Rows upon rows of people stood motionless in awkward positions in front of the bar. Neither drunk or sober, their blood was the equivalent of driving down the center of the road. I genuinely wanted to help them but they were beyond help. They were dead—scratch, stunned. Useless to society and certainly to the cash register, they wanted neither company nor strong drink.

To say they were bad customers would be an understatement.

I was licking my wounds from watching baseball all day and trying to make a deadline. The window between the final out and opening the doors to the club has become an increasingly small period of time that I barely slide through every shift. I can barely carve a sentence with an unlimited amount of time. Imagine trying to write 325 words on a game that becomes the point of record for the state. Heavy lifting? Yes, but not nearly as bad as watching the wall of zombies as I am trying to pour a drink.

But here I was, positioned behind the bar with a wall of hooch, strong glassware and good ice. The fruit was still glistening from being cut earlier and was sweating sweetness ready to improve and awaken the unmade drinks awaiting them. Instead of pushing out cocktails, draft beers and heavy-handed poured wines, I had dumbfounded faces staring back at me.

Imagine startling a nursery of raccoons on a dark night with a flashlight and the deadening eyes reflecting back nothing is what I had. I’m the kind of guy who likes to wear a collared shirt but roll up my sleeves but tonight, I am standing idly by as precious pouring minutes fall quickly to the wayside.

Pathetic.

Just when the tension reaches sliceable levels, one of the dead breaks ranks and asks why Utah has weird liquor laws? I explained gently that every state has their own rules pertaining to the dispensing of alcohol and what can I get her. Instead of ordering a drink, she follows up with a question of why Mormons hate liquor. I told her she would have to ask one and considering that everybody in the bar is from Kentucky, she might need to leave the club to find one.

Also, by the way, can I get you a drink?

Why does Utah serve weak beer? That, I told her as the group collected behind her, is because God hates beer and Ben Franklin was clearly mistaken when he made his sacrilegious comment. Nothing. You want to know why? It is because out-of-towners don’t have much of a sense of humor. Making the move to my cell phone to see whether San Diego downed the Brewers, one of the group asked if I had vodka.

I might be the size of an upright walrus but there is no way I block the backbar of bottles behind me. Pushed to exhaustion from the needling questions, I said yes and can I get you one. No, he said, I just wanted to know if you can get vodka in Utah. I quickly told them that not only do we sell vodka, we also have gin, rum, tequila and whiskey. In fact, I know a thing or two about combining said ingredients with mixers to make something called “cocktails.”

Yeah, but they’re not real drinks.

Just once, in the fit of existential mischief, I’d like to pour an unreal drink. Something that looked wet, tasted wet but was in fact a cup of gravel or a ball cap filled with feathers. Besides the insanity of running circles around the booze laws in the state, what were they hoping to achieve? Shame the bartender into crafting new legislation to improve their evening or guilt me into giving away the shop? Whatever the question was, there was no way I was going to provide the suitable answer.

Just when I thought we would go another round without pouring a round, the leader of the raccoons asked very snarkily if I had Guinness, Jameson and Baileys. I nodded. He then asked if he could order Irish Car Bombs. I nodded again. Here is where I lost my cool—he finished up by asking if I knew how to pour an Irish Car Bomb.

Excuse me?

Irish Car Bombs, know how to make them?

What the fuck do you think? I grant you that I am the eye-candy in this establishment but do you really think I only know how to open bottles of beer? Better yet, you want to take a little bit of the condensation out of your voice? You think acting like a babe in the woods is how things are done inside of this bar? You’re not nearly cute enough for me to give this much attention to and you have been nothing short of a complete asshole since the second you stepped into my bar. Want to pull this shit somewhere else or do you want to order a God damn drink?  Can’t imagine you getting this far back home in Kentucky acting like an idiot without somebody telling you to knock it off and guess what? I’m telling you to grow up and order a drink like a man. And while we’re at it, Irish Car Bombs are child’s drink—real men drink whiskey straight.

Uh….

Yes?

I’ll have six Car Bombs.

Coming right up, Sir.

For a state that has draconian liquor laws, I hope we never change the rules so I can play verbal joisting with visitors for the rest of my bartending career. Does Utah need some slight adjustments to the laws? Absolutely but we shouldn’t try and amend it to be exactly like Nevada. Nevada is Nevada and Utah should be Utah and idiots who can’t see past this should be handed an ice water, a pat on the head and be ushered to a table.

I’ve said it a million times—trying acting like this in Chicago and you’d wake up in a dumpster with your teeth kicked in. I’m from Las Vegas but I call Salt Lake City home. It’s time that everyone who tends a bar in this state to start acting like our rules are the norm and the rest of the nation is out of whack. It would take a bit of the sting out when we explain that real beer is 3.2% and a Christian shot isn’t more than 1.5 ounces.

Until we get unified in our stance that the rules we work under are the guidelines for making a living pouring drinks, we’re going to be subjected to dingleberry conversations that make our mouths drop in the complete rudeness of our guests. That, or we need to start spreading sawdust throughout our clubs to pick up the raccoon droppings.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. The Sidecar is coming. Yeah, he really had this conversation today and the knuckleheads tipped 25%.

If your first thought was a couple of toolbags in Affliction shirts ready to take off their watches and go swinging at each other, you’d be wrong. Instead of perched behind the bar, I was on the sidelines watching a high school soccer game.

I was standing with Adam Spencer of the Park Record watching Hillcrest and Park City boys’ soccer go at it in a heated match. Both teams were getting increasingly “chippy” with each other and I told Adam to watch three players on the field. Not because they were playing exceptional but rather they were exhibiting the clear-cut signs that they were ready to start fighting.

Within five minutes of pointing out what players were going to do what, it broke out. I’m not going to single out what boy did what—I don’t think that’s appropriate. Instead, I’ll tell you that all three players found themselves on the wrong side of a whistle after committing hard fouls. Want to read about the game, here it is: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/tribpreps/56110171-190/gunderson-park-stray-ball.html.csp.

Adam asked me calmly how I knew that was going to happen and I told him it wasn’t hard to see. Bartend in enough clubs for enough years and you just get a sense of when the fight is coming.

Very few people know I write for the Salt Lake Tribune. I am a freelancer or stringer and I cover high school sports. I am guarded about telling people I work for the Trib simply because I never want to misrepresent myself as being a fulltime employee. While there are weeks I put in close to 40 hours, I’m still just an independent contractor. Don’t believe me? I should have you look at my 2012 tax return.

For somebody who wrestled for only a year in high school and spent more time in theater than the football field, it’s wild to think that I write about kids more than half my age. Overwhelmingly, most of the kids are fantastic. They are what you’d want them to be: smart, engaging, bright and energetic and on the brink of starting a new chapter in their life. The reason the guy who captains the football team and is the salutatorian of his graduating class is because they are hardworking, driven young people.

Some are turkeys: cheap, dumb, selfish and a little bit crazy. Fortunately, they are few and far between but they usually make for better stories.

A lot of them are nervous talking with a reporter and others sound like they have been watching SportsCenter for a lifetime preparing for their first interview. They come in all shape and sizes from all financial backgrounds. Some talk firmly about upcoming LDS missionary work and others look longingly towards the freedom of college and leaving their parents houses. I struggle what I felt when I graduated from high school but it isn’t too different what most of these kids are going through.

Because I define myself as a bartender and I make my living selling booze, I don’t tell the kids know what I really do for a living. What good can come from me asking about a particular play on the field in a postgame interview and they come back at me with what dry vermouth makes the best Manhattans? Besides, one shouldn’t be drinking whiskey based drinks after exercising—that’s what beer is for.

