If you’re wondering, Dark Spirits likes the rock. Likes the metal, and the indie rock, the 70s flair, and the punk rock (natch). Dark Spirits (it’s sorta weird giving a book this personality, but in some ways sorta fun too, especially when it’s almost like it’s typing this now, talking about itself ala Bob Dole) especially likes the rock when the rockstars give it the faceout treatment in bookstores, so that all other books fall back behind its dark glory. This occurrence is shown in photographic full color in the picture below, as the hand holding Dark Spirits belongs to none other than Ron Lewis, the rock madman known not only as Ghost Stories but also as a member of the Fruit Bats (whose new album, Ruminant Band, is awfully good). He was in LA recently doing some TV work (as rockstars do), and shopping for books (ditto), and saw the Dark Spirits and gave it a high-five and the above-mentioned shelf faceout. Thanks Ron, from both Dark Spirits and me. You rockstars are all right.
Though this is Halloween week, making it the ideal time of year for a ghoulishly good (gawd, it’s fun to get yr Halloween speak on) mix like the Warlock, it really brings a magical charm to any evening. Well, any evening that you’re feeling like a yummily mystical mixture of brandy, Strega, limoncello, orange juice, and Peychaud’s bitters (which should really be any evening, now that I think about it). Click on through to the below video and learn the exact tricks to making it, but be warned!!! It can change you into a conjuring zombie. But now you know.
Well, some may know this already, and I’m not such a good “blow-my-own-horn” guy, so I’m going to keep this sorta short: my new book Dark Spirits: 200 Classy Concoctions Starring Bourbon, Brandy, Scotch, Whiskey, Rum and More is out, and ready for you to take it home, drink with it, and cuddle with it (well, at least pet it a little). The basic overview of the books is that it’s a bunch of dark-spirit based recipes broken out into seven fun (one hopes, at least) thematic chapters: Dark Classics, Bartender’s Choice, Bubbly Refreshers, Dim the Lights–Chill the Cocktails, Dark Drinks That Go Bump in the Night, Powerful Punches, and Hot Stuff. All the recipes are surrounded by what I like to think of as “party talk,” so histories, stories, quotes, suggestions for specific occasions, facts, further readings, and genial cocktail chatter. Also, as with a few of my other books, it has stunning and wonderful and wondrous photos taken by award-winning genius photographer Melissa Punch. While all that’s good and well, to complete my little sales pitch (see, I’m bad at this), I’ve decided to bulletize a few salient points:
Has two drinks in it (Sweet Louise, Very Old Fashioned) by bartender-about-town-and-serious-vest-wearer Andrew Bohrer
Has a George Brett mention in at least one recipe and the world’s best Football Punch recipe (that’s for the Kansan sports fans)
Has 35 recipes ideal for those days and nights when you and your specific other want to get “romantic”
Has a host of obscure literary and comic book references (though the Dr. Strange lines were sadly cut during editing–Neilalien will not buy this book), including the most obscure of all, a quote from Fandral from the 1976 issue of Marvel Spotlight, Marvel Spotlight on Warriors Three in the Rob Roy recipe
Has the phrase “the drink just wants that belly scratched” on page 221
Has shout outs to these four musical hot numbers: Truck Stop Love, Zoom, Warlock, and Tom Waits
Has a mention of you at some point in the book.
Okay, maybe that last one’s pushing it, but hey, Dark Spirits just might have you in it. And if not, you can certainly pretend. It’s available now at Amazon, and if you don’t want to buy it there, check out this page for more options. And let me just thank you in advance for the support, and for keeping me well-stocked in booze. And, let me tempt you with one more item below, the fabulous pic for the Crimson Slippers (won’t you be sad if you don’t have a book with that picture in your collection? I think so).
PS: Oh, could you (if you’re a facebook-er, and haven’t yet), also please become a fan of me on my A.J. Rathbun facebook fan page? If not, the PR guy at my publisher is going to beat me with a tape recorder. And I can’t take the scars.
I can’t get enough of The Long Goodbye. Maybe it’s cause I’m a big Raymond Chandler fan. Maybe it’s cause I think his creation Philip Marlowe is a big dollop of hard-boiled fun (some like Sam Spade or the Continental Op better. I say, “why not have all of them?”). Maybe it’s cause I have a soft spot in my hard heart for the Robert Altman movie version of the Long Goodbye, starring the genius, Eliot Gould. But maybe, just maybe, most of all, my liking of the Long Goodbye is because of this quote (which I featured in good ol’ Good Spirits, and which is admittedly a rough-around-the-edges, smelling-a-bit-like-bourbon, not-what-you-take-home-to-the-parents, quote. But great, so great, anyway):
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.
Okay, maybe I should have gone with the “Shaking and/or Stirring Writer Alert,” as in the below pic Mr. Regan is making a drink, and not actually drinking a drink. But, I promise you he did, indeed, drink one of the drinks he made. I promise. And, to be honest, I just wanted to have more than one “Drinking Writer Alert” (the first being the happy-go-luckiest poet, Ed Skoog, in this post) and hadn’t yet been sent any other pictures of drinking writers. So there.
