Your Neighborhood Librarian

All you fascists are bound to lose

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 06:16:00 +0000

So... I got called a racist at work today. I told a customer who was talking on his cell phone in the public computer area that we ask people who are going to have phone conversations of more than a minute or so to continue their conversations in another area of the library. He told his correspondent that the librarian told him to get off the phone and he continued with his work.

As he left, he stopped at the desk and told me that he wouldn't mind being told not to talk on the phone if only we were more vigilant. I started to explain, "We try to be consistent --" and he cut me off. "No you don't," he said. "You don't tell black people to be quiet."

If this middle-aged white man had allowed me to finish my sentence, I would have explained that sometimes we are too busy with other customers to hop right up and inform people of the cell phone policy. But he didn't. He stomped out.

Now, of course, I had a few immediate mental retorts, starting with:

That is 100% not true.
"Reverse racism." HAAAA ha haha ha ha. I'm honored, sir.
I didn't tell you to be quiet, I suggested, in an EXTREMELY nonthreatening way, that you take your conversation to a specific area of the library where your conversation was less likely to distract people who are quietly working.

Now, we are not a quiet library. We do not shush. In fact, I am aware that I am frequently the loudest person in the library, due to the fact that I have a low, carrying voice and because, as a person with a minor hearing deficit, I am aware that older people and others may need me to speak clearly and maintain good facial line-of-sight. I've asked maybe three groups of people to dial their volume down a little in the past couple of years, and it's for sure that customers have asked me to do the same at least as often.

We mostly don't quibble with people talking on their phones in the library - except in the computer area. At the time when he signed onto one of our PCs, a number of people were working over there in complete silence. Sometimes you'll get a pair of people working on a resume or an online form, or homework - and we do not police their conversations unless they get unduly loud - but today, the entire time he was over there, not one soul uttered a single word.

But that was not his point.

His point was that he couldn't STAND to be reprimanded, however gently. He felt singled out. And to that I say, Oh my brother, you should stage a sit-in. JUSTICE NOW! Someone asked you to not do something you wanted to do - like swim in a pool, or go to college, or vote, or eat at a restaurant... JUST LIKE THAT.

Except no, you butt-hurt former Master of the Universe. NOTHING LIKE THAT.

And once I got home and read about 20 picture books to get the taste of that interaction out of my mind, one more mental retort came to mind:

It must be frustrating to realize that your candidate is going to lose.

Not that my tiny experience today is an indicator of the nation at large, BUT. I have a feeling that, as a Trump presidency recedes to its resting state of farcical and distasteful premise, we will be seeing more incidents of Trump supporters lashing out, in minor to major ways. This is not the first instance of a middle-aged white man expressing undue anger at the library recently.

The candidate's willingness to spew retrograde, reactionary poison in the public arena has given these attitudes a renewed - and fraudulent - validity, and now people who follow him think it's all right and even brave to say out loud things that we've been telling them to be ashamed to even think. NO. BE ASHAMED. GO BACK TO THAT.

Just today, an imam and his assistant were murdered leaving their mosque. Do you think that the person who pulled that trigger had a Hillary bumper sticker on his mid-size piece-of-shit American car? No. That is a person who thought, for a brief shining moment, that his orange knight was going to put things RIGHT in this country. Was going to reverse the progress that has been made in religious and racial tolerance, was going to put white men BACK where they belong - as the only relevant point of view.

The end of Trump will not be the end of that point of view.

It's going to be important, in the down-stream races, especially the Congressional races, not to allow any claims that the popularity of his campaign is a mandate by a hitherto-unvoiced segment of America to go unchallenged. That segment has ALWAYS had a voice - in fact, it was THE voice for most of our history. They just weren't activated - they didn't need to be. And now, people with racist and xenophobic beliefs are a minority, and I think they've finally figured that out.

They're mad, and they're going to get madder. And we're going to have to worry that every time we ask one to adhere to even minimal behavioral guidelines, we're going to get accused of shit, berated, and complained about. GOD. What else is new?

The Cock Up

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 15 May 2016 21:24:00 +0000

What the fuck even is this?

I just read a review of D. Watkins's new book The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir in the New York Times Book Review. The reviewer is a guy named Jason Parham, senior editor at a magazine called The Fader. And it is one of the worst reviews I have ever read - not bad in the sense that it excoriates the book, but bad as in I finished the review thinking that the reviewer probably liked the book? but might not have thought it was well-written? but I couldn't tell? And somehow he manages to be patronizing even while expressing solidarity with the author.

So let's back up. I should start by saying that I don't know Dwight Watkins, although our paths have crossed. I have a definite memory of meeting him. Maybe it was back when I helped run a coffee shop in SoWeBo, an arty neighborhood embedded within a crack neighborhood. It might have been at the library. I'll be honest - what I really remember is not wanting to read his stuff. Because of the jobs I have had, people sometimes tend to assume that I am into angry poetry and gut-wrenching personal narrative. But I mostly read children's books and sci-fi, and before that I mostly read about diseases.

But Watkins is from Baltimore, and the book is about growing up here, choosing the drug trade over college, then rejecting the drug trade in favor of becoming an educator. And I do know Baltimore. I did live in neighborhoods where I observed the drug trade out my window and on my stoop, and I work with young men incarcerated for playing their part in the business they grew up around.

The DEA raiding the crackhouse next door to the coffee house,
shot from my apartment upstairs.

The other thing I know about is reviewing books, and this review is absolutely mystifying.

We start with two paragraphs of the familiar refrain "Baltimore I Love You But You're Breaking My Heart," referencing Nina Simone's 1978 album "Baltimore," Freddie Gray, and "The Wire." Yup, that's where D. Watkins lives. In case the title "The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir" was confusing to you.

Then three paragraphs of summary. Three paragraphs - that's a column and then some. I often find NYT reviews to be heavy on summary, so maybe that's an editorial guideline.

And then finally we get to criticism. And here my real problems begin. "I could have written at length about Watkins's lean, casual prose and how it was difficult to sustain throughout... but I would have missed the book's larger aim." What is that? Is he saying, 'Don't think I didn't notice this flaw, and I'm going to mention it because you might have a problem with it - but I'm not going to give evidence of it, and by the way if it bothers you, you're missing the point.'

That's not the way to do that. Good books with important 'larger aims' can have flaws, and it does not take away from those aims to actually give examples of the flaws and let the reader decide whether the flaws will distract from the reading. But the above sentence, along with an earlier drive-by slap: "Beyond identifying some of the book's technical faults..." gives the impression that the book is poorly written. But important! But poorly written. What does this guy think he's reviewing, a slave narrative? Dwight Watkins has two masters' degrees, including an MFA. If there are problems with the prose, critique the man like you would any literary author.

"I never set out to be a part of that life," Parham quotes, "but that never stopped that life from setting out to be a part of me." I mean, I'm no expert, but in my opinion that is in fact EXCELLENT prose.

And then there's this: "And because storytelling can function as catharsis for black writers, there is a measure of value in the book's publication... Words, for me and, I assume, for Watkins, are a means to personal deliverance." I must be misinterpreting this. Because it looks to me that Parham is saying that the value in publishing this book is the catharsis it brings about for Dwight Watkins.

I just want to know if the book is readable, accessible, and well-paced. I'd like to get copies for some of the incarcerated dads I work with at the county detention center, who, if they see themselves on the page, see themselves glamorized in thug life fiction or villainized in everything else.

Parham takes "other reviewers" to task, supposing that they might stick labels on the story or its prose (hey, here's an idea, guy - wait to make such accusations AFTER someone has actually done such things), and says "that would have misinterpreted his testimony, offering a shallow and one-sided distortion." Instead, Parham suggests that we, "as readers and as critics, mine deeper." This is where he offers that dig at Watkins's difficulty sustaining his "lean, casual prose," and I think he means that we are to look past the writing in order to discern "Watkins's belief in the telling of black stories, in their ugliness and their beauty."

Oh man. That is the best you can do? Cataloging this memoir under a hashtag? Like #blackstoriesmatter? Two sentences are quoted in the final paragraph of the review: "I was depressed with my friends and the decisions they were making. I couldn't do anything to save any of them." So shut up, reviewer. You are not doing any favors for a book that looks, in fact, very good.

Women: suck it up

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 18:51:00 +0000

So I was lying in bed the other day really not wanting to get up, and Morning Edition was playing on my husband's LEGO clock radio, and Steve Innskeep and Mara Liasson were talking about the Republican primaries. As if there's anything else to talk about, like, say, that Thurgood Marshall's elementary school caught on fire this week and Dilma Rousseff might get impeached.

Here's an excerpt:

INSKEEP: Has Trump's trouble in the last week or two caused any change in the sentiments in upstate New York?
BRIAN MANN (North Country Public Radio): I kind of expected to hear that, maybe hear some of his supporters here in New York kind of edging toward the door. But as I talked to my neighbors and people around upstate, I just didn't hear that. I reached out last night via Skype to Sue MacNeil. She works at a local hospital, and she's chair of the Republican Party in Fulton County, N.Y., a few hours west of here. And she told me, you know, that people who are put off by Donald Trump's coarse talk, especially about women - she says they're just wimps.
SUE MACNEIL: If you can't stand the heat, then gosh darn it, get out of the gosh-darned kitchen. I grew up with two older brothers. And I learned a lot from the family that I grew up with. And if I couldn't take it, then that was my problem. And talk about political correctness. Women, suck it up.

Needless to say, THAT got me right out of bed. I mean, I was either going to get out of bed and put some pants on or roll over and pull the covers up and hope for death. And Sue MacNeil has been ringing in my ears ever since.

I want to see Kate McKinnon play Sue MacNeil on Saturday Night Live. Of course, I want to see Kate McKinnon play EVERYBODY on Saturday Night Live. Any woman who can do Angela Merkel AND Justin Beiber, well. She's a genius. She's certainly my new favorite Ghostbuster.

So I'd see Sue McNeil coming back on NPR and Steve Inskeep querying her on her support of Trump and her willingness to be shat upon by 50% of the human race.

INSKEEP: Thank you for coming on our program, Sue.
MACNEIL: Thank you for having me.

INSKEEP: Last week on our show you advised women who were "put off by Donald Trump's coarse talk, especially about women," to, "suck it up." Do you stand by that statement?
MACNEIL: I do. I was raised with two older brothers and you better have a thick skin if you're going to roll with those big dogs. Women who insist on being treated like delicate flowers aren't doing themselves any favors.

INSKEEP: I think the women who have criticized Mr. Trump's statements would say that they aren't asking for special treatment, but are asking to be treated with the same respect as men.
MACNEIL: Well, if they want to be treated the same as men, I suggest they grow a pair!

INSKEEP: Um, yeah but... given the physical impossibility of a woman growing a pair of testicles, you are saying that women just can't be treated the same as men?
MACNEIL: Look, Steve. Men and woman are just different. They're going to be treated differently, and if you can't face that fact, well get your head out of your magic princess mirror and look around you.

INSKEEP: My... Well. But would you agree that the ways that women are different from men cause them to be treated with less respect? And that statements by Donald Trump exemplify that?
MACNEIL: Less respect? Respect is a funny word. I don't even know what that word means. And I don't know... I mean I've never heard Mr. Trump talk about women with anything less than total respect.

INSKEEP: Let me get your reaction to a few of his statements. In one of his books, Mr. Trump writes, “It’s certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on ‘The Apprentice’ were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal.”

MACNEIL: Well, sure! I don't see what's objectionable about having a little secret weapon down your shirt! If you look at it that way, we women have an unfair advantage!

INSKEEP: Ok. How about this one: “Women have one of the great acts of all time. The smart ones act very feminine and needy, but inside they are real killers. The person who came up with the expression ‘the weaker sex’ was either very naive or had to be kidding. I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye — or perhaps another body part.”
MACNEIL: There you go!

INSKEEP: Now, you're chair of the Republican Party in your county. It doesn't bother you at all, the implication that you are only in that position thanks to some kind of twitching?MACNEIL: Are you implying that I slept my way into my job?
INSKEEP: No, but don't you think Mr. Trump is?

Let me be clear - I made all this up. Because I've been haunted by this person. Even the language that she uses: the combination of squeaky-clean expletive (gosh-darn it!) and sexual imagery (suck it up!) seems to exemplify some kind of perfect Stepford combo of mom and hooker. And then I looked her up online, and she seems like a terrific woman. She's director of volunteer services at a hospital, a hospice board member, an entertainer and a speaker, She runs a summer camp for kids where she teaches kids about "healthy eating, going fishing, arts and crafts," for Pete's sake.

So I keep trying to guess how she reacts whenever her candidate professes his admiration for his daughter's body, or indicates that he's willing to pander to the fucking brow-ridge segment of the voting population that thinks women are whores and should be punished for getting pregnant.

And I keep coming back around to the term "slave mentality." It's a bad term, it's been co-opted by conservatives who use it to be racist in a shitty backdoor way, but I'm not coming up with anything else. The term used to be used to connote an individual's acceptance of poor treatment as natural and deserved, and what is more - that individual's efforts to proselytize this view.

I kept looking for language from the domestic violence prevention community about the mindset of denial and rationalization that can develop in an abused person, but I didn't find an actual term for this particular flavor of codependence. The language that most closely mirrors the "you don't deserve equal treatment and face it, you don't even want it" attitude I heard on the radio the other morning can be found in the writings of women in the submissive wife movement. Which is the absolute worst. I can't even - the flames...

All the bits about crying instead of expressing anger, or not opening your mouth to disagree with him, and

"Have you really enjoyed independence and gender neutrality that much?"

Recent state legislation legalizing discrimination against gay and transgendered people makes it obvious how un-united the United States has become, but whenever I hear of women who not only accept second class status, but rush toward it and crawl inside it like creeping into a dumpster of warm, rotting garbage, I experience fear. I become really afraid. It's one thing to imagine an army of butthurt straight white men getting fierce about the perceived erosion of their King of the World status - that almost makes sense - but the idea of a legion of their wives fighting for their right to be treated like doormats conjures an image of an America so saturated with sexist bullshit that a large number of Americans can't even smell it.

Your Neighborhood Librarian Cooks a Meal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 22:00:00 +0000

My son needs to bake a pie for his 8th grade class's Pie Auction.

Why this strikes me as like the last and final blow, the pinnacle, the ultimate "we've got to have WHAT by Monday?!" in ten years of "Students must have X by Monday" - paint smocks, comfortably a dozen batches of cookies and cupcakes, multiple tri-fold presentation boards, a clipboard, camping equipment, and costumes representing John Wilkes Booth, Ravi Shankar, a tropical fish, and British composer Henry Purcell - I can't really say.

But it irritates the shit out of me. Maybe it's because I can't bake a piecrust myself.

Anyway, the Pie Auction is described as a hallowed tradition of this private school that the boys have been attending for middle school, middle school representing for me the three years in a young person's life that most closely resemble hell, and so we paid good cash money to put them somewhere with 275 years of experience keeping kids basically on the rails. (*ignoring ignoring ignoring my friends who went there themselves and their fond memories of skipping class to smoke cigarettes at the Dunkin Donuts or pot down at the creek*) (*that was high school anyway, they assure me*)

And the flyer for the Pie Auction allows for "savory pies." Which is good, because my 8th grader is a savory guy. Ha. Ugh. Anyway, he's better with meat than with desserts. Hm. That's also kind of ugh. Here's a story:

We're sitting at dinner one night maybe 6 or 7 years ago, Ez was about 6 and Milo maybe 8. The subject of pie comes up, who knows how. Ezra asks, "What actually IS a pie? How do you make it?"

I start to answer. "You roll out dough flat and put it in a round pan..."

And then Milo chimes in. He's like me - he likes to have the answer to things, and is generally unconcerned with the limits of his own knowledge or authority on the subject at hand. "And then you put in the filling - the meat or jelly - and then more dough on top."

Bob and I looked at him. "Meat and jelly?" Bob asked.

I turned to Ezra. "Please keep in mind that your brother has never made a pie."

"He may have never eaten one," added Bob. "Or seen one on TV," I said.

So this is going to go well.

"I can make a pie," he says. "They showed us at school."

"You can make a piecrust." I said, skeptical.

"Yeah, they showed us."

"Can you drive?" I asked. "You've watched me do it."

"Probably," he said.

Fair enough. He could probably drive. "Well, I can't make a piecrust," I told him, "and I've been cooking for a long time. There's a lot of finesse involved. And measurement."

"Oh," he says.

Boy knows his limitations, I'll give him that.

Milo and I are both pretty good cooks. We get proportion and complementary flavor, we can throw things together and they'll come out ok. But measuring we don't really do. I think it interferes with our instincts. When I have to calculate measurements, I'll lose sight of what I intuitively understand to be right, and whatever I'm making will come out all fucked up.

So this is what recipes look like once I'm done with them:

These are from my recipe notebook. I started it when I lived in Brooklyn in 1995. It's full of ambitious experiments and holiday side dishes and 'jesus why can't you remember how to cook rice?' instructions to myself. There are about a hundred recipes for bread pudding, including one from Pascal's Manale in New Orleans which calls for 3 loaves of french bread, half a gallon of milk, and three pounds of sugar.

That was a great meal. I was in New Orleans with my boss for the American Association of Critical Care Nurses convention. Our booth - I worked for a medical publishing company - was immediately across the aisle from a company that sold internal prosthetics. Fake boobs, fake testicles. They had a couple of them out on display, I mean, that's the point, you need to be able to fondle them to be sure they possess the right consistency and heft.

And this is why even on my worst days I'm never really dissatisfied with my life. Memories. Of palpating fake nuts.

There are recipes from off the side of boxes - because you never know when Baker's is going to stop printing their one-bowl brownie recipe on the box and then you're screwed because those really are the best brownies (as long as you dust them with kosher salt and chili powder just before putting them in the oven - see?? I just can't leave well enough alone). There's an episode of Friends about that. Courtney Cox slaves for a week trying to duplicate Phoebe's grandmother's chocolate chip cookie recipe when it turns out to be the one on the chocolate chip bag.

There are pressed flowers and photos of lobsters. Recipes I've never made (homemade mustard) and recipes for things I make so often I'm surprised to find they have a written origin (Chicken Cacciatore). There are rare instances of me drawing. I can really not draw, except sometimes. That's a passable sweet potato.

The evolution of my chili recipe is tracked. Multiple batches of hot sauce. There are pictures of parties and guest appearances by friends and family. A pork dish Bob's sister Patsy made for my birthday, and a New Mother Chicken Soup my sister-in-law Jane made for me just after Milo was born, even though she's a vegetarian.

Here's our Jaime, showing off the (baked) goods at a tree-trimming party in our first Brooklyn apartment. Jaime brought an eyeshadow suspended on a string. "What do I know from Christmas ornaments?" she shrugged. "I'm a Jew!" Goes on the tree every year though - sparkly is as sparkly does.

I kept it up for about 8 years and then the recipes peter out. Kids, right? You know I love 'em! Detailed, illustrated recipes give way to "Meatloaf a la April 4th" and "here's how you sear a steak, dodo."

Bob and Paula, The Middle Years: The Wineglass and the Sippy Cup

Which isn't to say I stopped cooking. The evidence is stuffed into the front and back of that notebook, used as bookmarks in our other cookbooks, magnetted to the fridge. Today I finally went through all those loose Epicurious printouts, pages ripped from the New York Times Magazine, lists of ingredients scribbled on wrinkled-up scraps of paper.

Some people scrapbook - I cookbook

And looking at all the stuff we've made for holiday dinners and for our annual Pig Roast and the stuff I made because I was bored, I guess I get why my kids will order unfamiliar things off menus, and why Milo can make a marinade without even thinking about it. Ezra leafs through a baking cookbook and decides he'd like to make a four-layer, two-color birthday cake with two kinds of icing for his brother's birthday.

Because sure, in addition to "Super Easy Salmon" and "This is the last-minute Brussels sprouts thing" there's also the Bo Ssam from Momofuku and Pecan Bread Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce (served that one to my friends PG and TK the night author Adam Gidwitz came to supper).

Looks like I wrote down the recipe for the homemade miso soup with udon I used to make them for lunch twice a week when they were preschoolers. I can still make dashi broth half-asleep and talking on the phone.

That's our neighbor B, who I think maybe actually is driving now.

And lord there are so many drinks recipes among these stained and folded printouts. My Bad Mom friends will be relieved to know that I printed out and kept the instructions for making red white and blue frozen rum slushies. Some of those scraps of paper record fried chicken experiments, as well as documentation of how my friend Mona does it (dredged in flour with salt and pep, fried in lard, in a 24" skillet she calls Vera) (god Mona is such a boss).

We brought home a plastic bottle of the sugar-citric acid-chili powder that you find on the table at restaurants in Mexico (it's awesome, it's like an Atomic Warhead ground up with chili powder and will make a hard-boiled egg taste dynamite), thinking it would be like the seasoning I made for the fried chicken one time which the kids started calling Magic Dust because it tastes good on EVERYTHING, but it's not.

I lost that recipe as soon as I found it, and have since bought two cookbooks (Ride or Fry and Fried and True, both good) in search of it - but it turned out to be from Brooklyn Bowl, printed in the NYT Mag, and I had it among my scraps.

Above all, there are a million recipes for Hoppin' John. There's the recipe from the Goya bag, and one from Emeril, and at least two in my own handwriting, and one from when my friend Leslie, who used to be a professional chef, made it at Sarah's half-finished house in Pittsburgh one New Year's Day. Lacking any of the usual measuring hardware, he expressed all measurements in terms of coffee mugs - specifically, the coffee mug that was the favor distributed by Sean and Heidi at their wedding. This was brilliant - everyone who woke up in that house that day had been to that wedding. We would always be able to make Les's hoppin' john. The handle on mine finally broke, but we still use it to hold pens.

It's a little weird that I should have felt compelled to document how to make hoppin' john. It's just beans and rice, really - one of those things I can make while I'm doing ten other things, like making a mopping sauce for a 110-lb pig.

I guess it's because you make it on New Year's Day. It's special, and when it's really good it's just terrific. And it's lucky! Like me!

And you. To quote my friend Cole, who is a phenomenal cook - Your Neighborhood Librarian loves you, and your butt looks great in those pants.

xo

PS - So anyway, here's the pie Milo's going to make - the whole reason I dragged my cookbook out in the first place was to find this recipe for Shepherd's Pie, by our friend John Forrest, a legit British person, written down by Jaime while it was being made. And illustrated with a picture of Milo and his brother Ezra laying down the beat on Tupperware in our kitchen before we got rid of those cabinets and that floor.

On weak solvents and the wrath of Achilles

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 18:23:00 +0000

I was sitting on my neighbor's deck the other day, celebrating Greek Easter by eathing beautifully dyed and oiled hard-boiled eggs while the kids searched for plastic eggs full of candy.

