Today is my first day of unemployment after my position was eliminated at work.
It sucks because I actually loved that job — I got to write about food all day. But this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me, so I’m going to bend over and cheerfully take it until I am employed again. In the meantime, I will do what all unemployed champions do, which is drink. Now, don’t be alarmed. I am not going to do something pathetic like drink a pint of questionable-quality vanilla extract behind a dumpster by my old office. I will drink like any other self-respecting person does, alone on my front steps, with a paper bag over my head.
Also, when you are unemployed, you can drink whenever you want. Even for breakfast! I know! Isn’t being an adult amazing? Substance abuse is hilarious. Inspired by my current situation, I have crafted a breakfast-friendly cocktail that tastes amazingly like despair.
One of the most popular breakfast/brunch alcoholic beverages is called a mimosa. A mimosa is simply one part chilled citrus juice topped off with an equal amount of sparkling wine or champagne.
Mainly when I think about mimosas, I think about suburban mothers who want to feel sophisticated by drinking something bubbly and alcoholic at breakfast, kind of like that Sexual in the City television show. That’s what it was called, right? Sexual in the City? What a classy and urban television show, depicting a realistic version of modern life in a self-centered version of hell. So high-class. So sexual.
Instead of sophistication, I decided I wanted to flavor this beverage with hopelessness and despair. Nothing spells hopelessness and despair quite like a daily morning hangover. But how do you capture the flavor of immediate disappointment after waking up for the day? I did some deep culinary soul searching and thought about instant morning disappointment. And it hit me. One of the most disappointing things you can consume is orange juice right after you brush your teeth in the morning.
And thus, from the nooks and crannies of my cavernous ass, the Toothpaste and Orange Juice Beermosa was born.
When it comes to mixed cocktails, even simple ones, garnishes and flair are important. So I decided to rim the tall beverage glass with toothpaste.
Giving a glass a rimjob is easy. Start by putting your rimming material on a plate. In this case, I used toothpaste, as I’m really trying to ruin the beverage here. For some reason the toothpaste squeezed itself out in the shape of a crudely drawn penis. I’m not sure how that happened.
Next, place your vessel upside down on the penis. Er, plate. Then spin it around a little, ensuring that all the rimming material sticks to the rim of the glass. If you have a dry rimming material like sugar, all you need to do is moisten the lip of the glass a touch before you put it on the plate.
Isn’t doing rimjobs fun and easy? Your mother did a rimjob for me last night and I quite enjoyed it.
The finished glass should look like this, a beautiful pale creamy blue color smeared around the lip, kind of like your mother’s face the morning after a long night with a player from The Blue Man Group.
The last time I experimented with toothpaste, my friend Ed, a dentist, asked me if I got horribly sick. I had eaten a lot of toothpaste in that one sitting. But I was fine. He was impressed. Apparently you can get real sick if you eat enough toothpaste, so I’m just letting you know that now. I am basically not human anymore so it didn’t faze me at all.
Use a pea-sized portion in a mixing vessel you’re comfortable with possibly ruining. Toothpaste coats everything and is a bitch to clean off, so you’re better off using something you’re willing to sacrifice. Sorry, Dean’s 4% Large Curd Cottage Cheese plastic container. Stir some orange juice into the toothpaste, vigorously. Toothpaste doesn’t really dissolve much so you’re going to have to work hard to get the lumps out.
Pour the orange juice and toothpaste mixture into the glass and top it off with beer.
Now — you might be wondering why I chose beer over sparkling wine or something nice. It is because despair doesn’t taste nice. It tastes like cheap hipster beer. Cheap hipster beer tastes exactly the same going down as it does coming back up once you’ve had a whole bucket. It’s ironic. Hipsters know more about despair than you.
Harvey and Mr. Bee needed a bit of a step-stool to get a better view of the drink. Good thing I had plenty of beer. The Toothpaste and Orange Juice Beermosa tasted like the aftermath of a bad night of drinking, which is a little bit like bile and garbage mixed together. The toothpaste rim along with the toothpaste-infused orange juice adds to the strange chalky and muted orange juice flavor of the cocktail. Overall, I feel as if I was quite successful in capturing a mouthful of despair. This reflects my current state of unemployment perfectly.
If any of you are feeling down and like life has kicked you in the genitalia repeatedly, don’t worry. It’ll be okay. Just know that at any given time I’m often in a worse position than you, mostly because I eat and drink stupid things while generally being an incredibly stupid person. You can wallow in the actual flavor of despair with this horrible cocktail while you’re feeling bad for yourself. Because we all know that heavy alcohol abuse solves all problems, right?
Right?
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