drinking

LABATT BLUE

My Fellow Inebriates,

There is a time and a place for mass-market beer. The hockey game, on my couch.

This is where mainstream beer really shines—you can drink it fast with no pretentious tasting pressures, and it gets you nice and gooned. My good friend Jean-Guy recommends starting a case of LABATT BLUE just as Don Cherry starts mouthing off before the hockey game, then stretching it out for the next couple of hours. Perfect. Neither item distracts from the other: beer and hockey synergize into a perfectly anaesthetizing pocket of time.

Jean-Guy has all sort of other ideas about alcohol. He was the dude who first urged me to mix Stolichnaya and Smirnoff in a 50:50 on pointless-feeling days.

I barely know anything about hockey. I’m usually looped before the puck gets dropped. But as a Canadian bear I like to be semi-present for a game once in a while. What I can’t decide about hockey is, Is it emblematic of Canada? Or is it a meathead sport? What does “offside” mean? It seems to mean a couple of different things.

Mostly Don Cherry hurts my eyes with his outfits. Sure, that’s his gimmick, and I do have a soft spot for unusual visuals, but I think most people would prefer him naked to seeing these fashions.

Cherry does explain some of his get-ups. He has worn his pink suit, for instance, to thumb his nose at the left. “I’m wearing pink for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything.” Wow, so cool.

Don Cherry triggers me to drink LABATT BLUE, and fast. This last part is key, because LABATT BLUE has little to recommend it tastewise.

Less visually assaulting

Straw-colored with a quickly dissipating fizz, LABATT BLUE feels empty and light in the mouth, with a bit of a twangy, metallic funk. It has a pleasant crispness that is dependent on its being cold—hence the importance of pounding the case quickly.

As far as macro beers go, LABATT BLUE isn’t the worst, simply because it’s not memorable in any aspect. It’s an entirely appropriate accompaniment to anything mediocre you plan to do.

Are there boy/girl drinks? And where do bears fit in?

My Fellow Inebriates,

I got some new tasting notes from my friend Michael:

With Michael's bear Gustav. Can you "own" a bear? Whose outfit is sillier?

right now i am tasting a white russian. it is creamy and girlish but slightly strong and very bearly. tooodles liquor store bear

One of the first things to go when you’re drinking any quantity of vodka is punctuation. Add some Kahlua and you can say bye-bye to your caps as well. Michael’s notes are my very favorite kind—when you are three sheets to the wind you can be totally honest.

The White Russian didn’t originate in Russia; but it contains vodka, hence the name. Add cream to a Black Russian and there you have it.

There are dozens of variations on this drink but the classic method is to pour vodka and Kahlua over ice cubes and then add half-and-half. It’s totally, totally, totally yummy.

Michael mentioned that the drink is “girlish,” which raises the question: Are there “girl” drinks and “boy” drinks?

Here at LBHQ we don’t go in for gender stereotypes so much as we do massive, unspecific overgeneralizations. To put it more honestly, I’m freaking scared that someone will hunt me down if I start spouting off about which spirits I like to wear a dress while drinking (and there are some). So instead here’s a sampling of personality traits and drinks to match.

White Russian, fave drink of "the Dude" Lebowski. Drinking makes us all better people.

BEER—You’re down to earth and easy to please. Sometimes you leave appliances in your yard.

COOLERS—You’re underage. Or maybe a sugar junkie.

BLENDER DRINKS—You like drama in your relationships. You also like loud, mechanical whirring sounds.

COCKTAILS—You’re purposeful and know what you want. To you, blender-drink fans are your bitches.

WHITE WINE—You’re optimistic but sometimes insecure. You’d like to be a nudist but you don’t know how.

RED WINE—You’re classic and confident but not very street-smart. For instance, you wouldn’t know how to shiv someone with a broken bottle.

SHOTS—You don’t like wasting time. Ideally you’d like to get naked right now.

If you’re reading this, Santa…

I don’t enjoy getting hosed by retailers at any time of year, but the festive season seems the most predatory. When I heard on the radio this morning that one-sixth of all gift cards go unredeemed, I was jolted into sobriety. One-sixth! That’s a lot of languishing gift cards—between 8 and 10% of all gift cards purchased.

Across North America, that’s over $8 billion dollars that’s been paid to retailers and never exchanged for goods. Talk about money for nothing!

Gift cards were on my mind because my mum was reading my list for Santa, and she said: “Why don’t you just ask Santa for a gift card so he doesn’t have to waste his time hunting for bizarre alcoholic products?”

Well, I would never want to put Santa out or embarrass him by asking him to wheel a cart full of Malibu around his local booze shop, so I thought my mum had a pretty good idea there. But then this radio report made me paranoid! What if… What if Santa brought me my card, but it got lost in the wrapping paper on Xmas morning and thrown away? OMG. What if somebody else picked it up by mistake and took it away with them? OMG! What if my parents, in their parental way, put away my gift card for safekeeping and forgot about it? OMG!!

According to statistics, there are about $300 worth of forgotten gift cards lying around in the average North American’s sock drawers. What do retailers think about this?

Capable of forgetting to use a gift card? I'd say so.

Well, when gift cards first became popular, retailers did worry about cards going unredeemed—but strictly from an accounting perspective. So they programmed them with expiry dates. If you forgot to clean your sock drawer for too long, then tried to buy a toaster at Sears with an old card, you were out of luck. Finally regulations were introduced prohibiting retailers from selling these suicide gift cards. And retailers weren’t too sad because they realized they were raking it in regardless of whether they programmed the cards to expire or not.

But how do retailers feel about their customers spending money but getting nothing in return?

Yo, they totally love it!! This has become an industry unto itself. Take Best Buy, a place that specializes in hosing customers by placing loud price tags on things so they look like they’re on sale when in fact they’re not. In 2006 they profited $43 million dollars from unredeemed gift cards.

All of this worried me. But my mum said she was sure I’d pester her so hard to use the card that it wouldn’t get forgotten. I guess that’s true.

So Santa, if you’re reading this, you can send a gift card if you like, so I can buy my own Goldschlager, Bacardi white rum, Bacardi 151, blackberry brandy, strawberry liqueur, banana liqueur, Hypnotiq, Malibu, Pernod, champagne, melon liqueur, Bailey’s, Crown Royal, Frangelico, peppermint schnapps, Kokanee, Capistro and Domaine D’or. But please bring some Broker’s Gin because we don’t have any at our liquor stores in BC, and Julia Gale of Broker’s didn’t offer to send me any. Oh yes—and that tequila that comes in a gun-shaped bottle. I want to try that.

Yours truly,

Liquorstore Bear