I guess you dye 'em with beets, or onion skins, or the blood of the risen Christ or something. I love shit like that. Tradition! Anyway, as I sat in this weekend's ridiculously beautiful sunshine peeling my universal symbol of life and potential, I dropped the shell over the deck rail and into the yard.

Eggshell, I figured. Good compost. Later, my neighbor brought some food prep out onto the deck and sat at the picnic table slicing garlic and chatting. Putting the garlic ends and paper into a little bowl so that he could take them inside and throw em in the garbage.

Not the yard. Because that's gross. What's wrong with you, you toss your garbage in your neighbor's yard?! Pig.

"Penelope" by Enda Walsh

My neighbor - and I know you're wondering - didn't notice me treating his yard like a landfill, or didn't care, or was too polite to mention it. My point is, every person's relationship with cleanliness is slightly different. You know this if you have ever lived with another human being. The gradations are infinite. One person's napkin is another person's irredeemably soiled rag.

What, by the way, happens to the napkins in my house? Any napkin I take off the stack of clean napkins is clean. Any other napkin, lying on the kitchen table or the counter, even re-folded by some brainwashed child, is disgusting. Stained, crusty, spotted... I eat with these people. They are not masticating portions of their napkins along with their food. I do not notice them, I don't know, cleaning out their ears with their napkins. And yet. Every slightly used napkin in our house is an irredeemably soiled rag.

Here's another example. This weekend our fancy coffee maker, which takes beans and water and grinds and heats and mellifies them into lifegiving brown elixir, quit grinding. "MY SKIN POURS DOWN IN TEARS" went the general moan. You probably heard it from your place. "I will cut the throats of twelve noble youths of Troy at your pyre, coffee maker, in vengeance for your death."

Getting my Mallory Ortberg on a little bit there. That woman is a boon to all mankind.

Note twelve noble youths of Troy, not those shitty youths who grow their hair out stupid and hog all the booths at the pizza place.

"I'll look at it later," said my husband. Reasonable. Fair. I took a look at it myself this morning while my bread was in the toaster. There were still beans in it. I unplugged it and shook it upside-down over the garbage can. Not over the deck rail? Shut up, I will quit throwing garbage in the yard, ok? Leave me alone.

Then I grabbed the Phillips-head screwdriver that lives in the kitchen for just this kind of reason and I unscrewed four screws so that the grinder was exposed. Shook it over the garbage can again. There's a little brush that comes with the coffee maker. I used that. "All hail! Ye virgin daughters of the main!" I cried. "It grinds!"

As I put the coffee maker back together, I cleaned each part. Then I cleaned the other parts. Then I got out Windex and some paper towels and wiped like half a pound of encrusted high-grade pulverized coffee beans out of the crevices of the device. "Holy shit," I thought, my command of classic Greek poetry for once proving inadequate to the task, "has this thing ever been cleaned?"

Now granted, I am a total shithead because I let other people make me coffee and I never touch this appliance. On the other hand.

I'll make this easier to remember: keep your station clear, or I WILL KILL YOU!

Sometimes I think that The Land Beneath the Kitchen Sink is a lonely country. I'll open that cabinet to retrieve the Formula 409 and I'll imagine a barely perceptible sigh of yearning escaping its still confines. There sits the Windex, the dish soap, the Nature's Miracle, the counter cleaner - right where I left them.

And ordinarily I am satisfied when I come across remnants of an order I have imposed. I take it as affirmation of my organizing principles. OF COURSE all the Munchkin games go on the shelf together. That will make them easier to find. We stack all the WHITE TOWELS in one stack and all the HOT PINK TOWELS in another stack. Because... huh. As usual, there is no good reason for segregation by color. Excuse me while I go integrate my towels.

And all the cleaning products under the sink are arranged first by function, and then by size. I'm a librarian. We seek order in all things because we fear the opposite. But when I bend to fetch the Comet and see that nothing has moved since my last visit, I get no feeling of validation. They just haven't been there.

I can't get over the idea that there are places in this house that my children have never explored. It's not a big house! Don't you just go poking around places sometimes? It's not like I am some punitive person with many precious belongings or teetering secrets or a room full of severed heads - "You went into the closet, did you not? Very well, madam; you shall go back, and take your place among the ladies you saw there." Nothing under the kitchen sink is likely to electrocute you. We don't keep a basilisk under there.

On the other hand. "Have you seen the bag of clothes I had to take to the dry cleaners?" my husband asks.

"You have little bags of clothes all over the house. There's one sitting next to the front door right now. I never look in them in case they are dirty gym clothes."

"Oh no, yeah. Definitely don't look in those bags."

So I guess there are reasons not to explore the dark places. Smelly, wet reasons.

Still. I have resolved to teach a short class this weekend in my kitchen: Weak Solvents and Their Uses in the Home. We will cover Lysol, Windex, white vinegar, and WATER. "Be men, my friends, and fill your minds with furious courage, so we may win glory for the son of Peleus, greatest of the Argives beside the ships, and for his men who fight at close quarters, the pick of the army; and so the son of Atreus, imperial Agamemnon, may acknowledge his great blindness in failing to honour the best of all the Greeks.’ CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELVES.

We Drink With Characters: Special Guest Alex London on THE ADVIL CALENDAR 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 20:36:00 +0000

One of the nice things about taking a more laissez-faire approach to the holidays this year is that we've spent our after-kid-bedtime hours at leisure, and not wrapping or baking or cleaning or shopping online. Although I'll admit to a bitty little studio6 fetish this year. Everybody's getting a t-shirt for Christmas even though we're not really doing presents.

Some of our leisure time has been spent watching TV. It's pretty weird how, in the past year or two or three, TV has become something that people are not ashamed about. But people are very particular. Everyone has their own preferred cocktail of drama and humor and hot people, and we quiz our friends to learn where any recommended show falls on that scatter plot. Arrow? Not funny enough, I'm told. Downton? Hardly anybody gets their shirt off. So let's do it...

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN MAKES LIFE LOOK LIKE ART

It took me kind of a while to be talked into Orphan Black, for example. I kept confusing it with that weird psychological horror movie Orphan, in which - and I may have this wrong but - a prostitute from Minsk with a rare medical condition poses as an 8-year-old in order to get a green card. Much better plan than using those bride sites.

But wow! I love Orphan Black! It explains SO MUCH.

Everybody knows what's going on with Orphan Black but in case you don't - it's clones. Separated at birth and living wildly different lives until they are thrown together by coincidence (there are no coincidences!) and MURRDER.

This is probably what happened with Mr. London, our special guest drinker for today's post. (Is this going up kind of late in the day? Well yes, yes it is. I have had a ROUGH WEEK.)

For years, the world knew our guest as Charles London. Mr. London traveled the world reporting on the effects of war on children. He wrote a book, One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War, which I read long before I met him, and which I only just now realized was his.

Do you know how ridiculous that is? I know Mr. London, I've read like 5 of his books for children, I knew he had worked with child soldiers, and yet I still never put it together that he'd written that book. I'd probably have quoted his own book at him if we'd ever gotten into a discussion about eastern Congo.

The only explanation is - he's a clone.

Sure, there are reasons why a person might write under three names and drink under a fourth. It makes sense that Mr. London might not want a curious fan of his globe-trotting goofy kids' adventure series that started with a book titled We Are Not Eaten by Yaks finding him talking about traumatized children on NPR. So those books - and his series of short novels about military dogs - are written by C. Alexander London.

And then a third clone showed up, writing some of the best YA sci-fi I have read in a while. I won't go into Proxy here - there's a review elsewhere that you might look into - except to say that it is a thrilling ride for all readers. One of my son's friends just came over to ransack our YA collection and Milo thrust Proxy into his hands with the urgent sincerity of a Witness giving out Watchtowers.

Proxy and its sequel, Guardian, also reverberate with literary references and the kind of sociopolitical/economic structures that can only be generated by a mind informed in equal parts by firsthand observation, theoretical knowledge, and thoughtful analysis. You don't have to subscribe to The Economist to enjoy Proxy, but people who do - and who find flaws with much sci-fi because they understand cultural evolution, will find these books immensely satisfying. And also picturesque and explodey. With occasional boner jokes.

To put it in my terms: bourbon in a glass is nice. Bourbon in a glass with a piece of crystallized ginger and a fat curl of orange peel is better. So here for the first time (not for the first time), all three London clones, plus their shadowy brother, gather to discuss drinking fictionally.

Charles

C. Alexander

Alex

So let's hear it, Orphan London. Which of your characters would you want to drink with once they're legal, and what would you guys be drinking?

"I'd be thrilled to have a drink with just about any of my characters, but I've got two characters I'd love I think would be the most fun:

Knox, the devil-may-care party boy from my YA novel PROXY would be a blast to get a drink with. He most likely wouldn't wait until he was of age, so I'd be a bit nervous the whole time, but if we meet up in his time as opposed to mine, I don't think we'd need to worry.

Of course, in his future, the drinks certainly get weird and probably involve all kinds of foams and electrolytes and costs more than I make in a year, so I'd have to let him order (and pay). I picture him trying to get fancy and ordering some futuristic update on the Vesper Cocktail and things would get sloppy from there. I'm sure it would be a memorable night, but at my age, I'd be hurting the next morning. It's hard to keep up with the teenaged party king of a dystopian future, especially one who knows he's living on borrowed time anyway.

(You say albino rat drinking
shandy, I see the Queen.)

The other character I'd love to raise a more civilized glass of cheese ale with, once she was actually of age, is Eeni, the streetwise talking rat in my forthcoming middle grade series, The Wild Ones. She's a pickpocket and rogue, and an albino alley rat, who loves wordplay, grammar, and a touch of larceny.

While Acorn Brew might be good for a wake up, the pubs in her neighborhood serve the best Cheese Ale on this side of the Slivered Sky. I'd have to let her order for me too, as I wouldn't know a fermented Blue Cheese ale from a Cheddar Shandy (she would totally drink a Shandy), and I suppose she's someone I could keep up with drink for drink. She tends to take her drinks in thimblefuls.

I bet she knows a few good songs and tales of the wild places, some folk wisdom from the moles, and all the dirty gossip about the criminals and bandit kings who scurry through the small places of the world once the sun goes down.

I really hope I'm not lactose intolerant, because it's considered very rude to turn down a cheese ale in Ankle Snap Alley. One must keep one's wits, however. I'm sure Eeni would offer to pay for the drinks, but it'd be with money slipped from my pocket."

Oh my god how adorable is this Eeni?! You can tell that Mr. London was in a little state of Crafter's Bliss assembling his Redwall-meets-Diagon Alley rodent world. That is like writing with a focusing flashlight and special tweezers.

Drinking small-scale

But this definitely reinforces the idea that we are dealing with clones. I MEAN. Cyber-enabled foam-drinking smartmouth Knox comes out of the same brain as Ratful Dodger Eeni? The eyebrow rises of its own accord.

In a very entertaining podcast interview with our friend Rob Wolf on New Books in Science Fiction, Mr. London says that he always ends up writing for "an imagined previous version of myself." This conjures a time-lapse image of a kid reading The Accidental Adventures interspersed with the military series Dog Tags, and then discarding those in favor of Knox's dystopic world.

And...no. Maybe Accidental Adventures eventually lead to Proxy, but most kids who start down the Dogs And War path are on a trip straight into the heart of nonfictionland. Which is a fine place to find oneself - one of the London clones lived there for ages, before COINCIDENCE (there are no coincidences!) or MURRRDER led him to a secret meeting with snarky jet-setter Chazz London, bare-chested club kid Xander Londonowiecz, earnest history buff Chuck McLondonson, and master crafter Charlie "I ❤ My Hedgie" Londonberry.

Together, they form the master crime-fighting team The London Eye. They just write books for fun.

And I just read for fun! For the next week, anyway. I've got a few posts lined up but I am not sure whether they'll make it or not - we are going where the sun is shining and the wifi is spotty. Many thanks to Alex London for his thoughts on drinking with his characters - and apologies for screwing around with his identity and accusing him of being a clone. He's not a clone. I'm pretty sure.

Ok I gotta call TSA and American Airlines and make sure my husband can take his medication on the plane. Maybe clean out the refrigerator. And then double check the children have packed shoes. Why do they always forget shoes?

Keep your to-do list close and your cocktail closer - I'm out.

Drinking by the book: Advil Calendar 2014 BLACK VODKA HELICOPTERS Edition with SPECIAL GUEST Blythe Woolston

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 17:52:00 +0000

This is my autograph book. Yes I know nobody has an autograph book anymore, but just call me Anne Shirley, and shut up. Or don't. Don't call me Anne Shirley. In fact, I'll kill anyone who calls me Anne Shirley. I've never even read Anne of Green Gables and I would never wear my hair like that.

But as atavistic as it is, it's mine, and I love it, and it is packed with stories. The first story being of course, "Why do you use a 1904 drinks manual as an autograph book?"

This little book was a gift from my friend Paula, who knows that How We Used to Drink is almost as interesting to me as When Am I Going to Get My Next Drink. She gave it to me as we were on our way to a book festival. I admired the book and thanked her for the thoughtful gift and slipped it in my blazer pocket, on its way to a place of honor on my shelf of bartending books.

Next evening, wearing the same jacket, I traveled to Washington D.C.'s Politics and Prose to see a bunch of picture book authors talk about their work. There was a signing line, but since this was a bookstore event, you were supposed to buy the books you wanted signed, and...um...I'm kind of a brat and I'm cheap and besides I already owned copies of most of those books at home.

So I pulled "How to Mix Drinks" out of my pocket and asked the authors to sign that. It was fun! Children's book authors are cheeky:

"Drink more." Mac Barnett

"Drink often!" Laura Vaccaro Seeger

At the NCTE convention this year, Jory John (All My Friends Are Dead) added "Drink hard!"

Anyway, when I realized that Blythe Woolston and I were going to be in the same place at the same time at this year's YA Literature Symposium, I made sure to pack my autograph book. Blythe!

I first met Blythe when we were both early for an award ceremony at an ALA conference. Cooling our heels outside the room in one of those empty wide convention center hallways, she got to talking to my kids about the books they liked. She didn't TELL ME she was a nominee, or else I might have actually asked about her book. That book was Freak Observer and I read it because I met her, and that book - I mean I kid around a lot but I do actually like reading, you know - that book was extraordinary.

In Austin, we talked about our now-giant teenage boys, and about TV, and schools, and how inexplicable it is for a bar to RUN OUT of Wild Turkey during a librarian convention.

And I forgot to get her to sign my book.

But I remembered to ask her who of her own made-up people she'd like to drink with - and she was right on it, blending unexpected details with balls-ass characters. As is her wont:

Blythe Woolston

"I'd drink with Loa Lindgren--and our drink together would not be the first time she's availed herself of alcohol. She's almost 21 by now, anyhow. We would crack a bottle of absinthe and get completely giddy.

Loa's taking another semester's worth of credits of art history and ceramics. She is not an art major. She worked with Jack King-Fisher on a stream restoration project last summer. Next summer she hopes to do field research in the interest of the endangered Western Glacier Stonefly. She isn't a biology major either.

Bonus (a.k.a. I'm going to cheat): I'd also like to spend time drinking with Velma Blixen, a character in a book called 1910, which might never make it out of the publishing chute. Velma is fairly judgmental about drinking, although she never refuses it if someone is giving it away for free. She is also a big fan of laudanum. We'd drink salmiakkikossu, which is vodka full of pepper licorice. The stuff is black and ropy as cough medicine.

Velma's dead, but never exhibited any prejudice against ghosts while she was alive; I assume she is just as broad-minded about drinking with the living now she's dead."

Loa Lindgren, the main character of Blythe's Morris-nominated debut novel The Freak Observer, is - as if you couldn't tell from Blythe's description of her recent activities - one of the most insatiable intellects you are likely to come across in YA fiction.

Loa is for you, if you, as a teen, read the word "polymath" and thought it was a terrible word. "Many maths." Please. You could definitely have come up with a better word for being interested in and good at a number of disciplines. Who are these people, anyway, and what business do they have coining words? They're certainly not polymaths, that's for sure.

Why is Loa drinking absinthe? Why does anybody drink absinthe - because they're a little bit pretentious, that's why. Occupational hazard for polymaths (see the last 8 years of this blog). Blythe's an indexer in addition to writing YA. She ends up knowing a lot about a lot of things, too. She's the most polymathematical axe-wielding peasant you know.

There are a whoooole lotta "official" ways to drink absinthe, most involving a special spoon and a special glass: the Pontarlier glass, with a pinched-off little reservoir at the bottom for observing the reaction that occurs when water, sugar, and liquor mix; or the Brouille glass, which has a separate... you know what? both Loa and Blythe live in the middle of fucking nowhere. Nobody owns any special-purpose French glassware out there unless they found it on eBay, and Loa's absinthe phase hasn't lasted long enough for her to start accumulating special accoutrement.

Velma, now... Velma I do not know. Please note that our esteemed Special Guest picked a character from a book that even she doesn't know will ever get published - a dead character at that! Send me the damn manuscript, Blythe - I totally want to read it now.

Salmiakkikossu is likewise unknown to me. I know it's made from salmiak, strong and salty licorice from Scandihoovia. I like salmiak. Whenever I put in an order with All Things Dutch, my source for licorice that people generally put in their mouth and then take back out again, asking, "are you sure this is supposed to be candy?" I always order some salmiak. Sometimes you can get it in little cat shapes! And little pipes!

But I had to google this liqueur. It turns out not to be liqueur! It is generally not available outside of Finland, so you have to make it at home. I love making things at home! How do you do it?

Well, first you get some salmiak candy. One website recommends Tyrkisk Peber, which translates to "Turkish pepper" and if you think that is kind of a weird name for a candy, you are beginning to get the thing about salmiak. Once you've procured this awful Finnish shit, you just drop it in a pot and pour a bottle of vodka over it. When the "candy" has melted, you drink the vodka. Oh. Ew.

The website Metroactive says:

The treacherous concoction actually killed a few people back in the early '90s, so the Finnish parliament decided to ban the stuff. Never ones for the alcohol-regulated life, the Finns responded by simply making their own version on a mass scale, so the government eventually gave up and lifted the ban. Koskenkorva is actually a small town in Finland that translates as "dead water in the rapids," and the label on the back of the bottle is intentionally upside down, so you can read it while you drink."

THAT'S what Blythe wants to drink with her dead unpublished girl character. Pohjanmaan kautta ("bottoms up"), girls!

Another cute story about this stuff can be found on Salmiyuck! Adventures in Salmiak (Don't try this at home). The kid who writes that website is a boy after our own hearts. Let's see how he scores:

he made his own Salmiakkikossu (ding! one point),
sampled it sober (point to the boy)
and sampled it drunk (five points for doing it and another five for knowing that people will drink all kinds of weird shit once they're already wasted)
and lastly, he advises that when you pass out on the office conference room floor, do it under the conference table, so the cleaning staff has less trouble vacuuming around you. FIFTY POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR!!

But Salmiakkikossu is probably something I won't try. While I am nuts for strong licorice (I'm going to a former Dutch colony for Christmas week - guess who's going to check out every candy store on the island??) (oh I am going to make myself sick), I don't like licorice-flavored things. Anise cookies, Pastis, ecch. My husband mixed eggnog and Pastis one time and I nearly divorced him.

Gotta be a candy store or two on that street, right?

Wait, no. I can't say anything negative about my husband right now. Turns out, because he is in good physical condition, the orthopedic surgeon says we can delay his Achilles tendon surgery until after Christmas, which means he can come with us to Curacao after all! No more weeping! Appreciably less profanity! I love THE WHOLE WORLD TODAY.

Except eggnog and Pastis. I hate eggnog and Pastis. And Anne Shirley.

But I love you, and I love Blythe, and I want to get the two of you together. Read The Freak Observer and for goodness sake read Black Helicopters.

Tomorrow! Oh you are going to LOOOVE THIS. Should I tell? No, nope I'm not gonna. Suffer!

Advil Calendar 2014 EXCITING GUEST WEEK Telekinetic Teenager Edition with David Lubar

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 14:00:00 +0000

Stalking out of Target today at 9:23 a.m., my bag full of oxycodone, sunscreen, MAD Magazine, and "concert attire," I realized what had so far been missing from my holiday.

Rage. Barely contained, dry-eyed, crackling, hair-on-end rage.

I mean, I had this year pretty much wired. I hadn't overcommitted to writing assignments, everyone had already been sick and gotten over it, and best of all, I had booked - and paid for - a trip to TROPICAL PARADISE for my family and my parents, hoping to escape the traditional drama and anxiety that is part and festively-wrapped fucking parcel of this season of gifts.

I don't mean to show off, but look:

This is the house we rented in Curacao. That couch is crying out for me, a cocktail, and a book.

No wonder my customary December slow burn was barely at a simmer. I was cool - I have been lazing through December devoid of the usual stress. Not anymore, baby. It's happened:

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN IS FEELING THE SEASON

Best xmas movie ever, BTW.

As I piloted my Prius between the usual suburban psychopaths inching their overbuilt, undermirrored giant vehicles (fuck you Ford Motor Company) in and out of their generous Target parking spaces (if you have to make a seven-point turn to get out of a perpendicular parking space, madam, you might try buying a smaller car), squinting against the suddenly-blazing sun (fuck you, Sun), trying to mentally solve today's suddenly-complicated puzzle of two cars, one driver, two kids, one guitar lesson, two sets of "concert attire" (fuck you Quakers), I suddenly began to recognize the pitch at which my mind was vibrating. I was driving a little too fast, making lists in my head and spitting profanity at every city bus that cut me off (fuck you MTA).

"So this is Christmas," I thought, and cracked myself up.

Why the sudden descent into seasonal rage and despair?

Here's why: last night, my husband's right Achilles tendon abruptly parted while he was playing basketball. He called me while a friend drove him to the Emergency Room, said he thought it was a bad sprain. I told him I would put the kids to bed and to text me when he needed me to pick him up.

I got his text around midnight. "Come and get me," he typed. "It's a disaster." After I found a place to park (fuck you Union Memorial) and checked in and got lost twice trying to find the curtained cubby where he was getting wrapped up in a worrying amount of plaster and gauze, I was happy to see him conscious and not in too much pain. But he looked so sad. "Oh sweetie," I said. "No parasailing for you!"

"Can he swim at least?" I asked the doctor, and that's when they told me that because this particular injury comes with a high risk of blood clots, he is not allowed to fly. NOT ALLOWED to get on a plane and fly to the Caribbean for an already-paid-for Christmas vacation.

