#sctoch

This Friday will be attending the 26th Highland Festival in Estes park. Right here in Colorful Colorado.

I’m fairly sure we are higher up then any Highland in the homeland itself.

Легенда:

В городе Фолкерк, что лежит на берегу залива Великого Северного моря жил портной по имени Дугальд. И ходили про него слухи: что демону шьет он сюртуки и сорочки. А тото взамен, за его умелые руки и верность подарил ему рецепт восхитительного виски, на котором в последствии разбогател его клан Макмиллан. Его сыновья и внуки бережно хранят этот рецепт и делают самый “демонически” вкусных виски, когда либо видавшего мир.

Rebranding “The Glenlivet”

We’re big fans of Scotch here at VisInc, and definitely love this new logo mark.

a very handsome best man's gift

villacollezione.me

Dogs and Scotch

by Justin egan

She left me for a trumpet player, the whore. Walked in when she was blowing on his wind instrument, all right, sure as hell nailed the audition. Sitting here and feeling private and warm, I picked up the bottle of Johnnie Walker and took one sip, feeling it sick and pathetic on my cracked lips. The rest went out the window, drop by drop and I watched the neon lights outside the dilapidated brick hotel light the brown liquid up in an arabesque of drunken strobes. I spent the rest of the evening staring at the ceiling until a loud knock interrupted my desperate reverie.

-Housekeeping, the Indian voice inquired

-not interested right now. I’m naked. The place is fine, fine. 

Nothing in reply but soft footsteps down the dizzyingly rattlesnaked patterned hallway. I decided the night was over and left. There was a child with a plate of muffins, barefoot standing outside a door. He looked at me with his little face and sneered. 

“What are you waiting for?” I asked. 

“I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,” he said. 

“Well, I am sure strange,” I laughed. “Enjoy your breakfast. And have a good life.”

Like the maid, he didn’t reply. 

I left the hotel without a cup of coffee and a sore belly of stagnant scotch. I tried to remember something that occurred before being in that hotel and found nothing inside myself. There were too many similarities in my life at this moment to Tom Waits songs, an immature, pretentious tendency to be wordy and verbose in language to feel entirely real. The mere fact that I dwell on this exposes the writer, whoever he is, to be some anxious, desperate prick. I shook the feeling and continued, however, because if someone is reading this, they don’t want to get pulled into my flights of fancy. It was already midmorning halfway through my stroll down the street and reaching into my pocket I felt the flabby leather of wallet. Looking inside, however, I found nothing but a sigh of dust and poverty. My smarmy looking ID stared back at me, and amongst the layers of library cards and memberships, I found a couple coins to rub together and buy a cup of coffee. And still the litany of cliches continues, I sighed to the wind. I came upon a group of kids circled around something. Being taller than the brats, I looked on the ground to see a small dog, panting and bleeding out its nose. 

“What are you kids doing to this dog?”

They looked up at me with dark brown eyes, some blue and guilty.

“Nothing, mister, just looking at him”

“he’s hurt, guys, you should take him to a vet”

They looked at me again with those dark guilty eyes.

One boy with black hair tugged my hand and took me outside the proximity of their circle.

“I accidentally hit him with my bike,” he said, and he pointed to his bmx bike against the sidewalk, deserted carelessly. “I don’t want them to know,” he said, “They would blame me and I’d get in trouble.”

“So what did you tell them?” I asked, surprised this kid was being so frank. 

“I told him I found him like this.”

I looked over the scene and tapped the kid on his head.

“What’s your name?” I asked, with earnest, hoping my tone wasn’t at all perverted or conspicuous. 

“Tommy.” 

“Tommy? That’s a good name, kid. Tell me, do you know if there’s a vet around here?”

He looked at the injured little corgi and shrugged. 

“Look, Tommy, I’m going to take this dog somewhere where it can be helped. Is that okay with you?”

He looked at me and nodded slowly, walking towards the group of kids and asked them to get out of the way. I picked the poor dog up and slung him over my shoulder, saluting Tommy as I walked towards the car. 

He followed me as far as the parking lot and asked for a dollar. 

“What do you need a dollar for, Tom,” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to ask a stranger for money.”

“You’re a strange one, Tommy,” I said and showed him my empty wallet. “But you’re honest. I could learn a thing or two from you.”

