El Jimado Canned Paloma

Why in God's name would you make a tequila cocktail in a  can and only make it 5 percent alcohol? Who in their right mind has ever said "oh, no thanks, I'm trying to just get a nice buzz going. Just tequila for me." And why would you throw together substandard agave juice and grapefruit soda into said can and sell it for 2 dollars when I could get the same buzz for a buck's worth of PBR and it wouldn't taste like a cactus hooker?

Yep. Typical Tuesday night here at the Department of Skullduggery.

LOOK
It really, really seems like a waste to pour this out of the can. In it's in a can for a reason. What am I gonna do, mix it with scotch? (NO. No I am not. That's like if in Pretty in Pink Molly Ringwald had slept with that awful 80's friend of hers).

And I am Harry Dean Stanton, shaking my fist at the heavens. But not in this movie. Repo Man Stanton.

Alright, fine. But first let me say that the can is awful looking. It looks like budget soda-- specifically, like the store-brand version of Sprite from some chain based out of the Dakotas that found a niche market in selling caffeine-free soda to Mormons.

The soda itself is mostly clear, but kind of gray and cloudy. Like really terrible municipal tapwater or Mute, reproachful, the faint color of wetted ashes. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting. You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you ...

Wha- sorry. Sorry bout that. But yes, there is something sinister about El Jimado.

"How wonderful to fuck a farting woman." Man, Joyce would have loved tequila.

NOSE
 Well, this pretty much smells like grapefruit soda, which is what 90% of this can is. There is a really faint mustiness down at the bottom of it though-- the vastly substandard tequila that is mixed in there waiting in a thing sheet under it-- "death beneath the skin" to quote from Egon Schiele's trial.

What do you think: more or less pretentious than the Joyce reference?

TASTE
I've never had a real Paloma-- apparently Mexicans drink them way more than they do Margaritas --and I'm not a big tequila fan in general (unless I can go all David Carradine and just sip it in the middle of the desert). So take my assessment with a grain of salt, but this really isn't very good. I'd say it tastes like eating cactus pulp out of a grapefruit rind, but that would imply something clean and natural, whereas this is more processed and industrialized than modern-day punk imagery

The tumor they pulled out of Blake Schwarzenbach's throat wouldn't even drink this.

No, this is to tequila and grapefruit juice what 7-up is to fresh lemonade, or what those jugs of TGI Friday's White Russians are to a real handmade one (how do those even work? It's like fifty percent heavy cream and they just keep them on shelves). It also combines the worst aspects of tequila and grapefruit's pungency to be really puckering and dehydrating, and that is just awful. I've said it before, but nothing that you drink should make you thirstier.

FINAL THOUGHTS
In the end, though, it's not terrible. If you want a buzz and you don't want cheap beer, I guess you could drink it. I just have a pretty huge thing against pre-bottled cocktails anyway-- there's two ingredients in a paloma, and it's pretty much designed for a few people to kill a dozen over the course of an afternoon. Get some friends, but a bottle of something and make your own.

NOT. THOSE. FRIENDS.

King Cobra

WE'RE ALIVE AND IT'S BLOWING YOU MINDS RIGHT NOW BITCHES!

Seriously, told you I'd be back. It's just an issue of time, money, and my willingness to drink alone on a Wednesday night. And since I've got nothing else to do, King Cobra is a buck eighty a bottle, and  I don't have any videos rented, HERE WE GO.

First, an announcement: August 5-16th, I am going to be in the Boston area hanging with a couple loyal readers. And I fully intend to drink a jug (one of the big double-size bottles) of Wild Irish Rose with them. I may die, but if I don't-- look forward to it. It's gonna be a big hoopla post with videos and guest commentary and shit, but this should tide you over until then.

Second, a warning: McClelland's Scotch is not the best malt you get finish-wise or for complexity of flavor, but BOY HOWDY twenty-two bucks for a bottle of single malt is a damned impressive price. And Highlands Scotch is some of the tastiest, sweetest scotch there is. So I'm already just a smidge hammered.

Seriously, we're God's chosen people.

