The Case of the BYOB Battle

When you’re not cool—a fact I only accepted recently when my hair plugs frightened the tweeners sitting behind me at a Justin Bieber concert—the next best thing to be is clever. So when my friend Marjorie invited a small group of us un-cool kids over for a barbeque, we decided to have a little clever-minded fun.

“On the invite, what does the last B in BYOB stand for,” asked my smart aleck friend who was, coincidentally, a Harvard grad named Alec.

“Whatever you want it to,” answered Marjorie, assuming he was joking.

So we all brought our own B’s: baked beans, a Boston terrier named Buster, a basket of assorted breath mints, a badminton set, a beard-grooming kit—creating one of the stranger parties I’ve ever been to (and I used to party with Rick James!).

Unfortunately no one was clever enough to actually bring the real B, beer, which was sorely missed after a few rounds of badminton in 98-degree heat. As the shuttlecock whizzed past my head for the final point, I turned to see Dave—who was neither cool nor clever, but still managed to be a good insurance agent—stumble through the back gate holding a 12-pack of domestic brew.

“Beer!” we all yelled, swarming Dave like he was a bartender at last call.

“Hey,” said Dave, watching his pilfered pilsners fly away, “that’s the beer I brought for myself!”

“A real BYOB dilemma, ain’t it Dave,” I said, twisting the top off my bottle and guzzling half of its contents in one long swig.

He looked into his carton, pulled out the last beer and said, “I’ve come to expect such shenanigans from these people, but I thought better of you, Ace. You can redeem yourself if you can help me with a real BYOB dilemma.”

“Spill it,” I said.

“I’m trying not to,” he replied, glancing at his beer. “It’s the last one. Anyway, I have a client with a fine dining restaurant that does not serve any liquor, but they want to start permitting patrons to bring their own beer and wine. Since they are not in the business of manufacturing, distributing, selling, serving or furnishing alcoholic beverages, they would be fine relying on the CG 00 01 for liquor lawsuit issues, right?”

“Dave,” I said, hoisting my bottle between us, “did you manufacture, distribute, sell, serve or furnish this beer?”

“Um…” he said, the gears in his mind grinding slowly. “I’m not sure?”

“Exactly.”

What point was Ace trying to make? Click here to check out your solution against Ace’s.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.