DRINKS TO LOOK OUT FOR - VOL. 1

As your ambassador for the upcoming St. Patrick's Day (self-titled!) I consider it my duty to offer a couple words of warning or suggestion for the few of you who might choose to celebrate your Irish heritage... intemperately. As such, I offer up my first of many drinking guides. Share them with your family, and discuss the roll that drinking wisely could have in your life. IRISH CARBOMB (from Webtender)

Ingredients:

• 13-14 oz Guinness stout
• 1 oz Bailey's irish cream
• 1 oz Whiskey (Jameson's)

Mixing instructions:

Combine the Bailey's and Whiskey in a shot glass. Drop shot glass into beer. Should be finished immediately.

While I'm generally in favor of anything that incapacitates fratboys, it should be noted that this drink is responsible for 80% of the incoherent grunting and 100% of the Backpfeifengesichts (Ger.: "faces that cry out for a fist in them") on any given March 17th. Also, I like Bailey's as much as the next guy, but anyone bumping chests after drinking it, no matter what else it's mixed with, maybe needs to take a trip through Mexico the wrong way and learn a few things about alcohol.

Even worse, except not worse, because drunken fratboys are about the bottom of the barrel, are the women wo take this as their drink of choice for the night. Now, some people get chatty when they're drunk. Some people get belligerent, but women with Irish Carbombs only come in one flavor - weepy. Which means you can't really hit on them. Here's a helpful rhyme:

"If she's weepy, you're creepy."

In any case, I love St. Patrick's Day, but this drink is fully to blame for everything I hate about it.

SURFER ON ACID
Ingredients:

• 1/4 oz Jägermeister
• 1/3 oz Malibu rum
• Pineapple juice

Mixing instructions:

Combine and shake well with ice and strain into a shot glass.

This one might not come up very often without your seeking it out, but that's not exactly the point. As bizarre as this one appears - and it is - the strangest thing about it is how it can taste at once like every one of it's ingredients, and have that be awesome. Still, you don't really want tis for yourself. What you want to do is take that sweet, kinda straightlaced, desperately-wants-to-do-something-to-break-their-own-monotony guy or gal that you work with and get him or her started on these. Make sure it isn't a schoolnight, because as the night progresses, you'll only have two rules. One, Ms. Straightlaced should have one of these in her hands at all times, and Two, everyone does whatever Ms. Straightlaced decides. If you end up in jail, at least you'll have a damn good reason for being there, and probably a good amount of company.

People just tend to be fun when they're drinking these.

VODKA CRANBERRY

Ingredients:

• 6 oz Vodka
• Fleeting Remembrance of Cranberry
  

Mixing instructions:

Pretend to Stir.

Of course, my recipe is taken from the good people at Madame X on Houston St., where I recently attended a Charity Date Auction. Price of Admission was good for one Grey Goose drink, and I'm happy to say that they weren't stingy with the booze. Now I'm a beer man myself, and can genneraly hold my own fairly well when I'm working within those bounds, but who would I be to turn away a Grey Goose drink?

A wiser man, that's who.

I ended up accidentally winning the first auction, and then celebrated my winnings by following up the "cocktail" with two glasses of champagne. Then we moved on to the next bar. After five minutes and a beer there, a lovely friend of mine was kind enough to pour me into a ca with handwritten directions home from my roommate. I was later informed that those five minutes were about an hour and a half long. Now, I remember everything that I'm accused of having done in that hour and a half - I never black out - but it was all sped up like a whirlwind. And a mortifyingly embarrasing whirlwind, in retrospect. I will never touch this drink again for the rest of my natural life.

So that's it for this issue of Drinks To Look Out For. Tune in next time when I talk about something else that I haven't decided yet.