Tiki News

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

Emily Dickinson.

Well, I won the mustache contest. But don’t for a minute, Dear and Gentle Reader, think that ol’ Doc has finally grown a beautiful and full bodied mustache, say of a Tom Selleck sort, or even a respectable one like Groucho Marx did in his later years. Don’t think for a minute that I have achieved the sort of mustache that finally gives my face grand and sweeping symmetry like the handsome Clark Gable. No, I have a scraggily, scrawny, wiry, three-color mustache that would only look good if I panned for gold up in them there hills. It looks like I glued a slice of rusty Brillo Pad to my upper lip. It isn’t pretty. It is three different colors for Pete’s sake! Blonde, sort of a brown, and to top it all off, it is red, or perhaps a burnished copper. So if I have such a butt-ugly mustache, how did I win the contest you ask? I won by default. Markus didn’t grow one. He had a month, but he put it off. “Two weeks!” he said, and he could grow a robust, hearty mustache, and I believe he could. I come from a long line of hairless men. (I have three chest hairs. Two on my left nipple and one on my right.) It takes me a week to grow what most guys call their five o’clock shadow. This is very handy for me, as I am lazy by nature, and lets face it Ladies and Gentlemen, shaving is a chore. I get a little bit of a sideburn, and my chin gets a little fuzzy, but my mustache is the only thing that really comes in, except for the swipe of blonde hair that shows up under my bottom lip. Not enough to grow a “soul patch” as my wife calls it, or an “Imperial” as I would call it, like the Jack of Spades, but just a hint of blonde hair that suggests some milk was drank in my past.

So my crappy mustache was enough to win the bet, but I must admit that I so expected to lose, that I went ahead and purchased the hat that Markus demanded as his prize. When I ordered the hat, I didn’t realize that for the one price, they sold them in pairs. So somewhere in the night is a box with my name and address on it, and it is traveling on a red-eye plane from somewhere, bringing me two olive-drab hats with earflaps. That what he wanted for his winnings. I have already promised him the hats irregardless of his failure to win or not. Don’t get me wrong, I am a collector of hats, but one with earflaps is enough to round out anyone’s collection, let alone three. (I am not Charlie Brown.) I picture him and his lovely wife sporting them on this winter’s ski slopes.

I won’t be able to make it to this Friday’s Tiki. I have made plans to venture to the home country. As much as I hate to miss Tiki, I really must go. (I have missed two so far, and it turns out, the two that I missed turned into the wildest parties that the Tiki has ever known. I guess that all it really takes is for me not to show up.) So brace yourself, Dear and Gentle Reader, for this Friday. I won’t be there, but guaranteed, things just might be a little out of hand, and your faithful chronicler will not be there, so whatever happens, I will only be able to report hear-say. But that isn’t really a bad thing. Sometimes fiction can be much more fun than truth.

Patrice will be around, so there is no telling what direction the evening will take. Keep you posted.

Doc