Sitting in a booth at a pizza parlor in Stockton California, I was sharing a pitcher of beer with my friends when the most amazing person walked up and began talking to us. He was a tall, skinny African-American man, looking about in his mid-twenties, wearing a tee-shirt and Levi jeans with pant legs split up the sides all the way to his hips. That was the first thing I saw when he came up, these long, flapping split pant legs that were like four denim flags hanging from his upper thighs. They made a loud flopping sound with each step.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Crazy Bob.” He slurred his words a bit and had a lisp, so it sounded like this: “Hi. I’mb craythzee Bawb.”

We all stared at him in silence for a moment, not sure whether to be amused or terrified. Dan, always the outgoing friendly one, suddenly said back, “Well hi there, Crazy Bob, my name’s Dan. How’re you doing?”

My other friend, DT, gripped his beer mug tight, ready to use it as a weapon if necessary.

“I’m Crazy Bob,” Crazy Bob said again. “I wasn’t always like this. You see, the Martians they took me and put a needle in my spine, and they made me like this.”

“Really?”

“The government, they put a needle in my spine. The put a needle in my spine and turned me into a vegetable.”

“Really?” It was about all any of us could think to say.

“They turned me into a vegetable. The government, they put a needle in my spine. They turned me into a vegetable. Vegetable. Vegetable…”

We sat staring in stunned silence, thinking to ourselves: Where did this guy come from? We were just sitting there, minding our own business, drinking beer and waiting for our pizza, and here comes this guy. We didn’t know what to make of it. We didn’t know what to do.

“You see,” he continued, “I have to endure. That’s what my brother told me. He told me that because the government stuck a needle into my spine, I would have to endure.”

“Your, ah, brother told you this, huh?” said Dan.

“Yeah, my brother told me I must endure. It was my brother, Gerolda. Gerolda. Gerolda.” He continued repeating the name, turning slowly to one side, and his voice grew quiet and faded.

“Gerolda told you this?”

“Yes. He’s my brother. My brother Gerolda, in the home, told me that because the government put a needle in my spine, I must endure. They turned me into a vegetable.” He was walking around the room now, his split pant legs flapping, each step he lifted his leg so far into the air it was nearly a kick. “The Martians, they control the government. The Martians told the government to put the needle into my spine.”

“The Martians? Like from Mars?”

“Yeah, the Martians, they came down here. See, the Martians, they control the government, and the government controls TV. They put a needle into my spine. Turned me into a vegetable.”

“The Martians control the government?”

“The Martians control the government, and the government controls the TV.” He was standing right in front of the table again, and DT was holding his beer mug so tight his knuckles were turning white. “My brother Gerolda told me this when I was in the home. Gerolda, he’s my brother. Gerolda. Gerolda. Gerolda…”

“Hey Crazy Bob,” called a lady behind the counter.

Crazy Bob did his flapping goosestep over to the counter, and to our amazement the girl handed him a boxed pizza. Crazy Bob took the pizza and, pant legs flapping, he marched out the front door.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s just Crazy Bob. We give him a pizza and he leaves.” She shrugged. “What else can you do?”

We all looked at each other, our eyes wide. Indeed! What else could you do? After that, we would occasionally see Crazy Bob flapping his pant legs down Pacific Avenue, rain or shine, summer or winter, and we’d honk and wave at our strange new acquaintance. It’s been twenty years and the image of him is still vivid in my mind.

From Tales of the Lizard Hunter
By Jerry J. Davis

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I’m rich.
I’m good looking.
I’m bullet proof.
I’m invisible.

I didn’t make this up – it was on a tee-shirt of mine. These are the four stages of drinking tequila. By the time Ted and I made it to the top of the Bank of America tower in downtown San Francisco, I had reached bullet proof stage.

The barmaid brought us our beers. Seven dollars a glass, and the glasses only held about six ounces of beer. “Jesus Christ!” Ted exclaimed.

“We’re paying for the view,” I told him.

