May 24, 2016
Anthony Trollop and I hang out, usually over some port. It’s a swell time, and as a long-time reader of this blog (which you are, right? Right?), you probable already know this, cause of past Trollope Cocktail Talks (which I know you’ve read, right? Right?), and my general fawning over him. I recently just re-read the first of the awesome Palliser novels, a book called Can You Forgive Her. Not the tops of that series of his (to me, the Phineas books are best), but still amazingly good. And it has this quote, which tells about how a good whiskey drink is a swell mood-changer.
And when he got to his club the waiters found him quite unmanageable about his dinner, which he ate alone, rejecting all proposition of companionship. But later in the evening he regained his composure over a glass of whiskey-toddy and a cigar. “She’s got her own money,” he said to himself, “and what does it matter? I don’t suppose she’ll marry her cousin. I don’t think she’s fool enough for that. And after all she’ll probably make it up again with John Grey.” And in this way he determined that he might let this annoyance run off him, and that he need not as a father take the trouble of any interference.
–Can You Forgive Her, Anthony Trollope
April 26, 2016
Our final Fredric Brown cocktail talk (in this run at least) comes from a story called “The Wench Is Dead,” which was later expanded into a novel. It’s about a genial drunk (who used to be high society), and murder, of course! And mishaps, and, as you’ll see below, Manhattans. Be sure to check out Part I and Part II to expand your Brown-ing. You’ll be happy you did.
‘Let’s drink our drink and then I’ve got a room around the corner. I registered double so it’ll be safe for us to go there and talk a while.’
The bartender had mixed her Manhattan and was pouring it. I ordered a refill on my whisky-high. Why not? It was going to be my last drink for a long while. The wagon from here on in, even after I got back to Chicago for at least a few weeks, until I was sure the stuff couldn’t get me, until I was sure I could do normal social drinking without letting it start me off.
–Fredric Brown, Miss Darkness
April 19, 2016
Our second Cocktail Talk from the collection Miss Darkness: The Great Short Crime Fiction of Fredric Brown comes from the story “The Jabberwocky Murders,” which does indeed have a Lewis Carroll strain running all the way through it – just as you’d expect from a literary yarn spinner. Be sure to check out Part I of our little boozy run through the book. Here, not a specific drink, but a great line about drinking and reading:
But with a bottle in my pocket and good company waiting for me there, my old tried-and-true friends in the bookcase. Reading a book is almost like listening to the man who wrote it talk. Except that you don’t have to be polite. You can take your shoes off and put your feet up on the table and drink and forget who you are.
–Fredric Brown, Miss Darkness
April 12, 2016
I recently received the book Miss Darkness: The Great Short Crime Fiction of Fredric Brown. I hadn’t had any experience with Mr. Brown before, which is a shame as he’s pretty darn good – smart, funny, able to write both super short stories and longer pieces, obsessed a bit with chess and Shakespeare and a few other choices things, like drinks. He also made a name for himself as a sci-fi writer (maybe even moreso) and I believe had a few movies made from his work. This collection is a monster of sorts, just in that it’s 726 pages, so hard to read on the bus (but not impossible!). A worthy monster to attack though, as it’s jam-packed with crime-noir-y goodness. And if you like circus sideshows, well, don’t miss it. I’m going to run a couple Cocktail Talk quotes from it, because Mr. Brown also enjoyed the tipples, as I’ve said. This one’s from the story “Good Night, Good Knight,” and has cocktail and bartending and acting and blackmail fun.
He got the haircut, which he needed, and the shave, which he didn’t really need — he’d shaved this morning. He bought a new white shirt and had his shoes shined and his suit pressed. He had his soul lifted with three Manhattans in a respectable bar — three, sipped slowly, and no more. And he ate — the three cherries from the Manhattans.
The back-bar mirror wasn’t smeary. It was blue glass, though, and it made him look sinister. He smiled a sinister smile at his reflection. He thought, Blackmailer. The role; play it to the hilt, throw yourself into it. And someday you’ll play Macbeth.
Should he try it on the bartender? No. He’d tried it on bartenders before.
The blue reflection in the back-bar mirror smiled at him.
–Fredric Brown, Miss Darkness
March 22, 2016
In case it slipped by you like a ship in the night (for shame, for shame), my most recent Seattle magazine Bar Method article is about local bar Westward, bar manager Andy McClellan, and a cocktail of his, The Tale of Two Sherries – which uses two different kinds of sherry! It’s truly a fine mix, and one you should probably read about, right? So, check it out.
*See all Seattle magazine articles by me
March 15, 2016
Spring has nearly sprung, or maybe is in mid-spring, though that could be mid-sprung-ing? Either or, things are budding, including my most recent blog posts for the swank Seattle magazine, which you probably already know, having read them all, right? RIGHT? Well, if not, there’s no need for shouting (that was just me kidding around). Read them now, before the web explodes**.
• New Greenhorn Whiskey and Other Local Distillery News
• Top Five Drinks for Celebrating a Birthday
• Valentine’s Day Drink Picks from Seattle Bartenders
• Support Your Local Female Bartenders at Speed Rack
*See all Seattle magazine posts by me
**This is not happening, and I don’t want to be the start of any “the web’s exploding” rumors for gosh sakes.
March 8, 2016
Well, here’s a first I believe – a Jane Austen Cocktail Talk. Not weird, really, since I love some Jane, and I was also recently in Bath, where I trod the streets she walked (so to speak), and had fun doing it. However, weird in the fact that there’s not a ton of drinking it up in Jane, so the quotes applicable to the Cocktail Talking are fairly few and far between. However, I was re-reading Northanger Abbey recently, cause of the Bath-ing that goes on in and my recent visit, and came across a pretty swell, boastfully funny, bit about drinking at Oxford:
“Lord help you! — You women are always thinking of men’s being in liquor. Why, you do not suppose a man is overset by a bottle? I am sure of this — that if everybody was to drink their bottle a-day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all.”
“I cannot believe it.”
“Oh! lord, it would be the saving of thousands. There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help.”
“And yet I have heard that there is a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford.”
“Oxford! There is no drinking at Oxford now, I assure you. Nobody drinks there. You would hardly meet with a man who goes beyond his four pints at the utmost. Now, for instance, it was reckoned a remarkable thing, at the last party in my rooms, that upon an average we cleared about five pints a head. It was looked upon as something out of the common way. Mine is famous good stuff, to be sure. You would not often meet with anything like it in Oxford — and that may account for it. But this will just give you a notion of the general rate of drinking there.”
— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
March 1, 2016
I know many of the Cocktail Talk posts here (at least 89.6%) follow along one or two lines. Either a pulp-hardboiled-detective-murderous-noir selection, or a Trollope selection, with the occasionally Dickens thrown in for good measure. Sure, there are some others, but I usually run my routes with precision. But once in awhile, we need to shake things up. Combine that with the fact that I was doing an event not long ago and about half of the folks there had never had absinthe, and, well, we end up with the below quote which I love from the famous politician, historian, and journalist:
One’s emotions in Rome were one’s private affair, like one’s glass of absinthe before dinner in the Palais Royal.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
