oscar cocktails, other pairings

Ken Walczak keeps up his cutting commentary and cocktail-making. The subject of his scourge this time around: everyone involved in the Oscar-host fiasco.

How do you give a dude like Brett Ratner a proper sendoff? How about with a shot of Kansas Spirit. … Kansas Spirit bills itself as “whiskey without the middle-aged yuck factor.” I bill it as nonsense, inspired by poseurs—and as the perfect pour for a Hollywood douchebag whose accomplishments include sleeping with women half his age, then publicly ridiculing their appearance, sexual performance, and ethnic background; linking the words “masturbation” and “shrimp grease” in the public imagination; and the music video for “Pink Cookies in a Plastic Bag Being Crushed by Buildings.”

In other cocktail news, Drinkify pairs a drink to what you’re listening to. When listening to Gayngs’ 69-beats-per-minute groove, you should pour yourself six ounces of gin, served neat with a grapefruit twist. Phantogram requires a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale garnished with a cucumber. The “Of Montreal” is a bottle of Captain Morgan shaken up with a Monster energy drink.

I couldn’t stump it. They even had a drink recommendation for WU LYF: 10 oz. Microbrew, 10 oz. Lime juice, 6 oz. Damson Gin.

My musical tastes are apparently pretty narrow. Red wine was a popular pairing, from Wilco to Bon Iver to Mugison. The last I’m not sure about. More like eight ounces of Jack Daniels poured into a cup of boiling hot coffee, or a martini made with fish oil. SIMS was a surprise: water. Maybe the hip-hop artist doesn’t drink?

Check it out for yourself. I imagine there have been plenty of Drinkify-themed parties. People take turns choosing an artist and listening to the track the site plays while mixing up a new drink. Everyone has to finish it before the song ends. Could be fun. If I was DJ, though, everyone would apparently be asleep.

toast to the 9-9-9

I subscribed to GOOD’s Food Hub immediately. As an alternative media outlet, it promised to ignore conventional boundaries regularly. “We believe food is too important a topic to restrict the conversation to the usual suspects,” Nicola Twilley wrote when the online hub launched. “You’ll be as likely to meet a commodity trader, a synthetic biologist, or an industrial archaeologist as a chef or food activist … because both a neuroscientist and dishwasher have something interesting to tell us about what food is—and what it could be.”

But at some point I lost interest in what it was doing. The stories were becoming predictable (“New Farmers Markets Provide Health, Jobs Boost”) or sensational (“Child Slaves Made Your Halloween Candy. Stop Buying It.”) or just stupid (“The 10 Greatest Scanwiches Ever Scanned”). And yet, I didn’t delete it from my Reader. I kept checking in, browsing the headlines before clicking “Mark all as read.” Then today—snared no doubt by the name of a certain Republican candidate—I clicked “The 9-9-9: A Cocktail Inspired By Herman Cain.” Here’s what I discovered: