Pop Culture Cocktails That'll Eff You Up In Real Life

Before Ed O'Neill was arguably the best part of Modern Family, he was Al Bundy in the '90s sitcom Married With Children. Bundy is a hero for the everyman, a rude, lazy underachiever who hates his life and everyone in it. That's great fodder for some creative uses of alcohol, like in the Season 11 episode "Bud On The Side." In this episode, beer and Tang come together in a grand ceremony of white trash mixology. I hadn't had Tang since I was a child and hadn't had beer since an hour before sun-up, so I was excited to jump right into this one.

The Drink

Ingredients
Beer
Tang

Erik Germ

I didn't even know they still made Tang, but I managed to find some at my local Walmart next to the guns and the section with broken patio furniture. And I'm glad I did, because Tang is lit as fuck! I couldn't find the powder stuff locally, but I managed to find these little, easy-to-use bottles that let you squirt your Tang all over the place. The bottle says "One squeeze for every 8 ounces of liquid," but since math is for nerds, I just decided to go buck wild with the stuff. I chose a Hefeweizen to start off with, because you're supposed to complement it with orange anyway, and this makes for an acceptable middle ground. After pouring my delicious beer, I gave it two blasts of Tang.

Erik Germ

After a little stir to dilute the Tang, the result was fantastic! If you don't like cutting up an orange for your Blue Moons and other wheat beers, just start carrying one of these little Tang dealies around, because it is an excellent substitute. I can't think of a beer that Tang wouldn't complement, and to prove that, I tried it in a few more.

Erik Germ

Light beer went just as well as the wheat beer, thought it was kind of like drinking regular Tang in water anyway. It can get pretty dangerous since the "school cafeteria orange drink" taste takes precedent over the beer taste, so it's easy to forget you've actually been pounding brews all night. With the light beer gone and forgotten, I grabbed an IPA.

Erik Germ

I am not the biggest fan of IPA, unless that stands for "International Puppy Association," in which case, sign me right the fuck up. But since it is in reality a pale ale the likes of which I don't normally fuck around with, I was all too excited to shoot some of my Tang. The result was, once again, refreshing and tasty. The orange and the bitterness of the ale do a swirling dance of deliciousness that may have just turned this old Scrooge around on IPAs. Seriously, Tang has become my spirit animal. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing this little bottle can't fix!

Erik Germ
Fuck ...

All right, maybe I spoke too soon. When Bundy references the Bundy Mimosa, I think I can indisputably confirm he isn't talking about Guinness, because it tastes like an accident. Not like "Oops, I accidentally added some delicious Tang to my delicious Guinness." More like "Oh man, if a horrible car accident had a taste, it would probably taste a lot like this."

Tang almost batted a perfect game, but the Guinness was just too strong. Your taste buds want either the Guinness or the Tang, so it's a constant battle over who reigns supreme. The only way I could see it working is if you've already Tang'd five or six beers until you finally arrive at the "I'll drink anything in a glass" part of the evening. Since I had a long night ahead of me, I just decided to quit while I was ahead and move on.

The Simpsons has been a great resource for fake cocktails. Both the Skittlebrau and the Flaming Moe are delicious as far as I can remember, and I was lucky that they still had one more golden goose to give this article. Actually, "lucky" is a relative term in this case, because 50 percent of the mix here is wheatgrass juice. If I had to pick three words that shouldn't go together, "wheat," "grass," and "juice" would be pretty solid contenders. But, apparently, disgusting wheatgrass is a detoxifier, and my liver can use all the help it can get. So I clothespinned my nose shut and got to work on the third in the series of Homer Simpson-invented cocktails.

The Drink

Ingredients
Vodka
Wheatgrass juice

Erik Germ
How in heck's asshole is this considered edible?

That pond scum there is the wheatgrass powder, and boy oh boy is it ever potent! For those who have had a rabbit as a pet, it smells exactly like the cage you kept it in: earthy and a little bit like shit. I added a spoonful to half a glass of water and added some ice, because there was no way I was drinking this warm. Against my better judgment, I gave it a taste and got to experience exactly what drowning in a swamp must taste like. Thankfully, like so many times in my life, vodka came to rescue me. I topped the rest of the glass off with some alcohol and gave it a stir.

