Tag: 250717

Comedy Talk

Chatting with Tom Papa

A middle-aged dad whose kids are out of the house and off to college, Tom Papa revels in the joy of empty nesting on his 2024 Netflix special, Home Free. However, the reality turns out to be different, he noted recently.

“It’s more like you get breaks,” he said. “My daughter just came home from college, and I learned the other night that she’s going to be here for four months. I was like, ‘Well, that’s not great.’”

Born in New Jersey, Papa was “knocking around” in the New York comedy scene when Jerry Seinfeld spotted him and gave his career a much needed boost in the late ’90s. A few years later, his sitcom Come To Papa ran briefly on NBC, until a new network CEO looking to launch another show called The Office poached cast member Steve Carell and canceled it.

Papa will be at Hampton Beach’s Casino Ballroom on July 17. He spoke with Michael Witthaus in June — here’s an edited transcript.

When did you realize that you were funny?

In second grade…. I had an idea for a bit [and] a banana peel. I walked to the front of the classroom in the middle of the lesson, and I sang a song parody of ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ only as ‘Rhinestone Banana.’ It was throwing this banana and shaking my hips. The kids were laughing, and the teacher was sitting next to my desk like, what are you doing? But I remember distinctly thinking, yeah, that works.

What made you decide to be funny in front of people?

In seventh grade, this one week, I walked into my friend’s house, and all the older kids were listening to Steve Martin’s Let’s Get Small album. Later that week I was at my other friend’s house. He had a copy of George Carlin’s Class Clown. You would sit and listen to albums and look at the cover, and it really dawned on me that these are grown-up men [and] this is their job. They’re funny for a living. That really hit me.

Was there a moment where you knew you were going to be successful?

When I met Seinfeld. He came into this club two nights in a row when I was on stage [and] wanted to talk to me after the second one. He was talking about how funny I was, he was really interested and complimentary and spent time with me. I was like, all right, if this guy is endorsing me and saying I’m on the right path, then I think I have a shot. It really came at an important time where it was like, am I going to do it? And he’s like, you’re going to do it. I was like, OK. And that was really the moment.

Come To Papa … What are your memories of that?

…I did a set on Conan and the head of the network wanted to meet me. Then it was kind of this little leaf in this roaring river. Before you know it, I had a pilot and I was casting a show. It was all happening and it wasn’t like I was trying to get it. I was surprised it was happening … we ended up getting hooked up and then there was a new president and he was looking to do The Office. So, it ultimately got canceled after several years of working on it. It was a little confusing because I didn’t know. I got there, that’s got to be something. So … do I have to go back home now? You don’t know what’s up. Then someone gave me advice…. More shows get canceled than become hits … you’re good enough to have people want to make a show with you. It’s validation that you have it. … I was unhappy about it, of course, but I wasn’t crushed. But the real thing that kept me going was like two months after I was called to do a spot on the Tonight show, and I had done it before, but it was just a funny moment to be, OK, NBC put my show on, they canceled my show, and here I am driving back through the gate showing my ID because I’m going back onto the lot to stand up on their network. It was like, oh, wait a minute. I don’t need a show. I don’t need other people to say I can do this. If I’m funny as a comedian, I kind of call the shots. That was a huge moment. The show would have been fun and cool in its own way, but … you’re kind of unstoppable if you can be funny.

This current tour, you headlined the Beacon Theater for the first time. As a Jersey kid, that must have been exciting.

Yeah, that was great. It was a real milestone. Within a couple of weeks I did the Chicago Theater and then the Beacon … definitely milestone spots. I love places that have that kind of history. The one in Hampton is definitely that, right?

You’re right, the Casino Ballroom has had many, many greats on their stage.

I had no idea the first time I went. I was like, oh yeah, I know the area. That’ll be fun. It’s got to be a quirky little place. Then everyone from Count Basie to George Carlin, I mean, everybody. It was like, oh man, I better straighten my tie.

Tom, anything that I haven’t brought up that folks should know?

No, it’s just that I think my comedy really is pretty hopeful and not really that cynical. I sign books at the end of the show, so I get to actually meet the people that are coming out on this tour. You can just tell from the response and spending a little time with these people that they really appreciate that they were able to escape for an hour and a half. It feels like people are under a lot of pressure. It’s easy to yell about the sky falling, but my whole goal out there right now is to give people a good time and a little bit of an escape.

