Tag: observations

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The history of Rum is the history of US

Why do I drink aged rum?

Liquor storefront in NYC

Consider this my ode to aged rum.

Merriam-Webster defines distillation as the process of purifying a liquid by successive evaporation and condensation.

Removal through fire and heat, if you will, of all that is not the essence of something.

  • Brandy is the purified essence of wine.
  • Whiskey is the purified essence of beer.*

And rum? Well, the French call traditional rum, ruhm industrial for a very particular reason.

Rum is made of industrial waste. It is the distilled essence of industrial waste, then.

It’s made from molasses, the waste byproduct of sugar manufacturing. It was the leftover, black soupy crap that gummed up the works of the sugar machines. An annoyance at best.

You couldn’t give the stuff away.

But people discovered that you could ferment it and distill it and get a drink so terrible that it could kill the devil himself, so they called it Kill-Devil.

Later, as all good marketers do, it was re-branded to Rum and it stuck.

Now the rum that most people drink is essentially like moonshine.

It’s only a step or two above the Kill-Devil stuff they made back in the day. However, if you took a barrel that was burned on the inside – to kill bacteria and germs – put rum in that barrel, and then put that barrel on a ship bound for distant lands, it becomes something more.

It ages. It mellows. It becomes the best version of itself.

Crack open a bottle of aged rum and it’s something completely different from its roots.

I drink aged rum because I like how it tastes. And because I imagine I’m a pirate. And because one can drink buckets of the stuff and not have a hangover.

But it’s also because it’s like finding your people.

You like someone initially because of some small connection but as you delve further, you find you’re more similar than different.

I like to think of aged rum like me: Thoroughly American – despite outward appearances – with a sense of history, descended from people no one wanted, bound for distant shores, rough and crude in my youth and better with time.

And, with time, I’m hoping I’ll be better still.

Glass of aged rum

*For some additional reading on rum, pick up a copy of  And a Bottle of Rum by Wayne Curtis – it was he who pointed out the Brandy/Whiskey/Rum distinction. Great book and it comes with rum recipes (!)

While you’re at it, pick up a bottle of Cruzan Single-Barrel Rum and have it on the rocks with a thick slice of orange that you partially squeezed into a whiskey glass.

If you close your eyes, you can just about imagine sunnier shores.

Location: about to run to the gym
Mood: finally rested
Music: if you’re right, you’ll agree, here’s coming a better version of me
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Insomnia and a day of meetings on tap

Another sleepless night

Had a bunch of things I wanted to write about but a particularly bad bout of insomnia this week has made it so that everything’s hazy. A copy of a copy of a copy.

Last night a car alarm kept my entire building awake as well so that was beyond irritating. Wanted to go outside with a sledgehammer.

Now I’ve got to slap myself awake and prep for a day of meetings from 11AM to 7:30PM. No fun.

In some ways, NYC and I are in an abusive relationship. She treats me terribly but her charms are enough that I stay. Some of us are just nighthawks, I suppose.

Apparently Billy Joel feels the same way too; check out this vid with him and a random Vanderbuilt college kid named Michael Pollock that wants to play the piano with him.

Here’s the thing: If you never ask, there’s zero chance you’ll get what you want. The risk one takes by opening the mouth and asking changes everything.

Everything good comes from the asking. Michael Pollock asked to play and Joel said yes.

Guess it’s time for another meeting.

Why yes, I will have another cup of coffee…

Mood: ex-fricken-hausted
Music: so easy livin’ day by day Out of touch with the rhythm and blues
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If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything

These are two people who don’t know the definition of “Great”

Hitler, I am beginning to feel, is a very great man, like an inspired religious leader…not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power, but a mystic, a visionary who really wants the best for his country….

— Charles Lindbergh on meeting Adolf Hitler (1936)

He’s a great guy.

— Dennis Rodman on meeting Kim Jong Un (2013)

Idiots.

Imagine for a moment that you remembered everything you ever learned. Ever high school lesson, every cooking recipe, everything. You would probably be the smartest person on earth.

But the opposite is also true; if you don’t learn anything from the past, you may end up the dumbest person on earth.

While we’re all stupid on different subjects, the universally stupid seem to be those people that refuse to learn anything about history. Because history is nuthin if not repetitive.

Michael Crichton once said that, If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.

