Barware

If for some inexplicable reason - maybe you're drunk or a communist sympathizer or a drunk communist sympathizer -- you only wanted to purchase one piece of cocktail glassware for your home bar, make it a shot glass. It's the foundation of the bar set-up; without it your cocktails become an experimentation in guesswork and blind approximation, which means they'll be erratic and will likely suck.

Shot glasses are tough little bastards. They're like the pit bulls of the glassware world. Short and compact, with thick walls and thicker bases specifically built to survive regular slamming against a bar top or the occasional floor collision brought on by an alcoholic blackout. Heck, we've seen guys so buckled they've taken out a steel filing cabinet and fractured their clavicle, while their shot glass went unscathed. Really, this just happened to Jason in accounting during Wednesday's morning cocktail-shooter break.

Conveniently calibrated shot glasses mete out three different measures of liquor: the Pony Shot (1-fl.oz.), the Single Shot (1.5-fl.oz), and the boss's boyfriend's personal favorite, the Double Shot (3-fl.oz.). As a general rule a shot glass should be no more than 3"� tall or no shorter than 1 3/4"� tall, you know about the average size of the male penis.

As for the myriad of novelty shot glasses out there - company logo-ed, personalized shot glasses, etched shot glasses, light-up shot glasses, etc. - they're all fine. We say drink and pour from any and all of them. Just get one.