One of the great things about being a wine columnist and blogger is that I am able to try many different, wonderful wines.  However, one of the bad things about being a wine columnist and blogger is that I am very consistently hungover.

I was a late bloomer, discovering the joys of the drink my freshman year of college.  However, since my first beautiful hangover I have had the opportunity to experience many different degrees of hangovers, from the mild ones that can be knocked out by a glass of water and a few ibuprofen before bedtime to the ones that, like the one I am nursing as I write this column, last for a day or two.

Some of you might know that my favorite book in the world is Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.  It's basically a series of vignettes about the inhabitants of the old Cannery Row section of Monterey, California.

Though there isn't one unified narrative, much of the novel deals with a group of good-hearted bums and their two attempts to throw a party for their friend, the solitary and intellectual marine biologist, "Doc."  The first party ends in failure, as the party happens while Doc is away on a specimen collecting trip and results in the near-total wrecking of his laboratory.  The second party, however, is a complete success (though it should be noted that that, too, results in the near-total wrecking of the lab).

The book closes with Doc going out to the local grocery store the morning after the party to buy some beer, after which he comes back to his devastated lab and starts to read poetry while washing the countless dirty dishes and glasses.  He is hungover as hell, and his place is a mess, but he is happy.

Hangovers are the consequence of drinking.  One has to try to take a hangover in stride and convince oneself it was a fair price to pay for an excellent evening.  I myself try as hard as possible to avoid them, but sometimes I wake up, it's 1 pm, and my head is simultaneously spinning and aching: it's time to man up and start the day.

Unfortunately, starting the day usually means cleaning my apartment.  There are dirty Riedel glasses I have to hand wash and dry, piles of dirty plates covered with dried bits of cheese and prosciutto, and empty bottles everywhere.  Cleaning the apartment is the last thing I want to do, but, like many other things in life (see, e.g., class), it has to be done.

This all being said, I wanted to spend the remainder of my column reliving my worst hangover experience.  And by "worst" I of course mean "best."

Tequila Pong, or: the Worst Idea Ever

Just typing that subtitle made me want to throw up again.  That was the only thing I could do the morning after an epic beer pong tournament at my fraternity.

From what I recall of that evening, my girlfriend, her brother, and various friends and friends of friends were at the house to hang out.  My girlfriend's brother and I started playing beer pong, and we were on fire.  We vanquished team after team, until finally two insouciant toughs beat us.

Rematch! I bellowed.  And for some reason, I picked up a nearby bottle of Jose Cuervo and insisted that we play this Rematch of the Century not with beer, but with tequila.

Big mistake.  Especially because my team lost the rematch, meaning we had to finish our opponent's cups.  And there were a LOT of cups remaining.

I woke up the next morning at around noon feeling like a medieval barber-surgeon was trying to trepan my skull.  My stomach felt like it was being assailed by liquid insurrectionists stirring its contents into revolution, but worst: my girlfriend was sitting up in bed, crying over the phone.  "Joon!  My brother's in jail!" she wailed.

Remember what I said earlier about how it sucks to have to clean my apartment while massively hungover?  You know what sucks more than that?  When I'm so hungover I can't even stand, someone is crying next to me, and my friend is in jail and I have to somehow make everything better.

Luckily, this was an occasion where doing less was better.  I calmed her down and told her that we would straighten things out after I regained use of my legs.  A few minutes later, she got a call from her parents saying that her brother had been released (it was the drunk tank and not straight-up jail) and that he was fine.  Apparently, he stumbled out of the fraternity house early in the morning, got into his car, and while sitting in the parked car leaned outside his open driver's side door and threw up-all in plain view of a cop.

Fortunately, since he was not actually driving while under the influence he got off light.  I haven't played tequila pong since.  I think I've matured quite a bit: now if I have a hangover I can usually get a wine column or blog post out of it.