I have one dollar left until Friday. How should I spend it?

OVERHEARD IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM AT A FINANCIAL FIRM IN MANHATTAN

PERSON ONE: ...So what's your ride like in the morning?




PERSON TWO: It's a luxury.




PERSON ONE: Yeah?




PERSON TWO: It's a real luxury.




PERSON ONE: Nice! What kind of seats you get? You get to sit in one of those bucket seats?




PERSON TWO: What?




PERSON ONE: You know, how like on the lower tracks since it's electric, they have fancier carts.




PERSON TWO: I don't know...




PERSON ONE: You know, and so they put bucket seats on them.




PERSON TWO: I don't know what those are.




PERSON ONE: Bucket seats, you know, like they put in race cars. They're like seats, but they sort of, like, they mold around your body, they kind of wrap your body?




PERSON TWO: No, we don't have anything like that.




PERSON ONE: Yeah...They're actually not that comfortable.

STIFF ONES

We asked the diff inted reader a very simple question: What was your favorite drink of twenty-twelve? People tend to deviate from the subject in a complex manner. Here are [sic] replies from some of you freaks:

Patrick Pineyro is an insurance salesman and sex wizard based out of Miami.

            When I watch an ep. of Boardwalk Empire I'm left mostly with a strong desire to drink whiskey neat. I can't drink my whiskey without ice because it's too cheap. What kind of whiskey did they drink during Prohibition days? Even the richest of wets[1], such as Nucky and his cohorts, must have had some close to undrinkable bathtub liquor in their decanters: forget about the sludge your average joe was sluggin' in the speaks.

            My wish came true last year around Christmastime at a fortuitous event: I went to dinner at my parents': a friend of theirs showed up: a 1%'er: possibly a 1% of the 1%. He brought with him four bottles of whiskey, all single malt scotch: 1) Laphroaig, 18 Years Old 2) Dalwhinnie, 15 Years 3) Lagavulin, 16 Years 4) Macallan, 12 Years. We had a tasting, so we tasted. We insty'ed pix of the tasting (documented by the now defunct @bdbiz - #whiskeytasting, #blessed, #trulyblessed, if you can find the cache). We coughed. We swished. We laughed.

            I admit I am no connoisseur. One of the whiskeys tasted like old vegetables picked from a bed of garbage (Laphroaig 18, strong on peat flavors). But I drank the Dalwhinnie and I actually tasted something – I tasted honey. It went down smooth – smooth as in: no gag reflex, a heat in the gullet, but a minimal heat; and not an unpleasant one, as with every other whiskey-served-neat experience I’ve had before. It helped, too that we sipped the stuff from fine crystal: bar glasses, heavy, so they have a presence in your hand: the base alone measures 1 ½ inches. You could pour some Beam or some Jack in there, but you would look, and be, ridiculous. 

            Granted, winter is not winter in Miami, and this winter has been warmer than usual, but it helped that the temperature was in the mid to high 70’s: I felt warm rather than hot and rowdy like you do when you buy the usual liquor store stuff that you have to mix with ice and coke to get down. I felt classy. I felt like Johnny Walker Black on the rocks would never quite cut it again. I felt like a wealthy criminal from a period crime drama on premium cable television. I felt good. Best drink I’d had all year.

---

[1] “Wets” = anti-prohibitionists




 Rene Rodon is a Cuban-American film director living in Los Angeles.

COCKTAILS / WINES BY THE GLASS

GIN & TONICS MENU
The Classic
Tanqueray Gin with tonic and a lime
The Tonic and Grapefruit
Beefeater 24 with grapefruit bitters, tonic and grapefruit zest
The Lavender Tonic
Beefeater Gin with lavender bitters, mint
and bitter lemon tonic
The Garden Tonic
Hendrick’s Gin with cucumber, celery bitters
and tonic
The Bitter Tonic
Beefeater Gin with aperol, tonic and a twist

COCKTAILS ALL $13
Cocktails are made with fresh juices squeezed daily to ensure the purest flavors.  Syrups are all house-made.
          
