Belmont Cocktail

A recent cocktail book acquisition was the Mr. Boston Platinum Edition, at a Borders Outlet. It has the virtues and flaws of any Mr. Boston book; this is of course the classic mixed drinks bible, of which everyone owns a copy. It is hardly without flaw - the drinks appear with no commentary, in a strange mixture of old and new, good, bad and indifferent, with rather variable sizes. The book has evolved over many years; I had a copy for many years from the 70s.

I have lately been tempted to choose a book and march through it, making each cocktail in alphabetical order and blogging about it, complete with pictures. Some other bloggers do that - one is using the classic Savoy Cocktail Book for this purpose, and his blog is fun to read. I don't have that book yet, but I've made a couple of cocktails from his descriptions. But there are some practicalities to be mindful of. What about drinks for which one does not have ingredients? Do I skip them or substitute, or plan way ahead? The Savoy blogger obviously is able to afford some rather impressive brands, some of which I've never even heard of, much less seen on shelves in Michigan; and he lives in California, where he can readily obtain such items. Here in the People's Republic of Michigan, where our bureaucratic masters carefully control every bottle that enters the state and set its minimum price, this is an ongoing problem. Not ambitious cocktail lovers, our bureaucratic masters.

Ordering ingredients from out of state has multiple problems: expense in shipping; California distributors, who often have the widest varieties of items, won't ship to Michigan; and it's illegal to do it to begin with. (Almost certainly it's unconstitutional for the state to ban the practice after Granholm v. Heald, but I'm pretty sure the state will continue to attempt to ban private shipments until someone can afford to fight them to the Supreme Court for liquor as was done with wine. That would not be me.) So there are no easy options.

I was contemplating trying all the gin cocktails in Mr. Boston, but the ingredient problem was immediate: the second cocktail, the Adam and Eve, requires "Citrus-flavored brandy". I've never heard of such a thing, and certainly never seen it on the shelves. Can they possibly mean a brandy-based triple sec? It seems unlikely. And the fourth cocktail, the Alaska, calls for yellow Chartreuse. Chartreuse is alarmingly expensive, and Michigan doesn't seem to permit the stocking of less expensive 375 ml. bottles of the stuff. I have a precious fifth of green Chartreuse, and it seems to me that I've seen versions of the Alaska that call for green, so that might be solvable.

It's funny - I have a fairly well-stocked bar now, collected over a good many years and augmented by three separate inheritances or donations. I get the odd "You have Pernod?!" reaction from friends from time to time. But there are still a fair number of ingredients that present problems. I have other hobbies and am far from wealthy; I can't just buy anything that crops up in a recipe I'd idly like to try. (Thankfully, except for staples like gin and brandy and bourbon and scotch, the stuff doesn't get used too awfully fast.) And there are some things, like kola tonic or Amer Picon, for example, that are clearly going to be projects, not casual acquisitions. If I had those two items, I believe I would have made every recipe in the indispensible Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by now. I think I've done everything else that's actually practical.

At any rate, I put off that project for now and instead just picked a gin cocktail from that chapter: the Belmont. Alas, it's fairly awful. You would guess lightly sweet and creamy from the ingredients, but no. The gin overpowers the drink. Not a good idea. I'll finish drinking it - I'm eyeing it uneasily as I write this, the cream separating from the gin as if unwilling to associate with it. But this would not be one to repeat. Bourbon or scotch on the rocks would have been quicker, easier, more satisfying and with less clean-up. On the other hand, one does not discover new and exciting alchemical concoctions when one sticks to pouring whisky over ice...

2 oz. gin [Gordons]
1 tsp. raspberry syrup
3/4 oz. light cream

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. (p. 55)

UPDATE: To illustrate what I meant about my disadvantageous position in Michigan regarding ingredients, look at this latest post from the Savoy blogger. The drink is simple enough: absinthe, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth and gin. But notice the ingredients. I couldn't buy a single one of them in Michigan. I could make this drink myself, with ease (and I think I may try it tomorrow night). But I couldn't use the brands he mentions with the best will in the world. Now, I don't mean to whine - there are other interesting brands here. It just annoys me to have limited options.

Legion of Super-Heroes Fan

Now this gentleman is a serious Legion-fan. I'm a mere dilettante in comparison; likely because I have too many other hobbies and interests and sub-interests to get this serious about all the books and cards and posters and figures. And his blog is enjoyable, too. If you scroll down, photos of his collection, which makes me envious.

