after i left (without getting my drink), i soul-searched a little, thinking, was i wrong to be upset? i try to be an understanding person. bartenders at hoppin, douchey bars don’t have too easy a job. maybe it pays well, who knows, but it is still hard work. but i think what really gets me was that the person who got preferential treatment was such a entitled-prick archetype. in fact, another person got service before me even though i’d been waiting before her, but she wasn’t waving and bellowing like an imbecile, and my pulse stayed normal.

are entitled pricks good tippers? this one tipped $5 on a $35 tab.

so i took a stroll to heaven’s dog with the hopes that jackie patterson would be there. she wasn’t. i nonetheless enjoyed a couple of very fine drinks:

biarritz monk buck – armagnac, yellow chartreuse, lime, ginger
rattlesnake – rye, lemon, syrup, egg white, absinthe

no progress on the employment front.

tonight i will take a break from the ‘learn the classics’ series and instead mix something with the peaches that big sister and stuntman b are growing in their yard.

worse, the night we tried to get into nopa, those bitches were closed for their 3rd anniversary!

nopalito was still open and was pretty killa-dilla. nothing chases away cocktail blues like braised pork.

the folks took on babysitting duties. i left a double gin-basil-ginger cocktail in the fridge as a thank you to pops. i left a baby as a thank you to mops.

…

reading other cocktail blogs is informative and inspirational but also overwhelming. i have neither the heart nor the devotion nor the discretionary spending nor the taste to become a cocktail nerd deserving of respect, much less one that can maintain a proper, readable, blog.

…

this is tangential but i’m compelled to post an excerpt from this review of eccolo written in the prevailing yelp style and thus is a perfect example of why yelp so often makes me want to claw my eyes out:

Ouch.

I had some reservation about Eccolo only because…well, it’s in Berkeley, haha. I have this love/hate relationship with Berkeley – there are strips of this town that are pretty damn awesome. The rest of it…um…not-uh.

Anyway, apparently the street that Eccolo is located on, is the trendy spot of Berkeley…after a short walk along the street, I can see what they were talking about. Pretty cool actually.

So, here’s the 4 stars (borderline 3) – ya’ll gonna love this….

First of all, the menu changes CONSTANTLY – this ain’t no Chilli’s (Yes, I know that was double negative). It’s not the same all the time; the menu is printed daily on a slightly thick stock of paper – you can see the smears sometimes.

4-borderline-3 because the restaurant was out of some things he ordered, even though his backup choices were (a) “staggeringly fantastic” and “absolutely well made” and (b) comped.

my current dream is for yelp to allow custom filters, so i can eradicate Marvin J from my yelp experience, along with anyone who voted up any of his reviews, for good measure.

i didn’t love this, Marvin J! in fact it made my heart wither into a shell so frigid and brittle that i may never feel love again.