POY Update

Well well well. Here we are almost through the first quarter of the year season and it looks like Tag Berauscht has all but wrapped up 2 months for the Prick of the Year Contest. It seems that he is hell bent on reclaiming his title from 2007 and is off to a good start. The manual labor he subjected us to last month almost broke my back and knees, but not my spirit (to drink). Now the cockayus lets the entire Ice Bears regular season pass by without arranging a single group outing for us to attend. I cry foul! Hockey games are one of our best outings to drink as a group and shout profane insults for everyone to hear how obscene we are. C'mon man, don't be such a dick - that offense is worth at least 10,000 prick points.

The Irish Question

Well, lookee here. It seems the nation's second outright yearly excuse to get shit-housed has arrived.

Say what you will about the apocryphal origins of that snake-driving sumbitch, the end result these days is that we get to thumb our nose at any sort of responsibility to drink a metric fuck ton of booze.

I've posted in the past about my resentment of these holidays...which sends forth the amatuer to drink with the pros, the latter of whom recognize no drinking calendar other than "today." Bosses will be on the prowl in the morning, the uptight prohibitionists will sniff derisively at your bloodshot eyes and gamey stench.

Fuck them. As much as I don't care about St. Patrick's day per se(Lots of English blood, so I naturally wish to oppress them) I will side with the dysfunctional Irish over the sober. After all, we get polluted on Tuesdays by rote.

Hopefully each of you has a bar in mind for today, so I'll spare you the various activities that are advertised in the local papers and leave you with a simple charge: Consume.

We Kinda Suck At This Blogging Thing

Hey drunks,

Yes, YOU the reader, you’re a drunk too. I know because why else would you be here?

Welcome to our very 1st ever (EVER!) Drinking Knoxville mock draft, an idea we ripped off from successful, well written blogs that have actual readers who post comments and everything. I thought to myself, “Mackey, this is an easy way to get everybody to post as a group AND potentially have some readers get involved and provide their own thoughts via comments”. I was dead wrong on the first assumption and have a pretty good idea how the second one will pan out, we’ll see.

We'll start with a 2 round draft with each of us choosing our picks without repeating each other. You can simply list your answer or elaborate as much as you want to. In order to accommodate our mountain time zone blogger we'll do the 1st round in order, then the 2nd round in reverse order so he can go back to back due to (I'm guessing) limited computer access. Readers, feel free to add your own selections in the comments section. Allez!

The topic is HANGOVER CURES:

1st Round

Mackey - Supreme pizza, preferably cold out of the fridge, but it can be cooked or ordered fresh. All 4 food groups are represented in one dish, plus grease and salty olives do the magic. Some favorites include Stefano’s (wheat crust) and Mellow Mushroom.

Lord von Lord - Bloody Marys or Bloody Bulls...breakfast plus the hair of the dog, in my case heavy on the horseradish as well. Just enough of an eye opener to make that critical decision whether to bail on work or make Irish coffee and piss off the neighbors. Note: This never works out as planned, usually resulting in a mid-morning nap.

Bloody Bull from Cocktailtimes.com
Ingredients:- 2 oz vodka - 3 oz Tomato Juice - 2 oz Beef Bouillon - 1/2 oz Lemon Juice - 1 dash Tabasco Sauce - Black Pepper & Salt - Garnish: Lemon Wedge. Shake all the ingredients in a shaker with ice and strain into a highball glass over crushed ice. Garnish with the lemon wedge.

Scarlett O’Harlot - My current strategy is a multivitamin and a banana. Kind of girly, but that's my duty here, right?

M – A banana you say? Hmmm, okay.

This is where things started to go to shit

KRTI – Sucks!

1 week later

Tag Berauscht - There is only one cure for me on an average everyday hangover, and that's fluids, lots of them. And yes, Beer is a fluid, probably the first or second one to consider.


Several days later

Frank McWoo - Emergen-C. If you are not familiar, this is a powdered drink mix that comes in individual serving packages suitable for stowing in desk drawers, glove compartments, as well as mixing with airplane bottles of vodka in a pinch. It's full of vitamins, comes in several flavors, and makes a delightful alka seltzer style fizzing display when mixed with water.

2nd Round

Frank - I know I have bitched about Utah beer ad nauseum, but I just realized the true value of it. In fact, as a hangover aid, it may justify the existence of this swill. Enough "hair" to take the edge off a moderately hazy Monday Morning Comin' Down, while not so much as to prevent you from doing something productive if you can't talk yourself or the judicial system into putting it off.


Some two weeks later…

Tag - DNP

KRTI - still sucking

SO’H - Am I supposed to respond now? Are these other guys out?

M - We're waiting on Tag's 2nd response if he will ever get to it. KRTI is out, so you will be next. Hell, go ahead and reply and I'll get it worked out. Thanks!

SO’H: I don't think I ever got Tag's first response. Let me know what it is so I don't write the same thing.

M - He picked fluids/more beer. Frank kinda chose the same thing but since it is Utah 3.2 beer I am going to accept it because god knows how long it would take to redo. Fuck, this is more difficult than I thought it would be.

SO'H: My second hangover cure: Gatorade always peps me up a little.

LVL: (Not necessarily a cure )but usually the stark terror of pocket forensics, bewilderment on the exact location of my wallet/phone, and the panic that it might be time to roll into work will usually scare the remaining booze out of my system. In other words, sheer panic makes the pain go away.