Ramos Gin Fizz

This is a delightful drink. Eric Felten recently wrote that it was a favorite of Frank Sinatra, recommended by Robert Mitchum:

Actor Robert Mitchum introduced Sinatra to the morning glories of the Ramos Gin Fizz, which Mitchum had praised as "mother's milk." Sinatra would order the gin, cream, egg, lime, sugar and soda mixes by the trayful after a night of flying the Jack Daniel's flag. He remained grateful to Mitchum for the recommendation, sending him a card every Mother's Day.

Pardon the lack of a link - I think a subscription is necessary. The quote appeared in the December 27, 2008 edition of the Wall St. Journal.

I made one about a year ago, and it didn't come out right. I'm not sure which recipe I was using. But the proportions provided by Robert Hess in The Essential Bartender's Guide are very seemly, and I can enthusiastically recommend this version:

2 oz gin
1 oz cream
1 whole egg white
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz. lime juice
1 1/2 oz. simple syrup
2 dashes orange flower water
1 oz. club soda

You must combine all ingredients in a shaker, minus the club soda, and with no ice, and give it what is called a "dry shake". This emulsifies the egg white with the other ingredients. Legend has it that Myer's Restaurant in New Orleans, where Henry C. Ramos invented the drink, insisted on twelve minutes of shaking at this stage. Somehow I doubt that's really necessary, but you should shake it very hard for quite a while. Then add the ice and give it a conventional shake. Then strain it into a Collins glass, and add some fresh ice cubes if you like - opinions differ on that. Finally, add the club soda, stir and enjoy. Oh, and I suspect you could drop the simple syrup a little bit and get away with it. Maybe an ounce would be enough.

I never drink enough to get hangovers, so I've never used it as a morning remedy. I mean, really. I work for a living, you know. How much does one have to drink to get in such a state that cocktails in the morning sound like a good idea? If you need the hair of the dog that bit you, my advice is, don't let the dog bite you so hard.

Oh, and gentle reader, I hear your objection. Balian, you say, what do you mean by putting a raw egg in a drink? Are you trying to kill me with salmonella or some other dread thing? My advice? Cowboy up, there, pal. When is the last time you heard of someone dropping over dead from eating their eggs with runny yolks? For Pete's sake. One in about 12,000 eggs has salmonella. Your odds are good. Just use fresh eggs from a reputable source. And sue if you get sick! I can recommend a good lawyer, just let me know.

James Swett, RIP

James E. Swett of Redding, California died on January 18, age 89. You probably didn't hear about it; I only read about it today.

My question, for this blog on popular culture, is why didn't his death get mentioned on the network news, or a respectable headline in major papers? Why would only a very tiny number of schoolchildren know who he was, and probably even fewer teachers think he was someone whose example would be interesting to their students?

On April 7, 1943, Swett was a fighter pilot flying a Wildcat near Guadalcanal. A 150+ formation of Japanese dive bombers was reported approaching US positions, and 1st Lieutenant Swett was among the pilots who were scrambled to go intercept. It was his first combat mission.

First combat missions for fighter pilots are infamously dangerous. That's when an inordinate number of them get picked off by experienced opponents. The ones who survive that first clash have much greater chances of surviving subsequent encounters.

Swett downed three dive bombers, and got hit by friendly fire from anti-aircraft gunners on the ground. Going after a second formation despite the damage to his Wildcat, he shot down four more and was after a fifth when he ran out of ammunition and was wounded and his plane badly damaged by Japanese fire. He eventually ditched the Wildcat in Tulagi Harbor and was rescued to be sent to a naval hospital.

Lieutenant Swett's efforts that day didn't go unnoticed. He was promoted to captain and sent to train in the new Corsair fighter-bombers and to work from carrier decks in the future. And he was nominated for the Medal of Honor by Admiral Mark Mitscher personally.

Busy first day in combat: shoot down seven, lose your plane, get promoted, win the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor.

So why don't we all know who James Swett was? Or Alvin York or Ernest Evans or William Barber?

I'm not suggesting that American's don't value these sacrifices in general; they do. I'm not suggesting that too much hero worship is a great idea in a republic; it isn't. But every schoolchild once knew who Alvin York was. Gary Cooper played him in a movie, in fact. There will be no movies about Swett (although he was mentioned in recent television programs); or Evans, a mostly Native American skipper who at one point on October 25, 1944 led his tiny little destroyer USS Johnston in a gunnery duel with Japanese battleship Kongo - not the most amazing exploit of Evans or Johnston that day, last day of Evan's life and many of his crew; or Barber who commanded his troops in a six day battle at Chosin Reservoir from a stretcher in December 1950.