“For this price, the women should all be naked.” Ted held up his glass, examining its small size like it defied the laws of nature.

I have no idea what we were doing there. It was just something to do. The bar at the top of the big black monolith gave one of the best views of the city. San Francisco spread out before us like a map on the floor of a car. We could see everything. It was late afternoon, and the shadows were getting long.

I have memories attached to just about every landmark. There was street by a church where I’d given Jeannette a piggy-back ride all the way up the hill. We could see Coit Tower, where I have a memory with Karen. At the base of the Transamerica Tower, Brad and I had made a really funny film. I tried to explain all these to Ted, but I’m not sure if he could understand. My speech was not very coherent.

We nursed the tiny glasses of beer and stared out the window, and when the beer was gone, we left. Down the long, fast elevator and back onto the streets. On foot, because we’d left the car on the other side of the bay and rode BART in. You can walk anywhere in San Francisco.

We found our way to this most wonderful place. There was all you could eat gourmet food for free. Fried shrimp, crab legs, shish kabobs, potato skins … we’re talking some yummy stuff here, and all we had to do was buy drinks. The drinks were reasonable, too, especially compared to the $1 per ounce beer at the top of that tower.

At the time, Ted had a long distance relationship going with a wonderful woman in Sweden, and I’d brought a recorder along so that we would record things on tape and send them to her. The little recorder was on, and we were saying, “Hi Cecilia! How are you doing? Want to talk to the waiter?” Then we’d shove the tape recorder into the poor waiter’s face and demand he say hello to Cecilia.

“Hello Cecilia, how are you doing?” the waiter said. He was a good sport. No doubt he was used to this – we weren’t the only drunks he’d had to deal with. He was surrounded by them. Smiling, he brought us more alcohol as we stuffed ourselves with food.

My memories blur out at this point. It’s only because of the recorder that I know anything at all. Listening to the tape, I hear myself state that I’d gone beyond the bullet proof state and had become invisible. Ted takes over the recorder at this point, taping me as I laugh hysterically, and then narrates as I walk around the bar tipping over drinks, taking food off of other people’s plates, and grabbing women. At some point the bouncer escorts us to the door.

I have no idea how we got home. According to the tape, we rode BART back across the bay. The rest is a mystery.

The next thing I remember, my dad is waking me up. I’m at home, in my room at my parents house, enduring a hangover. Dad needs me to do something – he has a mission for me. He asks if I would grab one of my friends, drive up to Oregon, pick up one of his Terravac vacuum trucks and drive it back down to Reno, Nevada. There’s a convention there where he purchased booth space. He needs the Terravac for demonstrations.

I immediately called Ted. “Road trip!” I told him. Ted laughed like it was too insane to contemplate, and then he agreed to do it.

We headed up to Oregon in Dad’s 1976 Caprice Classic. Driving in a nice quiet car is a good way to nurse a hangover. We took turns at the wheel, and stopped only when necessary. I brought along the tape recorder, but neither of us felt like talking. I did turn it on when we crossed the boarder, saying something like, “Here we are in Oregon! Everything’s different here. The trees are so green, and the bushes are all clumped together and happy.”

We arrived at the ranch of my father’s friend, where the Terravac was, and they put us up for the night. Dad was already there, having flown up in his Cessna 310. We ate dinner, and then in the last rays of sunlight, I took Ted out to show him the land. There’s this neat canyon where you sit on the edge and yell out “Hello!” and the echo doesn’t come back to you for a full three seconds. For about 10 minutes there were all sorts of strange words and phrases bouncing around those canyon walls, until at one point another voice came echoing back to us: “Shut the fuck up!”

Back at the ranch, we ate a huge dinner and then slept like the dead. At dawn the next morning, my dad woke us up and told us it was time to hit the road. Ted elected to drive the vacuum truck. We had CB radios to keep in touch, and we rumbled off chattering away, happy and feeling good. This was fun.

It was late morning, and we were going down the highway in Northern California, and I heard a strange noise. I looked in the mirror at the vacuum truck, thinking at first there was something wrong with its engine. I was hearing a loud roaring sound. “What the hell is that?” I asked over the radio.

