Witz Pickz: Federal Jack's

Federal Jack's is a brew pub in Kennebunkport, Maine-- a quaint as all hell New England town, almost exclusively filled with touristy crap stores and with shops that used to be known as regional bullshit, but are now known as "artisanal." Jewelry stores with starfish necklaces, sweatshirts with "Vacationaland," printed on the front (don't even get me started), and plaques with ill-conceived New England phrases painted on them, such as, "I'm Feeling Soxy." Also, they have fudge, and the fudge is delicious.

Which is why Federal Jack's stands out. They clearly intended to present themselves as the brewery-restaurant of the town where people could get a burger and a freshly brewed beer and have some fun while still wearing their polo shirts. As I started looking around the restaurant and saw the Federal Jack's logo on the walls and on the menu, it became obvious that they had somewhat overshot what they were going for. Here's Federal Jack:



Federal Jack looks like he just raped and pillaged an entire Confederate town. He's toasting a beer with that shit-eating look on his face as if to say, "Hah-hah-hah, I am definitely for slavery, but have no allegiances except to beer and looting!" I'm also pretty sure he's getting blown just out of frame. Take another look at that picture and tell me you can't see him shouting boisturously in a Maine accent, "Fuck yawah mothah, I'm boozin' in Kennebunkpoaht!"

Further inspection of the menu proved my point. Federal Jack's has a brewery below the restaurant, and as I inspected the list, one name stood out. And that was the Taint Town Pale Ale. Yep. Taint Town. I could practically see Federal Jack winking suggestively. It didn't take much imagination to see Federal Jack in his bedroom with a gaggle of drunken whores going, "Choo-choooo! Alllll abooooard! Next stop: Taint Town!" and then stomping around the room and flopping out on the bed where he fell promptly to sleep and began snoring.



I ordered it, because, OBVIOUSLY, and I didn't like it-- not at all because of the name, but because it's a pale ale, and in what must be an ironic intention, the beer actually tastes like flowers. It must give Federal Jack a good laugh from the grave every time someone orders one, before he goes back to boozing, raping, and pillaging. So much pillaging.

I Went to Federal Jack's and All I Got Was Drunk, Raped, Robbed, and This Stupid T-Shirt,"
Witz

Bonus Material:
I was mentioning this to M-Dash who was there, but hadn't seen the Taint Town beer, and apparently, had never heard of the word "taint." In trying to prove that I wasn't crazy, I googled it and this is why The Urban Dictionary is amazing:

from theurbandictionary.com

"1. taint - The area between the nutsack and asshole that prevent a man from shitting on his nuts. See durf."

Wow. WOW. I would also reiterate that you should see "durf."

Witz Pickz: Maine Vacation

My apologies for the far and few between; I simply haven't been embarrassing myself the way I used to. Having said that...

...Every summer since I was born, my family has taken a vacation to Maine. I think it began as a pleasant thought, turned into a family routine, evolved into a yearly disaster, and has since become simply, "What we do." Growing up, I have, allegedly, ruined upwards of eleven (a vacationer's dozen) of these so called vacations, but if you ask me, my parents were the ones who ruined the vacations by choosing Maine in the first place, especially after they went so poorly.

I mean, Maine calls itself "Vacationland." How desperate is that? You know what Hawaii calls itself? "The Aloha State," because they're like, "What up!", "See you later!" "Whatever!" You're arriving, you're leaving, it doesn't matter to them-- they're always gonna be in Hawaii. I don't even know how Maine became "Vacationland." Just because you were the last state draft dodgers entered before slipping into Canada, doesn't mean they were on vacation. That's like if Harriet Tubman was on The Underground Cruise Ship.*



The point is, last month I found myself once again lying on the hot sandy beaches and penguin dick freezing waters of Maine with my family. This time, however, I was there for three days, had my own car, and my sister was mixing daiquiries. Which is where the fun started:



My Grandma is a four-foot-ten, golf winnin', tennis playin', fully functional, eighty-two year old woman. She has "idears," and eats "begels." She'll play you in paddle ball, shame you for hitting one too low, and then promptly laugh gleefully as she slams the ball down on your side of the sand court, sending you running across the beach to go retrieve the ball as she cries, "My point!"



