    "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
Oh hey ... George? In your face, motherfracker. How, piss off and find a copy of the United States Constitution, then read it. Then find someone (not a toady neocon yes-man) to explain to you what it means. Of course, the Republicans are already starting to talk about bending over backwards to give the Tinpot everything he wants. But we'll never see them tried. According to this crosspost from SCOTUSblog, the Supreme's Court above-referenced decision seems to show that "the Administration appears to have been engaged in war crimes, which are subject to the death penalty." On a practical level, though, will these people ever have to face justice for what they've done? Quote of the day. Typical of their gorge-rising spin and histrionic fear-mongering, on the heels of the Supremes' decision we get this from The Empty Suit:
Well, let's start with the possibility that maybe a few innocent people who are wrongly imprisoned at Guantánamo might be put out on the street, for starters. This is rich, too ... coming from the leader of a party who seem to be all for this whole amnesty-for-insurgents thing in Iraq. They seem perfectly willing to offer amnesty to the people who've killed over 2,500 American soldiers and let them keep being out on the street. Just so long as it's not our street it's okay, is it? Better quote of the day, from an actual human being (and a good human being, unlike the one quoted above). From Poppy's journal, talking about her recent fabulous meal at Cuvée (as if there's any other kind there):
Heheheheeeee ... I nearly spat iced green tea all over the monitor at that one. I {heart} Bob Iacovone! Cheese shmeese, he can give me this dish anytime he wants.  Oh my God, it was good. Ardent Spirits and The Cocktailian. Gary and Mardee have a new issue of the Ardent Spirits Newsletter out (because in the midst of all the stuff I'm posting today, we need a drink), featuring at least three new cocktail recipes! Actually, it's not Mary's turn after all. (Via Wes.) A couple of weeks ago, Dick "go fuck yourself before I shoot you in the face" Cheney's daughter Mary, America's most self-loathing, cognitively dissonant lesbian, was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air". I couldn't get past the first ten minutes of it ... she infuriated me so much I wanted to jump out of the car window. I switched off the radio and turned the iPod back on instead. Miriam said I've got to listen to it all, as it gets worse (!), so I probably will later. You probably heard that she wrote a book called Now It's My Turn, for which Simon and Schuster (via their new "conservative imprint") paid an advance of one million dollars (that's $1,000,000.00, in all its count-all-those-zeroes glory). Supposing that all copies of the book sold at the full retail price of $20, and supposing that the entire cover price went to the publisher (they don't, and it doesn't), they'd have to sell at least 50,000 copies to recoup that advance, much less make a profit when you consider how much they actually make with each copy sold. The book has sold fewer than 6,000 copies to date. During the week of June 3, for example, the book sold only 574 copies worldwide. Apparently not that many people want to read her sad, delusional foolishness. Here's a tidbit from TPMCafe:
Don't miss the comments on that post, my favorite hiss-claw comment being this one:
She doesn't need a book deal. She needs some serious therapy. Peeve of the day. I just rode up the elevator with someone who had been working out at the gym adjacent to our office building. In lieu of taking a shower, he instead doused himself with what must have been a quart of cologne ... making him smell exponentially worse. It was a good thing I hadn't had my lunch yet, or the unbelievably vile stench he was giving off would have prompted me to throw up on him. DUMI. Speaking as someone who's almost been turned into a smear on the concrete more times than I care to count by idiots yapping on cell phones while they're driving, I think the above acronym (Driving Under Mobile Influence) should be illegal. Now there's some evidence to back it up -- a study has shown that mobile phone talkers behind the wheel are just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than drunk drivers, and that more study participants rear-ended cars while talking on the phone than while drunk.
Of course. Hang up and drive, for feck's sake. Happy Fourth of July weekend, everyone! Have a safe and fun holiday, and I'll see y'all next week after the break. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. It's one of my favorites, the Aviation Cocktail. We've visited this one before, but here's a big of a twist -- according to a new article by Dave Wondrich in Drinks Magazine, the recipe we're used to isn't the original:
That's fascinating, and I had no idea. (That sidebar is also strangely omitted from the online version.) We had to try it. Crème de violette is going to be difficult to find, but for this drink and especially the exquisite Blue Moon Cocktail (substituting for the completely unavailable Crème Yvette), you should get some; you'll find it one of rarest and most exotic ingredients in your bar. It can be mail-ordered from Sally Clarke's in London, UK.