“I don’t know!” Ted called back.

The noise was growing in volume. It sounded like a hundred Harley Davidson motorcycles coming down the road. I kept looking in the mirror trying to see them, but there was nothing.

Something was wrong. Seriously wrong! The noise was deafening.

A sleek, fast twin engine airplane swooped right over the top of us, pulling out just twenty feet from the road and arching back up into the sky. It was my Dad! He saw us driving down the highway and buzzed us. Ted was yelling over the CB radio, “Did you see that!? Did you SEE that!!?”

“He scared the piss out of me!” I called back.

Dad’s Cessna soared back into the sky and out of sight, heading for Reno. He would arrive in an hour or so. Ted and I had several hours ahead of us. Driving in the car suddenly felt too slow. It was like riding the backs of snails.

The hours passed. We made it into Nevada, and then rolled into Reno. We found the convention, parked the vehicles, and we got our room. Dad left a message for us to meet him in the convention center, as the dinner was already underway. As I remember, Ted went ahead of me and I put our bags in the room, and when I came down the convention room was big, dark, full of people, and someone up on stage was calling my name. I thought I was being paged. So I walked up to the stage and everyone applauded, and the guy handed me a big bucket filled with dollar coins. Three hundred, to be exact.

“What’s this for?”

“You won!” the guy told me.

“Oh, thank you.” Bewildered, I wandered away from the stage while strangers accosted me with congratulations and off-color comments. My dad and Ted were waving. “What is this?” I asked Dad.

“I entered you and Ted into the drawing,” he said, laughing.

Ted was wearing his huge Ted-grin. “Party tonight, dude!” he said.

I looked down at the bucket of money. It was heavy! “Yeah, I think you’re right,” I told him. “I think it’s party time.”

I was only barely 21 years old. I had never won anything before. Suddenly I wanted to go gambling.

After dinner, Ted and I started hitting the slot machines. I won. I kept winning. I turned that $300 into about $900 in a few hours. When I started losing, I took the bulk of the money up to our room and hid it, and then we went bar hopping.

Reno is a fun place. Everyone there is friendly. Everyone! Even the cops are friendly. It’s the only place I’ve been where you can walk up and down the street with a beer in your hand, and a police officer will smile and light your cigar for you.

In the penthouse of the hotel there was an open bar, but it was so crowded that you could barely get into it. We were only there a few minutes before giving up. But while we were playing slots down on the 2^nd floor a fire alarm went off. The elevators shut down and people came streaming out the stairwells. It was only a few minutes later that we heard them announce it was a false alarm, but the people were still coming out.

We found out no one above the 4^th floor had heard it was a false alarm. “Ted!” I said. “That open bar is going to be empty!”

Ted’s whole face lit up. “Let’s go!”

We went into the stairwell and started going up the stairs as others were still going down. It was at about the 7^th floor when people started asking us where we were going. Didn’t we know there was a fire? “Yeah,” I told them. “We’ve got hang gliders on the roof.”

Ted and I made it to the top, nearly exhausted, and found the open bar was WIDE open, and we had it all to ourselves. We grabbed whole bottles of liquor and hightailed it out of there, heading toward our room with our treasures: Two Fingers Tequila, Wild Turkey, Stolichnaya, Bacardi 151, and Everclear. Everclear was special because it was illegal in California – it’s 190 proof clear grain alcohol.

In the hotel room, I filled an ashtray up with Everclear and, giggling, lit it on fire. It burned with a pretty blue flame. “It doesn’t burn that hot,” I told Ted. “Look.” I waved my hand through the fire.

“Cool,” he said, trying it. “Ouch!” He’d left his hand there a bit too long and it did burn. His hand jerked, bumping the table. The ashtray tipped. Burning liquid spread in a puddle across the table.

“Oh shit!”

We were laughing and panicking at the same time. I ran to the bathroom and came back with a towel, and threw it over the flames just before they could dribble onto the carpet. The alcohol was hot, but the fire was gone. “Damn!”