M: Chinese food. Flied lice. Rich, syrupy sauces covering meats of all kinds. MSG slathered on everything including vegetables. Eggrolls. Plus points for delivery and not having to drag yourself out in public looking and feeling like hammered dog shit. (thanks Gary Busey!)

So there you have it, and it only took the better part of a month to piece that one together. C’mon readers, I know you’ve got something better to add to these hangover cures, don’t be shy now.

Spring Rocka

Lieutenant Rocka is back with a fresh mixed tape of tunes just in time for Spring. Ease yourself into these grooves before the weekend sucker-punches your kidneys and takes all your money at the bar. Download episode twelve for FREE and spend your hard earned cash on booze! See, we’re good like that.

TRACKLIST FOR EPISODE XII
1. The Number Twelve - The Electric Company
2. Three Times Dope
3. Here’s the Thing - Girl Talk
4. Severed Hand - Pearl Jam
5. Mistaken for Strangers - The National
6. Daylight - Matt & Kim
7. M.E.X.I.C.O. - The Kills
8. Kamphopo - Esau Mwamwaya
9. She’s Not There - The Zombies
10. Departure - Crystal Stilts
11. Never Stops - Deerhunter
12. On The Road Again - Canned Heat
13. Tunnelvision - Here We Go Magic
14. Lion In A Coma - Animal Collective
15. Happy Up Here - Royksopp
16. Back on the Train - Phish (Live from Hampton, VA - Saturday, March 7, 2009)
17. Can’t Keep - Pearl Jam

Read this sumbitchin' blog(again)

Last year, yours truly blogged about how to make the misery of modern movies acceptable.

http://drinkingknoxville.blogspot.com/2008/07/functional-drunk-movies.html

Basically, I recommended drinking heavily and investing in a flask. What a fucking surprise. In hindsight I could have reduced that post by 50% had I just utilized booze references and curse words and still managed to get my point across. This year, Hollyweird has decided we need shiny pictures with extreme violence to take our minds off of the crap-laden diaper that is 2009. I'll spare you the tedium of reading titles you were already aware of, and indeed would like to endorse this sumbitchin' blog instead: http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/

A member of the highly funny and extremely offensive uproxx series of blogging partners such as http://www.withleather.com/ , you can obtain crucial film reviews as well as crotch-camera bootlegs plus all the racist and sexist humor that you laugh about in the privacy of your own home.

I mean, come on...who among us would have known about the NWA biopic if not for http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2009/03/nwa-biopic? Hopefully it will harken back to the days of the extreme violence and gunfire that encapsulated Spike Lee and John Singleton films of the day. I'm told you couldn't get a popcorn without some baller trying to jack you with his deuce-deuce in the concession line.

(Nino Brown says you are your motherfucking brother's keeper.)

Uh, yeah

Yes...First Friday was totally the reason I got polluted the other night. Completely. One hundred percent of the reason I ended up at the bar for an eternity after a happy hour-timed arrival.

Certainly I needed the artistic motivation to knock back countless IPAs, double Makers, and the coup de grace of Knob Creek belts straight from the bottle. Otherwise, I wouldn't have felt the need to drink all that shit.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Many Thanks(woo! Hell yeah!)

I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to Patrick Sullivan's right here in Knoxville's Old City 'district' for their upstairs digs. The de facto concert or band area for this establishment has served the authors well on several occasions. Strictly speaking, this is not a bar review, although it plays one on this blog.

Many of you have been to Patrick Sullivan's no doubt...decent beer selection, good(if standard) food, and an above average atmosphere. These qualities are to be expected at one of the few remaining veteran Old City establishments, and now the saloon can boast about the great addition of the adjoining BBQ joint as well. Cool, or tits, as they say.

Now that shit is out of the way, lets talk about the 3rd floor as concert venue. First thing the drunkard will notice is the split railing on the stairwell allowing both simultaneous ingress and egress. This is some proactive shit for around here, as most joints would just have a confused mass of morons milling around like a communist country's bread line. While the band area is against the far wall and is otherwise unremarkable, it does have the benefit of being some distance away from the bar...allowing the hot bartender to hear what you are saying. Furthermore my primary bar peeve of idiot shitheads standing around in the queue is also mitigated.


(Unknown Hinson says don't loiter near the sumbitchin' bar)

Anyhoo, we all bought rounds at a time which adds a robust sense of peer pressure and gamesmenship to the affair. The restrooms are also located upstairs, which is a huge plus for the music lover who might otherwise have to haul ass down two floors to utilize the primary facilities. This is manifestly awesome when you are at the Unknown show, which lends itself to extreme beer swilling and party liquor comsumption by nature.

The biggest thing PS can boast about up top is the ease of movement during a crowded show. That's fucking huge for the drunkard's overall comfort...which is the key point that many clubs and venues here in K-town often overlook. The goddamn bar down the street could take some fucking lessons, but that's another post for another day.(Oh and there will be a day of reckoning and a totalling of sums on that score, you trendy and apathetic hipster assholes)

One curious note that was briefly mentioned during some recent comments: the beer pricing made zero fucking sense, causing me to think that perhaps we were being undercharged. It's nice to be on the right side of a billing discrepancy let me tell you, and the general consensus is that even the beers we paid full price for were in fact quite reasonably priced.

In other words, Patrick Sullivan's has the hook in. They will reel us back in again and again until they fuck it up somehow.