Art Happy Hour @ the Bedlam Theatre

Wednesday, August 12
4 to 7 pm

1.

I recently submitted to Andy Sturdevant’s fantastic and ever-entertaining blog, Southtwelfth, a Kentucky Derby-day cocktail recipe called The Bruitist Manifesto. I present the recipe here (cleaned of typos and slightly clarified) for your Art Happy enjoyment:

The Bruitist Manifesto

1. Ponder a confusion of noises, colours and spiritual rhythms.
2. Play your favorite recording of the essence of a tramcar with the yawns of Mr Smith and the shriek of brakes.
3. Order vermouth from a club in Berlin which you can join without any obligations (if preferable, you may consider clubs in Honolulu as well as New Orleans and Meseritz).
4. Now, as you are bound by no frontier, religion or profession, pour into a cocktail shaker several peace congresses, scuffles in the vegetable markets, social get-togethers, etc., etc.
5. Pause to read the paper as the Balkan express crosses the Nisch bridge and a pig squeals in the cellar of Mr Bones the butcher.
6. Add several jiggers of bourbon and, as bitters, several dashes of the unrequited tears of a novitiate of the order of Carmelite nuns. Shake well.
7. Recite in a foreign accent: “Down with the anaemic abstraction of Expressionism! Down with the literary hollow-heads and their theories for improving the world! Long live Dadaism in word and image! Long live the Dada events of this world! To be against this manifesto is to be a Dadaist!”
8. Pour into a rocks glass. Garnish with a page from a Proust novel. Enjoy.

2.

Reminder: The next Art Happy Hour takes place on May 13, at the Bedlam Theatre, 4 to 7 pm.
Includes: Art Trivia contest (with prizes).
Note: Art Happy trivia hints starting today, May 1, on Twitter.

3.

Save the date — June 3 — for the next Art Happy combine: “Stuck in Right Field” – An artists event at the Metrodome.

Stay tuned (to http://www.arthappyhour.com/; to “Art HappyHour” on Facebook; to /ArtHappyHour on Twitter) for the deets about when and where to meet up with your fellow baseball (and hotdog)-loving artists!

And please don’t forget: Down with the literary hollow-heads and their theories for improving the world!

I promise to post a follow-up to last week’s Art Happy Hour! 3 very soon — perhaps tomorrow — but I’ve been quite taxed and overwrought these past few days for various and sundry reasons having nothing to do with art, happiness, or hours.

Trust me, despite the somewhat disappointing turnout to the last AHH! — which was likely dictated by the incoming tornadoes, hailstorms, thunderstorms, and resulting flash floods, more than anything else — I’m as upbeat and cheery as ever. Someday we’ll have a kick ass turnout to Art Happy Hour! Mark my word!

In the meantime, while you’re waiting for me to post about last week’s AHH!, I thought I’d send along a visual about what I’m up to today — A tasty drink I concocted just for this semi-partially-somewhat-okayweatherwise-evening.

A Blue Ginger Margarita

Made up of tequila, fresh lime juice, superfine sugar, Grand Marnier, ginger liqueur, and blue curacao. Not a shabby consolation after a disappointing AHH! turnout:

I promise I’ll post details about AHH!3 — which was actually quite fun despite the poor turnout — and preliminary planning information about AHH!4, shortly. In the meantime, be happy.

Greetings to all you Happy Hourians out there! Back to work after a long lazy weekend with nothing to do–what could be better? … Except maybe some news about Art Happy Hour!

Here are a few happy tidbits to add to your happy post-Memorial Day Tuesday joy!