I need to go in the other room and swear for a while, so why don't you enjoy this clip of "The Human Highlight Reel" Dominique Wilkins sustaining the same injury.

Barkley sure is sympathetic. His last words to Nique are, "Don't get depressed." That's good advice. I think I'll tell my husband, "Honey, don't get depressed. While you're laying on the couch for a week all alone in our house in stinkin' BALTIMORE on CHRISTMAS, keep your chin up." It's a good thing they prescribed him that oxy, because if I want to punch something, imagine how he feels.

I have four days to set him up in this house so that he can get everything he needs. On crutches. Without putting any weight on his right foot. Or driving. I better lay in some booze, don't you think?

And this is where today's Advil Calendar Special Guest comes in! David Lubar is not only a prolific and talented author of children's and young adult fiction, he is also a cocktail connoisseur AND he has suggested the perfect drink - and perfect drinking companion - for my lamed and lonely husband.

When I asked David (shown here with a beer and Lisa Yee's little stuffed mascot Peepy) which of his multitudes of excellent characters he'd like to drink with, he was on it like tonic.

"What great fun. I can answer that one right away. The character I'd want to drink with would be Eddie "Trash" Thalmayer, the telekinetic who was introduced in Hidden Talents, and took center stage in a "Bourne-Identity meets Carrie" adventure in True Talents.

He's probably working as an artist, now, so it would be up to me to pay for the drinks. He'd be the perfect drinking companion. Thanks to his ability to move objects with his mind, if we got seriously toasted (which is always a danger when artists and writers gather around a full bottle of hard liquor) he'd be able to fetch drinks and snacks from across the room without either of us having to get up from our seats.

Being young, Eddie would probably have a preference for sweeter and more complicated drinks, but I'd do my best, in my role of his mentor and creator, to guide him toward a simple concoction built upon a middle-shelf delectable rye, such as Bulleit, and fresh ingredients. By the end of our session, he'd definitely experience character growth, and possibly even an epiphany or two."

Somebody loves this man. Three somebodies, apparently!

Just these few sentences from David have calmed me right the heck down. And bonus picture: here's David on his birthday. Among his gifts are a bottle of Jameson, one of Maker's Mark and a bottle of Bulleit. Aren't you jealous? I know I am. That Bulleit is singing to me: "Hey Librarian! Your day has super sucked so far! Shouldn't you test David's cocktail idea?"

No, bottle of Bulleit. Shut up with your warbling. It's only 1pm, and before I hang up my car keys for the day, I'm going to have to get the kids from school, take Milo to guitar, find a place for them both to change prior to their Winter Concert, pick up Milo from guitar, drop them both at the concert venue, meet up with my mom, find food for everybody, and then park and take the shuttle to the concert. And somehow retrieve our other car, which Bob left at basketball last night.

And I don't need to test David's cocktail. There are a whole ton of things you can do with a "middle-shelf delectable rye" as he puts it, and very few of them are anything but excellent. Rye is very forgiving.

It mixes really well with weird vermouths like Cynar or Punt e Mes, sweetens up nicely accompanied by my new best friend Gran Classico or cherry liqueur, and loves lemon like I love airplane ticket refunds (I've been on the phone with Expedia for over an hour - cross your fingers for me). Bulleit is a great cocktail rye. Michter's is for sipping straight, and Pikesville is for punch, but Bulleit is an MVP team player.

The "Ice Ball Oldie" at Swift's Attic

At Swift's Attic in Austin, Paula and I met Carl the Bartender, who is becoming bartender-famous for his Ice Balls: mixtures of liquor, water, bitters and garnish frozen in spherical ice molds. He makes spiced vermouth ice balls, a Ricard Pastis ice ball for an interesting version of a Sazerac, and a Cherry Heering ice ball that he then drowns in Knob Creek Rye.

OH MY GOD was that drink good. It was a different drink every time I sipped it - I think an agile mind like Eddie's would really appreciate it.

I tried to duplicate that ice ball at home, like this:

1/3 Cherry Heering (I used Luxardo Maraschino)
2/3 water
lemon zest
1 Luxardo maraschino cherry

I don't have any of those spherical ice molds (still waiting on the Death Star one in my stocking), so I used my Big Cube silicone tray. I also tried this mixture in a Bundt pan, for a Whiskey Tamarind Punch I made on Thanksgiving. Either I need a colder freezer, or this mixture needs more water.

Actually, I think the secret really is in the spheres. The water freezes first, across the top of the vessel, leaving the alcohol, which freezes later, and which doesn't expand as water does, in the bottom. The result is an ice cube that is very slushy and crystal-y at the bottom. I bet Carl the Bartender flips those spherical molds periodically to mix the water and the booze and even out the freezing.

But back to David and his books for a second. Hidden Talents was published back in 1999, but damned if that book doesn't have legs for days. Milo found a copy on our bookshelf earlier this year and snarfed it up like I eat candied macerated orange peel. LOVED it.

Tor is putting out a new paperback edition next year, so put it on your list. Eddie and his pals Torchie, Lucky, Cheater, Martin and Flinch are your classic underdogs with a twist - great characters who have been lucky enough to find themselves in a Lubar plot not once but twice.

Milo, like most humans, also enjoyed Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie. That book is a realistic humorous YA novel with a teen boy protagonist, and books like that are thin on the ground indeed. It is a real go-to, and has made me look like a genius more than once.

In fact, we've been David Lubar fans around here for a long time. Ezra wasn't any more than seven when he read an ARC of Attack of the Vampire Weenies: And Other Warped and Creepy Tales. He's 11 now, and still a Weenies fan. Look at that face! It's kind of the same expression he made when I explained how an Achilles tendon retracts up the back of the leg when it is severed.

I'd love to enlist Eddie to come hang with my poor husband while the rest of us are in the Caribbean. I think they'd get along. They could lounge in the living room telling lies, and as they systematically wiped out the liquor cabinet, Eddie could fetch sandwiches and bananas from the kitchen without even lifting a finger.

Next! We bumped Blythe for a day because I was raging and needed rye whiskey to calm me down, so that means we meet her sharp and singular characters - and drink with them - tomorrow.

You're Invited to a Cocktail Party On the Pirate Ship Revenge: Advil Calendar Year IV EXCITING GUEST WEEK Day III: Caroline Carlson!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 13:30:00 +0000

I love looking out the window this time of year. The pissing-down rain, the 100% cloud cover hovering just above the chimneys... it's 2:30 in the afternoon and already the streetlights are on. Some poor schlub just passed by on a bicycle. It's like Dickens out there.

#paradise #tattoo #shin. AKA OW.

No wonder the British were in such a sweat to run and go colonize Trinidad or collect beetles in Sri Lanka. I'm taking off for sunnier climes myself. Conned my whole family into swapping wrapping and baking for lounging and collecting shells this year.

The joy I feel at not having to rearrange the whole house to accommodate a dead tree cannot be expressed in mere words. You must imagine a physical explosion of elation that incorporates the entire A to Z of Dance punctuated by frozen moments of Broadway weeping. Clasped hands and all.

But until then, it's still streaming ashwater gray outside. We gotta get out of here. Let's make like Baronet Joseph Banks ("Father of Australia," breadfruit enthusiast) and get on a damn boat to anywhere else. Welcome to...

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN DRINKS WITH PIRATES (and pirate-adjacent personnel)

What's your strategy for injecting your eyeholes with a straight shot of Vitamin D when it's gloomy outside? Here at the reference desk, we browse vacation homes on VRBO, check the live webcams of that active lava flow from Kilauea, or flip through Instagram images tagged #paradise. It's a little weird what some people consider paradisaical.

At home, my family likes to re-watch the first or second Pirates of the Caribbean movie to get our little dose of blue lagoon. Sun + sand + Orlando Bloom in his prime = aye-aye, Captain! Just last week, when we interrupted our Mostly 'Splody movie habit with a viewing of The Book Thief, the lightest moment in it was when both boys realized that the sensitive, jolly foster father in the film, played by Geoffrey Rush, was also the treacherous pirate captain Hector Barbossa. "Aaaarrrgh!" we bellow, chasing Johnny Depp through a sea cave full of treasure.

And while Captain Jack Sparrow is probably to blame for introducing Johnny Depp to the joys - and multitudinous sins - of overaccessorizing, I just can't hold a grudge. In a world where pirate styling can sometimes go horribly awry, Witty Jack was a fine-looking pirate.

bad hat

Uggs with short sleeves - aka Texas coed chic.

EITHER meticulous shaving OR unkempt head hair - not both.

Pirates don't wear tights.

10 lbs of plastic hair is no.

Vinyl hat is no.

Mr Kline, you are the hottest thing in
this array, but you're dressed like
John Travolta.

And let's not even get into Christopher Walken. I'll produce my own pirate special one of these days. It'll be called Your Show of Sleeves. On it, we'll do dramatic readings from Caroline Carlson's charming adventures The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates #1: Magic Marks the Spot and The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates #2: The Terror of the Southlands. For example, here's Caroline on what a pirate is supposed to look like:

"There were one-eyed pirates and no-eyed pirates, fancy pirates with billowing sleeves and shabby pirates with patched-up knees. They had pointed beards and pointed hats, curly mustaches and curly hooks, peg legs and real legs. they had golden teeth and golden earrings and gold doubloons sparkling in their mouths and ears and pockets. On their shoulders perched monkeys and toucans and tortoises, all seemingly named Polly. Shouts of "Arr!" and "Blast!" filled the air whenever a pirate swung his sword too close to his neighbor or tried to cut in line."

Note NO BEARD BAUBLES.

Caroline Carlson

Don't let Miss Caroline's wholesome demeanor fool you, folks. If her books are any indication, that tidily-groomed head is full of edged weapons and grog recipes. She may well be holding an inhaler loaded with a cocktail of industrial-strength nonstick baking spray and Goo Gone just out of frame.

Caroline says,

"If I had the chance to grab a drink with one of my own characters, I'd invite Miss Eloise Greyson, the exceedingly proper governess and owner of a floating bookshop. We'd drink a tea-based cocktail, naturally, and I'd try to get Eloise to dish about her pirate-captain husband and all the little scallywags they dream of raising. I'm sure she'd be an excellent gossiping companion after a hot toddy or two."

Here's the toddy I would pick for Miss Greyson. She's proper all right, admonishing Hilary to stop saying, "Blast!" and to tidy her cabin, but she's got plenty of grit, and she'll surprise you at every turn. So for Eloise, it's rye whiskey, honey, and tea.

The Whiskey Tea Toddy (from thekitchn.com)

1 teaspoon honey

5 whole cloves

1 cinnamon stick

1 whole anise star

1 1/2 oz rye whiskey

1/2 cup (or more, to taste) already-brewed hot tea (English Breakfast or Earl Grey)

Slice of lemon

Add honey and spices to the bottom of a heat-proof snifter or mug. Add the whiskey and pour in the tea. Squeeze the lemon, drop it in, and stir until the honey is melted.

Hey, I just got a text from my own pirate husband. He's ruptured his Achilles tendon, just five days before we are due to set sail for the Caribbean! Well, get on an airplane, but still. How the hell is that going to work? Not going to think about it. I'd rather brew myself up one of Miss Greyson's comforting, strong toddies and settle in with a little bit more of Caroline's picturesque prose.

"Hilary, Jasper and Charlie all raced for the spyglass, but Hilary claimed it first. Through its lens, she could make out a flat coastline trimmed with crenelated towers and sharp, proud steeples. She caught glimpses of gardens, apple orchards, and what appeared to be rows upon rows of cannons."

Ah... cannons! Orchards! If that doesn't bring a little green grass and blue skies into your day, I don't know what will. Even if you're due to go back out into the streaming rain and rescue your favorite brigand from the Emergency Room any moment now.

Never a dull moment! Tomorrow let's learn about salmiakki and other abstruse alcoholic items with the Terror of the Plains, Blythe Woolston! Achilles tendon. Jesus. FUCK!

Getting Lit in KidLit: ADVIL CALENDAR 2014 - Sydney Taylor Edition with Exciting Guest Laurel Snyder!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:30:00 +0000

It's important to me, as a bloody bloody atheist, to honor holiday claptrap in all its varied flavors and denominations. Claptrap all around! I love claptrap! Livens up the place. If all of us were nonbelievers like me, life would be so dull! We'd have no SantaCon, no fabulous book-themed bat mitvahs. The market for candles would dwindle to those people who want their powder room to smell like cookies. Well. The market for candles would dwindle to those people who put a toilet in a closet and then call it a "powder room."

And my drive home from work would become a whole lot less jaw-dropping. Never change, Parkville.

In the past, Your Neighborhood Librarian has celebrated the Festival of Lights (which started yesterday) with as many Hanukkah-themed schnepsels as I could find. There aren't many.

Laurel Snyder, author of imaginative, heartfelt middle grade novels and more picture books than you were quite aware of, tried to help me with that Hanukkah post but eventually threw up her hands and suggested we just pass around a bottle of Scotch. So this year I asked her an easier question, "Which character of YOURS would you want to drink with?

Laurel Snyder

"Hmmm," said Laurel.

"You'd look divine sitting in a bathtub of bourbon,"
she thought, eyeing Baxter with treyf intent.

"I think I'd want to get wasted with Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher. He's incredibly impressionable, and so could be talked into just about anything.

Plus, he's newly discovered his love of Manischewits (always concord grape, never blackberry!). I can imagine a crazy bar crawl of shots, and lots of meandering religious conversations. Maybe we'd even stop by the rabbi's office for some talmud talk, and a sip of scotch.

Talk about pickled pig's feet!"

When I suggested that Baxter would be a very popular companion on a crawl through - for example - the French Quarter in New Orleans, Laurel replied, "Yes, well, I think he'd be a popular fellow. I don't partake. But lots of people like their drinks bacon infused these days. BODY SHOTS!"

HOW TO DO A BODY SHOT:

Oops. Nope. Not going to go there. The Internet is a dangerous place (don't forget Rule 34) and 30 seconds of browsing just nearly brought my (kosher, vegetarian) lunch back up.

Instant party - just add Sammy

Instead, let's check in with one of my favorite brand websites. The recipes on the Manischewitz website include delicacies like Balsamic Mushroom Matzo Panini with Mango Jam and Faux Pho, made with egg noodles.

We highlighted the Manischewitz Jello Shot two years ago in our Eight Days of Drinking Hanukkah post, and it has since been taken down from the Manischewitz site! Denied! So glad I copied it before it was snuffed out like a Hanukkah candle half an hour after sunset. There's still a recipe for "Over 21" Potato Pancakes, in case you wanted to booze up your breakfast. (No bacon!)

Among Laurel's characters, I know I'd like to drink with Annie and Molly from Seven Stories Up. Time travel brings them together, and a shared sense of adventure makes them friends.

PLUS they get to sneak around a fancy hotel, through hidden rooms and dumbwaiters, and OH that was my favorite kind of adventure when I was a kid. If Laurel and I had known each other back then, I am pretty sure she'd have been with me when I crawled through the suspended ceiling of a university gym to get to the swimming pool like Bender in The Breakfast Club. In case you've ever wondered, yes that works.

It would take a physics miracle to get Molly and Annie back together once they're legal, but hey, I know physicists. I could make that happen. We would hang out on the 13th floor of the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore (the grand old pile that served as the model for the hotel in the book) and drink simple, tart Belvedere cocktails:

Belvedere Cocktail

2 oz vodka

3-4 oz Fresh Lemon Juice

3-4 oz Simple Syrup (if I were making this at home I'd use Ginger Simple Syrup)

Shake and strain over cubed ice into a rocks glass. Garnish with a wedge of lemon and a sprig of mint or rosemary.

Doesn't that look nice? That's nice. I mean, let's face it, cookie-tinis and JELL-O shots are for crazy people.

Oh but now you want to know what we're drinking tomorrow, don't you? Let's just say it's not so much what but where - we're buckling on the swash and taking to the high seas!

Return to Litte Tavern on the Prairie: The Advil Calendar 2014 WEEK TWO - Week of EXCITING GUESTS! Day One: Adam Rex

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 17:32:00 +0000

Hi there. It's Monday! We're halfway through December and true to rum-soaked form, Your Neighborhood Librarian finally has her crap together enough to start posting the Advil Calendar with some regularity. You're going to want to tune in to this, because I have a whole week of Exciting Guests to help us get squishy for the holidays. Exciting Guests!

What kind of Exciting Guests could Your Neighborhood Librarian possibly drum up? Will we hear from celebrity chefs turned novelists? Rock stars turned novelists? NASA techs turned novelists?

NO. EVEN BETTER: find a barstool and buckle up, because ain't nobody drink like an author of books for children drinks. I have authors of YA sci-fi, picture books, time travel adventure (time travel is SO HOT right now take my word for it), pirate adventure, and whatever you'd call that dizzying unquantifiable marvelousness that Blythe Woolston writes. That's right. Its...

ADVIL CALENDAR YEAR FOUR: THE EXCITING GUEST FIGHTS BACK.

Last year, one of my favorite Advil Calendar posts was about drinking with characters from children's literature. Um, two of my favorite posts. I had polled some of my kidlit industry colleagues (mostly bloggers) asking them what character from literature that they'd most like to drink with. Sam Musher said she wanted to get lit with The Baby-Sitters Club - and knew exactly what they'd all be drinking. John Schu wanted to drink with Babymouse, and that sent me on a crazy trip in search of the perfect lychee-tini. We slugged snaps with Pippi and sipped spiked chamomile tea with Mrs. Frisby. It was fun!

So now I have this idiotic compulsion to match characters with cocktails in every book I read. Poor Malorie in Bird Box gets a Dark 'n' Stormy, while the parents in Breed share a pitcher of Salty Dogs. I pulled down a bottle of viryta today to check its progress (needs another week for that cloudiness to settle, I'd say). Doesn't it look just like the cover ofThe Martian? If I dropped in a tiny little astronaut figure?

Which of course made me wonder - what would Mark Watney drink? HA! Trick question! Mark Watney would drink ANYTHING. Mark Watney was stranded on Mars all by himself for like I don't know how many months. Mark Watney would suck down Avon perfume samples if he had any. He would squeeze hand sanitizer onto a sponge and suck the alcohol through it if it meant catching a little buzz.

(I attended a Security Orientation at the Baltimore County Detention Center this week. I am very up to date on my Shit You Wouldn't Expect Is Contraband list.)

I didn't get a chance to ask Andy Weir what he thought Mark Watney would drink, because number one I don't know that guy and number two he's probably busy right now going on the Today Show and christening ships and eating crudite with Matt Damon. Authors of adult books, sheesh. They get all kinds of attention.

But speaking of hand sanitizer, this is when I realized the best thing would be to contact some of the authors I do know (or, uh, authors who had the misfortune of sitting next to me at something and letting me friend them on Facebook) and ask them which of their own characters they'd like to drink with, and what that person (using the word "person" pretty loosely here, see below) would order when the good-looking barman with the half-sleeve tattoos gave them the eye.

Being an author must be the best, man. You can make up the people you'd like to hang out with. Lord knows plenty of people use fiction to design their own boyfriend. I mean - nobody *I* know does that, but, like, you could. Hrmhm.

Oh wait I said "speaking of hand sanitizer" and I just left that hanging, didn't I? This is why I write for free. Let me stop meandering and let's check in with the first of our EXCITING GUESTS...

ADAM REX

Mr. Adam Rex

Why does Adam look blurry in this picture? I'll let him tell it:

"I was going to say that I wanted to spend a night drinking with Merle Lynn, Mick the leprechaun, and Harvey the pooka from my Cold Cereal Saga. But I don’t know. Merle the medieval time-traveler would keep forgetting that he can't order mead. Mick is strictly a perfume-in-his-own-flask man. Harvey would be drinking oatmeal cookie-tinis which would make him initially furious but eventually a real “I love you man” type, and I can’t stand that. Plus Harvey is like an arsonist, but for bar fights. He likes to start something and then watch it from a safe distance.

So none of them would want to share a pitcher, is what I’m saying.

Neither would J.Lo from True Meaning of Smekday, but I think I’d want to hear him talk about watching his life story get turned into a DreamWorks film like it is. So I’d order a beer and set J.Lo up with a glass of hand sanitizer, and see how much he has to drink before he starts being honest."

I love that Mick (that's him in the red tracksuit) drinks perfume. Doesn't drinking perfume sound all tinkly and magic-y? In fact (I learned in my Security Orientation at the Baltimore County House of D), when humans drink perfume they end up in the hospital, so: tinkly, magic-y, and yet super hard-core. Very Mick.

Harvey (duplicitous magic rabbit and bar fight arsonist) is a terrible creature. Or he has a heart of gold. Or, nope, he'll betray you to the evil queen for a pat on the head and a couple of drink coupons. I love a character that keeps you guessing. "Bar fight arson" is a genius way to describe behavior that, hmmm, I may have indulged in myself, oh but that was 20 years ago, and really nobody can even prove I've ever been to Santorini.

I wouldn't drink with Harvey either. Those oatmeal cookie-tinis are DISGUSTING. I thought Adam had made that up, but, as with Rule 34 of the Internet, if it exists, there is a martini of it.

Oatmeal Cookie Martini (from grinandbakeit.com)

1 1/2 oz. Bailey’s
1 oz. Butterscotch Schnapps
1/2 oz. Cream
Splash of Goldschlager
caramel sauce
oatmeal cookies, crushed

Rim a martini glass in caramel sauce and coat with oatmeal cookie pieces. Chill until ready to serve. Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake, pour enjoy.

Thank you Adam Rex! Way to play along! People, read Adam's books. They are for anyone who has ever kind of suspected that there might be something going on under that rosebush between a squirrel and... something that is not a squirrel, and that if they looked closely, they would either go on an adventure or be reduced to a squashed wad of gum on the spot.

And as for Dreamworks making a movie of The True Meaning of Smekday, one of my family's favorite books of all time - it could have gone so horribly wrong. We were so worried! But - giant sigh of relief: besides the title, which is dumb (you can't google Home, and what was wrong with The True Meaning of Smekday?) (I mean besides the implied criticism of certain dogmatists, and really, that's just so subtle, who would notice?), the movie looks terrific! I am so pleased for Adam and for the rest of us, because I could watch this trailer ten times:

Tune in tomorrow, chilblains YES I SAID TOMORROW. I'm generally total crap at doing daily posts, but I've got this week WIRED.

Oh what did Della wear, boy? Advil Calendar Year IV -- The bitter and the sweet

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 21:54:00 +0000

I can't find my orange comb. Where is my orange comb? Such a ridiculous thing to find yourself asking. Ou et la plume de ma tante? Donde esta mi peine naranjo?

