I like characters

Tonight my roommate and I bought a bunch of liquor.

We had no real reason for it, other than it seems somewhat retro-gentlemanly to have a liquor cabinet.

Anyway, I LOVE mixing cocktails so a nice stash of liquor also enables my hobby. Tonight, I had an Old Fashioned and I made my roommate two Vesper Martinis. He should definitely sleep nicely tonight.

In case you were wondering the "Vesper" is the infamous James Bond cocktail. The OG recipe calls for something like this:

3 parts Gordons
1 part Vodka
1/2 measure of Lillet
Shake over ice and garnish with a lemon peel.

First off, this is a massive cocktail. It's also a badly balanced one. The gin overpowers almost everything in the drink, and you're not left with much but big glass of gin. Of course this is okay if you a gin advocate.

But after a bunch of experimenting, I've come up with something which I feel is a much more elegant, balanced, cocktail.

1 oz Gin
1 oz Vodka
1/2 oz Lillet
couple of dashes orange bitters
STIR (all clear ingredients should always be stirred) with ice
garnish with a lemon peel.

Personally, I think this ratio allows the gin and vodka to work well with each other, and the orange bitters and lemon really bring out all the citrus in the cocktail. Try it at home. I'd make you one, but that's sort of tough over the interwebzzzz.

Wow that was a long ass lead in.

What I really wanted to write about was Up in the Air, a movie I re-watched tonight. I really think this was the best movie of last year; and yes even better than Avatar and Hurt Locker. Don't get me wrong, I really liked those movies, but my favorite movies--and TV shows--are those "slice of life" type stories. I want characters with pain/problems that I can feel, who have interesting stories. The George Clooney-Ryan Bingham character was one of those. Hell that character even inspired me to write the poem that is below this post. Like personally, Inception and A Single Man deal with very similar subject matter, but in different ways. Inception is a sci-fi action movie, whereas A Single Man is straight drama; but both are about how losing a loved one can affect your entire being (the physical and the mental). Both deal with this subject well too, but to me A Single Man resonated more, because the movie focused more on characters rather than spectacle. Give me characters over effects any day.