Lost in Translation...

Good ideas, often don't make it beyond quality control. It befuddles me that the marriage of these wonderful libations doesn't work... at all, and trust me... it is awful. The genesis of this grand scheme to trail blaze the already infinite inventory of "the cocktail", spawned at a Padres game. Already, with a couple of screwdrivers circulating through my veins, and much more chatty, I was attempting to explain to Crystal, my buddy Jae Lee, & a mutual friend, a recent realization. Thanks to the wonderful effects of aging, I could no longer handle the devastating consequences of drinking beer to excess, and had vowed to confine my binge drinking to the wonderful world of cocktails. My new drink of choice: The Screwdriver. I'm not sure when, nor why beer had suddenly become an arch enemy. Maybe one to many evenings at The Rock Bottom that resulted in me asleep on my couch at 8pm? Severe dehydration? Intestinal unrest. I had my reasons. The discussion weaved its way through a veritable "tioga pass", ending in "the valley" that is apple juice. A nice metaphor, because I do love apple juice, and insist that it must always have a place in our fridge at all times. Why couldn't you mix such a magnificently refreshing juice with any spirit... especially vodka. Why haven't we seen this before? How could this sure thing have been overlooked? Is it patentable? We were all sure we had a gem in the making, and would shortly be printing off Absolut Apple T's and rolling in cash somehow from this sudden blast of genius.

After coming down from the excitement of our newfound discovery, the 4 of us enjoyed the bottom of the 9th inning of a great game. 2 outs, 2 on, 2 strikes, home team down 1... walk off HR. Nice. An outpouring of high 5's amongst perfect strangers persisted for an eternity of minutes. Pure joy, however fleeting, shared with strangers exposes a slice of humanity that is so positive and good, and in that moment Life can be sweet.

A relatively traffic free drive home was a nice bonus. But before I lay me down to sleep, a nightcap was in order. After leaving cloud 9, and still on sort of a high, the cocktail (2 parts apple juice, 1 part Vodka) with unrealistically high expectations was utterly disappointing. Sweet & Vodka don't mix. There has to be that yang of tart to make the thing work, I guess. We hadn't stumbled on to the next big thing. We had simply stumbled down an old road littered with the remains of those who most certainly perished, trying to finish a highball of this wickedly evil concoction. Let Vodka happily mingle with its friends OJ, the crans, tonic, & rocks of course. And leave apple juice alone.

Addendum: Adding another part of AJ, diluting out the vodka doesn't help. Adding another juice to the mix barely helps.