It doesn't get the drink nearly as sky-blue as the Blue Moon does, but it does lend a really interesting, floral dimension to the drink. We enjoyed it, and it's very much worth a try. [ Link to today's entries ]
The Drive. I stumbled across this on YouTube last night, and was glad I did. The New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC) is back in business and currently spreading the word about their new one-hour documentary entitled "The Drive," described thusly:
I've said it before, I'll say it again -- a lot of people in this country still really don't get what happened in New Orleans, they don't understand the devastation because they never saw it. They can visualize some water in the house, they might be able to visualize a flooded neighborhood, but they're never going to be able to imagine anything like the Lower Ninth Ward or Lakeview or Gentilly untill they see it. Now, if they haven't gone to New Orleans and seen it up close, they can see it on film. The trailer for "The Drive" is here, and at the above embedded video you can watch the first 15 minutes, as they drive through the Lower Nine and Lakeview. This first segment, along with over an hour of other recently-produced NOVAC documentaries, will be released on DVD tomorrow and is a steal at $4.75. Buy it. Summer cocktails. The New York Times regales us with some summer cocktails (thanks to Vidiot for the heads-up), and apparently there was a contest that I missed, soliciting ideas for the best summer cocktails. D'oh ... I mighta come up with something good. (Like my Nilsson Fizz below.) Some of their contest winners do look worth a try, though ... especially the Gingino (a Campari and ginger beer highball, garnished with limes and crystallized ginger), The Cuke (a cucumber, lime and gin highball -- do NOT use vodka, for Chrissakes) and the L'Alhambra (a punch with fino Sherry, Spanish cava, orange juice, orange flower water and orgeat). I came up with this one a couple of years ago and found it quite refreshing. It was inspired by song, and named after the song's author.
You could substitute coconut-flavored rum for a stronger and less sweet drink, but I think it'd probably knock you on your ass. Screw AT&T. This fucking company has been chasing me for years, and I can't seem to escape them. Now they're gleefully violating my rights on top of a long history of shitty service, and there might not be anything I can do about it. When I first moved here I signed up for cable TV service with a little local company called Jack Barry Cable (yep, owned by the "Joker's Wild" host), who were then swallowed up by Continental Cablevision, who were then swallowed up by MediaOne, who were then swallowed up by the dreaded AT&T. The service was horrid, and compaints about it and/or attempts to have it rectified plummeted me into customer service hell. Between the atrocious cable TV and internet service and how they ripped me off for hundreds of dollars of long-distance phone service (and were nasty about all of it), I swore I would never do business with them again. Now SBC, the local "baby Bell" phone company who provide my landline and my DSL (as "SBC Yahoo! DSL) has merged with the tattered remnants of AT&T, adopted their more famous logo and, apparently, all of their malevolence. You've heard it in the news by now, no doubt -- AT&T's gleeful compliance with the NSA's illegal domestic spying program, according to the EFF's lawsuit:
Yesterday Salon reported the account of two whistleblowers, both former AT&T employees, who say that AT&T has maintained a second secret, highly secured room since 2002 where government work is being conducted, in addition to the secret spy facility AT&T maintain(s)(ed) in San Francisco. Now it's being reported that as of tomorrow AT&T will change the terms of their privacy policy -- your personal information and data is no longer yours, it's theirs ... to do with as they please; or, as the new policy will state:
Or almost any other circumstance that this administration wants to impose, an administration that's actually talking about prosecuting investigative reporters for espionage. Fuck AT&T. I no longer wish to do business with them. I didn't before, and now I really don't. Problem is, my options are limited. Unless anyone out there knows of any alternative for landline service in southern California, I'm stuck with them unless we go for VOIP (Internet-based phone service). A look at Vonage first reveals that we'd lose our phone number, and would have to get another one. Furthermore, Wes is uncomfortable with VOIP's 911 service, which has improved but is still less reliable than landline. We could get DSL from Earthlink or other providers. Then again, what happens when AT&T helps the senators and congressmen in their pocket push for an anti-net neutrality bill, then assert their ownership of the fiber optic backbone and impose horrendous fees on VOIP providers to put them out of business? How long until it's a big Ma Bell monopoly again, this time working hand-in-hand with the most secretive and privacy-hostile administration in memory? So far it seems as if my only options to switch are an independent DSL provider and VOIP. Any ideas? [ Link to today's entries ]
Da foist day o' da summa. It's the summer solstice, the first day of summer, and time for an Anders Osborne song. Download it from eMusic (What, you're not a member of eMusic? All independent artists and no DRM!) and sing along.
