Book: L.A. ’56, by Joel Engel (2012)

Joel Engel calls the tale in this book the “best true story I ever heard,” and it’s easy to understand why. It has big issues (racism, institutional corruption), sensational crimes, unlikely romance, and a whale of a finish. Not to mention characters galore. There’s the villain Willie Fields, a stranger to Los Angeles who prowls lovers’ lanes with a gun and a bogus badge, preying on women. The wrong man Todd Roark, a black former cop with no friends left on the force because of a scandalous interracial relationship. And a genuine hero in Danny Galindo, one of the few Mexican-Americans then on the LAPD, whose career spans the Black Dahlia case to the Tate/LaBianca murders. Galindo’s the only man who believes in Roark’s innocence, and he’s going to have to prove it all by himself.

Engel brings tabloid brio to this Southland saga; L.A.’s history is “written in asphalt” with streets named after movers and shakers, “which means the whole city is either a con or a crime scene.” He nails how show business is woven into the fabric of L.A. life. Galindo regularly sells his exploits to Jack Webb for Dragnet, his surname becoming a running gag on the show. It’s unclear how speculative the sections told from Fields’ point of view are – particularly when, as one figure describes him, he was cursed with stupidity, “the real rare kind that’s stupid through and through and doesn’t know how stupid it is” – but in Engel’s hands he’s a deeply disturbing figure, thinking of each woman he attacks as “that night’s girlfriend,” grateful for his attentions. Engel punctuates his chapters with articles from the California Eagle, Los Angeles’ primary African-American newspaper, spotlighting stories that weren’t covered by any of the city’s white periodicals in the summer of 1956. Hard-hitting and packing surprises to the final pages, you won’t find a better snapshot of life in the City of Angels sixty years ago.

Q&A: Tom Piccirilli

Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty novels including Shadow Season, The Cold Spot, The Coldest Mile, and A Choir of Ill Children. He’s won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. His latest book, The Last Kind Words, will be published June 12 and is already racking up acclaim. In spite of all that, he still agreed to participate in a VKDCQ&A.

Q. What can you tell us about THE LAST KIND WORDS?

It’s the story of a young thief named Terrier Rand who returns to his criminal family on the eve of his brother Collie’s execution. For no apparent reason Collie went on a killing spree murdering eight people. Now, five years later, Collie swears he only killed seven people during his lethal rampage, and the eighth was the work of someone else. Terry not only has to deal with an ex-best friend, a former flame, mob guys, and other assorted people from his dark past, but he’s also forced to investigate the night his brother went insane and find out if Collie is telling the truth. But more than anything, he really wants to know the reason why his brother went on a spree, in the hopes that Terry himself is never pushed to that kind of edge. Thankfully the novel has been getting some nice buzz, some first-rate blurbs, and a lot of excellent reviews thus far. Hopefully that’ll translate to sales.

Q. In your fiction and elsewhere, you write often about family and the power of things left unspoken. What kind of filter do you use when dealing with such personal emotions? Have you written anything that proved too close to the bone for someone else?

I don’t use a filter. I don’t think any valid writer does. I try to get as close to blood and bone as I can when dealing with certain familial and personal issues/emotions. What’s the point of writing about something and lying about it? If I’m going to go deep then I’m going to present whatever I find there the way that it is, whether that’s ugly or embarrassing or painful. I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten to close to a deep nerve for anyone else in my circle. Luckily, I suppose you could say, almost nobody I might write about reads my stuff.

Q. You regularly publish shorter fiction like last year’s acclaimed novella EVERY SHALLOW CUT. Are these pieces finding room to breathe in the new publishing landscape? Do you see new opportunities for writers?

There still seems to be enough life in the small press that novellas and other non-traditional works can still see physical print. And there’s always a chance that something that wouldn’t normally see the light of day can get a chance to be read via e-book format. There’s certainly opportunities there. But in the end what matters most, or should matter most, is the quality of the work. If it’s solid, it’ll hopefully find an audience somewhere. The trouble is that in this landscape a whole lot of garbage is made easily accessible as well. A lot of newer writers aren’t doing themselves any favors by making their early efforts available. I can completely understand why they would do it – I would’ve done it myself at the time given the chance, but in the long run they miss out on learning their craft the best way possible. Step by step, rejection by rejection, story by story. Almost any writer will tell you that they’re glad their first efforts never saw the light of day. Now, everything sees the light of day.

Q. You’ve been nominated for awards in horror, crime and fantasy. Did you read all of these genres growing up? If not, how did you progress through them?

I read horror, fantasy, and science fiction all throughout my childhood and into early adulthood. For some reason I got into crime fiction later on, in my early 20s. I remember collecting a lot of crime novels and stacking them on the shelves anticipating the day when I’d eventually start binging on the field. So when I was ready, I had a ton of classic titles and dove right in.

Q. What was the novel that truly hooked you on crime fiction?

I got into Gold Medal/old hardboiled-noir novels directly thanks to an article Ed Gorman wrote about GM for The Scream Factory way back when. He listed tons of GM authors and titles and I managed to dig in. First one I remember buying was a trashed copy of Charles Williams’ River Girl at the dealer's room of some convention. I went back later that afternoon and bought up all the Black titles by Cornell Woolrich. My true love for the genre started there.

Q. Your own work occasionally blends genres. How much thought do you give to how something you write may be categorized? Are readers more accepting of genre-blending than publishers?

I don’t tell the work what it is. The work tells me what it is and what it wants to be. That’s just how it goes. If it winds up with more horrific elements in it, or if some fantasy worms its way in, or if a horror piece winds up with the structure of a crime story, then so be it. So far it hasn’t been much of an issue. Most readers and publishers seem to accept the fiction so long as it’s good. The trouble, if there is any, comes afterwards with the so-called follow up. Some publishers expect my next piece to be similar to the previous one. I just don’t do that. Maybe it’ll be similar, maybe it’ll be in the same genre, but maybe the next work will want to be something else. I can’t help that, I can’t stop that, and I don’t want to. I can’t force a piece to be something other than what it is.

