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Ardbeggeddon III - Thursday January 10, 2002 We got Manny up and out at the ungodly hour of 6:30 am and everyone else was up by 8 am. We got out of the house a bit after 10 am and picked up Manny in town somewhere (damned if I know... I've been lost in LA since arriving). We went to lunch at a small greek combination grocery store and restaurant called Papa Christo's and while walking past the counter to order gyros, Dave and I both stopped in shock and gazed across the counter at a small selection of single malt whisky on the shelf. In the front was a bottle of 21 yo Springbank (70 cl) bottled in 1992 for $94 and a 1974 Macallan 18 yo for $84. Dave had that look in his eye that he was not be denied so I gracefully conceded the Springbank to him without a struggle. Frank stood in open-mouthed disbelief, bemoaning the fact that he's eaten there many times and never even noticed they carried single malts, much less look the shelf over. He walked out muttering about the injustice of being FOAFed in a greek grocery store... what a way to start off FOAFing LA! This event is now referred to as the "Host FOAF". We went to The Liquor Castle in Hollywood and entered a weird world of shelves partially filled old dusty bottles in a large room from another era. No prices on anything - just some cryptic symbols written on each box in grease pen. You have to ask the owner what the price of each is and she uses the code in combination with the age and vintage of the bottle to quote you a price off the top of her head. I picked up a Coopers Choice 10 yo Bruichladdich for $35 but passed on a Coopers Choice 14 yo Clynelish for $75. I couldn't figure out the code at all... They had a pile of very old and rare malts but in most cases pretty expensive - they seem to put a very high multiplier on older age bottlings, especially vintage malts, without considering the actual quality of the dram. We then went to The Wine and Liquor Depot to see one of our favorite single malt whisky merchants, Howard. He was in and the FOAFing began in earnest. I found a pile of interesting malts that weren't too expensive and had them shipped back home (shipping cost was less than the deferred tax). We started dramming seriously around 4 pm and paused for a short dinner break at a wonderful BBQ joint - one of FX's all time favorites. (more plates overflowing with meat) Here is our list of drams from that day:
About this time FX explained his enigmatic use of the graphic (__) on the PLOWED chatroom and in inter-plowed email transmissions... he noted that he hates - absolutely abhors - the use of emoticons and that he created this generic graphic (__) as a substitute, as in "fill in your own emoticon here"... I was totally floored as I thought he had been E-mooning us all this time. Since then I'll occasionally
"remind" him of my misperception of his intent by using the "more
graphic" version (_._) - which predictably triggers "that's WRONG -
just plain wrong" as his response... FX is usually off-the-wall
obscure and unpredictable... in a PLOWED sense of course. However,
this mutation seems to get under his skin a bit so feel free to borrow it if
he's torturing you on-line and you need to knock the wind out of him for a
moment... he'll thank me for it I'm sure!
Here are photos from Thursday in LA with FX and Manny. Friday January 11 - A3 begins in Las Vegas! last updated on 2/23/02 |