Mikes Hard Lemonade: Not at All Hardcore

I came home from LSU for my mom’s birthday. I had gotten my hands on some peach wine coolers, but her and my step dad were way ahead of me because they “learned how to make martinis and decided to drink them.” So, that’s when I decided to start making my mom “peach martinis.” This is the recipe for a peach martini, in case anyone is wondering.

Ingredients:

• 1 part Peach Wine Cooler
• 1 part Vodka

Steps:

• Pour into tumbler
• Add Ice
• Shake Shake Shake
• Pour in Glass
• Hand to your mom

I realize, now, that mixing wine and vodka together is not really technically a “martini” in any way, shape, or form.  All, “here is a grape martini, it’s a 2009 merlot and Grey Goose, ENJOY!” My mom being able to mix wine, vodka and whatever else she drank before I showed up is pretty hardcore, although to this day she will not touch a martini. Now, the reason why I mentioned that story is because I believe there are different levels of “hardcore” when it comes to drinking (i.e. What you drink, how much of it you drink, if your merry progeny is responsible for your most intense hangover in the last two decades since you had her.) Mikes Hard Lemonade, even though it possesses the word “hard” in it, is not at all “hardcore.”

(Drinking this on a pretty lake with mountains in the background is the least core thing ever.)

Now, that doesn’t mean it won’t get you both A) drunk and consequently B) hung-over.

My personal relationship with Mikes hit it’s peak the summer I lived in Sacramento. I found a pretty fun group, and hung out a good bit this one weekend. It was during the California State Fair. I was on a strict diet of Mikes that entire weekend. It was fun. But the main reason I latched onto Mikes over the summer in Sacramento was because of the insane heat. I actually figured out the other day that I’ve lived in every time zone at one point or another, and I can say without a doubt the most uncomfortable heat I’ve ever experienced is/was in California. South Carolina was hot, but it wasn’t all that bad because I lived five seconds from the beach. Louisiana was humid and hot, but I grew up there, so I could deal. Idaho had dry heat, but it was the arid north west, so while it got hot, people from Idaho’s definition of “hot” isn’t really as hot as hot could be. But in both Sacramento and San Diego, when it gets hot, you can feel your skin burning. This isn’t like “oh, I’ve been outside for four hours, I might be sun burnt” this is “I’ve been walking for one entire minute and I feel like my skin is literally sizzling.” It’s not at all as charming as the way the hot summer is described in the first chapter of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, in case anyone was wondering, here is how Harper Lee paints the charming nostalgic picture of her childhood summer:

"Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

All those hot days, when I’m in my apartment sweating profusely I think, “why can’t I have a Harper Lee summer with a little bit of charm attached to the potential heat stroke?” because I feel like it would be worth it, you know? She also makes the South sound really charming; even though I’m pretty sure shit was super racist and, because the south is always behind the times, was probably still suffering from the Great Depression. Now, this is how I would describe the hot summers in San Diego and Sacramento, if I were writing a nostalgic novel:

“I notice the air conditioner is broken as I feel a bead of sweat drip down the small of my back. ‘This will be my third t-shirt change of the day’ I think to myself as I futilely tap on the little plastic thermostat box. Holy fuck stick, it’s hot as the dickens.”

(This sun is no fucking joke, yo.)

I haven’t experienced that kind of heat since last summer, then a little while ago BAM! HEAT! So, that caused me to go and buy some Mikes, because that’s my summer drink. I told Stephanie (for those of you who do not know who this is, she is another SDSU graduate student) that I bought a six-pack of Mikes when I was hanging out day drinking at Eric’s (Also an SDSU graduate student). I don’t remember the exact words that spilled out of her mouth, but this was the essence of what she said, “that is so the opposite of hardcore, and it’s taking a lot out of me to not clown the shit out of you. You disappoint me with your apparent lack of hardcore-ness”

(Small)

Now, you can’t tell, because she is sitting, but this girl is a few inches shorter than me, I think when she wears heels she’s my height. Stephanie in heels always freaks me out a little bit because I’m like “YOU ARE MY HEIGHT SUDDENLY” and feel all randomly threatened. Anyway, the point is that she seems like one of those girls that “doesn’t like the taste of beer” if we’re only using her appearance. (I also keep referring to her as a ‘girl’ even though she’s over 21, it’s like she’s just so subconsciously non-threatening, like a stuffed animal.) So, let’s compare her to the graduate student in our program that is a 6’2” male from Wisconsin.

