SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Moon's brandy and Lennon's Brandy Alexander, with other less interesting milkshakes and frappes.

Full Moon is a book written by Dougal Butler, who served with distinction as legendary rock drummer Keith Moon's personal assistant and de facto handler. It was published in 1981. Moon's maniacal dissipation had caught up with him three years earlier, when he died at the age of 32 -- but what a life it was.

Moon remains my favorite drummer, if not the all-time best. It's probably Neil Peart of Rush, now retired from music.

The Who was on hiatus after the release of Quadrophenia in 1973, not to record again until The Who By Numbers in 1975.  During this time Moon the Loon rented a house in Malibu, and Butler was dispatched to watch over him.

This tenure of Moon's in SoCal (he adored surfing music) coincided with John Lennon's 18-month separation from Yoko Ono, occurring between 1973 and 1975, which has become known in music lore as the lost weekend.

Lennon went to Los Angeles at various times during this period, inevitably disappearing into rabbit holes with the likes of Moon and Harry Nilsson -- professional drinkers who sometimes paused to work briefly as musicians. The partying was hearty, to say the least, but Lennon eventually caught himself and reconciled with his wife.

However, no such luck for Moon, and the lost weekend was a breaking point for Butler, who famously phoned The Who's manager to say that unless Moon was brought back to England, one of them was going to die -- and it wouldn't be Butler. They were prophetic words, although Moon was staying in London at the time of his death.

I've had more than one lost weekend, with perhaps the first coming just after completing college. Of course, it may have included college. I worked meaningless jobs and drank a lot, often in the company of my friend Bob, with the result that our act achieved immortality as The Bob and Rog Show -- and it was a spectacle at its peak.

We both devoured Butler's book about Moon, in the process being introduced to two entirely novel drinking concepts entirely alien to corn-fed Southern Indiana boys. One was the simple mix of brandy and ginger ale, and the second a cocktail known as the Brandy Alexander -- not to be confused with the porn star who later used this as a stage name.

And don't ask me how I know that.

"Brandy and ginger" was the preferred stuff of Moon's daily sustenance; eventually, he took to consuming two bottles of brandy and two more of champagne each day. This is alcoholism writ large, and the drummer's actual cause of death was an accidental overdose of a drug being administered to help him get sober.

Brandy Alexanders were Lennon's preference.

INGREDIENTS IN THE BRANDY ALEXANDER COCKTAIL

2 oz Cognac or other fine aged brandy
1 oz Dark crème de cacao
1 oz Cream

Garnish: 1 Freshly grated nutmeg

HOW TO MAKE THE BRANDY ALEXANDER COCKTAIL

Add all the ingredients to a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

It should suffice to say that The Bob and Rog Show's budget was not sufficient to justify using (read: wasting) cognac in such a creation. Rather, dirt cheap, grappa-like E & J was just fine.

This column's namesake has plenty enough money to buy the good stuff, but I digress.

Our true innovation, which we may or may not have have purloined from the book, was combining quadrupled or quintupled Brandy Alexander ingredients in a blender with vanilla ice cream, yielding an alcoholic milkshake with more calories than the 57-year-old "me" even dares to contemplate.

Ah, those were the days. We drained them seemingly by the gallon.

Today's new words were to have been "milkshake" and "frappe," or the continuation of a discussion Diana and I were having in late February following our return from Portugal. She's from Maine, and there's a difference, as explored in the following post.

Exactly where these long-suppressed memories of Brandy Alexander milkshakes and/or frappes derive, I couldn't tell you. Age plays tricks with one's memory. I'll say this: while the recipe for a Brandy Alexander remains lodged firmly in my cranium, I likely won't be able to recall the New England milkshake vs. frappe breakdown.

This can only mean it's time for a beer -- and hold the ice cream.

The Difference Between a Milkshake and a Frappe, by Aimee Tucker (New England Today)

Do you know the difference between a milkshake and a frappe? How about a cabinet? Read on to learn the New England frappe drink definition.

When is a milkshake not a milkshake? In New England, of course, when it’s a frappe (or a cabinet). Confused? Let’s break down the delicious difference between a milkshake, frappe, and cabinet.

