The Disgusting Alcoholic Beverage (DAB, perhaps) seems to be having a moment. Alie Ward and Georgia Hardstark have achieved minor Internet fame — and now a Times writeup — for their McNuggetini, a chocolate shake with vanilla vodka, barbecue sauce on the rim, and a chicken McNugget garnish. They've also cooked up such upsetting concoctions as the Ham Daiquiri and the Bloody Bacon and Cheese. And they're not alone — bacon has now infiltrated both cocktails and beer. These DABs all wear their grossness with pride — they aim to be, if not players in what's supposedly the current cocktail revolution, at least an entertaining sideshow. But as anyone who's ever tried to drink before the legal drinking age knows, the true DAB is born of desperation — when there's no decent alcohol around, and no reliable means to purchase it, and all you have are your wits and some liquids that really shouldn't be mixed.

The grossest drink that ever passed my lips was Jager mixed with Red Bull — I know this is semi-popular, but it tasted more like poison than anything I've ever had before or since. My college friends, however, used to try to stretch a dwindling booze supply with a much grosser libation they called "church wine" — Carlo Rossi jug red mixed with Dr. Pepper. This swill actually ate through a paper cup one night while my roommate and I slept — inexplicably, one of us had been unwilling to finish it — trickled into my roommate's underwear drawer, and stained her bra. So I've always associated the Disgusting Alcoholic Beverage with squalid — and booze-stained — high school and college living.

If the rest of the staff is any indication, I'm not far off. Anna's unfavorite drink of all time is "malt liquor beverages with flavoring." While I agree that these are empirically gross, they'll always have a soft spot in my heart for their role at crappy high school parties. Says Margaret, "The only drink underage Wellesley students with no car could construct was a 'screwdriver' made of fake orange juice stolen from the dining hall and vodka that came in a giant plastic jug. Pour in a funky-smelling Nalgene bottle and serve." And in a similar but slightly worse vein, Katy once ran out of other options and decided to melt orange popsicles to mix with vodka. The verdict: "It was horrible." Some, however, had more high-concept, perhaps more McNuggetini-like DABs to report. Sadie says, "I used to know this sweet old lady who loved these vile Finlandia chocolates filled with sweetened Vodka and would always give them to me. One night, my friends and I made a shot from emptying about 15 of them per glass. It was...not good." But the winner, in my opinion, is Dodai, who writes,

my junior high school friend created a "punch" inspired by those chocolate oranges you see during the holidays. this meant: orange juice, mandarin orange slices, and, the kiss of death: KAHLUA. it was vile.

Consider yourselves warned.

Mixing Meaty Cocktails With A Shot Of Celebrity [NYT]

At downtown boutique Opening Ceremony, the line stretched down the block. The promised customized cars, out of which designers like Rodarte (a low rider convertible) and Alex Wang (a black van) were to sell their wares were just a row of cars parked cheek by jowl on the side of the narrow street; the real action was in the store, and the entire population of Williamsburg appeared ready to wait upwards of an hour to see it. I texted a friend who works at the store — no response — then screwed up my courage to go talk to the burly security guard at the door. "I'm a reporter," I said, plaintively. "I'm here to write about this!" He looked at me skeptically. I repeated this claim to a small woman in a large fascinator and a complicated dress, who eventually waved me in.

New Fashion Rule: If you cannot spell "Azzedine Alaïa", you should not be permitted to sell his shorts for $60.

I'd had a weird day at the tents — at one point I was standing next to four people deadpanning conversation, all wearing sunglasses inside — so I called that affable Marxist/skewerer of frivolity/drinker, former Jezebel editor Moe Tkacik. My partner in crime for the night eventually made it into the store, and we were served big cans of Asahi by a smiling bartender in a skintight waistcoat. We looked at the people. We looked at the wares — knits covered in rickrack, jewelry that looked like animal claws — and watched as people lined up to buy Fashion's Night Out t-shirts. We drank our beers and watched the crowd. Later, we made our way to Rag & Bone, the pricey vintage store What Goes Around Comes Around, and a multi-designer sample sale at the TriBeCa Grand hotel. Sadie, on the whole a more dedicated shopper, checked out Opening Ceremony, Prada, Intermix, Banana Republic, Oak, Club Monaco, Madewell (she likes their boots!) and a couple of boutiques.

