Modern Drunkard Magazine

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Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

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Bar Hoodoo When I first heard about Spike TV ’s Bar Rescue, I thought, “ What a fine idea! A noted bar expert rushes around the country bailing out at least a few of the 6,500 or so bars that fail each year.

My excitement fast faded when I actually watched an episode.

In case you haven’t seen it, let me lay out the show’s formula for you. An oversized and generally angry “bar expert” named Jon “Crazytown” Taffer is called in to fix a bar that is spiraling toward financial ruin. He sends in spies and observes the bar with cameras then—once he has seen enough obviously staged bad behavior to work himself into a sputtering, shrieking frenzy—he barrels in to berate the owner and staff for their many crimes.

The Big Four being: 1) Overpouring, which is stealing, even if the owner tells the bartenders to overpour. 2) Bartenders drinking on duty. 3) Owners drinking in their own bar. 4) Customers getting drunk.

In other words, he is offended by everything that makes a dive a dive. After a lot of shouting erodes the initial defiance, the owner swears to change, and Taffer brings in experts to Stepford the staff. Principle among them is a shaker-twirling mixologist whose main idea seems to be The customer hates the taste of booze.

Which means adding sweet and subtracting alcohol from the drinks.

Taffer then tries to imprint his particular brand of “bar science” on the owner. In one breath he condemns what he views as overpouring and overserving, in the next he reveals tricks to get the customer to linger longer and order more drinks.

“Everything is to make money,” Taffer says, and you start getting the idea that in his mind the perfect bar would be manned by robots that would simply pick your pocket the moment you walked in the door then shove you into the street before you could do anything dangerous like drinking alcohol.

Along with the universally reviled measured pour spouts, he also encourages the use of “butt funnels.” This is where you intentionally create chokepoints so narrow that customers are forced to “rub their butts together,” thus creating, in Taffer’s mind, some sort of intimacy.

Finally, the bar gets new equipment and a redesign, which usually includes a new name. Most of the names seem arbitrary, some are just bad: Dual Ultra Nightclub. Moonrunners. Metal and Lace. Spirits On Bourbon. The End. BARcode. The most tone deaf of all was undoubtedly The Corporate Bar, which was made to look like a corporate office so as to appeal to the minions from nearby business towers. Because God knows that once you get off work, you want to go to a bar that looks just like your cubicle.

So, does any of it work? After 50k in free improvements and about a million bucks of free publicity, the bars usually do better for awhile. Then about a fifth close anyway and about half ditch some or all of Taffer’s science.

Taffer claims to have once owned 17 bars. Presently he owns zero, which doesn’t surprise me. All the tricks he teaches work only in the short run. Once the customer realizes he’s being viewed as a side of beef with a wallet, he tends to move on, maybe even to one of those awful places with strong drinks and human bartenders. —Frank Kelly Rich 4

Frank Kelly Rich

PUBLISHER/EDITOR ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Shawna Rich

POETRY EDITOR

Nick Plumber Richard English

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Luke Schmaltz The Concerned Cad David Sipos Giles Humbert III

STAFF WRITERS

Kent “Doc” Wilson

PHOTOGRAPHER

Karl Krumpholz

ILLUSTRATOR

Frank Bell Lorin Partridge Shawna Rich Luke Schmaltz

100-PROOF READERS

Tony Millionaire Sarah Szabo Jon Tait Ray Cavanaugh

CONTRIBUTORS

Hunter Hemingway Rich

ACTIVE AGENT OF THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE

ADVERTISING

sales@drunkard.com Troy Baxley troy@drunkard.com 720.371.3871 Luke Schmaltz luke@drunkard.com 720.732.3340 Lorin Partridge lorin@drunkard.com 720.288.1367 Web Advertising sales@drunkard.com

SUBMISSION POLICY

Modern Drunkard Magazine invites all manner of art, fiction, poetry and non-fiction, so long as it strictly pertains to drinking and getting drunk.

Submissions will become the property of Modern Drunkard Magazine for first time publishing rights, then revert back to the author. All submissions are subject to editing for space and content. All the truly great writers were drunkards, so naturally we expect a lot out of you. *

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Please address your submissions to: editor@drunkard.com or Modern Drunkard Magazine 135 W. 3rd Ave Denver, CO 80223 ph. 303.578.6363 drunkard.com ©Modern Drunkard Magazine Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

T O P

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T H E

S H E L F

Top 44 Secrets of Mixology The horrifying truths behind the sinister cult.

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How to Make A Bloody Mary

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Pocketful of Joy

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On the Trail of Mickey Finn

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Where Do Teetotalers Come From?

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Clash of the Tightest

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A Killer Drink

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Wasted Youth

The last recipe you’ll ever need.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the hip flask.

Tracking down one of history’s most notorious scoundrels.

The answer might surprise you.

Hunter “Dr. Gonzo” Thompson Vs. Doc “You Better Duck” Holliday.

The uncanny correlation between homicide and a certain wine.

The awful, awesome excess of the teenage drunkard.

U S U A L

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. Modern Drunk Art Suitable for framing!

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Drinking by the Numbers Your day-by-day guide to every cheap chug in town

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Postcards From Skid Row Poems from the wild side of life.

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Wino Wisdom Pithy mutterings from the fortified-wine set.

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Rip Griffin, Drinking Detective: “Talk Dirty to Me.”

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Drinky Crow Comics for alcoholics.

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Top Drunks Wild in the streets with Keith Moon.

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You Know You’re a Drunkard When... Don’t pretend you didn’t know.

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Drunkard of the Issue Dan Dunn drinks the dream.

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

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Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

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Whether you like it or not, we are in the midst of a Golden Age of Mixology, and it’s not the first time.

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hile the whole mixology thing may seem like just another fresh-faced fad being foisted on the drinking public, the foisting has actually been going on for at least 150 years. A 1856 edition of Knickerbocker magazine featured a columnist asking: “ Who ever heard of a man ( . . . ) calling the barkeeper a mixologist of tipicular fixing . . . ?”

The answer to which is: “A lot of people, every 30 years or so.” A mixology craze will rise up, hang around a while, then get stamped down by a bunch of people with disgusted looks on their faces, only to rise up again a generation or so later like a phoenix that really should find something better to do with its life.

And like an unemployed neighbor you foolishly granted kegerator privileges, the fad hangs around a little longer each time, finally compelling the federal government into giving the title official status: the 1960 US Census Report lists mixologist as one of the four sub-categories of bartender, the other three being the ultra-gauche barkeeper, the stylistically-barren drink-mixer and the rather specialized tavern-car attendant. Mixologist is the only dapper monkey in the bunch, and not especially showy when you consider in that same census barbers were puffing themselves up as tonsorial

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artists and trichologists.

Fancy title and official government recognition aside, there are many other advantages to being a mixologist, as opposed to a plain old bartender. First off, if you go around saying you’re a bartender, people will expect you to 1.) actually spend part of your day tending a bar and 2.) be able to “whip up” actual cocktails, and not just the ones with both ingredients in the name. The mixologist is more akin to a splendid and dashing rocket scientist who designs the gleaming slivers of titanium that pierce the sky, while bartenders are mere laborers who crank out those sleek inventions in some sort of dreary factory.

(This of course flies in the face of the fact that bartenders have been the main inventors of cocktails since time immemorial, but hey, flying in the face of things is exactly what mixologists do.)

Infuriatingly, people keep posing the question, “ Why not just call yourself a bartender?” when the answer is plain as the smirk on their faces.

Bartender is not shiny enough, it does not ring, it does not say enough, it does not begin to illustrate the splendor and genius of this new breed. The very words bar and tender suggest a servile individual tethered and caged, while mixologist brings to mind a modern-day Marco Polo, a free-ranging

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

adventurer not only free from convention but actively avoiding it. Mixologists are cocktail artistes, not blinkered workhorses crudely harnessed to cash registers and bar tops.

It wasn’t so long ago that announcing yourself as a “mixologist” would have gotten you hooted out of the room, while today it is met with small excited cries of, “Oh, I am too!” So you’ll want to scramble aboard immediately because there is very little room left on the wagon, and by the time you finish this guide we may well be trundling into the Twilight of the Golden Age of Mixology. To speed your ascension into the rarefied ranks, I’ve put together the 44 foremost secrets of mixology.

You’re welcome.

ever have to show a jungle explorer diploma? No! They become what they are when they take that first step into the jungle. Doin’ it is their diploma!

GETTING STARTED

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The first step to becoming a mixologist is announcing in a sonorous and believable voice, “I am a mixologist!” And…that’s it! Congratulations and welcome! You’ve arrived! Mixology is a journey, and everyone knows a journey begins with the first step, therefore saying you are a mixologist makes you a mixologist. There’s no need to produce a pay stub or diploma or any other proof of competence. Do jungle explorers

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The field is completely unregulated!

As you might have guessed by the first secret.

While there are schools, organizations and even a magazine (certainly not this one) that try to exert some manner of control over the sweet chaos, they lack the power to enforce their tyranny. So if some officious uptighty asks you which mixology school you went to, feel free to smile while pointing at your crotch. (And that M.E. at the end of my byline? Mixologist Extraordinaire. I gave that to myself, and so can you!)

Don’t worry if you—an utterly inexperienced neophyte—don’t feel comfortable using the title “mixologist.” There are plenty of other titles that might suit you better, such as Cocktail Stylist, Cocktailologist, Mixmaster X or He Who Spins Turds into Starshine. If you’re interested in enraging chefs, there’s Liquid Chef, and if you want to enrage bartenders and chefs, try on Bar Chef.

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that is precisely how Papa lived his life.”

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So long as it looks good on paper, you don’t have to actually go through the hassle of trying out a new recipe. How many rocket scientists actually test pilot their sometimes explosive rockets? That’s best left to space monkeys and their human counterparts, especially those of your friends who are loathe to see you weep like an angry baby.

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Believe in what you do. Ignore the sheer mathematical odds and assume your new three-part cocktail made from ingredients that have been around for decades, if not centuries, is utterly original.

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Get some cards made up. Unless your phone number and address are somehow extremely exciting, do not just put something boring like Joe Smith, Mixologist on your card.

Instead it should read something like: Joe Smith, Noted Celebrity Mixologist Extraordinaire to Your Favorite Stars!

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Start a blog. The name should be something authoritative yet light hearted. For example, the title “Mixologist to the Gods” should be balanced by a whimsy subtitle like “No autographs please!”

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Buy a lot of fancy tools. You wouldn’t think that combining liquids in a glass would require the same amount of tools found in a typical operating room, but that just shows what a neophyte you really are. Along with the usual shakers, tongs, jiggers, peelers, muddlers, stirrers, whizzers and wompers, you’ll need an ice pick, a burlap bag and a hammer. You probably didn’t know this, but ice you stab from a large block then put in a burlap bag and smash with a hammer is the best kind of ice. No one knows why, but it is!

RECIPE SECRETS

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Name your children well. And it’s not such an outrageous idea to think of your cocktails as children: both start as a crazy idea, you give them a name, spend a lot of time trying to make them perfect, then finally you throw up your hands and say, “A little prison time is probably just what he needs!”

It’s a very good idea to name your cocktails after deceased literary figures, especially if he or she was known to be a bit of a souse. This adds instant pedigree and prestige to your creation and also gives you excellent cover because writers, like most heavy drinkers, will gulp down anything that will make them drunk, so your critics can hardly expect your cocktail to taste like dew-kissed ambrosia.

So if someone makes a face at your Hemingway’s Rusty Rudder and says it tastes “rough,” you should release a sudden yelp of delight as if that was exactly the effect you were going for, then hoarsely whisper something along the lines of, “And 10

You don’t have to memorize a bunch of old “classic” recipes. That’s what bartenders are for. You don’t even have to memorize your own recipes. A truly great mixologist is always tinkering, always evolving his cocktails. For example, if during a tasting you forget to put gin in your Gin Blossom Fantasia Flip, you did not “screw the pooch” or “really drop the ball” as other mixologists might murmur. You merely evolved the recipe.

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Locally source your ingredients. This is very important, because the shorter the distance an ingredient has traveled, the more awesome your cocktail will taste. You should assert this natural truth firmly, loudly and repeatedly as you prepare the drink because otherwise the idiots might not notice the additional awesomeness because they’re idiots. The absolutely best system would be to pluck the ingredient from the soil, bush or branch and hurl it immediately into the blender, so consider mixing your drinks in the middle of a field.

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Dress up your dogs. If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s people love dogs wearing fancy outfits. And if your new recipe is a bit of a dog, dress it up with fancy shouts.

Before the first sip can be snarled at, you should blurt out: “All ingredients locally sourced! Non-profit distillery benefiting whales! A tree is planted in the matto grasso every time this cocktail is served!” Only a monster would wail with disgust and vomit that cocktail back into the glass.

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Make a big deal about bitters. Like the matto grasso, you don’t have to know exactly what bitters are, you just have to make a big deal about them.

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Learn to carve ice into orbs. It’s very de rigueur1 to ice-pick big chunks of ice into orbs about the size of a cue ball, which you then put in a cocktail in place of boring old ice cubes. It looks really cool, and if they tilt the glass back far enough, the ball hits them in the mouth, which is pretty funny. Hint! When attacking the ice, do so with a furrowed brow of concentration, as if you were Michelangelo deciding if God’s hair is big and fluffy enough.

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Discovery is the mean step-mom of reinvention.

Sometimes you’ll invent an absolutely wonderful new cocktail only to discover that some jerk ripped you off a hundred years ago. For example, if some blabbermouth observes your Mexican House Fire has the exact same ingredients as a Tequila Sunrise, put on a tight little grin and say, “ Yes, it’s a reinvention.” Then all you have to do is change up the ratios and add a pickle and it’s yours. Be careful not to reinvent a 1 Translation: “I saw a Japanese mixologist do this and it looked super cool!”

reinvention or you might end up with the old recipe and then you’ll have to tell them it’s an homage.

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A substandard drink recipe, delivered at booming proof, will traverse from ridiculous to sublime in four cocktails. Three if sunk quickly.

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If you publish an original recipe on your blog, minimize the possibility of criticism by making it impossible to replicate. First, insist on very specific ingredients—the juices must be hand squeezed from fruit plucked from a branch within jogging distance, the water must be glacial and unshaped by tray or mechanical device, the liquor the finest available (unless you are a brand ambassador, in which case the liquor need not be not be so very fine), the bitters homemade. To be doubly safe, include an ingredient so exotic, so difficult to acquire, that the average Joe would have as much chance of making and therefore judging your cocktail as a some gap-toothed yokel finding a Picasso in the town dump. For example: The middle yolk of a Duckbill Platypus egg ( freshly laid!).

LEARN THE LINGO

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Always spell rum as rhum. It’s fancier and signals that you might just know something other people don’t. You should also make an effort to pronounce the “h,” i.e.: ra-HUM!

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Do not refer to your fans as drunks. Refer to them as drinkies, much as amateur gluttons are now called foodies.

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Use language to manage expectations. If your drink leans toward a flavorless muddle, tell them it’s highly nuanced. If it is utterly bland, call it well-mannered. If cringingly bitter, warn that it has a lovely bite. If it’s godawfully beastly, label it devilishly untamed. Saying your cocktail is not for beginners will make nearly all novice drinkies suppress their taste buds and gag reflex.

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Memorize These Useful Phrases: “It’s a reinvention of an updated hybrid.”

“Did I say reinvention? I meant deinvention.”

“I didn’t steal that recipe, I homaged it.”

“It’s not a purse, it’s a bitters-and-herbs satchel!”

“Make my cocktail with these bar tools? You must be kidding me!

“I’m just muddling along.” (If you’re using a muddler, pause for laughter.)

IN THE SCENE

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Strut around like a fairly-well regarded physicist who occasionally enters Tough Man competitions.

One of the best things about being a mixologist is you not only get to use outrageous terminology to explain something relatively simple, just like a wine snob, but also get to cast yourself Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

in the dual roles of Guardian of the Great Mysteries and Rugged Creator of Something Pretty Okay that are the bailiwick of homebrewers.

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Take a stand: are you pro-blender or anti-blender? Being anti-blender makes you appear an uncompromising purist, while being pro-blender makes you seem breezy and efficient (which sometimes leads to a bartending job, so be careful.)

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Deflect doubt with the right look. Bow-tie, vintage spectacles, monocle, fedora, Hawaiian shirt, leather doctor’s bag, Victorian coat, smoking jacket, velvet pants, weird beard or handlebar mustache. Women must choose at least two, men three.

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Don’t give away the game. If, in a moment of clarity, the idea that you’re a complete fraud who is certain to be exposed in a sudden climax of humiliation and shame rears up its ugly head, push it deep down with all those doubts about your Victorian jacket and monocle. Generally speaking, mixologists treat each other with the same chummy, let’s-notblow-this-sweet-deal respect common to abstract painters, fashion designers, snake-oil salesmen and other long-con flimflam men. However . . .

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Beware of wolves in sheeps’ Victorian coats.

There are some who dress like mixologists and even call themselves mixologists but actually work behind a bar.

They are easy to spot because the furtive pranciness of the mix11

ologist is replaced by an opulent confidence that brings to mind Porthos—a dandy through and through but also an expert swordsman willing to murder strangers over an imagined slight. Don’t let them trick you into guessing how much Tai goes in a Mai-Tai.

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Photobond your rep. Go to enough mixology conferences and you’ll eventually run into actual real-life cocktail masters who know what they’re doing. While it’s important to appear next to them in pictures (this is a version of photobombing called photobonding) do not engage in conversation with the DeGroffs, Wondriches, Regans, Berrys, Haighs and Whites of the cocktail world.

They won’t be so crude as to denounce you on Twitter, but this clan has a secret network, and once you’ve been outed as a fraud you’ll never be a brand ambassador, you’ll never get a book deal, and you most assuredly will never get a bar job that doesn’t have the word “back” attached to it.

