cocktail review no. 62 - Shark Bite

Say a beverage struck you as repulsive the first time you tried it. Don't give up. Head to another venue and sample their version of the same drink. Chances are you'll be pleasantly surprised. You may even discover a keeper.

The cocktail world is subjective. There are millions of ways to make the same drink. There are as many margarita recipes as there are cells in Jimmy Buffett's body. If a drink (especially a popular drink) fails to catch fire with you, look up a different recipe...or a different bar. It's too early to quit.

I found that out with this drink.

• 1 ounce light rum 
• ½ ounce vodka
• 1½ ounces Blue Curaçao
• 4 ounces sweet-and-sour
• ½ ounce grenadine

In a margarita glass half-filled with ice cubes, combine the rum, vodka, Blue Curaçao, and sweet-and-sour. Drop the grenadine into the center of the drink.

Now, let me set the stage for you.

I had tried the Shark Bite at Outback Steakhouse a few months prior. I was underwhelmed. On an impulse I decided to try the same drink again at Joe's Crab Shack. Different venue, different recipe, right?

Wow, did that ever turn out to be the right decision.

And not only did Joe's version of the Shark Bite turn out to be superior in taste, the presentation was second to none. The people at Joe's are pretty clever when it comes to prettying up strong drink. Aside from their kick-butt Mason jar margaritas, they serve a mean-looking Shark Bite. You get the drink in a big goblet. The Blue Curaçao renders the drink a vivid blue, like the ocean. The grenadine is served on the side, in a beaker stuffed into the mouth of a rubber toy shark. You, the customer, then drop the grenadine into the center of your drink.

The result is something like this:

Pretty cute, huh? The grenadine looks for all the world like blood in the water. And having that "blood" served up in a "shark" only makes the experience more novel.

I've listed the ingredients for this libation, but the amounts are approximate; it came out tasting pretty good, though. This is not a typical tropical drink. It doesn't reek of pineapple or drown in fruit juice. The vodka and rum combine to form a sweet, boozy kick which the orange tang of the Curaçao overlays and enhances. The sweet-and-sour simultaneously takes the edge off of the spirits while providing a sweetness of its own to the mix, while the grenadine (once you've added it) provides a cherry overtone which gets stronger and stronger the deeper you go.

What more do you need? The flavor's good and the drink is guaranteed to thrill the guests at any party. Get out there and mix.

That is all.

cocktail review no. 61 - The Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning

This picture is highly satirical.

Sounds like a head trip, don't it? And it would be, if you mistakenly confused it with this drink.

But you know me. I get (most) of my classic drinks from one source, and one source only: The Bartender's Bible, by Gary Regan. One thousand and one recipes to suit your every need. This one is another lovely tropical cocktail.

The only thing unusual about it is the name. Okay, yeah, and a few of the ingredients.

• 1½ ounces light rum
• ½ melon liqueur
• 1 ounce pineapple juice
• ½ lime juice
• 1 teaspoon orgeat syrup
• 1 cup crushed ice
• 1 teaspoon cherry brandy

In a blender, combine the rum, melon liqueur, pineapple juice, lime juice and orgeat syrup with the crushed ice. Blend well and pour into an old-fashioned glass. Drop the cherry brandy into the center.

The Sleeping Dragon, they might as well have named it. Not merely for its habit of lunging out of the crystal cave and biting you on the ass, but for its surprisingly delicate flavor as well.

Let me delineate here and now that, (a) I was slightly drunk when I originally mixed this libation, so my discourse on its charms may not be lucid; and (b) due to (a), I forgot to drop the cherry brandy into the drink. I just blended it all together.

Not much was lost. Light rum is sweet and faintly redolent of spice, but possesses none of the fire and flavor of darker rums. Therefore its role in mixed drinks becomes something like vodka: a "negative" or binding agent which maintains a characteristic undertone while allowing other flavors to be stacked on top of it, like Lego bricks. Rum possess an inherent sweetness which greatly enhances any tropical drink (and a great many non-tropical highballs besides). This sweetness is the basis for the Green-Tailed Dragon, which is then accentuated by the lime juice (providing a sour citrus sting); the pineapple juice (its pleasant flavor punctuating the rummy backdrop); the melon liqueur (a gustatory counterpoint which steals the show—the flavor both outshines the rum while simultaneously standing on its shoulders, lending the Dragon a pleasant fruity bouquet and a smooth finish); and the orgeat syrup (which, if you'll recall, is an infusion of citrus flavors, almonds and rose water, combining to form an extremely sweet medley). The cherry brandy is the finisher: though present in small doses, it retains its potency, rendering the drink a luxuriant dark red color and providing a deep fruity overtone to the finish.

Trust me when I say this is nothing like any tropical drink you've sampled before.

Then again, you don't have to take my word for it.

Just forgive the bartender for the funny look he gives you when you belly up to the bar and request "The Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning."

recommended reading

Some changes have occurred.

I've picked up some new reading material in preparation for my (eventual) departure to East Asia—a lot of new reading material, actually.

Also, I need to tell you what I've gotten through lately.

First, I've dropped The Dinosaur Heresies. No offense to the good Dr. Bakker, but I had to prioritize. A weighty scientific volume might make good reference material or even some didactic bedtime reading, but I'm really delaying the rest of my reading list by committing to it. Plus...well, I hesitate to admit it, but compared to the other stuff I could be reading, Heresies is just a little bit dull. Bakker is witty, light-hearted, and occasionally sardonic, which puts him head and shoulders above such stuffy characters as Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, but the fact remains that he's writing a book about why dinosaurs are more avian than reptilian. Compared to something like Starship Troopers or Black Hawk Down, with explosions and gunfire and war machines and whatnot, paleontology goes flat.

(I won't even really need to brush up on the avian-reptilian dinosaur debate until I sit down to write the sixth book in my series, where I introduce the reptilian-avian character. Remember this, children. You can reference this post when I get accused of retroactive continuity.)

That having been decided, I launched myself into one of my more recent acquisitions, something I picked up at the used bookstore earlier this summer and had never heard of before: David Houston's Alien Perspective.

And this is the cool part: the copy I bought has been signed by the author.

Pretty nifty, eh? Even if I've never heard of the dude, it's nice to know he made enough of a name for himself to sign somebody's book. It's something else for me to strive for, as long as science fiction as I know it doesn't go by the wayside by the time I get published.

Ahem...

Alien Perspective has one of the neatest and most unique plots I've come across in a SF novel, despite being packaged as just another five-dollar paperback. It concerns not one, but two alien ships—exploratory vessels sent from a dying planet to seek out new worlds to colonize. Well, they did—except one of them picked up a greyish, gooey parasite that stifles and kills everything it comes in contact with. After a few deaths, the first ship gracefully decides to commit suicide and render itself a harmless, drifting hulk. The problem is, some of the precocious alien children on board decide they're too young to die, lock the adults out of the command center, and take control of the ship. Not knowing what to do about the parasite, the alien children elect to land on the closest inhabited planet and ask for help.

The closest inhabited planet just happens to be called "Earth."

It was a supremely suspenseful story. The taglines and synopsis I read on the back cover totally belied the pace of the book. The aliens don't even land on Earth until three-quarters of the way through the book. The first 75 percent of Alien Perspective is split between two points-of-view: that of Himi, the alien captain of the second exploratory vessel, who is trying to figure out why the first vessel didn't rendezvous with him as planned; and human astrophysicist William Reid and his colleagues, who are trying to figure out who the aliens are and what they want. Complications arise in the form of Senator Copalin, known as "The Black Blot" for his habit of slashing funds to any program he deems "unnecessary" (Reid's project is at the top of the list); and Leon Hillary, an eccentric millionaire and the leader of the Alienites, a cult which fervently believes that the incoming aliens are our divine creators.

A suitably entertaining tale of intrigue, mystery, adventure, trials, errors, and unseen perils ensues.

For myself, I was somewhat let down at the end. Perhaps I've grown too accustomed to reading James Rollins, whose adventure novels are jam-packed with explosions, monsters, sinister third parties, and imminent catastrophes. By comparison, Houston's book proceeded rather calmly. That being said, there was enough to hold my interest. Alien Perspective reminded me why I love good old-fashioned science fiction: the breathtaking beauty of space is undiminished; the physiology and culture of alien nations is speculated upon; amazing technological marvels abound (both above the Earth's surface and upon it); and I can confidently say, without spoiling the ending, that a rapport is established between human and alien at the end. I never fail to find such themes refreshing. At its heart, Alien Perspective is classic, true-to-form sci-fi: ordinary people battling extraordinary obstacles with advanced technology, backed by the power of logic and reason. 

Satisfied?

All right, here's a list of new works I've acquired over the past few months. Some of them I bought; others I dug out of boxes. Some of these I've mentioned here before, but I want to list them again, since I'll be taking them to Korea with me and I'll undoubtedly review them later.

To begin, some classic fiction:

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  
• Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
• Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
• The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
  

Next, some sci-fi, both well-known and unknown:

•  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
• Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt
  
• Into the Storm (Destroyermen, Book One) by Taylor Anderson
• The Seventh Carrier by Peter Albano
• Winged Pharaoh by Joan Grant
• Phaid the Gambler by Mick Farren

And finally, some promising nonfiction:

• Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux
• The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
• The Great Shark Hunt (The Gonzo  Papers, Vol. 1) by Hunter S. Thompson

This should be adequate literary sustenance to nourish my mind on bus rides, international flights, and subway trains, not to mention my tiny apartment in Seoul on those quiet weekday evenings. I can't wait.