Maybe there should be some more movies about them, instead of the recent crop of anti-war movies which, I notice, no one watches or cares about.

Even though most Americans today will never hear any of these names, we should note that people like Swett, Evans and Barber, and thousands of others, keep appearing when American forces go to war. We can't fully gauge what makes most American servicemen and women engage in brave, competent service; a good many in outright heroics; a few in what it takes to earn a Medal of Honor, which very often means not surviving to enjoy the accolade. Clearly it isn't the notion that your name will live forever in American culture, outside the military, which of course does remember these men.

Perhaps it is a good indication. While we celebrate musical performers and sports stars and politicians, and enjoy our mostly happy, mostly safe lives here in the States, people like James Swett not only serve but demonstrate unsuspected skills and qualities every time we go to war. If someday we go to war and no one does that, it will be then that we'll know our society, our culture, is doing something wrong.

Most people don't have to know anything about their exploits for there to be a Paul Ray Smith or a Jason Dunham or a Michael P. Murphy or a Michael A. Monsoor or a Ross A. McGinnis. But they deserve to be remembered, and they deserve to be examples of how to behave.

Comic Strips

In addition to comic books, I've always liked and enjoyed newspaper comic strips... although oddly enough I've never followed many in the newspapers themselves. It's been pretty rare when any local or otherwise easily obtainable newspaper had the strips I wanted to read.

In fairly early youth, I discovered (via the well-equipped Fort Clayton library) collections of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Little Orphan Annie, books I've been able to obtain in adulthood. Both collections were sometimes frustrating selections of stories, sometimes cutting off in mid-episode or starting in the middle, but they were still very satisfying. The Buck Rogers material, titled The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, was very primitive for the most part, but had an appealing energy. The strips were written by Dick Calkins and usually drawn by Phil Nowlan, and featured an endless series of very art deco spaceships and gadgets, and the usual derring do. Rogers fights rather incongruous Mongols who'd taken over the 25th Century Earth to begin with, but was soon on to interplanetary voyages and wars with the likes of Tiger Men of Mars. He spars with the air pirate Black Barney and Killer Kane, and has a rather testy relationship with Lieutenant Wilma Deering, his guide to the future he's landed in. It's glorious stuff.

I had no notion of Flash Gordon at this point, outside of TV reruns of the old serials, because of the vagaries of library collections. But Buck Rogers had many qualities. The strip began in 1929, the same day as Tarzan, and was one of the first serial adventure strips. While not as popular as Thimble Theatre with Popeye, which gave mid-century Americans words like jeep and goon and phrases like "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," the imagery and excitement of the strip entered daily usage. Even today, no one would be mystified by a phrase like "No bucks, no Buck Rogers," from The Right Stuff. This early spaceman's name is a synonym for advanced technology. Most people might recall Buck Rogers from the 1970s TV show; can't say I ever watched it, so I can't comment. I guess I couldn't believe it was likely to measure up to that old stuff from the 20s and 30s.


Arf! The Life and Hard Times of Little Orphan Annie 1935-1945 was a very different sort of experience. Annie's adventures were more down to Earth. Frequently separated from her billionaire adoptive father "Daddy" Warbucks, Annie would find herself caught up in some poor or middle class family's struggles with evil bankers or organized criminals or sometimes communist spies, which author/artist Harold Gray had a gift for portraying with particularly horrifying amorality. Annie was no shrinking violet; perhaps the most ordinary and unremarkable character of the golden age of the comic strip, she had no noticeable powers or even skills. She was tough and honorable, and spent the Depression years giving an example of how to behave on the comic pages.

Annie isn't impressed with orphanages; Warbucks isn't, either, but he is determined to do things the legal way. Notice Annie's businesslike outfit, suitable for the times. Her usual dress might have seemed frivolous in WW II.