Q. Your Twitter feed is studded with movie recommendations. How big an influence were they on your burgeoning interest in storytelling -- and how much of an influence are they now?

They were and are a major influence. On me and, I think, just about everyone else. Writers, readers, all of us. The way we read nowadays is the way we view a film. We have cameras built into our heads now. Written scenes are presented the way that filmed scenes are. Tricks of POV or drama or characterization we’ve seen in movies automatically reflect back on fiction. We look for twists, we can more clearly imagine certain details or descriptions because we’ve seen something similar emphasized in movies. In point of fact, it’s almost impossible to untangle our mind’s eye with the filmmaker’s or cinematographer’s vision. I encounter the problem all the time. I start describing something and it reminds me too much of a particular movie or a scene and I know my readers will pick up on the same thing. Even if it feels fresh on the page you have to think beyond the page to what someone might have seen on television or in film.

Baseball Q. You live in Colorado. They have no business playing baseball there, right? The air’s too dry. They had to put a freaking humidor in Coors Field, for Christ’s sake.

Couldn’t give a shit less. I’m a sports fan like McCarthy loved commies.

Movie Q. What’s a movie that isn’t thought of as horror film – but should be?

Sunset Boulevard. You’ve got murder, a dead monkey, a gothic mansion, insanity, a narrative told by a dead man, and a young Joe Friday with really big fuckin’ ears. Horrific.

Cocktail Q. You’re in a well-stocked bar. What do you order?

I only drink beer or red wine when I drink at all. I’m a cheap date. And easy too.

Cocktail of the Week: The Red Hook

They say you never forget your first love. Here’s mine. The cocktail that swept me off my feet and made me, for good or ill, the man I am today.

The first time Rosemarie and I walked into The Zig Zag Café, I didn’t deserve the sobriquet cocktail enthusiast. I made the staples – Martinis, Manhattans, gin and tonics – at home in simple fashion. There was a world out there that I knew nothing about. But at least I knew that I knew nothing about it. Secure in my ignorance I ventured into the one place in Seattle where I could acquire an education with dispatch, the cocktail bar consistently acknowledged as one of America’s finest.

Ben Dougherty, the Zig Zag’s co-owner, took excellent care of us on the first of what would be many, many visits. I told him I was interested in learning about rye whiskey, then beginning its resurgence. He asked me what I knew about it, and I told him with complete honesty: “Nothing.” Ben inquired about my tastes – How did I feel about sweetness? How bitter did I want to go? – and in short order served me a cocktail that he said would show me what rye could do.

The Red Hook is a variation on the Brooklyn, a pre-Prohibition twist on the Manhattan that remains something of a rarity because one key ingredient, the French liqueur Amer Picon, is not sold in the United States. (It can be difficult to acquire even in France. Trust me, I’ve tried.) Consequently, a host of American bartenders have crafted tributes to it, naming them after the borough’s neighborhoods. The Red Hook was the first of these, created by Enzo Errico of New York’s Milk & Honey in 2004.

The distinctive taste comes courtesy of the Italian vermouth Punt e Mes. Its name means “point and a half” in Piedmontese, the legend being that in 1870 a stockbroker in Antonio Carpano’s bar ordered his custom vermouth with a point and a half of bitterness on the same day that certain stocks under discussion had fallen by that very amount. To mark this moment of serendipity, a new brand was created. The flavor of Punt e Mes lies somewhere between standard rosso vermouth and Campari, its bitterness pronounced but not overwhelming. This sharp quality makes it a welcome addition to cocktails, foremost among them Errico’s masterpiece. Punt e Mes’ edge is tamed by the sweetness of the maraschino, allowing the base liquor to take the spotlight gracefully. The Red Hook does indeed show what rye is capable of.

Since enjoying my first Red Hook I’ve toured the spiritual Brooklyn thoroughly, sampling most if not all of that cocktail’s descendants. I’ve even had a Red Hook in its birthplace at Milk & Honey. For emotional reasons it will always be my default drink of choice, the one that indoctrinated me into the cocktail world. It also tastes sublime.

The Red Hook

Enzo Errico, Milk & Honey, New York City

2 oz. rye whiskey (I recommend Rittenhouse 100)
½ oz. Punt e Mes
½ oz. maraschino

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

Books: Collecting Collections

Here are two anthologies – one fiction, one not – that warrant your attention.

Renegades is a collection of long-form reportage by my friend Robert Ward. The articles were originally published during the heyday of “new journalism,” a form that in the hands of some practitioners meant putting themselves center stage or close to it. Bob instinctively knew how much presence he should have in his pieces, admitting that he was so intoxicated by the aura of celebrity surrounding artist LeRoy Neiman that he told a curious blonde he was Hunter Thompson, acknowledging that his own dumbfounded reactions to the madness that surrounded Larry Flynt during the ascendancy of Hustler magazine were a part of the story. (It’s worth picking up the book for the Flynt article alone.) His show business profiles are dispatches from a distant era, when reporters hung out and boozed up with the likes of Lee Marvin and Robert Mitchum; there’s not a publicist anywhere near these pages, no empty platitudes or paragraphs devoted to the star’s favorite eco-charity. Included is Bob’s most famous piece, “Reggie Jackson in No-Man’s Land,” in which the new Yankee proclaims himself “the straw that stirs the drink.” It’s become such a part of Pinstripe lore that it was featured in an ESPN miniseries in which Bob plays himself, because no professional actor could capture his dissolute charisma. There’s a thread throughout the book about how sports and music can lift you out of yourself, offering glimpses of a wider world. Taken as a whole the pieces tell the larger story of Bob’s evolution from Baltimore boy to journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. A true blast from the past.

