NY Barfly

Drinks of the Week: Accio Butterbeer! Accio Firewhisky!

Barfly understands that our readers haven’t been able to check in this past week. You’ve all been busy burrowing your nose into a certain tale with a pedophile’s focus and adoration. While we’re sure that your favorite boy wizard is fascinating you with his “broomstick”, not to mention his “wand”, what struck Barfly about the recent incarnation of he-who-has eclipsed-God-as-the-most popular-fictional-character is the amount of underage drinking sprinkled throughout the blog. Wait, that’s not right. We mean sprinkled throughout the (we’re not quite sure how to pronounce this, silly Rowling conjuring up magical new words) – “book”.

No longer content with the cuddly charms of blast-end skwerts, our teenage heroes have made the logical jump to the bottle. After all, mommy and daddy aren’t home to monitor the keys to the liquor cabinet. They’ve been brutally murdered by the world’s most powerful dark wizard. As any child of the muggle suburbs knows, this can only mean one thing: Par-TAY!

And, why not have a little fun? Studying for the SAT’s, avenging your parents death while the fate of the entire wizarding world rests on your shoulders, girls – the perils of young adult hood are many. Barfly doesn’t blame Harry & Co for indulging in a little drinky drink after performing those exhausting spells. We encourage our readers to indulge Potter style this week. Empathize with your inner wizard as you sip and suddenly realize that the elf in the corner that you’ve been talking to all these years can finally be ascribed to, er, magic.

What’s your magic potion?:

Butterbeer

– A bucket of these makes a perfect summer treat. Kick back and have a few with the house elves. You’ll be sure to learn the deep dark secrets of your family tree (you always knew your cousin was a big ho). But, be careful who else you share with. One in four veterinarians have admitted to treating a Hippogriff for drunkenness. The proper ratio is one butterbeer for every four dead ferrets that you feed them.

Firewhisky – When you’re feeling a bit more broody, have a sip. It will help you sort out your issues. Be careful though, as too much sorting might lead you to wake up on the bathroom floor with bits of patronus all overt the toilet. You’ll have a smashing headache and feel a bit queezy as you remember what you signed up for the previous night. Saving the world surely is a hard act to follow, don’t have too many regrets, you had to do something.

Absolut Vodka Absolutely Pure? Absolut lies!

When Barfly thinks of all things Swedish, we naturally think of all the typical Swedish stereotypes – aloof (read: hot) blondes with icy eyes, ABBA, heavily-laden vowel names, the bumbling idiot Muppet chef, cheaply made dorm room furniture that ends up in the “free” section on Craig’s List... 

And ABBA.

But most of all, when Barfly, like our beloved compatrioalcoholics, thinks of Sweden we think about Absolut Vodka – Sweden’s most cherished export.

As such, Barfly feels it our duty and privilege to reveal the truth behind its origins and the multibillion dollar ad campaign launched to divert drinkers into believing they’re worldly, artistic and chic when in actuality, they’re like the rest of us – drunks who love a chaser of artifice with their glass of delusion.

Though extensive sleuth-like work, Barfly has uncovered that the wily ad execs at TBWA (To Be White Ads) masterminded the wildly successful Absolut ads to cover up the truth behind its beginnings and Barfly is here to tell the truth…

Lashonda O’feelya Smith aka was a black woman whose white rice was famous meters outside of her native village, Detroit. Detroit, like Lashonda, comes from Old Norse and means Like Hell. Lashonda’s tendency to pass out in public restrooms, Circle K and in very own kitchen was the source of ridicule and scorn – that is, until it was this very fine characteristic that resulted in the birth of Absolut.

You see, it was a Thursday just like any other Thursday – October 12, 1836 – to be exact that Lashonda was laid out in her kitchen, her face hovering just inches above a kettle full of her culinary marvel. Some 23 days later she was roused by the pungent scent of liquefied, fermented grain that begged to be chilled and served with Spanish olives. Rubbing her bloodshot eyes and with the thirst of a minutes-from-death, comatose drunk, she tipped her kettle back and swigged. After ingesting a quart or so, Lashonda, no dummy and drunk as shit, realized she had a vessel of liquid gold.