Unfortunately, if Facebook has taught me anything, it’s that people have zero sense of history. Yet they’re part of a greater collective, a greater tree of stupid.

This worries me.

Then again, I can hardly count myself amongst the truly smart.

Her: Didn’t you just say those chips were making you feel sick?
Me: Yes.
Her: They why are you continuing to eat them?!
Me: (mouthful of chips) I’m not.

———-

My buddy Ji just started a blog too so here’s a little plug for him – Better Pickled.

And while I’m at it, please check out artist Dana Burns, who left NYC to be an artist in France and posts in both English and French! Grenobloise

Mood: busy
Music: He’s so simple minded he can’t drive his module
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People used to say “And the winner is…” not “And the Oscar goes to…”

All men are created equal; we don’t stay that way

Didn’t watch the Oscars last night. Just not my thing. But I did manage to catch the very end of it where they’re singing a song to the “losers.” Found that interesting.

Because, I don’t know if you noticed, but they never say: And the winner is… like they used to; now they only say: And the Oscar goes to… .

The reason is obvious, they don’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are, indeed, winners and losers in life.

Which brings me to a friend of mine. Like most people, he only knows part of a saying and not the whole thing: It’s not just that “Curiosity killed the cat,” the saying finishes: “Satisfaction brought him back.”

That means the saying is exactly the opposite of what most people think it is.

It’s only after the cat’s curiosity is satisfied that he’s made whole again. Without satisfaction, curiosity was killing him.

As for my friend. He thinks the saying is, Everyone is equal. That is not the saying. People are decidedly not equal.

99.99% of the course of your life depends on the parents to whom you are born.

All men/people are created equal, but time, tide, and effort means that no one stays that way.

I have been wrasslin for over a decade now, on and off. I’m terrible.

However, I’m a pretty good fencer. Certainly not the best, but definitely not the worst. And the reasons for the two are the same: time, tide, and effort.

Put in much more time at being a good fencer than I did at being a good wrestler and my injuries mean that I can still fence but not wrassle.

Getting back to my friend, he’s also my fencing student but refuses to show me the proper respect as his instructor. That’s forgivable to an extent because he’s my friend.

But the moment he even hinted at disrespect for my instructor, I had to ask him to stop coming.

He had an easy out: apologize, pay a fine, and we could all move on with our lives.

And yet, he refused.

He only knows me as his drinking buddy Logan, his equal. And when we drink, we are. But put a weapon in my hand and I’m far and away not his equal.

And the reason is simple: I earned it, I worked for it.

The problem is the same with the Oscars, with the the soccer trophies everyone wins for just showing up, and him.

They confuse equality to equality of effort. They are not the same.

The other issue is that the other students have been part of other schools, and teams with coaches. They understand that they submit to the will of the instructor for two reasons: (a) safety and (b) to get better.

He does not understand this. At some point, one earns the right to be treated as an equal but he has not – not yet in this arena at least. I’m disappointed in both him and the situation.

To excel in something, one must bend. The winners in life are not the ones that futility fight everything but the ones that bend, learn, and come back for more.

If I had to rename this blog from On (or close to) Schedule, it would be to: If you can be anything, be bendy. I’ve said it a million times to him and everyone else.

We face a choice daily to be broken or be bendy; those that consistently choose the latter are the ones that survive and excel.

The door is always open for him, if he’s willing to pay the price of admission.

And a major part of the price is to shut up and learn from someone that did just that.

Mood: disappointed
Music: I won’t be coming this way again. Burn them bridges down
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I just need a pair of scissors

If you lost everything, what would be the one thing you need?

Bagpipes

Had a lot of things I wanted to write this week but I found out that an aunt of mine died.

We were never really close, but she was always there since I was a kid. In fact, I learned more about her after she passed than I ever knew while she was living.

For example, she managed people in a garment business for almost 25 years. She was hired to be a seamstress but was so talented that she was immediately promoted to manage all of them, despite speaking almost no English.

She never had much scratch because she was always giving what little she had away to charities; she had just given away several thousand to Hurricane Sandy victims and volunteered for several weeks.

She didn’t worry, though, cause she’d always say that as long as she had a pair of scissors to make clothes, she’d be ok.

That made me think: If I lost everything, if I just had a keyboard, or even a pencil and paper, I’d be ok.

Maybe teach fencing on the side for some extra coin. After all, the limits of our imagination are the limits of our world.

