One day, I’m going to write a love letter to Google.  They know my heart so completely, so intimately, it’s clear that we were made for each other and should buy a chateau in the French Alps (though we will have to have a serious talk about Analytics and how uncharacteristically unintuitive it is).

Today, they answered the prayers I didn’t even know I was praying once again with Gmail Goggles, an add-on that puts you through a test during the wee hours of the morning when you may have been drinking too much to make sure you really want to send that “baby come back” email to your junior year prom date you just stalked found on Facebook.

Damnit Google, how did you know I suck at math?

It even lets you set the days and timespan to make it active, and allows you to choose the difficulty level.  This may be the single greatest invention in all of mankind (other than booze, naturally).

Gmail Goggles via:: Gizmodo

It’s hard to believe, but just 1 year ago today, DrinkPlanner.com was birthed onto the internet, kicking and screaming and in dire need of a drink.  While the first post was a bit more local-drink-special-oriented (though worldwide domination by a zombie army was promised) we’ve come a long way since then.  Even though we didn’t really start cranking things up until April-ish of this year,  we were here, and ready to drink whatever was thrown at us.

Our first logo!

We started out with some familiar booze-blog topics, like beer pong and beer pong and uhmm…Beirut?  Ok, so we were covering already well-tred topics, fair enough.  It didn’t take long to start branching out, crowning our first ever Champion of Drinking and showing you remedies to age-old diseases and sharing the moments that make drinking something to be passionate about.  We debuted the Ask DrinkPlanner feature where we answered questions about consumption, like is a wine hangover different from other hangovers, or how to increase alcohol tolerance and the age-old question of whether beer before liquor matters.  Questions about what to drink if you’re a manly man-man or just a beginner.

Then things really took off.  By took off, I mean the article that was most responsible for our success: The 10 Commandments for Drinking Like a Man.  The truth about that article…I wrote the majority of it semi-hammered one night, saved a draft of it, and let it sit unfinished and unpublished for MONTHS.  I wasn’t happy with it to publish it that minute (and knew enough not to drunk-post it), so I let it sit, until one day looking for something to post I looked back through my drafts and said to myself “Hey, this is actually pretty good!”.  So I polished it up and added some pictures and tossed it on the internet.  Since then it’s garnered a bajillion hits and some controversy to boot.

Mission: Drunk the Planet

Just kept on truckin’ from there…we gave you reasons to leave work, ways to drink undetected, called out Ask Men for being a truckload of toolbags, defended canned beer, showed you the ancient art of getting hammered, and brought you Drinking Decks and the one and only Bierstick.  Oh, and we opened a kickass shirt store.

So, since I’m all nostalgic and now is as good a time as any, let me take a minute to thank some people.  You should know that there are two of us who run this site, me the DrinkPlanner Writing Guy and then there’s the DrinkPlanner Website Guy who does all the technical site design stuff.  He’s also the guy who works directly with restaurants and bars, does a whole hell of a lot behind the scenes, and is a great friend.  So since I’m the Writer Guy and I can write whatever I want, I just wanted to thank and publicly acknowledge everything he does, the site would not be what it is without him.  So thanks for everything you do, homie.

I’d also like to thank our friends and families who have been tireless in their efforts to support us and make this site successful.  They’ve done everything possible to try and help promote us and spread the word, and all their efforts are hugely appreciated and honestly, we can’t thank ya’ll enough.  So thanks guys, it’s meant a lot.

I’d also like to thank all the other drinking blogs and beer blogs and cocktail blogs wine blogs and everyone writing anything positive about drinking anywhere.  It’s been really heartening to see that there are so many people out there with the same passion for drinking (in whatever form it takes).  So I thank all of you boozy folks for any and all support you’ve given us and for being an inspiration above all.

And of course, I must thank you, the reader.  You guys kick ass and spread the word, and again, have made this site what it is.  If it weren’t for you guys, i’d be the online equivalent of the crazy drunkard talking to himself on the street.  But here on the internets, I’ve found all of you kindred spirits.  Now we can all stumble down the street drunkenly rambling on to each other.  There’s something comforting in that, my friends.  Thanks for reading.

Our average reader…

So where are we going from here?  Oh gosh…if I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?  Just know that we’ve got big plans, and there’s lots more drinking and lots more fun to be had.  Stick with us, we won’t let ya down.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this.  In the following video, you will be pitched a new quadruple-distilled vodka by venerable comedic actor Dan Aykroyd, of Ghostbusters, Blues Brothers, and Saturday Night Live fame.  A vodka that, for some reason, is inside a crystal skull.