Jenna: So! I was just writing about the scene at Opening Ceremony. What did you think of Opening Ceremony? How long was the line when you got there?
Sadie: The line was nuts - all the way down the block, and it didn't seem to be progressing at all.
Jenna: I shamelessly blagged my way in as press.
Sadie: The whole vibe was unpleasantly "hot club" — down to the letdown of getting in.
Jenna: Yes! All it needed was a velvet rope. The bouncers, the clipboard dragons. The boomboom music. It was just like a club, except inside it was brightly lit. And, you know, except that the Beatrice never tolerated anything so unseemly as an actual line outside.
Sadie: Well, Banana Republic actually had a 3" velvet rope!
Jenna: Wow. Tell me about that — I didn't go there.
Sadie: Ha, that was the best: they had the rope, and this poor woman in an evening gown wielding a fan — but then inside it was...Banana Republic. Open late, it's true! Did you get to Intermix?
Jenna: No, I missed it. I went to Rag & Bone to see my friend who works there, except the FNO iPhone app sent me to the Christopher St. store. And my friend works at SoHo. Thanks, Style.com!
Sadie: Oh, dear. How was R&B otherwise? Hipstered out?
Jenna: Actually, it had a very pleasant down-home kind of feel. I rendez-vous'd there with some friends who had just come from the gallery openings in Chelsea, and one of them lives in Japan. He kept on comparing the store's aesthetic to Japanese clothing, which I can actually totally see.
Sadie: Oh, definitely. Were folks shopping?
Jenna: You know, that classic pieces reworked and finessed, done with an eye for design, but subtle, kinda thing. But it was strange at the same time, because the store was made over as an Irish pub.
No, I saw very few shoppers.
But they had a fiddle band! And honeyed whiskey. And Guinness, from an actual keggerator. (I think.)

Sadie: Ooh, nice!
Jenna: Moe and I got to talking about keggerators, because she used to live in a house that had one.
Sadie: I got insufficient drinks, considering.
Jenna: (Dude room-mates, of course.) Rag & Bone also had this neat gravity-fed whiskey autodispenser. Very technological.
Sadie: Ha! Now: what did you wear?!
Jenna: Important question, which I spent a long time thinking about before leaving the house. I wore: a green 1940s bouclé jacket with balloon sleeves and a nipped waist. It has a totally shattered lining — which meant I got it cheap — but the greatest part is it's got an awesome collar. It's self fabric on one side, and rabbit fur (I think?) on the other. And you can either let the collar fall open across your shoulders, and it looks like these awesome, structured, furry shoulderpads on the outside of your jacket. Or you can tie the collar up tighter and it forms a big muffler around your face. It came in handy because it was so cold last night! I wore it with jeans and comfortable shoes. What did YOU wear? :P
Sadie: Well, I changed from my actual work clothes into a fake business costume, trying to convey that "coming-from-a-cool-office" vibe. I wore this swell pair of very high-waisted pleated plaid trousers, apparently the former possession of an elderly society matron, now in a nursing home. They are about 40% ridiculous. With them, a plain blouse and some very high vintage heels. Oh, and I cut myself a possibly ill-judged ragged bang just before running out the door.
Jenna: Oooh, last-minute haircut. I like that. I trimmed my own hair myself the other day because it was getting shaggy in back — I'm trying to turn my pixie into a messy bob, Karen Elson c.a. 1997 kind of thing. Naturally, I thought of your post and all kinds of disastrous self-inflicted haircuts of years past.
Sadie: Yes, but the temptation always proves irresistible! Did you see any really noteworthy looks? (Besides those dudes voguing wildly in the window of Opening Ceremony.)
Jenna: I saw two great looks, actually: I dragged Moe, Japan-man, this German guy, and everyone else I was with to What Goes Around Comes Around, where they were almost out of booze but had amazing black and white cookies. And this shopgirl had on the perfect pair of jean shorts, not cut-offs but actual high-waisted vintage shorts, and a really simple silk printed blouse. And cowboy boots. It was very straightforward but the pieces looked fantastic together, and she looked comfortable, especially for someone who was standing around in 40 degree weather in shorts. Then, at the sample sale at the TriBeCa Grand, there was a beautiful woman wearing a teal suede vintage mini-dress. It had shoulder pads and a scoop neck, and it fit her perfectly. She said she'd bought it at a thrift store in Palm Beach for $4.
Sadie: I saw one girl whose look was so hip as to verge on dowdy, and I loved it: she had sort of Cameron-Diaz-in-Being-John-Malkovich hair, big glasses, and this maxi dress. She also looked furious.
I spied Lynn Yaeger, in what looked like vintage lace but might have been partly Prada.
Most folks were too self-consciously fashion-y in cage heels and leggings etc.
Jenna: Oh, man, a Lynn Yaeger sighting. I am so jealous. That Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich look is so hard to pull off, I always mentally nod in respect when I see it even attempted. I agree, though, in general the crowd was very skinny-destroyed-jeans, studs-on-things, chunky-heels, blouson-top, "I-totally-just-threw-this-on," either all-black or whoa-random-colors. Kind of a boring look.
Sadie: I complimented her, which was maybe breaking the fourth wall, because she was clearly put out by my importuning. My blouse got ripped in the crush. But hopefully everyone thought it was a deliberate twist on buttoned-up menswear. Punk edge, you know.
Jenna: me: Absolutely. So where else did you go?
Sadie: Saw a little of the Rapture's "set" at Prada...glimpsed the Miller sisters...
Jenna: Spy Grace Coddington?
Sadie: No! Sadly. I bet she left; I don't blame her — having to strand around these stores for 6 hours seems very tedious.
Jenna: Absolutely. Not least because nobody was buying much.
Sadie: I grabbed drinks at Madewell and Club Monaco, as they were en route to the hot dog truck.
Jenna: I guess they are hoping heavily for a sort of follow-through, now the seal has been broken.
I did not have any food all night! Aside from those black and white cookies.
Sadie: One assumes. Tell me how much actual shopping you saw, because I witnessed very little!
Jenna: Plenty o' booze, though. Moe and I did well on that score. Very little shopping. Some people were trying things on at the TriBeCa Grand. But most of the stores I went to were mobbed because of the entertainment/gawking/novelty factor.
Sadie: The atmosphere was really not conducive to shopping. And some places served red wine!
Jenna: Not because of actual sales opportunities.
Sadie: How would you characterize the atmosphere, overall? And the crowd? (Relative to the hype.)
me: It was really cool, actually, I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would. It was definitely fun — if occasionally ridiculous. I saw a woman in a leopard print dress and a (different) leopard print scarf at What Goes Around Comes Around. She tried on a blue sequined jumpsuit I had just browsed on the rack. It cost something like $2,500.
And the Opening Ceremony scene was just — nuts. The camera set-up in the store window, the prices of things, the mayhem.
Sadie: I mean, that was frankly kind of my idea of hell. That's why I don't go to "clubs."
Jenna: did you see that cardigan by Rodarte at Opening Ceremony, folded up, with two tags? One was printed and said $2,800. The other was written by hand in highlighted sharpie, and said DO NOT PICK UP RODARTE. It was the most heartbreaking thing ever. I took a picture.

