Who has the fortitude to get engaged without first taking a little booze into the system? A cocktail can very much help shove you over the edge when you need a bit of shoving, but what kind of concoction you will want very much depends on the circumstances. For this reason we owe you, at the very least, three cocktails for three different kinds of proposals.
When both young lovers have window-shopped for rings, discussed them exhaustively, and triangulated price ceilings, karat size, and clarity. When they have gobbled up entire weekends sniffing out wedding locations. When they have written out and then pruned guest lists with a cold, Marc Antony–like willingness to dispense with the dispensable. When they have booked that French restaurant where no one under the age of fifty ever goes to and donned their Friday night finest. When all this is in the record, it’s safe to say that he knows that she knows that he knows that she knows that he’s about to bend down on one knee and…
And it sort of begs the question: what’s the point of all this again? Presumably, to formalize the relationship—a strange purpose, since you would think that the point of the wedding is to formalize the relationship. The purpose of the proposal, then, is to formalize a plan to formalize. And, to top it off, we are to understand this occasion to be a romantic high point of our lives?
Well, absurd as the planned proposal may be, there’s no use in shitting on it now that you are knee-deep. So let’s paint it up as “Celebratory Choreography.” Here’s what you can tell yourself when the brutally pricy bill comes at the end of the night: you have each assumed a role in a private ritual that is a celebration of your mutual commitment. Don’t you feel better now? So when you sit down for a stuffy meal that you both know will be ending in platinum and blood diamonds, kick it off with a cocktail that’s ridiculous but touching—just like the “procedure” itself.
Air Mail
1½ OZ AMBER RUM (4.5 CL)
¾ OZ HONEY SYRUP (2.5 CL)
½ OZ LEMON JUICE (1.5 CL)
BRUT CHAMPAGNE OR OTHER SPARKLING WHITE WINE
Shake and strain into a flute.
Top up with Brut champagne.
A pre-Prohibition sour, invented to commemorate the advent of the miracle of (guess what?) airmail. It’s a head-spinning, festive champagne cocktail that’s just the thing to enjoy privately with each other before spreading the news to your friends and family.
“I DO NOT WANT TO BE DOING THIS”
Well, then, toughen up and just don’t. Marriage can be great for the right people in the right circumstances, but if you’re disposed to view marriage with fear, we can assure you that it’s everything you’re afraid of and more. Marriage is not for a lot of people, many of whom are already married. Your distinct advantage is that you can be unmarried—and you don’t even need to hire a divorce lawyer to get there. Don’t even think of trying to extend the relationship past tonight, though; it will just go from bad to worse.
It is true that the expectation to propose/accept a proposal is an acute problem in your life. But if you think that getting engaged is a viable solution then you are suffering from an even more acute failure of the imagination. So we will spell it out for you: the next six to nine months of wedding planning will be more psychically excruciating than anything you have ever experienced. And only then, once that’s over and you’ve settled into a reluctant marriage, will you first learn what “psychic pain” even means.
Saying “no” isn’t that simple, you say—but it’s always that simple. You may be complicated, your significant other may be complicated, and your relationship may be complicated. But the solution is simple. If you dread the question that you know is coming at the end of the night—or the question you are expected to pose, as the case may be—here’s a mouth-puckering, complicated drink: just what the doctor ordered for powering you up to make the difficult but inevitable choice.
Boulevardier
1½ OZ BOURBON OR RYE (4.5 CL)
1 OZ SWEET VERMOUTH (3 CL)
1 OZ CAMPARI (3 CL)
Stir and strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with lemon peel.
If a Manhattan and a Negroni shagged up, this would be the spawn. Not quite like either of its parents, though, is it? Like a Manhattan, the Boulevardier takes its sweetness from Italian vermouth and its spicy depth of flavor from rye. But the Boulevardier’s Campari bitterness is much crisper and more pronounced than what you will get from the rich, almost musty Angostura found in a Manhattan. Meanwhile, the Boulevardier differs from the Negroni in two ways: first, most obviously, it uses rye rather than gin. But equally important, the Negroni is equal parts each gin, vermouth, and Campari, whereas the Boulevardier is heavier on the spirit. This makes the Boulevardier less bitter and also a bit heavier and boozier.
