Friday Night Bug Juice

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Welcome to Friday Night Bug Juice, a Metro Detroit bar review site. We're here to give you a look into the dive bars of the Detroit area, so you can hopefully spend your cash wisely, and get a little insight into the lives of a couple of hapless irish louts.

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Welcome to the section of our site where you can learn everything you ever wanted to know and way too much more about the gang that works hard ruining their livers to bring you all you need to know about the dive bars of the Metro Detroit area!

NOT SO GRATE

 I am a fifty-five year old man that fancies himself a man’s man.  I succeed at almost every aspect of manhood that was preached to me growing up:
 1. I have chest hair and would never dream of shaving my pecs or gut.  Guys are supposed to have hair on their upper torso.  The only reason I trim the hair south of the equator is that I would not be able to locate my Braille dot if I didn’t ( the proverbial needle in a haystack).
 2. I have facial hair.  It’s gray and sometimes mixes in with my nose hair, but I have it.
 3.I love sports.  I watch Sports Center, subscribe to Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News, and can even speak NBA ( I once pointed out how much tougher hockey is than hoops to a group of black guys who had just finished playing a rousing pick up game at the Y; that did not go over well).
 4. I love women.  Looking at them, that is.  My heart loves only one woman, but my eyes love all.  I find something attractive about almost every female (it’s a gift).  Before you get bunched about this, my wife likes to look at guys also.  She admires Austin Jackson and Curtis Granderson.  Wait a minute, I think I detect a trend...my wife likes Tiger center fielders.
 5. I love being a man, strong and vigorous.  I want to unscrew the reluctant bottle cap, sweat through my shirt, fart louder, shit bigger and generally stink.   
   My manly Achilles heel:  The art of grilling.  We men are supposed to be great at this.  After all it involves making fire, burning flesh and providing great bounty for others.
   Alas, I am an utter failure.
   Not for a lack of trying.  I have wheeled my charcoal grill out of the garage on many occasions.   I always expect to hear rubber burning and see the rapidly disappearing tail lights of guests when my grill makes its appearance.  I guess people will eat anything if you serve enough cold beer.
   My big worry is that I will undercook something and friends and family will leave retching and clenching their ass cheeks together.  As a result of this fear, I tend to cook the hell out of everything, rendering my grilled food dry and tasteless.  In my world, dry and tasteless beats retching and clenching every time.
   Where does it all go so very wrong?
   Getting the fire started is no problem.  I have two chimneys and put a couple of sheets of paper in the bottom and charcoal on top, put flame to paper and twenty minutes later perfect coals.
   From this point forward:  Epic Fail!  I’ve turned burgers into hockey pucks, hot dogs into shriveled peckers and chicken into a call to Papa Romano’s.
     
   So what to do when struggling with the basics of grilling?  Buy an expensive rack of ribs and shoot for the moon.
   I blame You Tube for the seed of this idea.  I watched a bunch of videos from guys with deep voices and  syrupy southern accents and names like Grill Guys and BBQ Kings.  They made the preparation and grilling of pork look simple, resulting in fall off the bone perfection.  They were loved and admired by all. 
   I wanted to be those guys. 
   My journey began at Sam’s Club on Saturday night.  I looked over a puzzling array of meat, fat, blood and bone.  Twenty minutes and $35 later I walked out with a mysterious package of pork spare ribs. 
   To get this gross wad of pork grill ready, you need to get at it way earlier in the day than hands want to touch blood and bone.  Trimming fat and membrane leaves the kitchen looking like the cutting room floor of a Rob Zombie movie.
   It was way more rib than I imagined and took up most of the grate room, leaving only enough space for a pan of mop sauce that one of the southern fried assholes from You Tube insisted needed to stay on the grates to help keep the ribs moist. 
   Thirty minutes and one beer later, I was ready to mop some of the sauce onto my ribs.  
   “That’s way more peppercorn than I remember putting into the mopping sauce, “ I said to my sons Max and Jack as we peered at the huge slabs of pork. 
   My heart sunk as I discovered that it wasn’t the delightful spunk of peppercorn that I was mopping on to my expensive ribs, but pieces of teflon coating that had peeled off the inside of the mopping pan.
   I did what I always do during times of emergency.
   “Jack, run inside and get Mom.” 
   God bless her, Andrea tried to make the best out of the situation.  She blotted and washed.  She clucked her tongue and said we were making a bigger deal out of this than needed.  She tried to make us believe that teflon bits would soon be packaged as a spice and be recognized as just another pork condiment.
   The boys and I were not having it.  Max and Jack went to the internet, where the opinions ranged from harmless to death.  I wanted to call Poison Control, but Max pointed out that this was only for those who were already poisoned, not for those who were only considering being poisoned.
  This debate raged on for the next two and one half hours.  I kept a brave face during this lively, beer fueled battle, keeping the coals stoked in an effort to provide even heat under the teflon infused ribs.
   The timer said the ribs were done and it was put up or shut up time for Andrea, the spokesperson for new Teflon Bitz for Pork.  Just to make sure they were ready, I poked the ribs with a meat thermometer.  
   Ribs that were supposed to register an internal temperature of 165 degrees failed to register the lowest temp on the gauge of 120.
   To summarize:  $35 spent, hours of time purchasing/studying/grilling, a family divided and the fucking things were inedible by everybody’s count, including Andrea’s.
   We dined al fresco that day, ate Papa Ramono’s deep dish pizza and salad, along with homemade parmesan encrusted spuds and washed them down with Summer Shandy.
   The topper, the desert if you will, was the good natured ribbing (pun intended) I took from my crew.  In the end, they insisted that they wanted me to keep trying and would always be available when the grill was wheeled from the garage.
   They either love me or the Summer Shandy.
Cheers!  Jim 
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