Sadie: YES! But overall: yeah, kind of fun. There was definitely a carnival atmosphere on the streets.
Jenna: So Moe and I went over to the mannequins and TOUCHED THE RODARTE. Rodarte is soft, it turns out.

Sadie: NO!!!
Jenna: Yup, we did.
Sadie: Did officious publicists scream at you? Did the guys in the window stop voguing? DID YOU HURT THE ECONOMY?
Jenna: No! We just pawed at the pretty gothic-Stevie Nicks dresses until we were satisfied. Then drank more Asahi. Did you buy anything?
Sadie: Nope! (Well, except the hot dog.)
Jenna: I bought a gorgeous Marios Schwab dress from a vintage seller at the TriBeCa Grand. me: it's black, billowy chiffon, with polarfleece sleeves, and a strange technofabric-and-elastic boned harness that comes over the shoulders and clicks in front with a — one of those closures they use on backpacks or fanny packs, generally with poly webbing. You know? Or on bicycle helmets. It was really cool, in a sort of techno-gothic way. I'm wearing it right now! It's warm. Best of all, it was only $50. But I only had $20, so I had to get my Opening Ceremony worker friend to spot me $30 from his hidden stash of emergency money. As he said, it was clearly a Fashion Emergency. (Yuk, yuk, yuk!)
Sadie: That is the perfect thing to buy at a fashion event. (Besides a hot dog.) Wear it next year — maybe we can skip the lines at O.C. Assuming this hasn't fixed the economy, that is.

Date: Friday, January 16, 2009. That's today!
Time: 8:00pm - 11:00pm
Location: T.G. Whitney's
244 East 53rd Street (between 2nd and 3rd)
New York, NY

Be there or be five by five.

As always, being our fan on Facebook and joining a Jezebel group can help you find commenters in your area.

