Drunk History, volume 5

In honor of the election, the tale of William Henry Harrison.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

I Have Never Been More Proud of My Country

A Sad Week for Country Fans

I gave the man who later became my husband a serious second look after I saw him sporting a vintage blue snap-button shirt, and fell for him after discovering a shared love of classic country. So thanks, Jack A. Weil and Don Helms, for making my life a whole lot better.

Denver Wester wear maker Jack Weil dies at 107

Don Helms, 81, Who Put the Twang in the Hank Williams Songbook, Is Dead

I Couldn't Have Said It Better

From the mp3 blog Said the Gramophone:

In many respects, My Morning Jacket have improved since their first album, 1999's The Tennessee Fire. The production on that album is muddled and scratchy, whereas their latest recording, this year's Evil Urges, is as perspicuous and loud as a bachelor is an unmarried man. On their first record, missed notes and wobbly tempos litter the songs, though neither fault is anywhere to be found on the band's latest. But as MMJ have honed their skills, progressed unrelentingly toward the realization of their vision - let's call it indie-arena-Southern-rock - casualties have been left in the wake. One such loss is that of tenderness, which can be heard so clearly - despite the dubious production - on this song from the band's debut. Listen, for instance, to the ritardando into the chorus, and then to the delicate step up as Jim James sings the song's title, his voice breaking up amid the ghostly reverberations of his bandmates' vocal backing.

Listen

Wouldn't Kick Him Out of Bed: Jemaine Clement

I would like Jemaine Clement (he's the one with the glasses) to be my imaginary boyfriend. Actually, when I think about it, he's already my imaginary boyfriend. And it's been incredibly rewarding.

The Wiki Game

What you need: Two computers outfitted with the interweb.

What you do:

1) Go to Wikipedia.

2) Click "random article."

3) Agree with your opponent that the random article is, indeed, a random article.

4) Open another window.

5) Go to Wikipedia.

6) Click on "random article."

7) Opponent does same (say, for example, your goal is to get to the page "Lord Snowdon." "Lord Snowdon" is Article 1. Opponent 1 tries to get to "Lord Snowdon" from "Theoretical Mathematics" and Opponent 2 tries to get to "Lord Snowdon" from "The Beatles.").

8) Try to get to Article 1 from the links in Article 2.

9) First one to get to Article 1 from Article 2 wins.

10) Repeat ad nauseum.

The Itch

The most disgusting — and disturbing — story I've ever read.

The Greatest Rock Band Ever Debate

For several months now, whenever there's a lull in conversation between friends over beers, I ask them their opinions about the greatest rock band of all time.

I don't have the answer, but what interests me is the people who think they do (those people always, always — unequivocally and without hesitation — answer The Who). The rest of us have to think about it.

The criteria for this discussion:

1) It has to be a rock band. Derivatives of rock, such as punk, are accepted. Folk is not.

2) The band has to be an actual band, not just one person.

3) Things to take into consideration: how the band stands the test of time, influence on other bands, etc., etc.

4) You will know a valid contender when you hear it. Rush is always the wrong answer.

5) Your favorite band and the best band of all time may not necessarily be the same.

Almost no one has said the Beatles, which I can't figure out. Are they too pop? No one has said the Replacements. Girls vote for Led Zeppelin. No one has considered the Jimi Hendrix Experience or the Stooges or MC5 or Fleetwood Mac or Big Star or the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. Most people choose bands that were defunct long before they were born (the cockroach-like Rolling Stones are the exception).

If I had to pick ... well, I still can't pick definitively. It'll take a few more beers.

That's How I Got to Memphis

We are trying to swing an Avett Brothers/My Morning Jacket weekend. It could be the greatest. Weekend. Ever.

Check out a few new songs from the Avetts.

Obama!

FINALLY.

Picon Punch

Depending on your drunk, Picon Punch is either the best thing you'll ever have or, in the words of our friend Noble, "ass Coke." It is not for the faint-hearted. It is the raw oyster of drinks, the fastest way to a hangover this side of the Rockies, and it leaves one hell of an aftertaste. It could have only been invented by Basques.