GRANDMA: Whattya makin'?
SWITZ (my sister): Daiquiries.
GRANDMA: Whaaat?
SWITZ: Daiquiris, you'll like them.
GRANDMA: I never heard of them...what's in 'em?
SWITZ: Strawberries, coconut rum, pinapple juice, ice...
GRANDMA: Ohhhhh, DYKE-ERIES!
SWITZ: Ummm...no.
GRANDMA: Yeah, dyke-eries. Rini and I have those in Mexico.
SWITZ: Grandma, they're called daiquiries.
GRANDMA: Whaaat? Dyke-eries!
MOM: Maybe if you're drinking them in a lesbian bar, Ma-- otherwise, she's right.
GRANDMA: And how do you say it??
SWITZ: Daiquiris!
GRANDMA:.....
SWITZ:......
GRANDMA: Nah, that doesn't sound right.



Earlier, my Grandma had been reading a terrible romance/thriller that she found lying around the house. She was disgusted, not by the content, but by the stupidity of the characters. Each of us sat listening for a solid ten minutes as she went through the plot so far. There was a politician and his wife, she met a guy, but she didn't want to cheat on the husband, but: "Get this-- he's a homosexual!" and then finally she goes out on a boat with the other guy, which is when my grandma came the closest she's ever come to saying the word "sex" in front of me.

GRANDMA: Then she goes on the boat with him and THEN-- Ha! Then, they have fun.
ME: Uh-huh.
GRANDMA: Like FUN fun, know what I mean??
ME: I do. I do know what you mean.
GRANDMA: But she loves this guy and her husband's been ignoring her, and she doesn't love him, but get this-- she doesn't know if she wants a divooorce. What a dummy!

Laughing, I turned on the TV, revealing a show I had never actually laughed at: Two and a Half Men. Who the hell is watching Two and A Half Men? Turns out, it's folks like my Grandma:

CHARLIE SHEEN(answering phone): Hello? Oh, hi mom. One second—- Get the door!
GRANDMA: Hehe, she’s at the door. Hehehe.
Someone opens the door and his mom is there.
GRANDMA: Hehehe.

Oh boy. Finally, thanks to daiquiries and a little game called Catch Phrase, I managed to embarrass myself:

For those of you not familiar with the game, Catch Phrase is a game where you give a partner clues and they have to guess what the word or phrase is before time runs out. I knew I was in trouble when my sister was my partner and I had to get her to say the phrase, "Go Whole Hog." My giggling wasted what little precious time we had left, leaving me with no other option than to give the clue, "If I appeared to be only attempting to eat half of a pig, but you wanted me to eat the entire pig, you would shout....." Shockingly, she didn't get it in time.

One round and another drink later, I was partners with my mom. Before I tell you what I shouted, it's important you know the clues I was given.

MOM: Two words.
WITZ: Ok.
MOM: Not shallow.
WITZ: Deep.
MOM: You have two of these in your pants!
WITZ: BALLS! BALLS DEEP!

Yep. I shouted "Balls deep!" at my mom.

WITZ: Er-- deep...balls. Deep Balls?? (BUZZER)
MOM: Noooo! (laughing) Pockets! Deep pockets!

Laughing and blushing, I tried to blame my mom:

WITZ: What?? Those aren't IN my pants, those are ON my pants! AND I have four of them!

But let's be honest, there's not really any coming back from that. Yet, despite it all, Vacationland was not a bust, I didn't ruin the trip, and we all agreed, like a group of Jews on Passover, knowing full well they'd be right where they were again, "Next year in Hawaii..."

More Like VacationBLAND,
Witz

*Yep, I went from Maine to an Underground Railroad joke in one step-- I'm getting really good at this...

P.S. On my drive up to Maine, I hit this AWESOME ODOMETER READING! Did I pull my car dangerously off the highway so I could take a picture of it without the speedometer needle blocking the shot, while my sister looked at me with a mixture of pity and understanding? You bet I did.

Witz DOESN'T Pick: Video Store A-Holes

Ok, for today's post, I'm gonna drop some a historical narrative from my past. I was thinking about this recently and realized just how ridiculous it actually was. Check it out:

Many moons ago, when I was twelve or thirteen years old, my friend (we'll call him The ATX) The ATX and I were in Maine on vacation with my family. For those who don't know, Maine is such a boring and uninteresting place to take a vacation that they actually nicknamed the state Vacationland. That's called overselling, and it's a sure sign that something isn't right.

