The latest issue of that venerable, mercurial, deeply occasional magazine THE REVELATOR is now available online for your perusal. It is filled with nothing but THE TRUTH AND ALL!
The contents of this issue are so vast, variable, and vivacious that I can't even begin to summarize them here. There are excursions into history, into imagery, and into liquor. We attend the tale of a young man reading science fiction in Kenya. We discover the secret life of Elodia Harwinton, about whom I am sure you have heard much (but never this much!). For those of you who do not like words, there are not only some videos, but a wordless book(let) by the great Frans Masereel. And do not forget the
Revelations, in which many secrets, some of them clearly obscene and pornographic, revealed!
Resist not, o mortal! Surrender yourself to the siren call of
The Revelator today!
Consume it. Just don’t sit on it.
Agave: Pointy. Vegan. Delicious.
Okay, so maybe just gnawing off a hunk of agave from your neighbor’s yard is not so delicious (or cool). You have to do stuff to it, like distilling, which is my favorite way of enjoying agave.
When you combine distilled agave (also known as tequila, people tell me) with limes and ice, magical things happen. I like to call it a “margarita.” Don’t steal that, I’m already working on the trademark.
Jenni and I have sipped a plethora of margaritas between designing, printing, shirt-folding, and child rearing. A few things we’ve decided:
- Tequila. If it’s not 100% blue agave, it’s crap.
- Expensive does not necessarily equal awesome (see above).
- Throw away the mixes. They’re crap.
- Margaritas are a valid source of vitamin C.
Don’t forget your margaritawear!
Jenni’s Superifico Margarita Recipe
Combine in a blender:
- 1 cup tequila (100% blue agave)
- 1/4 cup lime juice (freshly squeezed)
- 1/3 cup agave nectar (we like Tres Agaves)
- Ice
Blend it up. Serve in ginormous margarita glasses.
Technically this makes four margaritas. But who’s counting?
Do you do ‘ritas? What’s your secret recipe? Favorite tequila? Share with us in the comments!
Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition Karen Blumenthal
I'm knee deep in Cybils reading (although I shouldn't complain-- those fiction people have much longer lists!) but here's a good book for a Friday afternoon!
When I first saw this, I thought "what a weird subject for a children's book" but, it really works.
Blumenthal does an excellent job of explaining why prohibition passed in the US. I think when you learn about it in school, you look at the way America drinks today but that's not how we drank back then. Today, you don't give kids whiskey with breakfast, well, I mean, I hope you don't.
The book also deals with how Prohibition made things more dangerous-- mostly through gang activity getting liquor to people who wanted it. One of my favorite bits was a map of Washington that show everywhere booze had been bought. Also, the quotation from one reporter that "Capitol Hill was one of the wettest spots in Washington."
Also, the fact that beauty salons saw an uptick in business-- "When men drank, they were not so critical," Mrs. Harry Newton Price told the New York Times..
The conclusion is a bit weird, as it tries to incorporate an anti-drinking message (because it's for kids, and kids shouldn't drink, and alcoholism is an issue) and it's a bit rushed. BUT! A great book.
I think kids will really enjoy it while learning a lot about American history and the American relationship with alcohol. There's also a great lesson about political compromise and what could have been if both sides yielded a bit.
My real complaint is nitpicky-- Applejack. At one point she describes it as hard cider. In the glossary, it's listed as slang for booze.
Applejack is basically apple brandy mixed with grain alcohol. It's one of my favorites, so here's a prohibition-era cocktail that's great for fall, for those of you over 21.
Applejack Rabbit
3 parts Applejack
1 part lemon juice
1 part orange juice
1 part maple syrup
Shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass.
My variation-- add a good dash of bitters and only 1/2 part maple syrup.
It goes really well with a nice sharp cheddar.
Book Provided by... my local library
Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.
Excerpting Kingsley Amis’ Everyday Drinking at length in any discussion thereof is both crucial and inadequate: crucial because nothing anyone could say about it would be as entertaining as the text itself, and inadequate because the only way to convey how consistently funny it is would be to reproduce the book verbatim.
In their persistent humor and charm and their seeming effortlessness, these essays remind me of the best of Twain’s.
You may have come across a condensed version of Amis’ hangover recovery advice in the Daily Mail a couple years ago. I enjoyed it at the time, but now, having read that section of the book in full, I’m aghast that so much was lost in the cutting. Couldn’t the editors have omitted some of the day’s news instead?
Amis advocates a two-pronged approach to hangover recovery: the physical, and the metaphysical. The third step in his treatment of the metaphysical hangover (M.H.) entails embarking on either the M.H. Literature Course or the M.H. Music Course, or, if necessary, both in succession. “The structure of both Courses … rests on the principle that you must feel worse emotionally before you start to feel better. A good cry is the initial aim.”
Amis’ Rx for hangover reading:
Begin with verse, if you have any taste for it. Any really gloomy stuff that you admire will do. My own choice would tend to include the final scene of Paradise Lose, Book XII, lines 606 to the end, with what is probably the most poignant moment in all our literature coming at lines 624-6. The trouble here, though, is that today of all days you do not want to be reminded of how inferior you are to the man next door, let alone to a chap like Milton. Safer to pick someone less horribly great. I would plump for the poems of A.E. Housman and/or R.S. Thomas, not that they are in the least interchangeable. Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum is good, too, if a little long for the purpose.
Switch to prose with the same principles of selection. I suggest Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It is not gloomy exactly, but its picture of life in a Russian labour camp will do you the important service of suggesting that there are plenty of people about who have a bloody sight more to put up with than you (or I) have or ever will have, and who put up with it, if not cheerfully, at any rate in no mood of self-pity.
Turn now to stuff that suggests there may be some point to living after all. Battle poems come in rather well here: Macaulay’s Horatius, for instance. Or, should you feel that this selection is getting a bit British (for the Roman virtues Macaulay celebrates have very much that sort of flavour), try Chesterton’s Lepanto. The naval victory in 1571 of the forces of the Papal League over the Turks and their allies was accomplished without the assistance of a single Anglo-Saxon (or Protestant). Try not to mind the way Chesterton makes some play with the fact that this was a victory of Christians over Moslems.
By this time you could well be finding it conceivable that you might smile again some day. However, defer funny stuff for the moment. Try a good thriller or action story, which will start to wean you from self-observation and the darker emotions: Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler, Gavin Lyall, Dick F
.jpg?picon=160)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com
</p>
<div class="post-comments">
0 Comments on <em>Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition</em> as of 1/1/1900
</div> <!-- end post-comments -->
<a name="commentsforpost991557target" id="commentsforpost991557target" style="text-decoration:none;"></a>
<div id="commentsforpost991557" style="display: none;" ></div><a class = "leavecomment" title="Click Here to Add a Comment" href="/redirect.asp?kind=3&value=450&t=http://www.jenrothschild.com/2011/10/bootleg-murder-moonshine-and-lawless.html" onclick="window.open(){kind=small}
Add a Comment
