With the new cocktail menus at the Great wolf Lodge and the Greg Frewin almost complete and two shows this weekend I am off to Hollywood next week for 3 days.

We are shooting a pilot for a Late Late Night talk show. Should be very cool. Unfortunate that I will only be in LA for 2 nights.

New Orleans is the same way on the 11th. The Cocktail Cinema film fest is featuring the Movie Cocktail. They have asked that I come on down to do some flipping. Should be fun as well.

I'll update you on the trips once I return.

Cheers

Dean

OK so I do not intend to get rude here however. I have to share one of the funniest moments of my Flair bartending life.

Matt Jones and I were doing a presentation to the local collage students over lunch time. We did our you flair , I flair portion of the show and then we brought some students on stage to flair with us.

Now this is where it gets weird. In the front row was a group of students that had purchased a "Superdong" as a prank gift for a friend. Yes a rubber dildo. Turn back now if you are offended already. It will only get worse.

These guys slowly move the dong closer to the stage. closer and closer. The dong is so close to the stage that I now have two choices. Let the dong become something that every one giggles at in the show or #2. Grab the dong and bring it into the show.

You can guess my choice. You know I try to be professional when ever I can. However. We are entertaining a group of 19-24 year old collage students in their school. What would you do. You have to do what your audience would want.

I picked up the dong and threw it into a back hand stall.

The crowd went wild.

What followed (all while Matt was teaching flair to some girls) was great. Almost as though I had written the routine. I tossed the dong back into the crowd. 30 minutes of stand up dong flair.

I need to stop there as this is a public forum. I am happy to tell you the rest of the story over cocktails OK lets say over drinks some day.

It is a story that Matt and I will be telling for many years.

Cheers

Dean

With a pending full time postition at the Theatre, A liqour company contract and a full menu design all waitiing on my attention the last 7 days away from daily activity have put me behind the 8 ball. I have managed to pull myself out fairly well today.

Even had time to hit the P90X.

Shipping some TV show ideas off to Hollywood today. Cross your fingers I might finally get one out of the park.

The commercial was great. Aside from the 6 am make up call I got to sit around for much of the day eating catered food. Sure I had to do some shooting and a little juggling. One of the dancers Graham Goodhall and I started jugging to pass the time. He could do a simple cascade at the beginning of the day. By the end of the day he and I were passing a number of different ways and mixing up patterens. The guy was amazing. After P90X I am going to get him to teach me how to do a back flip.

After 12 hours of shooting my big close up came. I needed to juggle hot sauce bottles as I walk upto the camera. They took about an hour to set the camera and scene. I walked in on the first take with a drop. I reset quick and bam. 15 seconds of music later and they had the shot. I was done. Done of course until 2 hours later when they sent me home.

This commercail is going to be fun to watch and I promise you will have the Hot Saucey jinngle stuck in your head.

Off to the hopsital. Barb had just come out of surgery when I got there. She made it through pretty good.In a ton of pain. A ton of pain. She said she would rather have another baby because that pain goes away. Now that is pain. Well so I'm told.

Some pain killers for her and she is off to Never Never Land.

Day 2. We are now on set at Jack Astors Vaughan. Funny story of the day. Last wednesday I was invited to do a 10 minute flair show for the 10th anniversay of Jacks Vaughan. I had never been there before but they had a cancellation and I ran into help.

Here I am exactly a week later back in the same spot for a commercial.

Today the plot came together for me. I guy walks into a restaurant with Zantac in his hand and a Broadway musical breaks out. Complete with juggling waiters (your truely) dancing servers, arial cooks and patrons that do flips off of tables. All for a tasty chicken wing.

Today was the hospital day. Yup Omar a dancing chef that has to do back flips injured is achillies tendon during what could have been his 100th back flip of the day.

On my way home my nieghbor and good friend called.

"Hey Dean your wife is in the hospital with a broken arm."

"Yeah right, what do you want?"

"Hey Dean your wife is in the hospital with a broken arm."

"Yeah right, what do you want?"

"Hey Dean your wife is in the hospital with a broken arm."

"Yeah right, what do you want?"

This was exactly how the conversation went.

So off to the hospital to find my poor wife waiting on a doctor for 4 hours only to find out she broke the end of her elbow off and needed surgery.

I'll tell you about tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Today was day 1 of a commercial rehearsal.

I arrived at the dance studio in time to meet 6 beautiful dancers and a guy named Tyler. Tyler turned out to be the hero and star of the 30 second spot.

The dancers 3 girls and 3 guys were amazing. They were there for 15 minutes and had all nailed 5 minutes worth of dance coreography. Nailed it. These people are professionals. I have bartender trainings and everyone gets there 15 minutes late and take another 15 minutes to get started.

