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A Puppy Picks Your New Favorite Short Story

Gabriel Garcia Marquez No One Writes the Colonel & Other Stories (Bard, 1973) Allow me to introduce you to the newest member of the Cabinet Beer Baseball family, Mr. PJ Bottoms. He's a five month old terrier/cattle dog mix who was found abandoned behind an elementary school, sleeping on a pair of PJ bottoms. We picked up him, asked him who his favorite south American writer was and when he answered, "Marquez!" we knew we had found our pooch. Admittedly, his "Marquez!" sounded a great deal like "Woof!" and then unmitigated face-licking, so we wanted to press him further and asked him what his favorite Marquez story was and he answered, "One Of These Days." Still we were skeptical so, as if to quelch our concerns, he burrowed his muzzle into the paperback and opened the book straight to the story. If you've never had the chance to read the story, here it is. Rest assured, it is PJ approved One of These Days Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Monday dawned warm and rainless. Aurelio Escovar, a dentist without a degree, and a very early riser, opened his office at six. He took some false teeth, still mounted in their plaster mold, out of the glass case and put on the table a fistful of instruments which he arranged in size order, as if they were on display. He wore a collarless striped shirt, closed at the neck with a golden stud, and pants held up by suspenders. He was erect and skinny, with a look that rarely corresponded to the situation, the way deaf people have of looking. When he had things arranged on the table, he pulled the drill toward the dental chair and sat down to polish the false teeth. He seemed not to be thinking about what he was doing, but worked steadily, pumping the drill with his feet, even when he didn't need it. After eight he stopped for a while to look at the sky through the window, and he saw two pensive buzzards who were drying themselves in the sun on the ridgepole of the house next door. He went on working with the idea that before lunch it would rain again. The shrill voice of his eleven year-old son interrupted his concentration. "Papa." "What?" "The Mayor wants to know if you'll pull his tooth." "Tell him I'm not here." He was polishing a gold tooth. He held it at arm's length, and examined it with his eyes half closed. His son shouted again from the little waiting room. "He says you are, too, because he can hear you." The dentist kept examining the tooth. Only when he had put it on the table with the finished work did he say: "So much the better." He operated the drill again. He took several pieces of a bridge out of a cardboard box where he kept the things he still had to do and began to polish the gold. "Papa." "What?" He still hadn't changed his expression. "He says if you don't take out his tooth, he'll shoot you." Without hurrying, with an extremely tranquil movement, he stopped pedaling the drill, pushed it away from the chair, and pulled the lower drawer of the table all the way out. There was a revolver. "O.K.," he said. "Tell him to come and shoot me." He rolled the chair over opposite the door, his hand resting on the edge of the drawer. The Mayor appeared at the door. He had shaved the left side of his face, but the other side, swollen and in pain, had a five-day-old beard. The dentist saw many nights of desperation in his dull eyes. He closed the drawer with his fingertips and said softly: "Sit down." "Good morning," said the Mayor. "Morning," said the dentist. While the instruments were boiling, the Mayor leaned his skull on the headrest of the chair and felt better. His breath was icy. It was a poor office: an old wooden chair, the pedal drill, a glass case with ceramic bottles. Opposite the chair was a window with a shoulder-high cloth curtain. When he felt the dentist approach, the Mayor braced his heels and opened his mouth. Aurelio Escovar turned his head toward the light. After inspecting the infected tooth, he closed the Mayor's jaw with a cautious pressure of his fingers. "It has to be without anesthesia," he said. "Why?" "Because you have an abscess." The Mayor looked him in the eye. "All right," he said, and tried to smile. The dentist did not return the smile. He brought the basin of sterilized instruments to the worktable and took them out of the water with a pair of cold tweezers, still without hurrying. Then he pushed the spittoon with the tip of his shoe, and went to wash his hands in the washbasin. He did all this without looking at the Mayor. But the Mayor didn't take his eyes off him. It was a lower wisdom tooth. The dentist spread his feet and grasped the tooth with the hot forceps. The Mayor seized the arms of the chair, braced his feet with all his strength, and felt an icy void in his kidneys, but didn't make a sound. The dentist moved only his wrist. Without rancor, rather with a bitter tenderness, he said: "Now you'll pay for our twenty dead men." The Mayor felt the crunch of bones in his jaw, and his eyes filled with tears. But he didn't breathe until he felt the tooth come out. Then he saw it through his tears. It seemed so foreign to his pain that he failed to understand his torture of the five previous nights. Bent over the spittoon, sweating, panting, he unbuttoned his tunic and reached for the handkerchief in his pants pocket. The dentist gave him a clean cloth. "Dry your tears," he said. The Mayor did. He was trembling. While the dentist washed his hands, he saw the crumbling ceiling and a dusty spider web with spider's eggs and dead insects. The dentist returned, drying his hands. "Go to bed," he said, "and gargle with salt water." The Mayor stood up, said goodbye with a casual military salute, and walked toward the door, stretching his legs, without buttoning up his tunic. "Send the bill," he said. "To you or the town?" The Mayor didn't look at him. He closed the door and said through the screen: "It's the same damn thing."

