Summer Reading Kick-Off

One of the redeeming qualities of warmer weather is upon us: it's summer reading season here at MM! Time to revisit the list of future reads I've been compiling throughout the year and finally get down to it--let the traditional themes of serious historical pursuit intermingled with random "literary" frivolity commence! The usual M.O. of my summer reading habits is a steady diet of extremes: biographies! Novels! William Shatner fan fiction! Abraham Lincoln! Zombies! We like to mix the dense with the fluffy, the impressively haughty with the embarrassingly low-brow--it's what summer reading's all about!

Anyway, I thought I would share our first entry for your consideration: Thunderstruck by Erik Larson, I just finished it yesterday. Some of you may recall that Larson wrote another book that made the MM radar in a big way earlier this year: The Devil in the White City. Thunderstruck hits all the same notes, telling several stories that eventually intermingle: it's all about the invention of wireless communication (focusing on Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor pictured above with his wireless equipment) and a murder that became the next great public fascination following the Jack the Ripper murders in London. Like Devil it revels in historical detail and breathless storytelling, this time focusing on turn-of-the-century London. Larson, who has written for The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, is a helluva researcher--he seems to be able to reach past the primary resources and pull out the atmosphere and feel of the era.

Thunderstruck is fast-paced and fun (well, fun if you are interested in the finer points of the birth of globalization and a good/true-life murder mystery), and illustrates perfectly the effect wireless had on the world through the B plot: the killer and his lover are tracked and caught by Scotland Yard through the use of ship-to-shore wireless communication as they are fleeing from Brussels to Quebec aboard an ocean liner. The case was instantly famous--it was reported in the press around the world as it was happening, demonstrating the viability and value of wireless, which propelled it out of the realm of mere novelty and into widespread use. Recommended!

My next pick, as per my usual trend, will be a novel: The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming. I understand this is a science fiction novel, a genre I've been meaning to revisit, and the review from Publishers Weekly really sealed the deal for me:

"Flaming's debut mixes time travel, historical grit and an alternate history of the American frontier in a romance with a fantastic bent. A contemporary antiques dealer, after coming across an old photo, unspools the story of Peter Force, newly arrived in 1900 New York from Idaho, as he joins a crew of laborers toiling in grim conditions to build the subway system. A chance encounter throws Peter into the path of Cheri-Anne Toledo, a troubled woman who claims to have traveled seven years into the future from the Lost Kingdom of Ohio, a small frontier kingdom over which her father reigned. Cheri-Anne's plight, and his feelings for her, drags them into the orbits of a crusty J.P Morgan and of dueling inventors Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla. As Peter and Cheri-Anne evade the powerful forces invested in Cheri-Anne, the moment when their lives and the contemporary narrator's intersects looms closer and closer, creating palpable suspense. The journey through the seedier side of New York's Gilded Age, with reprisal killings for labor agitators and nights spent in drunken dance halls, is an arresting contrast to classic time-travel themes. This is a real crowd-pleaser."

Time Travel! The year 1900! An alternative history of the American frontier! Edison vs. Tesla! Labor agitators! Oh boy!

"New" Stereo!

Oh, boy readers: we've hit Memorial Day weekend yard sale pay dirt here at MM! In a recent trip to the lovey Germantown/Schnitzelburg neighborhood we discovered an offer we couldn't refuse in somebody's front lawn: an entire stereo dream-system that made all our analog dreams come true in one fell swoop! A cherry JVC set up (complete with really nice after-market speakers) that includes a CD player, a record player (pictured above) and a double tape deck! Although the tape deck needs some repair, everything else is in perfect order and ready for action! Oh boy!

Perhaps I should explain my enthusiasm to the modern, digitally-inclined music listener: I've been pretty disenchanted with the current-generation listening equipment landscape for some time now. Despite a well-publicized love of The Old Ways, I jumped (enthusiastically) into the digital pool along with everyone else: computers, MP3s, CD burners, iTunes--the whole she-bang. My conclusion (after a series of digital heartbreaks)? I miss magnetic tape!

The beautiful complication of making mixed tapes has been romanticized (ad nauseum) in the last decade or so, sure, but you know what? There is a good reason for that: burning a CD is so impersonal, so thoughtless, so...easy. You don't have to stress over thoughtful little variables like transition time between songs and the A side/B side issue. It seems like cheating to have your entire library of songs laid out in front of you in neat little lists, you can drag and drop your way to a perfectly timed mix, with no worries about too many or too few songs--your computer will tell you if there's enough room, eliminating the embarrassment of cutting off a song before it's over (or worse: that awful dragging silence on the end of a side when you left too much blank tape after the last song, your bad planning irrefutably exposed). Not that I think anything worth doing should be complicated/difficult, quite the opposite, actually: analog just works so reliably; digital stuff is too easily controlled by Apple and DRM and other mysterious, legally nebulous abstractions that just get in the way of being creative with your own things. LPs never tell you you can't record songs from them--it's a grooved plastic disc with exactly zero hidden BS to screw with your desire to make a soundtrack for your roadtrip.

I've been thinking about regressing back to the early 90's, equipment wise, for quite a while (the real clincher came last year when my computer crashed and iTunes informed me that I could not recover any of the songs that I had already legally purchased from them...). There is no ethereal, fleeting quality to analog--there is no data to be lost or corrupted, no finicky little lasers, no rebooting, no delicate touch screen technology. My stereo has needles, levers, dials, buttons and switches--it makes reassuringly cantankerous noises that let you know it's working.

I found all my old records in storage, and I realized I had a single of Eat It by Weird Al Yankovic--I had actually forgotten that I owned it! I listened to my records all day yesterday and it was great! Soon I'll get the tape deck up and running and then the real fantasy comes to life: mixed tapes! My end-game plan is to add one more piece of past-present equipment to my arsenal: a portable tape player, so I can take it camping and listen to music while sitting around a fire and looking up at the stars...can you imagine? I've done this many times with a CD player...but never the same one twice. My point being that CD players are so sensitive to moisture that one overnight trip, even a rain-free one, is usually enough to kill them dead. I've gone through more CD players than I'd care to count this way, always with the same result no matter what precautions I take--condensation always finds a way. But those old tape players we all threw away a decade ago? they still worked just fine, even after being dropped down stairs, dragged through mud, kicked around and generally disrespected.

We can have it all, my friends, we just have to go back to the eighties to get it...who's with me?

Official Mercy Missiles Summer 2010 Cocktail

Readers, after much deliberation we've settled on the official beverage of the summer season here at MM: the mojito slushy! After some experimentation and modification to the traditional mojito recipe (lime juice, rum, sugar, mint, ice), we've arrived at a remarkably well-balanced and refreshing drink that, when done right, calls to mind a lemony/limey Icee--a kind of naughty sno-cone for the adults.

I should note that I really couldn't make this happen without the manic ice-crushing power of my Waring Professional Bar Blender (the last word on at-home beverage blending, not to mention stylish, retro good looks)--it doesn't screw around like those other blenders when asked to make you an icy drink that you don't have to chew.

Anyway--you don't have to take my word for it, here's the recipe so you can see for yourself:

In a blender add:

* juice from 1 lime
* juice from 1 lemon
* 3 shots of rum (2 if you'd rather stay coherent after drinking a few)
* 1 oz agave nectar (or sugar)
* fill to within 3 inches of the top with ice
* 1/2 can diet ginger ale

blend until all ice is crushed

muddle a sprig of mint leaves in two mason jars (1 sprig in each), add the rinds of the lemon & lime to each glass, then pour blender contents on top. A swizzle stick is a helpful inclusion to each glass. Makes two very easy-to-drink servings. Ciao bella!