How To Make a Cocktail (not-really-a-book-review book review)

My wife and I have been dabbling with cocktails for a while now. Well, a short while.
Okay, it all started in 2017 when we went on our gold country trip and stayed in Columbia. We had this pair of cocktails:

which, I'm pretty sure, was the first time I'd ever had a cocktail. Maybe I'd had a pina coloda -- I don't really remember when we started making those -- but that would have been about the extent of it.

After or trip, we started trying cocktails when we would go out to places that served cocktails. Sometimes, we even looked for places that served cocktails as part of our decision process. Of course, we don't really go out a lot, so it's not like it was something that happened very often.

So we started making the occasional cocktail at home, especially pina colodas, the family favorite (because you can leave the rum out for the kids). I learned how to make margaritas. But that's where we hit a wall, I guess, because my wife bought me a book, Be Your Own Bartender, and I learned how to make a daiquiri. A real daiquiri, not those slushy monstrosities.

We tried out other things from that book, but it was too all over the place. I'm not saying it's a bad book or anything -- it definitely served a purpose -- but it only had a very limited number of drink options for any given category and it became a hassle trying to get just the various base alcohols for the different drinks. That and we discovered that my wife really just likes rum. Rum for cocktails, not on its own. On its own, I'd much rather have whiskey, which I like straight, but I'm not going to drink rum on its own.

All of which led to my wife buying for me for our anniversary this year the book at the top of the post, Smuggler's Cove, a book all about tiki cocktails, most of which are made from rum. Nearly all, actually. Did you know that cocktails originated with rum? And, kind of, with pirates. This is why pirates beat ninjas. They fucking invented cocktails! That's free information; I don't know if it's in the book or not.

However, the book is full of all kinds of history, which I will get around to reading at some point. I just haven't had a chance yet. My attention has been on the cocktail recipes themselves, over 100 of them. My personal favorite, at least so far, is the Planter's Punch. Which is not exactly accurate, because the recipe in the book is just an example of -a- planter's punch. It was just a catchall name given to a class of drink of which there were endless variations because every plantation owner had their own specific recipe. My wife has discovered that she loves Mai Tais, which, by the way, despite its association with Hawaii, was invented right here in Oakland, California. Also, by the way, the Hawaiian version, which adds pineapple juice, is vastly inferior to the original, basic Mai Tai.

I'm actually a little upset with my book. My wife got me this nice hardcover copy of it, and it's a first edition, and I am going to wear the shit out of it. Not that I think this book will necessarily become valuable, but it ought to. It's that good.

Aside from being chock full of recipes, there is also a section about how to create your own cocktails. I've been fiddling around in there quite a bit and have devised two of my own that I find quite tasty. As I continue to experiment, I'll post my personal recipes here on the blog. However, I'm not going to share recipes from the book unless I've adapted it in some significant way.

None of the cocktails I'm making at the moment are as pretty as the ones in the picture above, but they are very good. At some point, I'll start working on presentation and figure out how to make drinks as pretty as those up top.

Anyway, if you're interested in cocktail making, especially rum and/or tiki drinks, I'd give this book a strong recommendation.

Well, this became more of an actual book review than I'd intended, but I guess that's okay. I'll have some cocktail recipes posted soon.

Clone Wars -- Season One

I've watched more than my share of sci-fi on television, not all of it very good. Some of it downright bad. Some of it, like the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, so horrible that there's no legitimate reason it should ever have been allowed to continue. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is not one of those shows. The Clone Wars, in fact, is good sci-fi, even in its first season. It "suffers" from only two things, at least in the minds of most people:
1. Its connection to the prequels.
2. It's animated.

Seriously, in this day and age, why do people still belittle "cartoons." It's not a cartoon, okay. Quit calling it that. And, really, when you say, "I don't watch cartoons," in reference to, say, a Pixar movie or a Studio Ghibli film, you just sound dumb and/or weirdly prejudice. The Clone Wars is in the same realm. Sure, it's "targeted" at kids, except that it's not. Really, it's just produced to be "kid accessible," but kids are not necessarily the target audience. The target audience is anyone who wants a more fleshed out view of the Star Wars universe.

As for its connection to the prequels, you just need to get over it. My gosh, they happened. Get your collective heads out of your asses and grow up.

So The Clone Wars does flesh out the Star Wars universe, and it did it on an ongoing basis for six years. For me, the best part of the series is seeing the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin develop. From just the movies, you don't get to see the bond between the two and just how strong it was, so, unless you can fill in the gaps yourself, you fail to grasp the trauma for Obi-Wan when Anakin turns to the Dark Side and he's forced to confront him. I think most people failed to grasp that simple concept. The Clone Wars allows you to see and experience the brotherhood of the two men.