Erik Germ

The taste left me desperately searching for a silver lining. Maybe some people enjoy wheatgrass, terrorists and Hitler-types for sure, but I'm just a law-abiding American and I shouldn't have to deal with this kind of distress. For the record, vodka doesn't really help; it just makes it taste like poisoned rabbit food. The only thing I got out of this drink was a vision of dead little bunnies in my head, which only made me feel super depressed. That's the opposite effect I want from my drinking. As a last-ditch effort, I tried one more thing before calling this drink a complete waste of time.

Erik Germ
Tang, baby!

I straight-up basted this shit in Tang and, while it helped the taste only a tiny bit, I at least stopped thinking about dead little baby bunnies for a while. Thanks, Tang!

The Drink

YouTube

Ingredients
Gin
Rum
Tonic

I had some rum and tonic first, because that's what I truly desired, and it was just great. After adding an equal part of gin, I blasted the rest of the glass with the tonic water.

Erik Germ

The fuck am I supposed to do with one liter of gin??

Just as I thought, the gin prevented me from tasting anything else, and it was only after adding more rum that it truly tasted like something special. If I could say one thing for the gin, though: It did a commendable job of replacing the taste of the wheatgrass in my mouth. While Jum And Tonic isn't exactly anything you would want to write home and brag about, it packs itself a nice little a punch. This was the point of the night where I could actually feel the buzz coming on, and I credit these two liquors with triggering it. I wasn't initially going to finish this one, but then I accidentally spilled two or three or nine blasts from the Tang bottle into the glass, and I'm not about to waste good Tang, am I?

Erik Germ
Tang, motherfucker!

The Drink

YouTube

Ingredients
Hot cocoa
Creme de cacao
Creme de menthe
Peppermint schnapps

Sporting my finest Garfield mug, I made myself a nice warm cup of candy cane flavored cocoa, since it was the only kind we had in the house. It tasted just as good as it did when I bought it at Christmas, so the first ingredient was present and accounted for. Next, I combined the menthe, cacao, and peppermint liqueurs into the glass in equal parts, probably.

Erik Germ
As Garfield would say, "What-the-fuck-ever."

I've got to say, this drink is a home run. Keep this one out of your kid's reach, because if you didn't know the alcohol was in there, you'd find yourself pleasantly but surprisingly smashed. Not only is it creamy and delicious, it tastes exactly like a York Peppermint Pattie. I even gave each of these ingredients a sniff to see which one was responsible, and none of them smell or taste like the candy by themselves. Like some kind of chocolaty, alcoholic Voltron, all the parts needed to come together to get it to its final form. After downing the entire thing in a triumphant gulp, I figured I should keep the chocolate train going with another dessert cocktail.

The Drink

venturebrosblog.com

Ingredients
Kahlua
Hershey's syrup
Dash of red Kool-Aid

On paper, this seems like a good combo! Since it was such a highly recommended drink, I really wanted to make sure I did it justice. I found a transcript of the audio commentary for this episode on the Venture Bros. blog, where the creators explain that the proper way to make the Kooler is to add Kahlua and so much chocolate syrup that it's "thick and almost undrinkable." So I did just that. I filled about half the glass with coffee liqueur and then started piling on the syrup. You can see it start to pool at the top of the glass.

Erik Germ

I gave the drink a sip sans-Kool-Aid first to see how it tasted. It was actually really good, but far too rich to drink too much of. I was sure I had the right consistency when I put the straw in and found that, instead of falling to the side of the glass like a normal straw, it stood fully erect.

Erik Germ
Me too, man.

Finally, I added my sprinkling of red Kool-Aid to the top. Like the syrup, it kind of just floated there, with nothing to do except sit atop its chocolaty tower.

Erik Germ

I don't ever read my horoscope, but I'll bet the day I made this monstrosity, it said something along the lines of "No good can come of that drink, Erik, you idiot." I'm starting to think that cartoon character didn't actually try this drink, because there's no way he would realistically be able to keep any of it down. First of all, it's thick, like trying to suck a soft piece of Laffy Taffy through a straw. Since the straw itself was about as useful as Kool-Aid in chocolate sauce, I threw it in the garbage where it belonged and prepared to drink it the old-fashioned way. If you like chocolate and also getting diabetes, you might enjoy this drink. You also might get a quick glimpse of the cherry as you're drinking, but overall, expect to be full-on molested by chocolate. I didn't like what this drink did to me or how it made me feel about my decisions in life, so I ended up dumping most of it. After a brief chocolate coma, I moved onto the final drink.