Harvest Moon
Pimms, Calvados, Hard Apple Cider, Aromatic Bitters
The Last Waltz
Prosecco, Pear Liqueur, Rosemary
Pablo Honey
Tequila, Spiced Agave, Lime
Trampin’
Pisco, Pear Nectar, Smoked Black Peppercorn Syrup
Vespertine
Gin, Manzanilla Sherry, Absinthe Rinse
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Scotch, Cinnamon, Lemon, Zinfandel
American Beauty
Vodka, Acai Liqueur, Rosemary, Prosecco
Check Your Head
Aged Jamaican Rum, Black Tea Syrup, Aromatic and Orange Bitters, Citrus Oils
This is Happening
Rye, Benedictine, Oloroso Sherry, Aromatic Bitters

BEER COCKTAILS ALL $13
Beggar’s Banquet
Bourbon, Maple Syrup, Aromatic Bitters, Lemon, Cream Ale
Bitches Brew
Mescal, Tomato Juice, Lime, Spices, Lager
Boatman’s Call

Drinks

принтер Epson K201
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RUINART COCKTAILS 16

Classic Champagne Cocktail Ruinart, Comptoir and aromatic bitters

French 75 Ruinart, Spring 44 gin and lemon juice

BLOOM COCKTAILS  11

Tequila Beets Alacran Tequila, Lime, House-made Chamomile syrup, Roasted Beet Juice and Whiskey _Barrel Aged Bitters

Apple Mule Leblon Aged Cachaca infused with Washington Apple, Ginger Syrup and Lime Juice topped ith Soda Water

Bloomin' Paloma Cuervo Tradicional, Lime Juice, Agave Nectar, Topped with Jarritos Grapefruit Soda

Wynwood 75' Spring 44 Gin, Yuzu, Castor Syrup with Chandon

La Pacaya Ron Zacapa 23 Rum, Papaya, House-made Honey Syrup, Cilantro and Orange Bitters

Ring of Fire Kettle One, Lychees, House-made Honey Syrup and Fresno Chilli Pepper

Eastern Garden Tanqueray Gin, Lemon, Fennel Syrup, Arugula and Spanish Bitters

Reserva Spritz Santa Teresa Anejo Reserva, Lime Juice and Honey Syrup topped with Champagne

BLOOM SAKE

Tozai 'Snow Maiden' Junmai Negori 300ML   18

This is fairly think cloudy sake, but surprisingly dry with flavors of fresh fruit and creamy rice

Hiko's Dry 'Ka No Izumi' Junmai 300ML   21

This special dry sake made by  "Ohmi" rice is famous for serving royal family in Kyoto for 120 years. Polisshed up to 60% the "Ohmi rice" produces a pure clear dry "Junmai" sake with a fresh aroma and crisp taste.

Kitsui 'Funaguchi' Honjozo, Nama Genshu 200ML CAN  16

Thick and creamy with lactic aroma and flavor.  The cutest can of sake you'll see!

Vicari Valdes is a Brat enrolled in gender studies at NYU. She lives in Bushwick (duh).

My favorite drink of 2012 is soda. Specifically Coca Cola or Pepsi. Doesn’t make a difference to me. More than just great tasting it is a true symbol of freedom the world over. Its beauty as I perceive it was so eloquently described in the novel Generation “П”:

Once upon a time in Russia there really was a carefree, youthful generation that smiled in joy at the summer, the sea and the sun, and chose Pepsi.

It's hard at this stage to figure out exactly how this situation came about. Most likely it involved more than just the remarkable taste of the drink in question. More than just the caffeine that keeps young kids demanding another dose, steering them securely out of childhood into the clear waters of the channel of cocaine. More, even, than a banal bribe: it would be nice to think that the Party bureaucrat who took the crucial decision to sign the contract simply fell in love with this dark, fizzy liquid with every fiber of a soul no longer sustained by faith in communism…. children lounged on the seashore in the summer, gazing endlessly at a cloudless blue horizon, they drank warm Pepsi-Cola decanted into glass bottles in the city of Novorossiisk and dreamed that some day the distant forbidden world on the far side of the sea would be part of their own lives.