Getting back to her, the last thing I learned was there was no body at the funeral. She donated her body to medical students at Hofstra University and her organs to five families that needed it.

Think that impressed me the most. In her last act, she still managed to help people. We all have our three lives.

Wish I knew all of the above about her when she was alive. But we’re all always so busy aren’t we?

You never can tell about other people. Said it before, we are made in our sleep to be heroes or villains.

She was a nice old lady. Nicer even than I knew. She lived a life worth living and that’s something, isn’t it?

Mood: impressed
Music: there are some with no home, not a nickel to loan
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Signal versus noise: My plans, my pad, my people, my poison, and my person

From my sis regarding my mom. Except for the Vietnamese and the fact nonea us were ever the valedictorian, it’s pretty accurate.

Find it oddly touching for reasons I can’t fully explain. Says Happy Mother’s Day better than anything I could write so let’s just leave it at that.

Brunch foor

Stayed over at my parents and then had brunch over at my old college buddy’s place downtown over the weekend. A report came out that said that the key to happiness is human relations – you can watch it here.

Sounds right to me, iron sharpens iron and all of that.

The bacon doesn’t hurt, either.

A business blog I read’s named Signal Vs. Noise. The name comes from an engineering phrase that differentiates between the amount of useful information being transmitted versus that which’s just useless noise.

People around me’re always telling me stuff. I could be a great ______ if only I ______.

The assumption is, of course, that I dunno what I’m doing, which’s a bit insulting in and of itself. Actually do have a plan and, despite unexpected calamities, have managed to stick to that plan.

Y’know the difference between strategy and tactics? A strategy’s the big goal (Capture or kill Osama bin Laden); tactics are how you attain that goal (conventional warfare or propaganda). People confuse the two all of time, which’s fine, except when they try to push their inability to differentiate upon me.

My tactics shift constantly, as they should, but my strategy never changes.

There’s this section in Made to Stick where the author talks about the Tapper Game. It’s comprised of two players; one’s a tapper that taps out a song on a table, and the other’s a listener that tries to figure out the song. Participants thought they’d get about 50% right; the actual number was less than 2%.

Why?

Cause the tapper, the one tapping out the song, already knew the song in his head and could “hear” it. The one listening to only the tapping couldn’t.

That there’s, in my opinion, about 90% of what’s wrong with all human relationships. The stuff you hear in your head isn’t what the other guy hears. After a while, y’get tired of explaining stuff and either give up or continue to argue.

Am old enough to try and listen to other points of views and make my own decisions. But I’ve got a plan, a strategy, a song I hear in my own head. And I’ve got the results I wanted from these plans – my pad, my people, my poison, and my person. Which means that the song in my head is the right song for me.

And that’s the other thing, it’s my song.

It’s noise to you but signal to me.

Location: in front of my computer as always
Mood: irritated
Music: (the song in my head)

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Disappointment

It’s really the disappointment that wears you down

Sitting on a street curb in NYC

 

Me: You don’t care at all about that? It’s part of what makes a woman attractive.
Him: (laughing) Some like the attic, some like the basement. I’m a basement man, you’re an attic man.
Me: Well, that’s certainly a colourful way of putting it.
Him: (sighing) I still love her, y’know. Even though she’s evil.
Me: She’s pure evil. (patting him on shoulder) But I know. It’ll get better.

Take a lot of classes. Classes for wrasslin, fencing, law, etc.

Was talking to one of my instructors the other day, who’s been doing his thing for 20 years. We’ve known each other maybe seven/eight years. Told me outta the blue that he’s gonna be calling it quits soon.

This surprised me.

Me: Why?
Him: I can’t take the disappointment any more.
Me: (confused) The disappointment of your students quitting? Or the disappointment of them not practicing? Or of them not caring?
Him: (nodding) Yes.

It’s sad but true. My friends don’t wanna date cause it’s really the disappointment that gets you. Others have stopped looking for work. Still others have stopped trying to take those chances.

It’s bound to happen some time. He’s in his late 50s so maybe it’s time.

Still, it kept me up the other night. Something about teachers requires that they hope that someone listens, someone cares – no matter how many times they’re disappointed. It’s a hard and often thankless job.

