Hey, Goulet, since the Yankees won last night and I feel GROOOOOVY, I got something for you and your kind:



Enjoy.

Boozing Through Bad Times...... Just because the economy is depressed is no reason for you to be depressed


Asking a bar to “bail out” your tab doesn’t work.
Trust me.

Consider building your own still.
All you need to do is read a couple books, get the parts, find a welder you can trust, mix up some mash and, uh — that ain’t gonna happen.

If your career choices mean you are utterly unaffected by the current economic crisis, feel free to revel in schadenfreude.
You’re not a lowlife barfly, you’re a recession-resistant barfly.

Don’t think tipping less will solve your financial problems.
It will, however, solve your “Wow, that’s a proper goddamn pour” problems.

Instead of spreading your money around, spend all your dough at one bar.
Regulars get benefits.

If your home is about to get repossessed, make sure you throw one last kick-out-the-jams party before you go.
And by jams I mean windows.

Utilize the barter system.
Perhaps your bartender is willing to trade liquor for insincere compliments.

If you notice your local bar pouring weak to save money, make a stand.
Let out a loud and long horrified wail as if they’re strangling the sweet baby Jesus right in front of you. Do this enough times and they’ll eventually understand that we’re all in this together.

You can no longer say you “feel like a million bucks” while loaded.
That kind of ostentatiousness doesn’t play anymore. Just say you “feel like a couple hundred bucks, I guess, give or take.”

Liquor stores are not always a better deal than bars.
When was the last time a liquor store comped part of your bill?

You can wheedle free drinks out of the bartender by telling him you just got laid off.
And in this kooky economy, it’s entirely possible you’ll get laid off more than once a week.

Better a poor man drunk than a rich man sober.
Think about it.

Consider getting a bar job.
It’s recession proof, especially if they don’t keep tight inventory.

Better times are just around the corner.
You know the place.

Consider switching from top shelf to well liquor.
Johnny Walker and McCormick’s taste exactly the same after the 20th round.

Search out cheaper bars.
And just think how excited those lowlifes will be drinking with a high-class gentleman such as yourself.

If you frequent dive bars, expect new faces.
Feel free to laugh along with the bartender when they ask to see the wine list.

Realize you may have to choose between food and booze.
You have to ask yourself: Would I rather be fat or sassy?

Imagine if you’d spent all that money you lost on the stock market stocking up your home bar instead. Just imagine it.
No hate mail, please.

If money is tight, take full advantage of Happy Hours.
It’s welfare for drunks.

If you’re going to start standing on street corner with a cardboard sign, at least be original.
“Why lie? I need a drink,” is so played out.

Cut down on non-essentials.
Like vermouth. And olives. And glassware

well, I was glad to see that they had some black label at that party. I was buzzed

Drunkard Dozen



1The Eye Opener
Rehumanize Yourself
Good morning! How’s your head? What’s that? You’d like it surgically removed and replaced with a beach ball?

No need to go to extremes, chum. You are only a couple Eye Openers away from feeling very nearly human again. Whether it’s a Bloody Mary, a Zombie, or that half-finished nightcap seething on the coffee table, the first will make quick work of that nasty hangover and the second serves as an excellent breakfast.

Or you may wake up feeling, well, okay. It happens, I’m sure. Still, a nice cocktail might be just the thing to put a happier face on the long horrific ordeal of workaday drudgery awaiting your prompt arrival.



2The Mid-Morning Nip
In Werewolf Country, Always Pack Silver Bullets
Your eyes fully opened, you plow into your morning labors. Oh, what fun. But alas, after about an hour that hangover starts clawing its way out of its shallow grave. Should have tamped the soil with a third Eye Opener, eh?

Luckily you keep a handful of airplane bottles at the bottom your lower right hand drawer (Don’t you? Shouldn’t you?). A shooter of vodka poured into a bottle of Snapple from the vending machine and the beast is back-peddling like a recently re-elected senator. One or two of these clandestine cocktails and you’ll find yourself in a rather social mood. Perhaps a quick chat with the boss about that richly-deserved pay hike would be in order. Go get him, Tiger!



3The Lunchtime Lubricant
A Salute From Atop the Hump
Whew! You made it. Lunch was made for the martini (you may opt for a healthful beer). The Three Martini Lunch is a grand American tradition and who are you to defy tradition? This happy trio of gin stems will surely make the rest of the workday seem an amusing jaunt.



