Celebrity Formented Presents the Gaawanger
#1 in an irregularly ongoing series of booze-related madness featuring drinks from famous folks
(January 3, 2000)
Picture this: it's an overcast Thursday evening and I'm making my way from San Francisco, over the Bay Bridge, to a well-known watering hole in the East Bay (I have decided to refrain from naming said establishment as Green Day, Rancid, and numerous other infamous local denizens are known to frequent this house of libation from time-to-time and their boozing privacy should be honored without question).
At any rate, on this night I'm meeting Kevin Cadogan, guitarist for Third Eye Blind. We were supposed to talk on the phone, but when I called his house his girlfriend said that he would much rather meet me in person, hence I find myself at the bar.
When I walk in, Kevin greets me by placing a tall, cool, drink in my hands. "This is called a Gaawanger," he says matter of factly, while handing me the slightly opaque yellow beverage. I take a sip and a sweet, yet tart tang quickly assaults my mouth, fastly followed by a nice (and somewhat serious) alcoholic kick. "What's this called again?," I rasp as the alcohol trickles down my windpipe and makes my innards glow with that warm hard alcoholic fuzziness. "A Gaawanger," Kevin smiles back.
As we sit down in a vinyl booth, Kevin continues, relaying the history of this weirdly names beverage with all the aplomb of a vintage storyteller. "Gaawanger was a term invented by John Lennon used to describe what kids of the future would be playing today. There was this interview he [John Lennon] was giving with some feather-haired guy on the news and this guy asks Lennon what the future of rock-n-roll is, y'know if people were gonna be listening to the Beatles in 30 years. And Lennon goes [here Kevin adopts his best Liverpudlian accent] 'Well I don't know. I mean kids, they're gonna be playing Gaawanger in 30 years so we won't know what....' Anyway, John went on some more about Gaawangers and such,. but I thought it would make a cool drink name, y'know? So I asked the bartender to invent a Gaawanger just completely based on that story."
So how long has the Gaawanger [the drink] been around? "About 10-minutes before you walked in," is exactly how Kevin put it when I asked him this very same question. "So I'm tasting my first Gaawanger tonight, as well." [for the semi-historically accurate inclined, the Gaawanger was created on a Thursday evening in November of 1999 around 7:30 p.m.)
Now that you know the history behind the drink, it's high time we got to the bottom of what's in one. When I asked Kevin, 'What's in a Gaawanger?' he replied "It's Gin, Grand Marnier, Pineapple Juice, and some freshly squeezed lime with just the right amount of pressure applied by Robin the bartender extraordinary. Robin's the sweetest girl in the world. She's great, so sweet."
So there's the story. Now here's the recipe:
Here's everything you will need to make a tasty Gaawanger of your very own:
1 shot Grand Marnier
1 shot Tangueray Gin
juice 1/4 (fresh squeezed, baby!)
fill the rest of the glass with equal parts pineapple juice and ginger ale
Now drinking a Gaawanger with a member of Third Eye Blind is one thing, but road-testing the drink is another. To this end I enlisted the services of IGN For Men's head honcho Steven Horn, N64's Aaron Bolding, and IGN Movies Chris Bernier. To make it even more interesting, we had the drinks mixed at another bar by a bartender who had no clue what we were ordering. Needless to say Steven, Aaron, and Chris are all now Gaawanger converts and we've all managed to convince our share of bartenders around town to whip up the tasty beverage for us. And why not? After drinking my very first Gaawanger Kevin boldly (and very seriously) told me "That's my goal. I want somebody to be able to walk into a bar in Kansas City and order a Gaawanger."
'Nuff said...now it's time to go out, suck down a Gaawanger or two and get your swerve on!
