turning point

Well, blast it all.

I used to look at pictures of people waiting in bread lines during the Great Depression and think "Wow, I'm glad that's not me."

I'm still far from living on the streets or Dumpster-diving for dinner, but nonetheless, I'm beginning to feel less and less exempt from the general economic crunch.

Especially now, since I have no job.

Let me explain.

Remember how I said I was going back to Korea?

There are certain pieces of paper one requires if one desires to work overseas. The Republic of South Korea demands that all American immigrants obtain a background check from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and send it to the State Department to be notarized. This notarization consists of an apostille—a big fancy stamp, basically—which legitimizes the document for use by a foreign government.

When I checked the State Department's website in August, it clearly stated that the processing time for an apostille was four weeks.

Perfect, I thought. The job we've been accepted for in Korea starts September 12th. I'll send these forms off on August 5th, and we'll have them back by September 5th or earlier.

Ha-ha. What point did John Steinbeck make about "the best-laid plans of mice and men"...?

I sent the documents off on August 5th. A week later, I logged onto the State Department's website again, just to check up on the status of our apostille.

The Department's electronic literature now said that the processing time for an apostille was EIGHT weeks.

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!

It was all up with September. We missed out on the position. We had to call our recruiter, explain what happened, apologize profusely, and decline the position. The marvelous, marvelous position in Bucheon, Seoul, which would've netted us 4.6 million won (about $4600) per month, and left us with $50,000 U.S. to take home afterward.

Well, darn.

Our apostilles came in on October 5th. By that time, the jobs in Korea had all dried up. The hiring season was over. Our recruiter mournfully informed us that Miss H and I would be high and dry until January, when the next wave of hiring began.

Shazbot!

After a great deal of soul-searching and some late-night discussions, Miss H and I decided to wait it out. We'd obtain temporary employment here in the High Desert, work some dead-end jobs for a few months to keep afloat, and ship out for Korea in January.

It was shortly after this that we discovered that San Bernardino County has the second-worst unemployment rate in the entire country after Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mother&%@#er!

So here we are: applying for jobs all over the tri-city area, without so much as a callback or an interview. Both of us are going mad, being 23 and 25 years old (respectively) and still living in our parents' houses. It was cold comfort that Rush Limbaugh said on the radio this morning that 30% of all unwed males in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 34 are still living with their parents. I don't wanna be one of 'em. I want to be out on my own, dammit. Self-sufficient. Independent. Striding forward to my destiny. I really feel like I'm stuck here in the desert. It was just an inkling before, a terrible dream, a half-imagined dread. Now it's real. And it's constricting my chest. I perpetually feel, living here in the Victor Valley, as though I can't get enough air. Some days I just want to walk off into the desert and see how far I get. Just to maintain the illusion that I'm my own man, and my fate is still in my hands, you know.

This would've been easier to take if I was still chasing Predators. But I'm not. After I'd read that the State Department would take only a month to process my apostille, I gave my one-month notice at work. I retracted it as quickly as possible after I learned of the State Department's true colors, but the damage was done: my superiors had already begun searching for a replacement. And they found one, and he'd quit his job to work with us, and he needed to work full-time to support himself and his wife. So there it was: I was out. There was no getting around it. No plea bargain, no parole board, no second chance. October 28 was officially my last day. It's my first week off and already I'm going crazy.

So I made a decision this evening. I decided that I would polish off that bottle of über-peaty Ardbeg 10-year-old Scotch that's been sitting on the pantry shelf for eons.

More importantly, I decided that I would swallow my pride. I went out to the living room and asked my parents (who had just forked over $500 to replace the leaf springs on my Jeep) for a loan of $4500 to complete my commercial pilot's license. It was hard, but I felt it was the right thing to do. They had extended the offer previously, and I had refused it. But now I feel like I have no other choice. I've got to start making money somehow, and my journalism résumé is far too anemic to do me any good in this economical climate. I'd wanted to get my instrument rating first (only one checkride that way), but that's another 45 hours with an instructor. I only need 38 more hours of PIC (pilot-in-command) time to get my commercial license, excluding checkride prep with an instructor and the actual test. If I go down to the airport every day and fly an airplane around for an hour or two, making landings at towered airports and doing a few long cross-countries and night flights, then I'll be up to speed in no time. Then, hopefully, I'll pass my tests on the first try and be able to saunter forth into the world of commercial aviation.

And I'll use my first paycheck to reimburse my parents' loan. I promise.

Hold me to that, will you?

cocktail review no. 63 - Planter's Punch

Tropical drinks are a rum do.

A wealth of visual imagery and context and light and sound and feeling and fury lie bound up in those two words.

Most people immediately think of tiki bars, and rum bars, and tropical bars, and beach bars, and barbecues and summer nights and sambas and limbos and rumbas and tangos and lambadas when you say "tropical drink."

They think of tattooed women caked with makeup, drinking way too much and wearing way too little, easy prey. "Oh, I can't taste the alcohol, it's fair game for me!"

