Beer Cocktails, Art Tougeau Photos, A Local Writing Contest, and an Excerpt from Chip's Biography

Larryville is always hip, but it's not always on the cutting edge of hip. Here's what we'd love to see in Larryville this summer:

1) a large fleet of gourmet food trucks

2) a wide selection of beer cocktails

A recent piece in the NY-Times profiled the increasing popularity of cocktails in which beer serves as a primary ingredient. Chip is a big fan of Free State's Cyclist (half lemonade), but Larryville seems to be lagging behind in terms of the more extravagant drinks mentioned in the article.

Two examples:

"...at a new restaurant named Goat Town, you’ll find a drinks list with several beer cocktails, like one that combines beer and a house-made lemonade that’s infused with an array of herbs, including mint and tarragon that often come from the restaurant’s back garden" (NY-Times).

and


"...the avant-garde restaurant WD-50, on the Lower East Side, introduced a beer cocktail called the Black & Yellow. The name is a play on the Black & Tan, a classic layering of light and dark ales. In the Black & Yellow the top layer is indeed dark ale, but the bottom is a mix of kumquat-infused gin, yuzu juice and St. Germain, an elderflower liqueur" (NY-Times).

Chip: "You don't know how much I'd love to get shitfaced on elderflowers and go skipping around town on a nice spring day. Make this happen, Larryville bars!"


---

Governor Brownback signed his line-item veto to get rid of the Kansas Arts Commission less than an hour prior to the start of Larryville's annual art-car parade: Art Tougeau. When the annoucement was made at the parade, the governor was roundly (and rightly) booed. As we watched the adorable art-cars pass us by, we couldn't help but wish that the Governor was on hand to witness the event. Surely he'd reconsider his position if he witnessed such sights as these:



































---

We always jump at an invitation to try our hands at writing fiction and/or creative nonfiction (a few long-time readers might recall the time we wrote a full and mostly fictional biography of Chip on a now-defunct blog: we'll include a slightly re-edited excerpt below, and will rerun more of it if we get a positive response).

Anyway, our point is that we'll soon be participating in a contest by our Twitter buddy Saint_Upid , a Larryville writer/artist who asks readers of his blog to submit, in 500 words or less, a possible story behind a very odd photo (below; click to enlarge). The winner will get a T-shirt designed by Saint_Upid. Full details are here .
















---

The biography of Chip: (an excerpt)


"Like the town in Footloose, Fortt Scottt in the late 80's/early 90's imposed a strict ban on dancing in all forms, which stifled young Chip's love of tap and ballet and his need to shake his ass to the sounds of rock bands that he discovered through a scrambled late-night cable music video program hosted by a Canadian sock puppet, which he claims as an early and profound influence on his character. Early on, Chip didn't fully conform to the norms of his town, as he preferred tennis to baseball and Romantic poetry to... books about baseball (and he refused to recite "Casey at Bat" to placate the angry townsfolk, instead taunting them with "She walks in beauty, like the night..."). Gaining a reputation as a rebel, Chip kept mostly to himself or hung out with his twin brother, Pip, playing pranks on the unsuspecting villagers, who could never sort out one from the other."