“Well-dressed cute girls mixing god-awful drinks”

Posted By elissa on Dec 4, 2010 | 4 comments

Shortly after he returned from his volunteer stint at the Red Cross today, Number One Son ambled into my office and greeted me with a cheery, “Hey Mom, wanna see something disgusting?”

Kids are so cute.

But of course, I had to go see what he had up on his computer monitor. And I was immediately sorry.

It was a YouTube video explaining how to make a “McNuggetini.”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX8Hzxu7C1g]

Bleurrrgh!

At first I thought it was strictly a gag (pun intended). But apparently the young women in the vid believe that devising revolting ways to get s**t-faced is a recipe for fame and fortune. At least that’s the sense I got from this 2009 article on the subject.

JUDGMENT came swiftly from the dozen or so bloggers, friends and cocktail enthusiasts gathered at an East Village bar this month to sample the McNuggetini, a sweet-and-savory libation made from McDonald’s menu items and vanilla vodka (hint: rim the glass with barbecue sauce).

“It’s disgusting,” said Aidan Flax-Clark, an editor from Brooklyn.

The honest appraisal didn’t faze Alie Ward and Georgia Hardstark, a pair of winsome drinking buddies from Los Angeles who have ridden the McNuggetini to cult status on the Internet and are now hoping for more.

…But it wasn’t until pictures of their concoctions spread across the Web that the two saw a possible career path online (or an online path to a career). “McNuggetini is a game, and we are going to win,” Ms. Ward declared.

…But Ms. Ward and Ms. Hardstark are hopeful. “Denise Richards is probably a millionaire, and Lorenzo Lamas’s children have their own TV deal,” Ms. Ward wrote in an e-mail message, “so my hosting a cooking or travel show really isn’t as mythical a notion as, say, unicorns or the Kraken.”

I guess I should update the lede to my post about the Pumpple Cake:

One of the things that fascinates me about food in this day and age, is how its morphed from… well, food… into an edible spectacle. Food gets far more attention than it’s worth, in myriad television shows, advertisements, books, magazines, DVDs, web sites, etc.

Probably the most grotesque aspect of this phenomenon – at least to my mind – is the way various chefs/restrauteurs/entrepreneurs vie for media (and customer) attention by creating food monstrosities: whoever makes (or eats) the biggest, greasiest, gooiest or weirdest concoction is guaranteed his/her/their 15 minutes of fame.

Obviously, it’s not restricted to chefs and restrauteurs. Every day people can get in on the act, too – all you need is a video camera, some decent software and a pathetic yearning for attention. All I can say, the bar for celebrity is set pretty low if this is all it takes to attract an audience:

One commenter on YouTube summed up their appeal: “Well-dressed cute girls mixing god-awful drinks? I can’t stop watching.”

I’d like to think it takes a little more talent to land a cooking or travel show… but with a little luck – and a million or so more viewers – a cameo in a Weezer video could well be within Alie and Georgia’s grasp.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQHPYelqr0E]

I wish them luck.