Forget The Bird, Where's The Booze?

Ah Thanksgiving. That time when you come together with the family you seldom see. The typical awkward conversations about what you're doing with your life, why you don't visit and when will you finally settle down come up. If you're lucky enough, you'll have the chance to stuff your face full of turkey and stuffing in an attempt to avoid these questions. With any family setting the chances are good that there's some tension in the air between members of your family. So you're going to need something to help make those insanely boring stories told by family members you seldom see interesting. There's only a certain number of times you can hear about how your cousin timmy sure beat those parasites or awkwardly laugh at the uneasy jokes the hobo your hippie sister invited to dinner makes before wanting to slam your plate on your head.




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That's when the drinks come along. From helping you swallow your extremely dry turkey to getting your buzz on to loosen the mood. It's all the little things you do to help you pass the time before you fall asleep from an overdose of food. On Thanksgiving, the booze is already going to be flowing like Niagara Falls thanks to the deep-seated resentment and hostility in your family that's never given a proper outlet. Alcohol also serves a very practical purpose besides making incoming passive-aggressive comments about your lifestyle palatable; it removes all doubt from the mind. Sure, you may be asking yourself "Do I really want to do this to my body?" in front of all of those heaps of steaming food-mounds, but after a few glasses of spiced rum, you'll be on the sixth plate and racing your shirtless uncle to the bathtub so that one of you (the winner) can vomit. As long as everyone is toasted, everyone is happy; and you may just be drunk enough to forget about the poor parenting skills that made you intot he insecure, human train wreck that you are. If not, nothing makes a better chaser than tears! So read on, reader! This is your guide to what to chug down to get through those couple of hours tonight when you'll have to socialize with your family!

Wine

This is the basic on what you would think would be a perfect thing to serve with your fancy spread, right? WRONG! Think again. It's going to be a task to figure out what wine will go best with your meal. Should you go with a nice red or white? The rule of thumb is to stick to the color of your food, but if you're having a spread like your typical thanksgiving meal, what color would win out of all of them? The white of the turkey? Not to mention the different taste all around. Some like a nice oak after taste while others care for more of a fruity and sweet taste? Oh the choices! Then you'll have to figure out what years vintage was good and what year was crap. You'll then look foolish if you pick up a wine that isn't from America. I mean, it is Thanksgiving, what are you? Some terrorist? There's too many factors. Perhaps I'll write up a good wine post sometime, but for right now it may be out of your field my friend.

Guinness

While this may be the best drink in the world, not many people know how to pour one properly. And if the way your Aunt poured the gravey over your mashed potatoes is any indication, no one in your extended family, unless Irish, will know how to pour a proper Guinness. Not to mention that you're already going to be eating a lot of stuffing. Drinking one of these bad boys sometimes feels like you just ate a loaf of bread. Very often when I do drink enough of these I find myself waking up in a pile of wonder bread wrappers. I don't know why, man. I just do! In any event. Drinking this stuff will more than likely fill you up before you even get to the third helping of food. Which would be a bad thing considering the little known fact that you'll never have any leftovers to enjoy unless you hurry up and eat as much as you can now!



Jack Daniels

Well, if you're going to be saying grace down the neck of a bottle of Jack, you're more than likely not spending your time with a family. Which in itself is a plus. Congrats! Hopefully you'll be able to get some custody for your child after the courts stop raping you for child support. Either way, I'm sure that you're enjoying your thanksgiving meal in the form of a freshly carved up open face turkey sandwich from the local deli down the street.



Rum

Aye, a little Rum will do the trick of healing what causes your grief. The best part of this drink is that you can easily hide it in the coke that you have with your meal and no one will be the wiser. It helps avoid all those interventions. I mean, there's only so many times your loved ones can tell you they'll stop talking to you if you don't stop drinking before you just tell them to beat it anyway and leave you be with your drink of choice.



Hobo Wine

Forget the stuff that comes from Napa. A little known fact is that these hobo wines are made by the Gallo family winery. They just consider them the redheaded step children, much the same as you're family treats you if you hate being around them for thanksgiving. Let's get down to brass tacks . Your goal is to get as ripped up as possible in any means to not have to deal with your family. The 17.5% per volume alcohol level in these will leave you as toasted as the turkey. On top of that, it's a whole lot cheaper! These bad boys run you about a buck or two. Sure, you have to deal with paying for it through a four inch thick bullet proof window at the liquor store. But much like the pilgrims had to suffer a little, so do we. I'm sure anything from Modesto, California is nothing but top quality!