Terence Faherty has published several novels about Scott Elliott, the one-time Paramount player turned Tinseltown private eye, and won two Shamus awards along the way. The short stories collected in The Hollywood Op span Elliott’s career from the 1940s through the ‘60s. “Garbo’s Knees” finds Elliott digging into the theft of a concrete slab from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and “Closing Credits” is a haunting entry about the sins of the blacklist echoing years later. “Sleep Big” is an impressive piece of literary legerdemain, serving as both Elliott’s origin story and a plausible answer to the confounding question of “Who killed Owen Taylor in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep?”

Cocktail of the Week: The Ragtime

The easiest way to start talking about amaro is to point out that the word itself means “bitter” in Italian. Many of you will want to leave right now.

But don’t be misled. Yes, bitterness is always a component no matter which of these Italian digestifs you’re drinking, but amari offer a range of flavors, each with its own nuances. Initially served over ice straight or with a little soda – still a splendid way of enjoying them after a meal – they are now regularly used in cocktails.

At the far end of the spectrum is the pungent liqueur Fernet Branca, where bitterness is pretty much the whole show. To quote spirits writer Wayne Curtis, “it’s hard to describe what Fernet Branca tastes like; it mostly tastes like Fernet Branca.” Personally, I enjoy its harshness, welcoming its challenge as a penitent does a hair shirt. OK, that’s overstating the case. Slightly. But I genuinely appreciate Fernet’s bracing taste on its own and in mixed drinks.

It isn’t where you want to start with amaro, though. A far more accessible variety is Ramazzotti. Its history sounds like something from a Dan Brown novel: developed in 1815 by a Milanese pharmacist ... using a still-secret formula of almost three dozen ingredients ... Among the various herbs, flowers and spices is a combination of oranges that adds a beguiling sweetness. The aroma is frequently compared to root beer and writer Jason Wilson, who called Ramazzotti the easiest-drinking liqueur in this category, dubbed it the Coca-Cola of its class. I wouldn’t go that far. It’s more a gateway amaro. Like this, and in no time at all you’ll be guzzling Fernet and writing reviews of opium dens on Yelp.

One of the more popular cocktails featuring Ramazzotti is also the simplest: the Black Manhattan, with the dark-hued liqueur in place of vermouth. A far more engaging drink is the Ragtime, brainchild of Jeremy James Thompson of the Raines Law Room in New York. It pairs Ramazzotti with Aperol, which also balances the bitter and the sweet, tending toward the latter even as Ramazzotti does the former. The result is an intriguing partnership. Thompson’s recipe calls for a mist of absinthe, but as I didn’t have any in the home bar – I’m pretty sure I left the bottle at the last opium den I went to and the sons of bitches won’t give it back, so you can bet your ass that’s going into the review – I substituted Pernod. It’s a final grace note that brings many complex flavors together perfectly. There are a lot of kids on this playground, but they all get along.

The Ragtime

Jeremy James Thompson, Raines Law Room, New York City

1 oz. rye whiskey
1 oz. Ramazzotti amaro
1 oz. Aperol
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
Mist of Absinthe (or Pernod)

Stir. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

Book: Dropped Names, by Frank Langella (2012)

The subtitle is the first indication that something may be up. Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them. Frank Langella tells you straight off that this memoir isn’t about him, it’s about them: the luminaries he met during a long career on screen and stage. And it’s as he knew them, so conventional appreciations may not be the order of the day.

Oh, they are, more often than not. But even then not in the usual fashion. Langella opens his book with a brief description of a show meal with actors, the conversation fast-moving, gossipy, occasionally mean. He aims to recreate that feeling here. So while there are moving tributes to close friends – Raul Julia, Alan Bates – Langella can also write about another favorite, Anne Bancroft, with an unsparing eye for her narcissism. Then there are the times Langella gives someone both barrels. Richard Burton was a bore, Rex Harrison a preening ass, Lee Strasberg “a pompous pygmy ... a cruel and rather ridiculous demigod.” Not all of his targets are easy ones: Langella’s affection for Paul Newman is laced with unflattering commentary.

Dropped Names is a strange book. Langella places his reminiscences in the order the subjects died, which results in a fixation on infirmity and loss. He repeatedly laments the current age when “wit, intelligence and style have lost ground to stupid, vulgar and loud,” and “young male stars seem a sexless set of store-bought muscles set below interchangeable screw-top heads with faces of epic blandness - sheep trying to look like bulls.”

There’s clichéd writing throughout, but it’s punctuated by sharp observations that read like a skilled actor sizing up a character. Langella describes Ida Lupino (“too good for the room ... a first rate artist crying out for help”) before she was fired by producers for being more trouble than she was worth, noting how she was “put together in the way that heavy drinkers, particularly women, organize themselves: impeccable hair, makeup, clothing; a tidy house of cards.” A book in its own right could be made of his chapter on Arthur Miller, focusing on Langella’s failed attempts to cajole the playwright into penning a more honest version of himself for a revival of his autobiographical autopsy of his marriage to Marilyn Monroe After The Fall. And many of Langella’s stories are simply damn good, like bring hazed by Robert Mitchum on a movie they both know is crap. The best is a throwaway: Langella calls Nancy Marchand, his co-star in a play who is being replaced by an Oscar nominee in the TV production. Langella vows he won’t do the film without her. “Don’t be an asshole,” Marchand says, and hangs up on him.

In a sense, all of Dropped Names is an actor’s trick, one of the oldest in the book. Langella brings big names onto the stage, giving them the limelight – then proceeds to steal the scene. In a structure meant to showcase others, Langella keeps revealing pieces of himself. His disappointments, his jealousies, his feelings for women of shall we say a certain age. Langella is brutally honest on every subject, and that eventually includes Frank Langella.

