A MATT-AZINE: On Drinking

Hi again. Here we are in the dreary, dark depths of February. Boy, oh boy, it’s becoming hard work to keep the positive momentum going, isn’t it?

It’s enough to drive one to drink…Luckily, that’s the theme of this week’s issue!

—But, seriously, if anyone knows if there’s like a publican house or town square where one could, I don’t know, tar and feather “the king” in effigy, let me know? How did one get invited to the Boston Tea Party? Anyone throwing one? I kind of want to get ahead of the trickle down effects of the dismantling of democracy but, what? Should I just be hoarding as much cash as possible and start learning to cook primarily with beans?

Or do I just keep doing what I’ve been doing and fight, fight against the dying of the light with a lighthearted newsletter that gleefully covers….

-Oscar voting has closed! C’mon, Demi1!

-Onijah and Shabana, a love story

-Dolphins pee on each other to say “What up, queen,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

-New season of Survivor starts Wednesday! And the producers are really leaning into the whole conceit that mostly gays watch this show now, because: 💅 and 💅.

-OUT: Regular vodka in espresso martinis IN: Van Gogh chocolate-flavored vodka in espresso martinis. (This is in the same vein of Ina Garten adding espresso to her brownies. A genius combination. Thanks, Dan K.!)

Now, onto the features…

Having friends over for drinks? Wonderful! Great first step on becoming a Nice Boy™. If I could, ahem, offer some advice…

-Don’t wait til 7:15 when everyone’s coming at 7:30 to sweat whether you’ve got ice or snacks or even booze.

-Do put your personal preferences aside, or at least couch them with what you know of your guests. I, for one, would be happy to never drink a fucking hard seltzer again, but if I’ve got a pack of volleyball gays coming through the house, best bet there will be High Noons.

-Don’t ever think you have enough ice. You’ll never have enough ice.

-Do batch your drinks. If you’ve taken their tastes into consideration, people will happily take what you give them. No one’s ever gonna say no to a pitcher of margaritas.

-Do opt for the drink bucket or cooler. If you’ve got six or more folks coming through and hanging for an extended period or time, an assortment of bevvies on ice makes for easy, open access. Plus, it keeps people from rustling through your fridge which is to me a private a space. NO ONE NEEDS TO SEE YOUR LUNCH MEAT.

-Do open a beer before giving it to someone.

-Don’t just put the bag of chips on the counter. A bag of Tostitos sitting out next to a jar of salsa is ineffective and inhospitable. The root of all Nice Boy™ culture is taking that one small extra step and put the chips and salsa in a bowl.

-Do pre-slice the limes

-Don’t forget the ideal snack flavor trifecta: One sweet, one salty, one dip-centric.

~Blessed~ to have learned how to drink at a men’s magazine in an era where Mad Men was at the peak of its influence. It was a renaissance moment for the manhattan. When my old boss took me out to lunch at Porterhouse one Christmas for filets and manhattans a whole world opened up to me and that world said, “manhattans, baby.”

It’s the ideal cocktail in that it is at once hearty and relaxing, cozy and bracing. Sweet but not treacly. It’s a friendly pat on the back compared to the martini’s icy cool handshake.

For a bit of service here, since you can’t do sidebars on this platform, a quick recipe guide on the manhattan:

As a commenter in the New York Times cooking section once said, to make a manhattan just remember Manhattan’s area code, 212.

-That’s 2 parts rye, 1 part vermouth, 2 dashes bitters. (Though, I do more like three dashes bitters, but, sure, the mnemonic is cute enough.)

-Throw it all in a mixing glass, add some ice, stir the shit out of it and strain into your chilled glass.

-Luxardo cherry to garnish.

As a standalone drink, it’s my platonic ideal. But if you’re gonna have more than one manhattan and weigh less than 225 pounds, you need to eat something to help absorb the alcohol. The manhattan, with all its booziness, though, can obliterate the taste of anything somewhat delicate. That’s why you need substantial flavors of salty and/or meaty to stand up to it.

I credit this notion to my dearly departed Noorman’s Kil in Williamsburg (rip)2. They had a sandwich press in the corner of the bar and would churn out grilled cheeses with their manhattans that were bready enough to soak up the booze and served with a briny pickle that contrasted well with the Old Overholt and Dolin.

Herewith, in order from light to heavy, the ideal manhattan pairings:

-Wasabi peas

-Cheese balls

-Kettle chips

-Fritos

-A Reese’s cup3

-A wedge salad

-A grilled cheese

-The french dip at Hillstone

-A burger

As my relationship to drinking changes and shifts with age, I find that time and place make up about 95% the enjoyment of imbibing.

