a diatribe on chick drinks

Cosmopolitans, appletinis, lemon drops, flirtinis, cream-puff-chocolate-friggin-cake-tinis! Back in my days as a bartender there was no end in sight. With the coming of each new season so came the newest "it" drink that every botox injected, Fendi wearing, J-Lo fragrance stinking, rocket-nosed, bobble-headed, investment banker's midlife crisis solving arm candy just had to have. With almost dead-on accuracy, one could clock the time from which the drink was mentioned on Sex and the City until the next Thursday night that the words would come dripping from their mouths like over-mileage oil out of a '84 Eldorado. "Um, I wanna try this new drink it's called 'kerklank'. Do you know how to make it?"

Here's a math problem for everyone: What level of self loathing does a big titted blonde bimbo have to possess in order to choose with deliberate certainty a beverage based solely on how fictitious characters look consuming it? For the love of all things sacred, 90% of the time they don't even want to know what they're drinking. They just want to be seen drinking it! Take my word for it, it hurts a bartender's feelings.

I know what you're thinking. What difference does it make to the bartender? Why should he care? Well let's get a few things straight, there are a few simple rules that you can adhere to in order to ensure a good time for all patrons and barstaff alike.

1. Nothing blended, nothing muddled. I don't care what kind of machine he's got back there, no bartender is happy to make a blended or muddled drink. It's always five moves more complicated than it's worth. He can make another drink that will net him the same tip by lifting a single bottle. If it's blended or muddled, it's a pain in the ass. Bar none.

2. If the base ingredient of your drink is not vodka, gin, whiskey, rum, or tequila the bartender has to move further than he wants to to get it. You see, for anyone who doesn't know, the well rack is always right in front of the bartender at about lap level. He can grab the ingredient, pour, shake and serve without having to spin around like a retarded kid in an interpretive dance class. A mixer or two is reasonable, but if the ingredient list starts looking an ancient Mayan potion for restoring a horse’s virility you’re going to be looking at one pissed off blue collar worker.

3. A drink that requires more than one piece of fruit is a piece of shit. Bloody mary, tom collins, amaretto sour, all pretty simple drinks to mix. But once I have to start sticking a damn supermarket salad bar on a thin plastic stick, you, as a customer, have become about as pleasant as a rectal exam.

4. Bars are for drinking, NOT eating. Sure, it's a problem that has been created almost entirely by the onset of franchised restaurant empires, but you can be part of the solution rather than the ever-swelling problem. If the bartender wanted to watch you slug down a charcoal dry salmon steak he wouldn't be a bartender, he'd be your damned waiter. The same waiter, I might add, who's not getting a table sat in his section because your dull ass is parked at the bar instead.

5. Tip well. Bartenders put up with far too much crap day in and day out to suffer through a bad tip on top of it and not murder someone. The term "go postal" would have been "go bartenderized" if it wasn't such a syllabic car wreck.

So, what does all this have to do with chick drinks? The answer is pretty simple. Professional drinkers like the taste of alcohol. They like vodka, gin, whiskey, rum, and tequila. Sometimes all together. And when people, not just those with actual vaginas but metaphorical ones as well, start ordering fruit flavored, pink looking, fu-fu perfume samplers in a cocktail glass they start making life hard on the bartender. And as we have already addressed, bartending is already the kind of job that can crush your soul like a dixie cup under Star Jones' solar eclipsing ass. So, another trendy chick drink really just isn't what society needs right now.

A free piece of advice for chick drink drinkers. If you want to get sauced with your "sisters" over a Faith Hill album, some cheap desserts, and a bad hair dye kit, please please please just pick up a case of Mike's Hard Lemonade (or as The Empire likes to call it: Mike's Fairly-Easy-To-Slip-By-The-Powers-That-Be Teenage Date Rape Drug) and hangout in your father's/husband's/rich brother's/ex-boyfriend-who-has-no-backbone's shiny new SUV with the 'they were almost cool for eight seconds on a black guy's car' spinning rims and stay out of the bar.

Bars are for drinkers.