What's the Best Whiskey Chaser?

WHO INVENTED THE JAMESON PICKLEBACK SHOT?
Guest blog by Kanna Smith

My mom and I may not have gotten along when I was younger, but boy do things change. After an exhausting December day filled with obligations, we decided to grab a drink.

I’d never done shots with my mom before, and she was long past her shot days, and I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

After all, “Jameson and good decisions” was my life motto.

I might be less than classy after six or seven shots, but I’m the best version of myself with a little Irish in me. So we were off to the Hermosa Saloon.

Little did I know that it would end with me giving this tiny woman a piggyback ride on our trek home.

Like everyone’s favorite party-harty man-whore, Jameson is everywhere —loved by many and despised by those he fucked over (the weak). And those people are easily coaxed back to Jame-o with a simple pickleback.

If you're going to be an asshole who orders a chaser, try pickle juice. The judgmental stare of a bartender seems to soften when you request a pickleback.

Though she was hesitant, my mom is a drinking champion. It was pretty impressive to watch a 5’3” 105 pound woman toss back shots the way she did. I finally knew where I got it from. One shot turned to two, two shots turned to three, and three shots turned into forcing the bartender to join in our fun.

Like most nights that end in mornings hunched over toilets regretting every life-choice ever
made, we’d had no intention of getting so wrecked.

Between the shots, we mended a once-broken relationship. Picklebacks helped.

Who knew that brine would cut the burn of alcohol and the past? A goddamned genius.

Piggybacks after Picklebacks

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Legend has it an old lady with gold teeth walked into the Bushwick Country Club one night and asked for multiple shots and chasers of brine. The bartender liked it so much, he coined the term "pickleback" back in 2006.

Mostly people in NYC shot pickle brine behind Old Crow Bourbon. Salt changes the PH and seems to lessen the burn of ethanol. Alcohol burn whilst doing many shots can lead to sore throats and worse hangovers.

I like to think it's Las Vegas's obsession with Jameson Irish Whiskey is what propelled the pickleback to international notoriety.

Stratosphere

I went to the Stratosphere with my friend L. For $35 you get to go to the top of the tallest structure west of the Mississippi and ride all of the rides. It's a great way to spend an evening.

First though, L was running late, so I decided to play a few hands of Blackjack. The dealer was cool, and I was up to $100 at one point, but I ended up giving most of that back. I think I was $10 in the hole, but I tipped her and also had enough in chips left to tip the bartender at the lobby bar and the valet.

I asked for a Fernet Branca on rocks, but the bartender didn't know what that was (bad sign), so I ordered a Dirty Martini with Tanqueray. It came garnished with stale olives and a chip of ice, but it tasted right. The music was a mix, but there was more rock and roll than you usually get at places like this, and I dug that. "Everything is better with Rock and Roll."

L showed up and we figured out how to get to the top of the tower. The signage of the place and indeed the very flow of traffic seems to be a haphazard afterthought. The ladies at the counter selling tickets told us to use the machines. The machine contract must have gone to the lowest bidder. One was down, the other two ran like they were on DDOS. But it added to the fear of dying at the top.

The double-decker elevator is fun, there's a video screen showing the people riding beneath your feet. Your ears pop with the changing pressure. It's fast. At the top, more confusion as to where to go. I wondered if someone had spiked my drink. But the view!

I've been to the tops of many a tall building, but this is Las Vegas. Things are more fabulous out here. This glowing garden in the middle of the black valley looks like a shining testament to our humanity. Keep the crown jewels, England.

The bar up there was closed for a private party, so we couldn't get a drink, which was disappointing.

The rides are contraptions that dangle and spin you over the edge of the tower and shoot you off the top of it. Thrilling, terrifying, wonderful. I recommend doing all of them. I didn't feel like going on any of them more than once, so it wasn't a loss that we didn't buy bracelets that allow you to take unlimited rides.

I found out about Level 107 Lounge after this outing, so I'll be going back to the tower for that.

How to Join a Motorcycle Gang

This was originally featured here. If you want, you can comment and join the fun. There's much to be had. MURDERCYCLE.

Humane Turkeys

These are "Certified Humane Turkeys." There are not enough in America to feed all of the Americans who will be celebrating Thanksgiving next week. Most people will be eating force-fed animals that were raised in atrocious conditions, slaughtered in ways that would make you cringe and maybe cry, and pumped full of chemicals and antibiotics.

The word humane is an interesting one. It suggests ethical. Because the best human beings are ethical creatures, humane has come to mean the best of us. It's very strange to me that "humane killing" or "humane slaughter" are combinations that even exist. "Humane war" and "humane rape" should also be considered acceptable following this logic.

I read once that turkeys are the most environmentally friendly animals because they convert grain to meat quite well, thus being energy efficient. Energy efficiency is important since we're running out of oil and everything. But humane?!

