You like drinking? Hell, you like drinking. Who the hell don’t? - Uncle Jemima*
I obviously do. The cover of the book makes that pretty clear (or the pieces I’ve done on bourbon and gin). And when I drink, I prefer to do it for real. I don’t want wine with dinner, mimosas with a Sunday brunch or a half a case Michelob Ultra watching the college games. That’s not drinking.** That’s sipping. If those are the options, “Pass.” Give me a Diet Coke.
And when I drink, I don’t like to wait… running back and forth to the bar, standing in line to reload. I want a fat glass filled to the brim, as much as I can comfortably hold. Which is why I order the Triple. A single’s never enough, a double’s close but still short and the quadruple? That’s too clumsy to request. Makes you sound like a coke-muscled yuppie fucking with the bar tending staff, the kind of asshole who deserves to lose some teeth. The Triple is the go-to order. Gets the job done with optimal efficiency.
The only problem? Some bars won’t serve the Triple. This gratuitous bit of dialogue from Happy Hour covers a run-in I had with a bartender on my honeymoon who refused to pour me one.***
The Trouble with Ordering Triples
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* Killer line: “What are you swatting at?” Morgan’s obviously a genius, but Meadows is under-appreciated.
** The best example of bad social imbibing is the drinking you see at corporate functions. In this rancid New Millenium, Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels have given way to low carb domestic McBeers and chardonnay, the lubricants of soccer moms, health-paranoids and pretentious control freaks everywhere. “Hello, Miriam. Great choice on the pinot grigo, huh? Works perfectly with the white bean and arugula finger sandwiches. Why don’t you tell me about an obscure expressionist you’re into at the moment? I’ll respond with a comment about some Romanian author I read about in the Times. Then we’ll segue into a discussion about your recent Third Circuit argument. I’ll say ‘fascinating,’ down the last of this glass of horse piss and pretend to excuse myself to get another.”
*** And got revenge on me for being difficult, as a later passage explains.
Have you read Money by Martin Amis? I recently picked it up, and you seem to occasionally tap into the same vibe that he did.
PL: No, but that’s a damn flattering comparison. Serious man of letters there. I have Martin and Kingsley on the bookshelf, but for one reason or another, I haven’t gotten to them. Probably because I’ve been reading too many pop books on economic crap recently. I have to get out of this fascination with the creative destruction going on in the global economy. For starters, it depresses as much as it intrigues (I like watching things fall apart as much as the next guy, but the better part is watching a Phoenix emerge from the rubble. And this time, I just can’t see it happening. At least not on any reasonable time table.). Secondly, I’m not sure people want to hear somebody reflecting the bleak reality of that stuff at them. I think we all know it’s all true, that we’re uniquely fucked this time (I was wrong on credit rebounding in that piece I did on New Year’s Eve), and we’d rather think about something else because we feel like they have no control over that problem. So thanks for the recommendation. Perhaps it’s time to crack those Amis books.
You know, it’s funny… I just bring a nice large porcelain gravy boat with me and nobody every has any problems serving me a quadruple in it… Maybe it’s your attitude? PIZZA! PIZZA!
PL: That’s not Alfredo sauce.
A belated post here but looks like that link is broken (a 404 error).
PL: Thanks.