But how to mass produce and distribute? She quickly formulated an idea – one that would honor her Scandinavian roots and represent her own talents. No stranger to blowing and less of a stranger to prescription pill bottles, she’d create containers for the elixir – colorful, clever Swedish medicine bottles! With one hand she reached into the front yard of her beachfront lean-to, grasped handfuls of sand and tossed them into the nearby bonfire. Moments later, when the sand was piping hot, she reached into the flames and blew the molten glass into adorable rectangles with simple metal caps. With her free (of third degree burns) hand, Lashonda grabbed her palette and quickly painted a unique work on each of the bottles – using several of her 27 children – Warhol Johnson, Britto Slogstein, Versace King, Frabel Gonzalez and Haring Smith – as the inspiration. She poured and poured until she had a case. Barfly doesn’t think we have to explain how the ad execs managed to manipulate this little gem of marketing gold.

With the paint on the bottles barely dry, Lashonda headed to her local liquor store and showed its owner, Richard W. Lewis, her creation. Duly impressed, an idea guy, a spotter of genius and a first-class finagler, Lewis lured Lashonda to try the latest flavor of Mad Dog 20/20 – a pineapple strawberry concoction that he knew would win her heart and more importantly, knock her on her ass. Lashonda, like any true Midwestern lush in a town with no hope, no prospects and no economy, drank and drank, falling into a deep slumber. Wasting no time, Riley packed up her goods and headed for the Big Apple where he knew more than his share of advertising agents, the biggest being the good ole boys at TBWA. And the rest, is a history like so many others – the ones where white people take something perfectly wonderful, whiteify it and turn it into a bajillion dollar enterprise. Sadly, or perhaps blissfully, Lashonda would remain passed out for the remainder of her life or throughout the height of the Absolut campaign in the 1990s.

So next time you find yourself on a barstool accompanied by yet another sorry ass date from Match.com who orders an absolutely un-inventive Absolut and cranberry, make it your duty to tell them the Absolut truth. Then excuse yourself to the bathroom, exit the restaurant via the kitchen, grab yourself a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and toast Lashonda.

Because the troof hurts. But it hurts less under the influence of fortified grape wine. More upside? You get to avoid reality for at least 154 years.

Review: The Liberal Art of Cheap Drinking

Barfly knows how difficult college can be, especially financially. When mommy and daddy have to sell her precious MILF eggs to afford your tuition, they may be a bit strapped to provide you with spending cash. Be heartened as you learn valuable life-skills like feminist German filmmaking and The Power of the Nubian, there is a place where you can afford to drink it up. East village bar Cheap Shots certainly lives up to its name. You can get properly sloshed and still afford to buy the used copy of Beowulf that you’ll need for that report that’s due like, oh shit, tomorrow.

Before you have to write about our medieval hero getting sopped on Meade and going after Grendel, you can be a little epic yourself. Take some $2 shots of SoCo Lime and dive in after your roommates “out of town friend” Gretchen, who doesn’t seem so monstrous after that third pitcher of yuengling.

Barfly says Godspeed, young hero. Drink well and cheaply. Slay that redhead in the corner. Study for your exams. Most importantly, spend plenty of time playing air hockey, living it up, and gaining precious memories of cheap shots. You’ll be glad to have something to look back on when you realize that you won’t get hired at your internship, even though you spoke very eloquently about Prussian politics while going on your third Starbucks run of the morning.

Review: Cheap Shots - 1st Avenue and 9th Street

Drink for free on your birthday – 3 olives – A good deal, until that fake ID joint on Bleecker Street Closed. It used to be that every day could be our birthday for $35 a pop. Now we have to go to the tattoo parlor on St. Marks and spend $60. While this still nets us a $76 savings from an average night of drinking, those tattoo guys can have pretty hairy backs.

Reading just enough of Beowulf so that Mommy and Daddy are proud of your education – 5 olives – Recite a Shakespeare verse at the table (fail to mention that you memorized it from Baz Luhrmann) and she’ll pony up two more eggs. Drinks on you!