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The Perfect Summer Tipple for People Who Use the Word Tipple

A Not-So-Proper Pimm's Cup (our variant on the British classic) We were recently gifted a bottle of Pimm's #1 and, coupled with a trip to the Fruit and Spice market where we came back with, among other things, a quarter pound of lavender buds, we decided to whip up a twist on the standard Pimm's Cup. It's an easy enough drink to make, thereby making it a pretty easy drink to riff on. Here's our recipe: 2 oz Pimm's #1 .75 oz fresh lemon juice .5 oz lavender syrup (1:1:1--one cup sugar, water, lavender) 1 oz ginger beer (not ale, beer) 3 cucumber wheels (save one for garnish) Muddle two cucumber wheels together with simple. Add Pimm's and lemon juice to shaker. Add ice, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Top with ginger beer (We used Reed's) Garnish with cucumber. Voila! Something tells me we're going to have a new summer staple around these parts.

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Diving Into The Wreck

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) DIVING INTO THE WRECK First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

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The Vibrant Bear It Away

Flannery O' Connor The Complete Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971) In honor of what would've been Flannery O'Connor's 87th birthday earlier this week, here is the only audio (to my knowledge) of her reading her most famous, most anthologized short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find." If you've never read it, it's got a petulant grandmother, a psychopath on the loose and a family on a road trip to Florida. Find a copy of it here. I think my favorite story might be--ask me again tomorrow and I'll change my answer--"Parker's Back," which has this to say about it's main character: "Parker had never before felt the least motion of wonder in himself. Until he saw the [tattooed] man at the fair, it did not enter his head that there was anything out of the ordinary about the fact that he existed. Even then it did not enter his head, but a peculiar unease settled in him. It was as if a blind boy had been turned so gently in a different direction that he did not know his destination had been changed." Flannery O'Connor passed away at the age of 39, having written two novels and two short story collections, the last of which, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," was published posthumously. You can read her obituary here.

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Latest Fashion(ed)

Sorghum Old Fashioned (Benchmark, sorghum, bitters) This is Yardbird's fantastic riff on the Old-Fashioned. How do you make an Old-Fashioned? Easy. Just follow these instructions. What exactly is sorghum? Click here and find out. What does it taste like? Why, a little like this actually.

