Coke and Anise

I haven't stopped tinkering with cocktails. I present to you my Fall invention, the Coke and Anise.

1 shot Brandy
¼ shot Pastis (or other anise-flavored liquor)
2 dashes Peschaud's Bitters
1 ½ shot Coca Cola

Put Pastis and Peschaud's into small glass. Shake brandy with ice and strain into glass. Pour coke down the side of glass.

This owes inspiration to the Sazerac. You'll find it to be more of a sipping drink. The honey note of the Brandy combines with the sweetness of the Coke to play off anise flavor from the Pastis and bitters. It's like some demented derivation of honey with tea.

Imposters and split personalities

Marisa is my dear high school friend who until recently attended UCLA. She left on her Mormon mission for Prague this summer.

Dear Marisa,

I saw your double tonight. She looked just like you, except she was rather plump. She had your mannerisms and your smile and your sense of humor. It's only been a few months, but I already miss you so much.

She was the lead of a two part folk band I saw at a backyard show and she possessed a beautiful voice. She kept switching instruments, from a xylophone to an African gourd instrument to a ukulele and finally the musical saw. She played that saw with impressive finesse. I think I'm going to buy one.

Recently I've been thinking about my two personalities. Everything seems to remind me of them. I just finished my road trip with mom to drop Bri off at Santa Cruz. My mother only sees my sweetness and she loves me so much. I wish I could convince her that my other side is necessary, but I know she would say that it's not.

That's my superconfident side where I project charisma, competitiveness, antagonism and moral relativism. As you know, that is my ruling personality. My mom always says I'm thoughtful, empathetic, creative and honest and, to be sure, it is true. Over the years that part of me has lost ground. At Davis, I have had little motivation to utilize it.

I can't badmouth my Type A side because it has gotten me a long way. It earned me friends and respect in high school and earlier this summer it got me the phone number of a beautiful girl. I have no intention of disowning that part of me.

However, I will not pretend I am not horrified by some of the things I have done under it's guidance. I have missed or lost friends as a result of it. The way I treat my dear friend Brandon sometimes makes me shudder. I have taught him much, but I have also done my best to savage his self-confidence. I know, of course, about redemption. One could hardly live in this society and not have a firm grasp of the principle. I know I am redeemable and that doing bad things doesn't have to make me a bad person. It is time to go back to basics.

My blog is a continual joy. I've enclosed some blogs I've done this summer (I skipped a couple devoted to debauchery). Working at the lab is fulfilling and exciting. I just finished breeding my first brand new strain of worm today. I'm looking forward to classes this quarter, but I'm a little freaked about my GRE and grad application. I hope to visit Matt Wingert (in Santa Barbara), Caius (in Berkeley) and Bri each and host a large Christmas party. I'm counting weekends and with trips, parties and amazing KDVS events the season promises to be a tight fit. That's what I love about fall quarter. Stuff happens at blinding density.

Please write back as soon as is convenient.

With Adoration,
Max

Train Ride

A week ago I returned to the land of my upbringing. It was probably my last trip home from Davis by train.

Given the choice between air and rail, I will choose the train. Sure it will take a full day and sure I love airplanes, but there is a certain leisure to rail car. Seats are spacious and there's a plug for your computer, but the clincher is just idly watching the land go by.

It's the same reason I love road trips, but it provides a radically different perspective of California. People don't put Billboards by train tracks. There is, in fact, zero effort made to beautify the scenery. Trains pass through the grimiest, greasiest parts of town and view only the backs of buildings. There's a romance to the disembodied wharf pilings, weeds, stacks of paving stones and piles of rusted scrap metal so common along rail routes.


Of course, traveling through California by train also has long stretches of extreme classical beauty. It's hard to avoid in this great state, but I managed to sleep through them.

The most memorable thing I saw passed too quickly for me to catch a photo. There was a teenage boy sitting on a roof, watching the train go by.


Sometimes photography is an art of ideas. Juxtapositions and new ways of looking at the world. It isn't hard to use a camera the way it is to draw or to play an instrument, you just need sharp focus and a close frame. I think that's why it's such a popular amateur pursuit.

Othertimes it's about being at the right place at the right time or being invisible. That's when photography becomes something requiring patience and skill. That's when I go back to words.

Odds and Ends of Summer's End

There's been a noticeable cooling recently. The days are getting shorter and the air is getting gusty. Peaches are finishing up and apples went on sale at Safeway this week. It's become painfully obvious that summer is coming to a close and, as much as I have enjoyed the season, I feel ready to embrace the hustle that characterizes fall quarter.

I'm retiring my radio show for the next quarter. I don't have any new bands to play and I won't have the time to find them. I will make a point, however, of cohosting a Halloween show and a Christmas show. After all, it's my last opportunity to do so and I've been dying to do a holiday broadcast. Last year the Christmas music started in October at our house.

I've been getting some extra exercise lately. I keep finding myself on course towards our old apartment. Two weeks in and my subconscious still hasn't managed to internalize that I don't live in the ghetto anymore.

Similarly tardy is our DSL. When Howard called AT&T on the thirtieth, they said it would take them a week and a half to process our request and turn on the internet. So when the internet didn't start working last Tuesday, I called them to find what was up. I was met with a labyrinth of automated questions and confusion on the part of the tech personnel. This process repeated itself the next night and on Thursday they said there's a technical problem and they'll send out someone to fix it on the twenty-fourth. With luck, we'll have internet inside of a month since requesting the switch...

This misadventure has highlighted the fact that the internet permeates every aspect of my life besides sleeping, showering and pooing. It isn't just me though. The world expects you to have use of the web. AT&T referred us to a website that explains how to get your internet working. Think about that for a second.