And, Gary (or Gaz, as he’s now known from Tempe to Timbuktu) definitely fits the “Drinking Writer” name, as you probably know. But on the off chance you don’t, he’s one of the foremost drink writers in the world (the universe, even. The multi-verse, even , for you who’ve read a lot of What If? comics). The below picture was actually snapped at an evening celebrating his newest book, the bartender’s GIN compendium. I detail the book in more in-depth fashion on this Al Dente blog post, but in case your finger’s broken and you don’t feel like clicking, let me give you, as they say, the skinny. The bartender’s GIN compendium is a sweet book all about gin: history of gin, 250 recipes (or more) utilizing gin, and tasting notes and information on many, many specific kinds of gin and gin cousins and gin uncles and aunts, and gin pets, even. It’s a book for gin lovers, natch, but also a book for cocktail lovers, history lovers, and genial drunks who know how to read. Mr. Gary/Gaz Regan not only knows his gin (and drinks), but also is a darn witty fellow, and almost as fun to read as it was to meet him in person (but not quite: ain’t nothing like the real thing, as the song reminds us).
Which, to reiterate, I did, recently, at a lovely evening sponsored by the fine folks at Plymouth Gin. Beyond just talking gin, we hit the underground tour in Seattle (prostitute talk a’poppin, as it seems Seattle was once all prostitutes and mud), and then wound up at the Rob Roy. Which is where Gaz made himself and me (and Mr. Robert Hess, too) the drink he’s making below. The only down side? I don’t know exactly what drink it is–and it was darn good. It had gin, for sure. Vermouth? You bet. Bitters? Uh-huh. But what proportions? And did he pour in anything else? It was tasty, but darn it, I didn’t watch closely enough. Now, I’m going to have to track him down and have him make me another. Wait, that doesn’t sound bad at all.
Sometimes, even in a book (or comic book) you’re not especially fond of (or, haven’t grown fond of yet, because some books and comics, like cats, sneak up on you. At first, you’re all “take-it-or-leave-it” and then all-of-a-sudden you can’t put the book or comic or cat down), a quote just jumps up and makes you happy. Or, at least, this happened to me this morning while I was reading the Leslie Ford book Washington Whispers Murder. I’ve picked up a couple of Mrs. (Miss? Ms? Madame?) Ford’s books because, well, I liked the covers. And I’m a sucker. Or, sucka, if you prefer. Though I haven’t read one yet I can honestly say I dig. But what I do dig is a pitcher of Manhattans made for me when I come over to visit. Which is why I liked this quote (and cause I know you like the same–the Manhattans, that is–I figured you might like the quote, too).
Her pale blue eyes widened inquiringly as she looked at the Manhattan pitcher he’d picked up. If he’d been a magician, and the Manhattan he poured then a chinchilla rabbit, and she a child of five, her eyes couldn’t have shone with greater or more enchanted wonder.
“Me & Mint” sorta sounds like a kids book, where you learn about life in a very colorful manner. Mint in that book is either an older relative or a sick friend, or maybe a dog that’s not friendly at first, or a monkey that eats your baseball cards. In a very other sense, it’s one of my favorite herbs, and one that (luckily) is usually available, and so, so delectable in drinks. It’s also profiled in this week’s iSpice column on the Washington Post site, following either the first link in this sentence or this link. In that column, I rhapsodize a bit about mint, along with some others, and also talk about how to use it in drinks (and no, I’m not going to tell you here what I said there–that’s not what the interweb is about, people). They also have my recipe for the Iollas’ Itch in the column, which is from my new book Dark Spirits, a book I’m gonna write more about soon. Here’s the recipe (though this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t click to the column, just that you should have a drink while reading it).
3 fresh mint leaves, plus 1 fresh mint sprig for garnish
Ice cubes
2 ounces rye
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth
3/4 ounce apricot liqueur
1. Rub (carefully but firmly) the 3 mint leaves all around the inside of a cocktail glass. Then discard them.
2. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the rye, apricot liqueur, and vermouth. Shake well.
3. Strain into the minty glass from above. Garnish with the mint sprig.
Gawd bless the hard-boiled folks at Hard Case Crime. I may not have fallen in head-over-guns love with every single one of their books (that I’ve read), but enough of them hit me square in my noir-loving solar plexus that I’ve been known to fall on the hard cold concrete yelling their praises. And that’s just for the covers. No, no, it’s for the innards of the books they publish, too, and for their deadly devotion both to newly minted murderous/suspenseful/chilly/mysterious/etc novels and to reprinting hard-to-discover classics on the genre/s. For example, I just wrapped up John Farris’ (writing as Steve Brackeen–they’re great at printing up stuff from writers’ various and sundry nom de plumes, too) Baby Moll, a book that pulls no punches and revs up quickly into a mash up of twists, turns, smacks, sips, hips, and your general “guy-wants-to-go-straight-with-hot-babe-on-beach-but-gets-pulled-back-into-underworld-activities-by-once-beloved-boss” plot. No messing around, solely good, rapid, action of all sorts. And boozing. Which, as you know, I’m fond of (excessively? Maybe). First one’s a bar quote (for my bar-working chums), and the second’s a hard-drinker’s quote (for my hard-drinking chums).
The Rendezvous was a charming basement beer hall near the ship channel. It stank of spilled brew, dirty clothing, and the elusive scent of rare sin. The rest of the building was a honeycomb of rooms for furtive meetings, the exchange of smuggled goods, the viewing of strange sex acts. I had been there often in my fledgling days with Macy.
‘You go on to bed,’ Macy told Rudy. ‘Better get a hot bath.’ Rudy went out. ‘You want a drink, Pete?’
‘God, yes.’
He waved me to a small bar. I chose a bottle. ‘Give me some whisky,’ he said.
‘What do you want in it?’ I said.
‘I don’t want nothing in it!’ he said peevishly.
I gave him some whisky. He held it as somebody else might hold a flower. He drank it slowly. In between sips, I could hear the breath in his throat.