His recollection of an on-set affair with an older Rita Hayworth is here, and includes some great Mitchum material. The book closes with a lengthy passage in praise of philanthropist and socialite “Bunny” Mellon, now embroiled in the criminal case against Senator John Edwards. This New York Times article about Mellon draws from Langella’s book.

Cocktail of the Week: The Tom Collins

Maybe it’s the drink’s name that accounts for its decline in popularity. Tom Collins. It’s an actual name, like Shirley Temple, and we all know what that means. No booze.

The irony is that the Tom Collins isn’t named after a real person. Except that it is. Cocktail historian David Wondrich, in his book Imbibe!, traces the drink back to some doggerel composed by descendants of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It venerated one John Collins, a waiter at a London hotel famed for its gin punch. That concoction made its way to America, odds are brought here by British soldiers. But the drink that turns up in “Professor” Jerry Thomas’ canonical 1876 Bar-Tender’s Guide is a Tom Collins. The reason why is most likely an unrelated craze that swept the nation, as crazes are wont to do, two years earlier. You meet a friend, ask him if he knows “Tom Collins,” and when he says no – unless he does know a Tom Collins; then I suppose the bit falls apart – you say, “Well, he knows you, and he was just around the corner sullying your good name!” Hilarity allegedly ensues when your friend goes, to use one of my mother’s favorite words, gallivanting all over town.

I know times were simpler then. But honestly? I’d rather watch the Kardashians than put up with that kind of crap. And I hate the Kardashians.

I like to think some enterprising barkeep served this drink to every benighted fool who stumbled into his tavern in search of phantom malefactors. The sheer simplicity of the recipe, probably not far removed from John Collins’ original U.K. rendition, is one of the reasons why the Tom Collins was for decades among the most popular of cocktails. It’s also a remarkably adaptable one, suited to any base spirit since in essence it’s your basic sour. Make it with bourbon and you have a Colonel Collins. Irish whiskey and it’s a Michael Collins. Scotch is Joe, rum is Pedro, rye is ... hell, I don’t know, Cletus.

What ultimately hurt the Tom Collins was the era of convenience. Many bars began relying on ready-made Collins mixes, some of them, God help us, in powdered form. Shades of The Simpsons episode in which Bart and his buddies venture into neighboring Shelbyville to recover their stolen lemon tree. Egghead Martin Prince, drunk on camaraderie, braces a kid with his own beverage stand who says, “This is Country Time lemonade mix. There’s never been anything close to a lemon in it, I swear!” It’s one of those time-savers that’s no savings at all.

David A. Embury, in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, says of the Tom Collins: “This is a long drink, to be consumed slowly and with reverence and meditation.” He also observes that, “strictly speaking, a Tom Collins is not a Tom Collins unless it is made with Old Tom gin.” (Another reason, perhaps, for the drink’s Stateside rechristening.)

I have rhapsodized before about the miracle that is the now-available-again Old Tom gin. And I am here to tell you, brothers and sisters, that Reverend Embury is right on all counts. I have had a Tom Collins made with London dry gin. And I can testify that a Tom Collins prepared with Old Tom is a different beast entirely. The fuller, sweeter flavor not only gives the drink a spine but a body. Made for languorous afternoons, this traditional version belongs on any list of classic summer coolers. I’d put it ahead of the Dark and Stormy (dark rum and ginger beer) and just behind the Caipirinha (the national cocktail of Brazil, and who’d know better about cooling drinks?). Don’t listen to what other people are saying about you. The dog days are coming. And once you have a Tom Collins done right, you’ll pray for temperatures to rise.

The Tom Collins

2 oz. Old Tom gin
¾ oz. lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
2 oz. club soda

Shake the first three ingredients with ice. Strain into a tall chilled glass filled with ice. Add club soda. Garnish with a cherry and a lemon or orange wheel. If you’re making it with London dry gin, increase (read: double) the amount of simple syrup to taste.

Book: Wherever I Wind Up, by R.A. Dickey (2012)

Robert Allen Dickey is the kind of player you want on your roster, and I don’t say that just because he currently has a 4-1 record for my New York Mets. The last active knuckleball pitcher in Major League Baseball is good copy. He’s a character, obsessed with Star Wars (see his Twitter feed), eloquent in postgame interviews, talking up William Faulkner in the clubhouse. He also has character; inspired by his love of Hemingway, he spent part of the last off-season climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise money for at-risk women and youth in Mumbai. And now he’s written a book.

Wherever I Wind Up, co-authored by New York Daily News reporter Wayne Coffey, is a plain-spoken memoir about a life spent in “a game of managing regrets.” Dickey writes honestly about growing up in a broken home in Tennessee, his mother’s alcoholism (“I got my share of yellow stars (for success in Little League), but they never made it onto my uniform. My mom had a lot going on.”), incidents of childhood sexual abuse. Sports was a way out, until a routine physical revealed that the Olympic athlete lacked a crucial ligament in his elbow. He instantly went from first-round draft pick to cast-off, scuffling for years in the minor leagues. Dickey is blunt about the psychological, emotional and financial hardships of a career spent largely at the margins of what “can be a brutal, bottom-line business” which at its best affords “a life that can make you a perennial adolescent, where your needs are catered to, and narcissism is as prevalent as sunflower seeds.”

What saved him was religion, the love of a good woman, and the knuckleball, the fluttery pitch that maddens hitters and maims catchers. It’s certainly the only weapon in a hurler’s arsenal that requires emergency trips to the nail salon. The best stretches of the book are about the curious fraternity of knuckleballers, members of which – Charlie Hough, Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield – provide Dickey with insight and pointers. (“I’m part of a brotherhood, and the only prerequisite for admission is a passion for the pitch.”) It’s an unlikely tale of an unorthodox triumph, told by an amiable narrator.

R.A. is also featured in the upcoming documentary Knuckleball! Here’s a clip. And it’s worth remembering that former Mets ace and current Mets announcer Ron Darling also wrote a book. The New York Metropolitans: the most literary team in the league.

