This evening’s featured cocktail is the Stinger, a cool refreshing drink for a balmy Bon Temps night that makes an excellent dessert cocktail and pairs nicely with rich chocolate desserts. Jane Bodehouse* considers it the ideal drink to end a drunken binge at Merlotte’s before Tara calls her son to come pick her up.
Ingredients
3/4 oz brandy3/4 oz white creme de menthePreparation
Pour the ingredients into an old-fashioned glass with crushed ice, and stir well.orShake the ingredients with ice cubes and strained into a chilled cocktail glass.
In their heyday, Stingers were the drink to end a night on the town in New York, and they even made it to the big screen in The Apartment, a movie about loneliness, sex, and booze, among other things.
Here’s the big True Blood connection. (You knew it was coming, right?) The director of American Beauty (written by Alan Ball) used it for inspiration, and Kevin Spacey dedicated his Oscar to Jack Lemmon’s performance. The Apartment hits all of Alan Ball’s favorite themes: reality vs. illusion, empty consumerism, loneliness, self-destruction, addiction, and hypocrisy. It’s been described as a dirty fairytale. Is that great, or what? I’m going to have to remember to use that line for True Blood. Don’t you think AB would like that?
Any way, Stingers are of interest to us for another reason. They are the drink of choice in the Cary Grant comedy, Kiss Them for Me, a movie Grant fought the studios to make because it deals with PTSD. In the film, Grant’s character is a Navy procurer. While on leave, he procures a luxury hotel suite for his buddies and fills it with women and booze. To get his mind off the war, he flirts with the fiancée of one of his friends, which results in her throwing her engagement ring in the face of her husband-to-be and Grant declaring his love by the end of the movie.
I know I don’t have to draw y’all the parallels at this point, so I’ll just end by saying, ‘I’ll have what Jane Bodehouse is having…and make it a double.’
Oh Renee….don’t forget your hit of LSD to go with your stinger
The irony…I just read the newest issue of VF and there is a piece about the use of LSD as a psychoptherpy medication in the 1940′s by none other than Cary Grant!
ROTFL! Why am I having a flashback to Men in Black where the real news is only printed in the National Enquirer?
Time to add The Doors of Perception to the library?
Looks like it! Huxley’s description of his experience reminds me of Jason watching the sparks fly out of the magnolia flowers and a personal experience in hs of a “miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence” while examining a piece of shag carpet really close up.
I’m putting together a list of library additions and will have them cataloged and ready to be check out tomorrow.
Things seem to be getting stranger & stranger…
Didn’t AB admit at some point to having expanded his mind?
Mmight I also suggest, since things seem to be heading in that direction, Chaos & Cyberculture. I’ve just discovered it can be downloaded as a pdf!
I’ll tentatively add C&C. Might you be interested in writing blurbs for how DOP & C&C relate to TB?
IDK about AB expanding his mind…Anyone?
DOP – what you wrote about Jason’s experience reminding you of Huxley’s seems to be pertinent.
AB’s remark, I’ve looked but can’t find it, sorry, maybe I was dreaming but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t.
C&C – probably a totally off the wall suggestion as it came out of connecting RAW with Huxley and shouldn’t be added to the library, but I’ll try to have a go at a blurb sometime soon if that’s OK
Who knows, the way this is going C&C will probably come in to play eventually.
Thanks for doing the blurb. Sorry to have put you on the spot. Whenever is convenient for you is good.
Thanks for the recipe Renee…I be right back…15 minutes tops…brandy, check, white creme de menthe, check…oh…sheesh…make the a half, will ya?
But seriously…in the VF article about Hollywood use of LSD…Cary Grant met his 4th wife, Betsy Drake, ironically the heiress who’s Grandfather owned the Drake Hotel in Chicago, when she was on stage in London. He tracked her down, rode home on the same ship, The Queen Mary, and got his good buddy Merle Oberon to introduce them and proceeded to sweep her off her feet and married her. Then their marriage broke up because of Grant’s affair with Sophia Loren. Is it me? Does Alan Ball know the editor of VF? Does Bill think he’s a Cary Grant?
Thanks for the link to the VF article Osterby.
According to Prof Wikepedia there were rumours that Cary Grant was bisexual, so if Bill does think he’s Cary Grant…
Sorry to keep mentioning books but Lafayette quoted the Buddha to Tara so maybe The Dhammapada should be in there somewhere. I’ll shut up now (imagines large hand over mouth)
Right-O! Dhamapada–NEVER apologize for bringing up books around here, LOL!
Bill as Cary Grant? :O Now you are in serious danger of messing with my fantasy world, Anna.
It was Osterby who posed the question “Does Bill think he’s a Cary Grant?” I just took it a stage further…
Trying to be high minded, I suppose it’s AB that I’ll have to blame. Now that’s a new one for me considering that I’ve never complained about what he’s done to Bill before.