They think of paper umbrellas, and friends staggering on the street, and loud clubs, and garnishes almost too gaudy to be edible, pineapples and cherries and pomegranates and God knows what else. "For Christ's sake, where's the booze? This tastes like fruit juice!"

They think of outlandish names, monikers fit for the Sheriff of Nottingham, Vlad the Impaler, Robespierre, Ceauşescu, Shiro Ishii: the Zombie, the Scorpion, the Tidal Wave, the Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning.

Maybe that last one's a stretch, but it's imposing regardless.

There are a few hardy folks, however, who don't subscribe to the trendy, hip, club-going, bar-hopping, street-puking, alley-humping "in-crowd." Some of us out here in the ether still dream of seaplanes, hammocks, palm fronds, zebra stripes, native girls, ukeleles, volcanoes, howdahs, bungalows and sprawling plantations while we sip tropical drinks.

I do, anyway.

And this drink, Planter's Punch, made every daydream I'd ever had about a voyage to the South Seas or a passage to India or a beach house in Cuba come galloping to the forefront.

• 1 ounce dark rum
• 1 ounce light rum
• ½ ounce orange Curaçao 
• 2 ounces fresh orange juice
• 2 ounces pineapple juice
• ¼ ounce fresh lime juice
• ½ ounce simple syrup
• dash of grenadine
• dash of Angostura bitters

Shake all ingredients well with ice and strain into a glass. Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry. Top with club soda.

I need to tell you about a little book I found at Anthropologie.

The book, the acquisition of which cost me fifty-three U.S. dollars, is the jewel of my bartender's collection.

It's called Vintage Cocktails.

Part of Assouline's line on travel and culture and fine dining, the book features photography by Laziz Hamani, who is better known for his pictures of Louis Vuitton handbags than alcoholic drinks.

That should give you some idea about how lush the photography is.

As Brian Van Flandern explains in the introduction:

"The word vintage often implies antique, a relic from the past that has come back into vogue. Not to be confused with the classic cocktail, the vintage cocktail conjures images of specific places in time when a particular cocktail gained global popularity. Many of the recipes featured in [Vintage Cocktails] survived the devastating years of Prohibition (1920-1933) while others, like the Brandy Crusta (created in New Orleans in 1852), boast legacies of over a century."

What we have in this book is a collection of cocktails that are very old, mostly unheard of these days, known to only a few old-fashioned drink-meisters, mentioned frequently in black-and-white films, sometimes seen on those giant prints that Red Robin loves to put up on its walls. Nobody drinks this stuff anymore, but once you taste it, you may never go back to your Scooby Snacks and Blow Jobs. These names conjure up images of dimly-lit mahogany bars, and brightly lit ballrooms, and yachts, and verandas, and red carpet and movie stars and black-tie affairs.

The Sidecar.

The Brandy Flip.

The Gin Mule.

The Dry Martini.

The French 75.

The Sazerac.

The Irish Coffee.

The Stinger.

The Sloe Gin Fizz.

The Pousse-Café.

The Hemingway Daiquiri.

The White Russian.

Between the Sheets.

Pimm's Cup.

And all the rest of it. You can just see a bunch of Hollywood's greats lounging around in tuxedos, sipping on these masterpieces. (And indeed, there is a picture in the front pages of Vintage Cocktails showing Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and James Stewart, tuxedo-clad, enjoying a "drink and a joke" at a New Year's Eve party in Beverly Hills.

Wowzer.

So these drinks (with a few exceptions) have a long, epic history, steeped in tradition and class, endowed with unimpeachable reputations, crafted from the finest ingredients, and savored by some rather legendary human beings.

One of these is—you guessed it—Planter's Punch.

And it has earned its place on the list of vintage (and classic) cocktails.

I've had tropical drinks before. Lots. I like 'em. Makes me feel a little closer to my idols (Ernest Hemingway and Bartholomew Roberts come to mind). But I've never had one like Planter's Punch. It is a doozy. For once, the pineapple juice does not overpower or undermine. It smoothly backs up the orange juice and complements the sour kick of the lime, while its best qualities are brought out by the simple syrup. The simple mix of light and dark rum creates both a smoky undertone and a sweetly alcoholic finish which entrances nostrils and taste buds alike. (Some recipes for Planter's Punch include three or four kinds of rum; this is, I believe, an unnecessary and wasteful practice.) The bitters balance out what would otherwise be overwhelming sweetness. The grenadine provides both a textural solidarity and a slight cherry undertone that creates, in my opinion, the perfect tropical flavor. Many tropical drinks taste foully or overwhelmingly of pineapple; some are sickly sweet; others dilute the booze to fantastic degrees. The Planter's Punch does none of this. The addition of orange juice and orange Curaçao provides just the right amount of orange overtone (supplemented by the lime) without submitting to or adulterating the other sensations.

Sorry, I'm gushing.

Putting it bluntly, I think I've found my favorite tropical cocktail.

But, as always, don't take my word for it.