January 31, 2006 :: Accidental genius

I invented a drink the other day.

I do believe I came up with a cocktail recipe that, while I'm sure somebody has tried it before, it's rare enough that I haven't been able to find a similar enough recipe for it anywhere that I have looked. I checked Webtender, and some books I have at home, and found nothing, so I'm declaring that I've looked hard enough, and I'm claiming it as my own.

I sort of stumbled on it by accident, sitting in Ozio one slow, lazy weeknight with a friend of mine. They have an in-house martini list, and one of the drinks on there is something called "Old Blue Eyes", named after Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. Of course, blue curaçao is what makes it blue, and I don't normally mess with blue curaçao ... it's long since been perverted from its origins into a dyed-up triple sec, suitable for girly drinks that draw oohs and aahs from lightweights and teetotaler pantywaists. But I was bored, and I decided to mix it up a little. The original drink was a little too sweet for my tastes, and the curaçao doesn't taste quite as good even as triple sec, never mind an upbrand orange liqueur like Cointreau. It needed some work. So I told the bartender to add a little pineapple juice to mellow out the blue (the barest amount), and to add a float of brut champagne to dry it out a little. The results, at least for my palate, were sublime. If you like sweet drinks, leave it alone. If you like a nice stiff martini (a real martini made with gin, or permissibly vodka, but never any fruit juices or anything else remotely sweet, unless the fruit is an olive), and you aren't afraid of bubbles, you might like it. But I'm not making any promises, except to say that if you happened to be present for the travesty that was a Tajhtini at the 2004 birthday bash (a situation that went WAAAY out of my control), rest assured this drink is better, and it will knock you on your ass with velvet hammers the way a good drink should.

Here's the recipe, with all the steps for you non-bartenders.

Blue Topaz

Ingredients
Vodka
Blue curaçao
Pineapple juice
Brut champagne
Lemon peel

1. Find a nice martini glass. Don't use plastic.
2. Fill the glass with ice, then fill the spaces between the ice with cold water. Let it sit for a minute while you get the rest of the ingredients.
3. Slice a thin lemon wedge, then peel the flesh away from the peel. Save the peel, toss the flesh.
4. Get a shaker, and fill it with ice.
5. Pour 1 3/4 oz of a good vodka into the shaker. That's 7 counts with a metered pourer.
6. Pour 1/2 oz of blue curaçao into the shaker.
7. Pour 1/2 oz of pineapple juice into the shaker.
8. Put the lid on the shaker and shake. Remember, shaken, not stirred.
9. Dump the ice and water out of the glass.
10. Rub the lemon peel around the rim of the glass, and then twist it up and put it in the glass.
11. Strain the contents of the shaker into the glass.
12. Pour a float of brut champagne on top of the contents of the glass, just enough to see it fizz.

posted by Rainmayun at 12:03 AM -

January 13, 2006 :: Trends to end in 2006

OK, I know this will sound rant-ish, but there are some things I just have to point out. Some trends are older than others, and all of them are overdue for departure. First up...

Kanye West-inspired preppie look
Brothas, you do not look cool in pink and baby blue sweaters and Izods with candy pink green and white stripes. I'm glad you're cool in your sexuality and all, and I'm glad something replaced the thug motif, but this was definitely not a winning choice. 1985 called, they want their catalog models back. But I specifically have to call out...

Bib-length ties
This is a very recent trend, and I hope it's very short-lived. Nothing looks goofier to me than a big man with a decent blue dress shirt and a freakin' tartan plaid tie that's about 8 inches long. Looks like he raided his son's sock drawer for a clip-on in a pinch. Not attractive at all.

Thugtastic anything
I've been saying for years, I can't wait for the thug mentality to go out of style. Why it was ever considered appealing to be raggedy, prone to violence, etc., and why anything OTHER than that was considered "thuggish" is beyond me. It's 2006, and Nelly has a song out about gold fronts. If you can find me a woman, here in 2006, who still thinks putting transition metals over one's teeth is attractive and appealing, show her to me so we can submit her ass to the Smithsonian. But Nelly is just grasping at the desperate end of hip-hop, which is on life support, which leads me to...

"Trendy" clubs playing old music
I actually upset a friend of mine last night. We were out, at one of these so-called "trendy"/"hot" clubs, and I pointed out that most of the music they were playing was twelve damn years old!!! At least, all the good stuff was. Don't get me wrong, I like the old Tupac and Junior Mafia and Jay-Z stuff as much as anybody... but if they keep this up, those clubs will just be black versions of Polly Esther. It's not their fault though... the stuff that's coming out nowadays sounds wacker than ever. I'm sorry, Jermaine Dupri, I can't get with your nouveau retro sound... back in 1984 it was cool to rap over an 808 and a Casiotone keyboard, because that's all they had, but now it just sounds derivative and unimaginative. Hip-hop is all but dead, waiting for the next thing to kick out the cord on the iron lung it's on. And since black folks have a long, distinguished history of inventing creative new genres of music, I can't wait to see what's next.