“I think we’re too drunk to be playing with fire,” Ted said.

“I think you’re right.”

We took my bucket of money and went down to the casino, and lost all but a hundred of it. Weird how, in a casino, money is no longer money. It temporarily loses value. I kept handing Ted handfuls of dollars without a thought. It doesn’t help that they keep bringing you free drinks while you gamble.

When the sun came up it was time to work the convention. I was still drunk. Ted had passed out and had no intention of leaving the hotel room. He’d covered all the paintings with towels because something about the generic art just freaked him out.

I sat at Dad’s table during the convention, handing out brochures and replaying the video over and over again. Middle-aged men with glazed eyes scanned the table for free pens or key chains and, finding none, passed on. I’d made the video, and was getting pissed off that no one was paying attention to it. It was beyond a promotional video – it was art! Didn’t these morons know that?

At one point we had a demonstration outside, and Dad and I did our standard crowd pleaser. The Terravac vacuum truck had a six-inch wide hose, and air rushed in the opening at about 250 mph. It easily sucked up whole bricks. It sucked up rocks like they were popcorn. Something like a big paper grocery bag would literally implode and disappear so fast that it looked like a magic act. After that, we had a lot of people stop by to watch the video and pick up brochures.

Ted came down in the late afternoon, looking sheepish. “We can’t keep doing this,” he said, grinning. “This is insane.”

“Insane is fun.”

He laughed, nodding. “Yeah, but…” He laughed some more.

That night after dinner, we were hanging around in the bar, spending the last of my bucket of money, and we overheard people talking about two guys who’d jumped off building’s roof with hang gliders. Ted and I looked at each other. Were they talking about us? Or did two guys really jump off the roof with hang gliders?

We never found out.

From Tales of the Lizard Hunter
By Jerry J. Davis

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Ted warms up the tedmobile van, which has two captain chairs and lots of carpet. It’s early, people are still asleep. Most pile into the open back with pillows and blankets, sleeping bags, and each other. Santa Cruz, we’re going to Santa Cruz. Oh yeah! Ted sips coffee and I play with my cheap tape recorder. We are on the road. Young men and women, an extended family. Lots of love. Lots of lust. We’re on our way to paradise.

Gary and Mark play their guitars. We sing silly, tired songs. I record the whole thing:

Going on a road trip…
Goooing on a ro-wo-wo-oad trip…
We’re going! We’re going! We’re leaving now!
And as we go, I can say “Hey babe…”
Hey babe!
We’re going on a road trip…
Road trip!
We’re going to… San-tah Cruuuz!

A period of talking and singing passes, and we pull up at a house in the country. We’re picking up a tent trailer and three more girls. Two are Swedish exchange students. One is an American rah-rah country-girl cheerleader slut. Not that we have anything against her. We’re all for it, actually. She’s not interested in us, though … we don’t have cocaine or a Camaro. She’s the outsider.

The tedmobile rumbles back onto the highway, towing the dingy tent trailer behind it. We’re not on the road for more than 20 minutes when one of the trailer’s tires explodes. We pull over at a McDonalds and wile away the time as the tire is fixed. The two Swedish girls try to teach me their language. They’re laughing a lot. Little did I know they were actually making fun of me. The cheerleader keeps trying to make jokes, but they all fall flat, somehow. It’s hard to sympathize, though. Her attitude is that we’re beneath her anyway.

Tire fixed, back on the road. Over the hills, across the Silicon Valley, up into the green coastal mountains. The tedmobile begins to overheat, not being used to lugging a trailer over a mountain. We’re forced to pull over and let it cool down. Ted transfers water from a stream to the van using a Dixie Cup and a lot of walking.

Tony, who was following in his VW Bug, drives Mark and I to a nearby grocery store to score some beer. I’m the one who looks 21 years old. I grab two entire cases and slam them down at the register. No one will dare challenge that. They don’t, and the purchase is made. We have beer!

