Given what I do for my day job, I need to stick to areas of my body typically concealed by business casual attire, which inconveniently forces me to at least partially disrobe in order to display my body art, so even if we’re pretty good friends in meatspace, you may not have realized I had any tattoos at all.

Well, I now have three, and I’ll quickly bring you up to speed on the extant two:

Cocktails are better than sad computers. (Right shoulder.)

These two bytes, as ASCII, are "gr". (Left shoulder.)

Okay, so that’s out of the way, then.

As anyone who has some (the only people who have only one tattoo are the ones who haven’t yet gotten the second one they have planned; this rule holds true up to at least the “have three, planning fourth” point) will tell you, and only those without tattoos will dispute: tattoos are addictive, and, generally, the scale and complexity of the work increases over time.

Operating under this natural law, I’d been planning, sketching, and discussing with friends the back tattoo for quite some time. The plan was this: the recipe for an Old Fashioned, the way I typically prepare it. And I drink a lot of these, especially in hotel rooms (I see a lot of those; the afore-mentioned day job had me on the road for 210 days in 2011), where all you need is a 3 oz or smaller dasher bottle to bring your own bitters along, the purchase of a bottle of spirits, and you’re set. (The sugar and stirring implement come from the coffee service, the ice comes from the ice machine down the hall or, in high rise hotels, a floor or two up or down.)

In November, as part of a campaign to burn off vacation days I couldn’t roll over before the end of calendar 2011, I visited my friend Louisa while our mutual friend Hannah was in the last weekend of a month-long visit. Louisa’s a reference librarian outside of Kansas City (tangent: when near Kansas City, or even just on a couple-hour-plus layover at [M,K]CI, make a point of visiting Justus Drugstore, where the sketch below was done, and where both the food and drinks are insanely great and a majority of the ingredients are sourced at least regionally if not locally), and Hannah’s a bona fide Artist.

Naturally, I recreated my lousy-quality sketch for Hannah, and she made it prettier:

Hannah's sketch for my Old Fashioned tattoo

Exactly how to represent “sugar” without it becoming confusing right next to “ice” was still in
debate at that point, but this is basically what my tattoo artist recreated.

That tattoo artist is Bird Gudice, who currently works, with three other extremely skilled artists (in many mediums: the shop’s got interesting paintings and sculptures scattered all over) at Black Vulture Gallery, conveniently right down the street from my house. Bird looked over Hannah’s sketch, discussed the sugar question (I’d finally come down on something I could describe but not draw: “You know, that canonical sugar jar, with a lid, and a little spoon poking out, labeled ‘SUGAR’.”), and proceeded to freehand the lines for the tattoo in water-soluble ink on my back. It looked right to me, so we started on the lines.

Ninety minutes later, I stepped outside for a cigarette while Bird prepped the shader needle. If you haven’t ever had a large colored or shaded tattoo, you won’t be familiar with this device: suffice to say that it’s actually somewhere between six and ten individual needles, mounted in the same tattoo gun. Yes, this hurts a lot: imagine dragging a cheese grater across your skin over and over and over
again. It’s just like that.

But this is a passing pain for something that you (or, I, in this case) want to have for the rest of your
(my) life, so it’s worth it. Counting breaks, the whole session took about four and a half hours. I understand now that that’s generally considered “way too long”: after about three hours, most people have blown through the chemicals that their body had ready to compensate for pain (mostly adrenaline, but a few others too), and it’d really be better to cut off there and come back for a second session. That said, this hurt non-trivially, but I wasn’t ever screaming or crying (concentrating a lot on breathing: definitely), so maybe I’ve got something resembling a decent pain tolerance.

Right, that’s the cringe-inducing part out of the way.

