We Drink With Characters: Special Guest Alex London on THE ADVIL CALENDAR 2014

One of the nice things about taking a more laissez-faire approach to the holidays this year is that we've spent our after-kid-bedtime hours at leisure, and not wrapping or baking or cleaning or shopping online. Although I'll admit to a bitty little studio6 fetish this year. Everybody's getting a t-shirt for Christmas even though we're not really doing presents.

Some of our leisure time has been spent watching TV. It's pretty weird how, in the past year or two or three, TV has become something that people are not ashamed about. But people are very particular. Everyone has their own preferred cocktail of drama and humor and hot people, and we quiz our friends to learn where any recommended show falls on that scatter plot. Arrow? Not funny enough, I'm told. Downton? Hardly anybody gets their shirt off. So let's do it...

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN MAKES LIFE LOOK LIKE ART

Drinking by the book: Advil Calendar 2014 BLACK VODKA HELICOPTERS Edition with SPECIAL GUEST Blythe Woolston

This is my autograph book. Yes I know nobody has an autograph book anymore, but just call me Anne Shirley, and shut up. Or don't. Don't call me Anne Shirley. In fact, I'll kill anyone who calls me Anne Shirley. I've never even read Anne of Green Gables and I would never wear my hair like that.

But as atavistic as it is, it's mine, and I love it, and it is packed with stories. The first story being of course, "Why do you use a 1904 drinks manual as an autograph book?"

This little book was a gift from my friend Paula, who knows that How We Used to Drink is almost as interesting to me as When Am I Going to Get My Next Drink. She gave it to me as we were on our way to a book festival. I admired the book and thanked her for the thoughtful gift and slipped it in my blazer pocket, on its way to a place of honor on my shelf of bartending books.

Next evening, wearing the same jacket, I traveled to Washington D.C.'s Politics and Prose to see a bunch of picture book authors talk about their work. There was a signing line, but since this was a bookstore event, you were supposed to buy the books you wanted signed, and...um...I'm kind of a brat and I'm cheap and besides I already owned copies of most of those books at home.

So I pulled "How to Mix Drinks" out of my pocket and asked the authors to sign that. It was fun! Children's book authors are cheeky:

"Drink more." Mac Barnett

"Drink often!" Laura Vaccaro Seeger

At the NCTE convention this year, Jory John (All My Friends Are Dead) added "Drink hard!"

Advil Calendar 2014 EXCITING GUEST WEEK Telekinetic Teenager Edition with David Lubar

Stalking out of Target today at 9:23 a.m., my bag full of oxycodone, sunscreen, MAD Magazine, and "concert attire," I realized what had so far been missing from my holiday.

Rage. Barely contained, dry-eyed, crackling, hair-on-end rage.

I mean, I had this year pretty much wired. I hadn't overcommitted to writing assignments, everyone had already been sick and gotten over it, and best of all, I had booked - and paid for - a trip to TROPICAL PARADISE for my family and my parents, hoping to escape the traditional drama and anxiety that is part and festively-wrapped fucking parcel of this season of gifts.

I don't mean to show off, but look:

This is the house we rented in Curacao. That couch is crying out for me, a cocktail, and a book.

No wonder my customary December slow burn was barely at a simmer. I was cool - I have been lazing through December devoid of the usual stress. Not anymore, baby. It's happened:

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN IS FEELING THE SEASON

You're Invited to a Cocktail Party On the Pirate Ship Revenge: Advil Calendar Year IV EXCITING GUEST WEEK Day III: Caroline Carlson!

I love looking out the window this time of year. The pissing-down rain, the 100% cloud cover hovering just above the chimneys... it's 2:30 in the afternoon and already the streetlights are on. Some poor schlub just passed by on a bicycle. It's like Dickens out there.

#paradise #tattoo #shin. AKA OW.

No wonder the British were in such a sweat to run and go colonize Trinidad or collect beetles in Sri Lanka. I'm taking off for sunnier climes myself. Conned my whole family into swapping wrapping and baking for lounging and collecting shells this year.

The joy I feel at not having to rearrange the whole house to accommodate a dead tree cannot be expressed in mere words. You must imagine a physical explosion of elation that incorporates the entire A to Z of Dance punctuated by frozen moments of Broadway weeping. Clasped hands and all.

