It’s hard to say no to a free bottle of tequila. It’s even harder to write a review of that free tequila where you explain how the only way they could have made a less palatable product is by mashing up three turnips and a carrot, filtering the juice through a nylon stocking they found on the side of the interstate, and leaving the swill in an unwashed goldfish tank for two weeks to ferment using leftover saran wrap from a package of ground beef as a valve, then distilling it in a column made from the catalytic converter of a 1984 Oldsmobile. Fortunately, this is not that review.
The free tequila in question is Rosangel, a hibiscus-infused version of Gran Centenario Reposado tequila. It’s bottled in clear glass, which lets the pink hue of the hibiscus show. The glass is incredibly solid – great for clubbing an opponent in a bar fight or preparing root mush – but the cork adds a touch of class that’s usually only seen in a nice bourbon or scotch.
A few friends and I drank the majority of this bottle while watching the classic British gangster film The Long Good Friday. It’s well-suited to drink as a shot – the hibiscus flavor makes it much more interesting on its own – and survives the trip down your throat smoothly enough that a lime isn’t needed. As long as you’re secure enough in your masculinity to handle the pink color (or sufficiently heedless of your femininity to drink straight tequila), it’s also fine for sipping. (more…)
A couple weeks ago my girlfriend and I took a trip to Chicago for the weekend. The weather on Sunday was practically identical to that during Ferris Bueller’s legendary day off: mostly sunny with a high temperature of 69 degrees. It was the kind of weather that inspired Ferris (Matthew Broderick) to remark thoughtfully to the audience, “how could I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this?” before taking off for a day of surprisingly wholesome adventures in downtown Chicago with his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara).
In “There’s No Secrets this Year,” the first song on Swoon, the Silversun Pickups come out swinging for the fences. If the band has been bothered by frequent comparisons to the Smashing Pumpkins, they don’t show any signs of it here. It’s an auspicious track that makes the same kind of promises that “Cherub Rock” made as the opening track of Siamese Dream fifteen years ago.
In 1998, Terrence McNally’s play “Corpus Christi” was first performed in New York City. It wasn’t hard to predict that portraying Jesus as a promiscuous homosexual living in Corpus Christi, Texas would inspire vehement condemnation from religious groups – and it most certainly did, as “Christians” spewed death threats against the members of the Manhattan Theater Group that first produced the play, and when the play opened in London in 1999 a British Muslim group issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of the playwright.
Conceptually, counting cards is incredibly simple. Take a deck of cards. With a full deck, the count is zero. Deal the cards out one by one. Each time you see a card numbered 2 through 6, add one to the count. Each time you see an ace, a face card, or a ten, subtract one from the count. That’s it. You’re done. You’ve learned the basic high-low counting system, a system that mathematician Edward O. Thorpe developed and proved by winning huge money during a single weekend.
In 2002 I decided to cross one of the items off my bucket list (I hate that expression – if someone knows a better one please leave it in the comments) and took a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. My boss didn’t want to sign off on the vacation time because he was anticipating some sort of crisis during that week, so I almost had to quit my job for it. It was one of the few times I actually played hardball – I was playing chicken with a $2000 Christmas bonus that wouldn’t be awarded unless you actually worked for the company the day they handed out the checks – but I eventually got my way and flew out to Austin to join my college friend F****. Our plan was to rent a car and drive from Texas to Louisiana, stay at an as-yet undetermined hotel on the outskirts of Louisiana and drive into town each day for parades.
