Time flies, doesn’t it? It seems like just yesterday we were first writing about our pals at Kuroshio and their drink deals. Now we turn around, and our little baby boy is one year old. We look back fondly at the little sushi joint infant once crawling around eating Cheerios off the floor, but Kuroshio has grown up to be quite the big boy in the community, throwing down some of the best fried rice I’ve ever had not to mention fantastic sushi and consistently solid drink deals. So congratulations Kuroshio! May your chicken fried rice reign supreme forever, your sushi be the freshest around, and your sake be the life of many more parties to come!
To celebrate, Kuroshio will be throwing down a 1 Year Anniversary Event like no other this Friday, August 1st. There will be free prizes given away and HALF OFF their ENTIRE BAR! Yes, sushi and booze fans, your beers, sakes and wines are all half price this Friday. Thanks Kuroshio!
*Yes, I realize that I just consciously created and unleashed upon the internets the word “Sushibration”. I’m not proud of myself.
Sometimes it’s hard to be a drinker and feel normal. The nancy-pants goodie-two-shoes of the world have neutered most of popular culture to the point that you’d think nobody in this world drinks recreationally without it ending in DUI, homicide, rape, or a big vomit-y trip to the hospital. It’s a pretty grim depiction of a fairly common part of most adults’ lives. In movies and TV, you’re pretty hard pressed to find people living and drinking as normal people do. It can make you feel like something’s wrong with you, as if partaking in the completely legal (and healthy) act of imbibing alcohol makes you some sort of outcast. A misfit. A pariah.
Well fear not, fellow boozers. I’ve compiled a list of some great TV shows from recent years to help you feel right at home. Let’s dig in…
5. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia - It’s no surprise the characters on this show drink often: the show is set in a bar. Four friends (and one “Dad” played by Danny Devito) run Paddy’s Pub, a small Philly bar where a lot more goes down than it probably should. Booze is almost always to blame. Hilarious through and through, the gang has taken on North Korea, fought in underground fight clubs, slept with each others parents (ew), and lit dog shit on fire trying to intimidate an Israeli immigrant. Here’s a clip from the show where Charlie has to attend a court-sanctioned AA meeting after the aforementioned dog-shit-on-fire incident…drunk:
4. The Wire - Sweet slippery Christmas, I hope real cops don’t drink this much. Actually, I wouldn’t blame them if they did, if they had to deal with anything even remotely like the Baltimore depicted here. Gritty, raw, emotional, and often based on real events and people, The Wire pulls no punches. When the crew isn’t up on the wire or staking out Marlo and his crew, they’re downing booze by the damn gallon. It’s entirely justified, as the only reason anyone needs to drink in this show is simply being alive in Baltimore (just like real life!). In the Season 5 premiere, I counted at least three scenes set in bars. This is not atypical.
I couldn’t find a good drinking clip on the internets, so here’s a funny one where McNulty and Bunk perform an entire scene using one veryNSFW word. You’ve been warned.
3. Three Sheets - We’ve mentioned Zane and his show before, but it bears repeating that this lucky bastard gets paid to goof around and travel the friggin’ globe drinking the best (and sometimes the worst) the world has to offer. I mean damnit all, this bastard has the job of a lifetime and he actually does it. You’d expect a fellow drunkard to screw it up and get fired, but he’s actually doing better and better and getting more episodes added per season (probably because it’s his job to drink on the job). Note to THE WORLD: if anyone is looking for someone to do basically the same thing but on a different network and show, contact me. I will make Zane look like a damned clown. Here’s a Season 1 highlight reel (and every single episode is available on Hulu).
2. Mad Men - Maybe this is how the world was meant to be. Set in the early 1960s in a Madison Avenue advertising firm, this was a time and place where people drank and smoked and nobody hassled them about it for one second. Maybe they fully understood the risks, maybe they didn’t, but they didn’t let that stop them from having a good time. Men could drink at work, at home, and nobody even gave a crap if they drove home a little tipsy (they just drove reaaaally slow). But they didn’t stop there. The writers use their period-perfect recreation to say profound and beautiful things about drinking. Here’s a choice quote:
Roger Sterling: You don’t know how to drink. Your whole generation, you drink for the wrong reasons. My generation… we drink because it’s good. Because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar. Because we deserve it. We drink because it’s what men do.
