BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I have a hobby.

No… Not the one where I dress up in my wife’s lingerie and sing “I’m So Pretty” while playing badminton with the mushroom tripping squirrels in the back yard.

Errr… Ummm… Forget I ever said that, okay?

But seriously, I do have a hobby. A couple of them, in fact, and if book sales don’t pick up soon the IRS is going to consider my profession a hobby as well. But, that a different story…

The particular hobby in question here, however, is Home Brewing. Yeah, the making of drinkable fermented beverages such as Beer, Wine, and Mead. For someone who enjoys cooking as much as I do, well, brewing seemed like a no-brainer in the hobby department. Now, the truth is I don’t get to engage in my hobbies as much as I once did. This whole writing, touring, promotional marketing of oneself thing takes up far more time than I ever imagined it would. But, I still brew up a batch of Beer or Mead when I have some downtime and I’m looking for a fun activity.

Before we go any further here, I suppose I should define Mead for Brainpan Leakage readers who don’t happen to know what it is… Mead is basically a wine. In its purest form it is nothing more than Honey, Water, and Yeast. Mix Honey and Water, boil, skim off impurities, cool, add Yeast, allow to ferment. From there things can get a bit interesting with variations on the old standby – these being Pyments (fermented with grape juice as an adjunct), Melomels (Meads containing fruit), and Metheglins (Meads containing spices and/or herbs)…

I have made all varieties of Meads over the years. I have even made Meads fortified with other alcohols, and named after characters in my books. Most notably, Miranda Mead.

Emblazoned upon the risque label, Miranda Mead carried with it a tagline which read: Guaranteed to hurt you…  Bad… (Yes, I know, It should be badLY. It’s a label, gimme a break…)

Beneath this was an explanation which went on to outline exactly why those of us involved in the bottling of this particular Mead thought such (which is, of course, why it was named after Miranda in the first place, what with the character being a homicidal dominatrix and all…)

Of course, those eagle eyed among you probably noticed the words “Felicity O’Brien Sweet Dessert Mead.” Well, yes, that was the base for the Miranda Mead, what with their intimate connection and all. We won’t go into that here since some of you blog readers may not have read that far in the series just yet. So, the long and short of it is, yes, I created a recipe for a special Sweet Mead which was named after Felicity. Its label even contained the O’Brien Coat of Arms.

At this point I should add an important disclaimer so that I don’t end up getting a mess of email about this – None of this Mead is for sale or commercially available. It is home brewed for personal use, so please DO NOT even ask. It ain’t gonna happen. Hell, my brother-in-law is an ATF agent, so breaking that particular set of laws would be a doubly stupid move on my part now wouldn’t it?

So… Now that you are armed with the above information, I have a confession to make… No, not the thing with the lingerie… What I need to admit here is that I really cannot stand Mead. Seriously. It just isn’t my thing. There are a few meads I have had that are drinkable – Miranda Mead being one of them, Moniak another, and a Hot Ginger Mead made by a friend of mine the third. But if given the choice I’d reach for a beer instead. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with mead. It’s just not my thing.

So, I am sure you are wondering why I would bother to brew something I don’t particularly like. Well, that’s simple. I make it so that I have it on hand for my friends because several of them really do like it.

A lot.

In fact, I have one friend in particular who will crawl naked across shards of broken glass, layered on top of hot coals in an unmapped mine field while being chased by starving Basset Hounds just so he can kiss E Kay’s arse to get some… (Some Mead, that is… Not some… Well… You know…)

Yeah… You heard me. He sucks up to E K who wouldn’t even know where to start in the process of making Mead. Remember the Tuna Helper incident? She may be the Queen Bitch of the Whole F*cking Universe, but she knows better than to mess around in the kitchen. She has a lackey for that sort of thing, namely moi.

Still, that simple fact doesn’t stop Mike… Just the other day we were having a BBQ and there he sat on our back deck nursing what dregs were left of a bottle of Felicity O’Brien Mead. Just for the record, he has almost single handedly wiped out the entire batch, which means it is time for me to make more. Not that I mind in the least. I’m ecstatic that he likes it so much… But I digress… (So what’s new about that?)

