Fingers: Hear ye, hear ye, and all that crap. Here we are again with another installment of "Something is Rank," where a whole bunch of us get together to talk about stuff and how much we do or don't like it. Since I'm told this one's going to be for the big anniversary hoo-hah, I thought that we'd roll with something that's good for a celebration. So, people, let's have your top five choices in booze. Pick your poison!

Dustin: What if someone here is a recovering alcoholic?

Fingers: Shit. Uh... okay, if you're not comfortable with the booze thing, then… hell, I don't know. Talk about puppies or something. Wait, no, fuck that -- recovering alcoholics know damn well what they want to drink. And nobody says they HAVE to do this thing if they don't want to. Come back next month when we do 80s songs or something.

Adam: You know, I can't drink booze generally, I have an ulcer. And yeah I know it breaks my own column to point out that my column is semi-fictional. Shut up! Stop the screaming!

DJ: Sorry, I was thinking about something else. Wait, are we doing that “Rank” thing?

Adam: Beers! I drink beers. Bass comes first, of course. Crapass Corona is good for when it's hot out. Then you have your Sams, your Stellas, and your other pale ales. So there you go, folks. Hard Liquor is right out. But the beer family is well loved here. Though I do admit to drinking Corona all summer. I feel ashamed.

Dustin: At least it's not Pabst. Although I don't think Corona would be on my list.

Fingers: Nothing wrong with PBR, man… what about you, Sholler?

Leigh: Right, just keep encouraging my bad behavior by requiring me to research all the possibilities here. First and foremost, I will drink with Adam any time. At least he has the character to stick with the beloved beer category. I will also place beer in the number one spot, though I shall not discriminate based on brewery or national origin. Second is gin: mmmmm, mmmmm, love me a dirty martini. Third, I'll take a stroll down Bushmills' Boulevard with the ladies at O'Toole's and fourth and have a dab of Jägermeister just so's the night can take a turn for the worse -- ‘cause I'll throw punches if you allow me the fifty-six herbs and spices in that fine bit of German engineering. Finally, fifth, I nominate the beauty of a fine vodka for the Miss Congeniality award (mostly cause I grin a lot if I get a bellyful of gimlets). But really, booze gets a bit expensive, so I may find myself on the stool next to a red-faced Adam with a cheap Anheuser-Busch product in my hand if I'm not careful. Slainte.

Adam: Booze isn't for the cheap, and neither is a good beer. Lord knows I won't drink cheap beer often. I'm something of a snob. Big shock, right? And now I want a drink, after thinking about this. But Jäeger? Seriously? Dear lord why?

Leigh: Hahahahaha, Adam, yes, your faunch was audible, and yes, Jäegermeister. As I said, there are certain nights at the bar that require not caring whom or what you strike, and JM helps immensely with that.

Laszlo: Speaking as an aspiring alcoholic, but one who has not achieved the socioeconomic class that is entitled to drink as much as one needs to get by, I prefer Beer and ales for drinking if I'm actually thirsty and wouldn't mind a buzz, but, for sheer impact, I hold out for the liquors. Bourbons are at the top. I can't wait until the rest of the world catches on and small-batch bourbons turn into the new single-malt scotches of the upper class. It'll add tons to the refinement of some already spectacular flavors over the next fifty years, and, by God, I hope I'm still alive enough and wealthy enough to enjoy them. Knob Creek is about as good as I can afford right now, and it gets the job done.

Dustin: I've never understood Bourbon, really.

Fingers: Nobody cares.

DJ: That’s mean, Fingers… but true. Go on, Sir Laszlo.

Laszlo: Close second: variations on the absinthe theme. Dunno what actual chemistry/genetics are at work here, but wormwood and anise/liquorice are hotly pursued in this household. Actual Absinthe, Chartreuse (green over yellow, if I get to choose), Pernod, Ouzo, Arak, yes, even Jägermeister, although the last is typically far too sweet. Could be the ethanol, as this class tends to be potent, but it could also be the fever-dream that the third shot brings on. There are roughly a dozen enlightened individuals on earth who are willing to repeatedly drink shots of old-world absinthe straight, and both myself and my wife are among them.

Third: Tequila. The more you refine the tequila-making process, the more you end up with what tastes pretty much exactly like a fine scotch. Again, I can't afford them, but I love them. I have a dwindling bottle of Casa de Chihuahua mescal on my bar, and I will sorely miss it when it is empty.

Fourth: Gin. Like tomatoes, a good gin is spectacular while a bad gin is inconceivably vile. Bombay Sapphire is on the bar downstairs. Anything less than that will probably be used to help scrub away stubborn soap scum in the tub or maybe kill stubborn weeds in the front yard. Good gin is used for martinis. While a chilled shot of vodka could possibly be improved with a misting of vermouth (i.e., wormwood) and a drizzle of olive juice, that's not a martini.