Picons are a rare breed; you will find them in Basque bars in Boise, Nevada, Bakersfield ... and that's about it. Picon is a liqueur made from oranges and some mysterious "flowers." All you really need to know about it is that it is red and tastes a bit like liquid Ricola. Flora Aldazabal at the Basque Center makes the best Picon Punch in Boise, but even she admits that if you want to encounter some serious Picon drinkers you have to venture south to Nevada.

This video is from the Star in Elko, which is where I have had some of the best meals of my life.



Picons used to be made with Amer Picon; depending on whom you talk to, the absence of Amer Picon these days is due to a trade war (you figure that one out) or low profit margins. Picons are now made with the American Torani Picon, but my husband is making his own. It involves steeping orange peels in alcohol for eight months. I don't ask too many questions, but I'll let you know the end result.

The Avett Brothers

I have been reluctant to write about the Avett Brothers. There's that natural worry that comes when you love something so much and decide to share it with other people — kind of like taking a new boyfriend to meet your friends for the first time. Are they going to notice that sparkle in his eye? Are they going to think his jokes are funny? Are they going to get that he is, in fact, the greatest thing in the world at this very moment? You know what I mean.

I finally got a chance to see them — I had missed their now-famous (but dismally attended; it was the opening night of Bronco football) concert in Boise in August — last week at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland. There are currently four guys playing in the band: Scott and Seth Avett, two brothers from North Carolina who play the banjo and acoustic guitar, respectively; Bob Crawford, the stand-up bass player; and Joe Kwon, their sometime cello player. The Crystal Ballroom was sold out, but Parker and I managed to get really close to the stage. I thought the blonde girl to my right was going to faint, as if she were seeing the Beatles at Shea Stadium.

I've been to many, many concerts, but this was really one of the best. They seemed genuinely surprised to see so many people at their show and thanked the crowd profusely. For two hours, Bob twirled his bass and Seth screamed into the microphone; Scott jumped on the amps and Joe hoisted his cello into the air. They came out for two encores. By the end of the last encore it looked like they needed IVs. It was rad. It's amazing how much sound they can coax out of acoustic instruments and their voices, and it's amazing that they can put so much into songs that they have sung over and over and over again (they took about two months off this year. Their fans left messages on their website encouraging them to rest).

It's hard to describe their music, other than that they are anti-irony and emo without being emo. I started listening to them after several years of hearing overly self-aware math rock, and it was nice — and still is nice — to play music made by people who just love music and telling stories.

Jackie and Larry Sing

There is nothing — NOTHING! — on YouTube as awesome as Jackie and Larry. These are two karaoke lovers who joined up to make their own channel to cover country classics, though occasionally they veer into "Rocky Horror Picture Show" territory.

They have 28 videos and it's obvious that they have put a lot of work into these — check out the themed backgrounds! I highly suggest their Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers offerings.

Check it out

'Careless Whisper'

Lately I've been checking out ridiculous covers on YouTube. I ask you: Is there a better cover song than "Careless Whisper?" You tell me. I have done the hard work of going through every "Careless Whisper" cover on the YouTubes for you. Here is the best one, ready for your enjoyment. (Although what is my favorite cabaret singer doing with Ben Folds? I thought he just had that one abortion song.)




******************
Happy birthday, Parker Jr.

'Footballers' Wives'

I'm a little late to the "Footballers' Wives" party, unfortunately, but I have been making up for it with an almost slavish devotion. It cheers me to know that the British are even better at making trashy TV than we are. (I say that in awe.)

I was looking for something to replace "The L Word," the super tacky Showtime lesbian drama that I have watched faithfully for a few years but that has added too many characters who aren't the least bit fun to watch. Not so with "Footballers' Wives"! If "The L Word" is a candy bar, "Footballers' Wives" is mainlining insulin.

The show ran from 2002-2006 and follows the WAGs (wives and girlfriends) of Earl's Park, a fictional Premiereship team in London. (I got through the first season without realizing that they were saying "earl's" and not "ells.") The main character is Tanya Turner, the blonde, brittle ice queen who is the wife of the slutty team captain Jason Turner.

