“Crown on the Ground” - Sleigh Bells
2 weeks agoEconomic View - The Invisible Hand, Trumped by Darwin? - NYTimes.com
This article in Sunday’s NYT reminds me of the lack of work-life balance I see today. As long as there is a relative advantage to working more than your co-worker, people will continue to work longer hours, work at all times (thanks to Blackberrys, etc.), and let their work consume their entire life. That is no way to live and it’s certainly no way I want to live. But unless there is a collective decision to limit the amount people work, I don’t see an end to it. People I know today, including myself, typically work 12 hours a day, plus weekends. How are you expected to raise a family with hours like that? It’s depressing and makes me envious of Western European countries where it seems there is a lot more collective respect for the “life” side of the work-life balance (holidays in August, emphasis on eating with friends and family, etc.).
Can’t we all just make a collective decision to limit our work time to something reasonable? Society will still progress…innovation will continue. Just at a more reasonable pace that will enable us to enjoin the ride a bit more.
4 months ago
such a cool photo.
8 months agoThelonious Monk
From a blog post at The Selvedge Yard (via Dunstan).
from Zagat
Morning Glory Fizz
from Modern Bartenders Guide, O.H. Byron, 1884
Ingredients:
mixing glass 3/4 full with fine ice
3 to 4 dashes absinthe mixed in a little water
3 dashes lime juice
1 tbsp. sugar
egg white
1 wine glass of Scotch
Shake well in a shaker and strain. Balance off glass with seltzer.
Drink immediately, or the effect will be lost. It’s a morning beverage, a tonic and a nerve
quieter.
Italian Wine Lemonade
From Modern Bartender’s Guide, O.H. Byron, 1884, adapted slightly to make it easier for
the home bartender.
In a large goblet mix:
1 tbsp. sugar
1 oz. lemon juice
2 oz. filtered or spring water
Stir to dissolve
Fill the glass halfway with crushed ice
Pour 2 oz. of port or your favorite wine over the top
Dress the glass with seasonal fruit
Serve with a teaspoon
USS Richmond Punch
3 liters Myers’s dark rum
3 l. Martell VSOP cognac
3 l. green tea
3 l. medium oloroso sherry
36 lemons, juiced
3 lbs. white sugar
1 750-ml bottle of Grand Marnier
Prepare by peeling 12 lemons, muddling the peels in 2 pounds of the sugar and
letting them sit for 45 minutes. Then muddle again (the wait will have drawn out a
lot of the lemon oil), add strained juice and other ingredients, and mix well. Adjust
for sweetness. To serve, pour into bowl full of ice and add a liter of seltzer for each
liter of punch base.
Improved Holland Gin Cocktail
Shake well with plenty of ice:
2 oz. Bols Genever
1 tsp. rich simple syrup (made with 2 parts sugar to 1 part water)
½ teaspoon Luxardo maraschino
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 dash absinthe
Strain into small, chilled cocktail glass and twist a swatch of thin-cut lemon peel
over the top.
Blue Blazer
Put a half-teaspoon of sugar and a sliver of lemon peel in an Irish coffee glass or
other small, heavy, stemmed glass (a punch cup will also work).
Pour 2 ounces of boiling water and 2 ½ ounces of cask-strength single malt Scotch
whisky into a flare-rimmed mug. Light it with a match and carefully pour it back
and forth between the mug and another just like it, making sure to hold them
pointing away from you (not toward each other). With each pour, make sure a little
is left in the other mug. After five or six pours, extinguish each mug with the base
of the other and pour the liquid into the glass. Stir to dissolve the sugar and serve.
This is a really cool song.
8 months agoSwan Lake: The Cats (1969)
The Awfulness of Having to Clear Your Throat:
It is the biological equivalent of a doorbell, or worse, the bell that sits on an unattended counter to summons service from the back room. One cannot clear one’s throat in a public space without everyone in earshot peeking through and around their mind’s figurative curtains and doorjambs as they anxiously ask themselves, Now who could that be, and what do they want? It elicits paranoia, especially in the emotionally disturbed and some teenagers. An innocuous clearing of the throat may be interpreted as a way of saying, “I know what you’re up to, and you’d better stop,” or “I’m right behind you, and I’m about to strangle you with some piano wire.” Macho men, on the other hand, will understand throat clearing to be an instigative gesture, an animal-like grunt that initiates an altercation between two alpha-males. Clear your throat in the wrong place, and you will soon be in battle!
Though I’ve never been caught in quicksand, I understand that the more you struggle to get out, the stronger the vacuum pulls you in. This is also the case with clearing your throat. The more you clear your throat, the more you have to clear your throat. But of course not clearing your throat is the equivalent to not scratching a mosquito bite. Or worse, waiting to get to the prize at the bottom of a cereal box by eating only one serving a day until it naturally falls into your bowl. It’s just not going to happen without going mad first.
Finally, it is a dreadful sound that defies written transcription. The traditional “ahem” dresses the sound up in a way that is simply unfair. A realistic translation of the rather grating, guttural, stuttering sound would require letters – consonants, probably – to overlap. Some might even need to be cut in half. I find this highly unfortunate and unmusical sound a profound betrayal of the vocal folds. Down with throat clearing!
How to make a morning glory fizz. I really like drinks with egg whites.
Cocktail College With Dale DeGroff - Best of Buzz - Zagat Survey
8 months agoMy brother-in-law Pat got Kate and I some old-school cocktail manuals for our bdays last year. They are really cool and I’ve slowly tried to learn how to make some of these drinks.
I am surprised how hard it is to make a good drink. Part of it is practice, another part is not having all the requisite materials and ingredients but my biggest challenge is just lack of knowledge. These videos are helpful.
Cocktail College With David Wondrich - Best of Buzz - Zagat Survey
8 months agoApparently, Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys put out a solo album. I’m a bit confused…why does he need a solo album when there are just two members of the band? Coudn’t he just have been credited with writing songs on their next album. There are drums in these songs too…who is playing them if not Patrick Carney? I like them…because I like the Black Keys and it sounds like a Black Keys song. I don’t quite understand it but I’m happy to have more songs to listen to by these guys (or, by one of these guys).
8 months agoDan Auerbach - I Want Some More
More from Dan Auerbach
This is relevant to the discussion that Paul, Paul, Lauren, Kate and I were having last weekend.
8 months agoOp-Ed Columnist - Money for Idiots - NYTimes.com
It’s a sad truth, eloquently written by David Brooks.
9 months ago