What, vacation already? Jeezus, he’s only after gettin’ the blog up and rolling … barely three weeks and already he’s fecking off out of town?

Well, yeah.

So, Looka! is likely to be rather unattended for the next two weeks. I may try to make a few brief posts via the WordPress iPhone app, but I certainly can’t guarantee that.

As we’re still figuring out how the new digs work around here, strange things might happen, like legitimate comments to posts getting caught as spam. For that reason I highly encourage to you register for this site as a subscriber if you plan to be a regular participant in the comments (and I hope you do!). Go to the link on the right-hand sidebar under “Looka!dministration” (yeah, I know, it’s silly and I’ll probably change it) and click the “Register” link. You’ll be prompted to enter a username and email address, and a temporary password will be mailed to you. You can change it when you log in, set how you want your name to be displayed, etc. By registering you’re telling the system that your email address is legit and you’re not a scumbag spammer, fit only to be boiled in a vat of molten chewing gum (which is actually too good for spammers).

So … where the hell are we going? (Oh right!)

This evening Wes and I are taking off for a two-week trip to Europe — London, Shropshire in rural western England, then on to Paris for a few days, finally ending up in Barcelona for four days. We got amazingly cheap flights and are staying with friends for the first 2/3 of the trip, which is the way to travel and keep it affordable. Ah yes, the patented Chuck-’n-Wes-mooch-off-your-friends-as-much-as-possible method.

We’re particularly excited to visit our friends John and Fiona, namesakes of the Hoskins Cocktail (who, sad to say, never actually met gaz regan), who’ll be taking us around London for a couple of days and then whisking us off to their home in rural Shropshire and stuffing us full of pork.  (Mmmm, bacon butties …) Also part of the plan while we’re in London is to meet up with our friend Jay Hepburn of Oh Gosh! and hit a few of his favorite London cocktail bars. (Rumor has it that Morgenthaler will be there too … hoo!)

Then off to see our old friend Dule in Paris, where fantastic food, wine, cocktails, art and everything that is the City of Light awaits.  Finally Barcelona — Gaudí, tapas and … well, everything!  I’m still kind of overwhelmed by the prospect of it all, and I really wish we had more than two weeks to do this.  (Limited vacation days and not being independently wealthy, sigh.)

There should be tons of food and drink porn when we get back.

Cheerio, au revoir y hasta la vista!  See y’all the first week in November. Permalink

To be specific, I’d like to talk about my favorite movie poster for a movie I’ve never seen, based upon a novel I’ve never read.

In 1959 the well-known and popular author of Western novels Louis L’Amour wrote one called Taggart (hey, catchy title). I must confess I’ve never read a L’Amour novel, not being a huge fan of Westerns, but I have been wanting to read this one. Here’s the summary from the flap:

“His name was Taggart and he rode with a price on his head through the blood-red canyons of Apache country. Behind him was a ruthless bounty hunter — he deadliest lawman in the West. In front of him was a fortune in gold — and a pretty young woman hell-bent on carrying that fortune to safety. Suddenly Taggart was faced with a choice. He could either keep riding and leave the stubborn lady to fate and the Apaches. Or he could stay and help her make it out alive. But for a man like Taggart the answer was simple. He would stay. Even if it meant cutting off his own escape — even if it meant doubling his chance of death.”

Hm, he sounds tougher than I am.

The first time I ever heard of this novel was way back when I was in school, when I found out that Universal Studios had made it into a film. I found that out when, as a wonderfully surprising birthday present, my friend Bill Mitchell (who had stumbled across the poster at random while shopping at Hollywood Book and Poster) gave it to me. It’s still one of the coolest birthday presents I ever got, and I immediately called HB&P to see if they had another one. I did, and got one for my dad for Christmas. He had it framed, and it hung in the waiting room of his dental office for about 25 years. Dad recently retired after 49 years of dentistry, and he told me that one of his longtime patients brought a camera to his last appointment and took a picture of the poster.

I’ve been collecting some of my favorite movie posters since I was in high school (sadly, with very little room to hang them these days, and I have to rotate the ones I have). Just recently, I decided to Google “taggart movie poster” to see if I could find an online image of it, and I came across quite the bounty. First off, I found a great scan of the original poster that Dad and I have, in all its glory:

Dad and I both thought the tag line, “They’re all waiting for you!” was particularly appropriate for display in a dental waiting room. (Incidentally, Dad’s sense of humor was tempered by his professional propriety — I tried suggesting that he hang a movie poster from “Marathon Man,” but he wouldn’t go for it. That said, on one occasion when he had a patient in the chair who was a close friend and who had seen the movie, Dad held the drill over his face, tapped the pedal to make it go “ZZZZ! ZZZZZZZ!!” and said, “… Is it safe?” The reaction was priceless. But I digress …)

To my squeals of delight, the Googling I did in the past couple of weeks yielded not only the original “Taggart” poster Dad and I had had for so many years, but some new ones too. This one’s even more turgid:

“…AND A GIRL WITH A GUN IN HIS GUTS!” That poster, my friends, is made of awesome.

