Drink of the Moment: The Vesper

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large, thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

If there's an author this side of Earnest Hemingway who really knew his liquor, it was Ian Flemming, the creator of secret agent James Bond. In honor of the release of Quantum of Solace, I bring you the drink Flemming created through 007, The Vesper.

The Vesper was introduced in Flemming's 1953 novel, Casino Royal. During a high stakes game of Baccarat. Bond invents the drink when asked if he'd like a drink from the bar. When Felix Lighter, one of the other players comments on the drink, Bond says this.

"I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I can think of a good name."

He ends up naming it in honor of Vesper Lynd, the double agent for the Soviets that he's bedding at this time.

As you can read above, the drink involves Gin, Vodka, and Kina Lillet. However, if you want to make an accurate Vesper, you must keep in mind that this recipe was devised in 1953, when men were men, and alcohol was strong. Gordon's Gin has been cut down in proof, and most vodkas currently sold are 80 proof. Kina Lillet isn't made anymore. They replaced it with Lillet Blanc, which has no quinine in it, so it lacks any real bite to it.

To get around these issues, there are several quick fixes. Many modern gins maintain the 94 proof of 50's Gordon's. 100 proof vodka is easy to find. A dash of quinine powder turns a Lillet Blanc back into Kina Lillet. The quinine powder might be difficult to find, so if you can't get your hands on it, substitute in 2 dashes of Angostura Bitters.

You wind up with 3 oz 94 proof gin, 1 oz 100 proof vodka, 1/2 oz of Lillet Blanc, and a dash of Quinine Powder (or two dashed bitters). Shake until cold, then strain into a Cocktail glass, or a deep champagne goblet if you want to be true to Bond. Garnish with a long thin lemon peel. Take a sip, and picture yourself heads up with Le Chiffre.

Quantum of Solace

Quantum - [kwon-tuhm] -(physics) the smallest discrete quantity of some
physical property that a system can possess.

Quantum of Solace is the latest James Bond film, and once you watch it, the title becomes quite apt.

Daniel Craig stars for the second time as the man with a license to kill. Craig's portrayal of Bond is more in line with the model put forward by previous actors Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton. Craig's Bond is a killer for his country. Gone are the quips and one liners of the campier Bonds. Personally, I like it this way.

Judi Dench comes back as M, Bond's supervisor. As always, she does a sharp job at this.

Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton play Bond Girls Camille Montes and Strawberry Fields, respectively. Montes is a beautiful Russian Bolivian woman who's on a vendetta against the man who killed her family. Fields is a lovely British redhead working for the British Consulate. Fields exudes the almost prudish form of sex appeal that only the British have mastered.

Mathieu Amalric plays Dominic Greene. The main villain of the film. Eco friendly CEO of a major corporation, and member of the secretive criminal syndicate Quantum. Unlike previous villains, Greene lacks an outstanding deformity. He's probably the most normal villain to grace Her Majesty's Silver Screen. He still comes off as a little creepy though.

Quantum of Solace picks up right where Casino Royal left off. Right off, as in Mr. White, the operative for Quantum that Bond captured at the end of the previous film, is still in the trunk of Bond's Aston Martin. The film jumps right into a pitched gunfight on the narrow European highways, and the action never slows up.

After making his escape from the gunmen of Quantum, Bond brings Mr. White to an MI6 safehouse, where M herself prepares to interrogate him, using unscrupulous means if need be. Mr. White laughs her ominous threats off, claiming that Quantum has people everywhere. Usually when someone says that, it's a setup for someone to be a double agent down the road. Apparently, it wasn't very far down the road, because one of the MI6 agents in the room opens fire, killing the guards. Bond gives chase, leaving Mr. White unattended.

In Bond's furious pursuit of the traitor, we begin to get a peak at the reason why the film was given it's name. The betrayal and death of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royal has made him into an inconsolable font of wrath. He has buried himself in his duties with MI6, and walks a perilous line between his duty, and pure vengeance.

As he chases leads regarding the shadow syndicate of Quantum, he is led to Dominic Greene, the CEO of Greene Planet. Mr. Greene has some shady dealings going on that will bring about the downfall of the Bolivian government, and give Greene control of the worlds most valuable resource.