1. After a long and hard-fought race, we have, at last, a clear winnAHH! That is, Art Happy Hour!3 will take place at Clubhouse Jaeger - Thursday, June 5, 4 to 8 pm. (Jaeger got 10 votes out of 31, followed close behind by the Lexington with 8 votes, and Nick & Eddie with 7). Mark your calendars and plot your Google maps, and come to the Art Happy Hour! And stay tuned to AHH! for information in the next week or two for information on how to find your fellow denAHH!zens on the day of the event…

2. The Admin of AHH! is pleased to announce the formation of a new Twin Cities-based visual arts blog on the Rakemag site. Called The Thousandth Word, it’ll include the musings, critiques, and other writings of a group of six arts writers who collectively have dubbed themselves “The Vicious Circle.” You can visit the first shot-over-the-bow post (by your very own L’admin d’AHH!) here.

3. Finally, the Admin of AHH! is also pleased to announce he’ll be visiting in the coming week, of all places, Mars. And, believe or not, once there he’ll meet up with Douglas Fogle, the former Walker curator who left Minneapolis for Mars in 2005. (Watch for L’admin to post an interview with Fogle and a review of the show jointly on The Thousandth Word and AHH! some time in the new month!)

In the meantime, did you know that the U.S. could have established a 500-person colony on Mars with the money it’s spent so far on the War in Iraq?

Just for fun, meine Schätzes!

A few AHH! tidbits for today:

• L’Admin d’AHH did manage to stop by the Martini Social @ Clubhouse Jager the other night, and he was disappointed not to see any of you there… You missed a fantastic event! Kudos to Kate Iverson and the crew—she’s doing some great work to bring together the ever-disparate parts of the arts community, and she’s really fun to talk to. I’m hoping she’ll be able to make it to Art Happy Hour!3!

• Speaking of which, I promise, absolutely promise, that crucial information about the next iteration of the nation’s ONLY happy hour for artists and art lovers is coming soon. Though, in keeping with the happy hour aesthetic, I won’t say exactly when…

• In the meantime, here’s a poem about my favorite family of happy hour beverage, the Martini:

There is something about a Martini
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth -
I think that perhaps it’s the gin.
From A Drink with Something in It, Ogden Nash

• Also, here are two jokes by Roger Angell from his essay on martinis in The New Yorker a couple of years ago.

In the Second World War, Navy fighter pilots received a tiny survival kit, “Open Only in Extreme Emergency,” it said. Inside was a tiny shaker and a glass, a stirring straw, a thimbleful of gin and an eyedropper’s worth of vermouth. One downed pilot opened it, mixed and stirred. Vessels made toward him at top speed. A torpedo boat raced up and its commanding officer shouted, “That’s not the right way to make a dry Martini!”

Also: If you’re ever lost in the woods and can’t find your way out, just announce in a loud voice that you know how to make the perfect martini. Three people will suddenly appear out of nowhere to dispute you!

• Finally, I have to send a thanks out to the lovely and wonderful barkeep at Club Jager, who, when given a direct challenge by your Admin to make up “something in the martini family, that’s refreshing, light, and not too sweet” (you have to understand, Mr. Admin can be a bit of a handful in bars sometimes…), without skipping a beat went off and concocted this:

That Springtime Feeling
(She said she’d seen it in an old bar book from the 1920s; likely it’s a drink named after a 1915 movie of the same name. It’s also known, in modern parlance, as a Spring Feeling.)

2 oz gin
2 tblsp lemon juice
Add gin and lemon juice to iced shaker. Stir until chilled. Swirl green chartreuse in a chilled cocktail glass. Pour drink into glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.

FABS #1: Robert Plant’s Radiohead Rant

News Item: London, Jan 21, 2008, 13:30 GMT

Robert Plant recently demanded that a London bar stop playing music by the band Radiohead, calling it “rhyming crap” and saying it was “ruining his night.”

A source told Britain’s The Sun newspaper: “Robert was drinking with a woman and didn’t like the choice of tunes playing. Radiohead was on and he started complaining.”

When the bar’s staff complied with Plant’s request and put on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the 59-year-old former lead singer of Led Zeppelin was still not pleased, saying this music was like a “nursery rhyme.”