According to the American Heritage College Dictionary, a milkshake is a “a beverage that is made of milk, ice cream, and often flavoring and is blended or whipped until foamy.” Unless you live in New England, where a milkshake would never include ice cream. Adding ice cream makes it a “frappe” drink.

Asa teenager, I worked for a popular ice cream stand, Kimball Farm, in my hometown of Westford, Massachusetts, and like most jobs dealing with food and/or “visiting” customers, I spent a decent amount of time explaining things on the menu. Some questions relating to New England ice cream flavors were normal (What’s in Frozen Pudding ice cream? You don’t want to know) but others were uniquely regional – the kinds of things a local might know (What are jimmies?), but had others feeling puzzled.

The number one “from away” question? “What’s a frappe?”

Sometimes it got very “Who’s on first” kinds of confusing. Here’s a typical re-creation:

Customer: “I’d like a chocolate milkshake, please.”
Me: “Do you mean a milkshake or a frappe?”
Customer: “I mean a milkshake – with ice cream.”
Me: “If you want ice cream, you want a frappe. A milkshake just has milk and syrup.”
Customer: “Uhm…I’d like whatever has the ice cream.”

Today I’ve made a classic chocolate frappe with 3 scoops of chocolate ice cream, a generous splash of milk, and thick drizzle of chocolate syrup. I put all of my frappe ingredients into a tall glass fridge jug with an opening that perfectly fits my immersion blender (or “stick” blender), and then pulsed away until I had a thick and rich concoction – namely, a chocolate frappe.

I don’t know why we call the delicious mix of ice cream, milk, syrup, and sometimes malt powder a frappe (pronounced “frap”) here in New England, but when you really think about it, a milkshake shouldn’t be anything other than shaken (NOT stirred) milk and syrup. And a frappe, which sounds funny and looks elegant with those double p’s, must (of course) be the fancier of the two, meaning the one with the ice cream. It makes perfect sense.

Now for those who wonder if a chocolate milkshake in New England is basically just a glass of chocolate milk, the answer is a resounding NO. Chocolate milk is the casual stirring of chocolate syrup into a glass of milk. A chocolate milkshake is the vigorous shaking (or blending) of the two until the consistency is perfectly creamy and a frothy head is formed. I used the same stick blender is a tall glass pitcher to make this drink as well.

Finally, to make matters even more confusing, if you’re from certain parts of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, you order a cabinet.

What is a cabinet? Basically it’s the same thing as a frappe (usually coffee-flavored and made with Autocrat Coffee Syrup), but it got its name because that’s where the blender was kept. We like to keep milkshake-loving tourists on their toes here in New England!

So, readers…which name do you prefer? Milkshake, frappe, or cabinet? And which flavor is best?

ON THE AVENUES: Gin and tacos, and a maybe a doughnut, but only where feasible.

ON THE AVENUES: Gin and tacos, and a maybe a doughnut, but only where feasible.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It was very strange.

For about two weeks after Thanksgiving, I averaged around nine hours of sleep per night.

Given that the norm is closer to six, such episodes of prolonged unconsciousness puzzled me. Exercise and food consumption were constant, and as for the drink – well, not much at all.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s the real problem. Sobriety has a dependable way of accentuating the negative, especially here in Logic Cleansing City.

Other explanations are possible. While it’s been warm outside, it’s true that winter is here, and with it the usual black dog’s visit, bearing “seasonal affective disorder” tags. Still, this is an expected annual occurrence, and surely doesn’t account for the recent outbreaks of narcolepsy.

Maybe it’s something else entirely.

Recalling the presidential election in 2000, Al Gore famously observed that you win some and you lose some – and then there’s this little known third category.

That must be it: It’s the business of residency, because there’s nothing like living in limbo to make a man sleepy.

---

In major league baseball, the period just prior to the trade deadline sometimes can be vitally important for teams needing to make personnel changes, either big or small.

A common ploy among teams looking to deal players of marginal value is to showcase them with more playing time in actual games, and kicking the public relations department into higher gear.