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Don’t get rat-boxed.2

Beware of scenes where mixologists have been allowed to overbreed to the extent an ugly element of competition has crept in. Whereas mixologists generally congratulate one another’s creations and reinventions with such booming exclamations such as “A huskily carnal delight!” and “A boldly original reworking!” and “I want to marry this cocktail!”, overpopulation can create a cruel caste system. Those in the upper caste are hailed as artistic geniuses and explosive innovators and those below are reviled as Johnny-come-lately gutterswine who just rolled out of a ditch full of turds and yet, incredibly, want a seat at the kewl-nerd table.

MIX ‘EM UP!

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Learn how to shake a cocktail. The secret is behaving as if an invisible entity exactly as strong as you has a grip on the shaker and is energetically trying to take it from you. This creates an up and down, forward and back, heave and ho motion that appears 2 A reference to the Too Many Rats in a Box Theorem. In the 1930s, behavioral scientists discovered that if you put too many rats in a box they become agitated, antisocial and, most heinous of all, start eating their young. And if you are a late arrival, you can guess who the elder mixologists will consider the “young.”

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very stylish to observers. This is important because . . .

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The longer and more bizarre the manner in which you shake a cocktail, the better it will taste. This is called the Benihana Effect.

It also makes you appear a little insane, and most people are loathe to insult cocktails made by a nearby insane person.

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Make sure they know you care very much about their opin-

Stare at them with an aggressive yet fragile smile, as if the slightest suggestion that your cocktail is anything less than spectacular will make you either burst out crying or reach into their mouths and rip out their unappreciative tongues.

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Alcoholics are the best taste testers. It’s true! So be sure to steer your more devilishly untamed drinks toward the guys with cigarette burns on their pants.

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Vegans, because they have trained themselves to eat weeds, are also superior taste testers. And the last thing you want is them thinking your cocktails are raising sea levels, so when describing your cocktail use these words liberally, even if you’re not sure what they mean: locally, sourced, farmers, market, gluten, free, sustainable, green, craft, eco, friendly and homemade. For example: “All my eco-sourced ingredients are freely sustained by the locally-friendly homemade farmers craft glutenning their markets. Green!”

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Learn to pair your cocktails.

This is the art of telling people what to eat with your drinks. Then perhaps later you can tell them what to wear and what they should talk about during the meal because plainly they’re imbeciles and need all the help they can get.

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The longer it takes to make a cocktail, the better it will taste. Just like waiting in line for what seems an eternity at the DMV makes you appreciate your driver’s license all the more, waiting 20 minutes to get a drink makes the drinkie slaver with anticipa-

tion. So be sure to add a bunch of arbitrary stages (remember the ice in a bag thing?) and refrain from using any modern technology created to speed along the very thing you are doing.

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Carefully monitor how long it takes someone to finish your cocktails. If someone drinks your masterpiece in under three minutes, mutter: “Pearls before swine.” If it takes more than three minutes, snarl: “Great!

You’ve drowned the damn thing in melted ice!”

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Sometimes grimaces are secret smiles. If someone shouts, “ What the hell did I just drink?” after trying your new recipe, keep in mind that that was exactly the sort of response you wanted: a passionate ache for knowledge.

A MIXOLOGIST WALKS INTO A BAR

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When in bars, subtly communicate to the bartender that he is massacring the cocktail you just ordered. During each stage of the cocktail’s manufacture, make a tiny lunge as if trying to save a lemming from hurling itself off a cliff. Alas, each lunge will be too late, so you must sigh mightily until his next blunder, which will be immediate. If a bartender stirs your cocktail, cringe like a bullwhip was laid across your back and say, a bit breathlessly, “Could you please shake so as to aerate?” If he shakes your cocktail, let loose a large groan and complain loudly to the nearest person, “He’s bruising the vermouth!”

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Don’t forget the ice! There was a time when asking, “ Where is the ice from?” would be met with, “The ice machine, asshole.” But now bartenders have to mutter, “It’s triple-filtered in-house,” even if it’s not true, and it isn’t.

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Pity the fools. It’s easy to get a little misty-eyed when musing over the mixologist’s chosen fate: a courageous explorer far out in the nether regions, wrestling with wild new liqueurs and liquors, while the bartender squats in his safe little bar mixing safe little drinks for his safe little minions.

Sliding your bartender looks steeped

with pity while shaking your head sadly will help communicate your profound disappointment in him.

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Talk at great length about opening your own bar.

Talk all you want, but for the love of God, do not open your own bar. Running a bar is like mixing cocktails in your kitchen except hundreds of people are screaming for drinks that someone else invented a long time ago and they want them right now. Trust me, you don’t want any part of it.

ADVANCED MIXOLOGY

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Write a book. It should contain a vast collection of classic recipes (you can copy and paste these from the Internet, which will save you loads of writing time), plus some you reimagined or even made up, plus a chapter on the tools you’ll need to mix the cocktails (make sure you include a joke about the muddler, because muddler is a very funny word) and finally a chapter on how to actually mix the cocktails, which will include complicated maneuvers like stirring, shaking and, yes, muddling! Ha-ha!

Unfortunately, if you present your book to an agent or publisher, they will start yelling that a gazillion cocktail guides are published every year and who the hell are you to think you can be one of those gazillion authors?

Fortunately, you can now bypass those jerks and publish it yourself on Kindle. (They call it Kindle because if you had actually mailed a manuscript to an agent or publisher they would have used it for kindling.)

Good Words to Use in Your Book Title Eco-Friendly Locally-Sourced Classic Essential HOT! Bible Ultimate Celebrated Complete Exhaustive Not So Good Words Eco-Hostile New Jersey-Sourced Teetotaler’s Pregnant Just So-So Abridged Passable Semen

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Labor mightily to secure a brand ambassadorship. This is one of the biggest plums a mixologist can muddle in the highball glass that is his reputation. What does a brand ambassador do? Why, the same as the US ambassador to Liechtenstein does! Almost nothing! Just kidding!

Actually, there are many duties bundled up with that grand title. Depending upon which liquor conglomerate acquires you, you must put whichever alcohol product you’re assigned in every cocktail you invent, reinvent or homage, even if it doesn’t fit. (This is why Rum & Tonics and other silly drinks exist.) You must also put their product IN CAPS in every recipe or sentence you print, post, text, tweet or say. If someone asks you, “How do I get to the freeway from here?” you must answer “ Take a right on 7th and look for the next exit at OLD BARNACLE RUM.”

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Don’t become a molecular mixologist unless you have the time and money to blow on liquid nitrogen, rotovaps, centrifuges and other advanced tools. And make sure you have plenty of space in that cabinet above the refrigerator, because that’s where all that expensive crap is going in about three months. —Frank Kelly Rich

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Good for you! But be aware that there is already a massive, ever-growing zombie horde of cocktail guides out there, so you’ll need a fresh approach to stand out. You can either narrow your focus in hopes of nosing your way into a established niche, hot trend or ignored demographic, or you can go big, Big, BIG!* To give you an idea of the market, below are the titles of 20 cocktails guides. Try to guess which ones are real and which are totally made up. Check the box at the bottom to see how you did.

Organic, Shaken and Stirred: Hip Highballs, Modern Martinis, and Other Totally Green Cocktails The Sexy Vegan’s Happy Hour at Home The Everything Bartender’s Book Big Bad-Ass Book of Cocktails: 1,500 Recipes to Mix It Up! Semenology—The Semen Bartender’s Handbook Jam Down Mixology Kahuna Kevin’s Why Is The Rum Gone? Tiki Cocktail Bar Guide: Vol 2 Boozy Brunch: The Quintessential Guide to Daytime Drinking Roy’s Gay Gourmet Simply Fabulous Cocktails and Bar Drinks Drink Like the Dickens!: Discovering the Works of Charles Dickens by Recreating Drinks That Appear in Them 21 Drinks That Will Knock Her Dress OFF SteamDrunks: 101 Steampunk Cocktails and Mixed Drinks The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Martinis Cocktails and Shooters with Dirty Names The Bubbly Bride: Your Ultimate Wedding Cocktail Guide Preggatinis™: Mixology for the Mom-to-Be Mommy Mixology: A Cocktail for Every Calamity Dad-tinis: Cocktails Made From Whiskey, a Water Glass and Please Just Five Goddamn Minutes of Quiet The Completely Ultimate Big Bible of Classically Hot New Cocktails *The Big Bigger BIGGEST Cocktail Bible already exists, so don’t get any ideas.

All but the last two are real. Even the one about making drinks with your penis.

And yes, Preggatinis is trademarked.

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have exactly enough tomato juice inside them to make a Bloody Mary with. There are some limp recipes out there that say something about using V-8—that’s wrong. And while I’ve never heard of anybody actually advocating this, there do exist bottles of so-called pre-made Bloody Mary Mix, meant primarily to exploit illiterates and entice misinformed teenagers into shoplifting them out of a dim notion that there may be alcohol inside. These are abominations of science and Nazi perversion, and I bring them up only to advise you to steer clear. There are also some recipes which suggest making your own Bloody Mary mix, but I mean, I dunno, I’m not doing that. Two hours of prep time? Overnight chilling? Finding the blender? You realize that we’re trying to get drunk here, right? It shouldn’t take “prep time” when you’re trying to get your morning swerve on. Or anytime swerve, really. The Bloody Mary is an all-day drink, but it’s also one of the few cocktails you can drink at the crack of dawn without raising any eyebrows—and that’s valuable.

Where was I? This is still the list of ingredients: Worcestershire sauce. I know, we’re instantly piling on the obscurities, but this is necessary. Get one bottle—use it only for Bloody Marys. Steal it from a restaurant. After having one around for a well-made drink or two, you’ll begin to recognize its versatility in cocktails, and you won’t begrudge having it on your shopping list anymore.

I wasn’t aware until fairly recently that there are some people out there—grown-ass adults, even—who have never had themselves a Bloody Mary.

That’s wrong. And if you know any yahoo New Jersey knowit-all doctors by the name of Neil Da Costa, and you’re familiar with him on a first name basis, please have him email me, because this claim he made a year back about

A lemon. And look, I know you might not have a lemon, but I’m getting sick of your shit if you think that’s worth complaining about. They’re, like, fifty cents a dozen, and they keep forever on the counter. Just get a bag. Or, if you think that having the baseline ingredients for this drink is just too much for you, then feel free to go ahead and stay in bed with a horrifically mixed vodka and Coke, if that’s your attitude. Whatever makes you happy.

Ice. Six or seven industry-standard cubes of ice.

Hot sauce. Some people say Tabasco, and that’s fair. I’m not a fan of Tabasco in general, I’m not going to be elitist If you think that having the baseline ingredients but about this. I recommend Srifor this drink is just too much for you, then feel racha, because it’s the best hot on the planet, without free to go ahead and stay in bed with a horrifically sauce exception, and I’m personally disappointed if my Bloody Mary mixed vodka and Coke, if that’s your attitude. lacks it. But whatever you have will work—it just needs to be spicy. You may not like spicy the Bloody Mary being the most scientifically complex of foods, but you still need it—this is a drink. It’s different. cocktails1 offends me on a personal level. That is bullshit, and it’s not because he’s wrong—he has a very good point, Salt and pepper. This can be garlic salt if you feel like it. but he makes things harder than they actually are. A claim Whatever. like that serves to do nothing but scare people away, filling And finally, a bottla vokka. It can be any kind of vodka, them with uncertainty and fear of the unknown, and when which is just the preacher’s tits when it comes to cocktails. it comes to alcohol, fear of the unknown is the enemy—and Top shelf shit made from genetically modified super-potaI will have none of it. toes and ice cut from a glacier, or the crumpled plastic waLook, I’m aware that there are all kinds of guides ter bottle half-full of it that you trip over in the parking lot on the Internet concerning how to make one of these. after a concert. I made one today using vodka that’d been I’m not going to say they’re wrong. But I’m right. sitting neat in an uncovered plastic juice cup on my desk for three days and it tasted great.

Here’s what you need: Tomato juice from concentrate. I use Campbell’s—they sell them in cute little six-packs of single-serving cans, and 1 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/29/news/la-heb-bloody-mary-20110329

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Okay, you got all that? Tomato juice, ice, lemon, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt, pepper, vokka. Not too demanding. So here’s how to make a fucking Bloody Mary.

1) Get a cup. I prefer a sturdy copper Moscow Mule mug for mine, because they’re metal, and are good at keeping things cold. But that’s just me. I drink everything out of a Moscow Mule mug.

2) Clink in the ice. This is easy.

3) Crack the mini can of Campbell’s tomato juice and pour it all in. If you’re using a different brand, do like, five or six ounces. You can measure this if you want. It’d be better if you did, but I don’t care.

4) Two ounces of vodka. This is probably the perfect amount, roughly a 1:3 ratio with the tomato juice. You can do more, less, whatever. I’m not responsible for the taste of the thing if you break from my advice, though. You may be thinking “That’s not strong, what is this pussy shit?” And, I dunno, eat me. That’s more than a shot and if you add too much you’ll make it taste like shit. This way it’s delicious.

Up to you.

5) Squeeze some lemon juice in there. Doesn’t really matter if some seeds fall in. Go nuts. I probably wouldn’t use more than half a small lemon, but I definitely would never use Real Lemon fake lemon fraud juice. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

6) Dash some Worcestershire sauce in there. Shit, you poured too much! Well, you’ll get it right next time. Keep on anyway, it’ll still taste good.

7) Salt it. Pepper it. Don’t be stingy, but don’t go crazy either. The Greeks called it sophrosyne—everything in moderation.

8) Squirt some hot sauce in there. Aww yeah. Squirt some more.

9) Alright, now stir that thing. You’re basically done. If you have some celery in the fridge, or a carrot, some peppers, or olives, whatever, go ahead and throw that in there.

Skewer it on something. It doesn’t really matter, but it looks fun and vegetables are good for you.

10) Drink your drink. It’s nine in the morning on a Sunday, and your head throbs and joints ache from the night before. The thought of putting on anything more complex than an oversized T-shirt is as distant from your mind as the weather today on a distant moon. As the ingredients mingle in harmony upon your tongue, teasing the tart of lemon, the spice of capsaicin, and the smoky blend of pepper and aged wood of the Worcestershire sauce, you begin to feel emboldened, your pains anesthetized. You realize you’ve been facing the sun through your window, eyes closed, your aches subsiding as warmth envelops you. You forget that you are even drinking alcohol, as the experience is unlike any other, to even the seasoned drinker. Suddenly, the harsh bite of the unwelcome morning has blended into the fading regrets of yesterday, and you finally come to realize that you have sprung fully-formed into the arms of a new dawn. The drink is done. The day is yours.

Anyway, that’s how you make a fucking Bloody Mary.

Sarah Szabo is a child of America. An ardent student of liquor, Greek history, and celebrity gossip, she is a proud college dropout who lives and works primarily from the back of a 2000 extended cab Dodge Dakota in NE Oklahoma.

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A hip flask is a container for liquor like a Molotov cocktail is a bottle for gasoline.

If you’ve carried the former or hurled the latter (or more poignantly, had one hurled at you) you know their barest definitions leave a helluva lot of meaning off the table.

The fact that both—when put to their intended uses—are illegal in most public places tells you something. As does the unique shape of the hip flask, designed as it is to be hidden next to the human body, shielded from the prying eyes of prigs and policemen alike.

Handmaiden of Hooch, Ally of Humankind During its long journey as humanity’s constant, sometimes clandestine companion, the flask has played myriad roles: it lent strength to those stabbing at the fringes of civilization, it served as a peerless greeting between travellers on perilous roads, it went to war as standard issue for millions of soldiers, it sealed peace treaties, giving solace to the defeated and joy to the victors, it was a weapon in the war against tyranny. When the cold and callous hand of Prohibition gripped the land, flasks transformed into the Molotov cocktails of the resistance, igniting a fearful society with fiery defiance.

It has bolstered innumerable grooms wavering at the altar, hunters shivering in their blinds and sport fans huddled in the stands. It makes long trips seem less so, coloring in those broad blank spaces between places you want to be.

Great American heroes with presidential ambitions gave them out as reminders to vote for the right sort of person, brothers Frank and Jesse used them to steel their resolve before their

bold robberies, Blackbeard loaded his with rum and gunpowder, both Roman legionnaires and Imperial German infantrymen carried them as part of their standard issue when they picked a fight with the world. You were as likely to find one in the pockets of the Lost Generation’s brightest lights as you were a pencil, and at least one pope (Pope Pius XII) carried a flask of wine under his robes, “for medical reasons.”

It is a powerful talisman for repelling prudes you shouldn’t waste your time with, and attracting bon vivants you definitely want to know. It provides the grease, clandestinely applied, that

A flask makes long trips seem less so, coloring in those broad blank spaces between places you want to be.

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lets you slide eel-like through tight, uncomfortable and tedious situations. It is a discrete source of strength when you’re under the yoke and a great yawp of joy when you’re running free.

A Crude Awakening So I wish in heav’n his soul may dwell, That first found out the leather bottel.

—Traditional Anglo-Saxon Tavern Song The earliest ancestor of the flask, the Stone Age mead skin, was probably invented about 15 minutes after the first batch of mead was thrown together. Why not take this fine elixir with me wherever I go from now on? the original meadman surely must have wondered while dumping out the vile water clogging a container probably

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constructed of animal skin or bladder.

Sealed and cured with beeswax, the skin becomes quite stiff, which serves to alleviate pressure on the plug. It undoubtedly featured a sling because mankind, if you can believe it, hadn’t invented pockets yet and wouldn’t for a very long time.

Canteens of the Gods Perhaps ironically, it was religious fervor that moved flask production from the craftsman’s shop to the factory. Pre- Christian pilgrims, after trekking long and far to a holy site, wanted some sort of souvenir to take

monplace that nearly every God-fearing household had at least one on a shelf, a memento of a holy road trip.

And certainly some were put to use as alcohol flasks, which has caused some historians to foolishly suggest that the modern hip flask is a direct, if warped descendant of the wholesome pilgrim flask. Which is like saying the modern battle rifle is a descendant of the toy musket, rather than the real muskets that were around at the same time.