Musing over these kinds of comparisons may seem, to someone reading over your shoulder, like pure mental masturbation. And that’s probably what it is. But making connections between drinks helps build an understanding of how mixology works on a more abstract level. This will help you remember recipes and give you the tools to invent your own. What all that gives you, we can’t exactly say. Except to observe that better mixing skills is something to celebrate. Now that you have gained your independence, there will be plenty more time for boozing.
To the lucky few who are genuinely, happily surprised by the night’s outcome—either because you never saw it coming or you weren’t sure if your beloved would say yes—let’s focus on the end of the night rather than the beginning. After jumping up and down for a few hours, calling everyone you know, staring at the ring seven hundred times, and having sex on the couch, the sun will be rising. There’s only one way to start the new day.
Bellini
2 OZ PEACH NECTAR OR JUICE (6 CL)
4 OZ CHILLED PROSECCO (12 CL)
Serve in a well-chilled flute.
A drink of celebration, fresh starts, and bright mornings is the best way to begin your period of engagement. A nice sparkling drink will also delay, for at least a few more hours, the beginning of the nightmare that will define the next six to twelve months of your life: relentless, bitter wrangling over what size Cuisinart you should list on your registry. The Bellini hails from the iconic Harry’s Bar in Venice, Italy, where pureed fresh peaches were livened up with local prosecco. The kind of thick peach nectar that comes in a can—available at any Spanish bodega near you—will come closest to replicating Harry’s addictive refreshment.
Side note: congratulations on your engagement. This is the last time you will be having sex on the couch.
It’s a stiff drink indeed that will ready you for an introduction to your soon-to-be in-laws. The further along you are in the relationship, the worse the meeting will be. There’s that dread of making a bad impression—Isn’t this why you took yourself off the market? To stop worrying about first impressions?—and an even deeper dread of discovering that the stories about Mommy Dearest and the Old Man have been a touch sugarcoated for your benefit.
The scariest thing about scary in-laws isn’t what it means for your relationship with them. All that neurosis you see across the table didn’t just touch down from outer space for dinner only to lift back off and disappear again. It’s (gasp!) an inherited trait. Carried from generation to generation. Brought like a highly resistant plague into the house. That eerie glimmer you see in Mr. “Just Call Me Dad” is, well, eerily familiar: it reminds you of someone with whom you’re about to plunge into the rest of your life. As for your children? Their fates are sealed. Neurosis, the scientists tell us, flies in on a dominant gene—sure to override your perfectly perfect genes.
Ah, yes, those perfect genes of yours. Perfect—even though your parents are, actually, each profoundly insane. Which brings us around to what your fiancé will make of them… Well, perhaps we have strolled a bit too far down the dark path of your future. Perhaps it’s time for a drink. After all, it’s only your life we’re talking about. No need to take it all too seriously, right? For this occasion, only the brightest, happiest cocktail will do: the liquid equivalent of whistling past the graveyard.
Fine and Dandy
2 OZ DRY GIN (6 CL)
¾ OZ TRIPLE SEC (2.5 CL)
¾ OZ LEMON JUICE (2.5 CL)
LONG DASH ANGOSTURA BITTERS
Shake and strain over fresh ice in an old-fashioned glass.
Garnish with lemon wedge.
The Fine and Dandy is a classic from the daisy family, meaning that it’s a fancified sour—like the margarita and the sidecar, it’s sweetened with orange liqueur rather than simple syrup. But unlike those drinks, it takes a dash of bitters. If you are curious why, try the drink once without the bitters; you will find the gin easily overwhelmed by the sour components, and the result is far too bright. It’s an interesting lesson in what a little bitterness can do to encourage other ingredients to live up to their full potential—a good plug for the Angostura as well as those weird folks whose blood will run with yours sooner rather than later. So take heart, and give this cocktail a good solid shake. Then sit back, embrace the new family neurosis and have faith that your fiancé will be similarly tolerant of what’s going on over on your twisted side of the family tree. A fine and dandy marriage it may turn out to be, but mark our words: awkward in-law encounters are just the first of what will inevitably be a long string of bittersweet surprises.
