I got married for the normal and noble reasons that Bottom Shelf research director Emily is very pretty and has good employer-provided health insurance, plus my luscious head of hair isn't going to last forever so let's not kid ourselves about my options down the road. Proposing to Emily in January was the best decision I ever made, which means quite a little bit coming from the man who invented the Slim Jim-studded hamburger: I know from good decisions.

So I got married for the obvious, rational reasons, which means I've been pleasantly surprised by all the unexpected ancillary benefits that come along with picking up a cool new wife with primo health insurance. I particularly love that there's a whole new round of milestones. It's like resetting the meter on what had become a tired, old life. For instance, I've been to two airport bars before noon plenty of times before, but it wasn't till we left for our honeymoon that I got to do so as a married man. Then last week we had our first hurricane together. And just two days ago we got to engage in our new family's first act of voter fraud!

OK, I'm not sure if it was technically voter fraud. But it was at least voter misbehavior. This is how it went down: We went to vote together because we're adorable and codependent and because the elementary school's on the way to the bar. We happened to end up in adjacent booths, and since I'm not so great at going 180 seconds without speaking, I needed to pipe up when I flipped the ballot and got to Question 4. See, I'd only prepared for three questions, then they sprung a few extras on us last minute. TOTAL bullshit.

"Hey Em, what's this Question 4?" "I dunno, it's nonbinding so who cares. Same with 5 and 6." "But I gotta color in a circle!" "No, you don't. It's nonbinding. Stop talking please." "But you used to love it when I talked! You've changed!" "The sooner you stop talking, the sooner we're drinking rum."

So we did our heroic double-duty of voting and stimulating the local economy and then we went home to watch people shout confusing numbers on TV for a couple hours until we celebrated or commiserated or whichever, doesn't matter, who cares who the cheap vodka columnist voted for. I come to you in a spirit of bipartisanship, and one thing I think we can all agree on is that if America is going to return to its former glory, we need to increase domestic production of decent, reasonably priced vodka.

Los Angeles-based 21st Century Spirits is doing its part with the Blue Ice line of vodkas. The flagship Blue Ice potato vodka and Blue Ice Organic Wheat have just been joined by Blue Ice G, which bills itself as "American handcrafted" and "multigrain." The multigrain thing is a small measure of genius, isn't it? I figure it really means "I dunno, potatoes and wheat and grass and corn and a different kind of grass and rye if it's on sale," but it can also be interpreted as "you know, healthy, like the brown English muffins." I could sit here and poke holes in vodka marketing all day, but that wouldn't get our country back on its feet or get me drunk by sundown, so let's move on to the more important matter of how this stuff tastes.

Blue Ice G is remarkably smooth for a $15 bottle of vodka. It has the faintest odor of lemon-scented nail polish remover, but there are no signs of corruption once you get down to the drinking, and it feels petty to even mention the off smell in a liquor that's not meant for sniffing.

The taste is minimal, as it should be, but there is a distinct sweetness to Blue Ice G that sets it apart from the lower-middle-class vodka pack. They sent me a bottle for free, but I won't mind paying for it when I run out. Blue Ice G is the new official vodka of the Bottom Shelf.

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