While the upper classes experimented with flasks made of glass and metal, the rugged and cheap earthenware flask, along with its animal skin

Two major inventions had to go down before the pocket flask could rise up: distillation and pockets. home to remind them of their good deed and perhaps flaunt in the face of those less pious and ambulatory. And since many of the holy sites featured some sort of holy (perhaps healing) water source, the pilgrim flask was born. They were usually constructed of baked clay, flat, round, fitted with rope loops and usually decorated with religious motifs. Sometimes, instead of water, a pilgrim could buy one filled with holy (and certainly healing) wine, especially if he or she were visiting a site paying homage to Dionysus or Bacchus.

As religion became more organized and pilgrimages became more popular, pottery factories, usually employing molds, began popping up, first near the holy sites then later in large port cities where huge merchant fleets would export thousands of flasks to whichever holy site wanted them. These factories also produced a variety of similar secular flasks: one of the more popular lines, featuring pictorials of gladiatorial combat, were filled with wine and sold in Roman coliseums.

Pilgrim flasks became so com18

predecessors, would remain the wine, mead and ale carriers of choice for the common folk until well into the 17th century.

The Pocket Flask Arrives “Small flasks to hold distilled spirits were useful travelling accoutrements during a period when water was unsafe to drink and wine, ale and beer spoiled quickly.” —The Art of Drinking Two major inventions had to go down before the proper pocket flask could rise up: distillation and pockets. Fortuitously enough, they became commonplace at around the same time.

Though beverage distillation had taken root in Italy during the 13th century, it took its own sweet time spreading across the rest of the continent. Boiling wine to a high proof was generally considered a goofy (and quite dangerous) trick performed by alchemists; hard alcohol wasn’t put on a firm commercial footing until the 17th century, and even then it was usually sold as a medicinal agent.

Then, slowly, certain people (your and my direct ancestors no doubt) got the idea that this booming new body tonic was also good for lubricating the mood and mind, and suddenly the industry exploded like one of those early stills that were always exploding.

Excellent new boozes, including

This goose-egg sized amphoriskos—a miniature of the massive clay jars used to import wine—was the ubiquitous airplane bottle of 1st century Rome.

gin, vodka and whiskey, came onto the scene, and flask use (and production) jumped sharply as liquor became more affordable.

Suddenly a traveller didn’t need a huge honking canteen of wine, mead or ale to reach that fine level of satisfaction between destinations. A small container of concentrated alcohol, small enough to fit in one of those newfangled pockets, could do the job.

It isn’t the easiest thing to wrap your head around: we once walked around without pockets. Up until the 1600s, those who needed to carry small objects, such as coins, would put them in pouches which would be tied to their belts with string. Which made them easy prey for the “cut purses” who would sidle up, cut the string and make off with the loot. Finally some canny tailor fell upon the idea of sewing pouches inside the trousers and jackets of the day, at once making your possessions harder to detect and take.

The first true pocket flasks appeared at the beginning of 18th century, and were generally shaped like a flattened egg, something that could be easily slipped in and out of said pockets.

Though every aristocrat who considered himself a man-about-town simply had to have one, an educated guess places the fast evolution of the flask not in the pockets of upper-class Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

scoundrels but rather in the knapsacks of professional soldiers. By this time, the spirits flask was an essential part of a soldier’s gear, especially if that soldier was of the professional class, as opposed to a conscript.

It was the soldiers, especially the infantry who carried everything on their backs, who relied upon smallquantity vessels to provide warmth, motivation, courage and disinfection while on campaign. Furthermore, many of the improvements made to pocket flasks already had a precedent in a different sort of flask carried by soldiers.

Fill Your Powder Horns with Whiskey: Transmutable Flasks “Fearsome and fearless, he (Blackbeard) sprinkled gunpowder into a flask of rum, ignited the drink and guzzled it while it popped and burned.” —C.C. Tsutsumi

Just as some flasks started as holy souvenirs, others began as implements of war. With the dawn of gunpowder and musketry, powder flasks became commonplace on battlefields and hunting grounds alike. Their design mirrored the pocket flask and sometimes the only way to tell them apart was the powder flask’s narrow nozzle for injecting powder into a barrel. Keeping your powder dry was absolutely essential, so these flasks tended to be watertight, making the transition to spirits flask as simple changing out the nozzle for something a bit wider.

Once the war—or a soldier’s career—was over, many a vet continued to carry his wartime companion with him, now loaded with a different sort of conflagration. As one 19th-century song instructed: The fight is over, boys So dump your powder And fill your horns with cheer.

We can guess what kind of cheer they were singing about.

Some flasks were repurposed by design. Beginning in the 19th century, some women’s perfume makers began selling their pricey product in what were plainly spirits flasks. This is marketing at its cleverest: a husband was much more likely to spring for an expensive scent if it meant he got a silver flask at the tail end of the Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

deal.

A Flask for Every Pocket “General Taylor never surrenders.”

—Slogan on 1848 glass whiskey flask saluting future President Zachary Taylor’s leadership in the Mexican-American War

On the other side of the Atlantic, a flask revolution was brewing. In the early 1800s a booming glass industry sprung up in the States, and they knew what sort of glassware Americans wanted. Nineteenthcentury America was a nation on the go, and they couldn’t be expected to lurch westward with fullsized bottles of whiskey stuck in their belts. So they flooded the country with what collectors now call “historical flasks.” Molded, thick walled, and available in a rainbow of colors, they were soon found in the pocket of nearly every man west of the Mississippi and quite a few on the other side.

Up until the Civil War, these flasks were usually molded with uniquely American motifs, including the faces of favored presidents, eagles, flags, log cabins and sometimes political slogans. Filled with spirits (usually whiskey) and sold at the local version of the pub or liquor store, they could be refilled from the store’s barrels, much like the beer growlers of today.

Some bring a high premium at auction: an example bearing the visage of President Andrew Jackson recently brought $151,000. Pretty good considering it went for about a buck back in 1820.

The fact that Jackson was running for President at that time reveals two other uses for the flask: advertising tool and political schwag. Imagine if a present-day presidential candidate had the good taste to put his face on a bottles of whiskey and give them out at rallies. How long would it be before they stuck him in a cage “for his own good?”

Now that glass was widely available and dead cheap, the wealthy moved on to precious metals as the material of choice, especially silver. Silver was

long believed to have a purifying effect, making bad liquor taste better and good liquor taste fantastico.

Furthermore, now that every Tom, Dick and Harry had one, the rich naturally felt goaded into wanting extra special flasks with all sorts of googahs and refinements. In a relatively narrow period of time, a shocking array of structural improvements came into play.

Fast-action bayonet caps and screw tops now employed cork to prevent embarrassing leaks. Hinged captive caps put an end to losing your top in a moment of euphoria. Detachable drinking cups covered the cap or hugged the bottom half of the flask.

Peek-a-boo windows let you know exactly how much booze you had left and secret locking mechanisms kept unwanted lips off your liquor. Some came equipped with a fitted compass, in case you got lost on your way back home from the party. Material hybrid flasks became commonplace. A higher-end model might consist of four different materials, including glass, metal, leather, cork, wood, crystal, ivory or reptile skin.

The basic shape of the flask underwent rapid mutation as well. Two cappers came with separate com-

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partments for different liquors. Long cylindrical hunting flasks appeared, sheathed in leather scabbards easily hung from a saddle. Specially-shaped flasks were contoured to fit wherever you felt the need to put them, including your boot, belt, coat pocket and even the newly-named hip pocket.

Yet still, when the Victorian Age ended and we crossed over in the 20th century, they were not yet called hip flasks.

Black-Jacks and Batwings “Another name for the flask is foresight.”

—William Juniper

The word flask itself surfaced around 1300, after centuries of going by close relatives flasca, flasko, flaxe, flasque and so on, all of which were descendents of a Teutonic borrowing of a Latin. Or visa-versa, depending upon which etymologist you want to argue with.

It was a long circuitous route from

When U.S. Prohibition turned a large swath of Americans into active criminals, an oblique “ Who goes there?” challenge system emerged.

Any man who wasn’t a Dry carried a flask as surely as he would his wallet, but there were enemy agents about so you had to play it safe. If you noticed a tell-tale bulge in someone’s profile, you said, “ You, suh, have the build of a gentleman from Ol’ Kentucky.” Or: “Mighty dry this season, the fields sure do need some irrigating.”

So long as your weren’t dealing with an obtuse farmer, you were likely to get a taste.

The Great Flask Shortage of 1920 “A hot-water bag will answer the purpose until something more artistic can be found.”

—The Evening Public Ledger

More flasks were sold in the first six months of Prohibition than during the entire previous decade.

In the early days of Prohibition, before speakeasies began blossoming like desert roses, a flask wasn’t just a thing to get you between parties, it was the party. flask to hip flask. Circa 1700, as liquor came into fashion, flasks were usually identified by what they carried: brandy flask, whisky flask, or the more general spirits flask.

Once we had pockets sussed out, we started calling them pocket flasks, then, as we starting naming our pockets, it was expanded to hip pocket flask, then finally contracted to hip flask around 1920.

As with all things semi-secret and associated with muse alcohol, a battery of slang terms have been used to describe the flask, including hipper, travel bottle, pocket rocket, batwing mini, betty, rum-skin, black-jack, jingleboy, a-bit-on-the-hip, mickey, monkey, and pocket pistol. During World War II, RAF flyers would wryly flip the latter on its head and refer to their service revolvers as hip flasks.

If you carried a flask you were a vial villain, hipper, hip-flask fellow, a gentleman from Kentucky, or suffering from hip disease.

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Flask manufacturers had girded themselves, but were nowhere near ready for the ravenous mob clamoring for their wares once the saloons were shut. Shortages gave rise to wild improvisation: hot water bottles were rushed into service, as were baby bottles. They had the advantage of being disguised, but it was hard to appear suave and sophisticated while drinking from either. “ Wholesale and retail dealers in silverware say that one bright spot in their business,” reported the Washington Herald in 1922, “has been the demand for silver hip flasks. Hundreds of thousands have been bought for Christmas presents.”

Once production had cranked up enough to meet demand and create a sense of competition, the flask’s DNA underwent major shifts. Just as the medicinal and martial fields tend to make rapid gains during wartime, hip flask design made leaps and bounds after the government declared war on

alcohol.

Are You Changing a Tire or Throwing a Party?

“Hip flasks will be worn concealed this season. It has been become established that every well-dressed man has one and display is no longer necessary.”

—What’s In, What’s Out: 1922

Where before flasks were flashy playthings casually tucked away to avoid offending proper society, they now had to be near-invisible so as to avoid arrest and imprisonment. The once whimsical art of camouflaging flasks now expanded into a broad science. Almost any object smaller than a bread box (and some things quite larger) might be an imposter housing liquor, including canes, hats, cigarette cases, spare car tires, cigars, fountain pens, books, articles of clothing, shoes, work tools, foodstuffs and so forth. Anything a citizen could carry down a street without arousing undue suspicion or ridicule became a model for a crypto-flask.

Another thick branch of mutation was the arrival of the Gargantua class of flask. The distances between civilized places to drink had become vast morbid deserts, so naturally the flasks would have to carry more sustenance for the journey. Suddenly a 64 ounce flask didn’t seem all that crazy, and even a hulking 128 ouncer spoke more to necessity than novelty.

In the early days of Prohibition, before speakeasies began blossoming like desert roses, a flask wasn’t just a thing to get you from one party to another, it was the party. And with so much booze on the move, a party could break out anywhere drinkers should meet, as evidenced by this portion of a 1920 poem by popular Washington Herald columnist O.O. McIntyre: And then the party started And there were ten flasks Removed from the hip In that many seconds And the way they drank it One would get the idea That this was a free country Metal flasks quickly seized turf from their glass counterparts, for several good reasons. If you were to take a spill, as sometimes happens when Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

filled to the brim with joy, there was not only the danger of it breaking and severing an artery, but the added insult of attracting Johnny Law. If you lived in the Big Apple there was also the fresh menace of the recently installed subway turnstiles. Their thighhigh “arms” seemed specifically designed to smash glass flasks carried on the hip. After a wave of complaints, the metro authority rather snidely advised commuters to walk through backwards.

Furthermore, “hip-hitting” became a popular pastime for cops on the beat: upon noticing a suspicious bulge on a citizen’s hip, the officer would strike it hard with his nightstick, causing a glass flask (and any hopes for a swell evening) to shatter.

Naturally, a special flask was constructed specifically to resist these rude attacks. Called the Dreadnaught, a Philidelphia daily reported it was “a brute for punishment,” “constructed with an extra covering of silver,” and “the most resounding blow has no effect.” The only disadvantage was “when struck by some hard object, such as a policeman’s club, a faint musical note can be heard.”

The Flask as Status Symbol “Pocket Flask Are New Rage: Debutantes Demand Jeweled Containers” —Headline, Seattle Star, 1922

Flasks quickly became status symbols. If you didn’t give a damn about your reputation, you could shuffle into a drug store and pick up a cheap tin affair for a dime. Contrarily, you could march into a jewelers and pony up for something that suggested a more airy station in life. T. Coleman du Pont, of the insanely wealthy du Pont clan, hipped his gin (for purely medicinal reasons, natch)1 in a gold flask worth $15K in today’s dollars.

If you had the wherewithal, and many found they did, you could commission a one-of-a-kind, gem-encrusted work of art made by the master craftsmen at Tiffany and Co., and it’s a telling point that you’ll rarely find such workmanship and precious materials applied to water bottles and coffee thermoses.

1 “I am under orders from my physician to take a little sip when fatigued. Understand me, I take my gin as a tonic not as a beverage,” Mr. du Pont told an inquisitive reporter.

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The Drys Strike Back “Anyone carrying liquor violates the law as much as one who carries a pistol.”

—J.A. Leach, Head of NY State Prohibition Enforcement

During the early days of Prohibition, those charged with enforcing the new laws (and much less the public) weren’t sure what the legalities were in regards to the flask. Some locales enforced an outright ban, others did n’t, and some walked a sort of vague middle line, as pointed out by one newspaperman: “Officials have given out that it is all right to tote a flask if you aren’t caught. Obviously, as there is no penalty attached to any violation of the law, unless discovery ‘sets in.’”

Local ordinances aside, there were no specific penalties for flask-toting written into the Volstead Act because the Drys didn’t think they’d need them. They’d figured, in the spirit of trying new things, most Americans would stop drinking and therefore not need to carry around alcohol. And those who did not want to try new things, well, those booze-sodden degenerates would be easy enough to spot: they’d be staggering around with bottles of liquor tucked under their arms or perhaps even hillbilly-style jugs balanced on their shoulders.

Who would have guessed those devious bastards would adopt that old Victorian relic, the hip flask, and start sneaking them around under their clothing? And what Dry, in his worst nightmares, would have dreamed there would be so goddamn many of the sneaky bastards?

As often happens when self-righteous, this-is-for-your-own-good social movements stumble out of the gate, a wave of previously unimaginable authoritarianism was accompanied by a strong undercurrent of farce.

The government officially declared war on the flask in April 1921, stating with a straight face that flask-toting citizens were no different than those gun-toting gangsters who were presently shooting up the country. They began aggressively raiding clubs and arresting anyone carrying those dangerous containers. This was followed by the raiding and padlocking of restaurants and arresting waiters who dared serve set-ups (a cocktail mi-

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nus the booze) to flask-equipped customers. Not surprisingly, the charges were thrown out of court by judges who felt funny about putting a fellow in jail for dispensing ginger ale and orange juice.

Indiana tried banning the sale of hip flasks (and cocktail shakers) entirely. Shortly thereafter, some very fashionable sterlingsilver “cooking oil containers” and “milk shakers” appeared on store shelves.

Wading ever deeper into the sea of absurdity, the feds turned to spite. Since the government had already availed itself of the power to seize and auction off any vehicle carrying bootleg liquor, prohibition officials asserted they thus had the right to seize and sell men’s trousers found to be carrying flasks.

They had to lose a string of court cases to before they abandoned this hysterical strategy.

Amendment, drinking became such a vogue that unless a young man came with a flask, he was not welcomed” at society shindigs.

That same year, W.E. Hill of the Chicago Tribune wrote of a typical debauched youth: “Lawrence, be it known, is, at the moment of speaking, tripping the light fantastic at the country club with a flask on his hip and a flapper for his partner who has been expelled from finishing school for having a still in her room.”

And perhaps a flask in her garter. If you fancied yourself a flapper, as many young women did during Prohibition, you under-

A Menace to American Youth “Jewelers Say Ma and Pa Buy More Than Flapper Daughters or Young Sons” —Headline, Evening Public Ledger, 1922 The Fourth Estate was willing to whip up a little hysteria of its own. There was a diabolically-charming fiend prowling the country, ravenous for the sweet flesh of the young, and its name was Hip Flask.

“Flask on Hip National Menace to Young,” shrilled a 1922 Evening World (NYC) headline. “The young man with the flask on his hip is the popular fellow,” the writer went on to complain. “His company is sought. The success of his party is assured.”

A breathless article in the New York Tribune claimed, “Little boys of 18 and 19 actually go to parties with flasks in their hip pockets and offer the contents to the girls, and some of the girls think it’s clever to take some.”

A well-reported congressional hearing wailed that the youth of America were fast becoming “hipflask addicts.” Society matron and debutante-wrangler Mrs. William Laird Dunlop told the Washington Herald that “After the 18th

stood that part of the uniform was a flask hidden somewhere on your person. Just in case Lawrence forgot his.

In 1924, Young Men Magazine took a different tack, blaming the evils of the flask on Prohibition itself: “The hip flask at public and private dances has become so common that it passes without comment. This is the ghastly heritage we are beginning to reap by believing that we can outrage constitutional law in this country with impunity.”

Sam, and your stupid little law.”

The armchair psychiatrists on the Dry side immediately responded to this growing rebellion by hissing that flaskers were not so much personal liberty zealots as craven faddists driven more by bravado then any actual desire for legal alcohol. An editorial in The Christian Statesman put a finer point to it: “Perhaps they do not care so very much for drink, but consider it quite smart to startle others by their daring to do that which is forbidden by law. The hip-flask toters are of this class.”