So after a day or two on the beach, realizing that no matter how old you are as a kid (my family went from when I was five until I was eighteen), there will never be anyone there your age to hangout with, you get bored. The one time we found some people to hangout with, one girl had a lazy eye and the other was unattractive with a stalker like obsession with The ATX. Oh yeah, and get this-- so the lazy-eyed girl invites us to hangout at her family's house, "just as friends." Since we only are looking for friends (at least from a lazy-eyed girl and her portly companion) we said of course. So I'M sitting on a bed while we all talk about music when the Lazy Eyed Girl climbs only the bed, SITS down so my hand is under her leg, and then says accusingly, "I SAID we're just looking for FRIENDS!" Shocked and confused (we should have tried that with Iraq instead of Shock & Awe-- we'd tell them they could hangout in their country and it was all good, then we could have suddenly shown up and arrested Saddam and shouted accusingly, "YOU CAN'T RULE HERE ANYMORE!"-- actually, that sounds A LOT like what we did historically-- eesh), I slowly moved away from her and shot The ATX a quizzical look. Neither one of us knew what was going on, so we sat rigidly and listened to Marcy's Playground. We should have known something was up-- nobody bought the whole Marcy's Playground CD, they taped Sex & Candy off the radio and were content.

Anyway, after all this, we were bored, and that led to us going to the local video store slash souvenir shop to rent a movie. So we're poking around, browsing, wondering if we want to see Lethal Weapon again or maybe Highlander, when my friend The ATX picks up Silence of the Lambs.

"What about this?" he asks, showing me the box.
"Nah, I heard it's not that good," I say, even though that wasn't the case at all, because what I actually had heard was that it was scary shit and I really didn't want to watch a scary movie and get all freaked out while in a vacation home with noises in the woods.
"Ok," he says and puts it back on the shelf. Until--

"Actually, it's fantastic," snaps a voice, loud and intrusive and snotty and pretentious.

We looked up. Some, like, thirty-eight year old guy who was looking at movies nearby had jumped in on our conversation to call me out on not wanting to see Silence of the Lambs. Dude, I'm like freakin' twelve years old! "Actually, it's fantastic!" Are you kidding me? Before this guy spoke up, we were trying to decide between Heavyweights and Happy Gilmore-- that's about where we were at. I don't think my pre-teen lie needed to be housed by this guy, thus exposing me for the scared adolescent that I was.

In retrospect it's even more baffling that somebody would do that. Forget the fact that they overheard a conversation and actually had to LOOK to see what move we were talking about, but to then feel the need to derisively correct these two youths about what they heard about a movie is insane! I mean, I've overheard people my age pickup moves like The Wedding Crashers or The Big Lebowski and say, "I didn't think that was very funny," or, "What about this, I heard it was alright," and yet somehow I restrain myself from cutting in with, "Actually, it's fucking hilarious." I heard a woman walk by my cubicle yesterday and say, "I stopped watching Superbad halfway through, it was just too much for me and I didn't like the humor," and ya know what? I didn't stand up and inform her, "Actually, Superbad's humor is fantastic. You are the idiot in the equation!" because as a HUMAN BEING, I know when not to say stuff like that. "Hey kids with less life experience than me-- I'm cooler than you! My movie taste is impeccable! Get over me, bitches!" Shocking.

In the end, I didn't exactly know what to do. Saying things like, "I heard it's not very good," about a movie you don't want to see was the type of lie you were supposed to get away with. Like saying you'd seen a movie you hadn't so that people would like you or think you were cool, even if they were already your friends. "What was your favorite part?" they'd ask. "I liked all of it," you'd reply, or better yet, "I dunno, what was yours?" and then they'd say, "The part where the helicopter blew up," and then you'd say, "Oh yeah! That part was awesome!" and you were better friends for it. You weren't supposed to get called on the lie, especially by a much older person. In response to the guy I think my face reddened quite a bit, and I mumbled an, "Oh," for his approval, but we put the movie back. I don't remember what we ended up with, but it wasn't Silence of the Lambs. At the end of the day, everything was fine, but I guess these are the things we remember in life.

"This post sucks!"
"Actually, it's fantastic",
Witz