Gray was a flinty conservative in a very liberal age. He notoriously disliked FDR, who is never mentioned in the strip, loathed communists with a burning passion, showed unions in a very bad light, and generally praised the virtues of self-reliance, thrift and enterprise. The real hero of the story, on the relatively rare occasions he shows up, is the unapologetic capitalist tycoon Oliver Warbucks, who loses fortunes and gains them back with reckless abandon, always quietly serving his country's interests without much real regard for his own bottom line. Perhaps the most unique part of the strip's appeal is the fact that the good guys are actually rather terrifying. Warbucks is somebody you wouldn't want to get on your bad side - though generous and kind, enemies find him merciless; his chief aides are two truly appalling musclemen, the giant turbanned Punjab, who has mystical powers and sometimes disappears foes in a cloud of smoke, never to be seen again, and the sinister Asp, a black-hatted assassin of vaguely Eurasian appearance, who is the very model for someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

When things cut up rough, and Gray builds up to these big confrontations with great skill and patience, one genuinely worries about the characters. Annie's opponents are not concerned about her tender age; Warbucks ends up nearly dead many times. The strip is moody and dark, and Gray does not spare the reader. Some scenes stay with you forever after you read them, like the terrifying 1937 sequence in which Warbucks and the Asp are apparently slain by a murderous gang far up a jungle river, and then the strange Mr. Am intervenes, with eerie, understated consequences. Who is the jolly, white-bearded Mr. Am, who seems like an eccentric old rich man who makes inexplicable remarks and claims to be millions of years old? The reader can only guess. Or the 1938 series of strips in which Annie and her dog Sandy are being hunted in the night by the evil spy Axel and his gang, who are using two huge, horrible hunting dogs. One of the dogs catches them, and Sandy, a mutt a third the size of the hound, fights like a hero, his death apparently inevitiable, until Annie is able to intervene with an ax, off panel. When Axel's men and the other dog arrive, the second beast sees what happened to his partner and doesn't care for it; he refuses to continue to track Annie and Sandy. Axel shoots the dog, and the hunt is over, but Annie is still in danger from the gang.

Both the Buck Rogers and Orphan Annie strips become spare and different in the 1940s, when World War II begins. In different ways - the Buck Rogers strip is set in the future, after all - both become tied to the war effort. Calkins signs his strips "Lt. Dick Calkins" and his characters fight their own war; Annie tangles with Nazi spies and Warbucks is no longer interested in wealth as he supports the war effort. Both of the compilations end in 1945, and of course the golden age of the adventure comic strip did, as well. Steve Canyon was yet to come, and Prince Valiant and Buzz Sawyer had good years yet, but nothing was really the same for comic strips after the war.

The comic strip format is very different from comic books. Each daily (or Sunday) strip has to be a little self-contained story. It constrains the narrative, and makes it a bit jerky at times, but it also unmistakably shows the skill of the storytellers. Not just anybody can tell an effective story in four panels a day and keep the reader interested. Modern strips aren't as good at it. The size of the daily strip is smaller, the serial strips are regarded as old fashioned, and the great creators of the 20s to the 40s, Al Capp, Harold Gray, Bud Segar, Harold Foster, Milt Caniff and Chester Gould are all long gone. The better comic strip men of the second half of the 20th century would be gag artists: Charles Shultz, Bill Watterson, Walt Kelly and Mort Walker all worked with humor first, adventure second.

Annie (the "Little Orphan" is gone) is still around, revived in the 1970s. But now the strip is about Warbucks, and a bunch of new characters, all adults for the most part. Annie is mostly carried along like baggage, moving from one comfortable stop with friends to another with adventures in between. Not the same thing at all, although it is a decent strip. I wonder what's changed that in our society that 12 year old Annie of the 20s-40s could be such a vigorous moral force in the strip, but in the modern period, the creators or the syndicate can't believe the readers might like that. The strip is aimed at adults now, I suspect. The old Little Orphan Annie was appealing to children and adults alike.

More comic strips another time. Prince Valiant was my other big favorite, and I thought I'd survey some of the strips one can get at on the Internet today, including reprints of old comics.
Punjab in action during WWII. Yeah, guys? I don't think the admiral is coming back.

More on Dubonnet

A nice article on Dubonnet, which I mentioned below, at the Washington Post.

Crossover

This post at Bostonist.com describes a drink called the Fortress of Solitude, or Superman's Punch. Sounds intriguing.

Comics at Flint Institute of Arts

The FIA is exhibiting "Comics, Heroes and American Visual Culture" from January 24 to April 26. The Flint Journal did a story on it today, complete with obligatory funny lines from the 1960s Batman TV show. Has there ever been a newspaper story about comic books since the 60s that didn't do that? I don't think so.