It’s hard to tell what came first in the concept pitch.  Was it:

1. “Hey guys, remember the colossal failure of the latest Indiana Jones movie?  I think we’ll all agree the only silver lining in that soul-crushing disaster was it turned people on to crystal skulls.  Seriously, the kids are going nuts for ‘em, I can’t get my kids to shut up about CRYSTAL SKULLS!  So I figure..WE should make ‘em!  We’ll figure out what to put in them later.  They’ll sell like hotcakes!”

or…

2. “You know what there isn’t too much of in the alcohol marketplace?  VODKA.  The roughly 5000 varieties available at most liquor stores of a generally flavorless spirit just isn’t enough.  The kids these days want MORE!  But how to creatively package it?  Someone’s already done the tommy gun bottle and the pirate steering wheel…we’ve got to think of something new.  Hey, did anyone see that new Indiana Jones movie?”

The world may never know the true origins of Crystal Head vodka, but thank God it’s here*.

Crystal Head Vodka via:: The Hater

*Is it weird that I secretly want one?

Yes, of course it’s a joke.  Everyone knows that if you were going to make a flask out of an office appliance, it would be the 3-hole punch.  DUH.

I know this is a little last-minute, but the site DebateDrink has a handy guide to playing drinking games while enduring the thrill-a-minute talkfest that is the Vice Presidential Debates.  Surely, booze is the only way this thing can be endured.

This is the first in what will be an occasional series documenting the numerous ways in which you people suck at drinking.  I want you to be better, for your own benefit.  I want to help, honestly I do.

You people are depressing the hell out of me.  Seriously folks, your drinking habits are deplorable and it’s time for a frigging intervention.  No, not one of those silly “we think you need to drink less” things, but a “I think you need to drink better” kind of thing.  Let me take a moment and regale you with the tale of things I experienced while doing some booze shopping this past weekend:

1. Some asshole disparaging the name of some of the more decent rums (like Flor de Cana 4 yr and Goslings Black Seal) to his girlfriend as he walked past while carrying a 12 of OLD MILWAUKEE.  Die in a fire, jackass.

2. Asking an employee where the bitters were, and after being directed there finding only Angostura aromatic bitters, which I already have plenty of (And I love.  Hey, they’re from Trinidad, where my grandfather is from!).  I went back to the counter to purchase my Old Overholt rye whiskey and the guy said “Didn’t find ‘em?” to which I responded “No, I was looking for orange bitters”.  He then says “Oh…uhh maybe you can find them at the grocery store”.  Huh? Just because they’re “orange” doesn’t mean they’re produce, chief.  And on what planet should I expect the grocery store to have a wider selection of bitters than a pretty damn big liquor store (keep in mind that in this state, they only carry beer and wine in grocery stores)?  Bonus anger: I went to two more liquor stores and encountered the same thing there: only Angostura aromatic.

3. This is the one that really got me, and essentially pushed me to the point of writing this.  I’m standing in the rum aisle, shortly after incident #1, and I see a guy, mid-30s, looking at the selections and chatting with two employees.  What I gather from their conversation is that last weekend he brought a handle of Absolut tailgating with friends, they mixed it with cranberry juice and killed the bottle, and he’s looking for something else this weekend.  Something that’s not over $30 per handle, like the Absolut was.  He’s pondering the Bacardi Light, which…whatever, is about as interesting a choice as the Absolut was, but he seems like he wants to expand his horizons.  I mean, he’s in this mega-store with all these choices, right?  At this point I am kind of envying the liquor store employees, as this is really a chance to use their “expertise” (or at least minor embroidered-shirt-wearing powers) to really put this guy on to some cool booze that he’ll probably like and look cool to his friends for having the confidence and know-how to buy something a little different than what they expect.  This store is HUGE, so there’s plenty of opportunity around.

Oh, so THAT’S what you’ve been drinking!

Needless to say, these employees effing BLOW IT.  They’re kind of standing there shrugging their shoulders and lazily staring the rum shelves up and down until one of them points down at the bottom shelf and says “I’ve seen people buying this one, and they say it’s pretty smooth”.  What is he pointing at?  Well, I won’t disparage their name on this blog, but needless to say it’s on the bottom shelf in every rum section EVER , and goes for about $12 a  1.75L, because it’s horrible, rotgut, hangover-inducing swill.  Anyway, this guy may not know much, but he’s not a mouth-breathing retard, so he passes on the Puerto Rican Piss crap rum and says he’s going to keep looking.  The employees wander off muttering about carrying around minis of Crown Royal to pour in Sprite (I shit you not).  This is my opening.  Now is my chance.