Why isn’t life always like this? Oversized hotel rooms, magnificent steaks, erotic dancers, raucous laughter, and booze, booze, booze. In the morning, you are lifted gently from sleep by the sound of your oldest buddies ripping ass and stumbling to the bathroom. Your brain pounds with protest to toxins and dehydration. Your nostrils are full of the foulness of rank hangover breath and the residual sweetness of some stripper’s perfume. And all you can think is: life should be exactly like this, all the time.
If you add up all the excellent reasons why life should definitely not be like this all the time, you will feel better about yourself, your family, and your future. We should probably list some of those reasons here and conclude that bachelor parties are best enjoyed on, at most, a biannual basis. But hell. Life should be all about strippers and steak. Enjoy the moment and try not to dwell on what the other 98 percent of the year is like. We have to think that the drink for the moment is something that you can keep flowing without fuss and that will keep the adrenaline high (as if there weren’t enough adrenaline floating around the room already): something manly like…an apple martini. Kidding!
Red Bull and Tequila (or “Toro Rojo”)
2 OZ GOLD TEQUILA (6 CL)
4 OZ RED BULL (12 CL)
Serve in a collins glass with ice.
Red Bull is one of the less fortunate trends to charge into the mixologist’s workspace over the past fifteen years. It isn’t exactly the most delicate of flavors, and after all it’s basically liquid crack. But let there be no doubt: it has a certain value on an upbeat marathon night of hard living. In fact, now that it exists, it’s indispensable. Red Bull is most commonly seen mixed with vodka, but don’t be fooled. Red Bull is loaded with God knows what artificial flavors and a ton of corn syrup and it can withstand a lot more flavor than it’s getting from the vodka. Have some faith in that Red Bull; it was built to withstand fire. Liquid fire. Tequila. A Red Bull and tequila—let’s christen it the “Toro Rojo”—is truly worth more than the sum of its parts. It’s surprisingly balanced and both ingredients were born to bring boldness and energy into the night.
You may have noticed that this book was written by two men. The writers frankly have no idea what happens at bachelorette parties. It’s a huge mystery to all men. Occasionally, huge gaggles of young, attractively dressed women laughing deliriously are seen pouring out of a limo and into a restaurant or club. One such woman, presumably the bride-to-be, may be wearing a Styrofoam phallus on her head as a crown. This is a strange bridal ritual, and we pause to consider how it found its way to Atlantic City: by way of the Peloponnesian islands? Or was it torn from the playbook of the Young British Artists? Anthropologists and critical theorists among us, discuss.
With or without penis tiara, your goal at a bachelorette party is to let loose and explore some societal taboos without breaking any rules. And in fact the bachelorette party represents a dilemma to the prowling male: stimulating to engage with, yes, but is there any payoff at the end of the night? After countless nights of frustrating field study, we suspect not.
Enjoy your evening, young ladies. Enjoy toying with the many men who will approach your caravan—in vain—throughout the night. Play nice, be coy, frustrate them all, and party on. But you can bet your engagement ring that if your fiancé is wearing a woman’s body part on his head during his bachelor party, it won’t be made of foam.
Cosmopolitan
1½ OZ VODKA (CITRUS VODKA FOR A BRIGHTER DRINK) (4.5 CL)
1 OZ CRANBERRY COCKTAIL (3 CL)
¾ OZ TRIPLE SEC (2.5 CL)
¾ OZ LIME JUICE (2.5 CL)
Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with orange peel.
Though the cosmo gets little respect from the snooty corner of the mixology world, we see little to sneeze at. Pure and simple, the cosmo is a modern classic: a light, refreshing take on the basic sour. Still, as we recommend the cosmo for the bachelorette set, we hear some tsk-tsking from the corner of the room that disapproves of our stereotyping. In our defense, the hundreds—perhaps thousands—of hours that we, the authors, have spent toiling and boozing away in bars will truly amount to nothing if we are wrong in this:
Cosmos bring bachelorette parties to their full potential. All bachelorette parties. Everyone at the party will come to life. We are happy to ascribe it to an environmental influence rather than a genetic one, but there’s no getting around the cosmo’s uniquely feminine appeal.
