8.7 Best New Drink

Forget experimenting by drinking one, two, or three Four Lokos. (Really? You’re going to drink some malt beverages and then consider yourself, what, experienced in some interesting way? That’s the most insulting form of downsized class shaming/bougie warfare I’ve seen in a long while.)¹

I invented a new drink tonight. It’s a variation on the Old Fashioned.² Rather than use rye, though, I’ve substituted Buffalo Trace’s white mash. It’s like the raw materials they use to make their bourbon, basically. The stuff they put in the barrels to age. But it’s not aged. It’s fresh. So fresh and so cool.

Shit tastes like cornflakes. Shit as in pronoun, not noun. You know how I said the other day the Old Fashioned blows up whatever you’re drinking, expanding it for your palette? In your mouth, this stuff tastes like a putty knife dipped in a high-PH solution. It kind of coats your tongue. But going down, it burns. In a reasonably good way.

The nose is like going back in time, to the pilgrim days I guess. Because of the corn. And the burning. It burns your nose a little bit. But you know how all those people are like, ‘Ra Ra Ro Ma Ma BIG CORN HIGH FRUCTOSE SYRUP RO MA MA?’ This is like that. It’s sweet, too.

This is a Manichean type drink. It’s defined by polarity. Sweet and burning. Wide and sharp. Good and bad. I could see having one, two, three of these and then passing out and waking up down south. So I don’t think I’ll do that. But as a vicious diversion, it’s hard to beat. You won’t want to drink very many of these. As a catalyst, though, it’s cold and effective. Yet… I can’t help thinking it kind of represents the opposite of the German mindset depicted in Gravity’s Rainbow, which is I guess the first thing I think of when I think of the word ‘catalyst.’ This is a very American drink. GR is an extremely European novel. They would never allow this drink in the EU. So rather than cold and sleek and powerful, let’s say that this is wide, blunt, and sweet.

I wanted to resist making American South type references. But when the name of your drink is an allusion to an Outkast song, I guess you give up that privilege. So I’ll say that drinking this drink brings with it a faint hint of sophistication, like Don Draper showing you how to make an Old Fashioned. But the bulk of it is pure (uhh…) Dirty South. Corn mash and burning and wrestling out in the yard.