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Gone Wild

Spring Break, 1983, or Where Have You Gone David Lee Roth? In honor of Spring Break, here's a tequila punch that's sure to leave you face down in the sand so that your dear friends can draw something substantially foul on your back using sunblock, leaving you with a reminder--albeit a temporary one--of the killer time you had in Daytona, Lake Havasu, Cancun, or whatever destination you've chosen as the site from which to ruin your chances at gainful employment. You can thank us later. Preparation is as follows. 1. Combine one 750 ml bottle of tequila (we used Espolon Reposado), two cups pineapple juice, one cup orange juice and 3/4 cup of lime juice in a punch bowl, a big enough mason jar, or a large pot if need be. 2. Stir kindly. 3. Peel and chop one whole pineapple and toss into the punch. 4. For the sweetener, make a spicy serrano syrup. Add one cup. 4a. The syrup I made was 60/40 (sugar/water), and I added two whole peppers--sliced, seeds and all--and let it cook for about fifteen minutes. I strained the syrup, waited until it cooled, then added the full cup. 4b. The thing with serrano peppers is that the heat comes on towards the back of the drink, after the sweetness. It pairs really nicely with the pineapple and I enjoyed it hot, but the party seemed divided. A few found the heat to pile on after a few drinks. For the second batch I used half a cup of the serrano syrup and half a cup of agave and that seemed to be to more people's liking. Might 3/4 cup of syrup and 1/4 cup of agave be the happy medium? Perhaps. You can fiddle with this measurement to your liking. 5. Peel two oranges, two lemons and one grapefruit. 6. Give the peels a squeeze and toss them in the punch. 7. Take a handful of fresh sage, toss that in as well. 8. Put the punch in the fridge and marinate over night. 8a. If you're looking to serve this right away, don't bother with the peels. You are, however, going to need to chill the punch. The easiest way is to take one of those plastic quart containers (think take-out soup), fill it with water and freeze it, then use it as a giant ice cube. 9. The next day, strain the punch and pour it into your serving container. If you are using a punch bowl, garnish your punch with fresh pineapple wedges (so folks can eat them if they'd like), a few lime wheels, and a fresh sprig of sage. 9a. I opted to serve mine in a rocks glass (see pic), with crushed ice (what doesn't crushed ice make better?), and garnished it with basil instead of sage because I wanted something herbal and fragrant in your nose to help round out the spice and sweetness. 9b. If you're taking it to the beach, you'll need a cooler, two thermoses, ice and a pack of the official cup of binge drinkers everywhere. 10. Bottoms up. 10a. Given that this is a Spring Break post I feel obligated to clarify. Step 10 is meant to be taken figuratively, referring to your cup.

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Get In The Van

Psst. Hombre. Have you heard about the librotraficante caravan kicking off today? In direct response to a segment of Arizona's controversial HB 2281 that prohibits Tucson area schools from offering courses in ethnic studies and, as a result, has banned ninety-three titles from their school systems, the librotraficantes, a group of writers and activists, led by Houston-based novelist Tony Diaz will be trekking from Houston to Tucson in an effort to "smuggle" banned books back into the state. Along the way, there will be readings, teach-ins, the creation of "underground libraries" supplied with, at least, one complete set of all the banned books and a taco-truck handing out free copies of the aforementioned banned books. To read more about the librotraficantes (as well as an interview with founder, Tony Diaz) click here. For the complete schedule of events and how you can help, click here. For a complete list of the banned books, scroll to the bottom of the librotraficante home page. And prepare to cry, Auxilio!

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If It Ain't Broken, . .

