PHANTASMAGORICAL PHRIVOLITY

Welcome to another chapter of Born to Booze, where we still use the word “crunk.” In this installment, our resident bartender/musician Kirk Podell (Subversive Rite, Anti-Machine, Neo Cons) tries to play it cool with his childhood heroes the Damned before realizing they’re just as goofy as he is. Well, life goes on (and on and on), doesn’t it?

Absinthe gets a dogshit rap. In 1905, Jean Lanfray was accused of murdering his family while on the stuff. Ernest Hemingway drank it every day. People tell tales of hallucinating wildly, ending up in situations that were less than beneficial to them. Anyone who’s visited New Orleans can describe visiting some spooky dime-a-dozen bar where it flows. People have been known to scoff at me when I order a Death in the Afternoon, which is a glass of champagne with a few dashes of absinthe. The Damned, basically my favorite band of all time, seem to be obsessed with the herbal concoction, even naming a song after it on their 2001 comeback album.