He sure said it.
In the following clip, we see main character Don Draper in a smoke-filled bar, enjoying an Old Fashioned, and chatting with a server about why he smokes the brand of cigarettes he does.
1. Deadwood - Seems like the farther back in history these shows go, the more drinking there is. Deadwood is no exception. The Old West has never been portrayed as rough or realistic as it was on HBO’s Deadwood. Didn’t matter the time of day or the occasion, it was always a good time for a drink. Here’s a sampling of some dialogue from the show:
Jane: Maybe I will have a fuckin’ drink, just for sociability’s sake…’cause I am a fuckin’ drunk Joanie: What’s your preference? Jane: That it ain’t been previously swallowed…bourbon, if ya got it
If you didn’t notice the names, that’s the way the womentalk and drink on this show. The whiskey flows pretty much non-stop in Deadwood, as do the profanities and quite a bit of blood. As you’ll see briefly in the clip below, some people even made their living by setting up a few boxes on the side of the thoroughfare with a sign reading “Whiskey Shots”, and had more than enough business to get by. There’s a lot more in this fan-made montage set to some Johnny Cash highlighting some of the rough living and hard drinking in Deadwood.
So keep your chins up, drinkers. There are still a few shows on the ol’ boob-tube looking out for us…even if they have to go back a century or so to do so. The thing is, not only are these good shows about boozing, but they’re generally just good shows. I’ve been a fan of all of these shows for a while now and only recently put it together that they all prominently feature drinking. They’re all either currently on the air, available online, or available on DVD, so you shouldn’t have much trouble tracking them down. Enjoy!
Every once in a while we get a comment here at DrinkPlanner that brings up something that I feel needs to be addressed in a full-on front-page post. I’ve only done it once before (under much less pleasant circumstances) but it happens that someone brings up something that leads me to believe that there may be some misconception about things I’ve written that are large enough that I feel the need to share with the whole class. So, this is in response to a comment left here by mikhail7:
“after reading some of the other comments, I’ll say this, and DrinkPlanner, please disagree with me if you wish, I wont take it personally. A man should take things as they come. A man should not ever have to sugar coat or soften anything that is not meant to be softened. Whiskey, beer, Vodka, Rum and so on are made the way they are made for a reason. They are meant to be the way they are. Some men, who have a lack of testostorone, cannot handle things they way they are meant to be. So they have to put pink umbrellas in their drinks. And if you, a man, cannot obey at the very least commandment number one, you are no man. Please disagree with me, i like different opinions. Thank you”
Well since you asked mikhail7…ok, I disagree with you. While there are some things, like single-malt scotches, that are downright sinful to mix, many are greatly improved by the addition of other alcohols or mixers. I mean, I get your point about things being made to stand alone, and many do that quite well and are absolutely best enjoyed that way, but there are also plenty of drinks that are designed to be mixed. What would you do with vermouth except add it to a martini? Or triple sec? Or bitters? Vodka is by and large a tasteless drink, practically BEGGING to be mixed with stronger flavors to make a better drink. While I’m certainly no stranger to a shot of vodka, I like it better when it actually tastes like something.
There are tons of classic manly drinks that are mixed, from the martini to the Manhattan to the Pegu club. I DARE you to go up to the old guy in the bar drinking an Old Fashioned telling him he’s not drinking a manly drink and see if you walk away with your nuts. Hell, even Hemingway drank Daiquiris (which are really not at all girly in their classic form), and he was a hard-drinking seafaring bullfighting son-of-a-bitch like few others who have walked this world.
I have no reason to post this, but it’s from this series that’s so amazing I’m just going to stick them in posts whenever I feel like it
Beyond that, many things complement each other, and the once-lowly job of tending bar has in recent years been elevated to the level of “mixology“, all based on the art of creating amazing new drinks by combining alcohols and other mixers very specifically and creatively. Whether born out of the locale the alcohol comes from or necessity of circumstances or complete accident, some very fine drinks are mixed. In his discussion of the daiquiri, drink expert David Wondrich gives the following eloquent explanation:
“In fact, the daiquiri represents such an obvious marriage between local ingredients — rum, sugar, limes — and American technology — cocktail shaker, ice — that it would take the chowder-headedest duffer who ever buttoned a trouser not to invent it.”