So I pretend to be looking at the St. James Royal Ambre and Clement Creole Shrub like I might know what the hell I’m talking about.  He’s still looking at things near me, mumbling to himself, so I say “Are you looking for a gift for somebody?” (knowing full damn well what his situation was) and he lays his situation out for me.  He emphasizes that paying $30 for a handle is his main beef, and I sympathize with him (and truly, I do).  I start looking around and give him a few options.  I especially push the Cruzan Light, telling him how I used it bartending a friend’s birthday party recently and how it went over great and was smooth in the Pina Coladas, not to mention it’s literally half the price of the Absolut.  I told him how it was easily mixable with both fruit juices AND Coke, it’d be hard for his friends NOT to like it no matter what they drank.  He’s liking what he hears, but he’s not sold.  He says he wants to make sure and go look at the vodkas, I say “Ok, let’s go!”

I hadn’t been to this section of the store yet, so I wasn’t entirely familiar with what they had.  I quickly scan the 10 or so full shelving units of vodka (this is a seriously HUGE store) and spot Tito’s Handmade Vodka.  Perfect!  I show him it’s $10 cheaper than the Absolut, tell him how it’s handmade in Texas, show him the awards it’s won printed on the label and yadda yadda yadda.  Tell him the story of how I brought it on a weekend wedding trip a while back where a group of us rented a lake house and partied all weekend, and everybody dug it.  “It give you all hangovers?” he asked.  “Oh hell no…” I say, “this was pretty much a 3-day bender, we couldn’t afford to have hangovers”.  He nods, understanding. And then…

…all of the sudden…some how, some way I lose him.  “Ehhh…you know what, I think I’m going to just get the Bacardi and be done with it.”  WHAT!?!  I’ve only just BEGUN to show you the light, my friend, and you run back into the familiar, the same, the status quo?  Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with Absolut or Bacardi at all, but when you’re in a store that has approximately 10 shelving units of vodka and around 8 of rum, the most adventurous you can be is to pick those?  WHY DID YOU COME HERE AT ALL!?!  You could have gone to the tiny shop down the street and they’d carry both of those, no question.  You asked two different employees what they recommended (even though they blew it big time) and kept talking to me about what I’d recommend, and you still don’t have the balls to try something new (and notably less expensive)?  He mumbles some lame justification about people liking it, even asking me “I mean, people like Bacardi, right?”  “Yeah, I guess…” I say, hiding my heartbreak.

THIS is what’s wrong with drinkers today.  This guy wasn’t a beginner.  He told me how he and his friends killed the handle he bought last week, not to mention what everyone else brought to the tailgate.  He was a regular, active drinker hanging out with regular, active drinkers and yet he didn’t know enough (or care to know enough) to branch out from the most giant of brand names he’d probably known since before he was old enough to drink.  Or maybe he was just scared, didn’t have the balls to buy something seemingly “off-brand” to present to his friends.  Either way, he’s an EPIC.  FRIGGING.  FAILURE.

THIS is (part of) what’s wrong with drinking today.  DRINKING: Something most people engage in on at least a weekly (if not daily) basis, but they don’t take the time to get to know anything about it.  Maybe it’s the stigma associated with booze.  If you care or know that much about it, you must be an alcoholic.  Oh, unless it’s wine or cognac, then you’re a “connoisseur”. But that’s another discussion for another day…

Let me put it in perspective.  Let’s say you like reading.  You like it so much that you usually put aside time every day to do it.  It brings you calm, peace, pleasure and a break from your ordinary life to indulge in this interest.  It’s something you do to unwind each day, take the edge off, whathaveyou.  So, as a reader, do you think you’d only ever buy books from the NY Times bestseller list, nothing but James Patterson and John Grisham and Harry Potter every day?  Would that be fulfilling to you?  Or would you take the time to get to know new and exciting authors, people doing different and interesting things inside of a medium you hold close to your heart?  Would you branch out within your beloved genres to those pushing the envelope, challenging and broadening the scope of what you thought possible, or just be satisfied with the same old thing you’ve been experiencing since day one?  In short: Do your tastes evolve, or grow stagnant?

Herein lies the problem.  People don’t take the time to explore and educate themselves even a little bit about alcohol because showing interest in it might label you as someone with a drinking problem.  Think about other things in your life.  Do you ever watch new TV shows?  Learn about the actors on it and who’s writing it?  Ever buy a different spice or marinade for your chicken?  Try on a different brand of jeans because they might fit you better?  You take the time and effort to be a better consumer about other things, why not alcohol?  How do you know that Hendrick’s isn’t the gin you’ve been waiting for?  How do you know you don’t like stout beers if you’ve never had one because they look “thick”?

EXPLORE, people!  No matter what your drink of choice is, there are so many options out there for you to try out that you could take a long long time and never get to all of them.  Even in drinks you think you don’t like.  Don’t think you like rum?  Try Cruzan Blackstrap or Goslings Black Seal in a Dark and Stormy.  Don’t think you like gin?  Try Bulldog or New Amsterdam.  Turned off of tequila after getting sick off it back in college?  Try Don Julio or Cazadores.  Try drinking things in different drinks, in new ways, with new mixers.  There are SO MANY options out there, and even if you only drink on the weekends, you owe it to yourself to try new things and find those liquors that meet you where you’re at.

