Peppermint Martini

2 parts vodka
1 part peppermint schnapps
1/2 part creme de cacao

Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake until desired temperature is reached.
Strain into a martini glass.
Garnish with a candy cane.

Holiday Science

Recently my esteemed colleague Scott posted about the popularity of faxutini’s, which brought to mind the Peppermint Martini I sampled once upon a time. It occurred to me that this would be the perfect excuse to buy myself some decent vodka (I think the only vodka I had at the time was Stolichnaya, which is fine for mixing, but not martini-ing) and a good shaker. But before I did any of this I needed a recipe. Fortunately I knew just the source: Specsonline.com. I will save singing the praises of Spec’s Liquors for another time, suffice to say they are always my first (and usually my last) stop when I am searching for something related to drinking. A search of their bartender’s guide provided the following recipe:

STOLI PEPPERMINT MARTINI

2.5 parts Stolichnaya
.5 parts Peppermint Schnapps
.5 parts Crème de cacao

Mix ingredients together in a shaker with ice.
Strain into a martini glass.
Garnish with a candy cane.

Shopping list in hand I headed out to Spec’s to do some damage to the old bank account and then do some more damage to the liver. When I got home with my supplies I went ahead and whipped one up using Ketel One vodka rather than Stoli. The first few sips were okay, but it was quickly apparent that something was wrong. The vodka flavor really started to come through when I was about a third of the way through the drink. I had mixed it sufficiently as I shook the drink until a fine layer of frost had accumulated on the shaker. Clearly the ratios were off a little bit. The trick with this drink is to have the peppermint schnapps be the only thing you can taste without the peppermint being over powering. I changed the ratios to:

2 parts vodka
1 part peppermint schnapps
.5 part crème de cacao

Although I wondered why the crème de cacao was included in the original recipe, I wasn’t ready to cut it out entirely as I suspect it helped cut the peppermint flavor. This mixture seemed to be just right. I drank the entire thing without ever being able to taste the vodka and while I knew I was drinking a peppermint drink, but the peppermint was not overpowering.

I think I will play with the recipe a bit more in the future, but for now I feel confident declaring victory and posting my results here. I think my next science experiment will involve putting a twist on the classic Pimm’s Cup, which has been a favorite summer drink of mine for some time.

Chick Magnet

While I am not the past master at drinking that young Scott appears to be, this past week I was reminded of one of my more heroic bouts with the bottle which is worthy of sharing if, for no other reason, it took place the first weekend I made Scott’s acquaintance. The event of which I speak involves me, more Lone Star than any sane man should drink, a Screwdriver the size of Idaho, Scott, 2,000 dirty hippies, and the eponymous Chick Magnet boxer shorts.

Burning Flipside is held every Memorial Day weekend in the Texas hill country, just a few miles west of Austin. For many people Burning Flipside, or Flipside as it is more commonly referred to, takes on a certain aura of spiritual homecoming and serves as a stop-gap in their struggle against reality between trips to Burning Man. I am sad to say that it does not hold a deep significance for me. For me Flipside is an opportunity to go camping with a group of friends, hang out, drink, and enjoy the floor show. My downfall is that every other activity I engage in at Flipside, be it hanging out, enjoying the floor show, or eating dinner, also involves drinking. This means that I will, in the five days I spend at Flipside, consume a heroic amount of beer and liquor. My alcohol intake for those five days is probably about a third of my alcohol intake for the entire year.

This past year I had taken an ample supply of Lone Star for drinking during the day, and then donated a couple of bottles of McCormick’s Vodka (for which I cannot find a website) to one of the donation bars out there to ensure my evenings would be filled with liquor-y goodness. This came back to bite me the night of the burn. I had spent most of the day in the creek drinking with a rotating cast of casual acquaintances and friends, however I knocked off about 4pm for a quick bite to eat and a little bit of a nap before the evening swung in to full gear.

I awoke from my nap still feeling that warm sensation of a light buzz. I got ready for the night’s activities, which included burning a huge freakin’ rocket-sculpture, and made my way down to the field where the burning was going to take place. After the burn I wandered into the aforementioned donation bar where I proceeded to drink. At some point Scott showed up and convinced the bartender to fess up with the end of a bottle of Jack, which we shared while BSing. I had met Scott earlier in the weekend, but he was bust doing things which shall not be mentioned on this blog, so we had not really hung out. For some reason this turned into the night where we hung out. I switched between the Screwdriver that Ate Manhattan and Jack Daniels for awhile. At this point I was very drunk and Scott decided he needed to escape the field for a bit and thus he beat feet for his car beneath the flimsy excuse of needing to get some cigars for us to smoke. I continued to drink. Scott walked about five miles to recover said cigars and return. I drank more and more and more. The Jack was all gone. I got a refill on the Olympian Screwdriver. I smoked a cigar.

At this point the evening starts to get a little hazy.

I remember trying to talk to Scott but then wandering off when I got the feeling I was interrupting him dropping some game on an unsuspecting young lady. Sadly, as it was to turn out, wandering off meant wandering back into the bar where I could be plied with more of the hooch. At this point in the evening this was officially a Bad Idea. There was a stripper pole in the bar. There were people making use of the pole. I might have said something fairly inappropriate to the people using the pole. I am not sure. About this time I realized I was way too wasted to be in public so I started the drunk stumble-walk back to our campsite.

Somewhere along the way I found I had to vomit. Not wanting to mess up the outdoors with my spew I opened the front pocket of my overalls and puked in there. I found this little fact out a couple of days later when I went to wash the overalls.

I made it back to camp and collapsed into a camp chair, which to my surprise, survived the evening. As I was sitting there in camp chatting with my campmates I started to be sick again. I was so drunk I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even turn my head. After about thirty minutes I managed to recover enough to realize that I was covered in my own sick and I was past the point of being sick and I needed to pass out. Right then.

