About three articles in you realize that this is not some trendy tongue-in-cheek lifestyle deal after all – all of the subjects are genuine crash-and-burn alcoholics, as are most of the contributors. In fact, that realization will be unavoidable halfway through your first article if you start with Drunkard of the Month:
If I’m on the street I’ll buy a fifth of Early Times and a 16oz Coca Cola and get to it. Or I buy three cases of American Beer if I think it’s gonna be a long night. The other option is a bottle of good ol’ Irish Rose. It’s like Mad Dog 20/20. You could get mashed on that for five dollars…
The humour is a little forced sometimes, a bit like the 4am stragglers at a dying party who know it’s over but carry on regardless in the hope of recapturing the mood. But it’s almost worth it for the disquisition into alcohol in Star Trek, where the Vulcans are dismissed as “the designated drivers of the Universe”. At last a Trekkie who gives Scottie his due.
James Doohan, yesterday, idol of nerdy alcoholics everywhere. Also remembered for the classic line: “Laddie, if I had Alzheimers, I think I’d remember!” Slainte Mhath…
7 comments:
You don't get drunks in a joint where Whoopie Goldberg is the bartender. There's no point blaming Picard, even though he was a pompous prig.
Nowadays I drink mostly wine - with great enjoyment. Spirits on the whole are best eschewed apart from the odd hot toddy in the winter. It was all so different in the days when we had dinner parties; lots of hard stuff to start with - copious wine with the meal then liqueurs (digestifs don't you know)and then anything you could lay your hands on. And then we'd drive home!
Visiting the States it seemed that the hard stuff was drunk through out the meal and beyond - but maybe that was the company I kept.
The drink I found most lethal was Pernod but I'm a good girl now!
Seen on a t-shirt: one tequila, two tequila , three tequila floor.
The one I saw was
One tequila
Two tequila
Three tequila
More
Four tequila
Five tequila
Six tequila
Floor
...which credits a little more stamina to the wearer. Alas for the girl concerned, it turned out that she should've chosen your version. Or come up with a rhyme for "projectile vomiting"...
I've become a real lightweight in recent years. I cannot touch spirits and even the two glasses of wine I had with dinner last night for a small occasion has left me a bit hungover this morning.
When I was a gel we'd have a bottle of wine each before going out, as we showered and got ready and sang Blondie songs into our hairbrushes. Then we'd go out and drink more wine and finish the night off with spirits. Next morning we'd make it to 9am lectures, perhaps not as bright-eyed as is ideal, but functioning and able to pay attention.
Alas, my heavenly punchcard for freebie, hangoverless mornings became full sometime in my mid-20s. I eschewed all drink for 5 years as we tried to get pregnant and then had the girls. Nowadays, I am rubbish and easily the first person at the table to become over-served. I take a couple of interesting/unpleasant medications which aids this along, but in the end, we save a good bit of money as I hit my limit at around drink #3 and move to water for a while to regroup.
I don't know how my granny's generation did it. She would regularly have a G&T before dinner, several glasses of wine with the meal, Cointreau and a whisky afterward and never appeared in the slightest bit drunk or hungover to me.
Before going out to functions my grandpa used an old army trick to prevent himself getting drunk. He would eat a large pat of butter before leaving the house so he could keep his wits about him all night. He'd eat a half block of Lurpak at a time, with a knife and a fork, all dressed up and ready to go. It used to make us all ill to watch him, but my granny said he was always the most sober person there at night and never missed his 7am walk in the morning. And he never put a pound on either despite eating great lumps of pure animal fat. Bleugh!
They were built of stronger stuff back then.
Have you noticed the drinks in science fiction movie bars are always blue?
Now I need a drink...
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