Friday, May 25, 2012

No More Beer


I don’t exactly remember the first time I ever had a beer.  I think it was at a Bears game with my Uncle’s Dan and John in the parking lot tailgating.  I maybe was all of twelve or thirteen.  I thought it tasted like pure gasoline and after two sips my Uncle Dan assured me, “Don’t worry you will develop a taste for it.”  I would come to learn later in life that he was right.
Being a teenager in the suburbs drinking alcohol is quite literally a rite of passage.  I flirted with drinking here and there while in high school but the heavy 12 ounce curls didn’t really start until the Moraine and Kmart years.  I’ve often said, it wasn’t a matter of if we were going to a party on a Friday or Saturday night, it was which one are we going to go attend.
Weather it was drinking Stroh’s cans in Dell’s basement or Busch Light Draft in the Kmart parking lot I soon found my Uncle was right, I no longer was drinking beer to be cool or fit in.  I was drinking it because I had acquired a taste. 
The plus to drinking was that alcohol lowered inhibitions.  I found I had more confidence and would definitely do things tipsy that I would not do sober.  When I got to DePaul a whole new world of bars and adventures opened up to me all thanks to alcohol.  And I mean this when I say it I don’t regret any of it.
My twenties are quite literally a blur of sprits induced haziness.  I played softball, after the games we drank.  Nothing going on tonight, let’s go on a pub crawl.  What it’s Tuesday and I have to be at work at eight in the morning, better only have a couple of Budweiser’s.  I had so many good times then and so many stories that start out with, I was hammered.
As I turned into my thirties of course I started to slow down my consumption but still kept the habit up on weekends.  I was the definition of a social drinker.  When I went out with my friends I would always knock back a couple.  But, the times where I was getting knock down, blacked out drunk were thankfully becoming rare. 
I still would do my 95th street march with my friends and knock back as many Miller High Life’s as I could when out with the gang.  The side effect to all that beer was my gut was growing and soon I had a pretty substantial spare tire around my mid section.  Now, I don’t want to solely blame beer for it, I mean I still ate like shit and my exercise was minimal at best.  But, the beer intake certainly was not helping. 
I associated drinking with good times and won’t say anything bad about them.  I am not going to become one of these ex-beer drinkers that become a crusader for all the ills of alcohol.  But, now that it has nearly been six months without a sip of it, I must say I don’t miss it in the least.  As a matter of fact, I am repulsed by the idea of drinking a beer.
I started to go on my weight loss regimen in September.  At that point I was still drinking beer, hanging out at the Castle on Sundays watching football and knocking back a lot of High Life’s in the process.  As I started losing weight and eating better the more I drank beer the more it just wasn’t doing it for me anymore.  Then I started to think about why I still drank?
What was it about beer that had its grips on me?  I mean I was in no way abusing it or anything like that.  Sure, I liked it but I am not sure I loved it.  So, as the new year approached I said to myself, I am going to see how long I can go without consuming alcohol and beer in particular.  I wanted to see if I would miss it or not.  And as I said I simply don’t.
Now when I am around drunken imbeciles of which I played that part many times, I get repulsed.  I think to myself, did I used to act like that?  When I see a sloppy, slurring his words rummy, I get all the validation I need that I am perfectly good not drinking.  It is such a turn off to me now. Again, this is not a judgment.  If someone wants to drink it is their right and live and let live, I say.  I just don’t have the desire anymore.  At this point in time in my life I don’t miss it and don’t crave a beer.
Maybe, it is my whole training, getting in shape regimen that I am on.  Maybe eventually I will have a rough day and I will just want to drown my sorrows away in a drunken stupor like I used to, I will never say never.  But as of today in my current mind frame I really don’t want to drink anymore.  I think I am more addicted to Twizzlers and ice cream then beer anyways.  If I have to give up something for me at least , it is much easier to abstain from the occasional oat soda then a scoop from Premo’s or the Plush Horse.

Friday, May 11, 2012

The Beastie Boys


Adam Yauch otherwise known as his Beastie Boys moniker MCA passed away last week.  I have been a fan of the Boys for years now.  I know their later material in particular has not been great.  I will admit this but still I’ve always been a fan.  I don’t know what will happen with his passing but I cannot imagine how Ad Rock and Mike D can continue on without him.
Back when License to Ill came out I was at a crossroads.  I went to high school in the suburbs and while a whole other scene was happening in the alternative world sadly all that trickled down to the halls of Argo High was Poison and the latest Motley Crue tracks.  I like my share of bad hair band tunes but I was never really a huge fan.  How and why I got into white boy rap I am still not sure.
I think RUN DMC’s Raising Hell was the first rap cassette I owned.  And I played the shit out of it in my Firebird’s tape deck.  Instead of having a knee jerk reaction to it I gave it a whirl and I got taken in with its infectious grooves and killer rhymes.  I can still rock out to My Adidas or It’s Tricky.  Most of my friends and family did not support me in my musical taste at the time but I didn’t care.  I liked it and I knew it was good. 
So, I started to experiment with rap.  I was soon jamming to Public Enemy and Ice T.  Eventually License to Ill came out and I was instantly hooked.  Looking back it sounds so different to what the Boys would eventually morph into and become. Yet the seeds were still there of fusing rap with a more rock and roll sound. They were young early twenties kids and they wrote and rapped about what most kids that age were doing, chasing girls, drinking and going to parties.  Here were three Jewish kids from Brooklyn rapping with the best of them.  But, there was something in those sophomoric rhymes that struck a chord with me.
As I got older and moved onto college a whole slew of different bands and genres came into my realm.  But, I still had that soft spot for bands like the Beastie Boys.  In 1989 the Beastie’s got together with the Dust Brothers and crated Paul’s Boutique.  To think that record is twenty three years old blows my mind. 
At the time I will be honest the record came out and it was widely considered a flop and didn’t have much of an effect on the music scene. By that point I had moved on to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and bands of that ilk. It would take some time but history will show Paul’s Boutique was a huge stepping stone in the hip hop scene.  Everyone was expecting a repeat performance of License to Ill and why not.  The record sold a gazillion copies.  It would have been easy and safe for the band to just put out a record that sounded just like it.  But, they wanted to get away from their party boy images and go a little deeper.  And they did just that.
It took me years to finally get that record.  But once my eyes were opened to its greatness I would never look at the Beastie Boys the same again.  I really started to get back into Beastie’s music around the time Check Your Head was released.  I heard it and I was taken aback.  They had done something and created a sound that I am not sure had been heard up to that point.  They perfectly mixed their hip hop roots with an almost punk sound. You hear songs like Gratitude that is now twenty years old and it is as fresh as ever. 
I was sold and from that point on I was a fan.  When Ill Communication came out, that cinched the deal.  That disc was on a permanent rotation in my Corolla’s cd player and was played and played again at all the parties at the house of pain.  I hear Sure Shot or Sabotage and my mind flashes back to a party at the house and grabbing a beer from the keg sitting in the 1890’s model utility sink in the basement.  Like I said after that while I still dug their music it did slip a tad.  But, I was still and always was a fan.
So, when I heard of MCA’s passing last week, it definitely saddened me.  He went way too young and with his passing I felt yet another part of my youth had passed along with him.  I can associate so many good times to the Beastie Boys music that I cannot help but get nostalgic and have a cheesy grin cross my face when I think of them.  Even though I moved on to other bands and listened to many other records over the years The Beastie Boys will always have a special place in my heart.  So rest in peace Adam, you made this world a better place and you touched the lives of numerous white boys in the burbs and opened their minds to a new musical genre that eventual exploded and became mainstream.  You will without question be missed.