But until then, it's still streaming ashwater gray outside. We gotta get out of here. Let's make like Baronet Joseph Banks ("Father of Australia," breadfruit enthusiast) and get on a damn boat to anywhere else. Welcome to...

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN DRINKS WITH PIRATES (and pirate-adjacent personnel)

Getting Lit in KidLit: ADVIL CALENDAR 2014 - Sydney Taylor Edition with Exciting Guest Laurel Snyder!

It's important to me, as a bloody bloody atheist, to honor holiday claptrap in all its varied flavors and denominations. Claptrap all around! I love claptrap! Livens up the place. If all of us were nonbelievers like me, life would be so dull! We'd have no SantaCon, no fabulous book-themed bat mitvahs. The market for candles would dwindle to those people who want their powder room to smell like cookies. Well. The market for candles would dwindle to those people who put a toilet in a closet and then call it a "powder room."

And my drive home from work would become a whole lot less jaw-dropping. Never change, Parkville.

In the past, Your Neighborhood Librarian has celebrated the Festival of Lights (which started yesterday) with as many Hanukkah-themed schnepsels as I could find. There aren't many.

Laurel Snyder, author of imaginative, heartfelt middle grade novels and more picture books than you were quite aware of, tried to help me with that Hanukkah post but eventually threw up her hands and suggested we just pass around a bottle of Scotch. So this year I asked her an easier question, "Which character of YOURS would you want to drink with?

Return to Litte Tavern on the Prairie: The Advil Calendar 2014 WEEK TWO - Week of EXCITING GUESTS! Day One: Adam Rex

Hi there. It's Monday! We're halfway through December and true to rum-soaked form, Your Neighborhood Librarian finally has her crap together enough to start posting the Advil Calendar with some regularity. You're going to want to tune in to this, because I have a whole week of Exciting Guests to help us get squishy for the holidays. Exciting Guests!

What kind of Exciting Guests could Your Neighborhood Librarian possibly drum up? Will we hear from celebrity chefs turned novelists? Rock stars turned novelists? NASA techs turned novelists?

NO. EVEN BETTER: find a barstool and buckle up, because ain't nobody drink like an author of books for children drinks. I have authors of YA sci-fi, picture books, time travel adventure (time travel is SO HOT right now take my word for it), pirate adventure, and whatever you'd call that dizzying unquantifiable marvelousness that Blythe Woolston writes. That's right. Its...

ADVIL CALENDAR YEAR FOUR: THE EXCITING GUEST FIGHTS BACK.

Oh what did Della wear, boy? Advil Calendar Year IV -- The bitter and the sweet

I can't find my orange comb. Where is my orange comb? Such a ridiculous thing to find yourself asking. Ou et la plume de ma tante? Donde esta mi peine naranjo?

It's been missing off and on all year - I'll find it and be like, "God dammit, HERE's my orange comb!" In the toiletry bag I use for travel, in my summer pocketbook, laying mysteriously on my dresser. But this has stopped, and I feel like I might have left it somewhere...far away. Like Belgium. Or my niece's boyfriend's bathroom. Chris, did I leave my orange comb at your house?

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN DEBATES THE SEASON

I own three combs, but my orange comb is the best. I have long straight hair that will tangle like the Devil's pubies unless I comb it right out of the shower. So - you know how it is - something that you use every day, your specifications for it are ridiculous. It must have wide teeth that are slightly rounded on the end. It must be easy to grip. I used to have a fake-aluminum comb that my sister-in-law gave me that was perfect. It said "CONAIR" on it but it had nothing to do with Nicolas Cage. I think it came with a hair dryer. When it broke I had to totally go on a search for an appropriate replacement. Don't you kind of hate yourself in those moments? How spoiled am I that I look at 47 combs on the Ricky's website and purse my lips and say, "No."

The Advil Calendar 2013: INTERMISSION

At this point in your holiday, there's probably only one thing left to do.

SING. Sing, you motherfuckers - sing like you mean it, and dance.

BURN, BRIDGES, BURN - A Holiday Musical Spectacular (With Cocktails)

"Everyone's a Little Bit Spectrum"

We meet our 4 primary cast members (two married couples who are part of the same extended family), as they prepare dinner together prior to a large holiday gathering. Lots of oohs and ahhs as the group executes daring dance moves with knives while laughingly cataloging the quirks of each of their parents and siblings.