I clambered out of the camp chair and slowly made my way to my tent, shucking clothes enroute. This trail of breadcrumbs was thankfully kicked into a pile in front of my tent the next morning by some kind soul.

I am sure you are now asking yourself why the title of this post is Chick Magnet. Well, fair reader, the last anyone saw of me that night as I beat a retreat from the field of battle were the bright yellow words ‘CHICK MAGNET’ emblazoned across the ass of my boxer shorts. A name I certainly lived up to that night.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the Tipeler site, a friend posted this comment, which I thought was worthy of preserving:

Alas, I was witness to "Team ChickMagnet" in all its glory. A few of us were sitting in camp jibber jabbering around the vomit episodes. It was grand!! In between episodes, James was even capable of making jokes and somewhat carrying on with the conversations. There were a couple of newbies with us. One girl started to get up and leave but I think she realized she didn't know where to go so she sat back down. I assured her that it was "OKAY." THEN... dear god, when he finally ventured off to bed and his pants fell down around his ankles causing him to sort of shuffle off to his tent, I thought I would die! His boxers said CHICK MAGNET across the ass! In my state of mind, I couldn't help but think this was some sort of performance art. Really! Beautiful, just beautiful! I love you, Chick Magnet!!!

Thank you, Susan. I had completely forgotten that I was carrying on a conversation between chunder rounds.

Burners

Originally posted by Scott.

1 rocks glass
1 brandy snifter with diameter only slightly smaller than the rocks glass.
1 oz high proof, high sugar content liquor – sambucca, cointreau, and drambuie all work well. 151 works, but you’d be insane to drink that.
Matches or other source of fire.

Pour liquor into the brandy glass and set on fire.

Once burning, place rocks glass over the brandy glass and leave until flame goes out. Don’t let it burn too long otherwise the brandy glass will get too hot to drink from (at least too hot to drink from without burning your mouth).

Once the flame goes out, pick up the glasses without breaking the seal, bring it to your nose. Then lift off rocks glass, and AS YOU TURN IT OVER, breath in hard through your nose, inhaling all the alcohol vapor, then knock back the shot.

THIS IS VERY ALCOHOLIC SO BE CAREFUL.

ALSO, THE GLASSES GET VERY HOT, SO TRY NOT TO BURN YOURSELF.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Why it works - The fire burns all the oxygen, creating alcohol vapor. As you breathe in the vapor, it travels through your nasal passages and into your lungs, all of which have much thinner walls than you stomach, so the alcohol is absorbed almost instantly, and you get drunk for about 30 seconds. That passes, then the booze you swallowed hits and you get drunk for longer.

Two for the price of one – you just can’t beat it.

You Want Me to Drink WHAT?

Originally posted by Scott.

As I think I may have said before, I like to drink. I like alcohol, the variety that is available, the way different types of alcohol can be mixed together to create something new, and the effect it has on me.

As a result of enjoying alcohol, on something of a regular basis, I have, on occasion, found myself slightly inebriated by the end of the evening.

Ok… maybe slightly inebriated is an understatement.

“Smashed out of my tiny mind” is perhaps more appropriate.

Most of these evenings manage to pass into the mists of time, being remembered merely as a good night; an evening you went out with your buddies and drank enough to make everything entertaining, without the nasty side-effects of spending all night calling for dinosaurs, or waking up and trying to explain to yourself why the sheepdog lying in bed next to you is wearing a tutu.

Some of them stay with you though.

These are the traumatic evenings.

The ones that frequently lead to traumatic mornings.

As I said, I like alcohol. I like the way it tastes. I like the way you can mix it together and make new and interesting drinks. But that's not to say that I like all alcohol.

Some drinks are politely described as "an acquired taste". As far as I am concerned, if you acquired the taste you are either drunk or desperate need of professional help. Chartreuse for instance. Or the Robitussin of the drinking world, Jaegermeister. I don't like these drinks because, lets face it, they taste like ass.

However, some alcohol I dislike so much, merely getting close enough to smell it turns my stomach. These are the drinks which not only taste bad, but are inextricably linked with bad drinking experiences.

Tequila for instance.

A drink guaranteed to turn refried beans into regurgitated beans if given half a chance.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have NEVER been drunk on tequila.

There has, however, been occasion when, during the course of a evening, I've been tricked into imbibing a shot or two of tequila. Don’t ask me why, I can’t stand the stuff. I put it down to peer pressure, or perhaps the pretty bartender using her feminine wiles on me. You know the way they do, confusing me by batting her eyelids while offering me the Devil’s own piss, usually with the words, “it’s ok, this is good tequila.”

Let me tell you now, ladies and gentlemen, bartenders lie like rugs. Tequila is NEVER good.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I hold others responsible because I’d never drink that stuff in my right mind.

The smell of it turns my stomach, but the taste. Oh, god the taste is awful....

I don’t know what it is about the flavor, but no matter what I drink before or after it, that flavor stays with me. All night long. Five cigars later and I can still taste it. Try to drown it with 8 pints of Guinness and I can still taste it. Scoff down a kebab bought from the back of some dodgy van at 4.00 in the morning loaded in chilli sauce, and I can still taste it.

Tequila seems to be the last thing you taste at night when talking to god on the porcelain telephone, and it’s the first thing you taste when you wake up the next morning feeling as rough as a badger’s arse.

And that's never a good thing.

Although, arguably, it's not as bad as Cointreau.

Well, It Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time...

Originally posted by Scott.

When I was a younger man, I played rugby.