The housing bubble
I know a lot of you probably have bet on continued appreciation in home values. Sorry to say, not only is it not going to happen, it's a good thing that it's not going to happen. Probably half of the job growth that's constantly cited as support for rising home values is actually related to the real estate industry itself... agents, brokers, appraisers, construction, remodeling, etc.; that's not exactly a good trend. The fact is, the boom in home values is a direct effect of the ridiculously cheap credit and low standards that have prevailed in the last few years, and not due to any strong fundamentals in the market itself. It's not good for an economy in general to have any key asset class inflate in value far above wages, which as we all know are flat and have been for the past five years. This can only end badly... may God have mercy on all of you with overextended ARMs that reset soon.

Crack smoking politicians in DC
OK, I know it's been pretty much the same politician for the last 15 years. Still, the fact that Marion Barry tested positive yet again for cocaine... but what really makes me shake my head is that these people will still keep electing him. I don't care how down for the cause he is, he can't be an effective, respected leader if he's high off the pipe. Retire, Mr. Former Mayor, and hit rehab... hit rehab hard, like you hit the pipe.

Feel free to post your own trends that should end in the comments section.

posted by Rainmayun at 10:29 AM -

January 12, 2006 :: A pig in a poke

Remember back in the height of the dotcom era boom, circa 2000, when BlackPlanet was popular and still somewhat cool and trendy? Everybody I knew was meeting people in real life that they had first met on BP, even if they didn't admit it to their old brick & mortar friends. It was like a black candy bazaar... with aisle upon aisle of people to whom you would not normally be exposed or get the opportunity to meet. Of course, that meant all manner of different classes of people, from highly educated to the most ghetto... I think back then a WebTV system was $199. But they were all there, ripe for the picking, with pictures and profiles. You could search on any criteria you wanted, and risk was reduced because you could profile people before you spoke to them. It was better than any personals website, because people could post profiles without actually admitting to themselves that they were looking, yet be open to the opportunity. I even had a running joke about "spring visit season", because when I lived in California, I used to get a series of visitors just about every other weekend in the spring (some romantic, some not), and probably half of them were BP folks flying themselves out to Cali. Ahhhh... stories for another time.

At any rate, the time for BP came and went. It got overrun by the butch lesbians and swingers and jailbirds, swamped by spam, and permanently altered (and not for the better) by the need for the company that made it to start turning a profit somehow. Then people started denying that they were on BP, that they were ever on BP, and turned back to other venues.

I was reminded of this experience recently, by virtue of a somewhat unusual manner in which I was approached by a woman. When I hosted my birthday party last month, I invited as many people as I could find, and my cohosts also added many names, so that the Evite stretched out to 400+ invitees. I didn't know many of those people, but as the author of the Evite, they could all see my profile and picture. A woman I did not know and who did not attend the party emailed me afterward, essentially saying she liked my picture (which was an unrevealing headshot) and wanted to meet me.

On the one hand, I was flattered. On the other hand, I kept thinking, this chick doesn't know squat about me, not even really what I look like, except for one fuzzy headshot, so she must be desperate. But encouraged by my friends, I decided to talk to her. She sent me a couple of pictures of herself, and she turned out to be cute. I sent her a couple more pictures of myself. We've emailed and chatted on the phone. She lives about 60 miles away, so honestly I had not been pressed to drag myself out there to meet her, but I figure, if circumstance happens to find us in the same neighborhood, why not?

So we're supposed to meet this weekend, and even though I have done this before (the meeting of Internet people, back in the BP days), I am somewhat hesitant. I understand now why she was eager to meet a black man she figured was halfway decent looking based on a grainy thumbnail headshot, even thought she seems cute and reasonably sane... she lives in a county where not many black folks live. Still, I keep wondering, how could this possibly turn out well? Even in the best case scenario, I might actually end up liking this woman (and she liking me), in which case the 60 mile distance will quickly turn into a big pain in the ass. And there are worse scenarios... But I'm going to do it anyway. I'll let you know how it turns out. Hopefully I'll at least get a good story out of it.

P.S.: You'll all be glad to know that I finally got the part I needed to finish repairing my shower, which turned out to be a 39 cent nylon O-ring, and I have restored my master bathroom to full service. Now I have to see about replacing that faucet...

posted by Rainmayun at 2:31 PM -