Frank and his sissy Apocalypse Now drink

    These days there’s hardly a drink that’s easier to make than a Martini. But the boozy sector of humanity has attached such undeserved mystique to it that some customers can turn ordering one into a moderately needling experience. As a barkeep, they’ll complicate your job, drink orders backing up while you listen to too many questions along the idiot flavors of  So, do you make martinis here? or How many people drink martinis? and Are yours good? Others can turn the simple task of asking for a Martini into a full-blown, ordeal full which induces migraines and ass-chafe. 

   “Drip three drops of vermouth into it…don’t shake it…don’t stir it…wave the bottle of vermouth three feet from the shaker…I want ice chips…I want a layer of frost on the surface…I want it dirty…extra dirty… use the most expensive Gin you’ve got and make it filthy…I want a glass that’s chilled in liquid nitrogen…I want a glass of olive brine, but not the vermouth and hardly any vodka…”

   Or:   “You have bleu cheese on the dinner menu and you have olives at the bar…so why can’t you make me some bleu cheese stuffed olives?” That’s a personal favorite of mine.  These assholes, as well as a bottomless supply of self-impressed bartenders, are also prepossessed to go into all the limpid lore about this goddamned cocktail. How a real one is made, Who makes the best in town, the best way to chill the freaking glass, how to masturbate with both hands – and a foot – and still drink your lousy fucking martini.

   The problems with this drink stem from the historical pomp and snoot associated with it, as well a boatload of confusion as to what a martini actually is. Or was.

   Let’s begin with the snobbery.  A guy who orders a big shot of gin or vodka, hot or cold, is a lowbrow, distasteful thug with a drinking problem.  A gentleman or lady who orders gin or vodka chilled, strained into a conical, stemmed glass and garnished with an olive, an onion, a lemon peel, or nothing at all is a spiff dandy with a sense of style and culture. And a drinking problem.  That’s it.  That’s the social magic of this cocktail – do your shots from a martini glass and the world will forgive you for being a dipshit that dresses like a retard.

   Flatulent conceit and snotty pretensions aside, what has made the martini a stinging thorn in the hiney for me is that the definition of one has been splintering and disintegrating among the drinking public. And the martini drinking public just can’t keep their spittled traps shut about them when in bars.  Is it vodka?  Maybe gin? No, no – it’s very fruity…The idea of the martini being characterized by ‘fruitiness’ has been spawned independently throughout the land. We might be witnessing multiregional cocktail evolution in action and the former, defining character of a martini will be killed off by an effeminate descendant better adapted to humanity’s new tastes.  Or I’ve just been witnessing idiots as usual. I suspect it’s both. Morons add chaos to the alcoholic environment, ordering specific drinks in generally haphazard forms.  And though the cloying neon martini may lay in our future, the concepts are currently so disparate that exactly what artificial fruit flavor will become the basis is hard to predict.  Eventually, a consensus may be reached among the population and, in the year 2057, the martini will no longer contain alcohol.

   I’m getting a little harsh on the public.  It isn’t always nice to lay blame on that mass of harebrained fuckwits.  The shortsighted nimrods of the bar industry have done more than their share to keep Joe Public stupid.  We keep getting creative with tradition, adding countless variations, sensationalizing them, and then printing them on menus.  What’s the average schmuck to think?  “Hell yes, a martini is made with pomegranate juice.  I saw it in writing…” History and tradition also become worthless when people’s inclinations and likes shift. What was isn’t now and what will be might bear no resemblance whatsoever on what is today.

   Things change – but when you are working in the throes of those changes the job can really suck.  A customer on the younger end of the legal boozing spectrum orders a “martini, extra dry” from me and I give him a glass of cold Bombay with an olive drowning in it. He tastes it, nearly throws up, and gasps,

