If you don’t know this already, a cocktail should be put down the old gullet inside five minutes, preferably sooner than that. If it sits too long it’s just no good and the best ones are finished quickly without you really knowing it. The really good ones you can listen to over and over, they soothe you, they’re like a security blanket, you turn to them in the good and bad times. A cocktail, like a song, can turn back the clock, remind you of an instance. Remember the first time you had an old fashioned? How about the first time you had a really good old fashioned? A well stirred martini with the actual 2:1 specs (gin) or a margarita with fresh lime juice? That’s an actual revelation just like the first time you heard “Another Brick in the Wall” or “Gimme Shelter.” If you’re young enough and think hard enough you can remember where you were, who you were with. When you’re old like me you just smile and say to yourself, “It was probably so and so in this place.” When the mind starts to deteriorate you just fill in the blanks at random and move on.

Neither cocktail or song really makes any sense but we still love them. What I mean is that a song, usually around three to five minutes long, heavily ingrained within our subconscious as normal, is I don’t know, a little odd. We tend to think of it as normal but it’s actually pretty weird. Think about it. A bunch of people, or one person, sat down with an instrument or instrument in tune and in most cases one of them uttered sounds with their mouth, usually in rhyming fashion to a beat of some sort and we tapped our feet and the song got stuck in our head. It’s been going on for a really long time, this music thing. The beat itself makes sense, because everyone has their one personal beat, their heartbeat, occurring at all times within their chests. Everything else, the weird noises, etc. are not exactly something you’d see in nature. And maybe, just maybe this is what separates us from the animals and not “free will” or the fact that we think about our own deaths. But, you say, what about whale song? Yeah, that’s a good one. That makes sense. There are others in the animal kingdom that create “music,” birds especially. But the ones we’re the closest to? The chimps? Nah, they’re just violent and crazy. Cute, but nasty. Maybe that’s the next step in their evolution. They’ll get together and start banging sticks on the hollowed out skulls of their slain enemies.

Does everyone remember George Thorogood? He’s the guy who sang, “Bad to the bone,” and “I drink alone,” he’s also semi-famous for his cover of “One bourbon, one scotch, one beer,” originally written by Rudy Toombs and performed by Amos Milborn. I don’t know if anyone listens to that kind of stuff anymore. It was never really that popular. It “counts” as classic rock but it was a bit of a flash in the pan. “Bad to the bone” was catchy and made it into a hell of a lot of 80s and early 90s movies. Just off the top of my head, Terminator 2, and Christine.

Throughout history we’ve been privy to many a great drinking tune. No, not “99 Bottles of Beer” but “Gin and Juice,” “Drunk and Hot Girls,” “Brass Monkey,” “8 Ball,” “Warm Beer and Cold Women,” “Alabama Song,” “Whiskey in the Jar.” Man, there’s actually so many. More than I thought. I guess it goes along with the whole “Wine, women, and song” thing which is sexist and very exclusive of others. It’s a simple fix, however. A quick tweak to “Wine, sex, and song.” I guess “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll” was kind of a variation, but for the modern age, it can’t just all be about drugs and booze, it has to be inclusive for those who do not partake and isn’t sex kind of a drug for some people? I think today we should go with “Hedonistic pursuits and song.” That covers it. I think Bacchus (Dionysius) would still be proud.