" Mindful Drinking"

#258- For Archive: www.oaklanddupree@substack.com

When I read of this concept in the NY Times, my bullshit detector sounded off long and loud… “mindful drinking” is as much bullshit as “ drink responsibly” I thought. There was also a lengthy discussion on the subject on NPR. Apparently Gen Z and Millennials have discovered getting fucked up on booze is unhealthful to the body and mind, personal relationships, and social behavior, to say nothing of mayhem on the roadways and brawling…welcome to the club ! … (the usual OD caveat: this blog is comprised of my opinions and life experiences )… I am NOT a prohibitionist ! That “noble experiment” was tried in the USA and was a resounding failure that promoted gangsterism, corruption , smuggling , bootlegging, and crime on a massive , unmanageable level. Americans want the freedom of choice to imbibe spirits or not, and it is a huge industry with products readily available. Advertising alcoholic beverages is constant and unrelenting, assaulting us daily. I believe that American adults can make own their decisions on drinking alcohol or smoking weed…I base my IMHO ‘s on 20 years of tending bar and a robust drinking career from age 15 to 42, not to mention 25 years as a San Francisco cabbie driving drunks to and fro. I have exploited boozers for a living and helped them out of danger in those 45 years of working with drinkers... have witnessed so much misbehavior due to drinking … produced my very own bad outcomes as well. So much trouble ! Virtually all the heavy drinkers I knew and drank with are now either sober or dead. I quit drinking New Years Day 1990 with no regrets, other than saying goodbye to fine wines with meals. I believe viticulture is high art, but am very comfortable with abstinence… speaking of fine wines, while working on deliveries for Greenblatt’s in Hollywood ( Jewish Deli and upscale wine shop on Sunset Blvd.) in the late nineties. I was making a delivery to Francis Veber, a notable French director and masterful creator of farces and comedies ( La Cage Aux Folles, The Dinner Game, Buddy Buddy, Le Placard {The Closet} and many more) who lived part time in West Hollywood. I was to deliver four bottles of serviceable champagne e.g. Veuve Clicquot and a very rare and expensive bottle of vintage French Bordeaux. I packed them in a cardboard carton with 12 slots, putting the four bottles of bubbly in the corners and the Bordeaux ( worth about $300. then) in the center and took off on the delivery in the Greenblatt’s van placing the carton in the middle of the back area. I rounded a corner off Fountain Blvd. way too fast and the box tipped over with one heavy champagne bottle smashing the Bordeaux that had come loose of the box. Oh shit ! Veber is a very nice guy, but he was sadly disappointed on missing out on the irreplaceable Bordeaux. It was the only one left in Greenblatt’s. I was so embarrassed and remorseful of my fuckup , but the absolutely remarkable thing is the spilt wine stained the rug in the van and left an indescribably sweet and powerful perfume. I had never smelled an aroma of wine like that ! a complex and fabulous scent of fruit , flowers, and maybe herbs! I realized at that moment the concept of viticulture as truly high art.

