Roadmap to a guilty conscience.

had a very respectful chat about theology tonight

Oh come on! How is this not a word?

Body snatchers! King's Road, Chelsea, November 1784. The first time I walked down King's Road, in the summer of 1982, right off I passed a group of punks, one of them was a big geezer in leather with a huge, spiked Mohawk, a dotted line tattooed around the top of his head and CUT HERE on his brow.

Without naming your job, tell me something you say over and over again at work. "Twist a thin-cut swatch of lemon peel over the top."

Charles M-F Dickens, 214 years young today. A toast in excellent Punch, or whatever Punch you can scrape together, to the Pickwick Club and all its far-flung members!

Fingers really on the pulse, here. Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, 1975.

I kicked off Black History Month in Corona at the home of Louis Armstrong, who lived in our city for more than 30 years. Walking through his house and hearing how much New York meant to him was a powerful reminder of what this city owes to Black artists and culture.

The Saratoga Cocktail from the posthumous 1887 edition of Jerry Thomas, made with the absolutely splendid New York Distilling Co. bonded rye and some pre-Prohibition Abbott’s bitters. Panem et circenses.

Robert Fripp and Debbie Harry, 1978 - Photo by Chris Stein

All in all I'd have to say I don't enjoy being ruled by semi-literate perverts with infinite money

You're not alone, John Gary Williams. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoFm...

De-icing. What a good idea.

So the rules are if you’re white you’re gonna be fine but don’t think about trying to help anyone

ICE executed Alex Pretti. Anything else you’re told is a lie.

After 15 years of searching I finally got my hands on a copy of Désiré Kervégant’s masterful 1947 Rhums et Eaux de Vie de canne. 513 pages of often deliriously technical discussion of everything having to do with cane spirits. I’ll see y’all in a couple of weeks.

Al Green has always been like French engineering, in that he copied nobody and, especially, nobody copied him. Well, except for that magnificent bastard Jimmy Ruffin, in 1974: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eslE...

Introduce yourself with five concerts you’ve seen. Television Big Youth Fela Kuti Ornette Coleman Afrika Bambaataa & Souksonic Force

Nobody Had Heard Anything Like It Before! Or Had They? The Velvet Underground Myth. grantmcphee.substack.com/p/the-velvet...

Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence. "'If we assume that under the low rates of duty next year only three bottles, that is half a gallon per head, will be consumed, it will take up fifteen million gallons.'"

When you visit Trieste, Italy, you and you go and buy tickets for bus, in the buss station ticket office you can find this beautiful two projection section of Cretaceous rudist bivalve mollusk from the Radiolitidae family, which converged in their for with corrals! 🧪 #Geology ⚒️ #Paleobio

This afternoon! C'mon down.

This afternoon!

Well, thread. Pretty sure we’re all in there. Disappointing species, I guess.

425 years ago a cat makes a friend. In exchange, the cat gets to live forever.

For my Mid-Atlantic friends: this Sunday at 4:00 I'll be talking cocktails and comics with the great Phoebe Esmon at the also great Binding Agents, in Philadelphia. And yes, I'll be signing copies of the Comic Book History of the Cocktail. Come on down and say hello www.simpletix.com/e/binding-ag...

For more of my Mid-Atlantic friends: On Monday, the 19th I'll be at Southpaw, Baltimore--one of my favorite bars!--from 4 to 7, signing books and carrying on. They'll be serving a slew of cocktails from the Comic Book History. See yinz there, I hope!

Three wine critics have independently realised that drinking wine produces emotions, a breakthrough they collectively explored at extreme length, as Alfonso Cevola observes. Instead of simply writing better about wine, they wrote thousands of words about why writing about wine is hard.

there are so many [City] Reviews of Books now but how many of them take the obviously correct approach of accepting reviews of books that (a) have been out for months or years, or (b) they've already reviewed?

Get the book, drink the drinks, listen to some shaggy dog stories, have a laugh. Maybe, learn a lil’ something.

For more of my Mid-Atlantic friends: On Monday, the 19th I'll be at Southpaw, Baltimore--one of my favorite bars!--from 4 to 7, signing books and carrying on. They'll be serving a slew of cocktails from the Comic Book History. See yinz there, I hope!

For my Mid-Atlantic friends: this Sunday at 4:00 I'll be talking cocktails and comics with the great Phoebe Esmon at the also great Binding Agents, in Philadelphia. And yes, I'll be signing copies of the Comic Book History of the Cocktail. Come on down and say hello www.simpletix.com/e/binding-ag...

When you type the name of an author into Amazon's search bar, and books by 4 different authors come up before the first book by that author. “We know this is not what you're looking for but we don't give a shit.” Imagine if an assistant in a local independent bookshop did that to you. Off there now.

Archaeologists: D.C. Capitol May Have Once Been Used For Legislating https://theonion.com/archaeologists-d-c-capitol-may-have-once-been-used-for-legislating/

Good choice.

So I picked this up this afternoon at the wonderful Louis Armstrong Museum in Corona. 1950; Standard Oil sponsors a series of records for classrooms demonstrating American regional music. They get Pops and a couple of his All-Stars, Hines and Teagarden, who lived up to the name and then some, in

You always have this: heystacks.com/doc/850/davi...

A brace of Wiffins to seal off the day. That’s 1.75 oz of the now-scarce Tanq Old Tom, .75 oz Cocchi vermouth, . 5 oz cognac and a small dash of absinthe. My attempt at a drink sketched out in Wodehouse’s story, “The Passing of Ambrose.” Ambrose Wiffin needed a drink and thought it might be this.

Wise words here.

I was walking through Gowanus this afternoon, which is now one big construction site, and was reminded of the following lines, which I wrote back in 2019 when the canal looked like this and I used to while away many an idle hour wandering free as a rat along its weed-bowered banks.

Sen. Pete Incitatus (R, NC).

this is your mission. our pedophile president needs you to jump out of a helicopter to kidnap a head of state and his wife so some oil ceos can make a lot of money. we’ll be watching from a resort in florida that still serves wedge salad and checking how many retweets we get. good luck soldier

I'm sure this formula (from the Pharmacopoeia Bateana of 1700) is as efficacious as it claims to be, but--how do you get the bees to stand still on the scale?

It is not a great feeling to be a citizen of a rogue state.

Get ready for Phase Two: a raid on Oslo to seize the Peace Prize.

Man, Audrey Totter’s line delivery here.

#AI is awful part eleventy million. I wanted to confirm that I remembered hearing that Ian Tattersall had a rule about being able to tell whether fossil skulls were different species at fifty paces. Searches for "ian tattersall" and "fifty paces" wasn't turning anything up...

Many thanks to @davidwondrich.bsky.social and The Oxford Companion To Spirits & Cocktails for pointing me in the direction of these sources. An indispensable reference. #cheers 🍸 global.oup.com/academic/pro...