The Cognac Incident

Allow me to introduce myself, I'm stupid and don't know what I'm doing when I'm really drunk.

You know those classic sitcom episodes where, like, the guy gets a stain on his girlfriend's favorite sweater, proceeds to try and fix it, and only have it get exponentially worse?

Well, that happens in real life. It's not always a sweater though. Mine was a bottle of cognac.

Let's go back in time and first meet Leo, the one who started this fiasco.

He doesn't look like Heisenberg that much in real life. I named him Leo after Gerard Butler's character "King Leonidas" in the movie 300 because it's a friggin legendary beast. He can turn ice back into water in a matter of 3 pulses. And that's only when he's cranked up to level 4. Leo blends like a Spartan.

Considering the fact we had about 2 liters of tequila in the house (Yes. Yes we did.), I had to whip up some margaritas. Skippy's flavor of choice?

Watermelon.

I'm cruising through Google trying to find the perfect watermelon margarita recipe. Most of them required simple syrup which I didn't have at that moment.

Me: "Oh no problem, I'll just make some syrup."

There was a problem though. I needed to find a container for the syrup. I already used the pitcher to hold the ginger syrup for evil rum (I swear we're not alcoholics, we just like complicated drinks).

 I needed a vessel.

I was also already a little intoxicated from equaling out the watermelon to tequila ratios.

Leo and I are having a blast. Meanwhile, my simple syrup is warm and ready and so my idea was just to take one of the empty bottles off the counter AKA our bar and just label it with a sharpie.

I didn't write on just any bottle. I wrote on a cognac bottle, and not just any cognac bottle. A very special cognac bottle, a Hennessy. What my drunken mind called The Great Bambino of Hennessy Cognac, Skippy's Hennessy that he got directly from the Hennessy factory in France!

I was dead. I needed to fix this. I had to get the sharpie off the label.

I was off to Google once more searching for how to remove permanent marker from paper, the dumbest thing I've ever looked up.

I may as well been searching for a way to train a fish to juggle. Or... well it doesn't get much more impossible then removing permanent marker from fucking paper.

But I typed "how to remove permanent marker from paper" into the Google search bar and I was serious about it.

Some asshole suggested rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover.

Well.... being in a serious state of mind and all, I knew I had one of the listed materials that were needed.

Oh yeah, the sharpie totally came off... along with the rest of the label.

There I was in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, scrubbing an alcohol soaked piece of paper with a cotton ball. 

I thought of the next step in the sitcom story. "What do you do when the original object is completely ruined beyond repair? Find a replacement!!!"

The internet has everything. I could find a bottle on Amazon and switch out the destroyed one! The only problem with that was I'd have to hide the ruined one until the new one shipped AND THEN I'd have a whole bottle of cognac to drink in order to replace the old one, and well, I just don't like cognac. I think it tastes like man sweat.

I wasn't thinking about imbibing in man sweat just yet. I wanted to know where I could get the shit first.

So there I was on Google again...

And ummm... I looked up this "Very Special" Hennessy online. It turns out it's one of the cheapest of their products and you can get it pretty much anywhere. I don't think it was one of the bottles he got in France, more like the liquor store five minutes down the road.

Skippy doesn't drink the cheapest shit. He drinks the VSOP which is priced at around $60-$75. I graffitied the VS, a bottle that was only worth on average $45.

Hours pass. Upon returning home from work I asked him this:

Me: "I have 2 stupid questions. 1) How do you make a tuna melt? 2) What is the difference between VS and VSOP?"

Skippy: "Ummm... the VSOP is better and you just heat up the tuna and toast the bread."

Me: "Thank you."

Knowing he'd be confused (and he looked it), I proceeded to go to the closet where the ruined VS bottle was hiding in my snow boot. I revealed the damage to Skippy.

I blame Leo, but I can't be mad at him. He makes a mean watermelon margarita. Especially when there's a cup of tequila in the mix when the recipe only called for 1/2.