Goodbye, Liver

To the death, I say. To the death!

A wise man (Bill, the guy who sits next to me) once told me (five minutes ago) that a man has to have goals in life. We were discussing the Bukowski Six-Month Club.

For those of you who don't know, Bukowski's Tavern is a bar on Dalton St in Boston (and Inman Square in Cambridge) named after the author Charles Bukowski. The Emperor loves Bukowski and made me watch a documentary on the dude and I gotta say between the alcoholism and misogyny and violence, he seems like me if a few (hundred-thousand) brains cells drifted to the creative side of my brain from the "don't beat chicks" side.

Anyways, Bukowski's is known for having a rather large beer menu - its no Sunset Grill but who can top 500? - constituting somewhere in the range of 120 brews and its greasy food. I know this, sadly, not from firsthand experience but rather through a buddy or two and exhaustive online research (a full ten minutes). I discovered that this "Six Month Club" is for people who have drank all 120 beers within the span of six months. Your reward - besides the obvious pride - is a big-ass mug ('big-ass' being the technical term) engraved with your favorite author's name that you can get filled for the price of a beer every time you go back. Does this not sound like a challenge tailor-made for yours truly?

Apparently, again according to my online research and third-to-fourth hand information, the record for completely all 120 beers is five weeks. Five weeks. That's 120 beers in 35 days or 3.428571 (repeating) beers per day. That right there is what we in the business like to call "weak-ass shit" (or in the vernacular: "shit's weak"). That 41.428571 (repeating) fluid ounces a day is not something impressed with, and frankly hardly a challenge. So I was talking to my life coach - the aforementioned Bill - and has agreed to be my "manager" for this challenge. He even drafted me a schedule for completely it in seven days*. We've scaled back the ambition of our schedule now, but you better leave I'm going for the record.

But its not enough to set a record of this magnitude; you to set the bar so high and so convincingly that people come to loathe and despise you. You become their motivation to be the prolific drinker they know they can be. Your's will be the name they curse while worshiping at the porcelain altar. Five weeks is the record? I'm looking to do it in 12 days.

12 days means 10 beers a day on average, consecutively. That's 120 fluid ounces of booze per day. 2400 total. Uncountable calories ingested and imbibed. Is it possible? Not for mortal man. Will my liver be able to handle it? Probably not. But dammit: nothing ventured, nothing gained. To quote Theodore "The Ruff Rider" Roosevelt:

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;

who errs,

comes up short again and again,

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;

but who does actually strive to do the deeds;

who knows the great enthusiasms,

the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end

the triumph of high achievement,

and who at the worst, if he fails,

at least fails while daring greatly,

so that his place shall never be with those

cold and timid souls

who neither know victory nor defeat.

I still need to consult with the Emperor and with my Bad Life Choices Mentor (and ignore advice from doctors and parents), but as Bill just said to me, "Anything close to a month is a disgrace in my book." That's why he's the Mickey to my Rocky, the Mr. Miyagi to my Daniel LaRusso, and the black guy from Showgirls to my Elizabeth Berkeley.

Anyone who wants to draft out a plan or schedule, or be kept updated on my plans just leave a comment. Wish me luck.

EDIT: Also, who should I have engraved as my favorite author?

Stay thirsty,
{VM}

* This was when we thought the challenge was 100 beers.