Below is what a humane turkey looks like. It's made of soy and wheat. It tastes great. There isn't any POOP in it. Turkeys who once had heads, no matter how clean the slaughterhouse in which they met their doom, all have a little POOP in them. Happy Thanksgiving!

Welcome to the FUTURE!

I'm crazy about QR's at the moment and can't wait to do more with them. My head is exploding with ideas.

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My asthma seems under control. I have been gluten-free for almost 30 days, and I have not taken any medication for about that long, too. It's been great. My skin feels tighter and healthier, and I just feel more alert and happier. But the asthma thing is the biggest deal, and I've been working on a miracle.

I have been fighting asthma for 30 years. I've tried everything. And now I think that I'm almost finished with it. One... more... step.

Here it is (it's a two-parter):

1. I'm going to quit alcohol completely.
2. I'm going to work on building upper body strength.

For the first one, it seems crazy. I don't know how I'm supposed to give up cider and white wine and gin. I love those things very much. After 30 days, perhaps I'll try to drink them once a month or something. This will be a major test of will power. Alcohol has been linked to asthma. It must be addressed before I can say that I've conquered my dark companion.

For the second item, I'm working on getting up to a hundred push-ups in one go. I'm going to try to get to 100 by June 1. I think I'll also get a membership to the Y and start swimming and bench-pressing. Upper body strength has been said to take the stress off much of your respiratory system. It must be developed to muscle out my dark companion.

When I've slayed the dragon, I will write a book to help other people rid themselves of asthma.

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Today I found out MBH and I would not buy the house we wanted. But we are moving the cafe and have signed on it and are renovating the space, and one big real estate deal a year might be enough for me. Yes, it sucks that I will not be getting the big tax credit. But that's all right. People have been buying houses without tax credits for a long time.

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Poem about a Hamster

I wrote a poem with a hamster in it. It wasn't a poem about a hamster really, but a hamster played a central role. But then I couldn't stop thinking about Tao Lin while I was trying to edit it. Tao Lin writes about hamsters a lot. I like Tao Lin's hamsters. So I started feeling like I was in some way ripping off Tao Lin. It was maybe like I was unconsciously plagiarizing him and didn't know it until I started working more on the poem. So now I am posting this. It's a pet hamster you can feed. You can tell him to get back on the wheel by clicking on it. If you leave him alone he will drink water and fall asleep after cleaning his face.

Reporting on my vegan Thanksgiving.

Yesterday, the News Leader published an article that mentioned (my) veganism. That's really nice of them. Some of the comments on the article are not so nice.

I think my main problem with holidays is that everyone hates each other more than usual on them because they can't seem to grab what they really want: to love each other more than usual. It's as if there is such a huge expectation for everyone and that everyone feels obligated toward one another, something that is never pleasant and seems as arbitrary and ridiculous as dressing your girlfriend up like a squaw on a Thursday and forcing her to roast you a hideously large, genetically modified, flightless bird.

Then there's tradition.
Tradition is an obligation to nostalgia. Nostalgia is just a rosy version of the past. Yesteryear was not all that great. Every civilization has had a strange notion that the golden age was yesteryear, and now we're circling the drain, waiting for the end of the world.

I am a thirty-year-old heterosexual American with an iPhone. The end of the world is far from my mind. I think we are living in the most exciting times in human history. We are relatively peaceful, most of us aren't starving in America, we have time for art and literature and science, and most people I know have a computer in their pocket that can access more information than anyone ever thought would be available to a person born to working-class parents.

So just relax. No one cares how you were brought up or what you think of the way I eat. It's nice to be nice, and now that we all have the luxury to do so, let's! I don't have to kill animals to survive, and I live such a pampered life that I can act on my compassion and follow my conscience. I can live super-healthy and live as long as possible. Science has taught us what causes heart disease and other killers, so now we can avoid them! How great is that?! I'm thankful for all of that. I wish more people would be. If animals have wishes, that's what they wish for, too. Especially hamsters and flightless birds.

I'm also thankful for my girlfriend and her family, who have gone out of their ways in the past to make me feel welcome. They probably felt obligated. I hope they didn't.

Anyway, chill out, people. This holiday season doesn't have to be "the best ever." It doesn't have to match some imaginary version of holidays in Coke commercials or sit-com specials like Family Ties and Growing Pains. If you just act nicely toward one another, we'll all have a good enough time.
I'm also thankful for Indians. I love reading every year about how Thanksgiving is really celebrating brutality and war. Do you remember that episode of Buffy when the spirit of some Indian warrior was terrorizing the Slayer and her friends on Thanksgiving? I think Angel was int hat episode. Joss Whedon is a creative genius.