I’m getting that one, and another one for Dad. Ssshhh, don’t tell him. He hates computers and is unlikely to read this, so I think our secret is safe. (Then again, now that it’s out on the internets, someone will probably tell him tomorrow. Sigh.)

I really should read the novel. I can get it into the Kindle app on my iPhone in about ten seconds, for about four bucks. ‘Bout time. Permalink

I spied this on the liquor shelf of a Rite-Aid drugstore in Santa Monica. It was a brand of bottom-shelf rotgut vodka I’d never seen before — plastic bottle, of course — but then I noticed the brand had two varieties. Regular, and … this.

“Borski Diluted Vodka?” The word “diluted” is actually in the name of the product. Bottom-shelf, plastic-bottle vodkas are a dime a dozen, and I pay no attention to them except this time that extremely odd word “diliuted” caught my eye. And diluted it is, to an ABV of 25% (50 proof). Nice and cheap too, about eight bucks for the 1.75 liter plastic bottle.

This seems to be nothing more than a product manufactured and sold solely for the purpose of getting drunk, cheaply, and without burning your mouth quite so much. To top it off, here’s a video review some guy did of it. (F. Paul Pacult needn’t fear for his job.)

The lamest, saddest booze ever? I’m sure that Thunderbird and all the other bum wines are far nastier than this, but in the category of distilled spirits I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite as sad.  Flavorwise, I suppose Victory Gin would be worse, though … Permalink

Finally, this place is gonna start looking a bit more like it used to!

As of today, we’ve got the basic look of the blog down.  The theme is based on the free Vesper theme by Valen Designs, which had the kind of layout we were looking for, if not so much the exact look.  (I wasn’t really down wit’ da urnge.)

The custom Looka! theme was designed by my friend Marleigh Riggins Miller of SLOSHED! fame.  Not only is she a terrific cocktails and spirits writer and drink-maker, she’s a very talented graphic designer — the kind of stuff she does for a living — and she did a really lovely job.  It’s still a work-in-progress, and over the next few days or week or two we’ll roll out other features, including navigation along the header with links to full archives, an about page, a list of cocktail recipes (i.e., the old “Cocktail of the Day” feature, which I will gradually import into WordPress going as far back as I can), a page of links (instead of that really long frakkin’ sidebar) and maybe some more.  We’ll see!

I also want to thank my friend Jay Hepburn of Oh Gosh! (the UK’s premier cocktail and spirits weblog, in my humble opinion) for his preliminary work in helping get this place ported to WordPress.  He’s meeting Wesly and me at the Connaught Bar in London next Thursday, and I think there’ll be a drink or three there with his name on ‘em.

Onward and upstairs! Permalink

A few weeks back Wesly and I met up with Mary, Steve and Diana at Langer’s Deli, which is widely recognized as having the best pastrami anywhere (and I even know some New York Jews who agree — let the arguing begin!). When we parked at their parking lot a block away, we saw the most bizarre mural painted on the building wall next to it.  For a few minutes we were scratching our heads and saying, “WTF?”

Finally Steve was the one to get it. “It’s swine flu!”   We thought the snot streaming out of the pig’s nose was the killer touch.

On a less disgusting note, we did have absolutely fantastic pastrami as ever, thick and spicy and hand-cut, with the perfect amount of fat — just enough, and not too much.  (I already had a good picture from a previous visit, so I got lazy and didn’t take another one.)

There was one other picture I took while we were there, though.  Our dear friend Dave passed away in July, and we miss him terribly.  Dave loved Langer’s and we felt he should have been there, at least in some way.  So we bought several extra side orders of their kosher pickles, and spelled his name out:

Then he was there.  We weren’t able to finish all those pickles, but it was worth it.

Permalink

My friend Matt the RumDood once told me, “Your blog takes friggin’ forever to load on my mobile.  I could start loading it, go eat lunch and then maybe I can read it afterward.”  Well, something like that.  He probably said something a bit more epithetic than “friggin’,” at least.