It's been missing off and on all year - I'll find it and be like, "God dammit, HERE's my orange comb!" In the toiletry bag I use for travel, in my summer pocketbook, laying mysteriously on my dresser. But this has stopped, and I feel like I might have left it somewhere...far away. Like Belgium. Or my niece's boyfriend's bathroom. Chris, did I leave my orange comb at your house?

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN DEBATES THE SEASON

I own three combs, but my orange comb is the best. I have long straight hair that will tangle like the Devil's pubies unless I comb it right out of the shower. So - you know how it is - something that you use every day, your specifications for it are ridiculous. It must have wide teeth that are slightly rounded on the end. It must be easy to grip. I used to have a fake-aluminum comb that my sister-in-law gave me that was perfect. It said "CONAIR" on it but it had nothing to do with Nicolas Cage. I think it came with a hair dryer. When it broke I had to totally go on a search for an appropriate replacement. Don't you kind of hate yourself in those moments? How spoiled am I that I look at 47 combs on the Ricky's website and purse my lips and say, "No."

Get a brain scan and experiment
with highlights at the same time.

On the other hand, I approve of my unwillingness to spend money on a comb that is not going to cut it. Comb it. Whatever. I hate having a basket full of implements that somebody spent money on that will only ever gather dust and eventually take up landfill space. Thank Jesus I never had a daughter: it is developmentally appropriate to fuck with your hair throughout the teenage years, I think it's been proven using new fMRI scans, so of course you have to close your eyes before you roll them at her.

And therefore you can no more deny your daughter curling irons, gel, bendy foam curlers, and whatnot than you could deny her black-and-white-printed fabric-covered foam blocks when she was an infant and still developing visual acuity. But I think if I walked in the bathroom and saw all that crap littering the vanity I would pop every blood vessel north of my sternum.

I should totally try eyeliner on Milo though. Have you seen the L'Oreal Makeup app? It uses the camera on your phone to show you what you'd look like if you were a particularly terrifying female impersonator, clown, or Robert Palmer girl. I generally have no qualms about posting embarrassing pictures of my sons, but I have to draw the line at sharing the pictures that came out of the L'Oreal Makeup Whatever app. However, I don't mind revealing my own secret identity as that lady you see muttering at the scented candles in Target, chewing on her Thorazine.

That was a sidebar. I am still thinking about combs, and materialism, and accumulation of crap. I am wondering: how many combs do most people own? Worldwide? It seems like one of those small personal items that everyone must own one of. Combs are just combs. Like pens. Sometimes you have to buy one, but really if you need a comb, you must have a comb somewhere in the house, right?

But my 4 combs are probably the only combs in our house, so that means an average of 1 comb per person. Could we say that, worldwide, there is an average of one comb for ever person? Factoring that they are small and cheap and so plenty of people must own like 5 combs, but bald people don't have any, and people who wear their hair super-short don't, and people who don't give a crap about their appearance.

Bill the Barber (not one of the 85 richest
people in the world) owns more combs than
anyone I know. Sometimes uses them to
goof around with my boys' heads.

Or is that just my privileged assumption, born and raised and living in a climate of plenty, that anyone who wants a comb probably has a comb? The 85 richest people in the world "share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population" according to a recent Oxfam report that - maybe you could tell - has been on my mind lately.

If that abbreviation "tn" throws you, it's a British abbreviation for TRILLION. 85 people control 1.56 TRILLION dollars.

Do 85 people also own the same number of combs as the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet combined? No, that's ridiculous. Even if only one in every three people owned a comb, each of those 85 people would in that case own over a hundred million combs. Warehouses full of combs. Shipping containers packed with combs that shuttle around the world, following them from mountain cabin to beachside villa.

What the fuck do I know? Maybe they do. "I think I'll spend Christmas at the Lake Como house, Penelope. See to it that the combs arrive shortly before I do."

This time of year, everyone's thinking about giving. We buy gifts for our loved ones. We donate old towels to the animal shelter, toys to the toy drive at work, we tack ten bucks onto our grocery receipt to pay for food for the homeless. I send a blob of money to First Book and notify our extended family that we have used our love for them as an excuse to do a little bit of good.

But, jeeze.

It's a little bit depressing. 85 people on one side of the scale, 3.5 BILLION people on the other side. 3.5 billion is a little less than half the people on the planet.

Makes my little gestures seem so futile. Like Della selling her hair to buy Jim a chain for his pocketwatch, while he sold his watch to buy her a set of tortoiseshell combs. WHERE is my fucking orange comb?

Maybe this is why I can't get into my usual holiday mood this year. I mean, my "usual holiday mood" is already not, like, 'let's decorate the tree while carols play on the radio,' but most years I have at least settled into a state of genial humbuggery by now. I buy my kids ironic t-shirts, I lovingly unwrap my transvestite Ken doll tree topper and place him tenderly atop the tree I resent having to have in my living room. I write the Advil Calendar.

But I'm just not up for it. Ezra and I were out doing errands yesterday and stopped at a pho place to eat. TV's littered the joint, as they do, and the 6 o'clock news was on. We don't watch the news at home. Hell, we barely listen to the radio. We get the newspaper and so we keep semi informed, but man, there is nothing like the TV news. Awful. They led with that poor guy in Yemen and closed with 650,000 Filipinos evacuating their homes. All I could hear was Eric Garner, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe." More chili stuff in my soup so Ez thinks that's why my eyes are watering.

On the way home I stopped at a second liquor store and bought a fourth bottle of Everclear. Just for good measure.

So. It's Advent, here's my contribution. Liquor. Last year's batch of viryta turned out so well, I knew I had to make it again. With minor alterations because I never make the same thing twice the same way. To wit:

VIRYTA 2014: Orange you glad it's Advent edition

6 lbs honey
4 750-ml bottles of Everclear (available once again in Baltimore, but at 151-proof rather than 190)
8 cinnamon sticks
30 allspice berries
1 1/2 whole nutmegs, broken with a cleaver
3 T caraway seeds
30 whole cloves
30 cardamom pods, cracked
3 vanilla beans
one 3" piece of ginger, sliced thinly lengthwise
peel of one whole lemon
peel of one whole orange
two whole oranges, sliced into half wheels
one whole lemon, sliced into half wheels

Warm the whole spices up in the bottom of a stock pot until they are fragrant. Dump in 6 cups of water and add the peels, ginger and the vanilla beans. Bring to a simmer. Add another 6 cups of water, one of the sliced oranges and the sliced lemon.

In another pot, heat the honey slowly with the other orange. If you have any ginger left over, slice it into rounds and add it. Skim off the thick foam that rises.

Once the spice mixture is reduced by half, remove from heat and let cool.

Once the honey mixture stops throwing up foam, remove from heat.

When the spice water is cool enough to mess with, strain it into the honey. Do yourself a favor and line the strainer with a paper towel. Any fine particulates you eliminate now will not have to be filtered out of the finished product.

Mix the water and the honey, and slowly add the booze. Cover tightly, heat gently for 15 minutes. Cool overnight in the tightly covered pot. Funnel into bottles.

Hey, look at that! You have orange and possibly ginger slices that have been hanging out in your honey and booze. What should you do with them?

You MIGHT put them in a clean jar. You MIGHT put the leftover viryta that didn't fill a bottle and heat it on the stove until it is a dark amber syrup, and pour it over your orange and possibly ginger slices, and keep that jar in the fridge for when you run out of those incredible Luxardo Maraschino cherries and you need something to garnish your Manhattan or Old-Fashioned.

Or you might just sit feeling futile and frustrated about our fucked-up world and eat 'em sticky right out of the jar. They're kind of the same color as that damn comb.

Your Neighborhood Librarian Does New York

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:16:00 +0000

Oy.

The number of posts I've started with "Oy." It's many. I usually go back and delete it, but not this time I don't think.

We've just returned home from New York City. I love New York. I love New York like a really great tree or a crazy friend I don't see that often, or, or - like a city I used to live in. I know it but I don't know it. I like going back to places I know to see what they've cooked up lately, or if they haven't changed. I am sad that the Spanish place behind the bus station got closed by the health department. I am sad about that for two reasons, come to think of it. I am happy that you can now get pork donburi less than ten blocks from the Javits Center.

I love that the harp is still lit at the Tap Room.

I love that the New-York Historical Society still has that idiotic/genius collection of everyday and extraordinary attic items in its climate-controlled Luce Center, and that they've added a life-size bronze of Abe Lincoln to their front step.

But man this trip socked me right in the gut.

Oh by the way - I love you, my New York-dwelling friends, but this trip was too unpredictable and work-packed to try to steal away and see any of you. Except our nieces, but nieces are family. And they're fairly flexible schedule-wise, being also very youthful. Bob and I are coming up again in July though, so CLEAR YOUR SCHEDULES.

So, I went up on a Tuesday afternoon, sharing an unusually pleasant bus ride with my friend Paula. We were worried it was going to be raining when we got there. It wasn't. More on this later.

I nearly got nailed by a cyclist getting out of a cab with my luggage in front of my hotel. Bike lanes! There are bike lanes all over the damn place in New York City now! Who'd have expected that? "Where am I?" I thought. "Toronto?"

That night all the lady librarians from my old branch ate dinner at Coppola's, an old-fashioned Italian place not far from the American Museum of Natural History, where I had my first librarian job. Afterward, we walked past the museum and I babbled about the human remains stored on the 5th floor - shh! and the night I got locked in the Anthropology storage and the romance novelist/astronomy librarian who got to go to the opening of the Rose Center for Earth and Space in 2000.

People ask me if I miss living in New York and I guess I don't. I miss my friends, but we never had any money and our commutes were long and our apartment smelled like carpet and soup and had no light.

Lyrebirds in storage at AMNH.

But man I miss that museum. I knew all of its ins and outs, and it had a lot of ins and outs. Secret stairways, hidden doors. Hippo skulls lined up on a catwalk under the roof. Crazy scientists. Thousands of tiny stuffed birds laid out in shallow drawers in cabinets rising 8 feet tall.

There's a book that tells some of those stories, the rather stupidly titled Dinosaurs in the Attic (the dinosaurs are in the basement, duh), written by Douglas Preston, who used to work at the AMNH magazine before he got famous for writing gory thrillers with Lincoln Child (those books still have sort of an anthropology theme if you notice).

Maybe after the kids go away to college I will go live in NYC for a few months and update that book.

The Upper West Side - all of New York, really - is just teeming with kids nowadays. Most of them are about the age of my Milo - who is twelve - or younger. When I lived in New York, NOBODY had kids. I am serious. I worked in a museum with 2000 employees, and I can only think of three professional staff who had kids. One apiece. And NOBODY who was around my age - I was in my early 30's - was even thinking about starting a family. Hell, even Milo wasn't exactly planned per se. And when I found out I was pregnant, in January of 2001, all of our friends were like, "You're having a what?"

I have a theory about where all these kids came from. More on this later, too.

All of us library people were there for Book Expo and two attendant preconferences. Very stimulating, very exhausting. I got to hang out with people I admire and respect, people I have worked with at a distance, people I know well but never get to see, funny smart people, people I hug on sight.

Me, Lois Ehlert, Chris Raschka, Peter Sís, Raina Telgemeier.

I moderated a panel discussion on Wednesday that I had been very nervous about (four internationally-renowned author/illustrators, three of whom have been commanding great respect for decades and the fourth of whom is going to) but which went off just fine, so I was able to relax after that.

There were some pleasant surprises at the book festival. Lisa Scottoline is funny! So is Kathy Reichs! Everyone's favorite Dread Pirate Roberts, Cary Elwes, is a bit nervous speaking to crowds! Librarians LOOOVE Stan Lee!

I also got my important shopping done. Here is my NYC retail checklist:

Uniqlo. T-shirts, summer dresses, jeans.
Ricky's. Shampoo and conditioner. Shut up yes I buy my hair care products in New York.
Kiehls. Shaving cream. Shut up yes I've ruined my husband too.
Aedes de Venustas. Perfume. Miguel, one of the owners, is so amazingly nice to Milo and Ezra when I bring them in. "What kind of scent do you like? Like, citrus, or..." and Milo says, "Food!" Idiot. He and his brother are great at helping me pick perfume though. Sometimes I have to smell two dozen little cards and squirt candidates all up and down both arms, but this time I found a winner in three. Miguel gave Milo Jeux de Peau because it kind of smells like food - baked goods and apricot - and wow. Both kids were like, "No more calls - that's the winner."
Century 21. Shoes and kid clothes. Because I don't care how good for you they are, Fit Flops shouldn't cost more than about $30 and even that is high, and boys's shorts should cost no more than $10.

But I am stalling.

Hey, you know how people always kind of gripe about how thin New Yorkers are? Bob wore his Fuelband thingie while we were in the city and hit his goal every day without even trying. He went for a run in Central Park yesterday and by the end of the day was at 3x his goal. You just can't help being more active there.

Especially when the weather's so nice.

We went to Studio 54 last night and saw Cabaret! We neeeever went to shows when we lived there. I saw Picard in The Tempest but that was IT. I saw Mark Morris a couple times, but dance is not Broadway. Loved the show. I am so glad I have seen Alan Cumming growling "Ladies annnd.... gennelmennnn" in person in my lifetime. Although Michelle Williams was playing Sally Bowles and she was just so odd. I finally decided she was doing like a cross between Marianne Faithfull and Bubble from AbFab.

Then it occurred to me - Bubble from AbFab was also Little Voice, so I'll bet SHE's been Sally Bowles. And holy shit. Has she ever!

In order to see that show, we let the kids hang out in the hotel room by themselves. They're ten and twelve now, and fairly trustworthy. Ezra watched a documentary on WWII and Milo watched Animal Planet. Nerds.

Ezra was born in Baltimore. We moved here in 2002. Milo was born in Manhattan, on September 1st, 2001. This trip to NYC, under endless, faultless, enamel-blue skies, breathing sparkling sunlit air - I am not kidding, on a clear day the air quality in New York is crystal - strolling those wide West Side sidewalks on 11th Avenue near the Javits Center and enjoying breezes and 70 degrees... oh my god it was all I could do not to burst into tears.

Every goddamn plane that crossed overhead seemed to catch my attention. Not that I was afraid - even PTSD'ed-out I am not irrational - I just, I just couldn't seem to stop noticing them.

Walking to breakfast this morning, more damn beautiful blue sky weather. I grabbed Milo and hugged him around the shoulders and could not stop myself remembering the days after he was born, drinking in his tiny silky perfect-ness and how happy we were and how breathlessly, uncontrollably devastated we were at the same time.

I didn't cry in front of my kids. I pressed my lips between my teeth and smiled because I was happy, I am happy, I just feel all these tears building up until my face feels heavy and my cheekbones ache. I had such a wonderful week but I also wanted to be curled up in a fucking ball with my arms wrapped around myself IN a GOD DAMN CORNER.

We stopped in to the New-York Historical Society yesterday. Quiet, as usual, full of things that will make you laugh and things you didn't know - I recommend it always. They have a new movie, a ten-minute overview of New York history that is very professional and very proud and very fond. It made me cry twice, once during a photo montage of faces of immigrants and once of course toward the end.

That movie is narrated by Liev Schreiber, a native New Yorker who is actually the cousin of an old friend of mine. That friend had a baby - he's named Marco, which is kind of a cute coincidence - right about when I had Milo. We've never talked about it, but I wonder if that year affected her like it has me.

She's probably over it better though, not having moved away.

And I wonder if New York City has become a city full of parents, full of kids who know how to behave in restaurants and retail people who seem not to mind kids and museum programming with kid appeal and goddamn bike lanes because twelve and a half years ago on a beautiful blue sky day people got up from their desks and looked up and called their own parents to tell them they were all right and subconsciously decided that what their life needed was more love, because without the maximum amount of love a person can bear, other things are not bearable at all.

I, for example, love you. Good night.

Your Neighborhood Librarian Makes a List

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 May 2014 00:21:00 +0000

A long time ago, a woman who had just moved back to Spain from Argentina told me a funny story about getting things done. (Was it Venezuela? One or the other.) We were talking about regional differences in spoken Spanish and she said she once found herself describing her day to a neighbor: "First we'll get the car, then we'll get the laundry and the groceries, and then swing by the school and get the children."

Only - the casual verb form of "get" that she was using to mean "pick up" was actually a profanity in Argentina. So what the aghast neighbor heard was, "First we'll fuck the car, then we'll fuck the laundry and the groceries, and then swing by the school and fuck the children."

And oh, doesn't everybody feel like that sometimes?

So, uh. I'm on leave from my usual hours at the library. The branch is undergoing renovation so I am picking up odds-and-end shifts at my old branch in Southeast Baltimore County for a couple months. And - sidebar - if you work in a system as immense and diverse as Baltimore County's, this is a GREAT thing to do from time to time. Maybe everybody should shake off their semi-rural or practically-urban or aging or overeducated or well-to-do or poverty-line surroundings and switch it up from time to time. Remind themselves that different people have different needs.

Oh they are acting all cheery, but something tells me when the music stops
one of these bitches is going to whip out a shiv. Models are scary.

Ooh, schoolteachers should do that too! You know? Just, all of a sudden be working in a different school, just for a semester! Everybody should jump up and turn around and sit back down in a different -- no, Jesus, that's a terrible idea. Bad for the children.

But librarians should do it. What's the diff?

I thought that I would be working less while my home branch was closed, so I made this little resolution. I'm not much for resolutions (besides the pants thing), but what with a number of time-consuming projects I've done lately, plus the regular daily to-do list, certain non-critical tasks have sort of been waylaid. Dumb shit that I need to do around the house. Stuff that nobody else will do because - well, let's break this down:

I am the only woman in the house so some stuff applies only to me. I had to pick up a CD of my mammogram images and deliver them to the breast surgeon - fine, that's on me.
Certain things are completely invisible to the other people who live here. Three individuals in this house - five, including the cats - will step gingerly OVER a tangle of cords on the floor twelve times a day and never consider that that it is a thing that could actually be moved..
"I don't know how that is accomplished". This includes things like making dentist appointments and weeding the garden.

So my resolution was to do ONE dumb itchy little errandy thing that I've been putting off for each day that my home branch is closed. Do I have sixty such items piled up, one for every day the branch is closed?

This is...

Your Neighborhood Librarian Sets 'Em Up and Knocks 'Em Down

I. I boxed up two boxes of books and delivered them to a librarian who works with a family reading program at the Baltimore County Detention Center. These are free books to be given to the kids in the program. Two boxes of books to the Baltimore County House of D! DONE!

"No standing - Only dancing" MAN I love that school.

II. I went through five years of photographs I took at my kids' old school in order to find pictures of the principal for a celebratory slide show. DONE.

III. The basement flooded and I cleaned up after that.

IV. I put next year's school schedule into the household Google calendar. I know what's happening from now til June 2015.

V. I took the children to the dentist. Milo has a cavity. Yup, that's what you get, mofo, for not brushing twice a day. You gotta brush like Daddy and not like Mom.

VI. Camp forms. Did that one with a hangover. Twenty four pages of physician contact info and photo releases.

Saucy Colonial Gentleman!

VII. I bought a "Colonial Gentleman" wig for my friend who has been appointed to the bench. I have a friend who is a judge. Do you have a friend who is a judge? I don't know why I think that's so crazy. I gave that wig a purple streak, light-up earrings and flamingo sunglasses so that it's more Baltimore and less Barrister.

VIII. Hook adjustment. We have a tiny powder room off the kitchen. A dish towel hangs on a hook in that powder room because there is otherwise no room for a towel to dry your hands. But that hook is in the wrong place. You know how that can be, right? When something is just WRONG?

In this case, the hook was on the wall opposite the sink, so you had to turn around from the sink to reach the towel to dry your hands. And it's a very small powder room, so you'd be doing a little spin. A little twirl. A little Rites of Spring move, with water drops spraying from your hands as you turn. And all I did was take the hook off that wall and hammer it in to the wall next to the sink and now my brain doesn't itch when I have to deal with that hand towel.

IX. You know what else? This is something big. Right before Easter I was down the basement and I noticed a tool that someone hadn't put away. They'd put it on top of the toolbox instead of opening the lid of the toolbox and setting it inside the toolbox and so I did that. And while I was at it, I took the other things that people hadn't put back in the toolbox and I put them in the toolbox.

I mean BITE ME, it doesn't just SIT THERE, you know? There are PLACES for things, OBVIOUS places. Or NOT obvious places but a little looking around might SOLVE THAT MYSTERY. Or not obvious even a little bit. Fine, ok, where do bungee cords go, I don't know either, but check me out, I am going to MAKE SOMETHING UP and then tell everyone - hey next time you need a bungee cord it will be looped around that pipe by the water heater. Or wrapped around your brother's neck, I haven't decided yet.

So once I picked up all those tools I noticed that the counter they were sitting on was grimy, so I grabbed a rag and some Lysol and there you go. ALSO A THING THAT YOU CAN DO. Nobody's going to dock your pay or complain that you didn't do it right.

And while I had the rag in my hand, I noticed our basement refrigerator. Also filthy. Has been since it came into the house - the thing looked like it had been actually shat out of someone's body, it's so filthy. So I cleaned the outside, and then opened it up and lord it looked like someone had spilled a root beer in it and maybe a chicken had bled to death and then someone peed in it because they were sleepwalking and got confused about their appliances. I do not have high housekeeping standards, but if your fridge looks like a latrine at camp, do something about it, that's what I always say. And mine only looked like that for about seven years but then absolutely I DID something about it. I sure did.

While cleaning the fridge, we rinsed out our rags in the utility sink (by this time I had recruited Ezra to help). Coincidentally, the utility sink also looked like someone had been using it as a latrine. Soooo I scrubbed that out. I have to tell you, I didn't think that thing was comin' back. I thought it was gooked for good. But it turns out it was mostly paint from washing out brushes the spring I painted essentially the entire inside of the house. So NUMBER NINE: I cleaned the uncleanable.

X. Prior to that, inspired by the book My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag, I cleaned the mesh vent covers from under the rangehood. "The what?" you say, and I begin to suspect you are related to my husband. But yes. The lady who wrote the Barf book wrote something like, "Did you realize that those vents are growing a new textile? Some kind of felted grease fabric built up on a dust-fiber matrix, shortly to be discovered by NASA and put into use as a frictionless insulator in spacesuits?" I totally just made that up, I can't remember what she said about it. But inspired by her, I peeked up under my rangehood and I was like, "Aaaa! Fuck!" So in the book she says how to clean them and so I cleaned 'em.

XI. While I was at it, I followed the lady's advice about how to clean my rings - denture tablet - and now my rings are all sparkly.

XII. I changed the lock on the front door. It was so jacked as to be almost unusable. So if you have an old key to my house (lots of people do), it will work even less well now.

