Destroying Everything for Nothing

Fuck you , James Bond.

A Monday, a fine Monday, overcast, clammy. I feel like my armpits are going to stay glued together forever.

I worked at a wedding this weekend. My friend's mom married her longtime boyfriend in an outdoor service. It was on Saturday, it was very hot, it was on a 30 acre farm, it was gorgeous. I basically did nothing. Hardly anybody wanted a complicated drink.

I rolled that over in my head as I sat here this morning. I've bartended a few places, but for the most part, nobody wants a complicated drink. It's always two or three components. The truly complicated ones are reserved for kids and/or fads. The complication can lie either in number of ingredients, or time to make the drink. Case in point: The Mojito. Everybody wants a fucking Mojito these days, with multiple ad campaigns creating public interest. A bitch to make. Muddle twelve mint leaves. Juice half of a lime. Add Rum. Add soda. Don't forget the ice, don't forget the straw.

How about a couple years back? Think hard now, as you may have annihilated some of the brain cells required to recall this. I can remember everybody drinking Long Island Ice Teas. Whenever we went out, it was beer, and as they came to be called, L.I.T.s. That's 1/2 oz. of Gin, Tequila, Rum, Vodka, and Triple Sec, fill the glass with sour mix, and give it a spritz of Coke for color. Yum! They actually take less time to make than you'd think. Still, that's quite a few ingredients, and the main bitch is that you're using five different bottles (along with the soda gun). There's actually a Long Island Ice Tea mix that's out now, the liquor pre-mixed in one bottle, ready to go. Possibly the laziest thing I've seen in bartending...

So this weekend I'm working and the most complicated thing I make is a Rumpleminze shot. Straight up Rumpely-Dumpely, chilled with ice. It was tough because there was no strainer, so I had to be careful not to dump ice into the glasses. Aside from that I made more Vodka Collins than should be legal and opened a lot of beer bottles. I pocketed some money and had a great time, tied one on with my friends' Uncle and camped out the rest of the night with my friends, in an adjacent field.

But let's get back to these drinks. For the most part, nobody wants a complicated drink. They want Captain & Coke, Stoli & Soda, Jack & Water (Which I personally loathe). I think this choice has a lot to do with life. People, all people like things straightforward, no hidden intracacies . Every once in a while, we'll get a bit lax, try something new and see what happens. Maybe we tell other people about it, our friends, an acquaintance at the job. They try it out. Eventually, interest fades and we move on something else. Perhaps next time it will be a Tic -Tac. Or some kind of Bomb (Jager, Car, etc.). Perhaps some fruit-infused schtick, the likes of which seem to be taking off these days. In the end, we're still going to want that Captain & Coke. Perhaps, as we sip on that drink, sitting with our friends at the bar, we'll wonder what fuck came up with mixing muddled mint and lime juice in the first place, and chuckle to ourselves.