My Twelfth Entry - Rahr & Sons Texas Red Amber Lager

All right, I'd like to say a little bit about my band here.

We're not your ordinary group of instrumentalists.

Everybody here one time or another was putting people in prison.

This song is about a murder case that happened a few years back.

Every woo-oord is true.  It's a documented fact.

            - Introduction to "Don't Say Nothing 'Til the Lawyer Come," David Mitcham

I'd like to say a little bit about my band here.

In 1995, two things happened that changed the direction of my life: then-District Attorney Johnny Holmes asked me to leave the Appellate Division and be his General Counsel, and Bill Delmore, the guy I replaced, asked me to replace the keyboardist in his band, Death by Injection.

How could I have said no?

In the nineteen years since then, I've played nearly a hundred shows with Death by Injection. I've played on three different keyboards (a Yamaha SY-22, a Yamaha SY-35, and a Korg SV-1), and I've learned all the words to the three songs I sing with the band ("Start Me Up"; "For Your Love"; and my original song, "Witness Stand.") We've played gigs in tuxedos and gigs in swim trunks. We've played in front of hundreds at Splashtown, the Galveston Sandcastle competition, and the Italian Festival, and we've played for less than five people at the Continental Club and other hole-in-the-wall bars. We've played outside at golf courses, inside of residential homes, at Rice University, at political fundraisers for both parties, in my own backyard for my wife's birthday, and at church bazaars (where we try very hard to remember not to sing the dirty parts of our Rolling Stones covers). For about a year, we changed our name to the Convictions and then we changed it back (potential clients kept passing on the Convictions and asking whatever happened to Death by Injection).

The five guys I play with in DBI - Doug O'Brien, David Mitcham, Glenn Gotschall, Hal Kennedy, and Bill Delmore - are my brothers in arms, my mates.  They are endlessly patient with my efforts, letting me noodle around the best I can, as long as I somehow remember to pound out the chords to "Louie, Louie," "Wooly Bully," "Hang On Sloopy," and the keyboard solos in "Centerfold" and "Pipeline."

I have learned that band chemistry can be volatile and that success is based as much on compatibility as it is on talent. In this respect, our band is remarkably stable and balanced. We have some characters, but no jerks. We argue, we mope, we make bad jokes about each other, but we still enjoy making music together. Having been through nineteen years of practice, some good gigs and some really, really terrible gigs with them, all I know is that I love, trust and respect each of them like my family. No matter what happens - boos, arguments on stage, complaints about the volume by blue-haired society women at the Westin Galleria - we still have each others' backs. That's why our band works.

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Although we are pretty much a cover band, we did make our mark on posterity in 2001 when we recorded a CD of original songs called Down at the Courthouse (which you can find on iTunes and CDBaby). My song "Witness Stand" is the fifth track on the CD, featuring my basso profundo growl about the travails of testifying in a criminal case. 

The melody to "Witness Stand" came to me in a dream: I was watching a woman with her back to me (it might have been Lisa) swaying slowly next to an old-fashioned jukebox in the corner of a Florida beachside bar and the melody was something I'd never heard before.

I woke up, ran to my keyboard and tried to remember the chords.  In thirty seconds, I had it: Bbm7, Eb7, resolving to an F.  I wrote the lyrics that morning and we recorded the song that night.  It sounds like what it is - a crude blues with a pretty neat bass line - but it is one of the four works of original art of which I am most proud.

Here's a performance of the song that my daughter and I taped in 2002 (she was seven years old, so cut her some slack on the shaky camera, and I am a big goose, so cut me some slack on my lack of charisma - I reserve all of my stage flair for when I sing "Start Me Up"):

Why all this about the band?  It's because we're playing a gig at the St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church at 8200 Roos Street in Sharpstown from 11 to 1 on Sunday, May 4.  We'll take your requests from the set list - heck, if you buy us a beer, we'll even let you sing with the band.

How can you say no to an offer like that?

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The other three works of original art of which I am most proud?

(1)  A kind of dirty haiku I sent to my wife that only two legal scholars like us could fully appreciate:

Her (cite) form is great.
His briefs are packed with content.
It's appellate love.

(2)  My Dishonorable Mention entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in 1982, in which the competition was to write the first line to the worst novel ever written.  My nearly-winning opening line:

In the city of lost souls that was Los Angeles, the silvery halo glittering above Kitty Gillis's head blinked out a neon message to every two-bit grifter and pimp in sight: "I'm alone, I'm from Kansas, and I'm a virgin."

I still hope to write the rest of that novel someday.

(3)  An insult poem I wrote to a defense lawyer who made a snide remark about one of our Appellate Division lawyers who had used poetry in her motion to extend time to write a brief.  At that time, I was also in the Appellate Division and we were all greatly offended.  I decided to fight fire with fire, and I sent the commentator this poem:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
I think that I also shall never see
A more pusillanimous jerk than you.

In my old age, I think I'd now be honored to get a poem like that from someone.

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This week's beer is from Rahr & Sons Brewing in Fort Worth.  It's the Texas Red Amber Lager and it's pretty good.

(c) JDurfee99

Rahr & Sons is coming up on their tenth anniversary, having been founded by Fritz Rahr and his wife Erin in 2004, shortly after his graduation from TCU.  On the bottle, Rahr claims a brewmaster lineage going back to his great-great-grandfather in 1847.  I love these origin stories because they say so much about the motivation and the passion of the people who start these breweries.

Drinking craft brews has opened my eyes to how much of this kind of small-bore artistry is out there in other fields.  It's the same with small mom-and-pop restaurants, food trucks, butchers, and artists. They do it because they love the work - if success follows, great, but it's not what got them into the business in the first place.  Now that I think about it, there are some lawyers who are like that.

The Texas Red bottle is old school: a pen-and-ink drawing of two men on horses guiding a herd of Longhorns. The tasting notes are kind of helpful:

(c) JDurfee99

This amber lager is a tip-of-the-hat to our home state. It's got a balanced flavor with notes of caramel and a sound malt character that's perfectly balanced with just a bit of hops. Super-smooth and very drinkable, this is a beer just for Texans.  (And anybody who wishes they were one.)

I concur with the drinkability comment: this is a smooth, almost non-hopped beer that goes down fast (and its 5% ABV keeps it from hitting too hard). I think I drank it in about four minutes. I also liked the color of the beer: it had a rich reddish-brown glint that gave the beer an attractive glow in my pint glass.

I'm not sure it beat Lenny's Bittersweet - this is a really good beer that I could drink all day, but it's not very complex, and thus not as interesting as some of the other Fifty Beers. I liked it a lot, but it's not enough to dethrone the champ.

Till next week, this song should hold you over.  Cheers!

My Eleventh Entry - Independence Brewing Co.'s Stash IPA

After careful deliberation, I have decided to reveal where I was last weekend.

I was in New Orleans for . . . Wrestlemania XXX.

I hope you do not think less of me for this.  Or for the fact that this is my fourth Wrestlemania.