Cocktail of the Week: The Mary Pickford

Drink enough cocktails and you’ll soon establish preferences, developing a personal hierarchy of spirits. Mine looks like this:

1. Rye
1A. Bourbon
2. Gin

Then there’s fifty feet of crap. And then there’s us. (Sorry. Moneyball is on cable and I keep leaving it on.)

I wanted to expand my horizons, work outside my comfort zone. That meant rum. With its broad flavor profile, it blends admirably well while maintaining its own presence, leaving plenty of room for experimentation. I’d gained some valuable perspective on this spirit from Wayne Curtis’ And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, which points out how at every key juncture in the development of America, rum was being poured somewhere.

Even more illuminating reading came courtesy of Charles H. Baker Jr., whom I have come to regard as one of the great men of the twentieth century. Baker was a writer who married exceedingly well, a fortuitous turn of events that permitted him to do the great work he was put on this earth to do: he travelled the globe sampling cocktails and recording their recipes for posterity. They were collected in the second volume of his 1939 book The Gentleman’s Companion, later reprinted as Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask. Everything about Baker’s book speaks to a panache that is now in short supply. A Tahitian cocktail is introduced to him by a friend who “with 2 or 3 other Yale men set off from New London to circle the globe in their 65 foot schooner Chance,” and the concoction itself is “an insidious drink that ladies prefer, often to their eventual risk, joy and sorrow.” No wonder he still has ardent admirers.

As many of Baker’s recipes come from exotic, far-flung locales, rum is a staple. Earlier this year I visited Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco, a truly impressive bar with a lengthy menu drawing liberally from Baker’s book. Drinks are prepared and served in a style that would meet with the maestro’s approval. Their rendition of the Hotel Nacional Special, a mixture of rum, apricot brandy, and lime and pineapple juices which Baker dubs “one of the three finest Bacardi drinks known to science,” verges on a religious experience.

For my first stab at a more adventuresome rum drink I chose another born of Cuba. The Mary Pickford, crafted at Havana’s Jockey Club, was indeed named after the silent film legend, so how could I resist? There is no evidence, alas, that she ever sampled it.

The drink calls for pineapple juice, which both spurred me on and gave me pause. Freshly squeezed juice is mandatory when making cocktails. At Smuggler’s Cove, whole pineapple chunks were liquefied before my eyes for the Hotel Nacional Special. I attempted something similar with frozen pineapple chunks and a hand blender. The result was a fruit slurry that wouldn’t exactly mix well, although it did make a tasty dessert. In The PDT Cocktail Book, Jim Meehan notes that fresh pineapple juice is “preferable to canned” provided you can afford a juice extractor; I read his use of “preferable” as a tacit blessing to embrace canned juice.

One last note: three of the four founders of United Artists – Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks – have cocktails named after them. The sole holdout is director D.W. Griffith. (OK, technically there was a fifth name on the UA paperwork, that of lawyer and former Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo. But what with Prohibition, who’d order a drink named after a T-Man?) Griffith’s legacy is an admittedly complicated one, but in the interests of completion the man needs his own cocktail. I am consulting with experts now to right this wrong.

The Mary Pickford

2 oz. rum
¾ oz. pineapple juice
½ oz. maraschino
¼ oz. grenadine

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

Me Elsewhere: Noir City Annual #4

Taking a break from completely reconfiguring my home workspace with a standing desk – WARNING: you may be hearing more about this – to announce that Noir City Annual #4 is now available for purchase from Amazon. 328 pages gorgeously designed by Michael Kronenberg, the book is a collection of essays from the pages of Noir City, the magazine published by the Film Noir Foundation.

The usual suspects are present and accounted for: Eddie Muller, Alan K. Rode, Jake Hinkson, Dan Akira Nishimura, Imogen Sara Smith. Plus a few contributions by yours truly, including the leadoff essay of which I am unduly proud. Songbirds: A Musical Survey of Romance, Ruin and Remorse is a tribute to the many chanteuses who haunt nightclubs and hearts in film noir. Michael outdid himself designing these pages. The only thing missing is a soundtrack – but rest assured, I make copious suggestions.

All proceeds go to the FNF’s efforts to reclaim and restore classic noir films. So buy a copy already.

Cocktail of the Week: The Jasmine Variation

To begin, let me clarify that this is not about an episode of The Big Bang Theory or a lost novel by Robert Ludlum. This is about me monkeying with a cocktail invented by someone who actually knows what he’s doing.

The Italian aperitif Aperol has been around for almost a century, but it’s only made a splash in the United States in the last five years or so. It’s often branded – and occasionally dismissed – as Campari light, only fitting considering that it’s now produced by the Campari company. I prefer to think of Aperol as the ideal introduction to bitters. Both beverages look somewhat alike, dwelling as they do in the redder stretch of the spectrum, but there the similarities end. Aperol is lighter, sweeter, and smoother. It possesses a more floral scent and flavor, with prominent notes of orange. More importantly, it has only half of Campari’s alcohol content. While it doesn’t match Campari in the bitterness department – Campari’s taste can never be completely tamed, which is why I love it in cocktails like the Negroni (gin) and the Old Pal (rye) – Aperol is no slouch. It may be a step down from Campari, but it’s definitely a step up from the norm.

My intro to Aperol was, well, the Intro to Aperol, a drink fashioned by Audrey Saunders of the Pegu Club in New York to spotlight the aperitif’s unique charms. A few months ago I had it in a brunch cocktail alongside the Brazilian sugarcane spirit cachaça and an assortment of fruit juices. Aperol’s most prominent use, though, is the simplest. Mix it with Prosecco and a splash of soda water and you have the Aperol Spritz, a summertime staple on the streets of Venice.