XIII. I threw out the old worn-out doormat and bought a new one. My friend Spoon makes the coolest doormats.

XIV. I planted tomatoes. Twice, thank you very much unseasonal frost.

XV. I will only list the action verbs that are associated with the Taxes task: Sort. Stack. File. Shred. Sign. Deliver.

XVI. I bought a can of WD-40 and went on an Unsqueakifying Spree. You know when you open a door and suddenly it does not make a noise? It's eerie, like the world is on mute.

XVII. Replaced the batteries in the handsets for our home phone. Still not going to answer it, and in fact I could only find 2 out of the 4 handsets, but it's the principle of the thing.

Seventeen. Seventeen? That's bullshit, I've done a lot more things than that. I might have had some false starts, some "I drove all the way out here and you're CLOSED?" days. Easter was also in there, with dyed eggs and stuffing eggs for the egg hunt and cooking the least edible ham I have ever encountered.

But what I really notice is the number of items on this list that only I can do... because of reason #3, "I don't know how one would do those things." I try to encourage independent thinking and resourcefulness in my children. I want to believe that when they grow up and find that the dishwasher is leaving crud on the dishes, they will leap into information-gathering action. They will:

find the manual on the internet and read it
google the dishwasher model number and "leaves crud on dishes"
email their cousin who works for Whirlpool

Yak butter sculpture at a monastery in Tibet. Not what I'm looking for.

But I don't know. I tell a person to bring me some butter from the downstairs fridge and twenty minutes later I find that person staring blankly into that (now) clean and brightly lit icebox as if staring into the abyss. "Think of the shape of a stick of butter," I'll prompt. "Now - if you were to package some number of those sticks together, what shape would the package then be?" And then I get accused of being sarcastic and the person stomps off and refuses to help me anymore.

It's magic that I found those phone batteries. In fact, it's magic that I figured out why the handsets wouldn't maintain a charge anymore! The screen door's sudden lapse into silence? They think I am a witch.

They take care of a lot of the day to day maintenance. Food production, for example, is equally shared. My husband does the bulk of the laundry. But it's subsistence living, it's living lightly among our things rather than appreciating their thinginess and taking ownership of their care. They'll get it one day I know. I wouldn't proactively clean anything when I was their age either.

Recently, thinking about this subject, I asked my husband, "How old were you when you first cleaned a toilet?" After several seconds of silence, I asked again more tentatively, "You... have cleaned a toilet, right?"

I better quit before I start getting answers I don't want to hear. Go polish a doorknob! I'm out of here!

Love,
your neighborhood librarian

I'll look to like - One thing that I like about book covers this weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 22:22:00 +0000

A lot of people who work with books take book covers kind of personally. It goes like this:

One part "I love you I want you to look beautiful and cool"
One part "Don't make me look at your lame design"
5 parts "How do you expect me to sell this book when it looks like that?!"

Shake over ice, strain into a pitcher. Guzzle.

Leading to a profound sense of personal betrayal when one of your favorite authors ends up between the covers of something that looks like this:

Eeeuuurrgh. That poor man. He's Canadian, maybe that's why his publisher thinks that a murky 90's constructivist/disco album cover is the way to go. That thing looks like (the Human League) + (Stalin - mustache) x (abandoned on a roof).

The book cover trend I've had my eye on recently is graphic illustration - I mean graphic like simple shapes, not graphic like a knife through an eyeball. Like this:

SO FAB, am I right? Clean, streamlined. Plays well with type. Plus it's like a visual puzzle - your brain needs to resolve those two big black circles with the chopped-up brown semicircle and the underlying oval to make - ooo! a face! A sort of retro, minx-y face at that.

Graphic covers always have kind of a retro look. It's the modernism thing. There are a ton of totally iconic book covers from the mid 20th century, when Modern was modern. Check it:

Many of these are iconic because of their strong graphic illustrations. There is no other cover of Catch-22. You could argue that some of these are type designs only - the Rabbit books and 1984 are a little low on graphic elements - but I would come back and say that the broken parallel lines that describe a surreptitious circle on the Updike books are totally illustrative of the dissonance in those novels, and the fat, aggressive type used on the Orwell cover is a picture in and of itself. It's practically a sculpture.

I love the current descendants of these covers. OBSERVE:

So much color, so much shape. What does it say? It says this book will be uncompromising and hard-edged. Maybe this book will be short stories, in which case a quilt of similar geometric shapes is a good choice. Maybe this book has something to do with fascism, or is set in a culture that eschews representation in art. Maybe we've chosen abstract or semi-abstract shapes for the cover because the book deals in abstractions. Or maybe we've chosen lines - criss-crossing for Jim Gavin's Middle Men, spiraling on the Christopher Reich cover - because they describe the plot.

Melville House has a a lock on this style right now. In addition to serving up an entire series of books the covers of which feature silhouettes (remember last post?) against delicious solid color backgrounds, resident designer Christopher King also cooked up some masterful minimal illustrations for Marek Krajewski's Inspector Mock series:

These are clearly playing off a sort of Eastern European Bolshevik Modernist style - witty and eye-catching and sort of decadent and gritty at the same time. Somebody at Huffington Post likes them so much they interviewed the designer about them.

Here are some other beauties from Melville House:

Then there's black and white. People are always hitting the black and white. Man, when black and white is great it is iconic.

That's taken from a diagram of something having to do with a pulsar, if my recollection of my college-age fanatically encylopedic knowledge of everything having to do with Ian Curtis ever ever EVERRRR is correct. It's magnificently, viscerally pleasing, and inspired a thousand imitations:

Now, I own kind of an unusual number of capes for a 21st-century non-Renn-Faire-type person, but WOW I think I need another cape.

Even when black and white is not for-the-ages fabulous, it's still striking:

But LOOK AT THESE NEW COVERS FOR JAMES BOND. A favorite library customer pointed these out to me, and while I have, um, you know, probably ~~a full set~~ two full sets of these books at home already (one vintage and one reading copy. Hey! that's a thing people do - leave me alone!), I think it's for sure I'll need these:

Joy Division cape, new set of James Bond paperbacks, this is getting to be an expensive little post. Let's go for broke - I WANT THESE TOO:

Happy weekend, everyone! Read good books with attractive covers!

6 Things That Piss Me Off About Book Covers This Evening

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:29:00 +0000

If you are not a person who arranges books for display more than about an hour every week, you may not have noticed these irritating recent trends. Aren't you fortunate that I am here to point them out and complain about them? Avast!

1). NO MAS. The handwritten title. NO! MAS!

THESE. With their klutzy lower-case cursive r's and their anemic a's and l's. And they all look alike. Don't you think it is weak design to just scrawl the title across the front of the book? It is weaker still to use that tilty skinny faux-handwritten title typeface - maybe you know the one? I call it Oliver Jeffers Handwriting Corrupted by Barry Sonnenfeld Credits Display Face.

This is the typeface I mean. Oh look, the title forms a star.
There wasn't ANY other way to have done that?

BUT THERE'S SO MUCH MORE...

I blame The Marriage Plot. Because a) it's always nice to have something to blame and b) it's always nice when that something is Jeffrey Eugenides. Why pick on Jeffrey Eugenides? Because I kind of love him. He's from Detroit, he studied with John Hawkes, teaches at Princeton, and he is the opposite of jerkwad (see below RE: Chuck Palahniuk) in all of his recorded interactions. So he might kind of enjoy being cast as Cover Trend Villain of the Year, especially because it is a lead-pipe cinch he had nothing to do with that cover.

2013 Cover Trend Villain of the Year Jeffrey Eugenides with
Noted Villainous Voice NICK MOTHERFUCKIN CAVE.
How did that come about and why did nobody invite me?

But WHY the handwriting? Is it meant to bring a hand-crafted touch to the cover? Or make it look kind of endearingly sloppy and manuscript-y, as if Paul Auster's assistant just dropped it off at his editor's office? If it were even NICE handwriting, as on the cover of The Virgin Cure, I could sort of see it. But Mr. Penumbra's? Come on. Even the most eccentric of bookstores would have a sign out front that didn't look like somebody'd scribbled it on the back of an envelope.

AND she's turning her head away. Yeesh.

Maybe I have a particular axe to grind against this trend because I earned extra cash in high school as a calligrapher. AND THIS IS THE WORST CALLIGRAPHY EVER.

NUMERO DOS: I am boycotting the torn paper thing starting NOW. Well, starting after I read Alex.

This is a trend that I fear is just getting its legs under it, so I'm getting a jump on being sick of it. The success of The Goldfinch is going to inspire copycatting (please note also the handwritten damn title of The Goldfinch and you'll probably discern the reason why I don't feel like I have to read that book) (plus it's like 9 hundred pages long).

And of course it is superficially kind of brilliant - what's not to love about trompe l'oeil - plus the visual metaphor of What Lies Beneath the Page is just gonna be irresistable to designers, especially designers assigned creepy fucking things like this one:

THREESIES: Boys and girls of the publishing industry, if you want library and bookstore staff to be able to locate your author's book on the shelf, you will not use frickin CURSIVE for the title on the spine:

That is all.

IV). Maybe I'm the only one who sees this kind of thing all the time, but probably not:

Double check to be sure there isn't an existing book cover that looks just like the one you're planning before you print half a million of 'em.

FIHVE: IF you are looking for a Chuck Palahniuk nohvel on the shelf (and I spelled his last name right on the first try and that's a big DAHMMIT - guy is such a douche), you had better be able to identify that novel by its color scheme, because there is next to no space on the spine after the word PALAHNIUK gets its fair share of real estate.

No wonder I can spell it, it smacks me in the face every time I traverse Adult Fiction.

6). God, and frankly? I have never been ok with "a novel." Even when your title is "The Execution of Noa P. Singleton," I don't need the clarification. I'm still not going to mistake it for long-form journalism. Or a self-help book, or a board book, or a bag of oranges.

OH IT'S A NOVEL - THAT'S PROBABLY WHY IT'S SHELVED IN FICTION AND NOT WITH THE DVD'S.

AND TWO THINGS I LIKE:

I. I have to admit, I am enough of an Etsy addict to have kind of a visceral attraction to silhouettes. And there are a lot of them out there recently, enough that I think I'll probably get good and sick of em before the trend is over.

Look at how it is particularly deployed in the service of kids' historical fiction and YA. Interesting. It's the perfect compromise between showing the character on the cover and keeping the cover generic enough that the reader can project him- or herself onto it. It certainly beats the shit out of cutting the poor face in half at the bridge of the nose.

Extra points for this strong graphic element looking terrific paired with fun colors. You say Havisham, I say fabulous.

2. Also not tired of the return of cool, cool Helvetica and Helvetica-adjacent sans-serif typefaces:

Plain, like on the cover of the new Marcel Theroux (which I, uncharacteristically, might have to read - I loved Far North: A Novel) (not to be confused with Far North: A Minnesota rye whiskey or Far North: An insurance agency oh I'm sorry "a novel" is just SO DUMB), this type is both elegant and gritty. In glowing neon it is inkily atmospheric, luxe and hard-boiled at the same time. Even when it is rendered by hand, in watercolors on The Heart Broke In: A Novel or scratched in ink on On Such a Full Sea: A Novel (what a great title), it is intriguing as hell, promising no-holds-barred emotion and unflinching drama.

The type itself stands up to rough treatment - distorted by water (Hamid), partially obscured (Pochoda, Aira), degraded all to hell like on the Juan Gabriel Vásquez cover, or as if it's embossed in plastic like a credit card (the Alafair Burke). It is futuristic and nostalgic at the same time. It works when it's big, small, and medium-sized. It makes a long fancy title (The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls: A Novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel) easier to read and remember. It makes a short title totally fucking devastating. Benediction, indeed. No "a novel" needed for my man Kent Haruf.

A simple, declarative typeface, especially when in the company of a moody landscape, as in the Dubus and the Shacochis, also kind of announces the book as Serious American Fiction. You might notice the colors on these covers favor neutrals, along with various shades of that greeny washed-out blue that shows up so frequently on Literature. Ha: it's robin's egg blue - the Russell Banks cover makes that clear. I think bright color isn't considered to be intellectual, so this sort of polluted blue-green is the color compromise.

Curiously, all-caps sans-serif also seems to be a go-to typeface for books by Asian, African, and Latin authors. Perhaps the association is to the International Style of early 20th-century architecture. I'm going to be staying in the PSFS Building (now a hotel) during ALA Midwinter, and that pre-Mies International Style skyscraper is famously topped by a beautiful piece of sans serif type.

I think the typeface itself can be over-relied-upon, at which point a cover tips over the edge into Way Too Austere. Look at that Roberto Bolaño book. It's POETRY. The cover is black and white and has some kind of superfast photo of, what? a projectile's turbulence? Yeah probably NOT. And the Julian Barnes, Levels of Life? That is the least lively cover I have ever seen. Levels of life if we're talking THE STRATIGRAPHY OF A GRAVE, sure.

I am betting this trend found its wings when Gone Girl topped the charts. And do I spy an edition of This Is How You Lose Her illustrated by Jaime Hernandez? WANT THAT.

But that's all I have to say about book covers tonight.

And listen to me, right? Because I just can't help myself, I need to share a drink. When our hipster pope Junot Diaz is in NYC, he goes to Maharlika and has a Pacquia Punch: Santa Teresa Gran Reserva rum, homemade ginger syrup, lemon, pineapple, absinthe rinse. Want that too.

The Advil Calendar 2013: INTERMISSION

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 22:50:00 +0000

At this point in your holiday, there's probably only one thing left to do.

SING. Sing, you motherfuckers - sing like you mean it, and dance.

BURN, BRIDGES, BURN - A Holiday Musical Spectacular (With Cocktails)

"Everyone's a Little Bit Spectrum"

We meet our 4 primary cast members (two married couples who are part of the same extended family), as they prepare dinner together prior to a large holiday gathering. Lots of oohs and ahhs as the group executes daring dance moves with knives while laughingly cataloging the quirks of each of their parents and siblings.

This upbeat comic number starts our show off on a cheerfully sarcastic note, and must be accompanied by a swinging retro-modern cocktail, such as this updated take on the Moscow Mule:

The Baltimore Donkey (from Maggie's Farm)

2 oz Tito's vodka
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz ginger syrup
dash of bitters
Shake with ice, strain into highball glass over ice. Garnish with lime twist.

"I've Built a Little Comfort Zone (to Slowly Strangle Us Both)"

This is a cutesy romantic pastiche in the spirit of "There's a Small Hotel" or "Tea for Two," and introduces us to the parents of our leads. Choreography includes a little soft shoe, a couple of turns, a dip, and maybe some humorous business with canes.

It calls for something old-fashioned and sparkly yet toxic with a Capital T, served in a coupe glass.

The Hobnob
¼ ounce absinthe
2" strip of grapefruit zest
2" strip of lime zest
½ ounce simple syrup
½ ounce fresh grapefruit juice
½ ounce fresh lime
2 ounces gin
½ ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur
strip of grapefruit rind, for garnish

Pour the absinthe into an empty coupe glass. Wash the glass with absinthe and pour out the excess. Set glass aside. Add grapefruit zest, lime zest, and simple syrup to a cocktail shaker. Muddle the zests until they begin to break apart. Add the grapefruit juice and lime juice. Fill the shaker with ice. Add the gin and maraschino liqueur. Shake hard. Strain the drink into the prepared glass. Garnish with a twist of grapefruit, and serve.

"Peter Pan Got Nothin on Me!"

Introducing the self-centered douchebag second lead, this stompin' piece of mandancing goes with THE most expensive Scotch you can find.

Followed almost immediately by the poignant...

"Enable"

This one goes, "Enable! Enable! I'll enable ya tomorrow. But of course I'll also enable you today." A wrenching solo by the mother character in the vein of "As Long As He Needs Me."

Sip at a tumbler of Bailey's as you sniffle along to this tearjerker.

"How Can I Tell You to Quit Smoking Weed (When I'm on the Bulbie Myself)?"

A bittersweet comic duet between the colorful mother-and-son cousins who arrive from out of town. Throughout the show, they appear towing "new friends," fistfuls of gift cards, and "reconditioned" Xboxes that they are anxious to sell other family members.

White wine mixed with Sprite is the cocktail for this showcase number.

"Christmastime is the Right Time to Ignore My Chronic Condition(s)"

The big Guy Number - lots of opportunity for comedy here as various cast members go into diabetic shock, scramble for emergency inhalers, endure painful gout attacks and allergy-induced migraines, and crash their cars.

Cocktail accompaniment: eggnog.

The Persecution Tango

Nearly wordless dance number performed by the female members of the cast, each of whom gets a minute to tell her story. "But I was supposed to be the princess!" is the main gist.

Protect Ya Neck (Nopa, San Francisco)
We might have to go out for this one. I couldn't find proportions online for this smoky, bitter concoction named after a Wu Tang song. But it's Del Maguey Mezcal Vida blended with Cynar, Gran Classico, and lime juice, and I would probably be willing to experiment here at home to get that one right.

"Whatever You're Smoking, I Want Some of That (Oh No Jesus Christ I Take it Back)"

A nostalgic showcase for a former first lady of the Broadway stage, here playing the slightly out-of-touch family matriarch. The ingenue comes to her for romantic advice, and in between slugs of "lemonade" and prescription medication, she offers wisdom like, "Get knocked up," and "Push him down the stairs and then nurse him back to health."

Lowcountry Lemonade
1 1/2 ounces Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka
2 ounces lemon juice
1 ounce simple syrup
Shake, serve over ice.

"(I Don't Give a Damn Bout Your) Low Expectations"

Showstopper ensemble number by all the younger members of the cast, as they vow to live the lives they choose, surpassing or ignoring the expectations of their parents. Humorous twist in last verse when it is revealed that douchebag second lead actively undercuts his parents' meager hopes so as to be rewarded for accomplishments as minor as not having to be helped into his pants.

Time for a champagne toast! The champagne of beers, that is:

Beer and a Smoke (Jim Meehan, PDT)

1 tablespoon Kosher salt
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 ounce Sombra mezcal
¾ ounce lime juice
3 dashes Cholula hot sauce
1 dash celery bitters
1 bottle Victory Pilsner beer (or Miller High Life)
1 teaspoon orange zest
1 teaspoon lime zest

Rim a Collins glass with salt, celery salt, and sugar. In a shaker, add the mezcal, lime juice, hot sauce, celery bitters, and ice. Shake and strain into glass. Top with beer and garnish with orange and lime zest.

FINALE - "Will the Cycle Be Unbroken?"

As the music swells, as the curtain sweeps aside to reveal a blue sky backdrop, as the entire cast steps slowly to the apron of the stage and hollers out our version of this powerful gospel number, the matriarch watches from stage left. When the lights dim and the curtain falls, we hear her irritably scoff, "What cycle?" and our show is over.

Thank you for coming tonight! Drive safely, and Happy New Year to you and yours, both the annoying yourses and the lovely wonderful pleasant yourses. I have a 111-lb pig in a garbage can on my porch so I think I might spend my New Years Eve basking contentedly in the knowledge that I will be eating like a maniac tomorrow.

Due to taking lots of days off this December, I still have plenty of Advil material on tap (HA! A PUN!). Stay tuned for a few more posts throughout January.

Advil Calendar 2013 - GROWNUP GIFT GUIDE

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 05:05:00 +0000

Oh sure. I've bought presents. I don't believe in GOD and I have serious issues with CHRISTIANITY, but we do Christmas around here. There is currently a dead tree in my living room. I swear it's like taxidermy. Why people (my husband and children) think it's festive to watch a woody plant slowly desiccate inside is TOTALLY BEYOND ME.

But it's 10 minutes til 12 on Xmas Eve and the presents are wrapped and the pork roast is brining and I baked an apple pie that I suspect is basically raw on the inside and my husband made me a Negroni and Annie Lennox is on the iPod so... ok. Christmas.

Hey speaking of atheists who bake, did you read the Dan Savage review of the Sarah Palin book? You should. I can wait.

The really great point that Dan Savage makes here is that assholes like Sarah Palin are the ones who are ruining Christmas. Godless Dan Savage, baking cookies and taking them to his Jewish neighbors, keeps Christmas better than relentlessly god-bothering Sarah Palin, who buys her loved ones GUNS for Christmas.

So just in case you are a present-giver at this time of year, I have a few suggestions and observations.

1). The first item on our gift guide is something that's been stuck in my mind since the very first post of this year's Advil Calendar. The football game was on TV and there was a huge blitz of ads for tablets and other tech toys. When I was a kid, Christmas commercials were nearly all electric razors. Back then there were so few gifts for men, weren't there? Just, you know, spears. Loincloths. Electric razors. Now the commercials "for men" are all tech items and erectile dysfunction.

One of those tablet ads featured a dad analyzing stats while chatting with someone who was pressuring him to "make the trade!" Got it: dads need a tablet for maintaining their fantasy football team. Then we cut to Mom, who is using the tablet - oh good! To Skype with her mom about a recipe for stuffing. FUCK YOU.

The Samsung Galaxy Note: helps men be men and women better fulfill their roles as household servants. No drink for you, SAMSUNG.

(Not actually Holly.)

2). This item is just for residents of my neighborhood, and is actually a present we've already been given.

Her name is Holly (so seasonal!). She is not a proselytizing Christian bigot. She doesn't feel the need to comment on every grocery item she scans. She moves at a speed visible to the human eye. Her personal hygiene is in no way suspect. Oh thank you Ebenezer Safeway. God bless us every one!

After a long day scanning and bagging, I'd say our favorite checker could use a drink. With a name like Holly, she's probably pretty much over the Holly Jolly Cocktails and Mistletoe Martinis and whatnot, so I'm going with one of these:

The Classic Hot Toddy
1 sugar cube
1 1/2 ounces high proof (100 or higher) bourbon
1 lemon wedge freshly squeezed
1/4 ounce of spiced honey syrup
Hot water
1 thick lemon peel
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick

In an empty irish coffee mug, add your sugar cube, Bourbon, lemon juice and spiced honey syrup. Fill the mug with hot water and stir to mix everything up. Garnish with a thick lemon peel, star anise and a cinnamon stick. Serve immediately.

3). I wish I could sell you a visit to my ten-year-old's Minecraft Winter Wonderland. He built stables for his reindeer (Basher, Bruiser, Mauler, Spikes, Snapper, Blood, and Chucky); Santa's chicken house, where he makes toys (Moby Dick, binkies, cat toys, trains, Hot Wheels, Percy Jackson books); and this:

His Advent Calendar is a series of tasks. When you complete Day 1, "Kill 3 zombies with your fists only," you get to open a box containing a Santa suit. Day 2 is "Kill the elves on the shelves." He hid elves all over and you must destroy them. THAT'S MY BOY.