This upbeat comic number starts our show off on a cheerfully sarcastic note, and must be accompanied by a swinging retro-modern cocktail, such as this updated take on the Moscow Mule:

The Baltimore Donkey (from Maggie's Farm)

2 oz Tito's vodka
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz ginger syrup
dash of bitters
Shake with ice, strain into highball glass over ice. Garnish with lime twist.

Advil Calendar 2013 - GROWNUP GIFT GUIDE

Oh sure. I've bought presents. I don't believe in GOD and I have serious issues with CHRISTIANITY, but we do Christmas around here. There is currently a dead tree in my living room. I swear it's like taxidermy. Why people (my husband and children) think it's festive to watch a woody plant slowly desiccate inside is TOTALLY BEYOND ME.

But it's 10 minutes til 12 on Xmas Eve and the presents are wrapped and the pork roast is brining and I baked an apple pie that I suspect is basically raw on the inside and my husband made me a Negroni and Annie Lennox is on the iPod so... ok. Christmas.

Hey speaking of atheists who bake, did you read the Dan Savage review of the Sarah Palin book? You should. I can wait.

The really great point that Dan Savage makes here is that assholes like Sarah Palin are the ones who are ruining Christmas. Godless Dan Savage, baking cookies and taking them to his Jewish neighbors, keeps Christmas better than relentlessly god-bothering Sarah Palin, who buys her loved ones GUNS for Christmas.

So just in case you are a present-giver at this time of year, I have a few suggestions and observations.

The Advil Calendar 2013: NANCY DREW II: RETURN TO LITTLE TAVERN ON THE PRAIRIE

What's Jack Donaghy doing here? He's having a Nancy Drew (white
rum, diet ginger ale, lime). "For men, it's called a Hardy Boy," says Jack.

Last week I got to wondering, in a post I titled "Nancy Drew Turns 21," what some of my favorite children's book characters would drink once they were old enough to drink. I made fancy cognac cocktails for Maddie and Verity from Code Name Verity, took Claudia Kincaid drinking at a swanky joint in Manhattan's financial district, and shared a chamomile toddy with Mrs. Frisby.

But there are more. MORE.

I put the question to a few friends: "What children's book character would you most like to have a drink with once he or she has grown up?" And EVERYBODY - er, just about everybody - answered "Matilda" right away. Let's go get squiffy with Matilda!

The Advil Calendar 2013 LEMON DROPS ON ROSES EDITION

Ok then. Finally recovered from that frightening debacle on TV last week and don't you think it's just about time to talk about some of our FAVORITE things from this year? Yeeeeess. Unfortunately for you, sometimes my FAVORITE things are kind of horrendous and/or weird. Maybe inappropriate.

So let's dive in with a really nice one, kind of the best one:

Advil Calendar 2013 Day It's All a Blur: COOKIE SWAP KEY PARTY EDITION

We do crack ourselves up, don't we Raylan?

I have turned a corner on this whole December bullshit. Yes. It is safe to say there was a corner back there yonder - and I stepped smartly around it. I know when it was, too - it happened this afternoon, the minute I put two trays of cookies in the oven and slammed the door.

THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE GETTING THEMSELVES INTO LETTING THIS LIBRARIAN BRING COOKIES

The Advil Calendar 2013: F YOU FRIDAY - F.U. 2: F Harder

The last great drinking sitcom - Cheers - famously asserted that sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

Yeah, maybe.

But sometimes you want to go where not only will everybody not know your name, but you might actually have to assume a false identity, leave your ID in the car, and pay in cash.

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN PLAYS IT ON THE DOWN LOW

First, let me give you a quick rundown of this fucking week:

The Advil Calendar 2013 THURSDAY IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER EDITION

All right this is not a novel observation I'm about to make.

Let's be honest - is it ever? Am I ever out here on the Internet dropping the Bomb of Truth such that people stagger back from their monitors and run out onto the street, their lives completely changed? No. The only bombs around here are usually of the F- variety.

So, hi! Welcome to the 12th of December! We're right in the middle of the 24 days of Advil and maybe I should recap some of our progress before getting into the thing I feel like complaining about today.

