“They’re so self-righteous. I never pissed my pants. This guy killed a man with a motorboat. You know what gets you over something like that? Drinking.”

 – Roger Sterling, Sterling’s Gold

“The well-made cocktail is that most gracious of drinks. It pleases the senses. The shared delight of those who partake in common of this refreshing nectar breaks the ice of formal reserve. Taut nerves relax; taut muscles relax; tired eyes brighten; tongues loosen; friendships deepen; the whole world become a better place in which to live.”

– David A. Embury

(with thanks to “The” Steve Carey)

One hopes this young fellow applied the same industry to drinks-making that he did to the construction of this kitschy — but thoroughly delightful — bar. The menu certainly looks promising!

“I’m really sorry about her condition — ”
“Don’t be. The world would look better if everybody drank a glassful of Wild Turkey in the morning.”

— Charles Willeford, New Hope for the Dead

“A cigarette and a drink would taste good, he thought, damned good. There had to be a bottle in the glove compartment — and who keeps gloves in glove compartments and trunks in trunk compartments — and he willed a bottle to be in the glove compartment and there was. He swallowed some of the stuff and laughed because it burned his throat.”

— Jada M. Davis, One for Hell

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.