Welcome to the first installment of Ideas Over Drinks!
Thank you for being here. Or rather, there: on the other side of these words, reading, wherever you may be. Your time is valuable, especially during this pandemic we’re all living through, and it means a lot to me that you’re willing to share it. Of course you can’t see me right now, but imagine me raising my coffee to you in a toast. Picture a tall bald white guy sitting at a kitchen table, trying to work on his posture while staring at a laptop. And yes, I really did do that; I really did raise a coffee mug and say cheers to an empty room.
I’ve been thinking about how to start this thing for a while now. And as I was sitting here still trying to figure it out, my youngest daughter, 2-year-old Juni, shouted “Boo!” from the top of the stairs. She and/or her older sister EJ do this every morning. I get booed on the daily, and I love it. Anyway, Juni, her curly hair all lion-wild, came down and gave me a hug, then said she was looking for one of EJ’s stuffed animals, a rainbow-colored and aptly-named caterpillar called Jumpster. But then she turned and saw a book called You Choose In Space sitting on a chair. “Can we read this book?” she asked, forgetting all about Jumpster. “Pleeeease?”
She was excited about reading, and she said please. It was an easy decision to make. The fact that she’s also adorable was just gravy.
As we settled into the big brown chair in the corner of our living room, I asked Juni why she wanted to read this book. She looked at me with a shine in her eyes (and here I’m tempted to share an audio recording of her raspy little cartoon-character voice, so you can have the full experience), then said, “Because it’s the best thing ever!” It reminded me of a moment from a few weeks ago, when she was talking about how she loves “all the pink things.” I asked her why she loves pink so much. She stared at me as if I had just asked the most ridiculous question in the world. “Because it’s my favorite color!”
It was that simple to her. And it struck me, in the cliché way that a lot of observations about parenting can feel, that little kids are brilliant in large part because they just don’t give a shit. They want what they want because they want it. This same trait also makes them 1) occasionally maddening, and 2) arguably sociopathic.
This was around the same time that EJ started campaigning for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. She asked my wife Jenny if she could use her phone, then suddenly started FaceTiming all the friends and family members in her regular calling rotation to ask them who they were voting for. Then she told them why she was voting for Kamala and Joe (usually in that order; sorry, Joe). She didn’t hesitate in doing any of this. Much like her mama often does, she just did the damn thing.
Side note: EJ is five.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m inspired by my kids, and my wife, and their ability to just go for it. Whatever it may be. And so here I am.
I love to read, and I love to write. I also love to make drinks. Most days, I’m pretty good at doing at least one if not all three of these things. So it made sense for me to put them all together here, in this newsletter I’m calling Ideas Over Drinks. It goes straight to your inbox, which means you don’t have to mess with the poppy field of social media if you don’t want to. Zuckerberg and his army of evil geniuses won’t be here with us, pulling our strings, trying to sell us anything. As for me, I’ll never sell your information. I will however recommend books that readers in the US can buy on my bookshop.org page, which is a phenomenal alternative to the monster that is Amazon, and also a great way to support local bookstores. I may recommend bar tools too. And if, some day, some booze company wants to send me a free bottle of something delicious—in exchange for suggesting said delicious product to you—I think I’ll have to consider it.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh yeah. In Chicago, on a Sunday in November. Feeling thrilled that we’re about to have our first ever woman of color as the Vice President of the United States of America, and also agitated that it took so long. Writing about Ideas Over Drinks.
The name is intentional. For me, the ideas are more important than the drinks. They come first. Sometimes the reverse can be true too; have you ever noticed how you get really intelligent right around the end of your second glass of wine? Or is that just me? Seriously though, maybe you don’t even drink alcohol, in which case you might be wondering if this newsletter is for you.
Maybe. Like I said, the ideas are privileged here, particularly in the first free newsletter of the month. The second newsletter has more of a focus on drinks (you can read more about this, as well as subscription options that get you twice the content, on my About page). In theory, you could take the ideas and trash the drinks. Or vice versa—you could ditch the ideas and check out only the drinks—but that would hurt my sensitive heart more if I ever found out. (I’ll never find out!)
No matter what, know this: I might drop some ideas here that occur to you as challenging. I’m pretty sure I have a rep among some of my family and friends for being that guy. I don’t do too well with small talk. Surface conversations bore me, fast. I also have a tendency to ramble. These are qualities that make me a great bartender to some people, and a not-so-great bartender to others.
Well, whoever you are, I’m declaring this a space for ideas and occasional drinks. And since subscribers have the option to leave comments (which I encourage!), I want to declare this too: hate has no home here.
I want this to be a space for open-mindedness and inclusivity. A space for looking harder at things that often get swept under the rug by privileged people like yours truly. For digging into the realities of race and racism, in America and beyond. For challenging conventional notions of masculinity. For listening to people of color. For Black Lives Matter. For a critical look at whiteness and what it’s done. For Filipinos, and my halo-halo family. For feminism. For women’s rights, gay rights, and trans rights. For marginalized voices. For resistance to white-man-splaining, even though there’s no doubt that I, as a white man, am going to white-man-splain from time to time.
It will be a space for messing up, too. For struggle and joy. For knowing that it’s okay not to be okay sometimes. For telling 2020 to go fuck itself if you need to, and then for doing the work to help make sure 2020 doesn’t ever happen again. For laughter in the face of absurdity. For sharing the love and ridiculousness of raising kids, whether you’re a stay-at-home parent like me, a parent not at all like me, or not a parent at all. For doing and drinking your thing, whether it’s a Sazerac, a Sancerre, a PBR, or a green tea. And for—I almost forgot—EJ and Juni’s future ramen restaurant.
Of course, you’re going to gravitate more toward some topics and less toward others. That’s to be expected. Still, I hope a lot of what I get into here will resonate with you. And I’m sorry; I’ve gone way over the word count I wanted for this first post! Most future emails won’t be quite so long. With this in mind, I’ll delve more into the Drinks side of things next week, in the first subscriber email.
But before I go, I will offer one quick drink-making philosophy: You don’t need fancy tools to make great drinks. Check the picture above. Is the coiled barspoon better than the chopstick? Not necessarily. Because if you need to mix a drink and all you have is a chopstick, then the chopstick is going to work just fine. I’ll be talking more about important bar tools next week, but as with all suggestions I make, use it only if it works for you. I’m all for doing what you gotta do with what you’ve got.
Alright, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading! I hope you’re staying safe in these challenging times. I’ll catch you again soon.
Cheers!
— J.
P.S.: I have a favor to ask. Since I’m just getting this project off the ground, I could really use your help in spreading the word. If you liked this first installment of Ideas Over Drinks, please share it with a few people you think might like it as well. Thanks!