Hah. Hah hah hah hah.

Jack and Coke
Jack
Coke

Tall glass. Ice.

Yum.

I knew it. I knew it before I answered the first question. It's okay, I'm a fan.

Your Score: Corona
(33% dark and bitter, 100% working class, 33% genuine)



Ah, Corona...you're light, you're tasty, you come in a distinct, attractive package, and you're about as authentically Mexican as the taut brunette in the poster. Her name, by the way, is Linda O'Neil. True fact.

Anyhow, you scored above average on the "Working Class" axis of my test, and, seeing as I'm calling you a "Corona" you're probably thinking something along the lines of "I hate you." But the thing is, for a lot of people I know, drinking a few Coronas is about as close as they'll ever come to that Acapulco Resort that so many other people seem to hit every few months. So I think of this beer as Jet Blue for the proletariat. Scoring "Corona" is a compliment, I assure you.

Personality-wise, your scores indicate you have a light, easy-going personality (i.e maybe you'd need a lime to give you some bite!) and this makes you likeable & quite popular. Like most such people, you can, at times, seem a little superficial. Hence the ad featuring the Irish lady with the fake tan above. But here's the real deal: nobody minds someone who's not always what they seem. One example: whereever Ms. O'Neil's from, she's damn hot. And another: I'm Mexican. I drink Corona. I hate Tecate. Not everything that's hard-core "authentic" is all that great.

Link: The If You Were A Beer Test

I'm going to say something that apparently goes against popular opinion (surprise, surprise): I like Rosie O'Donnell. I've liked her ever since I happened to catch the first episode of her talk show way back when. I was 11, and recognized her right away from her role in the Flintstones movie. (Which I had on VHS. Remember those?) I thought, "Hm, maybe this will be good." And it was. Rosie was fresh, enthusiastic, and immensely likeable right from the get-go. She felt real and down-to-earth in a daytime TV landscape cluttered with vapid hosts and larger-than-life guests.

Now, 11 years later, Rosie has just ended a whirlwind 8-month tenure on another daytime talk show (one that was as boring as a box of dust before she arrived, let's face it, and one that will likely dissolve into irrelevance now that she's gone). She came, she saw, she cried, she seethed, she blew up at right-wing pundits and multi-billionaires alike. All the while, she spoke completely from her heart, for better or for worse.

I'll admit, Rosie was tiring at times. She grabbed onto an issue and didn't let go, spent far too much time fixated on some conspiracy theory or other, let her emotions get the better of her at the expense of coherency. But at the end of the day, you had to admire her chutzpah. And she was a damned better debater than Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who couldn't argue her way out of a paper bag without paraphrasing a Bill O'Reilly soundbite.

The View was turned on its ass by Rosie O'Donnell, and in the process it suddenly found itself relevant, even vital. As Entertainment Weekly pointed out, no other show on broadcast television, let alone daytime, showcased women talking, debating, and soapboxing so brazenly about hot-button political issues - live, at that. Had Rosie renewed her contract for another year, The View could have turned into must-watch television, particularly come election time. Instead, it all just became too much, too intense. Rosie showed herself the door before things got really ugly (see last year's Star Jones debacle).

Now ABC has a choice to make. They can hire someone bland, nonthreatening, and photogenic to replace Rosie as moderator, bringing the show back to its original level of fluff. Or they can pick up the torch and find someone who's just as outspoken as Rosie but with more self-control. They can hire a woman to represent the Republican point of view who actually has something to say. They can hire a twentysomething single woman without kids, to bring a dose of much-needed balance to a panel fascinated with menopause misery and puking-baby stories. They can take the hint, in other words.

You've got the start of something good here, ABC - something that could quite literally change the face of daytime television. Run with it.

Mom.

Slashfood posted a link to this recently. I lol'd.

