Hey, Pups. Let me buy you a drink!
Drink it fast or drink it slow,
But your lips have gotta touch the toe.
I can’t remember where I first read about the Sour Toe Cocktail, the liquorous specialty of Dawson’s Hotel in the Yukon. The original toe belonged to a rumrunner, Otto Liken, who got frostbite fleeing the Mounties with a load of merchandise. He and his brother holed up in a moonshine shack and Otto got blotto so Louie could amputate the frozen digit before it went gangrenous.
They put the toe in a jar of rum and let it mellow in the shack for, like, fifty years until the building was bought by “Captain” Dick Stevenson, a local fleecer of tourists. The cocktail was his idea. He loaned the toe to a local bar and dared tourists to drink from a glass filled with booze (of their choice) and The Toe as a way of proving themselves worthy of the Yukon. He was repaid in drinks.
About 30,000 suckers have “done the toe.”
The original toe — and several subsequent ones — was accidentally swallowed. But such is the generosity of the human spirit that surgically amputated toes are forever offered as replacements.
I consider it no accident that an article about doing the toe should surface in the Toronto Star just in time for Pupster’s 40th birthday.
Dude. Lemme buya drink. It was meant to be.
April 16, 2007 — 8:00 am
Comments: 14
Pupster: come out with your hands up. It’s all over.
Happy birthday to you.
I understand that you’re blue.
Well, you damn well oughta be,
Because it’s all over, Dog.
Today is Pupster’s 40th birthday. I hear he’s a little down about it — quite rightly. This is forty we’re talking here. The big Four Oh. Basically, all his hopes and dreams are dead and we’re just waiting for the undertaker to come cart them away.
So why not wander on over to his blog and wish him a happy birthday while we’re waiting. Or, you know, steal stuff or pee on the carpet or whatever. He’s old. He won’t notice.
He’s liveblogging the occasion. I’m going. I hear there’s booze. And bitter regrets.
— 4:12 am
Comments: 2