What I do bring to the table from years behind the bar is my casual conversation style. When the mics are hot, I envision myself meeting a customer for the first time and try to get them to do the talking. While I can dominate any conversation, the best bartending is letting the guest do the heavy lifting. Have them talk. Have them tell you what they want to talk about. Chances are they are going to focus on what they just experienced. Get a 16-year old kid who just scored the winning goal and I doubt he wants to discuss anything else.

In a phrase: stay the Hell out of the way and let them talk to you.

Bartending requires multitasking like a mofo. There is no way you can pour drinks, take money, wash glassware, stock and be constantly cleaning if you are single tasked orientated. Want to watch a bad bartender? Watch for the ones that use only one hand. Want to watch a horrific bartender? Find one that looks at their cellphone. This skillset has actually helped me write stories. You have to look at more than one thing, keep score and take notes. Getting interviews at the end of the game is like the 10 minutes before last call—frantic.

But on one occasion, both of my worlds intersected. I was writing a story on West High’s ProStart program. ProStart is home economics on steroids where kids get to learn the basics of working in a kitchen while still in school. All of the kids I met are either going to work as line cooks after graduation or go to culinary school. They were tough, focused and natural cooks. Working in kitchens most of my life, I know what a cook looks like and these kids had the routine down flat.

They destroyed the meal. The lamb was ridiculous, the dessert was good enough to take a bath in and I honestly believe that I ate the best crab cakes in my life at West High’s main hall. Read the story for more details: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/sports/56125708-77/gomez-west-prostart-crab.html.csp. After they got done cooking, we went out to the front steps while they cooled off.

The only thing missing in their hands were cigarettes and long neck beers. There isn’t a harder life than line cooks. The grunts and heart of any restaurant, it is a job reserved for hardcore people who live in a meritocracy. Dishwashers are revered while waiters are scum. As a bartender, I am not on equal footing but there is always a mutual respect. These kids just had that seasoned feel to them and when I told them that I actually bartend for a living, they opened up. They went from being guarded to some of the best kids I’ve talked to since I started working at the Trib.

They turned the table on me asking questions about life behind the bar and what it is like working in real restaurants. I gave them the best answers I could, trying to focus on the work but I knew that wanted the dirty secrets.

You’d have to ask them what we talked about.

At West High, sitting on the stoop with kids about to embark on a career in the culinary arts is where I found my place at the newspaper. I am a hack at best at the typewriter and a competent bartender on my best day. Some days are better than others between my two jobs but in the middle is an interesting rock I’ve carved out for myself. The money could always be better but the experiences more than provide adequate compensation. I probably have the most unique Venn diagram in the state with W-2s.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. Serving up The Sidecar shortly. No, he has never traded beer for stories.

I probably have nobody to blame but myself for stepping foot into your Whole Foods supermarket at Sugarhouse today. I was running errands and needed to get a quick bite to eat after buying dog food at Petco and scented candles at Bed, Bath and Beyond. For the record, I have not found the ‘beyond” at the home accessory store but that is another letter.

It took a lot of courage for me to wander into your Whole Foods for a lunch on the run simply because your managers have devised a simple plan of empting my wallet every time I go through your doors. Is it my fault that I love over-priced soup or your mediocre sushi? Who do I blame for buying pot stickers at a rate much over market price? Who is at fault for my random purchases running from $3 bananas or a $9 smoothie? Who I ask, who?!?

Of course it is mine.

Whole Foods should be renamed Middle Class Guilt and Beyond but that is wordy. What isn’t wordy is what you said to me about that pizza which had dying under the heat lamp as I approached the counter. I asked what sort of pie the chicken laden slice was and you responded with pride that it was a Mexican pizza.

Mexican pizza? Two of my favorite culinary culture treats on one piece of flatbread? Damn you for tempting me with labels that I support and even encourage. I love Mexican food and pizza is in my top four foods after shrimp, cold cuts and Sloppy Joes. Yes, bacon is number five on the RFPR (Raskin Food Power Ranking) with tacos, smoked trout and hot dogs filling out the bottom eight but Mexican pizza?

Well played, food handler that could never pass a drug test, well played.

I asked you to your face if the Mexican pizza was any good and you looked me straight in the eye without any hesitation and told me it was excellent. With a recommendation like that, how could I not buy over a pound of your Mexican pizza? I am merely a man, not some sort of automatized robot with restraint when it comes to Mexican pizza.

Well, I am here to tell you that it wasn’t excellent. In fact, it might have been the worst pizza I have ever had in my life. I assumed from your heartfelt recommendation that you knew what the word excellent meant but clearly you did not. Excellent is reserved for the slap hitting of Tony Gwynn or Eddie Veddar’s haunting rendition of “Release” from Pearl Jam’s first album. Excellent describes Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood or watching Stockton and Malone execute the pick-and-roll. Excellent is watching Peregrine falcons take down their prey in midair or a supped-up El Camino do donuts in an abandoned parking lot while people drink beer.

That Mexican pizza was not excellent—it was gross. So gross, that I had to feed it to my dogs who ate it begrudgingly because they lack the ability to talk and frankly, they are simply dogs.

Damn you for making my dogs eat bad pizza.

You, Sir, have no idea what “excellent” is. In fact, I am going to risk proposing that you lied to me about that Mexican pizza. You are either stupid or a liar because no sane human being could suggest that the Mexican pizza was “excellent.” It stands as the single worst pizza I have ever had and falsely giving me faith that Little Caesar’s actually knows how to make a pizza pie. Their $5 Hot and Ready have never, never, never caused me to turn into a gurgling mess and wish that I would simply die—simply die.

As I ruined my underpants throughout my shift at the bar, I burped and grappled with the wild indigestion I developed from your pizza. I felt cramps reserved for childbirth. I wasn’t pregnant with a human baby but a poop baby spawned from your horrific pizza.

The fact that I am able to write this letter to you, Bearded Pizza Maker at Whole Foods, is both a miracle and a testament to my body fighting through God awful meals. You should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting that the Mexican pizza was anything more than a step above the Alpo my dogs enjoy twice a day with dry food mixed in with the occasional human food because they are both really good girls.

You, however, are not a good girl. You are a bearded liar that doesn’t know the first thing about excellent Mexican pizza. The thought that you might actually try making this kamikaze pizza and risk other with the bile-filled disgusting mess called Mexican pizza is enough to keep me up at night and consider calling my state senator. You’re lucky I am lazy and stuck on a toilet.

But rest assured, I will get off of this toilet at some time. I’ll get off the toilet and stand in front of you with the same rage that I experienced as I took the first bite of that wretched slice. I hope you learn a thing or two about excellence and apply it to the next pizza you make.

If not, you’ll have more to fear then my sharp pen—you’ll have to live with the fact that I am going to have to make two trips the next time I hunger for a Mexican pizza: Taco Bell and Little Caesar’s. I’m sure I could make a home-made Mexican pizza in my truck from a Bell Beefer and a $5 pepperoni that would be superior to your crap.

Thanks for ruining my faith in humanity. I hope you get arrested and are forced to take a shower.

Cordially, Ben Raskin—concerned citizen.

Ben Raskin works at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. The Sidecar Podcast is in the works. He literally wrote 2/3rds of this blog on the toilet eating a Sloppy Joe, #3 on his RFPR.

It finds it way through your shoes. I was wearing wool sock stuffed into hiking boots. It should have been adequate protection from the elements but it barely made a dent in the bustling wind. Sitting in the first row at Rio Tinto Stadium, covering Murray and Skyline boys soccer, I was yawning out of cold and shivering out of necessity.

I have a good part-time job.—I cover sports at the Salt Lake Tribune. I refer to it as my lifeboat. Prior to writing about high school sports, I was looking for an outlet for the thoughts and passions that I experienced. I started writing a blog not because I wanted to prove that I knew how to carve a sentence. Nor did I start the blog to reconnect with my human interest column from college. I started the blog because I was spent from running The Woodshed.