The “mindful drinking ” folks suggest a period of dryness like several months to reflect on their drinking and how alcohol affects them psychologically, behaviorally, and physically. Of course , they admit that their process doe not work for alkies or booze abusers, sez Kenneth Stoller, a prof of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins U… No shit, Sherlock ! heh heh heh heh heh…Now , here in Marin, “mocktails” are all the rage , designer drinks with no alcohol selling for eight , twelve bucks or more at fancy dinner spots ...you know… coconut milk, blueberry juice, orgeat syrup, raspberry juice, cinnamon and nutmeg ( I just made that up !) Think Jamba Juice in a fancy glass with an elaborate fruit garnish…yeah, I know… bullshit! …remember as a child getting a Shirley Temple or a Roy Rogers ( grenadine in a 7UP or a Coke with a maraschino cherry on top) when going to a nice restaurant with your folks? Getting kids primed and indoctrinated for the cocktail life as an adult… I remember tending bar for large banquets of several hundred folks ( Diablo Country Club, HS Lordships) , beginning with “ cocktail hour” whether hosted or No Host ( buy your own drinks). If the event was hosted, hang on to your hat because it could turn into something disastrous. Anyway at the beginning of the cocktail hour, people were quiet and subdued, by the time the second drinks were being poured and quaffed, conversations engaged en masse, the place was a loud and roaring din, created by lubricated diners. Really quite astonishing , the power of alcohol on a large gathering in an hour’s time. Then the folks were seated for the banquet and we bartenders had a respite…My late buddy Kevin Graunstadt, a Vietnam Vet who owned a couple bars that I worked at ( Roundup Saloon in Lafayette California and Fan Club Saloon in Sutter Creek) used to brag about bars being a great investment because the liquor doesn’t spoil… ol’ Kev did not see the Pandemic coming ,when bars were closed up by gov’t order …no one did !… So , to my limited knowledge , the first drink or two of an alcoholic beverage acts as a stimulant to the human brain, every drink afterwards is a depressant… people get fucked up chasing that initial good feeling with sometimes sorry results. Maybe these young people are wise to contemplate mindfulness in their approach to drinking.

Bitz Und Pieces: In 1980, I came home to Lafayette from Amador County after some time working for Kevin at the Fan Club ( see above) and I was abstaining from drinking and decided I didn’t want to tend bar any more. They advertised for a Sandwich Maker at Bullock’s Department store in Walnut Creek. Bullock’s was an upscale chain of clothing and sundry emporiums associated with I Magnin where upper middle class ladies shopped. They had a restaurant with a nice luncheon menu and I got the job… quite a departure from tending bar in the Gold Country for lumberjacks, gold miners, lumber mill workers, and wild country women. I had experience making sandwiches beginning at 15 years old in NYC at Schrafft’s Restaurant, where kitchen boss Mrs. Kuntz put me on the line, when she was short a sandwich man. I became skilled at making BLT’s and tuna on rye… also had stints at Burger King, Ho Jo’s, IHOP, Jack in the Box, so I was eminently qualified for the Bullock’s gig…trendy at the time was the Pita Bread sandwich , a very delicate operation to prepare, without it falling apart. The pressure was on during a busy lunch. First you cut the top off the Pita, creating a pocket, then you slathered mayonnaise inside, adding lettuce , sliced tomato, sliced turkey or tuna salad, alfalfa sprouts, and sliced avocado, stick a fancy frilled toothpick in the sando, plate it with some potato chips or fruit salad and ring for the waitress. I was satisfied with the challenge and up to the work, when