“Three Finger Malone’s best days might well be behind him, but he’s always been a clubhouse leader, the fans love him, and look – he went three for four just the other day. Sure, they were infield hits – but boy, wouldn’t he fit perfectly on the bench for a contending team?”

Ever since that day so long ago when David Duggins reminded me of how much money he might be making in the private sector, as opposed to his pro bono sinecure as New Albany’s economic development director, I’ve been observing his batting average.

Currently it has dipped well below the historic Mendoza Line (.200), with an entire industrial park as yet unoccupied, and job losses piling up from the likes of Pillsbury, Sonoco and Indatus.

So, it should come as any surprise that the Gahan Mum Sox has long ceased measuring Duggins’ job performance by actual statistical results, seeing as no measure of creative sabermetrics can rectify this pattern of recurring sow’s ears.

Rather, he has become the modern-day equivalent of Joe Pepitone, who compensated for diminished output on the field (off the field was another story, wink wink, nudge nudge) by looking extremely sharp during the course of consistent underachievement. No player theatrically risked career-ending injuries in diving for unattainable grounders like Joe, who “couldda made us proud.”

Perhaps this explains why Duggins lately has been the point man for virtually every other presumed “quality of life” TIFFED-up "quality of life" project apart from those actually providing pay packets to a permanent labor force, as pertains to what every other municipality in Indiana except New Albany seeks under the mysterious code word of “jobs.”

Just this week, Duggins was publicly lauded by the M. Fine assisted living reboot developer, for whom the city has done nothing (it's the state's tax credits, natch), as well as lovingly credited by another corporate bigwig receiving voluminous taxpayer largess: Flaherty and Collins, low-risk builders of the Break Wind Lofts at Duggins Flats.

Duggins also gloriously shepherded the farmers market pole barn, painstakingly measured the distance between flower pots on Main Street, and is being leashed to the future of the doggie aquatic center. In fact, he’s gotten more ink since the election than the mayor himself, and it can mean only one of two things.

First, that Duggins is Gahan’s heir presumptive, a queasy prospect alleviated somewhat by his residence outside the city’s electoral limits in Clark County, and by Paddy Mac’s dibs on the position.

Second, that he’s being showcased by the city (and its ever loyal, albeit it understaffed newspaper stenographers) as a prelude to a triumphant return to the private sector in genuinely moneyed places like River Ridge, with its intriguing natural habitat of One Southern Indiana propaganda flaks, corporate wildebeests -- and let’s not forget the eternal Bud Light Lime fountain.

That must be it: The business of irrelevancy. After all, there’s nothing quite like living in style to make a man substantive – and get him traded from the Marlins to the Yankees.

---

As for me, my name is Mudd, and I’m one to talk, aren’t I?

No, really. I most certainly am one to talk – and to write, publish and disseminate. I've no plans to drop from the ranks of gadfly. The problem is that it’s a bit early to see how things will develop, and consequently, I’m inconveniently between crusades.

And to be honest, being between crusades is a big problem for me.

There is an intense emotional attachment to the things I do, major or minor. A bar-owning friend pointed to it recently, observing that for him, beer was just a part of the overall business, while with me, it was a crusade and an existential struggle. He’s right, of course. Without a revolution, I’m reduced to the indignity of clean living.

The mayoral campaign was like this, but it’s finished. Politically, I'm stymied, and if there is to be another beer-related crusade, it must wait until “The Big NABC Exit” is negotiated, which is ongoing and looks to be on track to take a while longer than I’d hoped.

I’m beginning to relate to Andrei Sakharov’s internal exile. However, I’m vaguely aware of what needs to happen. John Lennon did it when he took his five-year hiatus from the music business, tending to son Sean while Yoko shrewdly managed the money. When Sean was older, Lennon came back.

The comeback was cut short by an assassin’s bullet, but the lesson remains valuable, as such:

You’re in a different place, psychologically, and so you step away for a while and resolve to return when the pendulum has started swinging back in your direction – hopefully, on your own terms. Of course it’s easy to retreat from the world when you’re rich as Lennon, and yet there’s something to this for all of us, isn’t there?