You see, he had no more finished the last swig from the bottle than he looked up at E K and said, “I really can’t believe that you are XX years old.”

“What?” E K asked, blue fire kindling in her eyes at the very idea that someone might be implying she is a liar.

“You don’t look a day over 40,” Mike returned.

“Dude, you’re in trouble now. She’s only 27,” I told him. Unfortunately, my bid to trip him up fell on deaf ears.

“42, tops,” he continued, totally unfazed.

E K, not sure what to make of this, went inside and stood in front of the liquor cabinet angrily tapping her foot until someone had the presence of mind to crawl into the kitchen, mix a drink, and present it to her with much ceremony and the appropriate level of deference to her status as Eebil Queen. Satisfied for the moment, she returned to the deck with her Vodka-Tonic in hand.

“37,” Mike announced before she’d even stopped moving. “You’re just gorgeous. You don’t look a day over 37.”

“Dude… A minute ago you said 42,” Johnathan jibed.

“Yeah, right,” E K replied, then took a sip of her drink.

You could hear the amusement in her voice, but at the same time you could see in her eyes that she was basking in the glow of his effusive Redhead worship. Still, those of us who know E K well were perfectly aware of the fact that she was trying to figure out what was handy that she could beat him with in case he slipped up and said the wrong thing.

I wandered down the stairs to the grill and flipped the Bratwursts, then closed the lid and made my way back up to the picnic table. It had been quiet for a few minutes now, but I had no more planted my rear on a seat than Mike looked up at E K and began to gesture.

“Look at her,” he announced. “I’m telling you this woman is absolutely gorgeous. She doesn’t look a day over 35.”

“Did anyone else notice that the number keeps going down?” Johnathan asked.

“Johnathan,” E K replied coolly. “Do you really want me to knock you down and stomp on you?”

“No ma’am,” he replied.

“I didn’t think so,” she observed, then turned her attention back to Mike. “You were saying?”

Mike became even more animated than his normal cartoonish self. “I was saying you’re just gorgeous. You don’t look a day over 32… No… Make that 30. Not a day over 30…”

Now, remember where we left off folks – 30… This will be important later in the story…

It was at this particular moment that I spied the empty bottle of Felicity Mead and realized what he was doing. As it happens, his wife, Anastasia, was on the same wavelength with me – what with us both being a little brainpan bent and all – and she spoke up before I had a chance.

“Mike,” she told him. “You’re sucking up to the wrong person. Kat didn’t make the Mead, Murv did.”

“I’m not after more Mead,” he objected.

“Yeah, right,” Anastasia replied. “Sure you aren’t.”

“Really,” he persisted.

E K took another sip of her drink and like the ice-cold, redheaded assassin woman she is, went in for the kill. You could see the giddiness in her eyes as she told him, “It’s all gone, Mike.”

“It’s all gone?” He asked.

She nodded then grinned her evil grin. “Yes. All gone.”

“Yeah, dude,” I added. “She doesn’t have anymore. You drank it all.”

He was quiet for a minute then countered with, “Well, that’s okay. I wasn’t trying to get more Mead anyway. I’m serious, just look at her. She really and truly doesn’t look a day over 40…”

To this day, Mike swears he wasn’t sucking up in order to get more Mead, but I’m a little suspect of that, given how the years seemed to melt away from the Evil One without the help of Botox or even Oil of Olay.

Not that she needs any years to melt away, trust me. And I’m definitely not just saying that so she won’t stomp on my head. It doesn’t matter, because she’ll find a reason to stomp on me anyway.

The thing is Mike was so close to the prize it was scary – There was actually another bottle of Mead in the house and if he’d ratcheted her age down to 25 or so she just might have given it to him.

More to come…

Murv

This is probably going to sound a bit weird, but I think maybe Jerry Garcia came back as a squirrel and he’s living in my back yard with a whole raft of furry dead-heads.

Yeah, I’m sure you are probably wondering what I’ve been smoking that would make me think such a thing, but interestingly enough, that’s kind of the point behind this whole blog entry. Not the smoking per se, but the ingestion of psychedelic substances, and no, I’m not talking about a rainbow bomb pop from the ice cream dude.