this busybody bossy manager lady, a corporate bozo about my age, came along while I was working and began kibbitzing. She started harping on my avocado slices and how at Bullock’s at Vallco Fashion Mall in San Jose , they put the avo slices in a pan of cold water. I told her no way I was going to do that. Ridiculous. When I worked a few years as day bartender at Velvet Turtle , sometimes I worked the sauté line at dinner after my bar shift if they were short a cook. I learned from a seasoned pro cook there how to skillfully half an avocado, spear the seed with the knife to remove it, and scoop the half avo out whole with a spoon, then slice it perfectly...anyway, a week later that annoying manager lady came back from San Jose , walked behind the line at my sandwich station and began ragging on me once more about submerging the sliced avocado in water and I told her NO ! she wouldn’t let it go so I said Fuck It ! and quit on the spot.. before I knew it I was back to tending bar and dealing with boozers who couldn’t give a shit about Pita sandwiches and avocados… Bullocks got scooped up by Macy’s and Vallco Fashion Mall was demolished and good riddance to a distant memory… LOL !… The Baby Bull has passed… former SF Giants slugger Orlando Cepeda is gone. He was a remarkable baseball player who in life overcame serioso drug and alcohol problemos… At 24 Willie Mays Plaza, the Giants ballpark opened in 2000, Cepeda had a wonderful concession stand in the centerfield bleachers of Caribbean food, the featured item was the Cha Cha Bowl, a bowl of rice covered with jerk chicken ,veggies and spicy sauces. Very tasty! It was all the sustenance needed for watching a ballgame. I would always get a Cha Cha Bowl, unless I went to a pre-game restaurant with my late buddy Herbie Herbert. Rest In Peace Orlando… Flashback ! To High School days:… my Grandmother innocently gifted me an album for Christmas, a comedy record by Nipsey Russell…little did Gramma know that Nipsey was a master of filthy double entendre…my HS chum Charlie Hager and I spent hours laughing our asses off to Nipsey…some bits : “ newlyweds on their honeymoon came down to breakfast, the hubby took a sip of his coffee and spit it out, bit his toast and his eggs and gagged, he shouted ‘Damn! Can’t you COOK either ?!’ also “ my uncle’s a rich man , he got himself an apartment over the bank building, why his assets over a million dollars ! ” and Nipsey calling a horse race with entries like Pussy Willow, My Dickie, Big Rubber, and Harass “ Big Rubber rolls out of the pack and lands on the nose of My Dickie looking for an opening, Harass will not run today, scratch harass…My Dickie wins by a head !” Nipsey was a laff riot back in the sixties !… 500 some pages into the 600 pager East Of Eden by John Steinbeck reinforces my argument for Steinbeck as greatest American novelist, at least he’s my fave writer…seen the film East Of Eden several times and in the novel Steinbeck gives elaborate histories of two families the Trasks and the Hamiltons, based partially on the author’s grandparents’ Irish American family that settled in the Salinas Valley . Steinbeck even narrates sometimes then switches back to third person. The action mostly takes place at the turn of the last century into the WWI era, though there is background on the East Coast beginning with the Civil War.. He writes at length of biblical parallels and whorehouses and the characters have extensive psychological depth. There is a principal character Lee , a Chinese man who wears his hair in a queue and speaks pidgin to racist ignoramuses, but in actuality is educated , articulate, and a very wise speaker of the King’s English. He is a vital and influential force on all the main characters in the novel, which was not developed in the film. Glad I read this towering, deeply nuanced literary work!

