Actually, it was only three days long. Maybe I should have dubbed this a "BLEEEEECH! Long Weekend in the Middle of the Week." Or something like that.

So I'll now draw things to a close with the following anecdote from an evening many a moon ago. Up until a few years back, a friend's father owned a beach house in Manzanita, OR. It was a great little place built back in the '30s. It sat 50 yards from the sand, had a rickety fireplace and an area in the back dubbed the "Zimboli Room." It was littered with mementos from three decades worth of beach trips, an old bar and a foosball table. The place was a timeless get-away, a house caught somewhere between Norman Rockwell and a Jimmy Buffet song.

So during a holiday weekend a few years back, we were all lounging around the fire in the middle of the night. We'd grown bored with foosball and were sitting on top of a cache of booze and decades worth of accumulated condiments in the cupboards. Some of their labels were faded, with expatriation dates running back to the mid '80s. Naturally we gravitated towards dangerous experiments in mixology.

A drink was created in the wee hours of that night. A terrible drink that would make the spines of most good-natured Americans run cold. A drink with an aroma so wretched it could kill a man. A drink that looked like vomit and probably tasted just the same.

Not that I would know. Even today, my soul is too fragile and my tolerance for alcohol too weak to face a drink like this. It's since become a legend. You may have heard whispers about it in the dark corners of your neighborhood haunt. Or maybe your favorite bartender once told you about it during a quiet night around closing, his voice low and trembling despite the empty room and all the chairs upside down on the tables.

We called it the "Boiling Moon." To my knowledge, only one has been made to date. Now my memory is fuzzy and I'm sure the parties involved would all disagree on the recipe but it went a little something like this....

THE BOILING MOON

1 oz. ketchup
1 oz. mustard
2 oz. Worcestershire Sauce
1 oz. lemon juice
4 oz. hot tea
1 raw egg
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon spaghetti sauce seasoning
1 shot Jägermeister
1 shot vodka
1 shot rum

Served straight-up

At least one of us tasted it and another may have been able to drink the entire thing. To be honest, I was really quite drunk at the time. The man who consumed the contents of that glass did live but he has a gut like a goat's that could be made of solid steel.

Now, gentle reader, I have revealed one version of the recipe to you. As you can tell, the Boiling Moon is a dangerous weapon and not to be taken, er, in this case, drank lightly. We all made a promise that night to never reveal the recipe but it's a secret I can no longer live with.

May God have mercy on me.

[THUNDER CRACKS, A DISTANT WOLF WOLF HOWLS, OMINOUS ORCHAESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS, ETC.]


UPDATE: Kenny, who was also there that night, clears things up with his version of the Boiling Moon. He actually had the foresight to write down the recipe. Now from what I recall, hot tea and a raw egg were vital ingredients- that they were the inspiration for the name, since an egg floating in hot tea would look like a "boiling moon." Or something like that. Anyway, here's his more authoritative version of the recipe, which is still pretty disgusting:

vodka
gin
bitters
ketchup
mustard
soy sauce
Worcestershire Sauce
lemon juice
salt
pepper
a splash of leftover caper juice