Yule Crack and Smack

Before we watched Bad Santa last night we warmed up the tv with Dope City community tv faves Urban Rush. Terry David Mulligan, who I remember seeing carrying his children around Nat Bailey Stadium about the same time Trevor Linden was drafted by the Canucks, was on gabbing about the best of this and that. He recommended a wine from Argentina with a big gold star on the label.

After I had spent my annual two hours in the mall (where I chatted with a local horse breeder of note, he said he's buying whisky for everybody he knows on Boxing Day at the standardbred track) buying Sonja Christmas presents, the Hammer and I went in search of Terry's gold star wine. We met a lot of people staggering around on our way to the liquor store. People like being drooled on at Christmas, the Hammer was only too happy to do the drooling. In the park the dealers watched us with wary eyes as they dispensed their Yule Crack and Smack.

Just like Terry said, the wine with the gold star was easy to find. And at 15% alcohol, it will go over big with the members of the Hockey family fast enough to pour a glass of it for themselves with their Christmas dinner. When Christmas dinner is over, us Hockeys will count up the empty bottles of wine we have drank during our raucous dinner and wonder how the fuck we do it year after year. And we will have drank just as many bottles of champagne with breakfast and countless other refreshments for lunch. Booze is like oxygen at Christmas time.

Walking in the drizzly two degree weather put me in a good whisky mood so I bought a bottle of Glenmorangie to keep the wine company for the walk home. I am working on a triple shot poured over pristine Canadian ice. The bone chilling dampness of Christmas in Dope City is slowly being numbed as the scotch does its deadly work. I have been set free.