Professor of Cocktail Studies

  Being drunk is fun. That’s one of the lessons that kids of my generation learned from watching television in the 1960s. My friends and I routinely played at two things: pretended to get shot and die (westerns were big then) and stagger around pretending to be drunk—on TV (and in film, for that matter) being drunk was nearly always played for laughs. To give an example from “Star Trek,” hands down my favorite TV show: In the second season episode “By Any Other Name,” the Enterprise is hijacked by emotionless aliens who neutralize every crewman aboard the ship except Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty. The aliens have had to assume human form in order to control the Enterprise, which of course is designed for humans, and as a result have acquired unaccustomed human emotions--a vulnerability that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty exploit to retake the ship. Kirk (inevitably) seduces one of the aliens who has assumed female form. Spock manipulates the alien leader to become murderously j...

Binge-drinking means willfully getting drunk; that is to say, drinking enough that your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) reaches .08 percent or more. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an alcoholic. Most binge-drinkers aren’t. It still does a lot of damage over time, however. It may or may not surprise you to know that according to a CDC study done in 2015, one in six American adults binge-drinks about once a week. That’s 37 million adults. A standard drink is one 12-ounce beer, 5 oz. wine, or 1.5 oz. of distilled spirits. At the rate of five standard drinks in a two-hour period—four if you’re a woman—you will have consumed the equivalent of 3 oz. of ethanol. Cumulatively, that adds up to 17 billion standard drinks consumed by adults each year; or to bring it down to a human level, 467 standard drinks per binge drinker. The adults most likely to binge-drink are between 18 and 34. Binge drinking is more common among people with higher education levels and incomes north of $75,000...

Things that remind you irresistibly of New Orleans: Red Beans and Rice, bare breasts and beads, and memories of running for your life on Canal Street after midnight. Also the Sazerac, the emblematic cocktail of the Big Easy. Here’s the recipe for the authoritative modern Sazerac, as served at the Sazerac Bar in the 5-star Roosevelt Hotel (just off Canal Street and about a block from Bourbon Street). It comes from _The Sazerac_ by Tim McNally (Louisiana State University Press, 2020). 1 cube sugar 1.5 oz. Sazerac Rye Whiskey 0.25 oz. Herbsaint 3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters Lemon peel The recipe involves two Old-Fashioned glasses (8-11 ounces volume). Chill the first one—that’s the one in which the completed Sazerac is going to end up. Then place the sugar cube and Peychaud’s bitters in the second. Muddle it to crush the sugar. (Personally, I use simple syrup. It’s quicker and does a more thorough job of mixing the sugar and bitters.) Add the Sazerac Rye Whiskey (actually, any g...