The other thing The Clone Wars does really well is explore just what it means to be a clone. A product. Within that, what does it mean to be an individual? What is the importance, the value, of one clone? Or, more appropriately, one person?

What I'm saying is that The Clone Wars explores real questions and looks at real issues and puts those things in a context that pretty much anyone can understand. It's no mere cartoon. The first season is strong. It didn't need time to "find its legs," as so many other, especially sci-fi, shows do. This series should be a must watch for any Star Wars fan. Any real Star Wars fan, at any rate.

However, as good as it is, there are still some episodes I like, I'll say, less well. Only two, though, really. You can see the reviews for those two:
"Blue Shadow Virus"
"Mystery of a Thousand Moons"

Picking a favorite episode from the season is much more difficult. For instance, I love half of the episode, "The Gungan General." The parts where Anakin and Obi-Wan have to work with Dooku to escape the pirates are some of my favorite moments of the season, but, then, they are countered in this episode by it being the absolute worst usage of Jar Jar in the entire series (or, at least, season one, but I think it's true of the series as a whole).

But, fine, I'll pick one! I'm going to go with
"Storm Over Ryloth"
as my single favorite episode. As I said in the review, I highly recommend it.

Next week, we start season two! I hope to see you there, and, remember, you can decide to participate in this blog event at any time. Just go here to sign up!

Neil Gaiman's Bottle of Milk

Depending upon how you look at things, my kids are either very fortunate or dismally unfortunate. They get great stories all the time about, well, everything. So there is the story about the Troll Bridge and Goblin Town and, now, there is an excavation into Goblin Town going on that I haven't remembered to go take pictures of, yet, but I need to so that I can do a post on that, and, of course, DRAGONS! Sometimes, especially my daughter, the kids get exasperated with me because they have such a difficult time getting merely mundane answers from me. Sometimes, I almost feel bad about that.

Sometimes.

I mean, no one has ever just gone to the store or gone outside to play or, even, just gone to the bathroom. He's been abducted by aliens. And, when he comes back, he's been replaced by a robot duplicate or, possibly, a clone. We're never just having chicken for dinner; we're having dinosaur or, depending upon how many times I've been asked that question, one of the children.

And I might would feel bad about it except I hear my children, delightedly, repeating those stories to their friends.

All of that to say that I loved Neil Gaiman's new book, Fortunately, the Milk, about a father who has to go to the corner store to get milk for his kids' breakfast cereal (because, otherwise, they would have to use orange juice, which is not okay on cereal) and get abducted by aliens on the way home. This was a story after my own heart. It also has dinosaurs.

My own stories don't have enough dinosaurs, I don't think.

It's an illustrated book but not, really, a picture book. The one I have, the American version, is illustrated by Skottie Young. His art is whimsical and funky and fits well with the tone of the book. That does not stop me from also wanting the UK version of the book, illustrated by Chris Riddell, which is not so funky but looks no less interesting. Not that I will be getting a copy of the UK version, because I don't want to pay the shipping on it.

So, yes, the story is whimsical and funky and just a lot of fun, taking off at weird tangents. It has everything you could possibly want from a story like this: aliens, dinosaurs, pirates, time travel... okay, well, it doesn't have cowboys, so I guess it doesn't have everything, but it has an awful lot. If you have young kids (or, even, if you don't), this is a great book to pick up. I'm sure it would make an excellent bedtime reading book. Even though I don't have young kids, I may make mine sit down and listen to it anyway.

Maybe, that way they'll know I'm not the only one that does this.

Ninja Killer

I'm gonna come right out and say it: I'm not a big fan of ninjas.
Yeah, you heard me. In the whole Pirates vs Ninjas thing, I'm totally for the pirates. Not that I like pirates all the much either, but, you know, at least a pirate is honest about what he is. A scurvy dog, right?

But the ninja? No, the ninja has spent centuries developing this idea about themselves that just isn't true. That they're these awesome fighters and all of that. It reached a peak in the 80's, and, I have to say, I was as sucked in as the next guy. I loved the show The Master, for instance, although I may have been the only one considering how quickly it went away. Huh, I didn't remember Demi Moore being in that. Weird. Of course, it has been nearly 30 years since I've seen it. Heck, even the original Transformers animated series had a ninja robot in it built by humans! And I can't even get started on G. I. Joe. I have only one thing to say about that: Snake Eyes! In the 80's, ninjas were cool.

Then I learned about them. Not on purpose, mind you, because, like I said, I was as sucked in as everyone else, but, as I've mentioned before, I went to nerd school, and my world history teacher gave us some actual ninja learning. That was my introduction to the web of lies that ninjas have built around themselves. But, then, it does serve their purposes, because, what they want, is not to fight. If everyone thinks ninjas are all badass, which they're not, people will run away from them, and they don't have to do any real fighting. See how that works?