Here, look, the result is really pretty, in my opinion (and remember, because this will come
up later, it’s on my body, so it’s my opinion that counts):

Old Fashioned tattoo

And if it ended here, this would just be about my showing off my body art, which wouldn’t, in my opinion, justify a blog post, especially not to a blog that purports to discuss booze (yeah, sure, two of my tattoos are about booze, but That’s Not News). Now we enter the twilight zone of Internet commentary. After I’d scheduled the appointment for this tattoo, but before it had taken place, Ann Tuennerman, who (with her husband, Paul) runs Tales of the Cocktail, had put out a call for booze-related tattoos in various online fora, so I emailed her the “cktls > sadmac” one above and described my plans for this one.

Ann dug the idea, so I passed the image along the day after the tattoo went into place, and she apparently liked it enough to publish it under the TotC masthead on Facebook… and
then ~50 bartenders around the world “shared” it on Facebook (I read “shares” captioned in Portuguese, Russian–I think, Cyrillic, anyway, Greek, Chinese, German, and Italian… plenty in English too, of course), and something around 400 people “liked” it. A handful of people questioned or ridiculed it, but that’s cool: it’s not their tattoo, it’s mine. They don’t have to like it. One of the people who came across it through those re-”shares”, however, believed it is something I should be embarrassed about (I’m not, obviously), and that resulted in this:

failblog.org repost of my OF tattoo

I’d never have seen this had my friend Chuque not pointed it out to me. The commentary on that page is, well, exactly what you’d expect of that forum, but it’s pretty hilarious. I’ve responded to several comments there, but my responses are “pending moderation”. So, you know, I got a chuckle out of this, but when I stopped to think about it: this is copyright violation. That pictured tattoo is on my back, that picture was taken using my iPhone by my friend Heather. I explicitly gave Ann permission to post it to Facebook, which implicitly gave all those other random people permission to re-”share” it. All of that’s fine.

But then some guy I don’t know (identified as “Jimbo” in the failblog.org post) sent it in to Ben Huh’s “ugliest tattoos” website. I’m actually completely okay with the image’s use in that way, but I’m not okay that they made no attempt to request my permission first.

Because Ben Huh is not a moron, his website includes a convenient link to report issues like this, so I used it to simply assert, “You don’t own that, and you didn’t ask my permission to post it. Where
do we go from here?” The auto-response from that suggests I wait two to three business days for a response. That clock starts ticking Monday, so stay tuned.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

I’m a big fan of the former (and future?) radio show, current podcast Too Beautiful to Live, hosted by Luke Burbank (see also, NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!). As it happens, a friend of Luke’s (who hosts another Seattle-area-based podcast, of which there are many; I fear I can’t recall precisely which, but it’s one of the NOIZBEAM shows) actually curates Failbook, and Ben Huh, head honcho for the whole cheezburger/failblog world, has been an interview guest on TBTL.

So, on a whim, and riding high on having been explicitly mentioned on the podcast a couple times recently (most recently, because I hosted the Philadelphia listening party for the
1000th episode of TBTL), I sent Luke and his producer Jen this email telling basically the story I’ve just related to you. Within a couple of hours, I received this response (slight contextual note: fans of TBTL are referred to as “tens”, from the time when Luke asserted on the air that the show had “literally TENS of listeners!”):

From: [Luke]
Subject: RE: Ben Huh's enterprise has now made fun of a Ten
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:40:40 -0700
To: [me], [Jen]

this is fascinating. Would you want to come on TBTL to talk about it?

best,

Luke

www.tbtl.net
206-414-TBTL

Yes, of course I said yes. So that’ll probably happen later this week. Stay tuned for that too.

Update 2012-01-31: Two major items today!

1. The Cheezburger crue has responded. To whit:
   

   From: chelsea_f <contactus@cheezburger.com>
   Subject: Re: Correction regarding ugliesttattoos Post ID:24309
   Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:13:24 +0000
   To: [me]
   
   Hi there, Thanks for getting in contact with us. All of our content
   is user submitted, and we in good faith trust that they have
   permission to post the content that they do. I am sorry that you
   found something on one of our sites that belongs to you and was
   used without your permission.  We are happy to remove it for you.
   We will need the link to the content on our site, and the link to
   the copyrighted original. Thank you!
   
