New Cocktail: Mitchum’s Scam

Posted on by Dale

I’ve been reliably informed that Robert Mitchum apparently has a credible fifties rockabilly hipster outlaw vibe in the real world.  Who knew?  I live, I’ve been informed, a sheltered life.

Anyway, Mitchum’s son has capitalized on his cult classic Thunder Road by opening a moonshine distillery of the same name in Tennessee.  Coming home from Virginia last month, we stopped and got free tastings; I ended up buying a basic moonshine and their rye, which is completely raw, i.e., this stuff has not spent a second in a barrel of any kind.

As such, it has presented a challenge, a challenge that I decided to tackle yesterday.

Given the raw, even nasty, nature of the stuff, I decided to fight fire with fire.  I pulled out the Montenegro Amaro, which I’ve never quite developed a taste for, and went to the herb garden.  Next year perhaps I’ll have a better grip on angelica or vervain or valerian and how they might work, but for this drink I chose lovage, one of my favorite herbs, for its strong peppery flavor.

I thought about whether lemon or lime juice would help take the edge off, but my mental taste buds couldn’t see it doing much good.  Maybe grapefruit might be worth a shot in the future, though.

Finally, I thought, this thing is going to need a strong undergirding of bitters to make it through the aftertaste.  I used 18•21 Bitters’ Tonic and then, at first, their Havana & Hide Bitters before settling on their Saffron & Tart Cherry Bitters.

And here we are.  I figure it may be an abortive attempt; if upon a second one I find that it’s still not quite delicious, I may adjust the proportions, or toss it altogether, but for the time being:

Mitchum’s Scam

  • 2–3 leaves of lovage
  • 1.5 oz Thunder Road Runner’s Rye
  • .5 oz Montenegro Amaro
  • .25 oz 18•21 Bitters Tonic
  • 10 drops 18•21 Bitters Saffron & Tart Cherry Bitters
  • lemon peel for garnish

Muddle the lovage with all the ingredients.  Stir with ice, strain into a coupe.  Garnish with the lemon.

As I said on Facebook, this drink is not my best, but it’s not my worst either.  It has the potential to become a cult favorite on its own.  My first assessment — “The herbal nastiness of the Montenegro is rounded out by the unbarrelled nastiness of the rye, with nice floral notes from the bitters and a lovely overall pall created by the lovage” — may need to be adjusted.

More work is required.

What is wrong with these people, #3,276,990

Posted on by Dale

Here’s a screen shot of an article in Variety.

—click to read the entire article—

This is very funny, is it not, the reduction of an act of violence, a fupping missile strike, to a bon mot, a piquant witticism to make one’s fellow billionaires chortle?

These are the people in charge now: so rich, so insulated, so absolutely unconcerned with the other 99.9% of the earth’s population—or the earth itself—that the death and misery of other humans is a humorous abstraction for a stand-up routine.

What is to be done?

A missing blog post

Posted on by Dale

I swear I thought I had blogged about this two years ago, but either my MySQL database is borked or I am delusional—none of the key words I’m about to write show up in a search of this blog.

This is a ceramic piece sitting in our living room.  Yesterday an old friend who was visiting noticed it and asked me about it, and since I can never remember the artist’s name, I came to the blog to search for it.  As I’ve said, no such blog post exists despite my bestest memory, so I’ll now tell you the story behind the piece.

Two years ago, my Lovely First Wife and I were in Asheville, soaking in the ambience.  We went into Blue Spiral 1 Gallery downtown, looked at all the nice art, went downstairs, looked at more nice art, and that’s when we saw this piece.

I should say at this point that the photo here is not mine; I pulled it from a Pinterest page in the UK, of all places.  But it is my piece, although it is secured not with twine but with airplane cable.  Bolted.  Hold that thought.

The name of the piece is Cremains Vessel No. 5.  We really liked it.  We kept coming back to it.  It was within our price range, and besides, it was an investment.

We went upstairs and asked the young men working behind the front desk if the piece were actually a cremains vessel.  They seemed a little nonplussed, finally stammering out that there weren’t anyone’s ashes in it.

We laughed, which probably seemed odd to them, and I told them that what we were asking was whether the vessel was actually built to hold cremains or was it just, you know, art?  They pretty sure it was an actual vessel.

So we went back to the condo where we were staying and I did some googling and calculating: if we both shriveled a bit in our declining years, plus reserved a cup or so of ashes for scattering/rituals, then we should both fit in there.

