The Swizzle Stick

I can’t believe it happened again. It’s apparently happened enough times to enough people that some yonko made a pithy statement that people now quote, something about how lots of people have great ideas, but only great people bring them to life. Blah blah blah. What an idiot.


So there I was walking back from the mailbox with the New Yorker in my hot little hand, not even waiting to get to the house before I start reading (first the cartoon contest on the back page, then the table of contents) and WTF, scooped by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell. Why couldn’t it have been by someone like Christopher Buckley? But noooo… It turns out that Malcolm has been researching alcohol consumption. Yeah, but did he actually mix a drink in the process?

So that’s bad, but it gets worse. The very next day, I peruse a copy of More magazine, you know, the one for women of style and substance, and what do you know? Scooped again. There’s an article entitled “Does This Drink Make Me Look Old?”, and it’s about updating your cocktail so as not to look dated by drinking a Cosmopolitan. You want to see dated? Watch me whip out a Manhattan. The article has recipes and photos, though, so it’s not totally useless. I’ve been tossing and turning, wondering if the article was about style, or substance? Substance, or style?

I’d better get on the stick (the swizzle stick, that is) and get back to work. By the end of this I may have even learned to love the Bloody Mary, breakfast of champions everywhere (or would that make me look old?)