Now, as a rule, I think squirrels are pretty cool. After all, I am a devout follower of Foamy, and I regularly exchange Tweets on Twitter with Butters The Squirrel. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these two tree dwelling rodents, Foamy is the activist with a foul mouth, and Butters is quite a bit more of a pacifist. Basically, I suppose I am covering all of the bases in the event of an unexpected “Squirrel Uprising.”

Now, lest you think I am merely playing both sides against the middle, I am also a great supporter of the squirrel kingdom across the board. I have a pinwheel feeder which I keep stocked with feed corn (incidentally, my father-in-law calls it a squirrel gymnasium), and when winter rolls around and the temperature drops off, a big part of my morning routine is preparing breakfast for the tree rats. I do this by breaking a couple of slabs of Ramen noodles into squirrel friendly sized pieces, then coating them with chunky peanut butter and rolling them in sunflower seeds & feed corn. Not exactly gourmet, but I haven’t had any complaints yet. In fact, Clem and Cletus, a couple of my regulars, can often be found peering into our dining room from the picture window while they wait for the restaurant to open.

But, let’s get back to Jerry and the Dead Heads living in my back yard. You see, I’m actually old enough to remember Jerry. I’m also old – and experimentally curious – enough to have experienced the Dead Head culture. Now, I never actually followed The Grateful Dead across the US in a beat up microbus. Truth is, I never even attended a Dead concert in person (I could only afford just so many concert tickets). However, this is not to say that in my younger, wilder, less inhibited, and somewhat stupider years I didn’t maybe partake of a few controlled substances.

Yeah, I inhaled.

And guess what, I don’t intend to run for public office, but if for some reason I do lose my mind and put my name on a ballot, here you go. No digging required. Get over it, odds are you inhaled too.

But, moving right along… There was another substance that made the rounds with the Dead Heads, that being The Magic Mushroom. Yep… Psylocibin containing psychedelic fungus. Happy toadstools from the cow pasture. Your ticket to the magic kingdom.

Did I ever partake of them? Well, I probably shouldn’t say… But in case you are wondering, for the record those things taste like crap. (whoops… oh well… didn’t say I was proud of it, but hey, I’m being honest here…)

And so, anyway, Funny Fungus is exactly why I think Jerry and the Furry Dead have pitched a tent city in my back yard. You see, the other day I pulled into the driveway, parked and all that jazz. However, unlike any other day I heard this loud thump as I climbed out of my truck. Darting my eyes in the direction of the noise I saw a wild eyed tree rat perched on the railing of my trailer. He began chittering at me, as squirrels tend to do, then darted off down the length of the flatbed following an erratic serpentine pattern. Against my better judgment, I followed the little furbag.

Before I even reached the back gate I saw a half dozen more squirrels running around the yard like their tails were on fire and their nuts were catchin’… Aww, come on… I mean like peanuts, walnuts, hickory nuts… sheesh, you dirty minded folks… Anywho, I watched as they darted about, jumped up onto the deck railing, beat their tiny little paws against their chests while doing these squeaky little, high-pitched Tarzan yells, somersaulted onto my BBQ pit, ran up a tree, jumped 72 feet to the roof, double back flipped into the wading pool, and then started all over again.

Let me tell you, it was a sight to behold.

I stood there wondering what had gotten into them when something caught my eye. A couple of the tree rats who weren’t engaged in happy jungle gym time were sitting back on their haunches atop a stump. In their paws they held huge chunks of brownish-orange fungi. Before long, one of the crazed rodents who had been doing the backstroke in the offspring’s pool ran up to the stump, tore a hunk of the fungus from the side, then sat back and began gnawing on it. My guess is that his Psylocibin levels were getting a bit low and he needed a booster.

This continued daily until the fungus was all gone. No big surprise there. I almost offered them a boom box and a stack of Dead CD’s, but they seemed to be getting along fine without tunes.

And, you know, I can’t say as that I blame them for the rampant, repeated frolicking and going back to the trough for more, so to speak. As I recall, the magic kingdom was a nice place to visit. Not a place where I’d want to live, but hey, it had it’s moments.

Still, with that said, if I ever catch the little bastards cooking up meth in the tool shed, I’m having squirrel and dumplings for dinner that night.

More to come…

Murv