We went back the next day and bought it.  I tell people that my LFW finally figured out a way to screw over that whole “till death do us part” thing.

One thing that gave me a frisson was that it was more or less locked shut.  At least one of us would never know what the inside looked like.  Then, on a subsequent visit to Blue Spiral, there was a similar piece by the same artist, and my LFW opened it.  It may be that our piece looks different inside, but I’m thinking the suspense is ruined.

So who is the artist?  We were given a little card with his name and not much more: Don Penny.

I went looking, of course, and was stunned to find that I already knew the man’s work. He was the ceramics professor at Valdosta State University until 1990, and I had seen his work in the faculty display case every summer since 1984.

And then I had an inkling that I knew exactly who he was.   After I called a friend in Valdosta’s music department to go down the hall and read a plaque for me, my suspicions were confirmed: Don Penny was the artist who created the mural in the lobby of Whitehead Auditorium:

2013 GHP Jazz majors playing at the Art majors’ exhibit opening. Don Penny’s clay mural is behind them.

I saw this piece nearly every day of every summer for 30 years.

And in an astounding wallop of synchronicity, I bought a cremains vessel by that very same man, to stick my ashes in.

I’ll take truly bizarre plants for $400, Alex

Posted on by Dale

First, a photo of the back garden area, aka the privet hedge garden:

That does not look like much, but the echinacea, borage, and Joe Pye weed will by this time next year have colonized the area.  It will be a riot of blossoms and butterflies.

You may, if you are a long-time reader, remember the Dill Plant That Ate Newnan (RIP). Pfft.  That plant was a piker compared to the Cardoon That Couldn’t Be Stopped.

The acanthus-looking leaf there is the cardoon plant one year ago after arriving from the Growers Exchange.

Here it is in its second year of life.  And it has a secret.  Yesterday I peered into the rising central stalk and…

The thistles have arrived!  Yes, they are cousins to artichokes (which are themselves thistles); one cooks and eats them basically the same way.  I counted six on their way, and I bet there are more.

Stay tuned.

 

I can’t even

Posted on by Dale

Remember how Bill Clinton was always referred to as a “draft dodger”?

Or how we all slagged Barack Obama for not saluting a Marine when getting off the helicopter?[1]

Or how none of us liberals “support” the “troops”?[2]

Hold that thought, because it’s time to play yet another round of IOKIYAR!

The Current Occupant was inspired recently to personally pin a Purple Heart medal onto Army SFC Alvaro Barrientos, where he congratulated the young man, whose leg had been amputated, telling him it was “tremendous.”  Just tremendous, not yooge?  But I digress.

The Current Occupant’s brain, from my observations, seems to be pretty binary: A/NOT A.  There is no B, and Cthulhu help the rest of the alphabet.  He sees winning and not winning.  The young man won a Purple Heart.  He was to be congratulated for winning.  Simple.

The idea that perhaps the young man would rather have his leg than the ribbon, that there might be more layers to this man’s experience, that perhaps other words might better express the Commander in Chief’s appreciation for a citizen’s service/sacrifice, never entered the Current Occupant’s brain.

So “Congratulations!… Tremendous!” it is.

Now imagine, if you will, if Barack Obama had handed a Purple Heart to a wounded soldier—let’s say, for the fun of it, a white boy from North Carolina—as if he were getting the immunity idol instead of being voted off the island.[3]  Imagine how Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly or god help us Michelle Malkin would have reacted.  Imagine the huffing and puffing on the Sunday circus shows from Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham or John McCain.

How do you think the rightwing Wurlitzer is reacting to this tone-deaf gaffe?

  1. crickets
  2. crickets
  3. crickets
  4. dead crickets
  5. all of the above

Take all the time you need.

—————

[1] Which, as a civilian, the President is not supposed to do.  Reagan, that Great Pretender, was the first to pull that stunt.

[2] Limited to bumper stickers, yellow ribbons, and yelling at hippies.  Funding veterans healthcare or GI Bill not included.  Prosthetics sold separately.

[3] Imagery used deliberately.

Garden update

Posted on by Dale

You will recall that we left the front garden a little bare, though tilled:

Finally the big order from The Growers Exchange arrived, Friday afternoon.  This was a bit problematic, since once one unboxes these plants, one is supposed to let them sit out of direct sun for a day or two before planting them, but no longer than four days.  The problem was that 1) on Sunday I had to go to Duluth for the State STAR Student selection process, not getting home until Tuesday; and 2) it was going to rain on Sunday in any case.

