What's In a Name?

What is Bourbon?
Jim Beam Small Batch
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Y'know everyone always wants to know that, and the answer clearly isn't as interesting as people often assume it must be. So perhaps I should simply refuse to tell anyone anymore. The origins of the nickname lost to antiquity....

Nah. If you really want to know - here it is: When I was in the Navy and stationed up in Iceland (this would have been around '79) I used to watch a lot of western movies, and drink bourbon (Tennessee Whiskey really) while watching the cowboy flicks. One of my friends thought that I looked like Stacey Keach, who played Jesse James in the movie "The Long Riders" (one of my all time favorites, even though Clint Eastwood isn't in it :-). Don't ask me why he thought I looked like Stacey Keach. I don't think I look like Stacey Keach! I might sorta look like Jesse James though (click the link and tell me what you think!). Anyway, he started calling me Jesse, and the name just stuck until that was all anybody called me anymore. There was a lot of that at the time. There are many people I remember only by a nickname; Hooch, Belsen, Stash, House, Wop, Animal, Phil Wintrow - no wait! That was his real name! Anyway, there was another movie around this same time called "Urban Cowboy", starring John Travolta, whom I look nothing at all like, but I have been to Mickey Gilley's famous bar in Houston where that movie was filmed, and I even rode the mechanical bulls just like in the movie. So Bourbon Cowboy grew out of that, because it rhymed with Urban.

So there you have the genesis of Jesse, the Bourbon Cowboy, for what its worth.

This all happened prior to the advent of microbrews. I always tell folks that if the nickname were being given to me nowadaze it would be "the Microwbrew Cowboy" instead. But it doesn't quite have the same ring to it somehow. Besides whiskey is still better for watching cowboy flicks. Much more fitting. Beer is for all the other times ;-)

Yours Truly and Thomas J. Pirozzi on New Years Eve, 1996
(That big, ugly, suspicious-looking guy lurking in the background is none other than the infamous Big Daddy!)