Cat Develops Superpowers, Idiot Goes Drinking

It was an interesting weekend to say the least. It actually started a couple of months ago when I wrote about my new hero, the guy who is trying to visit 1000 bars in a year. I resolved that I would follow suit in my pathetic little way, and swore that I would ty to visit 100 bars in the rest of my life.

(If you want to read my original entry, it's here. If you want to read about the 1000 bars guy, his blog is here).

Anyhoo, one of my many awesome relatives read about my lofty goal, and offered to take me out to a few watering holes. I accepted happily, but first I had to find out what was killing my lawn.

You see, I pride myself on having the best lawn in the world, which is one of my chief qualifications for running for King of the World. The lawn at our new home apparently hasn't heard that I expect it to shape up, and little patches of it keep dying, looking as if they've been singed by some intensely hot flame.

The mini crop circles that were getting me down

I figured it was my neighbors, sneaking over in the night to ruin my lawn so that their lawns will look better by comparison, so I set up a secret hidden motion sensitive camera to see what I could find.

On the first night, I wasn't able to capture any of my neighbors on film, but the camera did capture several pictures of Fluffy, the family cat, lurking in the area.

Fluffy, lurking

I reset the camera and went about my business, excitedly babbling about the fact that soon I would be an actual bar and actually drinking, getting that first bar under my belt. To fill the hours until we shoved off on our adventure, I called everyone I knew and told them about my upcoming trip to a bar and how excited I'd be to finally be going to Bar #1. My excitement kind of died out when I got to the relative who had taken me to the Red Sox-Yankees game a while ago.

"You really are an Idiot," said he, "we went to a bar after the game."
"Huh?" said I.
"Waiting for the traffic to thin? Remember?"
"Uh, yeah, oops, heh-heh...."
And so it was that I got all fired up to go out and go to Bar #2 on my great quest to go to 100 bars.

The List begins, July 17, 2005:

Bar #1- Boston Billiards. I had a Sam Adams Summer Ale.
Bar #1a- Fenway Park, I had many many beers here.

So as the clock ticked down to our departure, I set the special motion sensitive camera and waited to see what I'd capture. I should probably mention that in the many pictures I'd captured of the lurking Fluffy, there were a few that were rather disquieting: in them, our beloved Fluffy has very strange eyes that actually seem to glow!

Fluffy's strange glowing eyes...

Finally, the time came and Mrs. Village Idiot pushed me out the door to go drinking.

[Important Editor's Note: between 1987 and 2004, The Village Idiot visited several thousand bars and frequented an amazing number of these same establishments. When he refers, in this article, to "Bar #1" and "Bar #2", he is saying that these are the first bars he's visited since vowing to visit 100 bars. The Legal Team here at Chez Village Idiot felt we should get this point cleared up before our e-mail floods with testimonials from people who have visited bars with the Idiot, which is usually a memorable experience for everyone except the Idiot, who usually can't remember much the next day.]

So, out we went. We were a motley crew of three; First there was our host, my relative, who threatened me with violence if I called him by either his name or referred to him as the Idiot Relative. When I asked him what he wanted to be called when I wrote about the evening in the blog, he gave me a name so filthy I'm still blushing about it, so for the sake of our more delicate readers I'll simply call him "W". Our other drinking buddy said that he had nothing to hide, so we should call him Al, which he said right after he announced that I should be his bodyguard for the evening.

W, Al and I had a great time and visited three Portsmouth, NH bars on that lovely night of July 23, 2005:
2) The Stockpot. I had a Red Stripe.
3) Jack Quigley's. I had a pint of Guinness or three.
4) Big Moe's. I had a 25 ounce schooner of Guinness.

Some notes:
-At the Stockpot, I raised the question as to what actually constitutes a bar, since most people would call the Stockpot a restaurant. We were on the deck of the place, which is outside, overlooking the harbor and does not serve food, but the rest of the place, the inside part, is clearly a restaurant. We couldn't come up with a clear definition that wouldn't include places like Fenway Park, which is why Fenway is tentatively listed as bar #1a.
Al kept coming up with definitions that would include my basement, ("they have beer", "they have a pool table and a dart board") because I'm pretty sure that he's getting addicted to the xBox game Halo, which we play in my basement everytime he visits Chez Idiot.

-Portsmouth has a seriously hopping nightlife, (which I assume ends once the nice weather and tourists go away). The streets were filled with throngs of happy people walking and enjoying the lovely evening, which is why I was especially sad when my host, W, took us away from the downtown area and took us to the last bar of the evening, a dive located in a strip-mall.
To my surprise, Big Moe's stock rose quickly. When the waitress announced that they had 25 ounce mugs of Guinness available, I knew I had found a home. A short time late,r when a gaggle of attractive female patrons decided that dancing promiscuously with each other would be a fun way to spend the evening, Big Moe's became the winner of the evening's best bar competition.


The Idiot in action

Eventually we made our way to our respective homes. The next morning I checked the images on the motion camera, and was absolutely shocked to discover that the burned patches on our lawn are made by our cat, Fluffy. I wouldn't expect you to believe it either, so here's the picture, straight from the old hidden camera:

Fluffy, eliminating mice with extreme prejudice.

We'd wondered why our dog was missing patches of fur from time to time, and why our youngest child calls the cat "Mr. Fluffy, Sir". Personally, I'm hoping that the cat soon discovers that there are mice on the neighbor's property because our lawn is really starting to look awful.

I must go now to see if Mr. Fluffy needs anything.