    “Oh my god! Is this gin?  I wanted vodka.”  Well, Ace, that would be a vodka martini.  And you laugh at him, because you knew it was coming and gave him the gin anyway. Only a person over fifty would order a martini and expect gin.  When a waitress brings a plain martini order to you, sans qualifier, you send her back to get specifics from the customer because he/she may be too far away for you to enjoy the wince and retch.  Other times you size up the patron by age or demeanor and just give them vodka.  Occasionally that may bite you in the ass, too.  Some smug bartender chump you don’t recognize may say “Uh, dude? I ordered a MAAAR-TEEE-NEEE.  This is vodka”.  Then he’ll look at you with that dopey, half-lidded leer of condescension bartenders like to use on their petty faces. This is a sticky situation because most barkeeps might feel ashamed at the mistake and stutter through some excuses to save face.  Screw that and screw that dipshit with the sneer and the wrong drink. Here’s what I do: Tell him that I’m sorry – it’s just that he looked as stupid as everybody else in the room.  And make him wait extra long for his next drink until he leaves.

   Finally, you’ve got ‘em all figured out: men in midlife crises; trailer trash bimbos and yuppie slunts; young business idiots with erectile dysfunction and poor attitudes; lurking bartenders, waiters, and liquor sales reps; Nancy boys priming before a foam and Vitamin K party; greasy Euro jizzlobbers sniveling their drink orders with their backs to you and new mothers on their first night out in ages.  You know exactly what they want even though they’re incapable of telling you specifically. You’re pouring mostly vodka these days – realizing that this is the way the wind is now blowing.  A martini increasingly implies vodka and gin is becoming the special request.

   Maybe, however, for only a short while.  Because lately, and with alarming frequency, I’ve been running into statements like this, “Didn’t I order a martini?  Why isn’t this pink?” A clear cocktail baffles the dickens out of these people.  Simply because the last one they had was pink. Or green or yellow or blue and it was a martini, at least according to the menu.  It was probably listed as Passion fruit, Green Apple, or Super Jimmy’s Perfect Date-Rape Martini. But people always forget the details and just spit out the one term they have a grasp on. So vodka’s days are numbered too.  Tough to say what the drink may evolve into next, though I tend to think it’ll be more candy-like – maybe the Sour Apple Martini will take over – and the austerity connected with a Martini will find its way down the toilet.  Where it really needed to go for a long time.

   To wrap this rant up, let me offer a lengthy overview of the history and mutation of the Martini.  Might as well try to define the miserable drink to show how we landed in this cluster fuck today.  

   Sometime between the Crucifixion of Christ and the Advent of the iPod, but most likely in the mid-1800’s, a guy in the California town of Martinez or going to Martinez or named Martinez came up with a new drink.  It was comprised of an old brand of gin (Obadiah’s Old Timey Shrub Licker?), sweet (red) Vermouth, and Orange Bitters.  Or some type of bitters.  Overall we’re talking one weird, cloying drink; and was probably served in one of those long-handled tin ladles. The kind which pioneers and cowpokes used to drink water from horse troughs. If ever there be a garnish, it were rarely used, seein’ as that would mark a drinker as yella and womanly.

   It was slow to spread East across the Union, as snake-oil weary settlers on the prairies tend to brand all new elixirs as hokum and bunk.

1933:  Hitler was in power, The 21^st Amendment repeals Prohibition, and people can’t get enough of the Foxtrot. And as good a year as any to jump to in this pointless booze biography. Sometime after this year people were still to be found drinking Martinezes. Only now it was made with “dry” gin (the old rotgut in the original was sweeter), dry (white) vermouth and a dash of bitters (unspecified).  Dames and chaps alike found this cocktail to die for. Only they were calling it a Martini now. Mexican Banditos had lost their grip of terror on the country so people offered Italian names for stuff to make our new mobster friends feel welcome and good about themselves.

  People drank it from the glass version of a dish on a stick.  Ideal for spilling down a flapper’s dress. Before the market crash of 1929 it had been garnished with thick slices of prime beef.  In the new atmosphere of fiscal responsibility, steak was replaced with the economical, yet smashingly elegant, olive or onion.

1957:  Rock and Roll has taken off.  Elvis Presley is huge, the biggest music act on Earth and now a movie star to boot.  The crooners of the last decade – Sinatra, and…let’s just say “Sinatra” for all of them – start showing the signs of age and hasbeenitis.  They also star in movies, as pathetic drunks, and they bring their tragic, real-life boozing right on the stages when they sing.  Highballs were out – too much ice. The new drink for the old swank crowd is the martini. ‘Cept the bitters is out of the picture see?  Bitters was a crazy dame who bit your tongue and broke your heart. Vermouth was still in the picture cuz she softened the blows when gin, and Elvis, kicked you in the liver.  Vodka was starting to come on strong even in maniacally anti-communist America.  Stank less than gin. Easier on the head come morning.