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of attending the grand opening of the Broken Shaker, a pop-up bar experience by the mad geniuses of Bar-Lab. If you’ve never had the pleasure of soaking in their libations, the Broken Shaker is the perfect opportunity to experience what they do best. Yes, the Broken Shaker is a pop-up. This means that in six months, it’s out of here. Last night, on its grand opening, two drinks in—a rum punch followed by a spicy tequila drink that Elad just handed to me and said, Trust me, you’re going to like it; he was wrong, I loved it--I had a moment of profound sadness thinking, this thing will soon vanish from us. I can be dramatic like that. Yes, their cocktails are all priced at $11. Let that sink in. $11. I’ll forever contend that the biggest obstacle to drinking well in Miami isn’t the scarcity of venues, it’s the price gouging. $11 is a dream come true. When you visit, remember to thank the boys. And tip well. You just saved at least $5 on that drink. And yes, there’s a small food menu as well as a punch bowl option that goes for $70 and can quench between four to eight people. Do the math on that, and say goodbye to bottle service. If you want to read a more informed article, and certainly a more comprehensive one--an article much better than the one I’m about to write--about the Broken Shaker, click here. (It’s great, right? I read it last night between brushing my teeth and choosing which v-neck to rock and it got me so pumped that I switched the iPod from Lou Rawls to the new Weeknd record.) Here’s my one beef from the article: “Think Paris meets New Orleans and lets New York tag along.” Maybe Paris, New Orleans and New York were the aesthetic cues the guys were taking as they built the place. That’s fine. I can live with that. I visited the boys for a few minutes two weeks back when the space was nothing, literally nothing, but a green wall and a lone shelf, and having to carefully appoint a venue with the vibe you carry in your heart must require shorthand cues like: think Paris, New Orleans, New York. But if I were asked that question (as a patron, not proprietor), I wouldn’t think to compare the Broken Shaker to either of those cities. Or to any cities at all. What I’d offer up, instead is: It is the most perfect vision of Miami Miami could ever hope for. You see, it grates my nerves whenever something beautiful and true appears among us and the very first thing we do is compare it to somewhere else. Everybody loves The Corner in downtown and the most common reaction I hear is: It reminds me of New York. Check out their Yelp page for Pete’s (who the hell is Pete?) sake. Someone says New York (4xs), someone says Chicago, someone says San Diego, someone says Portland. Hell, someone says, they’d thumb their nose at this place if it were in Brooklyn, but in Miami, it’s kickass! “It reminds me of New York” has become a euphemism for “this place is so cool, what’s it doing here?” Dear Miami, when are we going to stop doing this to ourselves? When are we going to finally start comparing Miami to Miami? What’s it going to take for us to finally treat ourselves like a real city, not a stereotype, not hyperbole, but a real place with a real identity? Let’s start here. Miami is not neon, Cubans, the Miami Heat, or David fucking Carradine. There are not two sides to Miami: South Beach, and everything else. There are two billion sides to Miami: Churchill’s Hideaway, nacatamales, Little Israel, gas station Jamaican patties, European man thongs, stray dogs, stray cats, stray chickens, voodoo, amateur pornography, Charles Willeford, El Rey de Las Fritas, air boats, air conditioning, Robert is Here, DJ Laz and five million psychopathic motorists redefining the meaning of death-defying. And now, you can add the Broken Shaker to that list. For starters, it’s located inside the Indian Creek Hotel, a gorgeous art deco hotel first built in 1936. Step inside and it’s a vision of Florida that includes seersucker suits and wicker ceiling fans. The floors are terrazzo. The walls are the color of cake. And it’s peaceful inside, cozy and comfortable. You can finally take a break and get back to that Grace Paley collection you started weeks ago. Walk through the lobby to the outdoor courtyard and you’ll find the Broken Shaker. You can’t miss it. It’s that beautiful little nook you fell for at first site. Really, there’s no understating the tremendous job these dudes accomplished here. You would’ve thought this bar has been here since the hotel’s inception, that’s how carefully Gabe and Elad planned their pop-up. The cabinets, in fact every shelf you see, was built and installed by the guys. Their glassware collection, collected by them. The insane roster of homemade bitters, syrups and tinctures, theirs and theirs alone. The library of cocktail books, curated. The beautiful assortment of cocktail accouterments, years of hunting and hoarding. There are a few tables, café-style, inside the actual bar, but the real gem of the space is the hotel’s courtyard and garden. I doubt Paris ever saw palm trees this perfect. I doubt New York ever had a pool as intimate and pretense-free as the one here. I doubt New Orleans has ever pumped Joe Arroyo's La Rebellion through its speakers as un-ironically as the Broken Shaker did last night. In short, The Broken Shaker is the bar you've been waiting for your entire life. It's the bar I've been waiting for my entire life. No velvet rope. No bottle service. No guest list. Exceptionally-priced drinks made exceptionally well. Outside seating. Surrounded by the kind of jungle foliage that can only be found in the tropics. A perfectly curated set list supplying the tunes. (Fellas, any chance we can squeeze some Joe Bataan in?) And an enormous parking lot, one block away, that's free after 6 pm. Dear Miami, go check out the Broken Shaker. Asap. And when you leave (imbibe responsibly, pretty please) I dare you to tell me it's not the most Miami place you've ever been. In the best possible way.

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The Odd Couple

Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey + Pastelitos de Guayaba I've always been surprised at how few bars and restaurants fail to combine South Florida's sleepy Southern town lineage with its new found (relatively speaking) international cosmopolitanism. Seems to me there's a whole range of flavors and pairings that have largely gone unexplored. For instance, you may take a look at this tray of guava pastries and say to yourself, yeah, I'd devour a half dozen of those with some cafe con leche or a soda (Materva!) or, more than likely, a lager or two. And you'd be in good company. I think most folks would join you. But in each of these cases (coffee, soda, beer) there's an aspect of flavor that either overpowers the pastry or flat out changes the taste. Neither of these drinks compliments the pastelito in an exciting and surprising way. Next time your abuelita is turning eighty, bring over a bottle of Four Roses and tell your dad, your step-dad, your uncles, your cousins, your cousin's cousins, to put down what they're drinking (it's Johnny Black, isn't it?) and try this on for size. Vanilla in the bourbon. Butter in the dough. Cinnamon notes from the oak. The sweet, sweet guava. The long spicy finish. The sticky mouthful of jam and pastry. A match made in heaven I tell you.