When that sort of sniping failed to make a mark, the Drys rolled

Bigger isn’t always best. Hoisting out a 48oz Texas Dinner Bell in a law office to celebrate a business contract may give your new investors pause.

The Tide Turns “When I’m elected we will not only reopen places these people have closed, but we’ll open 10,000 new ones. No copper will invade your home and fan your mattress for a hip flask.”

—“Big” Bill Thompson, Future Mayor of Chicago

As Prohibition ground on, drinkers became more jaded about the Volstead Act and less respectful of the law in general. In the larger cities, celebrators began brandishing flasks in public, daring the cops to do something about it. It became a very overt way of saying, “Fuck you, Uncle

their well-used Howitzer of Hyperbole loaded with its mighty Cannonball of Equivocation: “The hip flask is no more a badge of honor than the dope gum or cocaine vial,” railed Reverend H.C. Newton. “All of them ‘radiate considerable good cheer’ to addicts and traffickers.”

See, you weren’t taking your flask to a bachelor party to liven things up, you were a junkie drug mule. In the tightly-wound mind of the prohibitionist, the sinister flask, that simple container designed to fit close to the body, had transformed into the strong right arm of Demon Booze itself.

Try as they might, the Drys couldn’t shame and demonize the flask out of existence. By the late 1920s, Johnnie Law had all but given up arresting citizens for carrying flasks. It was assumed that everyone was carrying one and you could hardly arrest everyone.

The 18th Amendment couldn’t kill the flask; indeed, it did quite the opposite. The harder the government chopped at the tree of booze, the more flasks sprouted up around it. It would take a return to sanity, namely the 20th Amendment, to halt the flask’s Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

glorious ascension.

Post-Prohibition: The Soldier Puts Away His Rifle “The flask is the alcoholic’s paintbrush.”

—Andrew Jackson Jihad

The popularity of the flask immediately began to fade when it once again became legal to walk into a bar and procure legal liquor like a regular human being. The drought ended, the desert turned back to a lush paradise, and suddenly it didn’t seem necessary to lug around a canteen. Some learned to scorn the very sight of a flask, viewing it as an ugly reminder of an evil era best forgotten. A concomitant theory alleges American males became more “wussified” in the 1960s and no longer possessed the grit necessary to drink straight liquor served at body temperature.

Flasks remained popular with certain cliques, namely servicemen, bachelors and traveling salesmen. Private eyes and adventurers still used them, at least on the big screen, but by the 1980s—attacked by the twin spectres of recreational drug use and MADD —they had entered a cultural death spiral.

From then until now, flasks were gifts for groomsman, occasionally flashed on golf greens and sometimes found in the hands of artistes taking a stab at being eccentric. Hollywood hauls them out occasionally, either as an Instant Character Tell (“Oh my gosh, he carries alcohol around in a handsome silver container, thus he is a depraved alcoholic!”) or a Portable Mood Shifter (and apparently magical, as evidenced by two or more adults getting hammered on the contents of a single four-ounce flask.)

Because flasks are so rarely seen, they’ve taken on an exotic character. Produce one and, depending upon the nature of the crowd, people will gather around it like a campfire or slink off to a safe distance because you are obviously just trying to start some trouble.

All this said, flasks appear to have recently staged a small comeback. Judging by the army of custom flasks being sold on Etsy, hipsters have deemed them IN and by IN I mean Ironic/Nostalgic.

Other societal forces, namely the intense searches at stadiums and airports, have once again caused flasks to evolve to the point its hard to call them flasks. Foil pouches are being sold as “disposable hip flasks,” but surely that’s like calling the ubiquitous Red Plastic Cup a pint glass. Is a fake shampoo bottle (sold under the name Shambooze) designed to sneak liquor through airport security a flask or a repurposed shampoo bottle? Are the flask bra, crotch flask, and the beer belly flask really flasks or something that hasn’t been properly named yet?

A Flask For Every Purpose “Quart—a unit of measure applied to the size of the hippocket in Kansas; a flask which holds about enough for five men in Boston, three in Ohio and one in Arkansas.”

—Robert Jones Burdette

When Lucifer offers naive Prince Henry a drink from his “little flask,”2 the prince wonders, “ Will one draught suffice?” and Lucifer assures him, “If not, you can drink more.”

The Ancient Art of Flaskmanship has been passed down by the right sort of drunks since time eternal. If you choose to ignore them that’s your lookout, you savage son of a bitch.

WHEN A FLASK IS PRESENTED, ALL INTERESTED PARTIES SHOULD “CIRCLE THE WAGONS” TO BLOCK UNFRIENDLY EYES. IT IS CUSTOMARY TO OFFER ALL BUT CONFIRMED TEETOTALERS AND SONS OF BITCHES A DRINK. DRINK FROM YOUR FLASK BEFORE OFFERING IT TO A STRANGER. CAJOLING SOMEONE INTO DRINKING FROM YOUR FLASK STEALS ALL ITS DIGNITY AND MAGIC. BEING OFFERED A FLASK IS NOT A CHALLENGE TO YOUR DRINKING CAPACITY. CHECK FOR AN INSCRIPTION BEFORE DRINKING, THE MESSAGE MAY BE RELEVANT. LOOK AWAY WHEN SOMEONE DRINKS FROM YOUR FLASK, STARING MAKES YOU APPEAR STINGY. DON’T WIPE OFF THE TOP BEFORE OR AFTER DRINKING, THE LIQUOR WILL KILL THE GERMS. A FLASK IS NOT A MICROPHONE. ONCE YOU’VE HAD A DRINK, PASS IT ALONG. DON’T DELAY AND DON’T SCREW ON THE TOP. REFRAIN FROM FLASKING WHERE LIQUOR IS READILY AVAILABLE AND REASONABLY PRICED. A SQUARE OF TINFOIL IN YOUR WALLET MEANS ALWAYS HAVING A FUNNEL. KEEP IN MIND THAT THE LAW CONSIDERS YOUR FLASK AN OPEN CONTAINER AND IS THUS ILLEGAL IN MOST PUBLIC PLACES. TOTING A FLASK AND NOT NEEDING IT IS MUCH BETTER THAN THE OPPOSITE. MAKE A HABIT OF EMPTYING YOUR FLASK INTO A NIGHTCAP.

2 The Golden Legend (1851), a poem by William Longfellow.

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That fine wisdom only holds up, however, if you brought a large enough flask. The Devil plainly did, because when he pours some out for Hank, he assures, “Let not the quantity alarm you: You may drink all; it will not harm you.”

If you’re not out snaring royal souls, however, you may not need so much. While I tend to err on the side of excess, I recognize that you don’t take a elephant gun to a turkey shoot. Hoisting out a 32 ounce Texas Dinner Bell in a law office to celebrate a business contract may give your new investors pause. Contrarily, passing a 2 ounce Lil’ Nipper around a circle of football fans is likely to earn you the sort of reputation you don’t want.

You should have at least three flasks. One small enough to attach to a keychain, for emergencies; a four to eight ounce mid-ranger for casual carry and a 10+ ouncer for when things get serious.

Before walking out your front door, size up the figural horizon: If it looks like fair weather, a Laddy Buck might be all you need. If you see a shitstorm brewing, you’re better lugging the Elephant Hunter.

If you have any sort of romantic streak, consider an antique. A widely varied and priced collection migrates through Ebay and other auction sites on a daily basis. In addition to the horde of Prohibition-era deco-streamlines, there’s a good representation of reptile-skinned Victorian hybrids, kooky trench-art wonders and a surprising number of interestingly inscribed military flasks.

There is something very fine about drinking from the exact same vessel as a 19th-century English scoundrel or a dashing Cossack calvary officer. It adds a little flavor to whatever’s inside.

Try this: Hold a bottle of water in one hand and a flask filled with liquor in the other. Feel the contrast. It’s the same difference as holding a banana and a pistol. The flask and pistol both vibrate with a certain dangerous power.

That’s partly because it’s illegal to use both in most public places. The flask is lawfully considered an open container in the U.S., thus once brandished it is a misdemeanor. Just having it in a motor vehicle is illegal. Which, because of the vagaries of my psyche, makes flasks that much cooler to carry. Not to say I would be opposed to the issuing of concealed-carry permits for flasks, certainly an idea whose time has come.

I make a point—and so should you—of not using a flask in a bar willing to serve me liquor. It’s like walking around with an open umbrella on a perfect spring day. It makes you look affected.

After you’ve gotten into the habit of flasking, you’ll definitely want to encourage your friends to carry as well.

Once you get the reputation as a flask man, they’ll start gathering around you like pigeons swarming old ladies with bags of bread. Which is fine the first dozen times, then it gets annoying.

I carry a flask because there are few moments in life that couldn’t stand a little more color. Or a lot more. Dull events are usually conspired by dull people and those are the sort who almost never condone—much less provide—alcohol.

Hence the flask.  —Frank Kelly Rich 28

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

Papa&Jinny A Man and His Flask

No one is certain where or when Ernest Hemingway began his long relationship with the tall silver flask he called Jinny, but a handful of clues are revealed in a passage from True at First Light, his posthumous semi-fictional memoir set during a 1953 safari with his fourth wife Mary.

“The Jinny flask was in one pocket of the old Spanish double cartridge pouches. It was a pint bottle of Gordon’s we had bought at Sultan Hamud and it was named after another old famous silver flask that had finally opened its seams at too many thousand feet during a war and had caused me to believe for a moment that I had been hit in the buttocks. The old Jinny flask had never repaired properly but we had named this squat pint bottle for the old tall hip-fitting flask that bore the name of a girl on its silver screw Hemingway refills Jinny prior to rejoining the Spanish Civil War. top and bore no names of the fights where it had been present nor any names of those who had drunk from it and now were dead. The battles and the names would have covered both sides of the old Jinny flask if they had been engraved in modest size.”

There is little doubt in my mind that the name inscribed on the flask’s cap belonged to Virginia “Jinny” Pfeiffer, the younger sister of Hemingway’s second wife Pauline. Jinny had a deep, somewhat strange history with Hemingway, and it’s likely she either gifted the inscribed flask to Hemingway, or Hemingway—somewhat scandalously—decided to have his sister-in-law’s name engraved on his favorite flask.

Either is a possibility: the former because Jinny and Hemingway were close friends for fifteen years (19251940), right up until he divorced Pauline. And the latter because, from the start, Hemingway was more attracted to Jinny than her sister, but was thwarted by the fact that Jinny preferred the company of women. But perhaps not exclusively: according to Ruth Hawkins, author of Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The HemingwayPfeiffer Marriage, there is strong evidence that Jinny and Ernest conducted a clandestine affair, and Hemingway’s tragic and top-rate short story “The Sea Change” was a eulogy to that doomed relationship.

Further complicating their relationship was Jinny’s role as Papa’s personal homewrecker. First, at the behest of her sister, she helped sabotage Hemingway’s first marriage to their erstwhile pal Hadley, then, 13 years later, caused the breakup of his marriage to sister Pauline by spreading rumors (almost certainly true) that Hemingway was having a torrid affair with fellow war correspondent and future wife Martha Gellhorn.

What’s also interesting and more than a little odd is Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

the inscription was on the cap of the flask. An inscription on the body would have been there for all to see, especially if someone, perhaps your wife, were putting the flask to use. An inscription on the cap, on the other hand, would give the owner the option of palming the evidence before handing over the hooch.

So, whether simply a gift from an admiring sister-inlaw or a memento of a taboo relationship, we know the Jinny flask was with Hemingway when he covered the Spanish Civil War in 1937. A number of photos (see left) show him with the flask, and journalist Vincent Sheean would describe his first (but not last) encounter with Jinny in his 1939 memoir Not Peace But a Sword:

“This flask, a battered silver contraption of great cubic capacity, must have had a long career in its owner’s service. It had developed a certain flexibility with the passage of years, and when rhythmically pressed between the thumb and forefinger it emitted a tomtom noise like the drums that accompany a Moorish dancing girl. I saw it afterwards under a variety of conditions in Spain, and always with pleasure. The old flask must have been a welcome sight to many besides myself, for it was as inexhaustible as its owner, and as generous.”

From the photos and Sheean’s description, we can ascertain that Jinny had been in the saddle well before its arrival in Spain. A silThe beguiling Jinny Pf eiffer. ver flask is mentioned in many of Hemingway’s books and stories, starting in the early ‘30s and was seen in his possession as he observed the D-Day assault from the deck of a landing craft.

The war during which Jinny “finally opened its seams at too many thousand feet” was almost certainly World War II. After charging around France, liberating hotels and their wine cellars from the Nazis, and participating in more than one bloody battle, Hemingway took a long flight home to the US, during which Jinny most likely ruptured.

In 1950, Hemingway was famously described drinking from a silver flask by Lillian Ross in her book, Portrait of Hemingway, but since Jinny had been retired, it was most likely the flask described by Hemingway friend A.E. Hotchner in his bio Papa Hemingway. A gift from his fourth and final wife, it bore the inscription: “From Mary with Love,” contained “splendidly-aged Calvados” and is presently being hoarded by the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. —FKR 29

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MONDAY Goosetown Tavern 3242 E. Colfax 25% off for Industry, 7pm-close.

Lions Lair 2022 E. Colfax $2 PBRs all night, open mic comedy.

Tooey’s Off Colfax 1521 Marion St. $3 CO beers, $3 Buffalo Trace, $4 Fernet, all day.

Tennyson’s Tap 4335 W. 38th Ave. $1 PBR, Rolling Rocks & Olympia all 10am-2am.

TUESDAY Goosetown Tavern 3242 E. Colfax $5 for 2 cans & koozie, $4 Margs, 7pm-close.

Hangar Bar 8001 E. Colfax $6 pitchers & HH prices for ladies & anyone in a skirt.

Lions Lair 2022 E. Colfax $2 drafts & wells, 4-8pm, $3 Colfax Car Bombs all day.

Lucky Joe’s 25 Old Town Sq. Ft. Collins $2.50 Guinness all day.

Tooey’s Off Colfax 1521 Marion St. $2 Tecate, $3 Tequila.

WEDNESDAY Goosetown Tavern 3242 E. Colfax $3 Beer of the Month, $5 Towers, 7pm-close.

Hangar Bar 8001 E. Colfax Man Appreciation Night: HH prices for the guys all night.

Lions Lair 2022 E. Colfax $2 drafts & wells, 4-8pm, $3 Colfax Car Bombs all day.

Lucky Joe’s 25 Old Town Sq. Ft. Collins $2.50 U-Call-Its 7pm-close.

Rocky Top Tavern 4907 Lowell Blvd $5 All-you-can-eat wings, 5-11pm.

Tooey’s Off Colfax 1521 Marion St. $3 Coors tall boys, $3 Espolon Tequila Badgers 76 S. Broadway $10 All-you-can-drink, 9pm-midnight.

$1

PBR, Oly & Rolling Roc Open to Closk e Tennyson’s T a 4335 W. 38th

Denver

p

Ave

THURSDAY Goosetown Tavern 3242 E. Colfax $5 Sailor Jerry, $5 Breckenridge Bourbon, $3 Miller High Life, 7pm-close.

Lions Lair 2022 E. Colfax $2 drafts & wells, 4-8pm, $3 Colfax Car Bombs all day.

Lucky Joe’s 25 Old Town Sq. Ft. Collins $3 drafts & $3 bombs, 7pm-close.

Tooey’s Off Colfax 1521 Marion St. $2 off all Colorado spirits.

FRIDAY Goosetown Tavern 3242 E. Colfax $6 Jameson/PBR combo, $4 Fireball, $3 Beer of the Month, 7pm-close.

Lions Lair 2022 E. Colfax $2 drafts & wells, 4-8pm, $3 Colfax Car Bombs all day.

Tennyson’s Tap 4335 W. 38th Ave. $2 PBRs, $4 Beams, $4 CO draws, $15 whisky flights.

SATURDAY Hangar Bar 8001 E. Colfax $3 U-Call-Its 5-7pm & 1030pm-mid. $6 pitchers open-3pm.

Lions Lair 2022 E. Colfax $2 drafts & wells, 4-8pm, $3 Colfax Car Bombs all day.

Rocky Top Tavern 4907 Lowell Blvd $10 All-you-can-drink 10pm-midnight.

SUNDAY Hangar Bar 8001 E. Colfax $3 U-Call-Its 5-7pm & 10:30pm-mid. $6 pitchers open-3pm.

Lions Lair 2022 E. Colfax $2 drafts & wells, 4-8pm, $3 Colfax Car Bombs all day.

Tennyson’s Tap 4335 W. 38th Ave. $2 PBRs, $4 Beams, $4 CO draws, $15 whisky flights.

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

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Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

Somebody…

Somebody…

Somebody put somethin’ In my drink.

—The Ramones Over the course of humankind’s long, lovely, relationship with liquor, various persons have, at various times and for various, largely despicable reasons, felt it necessary to “doctor” another fellow’s beverage for the purpose of rendering him insensate and stealing his shiny stuff. This obnoxious practice went without a commonly employed name for quite a long time—until 1904 (or, according to some sources, as late as 1918), when unscrupulous barkeeps in Chicago’s grimy Whiskey Row district adopted the title “Mickey Finn,” and the concept of “slipping” someone “a mickey” was born. And why “Mickey Finn?” Because Mickey Finn was the name of the man who, while he did not invent the reprehensible custom, was responsible for transforming it into a sort of vile art.

At five feet four inches tall and barely a 140 pounds, Mickey Finn was a tiny goblin of a man, with a soul blacker and colder than Dante’s pits. He arrived in Chicago, from (so far as anyone knows) Peoria (or maybe Ireland), during the World’s Fair of 1893, and promptly set about seeking his fortune by rolling intoxicated pedestrians in the Little Cheyenne district. He tended bar for a time at a joint called Toronto Jim’s, but was fired after an altercation with a customer, during which he yanked the unfortunate man’s eye from its socket. For the next couple of years he worked as a pickpocket and as a fence for a gang of half-assed burglars before opening his own establishment, the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden, on Whiskey Row in 1896.

A combination saloon/eatery/whorehouse, the place was dingy, dimly lit and smoky. The Palm Garden was a single stunted palm plant in the corner of one room, wilting in an old spittoon. A police inspector named Lavin called the Lone Star “a low dive, a hang-out for…people of the lowest type,” and the historian Herbert Asbury wrote that the joint’s usual customers were “human lice.” Despite such negative reviews (or, more likely, because of them), the Lone Star thrived under Finn’s management.

Finn used the premises as a front for his continuing fence work, and operated a school for pre-teen pickpockets and streetwalkers with an

itch to enhance their revenue streams. Criminal gangs used the Lone Star for meetings. Crooked cops came and went (by appointment) to receive their envelopes of cash. The girls who worked the saloon had one job: encourage their johns to keep buying rounds of drinks. If all went well, the guy would get so drunk he couldn’t do what he’d gone there to do, and the girl could move right on to another victim without wasting time changing her sheets.

Finn owed more than a little of his success to his wife and right-hand, Kate Roses, a sometime whore and full-time thief and grifter. Kate managed the prostitution end of the Lone Star’s business. She recruited new girls and disposed of those who, due to disease or a lack of effort, no longer earned their keep. She usually accomplished this by beating them unconscious and dumping them in an alley, or by selling them for pennies-on-the-pound to even lower-class houses. Her temper rivaled her husband’s, and

At five feet four inches tall and barely a 140 pounds, Mickey Finn was a tiny goblin of a man, with a soul blacker and colder than Dante’s pits.

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sensible people took care to stay on Kate’s sunny side.

The Lone Star’s liquor business was overseen by a hulking fellow known only as Patsy. He purchased the booze, supervised its watering-down and served as the saloon’s main bartender. From his position behind the bar he was able to identify potential victims for Finn or the girls, which made him a valuable part of the enterprise.

When a girl had zeroed in on her prey, Patsy increased the power of the guy’s drinks while decreasing the girl’s, so that she stayed sober while the victim continued sliding toward a black-out, from which he would likely awaken in some cold alley, divested of his money, jewelry and, as often as not, clothing. When it came to thievery of this sort, two of the Lone Star’s best girls were Isabelle Ffyffe—called “Dummy” because she was one—and “Gold Tooth” Mary Thornton, sonamed because her single remaining tooth was capped in the stuff (and, gosh, what a looker she must’ve been).

For the first few years Mickey Finn operated the Lone Star, he made pretty good money selling weak drinks and by taking a hefty cut of the bawdy-girls’ earnings, but he wasn’t bringing in the amount of green he wanted or felt was his due. All that changed, however, in the summer of 1898, when Finn made the acquaintance of a black voodoo priest, known to history only as

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Doctor Hall, who sold magical love potions and snake-oil cures for venereal disease, as well as vials of morphine and bindles of cocaine to house-girls. After a meeting with Hall, Finn returned to the Lone Star bubbling with excitement, cradling a large brown pharmacist’s bottle in his arms. He held the bottle, which was full of white powder, up for “Gold Tooth” Mary’s inspection, and said, “See the nice bottle, Mary? We’ll get the money with this. I give the Doc an extra dollar to make it strong.” No one knows for sure, but the powder may have been chloral hydrate.

Within the week, two new drinks debuted at the Lone Star, both of Mickey Finn’s invention. The first was the Mickey Finn Special, a concoction of raw alcohol, water, snuff and a brutal measure of the white powder. The second was the Number Two, which was essentially the same as the Special, except with beer in the place of the raw alcohol. When a victim drank one of Mickey’s druggy cocktails, he walked around in a restless stupor for a few minutes before collapsing into a deep sleep. He usually remained in this coma-like state until the drug ran its course, which often took 12 hours or more, and when he did finally come to, his befuddlement could linger for hours, even days.

Finn’s beady little eyes gleamed with greed and malice every time he heard a potential victim call confidently for a Special or a Number Two.

Gold teeth were fair game— Finn kept a pair of pliers for extraction purposes.

Mickey Finn and his accomplices were quite a team.

Once a dupe had been identified, and Patsy and the girls had done their bit, Finn and Kate Roses would drag the unlucky bastard off to “the operating room.” There they would strap the man to a table, strip him naked, and painstakingly search every inch of his clothing and person—for money, watches, jewelry and anything else that looked valuable. They liked fancy clothing as well, especially shoes and hats, which could be sold on the black market. Gold teeth were fair game— Finn kept a pair of pliers for extraction purposes. He also kept a wooden mallet at hand, just in case the victim showed signs of returning to consciousness—two or three whacks usually did the trick.

The operation went gangbusters until the spring of 1903 when “Gold Tooth” Mary Thornton, afraid she was about to be murdered for knowing too much, quit the Lone Star under cover of night and, having persuaded Dummy Ffyffe to join her, went to the police and ratted out the whole show.

The women were taken before the Chicago Vice Commission, where they repeated their charges, but since the Commission lacked the testimony of an actual victim, its members were hesitant to act against Mickey Finn. They did eventually have him arrested for robbing customers after drugging their drinks but was released for a lack of evidence. The Commission then made the only move they had left and revoked the Lone Star’s liquor license in December of 1903.

Feeling the heat, Finn skulked out of Chicago to parts 36

unknown. He returned in late 1904, inexplicably broke and in need of work. It is known that he tended bar at a saloon on Dearborn Street, but no further details are available. Over the next few years, other ethically-challenged barkeeps began serving “knock-out specials” with several claiming that they had purchased the formula from Finn.

These statements are the last mentions of Mickey Finn in the historical record.

Keep in mind that everything I just wrote about Mickey Finn of Chicago should be taken with a grain of salt. The jury is still out as to where “mickey finn” originated. The historian Herbert Asbury, from whose books much of the above information was gleaned, was a fine researcher, with access to numerous documents, the most notable of which were court papers in which contained the testimony of Isabelle “Dummy” Ffyffe and “Gold Tooth” Mary Thornton. Both women provided detailed descriptions of Finn’s ugly activities. Asbury’s portrayal of events is compelling and, to me, convincing, and I’m willing to let it stand until better information comes to light.

When you get right down to it, it makes little difference where the phrase “Mickey Finn” came from. What’s important is that doctoring someone’s drink, no matter the intended result, is a revolting practice and people caught engaging in it should be expelled from drinking society, and forced to serve as a cabana-boy for one of MADD’s more withered executives. —Richard English Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

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It glows like afternoon air on my lips.

2.

Solemn ceremony of president, Executive, and, after all, the poet, A clear, terrible fuel, rite of the WASP, American legend, birthright, bequest: Supreme distraction, long ago, for a time Of polio, smallpox, economic decline; Then back for the Cold War, to melt away The edge on the Age of Anxiety When the Atom Bomb made sobriety’s Appeals pale beside a cold stem of Gilbey’s.

Another she worked the bar I had it easy a show up with no money not even a dollar she would serve me all night long or as long as it took I would talk to whoever showed lots of women showed they bought me drinks she charged them double men would sit at the bar watching her perform was something an easy blow off she did it with an absurdly cool style a slight brush of shoulder or eye a blonde flip that’s over now the last time I paid all of it there were no easy smiles for me no asking for the slip kiss just the general, eventual feeling that comes “go away” —Tate Wyllie Martini 1.

The ice is drenched in the silver cylinder With Bluecoat, vermouth, juice of pickled peppers.

The splash tingles the cubes. They crack and fuse.

I rest it to chill, shake, then shower loose A tidy rain to fill the glass chalice.

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3.

We’re at one other’s throats now, night and day, Yet still the true, indisputable way To rinse cerebral soot is to simply say “Dry, please, and a little dirty.” It’s okay To soak there in the rich, swabbed ambience After a day of cubicle fluorescence And go a bit numb at nerve ends, a sense Of drowning in place, serenely. So dispense Wisdom and foolishness with a lemon twist That shines like a hot coil above the wrist; Or royal rust of a salt-defused mine, The olive remote in its foggy brine.

—Ernest Hilbert I’m ok Stuck at the bar and afraid to drive, where’s my wife, mad again— not answering the phone, wishing she had said no, wishing she had a real husband.

I’m not slumped over the bar yet, but my head is getting heavy, that girl with the brown hair has been looking for much too long.

I try again and she doesn’t answer, by myself at 2 AM. give me Dewars and soda with a twist of lime. I’m fine, I mean it; a ride is on the way.

—Carmen Adamucci the last of the wine there is half a green bottle left of the dark red. there is no one here to bicker

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or to compromise with for who gets it, but i still resort to a coin-toss. heads, i get the wine. tails, it chases the brandy. i pull out a quarter, flip it up & watch it throw silver into the air then crash to the linoleum, where it spins & spins. i wait in a perfect calm. sometimes you just need a win.

—Anton Frost DRINKING IN SAN FRANCISCO Drinking bourbon in a hotel room on Powell Street in San Francisco and trying to read Cendrars; though the alcohol is too strong for me to understand much, the bells of the cable car ring and the streetlights shine, I can hear the tinkering voices of yesterday in the distance— though that doesn’t matter now: as the soul dances around the room and the gaze looks past the ceiling, lots left in the bottle and nothing else to

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worry about: for now.

—Brenton Booth untitled Sometimes when I look at a Crown Royal label on a rye whiskey bottle I think of you and remember everything, even the pock marks marching along the back of your neck.

—Belle Schmidt Heretic He drinks like it’s serious, Like it’s a job Chased down with each shot and beer Angry With god …as he tosses each golden liquid morsel Down his throat Like fire to burn and roast The heretic within —Nick Plumber The Port of Refuge Out of the bar, I’ve stepped in the street Road, what’s the matter? You’re loose on your feet Staggering, swaggering, and reeling about Road, you’re well lit, past any amount of doubt.

Streetlights, be quiet and stand up, if you please What the devil ails you? You’re weak in the knees Some of your heads in the gutter, some sunk Streetlights, I see it—you’re all of you drunk Angels and ministers! look at the moon Shining up there like a paper balloon Winking like mad at me: Moon I’m afraid— Now I’m convinced— Oh! you tipsy old jade Here’s a phenomenon: look to the stars Jupiter, Ceres, Uranus and Mars Dancing, capered, shuffled, and hopped Heavenly bodies! This ought to be stopped Down come the houses! Each drunk as a king Can’t say I fancy much of this sort of thing; Insde the bar, it was safe and all right I shall go back there, and stay in for the night.

—R. Von Muhler Submit poetry to: poetry@drunkard.com

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e? m i t l l of a d r a k un r d t s e at e r g e th s i o h W We’ve posed that question before. In 2002 we resurrected 16 of the history’s hardest-pounding hoochers and squared them off in a ferocious, tournament-style, singleelimination, winner-walks-out-on-the-tab bottle-royale.

Legendary lushes like Winston Churchill and Babe Ruth crashed their vast appetites for hooch against the cast-iron livers of monster inebriates Ernest Hemingway and W.C. Fields, and when the bar tabs cleared, a resurgent Jackie Gleason seized the crown from a stunned Charles Bukowski.

Visit clash.drunkard.com to witness the previous contest.

Controversy ensued: a great indignant yawp went up from our readers, demanding to know why so many of history’s finest boozers were left out of the contest, a roster that includes renowned soaks Andre the Giant, Oliver Reed, Jack Kerouac and Blackbeard the Pirate.

The exquisitely logical answer that there simply wasn’t enough room for the whole bloody lot of them was met with more yawps, so here we begin again with 16 fresh contenders, each eager to seize the crown of top toper. Then, once the winner emerges triumphant, we’ll pit him or her in a king-hell showdown with the original Clash champion, the aforementioned Jackie Gleason.

The Exhaustive Selection Process Explained First off, living drinkers were excluded because their story is not fully told; for all we know they’ll join the Anti-Saloon League and start bad-mouthing sweet mother booze. Backsliders such as Jack London, who did turn against the booze in his latter years, were also disqualified because winners never quit and quitters never win.

Lesser-known hard pounders were also excused because everyone has an uncle who should be in the fight and we only have room for 16 contenders—and we’d have to take you and your aunt’s word for it and we personally don’t trust either of you.

Personality was a deciding factor, because who wants to watch two stoic behemoths trade pitchers of Miller Lite for 12 hours?

Finally, since this is the second of the series, if you don’t see your personal drinking hero in the fight, odds are he or she participated in the first Clash.

One final note—this is a drinking contest, and like any contest, there are psychological elements involved. Having a superior capacity for alcohol will not always win the day.

So place your bets, pour yourself a strong one, and let’s get ready to stumble!

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The Rules A coin toss determines who orders the first round.

Contenders take turns ordering rounds of whatever alcoholic beverage they prefer.

A drinker must finish his drink within 10 seconds of his opponent finishing his or face elimination.

The contest will continue until a contestant loses by Passing Out (a PO), being unable or refusing to continue with the contest (a Technical Pass Out, or TPO) or vomiting (a VO).

Contenders cannot make unwarranted physical contact with their opponent. Contact results in disqualification.

Contenders cannot order a drink larger than a quadruple of straight liquor or a pitcher of a non-liquor. This rule can be waived if both contenders consent.

The Contenders 1. Andre the Giant 2. Alexander the Great 3. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson 4. Doc Holliday 5. Richard Nixon 6. Jack Kerouac 7. Truman Capote 8. Blackbeard 9. Carson McCullers 10. Jim Morrison 11. Mark Twain 12. Oliver Reed 13. Li Po AKA Li Bai AKA Li T’ai Po 14. Errol Flynn 15. Keith Moon 16. Calamity Jane Cont. on Next Page 41

Tableside Announcers: Howard Cosell and Sir Laurence Olivier Referee: Bill “The Fox” Foster

­

Tale of the Tab Hunter S. Thompson: Unpredictable, mercurial and highly explosive, Hunter is an oddsmaker’s nightmare.

His legendary constitution allowed him to weather a lifelong barrage of powerful chemicals, including alcohol—reliable witnesses attest he is capable of drinking three days straight without rest. His extraordinarily broad palette for all things alcoholic equates a full arsenal and seamless defense: he can come at you with any possible combination of boozes and won’t be fazed by anything you can throw back at him. His highlystrung and quixotic nature, however, means he might storm out or similarly disqualify himself from any match at any possible moment.

Doc Holliday: Renowned for his hard drinking as much as his homicidal urges, Holliday was said to average an astounding three quarts of whiskey a day, which is especially impressive when you consider the vile chemical confabulations that passed for whiskey in the Old West. One of the finest gamblers of his time, he knows how to expertly bluff and manipulate his opponents. All that said, Holliday has been afflicted with tuberculosis since his early 20s, and his failing health and known addiction to a form of morphine has many bettors doubting his chances at advancing deep into the tournament.

The Build Up Laurence Olivier: Though they lived a century apart, an uncanny number of common threads run through the lives of these famous outlaws.

Howard Cosell: You’re right, Larry.

Both lost a parent while in their early teens, and both are sons of the South who went west to find their fortunes.

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Your tableside announcers, Laurence Olivier and Howard Cosell.

LO: Both were known to vacillate wildly between southern gentlemen and savage beasts. Each also has a predilection for high-strength bourbon, high-powered firearms, highstakes gambling and the occasional drift into narcotics.

HC: Occasional?

LO: Was trying to be polite. Frequent.

HC: Frequent?

LO: Fine—constant. Both readily use the title “Doctor,” though you wouldn’t want either to operate on your spleen: Holliday was a graduate of The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, and Thompson holds a Doctorate of Divinity with the New Path Church.

HC: Finally, both spent much of their lives in the Colorado high country.

In fact, they died less than 30 miles apart.

LO: With so much in common, you’d think they’d get along like Irish uncles.

HC: Hunter seems to be in the best overall shape, physically speaking, but that’s not saying a lot. In the right light, Holliday could be mistaken for a wax sculpture.

LO: His stillness adds to the effect.

Has he blinked yet?

HC: Around the poker table he was known for his penetrating stare.

LO: And his short and violent temper.

HC: Neither brought cornermen, which is unusual.

LO: Indeed. They face one another like two solitary and desperate gunfighters squared off on a dusty street.

Except instead of six-shooters they have microphones, which is a precedent for the sport.

HC: That’s right, Larry. As a condition to his participation in the Clash, Mr. Thompson demanded both opponents have microphones “so they wouldn’t be misrepresented by those two goddamn vultures.”

LO: I believe he meant us.

HC: I’ve been called worse by better.

And we’re underway.

(Hunter wins the coin toss.)

Round One Hunter orders double Chivas Regals over crushed ice.

HC: He calls it a “snow cone.” A Thompson standard.

LO: Holliday seems fascinated with the ice. He probably didn’t encounter much of it in the saloons he drank in.

HC: Hunter casually drinks off half his glass. I don’t think he’s being competitive, he’s just drinking at his normal pace. Holliday has yet to— Hunter S. Thompson: Turn on this goddamn microphone! Okay, there, now I can hear myself speak.

HC: It seems as if Hunter is saying something.

LO: Are you sure? It sounds like he’s gnawing on his hand.

HST: I can hear you sons of bitches.

LO: Not sure if I like this new— HST: Of course you don’t like it. Do Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

you think Louie the 16th liked it when they rolled out the guillotine? Okay, first I want to lodge a formal protest with the pigfuckers running this cheap hustle.

HC: I’m starting to understand him.

LO: The price of sight is ugliness.

HST: I can hear you fuckers! Okay, Mr. Holliday, I watched the movie about you . . . “I’ll be your huckleberry” . . . all that . . . the fact of the matter is Mr. Holliday here is a junkie . . . a degenerate morphine addict, as it were . . . not to mention a full-bore homicidal maniac . . . and now here I am, a respected member of the sporting press . . . forced to engage in a savage contest of wills with a man who is at this very moment under the influence of dangerous narcotics. It’s an outrage, and I won’t stand for it.

HC: Hunter seems to be having a bit of sport.