OVERHEARD IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM AT A FINANCIAL FIRM IN MANHATTAN

PERSON ONE: ...So yeah, it was my birthday on the twenty-second.

PERSON TWO: Uhhuh....

PERSON ONE: And so we went to Wild Wings, you know?

PERSON TWO: Oh, I hate that place.

PERSON ONE: Yeah, that place is not the best.

PERSON TWO: Their wings suck!

PERSON ONE: You know what it is though? You know what it is? Their wings are good, but they're not special...

 

fanmail: o amor amargo

I have an obsession. I won't lie.


There was a period in my life when I used to deny my desires. It lasted six months, cuando todavia era chismoso. Tenia un amante autista. I didn't have the right to touch myself. We split like a hair. This was right before I left Mexico City for Santiago. The two events are related.

I scrunch in D.F. My apartment on Calle Bucareli. Days pace past the anterior window of Café La Habana. Antecedent lovers set no precedent to this fizzle. I breathe dark coffee. July girls in full blossom beauty. Sigo pensando en sus ojos bizcos, o cómo los brasileños lo dicen, vesga. A plaque of glial cells named Chile. I thought about going back in March when I wasn't alone.

First reaction is to breach myself from everything that's a reminder. I understand the problem with that now. Everything I was before is fractured by cross-glare. The rupture isn't with her so much as my capability as an individual to exist autonomously. My penis, though rude (of her) as it may seem, plugged her mouth and no longer belongs to me. I don't masturbate. I don't experience myself in a sexual way. I'm a second by second afterthought.

First to return is my taste for salted meat. I smell charque in my dreams. My mind travels home to Chile. It draws back when I think of cueca. Great fear of ridicule, typical of a Chilean, subsides. I am a Mexican. A revolution is like a fever, my desire the sting of a pimple that is past-ready to be popped. April May and June pass and intense pressure is building behind my sockets. July brings back just socialisme. Bad news for Allende. I brood for giant pinenuts.

She met a truck driver in March, a little more than a month before my birthday. I'm twenty years old. I feel an intense pyrexia. Thirty days pass. Eight weeks. Three months.

I sit in Café La Habana. I watch Rosario serve the customers. Tabletop is crotch height. I rub against it gripping porcelain. I close my eyes. Heat rises to my head. My fever is delirium. I rub furiously. I call Rosario. The fever is reaching it's peak. I rub furiously. Allende has locked himself in the palace. He has given his last speech. I am thinking of a cross-eyed lover for the last time. I stop rubbing against the tabletop. I bid Rosario for a coffee. Pinochet orders the strike. I place my hand in my pants. The troops move in. It is exactly twenty-eight years before airplanes demolish the world trade center. Allende places his hand on the revolver. Rosario places her hand on my shoulder.




The revolution is over. The pimple pops. My desire denial comes to an end. Allende is dead. Pinochet dealt a hard-blow. I must return to Chile immediately.




I have a penchant for letters


in the same way I have an obsession with love. I do not believe that love is restricted to eroticism. I believe one can love an ideal much more passionately than a pair of butt cheeks (not really). I believe this fanmail letter is the product of love. I thank you, the loyal writer, and hope you don't mind me sharing your spirit:

Manifesto



after Roberto Bolaño



You will grow sick. In the rooms

where you have loved, you will remain alone.

Stay in bed. Let there be no light

but the light of the poem

reflected in the eyes of the beloved.

Who is absent. Who is always absent,

if you’re thinking ahead. If you’re not

thinking far enough ahead now,

you’re still alive, and poetry

wants nothing of you. Just as you want nothing

of yourself. You will think of objects

as you would in a dream, their multiplicity

of lives. You will attend dinner parties

but leave in the middle of the main course. You won’t

say anything, not even to your friends,

and from the window in the bathroom

you will exit into your new life

as a visceral realist. You’ll be given a uniform,

though no one will see you wearing it.

