Callow youth that I am, I think for a second or two (I don’t know if I like them large or small; I’ve only had one Martini ever before in my life, and it tasted like bug spray… but I have a feeling that I’ve got a window of opportunity here, a chance to acquire an acquired taste), and say “Sure!” More is more, after all. The salesperson says, “My boss likes large Martinis too.” A truly deft and nuanced reply. She lets me feel OK about my purchase and judgment, and distances herself from them at the same time. I go home with a pair of these glasses.

I start mixing and exerimenting and drinking, and find that yes, I am in a window: I like Martinis. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. This is the era of Plymouth & Olives.

And then I break one.

So I go look for replacements, and find a really nice pair of glasses. They’re made by Waterford, but look like classic Martini glasses, rather than the heavy Waterford cut crystal. And they’re soooo nice. The glass isn’t wobbly when you look through it, like those other ones, and they have a nice thin edge, which really makes to whole experience, I dunno, classier. And they have a subtle “ledge” where the stem joins the bowl. You can easily hold one propped on your finger. And they’re only six ounces. This really makes a difference. I realize that I’ve been drinking a fair amount of lukewarm gin and vermouth, and that this smaller size is better.

And then I break one.

So I go look for replacements (we’re in the era of Beefeater & Twists now), and this time decide to spring for some Riedel glasses (the Vinum series). They’re a bit expensive, but my experience with their single malt whiskey glasses forces me to be open minded. Again, an elegantly thin edge, and again, a slight ledge where the stem joins the bowl. And – a very nice touch – the base is not all that wide (it’s visually harmonious with the bowl), but it’s rather thick. Its weight makes the drink balance comfortably in the hand. And it’s smaller still. 130 ccm, or four and half ounces. I was worried at first: they looked dangerously delicate, but it turns out they’re not.

I used to use three jiggers of gin per Martini, lest my glass look chintzy and bereft. Three jiggers of gin and one pony of vermouth, for a four-and-a-half to one ratio. Four and a half ounces of gin packs a significant whollop, and one Martini just won’t do, which compounds the problem. Now, I use two jiggers, and apply a little “Kentucky windage” when pouring the vermouth… shooting for a five-to-one ratio, I go for “a little less than two thirds of a pony.” And I find that I can pace myself through the evening, and enjoy it, and not be miserable the next day.

Sometimes, less really is more. And this is one of those times… but I’m also at a bit of a loss here. My experience definitely goes beyond a clinical description along the lines of “because the glass is smaller, the drink stays cold during the time it takes to imbibe,” or “because the drink is smaller, you can enjoy more of them during an evening.”

Now, when I look at that survivor of the first pair of glasses, I think, “Conan. If Conan the Barbarian somehow, somewhere asked for a Martini, this is the glass you’d serve it to him in.” The surviving Waterford, which I once loved so, and which I still keep in the freezer, just in case and just because, strikes me as totally outre. If the Rodney Daingerfield character in [i]Caddyshack[/i] ordered a Martini, you’d do well to serve it up in one of these.

Call me a…. I don’t know… position me somewhere along the spectrum that runs between “nerd” and “aficianado.” I get into this stuff. I get it when I read about Mencken calling the Martini “the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet.” I relish the phrase (I think it was in Conrad’s book) about a Martini glass being “as poised as a ballerina on point.” And the glass makes all the difference.

These glasses weren’t cheap, as glasses go. $16.95 apiece, I think they were. But I gotta say… I think they’re a bargain. If I dropped two hundred large on a Ferrari or something, I’d feel like one very suave dude when I, ah, made a run to the grocery for beer and bread, or idled and cussed in traffic on my way to work. But you know what? I feel like one very suave dude when I get home and mix my evening Martini in one of these. I really think it’s almost exactly the same feeling. And I got it for $33.90 instead of 200K.

I encourage everyone to give them a try. If you want to preview, check http://www.riedel.com. (You have to navigate through several frames, alas.) (NB: Evidently, Riedel recently got a new domain name. Google and the other search engines have them at www.riedelcrystal.com, but that gets you nowhere. Drop the “crystal”.)

If you need to tie a tie, or care to see a nicely done single-topic site, visit Caspar at Tie-a-Tie.net.

3 Jiggers Beefeater gin (4.5 oz)
1 Pony Stock extra dry white vermouth (1 oz.)
1 lemon twist

Prepare the twist. Fill a Boston shaker 1/2 full with good ice. Add the vermouth, coating the ice. Add the gin. Mentally hum the first first 16 measures of The Black Hawk Waltz, by Mary E. Walsh; shake the Martini in time (approx. 15 seconds). Strain into a frosted 6 oz Martini glass. Hold the twist, yellow “out” side downward, approx. one inch over the surface of the drink and gently but firmly squeeze along its length. Shape the twist into a fetching helix shape, and gently drop into the drink. Serve immediately. Repeat. Repeat.

Currently we’re experimenting with WordPress as an alternative to MovableType.

Gotta say… not crazy about this font. First task: find that in css and fiddle.

I enjoyed this post a great deal, and it sparked or re-sparked some notions I had been wanting to explore on my own. They’re not the kind of notions one can just fire off in a few minutes from work, however. I’ll need to hit the books again and mull some.

No telling when that will get done, though, so for now the best thing is probably just to check out Lydon’s post and see if it sparks or re-sparks notions for you as well.

Thanks to Ron at o.t.p. for pointing out this post.

ActiveState makes good, free Windows ports of perl, python, php, etc., and sells IDEs and other development tools to go with them. I was Putzing with Perl last night (good name for an O’Reilly book, I’d say), and decided I’d go take a look at ActiveState’s Komodo IDE … I had downloaded it once before, but this was a newly post-beta version that struck me as kinda rough, so I didn’t use it. But, I wanted to see how it is these days…. Since it’s a big download, I decided to wait and do it from work, since the connection is faster.

A little while ago (like 20 minutes), I went to www.activestate.com, and looked at their offerings, visiting maybe 15 different pages, and then decided to download the trial version of Komodo, as I’d planned. I finished page one of the form you fill in to download, and then clicked on the “Next” button…. and got a banner for the University of Chicago, with 404 File Not Found below that. The URL was still that for a form page on www.activestate.com. I backed up, tried again, went to other pages on the site, etc. Pages that I had visited scant moments ago were disappearing… In their place was the UC banner and 404 File Not Found, and the home www.activestate.com page now takes you to the UC home page.

You hear about this sort of thing all the time; this is the first time I’ve actually seen it happening.