The author quotes statistics about the rise of drinking among young women — "more than 48 percent acknowledge having had at least one drink in the past month (up from 42 percent in 1992). But beyond that, the women who drink are drinking more. The number of women who identify as moderate-to-heavy drinkers has risen in the last ten years, while the number of women who say they are light drinkers has declined" — and then uses anecdotal evidence from her peer group to show that upwardly mobile urban women are the ones who are doing all the drinking, out of wanting to do well at work or wanting to express the fact that they cannot be controlled by social mores.

Full disclosure: I am quoted in the article, and this site generally and two editors specifically are mentioned as examples of the fact that "drinking has become entwined with progressive feminism." I don't really think that's true at all, and say in the article that drinking in and of itself is not a feminist act.

Indeed, much of the New York social world revolves around drinking, but it has, well, pretty much forever. Tales of Dorothy Parker getting shitcanned at speakeasies in the 20s are part of writerly lore. Rather than increased hard drinking having much to do with gender, I think it has more to do with career and circumstance. New York describes a woman named Kate, who works in finance, and started drinking with her colleagues after hard days of work so she could be "one of the guys." The anecdote seemed so dated, and reminded all of us of the scene in Mad Men when Peggy goes to the strip club so she can ingratiate herself with the boys.

But wouldn't a male teetotaler feel much of the same pressure to be included if he worked in the same industry? Somehow, I doubt that medical students and residents, male or female, feel any of the same social pressures to booze it up, since their work colleagues are not indulging in the same way. This is New York Magazine, and so they are only talking about New Yorkers, but I also find it difficult to believe that the drinking of urban upper middle class white women is the only reason drinking has gone up for women across the board. The article doesn't even mention the fact that the writer interviews only young, childless, unmarried women: i.e., the kind of women who have the extra time on their hands to hit the bar on a weeknight... and are young enough to be able to work through an alcohol-induced haze more easily. There must be more complex issues (like the marketing of booze that the author mentions) than just a desire for some sort of misguided equality.

Gender Bender [New York]

[Las Vegas, November 20. Image via Splash.]

• Picture it: the Jezebel nursing home, the year 2068. We'll turn on our headchips to watch the disembodied skull of Oprah host her show, and Jennifer Aniston, having been cryogenically frozen, will have been unfrozen just to make an appearance. Oprah will still ask Jen how she feels about Angelina Jolie and Jen will still think that what Angelina did was "very uncool." We may die, but this story will live on forever.
• We found out the hard way that putting garlic up your nono is a no no.
• Did we earn our yeast infections the same way Bikini Cory earned her nickname?
• Joan Didion: officially more depressing than the mere existence of Bikini Cory.
• Not depressing at all: this almost unbearably cute precocious French toddler. We just want to hear lil' Amelie say "crocodeeel" all day long.
• Maybe she should have a cute-off with Maru, the box loving kitty from Japan.

• Speaking of kitties! We said Hello, Blingee Kitty at the Sanrio Luxe opening.
• We searched at home and abroad for for broads in our booze cabinets.
• Obama may have been elected, but as long as fugly shoes clog up our stores, the national nightmare will continue.
• You guys, it's Friday. So indulge in some hot food porn and have a good weekend!

Few and far between, it seems. Check these out:

St. Pauli Girl beer features a buxom bar maid on the label. Actually, looking at this visual "history" of the model, she's changed a lot. In 1982, she wasn't so busty; in 1989 she was (gasp!) brunette; in 2004 her apron disappeared, her top shrank and her skirt became alarmingly short. Progress!


Frida Kahlo tequila, launched in 2005, features the famed painter's visage on its bottles. Frida's niece, Isolda P. Kahlo, is involved with the brand. Unfortunately, art critic and author Raquel Tibol, who befriended Kahlo at the end of the artist’s life, is outraged, saying, "This is a dirty shame!" Blogger and artist Mark Vallens writes: "The idea of the artist’s alcoholism being somehow romantic could not be further from the truth. It was not a sense of romanticism that led Kahlo to drink a bottle of tequila a day, but the debilitating pain she endured from the accident suffered in her youth."

The labels on a Belgian beer called Rubbel Sexy Lager picture women wearing swimsuits, but the swimsuits can be scratched off, leaving naked models behind. Classy! This brew was pulled from shelves in the UK last year.

Sofia sparkling wine is manufactured by Francis Ford Coppola's winery, and named after his director daughter. Each can comes with a little bitty straw, because chicks like their booze to be cute! (Disclaimer: I've imbibed quite a few Sofias in my day and actually think mini champagne is a good idea.)




Inspired by the Hollywood icon, Marilyn wine exists, but, as Sadie says, "I wouldn't drink it."

