[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu5TkdcZA-M&w=700] Puccini's aria from Gianni Schicchi. "The action take place in Florence. It's sung by a teen girl who is in love with a boy, but his parents will only allow him to marry her if her father helps them steal their rich relative (who just died) inheritance. Lauretta is begging her father to help - she says she is in love with the boy, wants to marry and will throw herself into the river if she can't."
This Eugene Smith picture -- of Marines taking cover on an Iwo Jima hillside as a Japanese bunker is obliterated -- captures the cataclysmic destruction inherent in war perhaps more perfectly than any other single image ever published in LIFE.
WWII: MacArthur Barks Orders, Inchon, 1950
Gen. Douglas MacArthur roars orders from the bridge of the flagship USS Mount McKinley as Marines storm the beachheads of Inchon, Korea. MacArthur's daring amphibious assault turned the Korean War around, and for those Americans who had long heard of the man's titanic leadership -- but had never witnessed it -- Carl Mydans' almost assaultive, intimate photo relayed the famous general's legendary style of command.
Click HERE to see the full slideshow.
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
Blending satire, gallows humour and science fiction, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the twentieth century's great pacifists. You'll understand why when you know about his time in WWII as soldier and prisoner of war.
He was captured in 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge, where he was an an infantry private. His regiment got cut off from the rest of the army. As he said: "The other American divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks..."
Imprisoned in Dresden, Vonnegut was chosen as a leader of the POWs because he spoke some German. After telling the German guards "...just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came..." he was beaten and had his position as leader taken away. While a prisoner, he witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden in February 1945 which destroyed most of the city.
Vonnegut was one of a group of American prisoners of war to survive the attack in an underground slaughterhouse meat locker used by the Germans as an ad hoc detention facility. The Germans called the building Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five), which the Allied POWs adopted as the name for their prison. Vonnegut said the aftermath of the attack was "utter destruction" and "carnage unfathomable." This experience was the inspiration for his famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and is a central theme in at least six of his other books.
In Slaughterhouse-Five he recalls that the remains of the city resembled the surface of the moon, and that the Germans put the surviving POWs to work, breaking into basements and bomb shelters to gather bodies for mass burial, while German civilians cursed and threw rocks at them. Vonnegut eventually remarked, "There were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Germans sent in troops with flamethrowers. All these civilians' remains were burned to ashes."
Vonnegut was liberated by Red Army troops in May 1945 at the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border. Upon returning to America, he was awarded a Purple Heart for what he called a "ludicrously negligible wound," later writing that he was given the decoration after suffering a case of "frostbite".
When he got home, he jobbed around as a writer whilst studying for an anthropology degree. Then carried on writing his own stories on the side. In the mid 1950s, he worked very briefly for Sports Illustrated magazine, where he was assigned to write a piece on a racehorse that had jumped a fence and attempted to run away. After staring at the blank piece of paper on his typewriter all morning, he typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and left.
He was on the verge of giving up writing when his novel, Cat's Cradle, became a bestseller, and he started Slaughterhouse Five - one of the most important American books of the 20th century.
*
A word on "so it goes". The amazing thing about "so it goes", the repeated refrain from Slaughterhouse Five, isn't so much its plainness as the way it can pack so much emotion — and dismissal of emotion — into three simple, world-weary words. It neatly encompasses a whole way of life. More crudely put: "Shit happens, and it's awful, but it's also okay. We deal with it because we have to." Damn right.
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armour and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.
I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. From "Slaughterhouse Five"
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. From "Cat's Cradle"
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. From "Cold Turkey"
Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. From "Cold Turkey"
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. From "Cold Turkey"
Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. From "A Man without a Country"
Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. From "A Man without a Country"
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' A Man without a Country
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. From "A Man without a Country"
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them. From "Breakfast of Champions"
New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. From "Breakfast of Champions"
The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were. From "Breakfast of Champions"
Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind. From "Breakfast of Champions"
I can have oodles of charm when I want to. From "Breakfast of Champions"
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything. From "Cat's Cradle"
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. From "Cat's Cradle"
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand. From "Cat's Cradle"
Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. From "Cold Turkey"
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind. From "God Bless You Mr Rosewater"
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. From "Hocus Pocus"
During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice. From "Hocus Pocus"
Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful. From an interview on Mcsweeneys.net
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. From "Mother Night"
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. From "Mother Night"
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. From "Hocus Pocus"
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. From "Sirens of Titan"
Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her. From "Slapstick"
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. From "Slaughterhouse Five"
All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. From "Slaughterhouse Five"
How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. From "Slaughterhouse Five"
Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.' From "Timequake" (his last novel)
All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. From "Timequake"
---
EDIT: An excellent late addition, spotted by Charlie: "Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions."