Okay, I'll admit it: I love tequila. I'm one of the few and proud whose college memories (thus far) have not been tainted with visions of one too many salt-and-lime shots in dive bars on Friday nights, so perhaps I can be forgiven for not approaching tequila with the same "oh God, not that shit again" mindset. Tequila is a damn fine spirit, for both mixing and enjoying neat - Mexico has known this for years, and it seems like America is (finally) jumping on the tequila bandwagon, declaring their favorite premium brands and endlessly debating their own personal ratios of ingredients in their Margaritas. (For the record, mine is 2 oz tequila, 3/4 oz lime, 1/2 oz Cointreau, and 1/2 oz simple syrup. I like to taste the hooch, and anything over an ounce of lime is usually overkill for me.)

Tequila is fun, like rum or sambuca. It doesn't concern itself with snobbery, doesn't waste time with multiple distillations or OCD-worthy filtration counts. It doesn't care whether you drink it straight in a snifter or toss it back with a lime wedge and a bunch of frat boys cheering you on. It's endlessly mixable and almost always signifies good times. And for some reason, it goes really well with pineapple.

Which brings me to my entry for this month's Mixology Monday, hosted by Matt at My Bar, Your Bar. (See, I do get to the point eventually.)

Flipping through my copy of Mr. Boston (which seems filled with an equal number of hits and misses, taste-wise - c'est la vie, I suppose), I came across something called a Big Red Hooter. Yeah, I know. But the ingredients - tequila, pinapple juice, amaretto, and grenadine - sounded like an intriguing mix. Tequila has an inherent sweetness that seems to go well with other sweet stuff like fruit juices and liqueurs. I didn't have any grenadine on hand, so I used the other three ingredients to create something of my own.

This makes a great party drink - ice cold and sweet, sweet, sweet. (Cut it with a squeeze of lemon if so desired, but don't go overboard.) It's better than a vodka-cranberry or your millionth Screwdriver, anyway.

Sandstorm
2 oz gold tequila (Olmeca)
pineapple juice, unsweetened
3/4 oz amaretto (Di Saronno)

Add tequila to an ice-filled highball or hurricane glass. Top with pineapple juice and stir. Float amaretto on top, watch it sink defiantly.


(It wasn't until hours later that I realized this is basically a variation on the Tequila Sunrise. But still.)

Or as I call it, the best Apple Martini you'll ever have. This one comes courtesy of Jeffrey Morgenthaler, one of my favorite cocktail bloggers and a strong proponent of fresh ingredients in place of pre-mixed garbage. As someone who likes the idea of an apple martini but has been thus far underwhelmed by the usual bar offerings, I was thrilled to come across this recipe. It's really, really good, mostly because it uses fresh apple, rather than that nuclear green bottle of "schnapps" you always feel slightly ashamed of buying.

I can't urge you to try one of these strongly enough. It almost makes the apple martini seem like something more than a passing fad.

Bad Apple (from JeffreyMorgenthaler.com)
2 oz Absolut Citron
1 oz simple syrup
1 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1 quarter of a green apple, seeded

Blend ingredients without ice until the apple is puréed smooth. Pour mixture into a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an apple slice.

It's not that I'm a counterculture hipster or a bitter old man or anything. It's not even that I hate pink drinks, or girly drinks, or drinks made popular by television shows, particularly those set in New York and starring leggy fortysomethings who bitch about men and have Prada-induced orgasms all day. No, it's not about any of that. It's about how these things taste. And that taste is not a good one.

The Cosmo is one of the most popular cocktails of all time, easily the biggest drink sensation since the Margarita, and it has helped usher in the current cocktail Renaissance (bringing a sizable chunk of female drinkers into the cocktail enthusiast fold at the same time). It couldn't not be a hit, really - it's colorful, it comes in a pretty glass, it uses vodka - the most popular spirit in America and most of the world - and it was created in the midst of the mid-'80s trend towards classic drinks, particularly the Martini. Women wanted to be seen drinking Martinis, but the unique combo of gin and vermouth just isn't for everyone. The ladies needed a gateway cocktail. Enter the Cosmopolitan.

