Tuesday, November 30, 2004

I'm in Sunny Eagan Minnesota

Eagan Minnesota sucks. It's cold and there are no restaurants to speak of. One of my colleagues from New Jersey asked a local cop where she could get some Italian food and he tried to send her to the Olive Garden. Now she's all pissed. What did she expect?

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Coaster gets pissed

My friend Mindy June moved to England, and she done stole my idea to start a blog. She even went so far as to use false dates on her entries to make it look like she started her blog before I started mine. It reminds me of how when we were in college she used to pretend she didn't like any new band that she wasn't the first of her friends to discover. But she redeemed herself by liking Beulah at my suggestion, so I'll forgive her this transgression. Plus, I miss her and constantly worry about her developing bad teeth now that she's a Blimey & all.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Coaster Punchman is born

My name is Tom, but you can call me Coaster Punchman. The name came about 18 years ago when I was (gasp!) a twenty year old St. Olaf College student obsessed with the necessity of using coasters for beverages on coffee and end tables. I would go into histrionics when friends would visit my dorm room and fail to use coasters.

One night my friend Chuck was hosting a party where he served a bastardization of Wapitui Punch, or WAP. According to Log & Timber Style Magazine, Wapitui Punch is a fruity concoction of various delicious ingredients. But to St. Olaf College students circa 1985, WAP was a revolting mixture of whatever alcoholic beverages one could find. Generally, the MO for a WAP party was to have all your guests bring something to contribute to the punch. So the results could really vary depending on how cheap or tasteless your friends were. Usually by the time the last guest arrived you would have a perfectly vile combination of beer, vodka, red Hi-C, orange juice, Southern Comfort and Gallo wine. Many drank, all vomited later.

Being a bit of a control queen at age 20, I tried to supervise the creation of Chuck's WAP punch, and admonished both my host and his guests for their failure to either provide or use coasters in connection with this gala affair in Chuck's dorm room. As a reward for my preoccupation with both the WAP punch and coasters, I earned the nickname Coaster Punchman. It has a catchy ring, so I don't mind it.