Scotch

Scotch is a crowning achievement, one of humanity's finest moments, and is generally there for the other ones. The choice of all serious drinkers, scotch has been separating the badass from the walking dead possibly forever. It's been adored by too many icons of cool to list, including Poe, Hemingway, basically all normal artists, respectable biker gangs, whoever wrote Shakespeare, and Ben Franklin, unquestionably the coolest founding father. Nothing else goes perfectly with Coltrane, Metallica, and all things in between; scotch is what cocaine wishes it could be, a kind of explosive velvet, and is majorly iconic itself. We know you're thinking, do I want to consume exploding velvet - you do, badly, and are starting to remember this.

The only drink with a passionate following that's eternal and too superior to bother with drink trends, Scotch's charisma has made it often expensive and chased after by wannabes, like the rich and powerful, but they're easily ID'ed - they talk about scotch, with words like fruitcake or chocolate, which is normal only for industry drunks at work, and don't understand its appropriate use. Stephen King, Waits, Thompson, and hell's own list of musicians put scotch brand names in their work often, with no comprehensible use for product placement. As supremely cool as Waits' Jockey Full of Bourbon is, he keeps putting scotch in songs instead. As did Lynyrd Skynyrd, in spite of being fucking southern - which is why we feel their modest explanation of drinking enough whisky to float a battleship around meant the fucking Enterprise, or maybe they were just too southern to say fleet.

This kind of power can be tricky, since it defies trendiness, so scotch is having a big comeback thing now, not unlike all music legends that lived, or heroin having a comeback from junkyard lab fuck ups. Now that it's back where it belongs, first choice of rock star and supermodel types, while competent drinkers never left, scotch has its own Sam Adams guy with a company that wins lots of awards, some for innovation. Scotch can't be messed with casually of course, so this is exciting news. Because of its ass kicking ways, scotch has been associated with masculinity, when it really just amps everyone's gender profile. The "man's drink" gig is a retarded marketing thing overlooking the demographic repped by Courtney Love, Dorothy Parker, and everyone in the original 1960 Ocean's Eleven, like Angie Dickinson and Shirley MacLaine. Women have always been in serious drinking - scotch merely repels the stupid and backward.

Control freaks have stuck scotch with a warning to "unscrew cap while driving fast to escape school zone", but connoisseurs in Super 8s everywhere won't be impressed until there's a warning that drinking should happen after crime, not during or before. In real life, scotch has been recommended for longevity by a 113 year old man and to Russian soccer fans to fend off swine flu. With your own favorite scotch, you'll be far better equipped to defend your snack choices from the born without a brain crowd, like your boss. Availing yourself of Water of Life is easy - while bottles have recently gone for $54,000 and $81,000, and Highland Park averages $2k, you can get Johnnie Walker for around $20, and budget scotch fans can always rely on Black and White, long the best cheap scotch - since the phrase "cheap scotch" is usually associated with images like where Lucy Liu loses her head in Kill Bill, this is valuable information.

The Piano Has Been Drinking

Celebrity scotch brands:

Chivas Regal is preferred by Waits and Thompson

Johnnie Walker is preferred by Japan, where a novel we want to read has a character named after it and dressed like the logo, and musicians

Cutty Sark is preferred by Stephen King

Truman Capote always ordered "Justerini and Brooks scotch," or J & B to the rest of us