Never under-estimate how traumatic the damages from running my own club in Utah were on my family or myself. This is not an attack on Utah liquor laws or the Utah’s state tax code. Being a part of a business that fails is a reflection upon oneself. Your friends and family will tell you differently, but the pressure to succeed becomes addictive and all encompassing.

I did everything I could to make The Woodshed work but finding myself in the hospital with blood pressure 210/180 is a wakeup. Doctors told me that I was lucky to be alive. The fact that they determined that telling me that my mortality was jeopardized was hard t hear.

Was I mess? Absolutely. I was overweight, smoking and drinking too much. I ate like a raccoon but every decision and move that I made was for the survival of my business. I was trying to preserve my financiers’ trust and in the process playing a dangerous game of Russian Roulette with my health.

Scary shit.

Laying prone at the University of Utah Hospital, I was tended to by doctors and nurses who were fighting to keep me alive. I was a pushpin of laboratory experiments with IVs piercing my skin. I was half-naked on the examination table with a slew of machines monitoring my blood pressure and heart rate as I stared up at the false ceiling. It was artificially cold and scary. It was the kind of place where we feel comfortable watching on television but never want to experience in person.

I experienced it in person—so did Erin.

The final straw in deciding to sell The Woodshed came when Erin walked into my examination room. There was nothing but concern in her eyes but behind her compassion came a solid message that both of us read painfully clearly. Sell the bar and repair the damage done to my health and our relationship. She is a strong, caring and empathetic woman but her ability to trust and love were pushed to the limits. With IVs piercing three parts of my body, the moment to walk away from the bar seized my body.

I knew that I was done.

Done.

Scary shit once again.

I put an ad in the paper and through a series of misadventures, I found a fellow adventurer that was willing to risk running a bar in Utah. He turned out to be a great partner simply because his checks cleared and he had the belief that the project I started, he could finish. I don’t speak of the guy who bought The Woodshed often but I am glad to know that he had the strength to finish my vision.

It was the beginning of looking at people as lifeboats.

Following The Woodshed, I was spent. I improved my health and found my way to Keys On Main where my boss gave me a second lease on life. I never wake up or go to sleep without thinking of George as being the guy who saved my bacon. It might sound like brown-nosing but I never forget the guy who gave me a chance where others shuffled me to the curb.

Not scary shit. It just happened to be the shit that gets most of us up in the morning and get us to work.

By 5:45pm, I wanted to die. The wind was pushing it way though Rio Tinto Stadium and I was a shivering mess. My hands became frozen masses where the skin shivered up into wrinkled masses that lacked feeling and function. My toes were ghosts of themselves and I could barely make a fist. I hate admitting this but I was glad that Skyline couldn’t answer Clay Powell of Murray’s goal simply because I don’t know if I could survive an overtime period of a great game.

I don’t root for teams in Utah. I root for great story lines. I had my storyline but I didn’t have blood circulating in my extremities. I would love to have had the Eagles of Skyline fight back in the closing minutes of the second half but I was so God damn cold that I just wanted it to end.

I am the kind of guy that will never complain about the heat simply because I can’t stop bitching during the cold. I figure if that I can suffer through the 100+ heat of the summer and not raise my voice in complaint that I can be a whiny punk during the winter months.

My home life has calmed downed dramatically since that horrible day in the hospital. Erin and I have found the ebbs and flows of a family and it centers around dinner. I came home from Rio Tinto and she asked how was the game. I could have gone on in great detail that the wind cut through me like a knife and I suffered for 80-minutes of an unseasonable cold that wrecked my hands and soul but I focused on the single goal in the game.

In replaying Clayton Powell’s remarkable top shelf goal in the 51^st minute, she listened to me talk about a pretty cool part-time job I work. Erin is pretty cool but working at the Tribune isn’t half bad.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. Like the name The Sidecar? That’s the new podcast. Working at the Tribune is more than a lifeboat—it’s a destroyer.

Our room was a sprawling mess of two mattresses on the floor with clothes and books pushed into barriers demarcating who owned what. Too hot in the summer and an icebox in the winter, it was a dump but it was our dump. We shared the house with a flock of international students who hung sheets throughout the basement to create spaces not fit for refugees and members of a Reno’s biggest ska band.

I doubt you’d find a household with more range than at 561 North Center Street in Reno Nevada. You should Google Map the address and see what a mess my last two years in college were. Trust me, the house hasn’t changed much in appearance. The only difference is that the house has been converted into a Christian mission.

True story.

Gin, unlike other liquors, has an origins story. Whereas I can‘t remember the first time I tried a swiped can of beer from my parent’s refrigerator or that embarrassing balcony vomit session from ingesting tequila for the first time, I know how I first discovered gin. Ross Taggart was my introduction.

We were in some God damn awful casino polishing off a $4 steak and eggs when Ross offered to buy me a drink. We went to one of the many dilapidated casino cantinas where he ordered two Gibson’s. A simple martini served over ice, Ross was a fan of gin and dry vermouth garnished with a cocktail onion. Always over ice, never up, Ross swirled his drink with the pierced onion while pontificating upon nothing memorable.

The conversation died but the memory of the drink didn’t. Ross is the only person I knew that read out of love and not requirement. Moreover, he read important books. Whereas I fumbled through course selections and beefed up my pop literature with Thompson and O’Roarke, Ross read the greats. Take the top 100 books in English literature and he had consumed all of them. He had a tradition that I mimic to this day of rereading The Great Gatsby every spring. He said it reminded him of why our American canon is beautiful and should revisited often.

If he was right with Gatsby, certainly he was correct with his Gibson’s.

I found the cocktail onion to be disgusting but it was my introduction with gin. Like all great cocktails, I cared little for the drink but the experience I had with it. Ross and I shared that filthy, rat-hole for months challenging both our friendship and health but I always respected him for his intellect and drive. He was the guy who was cooler than anyone else, even if I was the only person who believed it.

My second memory of gin came from the first day I worked at Big Ed’s Alley Inn my fourth year in college. A hole-in-the-wall bar off the Reno strip, it was famous for two things: ridiculously hearty breakfasts and Ramos Fizzes. The breakfasts had enough heart-stopping cholesterol to choke out any hangovers properly placed on Saturday nights and Ramos Fizzes proved to be the best thing to wash greasy pork chops and eggs down with. The Ramos Fizz is a rather complicated drink. Into a blender, you add crushed (never cubed) ice, a jigger of gin (one and half ounces), fresh squeezed lemon and lime juice, egg white, sugar, cream orange flower water and soda water. The egg white was separated by rolling the yolk from cracked shell to cracked shell over the blender. It was a nightmare. To this day, watch me bartend and I am constantly wiping my hands on my shirt. After a shift of making nothing but Ramos Fizzes, my shirt would be so covered in egg white that it looked like I was wearing a Plaster of Paris tunic.

I worked for a taskmaster of an owner who would hover over me as I rolled eggs into the single blender and whipped up Ramos Fizzes during the brunch rush on Sundays. I crushed it as a barback making almost $100 a shift but I was so broken from leaning over for five straight hours making one drink that I vowed never to make another Ramos Fizz again.

Don’t bother asking for one at the club. Not only do I not have orange flower water, we don’t carry eggs. Besides, it is just as easy for me to get a bouncer to escort you out of the bar than relive that Hell.

Ramos Fizzes were Huey Long’s favorite drink. The Lousinana governor was reported to have shanghaied Sam Guarino to the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City to show the bar staff how to make the drink. Huey was eventually gunned downed by a dentist and I learned that the best drinks are made with practice. By the end of my two year stint at Big Ed’s, I had become so profiecent at making the Ramos Fizzes that I could literally do them with my eyes blindfolded. Once the rush died down towards the late Sunday afternoons, I would make a couple with my eyes covered. From this, I learned that bartending is more than making drinks—it is a part of the show of being behind the bar.