I borrowed an image of the Batman painting by Sheldon Moldoff that headlines the exhibit.

Comic Books

I haven't blogged about comic books here yet, so here we go.

I first bought a comic book (Thor #191) in the Miami International airport on my way to or from the Canal Zone. I liked it! I was ten or so, but Marvel comics at the time were sophisticated. Stan Lee, at the very end of his writing of Thor, was actually writing decent blank verse for Thor's pseudo-Shakespearian language. My ten year-old vocabulary was pretty large, but I'd say comics expanded it substantially.

Over the next, uh, many years, I kept buying comics. I missed that infamous moment in my teens when young buyers get interested in girls or cars or whatever. Well, I got interested in girls, to be sure, but my girlfriends were fellow nerds, for the most part, so it didn't hurt my social standing to collect comics. I have a pretty substantial collection, as one can imagine. There was a point in the mid-90s when I probably had purchased literally every monthly issue of Avengers and Fantastic Four for twenty years, to say nothing of back issues (they were affordable once) going back to about 1965, all my limited pocketbook would bear. Obviously, I was always something of a Marvel-head; DC was kids stuff when I started, although I liked the Legion of Super-Heroes title a little (and later a lot more) and I liked the old DC golden age heroes of the Justice Society of America. In the 80s, I followed my favorite writer, Roy Thomas, over to DC as they became more accessible and interesting for the older reader.

I was always more of a reader than a collector - I'm happy to have nice trade paperbacks collecting old stuff I enjoyed back in the day, and will probably gradually unload the original comic books as I accumulate more stuff that will sit neatly on a shelf where it is easier to get at.

But I'm in something of a downward spiral in current comic book purchases, probably for the first time in a very long time. My love affair with sequential graphic storytelling has been remarkably consistent over the years as I also toyed with or plunged into many other hobbies. But now doubt creeps in.

Here is a link to the DC solicitations for April; here is Marvel.

For the first time in a very long time, as I looked down this list, only one title interested me at DC, Justice Society of America. Two others, Secret Six and Fables, I will likely buy in collected format in due course. DC has gradually pushed me away for the past couple of years. After a wonderful weekly title, 52, the succeeding weeklies, Countdown and Trinity, have been awful (or in the case of Trinity, perhaps just not to my taste). Continuity and consistency at DC have gone up in flames - I can't tell what they think they're doing or where they're going anymore. Ok if the stories are also entertaining, but mostly they're not. All-Star Superman, a 12 issue monthly that actually came out about quarterly, was exquisite, but there hasn't been much else to brag about at DC. They keep rebooting an old favorite, Legion of Super-Heroes, but they keep cancelling the new versions. I'm getting tired of that - in April, they're not published in any version. They are presently in the process of making the most awful flub of their big cross-over event, Final Crisis. I can't even tell what the story is about, and I don't think they know either. It actually borders on incoherence. (Same writer, Grant Morrison, as All-Star Superman, by the way. Not the same result.)

Marvel fares a little better in this month's solicitations. Despite my distaste for their hot writer, Brian Bendis, and my irritation with their big recent cross-overs, Civil War and Secret Invasion, they are actually publishing some issues I'm interested in reading that month. Captain America continues to be solidly entertaining; I'll give Mighty Avengers a try (Dan Slott, a favorite, is writing it), and I'm looking forward to Agents of Atlas. But I'm not happy with Bendis' continued muddling of Dr. Strange, an old favorite who hasn't had an ongoing in over a decade. Bendis doesn't get the character - he can't even be bothered to do the speech patterns or powers in any recognizable or even consistent way. And yet he seems to like using the character. Collecting every appearance of Dr. Strange is my one "collector" thing as opposed to "reader", so I'm in the position of needing to buy these awful things and not reading them - this isn't "my" Dr. Strange.

(An aside - my preference for less popular titles and characters is infamous. Proprietors of comic stores have been known to laugh and tell me that I won't like something, it's selling like hotcakes. Obviously, not strictly true or I wouldn't like superhero comics at all, but a good rule for the average day. Bendis' great popularity and ability to sell comics cuts no ice with me.)

So, what, am I growing up? Well, not likely. But I am thinking about getting an awful lot more selective about comics. I'm tired of lugging around the sheer bulk of my collection. It's a storage problem of expensive and annoying proportions; it's a record-keeping nightmare; re-reading old issues is tiresome from a logistical perspective, which is why trades of the better stuff are so appealing.

