I been thinking about box wine lately. My cousin, who is now on his way to becoming a doctor, once performed some revolutionary calculations which revealed a surprising truth: box wine, specifically Franzia box wine, is the most cost-effective drunk in the world. It turns out to be true; you can't really beat sixteen bucks (fourteen on sale) for five liters of a substance that actually tastes pretty good -- MD 2020 it ain't -- and will get you fucked up with a quickness. When Ceej and I first moved here and were shiftless and dead broke, we went through an unfortunate Franzia Table White phase, which resulted in the worst -- and I mean the worst; I know what I'm talking about -- hangovers in recorded history. The kind of hangovers where, and I'm stealing this but it's apt, your significant other creeps into your bedroom and asks if there's anything they can get you, and all you can say is "Gun".
Which brings me to the following, which first appeared here
;
it remains the funniest example of wine writing (after a fashion) that
I know of. I still laugh and laugh every time I read it. I know, you see; in Franzia veritas.
Box of wine fair-weather friend, says Chuck
That's right. Box of wine screwed me. Oh, it sounded like a good idea when my buddy calls up at 1:30 a.m. saying "Hey, I wanna go out again, but everything's closed." We decide to go to the grocery store (and fast, because they stop selling beer and wine at 2 a.m. here), and grab a little something for domestic consumption.
Since they don't sell liquor, I was going to get some wine and he was going to have some beer. Until we stumbled there 'pon the grail. "Box of wine," I said. "Box of wine," he repeated. I hoisted the 5 liter spigoted-bag-in-a-box to the self-checkout and we were on our way. And I felt like I was 18 again. I thought back to the time that 5 of us in a movie theater - for the second Matrix movie, I believe - smuggled in a 5l bag on someone's chest, and each kept his own 20 oz soda bottle, for clandestine refills whenever necessary.
Now, some people will say that 5 liters of wine, at 12% alcohol, is a lot for two people to drink. Those people are absolutely right. I don't know how long it took or what, but we got really, really hammered. Totally blitzed. It was great.
In the still of the night it loves and cradles you in its warm, baggy embrace with a spigot at one corner. It is your companion of gentle spirit and élan, urging you to jump that fence, go for that swim dammit, if that's what you want! It said unto me "I am box of wine, and upon this rock shall thee do precisely what you please, and no laws of man shall prevail against it."
But box of wine has a dark side. It does nothing to help you in the morning as you lie there, unwilling or unable to move from some demonly compound ere consumed. It does not rub healing salve and ointment into your mysterious bruises, nor does it soothe your mysteriously aching knee. It just sits there, in its cardboard mansion, mocking you, its small red-buttoned tongue occasionally drooling a drop, heretofore inaccessible due to the engineering constraints of a plastic bag. Who knew that a 5 liter bag of wine in a cardboard box, purchased as the awesome price of $13.99, could be so obstinate?
In closing, I find that one must not only appreciate, but embrace the duality of the box of wine. It is sweet and tasty and alcoholic, but it is also a cruel cruel master.
Right now I am drinking Black Box Chardonnay, which is much more upscale owing to being $21.99 for three liters instead of $13.99 for five, and also not tasting like pineapple Kool-Aid that has been left in the sun and then enhanced with one thousand pounds of added sugar. I don't think I'll be asking Ceej where the twelve-gauge is come morning, but I wouldn't make any bets.
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