The Drunken Moogle (a site dedicated to nerdcraft and mixology) created a Minecraft-inspired Dirt Block cocktail, but it's made with Kahlua, chocolate milk and Oreo crumbs, so... no. But I would drink this:

Enderman Cocktail:
1 1/2 oz jager
1 1/2 oz white rum
8 oz Coca Cola
Mix alcoholic ingredients and pour over ice in a highball glass. Fill (around 8 oz) with Coke.

An Enderman in Minecraft is some tall thing that can kill you, but he can't see you if you don't look at him. THE MORE YOU KNOW.

And here's a little present from me to you: Shura. Shura Eadie was one of the stars of Cyber-Seniors, a new documentary film about a project that paired older people with teen mentors who helped them discover the wonders of the web. In this clip, she and her friend Max show us how to make cocktails inspired by her new favorite game.

5). I don't think we're up to 5 but. Here's a thing you might think of buying your loved ones during the holiday season: a cookie jar. We broke ours (which we use for bagels so it is actually quite essential). So I went on Etsy and Ebay and looked for a cool one and holy crap you want to get scared and depressed - search Ebay for cookie jars. They're all scary clowns and pederastic-looking elves and Mammies. Eurgh.

6). But the best present we ever gave each other was our idiot cats, who came two years ago from the pound and who now think Christmas is their birthday and Hannukah and Eid and Diwali all put together. So from Babe and Brother John -

To all a good night from Your Neighborhood Librarian. This is tomorrow morning's drink, by the way:

Bitter Orange Cooler

Shake in ice cocktail shaker & strain

2 oz orange juice
1 1/2 sweet vermouth
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz Cherry Heering
Strain into glass
Fill with ice & bitter orange wheel soda
Add orange wheel
Serve in a tall glass

The Advil Calendar 2013: NANCY DREW II: RETURN TO LITTLE TAVERN ON THE PRAIRIE

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 22 Dec 2013 20:53:00 +0000

What's Jack Donaghy doing here? He's having a Nancy Drew (white
rum, diet ginger ale, lime). "For men, it's called a Hardy Boy," says Jack.

Last week I got to wondering, in a post I titled "Nancy Drew Turns 21," what some of my favorite children's book characters would drink once they were old enough to drink. I made fancy cognac cocktails for Maddie and Verity from Code Name Verity, took Claudia Kincaid drinking at a swanky joint in Manhattan's financial district, and shared a chamomile toddy with Mrs. Frisby.

But there are more. MORE.

I put the question to a few friends: "What children's book character would you most like to have a drink with once he or she has grown up?" And EVERYBODY - er, just about everybody - answered "Matilda" right away. Let's go get squiffy with Matilda!

So my first stop on the kidlit bar crawl will be at Matilda and Miss Honey's house. (Oh gracious do not google "Matilda and Miss Honey" unless you are prepared for some potentially life-altering fanfic.) Matilda is all grown up now and has made a sweet little fortune of her own on industrial patents, but she and Miss Honey still prefer their housemate arrangement.

And though I have heard that they make a formidable double team on the rare occasions they venture out to the roadhouse on the highway, we decide to stay home on the porch and sip something cool while we catch up.

Matilda's favorite drink is a Madras. Made with cranberry and orange, it is a cheerful drink with a beautiful color. The mixture of OJ and cranberry juice means that Matilda can make hers a little on the tart side by going heavier on the cran and Miss Honey's a little sweet by upping the OJ, and they are both happy.

Matilda's Madras
1 1/2 ounces cranberry vodka
1/2 ounce cranberry juice
1 ounce orange juice
1 cherry
In a highball glass full of ice, mix one and a half ounces vodka, half an ounce of cranberry juice and one ounce orange juice. Stir and serve. You can garnish it with a cherry. Two for Miss Honey.

Librarian and blogging superstar Sam Musher of Parenthetical.net immediately thought of the Baby-Sitters Club when asked who she wants to go drinking with this December - and knew right away what each would order:

"The baby-sitters are definitely getting together when they're all home for Christmas, but the bar options are pretty crappy in Stonybrook. Kristy's easy; she'll have what's on tap. Claudia orders some ridiculous vodka thing that ends in 'tini and comes with a pile of plastic garnishes she can play with.

Stacey (who's taken the train in from New York just to see them) has to be careful because of her diabetes, so maybe just a Manhattan? Dawn tries for a mojito, but of course the bar has no fresh mint, so it's a disappointing sour-mix margarita for nature girl. And Mary Ann will take her Maker's Mark neat, thankyouverymuch.
I have spent way too much time thinking about this.

Drinking with children's book characters is the best game!"

John Schu, of Mr. Schu Reads, wants to drink with Babymouse. Me, too!

Babymouse grew up to be your brilliant and lovable but sometimes exhausting co-worker who comes in to work one day announcing (for example), "I should be a food stylist! For photo shoots! Don't you think? I'm totally going to do that!" and you want to be supportive, but on the other hand she's actually really good at the job she does have, but you want her to be happy, and you kind of agonize over this for days, until finally you take her out to the fancy cocktail bar you can't really afford on a photo archivist's wages (Verlaine), buy her a lychee-tini, clasp her hands and bravely say, "Babymouse, you were born to be a film historian. You are great at it. I don't think you should ditch your job to become a food stylist."

She'll look at you, furrowing her brow. "Oh my god no! That would be a nightmare, right? You'd never want to eat again! Did you know they use Scotchgard on pancakes to keep the syrup from soaking in?"

"No... I didn't know that," you murmur, bewildered but relieved and a tiny tiny bit exasperated. It's the Babymouse Zone, and you've been sucked into it - AGAIN - just like when she was going to get in shape and try out for the astronaut program and the time she cut up half of her clothes because she was going to start an upcycled clothing store.

So have another lychee-tini, listen to another disgusting story about how food gets photographed for magazines, and try not to overreact when she rhapsodizes about her plan to move to San Diego and get a job as a xeriscape designer.

Verlaine's Lychee Martini recipe is not posted online (it is said to include pineapple juice), but the extremely informative Lychees Online website offered some guidelines for making a good lychee martini, and this recipe, by Jess Scone, more or less conforms.

The Perfect Lychee Martini - 2 martinis

4 ounces vodka
2-3 ounces canned or fresh lychee juice
1 ounce lychee syrup reserved from a can
ice

Place two or three canned lychees into each chilled glass, strain the cocktail over them, and enjoy.

Why does Babymouse drink lychee martinis? Well. I was actually kind of hoping you wouldn't ask that.

Sigh. Wilson sent her an article once about the health benefits of lychees (Vitamin C, anti-oxidants, etc) because one condition they were said to ameliorate was tinnitus. Now, Babymouse has been on this thing for years about how when she was a kid she had trouble focusing, and she thinks it's because she had tinnitus, which her brain interpreted as an invisible Narrator observing and commenting on her life. So she consumes lychees whenever she can, and she swears that Narrator has totally gone away.

replies the Narrator.

Jesus, she's been smoking since she was ten!

Laurel Snyder nominates Pippi. You know Pippi's going to have some great stories, but dude - I am frankly terrified to drink with Pippi.

Can you imagine? This is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking we're talking about. She makes gingersnaps in batches of 500 - how much booze do you think she can put away? Plus, she's Swedish! Swedes drink crazy strong stuff! Little sinus-rocket shots of akvavit! Double IPAs! Strong porter!

AND, not that she'd be encumbered by it (like, at all) - but the drinking age law in Sweden is both liberal and complicated - it is legal to drink when you are below the age of 18, but it is illegal to sell, lend or give alcohol to someone under that age, which seems to imply that if teenagers are gonna drink booze (which? THEY ARE), they're gonna have to steal it first. Good lord. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

(Not actually Pippi.)

Well as it turns out, the grown-up Pippi is not some hurricane-haired anarchist living with 40 wild animals in the Villa Villekulla shouting at her garbage cans. She's got a lot of hair, true, but often as not it is tamped down by a bike helmet - she works for Stockholm City Bikes, a bike-sharing program that is now very successful thanks in part to her cheerful efforts.

It's perfect for her. She gets to spend a lot of time outside - supervising free mass bike lessons for kids and adults (that always end with riding the bikes straight into Lake Mälaren); she gets to use her incredible powers of persuasion - forming a miraculous partnership between bike shops and the police to recondition confiscated bikes and put them in the hands of youngsters; and she gets to make big arm-wavy speeches. Everybody knows Pippi!

In fact, transportation planners and eco-activists from all over the world come and interview her. (Later, they look at their notes and frown. "Did you meet a Mr... Nilsson?" they ask each other.) Her very favorite "duty," however, is the weekly underground costumed bike ride through the streets of Stockholm.

(Not actually Stockholm.)

When I finally (literally) catch up with her, it's at a huge, lantern-lit party in a city park after one of these rides. Everyone is laughing and disheveled, disentangling wigs and capes from helmet straps and reflective vests.

I talk to a really cool librarian and his wife for twenty minutes before I realize it's Tommy. Annika is absent - she is currently living in Indonesia making her living as a tattoo artist and surf instructor. It's always the quiet ones.

Somebody has had the foresight to fill an aluminum water bottle with akvavit, and that gets passed around. Somebody else shows up with a cooler full of Oppigårds.

Eventually, I return my bike to the share rack and lurch off back to my hotel. Pippi is reclining on the grass with a bottle of snaps, her head in the lap of some fella who can't believe his luck, singing a song she's just made up about her horse. The last thing I hear her call out is, "Next week! The theme is tropical fruit!"

Me, I think I want to hang out with the grown-up Charlie Bucket.

Charlie's a teetotaler, actually - compared to the kicks he gets from warm whipped chocolate and spun sugar fireworks, mere alcohol doesn't thrill him at all. But that doesn't mean an evening with Charlie is a snore. No way. The holiday season is a sticky whirl at the factory, so the only way he can make time for a visit with me is to walk and talk (and taste and sip and inhale).

From left: lemon cheesecake-filled chocolate easter eggs, mushrooms made of devil's food cake and fondant, a spun-sugar nest with candied malted eggs, and candy sushi. I am so sugared-up by the end of our tour my hair is curly.

We were a bit worried, when the Bucket family moved into the factory, that Mr. Wonka's emphasis on secrecy would end up isolating Charlie, and he would grow up to be a suspicious and weird man. But Charlie realized right away that there is no competition for genius - the Snozzwanglers of the world could steal Wonka products right and left, reverse-engineer them down to the atomic level, and still never duplicate the real Wonka deal.

With the decreased emphasis on security, Charlie and his team have more time to innovate. The Oompa Loompas are important contributors to the creative process - now that there are human workers in the factory, they have had time to document and expand upon their knowledge of industrial process and material properties. They have a cooking show on E! and a popular series of industrial safety videos.

The Oompa Loompas drink, oh yes they do. And here's a cocktail they made just for me:

The Chocolate Squirrel

3/4 oz amaretto almond liqueur
3/4 oz Frangelico® hazelnut liqueur
3/4 oz brown creme de cacao
3/4 oz cream

Pour ingredients into a stainless steel shaker over ice, shake until completely cold then strain into a chilled stemmed glass or rocks glass filled with ice.

Lissa Wiley from Here in the Bonnie Glen thinks we should take Harriet Welsch (aka Harriet the Spy) out for a drink. I think that's an excellent idea.

Harriet lives in Cleveland now, of all places. She's the head of Business Analysis at Progressive Insurance. Surprised? I will be surprised the day that Harriet doesn't surprise me.

Harriet, as it happens, is in love with data. She found out in college, when she had to create a sample database for a mandatory stats class. She populated her database with information from her old notebooks, and became entranced with the way the database helped her quickly identify patterns and verify hunches.

She still considers herself a writer, and in fact still considers the job at Progressive fairly temporary. She writes all the time - mysteries, literary fiction, sci-fi, and the occasional romance novel, but doesn't have time to send her manuscripts to agents or editors (or so she claims).

Harriet likes to hang out at the bar in Terminal Tower. I just shake my head. Terminal Tower is Cleveland's Empire State Building and Grand Central combined. Built on top of the rail terminal, it is all Art Deco and soaring spaces and kiosks selling counterfeit baseball caps and the scent of fast food. The bar at Terminal Tower is a hideous sports bar and I don't care how good the people watching is there, I'm not going.

Sneaky enough for Harriet?

Instead, I take Harriet to the Velvet Tango Room, a faceless joint in Ohio City recommended by my sister-in-law T. That's not a pseudonym - we call her T. T says "Paulius the owner is a riot. He finally succumbed to putting up a little neon sign a couple years ago but only opens shutters and lights it when open. Bullet holes in ceiling are real."

The inside is like Indiana Jones's house in Princeton transplanted to Drew Carey's Cleveland - part tastefully lit soffit ceilings and intriguing artifacts, part borderline-terrible leather couches and velvet upholstery. There's a gorgeous-looking little hidden garden at the back.

I won't be fooling around at a dignified little gem like this - they make my favorite, a Negroni, with "Campari and Plymouth gin, along with either our own Tango reduction ”vermouth”, or Vya, a small batch sweet vermouth. Finish is a flamed orange peel."

Harriet's always been kind of an old lady at heart - like a sharp-tongued Golden Girls Dorothy kind of old lady - so she orders a Highball, which is very old school. I have never had a highball. Frankly I thought it just described the glass. But VTR's is made with Maker's Mark, their strong housemade ginger beer, and lime.

Harriet tells me way more than she should about how much information a giant insurance company has about you, what they do with it, and what they can predict about you just from your address or the kind of car you drive. And then she gets distracted watching the double date at the next table go down in flames, progressing from passive-aggressive male bonding to outright husband-bashing. Harriet's eyes light up and I know she's glad she has a laptop in the car.

We took a little break there, but I think that means we'll just keep on Adviling even after Advent is officially over. That's the great thing about inventing your own holidays - you make your own rules.

Hey I don't think I used even one f-word in this post! We'll make up for that nexxt time - I have a Xmas Cocktail Romance I've been cooking up and I think I can keep that relatively filthy.

Your Neighborhood Librarian loves you - time for a drink!

The Advil Calendar 2013 LEMON DROPS ON ROSES EDITION

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 07:41:00 +0000

Ok then. Finally recovered from that frightening debacle on TV last week and don't you think it's just about time to talk about some of our FAVORITE things from this year? Yeeeeess. Unfortunately for you, sometimes my FAVORITE things are kind of horrendous and/or weird. Maybe inappropriate.

So let's dive in with a really nice one, kind of the best one:

1. WHISKERS OF THE DOG

THE OFFICIAL ADVIL COCKTAIL of 2013

1/2 Viryta (recipe here)
1/2 ROOT

The Viryta is heavier than the ROOT, but that doesn't mean we should go ahead and shake this over ice. No, just put both in a rocks glass with two ice cubes and stir real good.

So looky that! I FOUND A USE FOR THE ROOT! Listen, the Viryta is heaven and sex all at once, but it is a little intense in the sweetness area. Like, lip-licky roll-around-on-the-rug did-someone-roofie-that-chick intense. And the ROOT is just kind of vile, in its own bark-beer peppery way - it's totally like some kind of puddlewater liquor they distilled in District 12 and used for flavoring at Peeta's bakery. But put 'em together and they were made for each other.

2. BRIGHT COPPER SHAKERS

Speaking of Peeta, this NPR Monkey See article that everyone saw is one of my favorite things of 2013. That columnist describes how Katniss - laconic, emotionally unavailable Katniss - is the boy of The Hunger Games and Peeta, who helps and helps and draws her out and then needs rescuing - is the girl.

And I would like to think that Suzanne Collins wrote it that way in order to SUBVERT THOSE ROLES, but I bet you any money that she had the whole thing half-written with Katniss as the baker's daughter before she switched things up. Peeta is good at ART and BAKING for chrissake. He's a girl.

Cosmopolitan magazine, of all things, has a cocktail inspired by Peeta. I had to laugh - it is literally weak tea and pear juice (ok, plus bourbon) and... a cherry. Ouch!

Peeta's Pear Punch (James Labe for Cosmopolitan mag)
1 Numi Honeybush teabag
2 oz. bourbon
4 oz. pear juice
Garnish: maraschino cherry

Infuse tea bag in bourbon for 30 minutes, then remove bag, squeezing out excess liquid. Pour ingredients into a shaker filled with ice. Shake, strain into a glass, and garnish with a maraschino cherry.

3. WARM WOOLEN SPORRANS

Random image. Not associated with any book.

Now everyone seems to have read the Hunger Games books, but I am betting I read some stuff this year that you wouldn't touch with a ten-foot gaffi stick.

I've come to an interesting conclusion about some of the books I've read. I think that being assigned semi-random books to read (by the periodicals I review for) (fuck you preposition) actually gives me a big advantage over people who only read books that they select themselves.

Oh you could read The Fault in Our Stars, sure, and I'm sure you will love it, but how much more would you love it after having read All that Trembles (not its real name) or Cleopatra Comes Back! (also a fake title). How much more savorsome would Julie Berry's diamond prose be if you read it knowing for a fact that paragraphs like this existed in the world:

"As much as I tried to brush it off, if there was one thing I had learned in my family it was this: there are no coincidences. If it makes us pause, if it seems to have meaning, it probably is."

Is... it?

Bring Me Bonsai - what is German for "funny"?

"In a spirit of relaxed affability she extended her right hand and ____ gracefully took it and with great urbanity, bowed saying enchanted and gently kissed her hand and stated that my dear lady it is with particular pleasure that I make your acquaintance. _____ inquired, rhetorically, are you a supercilious fellow?"

Not de facto supercilious, but I would go with grandiloquent. And perhaps uninfected with any malady symptomatic of a hyperabundance of punctuation.

Some of the best bits are when an author tries to describe his or her character in a fancy way. As if it's cheating to write, "He had dark eyes and she had fair skin":

"The salient features of his incredibly handsome face was a pair of soothing dark eyes which appeared to glimmer as they pierced the inner being of the target of their gaze."

"I may have inherited _____'s spirit, but I definitely did not inherit her darker complexion. Nope, I was stuck with my fair Irish skin, which reacted like a bad report card burning in the fireplace - curling up at the edges. My head was already steaming, and it was only nighttime."

My head is steaming too, but not because it's hot in here. So sure, I drink.

4. BROWN PAPER PACKAGES CONTAINING OBSCENE MATERIALS

Amidst the brouhaha surrounding the replica baby Prince George doll, I feel that we are in danger of forgetting the true creepiness of dolls, a subject that we are committed to raising awareness of here on Your Neighborhood Librarian. Let's just take a mo and contemplate:

Weirder than the Prince G doll: faceless felt royals on Ebay.

Weirder than the Prince George doll: reborn baby dolls.

Weirder than all this shit put together,
but paradoxically less disturbing:
reborn zombie baby dolls.

And ladies and gentlemen, the best thing I have seen all year:
the custom Zombie Divine reborn baby doll by Krypt Kiddies.

There's a marvelous story about Divine on the night he died. Coming back from dinner with friends in Los Angeles, he paused outside his hotel room, leaned over the balcony railing, arms up like Eva Peron, and sang "Arrivederci Roma." That is style right there. Ever since I heard that story, I've taken to doing the same thing on my deck before going up to bed, just on the off chance I die in my sleep. You never know.

I don't know what "the Godzilla of drag" drank, but this one's for you, sir. It's strong and kind of tacky and most importantly, it's pink.

Divine Champagne Cocktail

1 white sugar cube
2 dashes bitters
¾ fl oz cognac
champagne (pink champagne! do I have to spell everything out to you people!?)

Place the sugar cube onto a spoon and add the bitters.
Drop the soaked sugar cube into a champagne flute and add the cognac.
Top up the glass with champagne and serve.

5 1/2. WHEN THE BOOKS BITE

I read all the new picture books that come into our library, right? Just about all of them. So when I find something like Mommy's New Tattoo: A Bedtime Story for People on the New Picture Books shelf, it feels like an Easter egg left there just for me by our book buyers.

The rhymes are pretty terrible. Try to ignore that. The art is excellent. I almost wish someone would use Coney Island tattoo art style to illustrate, you know, just a picture book about a mermaid going shopping or something. Pirates who learn how to cook. After all, most of the moms I know have tattoos, and to my knowledge, none of our children has ever questioned them.

Obviously, a dramatic reading of Mommy's New Tattoo calls for a drink made with Sailor Jerry spiced rum. The original Sailor Jerry was a grizzled tattoo artist and radio host in Honolulu. His bold lines and open curves directly influence the style seen in this book.

Sailor Jerry flash.

Rockabilly Juice

2 parts Sailor Jerry
½ parts Lemon Juice
1/3 parts Orange Curacao
2 parts Black Tea (iced tea)

Build over ice in a tall glass, squeeze and drop in a lemon wedge

6. GIRLS IN PINK BOTAS CON BUFALDA VERDE

THIS was part of the middle schooler's Spanish homework tonight. I love that Spanish teacher.

Billy la Bufalda is the hero and role model of anyone who ever secretly wanted to date twins. And I'm not saying that I'm one of those people - shut up with your freakish accusations about my feelings for Fred and George Weasley - but if I were, I'd probably need to know Billy's secret. You gotta have stamina when you're stringing two boots along at once.

A swaggering Latin lover like Billy will have no problem downing a Prairie Oyster - it's a meal on the go and a shot of confidence at the same time. Sally Bowles drank 'em and I have to confess, this is something I'm going to try real soon.

Prairie Oyster

1 whole egg
1 ounce vodka
2 dashes of vinegar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon ketchup
2 dashes thin hot sauce (like Crystal or Louisiana the Perfect)
a little salt and pepper

Carefully crack the egg into an old-fashioned glass, taking care not to break the yolk. Add the remaining ingredients and drink in one gulp.

7. SNOWFLAKES THAT INEXPLICABLY GROW UP AND GET PAPPED MAKING OUT WITH NIGHTCLUB GUYS ON BOATS ARG

Now I will deny to my grave ever having harbored impure thoughts about Fred and George - they're just teenagers! but I do tend to plummet down the Weasley K-hole whenever I go looking for a picture of them for a post. Have you ever seen this? It is the cutest thing you will clap eyes upon in your whole life:

Is that a juice box? I'm dyin here she's so cute.

But this is what I'm going to leave you with today:

OK I WILL GO TO THE BALL WITH YOU SHEESH.

So I guess this means we're drinking with the Weasleys tomorrow! Join me for Round Two of What Would Amelia Bedelia Drink? aka Half-Pint Orders a Pint: Ginning it Up With Your Favorite Children's Book Characters.

Advil Calendar 2013 Day It's All a Blur: COOKIE SWAP KEY PARTY EDITION

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 06:37:00 +0000

We do crack ourselves up, don't we Raylan?