Jager

Jager and the thanksgiving meal actually have a lot in common. Everyone has had one night of drinking way too much of this stuff and then found themselves puking their brains out all night long just like everyone has had one night (usually the fourth Thursday of November) where they ate too god damn much and found themselves puking all night long. Ah, then you wipe your hands of ever touching it again, only to end up in the same position a year later. It's a vicious cycle, I know. But it's one that will always happen. I would be careful to choose this as your drink with the meal. Yes, it will get you to the point of forgetting all about your problems quickly, but you already have a high puke terror threat on Thanksgiving anyway. No need to make it a certainty.

All this could have been avoided with a couple of Irish Car bombs. Either that or it would have been even more entertaining.

Coors

Unless you're going to be deep frying your turkey, perhaps it's best that you put that silver bullet down. Don't tap into the rockies for this one. Besides that, do you really want a drink that came from the same place where the losers of the world series are? Thanksgiving is all about being American and while baseball is as American as you can get, getting swept in the world series is as anti-American as it comes! Hey Rockies,what happened to Rocktober? Oh yeah, it turned into Chokevember! Oh yes, back to the point. If you are going to be deep frying your turkey this year, please be warned that you should not under and circumstance deep fry indoors. You will burn the turkey and your home. While it will be funny for me to laugh about it while I sit outside and drink a cold Coors, watching your house go up in flames, it may not be funny to you.

Pabst blue ribbon

Again, do not go to beer while eating your turkey. I did one for Pabst simply because it's going to be fair warning. If you're going to be drinking Pabst blue ribbon on Thanksgiving, you're more than likely not talking to your family and enjoying your Tofurkey with your hipster friends. In which case all I have to say is this, Get a job, you leaches of society! Oh, I kid, I kid. I know the world needs hipsters. Who else is going to ask me if I want paper or plastic. And the jokes don't stop, do they? (Or did they ever start?) You should leave the Pabst for another night. Class it up some and go pick yourself up a six'er of Old Milwaukee.

Tsingtao

If you've never eaten at a Chinese establishment during Thanksgiving then you've never truly lived. Or should I say never fucked up a thanksgiving dinner. There's something about when your thanksgiving host invites you over to eat and tells you all about how they've been slaving away with the turkey and how they are especially proud of how good it smells and how golden brown it looks. So when they ask you to do the honors of cutting the turkey, you stick your carving knife into that breast bone only to feel a cold and wet turkey center. I don't think they put instructions on a turkey to defrost it before tossing it in the oven at 350 degrees, but if they assume folks have common sense, they have another thing coming. Any number of things gone so wrong with your meal that you end up in a Chinese dive enjoying General Mao's tasty duck instead of turkey will lead you to also drink your problems away with this great Chinese beer.

A couple of shots and you wont even notice how crappy that food taste!

Jones cola Thanksgiving pac

Yeah, it may seem a bit redundant to drink sodafied versions of the meal you are eating but stay with me for a second here. You have to think of it like a turducken! You know, that duck stuffed in a chicken stuffed in a turkey. Yup, exactly like that. Only the wonders of Jones Cola Thanksgiving pack has everything you're going to be enjoying in liquid form. Especially helpful for Aunt Gladis who's nick name is Gummy Bear on account of her dental status. With flavors like Turkey and Gravy soda, Sweet Potato soda, Dinner Roll soda, Pea soup soda and of course, Antacid soda how could you go wrong? I'm sure you're wondering why anyone would even buy this pack? I'm sure there is really no "good" answer to that. I have to admit that I have a couple of these soda packs. Why? I guess I really like pain. The irony of it all is that the Antacid soda has a warning label that says "NOT TO BE USED AS AN ANTACID!" All of these sodas should have a tag of "DO NOT DRINK." Unless you want your family tension to be cut with everyone puking, this is not the drink(s) to serve at the table.

I'm sure this helpful guide has laid out the methods that will best serve you to get drunk, sick or dead in time for your holiday gathering. Just remember. The less time you are in control of your own body, the more you'll have fun. You should take comfort that while you can't control what family you are born into, you can at least control which drink goes down your throat in pure levels of enjoyment and numbness.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!