I cannot say enough about Tanya Turner. I love her so much. I didn't watch "Dynasty" in the '80s, but if I had I imagine that I would have felt the same for Alexis Carrington Colby. Tanya is so scheming yet transparent that you can't help but root for her. Whether she's snorting coke in a ladies' room stall, hiring a body double to do her community service or quoting Robbie Williams during a eulogy, she does it all with fabulous frosty eye makeup and a cheap golddigger wardrobe straight out of the back pages of the Victoria's Secret catalog.

What I love the most about "Footballers' Wives," aside from the trashtastic Tanya, is that it just abandons any pretense of keeping up storylines. Characters — even central characters — are dumped without a hint of explanation or killed off unceremoniously. And thank God. Can someone please do this to Eva Longoria Parker? Every time I get sick of a character he or she conveniently gets traded to another team or dies of anorexia. And nothing is off limits when it comes to advancing the plot: Hermaphrodites, sex with unconscious people, strap-ons, and pedestrian topics like kidnapping, the mile-high club and bribery have all made appearances.

I'd write more, but I have to find out what happened to the rookie and his new bride after they crash landed a hot-air balloon.

'Daddy's Cup'

I really wish that I was savvy enough to put an MP3 player on this site, but, alas, I'm not. So you guys are going to have to hang in there with me.

Lately I've been listening to a lot of Drive-By Truckers because they're going to be here in a couple of weeks. (Finally!) I love all of their songs, but this is far and away my favorite. It is better than almost any short story I've ever read. There's a reason why Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood are the best songwriters in the business today.



In case you can't make it out, with apologies for the extra long post.

Before I could walk, I had a wrench in my hand
I was my Mama's little angel and my Daddy's second chance
He went end over end the first year he went pro
Lost part of his eyesight and he couldn't race no more

But he never lost his touch when he got underneath the hood
He knew how to make them run and he knew one day he would
See his name in victory lane and engraved on that cup
Just like all them other crazy fools with racing in their blood

He would put me on his lap when he'd drive and I'd take the wheel
He'd say "What do you think about that son? How does she feel?
You just wait till them little legs get long enough to reach the gas
Once you put her on the floor one time there ain't no turning back"

Every Saturday, he'd take me out to the garage
He'd take an empty bucket and fill it full of engine parts
He's sit me down and pour em out in front of me on the floor
I'd have to tell him what each one was and what each one was for

We'd jump into the car and go down to the race that night
He'd tell me what each driver was doing wrong and what each one did right
He could always pick the winner before they ever took a curve
#3 might have the car but 43 has got the nerve

Before I turned 18 Daddy said "Now pretty soon
You'll be old enough to drive but I'll leave it up to you
I taught you all about it, taught you everything I know
You gotta have a car to do it and you gotta work and buy your own"

The first one I bought was a Mustang #2
Nobody kept'em any longer than they kept a pair of shoes
They started showing up at every used car lot in town
A V-8 on a go-cart, easy terms, no money down

Me and Daddy and my uncle took her home and tore her down
Checked her out real good, cleaned her up and bored her out
Took out all the seats, pulled the carpet off the floor
Knocked out all the glass and welded up the doors

The first time that I raced my qualifying was a shame
I started out way in the back and came back about the same
I pulled her in the pit, couldn't look my Daddy in the eye
He said "If you quit now son, it's gonna haunt you all your life"

It ain't about the money or even being #1
You gotta know when it's all over you did the best you could've done
Knowing that it's in you and you never let it out
Is worse than blowing any engine or any wreck you'll ever have

Since then I've wrecked a bunch of cars and I've broke a bunch of bones
It's anybody's race out there and I've learned to race my own
I'd shove em in the wall and I'd hit em from behind
I'd let them know that I was there, I'd let them know that track was mine

It's been several years now since my Daddy passed away
But his picture's on my dash every time I go to race
I lost more than I won but I ain't gonna give up
Till they put me in the ground or Daddy's name's on that cup

The Hopemonger

This morning, I listened to Barack Obama speak at a rally. In Boise!