Let’s be frank—gin taste like pine needles steeped in a bag of Xmas potpourri. It’s not for everyone. Hell, it probably shouldn’t be legal. With Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire coming in at 94-proof, gin packs the kind of punch reserved for shoe polish and turpentine drinkers. But like wiring a live electrical receptor or handling a cobra, you got to respect what you have in your hand. Get a half-dozen of these bastards down your neck, you are more than likely ready to end a marriage or find yourself in the back of a squaddie.

Gin don’t play.

Gin was the drink of choice of Winston Churchill, Jackie Gleason, Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, WC Fields and James Bond. 007’s famous Vesper cocktail was three measures of Gordon’s Gin, one of vodka and half measure of Kina Lillet. I would argue that even some of my best drinking partners would not be able to make a dent in Bond’s martini regiment before hitting the floor. Lord knows I am only good for two.

Hemingway was famous for his daiquiris but mind you he consumed the majority of these while living in Key West and Cuba. His early days in Paris were gin fueled days and nights with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Read A Moveable Feast and imagine trying to match Ernest and Scott’s gin intake. Hell, read A Moveable Feast just to remind yourself you couldn’t write yourself out of a wet paper bag. After being humbled, just read Hemingway to remark that perfect times with perfect subjects make for the best writing—Death In The Afternoon best encapsulates this.

Chandler, creator of Phillip Marlowe, was my favorite discovery in my early 20s. Chandler could carve a sentence out of wood but he is the only pulp writer that could bring me to drink not by his words but setting a mood that I wanted to participate in. I suppose I have never needed a catalysis for having a drink but Chandler made it romantic, dirty and grim. Mix a pitcher of martinis the next time we get rained out on a Sunday and try to get through The Long Goodbye. Nary a book better to read than this tome with a cocktail in your hand unless you start with his Farewell, My Lovely. That son of a bitch knew how to drive a story.

There is a drink called the Burma that I have been working to reinvent. Not quite a classic cocktail like a Manhattan or Horse’s Neck, the Burma was a very popular British drink when the Brits still ran amuck in India. A simple concoction, it is a jigger of dry gin, triple sec, lime juice and a couple of dashes of Angostura’s Bitters. Shaken over ice, it is poured chilled into a cocktail (martini glass for the uninitiated) and garnished with a thin sliver of lime. A raw amber color, the Burma tastes like good old fashioned imperialism. After a long day of enslaving a people and decimating a culture, there was no better cocktail for unwinding with the sounds of elephants trumpeting in the background and beggars clanking tin cups in front of your walled off estate.

After the British left the subcontinent in 1947, they took their drink back to the isle and it was the rage throughout the 1950s, when suddenly, it fell out of favor. While the sun never sets on the British Empire, the love of the Burma went the way of the dodo and became nothing more than a footnote in a dated bartender manual.

I like the Burma and have been working hard to reintroduce it to the modern drinker. Because gin is raw and complicated, I find it to be a difficult and challenging liquor to mix. With the Burma, I have a recipe that demands to be both honored and shared simply because it is the best gin drink I know how to make for non-gin drinkers. It is bright with citrus undertones but doesn’t hide the taste of the gin. Brightness is the best way to describe how the Burma hits your mouth from the first sip. It is raw but uplifting. It burns down the gullet but settles into the belly as a shovel of warm coals halfway through the drink. It is the kind of cocktail that intimidates at first but demands to be reordered before leaving the bar.

And like with all gin drinks, no man should ever order more than two. Nothing good comes from the third gin cocktail.

The most common way to consume gin is with tonic, garnished with a large freshly cut lime wedge. Simplicity—sheer, simple simplicity. The quinine of the tonic pairs with the gin creating a glass of heaven suitable for any occasions. Unlike other cocktails that are seemingly out of place during certain times of the year, gin and tonics beat back social norms and prove to be a superior cocktail.

Erin and I are suckers for Hendrick’s Gin. A cucumber infused gin, Hendrick’s is my gin of choice because of the botanics and drinkability. The cucumber takes away a lot of the bite that gin traditionally has and becomes a dangerous character in my two-per evening rule. Unlike other liquors that can allow the consumer to step down in their price, I can’t make the argument that a cheaper gin is as good as one of the more pricier. Simply put, if you can’t afford to drink decent gin, stay away. Bad gin creates more home wrecking moments than the rest of the liquors combines—yeah, I’m talking to you tequila.

Ross lives somewhere in New York now. He is working on a PhD in modern Irish Literature. We text each other on occasion, mostly to talk about our families and what we’re reading. To this day, I marvel at his intellect and scope of knowledge. If I had one piece of advice I could offer any incoming college freshman it would be to find a Ross Taggart. Find somebody smarter than you and try to learn as much as you can from them during your time together. They are few and far between but I know there are enough Taggarts to go around.

Second piece of advice? Stay the Hell away from gin. Nobody should be allowed to drink gin until they are at least 30-years old. And when you finally reach your third decade, spend a few moments with me before jumping half-cocked into the bathtub worth of distilled juniper berries.

Gin don’t play.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. Podcast—likely to start a new one shortly. He does read The Great Gatsby every year and thinks that Tom Buchanan is a dick.

It starts with a glass. I prefer old fashion tumblers. These are the glasses with thick, heavy bases and slender, thin walls. Old fashion glasses are called such because they need heavy bases for muddlers to crush oranges, cherries and sugar cubes. I like how they open up wide and let the booze seep the smells of the liquor. The clear crystal showcases the ingredients and best of all, I love how the walls of the glass build condensation.

Second, it takes ice. Automatic ice machines found on new refrigerators are fine but the best come from actual ice manufacturers. Want a root canal? Visit an exodontists. Want ice? Go to somebody who knows how to actually make it. Spend the $3. You won’t regret it.

There is much talk at the bar about people infusing liquors with fresh ingredients or aging new products in oak barrels, but I think it is time for folks to start to making boutique ice. Good ice sets off a drink. Bad ice taste like the remains of an aged fridge. It is only a matter of time before we’ll find an ice shop in Sugarhouse and you waiting in line to buy over-priced frozen water.

Third, quality booze. Here’s the deal, this is the most arbitrary part of any drink. What I consider quality might seem like a king’s ransom for a fifth of hooch. For others, they might think that my beloved liquor isn’t fit for a railroad hobo. Good booze is what you can afford and wish to pour. Not every cocktail can be made with the best product, that’s why you need to be selective and certain of what you’re pouring is the best for our drink.

When it comes to Old Fashions, there is nothing better than Bulleit Bourbon. Manhattan should be made with Canadian Club. Mint Juleps demand Jack Daniels. Sazeracs should be made with, well, Sazerac Bourbon.

The hitch behind this—Jim Beam would easily suffice with any of these classic cocktails.

If drinking is a lifestyle then it is immaterial what you consume. But if you are trying to create perfect drinks, then you need to seek out the best liquor you can afford. And don’t get hung up on brands. Find what you like and buy it.

I figure this reasoning is why I tend to buy two bourbons: Bulleit and Maker’s Mark. They both cost around $30. It hits the wallet but not too bad. I always justify these purchases in that you get at least nine cocktails per bottle where at the bar, I would spend close to $120 for the same amount of drinks.

If you think economy doesn’t come into my drinking, you’d be wrong.

Finally, the best drinks have the best mixers. Scotch and sodas demand canned soda. Whiskey and ginger requires canned ginger ale or homemade ginger beer. Jack and Cokes, I think you can see where this is going. The best carbonated mixers come from cans and I doubt you can do better than that. At the bar, the soda guns are good but you have to factor in the hundreds of feet the soda pop needs to travel before entering you glass. At home, don’t get cheap and make substandard drinks with two-liter soda pop.

