Bad Idea Theater Drink Recipes

Bad Idea Theater, installing and servicing hangovers since the twentieth century

Your mom called, she's worried about your drinking. She asked us to have a talk with you, so here goes. We don't suggest you try any of these drinks, drinking is bad for you. It won't make you look cooler, smell nicer, or do anything to fix your rather unpleasant personality. It will however give those people you call friends an excellent opportunity to photograph your most embarrassing moments and immortalize them on the internet. Don't say we didn't warn you!

A few bits of advice before we start:

Hangovers

If you find that you must drink, we strongly suggest that you have a glass of water in between each drink. It also wouldn't hurt if you took an aspirin before you start, as well as a multi-vitamin containing b-complex vitamins. Hopefully this will minimize the hangover you are so desperately trying to create. Oh, and when you are hugging that tree, talking to God and telling him you'll never do this again (you Liar!), tell him we said Hi.

By popular demand and without further interruption, those recipes:


Cocktails	Shooters	Pousse-café

A short history of drinking:

For those who care, and I'm assuming that's just me, I thought I would write a few words on the history of drinking and the evolution of the cocktail. It will get ranty at the end, but I'll warn you when that happens. Oh, and by the way, I can't really prove any of this, but it's mostly true.

The recorded history of alcohol goes back as far as the written record of mankind. The ancient Egyptians brewed Beer and there is some difference of opinion among scholars as to whether the beginnings of organized agriculture were due to the desire to make bread or the need to make beer. The fermented beverages of beer, ale, wine and even milk (not kidding; see koumiss) have been with us through the ages. In order to strengthen beer or wine, also known as "fortifying" it, the beverage was frozen and the ice skimmed off. This removed excess water and therefore increased the potency of the drink. Somewhere, lost in the mists of time, some enterprising individual discovered or invented distillation. It was learned that by raising the temperature to some degree (ok, its about 160 degrees F), but lower than the boiling point of water, the alcohol could be evaporated and reconstituted in another container, resulting in a distilled spirit. The down side, of course, was that the first alcohol to evaporate was the poisonous methyl alcohol (which either blinds or kills you), but for those willing to pour off the first bit, the rest of the batch was yummy ethyl alcohol. The fractional distillation process allowed wine to become brandy and beer to become whiskey. The varieties of distilled spirits flourished as people went around fermenting everything they could find, distilling them, and convincing people to drink them. To this day many countries have a spirit they enjoy with great national pride, such as Russian Vodka, Scandinavian Aquavit, Scottish Scotch (that doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it?), and American Bourbon (although we had to steal the name from the French).

The Cocktail:

The word cocktail is of dubious origin, there are many stories, myths and legends as to how the word originated and I leave it to the reader to research and choose the story they would like to believe. I believe I can say with some assurance, the concept of the Cocktail originated in the United States. The literary usage of the word goes back as least as far as 1806 when the following was written in the American magazine "The Balance": "Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters - it is vulgarly called bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion". In the 1950's the variety of cocktails was very limited, aside from aperitifs and straight (from the bottle) drinks, the alternatives were few. The Martini, The Manhattan, The Gibson, all very simple and straight forward drinks, the Rusty nail, the Whiskey Sour and its child the Ward Eight, with a few more ingredients. As life moved towards the 60's, more drinks appeared on the scene. The Screwdriver was developed (a tasty concoction of Vodka and orange juice), which developed into the Harvey Wallbanger with the addition of Galliano. The Wallbanger was then morphed into the "Slow Comfortable Screw up Against The Wall" by adding Sloe gin and Southern comfort.

OK, here's where the ranty part begins:

This is where the problem started, you didn't really need the Galliano to make it taste good, but you needed it to put the wall in the name (truthfully I believe the Slow Comfortable Screw came first). Great! Now it's not about the taste of the drink any more, it's about having a cutesy name (in fairness you have to give the SCSUATW credit for having all the ingredients, but still...). We have now reached the dawn of the age where any drunken sot can invent the worst tasting concoctions for the sole purpose of thinking they invented a drink, without possessing the slightest bit of skill or common sense. For example, The Prairie Fire. This one is just stupid, the only reason for this drink is to have your friend trick you into drinking it. The truth is if you're drinking this, you don't need a drink, you need new friends. Now with the advent of the Internet you have every bonehead on the planet throwing make believe recipes around like they have any clue what they are doing. Come up with a sexy sounding name and throw random things in a glass and suddenly you're Joe Cool. Just looking at the ingredient lists on some of these drinks is enough to make you swear off drinking. Not to mention the distillers creating their own crappy versions to push their product. Now there exists seventeen different versions of every drink all except one of them wrong, so when I sidle up to the bar and order a cocktail, the bartender has to look it up in a rolodex and then serves me a completely screwed up cocktail.

CUT IT OUT!!! You're ruining it for everyone! Admit that you don't know how to make a drink! Stop trying to impress your friends! We don't need seven thousand cocktails and if we did, we still wouldn't need the one you want to invent. You don't know what you're doing. You don't go around inventing new surgical techniques, do you? Of course not, because you aren't a surgeon. Surgeons spend years learning their craft before they are set loose on the public. It's not currently a crime to make a crappy cocktail, but it should be. You're all lucky I'm not in charge of this planet, cause' I'd be making some changes! ...Ummm.... Sorry about that... All I wanted was a nice tasty beverage.

Bad Idea Theater makes no guarantees as to the suitability or usefulness of its content. No warranties expressed or implied as to the actions of its members or their pets. We also take no responsibility for things that have happened, will happen or might happen. We also disavow any knowledge of anything that would in any way incriminate or exonerate us. Please keep hands inside the car at all times. No Spitting!

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