LO: I don’t think morphine would be the least bit advantageous in this contest.

HC: It wouldn’t, and furthermore, if there is anyone under the influence of dangerous drugs, it is plainly Mr. Thompson.

HST: What? What did that fat belly— HC: Hold on—the ref has started counting! Holliday’s glass is empty!

LO: I don’t recall him moving, much less drinking.

HST: Wait, what? I have to finish my drink because the cowboy junky finished his first? What kind of bullshit is this?

LO: It’s called a drinking contest.

HST: Well, I’m going to do it only because I want another drink.

HC: Hunter slides it down in one pour.

Now I wonder what the crafty Mr. Holliday has in store?

HST: Dentists are naturally vicious characters. You have to have the mind of Caligula and the soul of a sadist to be a dentist. Most likely it’ll be viper poison mixed with the entrails of a gutted wart hog.

LO: Perhaps I should retire to the bar for a martini. Mr. Thompson seems to have the color commentary under control.

Round Two Holliday orders four fingers of Old Overholt rye whiskeys neat.

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

HC: I believe both have some experience with the liquor.

HST: Shit, I used to drink this rotten stuff when I was a kid. Where’s the music? Can’t we have any goddamn music? I won’t continue without music.

LO: I knew this was a mistake.

HC: Once again, Holliday’s glass is empty.

HST: Goddamn you sneaky bastard!

LO: I spied Holliday’s trick. He palms the glass and drinks in between his coughing bouts.

HC: Hunter effortlessly knocks his back.

HST: I never thought drinking whiskey would feel like a job.

HC: Is that a Martini, Larry?

LO: Nothing gets past you, Howard.

Round Three Hunter orders 32-ounce frozen strawberry daiquiris.

HC: Holliday seems perplexed by the large colorful cocktail.

LO: How can you tell?

HC: I saw him blink.

LO: Ah. He whispers something to the referee, who signals a waiter.

HC: Who brings a spoon.

LO: He must think it’s some sort of fancy porridge.

HST: Well, hell. To each his own.

HC: Hunter uses a straw.

HST: I mean, if this goddamn hillbilly wants to drink with a spoon, who am I to say the befuddled old dingbat is wrong?

HC: Considering his rep for a short temper, Holliday is taking the insults well.

LO: He’s not armed. And he probably had to endure all manner of wild-eyed frontier vulgarians in his day.

HC: If by endure you mean shoot or stab, yes, he did.

Round Four Holliday orders double Red Eyes neat.

HC: Red Eye was a generic term for the sort of frontier whiskey you’d find in less reputable establishments.

LO: Calling it whiskey is like calling Hunter a journalist.

HST: What? What was that? What did 43

the bullfruit say?

HC: As I understand it, the recipe involves raw alcohol “aged” with creosote, rattlesnake heads, ink, chewing tobacco, and red peppers.

LO: Good heavens! While it’s no surprise Holliday trundled out this cannon, I sense this is a counter, a punishment if you will, for Hunter’s fancy porridge.

HC: Holliday tips down half his drink, grimaces the slightest bit, then settles back with a sigh.

LO: Hunter has a taste. And spits it back in his glass!

HC: No spill, no foul.

HST: Ye gods! What is this swill?

Doc Holliday: A gambler’s ruin.

HC: You know, it wasn’t the voice I

men into violence.

LO: So he could shoot them in “self defense.”

HC: It’s a good system. Especially if you’re best friends with the town sheriff.

HST: I ran for Sheriff, you know.

DH: You don’t say. I don’t suppose you were elected.

HST: No, I— DH: Of course you weren’t. No town could function with that many fools.

HST: Well, you obviously haven’t been to Aspen. To hell with this. Why are we even here? Who cares that I can drink more whiskey than you?

DH: Or me you.

HC: I can almost hear the stomachs drop out of every heavy Thompson bettor in the With his second call, Holliday has room.

Well . . already found a gaping hole in Hunter’s HST: . sure. Who cares if a junkie much-hyped “seamless” defense. can out-drink me? How is that knowledge going to was expecting. He sounds more like help anyone? a Kentucky colonel than a maniacal HC: Why should football teams play gunman. each other?

HST: The Sphinx finally speaks. I was HST: Right . . . well . . . fuck that . . . my beginning to think you were a dummy. record stands for itself. I don’t need DH: A dummy, sir? some dumb contest to tell me I know HST: Yeah, a dummy. You know, deaf how to drink. Fuck this. I’ll see you and dumb, a goddamn waterhead. fuckers— DH: I don’t know many waterheads LO: There was a lot of talk among the who graduated dental school with high handicappers that Hunter lacked the honors. And if you like, I can fix that fire in his belly, and here it is. mouth of yours.

HST: Fuck you, you— HST: Oh no, I don’t want any of your HC: He wouldn’t have gotten past frontier dentistry.

Nixon anyway.

DH: I wasn’t speaking of dentistry.

HST: What?

HST: Oh-ho! Did you hear that? This LO: If I may use Mr. Thompson’s verjunkie dentist just threatened me. nacular, Nixon would have stomped That’s a nasty cough you got there, him like a rat in a closet.

Doc. You should take something for it.

HST: Nixon! What sort of sick fuck let DH: I am. that monster in the contest? He can’t HC: And with that, Holliday empties drink. He has four martinis and turns his glass. into a goddamn hyena. Which is an HST: Goddamn you! improvement, of course, but— HC: Hunter jumps up, fills his cheeks, HC: It would be no contest. It explains shakes his head violently and forces why the doctor—so called—is throwit down. Some sort of weird bullfrog ing the match. system.

LO: Of course. He rightly fears the LO: And with his second call, Holliday severe thrashing he would receive at has already found a gaping hole in hands of the vastly superior drinker, Hunter’s much-hyped “seamless” Richard Milhous Nixon, the former, defense. and dare I say, finest president your HC: And he’s getting under Hunter’s country ever produced. skin. Holliday was a master of goading HST: You don’t think I know what 44

you’re doing? Dangling that goddamn Nixon in front of me like a stinking piece of meat, trying to goad me into stomping this poor goddamn hillbilly.

LO: There is little doubt Hunter would end up groveling at Nixon’s feet, licking his shoes and whimpering for mercy like a whipped cur.

HST: Goddamn it to hell! Okay, fine, your evil little scheme worked. I want that bastard’s head on a pole! I’m all twisted up. I demand a break to, uh, freshen up, as it were.

LO: Why not? You’ve gotten everything else you wanted.

By mutual consent, both contestants leave the table to “freshen up.”

Round Five Thompson orders double Wild Turkey bourbons on the rocks.

LO: Comfortable ground for Thompson.

HC: Maybe so, but he’ll never get past Holliday by ordering bourbon. On a good day, Doc was said to have tucked away up to six quarts of bourbon in a sitting.

HST: Bullshit! Nobody drinks that much. Did you?

DH: I don’t rightly know. After the fifth bottle I generally lose count.

HST: Bullshit!

HC: Both men seem to have taken on a different tone since returning from their “break.”

LO: Of course! They’re both high on drugs!

HC: The game has changed, Larry.

LO: Yes, but I don’t have to like it.

HC: I noticed you injected yourself with a number of large martinis during the break, as well.

LO: Why not? There are no rules anymore. If the drinkers get to commentate then the commentators get to drink.

HST: Yes, why not?

LO: You see? Even the bedlamite agrees.

HC: Back to the action, Doc Holliday has once again made an empty glass appear in front of him.

HST: Goddamn you!

HC: And once again, Hunter leaps to his feet to knock back his Turkey, while cursing at his opponent. Now he’s leaning in his face.

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

HST: I tried to treat you like a goddamn human being but now your treachery has pissed me off.

LO: Holliday pays no mind.

If anything, he seems very relaxed. There’s more color in his cheeks. Either the liquor is settling him or— HST: Do you hear that?

They’re saying you shot up in the men’s room. Well?

HC: Holliday seems to be in a world all his own.

Round Six Holliday orders quadruple Tarantula Juices.

HC: Another high-proof brain-mangler manufactured in the filthy back rooms of frontier saloons. I think this one features gunpowder and chimney soot.

LO: Odd how, when the bartenders said they didn’t have any gunpowder, both men were able to produce live ammunition. From their pockets.

HC: Like a man checking his hole card and finding a big fat ace, Holliday takes a long draw and settles back with content. Hunter has a taste.

HST: Hot damn! Hot goddamn! That is actual straight-up fucking poison. How did you cowboys drink that godawful shit?

DH: It ain’t how but why. It eats holes in my memory and I fill them up with speculations of my kindness to my fellow man.

HST: What’s that, some old serial-killer wisdom?

DH: Here’s the truest thing I know.

HC: And with that, Holliday pours down the rest of his glass.

LO: I shudder to think what that tastes like.

HST: Shudder to think? I have to drink it the goddamn stuff.

HC: He gets down half on the seven count then comes up for a bite of air then— LO: Downs the last of it on the ten.

That was very close. I’m starting to think it’s Hunter who’s mismatched.

Holliday’s long study with bad liquor has gifted him with a special kind of hammer.

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

HST: He’s been bitten by cobras so many times he’s immune to their venom. Whatever shall Hunter do?

LO: I’m going to play a game of my own.

Every time he talks, I drink. Waiter! A pitcher of martinis!

Round Seven Thompson orders two bottles of Heineken.

HC: Might as well. The bourbon isn’t making a dent.

LO: A sign of weakness. After all the tall glasses of whiskey, this is like a cry for help. He— HST: Cry for help, the hell— LO: Why are we even here? This match doesn’t need commentators, it needs a game warden. I won’t do another match where he gets to talk.

HST: There’s a rhythm to drinking, you understand. As long as you stay in that rhythm, that groove, you can drink for hours, days, decades. If you fall out of the rhythm, even just for a second, you fall to shit.

DH: Delphinum natare doces.

HST: What?

LO: He said, “ You’re teaching a dolphin to swim.”

HST: Dolphin! More like a hammerhead shark. Sir, are you aware of how many people you killed?

DH: Well, that ain’t something a gentleman— HST: Twenty by most historians’ count.

Did you know that?

DH: Well, that’s a mighty high number.

HST: Twenty men in the ground. Do you ever think about them, staring up at the wood of their coffin lids with dead eyes?

LO: Is he trying to be clever? Is he trying to play on Holliday’s— DH: Are you asking if I have a conscience?

HST: I suppose I am.

DH: I coughed that up with my lungs a long time ago.

HST: Listen, I’m not interviewing you for a dime western. Don’t give me your pat little answers when I— HC: Holliday tilts his bottle and sucks out the beer like a vacuum. Hunter manages to finish on the six.

Round Eight Holliday orders triple forty rods neat.

HST: Only triples? This one must really suck. What’s in this awful shit?

LO: If you’d shut up we’d tell you. Tell him, Howard.

HC: This kind of “whiskey” was particular to Texas. It was called forty rod because it was supposedly so powerful that it could kill you at forty rods, which is about 220 yards.

HST: Ho-ho. Kill you at forty rods. And I’m going to drink a big glass of the fucker.

LO: Oh look, he’s to his feet again. How unexpected!

HST: Goddamn this! I don’t have time 45

for this dimwit shit-kicker. Do you understand me, huckleberry?

HC: Have you noticed how Doc’s right hand has slipped beneath the table?

HST: This junkie is jerking off under the table! I’m a doctor of divinity in good standing. I can’t be expected to put— LO: Probably a reflex. Probably where he kept his .44 derringer.

HC: The hand comes out suddenly!

He’s got a— LO: He’s got a handful of fingers. He’s just making his fingers into a gun.

HC: He smiles briefly, coughs, picks up his glass and tips it down with three

HC: Stubbornly, some would say foolishly, he keeps coming back with bourbon.

LO: This is not your typical bourbon.

The Very Very Old is 12 years in the barrel and 100 proof. Top tier. Perhaps I’ll— HST: I’m trying to bring civilization to this savage.

DH: This man, if that’s what this creature claims to be, speaks like a patient far-gone in a fever dream. If he were in my office, I’d prescribe a potion of hot peppers and laudanum settled in a pint of whiskey.

HST: Hell, I’d probably drink it. I think I drank that last round.

“Whipped cur, am I? Get ready for the brutal ten thousand pound shit hammer!” big gulps. My God! LO: Hah! Now he’s got him!

HC: Hunter stops pacing, seizes his glass and— LO: Gets down barely a third.

HC: He shakes his head savagely, like he’s trying to shake the taste out of his mouth. He tips again on the six count.

He’s doing that bullfrog thi— LO: He’s done! Auf Wiedersehen, herr doktor! Don’t forget to send us a postcard from— HC: He’s still drinking! Nine, ten! And he’s done! Once again he finished just in time.

LO: He’s doomed. He’s just bouncing around off the ropes while Holliday lands skull-cracker after skull-cracker.

Doc is going to murder him next time.

HC: Hunter pounds the table furiously.

LO: Holliday remains eerily still. I wonder how many times Holliday would have shot or stabbed Hunter by now if he were— DH: Six. HC: Well. There’s your answer.

HST: Just six? Hell, I’ve got to try harder.

LO: You know who should really try harder? These bloody waiters. This pitcher has been sucking air for what feels like minutes.

Round Nine Thompson orders double Very Very Old Fitzgerald bourbons neat.

46

HC: Suddenly Hunter is civil and folksy.

LO: Maybe they’ll join hands and sing Kumbaya.

HC: Wait—are you drunk?

LO: Why not?

HST: Yes, why not?

LO: See? HST: You know, Mr. Holliday, it’s an interesting observation of popular culture. I mean, you’ve been portrayed in dozens of movies and books, you’re a fixture in American history. Why? When it comes down to it, you were just a psychotic croaking people left and right for no good reason at all.

They should have put you in a cage and yet here you are, a national hero.

I mean, more Americans know about you than Albert Schweitzer.

DH: How many men did Schweitzer kill?

HST: None, as far as I know. That’s just it. You represent the dark side of America, and the dark side has a very deep memory.

DH: They tried hanging me four times.

HST: Exactly! Why couldn’t they get it done? What’s your secret?

DH: Knowing when to leave town.

Round Ten Holliday orders quadruple Taos Lightnings neat.

HC: Yet another whipcrack whiskey from the Old West. Though this was more of an adulterated moonshine,

coming in at around 130 proof.

HST: Jesus! How much more of this cheapjack bullshit can I be expected to take? Why can’t you order good whiskey? Did you like the Old Fitz?

DH: I did.

HST: Then why don’t— DH: Because I’m trying to kill you, you self-satisfied son of a bitch, and they took away my goddamn gun.

HC: Hunter, for once, is speechless.

LO: Maybe he’ll shut up for awhile so we professionals can— HST: All right. Well, hell, at least now we know what kind of party this is.

HC: The coon speculates why the coon dog don’t just bring him the chicken.

HST: Yeah, I got it. It’s a fucking war. I tried being civil with you, remember that.

LO: Rather familiarly, Hunter lunges to his feet and begins pacing in front of the table.

HST: I’d leave, but these jackals would say I ran from Nixon.

LO: That’s right. The winners get to write history.

HST: That’s what’s wrong with— DH: I’d rather hear the howl of a wolf than the whine of a whipped dog.

HST: Are you calling me a whipped dog?

DH: I ain’t lifted a finger. You’re ringing your own bell.

HC: And, again, Holliday sinks his drink in one go.

LO: He punctuates his big sentences with big action. I like this fellow.

HC: Hunter tries to screw his mouth around his drink and— LO: Can’t do it. Fucker is doomed.

HC: So this is the drunk Laurence Olivier.

LO: That’s me.

HC: He shouts something guttural at the waiter, who immediately gives him two straws.

LO: Sure, he gets quick service.

HC: Hunter jams them in the glass and sucks furiously.

LO: Holliday is actually laughing.

HC: Eight, nine—he got it down.

LO: By using a sorority girl trick!

HST: Alright, fuck this. Whipped cur, am I? Get ready for the brutal ten thousand pound shit hammer!

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

Round Eleven Thompson orders Brutal Ten Thousand Pound Shit Hammers.

HC: So it’s an actual cocktail. Hunter supervised the making of these huge beasts. The main gears seem to be vodka, red wine and some unknown dark powder.

LO: Hunter reaches under the table and comes up a boombox.

HST: It’s time to put the zap on this geek.

LO: He jabs a button. Some sort of off-key caterwauling with voodoo drums and— HC: “Sympathy for the Devil,” by the Rolling Stones.

LO: My, aren’t you hep. Holliday seems rattled.

HST: Now I’ve got you, swine!

HC: This time it’s Hunter who begins chugging the murky concoction. Annnnnnnd, boom, it’s down.

HC: Fast is fine, but accuracy is final.

HST: You’re accurate, huh?”

HC: We shall see.

LO: Holliday collects himself, picks up his drink, doesn’t bother smelling it, and lays it back. He smacks his lips and considers.

DH: In my day we called that Cactus Wine.

HC: I think he finished it faster than Hunter. Thompson’s weird gambit has failed.

HST: The hell it has.

DH: We’re gonna ride with the devil tonight.

HST: Oh, yes we are.

Round Twelve Doc orders Dr Holliday’s Patent Pain Killers.

HC: In a tit-for-tat, Holliday mixes up his own special cocktail. I saw pure grain spirit, some herbs and something from a dark brown bottle—I’d guess laudanum.

HST: Hot damn. Now we’re having a party.

HC: I wonder what that green powder— LO: Ask the son of a bitch. It’s not like the old days where we had to guess what the son of a bitch thinks.

HST: Larry, I’m starting to like you.

LO: Well, whoop-de-fucking do.

HST: How do you feel, Doc? DH: I feel fine.

HST: Just wait until it gets on top of you.

LO: I could be mistaken, but Holliday’s pallor just keeps getting better. He looks almost human now.

HC: Both men seem to have settled down, each sipping their Painkillers.

LO: This is never going to end. This is going to go on forever.

A week from now we’ll still— HST: Tell me what it was like back then.

DH: Death was always there. I mixed up with everything that came along so I could forget myself. It occupied me and took my mind off my troubles.