Beer! Beer! Beer!
Let us make this perfectly clear!
If you drink enough you’ll have no fear…
Let’s all hear it for beer!

The tedmobile is up and running again. Over the top and down toward the ocean. Ted has camping space reserved, and we pull in amid beautiful redwoods. The trailer is set up. Tents are pitched. Aki, our Japanese exchange student, still has no idea who any of us are or how we’re related. He thinks my friend Ted and his girlfriend Stephanie are the mom and pop of the operation. Alex and I get him to say words with an “L” in them. “Telly Savalas” for example – he says “Terry Savarus.” We all laugh and Alex hugs him, because she wants to make sure he knows we’re not laughing at him. Aki doesn’t seem to mind, especially after having a beautiful girl hugging him.

With the camp set up, we pile into the tedmobile and rumble out toward the ocean. There’s not a whole lot of the day left because of the delays. We throw Frisbees and build sand castles, and generally romp about. Mark plays his guitar and we all sing, drunken and off-key. When the sun sinks low we head back toward the camp for dinner. Ted and I build a campfire and we roast marshmallows and tell jokes. Then we retire to our various sleeping spaces, which are for the most part communal, all snuggled together and touching. Mark and Alex keep getting frisky, which isn’t fair. Meanwhile, our cheerleader has found two cocaine abusers with a Camaro and settles into a small tent with both of them. Aki, not knowing where to go, ends up in the back of Tony’s Volkswagen with a blanket, and the poor guy freezes all night. Ted and Stephanie get the tedmobile all to themselves, which isn’t fair either, but hey – it is his van.

The next morning I get the fire going again, and we sit around and have a breakfast of beer and marshmallows. By 10am I am already drunk. I keep turning on my cheap little tape recorder and interviewing people, as if I were doing a radio show. The person most picked on is the cheerleader – I keep asking her where she spent the night. Then I go interview the two guys she’d slept with. They turn out to be nice guys, and go along with the joke of the tape recorder. They’re a bit sheepish for sleeping with the 16 year old rah-rah, but tell me that she obviously wasn’t a virgin as she had no problem going down on both of them. The conclusion is that no matter what happens to her, she has a future as a porn star.

I interview Aki about sleeping in the back of the VW. “Fuck you,” he says, and despite his accent it comes though loud and clear.

After eating and waking up a bit, we head back to the beach. A beach-side grocery store sells us more beer. Oh, the good fortune! We’re set for the day! I remember sitting in the soft sand, feeling the cool ocean breeze, hearing the sound of seagulls, and staring at the vast Pacific Ocean. All my best, most wonderful friends surround me. I love them all. I love everything. Sitting there, I attain a true state of nirvana. An ultimate peaceful happiness, no doubt brought on by the Lowenbrau, but still … I was there. I had attained that state. It was like the most perfect drug. It was like talking to God. I can’t explain it any other way.

Windswept beaches in sweet sunlight
The happy sounds of waves and laughter
Lowenbrau in my hand, buzz in my head
I am complete.

Gary and Mark sing songs. Tony takes pictures. The girls bury Aki’s legs in the sand. Morning stretches into afternoon, and the beach grows more crowded. I take out my tape recorder and go around interviewing people at random, asking them what had brought them to the beach. I introduce boys to girls. I introduce girls to myself. At one point I came across some teens who’d buried one of their friends in the sand to the point where all you could see was his head. “I’ve stumbled across a man with no body!” I say into the tape recorder. “He’s just a head sitting on the sand at the beach. I have to interview him…” I approach the guy, who is already laughing. “As you’re there,” I say, “contemplating the sand and surf, the wind and the waves … what are your thoughts?”

“I’m on acid!” he says.

Some beautiful, near-naked girls walk past, and I ask him, “Is there anything you’d like to say to these ladies?”

“Yeah…” he starts.

“Yeah,” one of his friends yells, “give me head!”

The disembodied head sitting in the sand blushed crimson.