This is an EON Bond film, so it's rather stunning visually. The stunts are jaw dropping. Picture Parkour on roid rage. The score suits the film well. It utilizes the Bond Theme leitmotif, without becoming dependent upon it. The theme song is well done, but a little unremarkable. I liked "You Know My Name" from Casino Royal better. However, Alicia Keys does a good job singing.

The writing has gone far away from the gadget filled camp of the series prior. For the most part, everything they use is plausible. There are not so subtle homages to Goldfinger and Moonraker. Think black gold. The characters are much more filled out in the Craig films than in any previous incarnations.

The film is 106 minutes long, and garnered a 58 on Metacritic. Most critics complained that it didn't seem like Bond was having fun in this one. I agree, but I believe that that was the point of this film. 007 is no longer the quip producing charmer in control of everything. He's human now. He bleeds, he hurts, and he has doubts. I think this is a great move. I give the film an 8/10.

New Watchmen Trailer!

This is going to be fucking fantastic!

In Bruges

Earlier this week, I rented a few movies. Amonst them was Martin McDonagh's In Bruges.

Colin Farrell plays Ray, a young aspiring hitman who accidently kills a young boy on his first assignment.

Brendan Gleeson plays Ken, an experienced hitman who acts as a mentor to Ray.

Ralph Fiennes plays Harry, their scrupulous employer who decides to send them both into hiding in the Belgian city of Bruges to lay low until the heat subsides. Ray hates it in Bruges. It's a little too... Belgian for his tastes. Things start to turn around when Ray meets a girl, Chloe, and a midget she's working with on a film. Things go south again when Chloe's tries to rob him, and midget turns out to be a jackass, and things just continue to go down. Until Ray decides to kill himself, and Ken is instructed to kill Ray over the boy Ray killed. At that point, decisions have to be made.

While In Bruges is indeed a comedy, it is a very dark comedy. So dark, that light cannot escape it's surface. It's pretty much an hour and a half of watching life kick Colin Farrell in the nuts. The atmosphere captures the feel of a small european tourist town pretty well. The score is fairly minimal, which is good because it doesn't get in the way. The characters of Ray and Ken are pretty well rounded, however the rest of the cast is a little flat. It's also casually profane in a manner that only Guy Ritchie movies have managed.

In Bruges is 107 minutes long, and earned a 67 on metacritic. It's worth watching. I give it a 7/10.

Fixing College Football: The Big XII

It's been a while, but as Bender once said... "I'M BACK, BABY!" Let's take a look at how we would realign the Big XII conference.

The University of Texas

Texas A&M

The University of Oklahoma

Oklahoma State University

The University of Kansas

Kansas State University

Texas Tech

The University of Colorado

The University of Missouri

The University of Nebraska

The first six were all classic rivals. Texas Tech, I'm hoping begins to form a rivalry with Missouri, and Colorado and Nebraska are both traditional Big XII powers that I would feel bad for excluding. Iowa State is more in Big Ten territory, so they're out. Baylor could be a rival with Texas Tech, but the idea of Missouri and TT shooting it out was just too appealing.

What Clemson needs to fix.

Clemson's the new hot topic, seeing as they just fired/resigned their head coach Tommy Bowden after a 3-3 start to a season that saw them ranked in the top ten in preseason polls. Many people have applauded this move, stating that with the kind of talent that Clemson has, his performance simply has not been good enough. Nine straight bowl eligible seasons and a 72-45 record in his time at Clemson.

My question is, what kind of talent do you really think Clemson has? Do people really think that Clemson has the kind of Talent to match up with major conference championship calibur teams?

Talent is really just a measure of potential. It does not always make a good player, but it does make a good draft pick. So recent draft picks is a good way of measuring what kind of talent a program has been working with in recent years.

Over the last four years, Clemson has had 13 players drafted. This puts them at Sixth in the ACC, behind Virginia Tech, Virginia, North Carolina State, Florida State, and Miami.

Let's look at some of the output of some of the perennial powerhouses. Oklahoma has had 24 players drafted in that same span. Texas has had 21. Michigan has had 19. Ohio State has had 23. USC has had 31. Florida has had 17. LSU has had 22.