It isn’t the same as retirement, which is predicated on a permanent detachment from work. It isn’t saying, “I’ll work no more forever.” Rather, it’s a process of regrouping, to take stock, do what one must, and then do it again when practicable.

But when it’s more than a job, and when it’s a crusade you’re looking for … then maybe it’s time to concede that the crusading urge itself is the underlying friction point in need of attention.

Lennon sang: “I just had to let it go.”

That must be it: The business of impassivity. The obvious drawback is that I’ve no idea how to achieve it. However, I must let go of something, for a little while, and let the pendulum work its way back.

Because I know it will. There'll likely be no column next Thursday; it will return on the 31st.

---

Recent columns:

December 10: ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2015).

December 3: ON THE AVENUES: Who (or what) is New Albany's "Person of the Year" for 2015?

November 26: ON THE AVENUES: Faux thanks and reveries (The 2015 Remix).

November 19: ON THE AVENUES: Beer, farthings and that little-known third category.

November 12: ON THE AVENUES: The mayor’s race was about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won.

November 5ON THE AVENUES: Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance.

Lennon's murder: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

(Originally published here in 2005, and repeated)

On the morning of December 9, 1980, I learned that John Lennon had been shot to death the previous night. Groggy and entirely unaware, I shuffled into the kitchen and looked down at the Louisville Courier-Journal lying atop the kitchen table. The headline was very clear. My reaction was anything but.

My mother was listening to the AM radio, as was her morning habit before going off to teach school, and as I listened to the news reports, my enthusiasm for attending morning classes at Indiana University Southeast quickly dissipated.

However, I wanted to be with friends, so I drove from our home in Georgetown to the Grant Line Road campus in a daze, thoughts swirling. FM radios everywhere were tuned to the inevitable all-day tributes. Chronologically, I was at the age of twenty, although on this day, matters still seemed far too painfully adolescent.

Apparently there had been too little of death in my upbringing, too few opportunities to learn how to handle grief. What was it about pop culture that made it easier to display emotion at the murder of an icon far, far away, even as it remained impossible to discuss feelings with one's own family?

My father and his schoolmates could easily remember where they were and what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and in the 1960’s, a different generation reacted in similar fashion to the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King.

When John Lennon was killed, I was quite certain something had come to an end. It was unclear to me exactly what it was. It was an emotion not to be experienced again until September 11, 2001.

On December 9, 1980, walking through the corridors at school, I met a friend named Sean, who had moved to Louisville from the East Coast a short time before. Sean was Irish, and a prodigious drinker. As we shared our mutual feelings about Lennon’s death, I was reminded that Sean’s father was an executive in the bourbon industry, something that loomed large considering our mutual desire to get drunk, and the fact that neither of us was 21.

The result? Two bottles of Old Yellowstone, artfully purloined from Sean's home.

I don’t recommend driving while drinking, but we did, listening to the music of Lennon and the Beatles, watching the Ohio River pass by, and wishing we had girlfriends. After Sean returned to campus to meet other friends, it was safe for me to sit alone in the parking lot and have a good cry when one of the FM deejays played “Beautiful Boy” from the Double Fantasy album.

Two or three days later, I saw a letter in one of the local newspapers, in which a fundamentalist Christian took offense at the widespread depth of feeling for John Lennon, preferring to view the slain musician as an immoral agent of Satan, out to subvert Christianity and promote sinful lifestyles. Incensed, I wrote a rebuttal, which was published … and I began to reflect on the hatred and spite that so often preface religious fanaticism.

Suddenly, I understood what had changed. On December 9, 1980, I abandoned the notion – admittedly, a tenuous one even then – that a world in which artists are violently struck down before their time, and the upwardly devout respond by piously sneering at the blood of the victim, has anything whatsoever to do with deities and the supernatural.

John Lennon’s brutal death wasn’t the only impetus for this conclusion. It was 1980, and the ascendancy of Jerry Falwell. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. There were many reasons for a young man to be angry before the morning when Lennon's music died.

35 years later, there remain such causes for anger … even though I’m no longer by any means young.