And exit stage left, please, because I just don't see the big whoop. On paper, it looks like it should work. Citrus vodka, okay. Flavored boring is better than regular boring, I guess. Cointreau, fine. A classic cocktail ingredient, rarely unwelcome in a shaker. Fresh lime juice, good. This is shaping up to be an okay tipple - a base spirit, a sweetener, and a sour. At least it follows a mostly fail-safe formula. And now a splash of cranberry juice, just to make it pink and pretty. Sure. Nothing wrong with a good-looking drink.

Shake it all up, add a lime wedge, and - BAM!

Ahem.

*Cough*

On second thought, maybe I'll just have a Sidecar.

I honestly don't know what it is, folks. Maybe the citrus vodka is overkill. Maybe the vodka itself doesn't have enough presence to stand up to the lime. Maybe I use too much Cointreau. Maybe the lime wedge pushes the whole thing over the edge into too-sour territory. But I've made at least four of these at home in the last few months, in pristine conditions, using excellent ingredients. And they're terrible. I had to resort to using Rose's sweetened lime cordial just to get through a glass, and even then, it was nothing to write home about.

Why are these so popular? Why have they been the hottest cocktail of the last 20 years? It can't just be the pink. And Carrie Bradshaw wore a whole lot of hideous getups that most real-life women had enough sense to avoid. So why the Cosmo phenomenon? Maybe that's why so many Cosmos these days are red instead of pink - more sweetened cranberry juice to break even with the lime.

At any rate, the Cosmo is an overhyped summer blockbuster of a cocktail. Drink them if you must, but ask yourself why. Do you really like them, or are you just going with the flow? And when you're done posing for the cameras with that adorable pink martini glass in your hand, toss it and order a straight-up Margarita. Your pride will thank you later.

Seriously, folks. What the fuck.

I can understand drinking cola sweetened with aspartame if you're worried about your sugar intake. I can understand drinking a cola with less calories than the regular version. Really, I can. But I will never, ever understand people who actually enjoy Diet Coke's flavor, who order it for the taste.

What is WRONG with you people?! </twilight zone moment>

Maybe I just can't handle the taste of aspartame, which turns everything it touches into a cup of medicinal-tasting goop, while everyone else's tastebuds are wired for it. And yes, cola is bad for you no matter how many chemicals they dump/don't dump into it. But still. Come on, y'all. This is a joke, right? All you Diet Coke fans are playing a trick on the rest of us. You can't possibly enjoy the stuff.

Comments welcome. I need to pick y'all's brains.

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Seriously, it's like Stepford over there.

Any drink recipe that calls for an ounce of lime juice is going to raise a red flag for me. I love citrus - just the smell of a freshly peeled orange or a zested lemon is enough to raise my spirits and whet my appetite. But I don't need a full ounce of it in a 3.5-ounce cocktail, which is what the folks at Esquire recommend for their version of the Brown Derby.

Esquire used to have a section of their site devoted to drink recipes and witty anecdotes to go with them, but they seem to have taken it down. Pity, it made for amusing reading. But I managed to save the recipe for the Brown Derby, a cocktail with no readily traceable history, because its ingredients piqued my interest. Dark rum, lime juice, and...maple syrup? After trying one of these, I'm suprised that maple syrup is such an under-utilized cocktail ingredient. The flavor adds an interesting dimension to a cocktail able to stand up to it - good maple syrup, the stuff made in Quebec or Vermont, is brutally, sickly sweet. Aunt Jemima's swill, which I actually tend to prefer on my pancakes (I know, I'm a bad Canadian), won't work here.

Esquire's original recipe called for 2 ounces of dark rum, 1 ounce of lime, and a teaspoon of maple sugar (or syrup). I tried it and winced from the lime. Again, love it in small doses, Margaritas are my best friend, etc., but it was too much. And a teaspoon of maple just isn't enough to balance the sour and the rum burn. So I adjusted the proportions to fit the more traditional Sour formula - more or less equal amounts of sweetener and sour.

When measured properly, this is a great drink, and a welcome addition to your cocktail repertoire. Try it on the next brutally hot day this month.

Brown Derby
1 1/2 oz Jamaican or Bermudan dark rum (Gosling's Black Seal)
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz maple sugar or syrup (see above)

Shake well with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.


I need a lightbox or something for these photos.