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Ringin' It in Right!

Champagne Barnaut Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs (approx $45) Come the New Year, there's no shortage of bizarro rituals intended to hedge your bets for a fantastic new year. Some folks swallow twelve green grapes at the stroke of midnight for luck. Some walk around the block with their luggage for safe travels. Some sleep with a potato underneath their bed for, . . well, I really have no idea what this one's for, maybe for a killer growing season? We here at Cabinet Beer Baseball Club like to start our year off right by drinking something fantastic. Hence, our champagne toast this year was the Barnaut Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs, a champagne that surprises at every sip. This is a wine made entirely from pinot noir grapes (ie. blanc de noirs) which, through some process too complicated for me to try and understand, produces a beautifully colored champagne with a nose and taste comparable to green apples, pear and fresh toast. The mouthfeel is silky and the finish is long but crisp. Also, because of the aforementioned super-complicated process, you'll find little to no tannins in this wine so, while the finish is long you'll find no lingering bitterness here. No overt tartness either. In fact, you might say this champagne makes for a damn good metaphor for all our hopes and dreams for the coming year. Long finish. No overt tartness. Keepin' it fresh and silky. To love, luck and all the playoff appearances you can muster. Happy 2012!

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William Faulkner's Hall of Fame Ballot 2012

Bet you didn't know William Faulkner had a Hall vote, did you? Well, he does. Check it out. Bet you also didn't know he was a middle infielder/catcher from Blissfield, Michigan. Well, he's that too.

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Cabinet Beer Presents: Drinking with Writers feat. John Dufresne & Blue Christmas

Drinking With Writers feat. John Dufresne/Blue Christmas--The Interview Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas. Sort of. For episode two of our new series, Drinking With Writers, we sat down with John Dufresne. He's the author of four novels, two short story collections, two books on writing and, most recently, the editor of Blue Christmas: Holiday Stories For the Rest of Us, an anthology of real (ie. unsentimental) holiday stories featuring a roster of writers too good to be true. During our interview, we discuss what it means to have a "Blue Christmas," how the idea for the project came about, and what it was like working with such talented writers with such a wide range of stylistic voices--seriously, the Colin Channer story, and the Steve Almond story (and the Diana Abu-Jaber story, and the Robert Goolrick story, and the Ana Menendez story) are must-must-must-reads--and why this collection isn't for just for the Scrooge's and Grinches of the world. And of course, it wouldn't be Drinking With Writers if we didn't have our cocktail taste-test. For this episode, we conjured up three holiday drinks that are sure to warm any blue spirits this holiday season. Like always, check out the recipes down below for all three drinks, but be sure to watch the episode to find out which drink John chooses as the official Blue Christmas cocktail.

Drinking With Writers feat. John Dufresne/Blue Christmas--The Drinks Lastly, from all of us here at Cabinet Beer Baseball Club, we'd like to thank you, our readers, that have made year two such a great year. Happy Holidays to you and yours and have a very Merry Christmas, blue or otherwise. Suggested Pairing Blue Christmas Cocktail#1 1. Slice a Granny Smith apple into quarters. Toss one wedge into shaker. 2. Pour 2 oz. of white rum into shaker. Muddle apple and rum together. 3. Pour 1/2 oz. nutmeg simple syrup* into shaker. 4. Pour 1/4 oz lemon juice into shaker. 5. Add 2 dashes of Bittercube's Jamaican #1 bitters into shaker. 6. Fill with ice. Shake. Fine strain into cocktail glass. 7. Take a remaining apple wedge, dust with freshly grated nutmeg. 8. Cut wedge in half, spear through both pieces and garnish atop of the cocktail glass. * For this recipe we made rich simple syrup. We boiled 1 1/2 cups of water and, once boiling, removed the water from the heat, added 3 cups of sugar and whisked until sugar was completely dissolved. Once sugar is fully incorporated, we grated 2/3 of a whole nutmeg directly into the water. Once the liquid cooled, we doubled strained it (fine mesh strainer, coffee filter) until all we were left with was the liquid itself. Blue Christmas Cocktail #2 1. Pour 1 1/2 oz of bourbon into shaker. 2. Pour 1 1/2 oz of brandy (we used Cognac) into shaker. 3. Add 1/4 oz of maple syrup into shaker. 4. Add 2 dashes of Bittercube's Cherry Bark Vanilla Bitters into shaker. 5. Add 6 milk ice cubes* into shaker. 6. Shake. 7. Pour into rocks glass with one, large milk cube. 8. Garnish with cinnamon stick. *Simple. Freeze milk in an ice tray same way you do water. For the one large milk cube, we used this this. Blue Christmas Cocktail #3 1. Pour 1 oz. Cherry Heering into Irish coffee glass. 2. Pour 3/4 oz. Rumple Minze Peppermint Schnapss into Irish coffee glass. 3. Fill Irish coffee glass with hot chocolate. 4. Top with whipped cream. 5. Dust the whipped cream with cocoa powder.