Yeah you rite. Singing the praises of homemade hooch. Dr. Cocktail's latest epistle at Martini Republic is a paean to the joys of making one's one boozy concoctions at home, from the homemade bitters made by several wonderful folks (dang, I'm going to have to revist my own experiments in this area) to Paul Clarke's experiments with homemade falernum (I can't wait to read about his latest batch) to my very own pimento dram (a.k.a. allspice liqueur, the description of which makes me blush intensely). On a related note, we had drinks last night (well, natch), but I won't give it a separate "Cocktail of the Day" header because 1) it was just a Manhattan (well, hardly "just"), and B) it contained an unfair ingredient. I did want to give it a mention, though, as to how a "standard" drink like a Manhattan can undergo drastic and wonderful changes in flavor merely by varying the brand of whiskey, sweet vermouth and aromatic bitters you use, plus the proportion. I usually make Manhattans at a 3:1 when using good ol' Martini & Rossi and a good, assertive rye, but last night Wes was feeling experimental and tried something new. The whiskey was Sazerac Rye, the new 6-year-old stuff, which I think is wonderful -- spicy, cinnamony, orangey -- and could drink it all day, despite the fact that one person I know (hi, Louis!) thought it tasted like "mold." (Tsk tsk.) The vermouth was Carpano's Punt E Mes, the most bitter of the sweet vermouths of my acquaintance, kind of like a poke in the ribs with a vermouth stick, except quite pleasant. The bitters were the legendary and long-defunct Abbott's Bitters, incredibly rich and lush with "apple-pie" spices like clove and cinnamon and ginger plus cardamom and more. The proportion of whiskey to vermouth was 5:1, given the power of the Punt E Mes, and the extravagant nutter put TWO big dashes of Abbott's in each drink! All I could say upon my first taste was, "Wow!" This was a one-man brass band of spice, with so much going on it made my head spin (and paradoxically I wanted to temper the spin by immediately taking another sip). You could almost say it was too much, until you thought about all the flavors going on and felt the balance between the spices and the bitterness and the smoothness of the whisky, with the citrusy elements of the rye helping as well. It was like getting to know a Manhattan all over again, and I enjoyed every drop. Like I said, it's a bit unfair as Abbott's is going to be rather difficult to procure. A not-too-close-but-in-a-neighboring-ballpark substitute could be made by using a dash of Angostura and a dash of Fee's Aromatic, or by making up a batch of Robert Hess' House Bitters (scroll down). Pig, pig, pig! Today's feature story in the Los Angeles Times Food Section is about the bustling 24-hour foodfest that is L.A.'s Koreatown, featuring "barbecue pork belly, fiery kimchi, late-night noodles and Crown Royal" (that all sounds great, except for the Crown Royal part ... booooring). My eyes immediately drawn to the "pork belly" part, I see the place that's a shoo-in for our next Koreatown pork outing, yet another hidden mini-mall gem:
The restaurant's at 3465 W. 6th Street (at Kenmore, three blocks east of Normandie), in a minimall called Chapman Plaza, and it sounds perfect. I'm also much more keen on the idea of the "team of young waiters with perfectly spiked hair," instead of that awful sneering bee-yotch who deigned to serve us (barely) at the Toad House a few months back. Yissi HwaRo, here we come. GOP blocks renewal of Voting Rights Act. Yep, you read that correctly. The landmark 1965 act, which enfranchised millions of black voters who were being stopped at the polls by everything from illegal and racist poll taxes to "literacy tests," is now in limbo thanks to Republian congressmen who blocked and postponed its renewal, saying it "unfairly singles out" nine southern states ... who have a historic pattern of racist voter discrimination. Who spearheaded this in the House? Why, none other than "do-nothingest" Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, mentioned below as the idiot who never introduced a single piece of legislation in 2 years and who wants to force the display of the Ten Commandments all over courtrooms and legislative chambers, but can't even name them. Yes, that fucking idiot. And what day did he choose to do this? Why, on the 42nd anniversary of the murder of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andy Goodman and Mickey Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi ... three young men who were murdered because they worked for voting rights. [ Link to today's entries ]