Without internet an astonishing array of things have gone by the wayside, not the least of which is this blog. I played catch up on the train home and I have a bunch of posts in the works, but I don't think I'll be able to sustain the rate of posting that I kept once classes kick in.

A Summer of Alcoholism

At the beginning of the summer I turned twenty one. I celebrated Howard and I's birthday by throwing a cocktail party, and this necessitated stocking a bar. Over the course of the summer I have read a lot about liquors, and I have passed from one fascination to another. The most recent has been rye whiskey.

Rye was the liquor of choice among our nation's founding fathers. It was popular in the States until Prohibition, when it went inexplicably out of style. The oldest, most available and cheapest brand is called Old Overholt, and the picture on the bottle resembles the portraits found on our currency. It's a light and flowery whiskey, in sharp contrast to Maker's Mark Bourbon. I drink it shaken with ice.

Last year Brandon and I discovered Martinis. We make them with cheap gin and not too dry despite present fashion. Even with our cheap ingredients the Martini is a world class drink of elegance and poise.

The Manhattan is a similarly refined drink that I have reveled in this summer. I owe it my introduction to bitters. Whiskey sold in glass bottles doesn't come so cheaply as gin, and thus it has remained a guilty pleasure.

Immediately preceding our cocktail party was my obsession with Brazilian Caipirinhas. They are made from a rum analog called Cachaca that is distilled from fermented cane juice. To make, you muddle two tablespoons of raw sugar with a fat slice of lime. Fill the glass with ice, then pour a tall shot of Cachaca over it. The drink smells of sugar cane and is great on hot days. I'm a proponent of substituting brown sugar and halving the sugar makes a better fit to the American palette.

The Caipirinha provided the inspiration for the Bitter Max and this too I have been meditating on. Rum vanishes seemingly overnight in the face of the new drink as well as, it turns out, Tequila.

Apparently I've inspired an appreciation for liquor in Caius. He reported that though once he had an aversion towards it, he is now in love with his native Romania's Tzuica. He promises to give me a taste the next time we meet. I hope you'll take example from my good friend Caius.

Just Call Me Max Freedom

So when Elisa asked me to write this, she requested I not be critical of ORMF as I have in the past been of certain aspects of KDVS. I told her not to worry. The worst criticism I can make is that Operation Restore Maximum Freedom is unfortunately named. Max Freedom is the KDVS music festival and it happens once or twice a year. It is among my favorite Davis events along with Picnic Day and one is coming up October eleventh.

As you might expect of KDVS, ORMF is intensely eclectic and unless you're a part of the local music scene you won't recognize any of the names on the roster. This works to the festival's advantage. Coachella this is not.

As any veteran will attest, Coachella is a stressful experience. This is because people usually only go to see one or two of the bands playing and because large music festivals are crowded and expensive.

Not so with ORMF. You can sit as close to the stage as you like and there are picnic benches and grass for sitting. The festival takes place in the backyard of a bar called Plainview Station, so good burgers and pitchers of beer are readily available and reasonably priced. I'm stoked to be of drinking age this time.

The bands are the handpicked favorites of KDVS staff, so anyone who comes with an open mind will be delighted and satisfied with the selection. Not necessarily every band, mind you, but the ambiance has a way of making uncommon music friendly. As with any KDVS outlet, you're liable to come away with a broader appreciation for music than you had going in.

You can hop on the shuttle or bike the five miles to Plainview Station en masse with fellow festival goers. Just bring a picnic blanket and a little money and drop by.

The Gang Makes A Move

I am writing this amidst a mountain of boxes. I had no idea that poor college students could accumulate so much crap, albeit overwhelmingly cheap crap. I apparently need twenty-four boxes and ten bags worth of stuff, plus furniture. That's right I counted. And that was only my room.


On Moving Day the streets are choked with trucks and the dumpsters with abandoned furniture. All the hippie-hobos of Davis come out to scrounge college-kid refuse. I myself acquired a broken dresser and a couple of chairs.

We began packing boxes Friday night so that we could empty and fill them again that night. Saturday, the Uhaul truck was so big it took us most of the day to pack and unload and by nightfall the toll of the day's labors weighed heavily upon us. I responded by drinking heavily.



On Sunday, Brandon's family came to help us. After evacuating our apartment, we set to work cleaning. Our muscles screamed as noxious fumes savaged our lungs. It won't surprise you to hear that that night also ended with heavy drinking.

On Monday we again plunged our lungs into the fumes. We closed our now-empty apartment and said farewell to our neighbors. Then we began unpacking.

Our former apartment was incredibly cheap, incredibly located and incredibly ghetto. Residents were mostly working class and our favorite neighbors were friendly drunks. During the two years we lived there, the complex kept changing hands, and each management demonstrated a complete apathy toward our myriad repair problems. The most recent company decided to flush everyone out with rent hikes and recast the complex to be student friendly. This guy's moving to Woodland.


Each of my roommates left their mark on the truck. Brandon hit a protector at the gas station and Howard took a chunk out of our complex's "pool house". It was a fitting farewell to make the complex look that much more like a war-torn former Soviet republic.


We will be joined this year by Greg Webb, a friend of Brandon's from DCD who's going to share his room. With Greg's contribution, the average rent is as cheap as our previous locale. Our new place is a duplex with the exact floor plan of almost every duplex in Davis and our landlord is a cute little Indian woman. We now benefit from such luxuries as central air, unbroken windows, and a dishwasher.

We are still without internet or phone service and my room's still mostly in boxes, but the TV is set up and we cooked our first meal in the kitchen tonight. This year we're living in style.