---
(thanks for the idea to do Kurt, Adam - good shout!) +
[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpJdRn5X19k&w=700]
One for my next salary review, I think...
The Flatiron Building was designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham as a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling. Unlike New York's early skyscrapers, which took the form of towers arising from a lower, blockier mass, such as the contemporary Singer Building (1902–1908), the Flatiron Building epitomizes the Chicago school conception: like a classical Greek column, its facade – limestone at the bottom changing to glazed terra-cotta from the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in Tottenville, Staten Island as the floors rise – is divided into a base, shaft and capital.
The Flatiron Building has become an icon representative of New York City, but the critical response to it at the time was not completely positive, and what praise it garnered was often for the cleverness of the engineering involved. Montgomery Schuyler, editor of Architectural Record said that its "awkwardness [is] entirely undisguised, and without even an attempt to disguise them, if they have not even been aggravated by the treatment. ... The treatment of the tip is an additional and it seems wanton aggravation of the inherent awkwardness of the situation."
He praised the surface of the building, and the detailing of the terra-cotta work, but criticized the practicality of the large number of windows in the building: "[The tenant] can, perhaps, find wall space within for one roll top desk without overlapping the windows, with light close in front of him and close behind him and close on one side of him. But suppose he needed a bookcase? Undoubtedly he has a highly eligible place from which to view processions. But for the transaction of business?"
When construction on the building began, locals took an immediate interest, placing bets on how far the debris would spread when the wind knocked it down. This presumed susceptibility to damage had also given it the nickname Burnham's Folly. But thanks to the steel bracing designed by engineer Corydon Purdy, which enabled the building to withstand four times the amount of windforce it could be expected to ever feel, there was no possibility that the wind would knock over the Flatiron Building.
Nevertheless, the wind was a factor in the public attention the building received. With Broadway on one side, Fifth Avenue on the other, and the open expanse of Madison Square and the park in front of it, the wind currents around the building could be treacherous. Wind from the north would split around the building, downdrafts from above and updrafts from the valuted area under the street would combine to make the wind unpredictable. This is gave rise to the phrase "23 skidoo", from what policemen would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds swirling around the building due to the strong downdrafts.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/19066883 w=700&h=400] A series of animations by Lara Lee, who says on her Vimeo page: "Different children are heard describing their favourite animal, and I then draw it according to what they say, so that the creature 'grows itself' in a completely unexpected way. I have interviewed six children and finished four animations so far. Only three animations are in the video linked here, so as not to be longer than five minutes." Which is a lot of single digit numbers to have in one sentence, but it still makes sense.
If you liked that one, chances are you'll want to see the others too - so click here.
...and wrote THIS piece about shark fishing while exploring the Skeleton coast. There was loads of stuff I didn't have space to write up. And I while I was enjoying my adventures, I took a bunch of photos (click to see slideshow):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlX8aazQKwY&w=700] Beautiful song by Mary J Blige from this weekend's Jools Holland show. She said when he interviewed her that she'd written it as if it was a chance for her to write a song for her younger self. Properly brimming on the sofa after big week. Stunning performance.
“Richard Harris may no longer be a wildcat, but he is certainly not a pussycat. Perhaps the description, amiable tiger, will do.” Lisa Hand, Journalist.
A genuine star of cinema on screen and a fiery hell raiser off screen, Richard St John Harris was born in 1930 in Limerick, Ireland, to a farming family. He was an excellent rugby player and had a strong passion for literature. Unfortunately, a bout of tuberculosis as a teenager ended his aspirations to a rugby career, but he became fascinated with the theater and skipped a local dance one night to attend a performance of "Henry IV". He was hooked and went on to learn his craft at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
His breakthrough performance was as the quintessential "angry young man" in the sensational drama This Sporting Life (1963), which scored him an Oscar nomination. He had a few ups and downs in his career. His last role was as Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) after his then 11-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again if he didn't.
Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Richard Burton were drinking buddies from the early 1970s till Burton's Death. Harris struggled with alcoholism - gave up completely for a long time, then in 1991, a decade before his death, went back to drinking Guinness. It's interesting, normally I search around for various quotes on and by these guys, but the ones on Harris all seem slightly maudlin - I wish I'd been able to find more bright ones. Still, he did comes up with some goodies.
While living in England, he popped out for milk and when seeing the paper he noticed that Young Munster were playing in Thomond Park, Co. Limerick, Harris got the next available flight to Ireland. He spent the following three weeks on a drinking binge. All was unknown at the time to his wife, who had no idea where he was. When he finally returned to England, he rang the doorbell of his house. His wife answered the door and before she had a chance to say anything, he said, "Well, why didn't you pay the ransom?".
He had little time for fools. One apocryphal story has an American wittering on to Harris about his own third-generation Irish heritage or somesuch, but using a soft 'c', pronouncing celt 'selt': "I'm a celt just like you," says the American. "No sir, you are a sunt," replies Harris.
I would give up all the accolades - people have occasionally written and said nice things - of my showbiz career to play just once for the senior Munster team. I will never win an Oscar now, but even if I did I would swap it instantly for one sip of champagne from the Heineken Cup. Someone asked me once "What is the difference between Tom Cruise now and you when you were a major star?" I said there is a great difference. Look at a photograph of me from the old days and I'm going to one of my film premieres with a bottle of vodka in my hand. Tom Cruise has a bottle of Evian water. That's the difference - a bottle of Evian water. No one trusts me any more. I spent half the movie [Maigret (1988) (TV)] arguing with people and I was accused of causing big on-set rows. But what they won't tell you is I fought for [author Georges Simenon]. I fought for the maintenance of quality. I don't believe in lying down on the job. I've seen these so-called "nice" actors. Very able fellows like Ian McKellen and Kenneth Branagh. But they're like bank managers. So sweet and careful. Who needs them? We are suffering a plague of good taste. Give me Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke any day. They project danger. That's what makes acting - and life - interesting.
[on his life] I wish I could remember it. [on turning seventy] I can be eccentric now and get away with it.
I have no friends in this business. I don't go to their clubs, don't go to their hangouts and don't mix at all. I am part of the business but I am apart from it. If anyone ever asks my advice, I tell them, 'Don't take yourself too seriously.'
No one gave me anything. I fought TB, I fought the devil. But I made people laugh. I don't want immortality. I've lived it all. I've done it all.
What I hate about our business today is the elitism. So-called stars ride in private jets and have bodyguards and dietitians and beauticians.Tom Cruise is a midget and he has eight bodyguards all 6 feet 10, which makes him even more diminutive. It's an absolute joke.
I hate movies. They're a waste of time. I could be in a pub having more fun talking to idiots rather than sitting down and watching idiots perform.
I was a sinner. I slugged some people. I hurt many people. And it's true, I never looked back to see the casualties.
I consider a great part of my career a total failure. I went after the wrong things - got caught in the 60s. I picked pictures that were way below my talent. Just to have fun. I made films I did not want to see, I took planes to places I didn't want to visit, I bought houses I didn't live in. I was numb, and it didn't seem to matter.
If ever I was miscast in my life, it was in the role of husband. I was the worst husband in the world.
When I'm in trouble, I'm an Irishman. When I turn in a good performance, I'm an Englishman. When I worked with Julie Andrews, I think I experienced the greatest hate I ever had for any human being.
Jesus is just a word I use to swear with.
Marriage is a custom brought about by women who then proceed to live off men and destroy them, completely enveloping the man in a destructive cocoon or eating him away like a poisonous fungus on a tree. I formed a new group called Alcoholics-Unanimous. If you don't feel like a drink, you ring another member and he comes over to persuade you.
I'm not interested in reputation or immortality or things like that...I don't care what I'm remembered for. I don't care if I'm remembered. I don't care if I'm not remembered. I don't care why I'm remembered. I genuinely don't care. Really, catching TB was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me
Actors take themselves so seriously. Samuel Beckett is important, James Joyce is - they left something behind them. But even Laurence Olivier is totally unimportant. Acting is actually very simple, but actors try to elevate it to an art. [on Michael Caine] ... over-fat, flatulent 62-year-old windbag, a master of inconsequence masquerading as a guru ...