But you’ve got to, in order to write.

You will consider publishing under pseudonyms

of the opposite sex, but what’s the point? No one

knows you anymore, not even your own

mother. Which is what she says on the answering machine.

You will stand outside time and own

only worthless things, like answering machines.

It’s not monasticism, this solitude…

You can still go out to bars.

Your life has simply gotten smaller.

It’s the size of a crocodile’s eye,

the tie on the waist-apron

of the woman from Ukraine

who brings you coffee, the scent

of her perfume. It might be enough.

But in the evenings, from the window

of your apartment, your bare shoulders

will catch a sliver of light

from the full moon and in this way

you will be recuperated by poetic clichés.

But don’t cry. Visceral realists don’t cry.

- Gregory Solano 

Neal Cassady: Love Radiation

In my early twenties, sex became a hazy experience. Brash, bold and boisterous, I relied on alcohol to share a bed. Besides the whiskey dick, the positive false honesty of drunken sex stimulated an inebriated poetic quality of desperate people in uncertain situations. It made it easier to bareback and penetrate anally. At twenty-three, whilst reading Big Sur, I discovered this letter, which served a more efficient albedo purpose than even my bathroom mirror could:

March 7, 1947

Dear Jack:

I am sitting in a bar on Market St. I'm drunk, well, not quite, but I soon will be. I am here for 2 reasons; I must wait 5 hours for the bus to Denver & lastly but, most importantly, I'm here (drinking) because, of course, because of a woman & what a woman! To be chronological about it:

I was sitting on the bus when it took on more passengers at Indianapolis, Indiana – a perfectly proportioned beautiful, intellectual, passionate, personification of Venus De Milo asked me if the seat beside me was taken!!! I gulped, (I'm drunk) gargled & stammered NO! (Paradox of expression, after all, how can one stammer No!!?) She sat – I sweated – She started to speak, I knew it would be generalities, so to tempt her I remained silent.

She (her name Patricia) got on the bus at 8 PM (Dark!) I didn't speak until 10 PM – in the intervening 2 hours I not only of course, determined to make her, but, how to DO IT.

I naturally can't quote the conversation verbally, however, I shall attempt to give you the gist of it from 10 PM to 2 AM.

Without the slightest preliminaries of objective remarks (what's your name? where are you going? etc.) I plunged into a completely knowing, completely subjective, personal & so to speak "penetrating her core" way of speech; to be shorter (since I'm getting unable to write) by 2 AM I had her swearing eternal love, complete subjectivity to me & immediate satisfaction. I, anticipating even more pleasure, wouldn't allow her to blow me on the bus, instead we played, as they say, with each other.

Knowing her supremely perfect being was completely mine (when I'm more coherent, I'll tell you her complete history & psychological reason for loving me) I could conceive of no obstacle to my satisfaction, well, "the best laid plans of mice & men go astray" and my nemesis was her sister, the bitch.

Pat had told me her reason for going to St. Louis was to see her sister; she had wired her to meet her at the depot. So, to get rid of the sister, we peeked around the depot when we arrived at St. Louis at 4 AM to see if she (her sister) was present. If not, Pat would claim her suitcase, change clothes in the rest room & she and I proceed to a hotel room for a night (years?) of perfect bliss. The sister was not in sight, so She (note the capital) claimed her bag & retired to the toilet to change ––– long dash –––

This next paragraph must, of necessity, be written completely objectively ––

Edith (her sister) & Patricia (my love) walked out of the pisshouse hand in hand (I shan't describe my emotions). It seems Edith (bah) arrived at the bus depot early & while waiting for Patricia, feeling sleepy, retired to the head to sleep on a sofa. That's why Pat & I didn't see her.

My desperate efforts to free Pat from Edith failed, even Pat's terror & slave-like feeling toward her rebelled enough to state she must see "someone" & would meet Edith later, all failed. Edith was wise; she saw what was happening between Pat & I.