And that’s exactly how drinks like the daiquiri and the margarita and mojito and cuba libre came about, because you’d have to be mouth-breathingly daft not to mix such clearly complimentary ingredients together. God lovingly placed sugar cane and limes on the same continent for a good reason, and we’d be remiss not to take advantage of such a serendipitous happenstance of fate.
So I just wanted to clear the air to make sure it was understood that I’m not such a booze purist that I believe every single alcohol should always and no-matter-what be consumed straight up. That’s all.
It’s pretty much what it looks like: it fills up your iphone with ‘beer”, and it will slosh around based on the crude accelerometer in the phone. Tip it towards the top right to “drink” and it will slowly empty out, or give it a shake and it will foam up.
I want to hate it, because I have a passionate (if somewhat irrational) hatred of all things Apple that burns in me like the fire from a thousand suns. Also, it’s pretty useless yet it still costs $3. However, I think it’s just clever enough that I kind of like it. At least enough to post it here and share with all you good people.
Sorry guys, no Ask DrinkPlanner this week. Know why? Because nobody has sent in any questions! I know you guys don’t know everything there is to know about boozing (I certainly don’t). So go ahead, ask me anything about booze or the boozin’ life. Could be a question about how alcohol is made or interacts with your body or what’s proper etiquette when buying shots or the history of some booze or how do you deal with hangovers or how to handle a naggy girlfriend who doesn’t drink and is giving you lip about boozin’. Whatever. I could have written myself a fake letter based on any one of those things to fill in this week but I didn’t, because I have too much damn respect for you guys. So do me a solid and hit me up. Or if you just want to chat or get something off your chest, my email is always open to you guys. Unless you’re trying to sell me a penis enhancing apparatus or breast enlarging ointment…in which case call me ASAP!*
And just so you know, next week I’m going to be up in the mountains, far far away from civilization, so don’t expect me to respond immediately to anything you send in. I’ll try and set up a few posts to auto-publish while I’m gone so you crazy kids have something to read. There is an off chance I might be able to encounter a computer once or twice while I’m up there, so I may be able to shoot back a reply, but don’t count on it.
I know, I’ll miss you too. Drink one for me while I’m gone.
*I just got a spam email (”How to Give Her Absolute Pleasure!”) with possibly the best fake name ever: Burgdorf Shambaugh. How great is that? It kind of makes me want to change my name to Burgdorf Shambaugh, move to a new town and start all over with one of the greatest names ever conceived. Just a little.
I don’t care who you are, when you’re drinking (and I mean driiiiinkin’) music selection can be the difference between walking on water and drowning in your own tears. The difference between dancing in the streets and passing out in the gutter. Nothing is worse than some dumbass putting on some old sad bastard music in the middle of a party because they’re drunk and weepy and want to pine for hours over their ex to some crappy Nickleback song and bringing the entire shindig to a screeching halt. SCREW THEM. Do that on your own time, Chico…there’s a friggin’ PARTY going on!
So I’m writing this to hip you to something you may have missed the first time around, so you don’t miss it this time. If you missed it, the best drinking album of the past few years (yes, YEARS) hands down was “Boys and Girls in America” by The Hold Steady. A bunch of guys from the Twin Cities of Minnesota (who now reside on Brooklyn) put out what is quite possibly the best album about boozing, partying, love, loss, and debauchery ever. I don’t say that lightly. I listen to a LOT of music, and I drink enough to match, and these guys hit it perfectly. They ended up on a ton of top 10 album lists for 2006, but have stayed under the radar for most people. They’ve even been called “America’s Best Bar Band” by many media outlets, but I think that undercuts how good they really are. A good bar band does a bunch of great covers, dead-on, that everyone can sing along to and rejoice in and commiserate with their fellow boozer. These guys weave elaborate (original) stories that recreate in incredible detail and authenticity the life and times of many an average shmoe trying to get by (who also happens to drink heavily). What I mean to say is…they speak our language.
Not only that, but they speak it with such a poetry and elegance you don’t quite get it the first go-round, but these songs are amazingly dense with meaning and clever turns of phrase. Here’s songwriter and lead singer Craig Finn at work on the track “Stuck Between Stations”:
She was a really cool kisser and she wasn’t all that strict of a Christian.
She was a damn good dancer but she wasn’t all that great of a girlfriend.