And I'm beginning to wonder if I should just stop buying the monthlies altogether. Why not? I want them in trades - why buy them twice? I haven't been to a comics store this year - certainly the longest gap in visits in my entire collecting experience. They aren't publishing much that I want; Amazon can supply trade paperback or other collections much cheaper; accumulating more back issues just adds to my storage and record-keeping dilemmas. And if Marvel keeps letting Brian Bendis write Dr. Strange, I think I'm going to have to make a Bendis rule for my Dr. Strange collection - his appearances don't count.

The Reluctant Tabby Cat

This cocktail was created by Gary Regan, one of the notable figures in the recent resurgence of classic cocktails, and the author of several books with his wife, Mardee Haidin Regan. However, although I have one of their books, New Classic Cocktails, this drink is from p. 187 of my favorite cocktail recipe book, The Essential Bartender's Guide by Robert Hess.

The drink is pleasant, but while two of the ingredients were on hand, I had to settle for a blended Scotch rather than the suggested Laphroaig single malt. So I assume it does not quite taste as intended, but I don't have any single malt on hand and I'm not buying a bottle of single malt for one drink, thanks. I can mildly recommend the drink as is. No idea why it's called that, by the way. Possibly a pun I'm missing.

1 1/4 ounces Dubonnet rouge
1/2 ounce limoncello [Pallini] (this is also the recommended brand)
1/4 ounce Scotch whisky

Shake with ice and strain into a wine goblet. Garnish with a lemon twist.

You can see from the picture that the drink is rather small - that is by no means a large wine goblet - in fact it is a 4 oz. glass I generally use for cocktails. I wonder why the instructions say to shake rather than stir. Not sure it would matter.

When I began to experiment with old cocktails, and ran across recipes involving Dubonnet, a common and inexpensive aperitif, I had the odd circumstance of not being able to find Dubonnet locally - it was just in short supply at the time, according to vendors I asked. But I did have a bottle of Lillet rouge. So whenever the recipe called for Dubonnet, I used Lillet rouge, and came to rather prefer it. Dubonnet, when it finally turned up, tasted too sweet and weak by comparison. But it also overpowers some drinks, the Dandy, for example... I especially like it in the Opera. I wonder whether Lillet rouge might punch up this drink a bit.

A side note about Dubonnet and Lillet. Both are famous aperitifs that have been around for many years. Dubonnet, which is quite inexpensive (about $12 in Michigan), is famously popular among the higher classes - it features in what is alleged to be Queen Elizabeth's favorite drink. Lillet, which is substantially pricier (about $20 in Michigan), is also a rather tony drink. Both are basically sweetened, slightly bitter wines, cousins to vermouth, and are sometimes referred to as wine-based bitters.

When you see Dubonnet mentioned in a recipe, it is a reference to the rouge, or red. The white version is available, but does not feature in cocktail recipes. Lillet means white, (or blonde, or blanc) when mentioned in a recipe; the red is also available, but never used in cocktails.

So are the reds interchangeable? The whites? I've never tried Dubonnet white, but I've come to rather prefer Lillet in both varieties.

UPDATE: Oops, that's Caravella, not Pallini I used, isn't it? And I need a better camera if I'm going to keep doing this. You can get a 10 megapixel camera for half what we paid for a 5 megapixel a few years ago, so I might have to ante up.

Starbuck Speaks

Dirk Benedict, the original Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, weighs in on the new one. He doesn't like it much, unsurprisingly... it's been known for years that he didn't much appreciate his male womanizer of a character reimagined as a woman.

I sympathize, and he has some rather sophisticated and provocative points to make. But I agree with some of the commenters. One points out to Benedict that the original BSG "sucked on toast." Yep.

The pilot was actually rather promising - there was a good idea there. But after that it was "Wagon Train to the Stars", and not in a good way. The new show takes that good idea from the pilot and runs with it. I don't like everything about the new BSG, but you can't fault it for not being entertaining, while I couldn't watch much of the original show, even back in the day.

Manhattan Project

One of my favorite cocktails is the Manhattan. (Despite the fact that some friends once managed to tip one into my Apple Powerbook. Laptops and cocktails do not go together, let me tell you.) I am at this very moment drinking a Manhattan. Like the Martini, the Manhattan is still good despite an almost infinite number of slight variations. Of course, if one wanders too far from the basics, it's not the same cocktail anymore, but you can adjust the proportions, vary the brand of the ingredients, fool around with the ingredients, and still have something wonderful.

