my tour through Louisville, July 6-8, 2012 (vignettes)

began my vacation last Friday, July 6-end vacation, Friday, July 13...back to work tomorrow to close

episode 1:

start of vacation: Capriole goat cheese @ Judy Schad's farm and bourbon @ Buffalo Trace Distillery

episode 2:

contemporaneous with trailblazing The Urban Bourbon Trail:
Blu@ The Marriott, The Old Seelbach Bar, Proof, Jockey Silks @ The Galt House, Dish on Main, and Doc Crowe's

ate @ Palermo Viejo, Dish, Harvest, The Overlook(Leavenworth, IN)

wineries: Huber Farms and Scout Mountain(run by Judy's cousin)

drank the White Dog(pure, distilled 126 proof spirits prior to aging @ Buffalo Trace)

drinks of note:

two completely different takes on the Sazerac
two excellent Manhattans
the rediscovered Seelbach cocktail
a flight of Four Roses
Horse's Neck
The Ambassador's Wife
white sangria
Eagle Rare
Buffalo Trace cream
Blanton's(of course)
Ancient Age
PBR

prevailed upon the Hilton's desk staff to avail our quartet of the chthonic demesne better known as The Rathskeller

and they also desecured the aerie of The Seelbach's Grand Ballroom...just for us

lucked upon Rufus Reid and co. performing at the old Seelbach bar

hung out with Kristin and John and Karen and Bill and Jennie

John and Kathy showed us a great time as always...being a veritable birthday boy, I was allowed to follow my whims and let the winds take us where they would...

episode 3:

This was also a bitter weekend:

Having recently given the book, Bitters, a go, I was rarin' to find bartenders(I hate the term mixologist) who when asked for a classic bourbon cocktail, might in return query what bitters might I prefer?

And it took a bit of searching, but, indeed, my experience is that Louisville bartenders know their shit

Sazerac Co. owns Buffalo Trace among many other spirits(they are globally traded). And, not for nothing, @ the distillery gift shop I found and purchased Peychaud's(the preferred aromatic bitters anointing a Sazerac) and Regan's orange bitters.

sideswiping in a sidecar a digression on the history of bitters and bitters availability(that's what the aforementioned lavishly-illustrated tome is for)...I was like a pig in shit...instead of buying signed bottles of Eagle Rare or Blanton's, or even a goof bottle of White Dog(the perfect spirit to offer your more inebriated friends at a party when you feel like scrubbing puke off the floor at 4 AM), instead I bought bitters...not even manufactured on site, but...that's the kind of geek I am...I DO sport a bright green hikingly-gay Teutonic Underberg backpack, after all

back to bitters:

except for a hiccup or two, we routinely found educated bartenders and evolved cocktail menus eschewing trends in favor of damn good local focus

to which I add to my previous list of drinks:

after the weird, chartreuse Sazerac on rocks(!?) I received at Harvest(I'm still not convinced they gave me what I ordered, except for the spicy Peychaud's), I drank a Summer in the Ohio Valley: New Amsterdam, muddled strawberries and cucumbers and some other shit lost to the haze of my 105 degree day supper of haute benedictine, house made pretzel roll(best EVER) & chow chow, burgoo(rabbit, pork, chicken, and the best summer vegetables on Earth), dessert, a wormhole-ridden white oak plank piled with pecan mint ice cream that tasted like you'd just popped a leaf of mint into your mouth, pillowy shortbreads lapped with mixed berry jam, and hand-formed truffles so gooey I was getting into scat, I swear...heat so great it plays tricks with the eyes...

episode 4:

hearts the ephemeral outgassing of the thousands of barrels of bourbon in their ricks; angels' share or perfume by another name, breathe deep...a scent just shy of pure alcohol, more like a boozy, vanilla, floral revery...so cool...

episode 5:

Yay! Birthday! I'm ain't doin' shit...

episode 6:

birthday supper was tod mun, tom kha gai, laab gai, mussaman curry @ Sawasdee in Indianapolis...only the second decent Thai resto in Indy(the other, and a rank higher imo, is Thai Spice in Greenwood, but that's too far away)...I rank Sawasdee as a mid-level, solid Thai American place, certainly not in the ranks of Chicago's best, or even Chicago's more solid Ameri-Thai places(like Opart), but for Indy...repository of the world's shittiest Thai...a veritable revelation...sadly, from the surrounding tables we heard only one dish being ordered; a concatenation of "pad thai, pad thai, pad thai"...It was our first time at Sawasdee and from execution to appropriate heat level, they did all right...

that was my last meal before having my second dental implant surgery today...it went smoothly...and now, I present to you: vicodin

last night(long story), I learned that my father(who is still planning to visit for a week from Houston in a week's time) has suffered at least two possible strokes, the last of which occurred Friday and is refusing to seek medical assistance

he's belligerent, aphasiac, and irrational on the phone; it was not until I threatened to call the Houston Police Department if his wife didn't contact me immediately, that she did and told me some of what's been going on

I also dug up my uncle's College Station, TX number and rang him up, of course, he didn't know

it was his birthday yesterday, too

So, as it stands, my father is acting like the world's greatest asshole insisting he will heal himself(and that he was able to before) meanwhile speaking with difficulty, fumbling the phone, hanging up on me, calling me some choice names, as well as, apparently, mowing the lawn, and painting the house

I've not spoken to him since last night

episode 7:

just watched Josh Trank's Chronicle; an amateurish, puerile waste of 90 min

even the ten yr old boy I keep chained and malnourished inside of me hated it

episode 8:

Just watched the Korean film, Sector 7, an overlong, yet creature-robust take on Host; nowhere near as entertaining, I fast-forwarded through most of it. Reading Stross's The Apocalypse Codex(yay!), Child's The Third Gate, and Rollins's Bloodline...I figured I'd get some beach reading in before I'm back to work Saturday. Maybe in spite of all the behind-the-scenes shit that's been going on, this vacation period's one of the few that's actually felt like time away. Now, if only I can motivate myself to continue with the housework I started yesterday after I finally started to feel human post-surgery and stepping down the pain meds.

episode 9:

sucks the Codeine remasters/additions aren't available as mp3's

Frigid Stars blew my mind waybackwhen I picked it up on cassette on a swing through Portland visiting my aunt

now Mark Eitzel's posted that his band is opening for Codeine tonight in LA

tmi: I just creamed my jeans

episode 10:

I could do for some more shatteringly-crisp fried chicken from The Overlook right about... ... ...now