I don’t judge you for wanting to get drunk—just show some modicum of class while you are doing it.

So, you’re going to be making some home cocktails, you now know what you need to make this happen: glassware, ice, booze and mixer. These four items compose a highball and they are the best cocktails on the planet.

At the simplest, a highball can be a Jack and Coke. At the most complicated, a highball can be a Mojito. Because we are talking about real drinks, I will spare you the shame of talking about any drink that doesn’t include whiskey. Real drinks are not made with anything but whiskey.

Think about that for a minute—I have been.

When I look at my truck or my home or the standard of life that working behind the bar has created for me, I am saddened to think that everything I own comes from pouring sickeningly sweet tall, strong and fruities. Every time Erin and I go out to dinner or pay for one of our dog’s veterinarian’s visits, I calculate the cost in how many AMFs or Long Islands I had to pour. The power bill to the phone bill to flying out to visit my mother in San Diego comes from pouring disgustingly sweet cocktails because the average (rather, the vast majority) of drinkers don’t like cocktails. They like getting drunk but not the taste of liquor. They want the baby but not the labor pains.

If you prefer drinking Long Islands to whiskey and sodas, chances are you don’t have the palate to enjoy anything pure. You would rather hide behind artificially flavored vodkas because you don’t like traditional tastes. That’s fine, I am not judging you, but recognize that you don’t really like alcohol.

For those of us that do like the taste of booze, we tend to stay away from the sugars simply because the sweetness equates to both hangovers and making very,very bad decisions.

With that said, the best drinks come from whiskey.

I wish that I had access to a cabana boy who would muddle the early evening away making Mojitos and Old Fashions, but I haven’t poured enough AMFs to make that happen. So, when I am home having cocktails with Erin, I settle with whiskey and water. In my estimation, this is the best cocktail on the planet.

The whiskey and water is a part of the highball family but I always call it a lowball.

In a good glass with good ice, a decent whiskey and (Lord help me) tap water, a lowball is the best way to enjoy making dinner at home. Because I do the majority of the cooking for my family, I love a short lowball while I steam vegetables, cooking rice or grilling fish. Lowballs set the evening and offer a chance to unwind while processing the day. I work four nights a week of and these moments at the house with my family are why I leave for over half of the week. Ten years ago, I never would have thought about it in those terms. Amazing what a little maturity can do to a man.

Fair warning.

There are a thousand ways to drink a cocktail and there are a million reasons to drink. I just caution people for calling whipped creamed vodka or lemon-flavored rum mixed with a Merlin’s brew of concoctions as being a bad road to walk down. Smart money would bet that years from now when you have a shared some of my experiences that getting crocked on anything more complicated than a lowball will result in misplaced memories. Instead of remembering the good times with friends and family, you’ll be left with blackened hangovers and nauseating mornings.

I defend the lowball and so should you. It harkens back to a time when cocktails meant something, more than a daily chance to tie on one.

The perfect cocktail requires four items.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. New podcast coming up. Funny how he can write about lowballs and only had two.

For 38-years, I have been building a mental roadmap of my teeth’s location and keep a daily record of their state. From molar to bicuspid to canine, I know how my chewing friends are doing and do a reasonable amount of work keeping my winning smile in check.

When my face is the moneymaker behind the bar, the worst thing I can have is a set of choppers jagged, chipped and discolored. Someone has to keep food on the table and my midsection isn’t going to pay the bills. Besides, my mother put way too much money and time into my teeth when she got me braces as a kid. I had a smile like an Englishman when I was 11-years old and she did the Lord’s work to make sure I didn’t grow up looking like David Nevin.

With the occasional cavity filled in and back molar yanked because I had cracked it on some particularly good ossobuco, my teeth have been damn good friends. I give them a brush a couple of times a day and run some floss through them and in return, I have been given a smile that can charm a cobra and the right tools to eat anything—including leather and radial tires.

That’s what made the discovery a month ago so disconcerting.

My upper back left fellow had taken ill. Sending the tongue in to get a better feel for what has happened, I felt a crack that ran the length of the old man. The thick molar was split and leaking some sort of primordial stew that was making my mouth taste foul. I was getting headaches and I feared it would have to be extracted. I am fine losing one tooth to lamb shank bones but two—no thank you. I was raised in Nevada not some village outside of Newcastle.

In heading to the dentist on Tuesday, I was apprehensive in both the pain and cost of saving my tooth. After seeing Les Miserables I knew that I could not just go to the docks and trade a tooth for a couple of shekels. I needed help and the right amount of dental work. I made my way in the office early and filled out a stack of papers in triplicate that seemed unnecessary and antiquated. I am hoping for the day that I can walk in to a doctor’s office, have them scan a bar code on my forearm and get to work fixing me. Apparently, Obamacare hasn’t gotten that far yet.

Dental offices are a combination of weird smells and unpleasant noises. The women running the clinics all look pooped, acting as if time spent around open mouths has taken a toll on them. Because I am pretty much a baby when it comes to people poking around my mouth, I was looking for a little mothering in the clinic but no such luck. These women had bigger fish to fry and that fish as probably something picked up through a drive-through around 11:30am.

The dentist came in and said his name was Brad. I wish he introduced himself in this fashion, “Hello, my name is Dr. Bradley Wilkins DDS. I am a board certified edonodontist and I am looking forward to helping you with your pain.” No such luck, I got some guy in scrubs telling me his name is Brad and to open my mouth as wide as possible.

I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on Brad. Too often we use stereotypes to describe people and most of the time these generalizations are unfounded. But every now and then, a stereotype is based in fact. When it comes to hiring an accountant, I like a guy who knows a Sabbath goy, all of my tailors should be named Giuseppe, a decent mechanic is named Mike and all of my dentists should be Mormon. If I don’t see at least a baker’s dozen worth of temple photos framed in the front office, there is no way I am letting them drill my teeth. Mormons make good FBI agents and damn fine dentists. The only problem is when you tell them that your teeth hurt like Hell and burping last night’s Scotch dinner in their face.

Nonetheless, here I was with Brad and he got to work looking at my mouth. He had a nice soothing umpa-lumpa manner of speaking which meant he was bored. It is counter-intuitive but you can trust a professional that is bored—it means that they have been there before and this is just one of a half-dozen he’ll do before breaking for lunch.

He gave me the run down and told me that I could save the tooth but it was going to need a root canal. Root canal. I was relieved that we were going to be able to save the tooth but I was disappointed that there wasn’t some sort of magic pill I could take.

Now, I wanted to be brave. I really did but there was no way I was going to be able to do this root canal without some whacky gas and a boatload of Novocain. They put the gas mask on me and got to work pumping injection after injection of Novocain into every corner of my mouth. Because I am a drinker and not a druggy, nitrous oxide is a pleasant break from the tumblers of bourbon I enjoy at night. I didn’t get high as a kite but I did that warm fuzzy feeling in my chest and feet that made me wish I had one of these things set up at my house.

Because the procedure takes about 90-minutes, there was an added distraction in the examination room—a television screen mounted into the ceiling that I could watch a movie while they went to town on my mouth. Thumbing through he choices, I selected Pixar’s Ratatouille. Having never seen it before and considering Pixar’s track record with their movies, I figured how could I go wrong.

Yep, I went wrong.

While Brad drilled away at my mouth I watched arguably the most disgusting cartoon I’ve seen since Fritz The Cat. The whole movie was nothing but swarms and swarms of rats climbing over food with an protagonist so unlovable that I was rooting for the villains. For those that haven’t seen Ratatouille, let me break it down for you: a filthy rat went to a dirty city and buddied up with a moron and handed a bunch of food that humans ate. The food looked gross, the characters bland and at no point did I not wish for Remy to get flushed down a garbage disposal.

