My favorite state

The last time I read the statistics, New Mexico and West Virginia were running neck and neck for the honor of being the most depressed state in the country.  I’ve been to every state at least once, and most of them too many times.  Hawaii is beautiful and I love hanging out with my friend Dewey and his horses and 650 head of cattle in South Dakota and I turn every miserable trip to Vegas into an excuse to go to California to Death Valley.  For some reason I just love New Mexico.  It’s not something that I think about often but I was having drinks with a friend who is planning a trip there and realized that I had to scan and post images of the VLA (Very Large Array)  in order to convince her to go way out of the way to see it.  I couldn’t articulate it at the time but the beauty of that part of the world lies in what you catch in the corner of your eye as you are balling the jack down the highway just before you spin around to find out what it was.  And yes, that is a dead cow missing her head.

Questlove

I don’t always get DJ culture.  Usually it’s just some dork with eclectic taste playing one record after another, or they run everything off of the laptop while they check their stock portfolio, er . . . while they check Facebook.  But Questlove and I must be the same age because he was playing all of the most epic tracks from my childhood.  The twelves were bumping and unlike any typical booze industry event, everyone was getting down, even me.  Not the friendliest man on the planet, but he is from Philly so he gets a pass until I meet him again.

Mise-en-scene

According to Wikipedia and David Cook:

When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement—composition, sets,props, actors, costumes, and lighting.

Now one of the many things that I really enjoy about shooting in, and around the world of mixology, is that the mise-en-scène makes it much easier to pull off really cool shit.  How can you go wrong with the backgrounds of the New York Public Library, a distillery and the consummately delightful, entertaining Theo Lieverman of Milk & Honey fame?  

 

 

 

Deal with the devil?

I have to admit, I’m flummoxed.  I photographed Dale Degroff, the anointed King of Cocktails, probably 10 years ago.  He was looking pretty good considering his age and the occupational hazards of the craft that he has championed.  Then I had the pleasure of running into him again at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic on Friday night and I’ll be damned if he didn’t look younger and healthier!  Must be all that clean living, or he made a deal with the guy downstairs.

 

Yeah, I stole that Negroni

I found myself at a cocktail seminar led by the “Modern Mixologist” and all-around amazingly great guy Tony Abou-Ganim.  I’ve  been dogging his tail from Tales of the Cocktail to the Manhattan Cocktail Classic for a couple of years now and perhaps I was taking liberties with our friendship, but he happened to “misplace” this Negroni and I ended up with it in the back of the room, trying to shoot and delicately sip at the same time.

Tony:  ”I don’t know what just happened but someone stole my Negroni.   Andrew?”

Andrew:  ”Yo Tony, I had nutin’ to do wit that.

I’m pretty sure we’re still friends.