cinematic

D: Why yes, I did get tipsy this month at an art opening & decide to go see "Burlesque" by myself.

A Lady: I can't believe you went to “Burlesque” drunk, alone.
I mean, I can.
But: amazing.

D: Ahemmm. Not drunk, tipsy. The art opening ran out of booze before I could get properly drunk.

A Lady: Was it everything I'm hoping it will be?

D: If you hope for a bastard child of “Showgirls”, “Cabaret”, and “Moulin Rouge”.... then YES.
Sequins, bad makeup, tits, and hilarity.

A Lady: OMFG. I need that in my life.

D: I still cannot believe that Alan Cumming was convinced to do that movie.
Also, Cher's face Does. Not. Move.

A Lady: Wait wait wait. Cumming's in it?

D: I KNOW
YES I THOUGHT I WAS SEEING THINGS
BUT HE'S IN IT.

A Lady: Must. See. Now.

D: I believe his first line is "I should wash your mouth out with Jaegermeister for that.”

A Lady: Holy shit, how did I not know that?

D: Best-kept secret of that movie, I swear.
Oh! And Cher has a line like "Did you tell him about the tattoo on my ass?"

Also all the girls in the movie who are not Xtina/Veronica Mars (she’s the Gina Gershon) look like Jessica Simpson.
EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

Dude, this movie was so worth the $4.

wishful thinking

D: Um, yes. We are the worst bloggers ever.

A Lady: Sigh. Agreed.

D: Let’s ignore the fact that we are absent and disappointing bloggers and jump ahead like we didn’t accidentally hiatus for, like, three weeks.

A Lady: Yes! Exactly! Let’s get greedy.

D: AKA wishlisting time. This is the best part of holidays: pretending that it’s not a little sad that I, at nearly thirty years old, am still making wishlists.

A Lady: Plus, the Christmas-adjacent birthdays thing. Was this always a pain for you, or a bonus?

D: Oh, always a bonus. My birthday falls three weeks after Christmas, so I’d take the handwritten list off the fridge, carefully cross off all the things I got, leave the un- acquired gifts on the list, and retitle it “Birthday List”. It was all kinds of efficient.

A Lady: Ooh. That’s so clever. My problem has always been of the eleven days prior variety. No, I never know what I want for either holiday. The more important concern is What Do You Want To Do For Your Birthday, and, to be frank I’ve more or less decided to throw in the towel. People are always writing papers or taking finals or already gone home for break and god I resent the academy sometimes.

ANYWAY. What do we want this year, pray tell?

D: I think I can speak for both trollops here when I say “scotch”. Delicious, gorgeous, expensive scotch.

And a table saw would be nice. But probably not recommended to enjoy at the same time as the scotch.

A Lady: And a pony! A Tom Ford-approved pony!


D: And a first edition of “What Shall I Wear”, of course. One must have a well-selected library, naturally.

A Lady: I could always do with a Rothko and a Twombly.

I also feel like either of us would go for the Visionaire boxed edition of Diana Vreeland’s VOGUE memos.
I saw it at Art Basel Miami and pined for a few minutes. The last copy they had on hand was $160 or so. (Which, crap, I should totally have gotten as an investment because on the site they retail at $250 WTF. Not. Worth. It.)

D: Ooooh. That packaging. Swoon.

(I can’t believe you don’t keep a running wishlist through the year. My acquisitiveness knows no bounds: I have a specific list on my calendar just for Things I’d Like To Have Purchased For Me. Sadly, the list only gets longer, not shorter ever. Magpie tendencies.)

A Lady: (I mean, I did, for a hot second, have a running email I was sending to myself to keep track of everything I wanted, but then present time came around and I, um, forgot about it. Because what’s more fun than making life difficult for everyone?)

D: Passive-aggression is everyone's favorite gift.

A Lady: Another thing I could use, since Boswell ate mine, is a new pair of ballet flats. (The
Delmans are dead, long live the cheaper version?) Like these, but in my size.

D: V nice. I can’t believe I haven’t put Improbable Shoes on my wishlist yet. No, my wall of shoes is not quite full yet, and I must remedy that.

FUCKOFF HEELS!
These are insane. And so am I, and thus, it is perfect.

We are so easy to buy gifts for, really.

how to drink

I like booze. Obviously. And while I am un-snobby about a lot of it (my well-documented and abiding love for High Life Light is Exhibit A for the jury), I am insufferably elitist about cocktails. Personal favorites: scotch on the rocks (not so much a “cocktail” as a hobby), French 75, manhattan, gin gimlet, dirty martini, Hendrick’s martini with a cucumber slice.

I had a cocktail party some months back that devolved into me doing some light shaming of a guest who was baffled as to the proper ratio of whiskey to sweet & sour. (Hint: the drink should still look like whiskey, not lemonade.) I am still dreaming of the day I acquire a bar cart for my apartment--how civilized would that be? Oh so civilized!