I've been to two Wrestlemanias in Houston:  Wrestlemania 17, which featured a match between "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and the Rock; and Wrestlemania 25, which featured a match between the Undertaker (Houston's own Mark Calaway) and "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels.  I went to Wrestlemania 26 in Phoenix for the return match between the Undertaker and Michaels, and now New Orleans for the matches involving Triple H, Bryan "Daniel Bryan" Danielson, Dave "The Animal" Batista, and Randy "The Legend Killer" Orton.

It's hard to explain why I like this stuff.  I've never been a mark, which is the term wrestlers use for the people who actually believe the storylines.  (I love the carny talk in the wrestling business, by the way.  My favorite: if you're a wrestler who "shoots" (tells the truth) about the business instead of "working" (conning) the marks, then you have broken kayfabe (the Omertà of wrestling).)

My first memory about wrestling, in fact, is based on my youthful skepticism about the reality of wrestling.  I was working as a garbageman for the City of Lewisville's Parks and Recreation Department during the summer after my freshman year in college.

It was a great job - we rode around in a flatbed truck emptying out oil drum trashcans in the city parks, which were filled with beer cans, rotting fish guts at the lake parks, and all kinds of weird stuff thrown away during summer weekends in the pavilions.  Work days started at 7:00 a.m., and we took a lunch hour at 11:00 a.m. and spent it playing three-on-three basketball in the parking lot of the truck yard on a nine-foot extremely dunkable rim nailed to an upright railroad tie, and then, in the hot summer afternoons, after most of the trash had been emptied, we drove around Lewisville on park maintenance jobs, but mostly goofing off until quitting time. Sitting around in the picnic areas, we talked about the things you talk about when you're young and have all the time in the world.

One day, the conversation turned to wrestling.  One of the full-time guys (the guys who worked year-round instead of the summer guys like me) announced that he had been to the Sportatorium in Dallas to see the rasslin' show and he went on about the moves he had seen.  This guy - Eddie - looked like a smaller version of Moses Malone: he had huge hands and thick arms from the manual labor he did while working for the city.

"That stuff's bull****," I said.  (I swore a lot more back then than I do now.)

He turned to look at me.  I was about 6-2 and 180 pounds in those days, still wiry from my time as a varsity swimmer in high school and in really good shape from the hours of basketball I played at college and during the summer lunch breaks.

"I call bull**** on that stuff, Eddie," I repeated.

He grinned.  "You think it's fake?"

"Yep.  Iron claw, my ***."  (That was the Von Erich family's submission move, a big hand clutching the top of his opponent's head and jamming a digit into his temple.)

He moved closer.  "You think this is fake?"  He quickly reached over, put his big hand on my head, and squeezed, his approximation of the Von Erich iron claw.  It turns out that the iron claw really hurts when applied by someone who's mad enough and strong enough. Eddie was both.

The guys separated us, laughing at me.  Eddie grinned again and walked away, point proven.

My lesson for that day: live and let live.  If Eddie wanted to believe that wrestling was real, who was I to ruin his fun, especially if it was going to result in a thumb to my temple?

(These days, I try to remember that when I talk politics and other fraught topics with my relatives.  Life is too short to antagonize the ones you love, and while they might not be able to apply a painful wrestling hold to you, the guilt they can inflict after you've hurt their feelings burns just as deeply.)

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After Eddie taught me the power of belief, I watched wrestling a little more closely.  I began to appreciate the psychology being applied, the manipulation of feeling, the cultivation of trust and the suspension of disbelief.  There was something primal about how conflicts arose and were resolved - always with words and action, the strong often losing to the clever even in physical confrontations.  There was something for everyone to relate to.

Plus, it was just fun to watch.

As the years passed, I learned that there were others like me out there.  Smart marks, they call us.  People who recall the Boesch shows in Houston fondly, who remember the touring stars like Ric Flair, Bruno Sammartino, Harley Race.  We don't usually advertise our affection for this rogue sport, but we're also not apologetic about it.  Live and let live, we say - let us enjoy what we enjoy.

Juan

This year, I went to Wrestlemania with my friend Juan (an IT professional) and his friend Xavier (a radiologist and Rice MBA student). We arrived in New Orleans on Friday and did the touristy things: beignets at Cafe Du Monde, the Audubon Aquarium, the Harrah's Casino.

Xavier

By a weird coincidence, my wife and her partners were in town for a convention taking place the same weekend.  They were staying at the Ritz Carlton . . . so, I bid Juan and Xavier a good night at the hotel I had booked for the three of us, and I decamped to my wife's hotel and we had dinner at one of Emeril's restaurants in the French Quarter.

Juan with Mr. Wonderful and the Dragon

The next day, Juan, Xavier and I went to WWE Fan Axxess (WWE likes to spell things phonetically for reasons that I guess are all too clear).  The lines were long for meet-and-greets with the wrestlers, but Juan persevered and got to have his picture taken with Larry "Mr. Wonderful" Zybysko, the Wild Samoans, Lanny "The Genius" Poffo, and Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat (whose real name, Richard Blood, is as good a wrestling name in my opinion as his kayfabe name).  I bought a t-shirt and just enjoyed the people-watching.

After a quick dinner at the Ritz club room (the only way to live), we went to the Hall of Fame induction at the Smoothie King Arena.  WWE inducted the female wrestler Lita (now an aspiring punk rock singer), Mr. T (who headlined the first two Wrestlemanias), Jake "The Snake" Roberts (whose heartfelt story of addiction and redemption was marred by a boob in the audience who asked him where his snake was), Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall (another recovering addict whose gimmick - a Tony Montana-type tough guy - had uncomfortably racist overtones that most of his fans try to ignore), Carlos Colon (a Puerto Rican wrestler and promoter with several sons in the business), and the Ultimate Warrior.

Warrior bears special mention because he passed away yesterday, two days after his special weekend.   He traded the back end of his life for the fame and fortune he acquired in his youth, a trade too many wrestlers make.  If there is a real reason to be contemptuous of wrestling, this is it - it's too hard on the men and women who perform 300 nights a year on the road, taking hits in fake fights that would put professional football players on the DL for months.  I am sorry for him and I am sorry for his family, and, as I do with professional football, I hope things get better for the performers who sacrifice so much for our entertainment, but I have no reason to believe that they will in either sport.
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On Sunday, we went to the big show at the Superdome. I won't go blow-by-blow through the show - suffice to say, it was great fun, with lots of surprise endings to the matches, and a communal sense of enjoyment being amidst 75,000 other unapologetic wrestling fans.

The highlight of the show was when the Undertaker lost, for the first time in 21 years, to former MMA star Brock Lesnar.  When the final bell rung, there was an incredible hush in the stadium as we all digested the significance of this entirely predetermined outcome. Some people cried, some people left the building in disgust, some people just shook their heads - none of them believed it to be a real fight, but their feelings were still real and heartfelt.

You may think this whole thing is silly.  Sometimes, I do too.  But who am I to judge how these wrestling fans truly feel?  If they're happy, if they're sad, if they're outraged: the common factor is that they feel.  That's what fascinates me about wrestling to this day and it's why I really had a great time this weekend in New Orleans.

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Before I go over this week's entry from the Fifty Beers, I want to make a note about the beer that kept popping up this weekend wherever we went in NOLA: Abita, a craft brewery 30 miles north of New Orleans.  I had two Abitas with my meals: an Amber and a Strawberry Harvest.

The Amber was good - smooth, not super-hoppy, pulled from a tap into a plastic glass.  I'd drink it again with my jambalaya.

The Strawberry Harvest on the other hand . . . it was like they had dissolved a strawberry fruit chew into an otherwise decent Amber.  Awful.

A piece of advice to the Abita Brewery: pass on the fruit in the beer concept.  If I want to put some strawberry juice into my beer, I'll do it myself (but I won't, and you shouldn't either).

(c) JDurfee99

(c) JDurfee99

This week's beer review will be short and sweet, mainly because there's not much to write about.  It's the Stash IPA by the Independence Brewing Co. in Austin.  Lots of hops - according to their webpage, it's a "dank, resinous and enlightening hop trip" (resin, enlighten, "Stash" - what do you think they're alluding to here?)

I liked it as much as the various IPAs I've sampled so far.  I drank it with a plate of fajitas tonight, and it held up to the strong Tex-Mex flavors.  The only downside: by the end of the drink, my tongue felt like I had been licking a pine tree. Resinous indeed.

Better than Bittersweet Lenny's, our current champ? Not by a long shot.  But I wouldn't mind drinking it again if I was at Chuy's in Austin.

Till next week, keep your iron claw to yourself.  (And Bert: congratulations on your new grandchild. He is starting life out way ahead of the game to have you in his life.)

My Tenth Entry - Avery Brewing Company's Joe's Premium American Pilsner

If you had asked me last year (or pretty much any of the last ten years or so) what kind of blog, if any, I'd be writing in 2014, I would not have laid claim to beer writing aspirations. I've always liked beer, but it was not my raison d'être.

Food, glorious food, would have been my first and only answer.

It has been, as it is for most of us, a lifelong love affair. My first job was in the food industry - cleaning grease traps and doing general maintenance at age 16 at a Grandy's Fried Chicken in Lewisville, Texas.  I graduated to better jobs in the restaurant, doing counter work, salad bar, rolls - everything but frying the chicken itself.  That was hazardous duty reserved for the big bicep guys who could lift the huge fryer basket with one arm and dump the chicken in the eye-level window, laughing as the grease splattered their arms and faces - not in my wheelhouse being 6-2 and 130 pounds in those teen years.

It was at Grandy's that I learned about the subtleties of comfort food. I remember one lunch break when I sat down next to an assistant manager who looked at my plate and shook his head.

"Four breasts and a roll?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," I said. "They're the best part of the chicken."

"Give me that plate."

He went back to the counter area, shoved the breasts to the side of my plate, and, reaching over with his tongs to the small trays on left side of the heating window, he filled the remainder of my plate with wings, livers, and gizzards, then poured cream gravy into a cup.

"Okay, taste test," he said.  "Take a bite of the breast."

I did.  It was delicious.

"I'll bet you think that's delicious," he said.  "It's not. It's boring. I've worked here for three years, and I stopped eating breasts two-and-a-half years ago. We marinate the [bleep] out of them and they're still just one note."

He then pointed to the knob of one of the wings. "That piece right there is the sweetest part of the whole chicken. Don't know why, but it is." I tried one. I may have been suggestible at that young age, but it sure seemed like he was right. It was like that knob of meat was where all of the chicken's, well, chickeniness was concentrated.

He took a second wing, twisted the middle part from the drumstick and the flapper, and deftly yanked the two bones out of the breaded meat.  "Instant McNugget," he said and laughed, popping the whole piece into his mouth.

He then forked one of the livers into the gravy, which he had sprinkled with black pepper.

"Try this," he said.

I looked at the liver. My mother cooked beef liver now and then, and I was no fan of the mealy organ meat. But I recognized this as a learning opportunity from an adult who was, in his way, trying to mentor me.  I ate the liver.

It was good, better than I expected. There were textures - the liver was smooth and firm, and there was a nice crunch from the breading - and the peppery Southern gravy softened the metallic taste of the meat like a thick patchwork comforter over an Army cot.

I grew to love those livers and wings, but I never understood the appeal of eating the gizzard.  It was like chewing on a deep-fried rubber eraser.

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When I graduated from high school, I turned down the assistant manager job Grandy's offered me and went to the University of Texas.  There, I learned how to cook on the cheap - food like chili dogs, mac and cheese, ramen soup, and an occasional freezer pie made from Cool Whip, Eagle Brand, and concentrated limeade.

I liked to cook (because I liked to eat), but I was intimidated away from serious cooking. It seemed like a vocational skill not for dilettantes, kind of like metal shop. It wasn't until Esquire Magazine, of all places, told me that men could cook too that I tried my first sophisticated recipe.

It was a pecan pie. Thirty years later, it's still the best dessert I make, and I've made it probably two hundred times (as you can see from the condition of this recipe card).

I remember the first time I made it: I was in my mother's kitchen with the store-bought pie shell, the bag of pecans, the mysterious Karo syrups (light and dark), and a bottle of "fine bourbon," the secret ingredient the recipe called for.

"What's a jigger?" I asked my mom.

She handed me a shot glass.

I was not a stranger to shot glasses after my first year of school. I had thrown back tequila, rum, Jagermeister - even ouzo at a Greek restaurant where they smashed plates - with the same panache as men drinking rotgut whisky at saloons in old cowboy movies.

But not bourbon. I had no idea what that stuff tasted like. It wasn't something me or my friends indulged in.

My mother was watching me cook this pie with the expression of a scientist watching a brain-damaged lab rat trying to navigate a maze. I decided to impress her.

I poured a jigger of Old Granddad into the shot glass.  "One for the recipe," I said, and poured it into the mixing bowl.

I poured a second jigger into the shot glass.  "And one for the cook!" and I threw the bourbon into the back of my throat.  And I promptly started coughing.

Turns out that there's a reason they call it sipping whiskey. My mother tells this story to this day, describing my face in great detail. Ask her some time, and she'll tell you. She tells everyone.

After the EMTs revived me and left our kitchen, I finished making the pie, which turned out to be first-rate. The bourbon offset the treacly sweetness of the brown sugar and corn syrups and complemented the woody notes of the pecans.  And the broken pecans in the filling kept the pie from being gelatinous goo, like the pecan pies you get at Luby's.  It's my second-favorite dessert and writing about it makes me want to make one right now. (My favorite dessert?  Tres leches, which I still haven't learned how to cook correctly, but which is sublime practically anywhere I get it in Houston.)

I still trust Esquire's recipes.  Here is a super-simple roast chicken recipe I do about four times a year (and should do forty times a year), and which you should try on your next dinner.

Enough of my food saga for today. Next time I write about food, I'll detail my man-crush on Alton Brown, who is living one of my alternate reality lives, the one where I went to culinary school and learned how to charismatically deconstruct a recipe and make millions of dollars on the Food Network.

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Time instead, at 10:11 p.m. on Tuesday night (I know, I'm late again, but the weekend got away from me) for this week's beer, which is Joe's Premium American Pilsner, the second entry in the Fifty Beers from the Avery Brewing Co. in Boulder, Colorado.

I would not have chosen a repeater this early in the blog, but I dispatched my daughter to get me one from the garage refrigerator, and this is what she brought me. Who am I to quibble with her choice?

The can has panache. Don't know who the Joe is on the label, but the rakish tilt of his fedora tells me that he's good company (or a dangerous guy with good stories). The tasting note (always a plus) is helpful:

You're holding a contemporary rendition of a classic style. Hopped with purpose, Joe's is beautifully bitter and dry with an abundance of floral, Noble German hops. Über-sessionable. Utterly American. This is Premium American Pilsner.

Brewed with Rocky Mountain water, malted barley, imported German hops and German yeast.

It makes me wonder whether the Rocky Mountain water is actually a significant ingredient, like New York City water is supposed to be for bagels.

And it also makes me wonder how a drink that is based on imported Noble German hops (Bravo and Hersbrucker, according to the webpage) and German yeast is "utterly American." Pilsners are actually Bohemian, according to Beer Advocate, but Steve Breezley's helpful video on the Avery Brewing Co. webpage for Joe's Pilsner explains that the beer is "a nod" to the light American lagers the brewers at Avery grew up with. I guess that's the American side of it.

The beer itself is just fine. Not much happening in the nose as I sniff into the glass (even though Breezley promised a "blast" of Hersbrucker aroma), but the drink is hoppy and nicely fizzy. It's light on the alcohol too, with an ABV of 4.7%.

This is a good beer, well-intentioned and worth trying. Not better than the Bittersweet Lenny, which remains the champ, but just what I needed for a Tuesday night before an early-Wednesday morning run.

Good night for now, and wish me luck.  I am on a trip east this weekend to see something I can't decide whether I should share with you.  We'll see.

See you then.  (And ten beers down, forty to go!)

My Ninth Entry - Great Divide Brewing Company Colette Farmhouse Ale

A friend of mine texted me this week with the news that his son had been ticketed for being a minor in possession of alcohol during a fraternity party.  His son was two months shy of his twenty-first birthday, and had just been handed the beer when a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission raid team entered the party room and started writing tickets to the underage drinkers.

He didn't even get to sip the beer he'd just been handed, much less finish it.

I checked my sources in that town and found a specialist to defend my friend's son.  She told me that she would almost certainly get him deferred adjudication probation (no finding of guilt) with some community service, and he would be eligible to expunge the record shortly completing it.

It was a happy ending, I think.  He's a really good kid and, if he takes care of business, won't have a permanent record. He's also fortunate to be affluent enough to hire a lawyer for something like this.

It also made me think about how lucky I was not to have drawn that kind of attention during the wilder years of my youth. I am not going to overshare here and detail my youthful indiscretions - suffice to say that with a drinking age of 18 back in the early Eighties, I think it was much easier to achieve that unfortunate intersection of impairment and immaturity than it is today (but I could be wrong about the present day - my children don't tell me everything going on in their world, to our mutual relief).

That said, my clear record wasn't all luck. Back then, I was blessed with three saving graces that kept me mostly out of trouble:

• My abiding belief in my future prospects.

• My nascent understanding of the consequences to those prospects if I screwed up.  This comprehension was, I now understand, an extraordinarily beneficial gift to me in my youth. Because executive function is not fully developed for most people until their early twenties, a lot of kids are incapable of thinking twice about playing with cherry bombs and mooning police officers in school zones. Not me - I was very careful about who I mooned.

• A nearly pathological fear of disappointing my parents and their belief in me. 

I had enough self-awareness to know I was going to screw up - as Joe E. Brown said in Some Like It Hot, "Nobody's perfect" - but I also had enough precociousness to make sure that I maximized my chances of minimizing my exposure.

A few of my strategies:

Start drinking bad beer when you start getting drunk. My favorite beer back then was Molson Golden. It wasn't cheap - for a six-pack of Molson Golden, I could buy a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jax, Lone Star, or Dixie, which were all terrible beers, but also cheap. And as a person of limited means in those days, my plan was to get one of each - I would drink the Molson early, and then move on to the cheap beer later, with the idea that in my impaired state from the first six bottles of beer, I would not mind drinking the skunk-brew later.

It never worked. Going from my sixth and last smooth and fruity bottle of Molson Golden directly to my first of twenty-four metallic and funky cans of PBR was like following a plate of Churrasco's sublime tres leches with a can of Campbell's undiluted cream of mushroom soup and a spoon.

I could never finish that first can of PBR, which meant that my night of drinking was pretty much over and I would ease back into sobriety.  I also earned love from my college buddies by donating the case of PBR to them (they were not as discriminating as I was about the finer qualities of beer).

Don't be the designated drunk.  There's an old joke about the two guys being chased by a bear, and one guy stops to put his running shoes on because he doesn't have to outrun the bear: he just has to outrun his buddy. I kind of pursued that strategy when drinking in public - I never wanted to be the most drunk guy at my table. If trouble was coming, it would zero in on the guy least able to handle it, which was not going to be me.

Date (and if you're lucky, marry) girls who are forgiving truth tellers.  I met my patient and loving wife Lisa in college, and we dated through law school before marrying here in Houston. Not a drinker, she has always had the ability to gracefully tell me to stop drinking in those rare instances when I have had too much to drink, and I have always had the grace to accept her advice.

When you're drinking, keep a little money in your pocket for a cab (or have a forgiving truth teller who will come take you home). This is self-explanatory.

At 50, I've made it long past the drinking years of my youth without having done damage to myself or others. For my friend's son as he approaches his legal drinking age, I can only hope that he begins to make the transition to appreciating good beer for what it is - an artisanal drink that is the product of centuries of refinement and the loving creativity of fine brewmasters - and not something you swill from a red Solo cup.

To him, here's my advice:  Drink and appreciate good beer, and you mostly stay out of trouble.  Drink and binge on bad beer, and trouble will find you sitting on a stoop in an alley behind a bar with bad breath and an inside-out stomach.

The choice is obvious.

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I drank and appreciated some good beer this week.  It was the Colette Farmhouse Ale from the Great Divide Brewing Company in Denver, Colorado.

I liked the bottle design, which has some subtle elements that reward the kind of contemplation we only do with beer bottles and cereal boxes.

First, I noticed that there are only three colors in the label: black, tan, and orange, which coincidentally are the prevalent colors in beer. (Do you think that was intentional?  Uh-huh.)

Second, the name of the beer appears three times and the brewing company's name appears four times (once as an acronym).  Great Divide knows that brands benefit from repetition, repetition, repetition.

Third, the label includes some helpful tasting notes (which, as I have noted before, I much appreciate):

COLETTE is our homage to the saisons that Belgian farm workers have enjoyed for centuries. Brewed with barley, wheat and rice and fermented at high temperatures with a special blend of four different yeast strains, COLETTE is fruity and slightly tart, with a dry finish that makes it that rarest of treats — a beer as refreshing as it is complex.

Fourth, it also has a first for the beers in this blog, a food pairing note, which suggests drinking Colette with charcuterie, foie gras, Indian curry, or Camembert cheese. Not having any foie gras in my fridge, I instead paired it tonight with a scallop soup I proudly improvised from leftover stuff I found while inventorying my freezer (homemade chicken stock, a bag of frozen scallops seasoned with Old Bay, chopped onions and celery, frozen corn, shredded uncooked potatoes intended for hash browns, fresh green beans, garlic, thyme, basil, and whole milk).  The pairing did not offend my palate.

Fifth, there's a "bottled on" date (October 22, 2013), another first for the beers in this blog. (By the way, the increasing age of the beers in my fridge is something I'll write on soon.  So far, not a problem.)

Last (and best), there are a bunch of small details that evidence a lot of enthusiasm by the brewers.  A little flag tells us that the company was established in 1994; the label specifies the alcohol by volume (7.3%); we learn that the Great Divide Brewing Company's zip code is 80205; they proudly note that this was a silver medalist in the 2010 Great American Beer Festival; there appears to be a company seal and slogan, "Great Minds Drink Alike" (clever); and twice it declares Colette to be "rustic" and "refined."

As to the beer itself, it was light and yeasty, very easy to drink, which I learned is not unusual for the saison style, which are ales that were originally brewed in farmhouses during the winter months to be consumed in the summer by the farmhands as a hydrating drink. Taking a big whiff as I finished the drink, the aroma did something kind of cool: it changed character from second to second, going from yeast to oranges to something else and then back again.  Try it sometime as you finish a beer in a glass and you'll see what I mean.

Did I like it?  Yep, it was good and refreshing.  Did I like it more than the prevailing champ - the Bittersweet Lenny?  Nope, although the Colette was a really nice beer with a lot to offer, the Lenny still abides.  (And yes, that was a Big Lebowski reference.)

I'll try to get back on schedule and write the next entry on Sunday night after band practice.  (You didn't know I was in a band?  Now you do.)

See you then.

My Eighth Entry - Ballast Point Brewing Company Sculpin India Pale Ale

Time to get serious.

So far, my assessment of beers have been the definition of a lay opinion:

lay (lā) (adj.; Middle English, from Old French lai, from Late Latin lāicus, from Greek lāikos, of the people, from lāos, the people.) - Not of or belonging to a particular profession; nonprofessional: a lay opinion as to the seriousness of the disease.

There's nothing wrong with a lay opinion.  Life is full of them, most of them valid (except when they come to sports or politics).

If you tell me that the tacos are good at Torchy's or El Rey (and they are), I'll take your opinion seriously, even if you've never written a word about tacos and have no idea how they make them (and I don't).

If you tell me that Shudde Bros. Hats makes great hats (and they do) and that you should buy there because they support the amazing Brookwood Community just off of Exit 731 at I-10 in Brookshire (and they do), I'll believe that too, even though I don't know the first thing about how a hat is made.

Beer is different, however. Knowing what goes into a beer, knowing how the beer is made, makes the tasting experience more meaningful. It also helps you have a better sense of what the brewer intended, and whether he (or she) succeeded.

Also, you just sound more intelligent talking or writing about beer if you start with first principles.  So, I am going to educate myself (and you) with a basic understanding of the beer varietals, so that I will be able to intelligently discuss them with you.  In theory, once I know what I'm drinking, I will be able to ostentatiously tell you what kind of beers you are drinking at any time.

(Pop quiz! What are Budweiser and Miller Lite? NO peeking.)

(Jeopardy theme plays: Do do do do do do do … do do do do DOOT do-do-do-do-do … do do do do do do do … DOOT do do do do … do … do … bum bum.)

(Did you know?  They are both Pale Lagers. I always just thought they were Beer.)

So, to begin this tour, let's start with a beer that seems to be a favorite of craft brewers, as evidenced by its ubiquity in the Fifty Beers that Jay and Lisa gave me: the India Pale Ale (or IPA).

Turning to the North American Brewers Association webpage on IPAs for guidance, we find that IPAs were the product of a revolution in beermaking in the late 1700s that led to the creation of the Pale Ale:

Throughout Great Britain's early brewing history beers shared one characteristic - a deep colored murkiness, and it was caused by an error made during the most fundamental step in beer making.

The problem was rooted in their method of malting, the process of converting a grain's starch to sugar. Brewers made their own malt by soaking barley and allowing it to germinate (sprout), but to prevent the embryonic plant from consuming all the fermentable sugars as food, they needed to halt germination. Brewers stopped it by "kilning," a process of drying the wet grain in an oven. Unfortunately, their ability to control the oven's temperature was primitive and often the grain was kilned to a darkish hue, which was then imparted to the finished beer.

By the later part of the 18th century the malting process was becoming more controllable and grains weren't as deeply kilned. Brewers took advantage of this breakthrough and although the beer was still a deep copper color, it was comparatively "pale." Thirsty Britains lapped up the newcomer with abandon and pale ale was soon king of the beers.

So imagine: you're a Brit who has spent your whole life drinking some kind of muddy swill to take the edge off of a day serving your liege, and one day, the barmaid brings you a flagon of pale ale, transparent and golden and watery and refreshing.  (Porters and stouts are lots of things, but they ain't refreshing.)  You think, "I can drink four of these for every one of those flippin' porters they've been servin' me," and you proceed to spend the next twenty years at the pub, telling your bar mates that if you had been at Lexington and Concord and - what's that other one? oh yeah - Yorktown, the colonies would still be the King's property, I tell you what.

So we now know where the pale ale side of an IPA comes from: the lightly kilned barley grains, cooked at usually 95 to 105 degrees Celsius, which yield a pale sweet malt which is steeped in hot water to become the mash, which eventually separates into the wort, which is, in turn, bittered, flavored, and finished by the sequential addition of hops, and then fermented with the addition of yeast. Variations, intentional or accidental, on the sequence or the ingredients yield different varietals.

(I think that's right. I'll check with my friend Brock to see if this basic description of brewing is accurate and report back.)

Where does the India part of the IPA come from?  Again, from the NABA page, we get this cool example from history of how capitalism bred innovation:

In the late 1700's [George] Hogdson was the most popular ale brewer in London. With easy access to shipping from the capital, Hogdson was in position to supply beer to homesick English colonists around the world. Of these, none felt so removed, nor thirsted more for the pleasures of English breweries, than the troops garrisoned on the sub-continent of India. Hogdson rightly believed it a huge market waiting to be tapped, but how could beer survive the trip around Africa? 

Hogdson used three brewing methods to ensure his ale weathered the journey. First, he knew hops were a natural preservative. Indeed, it was this property that first motivated brewers to use hops. Hogdson reckoned an increased hopping rate would help in transit. Next, he took advantage of another natural preservative in beer, and he brewed one with an exaggerated level of alcohol. Finally, he used abundant dry hopping as an additional preservative, and he rightly thought it wouldn't harm the taste because it would mellow during the long voyage. He couldn't have guessed better, the measures not only ensured Hogdson's modified Pale Ale arrived intact, the recipients considered it an improvement. 

Hogdson's modifications resulted in a variation both closely related to, and distinctively different than, pale ale. To differentiate it from pale it was bestowed with the name of its destination, thus the birth of what's known as India Pale Ale.

So to summarize: Hodgson's innovations were to increase the rate of hopping to enhance its preservative qualities; add more alcohol (also a preservative); and adding dry hops when casking. As a result, the beer survived the trip to India and tasted better.

(Here is a more detailed discussion of the IPA genesis by Thom Thomlinson, and here is an interesting dissent on the historical origins of the IPA, which argues that IPAs were being brewed long before George Hodgson started brewing them at his Bow Brewery in London.)

Regardless of who invented them, what do we look for in an IPA?  Higher than usual alcohol concentration, a strong hoppy aroma, and fruity notes.  According to NABA, the hops used in American IPAs are Northern Brewer, Cascade and Chinook (not available in your local grocery store).

Whew.  That's enough beer scholarship for today.  Let's take a break and drink a beer.

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This week's beer is the Ballast Point Sculpin IPA, brewed in San Diego, California. According to the website's tasting notes:

© JDurfee99

A trophy beer that’s a testament to our homebrew roots. Our Sculpin IPA is a great example of what got us into brewing in the first place. After years of experimenting, we knew hopping an ale at five separate stages would produce something special. The result ended up being this gold-medal winning IPA, whose inspired use of hops creates hints of apricot, peach, mango and lemon flavors, but still packs a bit of a sting, just like a Sculpin fish.

The bottle design is interesting: it's dominated by the brewery name, then a colorful drawing of the sculpin fish (new to me), and then in teeny-tiny type, the varietal (India Pale Ale).

I've found that this is not unusual for craft brewers - I guess they're marketing brand-loyalty first, then assigning a distinctive name or label to catch the eye of the browsing imbiber, and then rewarding the repeat customer with what amounts to a password establishing yourself as one of the cognoscenti:

You:  "I'll have a Sculpin."  (Wink.) 

Bartender (nodding with approval):  "Ah, you know your IPAs, sir."

Random Dude:  "I'll have a Bud." 

Bartender (spitting in the glass and muttering):  "Go play in traffic, you simpering vegetable."

© JDurfee99

The Sculpin itself does hit you with that apricot flavor from the first sip. (I'm proud to say I caught it before I read the tasting note!)  The hops are strong but not unpleasant, the alcohol is warming (7% ABV), and it finished in the glass with what seemed to be a citrusy lime note.  I liked it and you should try it.

Better than last week's Bittersweet Lenny?  Not quite.  I think the Sculpin could have had a long run as the champ if we had seeded the beers, but we didn't, so it won't get the chance. Bittersweet Lenny remains the king.

Next week: I look for something - anything - in the Fifty Beers that isn't an IPA.  Will I find it?  Only Jay and Lisa know.

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And just because this is my blog, I'm throwing in this picture of me and my son Josh from the 2009 State Bar Convention in Dallas, where he attended a speech I gave and we had breakfast with Channel 13 investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino.  He was a dashing ten-years-old in this picture, one of my favorites.

(Love you, dude, and always will, even if you talk a ton of smack at the ping pong table.)

My Seventh Entry - Schmaltz Brewing Company Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A.

I read a story this week about the great Dan Jenkins, whose golf and football writing I much admire.  In the story, there's a quote about Jenkins holding court at P.J. Clarke's in Manhattan, and his frequent departures for the bathroom:

“He would disappear once in a while,” said David Israel. “You knew nobody had to take a leak that often. He was off writing down all his overheards. That’s what he would call them. Just writing down great lines overheard in bars. He didn’t want to write them down in front of somebody.” Jenkins knew if he didn’t write down those lines — that material— they would float into the ether and he’d never remember them again.

This encapsulates why we write. It's because memories aren't perfect, because we don't remember everything, because we get older and forget. To be sure, there are things I want to forget, but there are other things that I don't.

I want to remember my first margarita.  It was in 1979 in the far reaches of a grocery store parking lot and it had been poured from a plastic bucket of margarita mix that one of my friends had dumped a bottle of tequila into.  (I think it was tequila. I'm pretty sure that was what kept coming up from my stomach as my dad laughed at me in the bathroom.)

I want to remember my first ball park beer. It was in 1980 at old Arlington Stadium, served in a cup with a top that looked like a milk carton. I don't think they sell them like that anymore, probably because of the cognitive dissonance of drinking beer from something that looks like a milk carton.  Like drinking milk out of a red Solo cup.

I want to remember my first jury trial. A no-test driving while intoxicated case in Sherman Ross's court against Cynthia Henley, which I lost when my arresting officer admitted on cross-examination that he didn't really know what he was supposed to be looking for when he conducted his field sobriety tests. (In those days, it seemed like some officers learned their field sobriety tests the way medical students learn a procedure: watch one, do one, teach one. It's much better now.)

After we rested, Cynthia did a solid and sincere final argument. I have this image of her in a sensible suit with the large bow tie women wore in court back then, taking no chances, arguing the case in a quiet and persuasive tone.  It must have worked because reasonable doubt was writ large on the faces of the jury as she ended her argument and sat down.

My turn.

I pondered my strategy.  I had argued cases in law school mock trials, but those proceedings were literally friendly venues ("literally" because the mock trial jury box was always filled with our friends and fellow students).

This was real life, an argument to six strangers (including a Houston Chronicle reporter who I left on the jury for some inexplicable reason). They were not cheering me on - they were ready to render a verdict and go home to their families. I am not kidding: as I sat there thinking, one of the jurors was putting his coat on, and another juror was making a "hurry up" gesture with his hand.

If I was going to win, I had to start strong and sell my case to them by force of personality and sheer charisma. I knew, however, that I was not a force of personality-type of guy. I was solid and sincere-guy, and Cynthia had already staked that territory out for herself. What to do?

I flashed on the guy who, back then, was the gold standard for final arguments - Michael Kuzak. Who is that, you ask? Michael Kuzak was the lead character in L.A. Law, played by Harry Hamlin, and he never lost.

Kuzak's trademark in final argument was to steeple his hands in front of his face while still seated at counsel table, rotate his chair slowly towards the jury box, and begin his argument with a cold opening. Something like, "You never really know someone until you have to stab him in the eye with a fountain pen."  He would then get up, still talking, and walk the length of the jury box, holding the jurors' attention as he sold them on his ridiculous theory of the case, which they always bought.

(Of course, I had forgotten the most important contributing factor to Michael Kuzak's success. He always won because the script said so. He could argue a case in a gorilla suit - and I think he actually did once - and win because the script said so.)

So, the Kuzak approach it would be.  I steepled my hands in front of my face, slowly turned my chair to the jury, and said, "You know, ladies and gentlemen, the streets of Harris County are -"

-WHACK!-

"Get up!" the chief prosecutor hissed from the seat next to me as she elbowed me in the ribs.

As I stared at my chief, I also saw Judge Ross lean forward in his chair and click on the microphone at the bench.  "MR. DURFEE," he said in high fidelity, "PLEASE STAND WHEN YOU ADDRESS THE JURY."

As I stared at Judge Ross, my chief kicked me in the shin.  "GET. UP. NOW."

I got up.

I don't remember my argument. I do remember losing that case. And I remember that moment every time I argue a case.

Memories are not just nostalgia - they are also the residue of experience, keeping us from making the same mistakes, most of the time.  I got better as a trial lawyer over time, mainly because I learned from my mistakes.

Nowadays, I stand when I address the jury.  And I don't drink margaritas out of plastic buckets.

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This week's beer is pretty dang unique.  It's Shmaltz Brewing Company's Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A. (Rye Double IPA), brewed in Clifton Park, New York.

© JDurfee99

The bottle label is crammed with detail: a picture of Lenny Bruce, framed in lights; a wrap-around collar label that lists the eight malts, seven hops, and three dry hops that went into the beer, the awards the beer has won, and the birth and death dates of Leonard Alfred Schneider (Lenny's birth name); and a note from the brewer, Jeremy Cowan, in four-point type:

"Satire equals tragedy plus time."
Lenny Bruce  

Emmis, Shmuck! 40 years alive. Over 40 years dead. And shares of Lenny Bruce commodities are still long-term performers - solid! Sure there's been books, posters, films, plays, a box set of course. But the big Four-O inspires innovation, something hip, modern - unorthodox - a taste that really swings…  

Ladies and Gentlemen, Shmaltz Brewing Co. is proud to present Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A. Brewed with an obscene amount of malts and hops. Shocking flavors - far beyond contemporary community standards. We cooked up the straight dope for the growing minyans of our nation's Radical Beer junkies. Judges may not be able to define "Radical Beer," but you'll damn well know it when you taste it. Bruce died, officially declared a pauper by the State of California, personally broken and financially bankrupt simply for challenging America's moral hypocrisies with words. The memorial playbill read: "Yes, we killed him. Because he picked on the wrong god." -Directed by, the Courts, the Cops, the Church... and his own self-destructive super ego. Like Noah lying naked and loaded in his tent after the apocalyptic deluge: a witness, a patron saint, a father of what was to come. Sick, Dirty, Prophetic Lenny: a scapegoat, a martyr, a supreme inspiration.  

From Burlesque to Broadway, Carnegie Hall to the Courtroom, Long Island to Lima, Ohio to L.A., savor the provocative spirit of Lenny's R.I.P.A., our HE'BREW monument to the richness, the bitterness and the sacred sweetness that is life... L'Chaim!

© JDurfee99

I love this beer.  As I drink it, the 10% alcohol by volume makes me warm and happy.  I get a dark syrupy aroma that evens out the hoppiness I'm getting on my tongue. The label promises rye, and I get a little of that as I finish the drink, but not like I am eating roast beef on rye - it's more subtle.  It finishes with a little orangey note, kind of like a dark chocolate orange bon bon you'd mooch from the box of chocolates you gave your mother on Valentine's Day.

We have a new champion.  It ain't less filling, but it tastes great, better than the Buried Hatchet Stout, which had a nice run.

Now if they only offered it in a milk carton. . .

See you next week!  (And to my friend at the office - you know who you are - we're here for you at the office and wishing your spouse a speedy recovery.)

My Sixth Entry - Cedar Creek Brewery Elliott's Phoned Home Pale Ale

We were on a roll, my partner and I.  And then - bam! - it was over.

I know I promised to talk about my beer can collection this week.  That will have to wait a bit because I'm still stoked about my weekend activity: the 2014 State Championship "42" Domino Tournament in Hallettsville, Texas.

A little bit of background for the uninitiated:  Texas 42 is a trick-taking domino game that, according to the New York Times, was invented in the late-19th century by two boys west of Fort Worth to evade the Baptist prohibition against cardplaying (which did not extend to dominoes).

A variation of spades, the game takes the 28 dominoes in a double-six set, deals them out to four players who are playing as two teams, who then bid on the number of points they will win.  There are seven tricks, each worth one point, plus bonuses for the dominoes with factors of five: the double-five, the 6-4, the 5-0, the 4-1, and the 3-2.  Thus: seven trick points plus thirty-five bonus points equals Texas 42.

The winner of the bid declares the trump suit (blanks, ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, doubles as trump, or no trump) and gets to lead the first domino.  The other players follow suit if they can, strategically trump in when they don't have to follow suit, and either try to help their partner make his point bid, or try to set the opposing team.

I first heard about this game in the early Nineties at a prosecutors' convention in South Padre Island.  Before then, I had played other kinds of domino games - chickenfoot mostly - in chambers with judges and defense attorneys, but I had never heard of 42.  My friend Keno told me about the tournament and, assuming they were playing chickenfoot, I told him that I wanted to play.

"You know how to play 42?" he asked.

"What's 42?"

He ran through the rules with me.  I didn't get it, so I told him I'd watch and try to learn. I watched, but still did not get it.  I did notice that the players were mostly older and rural Texas prosecutors who did not take kindly to my questions about the game while it was being played.  Still, as a card game lover, I was intrigued and wanted to figure it out.

When we returned to Houston, I told my buddy Gary about the game.  Gary and I have been pretty close friends for about twenty-five years because we have very similar perspectives on life: we're outwardly nice guys and inwardly nice as well, except that we both hate to lose at anything.  I've played basketball, poker, touch football, and dominoes with Gary, and in all of these competitions, he (like me) is the kind of guy who is a humble winner and a gracious loser, but mostly a humble winner because it drives him (like me) nuts to be a gracious loser.

Gary and I got Keno to show us how to play.  Others joined the game over time, including a pretty healthy contingent of our office's investigative staff, and in due course, a regular game ensued.  We played two to four times a week for about ten years and, like these things usually do, became something that transcended the game itself. For an hour a day, we played and talked and razzed and enjoyed each others' company.  Our fill-in players would come and go, but the core group of regulars would show up around noon wherever we were playing that day, and shake the rocks one more time.

Gary and I had a guru in 42 - the Pasadena Legend (if I used even his first name, you'd know who he was and I am trying to keep this blog mostly anonymous out of respect to my friends, so the Pasadena Legend he will be).  We loved playing with him because he was so committed to playing the game right, and because he was entertaining as hell, win or lose.

Example: I'd bid 36, which means I could lose one of the nickels (the 5-0, the 4-1, or the 3-2) and a trick to the other team and still make my bid.  The other players would pass to the Legend.

"Seven," he'd drawl through a mouth full of chaw and then spit into a cup.

"You bidding 37?" I'd say, looking incredulously at the five powerful doubles I'd been dealt.

"Uh-huh," he would say and then, looking at the other three guys at the table, he'd grin, saying, "As my daddy always said, 'You can't score if you don't have the ball!'"  The Legend would then look down at his dominoes, a fleeting moment of doubt crossing his face, then gather himself and declare the trump suit with supreme confidence - "Deuces!" - and slam a domino down in the middle of the table.

And sometimes he actually would make his bid.

This game broke up a few years ago when some of the players (including the Legend) left the office and when the atmosphere for lunchtime game-playing at the office became much less hospitable.

I see the Legend every now and then - he's working someplace else now - and he always asks me and Gary to come to his house and play with his neighborhood cronies. Unfortunately, we never seem to have time to take a Friday afternoon off to join him.

So, if I can change one thing in my schedule this year, it will be to carve out a few hours once a month to relive the old game and the old camaraderie.  Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again," and I am just now really beginning to understand what he meant, but sometimes it's okay to visit a close approximation of the real thing.

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Played in the Knights of Columbus hall on Route 77 about twenty miles south of Schulenburg, the Hallettsville 42 tournament is about as old-school Texas as such things get.  When Gary and I arrived on Friday night for the warm-up round-robin tournament, I was still wearing my work suit, having raced down I-10 to get there before the 6:30 start.

As I got out of my car, two guys getting out of a Ford F-150 sized me up.

"You're a little overdressed for this, ain't you?" one of them said.  I didn't think he was being unfriendly; I think he really didn't understand why I was wearing a suit.

I took my tie off and threw it into the car.  "Just got off work.  I'm from Houston."

He nodded, the mystery now solved.

As they started the warm-up tournament, Gary and I settled in.  We played five matches, won four of them, feeling the old rhythm kick in as I tipped a cold Shiner in a can (my obligatory beer reference for this story).  Much of what makes 42 so much fun is the partnership - you are playing his dominoes along with yours - and when you are simpatico with your partner, you can beat anyone.  As we left for our hotel, we felt good about our chances in the real tournament on Saturday.

The next morning, we got up early, had a nice breakfast at the Hotel Texas (the best hotel in Hallettsville, no complaints), and headed to the hall.  I decided not to wear my suit.

We played some games for fun while they set up the tournament.  The guys we played with were about as excited as we were (this was their first time at the tournament), although they had gotten up early that morning and driven to Hallettsville, so they were dragging a little, waiting for their caffeine to kick in.  We split two matches and neither of our teams lost any confidence.

About 8:30 a.m., the tournament director assigned us to our morning round-robin groups. The teams with the best records out of each group would qualify for the afternoon single-elimination championship tournament.

We played six matches over the next three hours.  We first played two old guys in cowboy hats to start the tournament. (This was a recurring theme.)  We beat them pretty handily.

We played a nice couple of retired ladies, one of whom was using a walker.  They were sharp as tacks and tough opponents, but we beat them too.  (The lady with the walker told me afterwards that her daughter is a county attorney in north central Texas, so I promised to look her up at the next convention.)

We played a husband and wife from Friendswood.  I found out that they play regularly in their senior center.  (I was glad to hear this because my retirement plan is pretty much going to be golf in the morning, 42 at lunch, and poker at night.  I might see my wife on the weekends.)  We beat them too.

We played two guys from Houston next, both wearing cowboy hats.  These were the first non-retiree players we had faced.  One guy was garrulous, talking a mile a minute, particularly after finding out where I worked.  He talked about a mutual friend of ours - a buddy of the Pasadena Legend - who is married to a state senator and who loves dominoes as much as we do.  We lost to these guys, mainly because the other hatted guy (who was as quiet as his partner was loud) insisted on invalidating a hand we'd won because Gary had asked what the bid was midway through the hand.  It turns out this is not a rule violation, but we didn't know that and agreed to replay the hand and lost it.  It was the difference in the game.  We lost to them, 7-6.

We played a couple from Houston who wore matching theme t-shirts and who were deeply involved in Texas 42 leagues.  Gary and I noticed a lot of deference to them from other players in the hall.  We lost to them, 7-6.

We played a couple of retired men from southwest Texas, one of whom told me that he had been his county's water official for thirty years.  (He warned me that a water crisis in Texas is imminent and no one wants to deal with it.)  We beat them.

We got a bye on the next game and then beat two young guys, recent graduates of Texas A&M, and came out of the round-robin 5-2, with our two losses only by one point.

My buddy Gary and the chicken lunch

We had a pleasant chicken lunch, and Gary won a jar of pickles in the door prize drawing.  When they announced the seeding for the championship tournament, Gary and I were seeded 14 out of 49 qualifying teams and got a bye into the second round.

As we awaited our opponents, I dared to dream.  We didn't need to be the state champs - any trophy, including a runner-up consolation trophy, would be a capstone to over a decade of playing.  Gary and I had proven we could play with anyone that morning, and we had made it to the third round of the championship round two years ago.  We could only get better.

But it wasn't meant to be.  We ran into a team from the Dallas area (sporting Cowboys colors) and they kicked our butts pretty solidly and ruthlessly.  About thirty or forty minutes after we started that round, we were done, out of the tournament.  Gary and I replayed our hands, but it didn't seem we'd done anything wrong - the other team had just played their dominoes better than we had.  They shook our hands and went looking for the next team.  We drove back to Houston and planned our return for next year.

With some practice, I think we can do better.  And even losing (and I hate losing), we had great fun: I still played more 42 in a single day than I ever had in my life, and we played with some of the nicest people anyone could hope to meet.

I say this often, even to my poker playing buddies, and I mean it:  Texas 42 is the Greatest Game Ever Devised.  I will preach that to my dying day, which will be when I drop dead, face-first into a domino table, after having made a two-mark bid by walking a naked ace-blank.

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This week's beer is the Cedar Creek Brewery's Elliott's Phoned Home Pale Ale.  Brewed by Jim Elliott in Seven Points, Texas (part of the Greater Cedar Creek Lake area an hour south of Dallas), the sixteen ounce can is kind of gimmicky:

(c) JDurfee 2014

I mean, I get it - Jim Elliott brewed the beer, and he must be an alien or something - but I think the name detracts from the drink.  If you have a beer you're proud of, don't make the customer think that this is something made back in 1982 to capitalize on a brief scene from E.T. the Extraterrestrial.

It really doesn't need the gimmick.  It's a good beer with a super-detailed tasting note on the can:

White Pale Ale is one of our favorite styles. Creating a nice blend of American hops and malts that can offset the German Alt yeast is a little tougher than it sounds. Our goal is a moderate level of hop bitterness that carries over to a soft hop aroma. We are trying some new American hops - primarily Apollo and Bravo - that give some interesting notes to flavor and aroma.  Bravo gives a blend of lemon, pear, and grapefruit notes. Apollo is mostly used as a bittering hop, but because of the great aroma we get from it, we also used it in the whirlpool. As a result, the aroma comes across as a strong grapefruit note.  We think it's out of this world - A Pale Ale to phone home about!

(c) JDurfee 2014

Did it live up to this billing?  I certainly smelled the grapefruit nose deep in the glass, and the hoppiness was muted but there in the taste.  The color was golden and cloudy, I guess from the yeast, which left a small residue on the bottom of the ol' pint glass.

I liked this beer, but didn't love it enough to dethrone the Buried Hatchet Stout, which seems to have some staying power in my personal championship series.

Having lost my own bid for a championship, I feel for Elliott's Phoned Home Pale Ale.  But it's a process, and I'm confident that in time, the Cedar Creek Brewery is going to make some remarkable beers, and, in time, Gary and I will bring home the Texas 42 gold.

See you next week!  (And to my three aunts in New York: I love you very much and I'm glad you're reading this blog.  You are each very special to me and my family, something I don't tell you as much as you deserve to hear it.)