Leigh: Though I do believe a martini must have at least a few olives (if not a dab of the juice, Laszlo), you are spot on with the abstinence in the realm of vermouth.

Laszlo: Fifth: Scotch. I like me some well-aged blended scotch. I've done the taste-tour of the single malts, so now I know what I'm appreciating in the blends. My favorite is a 21-year Balvenie aged in casks once used for making port, stolen from the French hundreds of years ago.

After that there are some interesting things that Asians have been doing recently with sweet potatoes. Awesome stuff. And I dig a number of wines, preferring stain-your-teeth-purple reds. And I love to try stuff I haven't had before.

There isn't a liquor allowed in my mixed drinks that I wouldn't drink room temperature, neat. Mixing drinks is too much work for me when I just want to switch off the censor that keeps me from writing, but mixed drinks are a social necessity, like the Western equivalent of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. The required drinks vary by situation. Dinner parties require dirty martinis, but summer afternoons here where I do my writing require mint juleps. And around here you can grow your own mint.

DJ: Like our erstwhile Laszlo, I, too, am an aspiring alcoholic, or, as I like to call it: FUNoholic. As such, I drink quite extensively but with shockingly little variety. Personally, once I acquired a taste for it, beer, in all its glorious incarnations, became a favorite, but it's also carb heavy. My roommate, who is carb conscious/obsessed, warns against this.

Fingers: You should listen to your roomie. Seen yourself lately?

DJ:: Heck with you! Anyway, luckily, I do enjoy liquor and wine, as well...

Numero uno: Guinness. God, I love me some Guinness. Many folk fear this awe-inspiring nectar, but mayhap that's because they don't truly know it. They haven't gone to a pub and ordered a pint and really gotten into what makes it tick. The dark, beef injected (my theory) beer goes down shockingly smooth and can actually put hair on various parts of the drinker-- which can be a good thing to some, tragic to others. But always worth it.

B: Sam Adams... Light. I know, it's shocking I'd go for the light, but I actually prefer it to the regular version. It's got snap but less bite, and it's from good ol’ Boston, home of lots of American stuff. Woo!

The magic number: A screw driver... vodka, especially of the vanilla persuasion, mixed with orange juice. No, no, wait, wait-- it's carb conscious, AND it takes like an old school creamsicle. So good, you don't even realize your getting drunk until the smiles are coming easier and everyone's suddenly your friend.

4: Cabernet Sauvignon. A good red wine. Being cheap, I'm down with the Yellow Tail. Many a night was saved as tears flew back up into my eyes while I polished off a bottle of Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon from the local booze mart. It has a nice, sweet taste and is good for the heart, right?

6 minus 1: The Caucasian. The Dude's drink. The White Russian. I haven't had this delightful cocktail made from vodka (that again, I know, but this is its own thing), coffee liqueur, and milk in too long. Might change that mistake after we get done with this. It's like a desert in a glass and has calcium for strong bones. What more do you need?

Dustin: Okay, looks like I'm bringing up the tail here -- it's weird, I think I've realized that I don't drink as much as I thought I did.

My list is going to be short and sweet: The top spots go to a variety of beers – Guinness, in agreement with The Kirk, is always going to be in there, yes, but I think that I really prefer something middle of the road these days, like a hearty ale (Bass by default), or there's a ton of really great microbrews in this area that make really interesting Bavarian-type stuff. After the beers, my default drink is going to be either a Grey Goose and tonic or a Tanqueray and tonic. Fourth slot goes to wines, which I go through phases with and always like to try something new -- I trend red in the winter, whites in the summer, though. Rounding everything off is a nice, solid Irish Whiskey, although I've found out through repeated testing that my upper limit on rounds of Jameson is three. Four rounds and I enter realms of unpleasantness.

Leigh: In regard to you wine-drinking types, I just can't seem to consider wine as booze. Maybe, I'm being a bit of a stickler here, and I certainly do not believe you are wrong in extolling its virtue; I just put it in its own class... far above the beers and boozes where the weak and uninspired (i.e. fraternity brothers) may not tread.

Dustin: Not true! I recall several frat parties that I helped host that offered some of the finest boxed wine money could buy.

Leigh: Well, cheers to you all, I'm off to the land of sake.

DJ: In college, me and some friends played strip Uno with a bottle of Sake my Japanese roommate Aki had given me. Uh... we didn't get very far. Into the game. We did finish off the sake, though.

Fingers: Gah! Okay, we're stopping there before the Party Animal McKrikbride can tell us about his strip solitaire experience. Not that this hasn't been just swell.