If you are disgusted with our stereotyping, fine. We were trying to be nice. In our generosity of spirit, we won’t hold it against you that a central ingredient of your favored drink is a sweetened, canned concentrate, and that vodka is about as interesting a mixing agent as Windex.
And we will even give you an alternative. Let’s say we do have you wrong. Let’s say you are a wilder type. Sexier, more (ironically) cosmopolitan in taste. Let’s predict that mysterious, dark men with flattering, three-day stubble and exquisite footwear will be involved in your celebratory night, and in a meaningful way. Let’s say that compared to your bachelorette party, your fiancé’s get-together is just a bunch of silly overgrown boys engaged in a glorified circle jerk. Here’s the drink for you:
Caipirinha
2½ OZ WHITE CACHAÇA (7.5 CL)
3–5 LIME WEDGES
2 TEASPOONS RAW (OR “TURBINADO”) SUGAR
Muddle raw sugar and lime wedges—this abrades the surface of the lime peel, releasing critical oils—and add cachaça.
Shake with ice and roll: pour into an old-fashioned glass unstrained—ice, wedges, and all.
Cachaça is a Brazilian rum made in the rhum agricole style—produced directly from cane juice, rather than molasses. Only 1 percent of the cachaça produced annually ever makes its way out of Brazil; the rest is consumed with gusto by the Brazilians themselves. White cachaça is bottled without any barrel-aging and is fairly harsh stuff on its own, but it softens beautifully with ice, muddled lime, and raw sugar. The caipirinha is a terrific drink with a sophisticated, worldly appeal—well-suited for whatever kind of wildness you are prepared to embrace.
There is nothing more deliciously tawdry than a drunken bride. A messed-up groom: totally undignified. Such spectacles are fascinating to watch at other peoples’ weddings, but for your own wedding, don’t give in to the temptation.
You should rise above this party, not drown in it. Let your friends and uncles drink themselves into oblivion. This should be a night to savor, to host, to be festive. That being said, one more drink can never kill you. (That is so demonstrably false, by the way: one more drink will kill you, eventually. But that’s okay with us if it’s okay with you.) If you do insist on staining the first night of the rest of your life, at least make sure to leave room for just enough consciousness so that you can consummate your marriage at three in the morning. Even a two-minute, half-conscious toss with a new spouse who is in even worse shape than you is better than nothing.
Southside
2 OZ DRY GIN (6 CL)
¾ OZ LEMON OR LIME JUICE (2.5 CL)
½ OZ SIMPLE SYRUP (1.5 CL)
5–6 MINT LEAVES
Shake and strain out mint as well as ice and serve either up in a cocktail glass, or in a highball glass over fresh ice.
Lime may make sense with the cleaner, more “vodka”-style gins that have hit the market in the past few years; otherwise lemon will do perfectly.
A drunken bride is a spectacle, but a drunken bride with wine or cranberry cocktail running down her dress is just criminal. For the sake of your dignity, for the sake of your unborn children, for the sake of your photo-retouching budget, please drink something that won’t leave a trace when it spills. A Southside—an appealing, zesty sour that has turned on many a vodka drinker to the charms of gin—fits the bill. As one of the few cocktails you can drink eight of while retaining the ability to walk out of the room on your own two feet, the Southside will give you the energy to keep rousing the guests onto the dance floor—and to preserve a little extra vigor for the end of the night.
There is a thing called the Wedding-Industrial Complex. It is composed of fawning wedding planners, enterprising florists, obtrusive videographers, disgruntled DJs, the inventor of the wedding registry scanner, and everyone else who makes you feel as though you need to spend six figures for the right to marry. The Wedding-Industrial Complex is conspiring to keep a little secret from you.
Here’s what they don’t want you to know: marriage won’t change your life much. Before the wedding, you may live together in a modest apartment or a house with some beat-up furniture and some perfectly serviceable cutlery stolen from a university meal hall a decade or so ago. After the engagement, you plan a big party. After the party, you go on a trip. Rings on your fingers and red in your bank account, you return to your modest home. It is now stuffed with products whose very existence can only be attributed to the invention of the wedding registry—brushed-chrome coffee grinders, monogrammed wine stands—that you got along fine without before and don’t particularly need now. The university cutlery is unceremoniously dumped on the Salvation Army, and your evenings and weekends pass much as they did before. Same basic picture. You could go on as a carefree, childless couple, and nothing needs to change except your age, your waistline, and your sexual vigor. Any money you earn can be dedicated to travel, cosmetic surgery, and divorce litigation.
