South Dakota - Badlands "Okay."
  
  
• North Dakota - "All they can do is drink."
  
  
• Omaha - "Buddy was a Guinness distributor. Pull off the highway. $2 filet mignon. I'll take 6." [More toury stuff - historic downtown, 1850, 1860, saloons.] "Nothing else to do. Eat steak and drink beer."
  
  
• Kansas - "No."
  
  
• Indiana - "No. Mr. Green's from Indiana. Yeah, Indiana, no."
  
  
• Alaska - "Hmm."
  
  
• Mobile's - "Not too bad."
  
  
• Mississippi - "No."
  
  
• Georgia - "Hard drinking in Georgia."
  
  
• New Orleans. [censored] "Anywhere you go and they ask you if it's for here or to go - that's a good place."
  
  
• Charleston - "Great drinking town. If I can clean out all the scotch in one bar, that's not a good thing."
  
  
• North Carolina - "Okay if you like tattoo parlors and strip joints." [disclaimer: Matt wishes that the 82d Airborne not take offense.]
  
  
• Tennessee - "Every town in Tennessee is a good drinking town."
  
  
• Louisville - "Good town. A lot of colleges nearby. Cool pubs and breweries downtown. Good place to raise a family. [Matt contrasts with North Carolina and then censors himself.]
  
  
• South Carolina - "SC pride - bumper stickers. You buy them in bars. Women in South Carolina wear stuff with Carolina on it, and they don't mean North Carolina. Charleston - more pubs than any other town in the south." [See previous section about scotch.]
  
  
• Alabama - "I don't want to piss anybody off in Alabama, so we'll just skip Alabama."
  
  
• Minneapolis - "Good. Nothing else to do except freeze your ass off. They drink a lot of vodka. Good Indian restaurants. Closing time is midnight. This is a problem unless you start drinking at 3 or 4."
  
  
• Newport, Rhode Island - "Take a ferry out to Block Island. 45 minute ride. Great place. Lots of bars."
  
  
• Connecticut - "Ex girlfriend there." [She drove him to a lot of drinking.] "Bethel is a good place. Good ice cream. Meg Ryan's from there. This is bad; she left Dennis Quaid."
  
  
• Buffalo - "Buffalo Wings - Tin Lizzie's. Quite a few others. What the hell else are you gonna do?"
  
  
• New York, New York - "Too expensive."
  
  
• Portland, Maine - "#99. Not a bad place."
  
  
• Santa Fe, Albuquerque - "Fun place." [Heather challenged to accurately spell Albuquerque correctly. Bluffs. Takes a drink of water instead of wine.] "Good restaurants and all of the restaurants have good bars. Really, really nice. Could raise a family there, but your kids couldn't spell Albuquerque." [Further, this spelling of Albuquerque is much simpler while sober.]
  
  
• Boise - "Great frickin' town. Skiing, weather, mountains, beer - underrated. Raise a family there. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore."
  
  
• New Jersey - Jersey Shore - "Right before Desert Storm, couldn't buy a drink there - always covered with a blessing."
  
  
• San Juan, Puerto Rico - "Lots of Tequila. Brings out the evil twin."
  
  
• [Interviewer cannot read her last bit of notes about the University of Illinois area - something about grills, not girls, drinking, no skiing, and the food sucks - Olive Garden being the best you can get there.]

And there you have it.

hln

Posted by hln at December 29, 2003 07:56 AM | Whimsy