I've always disliked Thanksgiving, and I thanked the Indian tribes of the USA every year for giving me a reason. Now I kind of like it I guess. I mean, it's not Christmas or anything.

Economy

This week, MBH and I decided to go on a money fast. A money fast is what happens when you refuse to spend any money at all for a predetermined amount of time. I've never heard of anyone else doing it, but I got the idea from Buy Nothing Day, which I usually celebrate. This is only the second day of our week-long fast, and I accidentally broke it last night when I was stranded at a bar and ordered a Tanqueray and Tonic, my signature cocktail. But it isn't a contest, it's a trial, and one misstep is not the end of the world.

I think that next week, in order to pay a penance for my transgression, I will not drink coffee or alcohol.

See, the economy's hurting everyone, and we can't afford to just keep on buying stuff. We can't buy our way out of our problems, can we? Of course not! Can we save our way out? Probably not. It's always a good idea to save money, though.

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Poetry:
I have been writing more poetry lately. It's hard to get time to do it since I've been pimping English and Shakespeare with Yourdictionary.com and ASC. I am extremely lucky to have two jobs that I enjoy. I was hoping to write less poetry for a while anyway. My work is looking different these days. I'd like to say more "musical," but I hate it when people say that.

Jack Morgan invented the skull emoticon

I invented the most bad ass emoticon. It's a skull because I don't have a skull ring anymore, and Tony Creed won't give me one for free even though I totally put him in the first Murdercycle. I think poor celebrities should get more free things.

Anyway, I invented the skull ring for the digital age. Someday Google will call me and ask me if they can incorporate it into their smileys on their Google Talk, and I will say, "yes of course, Google, I love you so much that you can have my skull ring for free."

Mike Young and Sara Mumolo, two poets who are very upstanding citizens and members of their respective communities have already declared in signed and notarized documents that I, Jack Morgan, invented the digital skull ring/emoticon/smiley, so don't try and take the credit with your friends.

And now, without further ado, I present to you my newest contribution to the free world:

º..º

Going Live and Getting Jacked on Your iPhone

TrainwreckUnion.com is your one-stop spot for all things Jack Morgan.
Stormy Petrel Press is Jack Morgan's press. That's where you can buy Sara Mumolo's chapbook!
A lot of you didn't know that. They haven't been totally live for very long, and there are still a few things about them that we're tweaking, but I am proud of the sites and I am grateful to know one of the most elegant programmers I have ever met.

Ryan Stark is able to write code that looks super simple, which is way more difficult than it sounds. It's harder to make things that look clean and disciplined than it is to be fancy and opulent. What looks like a basic website for Stormy Petrel is actually a creative way to handle content management, one that I have never seen before, one that I am entirely impressed with because it gives me way more control than I have ever had on a website. I want to build a statue of Stark and put it in front of city hall or the mayor's house or something.

Speaking of opulence, if you use your iPhone to visit TrainwreckUnion.com, I've made a fav icon for the device. If you go to the site and add it as a bookmark "to Home Screen," it will put the Trainwreck logo where the apps are so that you can just hit a button and your iPhone will take you the site. How cool is that? And the button looks really awesome.

And as long as this is a web-heavy post, someone told me there was a press ripping me off. I checked them out, and I don't think they are. I think I'd like to submit to them because how hilarious would it be to get published by them? I google fought them. I won, so I feel OK.
Trainwreck Union forever!

Mansions in Berkeley and my ROBOT! And fuck all the people who talk shit about Tao Lin.

Yesterday I went to mansions because my friends Cameron and Jessica are living in one and had their cats stowed at another, and we had to get the cats from B to A. We put them in cardboard boxes and brought them in a car, which was kind of funny. Cats poking their heads out of boxes is like an image out of Norman Rockwell or something.

Both mansions are owned by the guy who owns Rasputin and Blondie's. I don't know his name, so when we talk about him, we just call him Rasputin. The first mansion has a game room filled with air hockey, pinball, and pool, and nerdcore models. It smelled like peppermint oil. Have you ever seen that show called "Silver Spoons" that was big in the eighties? The house reminded me of that. All hardwood floors. I pretended to be Ricky Schroeder and played the pinball games.

I probably will never be rich. I don't think I would like to have a ginormous house even if I were rich. I think I would like to have more friends who have giant houses, though, so I could pretend to be Richie Rich in their game rooms and wear wool socks and slide across the hardwood floors. I think I would also have a remote control car and a robot that could walk around those floors. I would bring them to my friends' mansions and let the robot walk around by itself. The robot would be three feet tall so that it would scare a dog but not a human. It would be able to recite every poem Jack Spicer ever wrote and know how to mix perfect Tanqueray and Tonics. It would also tell jokes and take pictures. It would say ""say cheeze." It would also know the answer to every stupid question people ask about being vegan so that I wouldn't have to answer them anymore.

