My dad has a total boner for Nikola Tesla. I always wondered why, and then I read about him in The Oatmeal:
Click this pic to get hilariously schooled on why Tesla rocked and Edison was a douchebag.
OMG! I had no idea! Nikola Tesla was awesome!!! And Thomas Edison really was a dickhead.
For an even more scholarly version of Tesla’s accomplishments, check out The Drunk History, Vol. 6 with Crispin Glover and John C. Reilly. All history lessons should be like this one.
Toasting Nikola Testa with a double G&T! Dude, you ruled.
The house got turned upside down this morning in a search for this.
It was the umpteenth search for a teeny Chihuahua whose owner keeps stuffing it into small spaces and then freaking out when it’s AWOL for bedtime.
By the time Chihuahua was finally discovered in the car, it felt like gin-and-tonic time. And, while my mum informed me 10:30am was too early (arbitrary on her part, wouldn’t you say?) she did agree to break out the GORDON’S LONDON DRY GIN again this evening.
The $12.69 mickey in our freezer represents another infidelity to BROKER’S GIN and by extension its lovely Business Development Manager Julia Gale, a woman who once savaged her knee busting out on a dance floor to Love Shack by the B52s.
I know (I think?) I promised Julia I’d wait for her delicious gin to be reinstalled at our government booze store, but I’m not made of stone.*
It all started with BEEFEATER 24, a purportedly higher-end version of the famously juniperous BEEFEATERmarketed as a tea-infused homage to the founder’s dad’s penchant for that beverage—but really a cagey gimmick to gain market share by offering options within its own brand. When I espied the new BEEFEATER variety I was briefly blinded by it and forgot that I was holding out for BROKER’S. But BEEFEATER 24, while enjoyable, is a bit of a departure from traditional gin, so it felt like a miss (in retrospect). A couple of weeks after it was finished, I told my mother we needed some normal gin so I could feel better—both about my breach of trust with Julia and about my delirium tremens—but she said no. She said we need to keep our booze spending down to a dull roar.
Luckily my mother is weak-willed; as soon as the thermometer surpassed 30° she relented and started considering gin of her own accord. But only a mickey! (For tasting purposes.)
Thus rationed, I requested GORDON’S because it struck me as a good baseline, standard-issue gin. Chances are, every other gin-based cocktail you’ve ordered at a bar has been made with Gordon’s; it has the widest reach of any gin. I really felt (Julia) that it would be quite an omission if I didn’t procure some.
GORDON’S isn’t the cheapest gin on the shelf but it’s one of only two available (in my hood) in a plastic mickey. This makes it fantastic for lurching around a parking lot with—a distinction it shares with the bottom-shelf Canadian gin GILBEY’S, which is the cheapest, and which my parents won’t let me review unless I manage to procure a free sample.
The last time my aging parents bought a mickey, they probably did so to spike a punch. That’s how weird the purchase felt, they said, although I think they were just bitching about taking “bear requests.”
Soooo…
GORDON’S LONDON DRY GIN—check
Plastic 375mL bottle—awesome
$12.69 price tag—almost as good as it gets
Limes—check
Superstore house brand tonic water—check
Expectations—low to middling
Little did we know last night how much of today would be devoted to hunting a three-inch Chihuahua. I think we should have had four ounces apiece, but we settled for two in tall tumblers with lots of ice.
Ahhhhhhhh!!!!
Not bad, not bad. Especially considering the slight weirdness of our BEEFEATER 24 experience (although not as weird as HENDRICK’S). GORDON’S serves up exactly what’s needed in a decent G&T. Good infusion, good balance—more than serviceable and thoroughly underrated by gin snobs. It is, after all, the world’s best-selling gin.
But it’s not for gin noobs! GORDON’S hits all the traditional gin notes, and it hits them hard. If you’re looking for a gin that doesn’t really taste like gin, GORDON’S is not for you. If you don’t really like the taste of gin, there’s a whole shelf of gins crafted for you, with bizarro tasting notes like “cucumber” and “nothing.” If all the bottles came to life after the liquor store went dark at night, GORDON’S would kick the shit out of those pretty gin bottles. And maybe BROKER’S would help it if it was ever reinstated in the store.
I know, I know, it’s silly to anthropomorphize the gin bottles. Next thing you know I’ll be imagining Chihuahua is a real dog.
* NEW MATERIAL ONLY. POLYESTER FIBRES. PLASTIC BEADS.
It’s my Granny’s birthday today but my mum says we don’t have to make a cake because she’s dead. (I was thinking sherry trifle.) I think my mum is just trying to be a hardass, but she’d better hope none of Granny’s relatives are reading this. “And why would they?” she asked. “Why would anyone read it?”
Since my mum is being so liberal with abuse, let me tell you about her latest beer purchase. Thinking she could appeal to all tastes at LBHQ by buying yet another sampler box, she cruised the liquor store seeking a package that did not contain anything weird or fruity. I’ve mentioned before how limited my parents’ beer bandwidth is. My mum is anti-fruit and my dad is anti-IPA—which eliminated most of the sample packages in the store.
What remained was Lighthouse Brewing’s Premium Pack. Promising three ales and a Bavarian lager, it seemed innocent enough, so my mum plunked down $23 and took it home.
First out of the box: RACE ROCKS ALE. Considering the ordinariness of the packaging along with its lack of informative tasting notes, how could anybody expect weirdness? We were geared up for a run-of-the-mill ale with an ordinary hop/malt interplay. But it wasn’t to be.
Pouring amber-red with creamy foam, RACE ROCKS ALE puts you on immediate notice of wannabe intentions. But what does it want to be? Lighthouse Brewing designates it a craft beer, but OMG, any day now MOLSON CANADIAN will start calling itself that—it doesn’t mean anything, my fellow inebriates. If anything, RACE ROCKS ALE seems to be channeling the Belgian style with its rotting-orchard redolence.
You know when you’ve peeled a bunch of apples and peaches and whatever the hell else, about a day has gone by—a hot day—and gradually, slowly, you begin to notice that the kitchen smells? Well, I wish RACE ROCKS ALE were that subtle. While it’s certainly not as in-your-face as Unibroue’s product line, the fruit is there nonetheless, shaking its ass in your beer.
Okay, weird mixed metaphor, but this is a strange beer.
Get the $*#&@!#^! out of my beer!
On the tongue the ale redoubles its aromatic fruitiness. It’s no longer deniable; the overripe peaches can’t be ignored. Now, this is okay for my dad, because he gets all the remaining RACE ROCKS ALE and possibly its fellows if it turns out the fruit thing is something Lighthouse does with every beer. Score for my dad, but now we all have to live with my mum, who can’t blame anyone but herself for buying the case.
And what did I think of it? Holy crap, you know I loved it, people—I love all beer. But I love some beers less than others, and this is one of those (the ones I love less).
Nor did I like the way my mum pounded her bottle to make it go away. I had to be fast to get any at all. (She said it wasn’t bad enough to throw out. And yes, she does wear ten-year-old jeans for the same reason.)
Ignoring my angry mother, what did my dad think? “It kind of reminded me a little bit of U-BREW,” he said, damning Lighthouse Brewing further.
I guess this means I get all the RACE ROCKS ALE to myself. Too bad I can’t open it. If I could, I’d offer Granny a toast.
Liquorstore Bear 