• We've made autumnal punches for a family gathering (alcoholic and non-alcoholic).
• We saluted the Maccabees and a Japanese diplomat with Tablet Magazine's Apple Tea Fizz.
• We made Viryta and pickled oysters. (We sampled the Viryta last night and it is smooth and delicious!)
• Children's author Jonathan Auxier showed us the science of the Sazerac on the debut edition of EXCITING GUEST WEDNESDAY.
• I reviewed cocktail books and shared some sample recipes.
• We made White Trash Shooters, Broke-Ass Screwdrivers and Ghetto Fabulous Mulled Wine on our first F YOU FRIDAY.
• There were Bloody Marys oh yes there were. I might have one right now.
• Boilermaker! Boilermaker! Shot and a beer! Boilermaker! Boilermaker! Something something fear!
• We drank with our favorite children's lit characters - and we'll do it again next Tuesday at LITTLE TAVERN ON THE PRAIRIE.
• My husband confessed to a very embarrassing drink on our second EXCITING GUEST WEDNESDAY.

Well that is kind of a lot. Maybe I will have that Bloody Mary while I'm making dinner. You, however - read on!

Advil Calendar 2013 EXCITING GUEST WEDNESDAY Part Deux: The Exciting Guest Strikes Back!

You're going to say I'm lazy and I'm going to say... hold on. Honey, could you reach me my beer? Well ok obviously I am lazy, but not in this case. Okay kinda. Anyway.

I had the idea for Exciting Guest Wednesday a month or so ago, when I first decided to Advil it up again this year after a one-year hiatus. I solicited drinks recipes from friends, relations, business contacts, and the vermin who live beneath the porch. (Nobody wants that drink, by the way.)

And as I was getting together some of those recipes for today, I realized that the best drinksman I know, the person who makes me the most inventive, best-proportioned cocktails I've ever drink-drank-drunked - was sitting right next to me!

DAMAS Y CABALLEROS, QUIERO PRESENTARLES A MI ESPOSO,

Bob.

The Advil Calendar 2013 Day WHAT?: NANCY DREW TURNS 21 EDITION

"Are ya cold, Raylan?"

I was going to putz out on this day, I swear I was. I've written over 16 thousand words in the past week, including a longish post on my most memorable reading experiences of the past 12 months and a REALLY long set of notes for a radio segment about Great Holiday Gift Book Ideas For Children and I was fried.

Good for nothing but watching the episodes of Justified where Raylan gets his shirt off.

But then I posted an announcement of the radio segment (listen for me on WYPR 88.1 FM, Marylands NPR station, somewhere between 9:30 and 10am today) on Facebook, mentioning that I would be doing pairings of children's fiction with nonfiction and... something else, god I'm so tired, and my friend Leslie commented that she was glad I'd said what I'd be pairing the novels with, otherwise she'd have thought I was pairing like Harriet the Spy with Jack and Coke.

Paraphrasing.

BUT THAT'S A GREAT IDEA.

Thanks, neighbor! I'll save you a pig cheek just for that!

The Advil Calendar 2013: TOIL AND TROUBLE Second Monday of Advil Edition

I have two words for you on this day of work, my cousins and neighbors and co-workers and imaginary Internet friends and sisters-in-law... just two words.

BOILER. MAKER.

(aka BEER. LIQUOR.)

Of all the things I don't know a goddamn thing about - and you wouldn't know it to talk to me, especially if you had let me have one of these already, but there are actually more than a few subjects I don't know a tinker's tit about - I'm as blind as a Nim of the Mephidross Swamp when it comes to boilermakers and what makes them good and why they work. (Also, the children are playing Magic: The Gathering again and it's making me crazy.)

I don't even know why they're called boilermakers.

COME WITH ME ON A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY...

Advil Calendar 2013 Day 8: ERRAND APPARENT EDITION - Why we drink in the morning

Ho ho mutha-godforsaken ho... it is the first Sunday in December and you have a LOT to do.

