Cocktail of the Week

While not a cocktail in the traditional sense, our first of April concoction does qualify as a pharmaceutical cocktail...

Keith Richards' Dad

The Q'punga Cocktail of the Week for
April 1- April 7 , 2007!

In comments from this week, Keith Richards claimed to have mixed some of his father's ashes with cocaine and then snorted them. Said Keef: "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared ... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive." That Keith Richards is one crazy zombie-pirate, I tell you what.

I guess I have been wondering what he's been up to since the Rolling Stones broke up back in 1982, after Tattoo You. (Or should have.)

At any rate, here's how to make a Keith Richards' Dad:

1. Obtain some cocaine. I honestly have no idea how you would do this. If you know any investment bankers or theme park carnies or Richard Dawson, I would start there.
2. Find the urn containing the remaining, um, remains of Keith Richards' dad. In this case, I would look either in the galley of Keith's fantasy pirate airship or possibly somewhere within Anita Pallenberg.
3. Mix the cocaine with the residue that once was Bert Richards.
4. Snort?

In the same AP news article, Keef calls himself "lucky." He says -- presumably though some sort of Richards to English interpreter -- "I was No. 1 on the `who's likely to die' list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list." That wasn't a list you fell out of, Keef, it was a f*cking coconut tree.

For those who'd like to see what Keith Richards looks like today, pull up some of the pictures of "sour toes" and imagine them wearing a vest.

Here's a list of people whose fathers might be smokeable:

• Rae Dawn Chong (daughter of Tommy)
• Stella McCartney (daughter of Paul)
• Sean Lennon (son of John)
• Clyde Burroughs (son of William S.)
• Kenny S. Thompson (son of Hunter S.)
• Trip Leary (son of Timothy)
• Sherry Garcia (daughter of Jerry)
• Carmine Dawson (son of Richard)

Further Resources:

• Kurt Schwantz will smoke anything!
• Area Stoners Mistakenly Hold Massive Kemp Rally!
• Ask Keith

Cocktail of the Week

We'll round out our first month with this perennial favorite from Qanimaliqpunga....

The Mai Tai

The Q'punga Cocktail of the Week for
March 25 - March31 , 2007!

I will bet that somewhere on this big blue marble, a confident girl-drinkin' man can order himself a really nice Mai Tai. Somewhere.

Unfortunately, the place where I have thrice been forced to drink a Mai Tai is not a place where one gets a really nice Mai Tai. Nothing against Hooligan's, a Superbar I adore, but until I did a web search for pictures of Mai Tais, I was under the impression that Mai Tais were the color of a brackish purple-grey bruise.

The Mai Tai (recipes will follow) actually doesn't sound that bad, and looks particularly good in the photo above: golden, with some duskiness towards the bottom of the nicely curvy glass, almost peachlike, almost sexy. In fact, the drink's name translates in Tahiti to "Very Good!" In Hooligan's, I'm afraid, the name means "Particularly Awful, Especially Considering How Expensive It Must Be!"

Strangely enough, the drink isn't actually Tahitian at all, having been invented at one of two rival Los Angeles Polynesian-themed restaurants. The Mai Tai, then, is another one of those things that isn't actually what it is typically thought to be (please consult table 1.a below).

Table 1.a

What It Is	What It's Thought To Be	What It Actually Is
Mai Tai	Hawaiian	Californian Mercantile
Corned Beef and Cabbage	Irish	Jewish/Irish American
Irony	Coincidence	Cosmic Discordance
Greenland	Greenland	Iceland
The Police	Punk	Pop, sometimes Ska
Headcheese	Cheese	You'd Rather Not Know
Jim Morrison	Mystical	Dead Hippy

Important Links

• Mai Tai Recipes That Might Be Good
• Buy mouthwash online!

Cocktail of the Week

Our third cocktail of the week is a personal trip back to Des Moines, IA, in the declining years of our cherished 1980's...

The Flaming Dr. Pepper

The Q'punga Cocktail of the Week for
March 18-24, 2007!

In the "Skills and Certifications" section of his resume, Al reports that one of things he's really good at is filling a small glass with liquor, dropping that glass into a larger glass also filled with liquor, and then drinking them both as fast as he can. (Note to Employers: he also lists himself as "proficient" in Microsoft Office and "familiar" with fax machines, for whatever that's worth.)

