In the Spirit of Recognizing Holidays, Alternatively Titled "Juan Carlos Takes a Guestie"

[The King of Spain asked to take a G:TB guestie and who am I to say no? I assured him that this would be well received as the bar here is low.]

Longtime lurker, first time blogger…

Everyone should be celebrating Negroni Week. If you haven’t tried a negroni, it’s an excellent way to invest in yourself. Slightly sweet, somewhat bitter and plenty boozy, this cocktail’s profile is good advice on how to live your life.

I had my first Negroni at a Babbo in Greenwich Village about 22 years ago, on the first fancy date with my wife Julie. They served it up in a martini glass, garnished with a flamed blood orange peel. It was the perfect prelude to an amazing braised lamb shank. From that point on it’s been my go-to cocktail order.

Most cocktail historians believe the drink was created in Florence by Count Camillo Negroni, who asked a bartender to substitute gin for soda water in his favorite drink, the Americano.  Some say Camillo wasn’t a real count. If Camillo ran around Florence calling himself a count and invented this wonderful beverage, more power to him.

The classic Negroni is a perfect cocktail: equal parts gin, Compari, and sweet vermouth.  Garnish it with an orange peel. I make mine with two parts gin, and I recommend you do too. 

The Negroni format is flexible and forgiving, and has many respectable variations. The Boulevardier substitutes bourbon or rye for gin. An Old Pal subs rye for gin and dry for sweet vermouth. A bartender once told me, “it’s more crushable than a Negroni”, but I don’t recommend crushing too many. 

I don’t know where I learned the following under-the-radar variation but it’s worth making. I couldn’t find it’s official name. Let’s call it the Carlito.

2 oz mezcal

1 oz Aperol

1 oz Punt y Mes

Pour over ice and stir ingredients. Strain into an ice-filled lowball glass. Garnish with a lemon peel.

I’ve been in self-quarantine the past two weeks since my daughter was part of the outbreak TR referenced in a previous post. I’ve been dry - trying to bolster my immunity and drop the 8 lbs I gained over the summer grilling and drinking beers.  But it’s Friday, Negroni Week, the day after Free Queso Day, and I feel like celebrating.

A Pompous Lecture on the Curve of Drunkenness, Illustrated

TR recently opined on various states of drunkenness. My experience with this subject matter leads me to conclude that it can best be described as an inverted parabola with disposition as a function of fun along the y-axis and drunkenness by time along the x-axis. The slope at any particular point on the curve dictates how you're doing--this is why you should've paid attention in calculus. As a general matter, the upward slope from time 0 is euphoric, the peak is the fabled “sweet spot of drunkenness,” and everything after that is literally downhill into dysphoria.

Here's a curve for the principle generally.

As you can probably imagine, there are lots of other things you could overlay onto this plot. To wit:

Things can get really bad too. Then you're in the negative. This is "abject misery" and includes vomiting, bed wetting, waking up in jail and so on. This is where "too drunk to fly" happens.

We've all been there.

via GIPHY

Further, the shape of the parabola varies from person to person, and it varies for a person depending on the conditions at hand like hydration state, nutrition levels, degree and nature of concomitantly administered substances, health status, age, and so on. One’s drunkenness parabola can therefore be used as something of a fingerprint for their general drinking capacity, or a snapshot of a particularly memorable round of boozing. I’ll show you what I mean.

Much like Costanza in the pool, the SSOD of drunkenness shrinks with age. In my twenties I could drink a lot, sometimes even epically, before I tipped over the edge of the SSOD into dysphoria. My SSOD was a broad plateau, a mesa of fun. In my thirties the SSOD shrank to a mere hill. Now, in my mid-forties, my SSOD is like the dip of a dull spear and about as useful. So it goes.

As a result, I frequently and accidentally fall into the dysphoria side of the curve nowadays. I assume you're similarly situated. Here's a graphical representation with some examples from your inner monologue along the downward slide into abject misery.

As I said before, some people have wildly different curves. Here's TR circa 1994:

When we were kids TR had an egregiously large bad decision zone. It started at the end of his SSOD and ended well into abject misery. Apex TR was often the coolest guy in the room, picking out great music, making funny jokes, playing pool and beerpong well. After that things could get weird. He might do something that isn't that funny, but you let it go. Then it gets stranger and stranger until you find yourself with a dead woodchuck propped up in a lawn chair with sunglasses, a cigarette and a handful of naked lady playing cards and telling people "This is Lambo's new shake, they nicknamed him Chuck!"

TR's curve was also unique in that he had this amazing plateau of negative fun which coincided with a certain look in his eyes. Many of you recall The Look. When you saw it you knew anything could happen. Anyway, at a point where any normal person would have passed out, TR powered through, wreaking havoc and causing mass discomfort. Naked bike rides in hurricanes? Head positioned between two speakers blaring Bathtub Gin on repeat? It's enough to give another guy a panic attack and make him to pass out.

After the negative plateau phase things got dark. Someone usually wound up on the wrong end of a beating, perhaps with their own flip-flop, or there was a trip to 7-11 for diarrhea dogs. None of this happens nowadays.

Here's a curve for FOG:TB Ian:

Ian still has the capacity for epic drinking. His SSOD is broad and flat. That said, his descent into dysphoria is a thing to behold. For hours he can be the life of the party, cracking jokes and telling great stories. Then, in a flash, he's suddenly breaking things. Seconds later he expresses tremendous remorse for his outburst and engages in self-flagellation. He then staggers away into the night and eventually passes out someplace familiar like the back of his truck or under the Martha Wood. But because of his amazing ability to metabolize alcohol, this negative fun plateau can get dragged out for hours.

Feel free to print this post out and carry it with you so you can identify where you are on the curve of drunkenness the next time you go out. Then you'll know where you stand. And knowing is half the battle.

via GIPHY

Wednesday Filler



In the event no one was planning on putting in some filler, I offer this. I stumbled upon it on the tweeter a few weeks ago and placed in my back pocket for just this sort of day.

Looks like the South Florida Floridians filled out a few more surveys than the rest of us Floridians. And they like the Sidecar out west. Fuckin hippies. Sex on the Beach is pretty popular where there are no beaches. And you Virginia peeps like the Pisco Sours. Whaa??? Yeah, Pisco Sours, of course.