   The haute couture in martini goblets was an inverted dunce cap with a glass stem.  Ideal for clenching in a fistful of wist and spite.  Dean Martin could squeeze the shit out of his drink without breaking glass and slicing through the hand he’d need to sign a contract for another Jerry Lewis movie.

   Olives were still in – souses still had to eat.  Lemon peels made the scene so martini drinkers wouldn’t seem so square to the hepcats.

1965:  James Bond arrives and the Martini is firmly cemented as the choice cocktail of the stylish crowd.  For jet-setters and wheelers & dealers it becomes the perfect accompaniment for golf matches, business lunches, tea parties and parental neglect.  They taste great with cigarettes too.  As movie-goers begin to misinterpret Bond’s famous lines, vermouth begins to recede as fast as Sean Connery’s hairline. 

   Then The Vietnam War engulfs all facets of our culture and the Martini begins to gutter in the wind.  Much of the country has turned towards mind-liberating narcotics and Kool-Aid based cocktails.  By the time all this crap blows over Roger Moore has become the new “007”.  For a decade and a half the Martini would be seen as “wooden”, quite “gay”, or terribly “English”.  Huge jugs of Californian Chablis, Blush and Burgundy will replace cocktail shakers on a young couple’s dry bar.  GI’s from the Southeast Asian catastrophe turn to heroin while again Korean War vets sip cheap martinis in shithole dives, listening to Tommy Dorsey 45’s on the jukebox and watching Dr. No on crappy, 13-inch TV’s. Everything’s groovy.

1988:  Here we go – “Chablis” and “Burgundy” begin to get recognized as actual wine regions in France, the “Blush” remains elusive on the map.  Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are now the stars of the new American Wine Age, with wine coolers and White Zinfandel pulling in the kids.  People are making money on land speculation, junk bonds, insider trading and real estate scams.  It’s a hot time to be a young, greedy male.  Guys want to be as pretty as Judd Nelson or Charlie Sheen and need a drink that says “Wall Street!” And the Martini – Whooo-Ah!!! – is back in the game.  

   It’s also the year of my first bar gig.  At this point in history Vermouth holds a tenuous position in the make-up of the drink.  “Dry”, by consensus, mandates a small splash of Vermouth and “Extra Dry” means a drop or two. But both those amounts are dwindling fast. The fiscal state of the country sours again as Savings & Loan collapses across the nation do a whammy on the economy.  But not long enough to shelve the martini glasses.  Style and possession are the goals of the new generation and Bill Gates is just about to open the portals to the computer age – not to mention even more ridiculous amounts of wealth.  “Dry” or “Extra Dry” no longer have any meaning and saying “Bone Dry” is just adding extra chatter to your drink order.

      Vermouth is no longer in the recipe.

   But it’s not out of the picture yet.  As people beg for floor shows with their drinks the bar industry starts looking for ways to make the chilling of vodka fun to watch. Wheee! The extreme end of this daffy business involves stuff like pouring your booze down an ice-chute or through contraptions which chill, display, and dispense it right into the martini glass. Most of the time the whole show centers on the individual glass. We keep ‘em in the freezer so they frost over when brought out or pile ice into them so the patrons think we’re doing something special just for them (In reality I’m usually just buying some time to get other drinks made. Or to pour one into myself). Icing down the glassware to order is where the vermouth returns to prominence. With panache, snap, pizzazz and a c-hair of whoopdeedoo we pour vermouth over the ice thus speeding the cooling of the glass and capturing the attention of every rubbernecked dimwit at the bar.  In a cocky flourish the stem is emptied into a sink, any clinging shards of ice are flicked out towards eyes riveted to the whorled slick of fluid inside the glass, and the prepared liquor is disgorged into the waiting void.  That’s a whole lotta something for just trying to get vodka cold and into a glass.  But it’s the show people need and I’m as guilty of performing it as I am of dangling my wang into other folkses’ cocktails (though the latter is strictly an off-duty activity done in other bars). I’ve also loaded atomizers with dry vermouth and misted it over already poured Martinis. That once made me a committed player in this dreadful circus.  But I really dig the way a touch of Vermouth adds an oily glisten to the surface of an icy booze.  That’s me: a monkey and his shiny things.  It’s also everybody else.  I’ve done the ice-vermouth chilling deal for everybody. Iincluding hi-falootin jackasses, so adamant when instructing me not to have a drop of Vermouth get near their drink but gleeful while parading the Vermouthy glass around a lounge like a Malaysian boy with a new cockring.  The residue left after dumping the ice from a just chilled glass is actually a whole bunch of vermouth drops.  So what the hell is the thing with vermouth and why do people refuse to have it in their drink?

