It's a three-day weekend.
I was planning to be out of town this weekend. Upwards of two weeks ago, I started laying the groundwork with my friends in Boston, New York City, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago. I even had Back Home on the list. I spent a good bit of time comparison shopping for air fares for the holiday weekend.
Ultimately, the week got away from me, and I never booked anything.
As it turns out, that's not so bad. I had a shit-ton of laundry to do, and Load #2 is in the dryer even as I type. Besides, this whole musical renaissance I've convinced myself I'm in has led me to remember I want to digitize my entire music collection, and - even after the ten or so hours last Sunday I spent uploading CDs to my computer - I was only through the Js when I started this morning.
[Ned's Atomic Dustbin is currently in the drive. I don't know when I thought it was a good idea to buy their God Fodder album.]
My biggest beef with uploading CDs is that it takes so damned long. You put the disc in. You wait. You take it out. You put another disc in. At this point, I'm only uploading the manufactured CDs in my collection so the track names generally come up automatically. I don't know how long I'm going to take to get around to uploading the ones that aren't, but I suppose I'll cross the bridge when I get to it.
The upside of the time commitment is that you don't have to do much while you're waiting.
[Good God! After the Rain by Nelson. I don't think I've thought of them since I think I saw them at Pankake Pantry in Nashville some time in 1997.]
That leaves you open for lots of other things. I have chosen to fill the gaps between changing CDs with four activities:
1 - doing laundry
2 - making spaghetti sauce,
3 - mixing and drinking bloody marys, and
4 - writing this.
While I have little doubt that you are as fascinated with my dirty (and progressively cleaner) laundry as you would be with a meta-critique of blogging, I would like to explore some of the parallels between #2 and #3.
[The Best of Phil Ochs - I should mention that I am going through my CD collection and uploading ALL of my CDs. This is not the first trip through the collection I've made. I started off with uploading the filet about a year ago, but this time I am uploading anything that has not been uploaded before. None of this "Well, I never listen to it anyway" crap. So, the CDs I'm handling today were likely passed over the first time or two I did this. Do not judge me harshly.]
[Opera at the Movies. Better than you would think.]
[Oui by The Sea and Cake - Sorry for the triple-up. I had to go tend to the sauces, spaghetti and getting-me-d.]
I used to despise the bloody mary. I had this textural hang-up on tomato juice I just couldn't get by. I understood then, as I understand now, it was a strictly neurotic objection. The simple fact of the matter is that I could not tip a glass of tomato juice to my lips without the phrase "menstrual flow" flashing through my mind.
[George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars Live at the Beverly Theater in Hollywood]
Is that the right thing to say? No. Do I have an irrational hatred of menstruation that you should construe as misogyny? No, but that gives you a sense of how intensely I dislike drinking tomato juice.
On a fateful Sunday morning in the fall of 1999, my buddy Jenny DubTheGirl took me to the all-you-can-drink build-your-own bloody mary bar at The Sign o' the Whale in our nation's capital, and my buddy Dan ChutesNLadders, in coordination with the owner/operator of said establishment taught me an important lesson about the bloody mary: the texture of tomato juice is no longer an issue once you put sufficient amounts of vodka and other shit in it. This is doubly true after you have put a sufficient amount of vodka in to yourself.
While I don't mean to downplay the importance of that breakthrough, perhaps an even more important discovery that crisp, hungover fall morning was that, like spaghetti sauce, there is no definitive recipe for a bloody mary.
[Polka's Greatest Hits, Volume 1]
In fact, I have discovered through some research since then, when it comes to spaghetti sauce and bloody marys, there are only two types of people in the world: people who don't know how to make one and people who know how to make the "perfect" one. If you routinely make either spaghetti sauce or bloody marys, then you know exactly what is supposed to go into making it. You may play around a little bit with the proportions or make some minor adjustments in specific ingredients or improvise in the face of scarcity, but you know what should be there and what should not.
[Quad City DJs All-Star Christmas - Seriously, what did I used to do right before I went shopping for CDs?]
A lot of times, I've discovered, people inherit their notions of appropriate ingredients/preparation from their grandmothers. This is particularly true of the spaghetti sauce recipes. I didn't inherit either a spaghetti sauce nor a bloody mary recipe from my grandmothers. I take that back. There is a family spaghetti sauce recipe floating around. It comes with the family recipe for meatballs which is a phone call to mom away from my recipe book. The spaghetti sauce simmering on my stove has little to do with that recipe.
[Don't Fight the Feelin' by Rappin 4-Tay - I'm pretty sure I bought this album on the strength of his contribution to the Dangerous Minds soundtrack.]
[REM, Monster - Had to fold some laundry.]
