Two Tub Mantooth

I’ve never been what you’d call a “breakfast fanatic.” There are people out there that might try to tell you that it’s “the most important meal of the day,” but these same people are probably telling you to clean up your act and/or get some self-respect. Well I think that anyone familiar with my “balls out” attitude towards life could guess what I have to say to these fascists. Anyway…

I had some pretty amazing breakfasts on this trip regardless of my breakfast-ennui. The first one was in Santa Barbara at a place called The Cajun Kitchen. I also have an intense and irrational disgust for scrambled eggs but I decided to get the Eggs and Chorizo anyway. While I was overall pretty satisfied with my meal, after Tillman was delivered her Jambalaya topped with eggs, I sorely resented my original choice. I tried to console myself by thinking that we’ll all be dead soon enough anyway, but then I realized that if I died soon, my last meal would have been eggs.

After breakfast we headed out for some wine tastings. Now, being the unsophisticated lout that I am, I’ve never really enjoyed many wines I’ve tasted in my life. I’m not really sure why, perhaps wine reminds me of eggs. Or maybe it’s because I saw the movie Sideways once and now the thought of drinking wine hits a little too close to home. Or maybe it’s because I don’t have very good self-esteem. And so while I feel confident in critiquing the qualities of various worldly pleasures, I am a veritable n00b when it comes to wine.

But before we got started, we decided to pop into Firestone Brewery for a pint. You see, that’s how they talk in merry old England. They say things like “pop into” and “pint.”

Now I can’t fault this brewery for their choice of a totally lame slogan–”passion for the pale,” but I can fault them for a totally lame Hemp Ale. Maybe my expectations were the cause of my undoing. I don’t know why I expected, or even wanted, a beer that tasted like fizzy bong water, but this is certainly not what I got. Perhaps that’s a good thing, but is an unremarkable beer ever a good thing? I should try to sell that phrase to Stone’s or Dogfish Head…

Our first winery was Castoro. We squeezed our way onto the tail end of a bar crowded with housewives unaware of their drinking problem and their husbands with that “dad on vacation” look. Being that I lack the proper cultural capital to describe these wines, I will say that they were tasty and got me drunk. In addition, wineries seem to love having cats around. Big fluffy ones that just love to have drunk Manteeth rub their bellies and ask them if they want some wine. I swore I saw the same cat at Peachy Canyon and at Midnight Cellars. By the time we got to the latter, I was done attempting to maintain composure and was scolded by some shriveled winewoman for trying to urinate in their secret restroom.

Cue bad idea #1 of this trip (although I’m sure smoking drugs and lighting off fireworks wasn’t a great idea either). Once we got to our hotel in Cambria, we decided to go swimming in an area that:

1) is in “the red triangle,” rife with sharks hungry for dumb drunks.
2) is clogged with seaweed.
3) has very very cold water.

After the first swim I was feeling pretty good.

After my second I decided seaweed was a perfect accessory to bloody death by shark.

And after my third swim my chest started to hurt and decide to pose for this picture that I feel perfectly (yet subtly) displays my masculinity.

After washing the seaweed out of my asscrack, we went to The Sow’s Ear for a meal I barely remember because I was still kind of drunk and very dehydrated. Things I remember from this restaurant:

1) Everyone sitting around us talking about the bible
2) Some kind of berry called “Ollalieberry” made into a chutney and spread over my pork tenderloin.
3) Bread baked into flowerpots

After dinner we watched an episode of Law and Order, joked that I had a fetish for people stepping on my head, and listened the sound of Tillman’s teeth grinding in her sleep.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 2:29 pm and is filed under what. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.