July Heat Wave Viewing: Call Northside 777 (1948) In NYC in the early 60’s they had Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 where they ran the same movie for a week shown twice daily. I watched flicks like The High And Mighty(1954) and Call Northside 777 over and over again. Jimmy Stewart ,a skeptical Chicago newspaper reporter eventually tries to exonerate a guy ( Richard Conte) wrongfully convicted of murdering a cop, Jimmy’s character is involved based on a human interest story that he wrote of an old woman who scrubbed floors for many years to raise reward money to free her son. The characters are mostly Polish American and the highest technology of the time is employed for proof of innocence. Good picture…Papillon(1973) Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman try to escape the French Penal Colony in Guyana and eventually Devil’s Island based on an autobiography of a man named Henri Charriere who was convicted of murdering a pimp in the 20’s. I read the book in high school and loved it …was primed and ready for the movie which came years later… a cracking good adventure of prison and escape. A minor young character, Lariot, is killed early in the picture and was played by Bill Mumy ( Lost In Space : “danger, Will Robinson !”) In 1996 on my last day as an SF Yellow Cab driver, I picked up a flag on California Street , on a Sunday afternoon, a guy with light luggage going to SFO. It was Mumy who was appearing at a Trekkie convention at Masonic Auditorium. I asked Billy if he lived in LA. He said yeah. I said “me too !” and Mumy did a fabulous double-take that made me LOL. I had already gotten my pad in West Hollywood and was moving that week to find acting work. I explained that to Mumy and we bullshit all the way to the airport. He told me of his music and the band he was in, but I never got to see them…oh well… The Narrow Margin(1952) A great Film Noir that I’ve seen a half dozen times… an LA police detective accompanies a mobster’s wife from Chicago to LA on a train. The woman is played by super sexy fox Marie Windsor and the cop by Charles McGraw, a veteran Noir guy. The women is to be a star witness at a mob trial and she is a target for assassination. Surprise twist in plot and great action. Damn good one !…The Conversation (1974) Fifty fucking years old is this Francis Ford Coppola joint ! Francis’ success on The Godfather allowed him to make this pet project that he wrote, produced and directed and shot in San Francisco... a tale of Harry Caul( Gene Hackman) a surveillance expert who makes his own bugs, mics and equipment in his loft at the foot of Potrero Hill, Caul gets tangled in a murder plot after filming and recording a conversation between a young couple in Union Square ( Frederick Forrest and Cindy Williams). I listened to Francis’ commentary on the DVD and he stated that he was largely inspired by Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up ( a Johnny Stallion fave) The Conversation is top notch filmmaking and I’d say after a half century it’s right up there with Blow Up for artistic quality, though Blow Up had that ultra fab Yardbirds musical sequence. Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Alan Garfield, and Teri Garr also appear…Tomorrow Is Another Day(1951) An ex -con and a taxi dancer lam it out of New York City after a detective was shot and killed. Ruth Roman is the femme fatale and Steve Cochran the poor sap who falls for her, but their fortunes change and true romance appears in this Film Noir that satisfies…Wreck Of The Mary Deare(1959) Charlton Heston and Gary Cooper are sea-going men involved in a salvage scheme that is thwarted by criminal enterprises, masquerading as legit shipping business. Richard Harris is the villain , as is the asinine British legal system .Fairly entertaining nautical action… Casablanca (1942) Perhaps the greatest American movie of them all. Have watched it a couple dozen times, this occasion on the Fourth of July. Bogie as American saloon keeper Rick in French Morocco gets to bang the woman that broke his heart, mess her mind , and send her on her way with her hubby, a famed anti-Nazi freedom fighter. It’s all very civilized and well played. Humphrey Bogart didn’t have to stretch to portray the boozing , chain smoking Rick, habits that in real life didn’t allow him to age past his fifties. A classic film From Warner Brothers, though I would have cast Hedy Lamarr as Ilsa Lund, but Hedy was property of Sam Goldwyn at MGM, Warner’s rival studio... No Questions Asked(1951) A Film Noir penned by Sidney Shelton with Barry Sullivan, a jilted lover who builds an enterprise as a go-between recovering stolen merchandise from crooks and returning them for huge rewards from insurance companies. A fun and entertaining obscure picture with Arlene Dahl… Streamers : The House That Dragons Built ( HBO 2024) I watched this documentary series first episode and was very impressed with the making of the fantasy series House of the Dragon. The artisans, technicians, stunt people, artists and camera folks, mostly Brits, are 100% involved, completely buying into the silly story. The hundreds of millions spent on this series allows these craftsmen ( and women) to perform stupendous creative work. The sets, costuming, production design, camera techniques, and stunt acting are as good as it gets in the movie industry. The thought and detail put into making the jousting armor for instance, is truly amazing. The sculptors make life sized models of dragons. I have new respect for this series, though I believe a lot of the acting ( not the stunt work) and the fantasy storyline is laughable and childish. Reminded of Mel Brooks poking fun at Roman movies , because the “Romans” all have British accents. Ditto on House of the Dragons…binging the first three seasons of The Larry Sanders Show (1992-98 HBO) The genius Garry Shandling takeoff on late night talk shows. It occurred to me that watching this series is like a stroll through the graveyard…appearing in those three seasons are : Shandling, Rip Torn, Alex Trebek, Richard Lewis, Warren Zevon, George Segal, Regis Philbin, Martin Mull, Gene Siskel, Suzanne Somers, Phil Leeds, Chris Farley, Burt Reynolds, Hugh Hefner, Robin Williams. Louie Anderson and John Ritter, all dearly departed…Intimations of Mortality !… Torn and Shandling are just fab and super funny, skewering show biz with brilliance. Sidekick Hank “ Hey Now” Kingsley ( Jeffrey Tambor) can be quite annoying especially wearing an array of hideously ugly brown suits the first couple seasons. Probably intended.

Songs Of The Day:

Whiskey River- Willie Nelson

Drinking Champagne- Jerry Lee Lewis

Jack Straw - Grateful Dead

Knock On Wood- Dooley Wilson

Willin’ - Little Feat

( All available on YouTube)