Or you can do as the Sweet Lord has commanded, and multiply.
Why do people do it? Perhaps they can’t imagine just how much freedom they have to lose. Or perhaps they can’t envision of how much older they will look in twenty years, once the little buggers are finally out of the house. Perhaps the absurdity and humiliation of preschool applications hasn’t occurred to them. One thing is clear, though: if most people had any clue what children would do to their lives, they wouldn’t dream of having them. From this vantage point, it sure seems as though the leading cause of birth isn’t sex. It’s willful blindness. It’s charming in a way, except for the fact that these children we don’t need and then sacrifice our lives for will grow up on a planet that, in all likelihood, will self-destruct by the time they reach middle age. Which makes the futile, selfish sacrifices of parenthood seem even more futile and selfish than they were before.
All that being said. Having children may not be the rational thing to do, but it is the gratifying thing to do: gratifying in ways that only a parent can truly comprehend. Parenting makes every other activity look idiotically pointless in comparison—but it takes being a parent to know that.
The flip side of willful blindness, then, is a dramatic leap of faith. Leaps—especially leaps of faith, but also leaps onto tables or into the arms of strangers—are always easier after a cocktail or two. If tonight is the night designated for procreation, you might as well enjoy yourself and refrain from looking too far into the abyss. So here’s a toast to your marriage. A toast to your ill-fated freedom, and to the monogrammed wine stand that will one day be used as a launching pad for sadistically dismembered action figures. A toast to the energy you never knew you had—and that will soon be sapped out of you. A toast to the young ones who will turn you into old ones, and, most of all, a toast to your instinctual imperative to spawn.
Who needs fertility drugs when our pre-Prohibition cocktail heritage has endowed us with whole-egg classics like the golden gin fizz? By the time you are done with all the shaking necessary to get this protein party of a drink properly foamed and chilled, your blood will be flowing. And your vigor will increase to Stallone-like levels after consuming the golden gin fizz itself. This is a drink best enjoyed quickly, while the foam is foaming and the fizz is fizzing. There are other advantages to downing the golden gin fizz: unscientific study suggests that if you can make it to a second round before bounding for the bedroom, your procreative adventures will be as foamy and fizzy as you will need to get the job done.
Golden Gin Fizz
2 OZ GIN (6 CL)
¾ OZ LEMON JUICE (2.5 CL)
¾ OZ SIMPLE SYRUP (2.5 CL)
1 SMALL EGG (BOTH YOLK AND WHITE)
CLUB SODA
To foam, shake vigorously without ice for 15–20 seconds.
Shake again with ice for another 15–20 seconds, and strain into a chilled collins or small juice glass.
Top with a splash of soda.
MOM DRANK WITH ME…AND I’M FINE!
We live in an age of marginally reduced risk and sharply curtailed reward. Playgrounds are coated in rubber foam, and seesaws are a no-no. Children are forbidden from running barefoot—heightened risk of Lyme disease—but everyone has to take off their footwear just to board a plane. Disposable coffee mugs are spill-proof.
Is it wrong to bemoan the loss of fun? Some of us liked running barefoot and catching Lyme disease. We liked gashing open our skulls after toppling off seesaws and landing on rusty playground equipment. We liked wearing our shoes in airports and we damn near loved spilling scalding hot coffee all over our genitalia while driving and then suing McDonald’s for $20 million in punitive damages, plus additional spousal claims for loss of consortium. Others looked at all of this and saw danger; we saw life experience worth embracing.
The zealots won. Nearly everything interesting has been spill-proofed, childproofed, or illegalized. Meanwhile, what the zealots can’t regulate outright they suffocate through a heavy guilt offensive. By barraging us with half-truths and distortions, they try to make us feel too ashamed to live our lives fully. And why not? The experts have everything to gain from exaggerating the risks, and nothing to lose from stifling other people’s fun.
