Thanks for giving me good reason to invite, KDHX

Here's a quick breath of fresh air from crunching copy and editorializing on the Missouri Non-Partisan Court Plan to thank everyone who participated yesterday in Taste for Tunes, with a special shout out to the fascinating and lively crowd that joined Stevo Green and myself last night at The Stable.

One of our guests left this loving little note on the scrap of paper I was using to keep track of all of the interesting things people were saying around me.

Stevo was good to our taste buds, if perhaps cutting a bit into profits for The Stable (and the 20 percent cut to KDHX Community Media), by bringing some deluxe extra-curricular beer for us to sample. The beer curator to the stars loves his Founders double chocolate double stout, and he had a bottle to open. Mindy "I like dark beers" Mazur took a break from her left-handed drinking of her Left-Handed Stout to enjoy a sip.

I couldn't pry my palate off the two Bear Republic beers on draught at The Stable, Racer 5 and the Hop Rod Rye. Yow. Talk about big bold ales. Maybe even bigger and better than the fabled Stone IPA, which Stevo also brought, but only for me to take home (cue: "we're in the money," except this time we're "in the good beer").

Two of my Muslim brothers from Dynasty Hip-Hop Music Mentoring made the scene. They don't drink alcohol, but they must have been hungry from fasting all day long (it being Ramadan and all). I saw them chow down on an enormous salad. The rest of us scarfed on Araon Whalen's delicious pizza and bacon-wrapped dates in the bar area, it never feeling like quite the right thing to do to square off at a dining room table and act like grownups.

Former Fire Chief Sherman George was a late arrival, but he brought political wisdom with him. Speaking of the mayor of a certain mid-sized Midwestern river city, Sherman said, "He's a bully, so that means he's a punk."

I like that.

My contribution to the political banter was a point I often make about a class of political observers who like to know politicians and get close to them, yet have no grasp whatsoever of the kinds of brutal plays these guys make in private (and would never talk about to the pundits they have learned how to flatter).

"They don't know how to play the game, but they like the way the locker room smells," I said of this group of popssibly well-intentioned pundits.

Mindy Mazur, who does know how to play the game, said she will be cohosting a new Charter Media talk show with Ed Martin, who also knows how to play the game (especially the part of the game where you flatter the putatively liberal pundits until they start treating you like a dear chum rather than the ruthless enemy you are in your heart).

But it wasn't a completely political crowd, far from it, and much more than politics got chewed on with the gourmet pizza and downed with the fancy, fancy beer. I'll be back, later, with more - especially, more about KDHX FM 88.1, which was what brought us all together on this lovely September evening in St. Louis, and what kept me exquisite company all the way home.