Andrew's Movie Cocktail Guide

It's easy enough to pop open a Pabst Blue Ribbon while you watch Blue Velvet, or to pour a shot or six of whiskey for just about any Western film ever made. But some films have more complicated beverage accompaniments. That's where Furdell Dot Com comes in.

Bonfire of the Vanities
I just saw this famous flop, which inspired this post. In one moderately memorable scene, a character orders Sidecars, even though he's not supposed to be drinking.

Incidentally Wikipedia has some excellent pages about cocktails, the Sidecar included. Unfortunately, a lot of great obscure drinks are nowhere to be found on Wikipedia -- but any time a drink has a Wikipedia page, there seems to be a lot of information.
Wikipedia says the Sidecar is equal parts brandy, Cointreau, and lemon juice in a glass with a sugared rim. Some web sources seem to think you'd be fine with a lesser brand of triple sec, so presumably you could substitute any orange liqueur you have lying around. But to have a proper Bonfire of the Vanties sidecar, you must use Courvoisier. (And it's a safe bet they didn't cheap out on the orange liqueur.)

The Big Clock
This is one of the lighter film noirs ever made, and one of my favorite films. It's a lot of fun, and it introduced me to an excellent drink: the Stinger. It'll get you drunk and freshen your breath all at once!
It's easy to make -- it's just three parts of any brandy mixed with one part of white (that means clear, in liquor parlance) creme de menthe, shaken and strained like a martini. (Drinks like this, containing a base and a liqueur, are called "duos." Bring that up in conversation to look worldly.)

In the film, the overworked main character goes out on the town with his demonic boss's lover, mocking said boss's obsession with the color green by purchasing green things. In a bar, they order a number of Stingers -- "with green mint". The bartender is visibly upset. He takes a sip late in the scene, and finds the drink repulsive. I've never tried a Stinger with green creme de menthe myself, but if you want to do it right for the movie, that's how it should be done.

Basic Instinct
Alcoholic, coke addict, tourist killer, and all around sub-par police detective Michael Douglas falls off the wagon by ordering a drink called a Blackjack. In fact, he orders several double Blackjacks.

This one poses a problem. I've tried to order a Blackjack in a bar before, and nobody ever knows what I'm talking about. (I get some funny looks when I order a Stinger, too, come to think of it.) Furthermore, Google can find you several different recipes that identify themselves as such, but no two of which have a single ingredient in common. Weird. Is it (1) gin, kirschwasser, and creme de cassis? (2) Scotch, Kahlua, triple sec and lemon? (3) Kirschwasser, brandy, and black coffee? (4) Blackberry brandy, regular brandy, Jägermeister and heavy cream? God, I hope not.

Let's settle this method once and for all, democratically, using the Google recipe method. I'll Google the word "Blackjack" with each combination of ingredients to see how many hits I get.

(1) 518 pages;
(2) 532 pages;
(3) 21,000 pages;
(4) 975 pages.

That worked better than I thought it would. It wasn't the recipe I was pulling for, but it's settled: a Blackjack is some combination of kirschwasser, brandy, and cold coffee. This would come out the right color, but most recipes call for it to be shaken and strained -- Detective Nick Whatever drinks it on the rocks. Also, it seems unlikely that a guy into such extreme levels of vice would favor such a girlie drink. Maybe it's just a random word that Joe Eszterhas thought sounded drink-like. I'd say, if you're going to pair this drink with the movie, punch it up by substituting kahlua for coffee, and throw some vodka in there. On second thought, maybe you should just have a beer with this one. I think they drink beer in this movie.

Die Another Day
In most of the Bond pictures, Agent OO7 is pretty predictable with his drinks. He likes his vodka martinis shaken not stirred, of course -- as if anyone stirs a martini. And he likes unreasonably expensive champagnes -- who doesn't? But occasionally he finds himself in the odd exotic locale known for its local drink, and as Bond will tell you, when in such a land "one should delve deeply into its treasures." (Imagine Roger Moore saying that in the most sleazy way possible -- referring to a harem of Egyptian women as well as to a local liqueur -- for a less memorable scene from The Spy Who Loved Me.)

Die Another Day sends Bond to Cuba, where he drinks, thank you Jesus, the Mojito. This is a drink I know how to make, dammit. It's a rum drink with lime juice, mixed with mint and sugar -- delicious, but most people can't drink more than a couple of them because they're so sweet. My very scientific recipe called for 20 crushed mint leaves, 7 tablespoons of sugar, 6 limes (or, if you have the patience, 18 key limes), and 10-12 ounces of rum for a batch of what turned out to be about four Mojitos. When you're ready to serve it, add a splash of soda (I usually used generic Lemon-Lime soda). I liked to go crazy with the garnishes, to highlight each of the non-alcoholic ingredients: a spring of mint, a half of a key lime, and a few inches of sugar cane (which doubles as a chewable stir).

