Summer is coming, and in a vain attempt to shed some weight from my shitty flabby body, I am quitting beer for this month to make my body a bit less shittier and flabbier.

So I am trying out whiskey.

Don’t get me wrong, I am far from a drunk. I only drink when I am out, and usually only have 2-3 drinks (4 at the most) when out. Yes, drinking only a few is cost effective, but in Seattle, beer can be a bit pricey.

However, it is nothing like whiskey prices.

It is very easy to drop $10+ on one pour. One pour! To put it in context, that is a lot more than beer.

Also, the way whiskey prices work, low shelf rotgut goes for around $5. Slightly better stuff (aka Jameson and Bulleit) is about $8. Then the pricing becomes exponentially higher (why not linear like every other product out there? Have no idea):

• Anything 12-15 years: $15-$25

• 15-18 years: $30-$50

• Special stuff that is not for you: $100

But then there is this:

• Macallan M: Aged between 25-75 years, very select. $1000 a pour. Half a million for the bottle.

$500K? Don’t believe it? Well, according the Whiskey Bar barkeep on 2nd Ave in Seattle, that is the price of such a thing.

And why would he know? Well, perched on the highest shelf, there was a bottle (much like the bottle you see at the top of this page) with a spotlight on it. It sort of looked like Jesus rising from the dead, if Jesus was a bottle of whiskey. And this bottle, again according to the guy behind the bar, said that liquid was worth more than the entire building.

I am not sure I fully believe that. I did some research (aka: Googled) about this quaff and yes, there are some special bottles that go to auction for that type of price tag. But this particular bottle going for $500K? BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! I call shenanigans on that. I know of livers and eyeballs that go for less on the black market than that bottle of old brown water. I would think if this bottle was truly worth that amount of money, there would be an armed guard by it all all times, even during off hours. It also wouldn’t be so casually displayed behind a bar. Yes, it is on a shelf, but really. I am sure Thomas Crown would have that thing in his pocket before they could run his American Express card on closing out the bill. Palease!

Regardless, the thing is probably worth an absurd amount of money. I’ll say…..$100K. Anyway, I bet you dimes to dollars that if I lined up a pour of that stuff, a pour of High West Double Rye, and a pour of Teeling 12 yr, you could NOT tell me which one was the drink worth 100x more than the others. Ridiculous!

So I will still delve into my whiskey odyssey for this month; learn some things, try some stuff and see if the absence of beer tightens up my belly bit. But in the meantime, I will make sure to complain about this overly pretentious world of hard liquor as much as I can. Enjoy!!!