Everything I had heard — and hoped — is true. He really IS that cool: incredibly eloquent, amazingly magnetic, absolutely inspiring and very dynamic. He was funny, he was stylish, he was handsome, he was intelligent, he was on message. He played Stevie Wonder and the Chi-Lites. He was, in a word, cool.

We waited in line for 45 minutes to get a seat, and there were thousands of people who lined up in 25-degree weather with us. The 12,000-seat venue was standing room only, and they had to set up speakers outside so that the overflow crowd could hear. This is unheard of in Idaho. The last time we had a major political figure give a stump speech here was in the 1970s when Frank Church ran against Jimmy Carter in the primary. And he was a native.

I'm going to caucus for Obama on Tuesday. I know it sounds corny, but I am incredibly excited to do this. Everyone always talks about the Kennedys and how they felt about JFK or Bobby. I didn't think that would ever come along in my generation. I thought that maybe we were all too cynical for someone like that, and who could ever have that much charisma? But this may be the guy. If he loses on Tuesday it won't be for lack of trying, but if he loses we will be missing the greatest opportunity to change the status quo in the last 45 years.

'In Treatment'

After reading the 50 kajillion articles about HBO's new series, "In Treatment," in the New York Times (seriously, do their editors ever talk to each other?) this weekend, I downloaded the whole set on iTunes. For free! Thanks, HBO. But why can't you say "fuck" on iTunes?

Anyway. The series follows a therapist, Paul, as he talks to his patients. There are five half-hour episodes — Monday through Thursday features Paul's patients, and Friday focuses on the doctor's own session with his psychiatrist.

It really is a train wreck of a show. So far there are no redeemable people, no one you would actually want to hang out with. Except for maybe Dr. Paul. There's Laura (Monday), a breathy twentysomething who is in love with Paul; Alex (Tuesday), a Navy pilot (a totally compelling Blair Underwood) who is dealing with his role in the Iraq war; Sophie, a gymnast.

My favorite is Jake and Amy. Amy went through five years of fertility treatments, but now that she's pregnant she wants an abortion. He's a schlubby ass. She's a rich liar in a white suit. She may be having an affair. He may be emotionally abusive. They are horrible, horrible people. I have no idea why I like watching them, other than that it makes me feel better about myself.

The little things are really what make this show. After Laura tells Paul she loves him, you can hear his unseen wife upstairs. She stares at him as he unconsciously twists his wedding ring on his finger. There are almost no opening credits, no big "Sopranos"-style theme song + montage. When I got done watching, I thought, wow. That was really well acted. And: Thank God I'm not a therapist.

Hug Me, Don't Eat Me

I went down to California last weekend for a pig killing.

For those of you who don't think you read that right: Every year, my family gets together with a few other Basque families to butcher the pigs we'll need for the next year. We make the traditional sausages — chorizo, mortzilla (that's blood sausage) — cure ham and and package up the salomo and pig's feet that will make its way into holiday dishes (or, in my mom's case, losing bets).

I could tell you about how much this means to me because it preserves tradition and is a rapidly dying art, or that there's value in seeing where that ham came from and how the animal suffered for you, but I know that the two readers of this blog aren't interested in that. So!

I hadn't been down to the pig killing — held every January for generations — for five whole years, due to assorted illnesses, bad weather, work schedule ... you know the drill. Since I was last down two very important people have died, a Portuguese family and a Japanese family have joined in, and now about 80 people show up to drink, watch the proceedings and eat like it's Thanksgiving all over again.

The morning starts out with spiked coffee and the husband-and-wife butchers, who dispatch the poor pigs and get them ready for the rest of us. And by the rest of us I mean the dads of the group. I spent most of the morning drinking, talking to my relatives and taking pictures. Eventually I thought that I should, you know, do something, so I went to help my mom separate intestines for sausage casings. That's really not as gross as it sounds. They're already clean and packed in salt in Denmark, bizarrely. Due they have some sort of intestine industry? Back in the day, cleaning the intestines was the job for the girl rookies. Imagine marrying into that.