Casino Royale
I was pleased that they adapted, for the latest Bond film, one of the more memorable scenes from the source material, in which Bond orders a very strong, very big drink that he names the Vesper after the sneaky broad he's falling for. The vodka martini is so obvious -- the Vesper should be the drink you associate with James Bond.

Unfortunately, you'll never taste the Vesper the way Bond did (which is perhaps all the more appropriate -- you can't kill people like James Bond, so you shouldn't be drinking his drink either, Poindexter.) Originally, Bond's very specific recipe called for a lot of Gordon's gin, some vodka, and Kina Lillet, these days (and even when the book was written) just known as Lillet.

Vodka and gin are both less potent than they were when Bond invented his liver-busting drink; Gordon's gin, ordered by name in the novel, is probably not appropriate anymore. But the real problem is Lillet, which underwent a change for the less bitter in the 1980s when its quinine content was lowered. You could add some quinine of your own, or Angostura bitters, but it'll never be quite the same, will it? As Bond says in the end of the novel and the film, "the bitch is dead."

"From the studio that brought you Daddy Day Care"

Julia and I just got back from The Simpsons Movie, which was fronted by a trailer for Daddy Day Camp, the sequel to Daddy Day Care, in which Eddie Murphy inexplicably starts a day care center in spite of being actionably inept.

This trailer is remarkable. Here are some highlights...

1. Eddie Murphy has been replaced by Cuba Gooding, Jr. Think about that. Eddie Murphy, the man currently best known for his multiple roles in the career-defining Norbit -- a film so bad, you can rent it from the McDonalds "Red Box" service -- was not willing to appear in this sequel. For his stand in they had to get Norbit co-star and Oscar^tm winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Best Actor, Radio¹)
2. In fact, this film is so un-promising that absolutely nobody from the original wanted to be involved, as evidenced by the ominous phrase, "From the studio that brought you Daddy Day Care." Really. You thought it was overboard when they started marketing films as being "from the producer of" other films. Well, they've taken it a step further. My question: Why not say it's from the studio that brought you Spider-Man 2?
3. One of the best trailer lines, possibly ever...Cuba's skeptical wife, upon hearing his premise-inducing plan to take Daddy Day Care to its next logical step, points out: "But you hate the outdoors!" Sounds like a recipe for ZANY!!!

Will DDC2 be the next Snow Dogs? Or will it turn out to be another Boat Trip?² Keep your browser tuned to Furdell Dot Com -- your headquarters for all things Daddy Day Camp-related -- for round-the-clock coverage. You know, you should really set our site as your browser's home page.

¹ I assume.
² I think that how you interpret the last two sentences says a lot about you as a person.

Liveblogging my Last 6pm Broadcast

Julia and I are moving to Seattle on Wednesday, and today is my last day directing at KEZI. In under two years, I worked my way up from part time "technical" director on morning shows, to full-time real-life director of the station's signature show: the hour-long 6pm/6:30pm broadcasts. (I also direct the 11pm news, but nobody cares.) Quite an achievement, I think, for someone with absolutely no television experience coming into this place. I've had a lot of fun here, and learned a lot. Hooray for me.

After many months of practice, directing live television has become a bit too easy for me, so in a way I'm glad to be moving on to new challenges. In fact, directing is so easy that I can do a perfect job even while typing during commercial breaks and long packages.

6:14
We're about to go into the weather block. Before the show, Brad, the Senior Director, revealed a carrot cake he'd bought for my departure, which was really cool. Before the show I told the crew, "It's my last 6 o'clock show, so in the words of General Custer, 'Don't fuck up.'"

No fuck-ups so far, except that a transmitter somewhere apparently exploded, causing us to lose our "Relay for Life" remote live shot while we were in the middle of its package -- which only meant the anchors had to read the tag, so it looked fine on your set at home, even if my producer was visibly irritated.

6:20
All week we've been airing excerpts from local celebrity Rick Dancer's latest "Rick Dancer Reports" special, "The Not-So-Wild West." In each segment, he goes to a tiny backwater Oregon town where the inhabitants would seem to prefer that he had not gone there in the first place. Today he's somewhere called "Enterprise," population 2002 (consistently, since the 1920s -- weird). Like all small Oregon towns, they fear city folk, change, and growth.

This package is about four minutes. On a job interview in Seattle I learned that up there they never run a package of more than 1 minute in duration. (There's a little less actually newsworthy stuff going on here.)

6:28:
The D/E block break, after the end of the 6pm and before the start of the 6:30 -- the break in which we have to do the most adjusting, swapping out anchors and whatnot -- is the shortest break. What's that about?