This applies most to beer. What was once akin to drinking water, drinking beer now needs to feel earned in order for it to taste as good as possible. After work or labor of some kind, a crisp cold one shines best. Those earned contexts for supreme enjoyment are:

-After skiing

-After mowing a lawn/yard work

-After finding your seat at a baseball game

-After a hike

-After downshifting from a cocktail at the bar.

That’s all.

What the hell am I supposed to wear for a night out?

I mostly know how to get dressed for work (though I have fantasies of changing it up a bit). It’s casual. And I know what to wear to dinner at my parent’s house. A sweater. If I’m bopping around the neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon? I’m good. Hoodie and jeans and shades.

But if we’re “going to the bar” on a Friday or Saturday night? All bets are off.

I’ll stand stunned in front of the closet before giving up and throwing on some kind of black sweater and second-guessing myself all night long. Why is this? What makes “going out” more fraught in terms of getting dressed?

One, it’s not like I’m doing this on a regular basis anymore. In my 20s, getting dressed for the bar was a near-weekly ritual of putting on a button-up or T-shirt and dark jeans. Going out in public on a Friday in my late-30s happens maybe once a month at this point, so I can’t say I have a clothing routine down.

Two, I’m not trying to attract any one’s attention. It’s not like I’m getting dressed to score some strange. Most of the time I’m out at a bar, it’s with V. Still, I don’t want to completely disappear. What is going out if not an opportunity to turn up a bit?

So what is one to do? What are my goals? Am I to look sleek? Polished? Sexy? Can I dress sexy? Ew.

Because it requires this kind of thought, to get dressed to go out just feels inherently douchey. So, I’ve decided to lean into it. Where I’ve landed—to try and make this easy at the getting-dressed moment of the night—is to apply a simple dumb rule: Add one element of douchebaggery to an otherwise normal look.

One button undone too far. A flash of gold bracelet. A camo hat. A tank under a cardigan and that’s it. If it upsets someone in your group just enough to have them ask why you’ve made this choice, you’re doing it right.

At this point, hanging at the bar is a novelty. Why not match it with some novelty in your clothing?

I’ve had fun with this newsletter and slightly less, but albeit still fun, with this platform. It’s the closest yet to what I miss most about The Blog Age of the internet.

With everything personalized and SEO-optimized and schlock-ified for engagement, the internet and Substack doesn’t serve up the same surprise and delight as The Gawkers and The Awls once did.

Those sites would often just let writers go and do their thing. By landing on the page, some gem would land in my lap and I’d be cackling at my desk. It was in that era of blog supremacy that I read “Negroni Season” on The Awl by a pseudonymous Evelyn Everlady. It remains a quintessential internet essay that’s stayed lodged in my brain since the time I first read it. An excerpt:

My one quibble: Everlady’s trainwreck of a boyfriend and his sidepiece say Negroni Season happens around Memorial weekend.

I’ve got a wintry affection for the drink. I think mid-Feb Oscar season is a perfect platform for the Negroni. It’s why at this time of year instead of the beginning of summer I come back to the essay and grow wistful for the old fun internet.

Where else could you find that kind of piece now? Someone please god tell me.

Picking up on that good old internet days, and following up on my Aretha ode in the footnotes of our previous issue, I did some trawling through the internet archive to dig up this supercut Gawker had posted of Aretha Franklin inexplicably phoning in a pledge drive for PBS back in like 2010.

I remember catching this whole show at my old studio apartment, the feed coming through my brother’s Slingbox in Detroit. There was the Queen of Soul, reclined in a leather dining room chair, plucking away at a piano in a moomoo and a haphazardly placed wig, talking about how she’d met Patti LaBelle at the beauty salon and how much she’d loved PBS. (What was her favorite program? This Old House?)

The woman who defined the sound of American singing was on a Saturday afternoon on my TV affecting the vibe of a tired aunt who’d just strolled over from her house to the local Detroit PBS affiliate to ask me to stand by public broadcasting.

I couldn’t believe what I had seen and knew no one else had. This would be some little miracle of goofiness I’d never catch again.

But! Cut to a few days later and here’s Gawker affirming my sensibility, securing in the digital firmament that, yes, whatever the hell Aretha was doing on PBS was pure soul camp and needed to be archived.

That’s the internet, and ReRe, at their best.

That’s all for this week. Go have a drink. Try to ignore all the cancer warnings just this once. You’ve earned it.

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Speaking of, let’s take a look at the results of our Reese’s holiday shape poll from last week.