I played on a Rugby team that had a drinking problem, unlike the ones I’ve played on lately, which are drinking teams that have a rugby problem. One year, we went on our annual Rugby tour to the fair country of Italy – Venice, to be precise. Nice town. Expensive as shit. Not as fun as Amsterdam the year before, but all said and done, a good place to travel if you get the chance.

Now, let me start the story by saying that the first rule of Rugby Tours is much the same as the rule for trips to Vegas – What goes on Tour, stays on Tour.

Yeah, right!!!!!

If you can remember the story, you should tell it – that’s how legends are made.

Like the story of my mate Andy (who features later) who woke up in the wrong bed. No big deal. Except, he woke up in the same bed as another player. Okay, I guess. Except the bed was against the wall, and Andy was lying next to the wall. Uhmm. Okay. Except, the bed was a bunk bed, and you got it – they were on the top bunk. We never did figure that story out.

Anyway, we went on tour with 30 players, plus associated coaches, family, significant others and general hangers on looking for a good excuse to get ploughed for a week. 30 players. 5 games. 15 players per game. Now, stay with me here, this means that, at most, you should be playing 3 games during a one week tour.

The deal every evening was that the team for the next day would be posted by about 8.00 p.m., after which you would figure out whether you could go get hammered, or had to take it easy for the night. Come the Wednesday evening at 8.00 p.m. nothing had been posted. Come 8.30 p.m., still nothing. By 9.00 p.m., my mates Andy, Charlie and I were getting kind of hungry. So, being intelligent, rational individuals, we started weighing the likely team for the next day. We figured that since we had already played two games, and since we were all guaranteed to be playing in the last game, that would be our three, so we were safe for the evening.

We headed out for the evening; you know, the usual thing – pizza and beer (by the way, good pizza those Italians folks – who knew?). We then hit a few bars, and drinking ensued - beers, shots, more beer, cocktails. Oh, and some beer. As I say, the usual.

It’s not that we were trying to get drunk you understand, it’s just there are rules to rugby tours, and a certain blood alcohol level has to be maintained throughout. I’m not sure what that level is exactly, lets just say the appropriate measure involves the amount of blood in your alcohol stream, rather than the other way around.

Anyway, after about 11.00 p.m., other team members started coming up to us suggesting that, since we were playing the next day, we might want to take it easy. Well, being the intelligent rational thinkers we were, we thought they were winding us up, so we ignored them. Well, actually, we told them to “Bugger off”, and proceeded to down enough alcohol to sink a small boat.

You know, something the size of the Titanic.

Anyway, we got back to the hotel at about 1.30 a.m. after a good 3 hours of fairly heroic drinking and found that we were indeed on the list for the next days game.

Oops.

Well, like I said, we were intelligent rational individuals, so when faced with this knowledge we did the only thing we could.

We drank more.

Oh, sure, we could have gone up to our rooms, drank several gallons of water, taken a few aspirin and tried our best to be sober for the next day, but are you kidding me?

As it turned out, my mate Charlie had bought a liter bottle of Cointreau on the way through Duty Free, and this seemed like as good a time as any to break it open. Which we duly did, and proceeded to do Cointreau Burners with it.

Burners for those of you who don’t know, involve taking a rocks glass, pouring a couple of ounces of rocket fuel in the bottom of it, and setting it on fire. When it is burning nicely, you put your hand over the glass, totally covering the rim, while being careful not to burn your hand. As the flame continues to burn, it burns all the oxygen, creating alcohol vapor, and forming a vacuum seal around your hand – the glass will literally stick to your hand if you get it right.

If you don’t get it right, you’ll burn the shit out of your hand because the flame won’t go out.

You’ve been warned.

And yes, this is one of those drinks that are a really bad idea unless you are drunk already. And if you are so drunk that they seem like a good idea, you are probably too drunk to be drinking them.

Anyway, once the flame goes out, pick up the glass without breaking the seal, bring it to your nose, and as you break the seal, breath in hard through your nose, inhaling all the alcohol vapor, then knock back the shot. The alcohol vapor travels through your nasal passages and into your lungs, all of which have much thinner walls than you stomach, so the alcohol is absorbed almost instantly, and you get drunk for about 30 seconds. Then the booze you swallowed hits and you get drunk for longer.

Two for the price of one – you just can’t beat it.

But we should have.

We should have beaten it with a very large stick, because you get very, very drunk off these. Especially when, at the end of a very heavy evening, you drink the entire liter of the stuff.

Twelve years later and some days I can still taste it.

Suffice to say, the morning after was less than pleasant.

On the bus to the game, one of us was in full hangover mode (me). One of us was unconscious (Andy). And one of us (Charlie) puked non-stop throughout the 45 minute bus ride to the game. Not good.

But nothing compared to what happened when we got to the game. After we arrived, it got really bad.

We found that half the pitch was about 4 inches deep in mud. As any sports player (or hell, anyone with common sense) will tell you, running in 4 inches of mud is bad if you feel well, but murderous with a hangover.

And just to add to the fun, a nearby sewage pipe had broken, so the air stank of raw, untreated sewage.

You can picture it. Needing to breathe to get oxygen into the body so we could deal with the mud and hangover, while being unable to breathe because of the smell.

I have never wanted to die so much in my life.

And I will never, ever, drink Cointreau again.

Ever!

Chocolate Martini

Originally posted by Scott.

aka

One for the Ladies

Ingredients

2 ounces vodka

1 ounce White Crème de Cacao (that’s the clear one)

--------

Crème de Cacao and chocolate powder to rim glass

Chocolate chip, cherry or strawberry as garnish

--------

Pour all liquid into shaker filled with ice. Shake, or stir until desired temperature is reached.

Put a Chocolate rim on the glass. (Place glass upside down on a little Crème de cacao, to moisten rim. Place into a saucer of chocolate powder to coat rim.)

Pour liquid into glass, be careful not to hit the pretty chocolate rim.