   The simple answer is that no martini sipper has a clue as to what Vermouth is, what it tastes like or how it affects the outcome of Martini mixing. So many of these clowns who insist on super dry Martinis have never once had Vermouth in their silly glass cones and hence have no idea what it is they don’t want.  But that’s the way the masses order drinks.  In the same way they’ll perfunctorily spit out “Chardonnay” or “Merlot” and be happy with any white or red wine, they say “Hold the vermouth” because that’s how they’ve always heard it ordered. And it goes back to 007 and his catchy booze gab. And that’s all too bad because vermouth can be a nice addition to the drink.  It softens and rounds out the taste and feel of gin.  Vodka needs much less, a light lacing, but still gets a nice velvet enhancement and a fleeting herbal tone with vermouth (not to mention the LSD kaleidoscope surface in the glass. Boy howdy, it really is pretty).  So try and take control of your drinking and be your own person for a change.  Try a touch of vermouth in your next Martini – it will shock and awe your friends and fellow patrons.  Do it quickly before…

2008 : Crap, too late. Yes, I digressed a lot in this brief timeline of the drink. I don’t know where the Martini is headed – maybe it will be root beer with a fresh hamster tooth as a garnish. As I scrawl out this rant there are mixolofucks in NYC and elsewhere who are turning olive essence into tiny sub-zero ice pellets and exploding pimentos under inverted martini glasses. But I do know that I really don’t give a fuck what happens anymore.  I did quit bartending and I’ve just written myself rottenly sick of the subject.  Good fucking grief! It’s just some booze strained off of goddamned ice cubes. You can make one at home and drink it out of a cracked coffee cup and it’s still going to taste like it does as Snotschnauzer’s Uber Lounge. Smarten up chumps and broads – forget this whole freaking Martini story and just hold that last thought in your head as you order your next one.

“Bruises the Gin”?   Jesus Christ. Perhaps the most pernicious example of what martini jerkoffs find necessary to debate is the idea of “bruising”.   

   “Shaking bruises the Martini”

   “No it doesn’t, stirring bruises the gin!”

   “Shaking bruises gin and stirring bruises vodka”

   “Vermouth can’t be bruised. It is invulnerable to the machinations of Earth mortals…” What fucking ever. Goes back to James Bond as well, who after all, might be the only cool martini drinker ever. Why? Because he drank his any way he felt like having it and not according to some rigid, dimwitted sense of tradition or formalized drinky code. Bond would get himself a dry vodka martini in one story, and then make it medium dry in another. And that’s when he wasn’t mixing vodka with gin and Kina Lillet in his famous “Vesper” martini. That’s the culprit cocktail which would incite generations of morons into strident squawking arguments over the details of this cold cup of booze. And for the record, where James Bond was concerned, it wasn’t the shaking- It was the stirring that would bruise the gin.  Now that seems counterintuitive and perhaps that’s why everybody fucks up the quotes. Just remember that Bond wanted his drink shaken in the first place then stop remembering anything about it at all. How or why bruising occurs exactly I haven’t the foggiest and never will because it doesn’t mean shit beyond Ian Fleming’s sense of what a suave secret agent should say. It’s a line in work of fiction, dummies, and it amounts to no more than my saying “Don’t put a lime in my tequila – citrus cuts its dick off…