In recording these thoughts, honesty is my first aim. In the years since, we've arrived at a balanced portrait of Lennon, the man, which isn't always savory. He may (or may not) have addressed and conquered some of these issues during the last five years of his life, when he "had to let it go" professionally and did just that, watching the wheels go round and round until Sean was older and the musical bug bit again.

It would be much less jolting and far more pleasing to concentrate on remembrances of the good times when the music of Lennon and the Beatles filled my life – and indeed, there were many such times.

There will be more. I cherish them.

But the image of the newspaper headline won’t go away, and neither will the conclusions that the tragedy of Lennon’s death produced for me, in my life.

I miss his creativity, and my innocence. That's life, absent the simplistic blacks and whites. I'll always struggle with the grays.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

(Originally published here in 2005)

On the morning of December 9, 1980, I learned that John Lennon had been shot to death the previous night. Groggy and entirely unaware, I shuffled into the kitchen and looked down at the Louisville Courier-Journal lying atop the kitchen table. The headline was very clear. My reaction was anything but.

My mother was listening to the AM radio, as was her morning habit before going off to teach school, and as I listened to the news reports, my enthusiasm for attending morning classes at Indiana University Southeast quickly dissipated.

However, I wanted to be with friends, so I drove from our home in Georgetown to the Grant Line Road campus in a daze, thoughts swirling. FM radios everywhere were tuned to the inevitable all-day tributes. Chronologically, was at the age of twenty, although on this day, matters still seemed far too painfully adolescent.

Apparently there had been too little of death in my upbringing, too few opportunities to learn how to handle grief. What was it about pop culture that made it easier to display emotion at the murder of an icon far, far away, even as it remained impossible to discuss feelings with my own family?

My father and his schoolmates could easily remember where they were and what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and in the 1960’s, a different generation reacted in similar fashion to the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King.

When John Lennon was killed, I was quite certain something had come to an end. It was unclear to me exactly what it was. It was an emotion not to be experienced again until September 11, 2001.

On December 9, 1980, walking through the corridors at school, I met a friend named Sean, who had moved to Louisville from the East Coast a short time before. Sean was Irish, and a prodigious drinker. As we shared our mutual feelings about Lennon’s death, I was reminded that Sean’s father was an executive in the bourbon industry, something that loomed large considering our mutual desire to get drunk and the fact that neither of us was 21.

The result? Two bottles of Old Yellowstone, artfully purloined from Sean's home.

I don’t recommend driving while drinking, but we did, listening to the music of Lennon and the Beatles, watching the Ohio River pass by, and wishing we had girlfriends. After Sean returned to campus to meet other friends, it was safe for me to sit alone in the parking lot and have a good cry when one of the FM deejays played “Beautiful Boy” from the Double Fantasy album.

Two or three days later, I saw a letter in one of the local newspapers, in which a fundamentalist Christian took offense at the widespread depth of feeling for John Lennon, preferring to view the slain musician as an immoral agent of Satan, out to subvert Christianity and promote sinful lifestyles. Incensed, I wrote a rebuttal, which was published … and I began to reflect on the hatred and spite that so often preface religious fanaticism.

Suddenly, I understood what had changed. On December 9, 1980, I abandoned the notion – admittedly, a tenuous one even then – that a world in which artists are violently struck down before their time, and the upwardly devout respond by piously sneering at the blood of the victim, has anything whatsoever to do with deities and the supernatural.

John Lennon’s brutal death wasn’t the only impetus for this conclusion. It was 1980, and the ascendancy of Jerry Falwell. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. There were many reasons for a young man to be angry before the morning when his music died.

34 years later, there still remain these causes for anger … even though I’m no longer by any means young.

In recording these thoughts, honesty is my first aim. It would be much less jolting and far more pleasing to concentrate on remembrances of the good times when the music of Lennon and the Beatles filled my life – and indeed, there were many such times.

There will be more. I cherish them.

But the image of the newspaper headline won’t go away, and neither will the conclusions that the tragedy of Lennon’s death produced for me, in my life.

I miss his creativity, and my innocence.