He smiled and ran towards the kids, and dissolved into a aural clamor of play and childhood. Perhaps someday I’ll have time to reminisce on that feeling. I put the dog in the care carefully, watching his panting breaths and hoping I could find a vet that would look at emergency cases. I eventually found a place, but now am somewhat disconcerted that I don’t remember the drive or the arduousness of the search. The doctor immediately called us in and asked if I was the owner and if I had the dog’s records. 

“I have nothing, Doc. I found this dog all broken up on the street and just couldn’t leave it there.”

“It was a good call,” he said, “This dog has some very severe injuries. We’ll keep him overnight. Is that alright with you?” he asked. 

“Well, like I said, It isn’t my dog, and I don’t have much money.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much we can do, in that case,” he told me, so coldly I felt like I was in a meat locker. Perhaps it’s a memory I’m recovering. Was I a butcher? Was I a frozen goods delivery person? The doctor watched me with a twisted sneer. 

“Sir?” he asked. I again broke from my pursuit of self discovery. 

“I”m sorry, Doctor. Do you ever have those moments where you question everything?”

“No,” he said, “Not often. All I know is veterinary medicine and money.”

Sad, I thought. “This dog is going to die unless I pay you.”

He nodded. His slow, assuring nod reminded me of little Tommy. Little, honest Tommy. This world needed more men like him. 

“Can you put the little guy to sleep, then? If you won’t treat him-”

“We can do that,” he said, again, coldly.

“So,” I began, feeling a tirade brewing inside my hands, “You’ll kill this animal, but you won’t help it live? What does that say about you?”

“I considered dentistry when I was young,” he said, “but I heard many dentists offed themselves because they inflict so much pain and fear in their patients. So I decided to become a vet. Less teeth.” He sneered a crooked set of teeth yellow and jagged like a mountainscape painted by a Spanish surrealist. 

I felt the warm imprint of Tommy’s fragile grasp on my hand and looked deeply at my palms. I couldn’t let that kid down. 

“I don’t care about your career, to be honest, doctor. I just want this poor dog to get treated.” 

“He has several broken ribs that are causing hell to his insides. Even if I could do something, he’d be sick and lazy the rest of his life.”

And what is wrong in that kind of life, little dog? What is the harm in that?

I looked at the dog and stroked its neck. It lied on the metal surface limply. His impossibly deep, brown eyes looked up at me, like the dark guilty eyes of those children earlier this morning. 

“I don’t mean to be callous, sir,” he said, and I sensed a tender genuineness, almost a guilt in his voice, too. “But, this dog would need major surgery and it would be less expensive to put him down.”

“Will he feel pain?” I asked. 

“No. You can be in the room or outside for the shot.”

“I don’t even know whose dog this is.”

“When we die, who do we belong to?”

I paced the small, fluorescent lighted room. “It’s strange what he puts us through, isn’t it?” I asked him. 

“God?” 

The dogs eyes were closed and his camel furred legs twitched intermittently and squirmed on the metal. I nodded again, like Tommy, slow and honest to the doctor. He put his hand on my shoulder, I pet the dog a few times more, and I left the office. I drove back to the hotel, and I met with the young man again. He sat on the curb with his crashed bike still. The other children had gone away. I sat next to him and lit a cigarette. 

“You won’t tell your parents a strange man smoked near you, will you?” I asked him, half smirking, crooked and desperate.

He didn’t return the smile and nodded a “no”

“What happened to the dog?”

“The doctor wanted to put him down. So he did.”

“You didn’t try to save him?”

“What could I do, kid?”

He stood up. There were tears in his eyes and he swung at me, with both hands but I caught his small fists. 

“Why didn’t you save him? You’re supposed to fix things!” he cried, as I released his wrists and sat back down in a tragic huff. He moved away from me and hid his swollen young face. I put the cigarette out and didn’t know what to do. "Some things can't be fixed, Tom." He continued to cry softly, his arms crossed atop his knees, pulled up to his chest.

I heard the music of trumpets in a passing car as we sat together that afternoon on the sidewalk and threw a rock at the bumper as it whooshed by. He saw me do this and picked up a few rocks himself. He smeared his snot on his sleeve and joined me in throwing debris at the traffic. He especially liked when the dirt clods would shatter against the chrome as they hit and the car left behind a cloud of dust.