Morning, poppets! Sorry the italics monster has been eating my blog lately, but a few important thoughts before today’s (short, boozy) post.
- I’ve been having a pretty rough week for various reasons — including letting jerkfaces maul my self-esteem for two seconds yesterday — and it’s cheesy, guys, but I just wanted to let you know that your comments and support rock my face off every damn day. Thanks for being wonderful. Slash not being assholes.
- Today marks the opening of Muscles’s show, More Or Less I Am, a music-theatre staging of Whitman. If you’re going to be in NYC between now and May 14, check out a free performance! I’m going up this weekend to see it and couldn’t be more psyched! Also, THE HUGEST of shout-outs to Laura, as well as a few anonymous dudes, for making donations to this amazing project.
- Today, badass free-spirited freelancer-dude blog Untemplater isfeaturing a guest post I wrote about strolling through Whole Foods looking like a bizarrely perky walk-of-shame; related: why you should clean your closet. Hopefully this will turn into an ongoing contributing writer gig; feel free to click over to leave a comment letting them know they’d be crazy to pass me up!
- Other stuff I wrote today: on Secret Society of List Addicts, a few out-of-genre song covers that are way, way better than the originals. (WARNING: Searing confessions about Barry Manilow.)
- I promise the italics monster won’t rear its ugly head again ’til next Monday.
NTKOG #167: The kind of staggering daytime drunk who — paranoid about diluting her booze in the quest for a frosty brew — contentedly sucks down lager slushies.
I am: seriously diggin’ the nostalgia-boost of homemade frozen novelty confections.
I am not: sure that nostalgia and elevated BAC belong in the same mouthful. Beer scream floats, anyone?
The Scene: My apartment, a sweltering hydrophobic bunker in the final hours of the aquapocalypse. My third-floor apartment was so steaming I was afraid of my twelve-packs of Fresca popping one-by-one like an artillery demo, and the last ice cubes had run out days ago.
A beer popsicle, it stood to reason, was exactly what the troops clamored for. Finally, the perfect summer treat for the over-12 set! And it wouldn’t even stain your mouth red! Unless you’re really into framboise, I guess.
Set an ice tray of Newcastle in to freeze and, in the morning before work, beamed delightedly as I popped one perfect cube of boozeslush out of its holster. After I popped the chunk into my mouth, said beam froze into a mask of grotesque horror.
The thing I love about Newcastle is that it — like all the best of British cuisine — tastes so stolid and brown. A hearty slug of British ale is like listening to your favorite uncle’s infectuously rumbly laugh. The second you freeze said ale? Like listening to that uncle’s third wife’s pet Papillion getting dashed against a wall. Brutal. Shrill. You pray for its immediate end.
Worse, because I’d frozen the beer before it went flat, little pockets of carbonation opened as the bally thing melted, releasing mustard gas down my throat and deep into my sinuses.
Once I finished spitting the taste out of my mouth, dumped the rest of the cubes in a class and decanted half a can of Fresca on top of it.
Something about this picture really screams "diphteria!" to me.
The Verdict: Cold, diluted, none of the pissy reek of the frozen variant: it was basically a beer spritzer. If you’ve ever sipped a beer and thought to yourself, “yeah, that should probably be half as alcoholic and spend a dirty weekend with NutraSweet,” then have I got a breakfast recipe for you.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
For whatever it’s worth, your sarcasm drenched line, “Bloggers Exaggerate?” was great!
In a big announcers voice, ” Yesterday, you witnessed the annoying sound of people existing.” :)
Em, Nukie Broon is an exception, but most British “brown beers” are brewed to be served at typically 10 to 15C, say 50 to 60F. Also Nukie Broon will not benefit in any way from being left open for several hours to get frozen.
But on your general points, any time. And you’re always welcome; you make me :D just about every day.
I know that most people serve beer too cold, but usually an over-chill just leads to loss of flavor — freezing beer turns it noxious! I guessed it wouldn’t taste delicious frozen, but read a few websites that recommended “beer popsicles” so didn’t think it could be as bad as it was! I just thought it would be an amusing spin on aquapocalypse, but yeah, I’ll definitely be serving beer at the correct temperature from now on. :-)
Disambiguation – Nukie Broon is a rare example of a British brown beer that is meant to be served cold; where I think the plan went wrong is that if doesn’t respond well to being left open for longer than it takes to drink the bottle. I’m sure the wheels would come right off if you tried it with, say, Caledonian 80/- (Caledonian Brewery 80 Shilling ale; just say “Caley 80″ if ordering in Scotland).
When good ideas go wrong…
Have you ever had jello shooters? Just sub in vodka for the water. Serious delicious.
That really does look like a science experiment. Not necessarily a good one. Kudos to you for giving it a go. I admire that. Yesterday, eh, people are boorish at times. Actually, some people are boorish at times, other people are boorish all the time. ;)
“Papillion getting dashed against a wall”
Dude, that is _excellent_ imagery… which also happens to make me feel bad just for thinking/laughing at it!
Winter ale makes the best beer floats. Its delicate vanilla spiciness + soft serve = greatest housewarming mistake ever.
Aww, italics monster! Poor lil guy, always lurching to one side… he must be lapping up a lot of the booze you’ve been sloshing around your apartment during the aquapocalypse.
dirty weekend with NutraSweet
I may use that as a poem title if that is okay.
tried the beer ice in highschool and it failed horrible. I wish I remembered what beer it was.
Dude, you are more than welcome to all the dirty weekends with NutraSweet (or literary depictions thereof) that you can handle. Also, between reading your comment and typing this response, I went on a fifteen minute flight of fancy imagining a stripper with the stage name NutraSweet and all the terrible life decisions that would have brought her to those specific circumstances. Then I started writing a ballad about it, before I remembered I’m tone-deaf. As you can see, it’s been a highly productive evening here at the TKOG manse.
You’re allowed to be a librettist and tone deaf, I think. Just promise that you won’t attempt a tune to go with the lyrics.
One of my roommates put wine in the freezer once, thinking it was like vodka and wouldn’t freeze. We ended up with nasty wine popsicles that one of my friends thought was the greatest invention ever.
Also, I think I’m never going to get sick of commenting here with my name with a dollar sign… even long after it’s not funny anymore.
Also, you were close on the shows on my musicals post: the first was Les Miserables, but you got the others right. So… take 2/3 of however many points I promised. Add a few bonus points, because Pirates of Penzance is an awesome show, and made for a good guess. And you can keep all my love because of your fantastic blog.
1) The dollar sign totally suits you. You should start signing legal documents that way too!
2) Ohhh, I should have guessed Les Mis! But you know what they say. French peasants look identical to orphaned pirates, and are equally prone to bursting into song. I think that was in Hamlet or The Odyssey or something… ;-)
thanks for the shoutout. Fact that I only just had a chance to read this now goes to show how well it’s going. Super psyched to see you at tomorrow’s performance in the Winter Garden at World Financial Center (beautiful place). Also, I smell a legit experiment coming on: over the summer when you visit, we’ll buy 5 6 packs and make ice cubes out of one bottle of each – then let the taste test begin!
You’ve been quoted!
http://qoddessquotesblogs.blogspot.com/2010/05/quotes-may-7-2010.html