where were you?

Beer Committee Meeting minutes, Nov. 4, 2008:

On this day, the L.A. Derby Dolls Beer Committee (not to be confused with the Pizza Committee or the Committee Committee -- though there is some overlap in membership) convened for a special session at Big Wang's Wings in Hollywood. For years, the Beer Committee's Beerbrarian has been riding her bicycle past Big Wang's Wings on her way to the Hollywood YMCA (though its existence barely registered on her radar before this night). Big Wang's Wings is one of those things the Beerbrarian sees past rather than sees, sort of like a billboard for Yes Man. Clearly, this has been the Beerbrarian's loss. Big Wang's is a little piece of the Real America right in the heart of Hollywood. To walk through its barn doors is to step into your past: in an instant, you are back at that Midwestern college you never attended, boozing it up with your fellow Ag majors.

Big Wang's boasts 37 high-definition TVs and will serve your Budweiser in a ginormous Beer Tower with a nozzle dispenser. Members of the Beer Committee (henceforth BC) do not drink Budweiser, and instead opt for several pitchers of IPA (but later concede that nozzles would have been nice). The Beerbrarian was served her Ketel and soda in a pint glass.

In addition to the aforementioned Beerbrarian, BC members present for this special session were The BEO, the BE-co, the Laegeraision, and the committee medic, or B-EMT, (who arrived late, but was appropriately dressed, wearing scrubs and a Cedars-Sinai track jacket. Clinical, yet sporty).

All BC members proudly don "I voted" stickers.

Agenda items: Watch election results as simultaneously projected on Big Wang's 37 screens. Drink beer. Eat wings (omnivores). Eat nachos (vegetarians & omnivores alike). Witness political history in the making. Feel humbled to share this transformative moment with fellow Big Wangers, who shout and cheer and clap and hug and eat their wings and drink from their beer towers. The BC is caught in the zeitgeist -- a touching (albeit sticky-fingered) display from the Real America found in a Hollywood strip mall.

Following Barrack Obama's acceptance speech, BC members commence ritual shot-taking. On this night, the shots are chocolate cake, which taste rather bittersweet knowing that things aren't looking so good for Prop 8. Though not projected onto any of Big Wang's 37 screens, BC members have received this unfortunate news via text message.

The meeting is adjourned, and the Beerbrarian stumbles to her ride, which is locked to the lone rack outside of Big Wang's. Before mounting her bike, the shivering Beerbrarian wraps her neck in a scarf. Fall has finally arrived in L.A.

See? Things are changing already.