I’ve gone to the trouble of explaining how Aperol isn’t Campari’s sensitive little brother. So when it came time to experiment, what did I do? Substitute it in one of Rosemarie’s favorite Campari drinks. To, if I do say so myself, excellent effect.

The Jasmine, created by bartender Paul Harrington in the mid-1990s, has quickly become a popular member of the cocktail canon. In the standard recipe, the drink yields a phantom hint of grapefruit, abetted by that Campari astringency that I find so appealing. Switch in Aperol’s more subtle taste and you alter the cocktail’s complexion, getting a softer flavor that maintains a pleasing citrusy fullness. Fans of the original may want to try this alternative as a change of pace. Newcomers to bitters might prefer to start here, then work up to the heavy lifting of Campari.

The Jasmine Variation

1 ½ oz. gin
1 oz. Cointreau
¾ oz. Aperol (Campari in the original)
½ oz. lemon juice

Shake. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Movies: Two-Fisted Action Times Two

Two hugely entertaining films are out right now. Both are foreign and set to be remade, so why not be the cool kid on your block and talk about how much you enjoyed the originals? I know I will.

The Raid: Redemption. Before you say, “Not another Indonesian martial arts epic directed by a Welshman,” hear me out. The tagline on the poster lays out all you need to know: 1 ruthless crime lord, 20 elite cops, 30 floors of chaos. A SWAT team plans to pry a kingpin out of the Jakarta apartment building that serves as his stronghold. But some of the cops are bad, some of the henchmen may be good, and even the raid itself may not be what it appears. Never has an action film been so stabby – every blade imaginable is put to use – and it’s been years since one has been this relentless. 100 minutes of bone-crunching, high-tension joy. In theaters now.

Sleepless Night, aka Nuit Blanche. Regular readers may recall my delight last year at having filmmaker Nicolas Saada say mise-en-scène to me over cocktails in a Paris bar. Nicolas is the co-writer of this propulsive policier that again establishes its stakes with admirable simplicity. Crooked cop Tomer Sisley and his partner boost a cocaine stash. The local Corsican gangsters snatch divorced dad Sisley’s son in response and demand an exchange at their sprawling nightclub on the outskirts of Paris. Appropriately called Le Tarmac, it’s the size of an airplane hangar, kitted out with a first-class restaurant, a pool hall, and multiple bars, discos and karaoke lounges. Inventive use of all of them will be made as Sisley dervishes through the club once the hand-off goes awry, ducking well-meaning Internal Affairs cops, other bent gendarmes, the drugs’ owners and their bloodthirsty competition. Some dynamite script construction is on display as every casual bit of information pays off in unexpected ways. Available via on demand through the Tribeca Film Festival. Here’s the trailer.

Cocktail of the Week: The Meyer Lemon Whiskey Sour

If I were magically transported to California while I slept, it wouldn’t take me long to figure out where I was. The state has some tells. The light, to begin with. Golden, abundant, all too aware of how attractive it is. The air doesn’t smell the same there. And sooner rather than later, I’d encounter a Meyer lemon.

Every Californian I know has a Meyer lemon tree in their yard. They overturn bowls of them as they reach to shut off their alarm clocks in the morning, knock dozens of the little jewels off the branches as they walk to their cars. The place is lousy with them. A cross between a lemon and a sweet orange, the fruit was imported to the United States from China roughly a century ago. Their skins are thin and almost garishly colored, like many Californians. Zing! (I kid because I love. And am deeply jealous. And from New York.) They also possess a delicate floral fragrance and a taste sweeter than that of normal lemons, making them astonishingly versatile. To quote my friend David Corbett, Meyer lemons are God’s way of saying, “I’m sorry.”

Naturally now that they’re more readily available nationwide, I wanted to use them in a cocktail.

My choice was the humble whiskey sour. And by humble, I overstate the case. When you’re in the mood for a classic whiskey cocktail, you’re going to ask for a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned, with this one-time staple being the choice of last resort. I only order them in places where the drink list is suspect, the simplicity of the recipe rendering it foolproof. David A. Embury, in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, rightly notes that “the overwhelming majority of our cocktails are of the Sour type,” consisting of a base spirit, some combination of lemon and/or lime juice, and sugar or a sweetening agent. But he also views the entire Whiskey Sour clan askance because “whisky ... is a grouchy old bachelor that stubbornly insists on maintaining its own independence and is seldom to be found in marrying mood.”

Drinks historian David Wondrich is even more dismissive. The Whiskey Sour, he wrote, is “the cocktail in its undershirt.”

Enter the Meyer lemon. The natural buoyancy of its flavor blends perfectly with a good bourbon, and the fruit’s inherent sweetness means you can scale back the amount of simple syrup involved while still enjoying its tang. It revitalizes the drink, now no longer staid but refreshing, the stand-by transformed into a swinger. Turns out Old Man Whiskey just needs the right comely stranger to blow in his ear. Or, to put it another way, it’s a reminder that you need only change one element of a cocktail – not even the main one – to generate a pleasing variation.

The Meyer Lemon Whiskey Sour 

2 oz. bourbon
1 oz. Meyer lemon juice
¼ to ½ oz. simple syrup, depending on taste

Shake. Strain into a sour or cocktail glass, but know that everything looks better in the latter. Garnish with a cherry.

Book: Wolf Tickets, by Ray Banks (2010/e2012)

Like that ‘e’ thing I did up there? So you lot know it’s a new eBook? Clever, innit? Let’s just say I invented that and move on. Right, the checklist ...

Title based on a suspect interpretation of prison slang by noir maestro Tom Waits? Check.

Compelling situation set up sharpish? Guy gets shafted by his girl – she even took his one of a kind Italian leather jacket, for Christ’s sake – so he sets out to track her down with the help of his old Army buddy before she gets in even worse trouble. Check.

