Share a recipe for your favorite summer drink.
Lately, I've been enjoying a nightly Americano, made with equal parts Campari and sweet vermouth (I really like Vya), along with a splash of club soda and an optional slice of orange.
It's refreshing, but with a distinct bitterness, which I find I appreciate more and more nowadays.
Doing my chores...
Four Jobs I've Had in My Life:
I haven't had that many jobs. And I haven't really had the shit jobs a lot do when they're young -
Helpdesk support, Ford Credit. A summer job when I was 16. Scrabbling under people's desks, in a suit. Half fixing PC problems, and half doing grunt jobs like backing up a few hundred floppy disks. I had 20 PCs on my desk, running, at one point. The secretaries loved me, because I would patiently explain how everything worked. Or it could be something to do with scrabbling under their desks.
On my last day, they took me to the pub for lunch, then let me loose on their System/36 mainframe. I didn't delete anything too important.
Production assistant, BBC Essex. Myself and a few friends volunteered to work at the local radio station - on, of all things, the sunday religious programme. The bloke who ran it was extremely cool, and one of the nicest people I think I've met. We got to do pretty much everything - answering phones for the competitions and phone-in (we used networked BBC Bs to communicate with the studio), picked the records from the library, even going out interviewing and making packages. At one point they brought in a BBC radio trainer, and we all learnt a lot. I can edit reel-to-reel tape, and drive a radio desk, but most of the fun technology (carts) have disappeared these days. On the back of this, I got work experience in Radio 3, and some of the things I edited went out on Night Waves.
Summer student, GCHQ. I won't say what I did, but I by luck or magic didn't do anything that offended my morals. We did, however, have to be interviewed every year to check we were still kosher, which was moderately soul destroying. At one point, after I'd come out, I had an ex-chief constable asking me if I took the masculine role or feminine role. After stifling my laughter for a few hours, I'd pretty much decided this wasn't the place for me.
Programmer, Syzygy. After I took the money and ran from the above, I ended up at Syzygy for a summer, and freelanced during term time. I went through the recently launched Wired UK, and wrote to all the companies I thought were interesting. 2 replied; and I turned up to Berners Street for my interview. The floors were purple vinyl, all the computer workstations were hand made, and I worked on selling sweets to kids. The interview was hilarious - I don't think John asked me a single question. He was terribly enthusiastic, though. Weirdly several people that worked there still loom large in my life, 10 years later, such as Phil.
Four TV shows I DVR:
Harry Hill's TV Burp. Mainstream ITV Saturday night comedy, but it's incredibly funny nonetheless.
Skins. I still like to pretend I'm a teenager. From the evidence of this though, I'm so glad I'm not 16. The pressure to be seemingly having this much fun/craziness/sex must be immense.
The Wire. Working my way through s3 on DVD. I don't think it's the best TV show of the decade, but it's very nicely done, and managing to sustain over 50 hours of viewing.
Spongebob Squarepants. It's not quite S1 of Ren & Stimpy, but there are so many jewels in there there. It's hilarious, it's surreal, it's self-effacing, it even withstood being made into a film. What I really want, though, is Rocko's Modern Life to be released on DVD.
Four places I've been:
Kennicott. My aunt and uncle had a summer house up there, in an old mining town. I got very close to a bear, run up and down the glacier, and didn't play with the asbestos too much.
Manila. I went there with work, to do some user research. I must admit it was eye-opening, if only for wealth living so close to the slums. If MTV seems crass in the UK, imagine it being seen where there really is no money. I was genuinely touched by the sheer optimism and enthusiasm of the people in the Philippines. And the Singing Waiters.
Nordkapp. I went round the very North of Norway by bus, reading His Dark Materials. Want to go to Svalbard now.
The Isle of Mull. Spent a week in a house that my other aunt had rented. Very pleasant. One of my minor superpowers is spotting sea eagles.
Four music artists I'm listening to right now:
Spooky. Not the new album, which is pretty terrible, but hints at what they used to be, but either Gargantuan or Found Sound, both very different but legendary albums. I notice The Grid and System 7 both have new albums out soon - seems like there a bit of a revival going on.
Underworld. Last year's album was awesome, but I still return to the the Riverrun project.
Caetano Veloso. A cracking album last year, but it's the eponymous albums, plus Transa and Araca Azul that I'm playing a lot.
Wire. Of course.
(eagerly awaiting the new albums from Jamie Lidell, Portishead)
I'm no good at tagging people. I certainly don't expect them to do it. Or even to see this. Maybe, keeping it Voxtular, http://blech.vox.com/, http://danhon.vox.com/, http://thegareth.vox.com/, and http://deflatermouse.vox.com/.