Grade inflation at the major New York Universities – 4 olives – The report you hand in two days later is titled Yesterday’s hero, Today’s Hero: A Comparative Study of Epic Poetry and the film of Samuel L. Jackson. The professor gives you a B+. If it were a C, she knew that Jackson would come and fuck up her motherfuckin’ ass!

Service Industry Super Spy: The Customer - Always Wrong.

Aren’t customers adorable? In our undercover service industry job, Barfly has found so many cute things about them that we get weepy whenever they arrive. We tear up almost as much as we do when we see an infant plucked from the uterus and stuffed into a daffodil costume, Ann Geddes style.

We’ve also found that our cutesy customers are good for a number of things: sleeping with, stealing from, staring at, goosing. Recently we found that a customer’s most useful talent is their blameworthiness. Barfly discovered an important  trick of the service industry trade: we can get away with anything, as long as it’s the customer’s fault.

In the NY restaurant industry not only is the customer never right, they are oft times nincompoops who quickly lead to the system being destroyed. One look at the spinach salad hanging between their overpriced veneers and the conclusion reached is unequivocal: Guilty. Of everything.

Below you’ll find some examples of how to get off scott-free because of the scofflaws sitting at your tables:

You spilled red wine all over someone’s lap because you were drunk. Explain to your manager: “She was looking at me with her shifty eyes. Old bitch”.

The kitchen cooks the meat medium-well and the customer sends it back because they wanted it medium-rare – “Manger, they are Pilipino and seem to have a cleft palate. They clearly can’t judge a meat’s temperature.”

Toilets are backed up because you hurriedly put too much toilet paper in while between tables – “Ugh, one of the customers had a miscarriage. Again. Third time this week.”

A grease fire in the kitchen because the staff was watching the Mexican national soccer team get their ass kicked by the F’in USA – “Ay Cabron! Those putas ricas loca customers are. . . como se dice?...firestarters.”

You’re stuck in the service industry after a dozen years with no real career prospects “The old guy at table 13 tried to grab my ass. The world is full of perverts. I’m not even going to try”.

If the customer tries to deflect blame, be sure to grab your busboy (the one exiled from his native Brazil for slitting tourists’ throats) to escort them outside the restaurant. Surely the jury will understand your and Raoul’s actions. When the customer put on a ridiculous panama hat upon exiting the restaurant, they were just ASKING to be brutally maimed.

Booze in the News: ID's y'all. Yes'm, thats you too MeeMaw.

To address the “problem” of underage drinking, Tennessee authorities have come up with an inventive strategy: card everyone, regardless of appearance, when they purchase beer. Wine, liquor, ammunition, and huffable modeling glue are not affected by the new law.

“This law is going to put an end to a pernicious practice,” Democratic governor Phil Presden informed at a news conference. “We’ve had a rash of teens, and yes even tweens, going to the drive through liquor store. They wear pasted on beards and counterfeit colostomy bags to get away with buying beer. We are sending a clear message: this stops now. God knows what they used to fill those bags.”

The state law comes at the bequest of two powerful state persuaders – the ghost of Jack Daniels and a lobbying consortium of former beauty queens.

Royanna Lee Fairweather, head of the lobbying group, gave light to the organization’s thinking. “We all thought that it was unfair that the teenagers got to feel young when they are carded at the beer store. I was Miss Dixie Charm in 1965. I want to feel young too, y’all”.

When asked if she actually drank beer, Ms. Dixie Charm excused herself for a moment to clean the gunked makeup from the corner of her eye.

Mr. Daniel’s spirit also pushed for the ban to encompass wine, but he only controls the State assembly. The ghost of Davy Crockett holds enormous sway over the senate, and legislators were wary to cross him. A spokesman for the senate offered this comment: “Mr. Crockett enjoys a nip of a fine French red. If we were to take that away from the children of this great state, well, let’s just say that Davy’s got a knife. A big one.”

Barfly worried for a moment that such a stringent rule might be passed here, ruining all of the underage keggers and drunk driving deaths associated with them. Luckily we remembered something: we live in a blue state. The only people who get carded when looking for public services (i.e. drinking) are those pesky immigrants. Ah, democracy!