Place chocolate chip or strawberry in glass or on rim, according to artistic desire.

Drink.

Repeat.

The Martians Are Coming...

Originally posted by Scott.

“I enjoy a Martini,

Two at the most.

Three, I’m under the table.

Four, I’m under the host.”

------------------------

I forget who said that, but I’ve seen it happen.

There seems to be a trend that’s been happening over the last few years by which Martinis are seen as a cool and trendy thing to drink. I think this is a good thing.

Why? Because I likes me some Martinis.

And not just because Martinis are a socially acceptable way to drink 2 shots of gin or vodka, without any stigma being attached. Don’t know what I mean? Think about it for a while. If you order a Martini you are viewed as classy and sophisticated. If you order a double vodka straight up, you are viewed as an alcoholic.

It's harsh but true.

Actually, I think that the glasswear goes someway to perpetuating this. The ability to handle a drink in a glass as awkwardly shaped as a Martini glass does give you a certian number of style points. If you can spend all evening drinking Martinis and still handle your booze - and by that I not only mean the ability to still be vertical, but also the ability to not spill your drink every time you move it - you have a certain amount of class. Spilling your drink each time you move it because you're so drunk is not good. It means you can't handle your liquor and means martinis are probably not for you. Quit now, and stick to something lighter. Peach schnapps perhaps.

Anyway, as I said, I like Martinis. I like them because of the way they taste. And by that, I mean that if they are made well, they taste like water.

Of course, from that comment you can tell I am something of a philistine. I drink bone dry Vodka Martinis with a twist. Ketel One by choice, but I’ve been known to stray. Now, there is logic behind this choice. First, I don’t like drinks which taste like Christmas trees, so tend to stay clear of Gin. Second, if I wanted a snack I’d order one, so keep your damn olives out of my vodka, ok? Finally, and this is important, people who drink Dirty Martinis are out of their tiny minds. And drinking more sea water is only going to make it worse.

This is going to be a rant about “Fruitinis”, but let me take a moment to clear something up. A “Dry Martini” is not made more “dry” by adding more dry vermouth. I swear I’m going to do serious injury to the next person who pours a shot of vermouth into my Martini when I ask for a Dry Martini.

Let me give some history.

The original Martinis were made with English dry gin. That’s where the “dry” comes from. Got it? Good. Once you understand that and you understand that when you pour more vermouth in, even dry vermouth, there is less of what makes it "dry". Winston Churchill said it right when he explained how much vermouth to use. He reckoned that if you let sunlight pass through the bottle of vermouth into the glass, then that is about the right amount. If your bar has no sunlight, wave the bottle over the shaker like some sort of voodoo charm (just long enough to scare the alcohol), then put the bottle away.

A place for everything and everything in its place. The place for the bloody vermouth is in its bloody bottle, ok?

Anyway, Fruitinis.

As I said, I’m a something of a philistine, I drink vodka martinis with a twist. But I’m snobbish enough to raise an eyebrow at all the “fruitini’s” that are sold in bars. I get that you can do wonderful things with alcohol, and it’s fun to play with. I also understand that fruitinis give an extra avenue of drinks to those who find the classic Martini too strong. and that’s great. But I’m not sure that “fruitinis" are Martini’s. And I’m definitely not convinced that drinking “Fruitini’s” makes you a Martini drinker. Especially if you can’t stomach a classic martini because “It’s too strong.”

I can understand the Cosmopolitan. But it doesn’t sell itself as a Martini. What makes me pause are drinks like the Apple Martini; the Pineapple Martini; the Kiwi Martini (who the hell thought that up?). I mean, I’m sure they’re good, but are they really Martini’s?

I’m not sure what exactly defines a Martini. It certainly goes beyond pouring your drink into a really awkwardly shaped glass. (I’ll leave my diatribe about bars and their stupidly shaped Martini glasses for another time, suffice to say if it isn’t straight stemmed and clear, it’s a gimmick. And if you have to use a gimmick to sell your drinks, go back to school and learn how to make better a better drink.) For me, and please realize I sat and thought about this definition for at least 30 seconds before writing it down, a Martini is a drink containing predominately gin or vodka, plus whatever you decided to water down your perfectly good liquor with, shaken or stirred and poured into your glass.

And it should be clear.

Now, I know that opens me up to clever questions such as “Whether vodka and coke would be a Martini”, but my witty come-back to that is, “Bite me!” My main point was to say it Martinis should be clear.

Which brings me nicely to “Chocolate Martinis”.

Now I like Chocolate Martini’s. Alcoholic Chocolate. What’s not to like? But the thing is, what most bars serve as Chocolate Martini’s are, in my opinion, no more Martini’s than a glass of Bailey’s Irish Liqueur. Which is frequently what they are. Just because you pour your concoction of Vodka, Kalhua and Godiva liqueur into a Martini glass doesn’t make it a Martini. Its still and Orgasm, and belongs over ice in a highball glass. Probably with a little umbrella and a cherry.

You want a Chocolate Martini, knock yourself out, but keep away from all the cream based drink. Unless, and I’m spitballing here, you use it as a float on top of your drink.

No. Actually, thinking about it, just keep the creamy drinks out of the Martini glass.

Please!!!!

Anyway. I’ve said it before, I’m an equal opportunity drinker. I guess if you like what you’re drinking, drink it, and ignore me. But don’t proudly proclaim yourself a Martini Drinker because you can drink twelve of the Strawberry Watermelon Martini your local hostelry serves in an evening without feeling a thing. Sure, they go down as though they were water. With all the fruit juice in them, they probably are, or at least might as well be. For my money, if you can’t drink the classic martini, whether you choose gin or vodka, you are a cocktail drinker, but not really a martini drinker.

