You freaks have been asking for it, and I said I would deliver. We have talked about it on the PODcast before: a secret recipe discovered in the bowels of my cupboard, passed down among generations of a secret order of liquor gnomes.

The Detroit Lions, this historically awful team, deserve some goddamn real game day cocktails. This is it. We joke about drinking this stuff all the time. The Honolulu Blue Kool-Aid is the avatar of Lions fans’ fears, hopes, joys, shortcomings and failures; like Detroit’s own Ron Fournier, it finds truth somewhere in-between it all. We drink it during the draft, before the season, after a victory and before a loss. It has been metaphoric, but now you can make it real.

Share this at a tailgate or a viewing party, or drink it yourself. (You’re going to drink by yourself, aren’t you?)

How to make your own goddamn Honolulu Blue Kool-Aid

• 2 oz. New Amsterdam gin (THIS IS IMPORTANT. Don’t substitute Beefeater or Bombay Sapphire or whatever, dammit. It must be New Amsterdam.)
• 1 oz. citron vodka
• 1 oz. blue curacao
• 1/8 oz. simple syrup
• 1 ¹⁄₂ oz. sour mix
• Lemonade (go with Newman’s Own Virgin Lemonade if you can)
• Mad Dog 20/20 Blue Raspberry*
• Faygo Twist lemon-lime pop (you could go with Sprite but this is Michigan, man)

Combine and shake the first five ingredients together. Pour over ice and fill the cup with a combination of lemonade, Mad Dog and Faygo to taste. I tend to make mine with no more than a few splashes of Faygo and Mad Dog, but I’m not your boss, do what you want.

*Alternatively, you can cut out the Mad Dog altogether and add some Hpnotiq instead. This takes away the fun, hilarious effects of having a few dashes of artificially-flavored rotgut in your Sunday drink, but it’s also probably far more palatable, not to mention socially acceptable.

The creation of Honolulu Blue Kool-Aid is not a science. These secrets are not learned easily, nor can any cup be created in the same manner as the cup before it. The final effect strives to marry the conflicted emotions of sour memories and prolonged bitterness with the sweet hope of victory, someday. Feel free to tweak and make additions to achieve maximum effect.