Man, what a crummy week for our country. Our thoughts/prayers/positive vibes go out to everyone affected by the horrifying events in Boston, and to those left disappointed by a certain legislative body’s inaction/capitulation to special interests in DC.*
* Ex-Boyfriend loves and supports all 27 Constitutional Amendments. Please don’t be a troll.
So what’s the best thing to do? Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, have a nice drink (alcoholic or otherwise), and get right back on the horse — once you’re fit to ride again, of course!
Thankfully, New York Magazine has got us covered, libation-wise: earlier this week they published their 50-state cocktail travelogue — a perfect pairing for those brave souls that each year attempt to visit all 30 Major League Baseball parks in a single summer.
As I went through the list, I was surprised by how many cocktails from the Midwest appealed to my palate compared to the ones on offer from the coastal states. Of the 51 cocktails profiled (no taxation without representation, amirite DC?!), the following states offered the most-delicious sounding (in terms of ingredients) & looking ones:
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• North Dakota
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Vermont
• Washington, DC
• West Virginia
Also, no offense to Rye in Baltimore — I’ve had some nice cocktails there — but seriously, Bad Decisions deserves any and all cocktail love bestowed upon Charm City from out-of-town media. John Reusing started the cocktail renaissance that Baltimore has been enjoying the last few years, and all drunken high-fives are owed to that dude and his stellar staff of mixologists.
Anyway, I think my favorite drink of the 51 that were featured might be the Maridel, from the Parlor Market in Jackson, Mississippi:
In a shaker, muddle the cucumber-infused simple syrup and 4 or 5 leaves of basil. Add 2 ounces Cathead honeysuckle vodka and 1/2 ounce lime juice. Shake with ice and double strain through a sieve into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with a lime wheel and basil leaf.
Delicious!
(Via TheKitchn.com, by way of Adj! Special legal shout-out to photographer Melissa Hom and drink stylist Ian Knauer — please don’t sue me!)
p.s. – Denver & Vegas fans! Don’t forget to let me know, either via the comments section here on the blog, our Facebook wall, or our Twitter feed, which bar to meet you at when we’re in your respective cities on the nights of the 29th (Denver) and 30th (Las Vegas)! Your first round is on me if you show up wearing Ex-Boyfriend gear, and we’ll have free swag for folks at the bar whether you’re wearing our fly styles or not!
If you like interactive art AND being woken up in the middle of the night, you might want to look into joining Call In the Night, an “experimental radio show and telephone network documenting the nighttime experience” created by Carnegie Mellon student Max Hawkins.
Here’s how it works:
1. Sign up and provide your phone number
2. Once a week, you’ll be connected to another member of the network sometime after 2AM EST and have the ensuing conversation (which can be more or less about anything, but they seem to largely be about dreams and nighttime activities) recorded
3. Select conversations are then included in the Call In the Night podcast
Now, I’m all for engaging in some good, clean dream analysis, but woe be to those who would wake me from my slumber. That said, here’s a recent entry from my own lobes:
I had a dream a couple weeks ago in which I was President Obama, but in the dream, President Obama is an anthropomorphic elephant (irony!) wearing a killer three-piece suit and tooling around the U.S. on a motorcycle in order to better understand the concerns of ordinary Americans and craft policy accordingly. You know, standard POTUS taking-care-of-business. It’s no Denim Chicken, but really, what is?
We’re moving our company from Baltimore to Los Angeles! Along the way we plan to stop into Chicago for C2E2 and then for drinks in Denver and Las Vegas. Both cities are along the way to LA and make convenient stopping points on our trip!
If you’d like to meet up with us in Chicago:
Come to C2E2! It’s a really fun annual convention in Chicago that you need not be a geek to enjoy. The people watching is awesome and we’ll be there with special deals on Ex-Boyfriend products and loads of fun free swag!
If you’d like to meet up with us in Denver:
Suggest a bar! You can suggest in the comments below. You can suggest on our Facebook page. You can suggest by tweeting at us (@xboyfriend). We’ll pick a place and announce it ahead of time. We’ll swing through Denver on Monday April 29th and if you meet us for a drink wearing your Ex-Boyfriend (tee, belt, hoodie, bag, etc) we’ll buy you your first drink. We’ll also be handing out free swag to everyone we meet while supplies last.
If you’d like to meet up with us in Las Vegas:
Suggest a bar! You can suggest in the comments below. You can suggest on our Facebook page. You can suggest by tweeting at us (@xboyfriend). We’ll pick a place and announce it ahead of time. We’ll swing through Las Vegas on Tuesday April 30th and if you meet us for a drink wearing your Ex-Boyfriend (tee, belt, hoodie, bag, etc) we’ll buy you your first drink. We’ll also be handing out free swag to everyone we meet while supplies last.
From Japan, of course, you can now get a remote control broom and waste basket. I am not sure how well this would really clean but if you’re too lazy to get off your couch and instead use remote control cleaning tools you can’t be that particular about the quality of clean you’re going to get.
I have to say, I kinda love this story from BBC news. In short, this dad got fed up with his unemployed 23 year old son spending all day playing online video games, so he hired virtual assassins to kill his son’s avatar.
You know you’re spending too much time gaming when your parents are virtually trying to kill you.
If you have a habit of overdoing it when it comes to drinking science might have a solution. MIT graduate student Dhairya Dand has created ice cubes that let you know when you’re drinking too much.
Dubbed “cheers”, these cool ice cubes contain a circuit inside an edible jelly mold. The circuit monitors the number of sips you take and determines how drunk you are getting with a timer clocking the rate you’re knocking back those cocktails. As you start drinking too much the ice cubes change from glowing green to orange and then red.
If you keep drinking despite the warnings, the ice cubes can send a text message to a designated contact to let them know you’ve had a few too many.
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