The main calculus when thinking about stocking one’s home bar is defining the balance between cheap and good. Where can a lady cheap out a bit so she’ll have enough money to splash out for a good bottle of scotch?

A Lady: when (re-)stocking a liquor cabinet, what should every fine filly make sure to have on hand?
so far I have: scotch (Macallan 12), gin (Plymouth)

D: also, Hendrick's gin, bourbon (Bulleit is my jam. But I am experimenting with Old Overholt right now with an infusion of sour cherries, and may switch for thriftiness purposes), scotch (I am a devotee of Laphroaig- smokysmokysmoky), vodka –it can be cheap, Smirnoff is totally fine. And snobby homemade meyer lemon sweet & sour!

A Lady: how do you feel about brandy/cognac? I feel like Calvados is a must.

D: I don't do much for brandy lately
But Calvados is a good cocktail accoutrement

A Lady: and speaking of accoutrements: vermouth (Martini and Rossi, dry)

D: + sweet vermouth
And fee bros bitters

A Lady: argh, sweet vermouth. you would.

D: for manhattans! It’s necessary!

A Lady: tequila: Don Juan?

D: My bar is understocked at the mo’. And I have zero tequila knowledge.

A Lady: I also like something unusual. Like pisco. Mine's lemon-infused.

D: Mmmm pisco! Yes! And maybe cachaça?

A Lady: mm, yes


Apparently we cheap out on vodka (quite possibly because both of us like our martinis with gin, and vodka is pretty much limited to mixing for others in my apartment, or for my own bloody mary slushies) and just go with Smirnoff. I’m eternally in love with Hendrick’s gin, but since that cucumbery-rosewatery flavor is not good for everything, I will also note that New Amsterdam is cheap and yet good. Not the best gin of all time, but my corner bodega stocks it for under $15, and it’s not discernibly cheap when one drinks it. I don’t have Plymouth around at the moment, but if it’s good enough for A Lady, it’s most certainly good enough for me. (Oooh, now I want gin.)

Bourbon: I am highly opinionated on this. Bulleit, in my estimation, is the superior bourbon. But Old Overholt has been recommended to me as a fiscally-responsible alternative, and thus far, I’m not totally horrified by it. I’ve got a batch of Old Overholt being infused with fresh sour cherries, and when I crack that open, I’ll report back.

Scotch: A Lady goes for Macallan 12-year; I go for Laphroaig and as old a bottle as I can afford. (Right now that’s 10-year. Sigh. Someone could buy me a bottle of Laphroaig Cask Strength, hmm?)

Tequila: opinionate with A Lady and educate me.

Rum: Hmm. No idea. I don’t drink much for rum. I think everyone I know drank one of those dorm-room concoctions of Captain Morgan and Diet Coke in Nalgene bottle at age 19, and then we quit drinking rum because of that, save for the occasional mojito when we want to torture a bartender by making them muddle mint leaves and sugarcane and have to spend 8 minutes making one damn drink.

Others: Pisco, Calvados, vermouths (sweet and dry), cachaça, bitters. And if you’re willing to juice a million meyer lemons and some limes by hand, I highly suggest making one’s own homemade sweet & sour mix. It’s so, so good. And after you juice all that damn citrus by hand, you will most certainly want a cocktail.

I am also of the belief that one must always keep a bottle of cava on hand, just in case. In case… you are thirsty? (Cristalino: cheap but good. And it makes a damn fine French 75, friends.)

Addendum from A Lady: a decent bottle of rioja, at least a couple years old. It’s the kind of wine you can splash out into little juice glasses or re-purposed votive candle-glasses and slam on the table emphatically when needing to make a point at 1 a.m. on a hot summer night.

naming rights

It is so very unfair: A Lady has a namesake cocktail that’s all delicious and classic, and yet my best shot at imbibing my own eponymous cocktail is to frequent the same bar often enough that the bartender starts referring to a glass of whiskey as a “D”. I feel left out.

A Lady: I'll mixologize a Horst for you, and we can toast with when we meet.

D: Yay! It needs to have gin, whiskey, or champagne, fo' sho'. Otherwise the balance of my humors will be thrown off.

A Lady: Exactly. The Horst it is. I'm thinking some kind of a champagne cocktail? Champagne over muddled blueberries and lemon? Or gin muddled with blueberries and lemon, topped with champagne? Or whiskey with bitters and soda? Or a French lemonade but as follows: juice of half a lemon, 2 oz pisco, served over ice cubes in a highball and topped with soda, with a twist.

D: Oooh, boozy. Very close to a French 75- perhaps some sort of German riff on it, as I am freakishly 100% German, ancestrally?

A Lady: Bärenjäger topped with champagne, with a meyer lemon twist. Notice how I'm insisting on champagne?

Oh, brilliant. Yes, I am using this as an excuse to buy vrai champagne, and be snooty about it. After all, the bartender demands this. And if this means that I must drink those two bottles of cava currently chilling in my fridge to clear out refrigerator real estate to chill that champagne, well, I’m willing to make that extra effort.