6:34
Two news helicopters covering the same high-speed chase collided in Phoenix today. Like many news items, it's both tragic and kind of awesome.

6:36
In KEZI tradition, before the show I used a label maker to put my name on the ever-expanding Wall of Quitters. The station has a lot of trouble keeping people around, for a lot of reasons. I'm only leaving because Julia and I want to seek out opportunities in Seattle, but a lot of people quit because of management decisions around here. Check out Oregon Media Insiders for intermittent updates on the madness at KEZI.

6:43
It just occured to me that I missed a chance at another KEZI quitting tradition: I should have made a fool of myself on the Newsroom camera during the 5pm broadcast. Ah well.

My producer, a drastically overworked pregnant woman, had to leave "early" (actually really late, considering she'd have left at 5:30pm if we had a regular evening producer -- we haven't had one for weeks). I'm determined to finish the show early enough to roll credits.

6:49
We're twenty seconds heavy -- already my plan to roll credits is jeopardized. But I shall prevail.

6:52
Give Michael Vick credit -- at least he got in trouble for something original.

6:58
We did get credits in -- but at the expense of the copyright. Oops! Now I can upload the whole broadcast on YouTube.

Stan Lee's Soapbox: April 1992

Behold: the text of Stan Lee's "Soapbox" column, as it appeared in all Marvel comics cover-dated April 1992, just over ten years before Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was released in theaters. Bold emphasis is mine; caps or italics are all Stan; and I've added hyperlinks to explain the references that only nerds would understand.

Hi, Heroes!

Remember this date -- October '91! It was one of the biggest, most important months in the halcyon history of mighty Marvel! What made it so important? Hey, I thought you'd never ask!

In previous Soapboxes I gave you a number of hints about big things happening out here in Hollywood, big things that I wasn't free to talk about until the contracts were signed and the deals were closed. Well, now it's official! The biggest movie project we've ever planned is now under way -- and if you guessed SPIDER-MAN, then award yourself a twelve-cylinder no-prize with fuel injection!

But here's the most exciting part -- guess who's gonna write, direct, and produce the first ever big-budget, feature film of the world's most famous wall-crawler? Wouldja believe James Cameron?!! That's right, Bunky, the same fabulous, super-fantastic filmmaker who bestowed upon a wildly cheering, wide-eyed world such monster hits as ALIENS, THE ABYSS and the two titanic TERMINATOR thrillers! So you can take this to the bank, Believer -- SPIDER-MAN is destined to be the biggest, boldest, baaaaadest blockbustin' bombshell of a super hero action extravaganza ever to hit the screen!

Now then, before you start bombarding us with letters and phone calls asking who's gonna star in our fabulous forthcoming flick, or who the villain will be, let me advise you that those decisions haven't yet been made. First, the story has to be structured and then a screenplay written. That will probably take months because we're all determined to make it the greatest action thriller of all. But as soon as more info comes through, even faster than you can wiggle your webs you'll get the scoop via the ol' Soapbox column as well as in the various newsletters we'll be sending to all the Wild Agents of Marvel!

And next issue, on this very same page, if Irving Forbush doesn't elope with Aunt May in the next thirty days, I'll bring you some additional exciting news about X-MEN hitting the screen! Who says this isn't the Marvel Age of Awesome Announcements?

Excelsior!

Backstory: I've been looking for this Soapbox for years, because I remembered Stan's empty promise from my misbegotten youth. I just happened across it while reading Iron Man #279, part 13 of the sprawling Operation: Galactic Storm crossover.

Cameron's treatment for his aborted Spider-Man movie was so long that it's popularly called a "scriptment," and apparently it's available online. Apparently the bad guy was Electro (but as a suit-wearing business executive rather than an accident-prone electrician). As I recall, back then they were touting Leonardo DiCaprio as Peter Parker. What a different, darker world this could have been.

X-Men of course didn't come out until July 2000. I've not found the May 1992 Bullpen Bulletin, but I will, Stan. And your lies will be exposed for all the world to see! I will have vengeance, Stan Lee! Yes I will!

e-MixTape: The Internet's Next Big Thing

You heard it here first!

Trolling the torrent-verse this week, I found an album that seems to suit me perfectly. It's called Underdogs Never Say Die: Best of 80s Movies Fight Back Rock Anthems. Wordy title. It has like three songs from Rocky IV, so I'm sold.

Well, I downloaded it, and it doesn't have any kind of track listing. I thought I'd Google it to find out the retail version's track order.

But...there is no retail version! I didn't steal an album at all -- I got someone's mix tape!

I've never seen anyone share a mix tape on the internet before, so I'm hereby declaring this the Next Big Thing. Remember me when you read about it in Wired or whatever. I found it first.