I have turned a corner on this whole December bullshit. Yes. It is safe to say there was a corner back there yonder - and I stepped smartly around it. I know when it was, too - it happened this afternoon, the minute I put two trays of cookies in the oven and slammed the door.

THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE GETTING THEMSELVES INTO LETTING THIS LIBRARIAN BRING COOKIES

Oh sure, super cute, but so far beyond my level they
might as well be made of unobtainium.

I mean. What ailed me, signing up for the cookie swap? "Well I'll be making cookies anyway," I seem to remember thinking, having totally lost all memory of WHO I AM.

I have spent my whole life - 48 years - being Not a Baker. The whole "measure" and "watch the time" thing, I suck at both of those. Everyone who knows me knows that if they are looking for cookies, they can just keep looking. I don't even buy cookies, for Christ's sake.

So it was just another storm cloud on the December horizon, along with the webcast I agreed to moderate and the radio show and the judging panel for the Cybils Awards - now the Cybils is a labor of lusty passionate leg-humping love every year, but the finish line IS Christmas, basically, and so it kind of simmers in the background threatening to boil over and stink up the kitchen all month long.

Not to mention the book I was supposed to have reviewed by November 28. And that book is the most boring book I have ever read, and when I say that it was a boring book, I say that as a person who reads and reviews how to draw books twice a year. Yeah, boring and I, we're buds. So it has taken me A WHILE to read this book.

But the webcast is done, the radio show is done, the Safelite guy showed up this morning and replaced the windshield on the van, the cat gets eye drops, I am 30 pages from the end of this godforsaken book, and the kid's shoes fit, so this morning I beat some egg whites until they cried and rolled over and begged for more, and I made meringue cookies. Which are pretty much the only cookies I can make because they bake for two hours. You would have to forget them for DAYS before they burned.

(On the other hand, you can somehow screw them up so that after they have baked and cooled they will be adhered to the parchment paper so profoundly that you will have to tear them off the paper and then use a microplane grater to sand the paper off the bottoms, which is what ~~we have~~ Bob has spent the last hour doing. NO COOKIES. I am not cookie lady. Must remember for next year.)

(Plus I realized when I took the trash out after grating the asses off those cookies that my fly has been unzipped all afternoon. Yup. Things are looking up.)

BUT: CORNER. TURNED.

So I took the older kid out to Toys R Us so he could buy a gift for his brother and for his Secret Santa at school (UM? OK FINE. I will forbear) and a wreath hanger and a new dish drainer, and then we got pho and we were very happy. Then the liquor store. Man, have you been shopping lately? It is a world of picked-over out there right now. Had to go to three stores before I found a wreath hanger.

AND the liquor store had no Flor de Caña rum. TRAGIC - I can't find my favorite rum! How am I going to get through Christmas day? There better be a bottle of Rum Jumbie under my mistletoe, that's all I'm saying. Also missing from the shelf was Punt e Mes, which is going to make my little glass of rye very lonely. On the other hand... well you know there's always something intriguing at the liquor store. I ran across this item tonight and I just had to have it. ROOT spirit. It's got like tea and birch bark in it and I am a supersized sucker for stuff like that.

BROKEN ARROW

•1 part ROOT
•1 part rye whiskey
•1 part sweet vermouth
•2 dashes barrel aged bitters
•Build in a rocks glass with one large ice cube.

See? Rye! It's everywhere!

Our old friend Uncle Shawnie (you may conjure a scrawny version of SNL's Drunk Uncle if you need a visual) was once told by a nun, "you're like the broken arrow that finds its mark" or something like that. Spinning arrow maybe. Nuns. Who knows what they'll come up with. So years later, he has to go to his old school for some reason, and he was a cop at that point and the same nun was like, "Oh Shawn. I always knew I'd see you in a police car one way or another," and Shawn was like, "Hey! What about the spinning arrow?"

They offered a terrarium making
workshop for recycling your empties.
I can't make this shit up.

That cocktail is one for Shawnie, all right. The ROOT is bitter, ex-cop bitter, bitter to the point of astringent. And there's kind of a dirty aftertaste. By which I mean it tastes kind of like dirt. Which is a new one on me, for sure.

I think there are good uses for ROOT, but they need to involve something sweet. I'd add maple syrup to the Broken Arrow, for example. And I'd drink the Appalachian Flip, a drink on their website involving a whole egg, sugar syrup, and beer.

SIDEBAR: More brand website treasure
ROOT is made by (or for) one of those supertrendy supply stores for the well-groomed urban lumberjack DJs in our lives. It's located in Philly and it's called Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and uh-huh. Lordy. Let's just slide right past that. In fact, I walked past that when I chaperoned the 5th grader's field trip last month. I remember thinking, "Oh Jesus. We were just in Austin."

They have a men's gift guide though that is a scream. It hits every hipster beat fat and square. Warby Parker sunglasses. Fancy-pants shaving cream with a general store-looking label. A hemp denim necktie! BEARD OIL. Oh my.

You know who doesn't need BEARD OIL? That's him at the top of this post. Yup. I have decided that Timothy Olyphant is the spirit animal of The Advil Calendar 2013, as Taylor Kitsch was our leading man of 2011. Mmm. I kid you not, I saw John Carter of Mars twice. In the theater. I will bet you that not even Taylor Kitsch's mom paid to see that movie twice. And still it's not on Netflix. Dang it!

Anyway. Olyphant. There was so much drinking on Deadwood that I think I damaged my liver just watching. And Raylan? "Raylan will pretty much drink whatever's in front of him," says Taylor Elmore, a writer on the show (quoted on The Gray Report).

Raylan drinks Wild Turkey with his dad, white lightning with Boyd, beer with - um, anyone - and potentially poisoned moonshine out of a Mason jar with a notorious criminal mastermind.

Here he is with no hat, on a network TV show (Damages)
and he's still got a glass of bourbon in his hand.

So screw that hemp denim necktie bullshit - me and Raylan got something that'll oil your beard just fine.

Naturally, after this year's VERY SUCCESSFUL Viryta making experience (yes we have cracked a bottle and oh my heavenly honey angels it is good), I got to wondering whether Mags Bennett's "apple pie moonshine" was a real thing. I suspected yes, and I thought maybe it was some kind of sweetened infused moonshine, just like the Viryta is just Everclear, honey, and spices. And I thought maybe I should make some.

Well there are just a ton of recipes for it out there online. There's even one for you crock pot enthusiasts. Most of the recipes I found call for a gallon of cider and/or a gallon of juice and then a liter of moonshine but you know what? that just doesn't jibe with the high-testosity I associate with the word "moonshine."

The end product that "Tickle" here has produced is about half moonshine, half cider and juice. Well, I guess. Points for doing it outside, that's for sure. There's a legend in our family that my great-grandmother, a famous cook, burned the kitchen down three times making oyster fritters. She liked that oil good and hot - and deep. So my great-grandfather built her a barbecue in the backyard. But this is legend and I am 100% sure that one or both of my parents will tell me that I have that completely wrong - not only did she not light the kitchen on fire, she wasn't actually much of a cook and in fact I never even had any great-grandparents.

GRR CHRISTMAS. Sorry, sorry: Corner! Turned! In the lane snow is glistenin'! Timothy Olyphant in a Santa hat!

This is from "Go" but it's an emergency.

Ok I'm better. Here is also better - an apple pie moonshine recipe that uses apple concentrate instead of all that juice and cider. This recipe is from Clawhammer Supply, a company that will sell you an honest-to-god copper still (they're not that expensive!), and this apple pie is described as "knock-your-socks-off strong," which is definitely what I picture Mags Bennett drinking. I blended the steps a little bit with Nida's Viryta process, so that this is actually an overnight project.

Clawhammer Apple Pie Moonshine

1 quart of 150 proof, pure corn whiskey moonshine (everclear could be used as a substitute).
3 cans of frozen apple concentrate.
8 cinnamon sticks.
0-2 cups brown sugar*
other spices to taste**
*Depending on how sweet you want it to be.
**I would definitely jazz this up with whole allspice berries, mace, vanilla, ginger, cloves. Maybe orange peel.

First, add the apple concentrate, cinnamon sticks and brown sugar to a pot. Heat gently but do not boil. Stir a few times as it is heating up to dissolve the sugar.
Once the sugar is dissolved, turn off the heat. If you're using orange peel, you might want to keep the burner on a little longer. Cover and let cool overnight.
Split the apple/spice mixture between 4 pint jars (or 2 quart jars). Top the jars off with 150 proof corn whiskey. Remember, 100+ proof moonshine is flammable. You do not want to do this anywhere near a heat source.

Or you could just play Vulture's Justified drinking game. It's a good one - shots for shots fired, small sip whenever someone is addressed by their full name, tiny wince-y sip whenever Raylan winces. My goodness that man can wince.

It's late now, but maybe just one episode before hitting the hay. And I know I promised hot drinks, but it has just not been that cold. The snow didn't last, and I know all y'all in New York are all wintry-mixing it up, but the weather is pretty boring here.

Well then. This is Your Neighborhood Librarian. Until tomorrow, keep it zipped, and carry a flask.

The Advil Calendar 2013: F YOU FRIDAY - F.U. 2: F Harder

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 05:58:00 +0000

The last great drinking sitcom - Cheers - famously asserted that sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

Yeah, maybe.

But sometimes you want to go where not only will everybody not know your name, but you might actually have to assume a false identity, leave your ID in the car, and pay in cash.

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN PLAYS IT ON THE DOWN LOW

First, let me give you a quick rundown of this fucking week:

Got in the minivan yesterday and hey! Where'd that big crack come from? Pellet from a salt truck? Errant snowball? Tiny meteorite? Fuck you, space debris. There's a ding in the middle of the windshield and then the crack stretches from EAR TO EAR. Not sealing that one up with glue, no sir, that's a new windshield.

Might also benefit from a visit to the vet.

What's wrong with the cat's eyes? The long-haired cat has always been a little gluey around the portholes, but ugh all of a sudden he looks like Sad Bill Compton. Bob's administering a home eye test right now, very sophisticated, involves a sock, and the cat seems to be seeing ok... but it's definitely a trip to the vet.

And the 12-year-old has recently grown out of kids' sizes in the footal area. Therefore, there are no shoes to be found at all anywhere. Don't... all boys pass through this size? Why would we not stock as many shoes in a men's size 7 as in a boys' size 6? And just where do you put those apostrophes? So that means another trip to the shoe store to pick up the shoes that had to be ordered, and let us hope they're good, otherwise he'll be wearing my Danskos to school until winter break. (They fit! They look kind of great on him! He would probably not appreciate me sharing this!)

I think I saw a rat in the recycling bin on the porch.

"Why is your coat leaking feathers?" "Huh. Maybe it got torn sledding." Don't make me make the Marge sound - THAT COAT IS NEW. It's now patched with bandage tape. And still it's leaking feathers.

"Hey, my inhaler is down to zero - do we have another one?"

Plus, do you think if I picked up this laptop and shook it real hard, the relevant pieces would click back into place and it would stop gagging every time it had to wake up? "COM Surrogate has stopped working." Fine, I will click Ok to that. I don't know what it means but I don't think I care. Why tell me three times, though? It's always three times. And then when it just BAM!! shuts down, it's "Internal Page Kernel Error." Thanks. I'll make a note.

I know I'm not alone. Chatting with [NAME REDACTED] the other day, I mentioned I was thinking of gaslighting my parents so that they'd sell their house and move to assisted living while they are still able to do most of the work themselves. I was joking, but her eyes narrowed. "That's a great idea," she murmured, nodding speculatively. We are all at our wits end.

So I think today is just FUCK YOU FRIDAY.

Incognito already.

On the other hand, I took the day off so that I could attend the 5th grader's Winter Sing (Oh the rising of the sun! And the running of the deer!), so that means I can knock out some of the rest of this stuff and even have time for lunch with [NOBODY YOU KNOW]. And my husband got a babysitter for tonight, and I made a reservation, and we're planning on stopping at the place with all the Amaro after dinner, so that makes me smile.

Then there's this: when we picked up the middle schooler after school today, he was wearing a false mustache, an opera mask, and Mardi Gras beads. He's got the right idea, I think. Do you think he'd let me borrow that mustache? Because we're going on a little tour of hidden bars.

If somehow we were whisked away to San Francisco this evening - via private jet of course, me wearing a red ballgown and borrowed rubies (ugh I hate that movie almost as much as Ann Magnuson does), we might wander down an alley to an unmarked door and enter Smugglers Cove, a tiki-themed bar that is nonetheless reported to be one of the best in America. I couldn't find a cocktail recipe from this joint online, but I am sorely tempted by this punch. Love the Krampus, and a new punchbowl is on my wish list.

Tea and Krampus

1 1/2 ounces Appleton Estate Reserve Rum
1/2 ounce Coruba Dark Rum
1/2 ounce Leopold Bros. Blackberry Liqueur
1/4 ounce St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce pineapple juice
1/2 ounce vanilla syrup (buy it, or recipe here)
1 dash Angostura Bitters
Fresh grated nutmeg

Multiply by # of servings and combine everything except nutmeg.
Chill for 3 hours.
20 minutes before service, pour into a punch bowl filled with ice, and grate nutmeg over the top to taste.

The bar at Weather Up, Brooklyn.

If Bob and I were in Brooklyn and going on a date on a Friday night, I would try to remember the place our friend [NO NAMES!] took us in October. No sign, no exterior decor. I had to figure out what that bar was called by process of elimination, and I think it is Weather Up.

Weather Up is an intimate barrel-vaulted space lined in subway tile, as if it had been a Paris wine cellar that was used as a bomb shelter during WWII, accidentally buried for fifty years, and then unearthed and resurrected as a tony little bar.

I had something tall and pinkish. The Internet is a genius, I found that drink: La Isla, tequila, Campari, simple syrup, fresh lime juice, fresh grapefruit juice and soda, and I took its picture, but mysteriously, those photos have disappeared.

What a speakeasy would look like at Disneyland.

If we were visiting Denver tonight, I would have to wheedle pretty hard to get Bob to agree to enter through the swinging bookcase at Williams & Graham. His colleague [MMBLEHMPH] offered to take him there last time he was in Denver, and he refused absolutely. A little too rare for his blood.

But I know what I'd order if by some means I managed to strong-arm him through that hidden door: the Nickel Bag O’Funk (Boulard VSOP calvados, Leopold's Tart Cherry, fresh lemon juice, demerara syrup, Isastegi cider). That's an irresistible name, right? And I've heard that Boulard calvados is nice. Plus, we bought a bottle of Cherry Heering this fall and have been enjoying the heck out of it, so I'd like to try the Leopold's.

Another place I don't think I'd ever get Bob to walk into is PDT (stands for Please Don't Tell - oh, bite me) in Manhattan. You get into that place through a phone booth in a hotdog joint. WAY too cutesy for Bob.

There's nothing besides a phone number on PDT's website, but I know kind of all I need to about their drinks program. I checked out their mixologist's cookbook this time last year, and came to the conclusion that that guy (Jim Meehan is his name) is way too That Guy - and his drinks are far too Those Drinks - for me.

No, we'd go to Temple Bar, which I will always remember as the first time I met [HEY HEY WATCH IT] in person. It is a beautiful, beautiful, civilized place, and everyone who walks in is magically transformed into their 1940's movie star equivalent. I felt like Joan Bennett, maybe, while my date was definitely Hedy Lamarr. It's like a Star Trek Next Generation holodeck experience, except nobody has to look at Riker wearing a tiny fur poncho. Wow was that a rabbit hole not worth dropping down.

My husband is a Manhattan man like his dad, and so I know for a fact he would order the Temple Bar Lower Manhattan, made with Old Overholt Rye, Punt e Mes, Cynar, and orange bitters.

If we were in DC, we'd stop in at 2 birds 1 stone, on my friend [HUSH YOUR MOUTH]'s recommendation. It's the basement of the restaurant Doi Moi on the corner of 14th and S. As persuasive as she is glamorous, she got them to cough up the recipe for this excellent Pimm's Cup:

Pimm’s Cup for Fall

1oz. Cinnamon-infused Pimm’s (3 Toasted Sticks per Liter Pimm’s Overnight)
1oz. Ford’s Gin
4oz. ginger beer (housemade of course - fresh ginger and lemon juice, water, suger)
Pour over Ice in a Tall or Collins Glass.
Top with the ginger beer.
Garnish with a Mint Sprig and Lemon Wheel.

There's just a skeleton website for 2 birds 1 stone, like the tantalizing skeleton websites for Weather Up and PDT, and the completely nonexistent website for Harlan, a place NOT named after Raylan Givens's hometown, but JUST as cool and sexy in an old-fashioned - no not old-fashioned like "old-fashioned sexy Burt Reynolds in Playgirl" kind of way but real-life old-fashioned sexy, like when you realized that those handsome old movie actors with the beautiful manners were actually just hot men in suits.

Behind this truck is the most mysterious bar in town.

It's not all fancy places in big cities, either. The suburb/village/wretched hive of scum and villainy where I grew up has long harbored its own no-name, no-sign, You Didn't See Anything bar. Most people call it Morseberger's because that's the family that has owned it since Moses was a tadpole, but my friend [JUST LEAVE IT AT 'FRIEND'] called it "Bar named Bar" when she reminded me to include it here. Even on Google Street View, it is entirely blocked by a big truck. Adding to the mystique!

I have somehow never been in to Morseberger's - when I go home I am usually at my parents' house - but my FRIEND recommends the eggnog. Here's some advice, though: if you do go, and after a couple eggnogs find yourself in a beef with another customer, don't take it into the men's room. A man was killed in there a few years ago, and while this is tragic of course, it makes that Williams & Graham bullshit look like Candy-ass-land.

HA! We ended FUCK YOU FRIDAY with murrrder! How's that for F.U.! And how's this - this post is so obnoxious and rude that I am posting F.U. FRIDAY on SATURDAY.

The snow has started outside, so I am pretty sure we're going with hot drinks tomorrow. Teas, ciders, hot milk, hot water. Anything you like particularly, let me know!

The Advil Calendar 2013 THURSDAY IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER EDITION

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 22:52:00 +0000

All right this is not a novel observation I'm about to make.

Let's be honest - is it ever? Am I ever out here on the Internet dropping the Bomb of Truth such that people stagger back from their monitors and run out onto the street, their lives completely changed? No. The only bombs around here are usually of the F- variety.

So, hi! Welcome to the 12th of December! We're right in the middle of the 24 days of Advil and maybe I should recap some of our progress before getting into the thing I feel like complaining about today.

We've made autumnal punches for a family gathering (alcoholic and non-alcoholic).
We saluted the Maccabees and a Japanese diplomat with Tablet Magazine's Apple Tea Fizz.
We made Viryta and pickled oysters. (We sampled the Viryta last night and it is smooth and delicious!)
Children's author Jonathan Auxier showed us the science of the Sazerac on the debut edition of EXCITING GUEST WEDNESDAY.
I reviewed cocktail books and shared some sample recipes.
We made White Trash Shooters, Broke-Ass Screwdrivers and Ghetto Fabulous Mulled Wine on our first F YOU FRIDAY.
There were Bloody Marys oh yes there were. I might have one right now.
Boilermaker! Boilermaker! Shot and a beer! Boilermaker! Boilermaker! Something something fear!
We drank with our favorite children's lit characters - and we'll do it again next Tuesday at LITTLE TAVERN ON THE PRAIRIE.
My husband confessed to a very embarrassing drink on our second EXCITING GUEST WEDNESDAY.

Well that is kind of a lot. Maybe I will have that Bloody Mary while I'm making dinner. You, however - read on!

Ok so here's a bomb - not the bomb, but a little promise bomb to you - after yesterday's post, I am going to drop a buck into my son's Habitat for Humanity coin box every time I use the word "also." That is one duuuumb habit I picked up somewhere. Sorry.

But the observation, yes. It's been bothering me lately that certain manufactured items are evolving backwards. They are getting worse. As I said, this is far from news. People bitch about it all the time. And it's common knowledge - policy, even! - in some industries. One of my grown-up nieces is an engineer at a major appliance manufacturing company. She will tell you flat-out, "Keep your old dishwasher as long as you can."

A still from City Neighbors Charter School Film Club's
Dead End in Norvelt, showing the red phone in use.

I have a similar beef with my telephone. Which we don't call a telephone anymore.

My parents let me have my own phone extension in my room when I turned 17, a little rite of passage thing. It was a birthday gift, I'm pretty sure, and it wasn't new even then. That phone is a dinosaur. It's a cast-aluminum desk phone with a dial, and it weighs about 20 pounds. Rolling that dial around required real finger strength - good thing we only had to dial 7 numbers back then (THAT'S RIGHT CHILDREN).

And despite painting it red, retro-fitting it with a new jack, and putting an MTV sticker on it (in 1982, MTV was very cutting-edge), it was still not what I wanted.

I wanted a Trimline Princess phone with buttons. I eventually bought one myself, a pink one - dusty pink, like the inside of a dog's mouth pink, and it only got worse, you know how some plastics as they age the color shifts? It paradoxically managed to both fade and turn darker at the same time, eventually looking more like the inside of a dog's intestine. Whereas my red phone is still red.

And eventually the Trimline one broke or whatever. The red phone moved with me to Brooklyn in 1994. We put it next to the bed because it was so heavy, it didn't go flying across the room if you were half-asleep and had to make a grab for it. Also because it would make a great weapon in the case of home invasion. Home invasion very rarely happens but you know, if it does, no home invader expects to be attacked with a telephone.

And then when we moved to our house here, our first house-house, we got cordless phones because there's only one jack in this house. Maybe there's two. So you take the base unit and plug it into the one jack and then put the charger units... you know, wherever. Who cares. Well those fail with total frequency - I just recently discovered that those handsets have batteries in them that can quit. I don't know. I didn't open them up. I didn't read the manual. We never use them anyway.

Which brings us to the whole cell phone catastrophe of engineering.

A 2 by 4" quarter-inch slab is what we use for a phone now? That's ridiculous. They're slippery. Fragile. I've had like seven of them since I first got a mobile in 2000. They require accessories like earbuds and headsets to make them even remotely suitable for talking into.

I am not denying that they do other things very well - I'm recording into mine right now - but look at this picture: which one of these objects looks like an auditory communication device? AND - if we hadn't trimmed off the cord for some reason I don't remember? That red phone would STILL WORK. I tell you, if I were a phone engineer right now, I'd be ashamed of myself.

And even within the cellphone lifetime, they have gotten worse. This was my first cell phone. It fits in the hand, it has a little mouthpiece that flips out, I could find it in my purse. It has a photobooth sticker of me and Bob with a brand-new baby who is now 12 years old (and has his own phone god damn it). And then there were clamshell phones, which made a modicum of sense. All the sensitive parts were shielded when the thing was closed. But these stupid flat items, well I'm sorry.

