Headout: The Ten Meth Commandments

What Breaking Bad has taught us about being a suburban drug lord.

By MATTHEW SINGER

1. Always start the morning with a hearty breakfast. High-grade meth is made from a precise combination of phenylacetone and methylamine, but the ingredients for a good day at the lab are pancakes, eggs and bacon strips arranged to represent your age on your birthday.

2. Drive the ugliest car you can find. The only reason for the Pontiac Aztek's existence is to help keep drug dealers inconspicuous. Plus, you can shatter its windshield and dent the hood four times per season and not feel bad about it.

3. Familiarize yourself with indigenous flora. You never know when you'll have to use a toxic plant to poison your partner's girlfriend's son and trick him into thinking the poisoner was the drug kingpin and fried-chicken magnate your partner's been working for, in order to win back his loyalties and help you strap a bomb to an old man's wheelchair and blow half of said kingpin's face off.

4. Never get high on your own supply. Bitch.

5. Remember the snacks. Never come to a negotiation without a veggie platter. Even the most hardened gangster will listen to reason when offered baby carrots.

6. Keep a barrel of acid at the ready. Because dumping bodies in the desert is so 1960s-mob-boss.

7. Befriend a junkyard owner who has a paralegal's knowledge of search-and-seizure laws. Especially if he has access to powerful magnets. 

8. If your DEA-agent brother-in-law thinks he's closed his case, just roll with it. Or you could go, "Actually, maybe that meth lord you've been chasing is sitting across the dinner table from you right now!" while winking repeatedly. Your call.

9. Be "the one who knocks." A deluded self-image is crucial to keeping your empire afloat. Also, it's a bitchin' line to throw around when trying to impress your estranged wife.

10. Don't read where you shit. Quoth Homer Simpson: "Damn you, Walt Whitman!"

[Nota bene: Video below is SPOILER CITY.]

GO: The Breaking Bad Pub Quiz is at Belmont Inn, 3357 SE Belmont St., 232-1998, on Wednesday, Aug. 7. 7 pm. $5. The show's final season begins Sunday, Aug. 11, on AMC. 9 pm.

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