Test post after so much inactivity.

I have a dumb technical question: how do you crush ice from cubes for stirred drinks? I’d hate to take a hammer to it. — Wolf

Young fellow, in the past, I have done exactly that–wrapped ice cubes in a dish towel and hammered away until it was limp and soggy and my latent aggressions were satisfied. Now, however, I use a second-hand electric ice-crusher that makes a small drawer’s worth of ice. It’s just enough for two shrubs or one mint julep, but one can’t really keep crushed ice on hand too long anyway.

Suffering celebrants have this morning two options: going it again or going without. Mr. Eric Felten of the Wall Street Journal discusses the options. I myself am partial to the “liquor-egg-dairy lines” favored by Mr. Frank Sinatra.

When the world is too dark
And I need the light inside of me
I’ll walk into a bar
And drink fifteen pints of beer

— Shane MacGowan, “Streams of Whiskey”

“I had three cans of beer along. I drank them slowly in the increasing, savage heat of midday, dropping the empties into the slow river. I was not a good citizen. I didn’t flatten them first.”

— Shepard Rifkin, The Murderer Vine

Some events current, some less so. Mr. Eric Felten of the Wall Street Journal commemorates the “delightfully vulgar Blagojevich affair” with the cocktails du jour–and of yesteryear. His recipe for Cohasset Punch, itself an ingredient in Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man:

1½ oz dark rum
1 oz sweet vermouth
juice of ½ lemon
½ oz syrup from canned peaches
½ oz Grand Marnier
2 dashes orange bitters

Start by putting half a canned peach in the bottom of a saucer champagne glass; then half-fill the glass with shaved ice. Put all the liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into the glass.

“Burgundy makes you think silly things; Bordeaux makes you talk about them; and Champagne makes you do them.”

— Brillat-Savarin

Satisfactory “doin’s”:

“It’s a common saying that no one has been able to tell if they are historians that like to drink or drinkers who like history,” said Dr. Robert J. Chandler, a senior historian at Wells Fargo Bank and a proud member of the group’s San Francisco chapter. “And no one knows because no one has been in any condition to record the minutes.”

In the Atlantic Monthly, Wayne Curtis explores the bitter truth of Fernet Branca–which, contrary to popular misconception, is not the older brother of Glenn.

Other than that, it’s hard to describe what Fernet Branca tastes like; it mostly tastes like Fernet Branca. But to give you an idea: in 1960, Betsy von Furstenberg was suspended from Actors’ Equity for spiking Tony Randall’s onstage drink with it. Randall believed he had been poisoned with iodine.

ANNA: Gimme a whiskey—ginger ale on the side. And don’t be stingy, baby.
LARRY: Shall I serve it in a pail?
ANNA: That suits me down to the ground.

— Eugene O’Neill, Anna Christie

Recalled to mind by the Web log of Ms. Iris Iris, who refers us to a third location, where you may watch the immortal Garbo deliver these immortal lines.