In which our writers match people with the beverages they need
by Jorge Ignacio Castillo, Noelle Chorney, Shane Hnetka, Lisa Johnson, Chris Morin, Rick Pollard and Craig Silliphant
Are you a person? Perhaps you need a drink — an alcoholic bevéragé, to be precise. If you’re over the age of 19 in Saskatchewan, this is something you can legally have! Not sure what exactly to consume? That’s okay: we’ve curated a drinking experience for several people in this feature. If you are one of them, you’re covered. And if not? Well, just drink what these guys are drinking. It’s okay, we won’t tell anyone you’re copying them.
Justin Bieber
Retired teen idol on a downward spiral
With all the cocktails named after some of the great mustachioed men of history (I’m thinking of the Tom Selleck, or the Charlie Chaplin), how is it possible we still don’t have a Justin Bieber — a tall-glass tribute to the unfortunate filament that’s recently sprouted forlornly on the upper lip of everybody’s favourite man-child?
Does he sip green tea with honey to soothe his million-dollar pipes? Nope. Given his mile-high appreciation for THC, does he go for a shot of the classic marijuana milkshake, with that green melon liquor, white crème de cacao, and milk? Sorry, wrong again.
We know he needs something more colourful (and more readily available in a Brazilian brothel). If we ignore the obvious not-so-legal pharmaceuticals apparently flavouring his wobbly pops these days, Beiber’s drink is obviously the Electric Iced Tea — a cousin to the Long Island Iced Tea, but more appropriate for dance clubs than patios, what with its conspicuous neon hue.
It starts with your basic Long Island foundation — gin, rum, tequila and vodka, sour mix — but finishes with blue caracao instead of Triple Sec, and it gets topped up with lemon-lime soda rather than cola.
The Electric Iced Tea is no timeless classic, but it is sweet enough, decently refreshing and has just enough kick to get your Lamborghini impounded and land you in a police detention centre in Florida. Perfect! /Lisa Johnson
Gainer The Gopher
Beloved football mascot who works hard and parties hard
Gainer the Gopher is, of course, the much-loved rodent mascot of the Saskatchewan Roughriders — so it’s hard to imagine him imbibing anything that isn’t a green-coloured can of locally-produced Great Western Pilsner. But due to his hefty summer work schedule, ol’ Gainer tends to take down a Pilsner Light: it’s lighter on the booze content, so our gopher cheerleader can stay peppy and focused on the task at hand, which is leading a sports-addled crowd into a collective frenzy.
But he also loves them because they’re easy enough to smuggle into Mosaic Stadium, especially in the non-summer months when everyone is forced to wear a thermal parka overtop of their green jerseys. Of course, when Gainer really wants to cut loose (especially if a certain team makes it to, and wins, the Grey Cup), he’ll bust out the Boh-gin. A Frankenstein of a drink, the Boh-gin is born when a shot of gin is added to a bottle of Bohemian.
Not too sure on the science behind it, but it’s a smooth combination and an interesting taste. Unfortunately, that also means it’s far too easy to down far too many of them after a night of howling at cars on The Green Mile. Which means we all hope that Gainer’s fur is easy to dry clean: picking puke out of matted, greasy gopher fur is a terrible way to celebrate a football victory. /Chris Morin
Hobby Lobby
Despicable women-hating U.S. corporate entity and place to buy crafting supplies (if you too hate women)
While it’s clear to any sane person that the religiously-oriented company Hobby Lobby isn’t actually a person that can hold a belief, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. It’s long been established in the United States that a corporation has the same rights as a person, but now it’s been established in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that said corporation can have religious beliefs as well.
Well, if a corporation has the rights of a person and can be assured that its religious beliefs won’t be infringed upon, then it should be able to lift a glass and toast its newly anointed ability to infringe on other people’s rights in defence of its own religious sensibilities, right?
So if I were a religious corporation that just happened to benefit financially from avoiding paying for things that I consider morally wrong (like birth control), what would I toast to celebrate my windfall? It would need to be symbolic, yet expensive… so how about a couple of shots of Remy Martin cognac, with a half-ounce of church wine, shaken with ice and strained into a martini glass — and finished with a couple drops of grenadine to signify the blood of a virgin. Let’s call it the Misogynist Inc. / Noelle Chorney
Political Hacks
The hard-working, long-suffering former idealists behind all those smiling politicians
Thanks to Hollywood, most people likely assume that political hacks and flacks drink Scotch. But the truth is that life in politics is nowhere near as interesting as what you see in the movies. Everyday politics is less erudite than the West Wing and definitely less intriguing than the Ides of March. The stresses are often far more mundane — cringing when your elected member gives a bad interview or tearing your hair out when campaign volunteers cancel at the last minute because they have a hangover. And the stress management techniques of the political hack are often mundane as well — a cold beer or a vodka and tonic to take the edge off another long week.
Of course, there are politicos who still want to live the dream, and many of them drink Scotch. And of course, since most of them can’t afford really good single malts, they typically drink it only on Friday afternoon in their Minister’s office, preferably when their Minister or their big-talking colleague is buying. People who can’t afford good Scotch, and this describes the majority of people actually employed in politics, get by with cheaper blended scotches and a lot of pretentious talk about how their whiskey tastes like tree bark or moss as if that’s a good thing.