Well, to summarize: Pat & I stood in the depot (in plain sight of the sister) & pushing up to one another, vowed to never love again & then I took the bus to Kansas City & Pat went home, meekly, with her dominating sister. Alas, alas –––

In complete (try & share my feeling) dejection, I sat, as the bus progressed toward Kansas City. At Columbia, Mo. a young (19) completely passive (my meat) virgin got on & shared my seat ... In my dejection over losing Pat, the perfect, I decided to sit on the bus (behind the driver) in broad daylight & seduce her, from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM I talked. When I was done, she (confused, her entire life upset, metaphysically amazed at me, passionate in her immaturity) called her folks in Kansas City, & went with me to a park (it was just getting dark) & I banged her; I screwed her as never before; all my pent up emotion finding release in this young virgin (& she was) who is, by the way, a school teacher! Imagine, she's had 2 years of Mo. St. Teacher's College & now teaches Jr. High School. (I'm beyond thinking straightly).

I'm going to stop writing. Oh, yes, to free myself for a moment from my emotions, you must read "Dead Souls" parts of it (in which Gogol shows his insight) are quite like you.

I'll elaborate further later (probably?) but at the moment I'm drunk and happy (after all, I'm free of Patricia already, due to the young virgin. I have no name for her. At the happy note of Les Young's "jumping at Mesners" (which I'm hearing) I close till later.

To my Brother
Carry On!
N.L. Cassady

P.S. I forgot to mention Patricia's parents live in Ozone Park & of course, Lague being her last name, she's French Canadian just as you.

I'll write soon,
Neal.

P.P.S. Please read this illegible letter as a continuous chain of undisciplined thought, thank you.

N.

P.P.P.S. Postponed, postponed, postponed script, keep working hard, finish your novel & find, thru knowledge, strength in solitude instead of despair. Incidentally I'm starting on a novel also, "believe it or not". Goodbye.

I'm due for work in three hours, on a Tuesday morning at five a.m. I wake up in a pool of sweat. I get up to make a coffee but opt for a shower instead. I crawl back into bed and turn on my reading lamp. I find it on the side of the bed. Ulises must have brought it over. I watch him, sleeping next to, her name Petunia, or Penelope. My bed too small for the three of us, squeezed in.

OVERHEARD IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM AT A FINANCIAL FIRM IN MANHATTAN

PERSON ONE:...you know, like in Citizen Kane.

PERSON TWO: Oh, I wouldn't know.

PERSON ONE: You haven't seen Citizen Kane? Duuuude.

PERSON TWO: I've heard that's a famous movie.

PERSON ONE: Duuude...Dude! It's excellent. Directed by and starring Orson Welles.

PERSON TWO: Orson Welles?

PERSON ONE: Yep

PERSON TWO: Really? He's in it?

PERSON ONE: Yep!

PERSON TWO: The writer?

PERSON ONE: The writer and director. Oh wait, you're thinking of...

PERSON TWO: The guy who did War of the Worlds?

PERSON ONE: Yeah, that guy!

PERSON TWO: Wait, no, that's H. G. Wells.


 

Refined: The Juggalo Summer Reading List (done right)

So Blake Butler of HTMLGIANT recently published a Juggalo Summer Reading List on vice.com. There's some good calls on there, but mostly this is an injustice to ninjahood and betrays a grave misunderstanding of American juggalo culture. I felt compelled to compile my own Juggalo Summer Reading List that is more sensible to what the gathering crowd looks for in literature, so here it is:







































Link to this article Refined: The Juggalo Summer Reading List (done right): http://tinyurl.com/9d755qo

OVERHEARD IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM AT A FINANCIAL FIRM IN MANHATTAN

PERSON ONE: HEY, GOOD MORNING.

PERSON TWO:  MORNING.

PERSON ONE: HOW ARE YOU? YOUR WEEKEND?

PERSON TWO:  NEED A CUP OF COFFEE BAD.

PERSON ONE: OH YEAH, YOU DID ANYTHING, GO SOMEWHERE?

PERSON TWO:  NOTHING TO REPORT.

PERSON ONE: WHAT'S THAT?

PERSON TWO:  NOTHING TO REPORT..

TINA BABY IF YOU SEE THIS CALL ME

(2:25:51 PM) Dan Brat: so my passport situation might not work out
(2:25:58 PM) Lindsay: no shit
(2:25:59 PM) Lindsay: hahah
(2:26:00 PM) Lindsay: i knew it
(2:26:01 PM) Lindsay: man
(2:26:02 PM) Lindsay: that sucks
(2:26:05 PM) Dan Brat: you knew it?
(2:26:08 PM) Lindsay: i thought you said it was taken care of
(2:26:11 PM) Lindsay: yes fromthe sound of it
(2:26:15 PM) Lindsay: but you kept sayin it was gonna be fine
(2:26:25 PM) Dan Brat: ...you can tell things from the "sound" of "it?"
(2:26:30 PM) Lindsay: yes
(2:26:38 PM) Lindsay: well that sucks
(2:26:43 PM) Lindsay: man
(2:26:44 PM) Lindsay: :(
(2:26:45 PM) Dan Brat: You must be some modern day psychic!
(2:26:50 PM) Lindsay: fuckkkkkkkkk youuuuuu
(2:26:51 PM) Lindsay: i hate you danny
(2:26:54 PM) Dan Brat: Do you ever see things before they happen?
(2:26:54 PM) Lindsay: so you aren't coming
(2:26:55 PM) Lindsay: UGH
(2:26:58 PM) Dan Brat: Like
(2:27:00 PM) Dan Brat: do you ever get visions?
(2:27:03 PM) Lindsay: im gonna kill you
(2:27:10 PM) Lindsay: i cant believe youuuuuuuureeeeeeee not cominggggggggggggggg
(2:27:11 PM) Dan Brat: I hear strange noises sometimes
(2:27:23 PM) Dan Brat: So what is Tina's #?
(2:27:33 PM) Lindsay: i hate you
(2:27:34 PM) Dan Brat: I'd still like to get to know her
(2:30:57 PM) Dan Brat: hello?

OVERHEARD IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM AT A FINANCIAL FIRM IN MANHATTAN

PERSON ONE: THERE HE IS THE MAN THE LEGEND!

PERSON TWO:  LEGEND IN MY OWN MIND... 

PERSON ONE: HAHA HOW YOU BEEN? 

PERSON TWO: EH, Y'KNOW, BUSY.

PERSON ONE: YEAH.

PERSON TWO: I HAD SOME GOOD RELAXATION THERAPY BY MYSELF THIS WEEKEND.

PERSON ONE: I HEAR THAT! 

PERSON TWO: YOU LIKE TACOS? 

PERSON ONE: YEAH I LIKE TACOS. 

PERSON TWO: HOW'S YOUR PRODUCT COMING ALONG? 

PERSON ONE: IT JUST NEEDS TO BE...THE STUFF IS THERE, I JUST, I DON'T KNOW, I DON'T KNOW IF I'D BUY IT.

OVERHEARD IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM AT A FINANCIAL FIRM IN MANHATTAN

PERSON ONE: HEY WHAT'S UP!?

PERSON TWO: NOTHING MUCH, SAME OLD SAME OLD. HOW ABOUT YOU?

PERSON ONE: OH, YOU KNOW, I'VE BEEN BUSY.

PERSON TWO: BUSY'S GOOD!

PERSON ONE: SOMETIMES BUSY'S NOT THAT GOOD.

PERSON TWO: IT'S BETTER THAN NOTHING!

PERSON ONE: I HEAR THAT! SEE YOU AROUND.

PERSON TWO: SEE YA!

OVERHEARD IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM AT A FINANCIAL FIRM IN MANHATTAN

PERSON ONE: ...SHE SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH HER PARENTS, SO I HAD SOME TIME TO MYSELF, SO I JUST SAT AROUND GETTING DRUNK AND WATCHING MAD MEN EPISODES

PERSON TWO: OH MAN, NOTHING BETTER THAN THAT!