meerkat products ltd.

St. Patrick's Day Special at Embury Cocktails

Over at Embury Cocktails we got a chance to sit down with Paula Reynolds, brand ambassador for Jameson, and talk Irish Whiskey for St. Patrick's Day. She made a Jameson Whiskey Sour for us that was really quite good-I say that having never considered using Irish Whiskey in a sour. And here she answers some burning questions on whiskey including: what's the deal with whiskey/whisky? Also, for the forward thinking drinker, check out our hangover cures from Josh Condon--and please, add your own--share the knowledge.


4 Questions for Paula Reynolds from Embury Cocktails on Vimeo.

Empire State

Dusk, yesterday, looking north from the Thomas Collective, where we were shooting the Jameson brand ambassador for Embury Cocktails. Some view, huh?

Friday Music Cue: First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Play Misty For Me Version)

The French online radio station "Play Misty For Me" is a tribute to the Clint Eastwood film and plays all kinds of jazz and mellow tunes for, as Eastwood's DJ character says in the film, "Lonely lovers on a cold, cold night". It's been keeping me on track over here at Meerkat during a cold, cold winter and a hectic time. A radio station that is an homage to a movie is the best idea I've come across in a long time--it would be tremendous if there were a wave of these little fan stations. You can listen to it directly from the website playmisty4me.com or go to Jazz on iTunes radio, where it's listed. Here's the pre-music video sequence from the film with "The First Time Ever I Saw His Face".

This Photograph Made Me Decide To Shave This Morning

I can't be part of the artfully bearded and stubbled ranks any longer if it's this much of a uniform. Still, the accompanying article did make me glad to live in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn's New Culinary Movement [NYT]

Secret to Succesful Drinking Revealed: Eating Beforehand

Over at emburycocktails.com we've debuted a new feature: Cross-Training Mondays, devoted to the rest of life outside of drinking, and how to best  manage and enhance one's imbibing. Wellness strategies (raw vegetable juice, y'all!), ways to maintain while partying and actual food will be explored. Our associate Stuart Krimko (right)contributed the first piece, about an egg & cheese sandwich that made a party we threw a whole lot more enjoyable for us.

Friday Music Cue: 15 Steps (live with USC Trojans)

After repeated posts of live clips of Radiohead's live-wire performance at the 2009 Grammys were repeatedly taken down from YouTube, sgtpopoy posted a cool hybrid clip that seems to be staying. An excellent audio recording made during the performance plays over a montage of HD stills from the broadcast, and the visuals-to-music ratio is leveraged surprisingly effectively-something to look at, but you're really listening. Very rich sound, something that was missing from compressed YouTube clips before. And the video kinda just made you want to be there, teased you to further imagine the in-person experience. This slideshow gets the ambience down, while letting your mind wander with the music.

Was that marching band chuffed or what.

In Defense of Nervous Breakdowns

From Alex Witchel's Sunday brunch discussion-ready piece on Rupert Everett in the Times Magazine:

"It would be nice to see him work more, though he wasn’t convinced of this. “You shouldn’t work much more than every six months or so as an actor, he said. “People get very bored of you — all those people who do four movies a year. Barbra Streisand didn’t do four movies a year. Dustin Hoffman never did four movies a year until recently. They kept amongst themselves. I think you should do that slightly. You should be able to putter off and have a breakdown or a heroin addiction, whatever it is, your particular problem of choice. That’s what makes you an interesting actor, anyway. We’re more interesting if we are dysfunctional.”"

John Jay's Real Time Blackberry Trailer Reviews: The Wrestler

At the Wrestler...back in Portland

8ish people in theater

City, atm, people, corruption, clive owen, bank, ended up dead or dissapeared, can't allow anyone to put our agenda at risk, has to be a way to bring down this bank, naomi watts "The International" - looks like one gigantic cliche

Ruins, year 2018, judgement day, machines, outnumbered, running, this isn't the future my mother warned me about, at war, explosions, win or lose-this war ends tonight - Terminator Salvation - Bale's an ass but movie looks good.

Guy thrown out window, visually stunning, superheroes, one of us died tonight, maybe someone is picking off costume heroes, dude with sock over his face, we can save this world, why would I save a world I no longer have any stake in, producer's of 300, hell of a lot going on - "Watchmen"

Huge jackman, all the horrible things in your life, father, war, helicopter, special team special privildges, embrace the other siden killing, explosions, bullseye? Liev schrieber some animal guy, motorcycles - "X-Men Origin - Wolverine"
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

AFTER:

A bit contrived. I'm in the Penn camp.

Friday Music Cue: Stardust

Like Thomas McCarthy's 'The Visitor', Neil Jordan's 1991 film 'The Miracle' is bursting with unspoken feeling and intense yearnings, and traffics in a kind of emotional currency that's too uncomfortable, or perhaps just too subtle for a lot of people. And like 'The Visitor' few people actually saw 'The Miracle'--now the film isn't even on DVD, a real shame--this is a perfect candidate for the Criterion Collection treatment. It's not a film that should be encapsulated but rather experienced--I will say it's about the pull and danger of imagination and storytelling, and the pain and liberation of discovering, at last, the truth behind deeply buried family secrets. It's also very much about music as a potent communication of things unspoken, as in this scene with a luminous Beverly D'Angelo singing 'Stardust'.

Key West in Next

Some of my photos from 'return to key west' showed up in a travel piece in Next Magazine--no photo credit in the print version, oddly, but they added it online. Not a bad little clip.