Well, gnash your teeth no more.  As of now, if you care to read this weblog on an iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone, it’ll look like this:

Pretty spiff!  (Yes, I know I’m easily impressed, but this kinda entering-the-current-century stuff is all very new to me.)  You can read posts, comment, forward them, log in as a user/subscriber, forward to Twitter and a bunch of other social bookmarkers, or flip a switch to turn the mobile theme off and look at the full site. Alas, you can’t look at Flash videos, but that’s a limitation of the phone.  If you have some other kind of mobile, at least the new WordPress site should load a lot faster than my ridiculously bloated hand-coded versions did (most of which averaged around  200K of code alone, not counting pictures!).

Making life easier for our readers!  I’ll drink to that. Permalink

I always try not to make any assumptions about my readership. I know there are a lot of cocktail geeks, nerds, and– er, ahem, aficionadoes and enthusiasts out there, but new folks discover this weblog all the time and might be new to the joys that the cocktail brings into our lives.

One of the very greatest cocktails in the history of Humankind, in the top five certainly, is the Manhattan Cocktail. For a spot-on perfect tutorial on how to make one, watch Bobby Heugel of my favorite bar between L.A. and New Orleans, Houston’s Anvil Bar and Refuge:

You may have noticed that Bobby used Sazerac Rye, the six-year-0ld variety we’re fond of calling “Baby Saz,” even though the printed recipe calls for Rittenhouse 100-proof rye.  Baby Saz is really good stuff and we use it all the time, but for a Manhattan I think the bonded Rittenhouse product can’t be beat.  The higher proof gives it a bigger kick and more body and brings out more of the rye’s spicy characteristics. I highly recommend this for use in your Manhattans.

The vermouth here is Carpano Antica Formula, simply put the greatest sweet vermouth on the planet.  Sure, Cinzano and Martini & Rossi are good, and Dolin Rouge is quite good, but nothing beats Carpano (car-PAH-no).  You’ll want to drink this alone, on the rocks with a twist of orange, even more so than other sweet vermouths (all of which make excellent aperitivos).  The depth of flavor, the spice and tempered sweetness, all the Christmassy brown spices in there, are a joy to the senses.  The only disadvantages of Carpano are that it’s more expensive — $26 a bottle as compared to about $10 for Martini & Rossi, and the difference in price is justified, and entirely worth it — and that it only comes in one-liter bottles.  Half-bottles would be ideal for keeping it from going bad on you.  Vermouth may be fortified wine that keeps longer than the bottles you basically have to finish on the same day, but it’s still wine and won’t last forever.   Perhaps you could split it with a friend and decant into smaller bottles, or just use LOTS of it so that it’s still in good shape by the time you get to the bottom.

Finally, when visiting Houston, do not miss a trip to Anvil.  You’ll thank me for it later. Permalink

[Well, I had hoped to hold off on posting until the blog redesign was done, but it's been over two weeks since I posted, and I really ought to make sure you know I'm not dead, and that I'm still writing.  We will, I hope, have a Grand Unveiling soon!  Now, on to the matters at hand ...]

Last Thursday night was another edition of Thursday Drink Night, taking place as usual in the Mixoloseum Chat Room. Bartenders, mixologists, cocktail writers, enthusiasts and more join into an affable rabble as we mix drinks and stay up too late.   TDN always has a theme, and sometimes an official sponsor, and last night it was a new product called Square One Botanical Spirit.  “Botanical Spirit”?  What the hell’s that?  Good question.

DRAMATIQUE™ bottle photo by CocktailNerd

Square One is most well known as a company that makes organic vodka. I understand it’s quite good as vodkas go, but as I’m not a vodka man I never paid it much attention.  Then came their second release, a cucumber flavored vodka that I got to try at The Sporting Life, a monthly gathering of local L.A. bartenders and cocktail nerds, with drinks made with the product by H. Joseph Ehrmann of Elixir in San Francisco.  H. made us some mighy fine drinks with it, and I found it to be quite a bit more interesting than most flavored vodkas I’d come across.

Recently Square One released Botanical, which is quite pointedly not labelled as a vodka.  It’s far, far more than a flavored vodka, and almost resembles a gin in its botanical complexity.  In fact, if it contained juniper (which it does not), it’d be a pretty tasty New Western-style gin.  As it is, it’s a pretty tasty … um, something.  We don’t exactly know what to call it.  It’s not flavored vodka, but more.  It’s not gin because there’s no juniper, not aquavit because there’s no caraway.  So far, it’s pretty unique, and perhaps “specialty spirit” comes closest, clunky as that is.

Square One Botanical’s botanicals include pear (which is the most forward), lavender, rose, chamomile, lemon verbena (a flavor and aroma that I adore; I wash with lemon verbena-scented soap every day), rosemary, coriander and citrus peel, in a base of neutral rye grain spirit that’s given as clean a fermentation as possible, just one pass through the column still and one simple filtration.  Another difference between this and a gin (besides the lack of juniper, of course) is that the botanicals go in afterward, and aren’t in the still during distillation.