LO: It’s strikes me that Hunter has been engaging in a deliberate strategy: his sudden outbursts, then kindly chats, then more vicious shouting. It’s all designed to wear Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

down his opponent emotionally, to make— HC: Yeah, I don’t think there’s any sort of conscious strategy involved, so much as a psychotic personality being allowed to roam free.

HST: Richard Fucking Nixon!

LO: He blames everything on Nixon.

HC: No, he just showed up. Standing behind Holliday is none other than Richard Milhous Nixon.

Richard Nixon: Hello, Hunter.

HST: Jesus! Here he is. The fiend behind the fiend! It’s all very clear now . . . what back alley of Hell did you crawl out of ?

Richard Nixon: Just stopped by to see how my good friend Doctor Holliday is doing.

HST: Richard Fucking Nixon!

RN: Doc, did you know I raised the funds for my first political campaign on poker tables?

HST: What the hell does— RN: In college they called me “Iron Butt” because of all the hours I’d spend in the library. Did you know that. Hunter.

HST: Sweet Jesus! What kind of vicious mindfuck is he trying to lay on me?

LO: A grinning Nixon shoots two victory signs in the air— 47

Gold Nuggets of Knowledge Garnered From Forty-Ounce Philosophers “Life’s too short for suicide.”

Unknown drinker at an informal wake in a Colfax bar.

“Sober ‘up’ suggests something positive and fun is happening. I think we should change the phrase to ‘sober down.’”

A savage-looking but surprising erudite day-drinker at Brendan’s Pub. “It’s sort of like the underground economy everybody is talking about, except I call it the I Drink You Under the Table Economy.”

Hugh M. explains why the last person standing should be allowed to walk out on a group tab.

“Here I am sending you this mail to know the reply which should be said to bartender when he offer to touch the beer bottle when he come to serve you!”

Email/riddle from the iPod of Vicky at very late hour.

“Today has been a good couple of days.”

Shepperd D. at the tail end of a monumental bender.

“Of course a Manhattan is a brunch drink; it has a fucking cherry in it.”

Alex H., 29, to a sanctimonious mimosa-drinking brunch companion.

“Ordering pizza while drunk is like throwing yourself a surprise party."

Andrea H. via Twitter  48

not to be confused with peace signs—and fades back into the crowd and—just like that, he is gone.

HC: That was odd. And what was with that strange handshake with Holliday?

LO: Perhaps it was some sort of Masonic thing. Were they Masons?

DH: Damn, this is funny.

HST: Oh-ho. Starting to get on top of you, eh, huckleberry?

DH: Not that. This.

HC: Knife! Holliday has a knife!

HST: Holy shit!

DH: Here’s your huckleberry, you son of a bitch.

HC: Holliday lunges forward and Hunter leaps back like a mongoose!

LO: It missed him by a bare inch!

HC: He’s not done! He chases Hunter around the table like— LO: Get him!

HC: Are you— LO: The ref tackles Holliday from behind! Security piles on top!

HC: That’s it. The ref can’t signal it yet, but surely Holliday is disqualified! Hunter Thompson advances!

LO: Think so? Are we sure knifeplay is against the rules now?

HC: Yes, I’m sure. Pretty sure. So all along he was packing a— HST: What the fuck are you talking about? Nixon gave him that shiv!

LO: Come to think of it—did Nixon pass him that blade?

HST: Of course that rat bastard did. He’s wanted a piece of me for decades.

HC: Well, there’s no proof.

HST: Check the video tape!

HC: You insisted that there be no video tape.

HST: Son of a bitch!

LO: The salient question is this: if Nixon did indeed pass that knife, was his intention to eliminate Hunter—literally—from the tournament or disqualify Holliday so he can stomp Hunter later?

HST: I can’t believe this! I was almost gutted on the floor and all these bastards can talk about is Nixon’s Big Plan.

HC: I have to say, the first two bouts of this Clash have given the game a much stranger character.

Hunter S. Thompson wins by disqualification.

Post-Match Interviews HST: What can I say? They worked me me over me like a cheap punk. And it worked. I’m taking Nixon down and whoever gets in my way will be stomped. I’m coming for you, Nixon! Do you hear me, ratfuck? I’m coming for you!

DH: I sincerely do regret letting my anger get the best of me.

And even more deeply and sincerely I regret not getting my knife between the ribs of that son of a bitch.  —Frank Kelly Rich

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

What you drink can say a lot about you—

for better or worse. It seems that, with astonishing frequency, murderers tend to be connected with Richard’s Wild Irish Rose wine.

Described as “the murderers’ national drink” by a Chicago homicide detective in the book What Cops Know, the detective notes, “Invariably, there’s a bottle of it somewhere in the crime scene.”

He goes on to say: “A lot of the murders we get are crimes of passion – but you hate to use the word ‘passion,’ because the

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

idea of a crime of passion is the guy coming home and finding his wife in bed with another guy. In most of our murders, the passion is over who gets the last swig of Richard’s Wild Irish Rose wine… Literally, if you took Richard’s Wild Irish Rose wine off the market, you’d probably prevent half of all homicides.”

It is uncertain as to whether or not the community of killers has adopted this brand as part of its cultural identity. Such knowledge is likely difficult to obtain.

Most murderers tend to be rather tightlipped about their calling in life.

Suffice it to say Richard’s Wild Irish Rose ain’t the kind of wine you drink at a doctor’s wedding. Rather, this is the kind of wine the doctor finds in your system after you get caught with a dead prostitute.

As the U.S. produces more killers (if not more hookers) than any other developed country, “Richard” can count on a steady (commercially-speaking) clientele. The brand arrived on the market in 1954; it sells about two million cases each year. With a price often as little as $2 per pint, this wine can be enjoyed by killers of all income brackets.

At 18% alcohol by volume, it’s quite strong for a wine. That said, any halfassed vodka is twice as potent. So what could it be about Richard’s Wild Irish Rose that makes it such a staple at homicide scenes? Perhaps Richard has distilled some ancient ingredient dating back to the days of Celtic warriors.

In that era, the vast lot of slaying went unpunished. Nowadays, however, the game has changed; killers become convicts, who have to make moonshine out of apples that were probably already fermenting when they first arrived at the prison. It’s a sad situation all around.

And the whole matter has become more complicated: According to the Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands, “community groups” in LA , Portland, San Fran, and Seattle have asked the makers of Richard’s Wild Irish Rose to remove their product from the shelves of liquor stores in high-crime areas.

Regarding the potential removal of this wine, your correspondent was unable to find any killers for comment.  —Ray Cavanaugh 49

I was sitting

in a ragged Lazy-Boy recliner across from an equally ragged Larry Bozeman, proprietor of Bozeman’s Bonds, a bail bonding house. Larry was sitting behind his scarred metal desk. The office reeked of cigarettes, cheap whiskey and the stink of human desperation; I contributed to all three.

“I know you hate these bounty jobs, Rip,” Larry said as he tugged at the bangs of his toupee. “But I need a favor and you need the money. Besides, it’ll be a piece of cake, you know this guy.”

I stabbed out my Camel non-filter in an ashtray molded into a likeness of Kevin Costner. I reached over and picked up a mugshot off Larry’s desk. “ Yeah, I know the guy,” I said. He was Thomas “Ginger” Rogers, a twotime loser and leader of Satan’s Halo, a bottomtier biker gang based out of Golden. He got the moniker “Ginger” not because he had red hair, but because his last name was Rogers. Awhile back I had busted up a child prostitution ring run by Rogers, but the D. A . hadn’t made the charges stick. “ What’s he up to this time?” I asked.

“Same as before, kiddie whores,” Larry replied. “ Why would you bail out this worthless fuck?”

“It’s my business, Rip,” pleaded Larry. “ These lawyers, it’s just a game to them, you know that.”

“And it’s a shitty game the way you play it,” I said. I lit another Camel and stood up. “I’ll take the job. Yeah, I need the money, but even more, I need this asshead Ginger back in jail. Any ideas where he could be holed up?”

“I know for a fact he’s up at his mother’s place in Cheyenne,” Larry said.

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Not Cheyenne.” “ What?” said Larry. “ You know Cheyenne well enough.”

“I know Cheyenne plenty well enough. But it’s Frontier Days right now. That’s got to be a lousy time to go looking for somebody in Cheyenne. Besides, I’ve never even been to Frontier Days.” I crossed the room and opened the office door. I turned back and looked at Larry. “Unlike what most people like to claim, this is my first rodeo.”

It was a beautiful sunny day as I sped north on I-25 in my ‘65 Rambler; unfortunately I hate the sun. I reached into the cooler behind the passenger seat and pulled a 50

frosty can of Tecate out of the ice. I cracked open the poptop and took a long draught of the beer as I passed by a huge fireworks store that signaled to me that I was fast approaching the first highway exit to Cheyenne. I came over a rise and saw the exit ramp and the famous restaurant and motel “Little America” with it’s iconic penguin billboard. I finished the Tecate and tossed the empty back into the cooler.

Mrs. Rogers lived a couple more exits on, near the rodeo arena. I passed by the rodeo arena, its immense parking lot filled with vehicles and with hundreds of people milling about. I got off the highway at the next exit, made a left and drove around a residential area of ‘50s ranch-style homes until I found Mrs. Rogers’s address, 423 Appaloosa Street. I parked a few houses down. I took my snub-nosed .38 Detective Special out of the glove box, stuffed it into the side pocket of my sport coat and stepped out of the car.

I walked up the sidewalk and stopped across from 423 Appaloosa. I didn’t see a Harley parked anywhere, just an old, rusty Buick station wagon sitting in the driveway. I crossed the street and stepped up onto the cracked cement stoop. The curtains were drawn on all the windows I could see. I knocked on the door. It was immediately yanked wide open, surprising me. In the doorway stood a huge woman, at least six foot two or three, 250 pounds, with a massive black beehive hairdo adding to her already considerable height. She was maybe 50 years old and wore a gleaming red patent leather motorcycle jacket over a black turtleneck and black jeans. She glared at me with her kohl-painted eyes, her pointy features and pink lipsticked mouth drawn into grimace. She looked like a giant, pissed-off Chrissie Hynde. “ You thought you was clever parking down the street,” she said. Her voice sounded like she was sharpening knives. “ You gotta be a cop.”

“Rip Griffin, private dick.”

“All cops are dicks, private or regular,” she said.

I let her wisecrack slide; people rarely can pass up making a joke when I announce myself. Maybe I should change the announcement. Then again, fuck people.

“Are you Mrs. Rogers?” “ Why?” “I’m looking for your son, Thomas Rogers.”

Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

“ Why?” “He jumped bail.” “ Why?” “ What, are you five years old? Quit asking me why. Is Thomas Rogers here?”

“Ginger ain’t here,” Mrs. Rogers said.

“I was told by a reliable source he was staying with you.” “ Then your source ain’t reliable. I ain’t talked to Ginger in more’n two years. He knows I don’t like that he messes with kids.”

“Do you think he might be here in Cheyenne?” I asked.

“Probly. He loves Frontier Days.

He hangs around the Plains Hotel downtown. It’s where the big music acts that are playin’ the rodeo stay.” “ Thanks,” I said. I started off the stoop, but stopped to ask a final question. “Mrs. Rogers?” “ What?”

“If you hate cops so much why did you just tell me all that about Ginger?”

“I don’t hate cops, I just feel better when they’re not around.”

I gave her quick smile. “So, you read Bukowski.” “ Who?” “Never mind,” I said. “I just wondered why you gave up your son so easily.”

“Because he’s a perve, sellin’ children, like his Dad and every other goddamn Rogers,” she spat back.

“Now get the fuck off my stoop.”

I drove downtown to Central Avenue and the parking angels found me a spot directly across from the Plains Hotel. I put my .38 back in the glove box and took out a lead-weighted leather sap and put that in my sports coat pocket instead. I got out of the Rambler and hustled across the busy street. I passed by a few Harleys parked at the curb, one of which had a personalized license plate “Ginger.”

This dope made it easy. I made my way through the people crowding the sidewalk and stepped into the lobby of the hotel.

The Plains Hotel was built in the early 1900s to accommodate the cattle barons and lucky prospectors of that era and still had the dusty ornateness of the period. The Sheridan Room was the name of the hotel bar and was located on the left side of the highceilinged lobby. I walked over and stepped through the old fashioned swinging saloon doors.

The saloon was jammed with people, Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

most in cowboy gear of dubious authenticity. It had a long wooden bar with a foot rail and a low ceiling that made the room seem closed in.

The back of the bar was crowded with bottles and had a mirror that ran the length of it; I tried to imagine how many times it had been broken in the course of a century’s worth of bar brawls. Over the mirror hung a painting of a plump nude woman.

It was straight out of an episode of Bonanza. I looked down the length of the mirror to the left end of the bar and staring back at me was the ugly reflection of Thomas “Ginger” Rogers.

He looked me in the eyes and spat a gob of tobacco juice into a red plastic cup. I walked slowly down to where Ginger stood leaning against the bar.

He straightened up and took a pull on his long-necked Miller High Life as I approached. He was wearing his

I waved to the female bartender, a slender redhead wearing Daisy Dukes and halter top; I love the summer. “Miss, could we have three Cazadores?” She brought the bottle and three glasses and began to pour.

“Did you know this is George Michael?” I asked her. She giggled at me.

Michaels slammed his hand down on the bar. “It’s Brett, you asshole!”

“I am an idiot,” I said and picked up my shot glass and threw the tequila into Ginger’s eyes. He bellowed in pain and I whipped the leather sap out of my pocket and hit him once in the left temple. He slid to the floor and flopped around like a landed brook trout for a few seconds then fell into a deep slumber. I got out a pair of cuffs and tightly bound his hands behind his back. The redhead stood watching me with shock all over her face.

The office reeked of cigarettes, cheap whiskey and the stink of human desperation; I contributed to all three.

“Satan’s Halo” colors. Some of the beer dribbled into his foot-long goatee.

“How you doin’, Rip?” “Ginger asked with a brown-toothed grin. “Up here for the rodeo?”

“Nah, I’m just doing a favor for a friend,” I said. “ That friend wouldn’t be Larry Bozeman would it?”

“Might be.”

Ginger kept grinning. “Speaking of friends, this guy here is a new buddy of mine. You remember the band Poison?

This here is the singer.”

I looked at the long-haired pretty boy smiling at me. He was dressed in the aforementioned faux cowboy duds.

“Really?” I asked him. “ You’re George Michael?”

He frowned at me. “No, I’m not that pussy from Wham!” he bristled. “I’m Brett Michaels.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “My bad. I guess the leopard spot spandex fooled me.”

Michaels looked at Ginger. “ Who is this dick?”

Ginger’s grin turned malevolent. “ That’s exactly what he is, a private dick, and I think he’s looking for me.”

“Aw, let’s have shot before we get down to business, whaddya say?”

“Do me a favor and call the cops for me, Red,” I told her and flashed my badge. She took out a cell phone and dialed the number. Michaels was staring at me with his fists clenched.

“Don’t try it, George, uh, I mean Brett.

This kiddie pimp isn’t worth your time.

Let’s just drink these shots.” I picked up the shot that had been poured for Ginger. “Sorry for all the crap. I’m a just a jerk who can’t keep his mouth quiet. Cheers.”

Michaels picked up his glass. “No hard feelings.” We drank our shots and as I put down my glass, Michaels took a swing at me and I had to put him down with the blackjack. It was fun.

A short time later the cops showed up. They gave me some grief about Michaels, but Red backed up my story so they let it go. They hauled Ginger off to the hoosegow to hold him for the Denver cops and I gave Red 50 bucks and we did a shot together. I went back out to the Rambler and as I climbed the ramp heading south, I cracked open a cold Tecate and thought about how I still hadn’t been to my first rodeo and how maybe I should drive back up to Cheyenne tomorrow and see if Red might take me to one.  —David Sipos 51

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Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

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Do you remember your first drink?

I know, I know—asking an anonymous, career drunkard if he or she remembers anything is, necessarily, something of a stupid question. There are entire years I don’t remember; I still feel like I might’ve turned 21 yesterday. But the first drink—aye, that’s an indelible memory, your own personal “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” For the night of your first drink, God willing, was the night you cut your own leash, took your last vestiges of pastel-colored, soft-edged, Fisher-Price childhood and set those sons of bitches aflame.

And then you beat your breast and bellowed, announcing to the whole world within ear-

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shot, “I’M ALIVE! I’M AN ADULT! AND I’M DRUUUUUNK!” Let me tell you about my first drink.

I was 16 years old, dull and sober as a pregnant sow, having spent all the previous years of my life swearing to no one, and to no end, that I would never, ever succumb to the evils of alcohol. Folly most foul, I thought, and for most of my childhood, I was driven against it. Who knows why. My parents didn’t drink, I wasn’t supposed to drink—drinking must be bad. So I’ve always been a peculiar kind of proud that this moral foundation I’d grown up in eroded so quickly, and with such aplomb.

At 16 I was sober; by 18 I was scoring nine out of ten on Internet tests with titles like, “Are You an Alcoholic?”— by then, the only A-grades I was making in anything.

I grew up a weirdo shitkicker in the grassy countryside of northeast Oklahoma, a patch of the globe that strikes me now, sentimentally, as too easy to criticize, but difficult to defend. The place is home and haven, like most of vanilla America, to an enduring sense of existential ennui, where the main domestic product is a listless lack of purpose.

It’s an odd, unsatisfying place to be a teenager, growing up almost comically safe, with always nothing to do. They have this same problem in, say, Alaska, or the upper Northwest Territories of Canada, just to a much more dramatic extent—you can imagine how much drinking they get done up there.

Anyway, you know what they say about idle hands. They are Agents of Sin. Also, they shoplift things.

The scene is a balmy summer night, in a parking lot on one side of my hometown’s only commercial street. I was with three friends, in two cars, myself by far the youngest.

Across the street were two stores— the Wal-Mart and the liquor shop.

