Author: Dale

Vintage Cocktails, part 1

Posted on by Dale

If you are at all of a drinking disposition—and who among us is  not?—you have spent time in bookstores/cookery* stores looking at books of cocktail recipes.  (Other than the two main books I am about to discuss here, buy the Ultimate Bar Book and be done with it.  Or pony up for the iPhone app Mixologist.  Trust me.)

Once your grown-up palate is accustomed to the basics, you start looking abroad, and the first thing you check upon being seated at any new restaurant is the cocktail list.  Do they have anything interesting, i.e., not a sweet argle-bargle for the ladies who lunch?  Leon’s in Decatur always has the most interesting, but not a lot of it is transferable.  What is one to make of their “bullet & trigger”: bulleit rye, zucca amaro, cocchi rosa, cherry, acid phosphate.  Wait, what?  Hold that thought, it will resurface in a moment.

So as I browse through bookstores/cookery stores, one of my fascinations has been cocktails from the past.  What concoctions did our forebears enjoy, how were they made, and why can’t I just step up to the bar and order a “Miyako Hotel Special” without whipping out my iPhone?  I present a couple of those here:

These two are just chock full of COCKTAILS EVERYBODY ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT.  I mean really, a Manhattan?  Or a French 75?  Honey, please.  These books are just hipster posers for novices.

No, I’m talking about the seriously long-gone concoctions that no one any longer orders.  Just imagine Leon’s’s “bullet & trigger” fifty years from now.

Fortunately, I have two books that will sate anyone’s appetite for these things.  The first is Jigger, Beaker, & Glass: drinking around the world, by Charles H. Baker, Jr.  (It’s a re-issue of Baker’s original Gentleman’s Companion, and I just noticed features a new foreword by the authors of Vintage Cocktails.  Oops.)

Baker was a bon vivant who swanned around with Hemingway and the gang back in the 20s and 30s, and he collected cocktails.

From the original preface, in which he pooh-poohs Prohibition:

We also doubt if any lemonade social ever afforded a thrill like the moonlit night in Ceylon when we went to a Hollander friend’s beach bungalow out beyond Galle Face, where we swam in the blood-warm Indian Ocean and drank enough of his Flying Fish cocktails to do, and lay on the cool sand and listened to Tauber sing Dein Ist Mein Ganzes Herz on the gramophone.  Then when we swam again we slipped out of our suits to make the water feel better, and finally, when it was very late indeed, we dressed and said goodnight and vowed eternal friendship to our host; then for precisely no reason at all dismissed our waiting carriage with a flourish of gross overpayment and walked all the way back in our evening clothes through a new quiet rain to the jetties and the motor launch, just in time to prevent one of our best American cruising friends from consummating bribery of the Quartermaster on the good ship RESOLUTE into letting him hoist a purchased baby elephant—whom he said was Edith, and over whom he politely held a Burmese parasol of scarlet oiled silk—from a hired barge onto the forward cargo hatch in a sling!

Well, hello sailor!

Here he is talking about an actual cocktail:

THE RANGOON STAR RUBY, a Wonderful & Stimulating Cocktail from Lower-Burmah

In 1926 we disembarked in Burmah from a round-the-world ship, and spent several days there before hopping off to Calcutta in a little “Bibby” boat carrying a mess of Mohammedan pilgrims headed for Mecca as deck passengers, and who did all their own cooking right down there in plain sight.  In Rangoon we joined up with several folk in the Strand bar of evenings to chin about the romantic Mandalay country far up the Irrawaddy River, and to talk over gems with Hamid and his brother from Colombo and Bombay, and to acquire a really fine zircon for someone else and a set of star sapphire dress studs for ourself.  One American headed out on leave from certain ruby mining operations up-country told us he had invented himself a drink that everyone up at headquarters liked so well he was going to shout it to the world so that no man might be denied its virtues.  He popped behind the bar before we could say “knife” and whipped up the following mixture which, due to its color, he had christened the Star Ruby.

Take 1 jigger of good cognac, 1/2 pony of cherry brandy, 1/2 pony of French vermouth, 2 dashes each of orange bitters and lemon phosphate, then for added flavour 1 tsp of kirsch, or 1/2 tsp of maraschino.  Shake with finely cracked ice, pour into a wine glass leaving a little ice floating, and let fall 6 drops of grenadine in the center of this chilly expanse for the ruby color touch.

Who can resist that kind of style?  However, the experienced drinkers among us will already recognize a couple of problems.