The pear comes up in front, not like a pear-infused vodka (most of which I don’t really like) and not nearly as strong as a pear eau-de-vie, but still impossible to miss.  The lavender and rose gently envelop it, and any other lavender element you’d care to add to a cocktail based on this spirit (syrup, tincture or bitters) would go quite nicely.  The other spices are subtle, but provide a cushion upon which the flavor structure rests.  I really have to hand it to Square One for thinking outside the box on this one.  They wanted to produce something different, and they did — not only that, it’s good.

In coming up with an original cocktail for TDN my first thought was to treat it like a gin and make something Martini-like with it, just Square One Botanical with perhaps some Dolin Blanc sweet white vermouth to accent its fruity notes, but I decided to skip over that and head for something a bit more complex.  (I still might try that, though.)  I wanted some citrus to go along with that pear, some ginger too (I love that combination), and I wanted to boost the pear and lavender notes inherent in the spirit.  Here’s what I came up with.

THE AQUARIA COCKTAIL

2 ounces Square One Botanical spirit
1/2 ounce Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
1/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/4 ounce fresh orange juice
2 barspoons pear eau-de-vie (I used Purkhart)
1 dash Fee’s Old Fashion Aromatic Bitters
1 dash Scrappy’s Lavender Bitters (or lavender tincture)

Combine in a mixing glass, add ice, pop the shaker tin on and shake for a slow count to ten. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with an orange peel.

The lavender bitters are optional, since they’re not easy to get.  Scrappy’s Bitters are a small-batch bitters maker out of (I think) Seattle, and while their lavender bitters are pretty one-note (lavender, with a bitter base) it works beautifully with this drink.  I think it’d work even better with Bobby Heugel’s house-made lavender-vanilla bitters from Anvil, but as I didn’t have any this did the trick.  In fact, I’m considering adding some vanilla extract to Scrappy’s to see how that works.

See the Mixoloseum weblog for more original recipes using Square One Botanical that flew into the ether that night — there were some mighty fine ones. Permalink

In order to claim this blog on Technorati, I must actually write a post (sigh) with the following code within it:

5is37m2zre

I’ve actually got to clutter the place up with this? I can’t hide some code somewhere?  Meh.

Truly nothing to see here, move along, move along … next post is about booze! Permalink

Changes are afoot, kids!  I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and convert this weblog into one that is powered by WordPress (which you’ve probably noticed, and which probably made you say something like, “What the f…?”).

This horribly ugly and plain page using a basic, off-the-shelf WordPress template is merely a placeholder until we get some codeslinging done.  I have to confess, it’s going to take time.  My dear friend Marleigh Riggins Miller is building a custom template (which will retain as much of the look and feel of good ol’ Looka! while “moving it a bit into Web 2.0,” as she says) and doing the conversion for me, but it’s on her own time so it might be a bit before we get started.  Plus, I’ll be in Europe for 2 weeks starting in the 3rd week of October, so that’ll slow posting down a tad. This temporary template up now will at the very least allow me to get posts up. They’ll be ugly, but readable.

In the meantime, to backtrack and access the archived Looka! weblog for September 2009 (its final month as a dinosaur-like hand-coded weblog) and to read the final post if you followed this from the Networked Blogs link, visit this link:

http://looka.gumbopages.com/archive/2009-09.html

You can scroll down the right-hand sidebar and read any of the archives over the last 10 years as well.

To complicate matters, I’m changing the URL of the weblog! (Couldn’t you just strangle me?)

From now on, please update all links to this weblog to:
http://looka.gumbopages.com/

The old URL, http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/ should still work, but will redirect to this one.  All old links to that URL should still work.  (*fingers crossed*) If the old URL link includes “index.html” after the trailing slash (i.e., “http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/index.html”), it WILL NOT WORK.  I had to throw that one under the bus, but I don’t think too many inbound links are formatted that way.

UPDATE: The RSS feed is changing to http://looka.gumbopages.com/feed/, which I was able to fix from the one I posted earlier … ignore the one I mentioned in the previous incarnation(s) of this post.  I’ve rewritten it about ten times while I tried to tweak everything, broke everything horribly and somehow managed to get it all fixed so that, unbelievably, everything seems to work, and

Sigh.  This WordPress thing is gonna be good in the long run, but it’s a huge pain to set up.  (”The famous five-minute installation,” my fishbelly white Irish ass.)
This WordPress thing is gonna be good in the long run, but it’s a huge pain to set up.
(”The famous five-minute installation,” my fishbelly white Irish as
This’ll be exciting! Stay tuned.

xo

Chuck Permalink