Jiminy Glick’s playful interview with Mel Brooks culminates in the zany lardbucket asking Brooks, ‘So, Mel—what’s your big beef with the Nazis anyway?”

Were Glick to interview yours truly, the loveable hog-beast might lead with a similarly wacky and irreverent question: “So, Chris—what’s your big beef with Drink Me magazine anyway?”

Like Brooks, I might pause for comic effect, chuckle to myself and shake my head at the sheer rhetorical absurdity of the query. If pressed, I might say, “Because like the Nazis, Drink Me represents the rise of institutionalized barbarity and the moral collapse of Western civilization,” and of course, if called out for hyperbole, I’d redden and add sheepishly, “Except for the part about the concentration camps.”

Anyway, Drink Me is fathomless fodder for this column, because making jokes about it is easier than drinking and far easier than thinking.  Take the latest gem that showed up in my inbox, just in time for my annual New Year’s Eve gayla and yours, too: An invaluable*  feature called ‘Five of the Most Expensive Cocktails in the World’.

* We who lust after linguistics like to launch a liquid load over the idea that ‘inflammable’ and ‘flammable’ mean the same thing, but in this case, ‘invaluable’ really does mean the opposite of valuable.

So, seizing upon on the theme of ‘Dysfunctional Drink Dialogue’, I will offer first a Cliff’s Notes version of Drink Me’s pentad of purpose-free potables, and then I will tack on five more, making it an even decad—although naturally, my drinks are so far and away more fun than the original group that it’s like comparing ‘The Producers’ to  ‘Shoa’.

DRINK ME’S TOP FIVE:

The Kentucky Derby Mint Julep (Churchill Downs, KY)

Recipe:  A standard Mint Julep.

Why It Costs $1000: The ice is carved from a ten thousand-year-old glacier. And you get to keep the cup.

The Original Mai Tai (Merchant Hotel, Belfast, Ireland)

Recipe: A standard Mai Tai.

Why It costs $1270: The rum is really old.

The Ritz-Paris Sidecar (Bar Hemingway at the Hotel Ritz, Paris)

Recipe: A standard Sidecar

Why It Costs $1670: It’s made with really old Cognac that the Nazis stole when they stole France.

Mel Brooks, do you copy; over?

Salvatore’s Legacy (Salvatore at Playboy, London)

Recipe: Cognac, Kümmel liqueur, Orange Curaçao and 2 dashes Angostura Bitters*

*Half-price version with one dash Angostura available on request.

Why It Costs $8316: It’s made with really old Cognac, really old Curaçao, and by a really old bartender.

The Ono Champagne Cocktail (Encore Wynn, Las Vegas)

Recipe: Cognac, Champagne, apricot purée, rose nectar, orange juice.

Why It Costs $10,000: The Cognac is $90 k per bottle and the rose nectar comes from Rose McGowan’s vagina.

INTOXICOLOGY REPORT’S NEXT FIVE:

The Scotch and Soda

Recipe: 1 ½ oz. scotch, splash of soda.

Why It Costs $700,000: Instead of a standard swizzle stick, the drink is stirred with a finger bone from Charles Lindbergh’s murdered baby, exhumed by Intoxicology Report’s forensic experts. Certification of Authenticity included with every cocktail.

The Gin and Tonic

Recipe: 1 ½ oz. gin, 4 oz. Schweppes Malaria-B-Gon

Why It Costs $ 1.2 million:  Besides the standard lime wedge, the standard fruit fly floating in the drink is actually a deer tick infected with a new strain of Lyme’s Disease to which Intoxicology Report possesses the only known cure—included, of course, in the upscale price.

The Teeny Weeny Martini

Recipe: 2 oz. gin, ½ oz. Dry Vermouth.

Why It Costs $3 million: The drink is shaken by celebrity guest dwarf bartender, Michael J. Fox and all proceeds are donated to the National Parkinson Foundation, less shipping, handling, applicable taxes and obscene profits before interest, depreciation, amortization and embezzlement.

The Bourbon and Lourdes Water

Recipe: 1 ½ oz. well Bourbon, 3 oz. water from the spring in the Grotto of Massabielle in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Why It Costs $65 million: Duh, it cures any disease you have other than Parkinson’s. All you have to do is believe in unmerited mercy from a sovereign God, because if you don’t, you will die and go to Hell.

But ante up anyway: As they say, you can’t take it with you.

The Bloody Mary

Recipe: Standard Bloody Mary

Why It Costs Fifty Thousand Plenary Indulgences Drawn from the Treasury of Merit and Allowing for the Temporal Remission of Severe Penance:  It’s not the price of the drink so much as the price of the garnish—the Virgin Mary’s Most Holy Hymen, unpopped for lo these twenty centuries.