   Chelsea - Cheezburger Network

   [I intended to include this full exchange literally, but it crosses some magical Wordpress word-limit, so, for now, I'm just summarizing the rest of these emails.]

   I wrote, paraphrased: “I don’t mind if it stays, please fix the attribution, here’re the links to the original and the post.”

   We bounced details back and forth a bit, and then Chelsea updated the post. (Note the “Picture by:” attribution, newly present. It isn’t actually what I asked for, since the link text is the domain name that I own rather than my name, and I may yet take issue with that, but this has already been a rather long row to hoe.)

2. TBTL’s Luke responded:
   

   From: [Luke]
   Subject: RE: Ben Huh's enterprise has now made fun of a Ten
   Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:10:11 -0700
   To: [me], [Jen]
   
   Hey how about we chat on Thursday?
   
   best,
   
   Luke
   
   www.tbtl.net

   I’m actually supposed to be at a conference from 08:30-15:00 Eastern on Thursday, but so long as they’re still recording at 14:00 Pacific (17:00 Eastern), that should work just fine.

So, again: stay tuned!

Update 2012-02-02: I hope waiting for Luke and Jen is better than waiting for Godot.

I’m on TBTL today.

In fact, I’m listening to Luke do the ProFlowers ad pitch RIGHT NOW.

Update: later the same day

And the audio’s posted: http://mynorthwest.com/?nid=577&a=38654&p=2&n= (or check iTunes)

Here are some pictures:

And here are some videos:

For one thing, I guess Blavod does their entire year’s business between 15 October and 2 November, because that’s in more of these questionable online specs than even pumpkin parts. Like, say, the Black Martini, or this trio (although Martha Stewart–who, let’s remember, did actually go visit Tom Chadwick at Dram, so she knows a thing or two–opts to avoid the brand repping).

Then, of course, there’s the “let’s pretend we’re drinking blood” approach, as with VeeV’s Bloody-tini (because the perfect thing to do with an açaí spirit is… add more açaí!), DonQ’s Bloody Rum Punch (which, actually doesn’t sound bad; I didn’t have any red wine around when I was looking for something to make), Finlandia’s Vampire Kiss Martini (no, that’s not a martini, but whatever), or Effen’s Dracula’s Kiss. Really, people, if you’re going to make something red, could you pretty please do it with something that’s not saccharine once in a fucking while? Like, I dunno, Campari?

And there’s more pumpkin than you can possibly want: the cleverly-titled Jack-O-Lantern (here’s another drink with the same name, completely different base, and the same pumpkin silliness), the even-more-cleverly-titled Jack-O-Tini, Leblon’s questionably-named Pumpkin Caipirinha, Skyy’s Pumpkin’s Passion, and on and on and on.

Some folks try to make something Halloweeny with a name and some gilding of their lily. This Halloween Cocktail combines mismatched elements (oj + whiskey + ginger ale? Pick a direction, dude) with the wrong garnish (olives? In a super-sweet drink?) with a misnomer (what you have there, sir, is a collins, not a cocktail). Well done! Witch’s Brew sounds positively revolting, but at least you can get a proper service for it. Not all of these suck, Bleeding Heart is a classic with an unexpected garnish twist that works really well.

I’m actually being a little bit unfair here: a non-trivial number of the drinks listed at the five buried links to lists up at the top actually sound pretty good. But I feel like being a crank, so hush.

