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AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
HEMINGWAY ON ABSINTHE
DJANGO UNCHAINED POSTER
GET TO KNOW BARACK OBAMA
DRINKING WITH HEMINGWAY
This is a Papa Doble, a Daiquirí that Hemingway was fond of drinking at the Floridita Bar in Havana. I made it from a recipe that A. E. Hotchner wrote down one day while hanging with Papa at the fabled watering hole.
That’s Hemingway below, of course, sitting at his favorite spot at the bar, between Spencer Tracy and his wife Mary.
Hotchner’s recipe calls for the juice of two limes, the juice of one half grapefruit, six drops of cherry brandy and three ounces of Bacardi rum (or Havana Club rum if you can find it.) You put this in a blender 1/3 filled with ice and blend at high speed until the mixture turns the color of “the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots”, as Hemingway helpfully explains.
It’s a wonderfully refreshing drink, slightly tart but still festive. Don’t try to drink as many of them as Hemingway could at one sitting, sixteen by some reports — you’ll live longer.
Update — this recipe produces a drink that’s too strong, not for Papa, maybe, but too strong for me. I recommend adding twice as much grapefruit juice, which will produce enough for three medium-sized Daiquirís. If you want it to taste more like a traditional Daiquirí, add more cherry brandy or a bit of cane syrup to sweeten it. I myself find the unsweetened drink more satisfying — more bracing, like a breeze coming in off the ocean.
DJANGO UNCHAINED TRAILER
I’m kind of excited about this.
The first three shots in the trailer were made in Lone Pine, California, where Barbara Stanwyck’s ashes were scattered and where Budd Boetticher shot most of the Westerns he made with Randolph Scott. In short, it’s sacred ground.
SKINNER #3 (I WANT . . .)
SKINNER #3 ( I want… ) from jae song on Vimeo.
An exceptionally cool film installation by Jae Song. Two sixteen-millimeter projectors talk to each other.
D-DAY
AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
COMMON SENSE
In the recall election in Wisconsin, Republicans outspent Democrats 7-1. Guess who won. A hundred years ago even Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, know that big money can buy elections. This is not rocket science, folks — its simple common sense about basic human nature. That’s why TR helped pass the law limiting contributions by corporations to Federal elections — a law recently struck down by The Supreme Court in its Citizens United ruling.
Voters can be bought, and that’s never going to change. You have to go after the people who try to buy them. You have to criminalize their actions, as TR did. If buying elections is not a crime in a democracy, then the idea of democracy has no meaning at all.
PICK YOURSELF UP
Seven and a half minutes containing some of the most astonishing and erotic cinema ever created.
GO AWAY
It begins in Wisconsin — the hostile takeover of American democracy by large corporations. The fight to take it back is going to last for generations. Every politician holding national office who failed to show up in Wisconsin to support the recall movement needs to go — now — starting with Barack Obama. It’s time to clear the decks for action — make room for public servants with conviction and courage.
YOU ARE MY LUCKY STAR
After his revolutionary work in the 1920s, Louis Armstrong settled into a groove that was in some respects less electrifying. From 1935 to 1946 he fronted a big band, which recorded for Decca. The musicians were not always first-rate, the arrangements were occasionally third-rate and the choice of material was sometimes questionable.
But Armstrong’s genius sailed along as though he didn’t notice these things — he created brilliant work almost every time he stepped to the fore. “You Are My Lucky Star”, by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, is from the first of his band’s recording dates for Decca, on 3 October 1935 in New York City.
Armstrong’s instrumental and vocal interpretation of the charming song is simply sublime.