"Great Ideas"
At long last, I get round to describe the concept of the “great idea” that makes up the other half of the fundamental reasoning behind this blog. Now you may think you can define a "great idea", but you would be wrong. Because there are two different versions of the "great idea".
The first one is a genuinely great idea. Like the caveman deciding that the wheel is actually quite a good invention. Or the Greeks deciding that the Trojans actually were fucking stupid enough to accept the gift of a large wooden horse, big enough to contain the Greek army, after years of war. Or the decision to bring back Doctor Who. These ideas tend to be made by sober people after periods of discussion, debate and reflection.
Then there is the other type of great idea – the great ideas that occur after a prolonged period of heavy drinking. These can include walking over cars whilst singing “Show Me The Way To Amarillo”, propositioning strippers, telling your boss exactly what you think of him/her, ringing the girl you have just dumped and not remembering the content of the conversation (and only really knowing that you have had the conversation owing to the fact that you have a text message from her saying “you arrogant cock”), and thinking “I’ll go for it, she’ll still look alright in the morning”. This type of “Great Idea” tends to be made by slightly drunken people, who are unable to string coherent sentences together and often sway unnervingly, even though they are stood still. For a recent example, there is the recent discussion about the problem of obesity and how the best solution is to turn really fat people into soap.
Needless to say, Beverage and my good self are very experienced in coming up with the second type of great idea. Many a morning (or, indeed, early afternoon) has seen us exchanging text messages and e-mails that say “what the fucking hell were we jabbering on about last night?” It is far rarer for us to come up with a genuinely great idea that stays great in the harsh, unforgiving and sober(ish) light of day. However, one day (I think it was a Monday, but I could be utterly wrong about that) Beverage came up with a gold plated, 100% great idea. He came up with the idea of JT1.
When he first told me he had had a truly great idea, I didn’t believe him. In fact, I am not sure he entirely believed himself. But when we met in the pub to discuss, it turned out that he had been struck by a moment of (fleeting) genius.
The idea is simple – a gaggle of borderline drunks go into pubs, take some photos, drink a lot, and then write reviews of the evening the next day on the website. That way, you slowly build up a proper pub guide – not with shit like “oh, the ambience was a little bit nouveau riche” but rather the basics like “the beer was cheap, the staff were friendly and tolerant and the toilets didn’t make you want to dry retch”. And if the website took off, then we would accept challenges of pubs to review and would also start selling advertising space on the site. A genuine pub guide, written by people who aren’t complete cocks.
I think it could have really taken off. But real life intervened, Christmas came along, then Beverage had to go away travelling with work (he was working the world’s longest notice period at the time) and stuff just kept on happening. And it all fell away to nothing.
Until I was discussing the blogosphere with Beverage one evening (when he wasn’t being chatted up by the red-haired bar maid). And suddenly I realised that we could set up a blog that followed exactly the lines of JT1 but was much easier to access and amend. So we set this up. When I can be bothered, I will download site meter and if we find that Notes From A Drunken Evening has an audience, then we can revert to JT1 and turn this into more of a professional pub guide/website.
So… enjoy. There will be stupid stories to come, and hopefully we can give you a good idea of where to drink in London. And as for an opening story, I would just like to point out that I got four free pints last Saturday. And how many did Beverage get? Precisely zero… The moral of this totally rubbish story is I rule. Oh yeah. Go Team Me!
The first one is a genuinely great idea. Like the caveman deciding that the wheel is actually quite a good invention. Or the Greeks deciding that the Trojans actually were fucking stupid enough to accept the gift of a large wooden horse, big enough to contain the Greek army, after years of war. Or the decision to bring back Doctor Who. These ideas tend to be made by sober people after periods of discussion, debate and reflection.
Then there is the other type of great idea – the great ideas that occur after a prolonged period of heavy drinking. These can include walking over cars whilst singing “Show Me The Way To Amarillo”, propositioning strippers, telling your boss exactly what you think of him/her, ringing the girl you have just dumped and not remembering the content of the conversation (and only really knowing that you have had the conversation owing to the fact that you have a text message from her saying “you arrogant cock”), and thinking “I’ll go for it, she’ll still look alright in the morning”. This type of “Great Idea” tends to be made by slightly drunken people, who are unable to string coherent sentences together and often sway unnervingly, even though they are stood still. For a recent example, there is the recent discussion about the problem of obesity and how the best solution is to turn really fat people into soap.
Needless to say, Beverage and my good self are very experienced in coming up with the second type of great idea. Many a morning (or, indeed, early afternoon) has seen us exchanging text messages and e-mails that say “what the fucking hell were we jabbering on about last night?” It is far rarer for us to come up with a genuinely great idea that stays great in the harsh, unforgiving and sober(ish) light of day. However, one day (I think it was a Monday, but I could be utterly wrong about that) Beverage came up with a gold plated, 100% great idea. He came up with the idea of JT1.
When he first told me he had had a truly great idea, I didn’t believe him. In fact, I am not sure he entirely believed himself. But when we met in the pub to discuss, it turned out that he had been struck by a moment of (fleeting) genius.
The idea is simple – a gaggle of borderline drunks go into pubs, take some photos, drink a lot, and then write reviews of the evening the next day on the website. That way, you slowly build up a proper pub guide – not with shit like “oh, the ambience was a little bit nouveau riche” but rather the basics like “the beer was cheap, the staff were friendly and tolerant and the toilets didn’t make you want to dry retch”. And if the website took off, then we would accept challenges of pubs to review and would also start selling advertising space on the site. A genuine pub guide, written by people who aren’t complete cocks.
I think it could have really taken off. But real life intervened, Christmas came along, then Beverage had to go away travelling with work (he was working the world’s longest notice period at the time) and stuff just kept on happening. And it all fell away to nothing.
Until I was discussing the blogosphere with Beverage one evening (when he wasn’t being chatted up by the red-haired bar maid). And suddenly I realised that we could set up a blog that followed exactly the lines of JT1 but was much easier to access and amend. So we set this up. When I can be bothered, I will download site meter and if we find that Notes From A Drunken Evening has an audience, then we can revert to JT1 and turn this into more of a professional pub guide/website.
So… enjoy. There will be stupid stories to come, and hopefully we can give you a good idea of where to drink in London. And as for an opening story, I would just like to point out that I got four free pints last Saturday. And how many did Beverage get? Precisely zero… The moral of this totally rubbish story is I rule. Oh yeah. Go Team Me!
posted by The Nameless Libertarian at 4:11 AM
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