This installment of the ALOTT5MA Summer Cocktail Series is provided by Scott, a DC lawyer (and former DC Law Student), karaoke superstar.
If you (yes, you!) would like to contribute an item, just send us a recipe for a favorite drink and an amusing anecdote about that drink, to the contact email and we'll work you in.
HOW DO YOU KNOW EVERYTHING I’M ABOUT TO SAY? AM I THAT OBVIOUS?: This story begins, as most of my stories do, with a lot of alcohol and a microphone. New Year’s Eve 2006 (the next day would usher in 2007 – I never know how to refer to the holiday of the previous evening) was the date on which the title for, but not the content of, this drink was conceived. A bunch of my best law school friends and our respective wives/girlfriends rented a nice big lodge-type house in the Poconos for the weekend. Despite the fact that our cabin was mere steps from the base of Big Boulder Ski Area, we spent almost the entire time indoors. You see, we had not all been together in a long time, and we had a pool table, a hot tub, a PS2 with lots of karaoke games, and tons of booze. The last of those was helpful, if not essential, to the enjoyment, if not the quality, of the penultimate.
For those of you who have never played “Karaoke Revolution,” allow me to briefly explain. At its most basic level, it is a relatively simple karaoke game: you choose a song and sing the vocal track while the words scroll across the screen and the game provides the music and background vocals. However, it also adds an element of competition. Through technology way beyond my comprehension abilities, the game can tell whether or not you are singing on key and in time into the attached microphone, and you receive a score based on your accuracy or lack thereof. Colorful bars scroll along with the words to aid you in your quest for pitch-perfection. The better you sing, the better you score:
The Phrase Meter will fill up as you sing the notes correctly. At the end of every phrase, your performance will be rated. Fill the Phrase Meter completely to get a Great! rating. This is your current Score for the song. You'll get points at the end of each phrase depending on how well you did. The Crowd Meter displays how the crowd is reacting to your performance. Careful! If the Crowd Meter drops down too low, you may get booed off the stage. If you get the crowd excited enough, you'll get a score multiplier. If you score Good or Great! on three [or more] phrases in a row, you'll start a Combo. Continue getting Good and Great! ratings to keep the Combo going. Keep an eye out for special Crowd Boost! phrases. If you sing this phrase well, the crowd will go wild and the Crowd Meter will get a boost. At the end of the song, you'll get a final score tally based on your performance. If your score is high enough, you'll be awarded a Gold or Platinum record.Got it? Easy. As you get better at the game, you start to get more combination points, the highest of which is called, appropriately enough, “Combo Max.”
The thing is, with the primitive graphics of the first (and successive, unfortunately) version of “KR,” the “x” in “max” looks like an “h.” Don’t believe me? So, through our champagne-tinted lenses, we were reading, “Combo Mah!” and yelling out as such whenever the current competitor received the same.
It was perhaps a couple months later that most of the same group gathered in my condo in downtown DC for an evening of similar revelry. As the resident mixologist of the group, I was in the kitchen figuring out what to do with the 2-liter bottle of Fresca that my Atkins-dieting (now) wife handed to me saying, “Make me something with this.” I reached for a bottle of Stoli Raz, gave it a quick stir, and voila. “This is amazing,” she said, as she licked her lips and admired the clear, crisp concoction. “What shall we call it?” At that very moment, our friend Ashley was ripping through a song by the Simpson of the same name, accumulating points at a rapid pace when all of sudden, having strung together a particularly good stretch of notes, the room exploded with a shout:
”COMBO MAH!”
Henceforth, I give you, the Combo Mah:
In a tall glass filled with ice, combine:
”Some” (2 oz.?) Stolichnaya Razberi
”The rest” (4 oz.?) Original Fresca
Stir and enjoy.
This drink, sure to be the simplest recipe submitted for this series (until someone suggests “one bottle of beer, served cold”), has proven to be a continuous crowd-pleaser, especially during the summer months, when its refreshing nature is most appreciated. It has also been known to improve vocal performance by large – if not quantifiable – measures. Your mileage may vary.
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