Anyway, the Flaming Dr. Pepper shot takes the shot-dropped-into-a-beer formula up "another coupla notches," as Emeril might say. In fact, it's kind of the Turducken of the basement bar. Here, you have a mug of beer, into which you drop a smaller glass of amaretto, into which you have previously dropped a shot glass of 151-proof rum, which itself has been LIT on FIRE.

When executed correctly, the warmed rum mixes with the beer and amaretto (and all the frathouse chugging) to create a taste sensation oddly similar to that of a lukewarm can of Dr. Pepper soda. In fact, if you ever have a particular craving for Dr. Pepper soda but aren't able to attain one -- if you are in the middle stretch of the Iditarod, say, or in an Apollo LEM orbiting the moon -- the flaming version would make a handy substitute.

This is a drink that takes four hands to do correctly: one hand to hold the mug of beer, another to hold the glass of amaretto, a third to hold (and then drop) the shot of 151, and a fourth to light a plastic lighter and touch it to the 151. It's a drink that would be difficult to drink alone, and so it therefore fosters community and brings families together. It is the drink of peace.

Except, of course, when your knuckle-dragging college buddies spill the 151 all over your hands just prior to lighting the shot, causing a pretty blue flame to spread from the limn of the shot glass to the back of one's hands, spreading to one's arm hair and ultimately to the small bits of lint on one's sweater, causing ultimately one's entire torso up to the neck to be covered in a roving (if fairly harmless) blue flame, in which case the Flaming Dr. Pepper stops being the drink of peace and starts to become the drink of "Are you trying to f*cking kill me?"

The Flaming Pep was introduced to me by graduate students in the Engineering Department of Drake University in late 1988. It is an acceptable accompaniment to the following records: Appetite for Destruction, ...And Justice For All, Vivid.

For more information:

• Critical reviews of cut-rate Dr. Peppers.


• Home burn remedies.


• Lando Dr. Pepper interviews One-Man Star Wars. This is what I love about the internets -- you can type in "Dr. Pepper" into You Tube and happen across a film stolen from your own subconscious.

Cocktail of the Week

Our second Cocktail of the Week appears in honor of my two fellow finishers from the 2006 Q'pungies and their respective hatred for the human foot...

The Sour-Toe Cocktail

The Q'punga Cocktail of the Week for
March 11-17, 2007!

The Sour-Toe Cocktail is the specialty of the house at the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. In its original form, the cocktail was comprised of two elements:

1. A beer mug filled with champagne, and
2. The frost-bitten and pickled big toe of a 1920's rum runner and bootlegger.

This first toe, introduced in 1973, was accidentally swallowed the toe while finishing off his thirteenth (and record-breaking) Sour-Toe Cocktail. Luckily (or sadly, depending on perspective), other actual toes were donated to the bar where they have been dehydrated and preserved in salt so that the tradition may continue. There's a fascinating history of all eight sour toes offered here.

The Cocktail no longer requires champagne, but is made to the drinker's choice. The Sour-Toe Cocktail Club reports, "The Sourtoe can be had with any drink now (even ones that aren't alcoholic), but one rule remains the same. The drinker's lips must touch the toe. 'You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow-- But the lips have gotta touch the toe.'"

For more information:

• The Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, Yukon
• The Sour-Toe Cocktail Club
• If you liked your lunch and want to keep it, do not under any circumstances type the phrase "Sour-Toe" into a Google Image Search. You've been warned.

Cocktail Of The Week

For this inaugural edition of Cocktail of the Week, the editor has chosen from among thousands of options...

PRUNO

The Q'punga Cocktail of the Week for
March 4-10, 2007!

This pentitentiary favorite can be made with the following ingredients, all available from your area comissary.

• Several apples or oranges
• A can of fruit cocktail
• About 50 sugarcubes
• A few packages of ketchup

1. Smash the fruit and dump it, and the contents of the can of fruit cocktail, into a plastic bag. Add water and heat under hot running water until steaming. Wrap the bag in a towel or other insulate, then put it away for two full days.

2. Add the ketchup and sugar, and warm until steaming. Wrap bag in towel and let sit for three days. Gas will develop as a byproduct, so be careful that your Pruno bag does not burst.

3. After the three day wait, heat the Pruno bag once per day for an additional three days.

4. On the eighth day, strain liquid from the bag and serve. Mmm-mmm!

For more information:

Recipe for Prison Pruno, a poem by Jarvis Masters

Prison Wine at The Sneeze!

Make Your Own Pruno at the Black Table