It worked too well. I was taking this woman out to dinner afterwards and couldn't zip up my trousers. I wouldn't use Viagra again. Your heart has to be good to take it
+
[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9cGdRNMdQQ&w=700]
Smile! Ron Gutman reviews a raft of studies about smiling, and reveals some surprising results. Did you know your smile can be a predictor of how long you'll live -- and that a simple smile has a measurable effect on your overall well-being? Prepare to flex a few facial muscles as you learn more about this evolutionarily contagious behaviour.
Try this BBC quiz on spotting fake smiles.
Have you noticed how picturesque the letter Y is and how innumerable its meanings are? The tree is a Y, the junction of two roads forms a Y two converging rivers, a donkey’s head and that of an ox, the glass with its stem, the lily on its stalk and the beggar lifting his arms are a Y. This observation can be extended to every thing that constitutes the elements of the various letters devised by man. Whatever there is in the demotic language has been instilled into it by the hieratic language. Hieroglyphics are the root of letters. All characters were originally signs and all signs were once images. Human society, the world, man in his entirety is in the alphabet. Masonry, astronomy, philosophy, all the sciences start here, imperceptible but real, and it must be so. The alphabet is a source.
A is the roof with its rafters and traverse – beam, the arch, or it is like two friends who embrace and shake hands. D is the back, and B is a D on a second D, that is a “double back” – the hump; C is the crescent, is the moon, E is the foundation of the pillar and the roof – all architecture contained in a single letter. F is the gallows, the fork, G is the horn, H is the façade of a building with its two towers, I is the war machine that projectiles, J is the plough, the horn of plenty, K signifies one of the basic laws of geometry: (the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence), L is the leg and the foot, M is the mountain, or the camp within tents, N is the door, closed with a crossbar, O is the sun, P is the porter carrying a burden, Q is the croup and the tail, R signifies rest, the porter leaning on this stick, S is the snake, T is the hammer, U is the urn, V is the vase (that is why U and V are often confused). I have already said what Y signifies. X signifies crossed swords, combat – who will be victor? Nobody knows – that is why philosophers used “X” to signify fate, and the mathematicians took it for the unknown. Z is the lightning – is God.
So, first comes the house of man, and its construction, then the human body, its build and deformities; then justice, music, the church; war, harvest, geometry; the mountain, nomadic life and secluded life, astronomy, toil and rest; the horse and the snake; the hammer and the urn which – turned over and struck – makes a bell; trees, rivers, roads and finally destiny and God: This is what the alphabet signifies.
(main text from YouMightFindYourself)
Get the full download here.
A classic that can be destroyed, perfected, perverted. It can also reveal the depths of your character. By Troy Patterson|Originally posted on SLATE
One cold morning many years ago, a grouchy old New Yorker cranked out a letter to the editor of the Times. Happens every day, I know, but listen: This was New Year's Day in 1936, and this old timer—that's how he signed the letter, "Old Timer"—unraveled a righteous jeremiad about the improper mixing of drinks. Writing three years after Repeal—and presumably typing through a hangover, with the hammers of an Underwood clacking at his temples—he surveyed the violence Prohibition had done to the martini, the Manhattan, and, foremost, the old-fashioned whiskey cocktail.
Time was when the affable and sympathetic bartender moistened a lump of sugar with Angostura bitters, dropped in a lump of ice, neither too large nor too small, stuck in a miniature bar spoon and passed the glass to the client with a bottle of good bourbon from which said client was privileged to pour his own drink. In most places the price was 15 cents or two for quarter.
Nowadays the modern or ex-speakeasy bartender drops a spoonful of powdered sugar into a glass, adds a squirt of carbonic to aid dissolution, adds to that a dash or two of some kind of alleged bitters and a lump of ice, regardless of size. Then he proceeds to build up a fruit compote of orange, lemon, pineapple and cherry, and himself pours in a carefully measured ounce and a half of bar whisky, usually a blend, and gives one a glass rod to stir it with. Price, 35 to 50 cents. Profanation and extortion.
In his grumping, Old Timer roughly described the two main approaches to this uniquely venerable beverage. The austere former—its liquor merely sweetened and seasoned, not even tarted up with a citrus twist—is hard-core originalist. The fancy latter points to the opposite extreme, where the bartender muddles a whole Carmen Miranda headdress and the squirt of carbonated water becomes a long spritz of Sprite.
