Dear Mr. Price Is Right,

If what follows doesn't make a great deal of sense, it's because I have been stricken with some kind of flu-bug thing that carries with it a high fever and the inability to effectively and quickly make the distinction between what is real and what is not. At least it's not brought on by psychosis this time. Or bad acid. Just a virus or something and a wide array of over-the-counter medications that have me feeling like the fleas of a thousand camels are crawling across the desert of my scalp.

First, let me say Mr. Price Is Right - May I call you Mr. Price? Writing Mr. Price Is Right every time conjures up the image of an over-tanned and venerable Bob Barker used to regularly enter the family rooms of American households to invite a cast of regular old people to "come on down" from their studio seats to bid on complete rooms of furniture with highly varnished wood veneer and then send them home with pamphlets reminding them to spay and neuter their pets. You understand.

Anyway, Mr. Price, I was going to skip this column this week since the day after I sipped your orange, smoky goodness at Pacific Grill, I fell quite ill. I'm not saying it's your fault, Mr. Price. How could it be? There's enough alcohol in you to kill every germ 10 feet from my pours. Somehow, it happened. It happened so intensely I swear as I watched the Seahawks game sideways ancient cabals from invisible spaceships offered up elaborate handshakes that would make The Da Vinci Code seem like a day at the sandbox. Of course, without that Hanks character.

Speaking of The Da Vinci Code, why in the days it took the grandfather to die he was hiding keys, devising cryptic clues, writing riddles in blood, and stripping naked - instead of walking calmly to a phone and calling 9-1-1? Hold on and let me Google this real quickly ... Back. It was not my fever-induced imagination. This is real. Apparently indigenous peoples consider the urge to invent puzzles and strip naked more potent than the very will to live. Man, NyQuil rocks.

And, Mr. Price, you are real, too. First, your real identity is a smoky martini. Yup. You are Tanqueray 10 gin stirred in a Peat Monster scotch-laced martini glass poured by Pacific Grill manager Carol Reutercrona. I'm not sure of your born-on date. The earliest listing of you is from Sally Ann Berk's 1997 Martini Book. It's not credible to me that no one made you before the late '90s; I suspect you has been around much longer than that, perhaps invented and almost certainly misnamed during the martini exuberance of the 1980s. Your dryness makes you an excellent before-dinner cocktail. You pair nicely with many hors d'oeuvres such as smoked fish and cheeses.

Oh but wait. Here's the lovely kicker, Mr. Price. You are named after an actual man named Kelly Price who has visited Pacific Grill every Friday for the last six years. Talk about "come on down," Mr. Price. He does, every Friday, with his wife and orders Mr. Price Is Right ($10.50) - a smoky martini with the man's special twist - orange zest. And he was right, Mr. Price. The orange zest gin possesses a natural sweetness along with an aroma that recalls late summer afternoons, a vision from this crap January weather.

So, Mr. Price, while, once again, this column doesn't make sense, you do. You make complete sense. Hats off to you and, er, Mr. Price. Hopefully, one day I may hold you with one hand and with the other shake the hand of the other Mr. Price, um, or something. I have to go now. My spaceship awaits.

Cheers,

Ron Swarner

PACIFIC GRILL, 1502 PACIFIC AVE., TACOMA, 253.627.3535