The goal of the night was simple: we wanted to drink. Our plan—our first plan, plan A , all the way—was also simple: robbery.

I mean, how hard could it really be? *

*

*

In his book Getting Wasted, the sociologist Thomas Vander Ven defines drunkenness as “a process, an arc, an evolution of events starting when one contemplates drinking, continuing down a crooked path of consumption stops and starts, and ending some hours later.” He defines it as an adventure, a journey. Drunkenness as the story of a night, rather than a biological state.

Now, professionally, he was strictly studying college students—a class of drinkers who are, in significant numbers, pre-21. Children, idiots, many would say, adults in name only that know nothing about the world, about risk, or their own mortality, Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

but think they just might know it all. Such mindsets are, of course, holdovers from adolescence, adolescence itself simply a step removed from childhood. So if the act of drinking is such a to-do for college students—a whole arc, with twists, turns, and many stories—then imagine what an adventure it must be for actual children, having to find ways to weave all this rebel shit around curfews, parents, and seven-hour school days. Better yet, don’t imagine. Remember.

One of the things I feel like none of us realizes about the earliest days of our drinking is that, apart from discovering the World’s Greatest Pastime, we’re getting up to things that we’re never going to do again.

here, again? To hell with them.

Break things, steal liquor, search all cabinets and drawers thoroughly for controlled substances. See if you can open the safe.

Oh shit, guys, look: we found a gun.

4. Come outside! Paul’s gonna lick the electric fence!

5. Taco Bell.

6. Have sex in every bed, vomit on every surface, pass out somewhere in the general neighborhood.

7. Leave at sunrise. Never tell the people who live here what you’ve done. Keep it a secret for the rest of your life.

The night of your first drink, God willing, was the night you cut your own leash, took your last vestiges of pastel-colored, soft-edged, FisherPrice childhood and set those sons of bitches aflame.

A lot of this has to do with naivety, innocence, and idiocy. Things like drinking warm McCormick vodka in a house full of ice and orange juice, or trying desperately to figure out how to make these Jell- O shots set before Joey’s dad comes home— Guys, seriously, I think we used too much Everclear, it’s not setting, we’re never going to be able to move all these, oh my God we started a small fire. Y ’know, joyous memories of discovery and growth. But then there are the other things we were inclined to do—criminal, immoral, and gross.

Recall, for instance, the last party you attended. Did its progression, with any resemblance, follow these steps?

1. Wait, for days or weeks if necessary, for a house’s lawful occupants to leave their home unguarded for a single night.

2. Go to this house. Invite over 2, 10, 20 people.

3. Proceed to party. Who lives

Divorced from context, this is essentially criminal insanity—especially the Taco Bell. Imagine a group of grown-ass grown-ups having this kind of night. The image is sad, and scary. (Which is not to say, still, that I wouldn’t go to this party—I mean, come on.)

Dammit, I’m just gonna say it— there was magic to my teenage drinking, and I bet it was special for you too. Those, oh, halcyon days when every party was an adventure, every drink a calculated rebellion, every successful night an implicit testament to you and your allies’ grit, persistence, cleverness and daring.

For as kids, our drunkenness—our arc—started well before we had beers in hand, recall. First, there was the daunting and unpredictable challenge—the bare, basic thrill—of acquisition.

Perhaps you had it differently, but for me, for my people, our nights began with nothing. We had no stores or stockpiles, at least not enough for 55

more than a party of one. We left home on Fridays hopeful, but hardly certain, that we’d end the night in our cups. We failed, and often, but on other nights we found the loopholes, and threaded them flawlessly.

Nothing tasted sweeter than success.

The challenge, the anticipation, was itself intoxicating. Other peoples’ older brothers, crazy uncles, townie

feel I was missing much. A sip here, a can there. I remember being so disappointed, so offended by my friends that did this. I tsked so hard, like a judgmental little baby. Dark times.

Boo me.

The next logical step was the classic brute force method— the grab and dash, the wreck and run. This one took some balls, no matter what. In my neighborhood, it was a job for the small and swift—and size did matter, because a successful escape invariably involved a daring leap into the trunk of a getaway car. I remember one story, this kid named Ricky— God, he was great at this. I wasn’t there for this one, but word

I’ve often wondered what evolutionary purpose was served by the phenomenon of adolescent recklessness, historically, in our far-back animal pasts, before the days of Bacardi 151. strangers—how did you get it? You must have had a scheme, or been privy to someone else’s. Unless your family just gave it to you, in which case…I don’t know, that sounds like kind of a saddening childhood. (Oh, so you were the one with the Cool Mom and the Party House!) If you grew up like I did, in a thoroughly not-college town where the youth leave and the retired return, then it wasn’t always easy to find a comrade of-age or a helpful bum to buy your booze by proxy. So if you grew up like I did, you probably stole it.

There were, of course, lots of ways to do this.

The beginner method—stealing from your parents—rose from, I suppose, convenience and opportunity.

Like I said, I never did this. Somehow, I’m the product of two conscientious abstainers. So this is a practice I only ever heard about, not that I 56

was that one night he pulled off this heist in service of himself and some friendly football players, big guys, practically grown men.

They met no trouble—Ricky was in, he was out, and it was back to home base, where the drivers popped the trunk, tasting victory already, to find diminutive little Ricky, curled up and cozy around one six-pack of Busch. This was intolerable, so back in the trunk he went. The first time had been easy; no one had even seen him. He wasn’t so smooth the second time. Oh, they saw him. But he still escaped. If I’m remembering right, the last thing he heard from inside the trunk before the tires started squealing was someone behind him, shouting distantly, “Hey, some skinny girl just stole y’all beer!”

Casual crime, committed without a second thought. These were the methods we adopted. All morals

aside, I would never do this now.

(What’s that? Steal a 30-pack? Sir, I am a goddamn adult. I have a salary and a criminal record. There are stakes now. I’ve got a life to lose.) So this is not advocacy I’m doing. It’s just a matter of fact.

Of course, you’d have to be an idiot to think that this high-visibility method of thievery was at all sustainable in a town so small as ours, so we got clever. We plotted in classrooms, traded tips and tricks, cased stores like real-life criminals.

We had classic plays. “Dropping the Nachos” meant a two-man job at a gas station, which worked by having one guy head in alone, make a mess—by, say, dropping a plastic tray of nachos—thereby providing a distraction for the second guy to sneak in, grab beer and get out.

The “Cooler Switch” was a Wal-Mart heist, accomplished by coordinated teams working surreptitiously to fill the largest cooler we could buy with bottles of booze we legally couldn’t— a classic smuggling scheme, made extra hilarious if you immediately returned the empty cooler. (Shoutout to Mary: that was impressively brazen.)

But it was all brazen, all bold, all reckless. A lot of it was ugly. A lot of it was wrong—like too much drunk driving, or the crying, oh God, the crying. Not all of these memories are good, and not everything we did is defensible. But it all happened. We all did it, the good shit and the bad, before our drinks were even legal for us to possess, before we’d even thought about growing up.

I’ve often wondered what evolutionary purpose was served by the phenomenon of adolescent recklessness, historically, in our far back, animal pasts, before the days of Bacardi 151. Maybe it was how we were moved to leave our nests and approach the world, chests thrust out and boasting. Or maybe the teenagers were in charge of finding out which plants and berries horrifically killed you, and which ones got you high. Someone had to do it.

Practically in spite of myself, sometimes I cringe today at the things I did while teenaged and wasted—but at the same time, I’m glad they happened, and I’m glad I Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

got away with it. I’m old enough now to recognize that was never a guarantee. Even the ugly memories are good now—little snapshots from some whirlwind years I know I’ll never live again, when my idea of a good time was a long walk down country roads at night, drinking warm beer from a friend’s backpack. Before I had taste, or the ability to realistically cultivate it.

Those are my memories, and they are magical, and you have yours, and they are too. But magic like this is hard to sustain, and it’s probably not a good idea to try.

But no matter how many drinks we have, the memories of our firsts are never going to fade, not really. In a way, they’ve ruined us. Never again will we experience parties so thrilling, even as we grow and get better at throwing them ourselves. The camaraderie we felt while plotting out nights with friends, our fingers crossed, will be rare to recapture in our lives, and if we live a hundred years or more, we’ll again never taste drinks so sweet as the ones that got us started down this teetering path we’re on.

Which reminds me—my first drink. So there we were, the four of us, sizing up our targets. The plan was for us to split up. Two of us would hit the Wal-Mart. Meanwhile, me and my buddy Baker would break into the liquor store, through the back. It was closed for the night. I mean, how hard could it be? It looked easy. It all did—it was a good plan, this two-pronged assault. (This was, like I said, the very beginning of my criminal career; at this point in my life, I’d never stolen a thing.)

Nor did I, that night. Baker and I stopped at the store’s back door, obviously not intending even a little bit to actually try anything. We chickened out. The other two did not. And their haul, stuffed into a black backpack and carried out the front door like it weren’t nothin’? Why, it was a bottle of Boone’s Farm Blue Hawaiian, and a 12-pack of what is now, to me, an old familiar foe—Natty Light.

Now, like I said, this is Oklahoma, and one of those things about it that I find impossible to defend are its arcane liquor laws, which dictate, among other things, a maximum alcohol content of 3.2% by weight for everything sold chilled in, say, a Wal-Mart. (These laws should also explain my friends’ questionable beverage selection.)

At the time, I did not know about these limits. But at the time, I wouldn’t have cared.

Proud, excited, full of mirth and laughter, we drove from the main drag to the outside of town, into the hills, where we hopped the fence of some massive property, and began to drink like . . . well, we drank like children, dancing in the light of the full moon and the brilliant stars, trespassing in some stranger’s field.

Someone passed me the Boone’s Farm, its seal unbroken ‘til it met my grasp. I put the bottle to my lips, tipped it up and felt myself cross a threshold. I closed my eyes. Just like that, a part of my life, one aspect among many, came to its end and left me. Another part came to life, sprung nascent, thin and mewling, from a bottle of Boone’s Farm Blue Hawaiian.

I drank the whole bottle.

I shotgunned my first beer.

And then I threw up.  —Sarah Szabo Modern Drunkard Magazine Issue 58

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What's the drinking scene like in LA? How does it compare to Philly?

In Philly, nobody can hear you scream…

Dan Dunn's Dream Bender Team: I’ll assume you mean famous people and go with Marilyn Monroe, Nico from the Velvet Underground, supermodel Ana Beatriz Barros and Kate Winslet. My B-team would include comedians Greg Giraldo and Mitch Hedberg, Jack Kerouac and Cleopatra.

Best qualities in a bartender: Mad skills. Great personality. No BS. Humility. Big boobs (female).

Worst: No skills. Lousy personality. Full of shit. Full of themselves. Big boobs (male).

What was it like drinking with Hunter S. Thompson?

You know that sensation you have when you lean too far back on a chair and catch yourself just as the chair begins to tip over? Drinking with Hunter felt like that all the time.

Hangovers aside, are there any downsides to being a professional drunk?

My job is alternately wonderful, brutal, glamorous, reprehensible, dangerous, hangoveriffic, toxic, deadly, a gift from the lipid solvent gods, and the best excuse for pretty much any horrible behavior you can think of. It’s the best job for picking up chicks, and the worst for keeping them.

How do you know when it’s time to stop drinking and go home?

When the room stops spinning and I start spinning.

The vast majority of history’s great writers were also tremendous drunks who didn’t care who knew about it. Most of today’s writers begin weeping hysterically when you suggest they have a second glass of wine. What happened?

The Internet. Without a doubt. It’s created a world full of cowards and creeps . . . and not the good kind of creeps.

Can you trust someone who doesn’t drink?

If he’s driving home from the bar, I have to.



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Wild-eyed and soaked, a naked young man breaks as people leapt in fully clothed with bottles in their the surface of the swimming pool full of party debris— hands and generally started getting lairy.1 bottles, pool side chairs and an…er, Cadillac—gasps When darkness began to fall, Moon was naked, in a lungful of air an attempts to leg it from a cop waitthrowing handfuls of his giant cake at people and having with a gun in his hand. ing a mental time when the local police showed up to With superb comedy timing, the drenched, darkbreak up the festivities. haired youth slips on a large chunk of birthday cake It was then that Moon stumbled off and jumped into and is arrested, the swirling red and blue lights illumia limo that was parked up but was so pissed could only nating the carnage. giggle as it went backwards, smashed through a fence To be fair, most 21st birthdays get and sank slowly to the bottom of the a bit out of hand. But when you’re pool with him still behind the wheel.

The Who were the the speed-fuelled drummer of a When he swam to the surface he British band legendary for smashwas lifted by the armed policeman original Jack Daniels ing their instruments on stage in a and put in jail for the rest of the swilling, TV-set hurl- night. wail of guitar static, feedback and shattered wood, you’ve got to go one ing party boys of muAnd the damage from his birthstep further. day bash? A $50,000 bill for repairs, The Who were the original Jack sic and their drummer a life ban from the hotel chain and Daniels swilling, TV-set hurling parKeith Moon was the the town—plus the legacy of one of ty boys of music and their drummer the most legendary stories in Rock n’ head lunatic.

Keith Moon was the head lunatic.

Roll history.

With huge amphetamine-dished Moon was big drinking pals with eyes and arms flailing, Moon pounded out the rhythms madcap actor Oliver Reed and on his 40th birthday on his kit as the sweat flew off him and the drink and party did a helicopter impression by jumping up off the drugs set his heart racing. But that was the least of his table and grabbing hold of the whipping blades of an eccentricities. Oh yes. Moon’s party trick was to flush overhead fan, splattering the guests with blood as he sticks of dynamite down toilets and another favorite gashed his hands. was to launch furniture out of high windows.

Reed later reckoned that was the moment he realSo when his coming-of-age birthday came around, ized his drinking had gone out of control—and six the sharp-suited “Moon the Loon” was ready to party months later, in 1978, Moon was dead after an overdose hard. of sleeping pills. He was 33.

The Who were touring America and stopping at the However, that didn’t stop him getting an invite to Holiday Inn in Flint, where they had been on the piss play with The Who at the 2012 London Olympics from all day with the rest of the band, Herman’s Hermits, dim-witted officials. How Keith would have laughed.  who they were opening for and the road crews.

—Jon Tait More people began to arrive as the day went on and the drink kept flowing, much of it ending up in the pool 1 Aggressive or rowdy.

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Your Plan B is a lot like your Plan A , except with more liquor.

Plan C is getting your hangover drunk.

The NSA is pretty sure you own that liquor store.

Detox vans always drive by you reeeeeal slow.

Day bartenders are certain you’re a day drinker and night bartenders are positive you’re a night drinker.

While you agree “wino” can be a misnomer, “atrisk public inebriate” just sounds like your public defender is trying to be careful and clever at the same time.

You thought you said, “Give me another shot of whiskey,” but bartender heard, “Ithaca New York Taco Johns.”

You won’t give change to panhandlers with “Clean and Sober” on their signs because it’s like backing an expedition to Peoria.

Every week the recycling truck salutes your home with a glorious symphony of glass bottles cascading into its belly.

That old saw about life being too short for cheap whiskey doesn’t ring true. If anything, there seems to be a large surplus of time for cheap whiskey.

You wish you could sit down with tomorrow’s hangover and say, “Let’s work out a deal.” Then you’d shoot it in the face.

There is nothing more kind, calm and reaffirming than an empty bar with a quiet bartender.

You have never met a crappy day that could not be righted with a sharp crack of booze across its snout. 

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Many dream of drinking for a living, but Dan Dunn actually pulls it off. Author of the hard-drinking classics Living Loaded and Nobody Likes a Quitter, booze columnist, radio personality and all-around drinking expert, Dan reveals how he does it.

Do you remember your first drink?

The day after we graduated from the 8th grade, my friends and I planned this big party in the woods near my house. My parents kept a well-stocked liquor cabinet that I was obviously forbidden from going anywhere near. My stepdad was no dummy either. I knew he kept a close eye on the liquor supply. So rather than risk swiping a whole bottle of something, I instead filched about a shot from every bottle. But get this— my mom was home, and I was so afraid of getting caught that I decided to smuggle my booze booty out of the house in a racquetball can. To this day I’m not entirely sure why I thought that was a good idea, but I bet it had a lot to do with being 13.

So not only did I bring this horrendous, haphazard concoction of God knows what kinds of booze, it came “infused” with rubber and formaldehyde. Needless to say, me and just about every other kid at that party hurled.

That was the first time I ever had a drink. And it’s been downhill ever since.

What's your usual?

A Negroni . . . served in a tennis ball can. I’m sophisticated now.

The greatest drinking story you’ve ever told: I’ve been telling drinking stories for a living for 15 years, so it’s difficult to pick one. It’s kind of like singling out a favorite child (also difficult, since I don’t have any). But on the whole, the drinking stories I enjoy most are the ones that end with me either getting laid or getting paid.

Have you ever been thrown out of a bar?

In my book Living Loaded I recounted the time I got tossed from a pub just outside of Dublin, Ireland.

And the real shame of it is that it wasn’t even my fault. It was a press trip, and one of the members of our group was a fresh-out-of-the-frat douchenozzle from New York on assignment for some atrocious laddie magazine that doesn’t even exist anymore. Guy looked like Billy Zabka, the dude who played Johnny the smirking bad guy from the first Karate Kid movie. He acted like him too. Indeed, on more than one occasion during the course of that trip I wanted to rear up on one leg like a crane and kick him in the teeth. (A maneuver, I might add, that, if executed properly, is indefensible). Anyway, we’re at the bar, and with that fucking smirk of his Billy Zabka orders us a round of Irish Car Bombs. Again, we’re in Ireland, where actual Irish Car Bombs have been used in acts of terrorism that have caused catastrophic social and political upheaval—not to mention countless deaths—for generations of Irish citizens. Fortunately, we were with a publicist from Ireland who managed to get us out of there alive.

Are you aware of any hangover cures that actually work?

Alcoholics Anonymous.

What's your favorite bar and why?

Any of the airport bars at LAX. Because that usually means I’m on my way to someplace fun.

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