Adventures in Internet Blogging, Pt. I.

Hello gentle readers. Allow me to take a small break from your regularly scheduled travelin' and boozin' and researchin' about boozin' to peel back the curtain a little bit on some of the subtleties of having a "web log".

Folks who have had a blog know that whether you're trying to scratch out a living or you're just starting out at some point the amount of traffic you get on a day-to-day basis becomes something of an obsession. I can't say exactly why it happens for those of us who aren't ever planning on making any money off blogging. It's probably narcissism (or at least that's the explanation with which I'm most comfortable.)

Regardless, this obsession is a universal thing. Bloggers pore over their traffic numbers like they're religious screeds. They analyze and determine the types of posts that are the most popular (here at Fernetiquette these babies are by far the most google friendly) and the posts that no one bothers reading at all (basically everything else.) This is a daily ritual, and for most of us it's a sad, silent struggle against sanity.

However, one of the great joys of compulsively checking your traffic numbers is seeing exactly how people stumble upon your site. The average reader may not know this, but when you load Fernetiquette I can see a whole lot about you. Not only do I get information on how many people view my page, but I am told those visitors' locations, their browser settings and how long they spend on my site before clicking off to look at lolcats. Most interestingly, I am also told the link that brought you here. I ALSO see it when people find me through a google search and I see what the google search was that drew the hit. As you can guess, google searches are often pretty funny.

For example, last Friday I posted this about the Eastern Standard in Boston, Mass. Because no Fernetiquette post would be complete without pithy, immature tag I slapped one on the bottom of it that said "Tom Brady is a Handsome Man." I did this for a few reasons. One because before Tom Brady was the quarterback for the Patriots, he played for Michigan.

Proof

As I explained in the True Faqs, I am a rabid Michigan Football fan. It is also true that Tom Brady is in fact quite handsome.

Proof pt. II. You know you want him.

Astute readers will note that my description of the Eastern Standard's "Heather in Queue" cocktail used the word "foxy". Less than an hour after throwing that baby up, I got a hit from someone in South Korea who had apparently googled "Tom Brady foxy". I found this amusing. You may find this sad or unremarkable, but this gets back to the Pathetic Life of Your Poor Blogger.

Along similar lines someone in Pinole, CA recently found me through this search, which ha ha google suggestion lulz.

Not quite as tasty. Or dangerous.

But my absolute favorite example of this phenomenon so far is the apparent confluence of this post about Varnish in Los Angeles and this one about the Football cocktail which produced a google result for Fernetiquette when someone searches for (I kid you not) "homemade cream for décolletage". Insert relevant picture here:

Insert inappropriate joke here.

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UPDATES! So speaking of The Eastern Standard, behold the Power of the Twitternets!

Re-tweet away, minions!

To say that the post on Friday was the Most Popular Fernetiquette Post ever is a bit of an understatement. Someone in Boston found it Monday morning, tweeted about it and BOOM this blog hit triple-digit page loads for the first time in its young life. And there was much rejoicing.

There was also some helpful clarification. In the comments to that post, Frederic answers our question about Ms. Heather:

This cocktail is named for a regular Friday-night customer who was standing “in queue” when Jackson created this drink for her as a replacement for the Hoskins, “as I was running out of the then famous 164-bottle stash of Amer Picon that I picked from a dusty corner of the Martignetti warehouse.”

More at the Drink Boston link, which Frederic also helpfully provides. FWIW, My friend Aly who lives in Boston but is unfortunately not a Fernetophile had this to say about The Eastern Standard:

The Eastern Standard is the only good place to get a drink in the Fenway area. It's near the park, but manages to stay douche bag free.

So there you have it. More Fernet, Fewer Douchebags. How can you go wrong?
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Filed Under: meta, The Pathetic Life of Your Poor Blogger, Tom Brady is a handsome man, Boston, these are a few of my favorite things, All Your Updates, Fellow Travelers, MSPaint Skillz

All Your Updates: Tossing (Back) Footballs, Burrito Justice, and Scouting the Enemy

All Your Updates to Various Things for Feb. 18

Talkin' Footballs (Just in time for baseball season!)
Prior to the Super Bowl, we tipped you off to the magic of the Football, a drink that essentially consisted of Fernet-Branca and whipped cream. Sufficiently intrigued, the lady whipped up some... um, whipped cream so we could drink the footballs while watching the footballs.

 

The gnome looks on... wistfully

We (er... she) decided for the sake of scientific inquiry to try both the store bought whipped cream and homemade stuff. Mixing in a bit of vanilla extract and sugar to whipping cream, she got to work:

As you can see, we lack a mixer. I have been told to remedy this.

The result was quite frankly delicious and far FAR superior to the store-bought whipped cream.

It's like a Fernet Float! 

Obviously, if you're familiar with Fernet you can guess what one of these tastes like, but I will say it was better than I expected. The cream really mellowed some of the natural overpowering amaro tang. The vanilla in the homemade cream was an especially nice touch. I'd even recommend one of these to the fernet-averse, though I'd probably pour them a smaller glass.