By the way, I can hear you - you are saying "HEY - WHY AREN'T WE DRINKING YET?" and hold your horses, we are coming around real soon.

It's like ice.

Most people have icemakers in their refrigerator freezers now. Not everybody - them consarned things break down a lot so plenty of people still use ice cube trays. AND THEY'RE THE LUCKY ONES.

A Gizmodo writer LOVES this thing, calling it "a graceful mix

of starship freighter and industrial revolution machinery."

I laughed, oh I laughed. Then I stopped.

Used to be, everybody filled ice cube trays. If you're as old as I am or had a grandmother who never threw anything out, you remember those steel ice cube trays with the lever. Hated those things. The cold steel stuck to your skin and it took the strength of Hercules to crack the ice, which then burst out of the tray and skittered across the floor.

But this tray made good ice for drinks. Even the plastic trays make ice that is larger and more rectilinear than what you'll get out of your icemaker now.

Icemakers make terrible ice. It's rounded on one side, so when it slides up in the glass that rounded side nestles against the curved wall of the glass and you have an ice dam between you and your drink. Icemaker ice also tends to nestle together and refreeze into a solid block. And icemaker ice is NOT CUBIC - it's narrower at the ends, making it more melty.

Parsing this makes me sound like a maniac, doesn't it. But it is a factor, dammit!

The very worst thing is going to a restaurant with a good reputation - say a newer restaurant with a whole farm-to-table bla bla artisan hinkydink - and getting kind of excited about the cocktail menu, which will be full of sage-infused this and rhubarb shrub and heirloom whatever, and picking the house Negroni, which is made with smoked vermouth and gin aged in whiskey barrels, and asking for it on the rocks because you're going to have dinner and I for one don't need to be completely in the bag when the trout comes out - and it shows up poured over a metal scoopful of the kind of ice you find in a Coke at McDonalds.

You know the stuff.

This stuff is also known as "cheater ice," because it packs into a drink cup leaving as little room as possible for the soda. When stuff like this hits a room-temperature cocktail, it just gives up the ghost and turns to water. It's not so bad when it's added to a drink that's already been chilled, but still it will dilute the drink fairly quickly because it has a lot of surface area and carries with it more already-melted water. Also, it slides around in the drink and floats up into your mouth and it's just yuck. I DON'T LIKE IT.

This is the Angel's Share.

The first time we went to the Japanese speakeasy on Stuyvesant Street known as Angel's Share, I was startled and intrigued to see the bartender sort through an ice bin with a pair of tongs looking for the right PIECE of ice for my gin and tonic. (That was a long time ago if I ordered a G&T.)

One big rock of ice. He might have sculpted it a little with an ice pick to make it fit better in the glass, even. At the time, I thought it was one of those Japanese things that we Westerners kind of admire but also kind of think is frighteningly submissive and/or OCD.

But if you think I'm the only one who noticed, well, you've never been to New York. If it can be fancied-up, it will be fancied-up - that's the First Rule of Manhattan. New York Magazine ran a slideshow of fancy ice in 2008. God the rest of us are never going to catch up! (That was fake cultural hysteria BTW.)

In fact, the ice thing is getting seriously out of hand. It's one thing to plump for a bar ice machine that makes perfect 1 1/4" by 1 1/4" cubes, or to find specially-shaped silicone, copper or aluminum trays that make rods for tall drinks or perfect spheres for Scotch (a sphere is the shape with the least surface area and thus melts the slowest). I'd say it's another thing entirely to hand-carve every piece of ice that goes in a drink using a Japanese ice saw or a chainsaw lubricated with vegetable oil.

Ok, this is some badass icemaking, I have to admit.

And it appears I am going to need one of these.

Plus a set of these, a Japanese artist's statement on global warming.

There are bars that describe their "ice program" on the menu. I always thought an ice program was what Kristi Yamaguchi did at the Olympics. Get away from me with your ice program. Go smoke some bitters, why don't you. Wax your ironic mustache. The happy medium looks more like this:

That's ice from a specialized bar ice machine and the same kind of ice in my drink (rye with a little Cynar in it) at Cunningham's in Towson MD.

But what does all this mean for those of us who drink at home? Besides molding individual Death Star ice balls and great white sharks (oh I bought a great white shark ice mold - it tipped over in the freezer and all the water ran out), what do we do about putting ice in our drink that doesn't dilute it too fast and then try to sneak into our mouths?

Well, the good news is that you could reclaim some space in your freezer by taking out the ice bin and turning off the icemaker. Word has it that the water line that feeds the icemaker is the weakest point in your fridge's engineering anyway, so maybe using it less will keep the repairman at bay.

Or for $300, you could get 50 of these FedExed to your door.
I shit you not.

But yeah, if you want to go this route, you'll be filling ice cube trays.

So let's see, what does Bed Bath & Behave have in the way of ice cube trays? Cutesy ones, those are probably to be avoided. Silicone trays that make 2" cubes, that's probably your best bet, although you kind of have to punch each cube out of individually. There are sliding covers and switches - engineering innovations that seem...not strictly necessary.

This is the phone thing all over again, isn't it? Where is the semi-rigid plastic ice cube tray that you flex and the cubes pop out? What was wrong with it and why can't I find one?

CONCLUSION: How to make The Coldest Drink in Coldtown

Prepare your ice. Put your freezer on its warmest setting and find some kind of tray or mold that makes big ice. Fill the tray or mold with hot water. It'll take a day or two for that ice to freeze, but if it freezes slowly, it'll be extra clear and less likely to crack. Wrap up everything else in the freezer so that odors don't get into your precious ice.

Pre-chill your ingredients in the freezer. Put the shaker and the glassware in there too.

Pisco Punch

1 1/2 oz Pisco
1 oz Lime
1 oz Pineapple juice
1/2 oz Pomegranate juice
dash Chuncho bitters (Angostura in a pinch)

Shake over ice, strain into chilled glass.

So tomorrow's F YOU FRIDAY and hmmm... it might be time for the speakeasies. As in "F you, you are not cool enough to get in here." Last chance - you know about a hidden bar, a place without a sign out front or a website, you let me know!

I don't believe it, but this post is getting a bibliography. There is some serious nerdism going on out there in the area of ice.

"Cocktail Science: 5 Myths About Ice, Debunked" by Kevin Liu on SeriousEats.com.
"The Truth About the Fancy Ice in Your Drink" by Elizabeth Gunnison for Esquire.
"The Ice Program" by Nicola on EdibleGeography.com.

"Rocking Out" by Paul Clarke for Imbibe magazine.
"The Ice Is Right: Is Artisan Ice the Final Frontier for Craft Cocktails?" by Jessica Sidman for the Washington City Paper.

Advil Calendar 2013 EXCITING GUEST WEDNESDAY Part Deux: The Exciting Guest Strikes Back!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 07:40:00 +0000

You're going to say I'm lazy and I'm going to say... hold on. Honey, could you reach me my beer? Well ok obviously I am lazy, but not in this case. Okay kinda. Anyway.

I had the idea for Exciting Guest Wednesday a month or so ago, when I first decided to Advil it up again this year after a one-year hiatus. I solicited drinks recipes from friends, relations, business contacts, and the vermin who live beneath the porch. (Nobody wants that drink, by the way.)

And as I was getting together some of those recipes for today, I realized that the best drinksman I know, the person who makes me the most inventive, best-proportioned cocktails I've ever drink-drank-drunked - was sitting right next to me!

DAMAS Y CABALLEROS, QUIERO PRESENTARLES A MI ESPOSO,

Bob.

Without further ado (except for some minor edits on my part and a few comments and also I put in the pictures)...

Bob says:

We visited Peru this Summer, my charming neighborhood librarian family and I. Despite the occasional altitude or intestinal adjustment by some of us, it is an amazing place. I can go on and about it, just ask me.

But for today’s purposes, I'll skip all the rest [by "the rest" he means the astonishing cultural diversity, the mind-blowing geography, thousands of years of civilization, excellent food, and llamas - YNL] and present to you: the Pisco Sour!

The Spanish brought so much to the Americas: Christianity, genocide, excellent plazas and urban public spaces, plague, olives. Olives were a nice surprise about that country: excellent olives. This orchard in Lima is reliably (or at least consistently) said to be the first olives planted in the Americas, dating to the 1500s.

And they brought wine. And wine begat brandy.

And in the dry warm Southern expanses of Peru, brandy begat Pisco! Pisco is a clear distilled sweet strong grape brandy. In the puro form, it can be taken straight (not unlike tequila) but it is fairly strong (again not unlike tequila), being classified as an aguardiente -which I am guessing means something akin to firewater.

In the 1920’s, so the legend goes, American bartender Victor Morris started making pisco cocktails at his golden age hotel bar applying techniques of the era, improvising from a whiskey sour, blending in egg whites to finally strike on what became the Pisco Sour. Genius!

2 fl oz Pisco

1 fl oz key lime or lemon juice

¾ oz simple syrup

1 egg white.

Shake hard or blend with ice and strain into Old Fashioned glass.

Top with Amargo Chuncho bitters.

It is a great cocktail: sweet, deceptively strong, the Peruvian bitters have a cinnamon-y taste. (Oh and Chile and its claims on the history can kiss my Chuncho-loving ass.)

We had one with my friend TDub at this enormous kind of fancy/casual place in Lima;

[That purple shit in the glass? Chicha. Made from fermented purple corn,
it tastes like if Coke and mulled wine had a baby.
Actually it tastes like the afterbirth of if Coke and mulled wine had a baby. - YNL]

I had one at the cook-your-own-steak-on-a-rock-the-temperature-of-the-sun place in Cusco;

[This was before the kitchen basically caught on fire and we had to flee.
You can see my drink in this picture - a caipirinha, also very good in Peru. - YNL]

I had one on the roof at the terrace place behind the white pumice-like stone Cathedral in Arequipa;

[Amazing ceviche in Arequipa. - YNL]

I had one pretty much whenever I could. Rarely if ever did I have two. Words never heard by Peruvian waiters from their managers: “push the drinks”.

I also had a Colca Sour in which the simple syrup is replaced by juice of a cactus flower grown in the Colca Canyon region.

[He did not buy the Colca Sour from the wool lady but I didn't get a picture
of the Colca Sour lady, and this wool is pretty frickin amazing. - YNL]

It was great but I still feel guilty about buying it as we were at a tourist-trap street market on a tourist-trap tour, running low on soles and that leg of the trip was fraught with altitude/car sick child, creepy leering obsequious guide [who rubbed up against the lady with the sick child every time he passed by, oh and also almost certainly lied about the entrance fees to the WHATEVER WE WERE GOING TO SEE, which had to be paid in soles that he oh-for-damn-sure pocketed, resulting in the stressful cashlessness of that day AHEM CARLOS YOU PRICK - YNL], unknown next likelihood of food, threat of condor poop.

Still the drink was appropriately grungy in a styrofoam cup and truly excellent.

A Pisco sour I didn't have was at the bar in the lodge we stayed at on the Amazon. We were about seventy-five klicks upriver from Iquitos. It was not Cambodia, and it was not classified, and we were supposed to be there, but otherwise it was just like that clip right above.

[AHEM FOR COMPARISON:

100% fewer visible wounds and audible fatalism in our video. Also, different continent. - YNL]

Our place was a pretty cushy spot with a hammock house, a scarlet macaw that yelled Hola! at the kids, a friendly tapir and a big center bldg for meals and lounging. I saw they had a bottle of Kahlúa on the shelf and I thought of Jeff.

[This is the lodge bar at the place upriver from Iquitos.
That empty glass with the pink straw? Pisco Sour, pretty sure.]

[Wait, JEFF? Jeff from the shelter? Jesus this is swinging wide just as badly as I do. - YNL]

Ol’ Jeff. Jeffy. El Jeffé. Jeff and I were “counselors” on swing shift together at a homeless shelter in Seattle Washington when I was fresh out of college about, uh, almost twenty five years ago. The quotes on counselors were not anecdotal; ours was more of a rules-enforcing role than a therapeutic one. The job was pretty stressful.

Beer guy. Also, from Ohio.

Not a lot of counseling. I lasted three years or so. Like shift workers everywhere, I suspect, we hung out mostly with one another as our 9-5 colleagues were usually not up for an 12:15 happy hour.

I had been pretty much a beer guy to that point (and mostly since –keep reaching for the stars Bob!), so it was Jeff who provided a genuine grown-up entree to cocktails for me, or rather, one cocktail in particular: The Brandy Separator.

[Wife has a spasm right here and laughs for three minutes.]

1 shot Brandy
1 shot Kahlúa
.5 oz cream or milk in a pinch
Serve over ice in a low ball glass
adding the cream last.
(They will try to put vodka in there, don’t let them.)

“That was your first real cocktail!?!” I know; it’s embarrassing, right? [YES] It is only now that I am comfortable enough in my manhood that I can admit this to just you and 700 more of my wife's closest friends.

The Brandy Separator, aka the Dirty White Mother. Nice.

Well Jeff was about six foot seven and had this messed-up acne scarred face. He was also nearly deaf which gave a certain aloof terse-ness to his interactions, I have come to think. Anyway, people didn't question his masculinity very often from what I noticed and the Separator was what Jeff drank.

Rain slickened nights at those shitty cocktail places behind curtains in random Asian restaurants by his place near SeaTac Airport (and what is up with that name anyway? famous favorite son or daughter naming opportunity here! How about Kurt Cobain International? The Jimi Hendrix Cross-continental Traffic Experience? Anything but Jeff Bezos Field.), I will have another, thank you.

So Pisco is brandy, right? So Pisco and Kahlúa, plus cream would be a Separator! Jeff would be so proud! I struggled in my broken Spanish to communicate with the barkeep at the lodge but pointing is pretty universal. It was the milk that was the hard part. ¿Leche? ¿Verdad? Convincing him to actually pour it in there took more gesticulations. I haven’t found Jeff on Facebook or analog means. I hope he is well somewhere.

I raised a glass to him there in the jungle that night. It was sweet and awesome. The only internet reference for this particular concoction I found in my exhaustive research was for the ‘White Peruvian’ at Tutuma, “the only jazz club and restaurant in New York that you can hear Afro Peruvian jazz music without a cover charge”. Tell ‘em Jeff sent you!

That's the mouth of José de San Martin,
liberator of Chile, Argentina, hell most of southern South America.
But the rest is all Bob's son.

Jesus Christ, he brought it back around. Whew! Also, that empty glass at the Adventurama or whatever it was called lodge bar was NOT an empty Pisco Sour. He was reminiscing about a giant semi-psycho hearing-impaired shelter worker in Seattle! OK THEN.

Tomorrow is Thursday and I think tomorrow is the day we will address a very serious subject. Ice. People do not understand ice, and you'd think, given that it's merely the solid state of one of the most common - and simplest - molecular compounds ON THE PLANET, they'd've figured out how to cool down my drink without turning it into weak slush by now. DEMAND BETTER ICE. I'm out.

The Advil Calendar 2013 Day WHAT?: NANCY DREW TURNS 21 EDITION

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 06:52:00 +0000

"Are ya cold, Raylan?"

I was going to putz out on this day, I swear I was. I've written over 16 thousand words in the past week, including a longish post on my most memorable reading experiences of the past 12 months and a REALLY long set of notes for a radio segment about Great Holiday Gift Book Ideas For Children and I was fried.

Good for nothing but watching the episodes of Justified where Raylan gets his shirt off.

But then I posted an announcement of the radio segment (listen for me on WYPR 88.1 FM, Marylands NPR station, somewhere between 9:30 and 10am today) on Facebook, mentioning that I would be doing pairings of children's fiction with nonfiction and... something else, god I'm so tired, and my friend Leslie commented that she was glad I'd said what I'd be pairing the novels with, otherwise she'd have thought I was pairing like Harriet the Spy with Jack and Coke.

Paraphrasing.

BUT THAT'S A GREAT IDEA.

Thanks, neighbor! I'll save you a pig cheek just for that!

I DRINK I CAN, I DRINK I CAN!

For example! That poor peddler in Caps for Sale is going to sit down with a nice meaty glass of red workman's wine as soon as he gets those damn monkeys off his back and makes it to a cafe.

The Grinch gets his chill on with a Midori Sour (Midori, vodka, sour mix, and Sprite - we don't bother making artisan cocktails for that guy, I don't give a shit how big his heart got).

Katniss drinks moonshine.

Mary Poppins takes a po-faced glass of sherry from time to time but her modern counterpart Nanny Piggins will have a Cake Batter Martini, thank you very much (cheezus crust, that looks nasty) - in a pint glass if you please, or better yet a quart jar if you've got one. Maybe just a mixing bowl. And keep 'em comin'.

Mrs. Frisby, once she's gotten all of her children out of harm's way, takes a drop of St. Germain elderflower liqueur in her chamomile tea - and that, friends, is a lovely little hot drink, as long as you don't mind drinking with a mouse.

Tiffany Aching of Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men YA series is spiritual sister to Stephanie Edgley (sp. yes I know fuck off) from the Skulduggery Pleasant books by Derek Landy. They are going to sit down in a picturesque pub in Cornwall (splitting the difference - Tiffany's from Scotland and Stephanie's from Ireland) and trade thrilling tales over pints of real ale. They're realists after all, even if they routinely practice magic and talk to dead people.

Some characters, though, I'll take to the bar myself.

Fern, from Charlotte's Web is someone I'd like to check in with once she's old enough to knock a couple back. She will have grown up with fairly simple tastes, so for her, we'll resurrect a really neat summery ice tea cocktail that I came up with myself:

Tracy's Birthday Ice Tea
2 oz gin
4 oz hibiscus tea, cold
about a teaspoon mint simple syrup
garnish with frozen blueberries

Fern will update me on how the farm's been making out ever since she took over from her dad (massive coronary, it was so sad). It's actually going really well - the stand at the farmer's market attracted the attention of a couple of influential restauranteurs, and when other farmers noticed her sudden cachet as THE provider of fancy organic produce and local cheese, she found herself giving classes and speaking at conferences and now she's writing a manual for reverse engineering a modern, chemically dependent farm into something more sustainable and in tune with the seasons. She's got a title: Farm Detox.

She tells me all about crop rotation, chicken tractors, and beneficial insects while I bide my time waiting to ask if Templeton is still around giving her grief.

I read Code Name Verity earlier this year and after I finished it - and wiped my eyes and blew my nose - I wanted nothing more than to sit down with Verity and Maddie, the teenage war heroes of that book, and ply them with liquor (not difficult - they're already drinking a bit in the book) until they spill all their stories and get weepy and then sing bawdy RAF songs.

Wartime privations being what they were, I'll want to honor them with the most luxurious, decadent cocktail that I can find, and that's - coincidentally - the Winston, named after you guessed it, the old cigar-chomper himself. It's crazy expensive because it's made with cognac that's like five jillion years old, plus some other stuff that I don't even understand - Grand Marnier Quintessence, Chartreuse Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolonge. And then it's dusted with chocolate nutmeg VICTORY.

Here's another pair who could use a stiff drink - Hansel and Gretel. Not those cake-sniffers featured in a million syrupy cartoons, but the Hansel and Gretel who hit the road fleeing from homicidal relatives and could-be relatives in the first book of our pal Adam Gidwitz's A Tale Dark and Grimm trilogy.

For those two, I'm going to want something sweet and maybe golden, but with a kick like a hammer. I mentioned the Widow's Kiss in my last post, and that sounds suitably ominous. Let's go with that.

The Widow’s Kiss
1 1/2 ounces calvados
3/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse
3/4 ounce Benedictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

I've seen recipes for this joint topped with a frothed-up eggwhite, and I like that for Hansel and Gretel too.

The dad in King Neil's Fortunately, the Milk gets a drink as a reward for dealing with aliens, pirates, an intellectual stegosaurus with a bit of an attitude, and "wumpires" all so that he can get the milk back home for the kids to put on their cereal. If I were him, I might see to their breakfast, send 'em off to school, shove that goddamn milk into the very back of the fridge, and then collapse in an armchair with one - or several - of these:

Well ok first he'd have to make the Earl Grey syrup. But really, takes 5 minutes.

Rainmaker Cocktail (Claire Lassam of Hello Giggles)
2 oz gin
1 oz tea syrup
1 oz lemon juice
soda water (Optional)
lemon peel for garnish
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and mix all ingredients together. Shake until chilled.
Pour over fresh ice. Give it a lemon peel for fancy.

Earl Grey Syrup:
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 tsp Earl Grey tea
In a small pot bring water and sugar to a boil. Remove from heat, add in tea and stir. Let sit for 2 minutes, then strain.

I love Zelly Fried, the protagonist of Erica Perl's When Life Gives You O.J. and Aces Wild. She has some weird (but loving) parental and grandparental mishegas to put up with, and when she finally grows up and goes off to college (I'm rooting for a liberal arts college somewhere in the East!) she is going to want to splash out a little.

But just a little. She's a good girl with a good head on her shoulders. Zelly is going to grow up to be a Greyhound girl. That's right - a sunny cocktail, with vitamin C (but not OJ, she is done with OJ) and lots of ice so she doesn't get schnockered right away.

Greyhound for Zelly
2 oz gin
4 oz grapefruit juice

You can make a Greyhound with either vodka or gin, but I see Zelly drinking gin. When she gets a little older, she's going to realize that this drink gets even better with just a little splash of maraschino liqueur, and all of her friends will think she is very sophisticated.

And of course I'm going to sit down with Claudia from E.L. Konigsberg's From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. That book changed my life - but I'll try not to tell her that, at least not until after we've sampled our way through a flight of punches and half the cocktail menu at The Dead Rabbit. We picked The Dead Rabbit because we are both suckers for New York history and because it's not that far from Les Halles, and we figured if the financial district crowd at Dead Rabbit pissed us off too badly (Claudia still gets pissed off pretty easily) we could go there.

Claudia will be working in publishing, of course - at Rizzoli or maybe Abrams. She got her start as an intern copyediting exhibition catalogues and now she helps develop interior design books, which makes her CRAYZAY.

Her brother Jamie's a lawyer, of course, and he shows up midway through our third hour of drinking, reminds Claud that she has to work tomorrow, and graciously picks up the check.

Now I'm all happy, taking that little imagination journey. That was so much fun I think I'll do it again next Tuesday - so shoot me a comment or an email if you think of someone from children's or YA literature that we should get a drink with - including any suggestions of what cocktail he or she might like or deserve, if you have an idea.

If you want to hear me on the radio, the audio is online, along with my notes. And you are never going to believe who is joining us for EXCITING GUEST WEDNESDAY tomorrow! Hoo-hoo!! I cannot wait to read this!