Our first problem with vintage cocktails: many of the ingredients are no longer freely available.  Lemon phosphate, anyone? (Well, actually…)  It’s like trying to make a bullet & trigger at home.  (And don’t get me started on Cynar, which shows up with depressing regularity in modern cocktails, or at least did last year, and which is unavailable in any liquor store I’ve checked.)

And even the ones that are freely available—who has all that stuff lying about?  It leads to madness, trying to collect all those liqueurs and mixers and bitters and phosphates, and I should know: my bar now occupies the 1920s French pastry display case in my living room, two shelves in the front hall closet, and a separate bar for single malt scotches in the playroom downstairs.  But, hey, I can make you almost anything but a bullet & trigger.

It’s lunchtime, and I will postpone my further ramblings (and the second book) till tomorrow.

_____

* Cookery was the actual, honest-to-God subject heading from the Sears List of Subject Headings the last time I looked.  I think.  The PTB might have changed it to Cooking before I left the media center, but I don’t think so.

Checking in with the labyrinth

Posted on by Dale

I know, I haven’t written about the labyrinth recently.  For that matter, I haven’t written anything recently, but I’m hoping to change that in the next few days.

Yes, I lost my dream job and will probably never see the Magic Square again, but hey, let’s not bicker about who killed whom, let’s check in with my second-favorite spot on the planet.  (Seriously, I will blog about all that. Some day.)

The large problem this summer is that the place is absolutely sodden.  It’s a marsh out there, and the rain does not promise to let up even this week.  It let up enough last Tuesday for me to get out there and reseed it where it was absolutely nothing but bare dirt, and for that the constant rain has been a benefit: barely a week later and tiny little wires of fescue are poking out of the dirt now.

Hardly worth admiring at this point, and it certainly precludes any use of the facility for another couple of weeks.

But there are a few things to admire at this point.  I was out there this afternoon and was delighted to see these:

These are spider lilies, and what is now the labyrinth used to be covered with them.  This was 20 years ago before we added onto the house, and the excavation of the basement dumped three feet of clay onto what had been very luscious soil.  As the link discusses, they pop up out of nowhere, and they’re quite lovely.  I’d love to have more of them return.  Perhaps I should go back to that link and buy some?

Next to the lilies is our old friend Apollo:

Doesn’t he look radiant in the setting sun?  Those are Dixie Wood Ferns behind him, plus ivy which will be beaten back as soon as I can get back out there.  His patina is real, because he’s really bronze.

His counterpart, the Dancing Faun/Dionsyus:

His corner, downhill from all the rain as it is, definitely needs some cleaning up.  Those are bristle ferns behind him, I think, along with some errant ivy and vinca major.

And finally, the northpoint:

Some tidying to do, but the outgrowth of the peacock fern is exactly what I had planned.  The clusters of tall fescue are kind of nice as well, although for the life of me I can’t understand why it infests the northern bank and won’t grow just one stone over on the path.

With any luck, the rain will begin to clear out this week and I will be able to get back there and really do some maintenance in preparation for the Vernal Equinox.  In the meantime, I need to get out there right now and see if the full moon is at all visible…

(later: It is not.)

The Game of Tiger

Posted on by Dale

Walking around the Magic Square tonight, I witnessed scores of kids playing a game called Manhunt in the deepening evening out on West Lawn.  (Essentially, it’s a land-based version of the swimming game Sharks and Minnows.) I was reminded of the game of Tiger, that I and my siblings invented around 50 years ago (really??) to play in our grandmother’s back yard.

We played it endlessly, from summer dusk until deep night, and it never paled.  Even now, I think I would enjoy a good game if I could keep up with the young.

I came up with the idea after watching some television program about some explorer/adventurer—Lowell Thomas, perhaps?—who was “hunting” tigers in India.  What struck me dumb was the fact that the narrator adventurer was safely ensconced atop an elephant while native beaters went ahead in the waist-high grass, wherein a tiger might very well be lurking.  It might have been a man-eating tiger terrorizing the village, even.  It was damned creepy.

Anyway, the vacant lot down on the corner of Winfield and Dixon had at the time a small field of tall, dry grass, and so we played at the experience.  It was fun, and we soon codified it into a game.

The rules are simple:

  • There is a Home base.  Everyone gathers at Home.
  • One person is the Tiger.  The Tiger goes and hides somewhere on the grounds.  (Strict boundaries must be set, of course.)
  • After a decent amount of time, the rest of us call out, “READY?”
    • If the Tiger is not ready, he simply yells, “NO!” and we wait a little while longer.
    • But if he is ready, there is silence… deadly, deadly silence.
  • Then we all go hunt the Tiger.
  • If you find the Tiger, you yell, “TIGER!”; the tiger springs out with a roar; and you sprint for Home.  So does everyone else, needless to say.
  • The Tiger attempts to tag as many people as he can before they reach Home.
  • The last person tagged becomes the next Tiger.