So, climbed outta bed and practiced quietly in the dark. 1, 2, 3…

Location: in the back room
Mood: pensive
Music: It’s too late – much too late, too late for the young gun
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Art is…

The One where Logan rants about ranting

Almost Tribeca, NY

Her: If I left, I’d just take my stuff and walk out the door. You’re not a jerk so I don’t need one.
Me: Ok then, so I won’t write up a prenup if we ever get hitched.
Her: (laughing) It’s funny, we’re planning out the divorce before we’re planning out the marriage.

Immediately prior to Lincoln’s Getteysburg’s Address – which was only ten minutes long – a fella gave a two-hour, 13,607-word speech. You know who that was? Me neither. Cause no one remembers or cares.

Have you ever read just crap poetry? Or seen crap art in general? You thought, in some fashion, How the hell is this art?

When you’re a kid, you think that art is all about unfettered freedom and novelty. But real art comes from limiting yourself. It’s about conveying the maximum depth of meaning with as little possible – words, time, paint, whatever.

Art’s efficient.

Look, my drivel’s not art, but I still try. Whenever I’m done writing, pour a cup of joe, sigh, and then start whittling down.

Almost all of Shakespeare’s stuff’s in iambic pentameter, which is freaking hard enough without a delete key. Oscar Wilde wrote the shortest telegram in history to ask his publisher how his book was doing.

Oscar: ?
Publisher: !

Art only happens with restraint; and if you’re writing and not getting a dime for it, it should be art somehow, yeah?

Otherwise it’s just ranting and ranting is worse than a waste. It’s a bore.

Location: waiting to wrassle
Mood: melting
Music: You’re not here but it’s ok I assure you babe

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Hedy: King of two, Jack of four

Hedy Lamarr is one of my heroes; she should be yours too

Heady Lamarr - not my copyright, obviously

Met up with this nice fella who congratulated me on some of the work in one of my professions.

Him: At some point, you’ll have to pick one. You can’t be a Jack-of-all-Trades.
Me: I’m not, I’m King of two, Jack of four.

Hedy Lamarr was this major actress back in the day. If you said her name round the 30s/40s, everyone knew her like we know Angelina.

She was also a major spy for the allies against the Nazis, which is pretty cool.

But that’s not even the coolest thing about her. The coolest thing about her is that she changed my life; and yours. In fact, she changed the world.

She came up with the underpinning of Wifi and secure cellular/mobile calls.

In other words, I couldn’t write this sitting in bed if not for this actress.

  • The fellas I fence with probably only know me as the best fencer in the class.
  • The fellas I wrestle with probably only know me as the worst wrestler in the class.
  • My clients probably only know me as a tech lawyer.
  • My other clients know me as the guy with that fancy new designation.
  • You folks probably only know me as a NYC insomniac with an incredibly nerdtastic blog.

Funny thing’s that I’m none of these things in my head.

People always wanna peg you as one thing or another; makes it easier for them to know how to treat you. And when y’re young, you don’t know what you are yet so you try on different things as you figure it out – the bow-tie wearing conservative, the flower-power girl, etc. That’s fine when you’re a kid.

But at some point you gotta be something more than a cliche.

Be anything you wanna be; but I hope you aspire to be more than a cliche. Hope you aspire to have more than a big screen TV.

May be a dork, yeah, but I’m the only dork of my kind.

Location: no place special
Mood: conflicted
Music: my tears don’t show, but oh honey, they flow

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Time¬=Money; Time>Money

Time isn’t money; time is so much more valuable than money

Antique clock

 

To add to the list of things that have the air of truth to them but no real truth at all, lemme give you one I particularly despise: Time Equals Money.

A buddy of mine put up this thing quoting just that and it reminded me that that’s gotta be one of the stupidest beliefs a body could hold.

Time is so much more valuable than money. Money, you can make and spend; time you can only spend.

Put another way, if given X years to live, how much would you pay for one more year?

Any idiot can make a buck. But in 432,329,886,000,000,000 seconds, no one’s figured out how to make an extra second for themselves.

Working at jobs you hate, to buy things you don’t need, to impress those you don’t know. That’s crazy.

So, if given the chance to make an extra $1,000 or go see your grandma, go see your grandma.

I didn’t and I gotta live with that for all of the seconds I got left.

———-

Sick again. You know the drill, please send soup.

Location: in bed
Mood: sick
Music: with you I’m having a good time I don’t mind
YASYCTAI: At least give her a call. (10 mins/1 pt)