However, to show that I am actually a nice person, who does more than just criticize others, here’s a recipe for a Chocolate Martini that I consider a Martini (albeit not one that makes you a Martini drinker. But at least it’s clear.) Try it before you complain that it’s not right. It is right, and it’s actually very good. Chocolatey, but you can still taste the vodka, and it isn’t too sweet.

And best of all, it’s clear.

CHOCOLATE MARTINI

Ingredients

2 ounces vodka

1 ounce White Crème de Cacao (that’s the clear one)

Crème de Cacao and chocolate powder to rim glass

Chocolate chip, cherry or strawberry as garnish

Pour all liquid into shaker filled with ice. Shake, or stir until desired temperature is reached.

Put a Chocolate rim on the glass. (Place glass upside down on a little Crème de cacao, to moisten rim. Place into a saucer of chocolate powder to coat rim.)

Pour liquid into glass, be careful not to hit the pretty chocolate rim.

Place chocolate chip or strawberry in glass or on rim, according to artistic desire.

Be prepared never to drink a creamy chocolate martini again.

Beer. Helping Ugly People Have Sex Since Who Knows When.

Originally posted by Scott.

Or alternatively,

Friends Don’t let Friends Beer Goggle. Unless it’s funny.

This is the first in a line of stories I have about my mate Little King.

I have so many stories about him that it’s difficult to know which one to start with. Let’s clear one thing up. Yes, he was called Little King. And, No, it’s not that his parents didn’t like him, it’s just the name he went by during drinking games – and besides, he’s married now, so the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

I contemplated whether to start with the glorious tale of his 18th birthday, which started with Mexican food, progressed to him being handcuffed to an inflatable doll, and finished with him getting his head shaved. With friends like me, you know?

I toyed with the idea of discussing our evenings playing drinking games where, during the span of a couple of hours, we would each drink the United Kingdom Medical Board’s recommended weekly intake of alcohol before heading out to the pubs.

Finally, I decided on a more enlightened topic. Beer Goggling. Something at which Little King was a god.

Beer-goggling, for those of you who don’t know, is a phenomenon I’ve seen on both sides of the Atlantic. Normally it refers to that state of mind where alcohol and lust combine to completely override common sense, good vision, and good taste. It’s the stage at which the Old English Sheep dog in the corner of the bar is starting to look mighty sexy. But it refers to more than just a drunken hook-up. I think that, in a Pavlovian kind of way, it might also have something to do with last call. If you watch long enough, it’s something that you can set your watch by it. About 30 minutes from closing time, whether you’re in a bar or a club, suddenly people start going crazy trying to hook up with someone so they don’t go home alone. Don’t believe me? Go spend evenings in a less than classy establishment for a couple of months and tell me if I’m wrong.

Let me take a moment here and first insert a little story about my buddy, Goggles. Goggles was a true master at this sport. His ploy, if you want to call it that, was to get absolutely blitzed, and about half an hour from last call, go up to the first girl he saw at the bar, tap her on the shoulder, and ask, “So. Do you want to sleep with me tonight?”

Invariably he would get slapped.

Undeterred however, he would then move to the next girl in line – normally within earshot of the first, and ask “So. Do you want to sleep with me tonight?”

Again, invariably, he’d get slapped.

At which point he’d move to the third in line, again within earshot, and ask..... Do you sense a pattern? Now, my point is not to make fun of Goggles (OK, it is. But that’s not my entire purpose). I grant you that he’d get slapped a lot. He also got laid a lot. Because eventually, he’d find someone whose standards had dropped as low as his, and they’d hook up for the evening.

And that’s Beer-goggling ladies and gentlemen.

Goggles was a master. But LK was a god.

The evening which I am going to recount occurred in the first semester of our undergraduate year at Edinburgh University. We were at one of the University Student Unions; the much lamented and undervalued “Teviot” – a great place for a cheap pint (about a $1.50) and a plate of food, by the way.

Back in those days (and I’m sure even now) it had about 5 different bars and ran about 4 different night clubs in the place on a Friday evening (yeah, it was that big). The busiest one was on the top floor (the name temporarily escapes me – but that may be alcohol induced). We had been there for about 2 hours when we started noticing LK and his ladies.

I use the plural form deliberately, albeit, without a chromosome test at least, somewhat loosely.

I’d been talking with my other mates and, as normal, we were discussing LK. His prowess with the ladies was interesting, and therefore always a talking point. It would have been impressive, had it not been for his taste, or lack thereof. Don’t get me wrong, he picked up some gorgeous young ladies, but that was when he was sober. Which was rare.

After about two hours, we were discussing the woman he’d hooked up with that night, but it turned out that my four friends and I could not agree on the description of the girl. Short, tall, medium, thin, heavy, dark hair, red-head, blonde. Turns out there was a reason.

Turns out that by two hours into the evening, he’d made out with six different women.

SIX!!!

I have no idea how he had the time to put drink down him, let alone hook up with six different girls. But that was LK. As I said, the man was a god.

We found him shortly after that, took him aside and told him he might want to pace himself. He was only little after all – about 5’4”, and a physique which can best be summed up by the phrase “cuddly”. “Rotund” is a close second. But he had a confidence I’ll admire for a long time – although I’m truly glad that I can’t emulate it.

After that we did our best to look after him. We kept our eyes on him, and every time he started dancing close with a girl, we stepped in and dragged him away. Now this might seem mean, both to him and the girl, but we figured it was only right. He was our mate, and we figured neither he, nor the girl (ok, girls) in question wanted to wake up the next morning trying to figure who the hell the random person next to them was. After all. Friends don’t let friends beer-goggle.

But he got away. He was only gone for 10 minutes, but he got away.

