Whiskey Wisdom: the Art of Being Interesting

“Sometimes I just want to slap him across the face and say ‘Why the f*ck can’t you be more

Thus spoke the viper-tongued young lady at my bar one quiet Sunday night. She was three Manhattans in and talking to me as if we were old friends, which we weren’t.

Her remarks, I told her, reminded me of a basketball coach I once had who, in the heat of battle many years ago, when we were in the huddle after an urgent and final timeout, sixty seconds on the clock, the game down to the wire, coach’s face beet-red, spit flying, said to us seriously:

“I told you guys not to let them make baskets!”

The real question, of course, is not whether to interesting but how does one  so?

Here, from a bartender's perspective, is the fundamental answer: 

To become more interesting, first become more   

Listen. 

Look. 

Here are a couple of other observations:

Disprove the proven. Be courageous. Tell about it in a good story.

Whiskey Wisdom represents a compendiation of nuggets of wisdom I’ve mined, over the course of two-plus decades, from the beautiful depths of the bar — a compendiation as well of the fascinating humans I’ve had the good fortune of serving and knowing over the course of those years.

I offer now these nuggets of wisdom to you.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1. It’s Not How Clever And How Smart You — It’s How Clever And Smart You  To Be
  
• Chapter 2. How To Be Wickedly Charismatic
  
• Chapter 3. The Awesome Power Of Your Eyes
  
• Chapter 4. How To Penetrate People’s Brains As Though You’re Telepathic
  
• Chapter 5.How To Charm The Pants Off Anyone Without Saying A Single Word
  
• Chapter 6. How To Have People Dying To Hear What You’ll Say Next
  
• Chapter 7. How To Answer The Age-Old Question: What Do You Do?
  
• Chapter 8. How To Become A Freakishly Brilliant Small-Talker By Doing One Simple Thing
  
• Chapter 9. How To Come Across As Diabolically Clever
  
• Chapter 10. Ten Authentic Signs Of Intelligence That Cannot Be Faked
  
• Chapter 11. Lynchpin
  
• Chapter 12. Are You Fascinating?
  
• Chapter 13. How To Be Unforgettable
  
• Chapter 14. How To Be The Smartest Person In The Bar
  
• Chapter 15. The Truckdriver
  
• Chapter 16. The Art Of Independent Thinking
  
• Chapter 17. What is Independent Thinking?
• Chapter 18. The One who Spends Her Life Educating Herself
• Chapter 19. A Liquid Life, Forever Flowing
• Chapter 20. High-School Basketball Star
  
• Chapter 21. What Is Friendship?
  
• Chapter 22. “Whiskey is Merely Sunshine Held Together by Water”
  
• Chapter 23. The Brown-Eyed Beauty Of Distilled Spirits
  
• Chapter 24. Whisky, Whiskey, White-Lightning, Moonraker, Moonshine
  
• Chapter 25. Work
• Chapter 26. Hard Rock Miner
• Chapter 27. Waitress
  
• Chapter 28. The Woman with the Grasshopper Mind
• Chapter 29. The Sudsbuster