Drink of the Week: Independence

Now kids, why would you expect Barfly to tell you what to drink on this glorious week? Four score and seven shots ago, our fore fathers founded a great nation on this very day. Perhaps if we were still under British rule you would look to an educated charlatan like Barfly to tell you what to imbibe. But, when they signed that declaration thingy, those rebellious dudes had a few freedoms in mind. Hundreds of years later we are able to mock those who buy hybrids, let Disney trample our copyright laws (Mickey is a true patriot), and chose to drink whatever the fuck we want. Take that European Union. Wine is for sissies. Boo-yah!

So, readers, what does freedom taste like to you? We’ve listed some favorites because, even though we would never tell you what to sip in this beautiful republic, some drinks are more patriotic than others.

An ice cold Coors – As refreshing as the water the border agent hands to the Mexican he detained near the Rio Grande. Better enjoy it while its cold, there is nothing quite so thirst quenching when you and your bride are shipped back to Gudalajara short the $4,000 you paid to the human traffickers.

Mojito – Thought we were serious, did you Commie?

O’Doul’s – What the current leader of our nation drinks. Sip one on this day in his honor. This particular can beverage can also be enjoyed in a frosted mug or water boarded down your gullet. A no-brainer to us.

There is some help to get started. We’re sure that whatever you come up with will be an appropriate libation for this special day (except anything with Gin, then you’re a red coat).

And remember, a true patriot will have a few too many of their independence cocktails and blow their second and fifth digits off with a proper American M-80. When you’re on your way to the emergency room, know that your sacrifice was for a good cause. We don’t want the terrorists to think they’re winning, now do we?

Booze in the News: Jihad, shaken with a twist.

Barfly’s contacts in the Department of Drunktown Security have informed us that the terror alert will soon be raised from “Slightly Tipsy” to “Pretty Damn Drunk”. Knowing that the next and final threat level of “wake up in the hospital and realize that your teeth are missing” really means bad news, Barfly asks our readers to be as vigilant as they can while still being your fabulously disaffected selves.

Apparently, the recent attacks foiled in the U.K. have lead the jihadists to a conclusion that we have known for our entire cosmopolitan career : car bombs are passé. Why drive when you can take a taxi? And, as we all can empathize with, it is such a chore to light yourself on fire if said car bomb fails to go off. We can view self immolation any time we want to in this you tube era. Why bother with all that running, screaming and flailing if you know the heathenish white men that you’re trying to kill have seen it all before?

So, the terrorists have found a new toy that is sure to get us all lit in a non burny-burn type way: The Dirty Martini Bomb. The advent of this sophisticated weapon is the reason for the elevated threat level. “While no specific attack is currently planned,” Michael Chertoff informed at a news conference, “we do have intelligence that indicates the ability to make a crude device. Let’s just hope that they don’t figure out how to pit olives. Then we’re in big trouble.”

The breakthrough came when our friendly Islamists decided to turn off Koran tube and tuned into an American favorite, Sex and the City. Barfly got a comment from a terrorist spokesperson: “We watch this show, and it dawns on us. Americans are drunk all the time. Why not use this seeming strength against them?” The masked representative then tried to behead us, but we were able to convince him that we really are more of a Carrie than a Samantha. He chuckled as we decided to put the machete down and make mimosas instead.

We don’t want to reveal too much about the bomb’s mechanisms (lest you create one yourself), but the basics are easy to understand. It goes off at night, a cool mist of premium gin spreads throughout the immediate neighborhood. Those who come in contact with it become furiously drunk. Much jihad- wackiness ensues. Everyone wakes up with a furious hangover. Not to mention caliphate, which has been established while they slept.

We got our masked spokesperson slightly tipsy, and decided to see if he would open up a little more. Did he really think that this was necessary? Were our societies really that different that violence was needed? “You see,” he said “I don’t think we really are that different. If you American’s would just understand us a little bit more, and start stoning your rape victims to death, then I think we all would get along happily. We could go to, how you say, brunch!” He later admitted that he thinks that he is closest to Charlotte but with the work ethic of Miranda. Silly guy.

Brunch for world peace? Barfly certainly is there! For the sake of national security, we wonder if Mr. Chertoff would pick up the tab for unlimited Bloody Mary’s.