When we found him, he was trying to give some delicate, young lady the kiss of life. Either that or he was trying to extract her fillings with his tongue. We couldn’t tell. And he had her hands up her shirt.

Now this is occasionally something to be applauded. Perhaps not in the middle of a night club, but who I am I to say when true lust is going to hit? So sometimes it is to be applauded.

Although, perhaps not when the “apple of her father’s eye” in question was a Women’s Field Hockey goal-keeper. Perhaps not when there were three spare tires visible beneath his arms. And almost certainly not when the name written on the back of her XXXL hockey shirt read “Man Eater”.

So we left him alone.

And laughed.

Quietly.

And at a a distance.

Personally, I think we were scared of Man Eater.

But besides. Friends don’t let friends beer-goggle. Unless it’s funny

Pubie's Last Stand

Ah college. The mere mention of that word brings back fond memories of co-eds who wouldn’t give me the time of day, late night discussions over cigars and beer on the top floor of Agnes Arnold Hall, and the occasional bout of semi-criminal mischief. College is also the time where I began to understand the joys of drinking and no one did more to demonstrate this to me than Pubie. Pubie was my tragically coifed and nicknamed roommate my sophomore year at the University of Houston, and while he was a year younger than Mr. TunaCan and myself, he embraced drinking with an élan that was unrivaled by any of our other compratriots.

Pubie, so named because of his incredibly short, curly hair, taught me many things. At this point in my life I did not like beer and had only been drunk a couple of times, both in response to problems with the fairer sex. I am not sure how much drinking he had done before arriving at UH, however I know once we discovered you could trade meal-clicks for pitchers at Coog’s Café our livers were never going to be the same. Pubie was on a National Merit Scholar scholarship, which at the time meant a full ride to UH with the seven meal-clicks a day eating plan. This added up to a lot of beer and junk food. Added on top of the fact that we could get beer for free from the university was the Honors Program parties. These always involved a couple of kegs and the person manning the door would traditionally ask whether you were drinking or not rather than asking to see I.D. If I ever feel the need to sue someone over my drinking UH is so going to get it.

The final drinking straw, as it were, was the fact that Mama-san’s was less than a five minute drive from campus. Mama-san’s was a drive-up liquor store that would sell to you as long as you could get your money on the counter. I saw kids who could not have been more than 11 or 12 riding their bikes away from there with a forty or two stashed beneath their arms. To this day I do not know the actual name of the store and I have no idea who found it. I suspect that it was one of the frat-rat’s who shared the dorms with us. Forced to guess who it was I would blame the TKE (Tau Kappa Everybody) who lived on the 4th floor and managed to pull off a GPA somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.0 his first semester. This guy would START the day with, I believe, a Tang and vodka.

Throw in a bit of boredom with all these factors and shake vigorously and there you have the recipe for drunken antics the likes of which take place on many campus’ across the nation. Anyways, you get the picture, here we are, a bunch of kids of above-average intelligence with nothing to do and copious amounts of alcohol available to us. Stupidity ensued. Sending frozen oranges sling-shotting down the hall was a drunk idea. Freezing the rubber mallet was probably a drunk idea.

Now, I have told you all this so I can share the single funniest moment of Pubie’s freshman year.

He had finished his finals sometime that morning and then came back to the room and packed all of his stuff since his parent’s were picking him up the very next morning. As soon as he was done packing he headed out to drink and play cards with the boys. He was already upstairs and drinking before I bothered to get out of bed in the morning, which means he was able to drink a heroic amount of beer before I headed upstairs after dinner that night. At this point he was already laughably drunk.

Pubie was what we refer to as a six-pack homosexual in that as soon as he was drunk he started to give everyone hugs and tell them he loved them. You were fine as long as you hugged him back and told him you loved him, too, but if you rejected his affections he would get MAD. He also got very good at cards when he was drunk. Like scary good. He was already in his hugging stage when I wandered off, ostensibly to pack some more of my crap, but most likely to play on the computer (I was 100% loser in those days). Around 1 or 2 in the morning it occurred to me that I should try and track Pubie down and get him to bed since his parents were going to be there in a few hours.

I headed upstairs again and began my search. He was not in any of the usual hangouts and I was beginning to think that he had either sealed the deal with one of the girls he had been pursuing all semester or that Olga, the scary Turkish girl, had found him passed out in a corner and was having her way with him. Either way I was not going to interrupt as I was either proud of him or not willing to sacrifice that much of my sanity for him. Then I heard him laughing like an idiot and the sound was coming from Mr. TunaCan’s room. I poked my head in to see if he was actually in there and lo and behold I found him.

Pubie was standing on one of the desks in the room facing the window. The windows at UH did not have screens on them and they opened at both the top and the bottom. In this case the window was open with the top down. Pubie had his business in hand and he was peeing out the window and laughing the maniacal laughter of someone who needs to visit the nice men in the white coats for a while. I am sure there was some cussing involved in coaxing Pubie down from his perch but eventually he was convinced to pack up his junk and get down from the desk.

To say Pubie was trashed is to be way understating the fact. Quite frankly to this day I am amazed that he was still conscious, let alone ambulatory. As near as I can figure it he had been drinking for roughly 14 hours at this point. 14 hours! Truly this man had a liver empowered by the gods.

After we talked him down from the desk I escorted/carried him to our room. As soon as we got there he let me know he had to pee again but that he was having trouble standing. I guided him into the bathroom and shut the door behind me, letting him know that he was on his own. While he was in the loo I worked on getting his bed ready all the while wondering how we were going to get him up to the top bunk. He let me know he was finished and I made him promise he had his pants on before I opened the bathroom door.

Sweet Monkey Jesus.