Obviously, this is why the Manhattan and the Martini are the universally recognized and approved cocktails, for a long time the solitary survivals from the great age of the cocktail in the early to mid 20th century. They are durable and likely to please regardless of the resources available. And virtually any bartender can make you one that won't be a disaster, a significant advantage in this age of syrupy sweet, oversized atrocities. Which is not to say I haven't had some bad Martinis, like the one that arrived warm and without any vermouth.

My favorite Manhattan recipe involves:

2 oz. Maker's Mark bourbon
1 oz. Cinzano sweet vermouth
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 dash Angostura Orange bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass and add a cocktail cherry, preferably one soaked in whisky or brandy.

But I also like them with rye, the original formulation, and I don't suppose I've ever really had a bad Manhattan - even blended whisky can't mess up the basic formula. Canadian Club is best if you're on a budget, or obviously something like Crown Royal or Chivas Regal will work fine.

Many people, by the way, will skip the bitters (two dashes of Angostura are traditional), or add maraschino cherry juice. Such people should be avoided, for they stray from the path of righteousness. A few drops of the juice getting into the drink won't hurt anything, mind. I learned the Angostura and orange bitters variation from Eric Felten's column in the Wall St. Journal, How's Your Drink, by the way.

Here's a recent post from a favorite cocktail blog on the topic. The writer also likes Maker's Mark as the base spirit. And this mini-tutorial from Robert Hess' Cocktail Spirit Internet TV program is worthwhile.

Indispensible?

This article examines the question of whether Steve Jobs is indispensible to the success of Apple.

My opinion is that no one is literally indispensible, but some people might be extraordinarily difficult to replace.

Another Introduction

I'm also a college instructor, in this case of business law, political science, economics and especially the international classes. Which is to say, if "international" is in the title of the class at my college, I'm likely to be teaching it or have taught it, along with all the law material. (I'm the more or less anonymous blogger at Originalia, where I comment on and link to topics of interest to my students.)

Other interests include the Society for Creative Anachronism (I'm a long-time member, though semi-retired at the moment, and blog about it at Clarion Hall).

On a regular basis, I have been in the habit of sending emails on the topics of cocktails (mostly my opinion of new ones I've tried) and comic books (mini-reviews to friends with similar interests). My plan is for those emails to become posts here instead.

I'm also interested in stamp collecting (I'm interested in Canal Zone, pre-revolutionary Cuba and France for the most part, but I collect some topical stamps on heraldry, the Middle Ages, coffee, tobacco, etc.); books and book-binding; cooking; some mystery, fantasy and science fiction; baseball and college football; military and naval history; and I'm particularly interested in illuminated manuscripts and their bindings.

Very likely I'll blog about most of those things here, I guess, and probably the occasional movie. I'll likely save SCA posts for Clarion Hall and politics for Originalia.

By the way, I hope our various authors, as they join, will write about pretty much anything they like that they think is likely to interest the other readers and authors. I said no politics below, but what I think I really meant was no arguing about ideology and so forth. Someone who wanted to, say, write about their impressions of the inauguration on Tuesday or that type of political topic or event, would be welcome, I should think.

Feel free to write at any length about your popular culture issues. Hopefully we'll get posts on television, music, arts and crafts and so forth. Also, fine to merely link briefly to other sites or articles you might think interesting, or promote your other blogs or websites here.

Oh, and I'm married to the blogger here whose profile is "The Cat Bastet".

Hello!

Since this is my first post here, I'd like to introduce myself. My screen name is The Cat Bastet and I'm a college writing instructor with eclectic interests. Some of my favorite pop culture topics are mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and the RMS Titanic. My favorite TV shows are Star Trek, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Monk, and The Closer. A few of my favorite authors are J. R. R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, and Neil Gaiman. I also enjoy counted cross-stitch needlework when I have time.

Like the other authors, I live in mid-Michigan. I've lived here ever since I can remember (although I was born in Florida) and consider myself a Michiganian (or Michigander to those who don't worry about the original use of the term). I enjoy traveling in our beautiful state, especially "up north" (that's pronounced like one word in Michigan).

I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone writes about here!

Welcome!

Welcome to Michigan Miscellany! My associates and I - I'll let them introduce themselves as they join in - are going to comment on popular culture and whatever else amuses us. For me, that will be books, movies, cocktails and sports, probably.