In addition to Nicole Atkins...
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The Magnetic Fields' Distortion is, as advertised, full of lovely, noisy distortion. Aside from that, it's a nice set of pop songs, as usual; my favorites are "California Girls" and "The Nun's Litany."
- Now that I've had more time to digest 8 Diagrams, I've settled on "Stick Me For My Riches" as my favorite track on the album. A great intro, and another amazing verse from Method Man.
- I've loved Maxi Geil! & Playcolt for a couple of years, and I bought their Strange Sensation album sometime last November--but I hadn't really listened to it until this week, when I ran across this post on Fluxblog. And indeed, "Your Best Won't Be Enough" is a killer song.
My album of the week: Nicole Atkins's Neptune City, which has accompanied me all of this week on my various commutes to work. I love it all--it's like listening to ABBA and the Pretenders at the same time, or something.
I have a lot of favorites, though the one I keep coming back to today is "Neptune City" itself.
It's the maudlin in me, I guess; the ones that clings to nostalgia: "Maybe if I paid attention / I could learn to love the landscape I was born to." Anyway, it's a gorgeous song, as is the album.
Anthony Bourdain, in a wonderful rant about the Food Network:
There's last year's Great Hope, Guy Fieri, who reminds me of the "Poochie" character in the classic Simpson's episode where it is decided that Itchy and Scratchy need a "hip, in-your-face, pro-active" new sidekick to bring in a younger demographic.
And, as a final something for 2007: Wu-Tang Clan's "Campfire" (listen), track one from 8 Diagrams.
A very sobering and (dare-I-say) mature kung-fu sample; an incredibly spooky sample of the Persuasions' cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman"; and an absolutely killer verse from Method Man to get it started.
Not a bad start to an album that's growing on me very quickly.
Favorite books:
Some of these were published in 2006, but when reading I'm always behind by at least a year, I figure--so I think it's safe to say that these were my favorite books that I read in 2007 (hey, they all start with "M"!):
- Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union
- Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka
- Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
- Michael Ruhlman, Reach of a Chef
The following twelve songs are my personal favorites for 2007: they're the songs I most enjoyed and that, out of sheer narcissism, I suppose I'd classify as "best", whatever that means. More than anything else, they're the songs I'd like to listen to most, right now.
Some notes:
- R. Kelly makes an appearance on three out of twelve tracks: it was the year of R. Kelly, after all!
- There's no Ghostface or Wu-Tang, because I just bought Big Doe Rehab and 8 Diagrams last week and haven't had nearly enough time to digest them. This makes me sort of sad, but I guess gives me license to include them next year.
In alphabetical (essentially unordered) order:
- Celebration, "Evergreen" (listen)
- Ciara, "Promise (Remix) feat. R. Kelly" (listen)
- The Fiery Furnaces, "Restorative Beer" (listen)
- M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (listen)
- Of Montreal, "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider" (listen)
- R. Kelly, "I'm a Flirt feat. T.I. & T. Pain" (listen)
- Richard Hawley, "Lady Solitude" (listen)
- Rihanna, "Umbrella feat. Jay-Z" (listen)
- Robin Thicke, "Got 2 Be Down feat. Faith Evans" (listen)
- Siobhan Donaghy, "Goldfish" (listen)
- Spoon, "Black Like Me" (listen)
- Swizz Beatz, "It's Me Bitches (Remix) feat. Lil Wayne, R. Kelly, and Jadakiss" (listen)
I love this quote (among others) from a 1996 interview with David Foster Wallace:
And I know that when I started this book I wanted--I had very vague and not very ambitious...ambitions, and one was I wanted to do something really sad. I'd done comedy before, I wanted to do just something really sad and I wanted to do something about what was sad about America.
Which "this book", i.e. Infinite Jest, definitely is, i.e. sad, and which reminds me--again--that I really want to re-read it. One of these days, I guess.
(via Jason and Daring Fireball)
What's your favorite thing to drink when it's cold outside?
Over the last couple of weeks, I've really been enjoying an occasional Red Hook cocktail, which I first read about on the Cocktail Chronicles, and then again on gumbopages.com (which is also where I found the sazerac recipe I'm most fond of).
It's rye-based, so a perfect warming drink for a chilly fall evening. Yum!
The Red Hook Cocktail
(by Enzo Errico, Milk & Honey, New York City)2 ounces rye whiskey
1/2 ounce Punt e Mes
1/2 ounce maraschinoCombine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for at least 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