The girls had stopped, and were laughing with us, and when I move on I’m surprised that they follow me. “What are you doing?” they ask. “Why are you doing this?” I guess they thought I was actually a celebrity or something, doing recordings for a radio show.

“For fun,” I tell them.

“But why are you doing it?”

“Just for fun,” Tony answers for me, zooming up at the sight of the beautiful girls. “We’re just doing it for fun. You know, just to do it.”

“Oh!” They’re both instantly entranced with Tony. “You have beautiful eyes,” one of them says.

“Thank you,” he replies, grinning back.

The girls introduce themselves as Brandy and Cheyenne, and we give them wine coolers, and they sit with us and ogle Tony for the rest of the afternoon. Alex, Stephanie, and the Swedish girls don’t seem to like them much. Stephanie refers to them as “Jerry’s girls” as if I’d brought home stray animals. Really, they were only mine briefly. Afterwards they were all Tony’s.

I didn’t care. Nothing mattered. I was still in that state of nirvana, and I kept drinking, and the rest of the memories all blurred together into a fog. I don’t remember if we stayed another night or headed home that afternoon. I don’t remember getting Cheyenne’s address, either, but I ended up with it somehow. All I really remember is riding home in the back of the tedmobile, lying against piles of blankets, and Alex was laying on top of me but making out with Mark, and I kept hearing her intimate, love-induced sighs and wishing they were for me.

Later, Stephanie summed up the trip rather tartly, as she hadn’t attained the same state of nirvana that I’d somehow found. The trip, from what I gather, wasn’t that enjoyable to some of the gang. But I took the recordings I made, edited them and added narration, and called it “The Great Santa Cruz Experience” and made copies for everyone. The tape turned out to be very precious, like a time capsule holding our last moments of youthful freedom. For some it changed the memories they had. The trip became immortalized, and those who hadn’t enjoyed it suddenly did, like I’d somehow managed to infuse them with my memories of nirvana.

Strangely, Cheyenne wrote me letters, and it turned out that wasn’t her real name. I guess “Denise” wasn’t exotic enough. We were pen pals for years.

From Tales of the Lizard Hunter
By Jerry J. Davis

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You just have to love innovation, though this is not something you’ll find hitting the mass market anytime soon.

Tired of having to get up to get a beer in the middle of an important sporting event on TV? Well, a very clever engineer named John W. Cornwell devised a refrigerator that brings it to you … via special air delivery, no less.

Inside, a can is brought up and out of the fridge by an elevator, where it’s then transferred into the business end of a catapult. The catapult swivels around and tosses with amazing accuracy to where ever you’ve aimed it.

Don’t take my word for it, watch the video.

This groovy piece of homemade hardware is controlled by a car’s remote. Pressing the “unlock” button starts the catapult and it spins around until you press unlock again. Press “lock” and the beer is in the air.

If you think about it, the gizmo not only makes it effortless to get a beer, it also limits how many you can have. When you’ve passed the point of drunkenness where you can no longer operate it properly, or lack the eye-hand coordination to catch the flying can, the beer hits you in the face, knocking you out, and thus preventing you from imbibing further.

The only thing I’d do differently is fill it with a different type of beer.

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Now this is cool. You are here, now, reading the very first post on this website. Remember this day. Years from now you can say, “Yeah, I went there before there was anything even published there! And now look at it!”

You, my friend, are definitely ahead of the curve.

You’re here because you love beer. This website is here because I love beer. Beer is good. Beer is even holy (I know, because I have some in my fridge that was brewed by monks).

This is yet another website about beer. But as there is no such thing as too much beer in the world, I say, there’s room for yet another website about it.

One thing I can tell you to expect … one of these days I’m going to try an experiment I found on the Internet, where you can brew actual beer in a coffee pot. I don’t know if it really works. I don’t know if, after I drink the stuff, I’ll die or end up with brain damage. But by Gods I am going to try it!

Thanks for showing up, my friend. Please bookmark this place and check back from time to time.

Sincerely yours,

Jerry J. Davis
Fellow Beer Lover

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