The old-fashioned is at once "the manliest cocktail order" and "something your grandmother drank," and between those poles we discover countless simple delights, evolutionary wonders, and captivating abominations. Because of its core simplicity and its elasticity—because it is primordial booze—ideas about the old-fashioned exist in a realm where gastronomical notions shade into ideological tenets. It is a platform for a bar to make a statement, a surface on which every bartender leaves a thumbprint, and a solution that many a picky drinker dips his litmus paper in. You are a free man. Drink your drink as you please. But know that your interpretation of the recipe says something serious about your philosophy of fun.
I like mine with rye. Matter of fact, I'm liking mine with rye while proofing this sentence. I'm sitting here with a fifth of Rittenhouse 100 and a stack of this fall's cocktail books. I've been using the bottom of an old-fashioned glass as a lens to focus on the soul of each.
The oldest of the new books is Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide: 75th Anniversary Edition, which was edited by Jonathan Pogash with Rick Rodgers and draws on the efforts of many other esteemed barkeeps.1 In the beginning, the Guide existed to shill for Old Mr. Boston, a Massachusetts company that once sold a line of 148 liquors, including the finest mint-flavored gin, butterscotch schnapps, and premixed apricot sours ever distilled in the neighborhood of Roxbury. Now, the liquor brand is a shell of its former self, and the book is the closest thing we have to a standard wet-bar reference. It is, like Hoyle's Rules of Games, Emily Post's Etiquette, and Vātsyāyana's Kama Sutra, a volume without which no home is truly complete.
The old-fashioned whiskey cocktail comes first among the book's 1,500 recipes. A four-page discussion begins by connecting the old-fashioned with the first recorded definition of the cocktail in general—"a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters"—which dates to 1806.2 "As the cocktail evolved, this earliest of cocktails became known simply as the Old-Fashioned," the text explains. Before old-fashioned became popularly synonymous with a particular drink made with American whiskey, it described a general style. In keeping, the book later presents the rum old-fashioned and the tequila old-fashioned and more. There's a "Bad-Humored Old-Fashioned" for fans of Dutch gin, a "Oaxaca Old-Fashioned" for mezcal enthusiasts, and a scotch old-fashioned for aficionados of fucking up perfectly good scotch. It only strays from the strictest definition of the term with the coffee old-fashioned, a sort of bourbon-java spritzer served cold. Though the coffee old-fashioned is passable as a hearty after-dinner diversion—and also suitable as an eye-opener for female characters in Bukowski novels—it might work best to fuel late nights of reviewing very dull legal documents. Back up front, handling the basics, Mr. Boston endorses a recipe from 1895 and presents a modern analog that calls for smooth simple syrup rather than grainy sugar.3 Then he anticipates a frequently asked question: "But what about the cherry and the orange?" Though the book, open-minded about the orange, suggests a few techniques of getting at its excellent essence,4 it approves of the cherry only as a garnish: "Muddling them into the drink does little to improve the flavor or the aesthetics." Depends on your ideas of beauty. At my dive of choice, where they turn out an old-fashioned as a vermilion mess of blasted cherries, the drink is only interesting for its aesthetics. With its evocation of lipstick traces and its garish air of frilly dissipation, the thing is most plausible as an accessory for a young woman cultivating a bad-girl affect.
One of the persons responsible for maintaining Mr. Boston's relevance in recent years is Jim Meehan, proprietor of the Manhattan bar PDT and now the author of The PDT Cocktail Book, illustrated with brawny suavity by Chris Gall. It is but one indication of Meehan's stature that he admits the loathed cosmopolitan to these literary premises; many players on the craft-cocktail scene would hesitate to do so for fear of being abandoned by their tribe. The book's 300-odd formulae include canonized classics and originals from Meehan's hooch house, which range from models of delicious simplicity to total stunts like the "Cinema Highball," a Cuba Libre made with buttered-popcorn-infused rum. The PDT Cocktail Book is a terrific resource for anyone running a chic bar, especially if that bar is PDT: Very many cocktail guides offer drawings of Champagne coupes and channel knives in their equipment sections. Meehan goes the further step of showing you his Kold-Draft GB1060 ice machine and diagramming its location in his basement.
