Like Water for Chocolate

Do I like vodka? Not really. But not not really either. C’mon, it’s vodka!! It’s stealthy, I’ll admit that. My personal lasting early impression of the stuff – aside from waking up bleary, a ~16 yo, next to a seagull pecking at trash near my high school face, the morning after an ill-advised alcoholic score – is of the girl with the really reeeally long hair in 11^th grade with her huge macrame purse that ‘concealed’ her bottle. Vodka is, and ever has been to my mind, just like that…clear and pure and clean. The perfect liquor, which is to say, the most serviceable but also the most dismissible. Doesn’t smell like anything. Nobody ever said, ‘you stink like a vodka factory’. It should taste like…ethylic alcoholic water… nothing!! It should taste like nothing. Only it so f’s you up. No notes is good notes!!! I’ll have me some gin please!  But I digress.

Au nyet. Madison Avenue (is there still a Madison Avenue??!?) disagrees strongly. So did the Europe Union, recently quibbling over what vodka ‘is’, which led to the Schnellhardt Compromise. Something about alcohol content or the kind of potatoes or whatever, but a compromise. I guess that’s good, we certainly don’t want any more unpleasantness among the Eastern Euro people. 

But come the mother f__ on!! It’s vodka, Fricken vodka!!  The less taste the better, everybody knows that!! It’s neutral. And yet (see pics), my local BevMo has many many many many ‘varieties’ of The Vodka. Some of them behind glass, lock and key. Call an associate for that $weet $tuff!

It’s like water. Wahh..ter. Where I grew up – Maryland – Wuoouh-der. Let’s face it, the best water tastes like…absolut nothing. Nothing at all. But again, the ad men would disagree. There IS a difference…you can TASTE the difference.  Your mouth can FEEL the difference.  Just tryyyy it!

I really can’t/won’t. Vodka gets you buzzed, and the cops can’t smell it. Good water is nice like air; you don’t need to think about it. Good water tastes like nothing at all. And good vodka tastes like the 11^th grade.

• OldManWrong