I like Growers Exchange; they’re good people, and they have interesting plants.  But I ordered these plants in December and they were supposed to be here mid-March.  That worked for me because starting in late April I was going to be pretty much unavailable till June: the aforesaid State STAR Student process, followed by Euphoria build weekend — packing for Euphoria — Euphoria — unpack — pack for the Danube — cruise up the Danube for a week or so, past our beloved homeland of Hofvonstein — unpack from the Danube — pack for To The Moon burn — To The Moon.  On June 6 I expected to come up for air.

However, the plants arrived.  I unboxed them, sat them under the work table, watered them, and told them they had 24 hours to acclimate.

Late Saturday, when the sun was on the other side of the house, I popped those puppies into the earth:

There was also the privet hedge area, but I didn’t get a photo of that.  Maybe Tuesday when I get home…

New cocktail: Brad’s Bebida

Posted on by Dale

So, the other day my badly-behaved friend Jobie sent me this image:

Dear reader, I was scandalized.[1]

Anyway, Jobie said that there should be a cocktail created especially to employ these tawny, vaguely Latino youth.  (Why Jobie is interested in full employment for tawny Latino youth, I am not prepared to speculate.[2])

My first reaction was to laugh gently at my friend’s humor and go about my business, but then I noticed a curious detail:

These tawny Latino youth have the whitest white boy names emblazoned on their asses.

Well, who could resist that?[3]

This one came together rather immediately, flashing into my imagination as a gift from the gods.[4]

Brad’s Bebida

  • 1.5 oz gentle tequila (I used Casamigos Reposado; their silver might be even better)
  • .75 oz vanilla vodka (VANILLA VODKA, BRAD!)
  • 1.5 oz pineapple juice
  • 2-3 dashes 18•21 Japanese Chile & Lime Bitters
  • honey sea salt, dosed with sriracha salt
  • lime wedge

Rim the glass with the salt.  Shake the other stuff with ice, pour.  Garnish with lime wedge.

It’s pretty tasty, although I think I’m going to try it again with an actual vanilla liqueur instead of vanilla vodka (VANILLA VODKA, BRAD!), either Navan or Tuaca.  In which case maybe I’ll rename it the Classy Brad.

Stay tuned for updates.

—————

[1] I was not scandalized.  Especially since the day before I had sent him an escalating series of double-entendre photos of children’s toys while on a jaunt through Five Below, which I seem to have deleted from my phone, quel dommage.

[2] Speculations welcome in comments.

[3] Comment from Jobie in 3… 2… 1…

[4] Apollo probably, although his penchant was for more lissome boys.

A realization

Posted on by Dale

Recently, the Library of Congress published a beautiful book, The Card Catalog: books, cards, and literary treasures.  Because I am a catalog card porn junkie, I immediately bought it—pre-ordered it, in fact—and devoured it when it came in.

It is lovely: the Walt Whitman catalog card you see across the bottom of the cover is actually a paper wraparound, and it has an honest-to-Melvil-Dewey library card checkout pocket in front!  It is full of images of fascinating books and their catalog cards throughout, and is beautifully laid out on quality paper.

I wish I could say it was the sheer physical experience I’d always dreamed of, but alas, the book is a bit of a dud in bed.  It starts at the dawn of recorded history with Sumerians and their cuneiform tablets, and there was a lot about Melvil Dewey’s empire building I didn’t know, and the impact of the LOC’s cataloging efforts on public/school/university libraries across the nation is not underestimated, but let’s face it: the world of librarians and their cataloging preferences isn’t exactly Silicon Valley.  My biggest complaint about the book, though, was not its lack of sexiness, but its failure to cater to us catalog card porn junkies in any way.

As I said, it is chock full of pictures of famous books and their catalog cards—overfull in fact.  Three-quarters of the book is taken up with these allurements, and yet they are presented without comment or context.  Were these books special acquisitions?  Do they represent one of the phases of the development of the catalog?  What is their place in American lit/publishing?

More: many of the cards have handwritten annotations on them, and most of those seem to be librarian code for something.  WHAT IS THAT CODE, KENNETH? CATALOG CARD PORN JUNKIES SEEK GRATIFICATION!!  This book left me unsatisfied, about as blue as the penciled-in cross on the handwritten card for Moby-Dick.  What does it mean??

However, that’s not what I’m writing about today.  On p. 118, in the chapter about the LOC’s card service, which printed and sold catalog cards for every book published to any library—mine included—there was this sentence: “The card service lasted nearly a century, with the last cards produced and distributed in 1997.”