There are three old-fashioned recipes here—a minimalist version from 1888, a "Newfangled" that tops its Old Grand-Dad with wheat beer, and the "Benton's Old-Fashioned," which relies on bacon fat-infused bourbon and Grade B maple syrup. This is PDT's most popular drink, its most imitated, and the best exemplar of the house style. This was something I needed to sip, so I called ahead for a table.5 The wife put on her party shoes, and we rendezvoused with a friend at a hot-dog joint on St. Mark's Place. I went into a phone booth, spun the "1" on the rotary dial, and a hostess opened a hidden door onto a narrow barroom. I placed my order with a pleasant young man wearing a bow tie and clip-on suspenders. Very shortly, the bacon-infused old-fashioned got all up in my face. It came on easy—smoky and rich but delicate. The wife observed that the clarity of the bourbon contrasted wonderfully with the drag of the sweet grease. I quickly decided that I wanted another, but not for years, probably, unless it were served alongside a plate of crispy Eggo Minis. The bacon fat lingered on the palate—loitered, even—on through the cab ride home.
Back on my couch, I dreamily re-read Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, written by Brad Thomas Parsons and enlivened by the appetite-whetting photography of Ed Anderson. Parsons tells you everything you ever wanted to know about his subject and tells it in a manner that may convince you that everything is not enough. "Bitters," he writes, "are an aromatic flavoring agent made from infusing roots, barks, fruit peels, seeds, spices, herbs, flowers, and botanicals in high-proof alcohol (or sometimes glycerin)." They give balance, counter sweetness, cut richness … and most of the people who omit them from old-fashioneds are ignoramuses and fools.6 After offering a history of Angostura, a review of bitters' origins as medicine, an overview of today's bitters makers, and instructions for making your own, Parsons turns to recipes for 60-odd cocktails. The old-fashioned heads up his "Bitters Hall of Fame." Characteristically, his tone is companionable, and his advice encourages R&D: "Just mix and match your bourbon or rye with different bitters, and the sugar can take the form of a flavored syrup. … I'm fond of putting an autumnal twist on the old-fashioned by using bourbon, cinnamon syrup, and apple bitters."
Fab. I recommend Bitters to the Etsy set without reservation. But I also suggest studying it as evidence of certain problematic quirks in cultural consumption among a certain caste.7 On two occasions, Parsons mentions the most precious of all auteurs when introducing a recipe. In one such case, he invokes The Royal Tenenbaums when dedicating a fabulous interpretation of the Pimm's Cup to two sisters who collect vintage knickknacks in their Williamsburg loft and blog about tweed and that sort of thing. Further, the author features a handful of drinks named with reference to good music, and he has paid special attention to the Matador back catalog. What sort of expression is one supposed to make, in lieu of a straight face, when asking for an "Exile in Ryeville"? It only seems possible to order one if you don't even know who Liz Phair is. I see where things are going, and the destination makes me uneasy. Nonetheless, I call dibs on the following drink names: Arcade Firewater, the Cape Codder Kwassa Kwassa, and the Lykke Li Lychee Martini.
Click here to read the rest of the article (and get the footnotes)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_ejuEJbNSA&w=700] Just Jacques on his own. Utter genius. Works with any soundtrack. I'd like to go to a club that had Jacques Tati films instead of crazy lava lamp visuals.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfS0atTiHpg&w=700]
...for a piece I'm writing in the FT, it's a beautiful place. While I was there I took a bunch of photos. Check them out by clicking here or on the photo above.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLb0J8o4Au4&w=700]
South Carolina’s Carleen and The Groovers released only two 7” singles, in the early 1970s. They have gone on to become standards in the Deep Funk scene due to bootlegged, poor-sounding, anonymous compilations. The singles themselves are so rare that copies almost never exchange hands. They were re-released a while ago though.
At the peak of the band's success Carleen decided that she was moving to Germany. Clary [St. Clair] heard a young drummer by the name of Bernard Smalls performing with the Electric Icebox Band and liked his funk style which was similar to Carleen's. Bernard Smalls joined the band while he was still a sophomore in high school after Carleen moved to Germany and he played with the other original members keeping up the deep funk tradition. After Carleen's departure the band was re-named St. Clair and the Mid-Night Groovers. During the early 70s the band had a tradition of being the best R&B band in the low country with its deep grooves based on James Brown style funk.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au6hzTFZrDY&w=700]
Check out Carleen's hair.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWM_-ylI9k8&w=700]