Surprising characters leading you down, down, down? You’ve got Sean Farrell, Irishman formerly in Her Majesty’s service turned petty criminal who can’t admit how much he loves the woman who ripped him off. You’ve got his mate Jimmy Cobb, pettier criminal with dodgy musical tastes and a stubborn streak that verges on vicious. You’ve got alternating viewpoints with each thinking he’s the smart one. Check.

Scabrously funny writing? “Whoever had been in charge of The Claddagh’s interior design must’ve detonated a bag of leprechauns and called it a fucking day.” Double fucking check.

Gut-churning violence? ... hoo ... You bet your ass that’s a check.

Whiplash twists you don’t see coming and heart where you least expect it? Check.

Yep. It’s another Banks book.

Miscellaneous: Words of Wisdom

(Sam) Peckinpah was a good writer, but he only had one voice. He could just write his kind of thing: Westerns, hard guys, bitter-enders. But he wrote them quite well. He was good at structure and good at finding the ironic moment. On dialogue, it’s a little harder to be completely generous. He was good at finding short catchphrases for characters that described their inner workings, but I always thought he was way too explicit in having characters baldly state thematic ideas.

The contrast with John Huston I think is interesting. Huston, like the more traditional screenwriters, could write in many voices. For instance, it’s impossible to imagine Sam writing Dr. Erlich’s Magic Bullet, Jezebel, or Wuthering Heights. But one can certainly see him doing Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This sounds like a criticism of Peckinpah but isn’t meant to be. I actually think you are much better off writing in as narrow a voice as possible (produces higher quality work and a more personal statement), but the other side of that coin (and Sam is illustrative of this), you probably burn out faster.

Walter Hill, in an interview in Backstory 4. For Ray Banks.

Cocktail of the Week: The Martinez

During a conversation with a friend about cocktails – I have these conversations a lot – I relayed a theory put forth by Washington Post spirits columnist Jason Wilson. Namely, that “many Americans end up drinking what they enjoyed in high school or college” because of “the visceral experience of memory,” the familiar flavor conjuring up the good old days. I’ve found that the opposite is also true; people will avoid a beverage with negative connotations from their past, be it poor quality or, ahem, youthful excess.

“That’s why I can’t drink gin,” my friend said. “I never got over thinking it tasted like Scotch tape.” I love gin, and even I have to admit I see what my friend’s talking about.

For decades, gin didn’t taste like Scotch tape at all. What’s consumed now under the name would have been unrecognizable to pre-Prohibition tipplers. Gin then came in two styles: the lightly sweetened Old Tom and the richer Dutch genever. In cocktail historian David Wondrich’s essential 2007 book Imbibe!, he lamented the latter’s absence from the American marketplace and the fact that Old Tom’s taste could only be approximated by adding gum syrup to Tanqueray.

A mere five years later, genever is again available Stateside and several enterprising distillers have painstakingly recreated Old Tom gin. Ransom Spirits in Oregon even had Wondrich serve as a consultant. Rosemarie and I had a chance to sample it a while back and finally splurged on a bottle.

It took a while to crack the wax seal; ultimately I put the bottle in an apple crate with a rabid wolverine and stood guard. But the reward was worth the effort. Ransom Old Tom gin is slightly aged and made with malted barley as its base, giving it a dense taste and viscosity more akin to whiskey than contemporary London dry gins. Several bartenders suggested using it in traditional bourbon cocktails, with no less an authority than Murray Stenson telling me it makes a killer Old Fashioned. But the liquor also retains the becoming splash of botanicals that gin drinkers expect. It’s still a guess as to whether gin really tasted like this in 1885; in those days gin would have tasted completely different in saloons one block apart. But this replication is deeply satisfying.

My first experiment with the Old Tom was the Martinez. This predecessor of the Martini has a convoluted history and a host of more current variations that I’ve never tried. I held out for the original, cited in both O. H. Byron’s 1884 Modern Bartenders Guide and “Professor” Jerry Thomas’ Bar-Tenders’ Guide (1887): Old Tom gin, Italian vermouth, maraschino and bitters. (OK, it’s not the original original. That recipe calls for Boker’s Bitters, which like Old Tom vanished from the earth to be reconstituted a century or so later, but only in the U.K. And I didn’t go with equal parts gin and vermouth – or even with the alternate suggestion of a 2:1 ratio of vermouth to gin, because I had Old Tom. If I can taste history, I want it front and center.)

The resulting cocktail doesn’t just have a big, bold flavor. It has the kind of flavor that pulls a leather wing chair closer to the fire and settles in for a long evening. And it packs a punch like a lead weight in a feather pillow. The use of sweet vermouth and bitters makes it a kissing cousin to the Manhattan; in truth, despite its history it would appeal more to partisans of that drink than the Martini. I prefer to think of it as a bridge between those twin titans of the cocktail world. It may not be for everyone, but it’s certainly for me.

The Martinez (variation)

2 oz. Ransom Old Tom gin
1 oz. sweet vermouth
¼ oz. maraschino
2 dashes Fee Brothers old fashion aromatic bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Book: Hell & Gone, by Duane Swierczynski (2011)

The second installment in any series – and especially a trilogy – is the bear. It’s the one that proves you’ve got a series, after all. At the same time, it is destined to be overshadowed by its brethren. The flashy, love-at-first-sight introduction. The satisfying denouement. But those misfit middle children are often my favorites. They tend to be darker, thornier, more interested in complication than resolution, all sharp corners and no smooth edges. For A Few Dollars More. The Godfather, Part II. The Road Warrior. Back to the Future Part II. Spider-Man 2. Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment. (Watch it again. There are nuances, people.)

Hell & Gone by Duane Swierczynski admirably carries on the tradition. It picks up the action exactly where Fun & Games breathlessly left off. Cop-turned-housesitter Charlie Hardie has run afoul of The Accident People, a consortium of killers who ply their trade in plain sight. He’s foiled one of their schemes but fallen into their clutches – which means coming to in a high-tech prison. Only Charlie’s not an inmate. He’s the warden, unable to trust either the guards or his charges.