If I do anything with this blog, I hope it’s that I expand the horizons of drinkers out there, that people realize that yes, the big players in the game got there for a reason, but there are lots of other things out there that may be the thing they’ve been waiting for.  I’ve just received samples of two new boozes: Sobieski vodka and Tabasco tequila (reviews forthcoming).  In their own ways, each is trying to do something new in spaces that have been around for a long time.  That’s exciting!  To think that these types of alcohol that have been around for hundreds of years still have something new to offer us drinkers is great news!  It means that we as drinkers have evolving and changing tastes, and that the producers of these drinks recognize that and want to do new and creative things to keep us as consumers, and are willing to work for it.  What you like matters, and if you’d only take a little time and refine your tastes the marketplace will be more than happy to provide you with numerous tasty alternatives to your current favorite.

So the next time you head out to your local liquor store, take a moment and consider the many alternatives available to you.  Instead of buying a 1.75L of your old tried-and-true brand, buy 2 1-liters of 2 new brands, try something new.  Who knows…your new favorite drink could be just one bottle away.

And so, my jury duty ends.  It blew.  So this week I hope to catch up on every boozy thought I’ve been having while held captive in the endlessly boring (not to mention dry) clutches of our government’s legal system.  So let’s get back into it.  Woo-hoo!

Well let me just assure you that everything you’ve ever heard about jury duty is true.  That is if “everything you’ve ever heard” is that it’s stupefyingly, achingly, frustratingly boring.  Let me give you a brief recap of today’s thrilling activities.

1. Sitting

2. Staring into space

3. Twittering my frigging fingers off because I had nothing else to do

4. Praying for the sweet release of death

5. Nodding off in a chair

6. Wishing I’d brought a book or my Zune or a gun

7. Lunch at Hemingway’s: Good food, pathetic drink menu

8. Conspiring with my fellow duty-ers to each bring a flask in tomorrow

9. Random conversation about Kuroshio with strangers who’d been there and loved it

As pleasant as items 7-9 were, they altogether took up maybe 10% of my day, so you can get a rough estimate of just how maddeningly dull the waiting is.  I’d say it’s almost as maddening as it is to watch the same 5 people sit at the 5 complimentary computer stations ALL DAY LONG and not give any of the rest of us a chance to even check our email for 5 frigging minutes.  Thanks jerks!

Ok that’s it, thanks for letting me rant guys.  If you care to continue hearing the blow-by-blow tomorrow (and possibly the rest of the week), follow me on Twitter.  Now, to drink!

marriedtothesea.com

Yep kids, I have been called to that most patriotic of duties…Jury Duty.  I don’t know how much I’ll have to be there or if they’ll cut me loose early or what, so posting may be a bit sporadic until this blows over.  From what I hear, it’s 83 kinds of boring, so I’ll probably have plenty of time to think of new things to write about.

And on that note: anyone know any interesting places I should hit up on or around the Marietta Square?  Drinking or food-wise.

Heads up!  This Saturday, September 2oth is the annual PiratePalooza Pub Crawl, rocking Atlanta yet again.  4 bars, 4 bands, 1 burlesque group, and more eyepatches then you can shake a hook at.

A word of warning: these people are serious about the pirating life.  I went last year with a few buddies because we love pirates and drinking and it sounded like a fun time.  So I grabbed an eyepatch and threw on a skull-and-bones shirt and headed down there expecting to find some like-minded people.  Do you know how weird it is to feel out of place because you’re not dressed up like a pirate enough?  Yeah, a little weird.  Most everyone was in full-on pirate garb, and not some crappy Wal-Mart Halloween costume crap, but serious leather and swords and poofy shirts and the whole nine.  It was like a mini-DragonCon focused solely on the Pirate genre (and waaaay less geeky).

That being said, everyone we met there was super-friendly and we had a blasty-blast.  We ended up meeting some lovely ladies who were roughly as under-dressed as we were and ended up hanging with them for the rest of the night.  And as silly as it sounds it really is a lot of fun to hang out with a bunch of people who are dressed as frigging pirates in the middle of Decatur and CLEARLY don’t give a shit, drink tons of beer and rum and sing pirate drinking songs at the top of your collective lungs.  Also, as a general rule, girls look hot in pirate gear.  You know, lots of uhh…push-up action.  Look, BOOBS is what I’m trying to say.

I happened to find this floating around the ‘nets, but it’s from the ‘Palooza, as you can see dude in the picture is all over the PiratePalooza Flickr pool

So if you like pirates and especially drinking and dressing like one, make your way down to the Decatur/Avondale area this weekend for an evening of drinkin’, wenches, and hardcore piratin’.  It’s an event you won’t soon forget.

PiratePalooza