For the sake of completeness, here's a shot of the prettier-but-not-quite-as-tasty Football with the store bought whipped cream.

You must check this out immediately or I will fight you.

If you live in San Francisco, you should be familiar with Burrito Justice. It's a blog dedicating to taking what is old and historic about San Francisco (and specifically the Mission/Bernal areas) and exposing it to the fixie-riding-fernet-swilling folks populating our neighborhoods today. If you don't know them, take some time to poke around the site because pretty much everything they do is beyond fascinating.

I bring them up today because Burrito Justice has been absolutely killing it lately, in a way relevant to this blog's second most favoritest topic: baseball. (As an aside- OMG PITCHERS AND CATCHERS PITCHERS AND CATCHERS!) 

Last week, they explored how the graceful glory of Seals Stadium at the corner of 16th and Bryant was transmogrified into the Office Depot/Safeway/24 Hour Fitness monstrosity that inhabits that space today.

They took the time to overlay the schematics of Seals Stadium onto the current layout of the shopping complex, and (with some help) found the exact location of each of the bases.

He hits it high! He hits it deep! He hits it to Lane Bryant!

As if that weren't cool enough, today they went even farther back in time in a post titled "The Mission Has Always Been the Home of Baseball", wherein they drag up some amazing issues of the San Francisco Call Bulliten from 1924 which serve as the definitive history of San Francisco baseball. I don't want to ruin it (CLICK THE EFFING LINK ALREADY) but let me just say that I now consider myself an honorary member of the San Francisco Pickled Nine.

You're a handsome fella. What's your name?

A Faces of Fernet from a random schmo.

Those ceilings are the tits

Taken @ The Homestead on 19th and Folsom on Saturday, Feb. 13.

Housekeeping.
Light posting this week as I've been busy with some interesting and exciting stuff that has almost nothing to do with this blog. Should be back to normal next week.

HOWEVA, in what will probably not be an opening salvo in The Great California War but will certainly involve me talking mad shit to disinterested Dodger fans, this weekend I'll be hopping on a flight and heading directly...

...to *shudder* Los Angeles. Naturally, I'll be doing some Fernetiquette research. Stay tuned.

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Filed under: All Your Updates, Fernet Foto File, Faces of Fernet, Burrito is my favorite kind of Justice, LA is sorta OK sometimes, The Homestead, Fernet cocktails, The High Holy Church of Baseball

All Your Updates to Various Things!

A catch-all update on All Things Fernetiquette.

-Ask the Internet and the Internet Responds. 
Last week, I exposed my massive ignorance by asking for help in translating an Argentine advert for Fernet-Branca. Advert in question goes here:

Naturally, lots of my friends speak the Spanish pretty good, though even they could not fully Unravel The Mystery of the Fernet Dog-Walking Advert. Most commenters bemoaned the lack of a bigger version of the image (sorry, no dice), but were able to piece together a rough translation:

The headline says something like "This is the last time I'm fetching it for you" but I'm not sure about the other text.

... 

"The last time I take him out." (I don't have the phrasing quite smoothed out, but that's how I translate it.)
and
"One fewer discussion among (so) many discussions."

 ...

...it says "The last time, I took it/him out" and underneath "One less discussion (out of so many)." But that still isn't very enlightening.

Indeed it is not. What is the connection between, "I took him out last time" and "One less discussion (among so many)"? Maybe the illegible small print would clarify? I'm not sure. It could be a cultural reference or idiom that we're not getting. Still, one brave commenter did advance a few plausible theories:

Fernet means never having to say, "Fine, I'll take the dog out AGAIN, fer chrissakes"?

I quite liked that one but was partial to

"I took the dog out last time, so you do it this time, cos it's high time I had me some Fernet"

Perfect. I'm going with that one.

-And speaking of Argentina...
Our traveling correspondent has returned stateside with just an overwhelming number of sexy Fernet pictures and tall Fernet tales. It will take me some time to wrassle them all into one narrative, but perhaps a small preview is in order.

Sorta romantic, don't you think?

-The same thing happened while trolling for dates to the Prom.
As of yet, my email to the purveyors of Bourbon and Branch has gone un-returned. I've also reached out to a few local and related-by-subject-matter blogs of note and gotten no response. In fact, the Fernetiquette Email Inbox remains entirely barren. le sigh.

But fear not, Gentle Reader! I shall soldier on, undeterred! So, if anyone out there can think of a blog or website I should reach out to, drop me a line and I'll gladly set myself up for future rejection!

-Housekeeping:
Your Fernetiquette is all grownsed up! Now you can get to us by our old dot blogspot url AND our brand-shiny new digs at http://www.fernetiquette.com/. It's like twice the fun, but with exactly the same amount of website! Also, the twitterverse can now follow us on the twitter: @Fernetiquette.

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Filed under: fernet adverts, The Argentine Menace, Updates, You're such a super lady I get so lonely, meta, pretty sure dogs don't drink booze