That’s it, just a simple little reverse Hide and Seek.  But oh, the variations!

The Tiger, for example, is under no obligation to pop out upon being discovered, forcing the hunters to come closer to verify his hiding place.  (Any person who touches Home before the Tiger actually pops out is tagged.)

Nor is the Tiger obligated to remain hidden until someone discovers him, perhaps waiting until all the hunters have passed him by and then springing out between them and Home.  A particularly crafty Tiger might not even hide to begin with, just sneaking around in the gloom until he can spring out behind all the hunters.

As a hunter, you have options.  Sacrificing a little sister is one, for example.  Another is forcing the Tiger to chase you all the way around the house, staying just close enough to make it not effective for him to double back, so that you can dash for Home.  You could, if the Tiger is already guarding home, hide yourself and force him to come looking for you. (Standoffs at Home which dragged on too long could be terminated by majority vote and a subsequent countdown.)

There were five of us, plus any friends we had along for the trip, and so we always had enough to make the game interesting and complex.  Some of us were eager to be the Tiger, mainly because they had evil evil souls.  Others were as scared of hiding in the azaleas as they were of the Tiger itself.  Some hunted in groups, others headed off alone.  Was the location of a “NO!” a clue as to where the Tiger might be, or (remembering the evil evil souls) a deliberate deception?  You can see  how it might be addictive.

All in all, a game worthy of promulgation and preservation.

An odd precedent

Posted on by Dale

Last night, a very strange thing happened: I got to hear one of my pieces performed.  Live.

The composer and his Muse

Maila Springfield, that goddess of the piano, asked me to write her something that she could play when performing with her estimable husband David and another friend.  She was their accompanist, and she wanted something cool for herself.  That was in 2009/10, and so when I took the summer of 2010 off, that became my project.

The result was Six preludes (no fugues), and I think I did an admirable job, if I do say so myself.

Maila premiered them in the fall of 2011, but I didn’t get to hear them because of something something argle bargle.  Last summer, after the Music Faculty Recital, she confessed to me that she thought about asking to perform them but didn’t think I’d like it.  Conflict of interest, etc.  I set her mind at ease: any time you want to play them out loud with me in the audience is fine with me.

And so this year she did.

Wow.  She launched into #1 with a ferocity that took my breath away (and I think a lot of the audience’s).  #2 was gorgeous.  #3 was once again everyone’s favorite.  #4 was quiet, sustained, simple.  #5 was massive, and the ending rocked me back in my seat.  #6 wended its way through each variation, and the ending was boffo.  The crowd went wild.

She did lose her way in #1, a ferocious little two-part invention that careens down the keyboard like some X-treme snowboarder in an 11-measure passage before sticking the dismount at the bottom, and then jumping back to the top and doing it again.  She said, “I don’t know what happened; I looked up and suddenly didn’t know where I was.  I shouldn’t have looked up!”  She’s wonderful.

It has inspired me to wish I were actually working on Five Easier Pieces for her.

Another drink, as an apology, in the spirit of the day

Posted on by Dale

It seems that I missed the party at which the young UGA ladies were to be fêted.  Although I was not given a deadline before which I needed to develop the signature cocktail, I nonetheless feel bad.

I have assuaged my guilt by revisiting one of the drinks I explored during the process.  Unfortunately, all I could remember that it was a tequila/pomegranate concoction, i.e., a margarita with pomegranate juice (of which I now had a refrigerator-plenty).  I could have gone in search of it, but overcome by my grief, I just made up a new version.  I’m sure it had a name already but since I had to reimagine the whole thing, I’ve given it a new name.

Srta. Dawg

  • 1-1/2 oz. tequila, your choice, but for the love of Dionysus, don’t use cheap stuff
  • 1 oz. orange brandy, e.g., Grand Marnier
  • 3 oz. cranberry/pomegranate juice
  • black salt
  • lime wedge

Rim the glass with the lime wedge and black salt; dump the wedge into the glass with ice.  Pour all the other stuff into the glass.  Drink.

The combination of the salt and the sweetness of the juice is a very nice touch.

If I choose to make another one—it is Cinco de Mayo, that distinctive American holiday—I’ll take a photo.

 

A new drink

Posted on by Dale

I was asked recently to come up with a red and black cocktail for an upcoming graduation party, and so I’ve spent a lot of time playing with some interesting and not very appealing combinations.  It devolved into looking at any recipe online that had a picture of a red drink.