For example. There are women for whom pregnancy is an exhausting, nauseating, really horrific ordeal. For some such women, a light drink at the end of the day, once they are off their feet and the nausea subsides, would make all the difference in whether they can anticipate the next day with a positive outlook or soul-draining dread. Do the media-savvy medical experts care about the plight of such women? They do not. They only care about the fact that abusive, over-the-top alcohol consumption is (obviously) not healthy for a fetus, and that the surest way to minimize overconsumption is to strictly discourage any consumption. Studies of moderate drinking during pregnancy have yielded results that are inconclusive at best. But why should individuals be trusted with the capacity for making nuanced judgments based on ambiguous data sets when they can instead be scared into taking the safest, dullest course of action by experts willing to distort the truth in the name of a simplified sound bite?
When it comes to moderate drinking during pregnancy, our intention is not to endorse one view over another. It’s your risk and your fun, not ours. But we will point out that pregnant women have been drinking moderately for millennia and people have generally turned out fine. We will point out that staying youthful and happy ourselves is one of the best things we can do for our children. And we will offer you a great, low-alcohol drink that is sure to revitalize and relax an exhausted pregnant woman at the end of the day.
We hope you enjoy! This is an original creation.
Andalusia Aperitif
3 OZ FINO SHERRY (9 CL)
1 OZ HONEY SYRUP (3 CL)
½ OZ NAVAN (1.5 CL)
3 DISCS CUCUMBER
1 PINCH KOSHER SALT
Muddle cucumber, add remaining ingredients, and shake.
Strain into a wine glass.
Garnish with thinly cut slice of cucumber.
Light, aromatic, and at least colorably nutritious, the Andalusia Aperitif is as endearing a drink as any you might imbibe when you are expecting. And don’t let the disapproving glares of others ruin your hard-earned tipple: your days are too weary and the Andalusia Aperitif is too special.
And just to make sure the point is not lost on the crowd, take the drink in a cocktail glass rather than a wine glass: there may be a more elegant vessel than a cocktail glass for delivering a fuck-you to the fear-mongering teetotalers, but we can’t think of what it might be. And while you’re at it, pour out some sugar on the table, give it a nice, clean chop with your credit card, and snort it all up. Then pat your belly salaciously, hissing out in a loud whisper for all to hear:
Just a taste, my precious little bunny. Just a taste of what’s to come.
NAVAN
Navan is a natural vanilla bean liqueur made by Grand Marnier. A neutral grain is flavored with macerated vanilla beans for several weeks and then combined with cognac.
What are you doing here? It’s 8:45 on a Sunday morning. You should be in bed, passed out, slowly rousing yourself into a brutal hangover and a quiet morning of self-loathing and coffee. Yet here you are with the other chump dads, lamely watching your young ones tear through the park. While your wife sleeps, deservedly, after an endless night of nursing and midnight tantrums, you squint into the sunlight with the words “What have I done?” furrowed into your brow. You’re doing the right thing, but somehow you never thought it would come to this. And let’s face it, it never should have. You thought your life would turn out differently. It might comfort you, or maybe it might not, to learn that everybody thought their lives would turn out differently. Exceptions are crushingly rare to demographic truth. You are a yuppie, and this is what yuppies do. Throughout life, there are dark moments of weakness, humiliation, and shame—many of them are described in this book—and they call, desperately, for something called liquid dignity. This is a concept we have no doubt inherited from Hemingway, and though we didn’t want to get you down by mentioning it too early in the book, we should note that the need for liquid dignity is a primary reason for boozing. And boy—do you need it now. So rinse out that flask your boozy old granddaddy gave you on graduation day; it’s about to come in handy. Just make sure you stay alert enough to intervene on the jungle gym—a concussion will be hard to explain to your wife, particularly with whiskey breath.
Mint Julep
2 OZ BOURBON OR RYE (6 CL)
¼ OZ SIMPLE SYRUP (4–6 DASHES)
5–6 MINT LEAVES, LIGHTLY CLAPPED BETWEEN THE HANDS OR PRESSED ON A HARD SURFACE
Stir and strain over fresh ice.