Besides that, it was a fine movie.

As I was trying to keep my breakfast down from watching bubonic plague infused soups and a dipshit of a lead try to fake his way through a Julia Childs book, I was fighting the temptation to have Brad stop what he was doing and just yank the tooth out. He was drilling and probing and sawing that I thought I was going to pass out. Reminded of my promise to be brave, I gripped hard into the chair and try to suck down as much clown gas as possible.

Root canals consist of drilling out the tooth and taking these miniature piper cleaners to poke out any tooth pulp left in the molar. They then build a temporary crown by packing the tooth in with filling and have you come back later to dump your kid’s college fund into their boat fund. It is just good science. Brad was a gentle lover but he kept showing me what he was going to do. It was a sick sadomasochist way of making sure that I wasn’t going to punch him in the eye. Carrying over the movie theme, it would have been the equivalent of the opening sequence of Hostel deciding to do a Ted talk while jamming 16-penny nails through my teeth.

Between the rat and Brad, I was dying in the chair. I did a little praying but we know how that worked. I did a little crying but that didn’t speed things up. I did a little negotiating with God and he wasn’t pleased. He actually told me he was too busy picking a new Pope and didn’t have time for some wuss in Utah who was having a little bridgework done.

Miraculously, it eventually ended.

I was covered in sweat. Every muscle in my body was stressed from contracting in pain for two hours. My mouth felt like I had been using it to move Louisville Sluggers across a warehouse and I wanted to get the Hell out of there. Testing my repaired tooth with my tongue, it felt strange and bloated and foreign. Yet, I felt better. My face wasn’t a pulsating pulp of pain and the vile taste of infection was gone. It is as if Brad knew what he was doing.

I grabbed my pain meds and antibiotics and made my way out of there. The numbness in my mouth was unbearable. When I talked, I sounded like a cross between Albert Finney and Roger Ebert. I knew the Novocain was going to wear off, so I took my pills and went home to sleep through the afternoon.

That’s the story. I get my permanent crown next week and should be ready to eat hard candy and taffy by the end of next week. The dentist stinks but I guess I am fortunate that I have health insurance and live in a community that actually has doctors.

Brad is not aces in my book but he is one of the good guys. He did a good job cleaning my tooth out and I am looking forward to putting this affair behind me. I just wish he could have recommended a better movie than Ratatoiulle. Man, that movie was garbage.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. Podcast, yeah, podcast. Patton Oswalt is getting a very strongly worded letter from him when the pain pills wear off.

I started with St. Pauli Girls non-alcoholic and was surprised how good they were. They had a crisp, malty taste that didn’t disappoint in the mouth but disappointed horribly in the getting wrecked feeling. They tasted like an import which is to say they were skunky but they really weren’t that bad. I would definitely recommend St. Pauli Girls as a wean-you-off-the-teat from sauce. That six-pack lasted almost an hour before I decided to switch to water.

The next day I tried a 12-pack of O’Doul’s selection. Talk about a Pyrrhic victory. They have a hint of malt and are overly carbonated. Imagine club soda with a bit of whiz in it. We were watching a “House of Cards” and I found myself literally chugging these bad boys. Mind you, the taste isn’t bad but I was downing each can in about three swigs. Probably not healthy but the caloric intake from a 12-pack was less than a couple of DABC beers. The only real downsize was that I woke up a little hungover. I don’t think it was the booze that did me in but rather the amount of carbonation I consumed in a sitting. The only upside is that I will always associate that feeling with Kevin Spacey’s performance. “House of Cards” is really good.

The last selection was Busch NA. Yep, a beer that already tastes like it is NA has an NA option. Are they good? Probably not the right question, let’s try, are they bad? I offer an emphatic no. They remind me of a time in college where we would wake up from a house party and walk the house polishing off any wounded soldiers. Minus the cigarette butts and chew spit, Busch didn’t disappoint. After a week of not drinking, I found myself actually enjoying the Busch more as a beverage as oppose to a means to an end. Because you never get drunker than when you are boating, I think Busch might be my new beer of choice when I hit the water.

*******

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse won’t come on pale white horses or a horn-tooting on Gabrielle’s trumpet—it’ll come the day when I show up for work and pour nothing put Fireball shots and Coors Light drafts. This weekend was a nightmare. We hosted a Fireball Headbanger’s ball and it brought out some of the best in SLC or I should say, Taylorsville. Dressed in my best Iron Maiden T-shirt, I witnessed a Bacchus debacle that reminded me that I do have a bachelors and I would make a decent junior high teacher.

After a week of NA, I realized that I would rather spend the rest of my life pounding O’Doul’s than taste a Coors Light. The silver bullet makes people dumb. I don’t know if it is some sort of altitude sickness that they put into every keg or if it is because Pete Coors once kicked my rugby team out of his Palo Alto home 20-years ago, but I hate Coors Light. Fans of the watered down Rocky Mountains are extremely fickle and would rather go without instead of drinking any other beer. Their brand loyalty is disturbing to me—it’s not like they are addicted to Beluga caviar or Kobe beef—they’re addicted to a beer that taste best when poured directly into a toilet.

The only thing worse than Coors Light drinkers is this new phenomenon of Fireball drinkers. My issue with Fireball is very simple—it is not a whiskey. If they marketed it as a cinnamon schnapps, I would be pushing this God awful concoction with a shit-eating grin. Instead, I have grown men (ADULTS!!!) ordering a whiskey and being disappointed when I give them a shot of Bulleit bourbon. What’s happen to the greatness of the American West when people think cinnamon schnapps is a whiskey? I wish John Wayne was still alive so he could go Rooster Cogburn on anyone who even thinks Fireball is a whiskey. Half-blind and drunk in the other eye, he would pistol whip the lot of you if the Duke ever heard you mislabeling a kiddie cocktail as whiskey.

So here is your perfect storm—like Mickey meeting Mallory—the bar became a bozo-fueled nightmare that kept me guessing why I pour drinks for a living. There was a combination of stink and fear in the air that would cause the bravest souls to run for cover. Instead of taking the coward’s way out, I stood my ground and barely made it through the night. The bar looked like the North Koreans made good on bombing the US at the end of the night. It was nights like that is why I can’t be on a NA diet for more than a week.

*******

Here’s a thought that doesn’t get expressed enough. If you can’t start a tab because you’re afraid you’ll leave your credit card at the bar then you are an idiot or a drunk or both. What kind of adult is so irresponsible that they can’t start a tab and remember to close it out? If you are too stupid to remember you handed a complete stranger your credit card, try bringing cash to the club.

What’s the fear? That I’m going to abandon my position and run to a computer with your card to make a bunch of online purchases? Afraid that I am going to ring up a butt-ton of drinks you didn’t order? Or that I’m going to hand it over to a wandering minstrel who is jumping the midnight train to Boise?

Starting tabs saves time and my boss money. Cash and carrying waste time and costs my boss money. Ever wonder why I look like I am dinking around by the register when you’re waiting for a drink? It’s because some idiot who has the sense of a Portuguese waterdog is afraid that he is too stupid to remember that he is paying for drinks with a credit card.

Grow up or drink at home.

********

You never go to work to make friends. You go to work to make money but if you meet friends along the way, all the better. I work with a fellow named Brandon and he definitely falls in to the latter half of this equation. He is the general manager of the club and a benevolent dictator. Brandon and I go twelve rounds on most everything but I think we are better because of it. You might think that we are just pouring drinks and running food but we both know we are doing something more.

Last summer, I had the pleasure of performing Brandon’s nuptials to his wife Jennifer. It is probably because I am an ordained minister or the fact that they couldn’t find anyone else. Nonetheless, it was my pleasure and definitely an honor. On Tuesday, they will be having their second child. For a guy who has a whacky schedule and sleeps like an over-caffeinated parakeet, I am sure he will be ready to welcome the new kid into the clan. More than anything, he’s already had a lot of experience being a great dad.

*******

I took a break from writing the blog because I have been busy at the Salt Lake Tribune. Unlike the blog which costs me money, the Trib actually pays me a couple of shekels a week. You do the math. My first love is writing inflammatory columns about the very customers that pay my bills but writing prep sports is a very close second. I just got done with the winter sports and faked my way through a season of basketball. I love the hardcourts but I am not much of developing storylines regarding basketball. The game has an ebb and flow that I have difficulty picking up on. I think it comes from the fact that I spend too much time worrying that the concession stand might be out of hot dogs at the half and not enough looking for nuances to explore. Gracefully, my editor didn’t can me halfway through the season.

Even though it doesn’t feel like spring, baseball is in the air. Here is a sport that I love and understand. I feel like I was born 30 years too late for sports writing. I love baseball, prize fighting and horse racing—all three of which are on the decline in this modern era. Baseball is the game of my grandfather and he taught me the beauty of spending a lazy evening watching kids round bases and turning two.

I covered my first game Friday night. It was a one-sided affair between last year’s 4A state champions, Skyline, and Woods Cross. Skyline didn’t disappoint with good pitching and excellent execution of small ball. They worked pitch counts, bunted efficiently and ran the bases well. The story line could have been the Eagles scoring 8 in the top of the fourth but I focused on the team effort and Skyline looking forward towards a success season.

The weather was brutal. I wore adequate warm clothing but the sun was blocked by ominous clouds and the wind came off of the Great Salt Lake. My fingers were so cold that they contracted into James Coburn’s paws by the second. It could have been a nightmare if I didn’t take the initiative and buddied up with a woman who had a propane heater in front of her. I introduced myself as a reporter for the Trib and asked which of her kids were playing. Her son was on Woods Cross’s JV team but I started asking enough questions as if I was writing a 13,000 word column on the promising outfields. In sitting down next to her, I kicked the heater my direction and spent the rest of the game making small talk.

It was arguably my most resourceful moment as a sport’s reporter.

With that said, I am going to make time to knockout a blog at least once a week. Hopefully it won’t disappear the way of the podcast.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. He once had a podcast—once. He feels really bad calling Portuguese waterdogs dumb. They’re not.

Serving at the pleasure of my editor, I went to cover West High’s last home game of the season. They were hosting the lady Lancers of Granger in basketball. I went to the game expecting a blowout. Granger handed West their lunch the first time they faced each other, 49-27. History tends to repeat itself in high school sports—the project winner tends to win.

It was senior night for the Panthers and Coach Ronnie Stubbs was sending his girls off in fine fashion. After being announced by the PA, the girl would join her parents and Coach Stubbs would say a few words about her. All of it was laudatory and you could hear in his voice the affection he had for his departing players. Succeeding the affair, the girls warmed up and got to the real business at hand—trying to beat their Region 2 rivals and make it to a play-in game for the state championship.

Per expectations, Granger took it to West. They led for the entire half and looked like they had come up with the right game plan to shut down West’s hot shot point guard, Maddy Murphy. Running through what my lede would be for my gamer, I went into halftime fully prepared to write how the Lancers have found the right pace to entire the state 5A tourney and how they would matchup with their next opponent.

Something happened in the West locker room at halftime. Coach Stubbs must have given a heck of a speech and the Panthers came out and began taking it to the Lancers. They spread the court better, stopped making poor passes and started hitting shots from beyond the 3-point arc. Chipping away at the lead, Murphy started playing out of her mind and single-handedly started putting West’s fate on her shoulders. An eight point lead was chiseled to three and in the final moments of the fourth quarter, the Panthers took over. The last three minutes were as exciting as any game I’ve seen all year and in the last seconds, Granger missed back-to-back free throws giving West the victory.

Great game.

I am lucky to have a part-time job that pays me to witness glimpses of brilliance and Murphy and Company did not disappoint. It was the quickest gamer I’ve written throughout the winter season and maybe my best. I was very proud of the work I submitted and I hope it encapsulated the game as best as possible.

The funny thing that happened at the game took place during halftime. Not to be a snob, but I cannot stand any of the halftime entertainment. Young girls gyrating to pop songs I have heard in passing does nothing for me and this is a good thing. At 38, I should be more interested in the mothers in the stands than their daughters. Escaping the bass and drum noise, I do what any self-respecting sports writer should do—I went and got a hot dog.

Walking to the concession stand, I passed the police officers stationed at the entrance. These rough looking dudes with beer bellies holding up utility belts didn’t give me a second look but the school hired security guards did. One in particular gave me a look and I found myself staring back hard at him. He was a husky guy with long, greasy hair pulled back over his super-broad shoulders. He had the physique of a body builder and the brickyard square jaw of a guy much more comfortable in a weight room than a library. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn it was Kane of WWE fame. You’ll have to Google a picture of Kane and you would definitely get the idea the moment you saw it. He wasn’t menacing or anything but he definitely gave me a look and I found myself squirming to the hot dog stand.

A quick note about hot dogs—the best are Nathan’s and thank God West High has the self-respect to serve these beautiful tube steaks. Since only a heathen or a Republican would out ketchup on a dog, I slathered mine in mustard and made my way back to the gym for the second half. Sliding my Coke into my pocket, I had a mischievous thought as I made my way to my “office” in the bleachers—let’s snap a picture of Kane and post it on Instagram.

I knew I couldn’t get him to sit for a portrait, so I would have to be clandestine and snap a shot on the fly. I put my hot dog in the other pocket of my jacket, took the flash off my iPhone and started my attack. This job required finesse and if you know Ben Raskin, you know his middle name is Finesse (it’s my father’s mother’s maiden name). Kane was standing in the middle of the entrance talking with the police when I cocked my phone at my hip up towards his face. I slowly meandered by him and at the last moment, I hit the button.

Something went immediately wrong because instead of Kane not being any the wiser he immediately focused on me and yelled, “Hey!” Because my nickname is Kaptain Kool, I did what any calm, reserved prankster would do—I yelped.

He made a move towards me and I literally scampered up the bleachers back to my stuff. Oh Boy! If this guy really has a problem with me, I am certain as death and taxes that he could rip me to shreds. Instead of being a meathead, he let the matter drop but not before I had a mini-heart attack and wondered whether or not my press credentials were going to be confiscated. More than likely, the mini-heart attack was the work of the Nathan’s dog and not the potential of a WWE wrestler putting me in a figure-four.

Instagram is a nutty phenomenon. It is a chance for people to take pictures of their meals, feet at the beach and the pyramids of beer that had been consumed through the night. I like it because it is a chance to spy on what fold are doing and to share pictures of my dogs at Fairmont Park. Nonetheless, I am not very good at it and I think I am going to stick with Twitter.

If you’re not following me on Twitter, get on board @BennyRaskin. In 140 characters or less, you basically get mini-blogs on subjects ranging from hot dogs, sports, Fairmont Park and whatever silly thought that crosses my mind. With that said, Twitter was kind to me with West downing Granger. Nights like that are why I love covering sports and getting a chance to get some ink in the local rag.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. Podcast coming, people. For the record, Rowdy Roddy Piper was/is/and will always be his favorite wrestler.

They should be sticky.

Covered in the remnants of shaking countless cocktails and shots, my forearms with their Irish red hair catch all the flying booze and mixers that make the diesel fuel of a great night. I power through the evening on the strength of whatever bartender I am partnered with. I prefer Rebecca but I’ll work with any of them. They are all good but Becky is fun—she makes me laugh. It’s like working with your younger sister providing your sister is covered with tattoos and has the mouth of a trucker.