These dancers have really opened my eyes. My trainings will no longer be slow starters. Get in get ready we are going hard core.

“I understand we are both very busy people. I will not waste another minute of your time. I have five questions that only you need to know the answers to.”

1. … are unmotivated and lazy. Paying them sub minimum wage is still too much.
2. … know more about whining and complaining then wining and dining
3. … are like Batman. They can’t work without Robin.
4. … are enthusiastic about making and selling the best cocktails they can make.

1. … are incapable of smiling let alone attracting people to the bar
2. … would provide the same hospitality from behind a wall
3. … are too uncoordinated to pour two bottles at the same time
4. … have a perfect mix of chit chat, efficiency and flair for the craft of bartending

1. … lack any understanding about the business of selling spirits
2. … - I now need two bartenders to ring in what one bartender used too
3. … should have expensive pouring systems to monitor their pouring
4. … are fast and efficient. My profit margins are bulging with perfect pouring

1. … are served warm in dirty glasses. No one complains.
2. … are not fancy. No one asks for fancy drinks so we gave up selling them
3. … are bottled beers, bottled coolers and booze on guns
4. … are unique cocktails created by and sold by my team of professional bartenders

1. … is over 20 drinks long and takes 20 minutes to read
2. … the last bar menu I saw was under the glass washer, I think it is still there
3. … - my what?
4. …SELLS for me. The perfect selection and quality beverages promoting to the type of guest that I want to put in my bar.

Dean Serneels - dean@flairco.com

I spent yestaurday taping the Distilley segments for the Mad Mixologist.

We are touring a local whisky makers facility in the show. Each of the segmetns of the process will be cut into different episodes. The point here is that I sat 2 barrel stacks high with this 1st generation whisky maker. Sipping whisky, talking about the spirit. We are sitting 2 stacks high in a warehouse full of 40,000 barrels of whisky. Yup sitting, chatting and sipping surrounded by 1 600 000 gallons of whisky. If I had died there I would have fullfilled my destiny.

The show is coming together. Lots of levles of education. Fun for the introductory bartender and educational for the seasoned vets out there. I am getting more and more confident that we are on the right track with this. I am editing today. The creative process continues.

1 Flairco Lites

2 Bar Kit

3 Floating Shaker tin

4 FAST Tender

5 Portable bar

All of these new products are either already released or coming soon. We had a great 2008 producing and preparing new products. The Bar Kit is the latest and probably the most exciting of them all aside from the new portable bar.

This kit holds almost 40 bartending tools and has space for 750 ml size bottles and lots of shjaker tins. Even when packed there is still room for more of your own favourite bartending tools.

I will let you know more about the new portable bar that is almost here as well. WIth that we have 5 new product launches over the last part of 08 and the beginning of 09.

An all new Flairco is on the way.

I just recieved my second TV invitation for 2009. OK I have not officially recieved the second one as yet but I know its coming tomorrow. I am not at liberty to discuss the first invitation as yet but I can promise that it is my biggest invitation to date. It beats Food Network and the Coyote Ugly series. Cross your fingers I need to get a ton of paper work prepared for it.

The second looks like a pilot for a late night talk show. I'll let you know more as I get more information. I hope Craig Ferguson will be on it.

I really do not know what my curiosity to be on TV is fed from. Perhaps my father did not hold me enough. LOL.  I often wonder what makes people so crazy about TV, celebrities and that whole Famous thing. My kids ask me all the time if I am famous. They have seen me on a bunch of little shows, we have had a few video crews through the house to hang in my bar/studio.

I tell them that I am almost sort of Famous. I tell them that famous is a scale. Some people are more well known than others. One time they asked me if I was more famous than Greg Frewing. (Local magic show where I tend bar.) Now Greg is famous and one hell of a great magician. He is very famous with the Magic world and sort of famous with the mainstream. Now perhaps there are more bartenders in the world than magicians. So I might have a chance in this discussion.

The funny thing is that I tell myself I don't care to be famous yet when ever anyone waves a stick of TV at me my mouth begins to water and they can throw that stick as hard as they want and I will chase it. Just like my Golden Gogetit. My dog Jasper. He will be asleep until you wave a stick. Then he is up and going crazy. I toss the stick and he runs everytime.

He never does bring it back. Most people call them Golden Retievers. Not me. Jasper is my Golden Go Get it.

I still don't know how famous I am. Nore how famous I want to be.

How is that for a Sienfeld style Blog update. An update about nothing.

Cheers to everyone.

D