Up with a Twist Introduction – The Three-Martini Launch

Up with a Twist Introduction

Musings on Modern Life – A classic cocktail of three parts 80-proof cynicism and one part hope for the future, stirred not shaken, and garnished with a twist of irony. Join me in a slightly tipsy take on American culture and politics, and my quixotic quest to find the Golden Mean. 

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The Three-Martini Launch

Can I tell you something?

There’s nothing wrong with drinking chilled vodka, but if it’s not mixed with at least a little vermouth it’s not a martini. A single part vermouth to five or six parts vodka is about right. And for the record, the classic martini is made with gin. I prefer vodka myself but will occasionally have a Bombay martini when I’m in the mood for liquor that actually tastes like something. In certain circles people now order martinis with half gin and half vodka, which is very au courant and comforting I imagine to the commitment-phobic, but a bit silly I feel. In any event, whether you choose gin or vodka or a combination of the two, put a little vermouth in it.

Your martini can be shaken not stirred, and they almost always are these days, but may I remind you that you’re not James Bond and you’re making a cocktail not a snow cone. I know stirring requires a funny looking spoon and a bit more time to make it properly cold, but it’s worth it. And it can be served on the rocks if you want to skip the shaking or stirring altogether, but why would you not want to look damn cool? Apropos of that, it should be served in a classic martini glass, not a champagne saucer or your grandmother’s crystal sherbet dish. Finally, you can choose the classic garnish of pimento-stuffed olives skewered on a toothpick – whoever came up with the idea of putting olives in martinis with the pits is exactly that – and you can have it “dirty” with extra olive juice if you really like olive juice. Or, as I do, you can toss in a bit of lemon peel that has kissed the rim of the glass and had its lovely essence twisted into your bracing bath of booze.

I would never encourage anyone to drink too much, or drink at all for that matter, but if you do, martinis are strong drinks and for most people one is enough. As you may have guessed by now, I’m not most people, and I can report that sometime after you’ve started a second martini and before you finish the third – despite amassing a statistically significant database I have yet to pinpoint the exact moment – the world becomes a better place. Or at least it looks better.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. 

Though you didn’t ask, my view of the world, blurred or not, is rooted in an innate and unwavering sense of fairness, steeled by a dictatorial and unyielding father, nurtured by a loving mother who insisted the only rule in life was golden, influenced by role models both good and bad, impacted by world events both good and bad, and seasoned by enough time fogging the mirror to round off any sharp corners and soften hard feelings. I am firmly grounded in love, friendship and a sense of place, but feel increasingly unmoored and adrift on the socio-political sea of American life. Except for the three-martini lunch, I have no desire to turn back the clock to the 1950s, but on the other hand I don’t feel especially woke either. I don’t want to offend anybody, but I don’t believe we have a right to not be offended, so please don’t be offended if I don’t care that you are. Reading or watching the news makes me want to lie down, and I couldn’t even begin to explain what constitutes ‘news’ anymore. All I want to do is the right thing, but I’m afraid my friends on the left might take that literally and unfriend me. So, what’s left then? Or right? . .

Aristotle – one of my top-five favorite Greek philosophers – tried to describe, or prescribe, or proscribe, or maybe just scribe moral behavior. He called it the “golden mean” and simply put it meant navigating a path between excess on the one hand and deficiency on the other. Chances are he was only trying to find that sweet spot between the second and third amphora of wine, but it’s a pure and simple philosophy applicable to every aspect of human existence and all walks of life. Applied to our current culture, it suggests we might meet in the middle on common ground and try to solve our problems rather than conjure new ones. Is that so wrong? Is that so hard? Isn’t that more or less where we all, or at least those of us with a functioning fuse box, would like to be?

Ari and his Acropolis bros would surely stroke their hoary beards and rub their ancient eyes at how unrecognizable the world is today. All around us we see and experience excessive deficiencies of equity, fairness, opportunity, truth, empathy, compassion, kindness, decency, and other things as well. How did it come to pass we have only the choice of rich or poor, left or right, red or blue, black or white, urban or rural, all or nothing, and nothing in between? If we have a choice. My more modern take on the golden mean is that it describes the middle lane on the interstate freeway of life and my goal writing these essays is to try and merge with the flow of traffic, much of which is going too fast or too slow, signal my intention to find the middle, keep my middle finger inside the vehicle, and let the crossover SUV of happiness cruise to its ultimate destination going just slightly over the posted speed limit, safe from lunatic fringes both left and right. If I’m not the only one who feels this way then please ride with me, in which case we could legally use the HOV lane. I Googled Aristotle to see if he had anything to say about HOV lanes and came up empty, but I’m reasonably certain he would approve.

Thanks for listening. Talk soon.