Notes on the Thunderbolt
No, not the bar in Filipinotown, L.A. but the cocktail itself which first appeared in a book called The Gentlemen’s Companion: Volume II The Exotic Drinking Book (1939) by Charles H. Baker. If you haven’t read it, you should as it is an exceptional slice of history and includes a catalog of bizarre cocktails but…
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Notes on the Thunderbolt
No, not the bar in Filipinotown, L.A. but the cocktail itself which first appeared in a book called The Gentlemen’s Companion: Volume II The Exotic Drinking Book (1939) by Charles H. Baker. If you haven’t read it, you should as it is an exceptional slice of history and includes a catalog of bizarre cocktails but…
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Phish: Live at the Sphere 4/23/26
Here’s the sum up…A spur of the moment drive through the Mojave… Row upon row of Joshua trees and constant thoughts of that scene from The Good the Bad and the Ugly where Blondie is left in the desert by Tuco. What would I do? Find a way to cut open one of those cacti…
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I Ought to See the Man Mulcahy
There’s much speculation in the Phish universe about just who “The Man Mulcahy” is in the song entitled “Character Zero.” Could it be Father Mulcahy from M.A.S.H.? Or just a random Jamaican DJ the Phish guys met long ago on vacation? Why is this thought in my head? Well, my son is obsessed with the…
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Restaurant Review: Max and Helen’s
If you know me, you know my favorite types of restaurants are diners, more specifically, those lovingly dubbed, “greasy spoon,” a moniker denoting a casual environment, cheap prices, and the prerequisite plumes of smoke. I grew up eating at the Woolworth diner with my grandmother. Yes, back in the day, you could go to a…
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Make your own Yuzucello
Shortest post ever. Zest. Add booze. Wait…Ha! But what about? Yeah, okay. There is a little more to it. First off, you have to find the damn yuzu. Not so easy for anyone outside of California, but not impossible either. We are very lucky in this regard. Yuzu is grown in Cali and this year,…
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The Second Coming of Dudikoff
After naming a cocktail Dudikoff, then posting and tagging the man himself, the American Ninja and I exchanged a few words on Instagram and a month later, he made a reservation for two at Rustic Canyon. There was some excitement on my part, as one of my childhood heroes coming in was a big deal,…
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Pisco Showdown: Peru Versus Chile
A hot debate rages down in South America between two rival, neighboring countries who have had a long history dating back to The War of the Pacific between them which occurred during the years 1879 to 1884. Since those days, the battlefield has been contested between two modern arenas, the football field and bragging rights…
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Rethinking the Mezcal Negroni
The old spirit switcheroo is a common happenstance in any restaurant or bar created by the mostly innocent guest and in turn, must be realized by the bartender via the waiters who are oftentimes bad communicators or just uninformed. It can be a frustrating situation for any professional booze slinger, not just your friendly neighborhood…
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Cocktail: Vesper of Total Enlightenment 2.0
If you do it right, a Vesper ain’t so bad. Instead of adding vodka, use a decent pisco and what you now have is something with more structure and mouthfeel that might even be worth drinking. Yes, I’ve turned a corner from a couple of years ago when I wrote this article about how a…
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New Cocktail: Black Martinez
I thought I made this one up, but other online presences have naturally bridged the gap, as I did, between Black Manhattan and Martinez. Still, mine goes the extra distance by using an oaked gin instead of regular old gin and I think it comes closer to a perfect mash of the two drinks. The…
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Movie Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
2025 has yet to end and we already have updated Dracula, Wolfman, and Frankenstein movies under the belt. Yes, a banner year for our old school Universal Pictures movie monsters. There is certainly a pattern at work here where we see new iterations of these guys in different but predictable spans of time. Frankenstein was…
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Movie Review: They Live
When you talk about cult 80s sci-fi classics, John Carpenters (again, please excuse the lack of all apostrophes and quotations, the button fell off my keyboard), They Live, will always be in the conversation. In terms of rank, I would place it in the high quality pantheon of flicks from that era like The Evil…
The Aging Bartender 