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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.
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.
Audio: What's your favorite carol or holiday song?
Without a doubt: Price's "Another Lonely Christmas".
I must admit that I'm still a little thrown by the pokeno & banana daiquiris, but that said, this is my #1 when it comes to Christmas songs.
I have a file of things to post to my blog about, and it's become clear to me that I'm not going to have the time/inclination/desire to write full posts about each of them. Some of these are old, so you may have read or seen them already.
So:
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Wu Tang Clan, "The Heart Gently Weeps". I love this in concept; in reality, it's just okay for me, though Method Man's bit towards the end redeems it quite a bit.
- Richard Hawley's new album, Lady's Bridge, is gorgeous fall music. My favorite so far is "The Sea Calls".
- I'm enjoying Blake Lewis's "Break Another" way too much.
- A combination of a dead hard drive and annoyance at having something like 5 (all different!) iPhoto and iTunes libraries inspired me to do a little cleanup. Applications used both to combine the libraries and keep them in sync, all highly recommended: iPhoto Library Manager, Senuti, and Martian Slingshot.
