Least Awful Drink
I'll still pick up a bottle of Night Train or Irish Rose every once in a while when I wanna get crazy with friends. It's not good by any means but, compared to T-Bird or Mad Dog, it's pretty palatable and it'll get you trashed fairly efficiently. The Pelinkovac, that weird Croatian wormwood/cinnamon thing, was actually fairly decent and I'm still working through the bottle, throwing a splash of it into Manhattans or just as flavoring in soda water every once in a while-- it's one of the few I'd recommend picking up if you have a chance..
Most Awful
The top two are Malort and that time I made prison wine, but Malort is established and successful solely on how terrible it is and the prison wine was designed to be undrinkable-- and then I think I screwed up the fermentation process and made poison. So out of the legitimate, cheap hobo-drink contenders, it's Jacquin's Banana. Most of the other really awful things I'll sometimes pick up just for fun or to horrify my friends (really want a bottle of Malort to call my own, to be honest), but I am never touching that again.
Best ReviewI really like how the Mill Stream review turned out-- it makes so little sense that it would end up turning into a joint review of bad whiskey and a short-lived Sonic show from the 90's, but there's a really surreal beauty to it. I wish I'd done more reviews that just went absolutely nuts like that one did. The Thunderbird Cocktail Hour was also pretty great-- I love the way it turns into this Beckett pastiche at the end, and the Final Thoughts just being a picture of Kurtz is one of my favorite jokes I've ever made on this blog.
Worst Review
Probably my El Jimador review. It was around that point that I realized I was both running out of really entertaining stuff to review and starting to fall into some comedic ruts. Also, the running gag there pretty much boiled down to "more nonsensical and snobby references than usual," which... it's just not a very cohesive review, and the subject itself was pretty boring.
Most Fun Review
No contest here, Cossack vodka. Hanging out with one of the greatest people in the world, doing what I do and having a great time. Late that night-- about the point in the review where I pretty clearly leave the computer for a while and come back more drunk -- we just went outside, had a couple smokes in the Massachusetts summer (and I never smoke, except for when the drinking/close friend/nirvanic relaxation ven diagram lines up) and just talked and swapped stories for a while. One hell of a good time.
Regrets
I never got around to doing any rum or tequila-- the only really clearly disreputable brand the store carried of either was Aristocrat, and we all know how awful that is. I'd have like to have expanded the blog some and tracked down weird foreign liquors and moonshine and stuff like that, but I just never had the time and the money.
Potential Theme Songs
Kimya Dawson-- "The Beer" . The opening line is about having Mad Dog 20/20 for breakfast. Pretty appropriate.
World/Inferno Friendship Society-- "Addicted to Bad Ideas". The chorus is about refusing to give up your worst decisions, drinking/morphine-ing yourself to death, and then they make a reference to Goethe's Faust.
The Mountain Goats-- "Game Shows Touch Our Lives." You gotta watch that video. The introduction he gives is pretty much the zone my brain clicked into at the end of every review. Also "I handed you a drink of the lovely little thing / on which our survival depends. / People say friends don't destroy one another / what do they know about friends?" goes out to everyone who's had T-Bird with me.