"The Green Room is smokin' and the Plaza's burnin' down ... throw the baby out the window, let the joints burn down ... awwww, because it's ..." It's Al "Carnival Time" Johnson's birthday today, y'all. If you're in New Orleans, the party is tonight at 8pm at Vaughan's, Dauphine at Lesseps. Will we still need him? Will we still feed him? Over across the pond, another famous musician turned 64 years of age last weekend, which is a bit of a milestone for him. Although he doesn't have the stature of Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, who wrote one of New Orleans' most famous Carnival songs, he was once lucky enough to have New Orleans legend Clarence "Frogman" Henry open for him and his band back in 1964, and he once recorded an album in New Orleans with Allen Toussaint on piano. That's pretty good. Outrage overload. I had more to post about this week -- the N.O. firefighters who first witnessed the levee breach at the 17th St. Canal and were told to keep quiet about it by Congressional investigators; Blanco's bullshit anti-abortion trigger law, and Atrios' and Kos' and the "fair weather friends" of the liberal blogosphere's bullshit response to it (and to whom I say, "Fuck all y'all"); the cable from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq detailing horrible conditions there -- but I'm in the midst of some serious outrage fatigue. More later, maybe. [ Link to today's entries ]
Why New Orleans Is Still Worth It. Poppy (who's been on fire lately -- God, I can't wait for D*U*C*K to come out, not to mention Soul Kitchen), in a must-read post on her blog:
I'm reticent to post all of this, because I don't want to exceed the boundaries of fair use, but it's just so fucking good ... just read it all. She's nailed it, perfectly. This is exactly how I've felt about New Orleans for a very long time, how I've written about the city, how I've tried to describe the city to people. This helps explain my own verging-on-breakdown mental health status between the landing of Katrina and the day I was able to set foot in the city again and see it, deeply wounded as it was, and to see my family and friends again. I think what I was feeling was grieving, not that different from how one grieves for a person. I had to see that person of a city again, and see that despite near-mortal wounds that it was still alive, even if only 20% alive, before I could calm my spirit and move on. Now I've got another bout of homesickness to get over ... (Don't forget to follow the link to Vitter's letter to Da Paper. God, what an unbelievable prick that man is.) "Dollar Bill" gets the boot. New Orleans' Rep. William Jefferson was removed from his seat on the Ways and Means Committee by vote of the full House of Representatives.
He also claimed to be thinking of his constituents when he had a National Guard truck (soon to be two trucks and a helicopter) take him to his house three days after the flood so that he could retrieve belongings from his house. I'm really looking forward to his "side of the story" about how that 90 grand got into his freezer. It'll be very entertaining. America's dumbest congressman? (Via Steve M.) From the Must-Be-Seen-To-Be-Believed Department ... although the competition for the above title may be tough, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) takes a pretty impressive lead with his appearance on "The Colbert Report." He's introduced no legislation, although he co-sponsored a bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in the House and the Senate. (Perhaps he wants them there as a reminder, as he can only name three of them. Sorta.) And how does this idiot want to balance the budget? Why, cut the Department of Education, of course. Crooks and Liars has the video (QuickTime, WMP), which you absolutely must watch. Here's a partial transcript:
Emailer Ruth asked at C&L, "Does this guy deserve a $3,300 pay raise?" Only if he uses it to pay for a few years of remedial classes at his old high school. And a new hat. [ Link to today's entries ]
Café Adelaide. Okay, time for a massive dose of food porn. A mere six weeks after the fact (hey, not bad for me), I'm back to recapping the food, drink and music of Jazzfest. We actually left the Fair Grounds a bit early on the first Saturday, after The Iguanas' set, happily eschewing the mobs of Dave Matthews Band fans, but missing out on Etta James, Terence Blanchard, Banu Gibson, C. J. Chenier and/or Ben Sandmel's interview with Elvis Costello at the Heritage Stage (oh well). We had big plans afoot or else we wouldn't have missed out on this, and those big plans were dinner and cocktails at Café Adelaide, not only a favorite of mine since the day it opened, but now truly one of the very best restaurants in New Orleans. I thoroughly enjoyed Chef Kevin Vizard's cooking in the restaurant's early days, but now he's off on his own; under current Chef Danny Trace, it's even better. Every visit to Café Adelaide is a delight, and it keeps getting better; it was a must-visit, as soon after our collective arrival in New Orleans as we could manage. Most of The Fat Pack assembled there for a celebratory back-in-New-Orleans meal, plus a belated celebration of John and Fiona's birthdays (namesakes of |
