Back in the particularly panicky period of American history when some of the most absurd people in the nation convinced Congress to ratify the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, the majority of the alcohol consumed in our silly country was produced in less than optimal conditions. Bathtubs in some guy's basement, homemade stills in mob-run warehouses, barrels in the backwoods where nothing but moonshine ever flowed before. Needless to say, the products of these operations were pretty unpalatable, thus the cocktail was finally embraced wholeheartedly by the drinking American public. I suppose most of us never lost the taste for alcohol mixed with anything that would make it taste like anything other than poison.

Today, cocktails are trendy. They're status symbols you can drink and as such they tend to cost as much as a meal. This has always struck me as more than a bit silly. I always say that when you pay for a cocktail, you're just paying for the damn glass. The most valuable component of a cocktail is the alcohol in it, but the whole point of a cocktail is to combine alcohol with things that are explicitly not alcohol. Unless you're talking about incredibly stupid suicide-style drinks like the Four Horsemen, you're probably drinking some combination of alcohol, fruit juice and food coloring. This is like paying more for a ring made out of wood with gold plating than you'd pay for a solid gold ring.

But the cost of cocktails isn't what draws most of my ire. Cocktails are tourist drinks, alcoholic beverages for people who don't actually like alcohol. Tarting up your vodka with Apple Pucker is a bit insulting. "Oh, but I don't like vodka." Yeah? Then go pop half a Xanax and drink some apple juice, you'll get the same effect. Speaking for every bartender who ever had to clean up a bathroom because somebody had one too many Purple Nurples, if you can't handle your booze as nature intended, maybe you ought to choose a different intoxicant.

It's telling that cocktails are more popular with the younger set of drinkers than they are with folks who have been enjoying the sauce for long enough to know better. At one point that guy you know who drinks nothing but gin and tonic might have screwed around with Irish Car Bombs and Alabama Slammers, but through his body's own process of elimination he got punished into accepting the gentle simplicity of a more grown-up drink. He doesn't drink G&T like mother's milk because he loves it, but because everything else has long become connected to some painful experience in his younger days.

I should qualify my rant by explaining that when I say "cocktail" I mean those neon-colored concoctions that have pervaded our culture as of late. I can't in good conscience advise against them in all situations, but they shouldn't be treated like anything but novelties and dessert treats. I enjoy a White Russian every now and then, but there's no earthly reason to drink more than one, maybe two, in a night. It's full of sugar and cream. You wouldn't eat three ice cream cones in one sitting and you sure as hell wouldn't pound vodka at the same time. Why? Because it's a guarantee to get sick. The same goes for anything that tastes like a Jolly Rancher.

I've even lost respect for my beloved Martini. It's still a beautiful construction, but with each passing sip I've come to wonder why I'm not just drinking chilled vodka or gin. It's so much easier to train one's body to tolerate straight liquor than ask it to deal with a bunch of intense ingredients at the same time. If the Martini can't be the unimpeachable king of cocktails, is there really any mixed drink beyond reproach?