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 [...]