"Beer Drinking Geek", Statement Validation

What do I mean, calling myself a Beer Drinking Geek? Am I an Alcoholic Circus Performer with a penchant for biting the heads off of barnyard fowl? Um, no… I’m more of a nerdy guy who enjoys drinking Beer (not just the cheap industrial swill that is a rite of passage for many of our youthful American compatriots).

I assume you and I are living in the 21^st Century, and that we may even have been born in the 20^th Century (I certainly was). My childhood was in the 1970s and I served my adolescent teen years in the 80s.

I grew up with the first appearance of home video game consoles (Combat was, like Wii Sports, what you played a lot of until you finally got a cooler game), Star Wars in the theatre for the first time, and Dungeons & Dragons/ “The War-on-Dungeons & Dragons”. These things probably had more of an impact on me than anything else in my lifetime, except for sex. (AND I still have not become an axe-wielding sociopathic murderer with The Devil’s Mark etched into my forehead with a pocket-knife, by the way…  fucking idiots.)

My earliest Beer commercial recollections are full of “Raiiiiiiiii-Neeeeeeer-Beeeeeeer” and Giant Bottles of Beer with Legs and snooping around in the dead of night trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive “Artesians”(ah, Rainier Beer, you had the Best Fucking Commercials!). My first sip of Beer was after an argument with my mother about her not sharing her Apple Juice with me (yeah, I was like 4 or 5, maybe, I think) and she acquiesced with “I told you it wasn’t apple juice…” ; I was nonplussed.

A handful of favorites, in varying condition

I wasn’t particularly athletic and I didn’t get into following fashion trends (My shoes: still not fashionable), nor did I know to what music I should be listening to be cool. I had too many imaginative worlds to explore; whether it was via Commodore 64 (I visited the Temple of Apshai and delved the depths of Telengard through the power of my Data Cassette Deck), Staging battles between the Masters of the Universe and the Cybernetic Mantechs and making a slideshow out of it, or gathering with others of the not-as-socially-outgoing type for exciting fictional adventures as super-heroes and secret agents (Games Workshop’s Golden Heroes and TSR’s Top Secret were group favorites)! (I may have read a few books, too.)

There it is!

It didn’t stop, you know, when I got older… I continued getting together with friends for regular D&D nights for years and continued to favor anime and Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror B-movies (with lots of cheap Beer to extend the laughter and enjoyment).

(see forthcoming bio for more on how I got on the Craft Beer track.)

So where does that leave me now? Have I stayed true to my roots?

I no longer get together with anyone for D&D (oops, sorry, Pathfinder now…) sessions; in fact I can’t remember the last time I got to enjoy some good old-school RPG action. For a while I enjoyed the online MMORPG opportunities of WOW, Guild Wars, LOTRO, etc. I still watch plenty of select anime series and B-movies, and occasionally bust out various fantasy (etc.)-themed board and card games. I don’t really attend conventions or follow forums because I do have other domestic responsibilities to attend to; and most of those folk (sorry for saying, but it is true…) are either stuck in their own bubbles or are just internet Trolls, and not worth my time hanging around with.

How can I not reference Python in this post?

I thought about listing all of the geeky, nerdy, dorky things that establish some kind of “Geek-Cred” for myself… but that’s a lot of unnecessary listing of too many obvious references…  but there you have it.

This is what I mean by “Beer Drinking Geek”. I’m kind of a dork and always have been.

I also happen to like some tasty Beer.

So… what are your favorite Geeky Pleasures?

Cheers!