meximick's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regrets, I've Had a Few

I don't think I've written about this. But Last year, Mike and I participated in something we called (or really, something I'm now calling...)

The liquor store on my block caters to a wide variety of alcohol consumers. From the 7-10 kids with one fake ID packed into one 3 bedroom apartment behind my building who are looking to score a few cases of Stroh's, to the nice gay couple that used to live above me who enjoyed a robust California cabernet, this store has everything you need and more. Maybe less. But they sell peanuts. And I like peanuts.

They also have an intriguing (if you're intrigued by this sort of thing) selection of the finest hobo wines I've seen in quite a while. These are very cheaply produced fortified wines. Whereas the so-called "real" wines are about 10% alcohol content, and made with real grapes these babies are anywhere from 15-20% alcohol. Science has yet to determine the exact ingredients in hobo wine.

So being the money-conscious miser I am, I put it to my roommate, Mike, thusly, "We have limited funds with which to get wasted. A visit to a bar would be short-lived indeed, my friend. Instead, I propose another solution - a variety of alcoholic beverages at our disposal, to be consumed in something of a "taste test".

As a scientifically-rooted intellectual, Mike assented to my plan.

We bought the following:

-2 pints of MD 20/20 (kiwi-lime and strawberry-banana <--- WHO DECIDED TO PRODUCE THESE FLAVORS???!!!)

-1 pint of Night Train

-and....[Interesting side note: I had never seen Cisco before. The only time I'd heard of it was when I was in school and hanging out with some skateboarding friends who fondly recalled this "fucked up shit that tasted like Kool Aid and made you fucked up, insane drunk." Then they told me a story about destroying someone's apartment after getting drunk on it.]
2 bottles of Cisco (strawberry and orange).

The MD was something we had experienced before. I had, in my day, choked down a bottle or 2 of the grape varietal, but never these 2 flavors. They were sweet. They were fruity-like. They were malty. Nothing special. Not paint thinner bad, but not something I'd want to experience again.

On to the Cisco! (we decided that the Night Train required more chilling in the freezer than the rest - I mean who likes warm hobo wine?? Losers, that's who.) So it did resemble Kool Aid in appearance. BUT OH My LORD God in HEAVEN - the taste......

It was unGodly. Never before have I choked down such a miserable drink in my life. And I've drank Sambuca! It was distilled misery. Sweetened, fermented death in a bottle.
It.
Was.
Bad.
I'm talking with-the- lingering-taste-of-feet bad. Unpleasant on many levels, and offensive in taste, I have no idea as to why both bottles were drank. I believe Mike drank most of them. We tried many things: chilling it, adding 1/2 a glass of orange juice and orange slices. It only seemed to intensify the terible, terrible taste. Nothing helped. Every gulp was like a sweetened kick in the face. Our eyes widened in horror at what we'd begun....

So, on to the Night Train! It was pretty good, relatively, we decided. Citrusy, with a minor hint of awfulness which abated within moments. I believe the best compliment we gave it was, "Not horrible."

The hangover in the morning was unreal. It's like we packed 2 days of drinking into 3 liters of terrible, terrible hobo wine. My eyes were slits. Bloodshot. I could feel my pulse pushing throbbing waves of pain through my skull and face. Eight to ten hours of sleep later, we felt almost human again.

Basically, we learned that hitting yourself in the face with a hammer hurts a fucking lot, by hitting ourselves with an awful tasting hammer in the face.

1:54 p.m. - 2001-09-27

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next