At my house, it would live in the closet. The only time it would come out is when I went to my friends' mansions and to poetry readings. I think robots ride BART for free. It will introduce me to people and ask other people their names and remember them and tell me when I forget.

I will name it Tao Lin because I like that name and because Tao Lin is kind of short, though much taller than three feet, and because I think Tao would laugh about that. Maybe Tao Lin 3000. It would sometimes say funny things about hamsters or other small animals.

Also, I wish I could buy rights to Tao's new book. I wish I could buy half a share. I don't have 2000 dollars for shares in books, but I wish someone would want to split one with me.

People shit-talk a lot. Some people do it about Tao Lin, and when it happens I feel bad because it's much bigger and much more intense when it happens to him. When the police made me come into the station because of shit-talking Rae-Lyn Barnes, that was pretty intense, and when Suze Stein made that comment about people who like me being horrible people, that was pretty intense, but sometimes people who are not as easy to laugh at and dismiss say mean things about Tao that are untrue and stupid, and I don't understand it.

I am going to wear my Tao Lin shirt today.

At a Party with Famous Shakespeareans and a Dog Named MacDuff

I have very intense feelings when confronted with nature. I am immediately impressed by everything I don’t know.

At the party’s beginning, the only person who was interested in me was MacDuff, the dog, who likes to lick toes of scholars. The house was capacious and pretty and filled with academics, famous Shakespeareans, and people who I didn’t know; not knowing anyone was a crushing blow to my wit. How am I ever supposed to leave the bay if I get lost where no one knows who Jack Morgan is? Every place that is not SF BAY or NYC is a vast wilderness in my mind because they don’t know who I am.

The view of the Blue Ridge was breath-taking. The Abraham Lincoln Robot at Disneyland’s “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” said no foreign power would by force make a trek along the Blue Ridge. That never made sense to me until now. Something as breath-taking as the Blue Ridge might be worth fighting over, like Scotland. The cicadas thought so and screamed.
I became the weirdo at the party who couldn’t fit in with the larger portion of guests. The poetry scene is very different from the academic one, and I’m not used to it I guess. I don’t know all their acronyms. I don’t know how to be funny with them. And I was busy having intense feelings on the other side of the deck, looking out over an endless prairie, eternity stretching before me, letting it occur to me how far the Pacific lay and how juggernaut earth would soon clipse her father the sun.

I felt like an ass hole for not taking advantage of the company of geniuses filling the house. The only people I talked to were Ralph Cohen, Alan Armstrong, and Stephen Booth, all famous Shakespeare people, all people I respect and admire. After most people left, I would meet two vegans and a fascinating Sarah. The party would end well with hugs and kisses and new friends.
But first I saw fireflies and wondered if I had ever seen fireflies before or if I had only seen the fake ones at Disneyland. Mars burned like one who had flown too high. Grain silos spotted the landscape. Somewhere a cow looked up and howled at the moon surrounded by glittering lightning bugs while real lightning struck silently in the impossible distance. MacDuff returned and looked at them with me. Magic is reserved for the speechless.

Fancy!

Two of our founding members got into Brown. Getting into Brown's poetry program is kind of a big deal, but that's not all of it. Three of our founding members will be attending fancy schools come next term, and we should be very proud of them and congratulate them every time we see them. They've got very big decisions to make because they were accepted to several schools each, all fancy ones, too! Isn't it exciting? Some day we will be able to say, "I knew them when we were in the Trainwreck Union together," and people will be impressed and want to be your friend because you once knew these shooting stars of poetry.

Pablo Lopez says it's between Brown and Iowa for him. Wow!
Sara Mumolo says she's considering St. Mary's, Pitt, and New School. Zowie!
I don't know where Sarah Stone wants to go, but she's a genius and got in everywhere she wanted! Woo-hoo!

Right now, in fact, Sara is in Pittsburgh, being courted by their fancy staff and faculty. She sent me this today. It's an interesting piece on Gertrude Stein by Lynn Emanuel. Miraculously, I liked it very much and have nothing negative to say about it at all.

Last night several trainwrecks occurred on College Avenue. Someone had the bright idea to leave Ralleigh's, raid Nabolom, and hit every bar on College. Chad even came out!!! Pablo and I (Jack) got into a huge argument about poetry, and Connie Coady was like, "you guys always talk like this about poetry?" In stereo, we turned to her and said "OF COURSE!" Connie got into it a bit when Gertrude Stein came up, as she invariably does. No one will escape Gertrude Stein. No one!

One more thing. Pablo, instead of cherishing his acceptance letters to places like Columbia, which I think many people do for a little while before tossing them, he wrote poetry on the back of all of them. For some reason I think this is rather cool. Good for you, Pablo.