Sailor Jerry rum is named after a man (the legendary tattoo artist) but has a pin-up girl on the bottle, does that count?

Damiana herbal-based liqueur from Mexico comes in a bottle shaped like an Incan goddess. Except, uh, the Incans were from Peru, right? So she should be Mayan, or Aztec? Well the website lists an address in Texas, so maybe someone is confused.


Batuque cachaça from Brazil is made from sugar cane and aged in mahogany barrels. The bottle is shaped like a woman wearing a Brazilian bikini (read: thong.) I had it in a caipirinha once, and never got around to figuring out why the poor woman has an awesome booty but no head. (Here's another view of her physique.)

Veuve Clicquot was, at some point, run by Madame Clicquot, hence the term "grande dame." If you look at her portrait you'll see Madame was pretty serious about her booze.

Did I miss any? Let me know.

The Men Behind Your Favorite Liquors [Mental Floss]
Earlier: The Top 10 Female Product Advertising Icons & The Actresses Who Could Replace Them

[London, August 22. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

Of course, just off the top of our heads we can think of more than a few exceptions to this study, but according to those Yalies, there are physical manifestations of this male emotional avoidance. "Men had greater blood pressure response to stress, but did not report greater sadness and anxiety, may reflect that they are more likely to try to distract themselves from their physiological arousal, possibly through the use of alcohol," Chaplin tells Science Daily. So the next time your best dude wants to drown his sorrows in booze, perhaps you should get him to talk it out...though you'll probably just end up doing Jaeger bombs with him anyway.

Men Are More Likely Than Women To Crave Alcohol When They Feel Negative Emotions [Science Daily]

"If I was a young man I would not drink beer, I would not be smoking when I'm trying to conceive a child," Daniels told the BBC. "There are many potential sources of harm to foetal health that remain unexamined. When 60% of birth defects are of unknown origin, why are we not examining one obvious potential source of harm?" the professor reasons.

Even without outside carcinogens, many sperm have defects, according to Slate, because of the body's furious sperm production schedule. It's "a manufacturing decision that sacrifices quality control." Another new study quoted by Slate says that men produce so much sperm to counteract cheatin' women — the massive amounts of semen are created to compete with other dudes' sperm. Apparently in the animal world, the idea of "sperm competition" is old hat; "male flour beetles have spiny penises designed to remove rival sperm from a female's reproductive tract," says Slate. The coronal ridge (the space between the head and the shaft of the penis) in humans is also built to remove rival sperm. Who knew?!

Women in New York City might want to be checking out rival sperm banks, as some local ones have not been inspected since 2004, according to Gothamist. One bank in particular, Idant Laboratories, failed to pass on information to a customer about the high-risk sexual behavior of a donor, and many of the labs are not thoroughly checking the sperm before and after purchase for sexually transmitted or genetic diseases.

So ladies, whether you're getting your sperm the old fashioned way or making a withdrawal from your local sperm depot, make sure you investigate the source. But there's a silver lining if your man is a total lush and you want to get pregs: Sperm is produced continuously in a 74-day cycle, so in less than three months, those drunk-ass semen can get washed away in a cleansing tide of kombucha and green tea.

Drink And Drugs Can Damage Men's Sperm, Study Suggests [Guardian]
Sperm Damage 'Passed To Children' [BBC]
The Merry Band Of Wrigglers: Men, Women, Passion, And Sperm. [Slate]
City Awash In Bad Sperm [Gothamist]

Anyway, the recommended weekly maximum "units" for a woman is 14. Which means we should have one glass of wine every day. Just one! In the new big glasses, though.

Here's the thing: We've got higher life expectancies these days but we're in a fast-paced, globally-warmed, been-there-done-that, terrorism-threat-level-permanently-orangeish world where there are few legal ways to soothe the soul; and sometimes chocolate and pictures of kittens just aren't enough. Many of us emerge from our square-ish homes, travel in boxy vehicles to spend the day in a cube of a workspace. Why not hit the bar for some actual social human interaction? The ancient Greeks had Dionysus; we have happy hour. The government thinks you drink too much? So what?! And if you're successful, working hard, isn't there something civilized about an after-work cocktail? Does anyone else want to raise a glass and toast the invention of alcohol?

Millions Of Middle-Class Women Drinking More Than They Realise Because Of Larger Wine Glasses [Daily Mail]
The More Successful You Are, The More You Drink, Research Finds [Independent]
One In Three Men Drink At 'Hazardous Levels' [Telegraph]
Underage Drinking - The Facts [Guardian]