In the dorms we used to joke that Mr. TunaCan approached urination like many people do a piñata, blindfolded and swinging for the fences. It appeared Pubie had taken this to heart this night as he managed to pee on everything in the bathroom EXCEPT the toilet. Everything. Including himself. At this point I was beginning to get a bit exasperated with the shenanigans and so I pushed him into the shower and turned it on him on cold, hoping it would sober him up a little. After his shower he changed into some clean clothes and started to climb into his bunk. About halfway up the ladder gravity started to assert itself and he almost fell off. I managed to stabilize him and get him into bed where he promptly fell asleep.

I quickly followed, thinking that I was glad his bunk was not over mine.

The next morning I dragged him out of bed and forced him into the shower, knowing that I had to act quickly since his parents were arriving at any moment and the room reeked of piss and beer. Fortunately I was able to gather all of his clothes and bedclothes from the night before and get them into a trash bag and into his stuff before they arrived. Once Pubie was out of the shower he was looking a little more human and we conspired to frame our third roommate Carlos, who we hadn’t seen for weeks but had left a couple of Olde English bottles around, for the smell in the room.

His parents came and collected him and his things and that was the last time I saw Pubie for several years as I chose not to return to the University of Houston. Truly Pubie is one of the greatest drinkers I have personally known and I am glad his last stand was worthy of retelling.

Drink Recipes

I went ahead and split out the drink recipes from Scott's post so we can have them as individual lines in the Drinks section of the Links. You can now return to your drinking.

Shambles

Fill a highball glass with ice.
Pour in 2 oz. of vodka.
Fill the glass to within 1/2 inch of the lip with Red Bull.
Top off with champagne.


Originally posted by Scott in Drinks to be Drunk while Drinking to get Drunk which really should be subtitled, "What I suckered James into drinking on his birthday."

Car Bomb (Proper)

1/2 Pint Guinness in a Pint glass
1 Shot glass of Jamisons (although any Irish whiskey will do in a pinch)
Remember: Specify you want an entire shot of whiskey if you are ordering this at a bar, American bartenders tend to do a half-shot of whiskey and a half-shot of Irish creme.

Drop the shot glass of whiskey into the 1/2 pint and drink the whole thing in one go.


Originally posted by Scott in Drinks to be Drunk while Drinking to get Drunk which really should be subtitled, "What I suckered James into drinking on his birthday."

Drinks to be Drunk while Drinking to get Drunk

Originally posted by Scott.

Drunk. Hammered. Wasted. Blitzed. Ploughed. Trolleyed. Guttered. Maggotted.

Whatever the term, this is something I almost never do deliberately. It has been a very long time since I actually set out to get drunk. Normally it takes something catastrophic happening in my life before it sounds like a good idea.

Now don’t get me wrong. I get drunk.

A lot.

As I see it, there’s nothing wrong with getting drunk. Hell, it can make for fun evenings. I mean, I like booze. I like the way it tastes. I like the incredible variety of alcohol that exists. And since getting drunk is a by-product of having things I like, that works out well.

It’s just that I rarely start the evening with the goal of getting ploughed. In fact, one of the things that truly irritates me while I am out having a quiet drink with friends, is the bunch of arseholes in the corner who are power drinking because they think it is cool and clever. Bloody idiots.

I do not see, and have never seen, the attraction of getting so out-of-your-skull drunk that you end up hugging the porcelain throne all night. Then you get to spend the next day enjoying the twin joys of a crushing hangover and your mates filling you in on the many dumb activities you got up to the night before. (Actually, I’m pretty sure that at least a small part of alcohol induced blackouts is due to the body’s basic desire to NEVER EVER remember who it was you slept with the night before, rather than any effect the alcohol may have had on you.)

However, I had something of a misspent youth, so after about a decade of getting people drunk out of their minds, I have skills.

In fact, I have mad skills.

In order to go some way to fulfilling a promise made by James, I am going to start adding in a few recipes for drinks. Some may be familiar. Some you’ll go “What were you thinking?” and some (I’ll let you know which ones) should never be drunk. Ever. (In fact, if they ever sound like a good idea, you are way too drunk to be drinking them.)

Shambles

Take a highball glass. Fill it with ice.
Pour in 2 oz Vodka.
Top to within ½ an inch from the top with RedBull.
Fill with Champagne.

Beware. This tastes like candy, and is very easy to drink. You will not realize how strong it is till you try to stand up. You’ve been warned.

Car Bombs

½ pint of Guinness in a pint mug.
1 Shot glass full of Jameson’s Irish whiskey. (Watch out – if you ask for this in the US, you have to specify this. Otherwise bartenders have a bad habit of giving you a shot glass with half Jameson’s and half Bailey’s in it – to be avoided)

Drop the entire shot glass into the Pint glass and drink the whole thing in one go.

----------------------------------------

Watch this space. More will follow.

Edit. I added RedBull to the Shambles receipe. Kinda looses something without it. -- James

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Originally posted by Scott.

Back at home (sunny Scotland for those of you who missed it), everyone has his or her “local”. A local, for the uninitiated, is an individual’s pub, or bar, of choice – the one where he or she instinctively heads for a quick drink. Your default pub, if you like.

Now, because I’m British and we like confusing people, a “local”, although easy to get to, is not necessarily the closest bar to home. Rather, it’s the place where you choose to drink over all the others in your area. Your home away from home. Your port in a storm. Your refuge from the grind of daily life.

It is important to note that what makes a pub “good”, is different from what makes it your local.

What makes a good pub may be the extensive selection of Single malt Scotch. It may be the 75 beers on tap – only a handful of which are domestic. It could be the big screen TV’s showing any number of sporting events from the NBA play-offs to the local highschool tiddlywinks championship. It could be a taste of home. It could even be the waitresses dressed as schoolgirls. Whatever the draw, whatever the hook, the important thing is that it continues to bring you back. What makes a local is different. Sure, your local is probably somewhere you consider to be a good bar, but there’s more to it.