What can be said about King Cobra, really? It's Anheuser-Busch, it's somehow even less classy than Colt 45, and up until now my only experience with it has been seeing broken bottles by the side of the highway (seriously, walk down Merrimon sometime; there's like a new one every week). But I've never reviewed a nice big frosty 40oz before and for a dollar goddamn eighty I could not pass up the opportunity.

LOOK

It looks like goddamn piss is what it looks like. Hangover-piss, when you're dehydrated and it comes up all thick and amber. Or as I call it, a weekday morning. King Cobra used to have a giant-ass cobra all hssing at you on the label like "I dare you to drink me, motherfucker!" and now there's just a tiny little snake above the name. So it's gone from looking like something a hard-ass would drink (see: Ron Perlman) to something that a trashy  high school girl name Pearl Ronmano would drink. 

You don't drink King Cobra. Or I will come over. And I will stop you.

Also, fuck the person who designed this bottle. The neck is too stubby to do the proper one-handed forty-swig. If I can't chug back a forty like I can in Saint's Row (It's a healing item!) then what the fuck is the point? Next you'll tell me that defibrilators don't cure bullets! I need to steady the bottle with one hand, which means I have to take that hand off the steering wheel if I'm driving. For shame, Amheuser-Busch.

 NOSE

Jesus Christ Ron Perlman is quite a man. Also really funny-looking without the Hellboy makeup. What? Oh shit, right. I don't even want to talk about what Colt 45 smells like. Do you remember when you were a kid and you smelled your dad's beer? Remember how it smelled like rotten grain to your little stupid nose back then? Well King Cobra is that smell-- it's what beer smells like to an 8-year-old, to a 21-year-old. This is what that delightful blend of hops and malt would normally smell like if you never ever developed a palate.

Oh baby YOOOOOU...GOT WHAT I NEEEEED

Seriously, I've been watching a lot of Always Sunny lately. Also if it weren't for the fact that I'm on a huge Nothing Painted Blue kick right now (their lead singer and John Darnielle recorded a country album together! It was pretty damn good! It was better than King Cobra!) I would be emptying this and then screaming along to some ODB.

Anyway, yeah, King Cobra is as gross as you thought beer would be when you were a kid.

TASTE

Whaddayaknow, it tastes bad! Reeeeally. On this blog? Here I thought it would ferment eight years inside a sherry  cask!

I will say this for King Cobra: it knows why you're drinking it. If it actually had the elements that I like in beer (sharp hoppiness, a roasted undertone, thick malt, bitterness, and label design by Ralph Steadman) it would not get you drunk as fast. By being as watery and, well, Busch-like as possible, it goes down fast.

I've made a Tila Tequila joke. And I had like a couple weeks to prepare for this review. Christ, I just need to drink more to punish myself.

But seriously, this is ultra-watery stuff. It tastes like beer flavor. Like, there's a fancy-ass spice shop down the street from my house (hellooooo, Asheville!) that sells powdered beer-flavor, I guess for if you wanna do beer-battered fried fish and you don't want beer in you house (I do a lot of frying and this has never been an issue.) It's like if you just took that beer powder and mixed it with tapwater and vodka.

This is the point-zero of the basic malt/grains/hops combination. Seriously, unless you just scammed your way onto welfare and want to celebrate by sitting on your stoop listening to some Dirt McGirt, or if you want to give it to a child to convince them that beer is just a special medicine for mommies and daddies and also Big Baby Jesus,  I can't recommend it.

FINAL THOUGHTSIS IT A GOOD THING NO IT'S BAD. Hey! Dir-tay! Baby I gotcher money doncha wooorry!

 

From Me Home I Started

Hey everyone-- The Gutrotter's going on, if not a hiatus, a bit of a sabbatical. I'm hoping to keep updating  on an irregular schedule and I'll hopefully come back swinging bloody knuckles once everything's picking up, but:

1) Money's real tight right now, and while nothing I get for this blog is too expensive, I still gotta scrape together my pennies.
2) In kind of a bad state with work and money and bills and other issues, the roommate's out, and I really shouldn't be drinking 3-dollar vodka alone right now.
3) Recent entries haven't been that great, I think-- need to step back, tighten up the comedy, and figure out my process a little better.

If any of you have a bottle of something awful, though, and happen to be in or around Asheville NC,  feel free to bring it by and we'll hash something out. That said-- see you around, and keep your eyes out for when I do update.