Links for 2010-12-23

"In 1974, a Clevelander wrote the Browns complaining of the menace posed by the then-fad of throwing paper airplanes, and implicitly threatened litigation. The Browns' response is just about the most awesome thing ever committed to paper."

"Lukas, it seemed, had served mixed drinks with the best of them at the Paris Ritz, the Waldorf-Astoria and everywhere else on that circuit. But he'd jacked it in and taken up a defunct lease in the City, to follow a vision; the vision of bringing the crude pseudoscience of bartending together with the noble art of homeopathic medicine. The cocktail he had painstakingly constructed for me had been made from a base of gin, mixed with gin from a bottle which had once contained a drop of vermouth, and stirred assidously over gin from a bottle which had once contained a sliver of ice. Lukas had been up all the night before, pouring and re-pouring the gin, to ensure that these original ingredients had long since been rinsed away."