Tuesday, June 07, 2005
I ain't drunk, I'm just drinkin'...
Another weekend at the pubs has been interesting.
Saturday night saw me at The Little Red Rooster (which, incidentally, is a blues euphemism. Not too hard to guess), to catch James Harman again. Another stellar show, but I won’t bore you with a repeat description of something which should really be experienced in person.
Instead, what made the night different from the rest was an inebriated old-timer. He started off hitting some congas at the side of the stage while there was a guy playing acoustic blues. Understandably, the guitar player wasn’t too happy and told him to buzz off. Undeterred, he proceeded to rant loudly to no one in particular, alternating between proudly proclaiming to be a veteran of 2 Vietnam tours and vehemently cursing everyone else for not recognizing a war hero.
For the most part, everyone else ignored him except his pal, who tried to get him to pipe down. Not too much success though, as he then planted himself next to a lady, who was seated at the bar next to her male companion. I was seated at the bar too, and the old-timer stood between myself and the lady.
He carried on his dubious sermon, a haphazard mix of barroom politics, drunken philosophy and misconstrued history. Though I was concentrating on the blues being played, I could see that the lady was slowly becoming visibly pissed. It didn’t help that her male companion was a huge bearded guy who would have looked right at home in the WWE. They weren’t really on the verge of a smackdown, probably in deference to his elderly age and frail frame, but he was making quite a nuisance of himself.
It all culminated in her giving him a piece of her mind, a polite but firmly worded reprimand with choice placements of F-words. Amazingly, his earlier belligerence became suddenly subdued in the face of impending female wrath and he only managed a weak “Ok”. He turned away, staring blankly into his mug of beer. One can only wonder what he saw at the bottom of that mug. With either uncanny coincidence or sarcastic humour, the guy on stage was singing at that moment:
The battle may be over
But the war has just begun
Ordinarily, I don’t care much about drunks but this one brought to mind an issue which we as Singaporeans don’t get to think much about. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t approve of getting piss drunk in a pub/club to the point of incoherence or even worse, incapacitation. Neither do I believe in blatant self-glorification to the point of disturbing the public peace. It’s just that I’d been watching lots of WWII movies lately and somehow that event served as a catalyst to organize all those thoughts.
In the wake of the Memorial Day weekend and the backdrop of the Iraq war, it’s hard to imagine when peace will prevail. All over the world, tensions seem to pop up like that arcade game where you smack beavers (or whatever they’re supposed to be) poking their heads out of holes with a rubber mallet, but don’t disappear quite as fast. They seem to keep popping up at the same places too. It’s great if you like smacking beavers (stop grinning now) but that’s not quite the point.
Boarding a few different trains of thought brought me to the station of self-reflection. Exactly what went on in that station may not interest most of you, though if you’d like to discuss it constructively I’d most certainly oblige. If you’d like to pop by that station, here are the directions:
“What would I have done?”
Current beer in fridge : Sapporo Premium Beer
Saturday night saw me at The Little Red Rooster (which, incidentally, is a blues euphemism. Not too hard to guess), to catch James Harman again. Another stellar show, but I won’t bore you with a repeat description of something which should really be experienced in person.
Instead, what made the night different from the rest was an inebriated old-timer. He started off hitting some congas at the side of the stage while there was a guy playing acoustic blues. Understandably, the guitar player wasn’t too happy and told him to buzz off. Undeterred, he proceeded to rant loudly to no one in particular, alternating between proudly proclaiming to be a veteran of 2 Vietnam tours and vehemently cursing everyone else for not recognizing a war hero.
For the most part, everyone else ignored him except his pal, who tried to get him to pipe down. Not too much success though, as he then planted himself next to a lady, who was seated at the bar next to her male companion. I was seated at the bar too, and the old-timer stood between myself and the lady.
He carried on his dubious sermon, a haphazard mix of barroom politics, drunken philosophy and misconstrued history. Though I was concentrating on the blues being played, I could see that the lady was slowly becoming visibly pissed. It didn’t help that her male companion was a huge bearded guy who would have looked right at home in the WWE. They weren’t really on the verge of a smackdown, probably in deference to his elderly age and frail frame, but he was making quite a nuisance of himself.
It all culminated in her giving him a piece of her mind, a polite but firmly worded reprimand with choice placements of F-words. Amazingly, his earlier belligerence became suddenly subdued in the face of impending female wrath and he only managed a weak “Ok”. He turned away, staring blankly into his mug of beer. One can only wonder what he saw at the bottom of that mug. With either uncanny coincidence or sarcastic humour, the guy on stage was singing at that moment:
The battle may be over
But the war has just begun
Ordinarily, I don’t care much about drunks but this one brought to mind an issue which we as Singaporeans don’t get to think much about. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t approve of getting piss drunk in a pub/club to the point of incoherence or even worse, incapacitation. Neither do I believe in blatant self-glorification to the point of disturbing the public peace. It’s just that I’d been watching lots of WWII movies lately and somehow that event served as a catalyst to organize all those thoughts.
In the wake of the Memorial Day weekend and the backdrop of the Iraq war, it’s hard to imagine when peace will prevail. All over the world, tensions seem to pop up like that arcade game where you smack beavers (or whatever they’re supposed to be) poking their heads out of holes with a rubber mallet, but don’t disappear quite as fast. They seem to keep popping up at the same places too. It’s great if you like smacking beavers (stop grinning now) but that’s not quite the point.
Boarding a few different trains of thought brought me to the station of self-reflection. Exactly what went on in that station may not interest most of you, though if you’d like to discuss it constructively I’d most certainly oblige. If you’d like to pop by that station, here are the directions:
“What would I have done?”
Current beer in fridge : Sapporo Premium Beer
# posted by BloozeGit @ 11:05 am 
