This last summer I worked at Star Island, one of around 150 people who ran the island. Everyone works real hard, and after work, party's pretty hard. Drinking seems inevitable. One afternoon we were thinking about this awfully cheap bourbon we had, Rebel Yell, $10 for a half-gallon. Me and a friend realized if we mixed it, 1-1, with Carlo Rossi, cheap red wine, it would make the perfect drink. See, it's like wine with a bite. Or better yet, it's an easier way to drink bourbon. We were inspired by Kerouac's wine spodie-odie. It seemed perfect, mixing alcohol with alcohol.
Now as the night wore on we became pushers of this drink, making everyone try it. A couple people thought it was wonderful, most people thought we were depraved. One person took a sip and gagged, then said "Man, that's not hardcore, that's just weirdcore." And it had a name.
We drank weirdcore all the time. It was brilliant. It was foul. It gave you two whole days of aching hangover, for a while I thought everything smelled like bourbon. We were hooked. People started swearing they would open a weirdcore bar. We decided it's motto would be, "When you're no longer drinking socially!"
Weirdcore soon became a way of life. It went beyond the drink. We became estranged from society, convinced that weirdcore was a state of mind, that one had to be as out there as possible to truly be worthwhile. I started dressing like a cowboy, chaps, hat, everything. But the real trick was we all got strange hair cuts. People got the Wild Thing haircut, mohawks, bihawks, nohawks, dreadlocks, the Mr. T. I did my hair up in bihawks with wood glue. It never came down. Someone got a Flying-V, but it turned out too wide. This was key. Getting strange haircuts was interesting, but they had to try not to look cool. People messed up, lines were crooked, everyone's hair looked like some strange mistake. It was beautiful.
The drinking got equally creative. We started using Jim Beam instead of Rebel Yell, for lack of availability, but this was not the same. It became Beamcore. We explored other options, first with different bourbon. Knobcore, Maker's Core, all things seemed possible. We mixed Southern Comfort into SoCore, and Jägermeister into DeathCore (I know you won't believe me, but this one actually didn't taste that bad!). At one point we left weirdcore in a water bottle for too long and the wine soured, but a drunk friend mistakenly drank some, christening FoulCore. We were unstoppable.
I had this great idea. I would lay down a wood glue layer on my hair and build a wooden mohawk. I'd have a hawk-holder, a divet I could slide different hairstyles into and out of as a base. I'd attach the wood-hair with pegs on either side of the base. I would then epoxy the wooden base to the wood glue layer.
This seemed like a good idea at the time. I did actually make the wooden mohawk, but I realized that having epoxy near my scalp was frightening (still considering silicon caulk...), and that when my hair grew out, the weight of the wooden hair might pull out my hair if the hawk fell over. So I chose to back down.
Now the summer came to an end, and I have a real job that requires I not have a hawk. But I occasionally (read: when I can find a willing participant) still drink weirdcore. I yearn for next summer when I will go back to my evil ways, cutting strange things in my head (I'm currently pondering the idea of mixing woodchips into a wood glue'd hawk... maybe a wooden mohawk is still possible), drinking horrible concoctions, and generally being absurd.