But the majority of political hacks like to raise a pint at their favourite local pub. Almost as if they were real people.
Shia LeBeouf
Not-famous plagiarist, retired actor and shaved giant gerbil in human clothes
Once Steven Spielberg’s can’t-miss Wunderkind but now finding more ways than Rob Ford to freak out the Internet, Shia LeBeouf’s career is plummeting at light-speed past its “best before” date.
So the first ingredient in The Shia LeBeouf has to be perishable — meaning orange juice is perfect! Next, you need some serious booze that’ll take a rocket train to your brain and make you do all sorts of crazy things. (Like put a paper bag on your head at a movie premiere or yell at people on stage during a Broadway play, perhaps.) How about vodka! We’ll call our work of genius a “screwdriver”!
Wait, what? A screwdriver IS vodka and orange juice? Well then, we’ve truly created The Shia LeBeouf. /Craig Silliphant
Peter Mackay
Conservative Minister of Justice, expert on teh ladiees
PISCO SOUR: 3 oz. of pisco, 1 oz. of fresh lemon juice, 1 oz. of flavorless syrup, ½ egg white. Shake vigorously and pour over a cold glass. Top it off with two drops of bitters.
For a while, it seemed Peter MacKay truly appreciated strong, powerful women. Before his marriage to human rights activist (and former Miss Canada, but still) Nazanin Afshin-Jam, McKay dated MP Belinda Stronach, and, allegedly, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Turns out Stronach and Rice dodged a bullet: of late, MacKay has revealed himself an old-fashioned chauvinist, in e-mails celebrating men for “raising leaders” and women for “changing diapers”.
Yep, he wrote that.
The minister of justice started the summer in a manner worthy of Rob Ford. Besides the Mother’s Day snafu, MacKay suggested women don’t apply to federal court positions because they want to spend more time with their children. I wouldn’t blame him for trying to drown his sorrows after alienating his entire female base, and I’m sure pisco sour would be his poison.
Pisco is such a wonderful, clean liqueur it’s inexplicable that it remains in relative obscurity in North America. It can be described as grape brandy with a heavy alcohol component: 35 per cent. Unless you’re a connoisseur, you have to mix it (pisco and Coke is the safest bet). For decades, Chileans and Peruvians have claimed pisco as their creation. In both countries, pisco sour is touted as their most traditional beverage, often badmouthing their neighbour in the same sentence.
MacKay and the pisco sour are perfect for each other. He needs to look like a moderate, and a pisco sour seems like a perfectly inoffensive libation (a “girlie drink” perhaps?) while hiding some serious kick.
This way he gets his drunk on while simultaneously pretending he isn’t sexist. Well played, Peter. /Jorge Ignacio Castillo
Iron Man
Superhero, multi-billionaire playboy (as Tony Stark)
I don’t know how I always get roped into writing about drinking as I never touch the stuff, but it apparently amuses my colleagues who do partake. So here goes.
Another person who can’t touch the stuff is Tony Stark, Marvel Universe’s superhero Iron Man. It doesn’t come up in the movies, but in the comics Tony is a raging alcoholic — the classic “Demon in a Bottle” storyline is standard reading material for Iron Man enthusiasts. If people think drinking and driving is terrible, imagine drinking and flying in a battle armour suit. (To be quite frank, none of Iron Man’s Avengers colleagues should be drinking and fighting: the terror of a heavily intoxicated Incredible Hulk making sweet love to the Statue of Liberty should be avoided at all costs.)
Tony has been off the stuff for quite some time (except for the odd relapse), so the perfect drink for Iron Man would be a Diet Coke. Why a Diet Coke? Well, it’s my drink of choice — and since Stark has the extremis serum running through his veins, he doesn’t need to worry about the possible harmful effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame. Plus, being a billionaire playboy means that Stark would have to attend plenty of parties, and the best way to blend in would be having a nice soft drink that may look like it’s a rum and Coke, but isn’t. Short, rocks, and subtle. /Shane Hnetka
Martin Scorsese
A very, very important movie director who lives in New York
THE MARTINI SCORSESE: 2 oz. Cutty Sark, 1 oz. lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of sugar, ½ oz of grenadine. Serve with a twist of lemon in a martini glass. Throw on a DVD of The Last Waltz and look for the scene with Neil Young’s cocaine booger.
See what I did there? You can’t spell Martini without Martin, right? Ha! But now I need to actually make this make sense.
Thankfully, you can pretty much put anything in a martini these days, as long as you serve it in a martini glass. So: Harvey Keitel gets pretty bombed in Mean Streets. There’s a barrel-full of spilled booze in Gangs of New York. They drink wine while they cook amazing Italian prison food in Goodfellas. And Wolf of Wall Street is a helluva party on a few fronts.
But truthfully, when I think of Martin Scorsese I think of his passion for one of the greatest cities on Earth, New York City — and a classic New York cocktail is similar to a whiskey sour, though instead you add some sweet grenadine to balance out the tartness of the sour. So do up one of the above, put it in a martini glass and bam! You’ve got yourself a Martini Scorsese. Turn on the Oscars, and drink every time someone says “Martin Scorsese.” In no time, you’ll either be a great director or you’ll be rolling around on the floor trying to find Jonah Hill. /Craig Silliphant