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Game, Set, Death!

Sporting Blood: The Great Sports Detective Stories ed. by Ellery Queen In what can only be described as a match made in Cabinet Beer heaven, this anthology, published in 1942, pairs some of the greatest names in detective fiction, both British and American, together with the whole wide world of sports. The anthology, edited and assembled by Ellery Queen himself, includes twenty stories and each one features murder and mayhem that is, in some way, connected to a sport. You get Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on horse-racing, Dashiell Hammett on boxing, Leslie Charteris (of The Saint fame) on poker, Agatha Christie on chess and Robert W. Chambers, author of The King in Yellow and The Maker of Moons, on butterfly collecting. Wait, what? Yes, it would appear that alongside the expected sports entries like football and baseball, you also get tobogganing, ping-pong, and coin collecting. And, as if to add credence to the venture, the introduction is written by Grantland Rice. If you don't know who Grantland Rice is, you may want to click here but, whatever you do, don't click here. The collection, as a whole, is far from a knockout (seriously, who needs a story about the subversive underworld of coin collectors?), but yet the book feels somehow greater than the sum of its parts. It reads like a surviving relic, a reminder of a time when detectives ruled the literary landscape. Ellery Queen, the brand, was at the height of its powers, having expanded into television, radio, and of course, the magazine, and American audiences were ravenous for all things noir and mystery. Looking back, we can clearly see anthologies such as this one having birthed today's current market of "cozy mysteries"--detective/chef mysteries, detective/pet mysteries, even detective/quilting mysteries--but let's not hold that against it. Remember, Ellery Queen was the first to publish Borges in America so, I guess it all balances out.

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William Kennedy, Miami Marlins Fan?

To read John Sayles', a writer who has tackled Castro-era Cuban politics himself, review of Kennedy's new novel, click here. To read William Kennedy discuss writing, revolution, santeria and how Fidel Castro tried to make his own scotch, click here. To read Uni-Watch's take on all things right and wrong about the new Marlins uniforms, click here and here.

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CBBC Presents: Drinking With Writers! featuring Lynne Barrett

