So here’s something twisted: kids who were born in 1993, when this record came out, are old enough to drink now.  They’re gonna be hitting the bars tonight buying drinks with real IDs.  Curse you, relentless passage of time.

I remember buying my first legal drink.  I ordered a glass of red wine in a Legal Seafood restaurant in a mall.  I didn’t get carded, the wine was a bit blech, it felt very anti-climactic.  Ordering a drink at a bar, of course, was very different.  I really did feel like I was getting away with something.  I kept waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and give me a condescending “Okay, honey, let’s go.”  But no one did.  So, bars were no longer mythic – less Mists of Avalon, more Terminal B Airport Lounge.

So, a bar is a bar is a bar.  (You of course are a bar, but were always a bar.  (Robert Frost, up top!))  The best bar I have ever been to is basically an enormous living room, filled with squashy sofas and arm chairs.  The drinks are reasonably priced, the food is delicious, and the service just desultory enough to allow you ample time to wonder if you’ll die in the chair you selected, and then realize you won’t really mind because it’s so very comfortable.  In fact, the bar in “Tukka Yoot’s Riddim” slightly resembles this Elysium of bars.  So, while drinking tends to cram a half-hour of loose amusement into three hours of unpleasantness, you might as well do it sitting in a blue velveteen low-rider sofa listening to an upright bass player.  Word to the wise, newly-minted 21-year olds.

Oh and one more thing: shots are the Devil’s plaything.  Shots are how the Saxons fell.  Don’t do shots.  Promise me.  Ok?  Look me in the eye.  Ok.  Now be home by 11.  And would it kill you to wear pants that fit?