No, a ninja's real job is to be a sneaky killer. They don't do direct confrontation. They're the guys that sneak around and poison food or kill you in your sleep or sneak up behind you. Anything not to be seen, kill their target, and get away, again, without being seen.

My favorite ninja story?
This ninja needed to kill this guy, and, to do it, he hid in an outhouse. But not just in the outhouse, in the outhouse. As in under the seat down in all the urine and feces. He brought supplies so that he could camp out down there, which he did for three days. Three days! Three days in a toilet making no noise while people did their business on him. After three days, his target finally showed up. The guy sat down to do his business, the ninja took his spear and, while the guy was reading the equivalent of the Tokyo Times, the ninja shoved his spear right up the guy's bum. What a way to go.

See, if I was a ninja, and I was willing to go to that kind of length to kill someone (which I'm not), I would totally own it. I would own that... um... forget that next word... um... stuff! I would own that stuff! And, then, I would respect the ninja. But, then, I guess the whole lying thing is just a part of what they are in order to do their job.

The thing is, though, in a straight up fight of pirates vs ninjas, the ninjas would all run away. Of course, there's always waiting for the pirates to get drunk and fall asleep, which is what the ninjas would do.

Anyway... all I'm saying is that if ninjas were honest about who and what they are, I'd be okay with them.

But all of that is not really what all of this is about, now is it? Because this is the

Question the first:
What does Alex look like?
Alex looks like George Clooney with a guitar. Probably not as well dressed. I imagine him walking down railroad tracks with the guitar slung over his back.

Question the second:
Who could play Alex in a documentary?
Well, of course, George Clooney. Or, maybe, Ben Affleck playing George Clooney, because, as Kevin Smith says, "Affleck could be the shark."

Question the third:
Who does Alex remind me of?
At this point, how can I not say George Clooney? I can't not say that, so I will: George Clooney.

Flash Fiction (bah! I mostly dislike flash fiction):
George Cavanaugh was making his way down the tracks one day with his guitar slung over his shoulder. Cavanaugh had stolen the plans for an IWSG from a secret government installation, but he'd found that no one paid any attention to hobos with guitars, so it was his MO to sneak away in this particular guise. Besides, if he needed to be inconspicuous, he could always stop and play on a street corner, because even fewer people paid any attention to those guys other than tossing some bills into his case, which would mean he wouldn't have to pay for supper, either, so, really, it was a win-win. However, a ninja had tracked him and was, at that very moment, sneaking up behind him, sword drawn. Cavanaugh knew all about the ninja, though, and was just luring him out. At the last moment before the ninja struck, Cavanaugh spun while drawing his cosbolt and shot the ninja right in the eye slit. "New pajamas," Cavanaugh thought, as he stripped the body.

Bonus Points?
Wait, who said anything about points? This is an arbitrary thing, right? Besides, I've used up all my words. I'll just keep it short: Thanks for sharing!

Swimming On Stranger Tides

My kids started swimming lessons this week. It's been bad for blogging. More bad than I would have expected. I mean, generally speaking, I don't get a lot of anything productive accomplished in the mornings, anyway, because my daughter spends that time of the day doing her best to drive everyone in  the house crazy, because none of her friends are available to play. This, in itself, is a mystery to me. I was like my daughter at her age. As soon as the sun was up, I was out the door. Unless there were cartoons, but that was only on Saturday. My daughter is the same. Her friends, however, don't seem to share that same enthusiasm for playing and must only go outside once they are forced out by their guardians like baby birds being pushed out of the nest. At any rate, I was sort of assuming that going to swimming lessons with the kids would just be using that unproductive time in  the mornings in other ways, but, no, not really... It just hasn't seemed to work out that way.

However, surprisingly, swimming lessons have been good for Brother's Keeper. That, also, is interesting. I need a pretty quiet space for writing. The TV can't be on. Music can't be playing. The kids can't be making noise. That includes noise from video games. Basically, if I'm trying to write, they need to be somewhere else. Or reading. And even though I'd like to, I can't make them read 4-6 hours a day. Not to waste the time I'm sitting around while they have lessons, though, I take a notebook with me. And a book. Maybe it's because the chaos there isn't specifically directed at me. Maybe it's because the tables are at the back away from  the pool. Whatever it is, the chaos is sort of like TV fuzz, and I've been getting a fairly good amount of work done on the new manuscript while I sit around and they flop in the water. Or, maybe, it's just that I've had this stuff buzzing around in my head since February, and it's just ready to get out.