The spaghetti sauce on my stove started out as a bored afternoon during which I found myself overstocked with tomatoes, garlic, sausage (hot and sweet), and red wine (Rosemount Estate 2003 Chiraz, which I have finally accepted is not the one I fell in love with while I was crashing with my brother's buddy Tom Victorious in Chicago back in 2002. Yeah, you see the problem with the math there? It took me almost three years to figure that out. I am now convinced it is the 2002 Rosemount Chiraz that is super-spectacular. Another year or two, and I'm sure I'll foind out it's the 2001. Then, I'll spend another year or so figuring out that it isn't all that good.). That afternoon was about a month ago. The sauce on my stove had been sitting in my freezer since then. I defrosted it earlier this week, and I finally got around to doing something with it today.
[Lou Reed's Set the Twilight Reeling]
Of course, what I did with it today isn't all that impressive. I dumped two large cans of diced tomatoes and a can of beef broth in it. It has been simmering on the stove for about five hours now. The funny thing is that I don't really care about the spaghetti sauce. I'm just using that as an excuse to talk about the bloody mary.
Here is what I have learned about bloody marys:
1 - Finding a good one in DC is remarkably hard. This is an e-mail message I sent out to my favorite person back in September:
Date: Sep 15, 2006 2:19 PM
Subject: Searching for a good Bloody Mary
So, I was bemoaning the fact earlier that I have been unable to find a place that serves a decent bloody mary in DC, despite the fact that it is the ONLY place I have ever lived (and I am counting both Phillipsburg, MT AND Brunswick, GA) where I have been unable to find a place with good bloody marys.
(And, yes, I know I can always make kickass bloody marys at home. So can some friends of mine. That's not the point.)
In the course of the ensuing exchange, an associate of mine who likes to refer to himself as Ultimo Dragon replied:
"Ultimo Dragon would break wooden chair on suckers head to get decent bloody Mary. Or put serious dent in metal chair.
at church in el pueblo, Drogon used t othink, why is jesus's blood wine, why not bloody mary? everybody drinking it on sunday morning any way. Call it sangre de jesus. more people show up for free drink."
My esteem for that individual because of that comment greatly increased, but fret not: you're still my favorite.
Ta,
Eq
I still haven't found a good bloody mary place in DC (suspending for a moment my historical attachment to the site of my bloody mary deflowering mentioned ealier). I have discovered that I lay great store by the way an establishment's bartenders make a bloody mary. If they create each one from scratch, I am generally more interested. I can accept the large-batch-mixing to save some time on busy brunch shifts, but I like to see a little thought put in to it. Don't think pouring bloody mary mix over a tall vodka on the rocks is enough. You have to do at least a little work. Drop a celery stick in there! Grind some pepper! Pretend like you know anything about your job!
I have found a couple of places around here that at least have the stones to actually make some choices (Bourbon, Tonic), but they make choices with which I disagree. (That usually includes an over-reliance on olive juice or Old Bay.) Last weekend, I went to Wonderland and was pleased to see their due diligence with the bloody I ordered. It was not exceptional, but - alas! - the bare competence makes it noteworthy in this town.
2 - I still hate olives. When Gwen Bartender served me bloodys back in my Philipsburg, Montana days, she would give them to me with a pickled asparagus spear dangling in my cocktail flanked by two olives. I grew to love the pickled asparagus. (Read in to that what you will.) The olives persisted in their nastiness.
[Rocky Orignial Movie Soundtrack]
[Favourite Rossini]
3 - In addition to the staples (Worcestershire, pepper, hot sauce), I like my bloodys with a little beef broth, Guinness, carrot juice, wasabi, celery salt, and garnished with blue cheese wrapped in prosciutto and a cucumber wheel. If I have to go pre-mixed, I love ZingZang. I have Mr. and Mrs. Bad Influence to thank for that. I should take a moment here to note that my bloody mary recipe has nothing to do with either of my grandmothers.
[Reel Big Fish's Cheer Up!]
My maternal grandmother doesn't drink anything but Beefeater's Gin on the rocks, and my paternal grandmother did little to teach me about boozin'. My paternal grandfather (in a tradition carried on by my father) taught me a thing or two about keeping a decent bar and mixing a decent cocktail, but the bloody mary wasn't on the syllabus. So, there goes my grandmother influence theory.
What I'm trying to say here is that you should spend cold winter Saturdays making bloody marys for the ones you love. If you're not sure how to do that, then get off your ass and do a little research. Figure out what you like. Figure out what you don't like. Define your "perfect" bloody mary and argue with another bloody mary maker over a couple of yours and a couple of his. And, if you can do it in the honor of some dead presidents, then all the better, but make sure you make the spaghetti sauce, too, because you'll want something for lunch when you realize you're shitcanned by noon.
Happy Presidents Day.
