Sunday, October 31, 2004

Picture Sunday

So it all hit me this morning around 11:30, when I was crunching over the fallen leaves in Mr M's yard, trying to decide if I was nursing the world's worst hangover or in fact still dog-ass drunk, and walking back from my vehicle carrying 2 beer steins, a clarinet case, a backpack full of stuff, a "Warning: Clarinets" sign, and a pair of lederhosen.

Oktoberfest is over. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

We'd left all the stuff in my car because frankly neither of us were in any shape to be walking last night. Mine was voluntary - a major display of public drunkenness. Mr M's was not - a particularly wicked case of gout.

The odd thing is, I'm not nearly as sad about it all being over as I thought I was going to be. I don't know if it's because the two shows this weekend were so, well, so just plain fuckin' weird (it's not explainable, so I won't try), or if I'm losing my sentimentality, or if it's just simply something I need to leave behind for now. I know one thing I did need to leave behind for now, and I did. In a symbolic gesture of sobriety, I left my remaining Goldschlager on the mountain. I'm going teetotaler for a good while. (And in a stunning move, I ditched my clove cigarettes today as well.)

Now, if you'll bear with me through one more set of Oktoberfest related photos for Picture Sunday, I'll be forever in your debt. And I'll thank you by having something different for you for the whole next year to come.

The first picture is of Jude. For those of you who read my "It was hot, and I got drunk" blog of a year or so ago, you probably know Jude as "Jude the Corruptor." This is because I gave him that name, for his special talent of getting other people incredibly drunk while not doing so himself. Friday night Jude had a face-to-face, or rather a nose-to-nose, with Mr P. Was he trying to corrupt him? One does not know.



OK, now here's where things get fun. Remember a couple of weeks ago I told you I was working on a little art project, and that if it worked out I'd tell yall about it? Well, it did, I think, and so now I am. But it needs a little background.

Every night at Oktoberfest we do (with the help of some poor schmoe in the audience) The Schnitzelbank. This is some sort of really dumb German sing-along game about The Schnitzelbank, which is a cutting board. You sing about the schnitzelbank (and get to sing what has to be one of the most bizarre lines of songdom, "Oh, the beauty on the wall, yes, it is the schnitzelbank"), and repeat over and over lines like "here and there," "curvy and straight," "wagon wheel," well, it goes on forever and makes no sense at all to anyone. Here's The Schnitzelbank as it appears on the poster and in your little wordbooks at Mt Lake:



OK, that explained, there'd been talk amongst the Sauerkrauters that we needed our own Schnitzelbank, a Schnitzelbank we could all identify with. Well, it just so happens that we have a Schnitzelbank of sorts in the form of EddieT's Jagerbench. See, EddieT is the keeper of the Jagermeister (he's the Jager Master), the shotglasses we give to audience participants (and ourselves), and ice, bottles, etc. And he carries a little fold-up bench with him to spread his wares (so to speak) out on. The Jager Bench.

And so I took it upon myself to make The Jagerbench. And when we say, "Oh, the beauty on the wall, yes, it is the Jagerbench, we mean it!"



The rhymes are, of course, pertaining to the band. And as an added bonus, that's Mr M getting blasted by the trumpets.

And our last picture of Oktoberfest - yes, last night, after all was said and done and the tearing apart of the equipment began, who was sitting there all alone? Yep, our little Jagerbench in earnest.



Wow. What a six weeks.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for - no, not the end. The recipe du jour! I give you Saucy Barbecued Spare Ribs:



Now, other than the fact that this looks a lot like chicken, I really don't have a gripe with this dish at all. I just have a little hump at the fact that 1) these people obviously bought the Easy Bake Oven version of a grill, and 2) They're grilling their damn food in a forest of pine trees! I wonder how many times this family has caught their yard on fire? It has to be at least a couple, because if you look over to the side there (by the watermelon no one thought to put on a plate), you'll see they have plastic plates instead of paper ones. The paper ones all burned up.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Wonder who owns the Who's catalog of songs and how hard up they are. Not only do we hear their music as the themes for those CSI shows, but you can't flip the remote these days without hearing a Who song used on a commercial.

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