4The Low-Tide Tipple
Succor for the Stranded
Or so you thought. I mean, honestly, is that fucking clock moving backwards? Two hours in and your fine lunchtime glow has receded, leaving you mired in the mid-afternoon muck of low tide. You are now faced with the cruelest hours of all, the Sahara Desert Death March between three o’clock and clocking out. I’ve found you can jazz up these dour hours by e-mailing insults and invitations to your drinking comrades. Organizing the after-work drinking session can be as difficult as any actual labor, so another vodka/vending machine combo is an appropriate reward for your hard work.



5The Happy Hour Hammer
Smash Those Chains
The first drink after work is a lovingly planted flag demarcating the line between labor and leisure. It could be a double bourbon to jolt you out of that harness, or a tall ice-cold cocktail to soothe your jangled nerves.

The second Happy Hour Hammer is a tool of vengeance. The Goliath that is your job bullied and belittled you all goddamn day, and now it’s payback time. David got it done all by himself and with a single stone, but let’s face it: the kid got lucky. Best to gang up on the big bastard. Lucky for you The Happy Hour Hammer travels in pairs, if not packs. They’re easy on the prole’s pocketbook and notorious rabble-rousers, encouraging you to speak all sorts of treason against the source of your paycheck. It’s insurrection in a glass.

When you’ve tired of kicking the giant’s corpse around, you will, once again, regain your status as a self-determinate human being, as opposed to just another insignificant cog in the big ugly machine.



6The Sundowner
Cocktail at the Crossroads
The sweet golden light of Happy Hour has faded, prices have fluttered back up to their lofty perches, and there you teeter, balancing this fateful drink in your hands. Apollo is creeping behind the skyline, it is that twilight period the French call entre chien et le loup (between dog and wolf.) Happy Hour is the end of the journey for the dogs; it is the bridge to new adventures for the wolves.

You are left with a singular question: is it time to shag it home like a good dog, or range into the night like a wild beast?



7The Gateway Chug
Passkey to the Night
You might be a lot of things, but you sure as hell ain’t no goddamn dog. The Gateway Chug affirms this, it is the drink that celebrates and solidifies the fact that you’ve decided to make a night of it. You’ve crossed the rummy Rubicon and there’s no going back, at least not until the bouncer says so.



8The Communal Cup
Good Times with the Tribe
This gregarious glass usually comes over the bar as a member of a large round. You feel a powerful bond with everyone around you, friends and strangers alike. You feel as if everyone in the joint is marching beneath a splendid banner toward some vague but magnificent goal. You just know you’re going to make it all the way, and you’re going to win when you get there. Win what? Who the hell knows? You’re just going to, that’s all.

Downing the Communal Cup is probably the closest you’ll ever get to feeling a genuine bond with that shockingly dysfunctional family known as humanity.



9The Surfboard of Euphoria
Top of the World, Ma!
Midway through this drink that certain feeling arrives. The raucously buzzing room closes in around you and you feel that incomparably perfect sense of euphoria. All is right with the world. You are at that ultimate peak, riding the wave, and you can see all the way to Paradise. If only you could stay right there. If only.



10The Velvet Hammer
Oblivion’s Gentle Shove
You’ve been lining them up, you’ve been knocking them down, and the light inside has grown so bright it’s beginning to blind you. You order this nice fat double (by now singles seem like a silly waste of time) and halfway through it you feel that soft thump to the side of your head. You fall in slow motion over the precipice into sweet madness and suddenly you’re slurring like a sailor, laughing like a lunatic and everything and every one seems perfectly hilarious.



11One for the Ditch
The Long Kiss Goodbye
Last call has been called, and it seems absolutely essential you have one more — one more time around the wildly spinning carousel, one more chance to snatch at that brass ring. It’s like pouring kerosine into Hell at this point, but so what? They love the stuff down there and—hey, leggo! Can’t a man finish his damn drink?



12The Night Cap
Saluting the Sandman
My God! Is that really the time? And what are these people doing in your living room, drinking your good liquor? You have to be at work in—fuck, you don’t even want to think about that.