Duane is his usual fiendishly inventive self. If anything the contained setting forces him to step up his game, the twists in abundance but still managing to catch you off-guard. The background of The Accident People is fleshed out and even more disturbing than what F&G hinted at. And the ending manages to be strangely moving while setting up what promises to be an utterly demented conclusion in Point & Shoot. (Duane recently announced that publication of P&S has been pushed to April 2013.) It’s another ferocious thrill ride that, more importantly, avoids being the literary equivalent of Highlander 2: The Quickening. Which is something none of us wanted.

Full disclosure: I’m thanked in the acknowledgements of H&G, one of several people on a list that includes Duran Duran front man Simon LeBon. Nothing I have accomplished personally impresses Rosemarie as much as that fact. Understandably so.

Here’s a Q&A on the Hardie books Duane was gracious enough to do with me.

Cocktail of the Week: The Clover Club

I can’t in all honesty say that I’ve ever gone into a cocktail bar seeking a drink with egg in it. (Leaving aside, obviously, the prime nog season of the holidays.) But whenever I have one – or watch a skilled professional build a Ramos Gin Fizz – I’m reminded of what this ingredient brings to the party. The addition of egg white gives a cocktail a silken texture, a fullness on the tongue. I may not always remember the taste, but I’ve never forgotten it.

In my home experimentation, I’ve never worked with eggs. What better time than the run-up to Easter to start?

Not wanting my maiden voyage to be scuttled, I opted for simplicity. The Clover Club was born at a regular gathering of journalists at a Philadelphia hotel around the turn of the last century, but like many a stage musical or TV weatherman the drink didn’t hit the big time until it made it in New York. There’s even a namesake bar in Brooklyn. I had the ingredients. I also had a question. How, exactly, did one work with eggs?

Apparently with the vigorous application of elbow grease. David Wondrich’s Imbibe! gets right to the point: “Like all drinks using eggs, this one will have to be shaken extra hard.” A 1989 bartender’s guide even made mention of a blender. The PDT Cocktail Book suggested another option: dry shaking. Prompting another question. What, exactly, was dry shaking?

A misnomer, for starters. Explain to me how combining liquid ingredients without ice can be considered dry shaking. But the process allows the egg proteins to emulsify. It’s a scientific innovation that, as cocktail guru Gary Regan discovered last year, is actually decades old; a 1951 book by the former publicist of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel – coincidentally the same establishment that helped put the Clover Club on the map – suggested this step because it gave the finished product “a nice ‘top.’”

So I dry-shook (?) my Clover Club, assembling the ingredients, shaking sans ice for several seconds, then avec ice for twice as long. The resulting drink did indeed sport “a nice ‘top’,” crowned with a gossamer froth that admirably maintained its consistency to the last drop. First time out of the gate and I already know that wet-shaking (??) isn’t for me.

But there are still other methods. Earlier this week I watched Ben Perri, one of the resident wizards at the Zig Zag Café, make a pair of Ramos Gin Fizzes. After depositing the egg white in the bottom of a Collins glass he used a thin whisk to aerate it before adding the drink’s other elements. “Does the same thing as a dry-shake,” he said, “but with a lot less work.” Lesson learned. Whisk to be ordered.

The Clover Club

2 oz. gin
¾ oz. lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
1 barspoon grenadine
1 egg white

Shake the ingredients without ice, then with. Strain. No garnish.

Miscellaneous: Words of Wisdom

Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman – not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen – though not designed by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a standup mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear ‘artist,’ I think of someone who doesn’t think it necessary to show up at work on time. More often than not their efforts, convinced as they are of their own genius, are geared more to giving themselves a hard-on than satisfying the great majority of dinner customers. Personally, I’d prefer to eat food that tastes good and is an honest reflection of its ingredients, than a 3-foot-tall caprice constructed from lemon grass, lawn trimmings, coconuts and red curry. You could lose an eye trying to eat that. When a job applicant starts telling me how Pacific Rim-job cuisine turns him on and inspires him, I see trouble coming. Send me another Mexican dishwasher anytime. I can teach him to cook. I can’t teach character. Show up at work on time six months in a row and we’ll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you: ‘Shut the fuck up.’

Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential

Movie: Goon (2012)

The hockey wing is the loneliest in the Sports Movie Hall of Fame, located in scenic Canoga Park, California. But what it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality, because sports movies and comedies don’t come any better than Slap Shot. (HOF write-in campaigns on behalf of Youngblood and Mystery, Alaska have been met with open scorn.) At long last, though, Slap Shot will have some company, thanks to the inspired-by-a-true-story Goon.

Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is good of heart, dim of wit, and short of temper. The self-described “stupid” son in a family of doctors, he doesn’t have “a thing” – until a brawl in the stands at a minor league hockey game lands him on the team as an enforcer. Before long Doug the Thug is called up to protect a highly-regarded prospect who’s never been the same since a run-in with the most fearsome goon of all, Ross “The Boss” Rhea (Liev Schreiber, never better and absolutely terrifying).

Goon is made by Canadians (including several Judd Apatow veterans), so it treats hockey like the foul-mouthed orgy of violence it is. While it acknowledges the consequences of fighting, it baldly states that brutality is an essential part of the sport and a big reason why people watch. It also wields a truly profane sense of humor, buttressed by antic announcers, near-indecipherable Quebecois and Russian accents, multiple nods to Slap Shot, and the greatest rallying cry ever (“Gay porn hard!”). You’ve got to love any movie that stages the first encounter between The Thug and The Boss as a greasy spoon tribute to the DeNiro/Pacino coffee shop face-off in Heat. Goon is getting a small theatrical release, but it’s also available via On Demand right now.

Here’s a Grantland interview with Doug Smith, the film’s inspiration. That’s some career line: over four hundred penalty minutes, and zero goals scored.