So, Steady and I went to see Elizabethtown on its opening night. Because it's set in Kentucky. I might have been the only person in the theater who laughed at loud at the how to pronounce Louisville joke...
I think I started crying ten minutes in. They were driving down actual roads in Kentucky. Roads that I knew! I know those highway signs! That's my home!
It continued through most of the movie. I'd see something familiar and then I'd point and whisper scream about it to Steady and all these tears would run down my face and I don't know that I was paying much attention to the plot... but I was enthralled by the setting.
And then I saw an Ale8 on a table. And I may have jumped up and down a little bit in the movie theater. And then the main character was drinking an Ale8, and it's possible that I was disturbing other people. I think I only mentioned about fifteen times that his t-shirt had the Ale8 logo on it during the fifteen minutes it did.
The next morning, I was still awfully homesick and I was still muttering about Ale8. I was tasked with explaining Kentucky's soft drink to my boyfriend. I'm using two of the pretty sixteen ounce bottles as book ends, and there's an Ale8 bottle opener on the fridge, but now he wanted to know exactly what this drink is. We started with "no, there's no alcohol in it."
It's like... okay, imagine you have no preconceived notion of what ginger ale should taste like. Now think about what you expect something called "ginger ale" would taste like. That's what an Ale 8 tastes like. It's kinda spicey and fruity and it's very yummy.
And it has caffeine, making it "A Late One". (It's Ale-8-One, but the one is tiny on the label so I've always heard it called Ale 8, although on the commercials and at the bottling company they call it Ale-8-One. Change the stressed syllables in there so you sound like a Kentuckian, it sounds like "A Late One.")
That's what I'd always been told before, but I'm now reading the history on the website and they're saying it's "A Late One", like "The latest thing in soft drinks", which in 1926 when it was named, it was. That's interesting...
So, I got on the Ale8 website. Last time I checked, they were only shipping it in cans, but it seems they've come to realize that anyone who is anyone is going to prefer Ale 8 from the glass bottle. And now they're sending bottles!
I pestered chris for the longest time about if I could rationalize the cost of having some shipped to me. She was busy putting together a care package for her husband who is at war, but she took a minute to tell me I should just get the damned soda (she was nicer about it than that). I did, and I also ordered an "Ale Eight One, It Glorifies!" tin sign.
It's here and it's very exciting. I haven't had it in a twelve ounce bottle in a long time (I usually get the sixteen ounce bottle), the story on the side has changed. It used to start "Our Uncle Lee was an eccentric old gentleman, but there's nothing strange about his creation, Ale-8-One." It's different now. Is this a different label for shipping out of state? Or did they change it?
Also, since when do they make twist tops? I really drank four of them, using a bottle opener every time, before I noticed the note on the label.
I've been doing my best to ration it, but I just want to drink it all the time until I never ever sleep again.