We here at Cabinet Beer Baseball Club couldn't be more proud to announce our new video series, Drinking With Writers. As the series' name implies, it's us, drinking, with writers. For our inaugural episode we sat down with Edgar Award winning author Lynne Barrett and discussed her latest collection of short stories, Magpies. During our interview, we talk about how characters take over your best laid plans, how a hurricane season helped structure a short story and how every writer has got a little magpie in them. But that's not all. In the spirit of her collection, we conjured up three potential Magpies cocktails and had Lynne taste test them to determine, once and for all, the official Magpies Cocktail. Check out the recipes down below and see how they strike your fancy, but to see which Lynne chose as the winner, you'll have to watch the episode. Super special thanks to Lynne Barrett for partaking in our goofy experiment, to Unpaid Intern Productions for setting everything up (and I mean, everything), and to all the bartenders and mixologists whose ideas and efforts behind the stick helped fine tune* these recipes. We hope enjoy the episode. We sure did. Suggested Pairing Magpies Cocktail #1 With all the stories in the collection taking place in NY/NJ and Florida, we decided to pay homage to these backdrops with our first contestant, Magpies #1. Also, we'd be remiss in not mentioning that we "borrowed" the impetus for this drink from Joe Campanale's Roasted Orange Negroni, which is also pretty damn delicious. 1. Soak orange wedges overnight in sweet vermouth. (We used Carpano Antica) 2. The following day, slow roast the wedges until the edges char. 3. Plop one wedge into your shaker. 4. Add 1 oz sweet vermouth. 5. Muddle together. 6. Add 1 oz apple brandy. In a perfect world, we would've used applejack but we had some difficulty locating a bottle at a our local liquor stores. In lieu, we used Calvados. Not a bad trade off. 7. Add 1 1/4 oz Campari. 8. Add ice. Shake. Strain with fine strainer (to keep orange bits out) into cocktail glass. 9. Top with club soda. 10. Garnish with orange slice. Magpies Cocktail #2 One of the more compelling aspects of magpies is their predilection for all things shiny. In fact, they're quite notorious for "stealing" treasured objects, such as jewelry. So, with our Magpies #2, we wanted to create a drink reflective of the magpie's desire for all things sparkly. 1. Pour 1 1/2 oz of bourbon into shaker. We used Russell's Reserve. 2. Pour 1/2 oz of yellow chartreuse into shaker. 3. Squeeze a full dropper's worth of Bittercube's Blackstrap bitters into shaker. 4. Add ice. Shake. 5. Fill Collins glass with ice. Pour drink into glass. 6. Top with ginger beer. 7. Garnish with basil leaf and candied ginger. *editor's note. While the above recipe was the original recipe, we have since fine-tuned it. Here's our latest version. Magpies Cocktail #2b. 1. Pour 1 1/2 oz of bourbon into Collins glass. 2. Pour 1/2 oz yellow chartreuse into glass. 3. Pour 1/4 oz fresh lime juice into glass. 4. Squeeze a full dropper's worth of Bitterman's 'Elemakule Tiki Bitters into glass. 5. Add ice to glass. 6. Top with ginger beer. 7. Stir in glass. If you don't have a bar spoon, stir carefully. 8. Garnish with basil leaf and candied ginger. Magpies Cocktail #3 For our final drink, we wanted to pay homage to the beautiful colors of the magpie. Yes, they have a shiny black color reminiscent of crows, but they're also white with a deep blue/purple color that really makes them stand out. That color was what we were aiming for. 1. Housemade blackberry infused vodka. We took about two fistfuls of blackberries, tossed them in a mason jar, filled it with vodka and let it macerate for about a week. 2. Squeeze a full droppers worth of Bittercube's Cherry Bark Vanilla bitters into champagne flute. 2. Pour 2 oz of blackberry vodka into flute. 3. Top with favorite champagne. 4. Garnish with a fresh blackberry. *editor's note Again, we couldn't help but continue to mess with this recipe. Here's our latest. 1. For the blackberry infused vodka follow the same instructions as above but, add 1/8 of a cup of sugar for every liter of vodka. We initially did try adding sugar but we oversugared it and it completely overpowered the taste of the berries. Luckily, we had help from a friendly neighborhood bartender with this one. 2. Combine the aforementioned Cherry Bark Vanilla bitters and the 2 oz of vodka in a shaker with 6 (or to your taste) sprigs of mint, add ice. Shake. Fine strain into champagne flute. 3. Place your bar spoon in the middle of the flute and pour champagne, slowly, along the spoon. This will allow you to get a nice, rich foam that you can control. 4. Stir drink in glass. Again, stir carefully. 5. Garnish with a fresh blackberry.

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Paperback Dreams

Because sometimes, you really should judge a book by its cover.

William Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Harper & Row Publishers, 1969

Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Penguin Books, 1946

Donald Barthelme, City Life, Bantam Books, 1971

Bernard Malamud, The Natural, Pocket Books, 1975

Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, New Directions, 1958

John Hawkes, The Cannibal, New Directions, 1962

Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love, Bantam Windstone, 1982

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Penguin Books, 1984

Jorge Luis Borges, Book of Sand, Penguin Books, 1979 ps. Watch this.