After a totally awesome lunch (worth another post, really) of lamb everyone made the mortzillak. Blood sausage really isn't as bad as it sounds, but it's pretty great for freaking people out because it's made from the fresh blood and the offal from the pig. It tastes rich, but it isn't heavy or greasy. It tastes ... dark. If the darkest of dark chocolates could be reincarnated, it would show up as blood sausage.

Everyone breaks at dusk and eats the mortzillak, grabbing french bread and glasses of wine off of the bed of a truck pulled up to make a dinner counter. And then we drink some more. Too much, in my case. It took me three days to recover and all of my pictures from about 6 p.m. on are blurry.

The next day started out with the ancient grinder breaking down and an accidental stabbing after one of the men cutting up the hogs let his knife slip. He's fine after some stitches and staples, but the sheriff's office had to call (call!) to ask about the stabbing. "We're just butchering some hogs," the person who answered said. Apparently that's a good enough explanation in Stanislaus County. We weren't sure if we should be comforted or worried by that.

After mixing together the chorizo according to each family's specifications, everything gets packaged up. I wish I could have stayed for the big breakfast the next morning, when everyone tries out the chorizo, but no luck. I was on a plane back to Idaho by 6:30 a.m., nursing my hangover and thinking about next year.

One D at a Time

I'm kind of addicted to One D at a Time, Tracie "Slut Machine" Eagan's blog. (Slut Machine is her nom de plume, in case you aren't a reader of the completely fantastic and smart Jezebel.)

If I were a 28-year-old chick in with huge tits and a weed problem living in New York and getting over my porn star ex, I would aspire to have a blog 1/10th as awesome as hers. I'd settle for this blog being 1/250th as awesome as hers, to tell the truth. I talk a lot about how America needs to rise up against puritanical thinking and pass out condoms in school and keep abortion legal blah blah blah other good liberal things, but there is no way that I would ever have the balls to talk about the things she does and put my name on them.

A few recent subjects: Hooking up with an acquaintance at her own New Year's Eve party and not being able to finish the sentence because of imminent puking; interrupting Dr. Ruth at lunch and asking her about period sex; watching boys jack off on the Internet while using her Hitachi Magic Wand; putting pictures of her cleavage up in order to attract a date ... You get the picture.

It'll make you feel like an nun.

I'm a Man! I'm 40!

Our friend Nick recently turned 40, and to celebrate he embarked on a months-long journey to document the best songs of his lifetime — four for every year. No repeats of bands, either. The result is one of the greatest things I've ever seen, not only because it's such a rad idea, but because the collection came with, like, 24 pages of liner notes.

The liner notes elevate the two-disc set from just a fun set of songs to a work of art. Seriously. I don't know why more people don't do this. Probably because you have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of rock music and a memory like an elephant's. Luckily, Nick has both. A sample from the year 1987:

"Welcome to the Jungle (Guns N Roses): Arguably the most influential album of the 1980s and one that didn't have a weak song. I won a trip to see them in Dayton once and it was the infamous show where they played until 3:30 a.m. This disc was a party staple at our eipc Lakeview parties with Dan Michael, the Reckhemmer brothers and Teresa Saile. Wild Turkey was always served. That stuff is nasty. Those were fun days with those guys and Colleen Buggy and her friends. Colleen and I always said we were going to throw a 'Purim' party after we saw that holiday on a calendar. Never happened. Too bad."

The liner notes also list Nick's pick for best restaurants around the country, broken down by categories: cheap, steak, Italian, chicken wings ... And! There's a bonus disc with the honorable mentions and clips of Nick's many, many contest wins on a radio station in Ohio (where he was named the all-time contest winner and had his own commerical) and soundbites from Mike Gundy, who provided the inspiration for the title.

It would be the coolest if Nick would start a blog so that everyone could contribute their own lists, but, understandably, the guy's a little bit worn out.