Finally, I found a couple that I find interesting: CocktailDB’s Sleepy Hollow and (via Dave Wondrich’s Esquire column) a shooter from the now-defunct Chickenbone (now Dram, where several of my friends work, and where the aforementioned Martha Stewart visit took place): the Bone. I don’t have any Apricot liqueur at the moment, so I tweaked the latter into a punch (merely hinting at that punch part in the name). Measurements for 1 L (the volume of my surplus World War II poison bottles):

Bruised Bone
16 fl oz overproof whiskey (I used Grand-Dad Bonded)
1.5 fl oz absinthe (I used Vieux Carré, and I used 2 oz, which was a little too much)
3 fl oz lime juice
3 fl oz 1-1 simple syrup
10-20 dashes hot sauce (vary by taste and how hot your sauce is; I used Sriracha)
8 fl oz water (do NOT forget the water!)

This first second (I forgot that I already tried Canton v. Cognac v. Armagnac) round compares three of the four Cooper family spirits (I didn’t have any Yvette at the time). The glasses were left out, equidistantly from my sink (the eye of the swarm), for several weeks: long enough that all that remained of the spirit was congealed syrup.

First, we have Daddy Cooper’s Chambord:

Chambord's fly catching ability

Second, we have li’l Bobby Cooper’s St-Germain:

St-Germain's fly catching ability

And, finally, li’l Johnny Cooper’s Domaine de Canton:

Domaine de Canton's fly catching ability

I think we have a clear winner for this round.

http://cocktailsoftheworld.net/

In round one: Domaine de Canton is 10 times better than crappy brandy, 20 times better than decent Armagnac.

Round two is a Cooper family shoot-out: St. Germain, Domaine de Canton, and Chambord. Winner is the one with a statistically relevantly larger number of fruit flies in the respective wine goblet before I leave for the wilds of Alberta Tuesday afternoon.

Transcribing from my Facebook post at the time, Cinebar is dive bar perfection on a Sunday night with blasting post-goth/industrial, subtitled Tarantino movies on the tvs, classic movie posters enlarged in b&w on the wall, black felt on the 3.5×7′ pool table, and many backbar statues including Spuds MacKenzie. The crowd was very mixed (Latino, white, and black, in decreasing proportion), the beer of choice is Olympia, and Maker’s is about as good as you can do on whiskey. They’re open till 01:30 Sunday nights (later than anything else serving booze), and actually have a pretty decent backbar (light on fancy cocktail stuff, but both Fernet Branca and Menta Branca, so there’s that), although I didn’t push Julio (I think… I’m not just being racist here, that’s at least close to correct) for anything more than whiskey on the rocks, a couple of beers, and a Fernet (which I recommended to a woman who rolled in at last call and asked for bitters in her G&T to “settle her stomach”).

Also of note in San Jose: not a drop of rye (and barely any whiskey; plenty of bad tequila, nothing decent worth buying at the cost, and, most depressingly, nary a bottle of mezcal) in any of the myriad corner liquor stores. A hefty man of indeterminate late middle-age behind the counter in one even informed me that he used to be a bartender in SF and “nobody uses that any more”. Um, yeah.

So, Thad, you’re right: maybe I do have something of value to contribute, and I will strive to get something posted about San Jose, (my most recent visit to) SF, and Seattle before I get back on a plane again…

“The dry gin martini is the shortest distance between two points.” – Dave Wondrich

“If you can’t look cool stirring, your drink won’t have any deliciousness.” – Thomas Waugh

“… as long as that shit ice is consistently shit.” – Dave Arnold

“Never trust a skinny chef or a sober bartender.” – Danny Valdez

“You should have your own rockstar in mind [when tending bar].” – Dushan Zaric

“The government is not in the liquor or wine business.” – France, when asked by the US to police St. Pierre et Michelon during Prohibition [Somebody needs to tell the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania about that...]

“Martinis are like women’s breasts: they should be round and smooth. One is too few, three is too many.” – Henrik Hammer, Geranium Gin

“We’ve got a Dutchman, a South African, and a Dane: if we were any more laid back, we’d be horizontal.” – Andrew Nichols, of door74, presenting with Henrik Hammer and Timo Janse