1997.  I was there, I thought.  In fact, I thought, that was the year I moved from East Coweta High School to Newnan Crossing Elementary School.  And that was the year that the LOC stopped making their cards.  Huh, I thought.

And then I realized: that was the year I was offered the job of assistant program director for instruction of the Governor’s Honors Program.  I was given the chance to structure and mold the life-changing experience to 700 gifted/talented high school students every summer, which I did through the summer of 2009, followed by a three-summer stint as the actual director of GHP.

And 1997 was 20 years ago.

Time is a wormhole.

New Cocktail: Who’s Your Bunny?

Posted on by Dale

As you no doubt will recall, last Easter I was called upon to come up with a signature cocktail for our traditional Easter luncheon with friends, the result of which was the suspiciously tasty Jellybeanitini.

This year, on Saturday, I got the cryptic text message that I was to bring a cocktail called “Who’s Your Bunny?”  Well, all right then.

I figured I had two options: silly and sweet like the Jellybeanitini, or dark and mysterious.  I bought both chocolate caramel bunnies and Peeps as garnish for either eventuality.  But by the time I finished my rounds at Kroger, I was pretty sure it was going to be the latter, and in the end I used neither candy.

If I were a real blogger, I’d have photos of every step in the process, but I’m not and so I don’t.  I don’t even really have a good photo of the drink itself, and it’s too early in the morning to make one.  Although—and hear me out here—it occurs to me that I could pour one and not drink it.  Crazy talk, I know, but sometimes it’s radical thinking like this that moves humankind forward.

Hold on, I’ll be right back.

—————

That was difficult, but I have prevailed.  And now…

Who’s Your Bunny

  • dipping chocolate (I used Ghirardelli’s dark)
  • chocolate sea salt
  • 1.5 oz brandy
  • .75 oz blood orange juice
  • .75 oz Amaro di Angostura
  • .5 oz creme de cacao
  • .25 oz Chambord
  • 2-3 dashes chocolate bitters

Melt the chocolate, then dip the rim of the glass into it.  Immediately dip a quarter of the rim in the sea salt.

If you’re feeling frisky, go download a Playboy bunny tattoo design and create a fabulous garnish by piping the melted chocolate into that iconic shape.  After it hardens, brush more melted chocolate onto the tips of the ear and where the eye should be; sprinkle with sea salt.  (When you’re piping the shape, extend it downward into two prongs, then glue it onto the glass with piped chocolate.)

Shake the other ingredients with ice, pour and serve.

The rabbit garnish is not really necessary and actually gets in the way of drinking it, so feel free to go with the simple elegance of the rimmed glass.

The drink is kind of sweet with bitter undertones, and the chocolate/chambord flavors lurk just in the background.

I’ve saved the photo for last, because this was outrageous.

Yes, that’s a disposable plastic wine glass. Sue me.  Here’s close-up of the bunny:

Pro tip: to transport these things safely, use painter’s tape to tape them to a tray.

Some choose darkness

Posted on by Dale

We all live in bubbles—it’s more comfy in here, isn’t it?

But some choose to live in some pretty dark bubbles.   On a whim just now, wondering what the conservative side of the world thought about Sean Spicer’s disastrous press conference where he idiotically compared Assad to Hitler (who didn’t even use chemical weapons, you guys), I went to the Fox News website and typed in Sean Spicer Holocaust.

This is what I got:

Zero results.

Here’s what Google gave me:

Not a fair comparison, you say?  Google is an aggregate search?  Fine. Here’s CNN:

No, it’s not because CNN is “liberal.”  CNN is a news outlet, and Sean Spicer’s astounding gaffe was news.

Fox “News” chose deliberately not to tell its audience that this thing happened.  Fox viewers have no idea that the Republican Administration’s press secretary said that

“I think a couple things. You look — we didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II. You had a — someone who is despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

and that it went downhill from there.  (For a truly hysterical, laugh-so-that-you-might-not-cry summary of the debacle, see as always Wonkette’s take.)

A study done several years ago showed that people who watched only Fox News were less knowledgeable about current events than those who watched no news at all.  Even taking into account that correlation is not causation — people that blindered would seek a narrow worldview anyway — it’s still a reason why your rightwing relative thinks you’re an insane libtard.  Whenever you shower them with facts, their innate fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in: you’re a snotty, pointy-headed intellectual without any common sense.

It’s a pretty thick, dark bubble to be in.