Liquid Sexy

In the middle ages in Europe when local economies were driven as much by barter as by hard currency, food found its way into the wages of everyday laborers as much, if not more often, than precious metals. Some fiefdoms ended up having to deal with drunk workers because many of them were paid in high-quantity spirits like beer. After all, alcohol kept for a long time and could be parceled out in discreet packages like bottles, bags and jugs. For your average feudal worker, an ale today had more value than a coin to be spent tomorrow. And why not get a little sloshed when there's wood to be cut and fields to be plowed? An alcohol buzz is distracting, pleasantly or otherwise. Though we today aren't permitted to drink on the job, there are plenty of us who would gladly take the opportunity to do so.

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We're all unique little snowflakes. Bear with me here. When in comes to the way our bodies handle mind-altering chemicals, there's a lot to consider before we can really judge just how we'll react or who we'll become when the chemicals get to altering. There are real, scientifically observed, physiological reasons why one guy is a sloppy drunk, one guy is an angry drunk and another guy is a fun drunk. Alcohol, unlike most drugs, gets into the body in a wide variety of states with little to no concern for the individual attributes of that body. Here's a little bit of a primer on why we are who we are when we drink and how to judge (roughly) what kind of drunk we want to be.

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the first sip is great
the first glass is delicious
the last is regret

Liquid culture fascinates me. You can tell a lot about a person by how they drink, and I really mean that. Not just what they drink, but when, where, why and by which means. For example, you'll never meet someone who both only likes super-sweet drinks and is also a respectable adult.

All kidding aside, human beings have a real connection to ethanol. It has long been a source of everything from religious inspiration to rights of passage. Though roughly a billion or so members of our species forbid the stuff, the other five usually find a way to have a very complicated relationship with alcohol. Unlike most other recreational drugs, we drink for a wider variety of reasons than the high, or addiction, or pain relief. Drinking, like the great human experiences of love and wanderlust, is strange and irrational. Mine is a complex question with as many answers as there are barstools in the world. Why do we drink?

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Ask any of my friends or close relatives and they'll tell you that I'm one vodka-soaked olive short of a total lush. Or alternately, ask any of the sworn enemies I've collected from a solid year of making fun of people on the Internet and they'll tell you I'm an inveterate drunk. Though there's likely more than a kernel of truth to these accusations, I'm a writer, it's part and parcel to the profession and has been since Homer. All the same, us varsity-level drinkers get to be smug around the holiday season as the more responsible folks start indulging for the usual reasons people drink during yuletide festivities. I've never been one to join in on the absurd sloshing about of Christmas and New Years, but there are a few drinks I enjoy exclusively in the month of December. These are my cold weather drinks.

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There are a few hallmarks of culinary snobbery that are near universal. For instance, the baffling number of forks at a full table setting. While it actually is pretty absurd to dedicate an entire fork to, say, shrimp, other dining particulars aren't so baseless. One I'm particularly interested in defending is the careful pairing of drinks to certain kinds of food. By no means do I believe that these are hard and fast rules, but they are good suggestions that, at best, are intended to make the dining experience more pleasant.

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There's a psychosomatic effect by which the body rejects substances or experiences that at one time resulted in an extremely negative experience. In layman's terms, it's the mechanism by which we learn to never again drink the substance that resulted in our very first hangover. I've heard several generations of drinkers tell similar stories about the ill effects of Southern Comfort, a liqueur sweet enough to entice novice drinkers into familiar territory, but also brutal enough to push many of them away from the hard stuff for a long time. While I personally never much enjoyed SoCo, I had a much crueler first hangover experience that, several years later, I am still coming to reconcile.

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There's no reason the casual drinker should have to compromise quality for convenience when having his or her favorite cocktails at home. All it takes is the right equipment, some simple techniques and proper ingredients to get results on one's own that are as good, or better, than those drinks offered at top-notch lounges. Here are some of the essential items for the domestic bartender in all of us.

Mixology is an art of exactness. Professional bartenders use a series of instruments designed especially for the creation of consistently good cocktails. The truth is that you'll only really need a few items to make the vast majority of drinks offered at any bar. Read more

December 21, 2012 is less than two and a half years from now. Some say that this could be the end of the world due to certain prophecies fortold by the Mayans, the i Ching, and an Oracle at Delphi. Regardless of whether you buy in to the conspiracy theories or end of days armageddon doomsday theories, more than likely it will be impossible for the media to quell a quasi-panic similar to that of the Y2K scare. Unfortunately, if the end of the world doesn't happen, we may have to deal with panic on the streets, rioting, looting, raping, pillaging and god only knows what other kind of atrocities freaked out suburbanites may commit.
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I had a few jobs in college. Some were good, some were awful and some were strange. While I was making my bones as a part-time, entry-level copywriter, I also pulled a night shift tending bar in a variety of mostly unpleasant places. I got my mixology certification just shortly after turning 21 and I quickly discovered that even holding a state license doesn't trump experience. Bars have a fairly high turnover rate, but most popular or high-end places won't hire someone for anything better than a barback shift if they don't have a year or two of experience slinging suds and rocks glasses somewhere else. For all the newbies, that first job is almost guaranteed to be somewhere shady. Read more