Merely being a good bar isn’t enough. It misses the point. The “local” is a phenomenon that goes beyond just being a good bar, or a place where you’re almost guaranteed to hook up with someone. For my money, your local is a place for which you forsake other bars EVEN THOUGH the other places are good bars, or you’re almost guaranteed to hook up with someone.

For me it’s the place where you walk in, and you know people. Regardless of what day of the week it is, or what time it is. It’s the place where the guy behind the bar, or the girl who brings you drink is not a member of staff, but your friend. It’s the place where not only do they know what you drink, but normally they don’t even bother to ask, because they started to pour it for you when you walked through the door.

What brings me back to places is a simple recipe. It has to be comfortable. It has to have two or three of the drinks I like on a regular basis. It has to attract the type of people I want to be around, for whatever reasons. It has to draw those who like to drink, yet deter power drinkers and drunks.

What makes a place my “local”, is a factor that is so easy to point to, yet so hard for many places to get right – the staff and the atmosphere they generate. If you get the right group behind the bar, then I will come back again and again.

The key is a term I mentioned in the opening paragraph. Find yourself “your home away from home”. Find the place that you’d want if you were opening a bar. Find it, and stick with it. When you get to the stage where everyone knows your name, you’ll never leave.

Because you have no need to go anywhere else.

You’re already home.

My local, for those of you who are interested, is currently 10 Downing St., located at 2549 Kirby Drive, Houston, Texas 77019. It's close to work, and definitely worth the drive from where I live. I’m probably there 5 nights a week, and I consider it my home away from home. So do my friends – if I’m not in my apartment, chances they’ll find me at “home”.

The Usual

Originally posted by Mr. TunaCan.

Everyone should have one. Its the thing you automatically order when the bartender walks up to get your order, but you've been staring at the ass of the girl at the end of the bar as opposed to thinking about what the hell you want to drink. For me, its whisky and water, preferably Jameson's, but in a pinch most anything will do. Its important to find something that you like a lot and is common enough that you won't have to cycle through fifteen different drinks/brands until you find something to drink in this particular backwater shithole of a bar. Case in point: A few months ago I was in Brussels with a couple of buddies (Lapp and CB), after sampling some of the damn fine local beers, we wandered the city looking for a suitable place to get a serious drink on. We eventaully found what appeared to be a goth/eurotrash bar in the old part of the city. Now for some reason, no bartender in Brussels will speak English to you (as opposed to Amsterdam, where everyone speaks English). Mainly they want to speak French, and while I took a few years of French, I'm less than conversant in it. They had it, and more importantly, they understood what the hell I was trying to order. We proceeded to break ourselves on it that evening. We wandered to Amsterdam the next day (where we had wandered from in the first place), and I noticed a lovely little fact. Every single bar I meandered my drunken ass into had a bottle of Jameson's behind it. Every. Single. One.

First Question

So why is the name of the blog Alcoholocaust while the URL is tipeler.blogspot.com?

Well, the short answer is that some no talent twelve-stepping ass clown who may or may not be named Lou Kesten has the alcoholocaust.blogspot.com URL all tied up. Normally this would not bother me, however he has made exactly one post to his blog back on Sunday, December 30th, 2001. The one sick pleasure I can derive from this is that while this Alcoholocaust is about the joys of drink his is, “…dedicated to the principle that recovery from alcoholism can be, if not fun, at least funny.” There is a glorious irony here that I like to savor for a moment.

Mmmm. Tastes like victory.

I tried a couple of other URLs, but they were also tied up. When I looked up tippling at Dictionary.com (one of the most useful sites out there, in my opinion) I found that is was possibly derived from the Middle English word for bartender, tipeler. Tippling.blogspot.com was taken (as were benders.blogspot.com and benderz.blgospot.com) so tipeler.blogspot.com became the home for the new and shiny Alcoholocaust. Besides, I figure having a foreign language kind of ups the intellectual hipness of the place, and lord knows we are going to need all the help we can get with that here.

No one actually asked this question, I just thought I would get it out of the way before someone did.

As the more astute amongst you may notice, we are now kicking it at alcoholocaust.blogspot.com thanks to Lou Kesten who turns out to be a hell of a guy and gave up the URL when he read this post. I moved this post from the tipeler site for the sake of completeness.

The Second Day

Welcome to my second entry in to the ever expanding blogosphere! The Alcoholocaust is a blog dedicated to, as I say in the description, the most noble and manly of arts: Drinking. Everything related to drinking is going to be fair game on this blog.

• Bar reviews? Count on it. Well at least for the three bars at which the group of miscreants I know drink.
• Drink reciepes? Bring ‘em on. Even if you’re not a member of the blog, email them in and we will try them out and post them along with our thoughts.
• Stories of drunken exploits? Are you kidding me? That is really the whole point of this blog, but don’t tell anyone else, I want to have some shoddy veneer of class.
• Philosophies about drinking? Absolutely! I would like this to be a thinking drinker’s blog. A symposium if you will, but maybe with less of the butt sex.

I have also invited two of my friends to contribute to the Alcoholocaust, so in addition to trying to stick with a theme (which my other blog, Opiate of the Masses couldn’t do if the theme was super-glued to the blog) I am going to have to share this space with a couple of other drunkards. I will let them give in depth introductions themselves, but believe me when I tell you they are both well versed in the rarified science of drink. One is a former bartender hailing from Scotland and the other is a former philosophy major from the outskirts of East Texas. Both of them had upbringings and made life choices which I believe destined them to become the grand masters of the art that they are today. In all honesty I bow before their knowledge and consider both of them not only my good friends, but my spiritual advisors.

Now let’s get this party started.