• Have you picked a photo and ordered cards yet?
• Have you made this year's photo album (I'm doing it today! I'll do it! Get off my back!)?
• There are still leaves to be raked.
• Ice storm's comin' - you should check to see everything's charged.
• Did you order the pig yet? 110 lb pigs don't just grow on trees you know. (that may not be on your to-do list, but it is on mine)
• Have you seen Catching Fire? Better get on it while it's still at the good theater.
• Oh and it's Take Your Kids to a Bookstore Day, did you know?
• Besides the fact, have you noticed the state of their shoes lately?
• Not to mention, if you don't goad them into buying each other presents, they... just won't.

That's a great idea, Haymitch. Pour me one of those, too.

And don't even use the t-word in my presence for at least another week. If we have to have a live dead plant in my living room, it's not going up until the last fucking second.

I know you hear me: IT'S BLOODY MARY TIME.


YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN SENDS HER KID TO THE GROCERY FOR V-8

You just swallow the Advil, you don't crush it up and snort it: DAY 6

We haven't done dreadful yet, have we? Not a single shot worthy of a bachelorette party, not a single float of burning rum. Nothing named after a baked good or utilizing brand-name mixers. Well it's Friday god damn it and that's about to change.

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN DOUBLES DOWN ON THE DIRTY STUFF

Dreadful drinks kind of come in two flavors: - Tacky and Broke-ass. There's also Creepy Crafty, like the Camp Crystal Lake Surprise (blue curacao, rum, OJ, with a shred of red Jello floating in it), but we should save that for its own day, don't you think? We've embraced all three of these themes in the past here on the Advil Calendar, as we also embrace flavors like Stupid Fancy, Weeknight Drunk, and - OH FOR CRAP'S SAKE CLOSE THE DOOR WHEN YOU'RE PEEING.

The Advil Calendar Year 3 Day 5: A BOOK AND A DRINK EDITION

I'm a librarian, right? So I am kind of a sucker for books.

It's not the best reason to go into librarianing, by the way. The books are maybe about 20% of the job. The rest is website troubleshooting ("Well, it looks like if you hit 'Next' here..."), putting holds on DVDs, and helping people buy nutritional supplements for their cats over the phone.

Fortunately for me, I had worked in a law library as a youngster and knew what I was getting into by the time I enrolled in library school. (And someday I will teach a class: How To Learn To Hate Books and Also Graduate Students 101, and it will involve a one-hour field trip to a law library. One hour. One and done. What a bunch of assholes those kids were. Making a xerox copy of something - or better yet getting a workstudy minion to xerox 250 pages out of a law manual - does not replace just fucking reading it and taking notes.)

YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARIAN READS A GODDAMN BOOK

All librarians get Hermione
when they do that FB quiz.

No, you go into librarianship because you are a know-it-all brownnosing snot who loves having all the answers. Heh heh. Ahem. Or because you believe that democracy is knowledge. It's about 50/50.

There's also a subset of librarians who chose the field as a drastic form of overcompensation - those are the types who never know where their keys or their glasses are, but god damn it they can find you the NOLO forms book on tenant/landlord law in twelve seconds flat, and that means THEY WIN. They may not be able to get into their car to go home tonight, but still. One in the W column.

Yeah, in fact, librarians have to be people people. It's a public service job in the truest sense of the phrase. But that doesn't mean we don't, y'know, like books.

Me, I collect old cookbooks and mixer's manuals. Old bartending books are particularly bizarre - Prohibition caused a lot of mixology malarkey as people tried to mask the taste of the illegally distilled poison that passed for booze in those days. And we got to like it!

My friend Paula knows my illness, and gave me this dear little pocket-size drinks manual originally published in 1904. I happened to have it in my bag one night at a panel discussion featuring some of my favorite picture book authors, so on a whim I asked them to sign it instead of their books.

"Jack in a glass!"

This autograph book now has about 50 signatures. Jon Scieszka gave it 5 stars! Chris Myers shared a recipe for a post-basketball ginger drink. Melissa Sweet drew a parade balloon and Jack Gantos drew a glass of applejack. It's one of my most prized possessions.

I also collect new cookbooks and mixer's manuals. Not a lot of them. Most are exciting looking, with sexy sharp pictures or amusing descriptions, and sometimes that's enough -- but not everybody can be Kingsley Amis or Bernard DeVoto -- so most of those clever/gimmicky joints are merely disappointing from a maker's point of view. Here are my impressions - Maureen Kearney coined the word "reviewlet" and I think I'll use that - of some recent cocktail cookbooks: