This Week for Happy Hour: Ryan's Ashes and Lenten Lentils

Hey er’body!  Wow, what a week – so much going on right now.  Ryan’s leaving; Lent begins; Black History Month draws to a close.  Let’s take this one step at a time, conspicuously trying to make each occasion a reason to raise a glass at the white marble.  Shall we?

First, tonight is Ryan’s last happy hour (shift!) at the Rhino.  (I’ll give you a moment…  Wipe your tear.  Yeah, your left cheek.  It’s gonna be okay.  You okay?  Okay…)  He’s off to be a super brave fire fighter and the department won’t let him bring his hose to the bar, for some reason.  Something about only spraying down buildings that are actually on fire.  So make sure to stop by tonight before 9pm to send him off proper.  Did somebody suggest lighting Wild Turkey 101 on fire?  If you do, you better bring your poncho, ’cause Ryan will soak the first row with his spray gun like it’s Gallagher’s fruit-smashing mallet circa 1993.  You’ve been warned.

Moving on…  This week is also the beginning of Lent, a time when many Catholics give up something they should probably give up anyway in order to commemorate Jesus’ 40 days of fasting and being tempted by Satan in the desert after his baptism and prior to his teachings, as it goes.  I have a few comments on this ritual.  First, will somebody please give up lentils for lent?  Please?  It’s just funny and I can’t do it myself; Satan tempts too strong with the lentils. 

Second, while I kind of get the whole idea of prioritizing soul nourishment over physical nourishment, I tend to take issue with implied (and perhaps misapplied, with respect to spirituality) egocentrism in the subject-verb “I am,” as in “I am giving up lentils for lent.”  What I mean is, for most major religions, the ego is identified as the problem in the first place, that which fosters self-importance and the separation of the self from the other.  And reinforcing the concept of the “I” for 40 days is, I posit, missing the point.

Think about it this way: if you can self-observe, what are you observing?  That is, there is an inherent divergence from that which we generally refer to as the “self” when we self-observe.  When we self-observe, we orient ourselves as the observer, which is disconnected from the observed, which is somehow still us.  More specifically, the ego tends to observe the consciousness or the consciousness tends to observe the ego.  When you find yourself self-observing, you can usually tell which is in the driver’s seat pretty easily. 

In the case of Lent, folks try to observe/check their ego through self-sacrifice, with the goal of spiritual growth, which is ultimately a great idea.  But is there more efficient road from point A to point B?  How else can we challenge the ego?  Well, you know I’m gonna say it: alcohol.  …and a new religion is born.  Ha!  Stay with me…

Okay, you know how booze can kind of thin the filter between the ego and the consciousness?  I mean, where your personality would normally interrupt ego-driven impulse, the addition of booze can sort of weaken the defenses of the personality to the intervening ego.  Ever have your butt pinched at a bar?  That’s somebody’s ego that’s broken through and taken over, or in layman’s terms, an asshole.  Or maybe it was just your boyfriend, or maybe it was for purposes of pure comedy, or whatever – but you know what I’m saying.

Anyway, if the point is to check the ego – to exercise the muscle that keeps the ego at bay – then the conscious introduction of alcohol to the mind is like weight training.  It’s like how in baseball, the hitter puts a weight on his bat while he’s on deck and takes a few cuts so that once he’s at the plate, he’s got a quick stick.  Same thing with the sweet, sweet booze.  Drink a whole bunch and be mindful of yourself.  If you can keep your ego in check while you’re blitzkrieg blasted on a bottle of bourbon, then the force is strong with you, my friend, and Satan’s temptations – booze, not among them – will be dealt with handily long after the 40 days of Lent have come and gone, and when you’re sober you’ll be like a goddam Jedi.  At least, that’s my Lenten goal: to do drunken warfare with my ego.  My beer is my light saber.  Join me!

Wow, we went deep there for a bit.  If you’re still with me, kudos.  You will now be rewarded with Rhino’s booze-fueled (literally) commemoration of Black History Month: a wonderful informational video about abolitionist Frederick Douglass featuring Will Ferrell and Don Cheadle, as narrated by a really, really drunk girl.  Enjoy!

Half-price Happy Hour 5-9pm, and the party continues upstairs all night.  Saturday afternoon, stop by for some delicious drinks, good tunes, fun times, friends, and optional consciousness weight training.

See you all this weekend!

Cheers!

 

This Week for Happy Hour: Olive Me

Since President's Day is always so shockingly uninspiring, I say this week we raise a glass to something else that's going on in the world, and which is oddly related.

You know how they say our democratic model - and by derivation, our presidential system - would not exist if not for the ancient Greeks' concept of democracy?  Well today Greece burns.  Their economy is imploding and their government is helpless.  Stateside, even George Stephanopoulos has the flu, and I have a hunch that the real reason Fox News fired Judge Napolitano is because of the Greek thing.

What I'm saying is, invest in hemlock now.  Go all in and ride the wave.  Then pull your money out before the banks use derivative price suppression to force hemlock farms out of business, buy the farms, and then demand taxpayer bailouts to compensate their losses.  That should be about 5pm.  Use your smart-hemlock-investor winnings to come to Rhino for Happy Hour (5-9pm), where we will be selling all the Sambuca you can imbibe at half price!  It's not a celebration, exactly, but it's something you don't want to miss.  Like Aristotle's funeral.  History in the making.

See you there!
Cheers!

P.S.  Due to the imminent olive shortage, Rhino can no longer offer dirty martinis.

P.P.S.  Rhino has no rule against tunics.

This Week for Happy Hour: Love Bombs

Today is February 9^th.  Valentine’s Day looms close above, casting its shadow like a B-52 (the massive WWII-era bomber, not the terrible 80s band which, somewhat ironically, wrote ‘Love Shack’).  The question is, friends, what kind of bomb is the airborne leviathan going to drop this Valentine’s Day season?  What’s coming out of the mechanized belly of institutionalized romance-ishness?  Will it be a love bomb?  I hope so.  But I have my worries.  If it’s not a love bomb, then what do you call it?  What is that nasty little Trojan horse impostor?  (My God, I just realized how gross it is that there is a condom company called ‘Trojan’ – that which tricked the recipient into the act of receiving by misrepresenting itself.  Yikes!  If I wore those silly things I would totally switch brands.)

Anyway, here’s the thing: it sucks that people need to schedule (merely once a year, mind you) time to be romantic with each other.  And clog up all the restaurants on the same stinking night.  And ugh with the grand romantic gestures, already.  Let’s face it: whoever wrote the movie “Say Anything,” where John Cusack stands outside that girl’s bedroom window holding up the stereo that’s playing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel – that guy wins.  Okay?  Somebody give him the Gold Medal for Best Grand Romantic Gesture Concept of All Time and let’s all just dispense with the cliché hokey pokey and get on with our non-fiction lives.  Romantic or unromantic as they may be.  Grand gestures are for movies and people who have to be convinced that they’re in love.  And such gestures are usually – let’s be honest – silly.  Oscar Wilde said it well: “Nothing spoils romance like a sense of humor in the woman.”

 My point is, grand gestures only last a moment, or a day.  Maybe the memory can be prolonged with a photograph or by loading up on your ginko biloba, but still, it’s fleeting.  So what about the rest of the time?  Which springs to mind this holiday: Valentine’s Day.  Ay.

I’m not saying don’t bother with romance.  It’s a good way to prod love in the direction of longevity.  And it makes people feel good in a genuine and substantial way.  And that’s good.  Hey, if you’ve had it, you know that love is itself grand, when it’s not being a dog from hell.  That dirty trick played on us by 60,000 years of human evolution to keep the species afloat.  Don’t fight it.  It’ll win.  But don’t plan it either, or force your own institutions on it, or you’ll end up inevitably disappointed.  Men don’t change.  Women do.  It sucks.  Deal with it.

“Oh no,” you say.  “What a bummer, man.  However can I cope?” 

Well you’ve come to the right place, my friend.  At Rhino, we sell solutions(TM, 2010).  This week for Happy Hour, Friday 5-9pm, and the rest of the weekend, come to Rhino for a Love Bomb.  It has ten times the love of a trite grand gesture, and costs a mere fraction of the price.

“What’s a Love Bomb?” you ask.  “Is that like when, instead of bombs that blow up, the plane drops Teddy Bears with ecstasy pills in their cute little paws, and warm lavender towels tied to red helium balloons that slowly descend into your cold, dry hands, and coupons for free back rubs?”

Well, the answer is, yes, that is a Love Bomb.  And how cool would that have been to drop over Iraq about a decade ago?  I bet that after the populace sobered up they’d have overthrown their government on their own. 

But that’s not what I meant.  I meant the Valentine’s Love Bomb, the drink, which is like a Jager Bomb, but instead of Jager, it’s tasty red vodka that you drop into Red Bull, and instead of high fives and fist bumps to follow, you hug your co-drinkers afterwards.  Really hug it out.  Sexual or non-sexual – totally up to you.  Hey, even hug others nearby.  Don’t be afraid to really spread that Love Bomb around.  That shit is contagious.  Remember the Mr. Deeds aftermath?

So come try out a Rhino Original Love Bomb this weekend.  Take the edge off.  Give a hug.  And let love find you.  There’s a long list of happy couples who found their mates at the Rhino Bar.  I’m even on the list, if you can believe it.  And I think a few of you are too.  What a great story for the grandkids.  “How’d you meet, Grandma and Grandpa?”  “Love Bombs, children.  Love Bombs.”

Come kiss the Rhino all week in celebration of Rhino Love.

See you there!
Cheers!

P.S.  It’s my birthday on Monday!  If you so desire, come see me tonight, during Happy Hour on Friday or on Saturday until 7pm and do a Love Bomb with me!

This Week for Happy Hour: Superb Owl Weekend

With the Super Bowl at our doorstep, I encourage you to accept in advance that the siren spawn of our economy – crappy advertisements – will exert their dominance over us and that we will all helplessly smile in submission as we are swept downstream, that we will all be power chugging whatever those clever marketing shorts tell us to by this Sunday as we watch that gristly old whistle pig, Madonna, preside over the perversion of entertainment that has become the Super Bowl halftime show.  We can only hope that, by then, our vision has blurred out the hi-def.

But my question is this: why not at least retain some semblance of hope for existentialist human individuality and freedom by choosing to pay only half-price for your inevitable ad-borne cross-bar acquisitions?  The choice is yours, over pay or don’t.  Go to some stuffy, cookie-cutter, corporate “bar” product inside an edifice which is itself an insult to your intelligence (I’m looking at you, ESPN Zone) – and, there, overpay for your swill – or, come to your friendly neighborhood Rhino Bar, the Spiderman of sports bar-like options, and pay only half-price on Friday for Happy Hour, 5-9pm.  Get yourself warm and ready for SB XLVI, son.  You gotta prepare for the big game, after all.  Can’t just show up on Sunday evening and expect to excel.  Nah, you have to start training now.  Saddle up.

Need a little more inspiration?  Ok, let’s stoke the rivalry a little bit. 

Pats fan?  You guys are supposed to win.  But sometimes a little underdog-type fire in the belly is a good thing.  Hmm.  How about this senior yearbook picture of Bill Belichick? 

He looks like the lovechild of Shrek, David Letterman, and an industrial grade push broom.  This guy…this guy needs a win.  Every day.  This guy is like the supermodel who was a mess in high school, so she stays at the top of her game through sheer drive and determination.  And sometimes hidden cameras.  Go pats.

Giants fan?  Y’all are already the underdogs, even though the last two times these teams met the G-men went home with the W.  But don’t get cocky now.  Have you heard that Peyton has been giving secrets to Tom Brady about Eli in an attempt to remain the Alpha brother a bit longer?  Check out this leaked voicemail from Peyton to Tom:

Bottom line is this: big game this weekend.  It’s gonna be tons of fun with delicious drinks, enticing sports drama, perhaps a chest bump or two, and so on and so forth.  Make happy hour the beginning on Friday until 9 (did I mention the half-price thing?).  Then, party upstairs on Friday night until you are blind and numb.  Re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday afternoon with movies and revelry and sweet, sweet tunes all day.  And finally make Rhino your spot for the Super Bowl.  There’s no bad seat in the house, unlike in Indianapolis.

Following the game, there will be a marvelous after-party, honoring the victor with praise but not class.  On Monday morning, plan to wake up for just long enough to call in sick, then pull the covers up over your head and smile, because you, my friend, have just experienced what it truly means to live.  If only Kierkegaard could see us now.

See you there!

Cheers!