She likes the warm feeling but she’s tired of all the dehydration.
Most nights are crystal clear
But tonight it’s like it’s stuck between stations
On the radio.
And they’re rocking hard while they do it. I mean really, with lyrics like that, how can you go back to just throwing on some old Fall Out Boy or some crappy mix CD from 2002 at a party when you know that great drinking music like this exists in the universe?
So why am I telling you about an album from 2006 now? Because their new album, “Stay Positive“, just came out this week. I’m trying to give you the heads up that if you missed their last one, well that’s ok, you’ll have to play catch-up at some point. But now, today…you need to get yourself ahead of the curve and get this album before you’ve missed another great booze-and-music combination. I’ll be honest, I’m only about half-way through it, but so far it’s pretty damn great, and I feel confident recommending it to you guys. Do yourself a favor, and check it out (and check out Boys and Girls in America, if you haven’t already).
Otherwise, you’ll be left with that asshole playing “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” on repeat all night long.
(Oh, and if you haven’t checked out the DrinkPlanner Muxtape yet, you should! Tons of great drinking songs. If you’ve got one to suggest, let us know!
The amazingly crush-worthy Christina Perozzi (above) has opened up Beer 4 Chicks,a site and blog for beer-drinking ladies* by a beer-drinking lady!. If they ever launch a dating section of the site, I fully expect to meet my future wife there.
And if I don’t meet a fine lady-friend at the non-existent Beer 4 Chicks dating site, this woman with a 0.55% BAC was probably driving around looking for me.
The interwebs are all atwitter at the news today that American beer mega-producer Anheuser-Busch will be sold to Belgian powerhouse InBev for a cool $52billion dollars. Many are crying out at the #1 US brewer being sold off to a foreign company, how it’ll be bad for AB and bad for the US, but to anybody who’s been paying attention, this should come as no surprise.
The fact is that Anheuser-Busch has been mismanaged for years now, and while most consumers only know them by their flagship brands Budweiser and Bud Light (and other derivatives like Bud Select and Bud Ice), they handle a number of other beverages. I don’t want to turn this into a big long business analysis, but to anybody who noticed their “Jekyll and Hyde” blunder or knows the vomitocious wonder of their clam and tomato juice (and of course beer) Chelada drink-like concoction know that they’ve been slipping lately. There’s a lot of other reasons why they’re screwing up (poor marketing of brands like Bud Select and Tilt, letting Bud Lime get out without anybody taste-testing it, allowing Bacardi Silver Mango Mojito to exist, not playing up potential big winners like Shock-Top, etc.) but they’ve been in need of new management and brand-handling for a long time, and they’ve seemed complacent to change anything that needed changing. So it’s a great buy for InBev, who handles big-time imports like Stella Artois, Becks. Bass, Boddingtons and at least four other brands that begin with “B”, who will now be able to add a whole slew of other B-beers to their stable.
And to those panicking about lost American jobs and whatnot…calm the hell down. Anheuser-Busch is THE #1 producer of beer in the states, and they’re not going to be shutting down production anytime soon. How cost-effective do you think it would be to move production of the #1 US beer out of the US, only to have to ship it back to us? InBev isn’t stupid, they know many US drinkers aren’t happy about the takeover, but give them a chance. They wouldn’t have the clout (or the cash) to buy out AB if they weren’t good at making and selling beer. They’re actually branding it as AB and InBev “combining” instead of a buyout, which shows they’re not planning on destroying the beers or brand you’ve come to know and love.
So relax, interwebs. Time will only tell as to what this will mean down the line, but rest assured your favorite Anheuser-Busch brands aren’t going anywhere. Unless your favorite brand is Bud Light Chelada, in which case you deserve whatever you get.
Here’s a slick and humorous little viral vid (in the same spirit, but much less obvious than the Zach, Tim, and Eric ones) with a retro-infomercial style starring the one and only Kanye West.
And sorry I’ve been light on the posts this week (and will probably continue to be) but I just became an uncle for the first time, so things are a little hectic (and happy, of course) in the Great Big DrinkPlanner’s family.
How does the DrinkPlanner celebrate freedom and all that good stuff? With a bunch of fireworks blasted off from an emptied handle of Johnnie Walker, that’s how! (click for the large versions, they’re worth it)
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