To be clear, I read Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies in high school. That was almost ten years ago, though. I feel the need to reacquaint myself with these works in a more, ah, enlightened frame of mind.

The Sand Pebbles is the newest addition to the list. I found it in a box which my parents were planning to take to the thrift store (??!?!!). It looks incredible, and I can tell it's infecting me with an obsession with all things naval and Chinese. The book concerns Jake Holman, a young sailor, who is assigned to the aging gunboat San Pablo on the Yangtze River...right before the Kuomintang begins the Northern Expedition of 1926, which will eventually lead to the fall of the Beiyang Government and the unification of China.

Sounds kind of tame, right?

It isn't.

China explodes into war. Racial tensions and anti-foreign sentiment boils over, and Jake (who has been gradually forming a mostly positive opinion of the country) is now ordered, along with the San Pablo, to battle his way upriver and rescue two white Catholic missionaries from an oncoming horde of Nationalists. In the midst of this madness, Jake must contend with his shipmates (who believe him to be a Jonah, and would like nothing better than to throw him overboard) and his own heart (which has fallen for the missionary's pretty daughter).

The story is a sweeping historical epic, which beautifully and masterfully encompasses the political, cultural and social landscape of China in the mid-1920s, as seen through the eyes of a down-home American boy. It also skewers the superstition and ignorance of the uneducated; exalts the loyalty and determination of lower-class Chinese over the bigotry of the Westerner; and divulges triumph and tragedy, despair and hope, honor and depravity in a single stroke.

It was made into a 1966 movie with Steve McQueen, but the book looks like it's going to be better. Books always are.

Riding the Iron Rooster is another latecomer. I picked it up for two bucks in a used bookstore in San Diego. It was written by one of my favorite travel authors (perhaps my very favorite), Paul Theroux. Where most travel writers wax poetic, florid, or downright sappy, Theroux remains delightfully crotchety. He hates people. He loves trains. So he rides trains, venerates trains (and the lands they pass through) and denigrates the passengers. Riding the Iron Rooster is an account of Theroux's passage through China, as part of a larger train trip through Asia (which he recounted in The Great Railway Bazaar, a book I read and loved). Just the title gets me going. Riding trains is fascinating and fun even in a familiar setting, but throw in the mysterious, misty, mountainous terrain of China, a country thousands of years old, with food and customs as otherworldly as can be, and—

—ooh, I've got goosebumps.

See what I mean? I'm getting China on the brain. Next thing you know I'll be forgiving the Chinese for being dirty Communists and sucking up all our national debt and limiting their poor citizens to one child per couple and being greedy, callous, polluted, industrialized buggers in general.

Anyway, that's the list. If you see anything on there you're curious about, drop me a line and I'll give you the skinny. I heartily encourage you to Google (or better yet, Amazon) some of these and see if they're worth checking into. I'm sure you'll find something you like.

One last thing:

Now that I'm done with Alien Perspective, I'm quite stumped as to what I should read next. I did Moby-Dick, followed it up with a few works of science fiction, took a short detour into scientific discourse, and then tripped lightly back into SF.

Where next? Suggestions, please.

channeling Dostoevsky

One of my favorite books—and the only one I didn't sell back to the Royal Rip-Off Club (the university bookstore, in other words)—is Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I couldn't really tell you why I kept it, except that I like it. The protagonist of NFU is not a likeable fellow. He's a neurotic mess. Mind you, his environment has something to do with it. His job was boring and didn't pay well. His (few) friends are all better-off than he is. His butler is passive-aggressive. And to top it off, he lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, which (Dostoevsky puts this quite delicately) is a frigid cesspool. Understandably, this unnamed protagonist is lonely, distraught, and used to be downright ornery (before the ennui overwhelmed him and turned him into an apathetic pile of dithering paranoia). His self-esteem is in tatters, and his perceived inferiority to others drives him to fits, so he takes this bitterness out on people. He acts solely out of spite. Everything he does is done out of spite. He even spites himself when there's no one else around. He finds pleasure in toothaches and liver pain. He was as nasty as possible to the petitioners who appeared before his desk. In his own words:

When petitioners came to my desk seeking information, I gnashed my teeth at them, and gloated insatiably whenever I succeeded in distressing them. I almost always succeeded. Most of them were timid folk: naturally—petitioners. But there were also some fops, and among these I particularly detested a certain officer. He absolutely refused to submit and clattered revoltingly with his sword. I battled him over that sword for a year and a half. And finally I got the best of him. He stopped clattering.

This novel entertains me. On the surface it's the depraved maundering of a nihilistic sociopath, who once would've liked nothing better than to set his hooks into you and drag you down with him. (Now, his soft insides hidden beneath a layer of calcified spite, he sits on the sidelines of social interaction and cackles like a demon at the artifice of it all.) Underneath it's one of the first existentialist novels, and a complete rejection of utopian socialism. It pulls no punches in presenting humans as irrational, uncooperative, uncontrollable beings.

Much as I enjoy the idea of a happy little world filled with soap bubbles and hearts and fluffy clouds, where everybody gets along and all are considered equals and nobody kills anyone else and whatnot, the idea is laughable. This is a central theme in my own novel, in fact.

Moreover...

It is ample justification for what I am about to tell you.

I once had a coworker whom I couldn't stand.

The man was an utter and complete idiot. He wasn't safe to work with, lacked any understanding of his trade, and worse yet, he would equivocate, exaggerate, downplay and flatter to avoid being called on it. He'd say anything to wiggle out of being blamed for mishaps he caused. (And he caused quite a few.) He undermined our supervisor's authority by calling the higher-ups behind his back. He treated near-misses nonchalantly, as if they didn't really matter. He routinely forgot (or conveniently misplaced) the most fundamental things. (I could list more of his transgressions, but I wish to avoid casting aspersion on the company.) Suffice it to say that this fellow was a piss-poor worker, forgetful, sneaky, inept, incompetent, and conniving—and his arrogant attitude compounded the problem tenfold.

So I saw nothing wrong with giving him hell on a daily basis.

I called him out on his errors. I raked him over the coals when he screwed the pooch. I sententiously bossed him around in the cockpit (remember who you're dealing with). I contravened his wishes (though never in an unsafe manner). I second-guessed his intentions. I challenged, I questioned, I snarked without mercy. In short, I submarined him any way I could. If he borked, he got an earful...and so did the supervisor, chapter and verse.

Got a problem with that? Sue me.

I was on a holy mission. The Royal F@#&-Up and I had to work together. His foul-ups weren't severe enough to get him fired. And I wasn't in a position where I could logically or conscientiously refuse to work with him. I had gone before the higher-ups and complained, and there had been problem-solving sessions and group discussions, but in the end, the Jerk was exonerated, and I had to suck it up and roll with it. But I didn't have to acquiesce to his stupidity, I decided. As the duly-appointed safety observer, it was my job to point out any issue I felt needed to be addressed. And did that. I was civil about it, too, mostly. But I didn't have to like the guy. I figured it was better for him to watch his ass when I near. I wouldn't tolerate failures or slip-ups. After all, if he balled up the airplane, I'd get splattered all over the countryside along with him.

I looked at this the same way the Underground Man in NFU does. There was a battle of principle taking place. The Royal F@#&-Up refused to submit and began rattling his saber. So, I vowed, I'd gnash my teeth at him until he quit.

I finally got him to quit. Or to crack, at least.

It started innocently. It may not even have been a hill worth dying on. We had a slight disagreement about procedures. Tomato, tomahto. He did something, I questioned him about it, he defended himself. I filed the matter away to be discussed later.

And when I brought it up...

He exploded. He used a rather naughty word. He threatened to quit, which made me quite happy, if only he could've known. He said he didn't need this kind of aggravation. He was the superior here, he insisted. He would do things the way he saw fit, the safest way he knew how. I could barely choked back the laughter. I leaned against the nearest wall and soaked it all up. I'd beaten him. I'd shaken his cool. I'd rattled his cage. I'd cracked the ridiculous veneer of professional calm which he'd exuded up 'til now. Victory was mine.

By and by he calmed down. He said that he didn't have a problem with my calling things to his attention, per se (odd, seeing as how that was what had set him off in the first place), but my delivery could use some work. I was nitpicking and hypercritical, he said. (Excellent, I thought, he picked up on it.) My tone came across as condescending, he said. (Oh good, he'd noticed.) I shouldn't stop bringing these issues to his attention, he said, but my bedside manner could be more polite. Delighted, I agreed. I'd continue my duties as safety observer, but I'd work on my delivery, no sweat. I was chuckling inside all the while. Sure, I'll be nicer. Now that I've knocked all the supports out from under you, and revealed you to be the pompous, egotistical, scheming nincompoop you always were. And now you know I've revealed it, too. And indeed, his manner was conciliatory. He seemed to regret his loss of temper and took pains to ensure that we had resolved the conflict—and by proxy, that I wouldn't report anything to the supervisors. I didn't report a thing. There was no need. I'd gotten what I was after: sweet satisfaction. I felt almost no guilt about it, either.

Undermining people's egos isn't something I've made a habit of since, largely because I've never again been forced to work so closely with someone I despised.

But now that I've done it, I can see the benefits (and potential harms) of it. And I understand Notes from Underground a lot better, too.

Because, to a substantial degree, I didn't need to do what I did to the Jerk. I'm not a malicious man, and neither was Dostoevsky's protagonist. We are not, by nature, spiteful or hateful or nasty or mean. We were just amusing ourselves.

Because it can be mighty amusing.