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When Harry's Met Gabby

Gabrielle Hamilton (Prune Restaurant NY) and Michael Schwartz (MGFD Miami) This past Sunday, the Miami Book Fair International wrapped up its 28th year as one of Miami's premier cultural events. Over that time, it has grown from a two-block street fair to a week long festival combining writer workshops and seminars, film screenings, lectures, readings, concerts, industry panels, writing contests, a separate comics and graphic novels mini-fair, tastings and receptions. And now, you can add dinners to the list. In what was certainly one of this year's most inspired offerings, local chef extraordinaire Michael Schwartz invited Gabrielle Hamilton, owner of Prune restaurant in NY and author of the memoir Blood, Bones and Butter, to take over Harry's Pizzeria for a ticketed, one-night only event. The price of admission got you a three-course meal complete with appetizers, cocktails, a wine flight, dessert and a signed copy of Hamilton's book. The fact that the ticket also covered tax and tip made the dinner at "Prune Pizzeria" a no-brainer for winding down after a week, (weekend, in particular) of literary mayhem. Me and the Ms. arrived a quarter after seven and, after being informed that it was open seating, we immediately sat at the bar. Best vantage point. Best way to chat up the bartenders and sommelier. We were set up with classic Negronis and informed that they were Gabrielle's favorite way to start her evenings. In fact, that's her sipping one in the above pic. The drinks were perfect, equal parts Plymouth Gin, Campari and Carpano Antica.

They were paired with warm hard-boiled eggs (with, I believe, shaved celery), shrimp toasts, (triangular shaped shrimp puffs) and raw radishes with salt and sweet butter. Just as we were finishing our second Negronis, Michael Schwartz got everyone's attention, thanked us all for coming, introduced Gabrielle Hamilton, and hoped we had nowhere else to be since we were going to be enjoying each other's company for the next few hours. And that's when things got interesting. The next drink was a Knoll, Grüner Veltliner Federspiel 2009, a crispy white wine that I had never tasted before and was immediately mesmerized by. It was bright, herbal, with a dry finish at the end that left no cloying aftertaste. If I had been even the least bit aware, I would've noticed that our place mat detailed our menu and I would've seen what was coming next. Needless to say, when a plate of frog legs (garlic, butter, parsley) showed up, I was stunned speechless. On one hand, I had a pond's worth of childhood memories washing over me. Countless trips to the Everglades to go airboating, mudding, shooting at tin cans, and horseback riding, were always capped off with barbecued frog legs. Couple that with my now adult brain reeling from pairing a fine Austrian wine with a southern South Florida staple and the move was so genius that the first thing I did, even before taking my first bite of frog, was call Moustachio Sr and tell him, If you could only see what I'm eating now. As an aside, I've always felt that's what the best food, the best meals, should always do, make you call the people you care about most and say, Goddamn, I wish you were here. Here's what a plate full of frog legs looks like.

And here's what one "pair" of frog legs looks like.

To quote Ms. Moustachio: "That's a frog. That's a straight up frog." Yes. Yes it is. For our main course, we had cold braised celery hearts, smokey eggplant and whole roasted lamb, and that was paired with another exceptional wine, a Casanuova delle Cerbaie, Brunello di Montalcino 2004, which was quite possibly, for me, anyway, the highlight of the evening. I suggested to the sommelier that this was akin to an elegant version of a Zinfandel to which he smirked and said, "If I was this wine, I think I'd be mad at you." Ha. Fair Enough. But therein lies the advantage of sitting at the bar. I asked the sommelier to elaborate and he suggested it was more akin to being Chianti's big brother. The wine was 100% pure Sangiovese and was a ruby red color similar to pomegranate. It smelled of a riot of berries, jam, plum and oak from the barrels. In fact, there was a slight earthy quality to the nose but the finish was crisp and clean. I immediately made amends with Mr. Montalcino as I planned to drink as much of this as possible. Lastly, for dessert, we were served candied rosemary and grapefruit together with a grapefruit sherbet and warm olive cake. To drink, Pierre Moncuit Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru. Just a stellar pairing. Really. According to Harry's Pizzeria's tumblr, it looks like they've got a few more of these "pop-up" restaurant experiences lined up. If you're interested or curious about attending, I can assure you that me and Ms. Moustachio were thrilled with our experience. Even the day after, we couldn't stop commenting on what a great time we had. MGFD is one of our absolute favorite places to go for dinner and if Michael Schwartz is willing to turn over his kitchen to his chef buddies, you know it's going to be a memorable evening. We couldn't possibly endorse this experiment of his any more.