Boozeature

I, T.Mixeur as they call me (editor's note: no one calls him that), have been quite busy over the previous few weeks. There was Le Mixeur Chaton Ralph, which was a success, raising well over $500 for Le Kitty Cat (after my expenses of course, including the all day spa I treated myself to the day after, not to mention the catered spread in my dressing room before the event). There was the Absinthe event, which required no work on my part but I mention here just to announce it played to a packed house. For those of you who did not attend, you missed the truly awesome spectacle that was Paul Clarke's Wrestlemania-style entrance, donning a sequined robe, pumping his fists in the air as the electrifying strains of "Eye of the Tiger" blared across the P.A.

I've also been pouring my writing energies into the new and improved version of Left Coast Libations, which is going to be completed by the end of April, printed by the end of June, and available in book stores by 2017. And what little leftover writing impulses that have remained have gone into the writing of an article for Drink Me magazine. Drink Me is a new, Bay Area based magazine about the culture and lifestyle of bars and booze. They're hoping to project that same edgy, hip, in your face bombast that folks have come to expect from Le Mixeur, so it was a natural fit. My article is about why it's fun to go to your favorite bars, wear an Optimus Prime helmet, and sing Christmas carols. Oh wait, it's about female bartenders. Whatev. Same diff.



At any rate, this is all just me, in my own inimitably long-winded way, making excuses for having let over a month go by without a post on this blog. And now today, I return only to paste in someone else's writing. In trying to write about booze in a creative, literary way, I've taken to mining for examples of writing about booze that are creative and literary. When I find one that's even more flowery and ridiculously over the top than anything even I could inflict upon the world, I must share. I'll post examples of this “Boozeature” from time to time. Today, we'll start with M. Somerset Maugham, as first printed in “Of Human Bondage.”

Enjoy...

"They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous terms, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit, and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the preciseness of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else; it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel were not to be described in words. Charles Lamb, with his infinite tact, might have drawn charming pictures of the life of his day; Lord Byron in a stanza of Don Juan, aiming at the impossible, might have achieved the sublime; Oscar Wilde, heaping jewels of Ispahan upon brocades of Byzantium, might have created a troubling beauty. Considering it, the mind reeled under visions of the feasts of Elagabalus; and the subtle harmonies of Debussy mingled with the musty, fragrant romance of chests in which have been kept old clothes, ruffs, hose, doublets, of a forgotten generation, and the wan odour of lilies of the valley and the savour of cheddar cheese."

Well done indeed, M. If that is your real name. You kind of lost me with the cheddar cheese bit there at the end, but otherwise...Huzzah!



Comments

erik.ellestad said…
I don't know if I would call it an "Improved" version of "Left Coast Libations". Especially since I'm not in it.

:-P
T. Mixeur said…
You are stabbing my heart with red hot pokers of guilt, Mr Flannestad...if that is your real name.

I was saving this as a surprise, but the next book is going to be all about you. It will be 400 pages long and feature plagiarized prose from M. Somerset Maugham.