Besides that, Becky is a good bartender.

The second indicator will be my glasses.

Good nights mean that I drive home with smudged glasses coated with what missed my forearms. The sweat and tears of the night cling to my glasses creating lens opaque and spotty. Loaned to a high school student, they would pay good money to slowly lick my glasses to absorb the shot and a half of hooch that dry on them. What a gross sentiment, having arms and glasses covered in alcohol but this is the life that I have chosen, the life that I have lived for almost 14-years.

Going home, I like a beer and the occasional shower. It feels good washing away the evening and being clean while slipping between the sheets. There is something very gratifying pouring myself a quiet drink as Erin sleeps in the other room and having the dogs join me in my small office in the basement. I watch Netflix on the computer or cruise through websites waiting for sleep to grab me and force me to bed.

Most nights it is a quick sojourn with the exception being Saturday where I like to have a stiffer cocktail and a few moments to myself before my weekend begins. Bartending means I work while others relax. Once I clock out and make my way home, I am off my guest’s clock. I am home for myself and my family. I value being at home more than anything else in this silly world and that is enough for me. I don’t know what your little nugget of home is but I assume you do and fight every day to get back to it.

Saturday was a zoo. The bar was full for the second night of our Marti Gras party with a full band backing up our incredible piano players. They played and sang Dixie at an unseen level of talent. I am always impressed with what happens on stage but this weekend took the cake. There were amazing and it is a shame the weather prohibited more people from making their way to the club. Nonetheless, those that made it probably enjoyed the show as much if not more than me.

Battling a head cold this week made work more challenging than usual. With Erin out of town working one of her three jobs, I was alone during the middle of the week and was left to my own devices. By my own devices, it meant eating like a raccoon and wearing less than the prerequisite amount of clothes I am forced to have on when she is in town. I struggled through my Wednesday to Friday shifts with a fogginess reserved for London nights and SLC’s ridiculous inversion. I hate feeling sick. Makes me feel weak and destroys the only leg up I have on most people—my sense of humor. I am not very good at being serious and when I can’t be loose or glib or flippant, I am the thing that I detest more than anything on the planet.

I am boring.

Saturday was different. I showed up to work happy and fat with Erin home and able to dress in casual clothes. I threw on my favorite jacket and went to work. The jacket was a gift from Erin from two Christmases ago. It is a charcoal wool coat that whisks away weather and looks good. As somebody who doesn’t own very many nice pieces of clothes, it is a favored coat and probably the only grown up piece of clothing that I own. I drove through the garbage snow storm dumping in the valley and began the arduous task of getting the staff to prep the bar for work. For the overwhelming part, I am lucky to work with good people. Even though they have good intentions, they still need to be whipped into shape. There are many managerial styles to getting them to work and the most exhausting part of my job is tailoring different motivations to each person who works under me.

We went through the night in the fast and furious manner which makes us the best bartending staff in the valley. There might be more financially successful bars in the city but none of them have the skills and dedications that Keys On Main has. Of course I am biased but there isn’t a better staff. I’d be happy to wager a night’s wages against the stones of any other staff in the valley. From my perspective, that is the safest bet I would ever lay.

We got through the evening and spent the last two hours of the night trying to clean up the catastrophic mess created from the countless beads that failed to deliver uplifted shirts and the garbage a “normal” busy night makes. As a staff, we grinded through the crisis and worked our way to that most beautiful part of the night. I hold the rare privilege of saying the sweetest words in the English language. Once everything has been cleaned, cleared and reset, I get to yell in my baritone voice my favorite part of any night:

“Clock out!”

Cocktails clear out earlier than bartenders because we spend 20 minutes counting our tips and dividing them up. I let my people grab the buckets while I went looking to collect my stuff. I own two sets of keys, work and home. My work keys are the keys to the Keys On Main castle while my home keys are for my truck and house. I found my work keys in my pocket but couldn’t find my home keys. In fact, I couldn’t find my jacket. I had it when I came to work but it was nowhere to be found at the end of the night. While the staff were counting money, I was anxiously looking for my coat.

It was gone. More than that, so were my home keys. Selected members of the staff helped me look but my coat were nowhere to be found and I started to get angry. It is not enough that I spend my entire evening looking after the needs of others but why couldn’t I find my jacket? I figured I left it on the railing early in the night but folks usually look after it. I went through the normal hiding places for my coat until I realized that it was gone. Panic hit me quickly because I left my keys zipped up in my coat. How the Hell was I supposed to get home without my keys?!?

I went to the host stand and started flipping through the drawers when I saw something that made my heart stop. In one of the drawers, I found my car keys. These were the same keys that were zipped up in my coat. It hit me like a bucket of water—somebody had stolen my coat but had a change of heart when they discovered car keys inside the front pockets. Not willing to return the jacket, they thought they were doing the Christian thing by returning the keys to the front desk. They were planning on fucking me but at least they were going to give me a kiss on the cheek.

It hurt. My God, did it hurt. I can’t believe somebody stole my jacket.

To the piece of shit that stole my jacket, thanks for leaving my keys. I hope you get raped by a hobo and left for dead. Good job reaffirming my faith in strangers, fucknozzle. There is no way that jacket will ever look good on you because you never loved it. It was a gift from Erin from Christmas two years ago. It isn’t the fact that it cost $200 but the fact that Erin knew how much I wanted it and why. I had just been hired by the Salt Lake Tribune and I didn’t have anything to wear to our weekly pitch meetings on Monday. Because I have a weird body type, very few things fit me and I was very uncomfortable with my attire going to the meetings. I have never owned nice clothes and the clothes that I do have, I treat as if I am running through a briar patch. In getting ready for my first couple of pitch meetings, I went to REI and I saw this jacket. I tried it on but I couldn’t justify paying the money for the coat. My self-esteem didn’t allow me to have the nerve to pay for such a beautiful coat. Instead, I went to those first meetings dressed under the frumpy sweaters that I have made my own and tried to make the best of my appearance.

Smash cut to Xmas where Erin had opened up all of her presents and she gave me this large box wrapped up in green paper. I opened it up and inside was the coat that I wanted to buy. She had gotten it for me. She listened to what I wanted for Xmas and found the exact coat that I wanted. It fit great but more than that, every time I have worn that jacket, it reminds me of the care Erin paid to me. It’s the kind of thing that makes a man weak with love and another example of why I am a lucky guy.

And in an instant, some cheap, stealing, fucknut of a human being stole it from me. It was taken and they knew they had sinned by returning the keys but still took my coat. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. There is no way you will look as good in it as me in it. You don’t deserve it. You will never know how good it felt to slid on for the first time and remember how wonderful that Christmas evening was when Erin handed me that oversized box. You will never know how special that coat was and if you think I am over acting, I hope you get hit by a fucking bus.

Way to ruin my weekend and leave a taste in my mouth that I didn’t deserve. I am pissed, angry and instead of reclining in my small office, I am grinding through a blog post trying to figure how I can replace this wonderful present. Money is too tight to go out and replace this coat, you piece of shit.

Erin awoke when I came home and was incredibly supportive when I told her what happened. I apologized for not protecting the jacket better and she was the best telling me it wasn’t my fault that it was stolen. She always makes these things better and I hope that the person who stole my jacket knows that you’ll never have the love of a good woman like Erin.

So, I am back to square one. I will be wearing the dumb, thread-born jackets that I owned when I moved to SLC 12-years ago and I will be on the lookout for the douche-nozzle who stole it. Return it post haste and there will be no problems.

Nah, I still probably would want to still kick your ass.

Ben Raskin bartends at Keys On Main Wednesday through Saturday. Follow him on Twitter @BennyRaskin. Podcast, ugh! He is really, really pissed about this jacket being stolen.