Barrett's Mixology
By Nicholas Desai | Monday, January 9, 2006
French "75"
1 1/2 oz. gin
2 tsp. superfine sugar
1 1/2 oz. lemon juice
4 oz. chilled champagne
Combine the gin, sugar, and lemon juice in a shaker, shake well. Pour into a collins glass. Top with the Champagne.
That spring was easily the worst of my life, spent alphabetizing the mixed-up files of one Dr. Harold T. Plotnik-Whittaker, senior fellow in residence at the Welch Institute for Serious Investigation into the Inner Workings of American Institutions (WISIIWAI). The man's job was essentially edit a crank quarterly journal (The Bootless) that nobody read (and none of which he actually wrote) and occasionally to appear on talk radio. Most of the day, though, he spent taking "pick-me-up" (his phrase) shots of the most disgusting gin. This guy, supposedly the pre-eminent mind of a now-deceased quasi-humanist movement, took three-hour lunch breaks at Hardee's. And my task was systematize his absurd oeuvre. The man's files began as obscene skein of esoteric arguments, realized by pages and pages tricked out with the most jargon-addled nonsense ever rescued from the bowels of the Frankfurt School. But after a few weeks of this... they still hardly made sense. I wouldn't have minded any of this especially, except that (a) this intellectual kept borrowing money from his unpaid intern (b) he borrowed one of my ties ("for a dinner party") which was extremely soiled when I retrieved it several weeks later (c) he worked in upstate New York, and I didn't have a car. All of these factors, in my mind, congealed into an undeniable casus belli. When my hircine boss flew to Milwaukee for a 'dialogue' (I didn't ask), I knew just how to make use of his absence. Several non-intellectual acquaintances of mine drove six hours to help me drink his office dry. It went fairly well for a while, until-well, the long and short of it was that the place was gutted by fire. In the heat of the moment, we fled to a nearby motel, and I never saw the good doctor again. I can't say exactly why Plotnik-Whittaker refused to press charges, but I think it has something to do with his aggressively horrible memory: once, I asked him the names of another intern who had attempted my project, and he said he couldn't recall. Soon after, I became a barista. All's well that ends well.
|