What kind of teams have had a similar talent level over the last 4 years? Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oregon, Stanford, and Louisville have all had 13 players drafted over the same span. Together, those 6 teams, in 24 attempts, have 1 conference championship between them. They are also a combined 22-16 this season, which basically averages out to 4-3. Also, with the exception of Oregon, all of these teams have stumbled recently with coaching changes. These are the talent peers of Clemson. This is no longer the 1980s.

Tommy Bowden was not a coach who was going to take Clemson to the BCS promised land. But I don't really think that was a place Clemson is capable of going to. He's pretty much a face value coach, give him a mediocre team, and you get mediocre results. But he was consistent. And in college football right now, consistency equals money. Those eight bowl appearances netted the ACC over a million dollars in prize money. With Tommy, you knew what you were getting. Now, Clemson has opted to roll the dice.

I don't like the move. Coaching changes after a successful season tend to faceplant. I would not be surprised if Clemson falls apart completely the next few seasons. Especially if they hire some retread coach, which, after the dismissal of Bowden, might be all they can get, as the hot names, like Bronco Mendenhal and Will Muschamp will be able to take their pick of the vacancies. Clemson's best bet, assuming that they can't get one of those two, might be an unorthodox one.

Gus Malzahn, the offensive coordinator of Tulsa. Orchestrator of the number 1 offense in college football, averaging 603 yards and 53 points per game. The first step to set the table for him is the benching of Cullen Harper, a senior, in favor of the more talented and less experienced freshman Willie Korn. Get him some experience. Also, do whatever it takes to keep CJ Spiller on campus. Those two, along with receiver Jacoby Ford, will provide the initial nucleus of a new offense Malzahn can build. Clemson has already decided to scrap this season. Don't be surprised if they drop out of bowl contention entirely, which would have been unlikely with Bowden. All Clemson can do beyond that, is pray.

Thoughts on the Bailout

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last week or so, the hot topic now days is the proposed $700 Billion bailout of the lending institutions that overextended themselves on bad mortgages. The senate recently passed it, and it's going to the house. President Bush has endorsed it, and both Obama and McCain voted for it in the senate. It seems almost a forgone conclusion that this will pass. I have only one question...

What the fuck happened to accountability? I always thought that one of the key ideas of capitalism was that you accept both the earnings and the losses. These lending institutions took risks by handing out mortgages to any Tom, Dick, or Harry with a pulse. "You make $25k a year, and you want to buy a $1.5M house? Sure, we'll back you!" Who approved these boneheaded moves?

People talk about the collapse of these lending institutions as if it's the end of the world. They claim it's the next Great Depression. Did any of these politicians live through the Great Depression? It's like claiming that the Iraq War is the next WWII.

People point to the failure of Washington Mutual as if all banks will fail and all the money people have saved will just vanish into the ether. Did these people notice what happened to Washington Mutual? It got bought out by JPMorgan Chase and was open the next day. This is capitalism, people. The banks perform both a vital, and lucrative, service. If there's a void, and there's profit to be made, that void will be filled.

It's not the government's place to insulate businesses from the consequences of their bad decisions. All the government needs to do is ensure that business is being conducted in an ethical manner, and beyond that, fortunes will be made and lost by the hands of the businessman, not the congressman. You aren't solvent enough to cover your debt? Fine, sell assets until you are. Don't whine to the government for free money. If the government has to bail out a business, it should be nationalized, rebuilt, and eventually sold back into the private sector. Put the jackasses who ran that ship into the ground out on their ass.

The other concern I hear about is all the people who will get foreclosed upon because of their bad mortgages. Cry me a river. You're going to lose your house? Cash in your end of the mortgage, let the bank foreclose on you, and buy a house that you can actually afford. What? It'll ruin your credit rating? It should, I wouldn't lend to your dumb ass after you made a mistake that big.

In the end, it all comes back to accountability. People are in this mess because both sides made some God awful decisions. Bailing them out at this point is simply rewarding them for making those decisions. It takes all the risk out of business, and in the end, is tantamount to theft from the taxpayers.