Archives for December 2010

“How four women (and one man) conspired to make two babies — a son and a daughter of the same age from the same egg donor but two different surrogates.”

Because Korrektiv has the coolest friends on the block…

The Manhattan Lawyer passed along this wondrous screed. It took me back.

“One of my freshman English students, sent to find an example of debased language from the world of the lie, selected an ad for a brassiere promising Sexy fun, 24/7. This is a lot of pressure to put on your urogenital hydraulics. What, no refractory period? No menstruation? No bean soup, no coffee, no long phone calls to old friends, no train trips to the city? It sounds like hell to me: like Paolo and Francesca, speared together for eternity. O anime affanate, / Venite a noi parlar, s’altri nol niega—but someone has forbidden speech. Their burning is all but drowned out by this f*cking music. I couldn’t hear you. What were you saying?”

Oh my goodness, they’re making rye whiskey in my home country.

“On the more lavish side of the craft, Brian McKenzie, 33, has built the Finger Lakes Region’s first stand-alone distillery, Finger Lakes Distilling, in Burdett, N.Y., which juts like a sleek white liner among 100-year-old vineyards on a hillside above Seneca Lake. Mr. McKenzie spent years in finance in Washington before coming home to help at his father’s small savings and loan in Elmira, N.Y. After trips to Scotland and Kentucky, he was bitten by the concept of introducing distilling to a region where hundreds of local wineries have created a solid base of alco-tourism.

“His distillery is striking, housing a well-appointed tasting room and a custom-built 300-gallon German-made Holstein pot still, which vaults through the space like a burnished copper rocket. But his masterstroke was hiring Thomas Earl McKenzie, 34 (no relation), an experienced Alabaman stillman whose sly drawl is as surprising in these parts as is the accomplished breadth of his handiwork.

“They have an astonishing 18 products, from fruit brandies and liqueurs to aged whiskies and musky grappa made from local grapes like gewürztraminer, muscat and Catawba. Their Seneca Drums is one of the better new London dry-style gins, but their double-distilled bourbon and rye are where Mr. McKenzie’s Southern pedigree shows up. The peppery rye is from fields one can see across the lake and aged in casks that held local fortified wine.

“’See what you all think,’ the stillman offered with breezy confidence. ‘I ain’t feeling too poetic today.’”

And you just know he said “Y’all.”