There was also a movie. I've been getting some one-on-one time in with the kids by taking each of them to a movie they pick out. Of course, it's not really that simple, because it all started over some drama with my daughter about her not getting to go see a movie she didn't want to go see. Yes, you read that right. She did not want to see a particular movie. She was given the option of seeing the movie, anyway, and declined. She became upset that  one of her brothers got to see it with me. Yes, I deal with that kind of thing every day. The oldest child chose to see X-Men: First Class (which I reviewed here). The daughter chose Judy Moody (You may, now, notice that I did not review this one. Yes, there is absolutely nothing to say about it. Neither good enough nor bad enough to really say anything.) The middle child chose Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Not because he really wanted to see that movie in particular but because none of the movies he wants to see are out yet, and it was the one he most wanted to see of what's available.

I feel a little bad for taking him to it, at this point, because he would have liked X-Men a lot more. But I had no way of knowing.

Pirates 4 is a lot like Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer; however, because it's such a big deal (as opposed to Judy, which you're not likely to even know about unless you have a, what do you call it now, a pre-tween girl in your house), I'll give you the scoop. Even though it is coming rather late.

There are two main issues with this newest installment of the Pirates franchise. The first one, I'm just going to gloss over, because I actually have an upcoming post dealing with this issue as it's not a problem specific to this movie but a growing trend, not just in movies but in, well, everything written coming out these days.

Pirates is a long movie. Too long. And, yet, not long enough. The writers wrote this long, rambling script with lots of extra stuff in it. Stuff that, really, has nothing to do with the actual plot. I'm assuming it has an actual plot, although I'm not convinced the writers had agreed on one specific one. At some point, they realized it was too long. Cuts needed to be made. Instead of carving out the non-essential elements, they just chopped off the first third of the movie, leaving something that was still too long but without any kind of foundation. At least, that's what it felt like.

For instance, the movie opens with Mr. Gibbs on trial. He's being tried as Jack Sparrow. How did he come to be on trial and why do they think he's Jack? We don't know. And we don't get to know. Of course, Jack is there to rescue him. Gibbs is surprised to see Jack, because Jack had nothing to do with why he's on trial, Jack just happened to hear about it and decided to rescue his old friend. Because, you know, Jack is prone to thinking about other people before himself. During all of the action revolving around the rescue, we find out we're already in the midst of the story, "I hear you've been looking for the Fountain of Youth." "Why, yes. Yes, I am." Something close to that, at any rate. And there we are in the middle of the story without any of the reasons for it. Of course, in the end, the "story" isn't even the story, because, well, as I said, the writers didn't know which story they were telling. The rescue of Gibbs and Jack's escape is the best part of the movie, though, and that, actually, has nothing to do with any story. It's just a bit of fun. Think car chase with no cars.

There's also a completely non-essential sub-plot, or, maybe, it is the plot, between a missionary and a mermaid. I think they were probably trying to recapture the romance between Swan and Turner from the previous movies, but, in truth, they are who the previous movies are about, so it worked. This movie, Jack is the main character, and we have no reason to care about the missionary and the mermaid, so we don't.

I could go on about the plot issues. For instance, there's the inclusion of the Spanish, who are there as no more than a deus ex machina device except not. There's Blackbeard. Why? I don't really know. Theoretically, he's important to the plot, but, unfortunately, he's also unnecessary. Anyway...

The other central issue to the movie is that the actors, over all, don't give the parts any life. It felt like watching a dress rehearsal. Hmm... no, not a dress rehearsal, a last run through of the dialogue while in costume. Oh, there are moments, but not enough of them. Johnny Depp even falls flat for much of the movie, but it may just be that the script kept trying to force him out of character. Like rescuing Gibbs when he was getting nothing out of it. Geoffrey Rush almost pulls off Barbossa, but he, also, is frequently out of character because of the script. It's like the writers had a basket of characters that they plugged in whether they should have been there or not. Well, actually, they had characters they needed to put into the movie and stuck them into the best places possible even if they didn't quite fit.

The biggest disappointment was Ian McShane. If I had never seen Deadwood, I probably wouldn't have given him a second thought; however, I have seen Deadwood, so I know what he's capable of. His rendition of Blackbeard was not it. Flat as a cardboard cut out. If they hadn't told us in the movie that Blackbeard was supposed to be scary and evil, I never would have known. And don't get me started on the cheesy scenes of him and his sword that they put in just for the 3d effects even though they didn't do anything for the actual story (no, I didn't see it in 3d, so they were doubly wasted on me).

The biggest surprise was Penelope Cruz. That may be because I was expecting absolutely nothing more than a piece of eye candy from her, but she was actually decent. As decent as the script allowed, at any rate.

Oh, and they stuck Keith Richards in just so he could be in the movie. Sort of like the random old guy that wanders through and says "Beware...!" the whatever and then is gone. Yeah, that was his bit.

What it comes down to is that I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. At least, not for seeing it in the theater. It's probably worth a rental, but it has nothing to make it worth seeing at the theater. Not unless you just want to pay the 3d price in order to see a few swords and ropes flying out of the screen at you.