Garnish with 6–10 fresh mint leaves, blossoming out of the glass.
Flasks thirst for bourbon. They were made for each other, just like parks were made for children and drunken fathers. The mint julep may have gained its fame as the tipple of tony horse races and languid summer days, but as a playground refreshment it’s beyond reproach. Sugar content should be quite low—note this drink calls for a third as much simple syrup as we typically recommend—and if possible use plenty of shaved ice. When serving the drink at home, in the extremely unlikely event you happen to have a julep cup in your cupboard (it’s typically pewter or stainless steel, slightly wider at the mouth than the base), you probably know that’s what you should use here. Otherwise use an old-fashioned glass or something slightly taller. Garnishing the julep with an abundant bunch of fresh mint leaves is central to this drink; your nose should be buried in the mint leaves when you sip so that the overall experience is largely olfactory.
All of these fussy guidelines aside, the mint julep is palatable and even oddly appropriate when strained and funneled into a flask, ass-pocketed, and lukewarm.
Cognac mint julep: like many classic American whiskey drinks, the mint julep was likely first served with cognac.
Little pissants.
Charming enough when you see them at a pizza party here and there. But when they invade your home, stake out the basement with obnoxious music, and whine through your precious evening with a thousand little complaints and food peculiarities, you suddenly realize that other peoples’ children are far less lovable than your own. And this epiphany may lead to another: maybe your own kids are unlikable, too?
You may also wonder how you will survive the night without stuffing the lot of them into the minivan and dumping them off at a deserted gas station on the highway. We recommend a more sensible course of action:
The feedback from their parents, while perhaps not as severe as if you abandoned the lot of them at a highway rest stop, may not be entirely positive. But your night will be salvaged, and the kids will have learned a few things about mixology and the merits of manual labor instead of wasting away the evening screeching at insipid horror flicks on your widescreen television. Pissants.
Odd McIntyre
¾ OZ COGNAC (2.5 CL)
¾ OZ LILLET BLANC (2.5 CL)
¾ OZ TRIPLE SEC (2.5 CL)
¾ OZ LEMON JUICE (2.5 CL)
Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.
An original by Harry Craddock in The Savoy Cocktail Book, the Odd McIntyre is rarely served but definitely appealing. It’s a refreshing drink—like the related Corpse Reviver No. 2, part of the extended sour family—and because the spirits’ work is evenly split between brandy and Lillet Blanc, it’s reasonably light on the system. As an equal-parts cocktail, the Odd McIntyre is so easy to mix that you might even put one of the kids to work with the measuring cup.
REALIZING YOUR CHILD IS A FUCKING IDIOT
All we can really do in this world is try our hardest, watch in horror as our efforts come to naught, and hope it turns out better for the next generation. They won’t make the same stupid mistakes that we did, we muse—and the young ones are quick to agree on this point. The problem arises when you, as a parent, realize that one or more of your children are completely incompetent. Then you realize that they aren’t even capable of functioning at a high enough level to make the kinds of mistakes you made, and they are too clueless to know what’s about to hit them.
If you look back to your own youth and can recall a specific time when your parents started to drink more heavily, you might experience an epiphany: your parents hit the bottle precisely when they realized you were a fucking idiot, too. So it’s no wonder you feel drawn to the booze shelf more and more frequently right about now, as your dumb-ass eldest ambles into the kitchen and stares at the open refrigerator for a good ten minutes before wandering back to the computer like a zombie.
Greyhound
2 OZ VODKA (6 CL)
GRAPEFRUIT JUICE
Pour vodka in a highball glass over ice. Top up with grapefruit juice and stir well.
For those of us who find orange juice’s sweetness a bit too cloying, the greyhound provides a refreshing and distinctive alternative to the screwdriver. Grapefruit juice shows up only rarely in cocktail recipes—it wasn’t widely available during the formative years of the mixed drink—but it’s a well-balanced, usefully puckering ingredient. Needless to say, the greyhound is simply prepared and open for enjoyment at whatever time of day you happen to witness something particularly deplorable from your half-wit child. And the greyhound is packed with all of the good, healthy stuff that will keep you living long enough to support your children through their mid-forties.