Moving

Due to the generosity of Mr. Kesten we are moving to a shiny new address.

You can now find the Alcoholocaust at http://alcoholocaust.blogspot.com.

Thank you Mr. Kesten. You are truly a giant among men.

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.

The Martians Are Coming…..

“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.

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."

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.

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.