for those about to rock

white lightning

Oh, they call it that old mountain dew,
And them that refuse it are few.
Oh, I'll shut up my mug,
If you'll fill up my jug
With that good old mountain dew.

-- bascom lunsford, "mountain dew" (later made awesome by ween)

"white lightning" is a song written by the big bopper, aka jp richardson, and later made awesome by hank williams, jr., whose version included a rollicking honky tonk piano line in the bridge. i used to listen to this song with the windows down and smoke cigarettes whenever i borrowed my housemate koning's car in my later college years to refund bottles or return dvds to the library. i always assumed 'white lightning' referred to cocaine.

"white lightning" is also the name of a movie that burt reynolds and ned beatty made in 1973. beatty plays a corrupt southern sherriff who kills the protagonist's flower power brother (because he suspects him of being a "COMMUNISSST!!") and spends the movie bullying, intimidating, hollering, scheming in hushed tones and generally displaying the bottom row of his compacted teeth; burt plays the protagonist, a misunderstood man doing hard time who is granted a kind of parole to go undercover bootlegging moonshine in order to expose dirty sherriff beatty, getting into about 700 car chases and emitting that chirping young burt laugh ("ha-HAAA!!") all along the way. i watched this on saturday night with my friend mike and laughed my ass off.

"white lightning" is also a particular type of moonshine, named such because it is capable of quite literally striking a man blind. i had a shot of this at jesse's friend april's bbq on sunday night, where our host informed us that 4 or more shots could rob you of your sight. i think she may have been embellishing the truth slightly; then again, maybe i just heard her wrong, and she had actually said 'eight', which sounds somehow closer to the mark. in any case, the stuff smelled and tasted like rubbing alcohol that had been filtered through rubbing alcohol, which is to say it almost made me think of it as a VERY potent shot of vodka. coming before the white lightning were a few beers and a mixed drink made with ginger ale and a milder-tasting -- though no less potent -- variation of moonshine that had been distilled in a whiskey barrel (that it was distilled in a whiskey barrel makes it more a whiskey, by definition, but the fact that it was made independently puts it decidedly in the moonshine category). i decided that it would be best for my health and my sanity to leave well enough alone after the white lightning.

if you're wondering how the hell april got her moonshine, you'll have to keep on wondering along with me. she explained how it had something to do with her grandfather, or at least i think she did, as i was feeling a buzz like no other and was positively floored by and wholly fixated on the coincidence that i had been watching a movie just the night before in which this extraordinary stuff that i was drinking for the first time in my life had been part of a major plot point.

geez, i feel a little like the story and the way i told it doesn't exactly live up to either the amount of time it took me to get around to writing it or the apparent demand that has spurred me on in doing so.

anyone got any good jokes?

posted by jomilkman @ 10:34 AM