However, last night I got down to basics, and here’s my proposed solution:

Ms. Dawg

  • 1 oz. orange brandy, e.g., Grand Marnier
  • 1 oz. cranberry/pomegranate juice
  • 1 tsp. blood orange bitters
  • champagne/prosecco
  • lime
  • black sugar

Take a small slice of lime and juice the rim of a champagne flute.  Rim with black sugar.  Drop the lime slice into the flute.  Add the first three ingredients, then top off with champagne or prosecco.

Some helpful tips: Make your own Grand Marnier. (This is also useful.)  The blood orange bitters is amazingly available at Publix in the mixer section.  I haven’t checked locally, but both Michael’s and Hobby Lobby should carry Wilton Black Sugar.

Other than the black sugar rims making the young ladies at the party look awfully Goth, it should be a hit.

 

24 hour challenge #13

Posted on by Dale

From Dave, way back in 2009, 3-187-13:

they are given to
hold close, not
air, not each other

From “Knee Lunes,” by Robert Kelly.

No, I don’t know what to do with this, nor have I ever.  See you tomorrow night.

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

4/23/13, 10:36 pm

Okay, it sucks, but really, I don’t even.  I mean to say, wot?

24 hour challenge #13, “Knee Lunes,” for Dave: score [pdf] | bassoon [mp3]

The return of the 24 hour challenge: #12

Posted on by Dale

I know.  It’s rather unbelievable.  What have I gotten myself (back) into?

But in a longstanding Lichtenbergian tradition, I have resurrected 2009’s 24 hour challenge in order to avoid working on Five Easier Pieces, of which I have exactly three abortive attempts.

For those who cannot recall exactly what I am talking about, head over to the 24 hour challenge page and refresh your memory.

And here we go:

From Mike, who will be astonished to learn that his numbers (4-1081-33) finally came up:

Come Sweete & frolick then with vs
Noe Longer doate on Telaphus
A youth aboue thy fate
A wanton Wench & rich beside
Hath him in twofould bondage tie’d
Nor does he proue vngrate.

That’s ll. 31-36 from “Maecenas Birthday,” by the Roman poet Horace, translated by one Thomas Pestell, an early 17th c. poet about whom not even Wikipedia has a thing.

Let’s see if I can get this up by tomorrow midnight.

4/19/13, 8:58 p.m.

Well, what do you know?  I did it.

A little background: entries #12, #13, and #14 have all been on sticky notes on my monitor since 2009.  I had to look at them every morning and every night, right above my Lichtenbergian chalice.  So it’s not as if I haven’t give these scraps some thought.  Even before I had to stop the 24 hour challenge because of decamping to Valdosta in June 2009, I knew that I wanted to set this one as a kind of Cole Porter beguine, a song for a 1930s chanteuse, as it were.

See what you think.  I think the tempo could be a little slower.  It would have to be interpreted, of course, by the artistes.

24 hour challenge #12, “Maecenas Birthday” for Mike: score [pdf], bassoon [mp3]

Marriage equality and language

Posted on by Dale

With the gay marriage debate all over but the tossing of the bouquet, I have begun to wonder about language: how will it change to adapt and codify the new reality?

We went through the same kind of thing back when couples started living together instead of getting married at all: is she your “girlfriend”? “Roommate”? I had one friend in college who insisted on introducing her boyfriend as her LOVER, said practically exactly like that. It made me giggle then, and it still does. (She still introduces James as her lover, forty years later.)

Most of society has settled for “partner,” and in fact gay couples have benefitted from that so far.  But now we’re talking matrimony, and “partner” has already been codified as “unmarried sexytime person,” so that won’t really do. (Side note: when someone I don’t know well talks to me about their partner, there is always that slippery moment when I listen extra sharp to establish context: is he telling me he’s gay and in a committed relationship, or is he talking about the guy with whom he owns and operates the Harley-Davidson franchise?) (Or both?)

I brought up the topic last night in a discussion, and my lovely first wife promptly epitomized the problem by framing it as, “Which one’s the husband and which one’s the wife?”

That lays bare rather explicitly our sexual assumptions about it all, doesn’t it? It seems to me, I offered, that the first step is to disconnect what goes on in the bedroom (or at least our curiosity about it) from the terms we use in invitations, announcements, and office chitchat. It is not necessary for one person to be the “husband” and one the “wife” in a marriage, if by that we mean fulfilling traditional sexual roles.

We already have a useful term, of course, in “spouse.” Just like “partner,” it wouldn’t be hard for society to begin to prefer the gender-neutral term, but I suspect that for quite a while yet, we’re all still going to be curious about which flavor spouse we’ve invited to dinner.

Using “spouse” as a society would also help us reign in those who might insist on flaunting their sexytimes, which is not in good taste no matter who you are. A same-sex couple who insist on being called “husband” and “wife” are dragging the terms right back into traditional sex role territory that we should be glad to escape. We get it: you’re having sex. What no one wants to know (about any relationship) is the nature of the sex you’re having. It would be like a straight couple insisting on being referred to as “mistress” and “slave” outside the confines of their bedroom. What would the Dowager Countess say?

Not only that, but that way madness lies: if Joe tells me all about what he and his wife did over the weekend, and then Joe’s wife turns out to be a barrel-chested lumberjack, I think I am right to declare shenanigans. There’s also then the spectacle of two men claiming each other as “wife,” and on and on. Too much granularity when all we really need to know is whether you’re living with someone as partner or spouse, and if so, what gender they are just so we can be polite whenever we’re chatting about the weekend.

My prediction is that for a long while we’ll call all men who get married “grooms” and “husbands,” and women will be “brides” and “wives,” alternating with “spouse” when it feels right. Of course, it will all get easier over time: we will already know that Joe is married to Brett, or that Susan has a girlfriend, or who Dale means when he refers to his lovely first wife.

And eventually, we’ll simply ask our new coworker if he’s married and if the answer is yes, then, “Why don’t you ask your spouse to join us for drinks Friday afternoon?” without wondering in the least which flavor is going to show up at Alamo Jack’s.

Spotlight on… me?

Posted on by Dale

Working on Spamalot has been a treat, but it’s also felt a little strange, and I finally realized that part of the reason why must be that I am in fact unused to performing.

Think about it—since I started directing theatre in Newnan in 1975, here’s a list of the shows in which I had roles:

  • Hotel Paradiso, Maxime
  • Midsummer, Oberon (1979) & Theseus (1997)
  • Twelfth Night, Antonio
  • The Dining Room, various
  • You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Schroeder
  • Love Letters, Andrew
  • Pericles, Gower
  • Henry VI/3, Clifford
  • Into the Woods, The Baker
  • Marriage of Figaro, Count Almaviva
  • Wit, Dr. Kelekian
  • Auntie Mame, Mr. Babcock
  • Coriolanus, Aufidius/various

That’s it. Out of the hundreds of shows done in Newnan for the past 38 years, I have had roles in fewer than twenty of them, and only five of those could be considered lead roles, and only one of those was a starring role.

And Arthur, King of the Britons, is a starring role, the kind that gets your name up in lights on the marquee if not the top of the Playbill title page. That’s hard for me to wrap my head around, actually.

It’s not because I am unused to being a star, because in GHP Land I am a huge star where hundreds of people whose names I do not know think I am wonderful and gush on Facebook that they saw me at some function or other. (It’s mostly amusing and of course bunches of fun, but even on that small scale I am acutely aware of the responsibility to be perceived as cheerful and gracious to my “fans.”)

That’s not what I’m talking about with Arthur, however. Arthur is not about being a star, about stardom, it’s about handling a starring role. On one level, of course, there’s nothing different about it than any other role—you learn your lines, your songs, your choreography (eventually), and you use your skills to evoke laughter/tears/delight/horror/whatever.

On another level, though, there is a huge difference between being Arthur and being the Third Peasant from the Left. There is a responsibility to the production that does not weigh in the same way on the Third Peasant; if he flubs a lyric or a step or screws up the timing on some gag, hardly anyone but his mother will notice, whereas if I screw up something, it has the potential to wrench the whole show out of its frame.

There is also a curious sense of dividedness inherent in the role. On the one hand, there is a huge amount of attention being showered on me, but at the same time, it’s not really me, it’s Arthur. This is true of any role, of course, and it’s one reason some people have a hard time committing to playing the truths of an unpleasant character, but it’s magnified in a very weird way in a starring role. I can see why some actors would become irritating divas: if you confused Arthur’s “stardom” with your own, you might begin to believe that it was you that everyone loved so incredibly much. That way madness lies.

I’m not sure even now that I’ve adequately explained how odd playing a starring role is for me. I’m sure anyone reading this is likewise puzzled, because I imagine that most people would never associate “shy, self-deprecating modesty” with me. But dammit, I’ve been working on that, and now here’s a stumbling block in my path to enlightenment. Which you can see for yourself March 13-24 at Newnan Theatre Company.