(Not so small.)

Now, let’s compare their favorite beers:

• Eric: Bud Light Lime
• Stephanie: Hoppy McHopperson IPA (that she keeps in the trunk of her car at all times.)

If Eric can’t get his Bud Light Lime, then he goes for regular Bud Light. If Stephanie can’t get Hoppy McHopperson IPA, she goes for Guinness or a similarly dark stout. The point is that she drinks beer as if a 55-year-old man with a grey beard lives inside her. If I could get her and my step-dad in the same room, they would become quick beer friends.  I, personally, don’t like to chew on Hops when I’m drinking beer, but Stephanie has the hardcore-ness of a middle-aged man when it comes to beer. (Meaning, had we made first contact on, say, a beer forum instead of at orientation, I would have automatically assumed she was a middle-aged man, unless her handle was something like “I♥FluffyKittens&Rainbows22”)

I think my most potent Mikes Hard Lemonade memory, was when I got Mikes Hard Pink Lemonade. It was some sort of breast cancer thing; each six-pack of the pink lemonade donated some money so I was like “why not!” So, we had one or two in the refrigerator, and my brother and I are just hanging out, minding our own business. Then we had a car drive into our living room. This was, approximately eight p.m. … fast forward to 1 a.m. after the cops, firemen and guys who boarded up our house were gone, and we were in a hotel room (thank you Red Cross). We were told our apartment was not safe to stay in that night, until an electrician could come and see if the house is electrically sound (I guess, because there may have been open wires, etc.). My brother and I being, you know, who we are, ended up grabbing the frozen crawfish from the freezer and the two bottles of Pink Mikes from the fridge, and we drove to the hotel room.

(Drunk drivers are fuck sticks, much like hot weather. That bent metal tube in the foreground of the picture WAS THE STREET SIGN ON THE CORNER.)

Kevin propped up his injured leg on a pillow and asked me to grab him the Mikes. He then proceeded to get tipsier than a grown man of his tolerance and weight should have gotten off spiked pink lemonade. He came up with the best list ever, which I managed to get on video, and I will transcribe exactly.

Reasons Why We Live(d) in the Mother Fuckin’ Ghetto – by Kevin Guidry:

• “First off, a car ran through our living room wall”
• “Second, after we got, uh, over the shock of a car running into our living room, we got outside, 90 seconds tops…. And there’s like twenty people outside. That’s fucking ghetto.”
• “Third, there’s the mother of the kid that got hit by the car that came into our living, yelling at, basically, everyone really loudly.”
• “Fourth. Fourth reason our neighborhood is so fucking ghetto, three of our ghetto neighbors actually chased down the driver of the car, who was drunk as fuck, and just took off on foot. They chased him down, made a citizens arrest, if you will, of course the mom started chewing that dude out…. in Spanish. He was crying. Cops came. He’s probably in jail tonight.”
• “Sixth reason our neighborhood is ghetto is, while the police are roping off the crime scene taking pictures, CSI and all, we have two different neighbors come up to us and say ‘hey, when all these cops get out of here, y’all want to come to our house and get really fucked up? Just come on over.’ We had a person on either side tell us the same thing, and they were both just ghetto young white dudes, like our age white kids, and everyone smelled like they had been drinking.”

According to my forensic analysis of the grainy bottle of Mikes Hard Lemonade sitting on the night stand near Kevin, it was about half full, therefore it would appear this entire diatribe was brought to us by a half drunk, pink, Mikes Hard Lemonade.