This drink serves not only to tuck you into bed (if you make it to your bed), it is the last hurrah until your fates falls back into the hands of the Man. So pour it strong (you will anyway) and don’t worry about finishing it (you won’t).

xwill7 just remember this song when the going gets tough ....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRVhevmDwlk&feature=player_embedded

"diarrhea" of the mouth?.

MGD leaves your tounge with no taste buds the next day. You also have to drink a whole 24 pack in order to get buzzed. bud, mgd, old stlye, and coors are the bottom of my list

Alot of Puerto Ricans, Colombians and Venezuelans like Red Label, also, so says a buddy of mine who owns a Liquor store.

Blue Label, NOW you are "talking" my language!.

Come on man, say it the way it's supposed to be said:

ALL cheap beers leaves your mouth tasting like crap!. (Or like a Dominican would say "cono pero esa cerveza me deja un bajo a perro muerto en la boca".

Budwieser, Coors, MIller........all of them!.

And Colt 45, Ave Maria puriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisima, why even go there!.

While wine snobs have blighted the earth for thousands of years (you can bet there was at least one guy curling his lip at the vintage of Jesus’ first and best miracle), beer snobbery is a relatively young art, especially in the U.S.

This is because every beer in the country once tasted exactly the same. Oh sure, there were Bud lovers and MGD aficionados who would swear they could tell the difference, but if you gave them a blind taste test, you’d soon discover they’d just keep asking for another “test taste” until there wasn’t any beer left and they were passed out on your sofa.

Furthermore, beer was considered the balm of the common man, it was not something you swirled in a glass and judged by its “nose.” It was something you swilled from a plastic cup and sometimes shot through your nose.

Then the microbrewery revolution swept the country and soon every abandoned firehouse, bank and shoe factory was outfitted with a vat and turning out every possible form and flavor of beer you could imagine, and some you would rather not.

It was perfectly natural then, with so many different beers to choose from, that a learned cadre of beer experts would appear to explain to the unsophisticated masses what is “good beer” and what “has the nose and character of a harbor-town harlot with a penchant for walking into walls caked with manure.” Thus arrived the beer snob.



Beer Vs. Wine Snobbery

Beer snobbery is less dangerous.
While wine snobs have been around long enough to be nearly universally despised and even hunted for sport in certain parts of the South, beer snobs are so new they’re considered by the general public to be as harmless as those people who carve elaborate sculptures out of Spam—someone to be viewed more with bemusement than with the scope of a high-powered rifle.

The dress is casual.
Wine snobs have a strict dress code involving turtlenecks, glasses designed to sit on the end of one's nose and silk scarves, but a beer snob can pretty much dress anyway he likes. Aside from the snooty expression, a typical beer snob is nearly indistinguishable from your least favorite brother-in-law.

The position doesn’t require a sensitive palate.
In fact, a too-sensitive palate just gets in the way. If a beer snob’s mind is busy trying to decipher a vast array of signals from his tongue, it becomes very difficult for him to think up a clever way to insult a fellow beer snob’s tie.

You don’t need to know what the hell you’re talking about.
The fact of the matter is, no one really knows how to tell a good beer from a bad one. The prestigious Beerophile Digest, for example, will declare McChumley’s Mauled Herring Ale to be “a delightful triumph of art and nature right up there with the pulsating shower head” while the brash Xtreme Brewski Review will assert the same ale to be “the sort of crap drank by hoity-toities who take lots of showers and stuff.”

You don’t have to learn a foreign language.
While a wine snob is expected to speak enough French to enrage a Frenchman, the beer snob only needs to speak enough English to infuriate an Englishman, which only requires slurring, “Hey you remember when we saved your butts from the Germans back in Dubya Dubya Two? Remember that?”

The terminology is simple and straightforward.
For example, the guy who pours the beer is a bartender and not some snooty guy whose title looks suspiciously similar to smellier but is actually pronounced like the cry of a gardener pleasantly surprised while trying to explain the holes in your lawn: “Some mole—yay!”

Enthusiasm and relish are more important than experience and research.
When it comes to rating beers, you don’t need to be able to identify the vintage or know which field the hops were grown in. This would just confuse you. Neither do you need to attend mundane festivals, read a bunch of dreary books or even sample a lot of different beers. All you need is a big helping of enthusiasm and relish, and by that I mean sarcasm and snootiness.