Tom Papa
When: Thursday, July 17, 8 p.m.
Where: Casino Ballroom, 169 Ocean Blvd., Hampton Beach
Tickets: $36 and up at ticketmaster.com

Featured photo: Tom Papa. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/07/17

Local music news & events

• Rocking role: A veteran of the tribute scene, Zoso: The Led Zeppelin Experience recently marked three decades of its note-for-note, shirt-open-to-the-navel show. They’re as close as it gets to the true look and feel of a genre-defining act that’s reunited exactly twice since dissolving in 1980. Thursday, July 17, 7 p.m., LaBelle Winery, 14 Route 111, Derry, $35 at labellewinery.com.

• Pure blues: Keeping it real with a new album, local traditionalists Blūz Chīle — Dave and Jacob Couture sharing guitar and vocals, with a rhythm section of Jeff Merriman and Brian Sullivan on bass and drums — perform a release party show. Hard Row To Sorrow is gritty and real on songs like “Badlands” and “El Dorado Way,” which sounds like an extra track from ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres LP. Friday, July 18, 8 p.m., Riley’s Place, 29 Mont Vernon St., Milford, bluzchile.com.

• Guitar man: While he’s an immensely talented country singer, Brad Paisley is even more ferocious on the frets, so fans at his Truck Still Works tour stop here can count on hearing hits like the Dolly Parton duet “When I Get To Where I’m Going” along with some serious shredding. Saturday, July 19, 7:30 p.m., BankNH Pavilion, 72 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford, $36 and up at ticketmaster.com.

• Helping hands: Four area acts perform to benefit NH Outright, including Jake McKelvie and Megan From Work, whose 2024 album Girl Suit explores gender issues. Vanyaland called its title song “a peppy surge of soft punk that dances atop [Megan] Simon’s discarded suit, gouging holes in their once-obligatory façade.” Cade Earick and Ken Higaonna also appear. Sunday, July 20, 2:30 p.m., Candia Road Brewing, 840 Candia Road, Manchester, nhoutright.org.

• Island rap: Enjoy a midweek show from a trio of hip-hop acts, led by JOATA, Puerto Rican indie pop musician Jose Oyola. Now based in Los Angeles, Oyola infuses Caribbean rhythms and indie rock into his bilingual songs. Rounding things out are Seacoast band Bad Lab and A Lunar Landing. Wednesday, July 23, 8 p.m., Auspicious Brew, 1 Washington St., Dover, auspiciousbrew.com.

Superman (PG-13)

DC finally pulls off the right mix of heroism, action and a sense of playfulness in Superman, the James Gunn-helmed reboot.

This Superman (David Corenswet) lives in a comic book-y, without exactly being cartoon-y, world where he is not the Earth’s only Metahuman and where fighting a flying metal guy calling himself the “Hammer of Boravia” is just all in a day’s work. What’s surprising is, as the movie begins, Superman has just lost a fight with the Hammer and is recovering, with the help of the very good dog Krypto (sweet and loyal but not particularly well-behaved), in his icy Fortress of Solitude. While tended to by slightly snarky cape-wearing robots, Superman listens again to the message his parents sent him, baby Kryptonian Kal-El, when they rocketed him off Krypton, about how they love him and are sending him to Earth where he can do good.

Well, actually, Superman only has part of that message; discovering and weaponizing the other half of the message will be part of the villainy of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). I realize this is a very internet-y take, but watching a smug bald billionaire with dangerous tech and the ability to push around the U.S. government is not the same Dr. Evil-style cartoony fun it once was. But once I acclimated, this movie’s Lex is a solid comic book Big Bad and a solid villain for this particular Superman universe. He’s not the dark nihilism of Heath Ledger’s Joker or the annoying nuttiness of Jesse Eisenberg’s take on Lex. Hoult’s Luthor is petty, scheming and vain and a baddie in the evil corporation style while hitting the right note of villainy (not too grim, not too goofy) for this movie’s tone.

Lex ― with the help of his own Metahuman allies Ultraman, a faceless supersoldier, and The Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faría), a woman whose blood and body are full of nanobots ― attempts to foment war and bring down Superman. He wants to destroy Superman in all the ways ― both physically and reputationally, which he does in part with an army of angry monkeys typing anti-Superman rants on social media (a nice touch). The monkeys, along with various enemies (including ex-girlfriends and political prisoners), are being held prisoner in a pocket universe that Lex created, which serves as kind of a ship-at-sea legal-jurisdiction-free zone for his badness.

It also threatens the existence of Earth, so explains Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi). Mister Terrific, Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) are all members of what two of three of them do not want to call the Justice Gang. They sometimes work with Superman to protect Metropolis, but while he is concerned with the preservation of life and prevention of injury to people, animals and things, they’re more of a “blow it up and I’ll take my applause now” brand of superhero, especially Green Lantern. However, they have superpowers and they know about the whole Superman/Clark Kent situation, so when Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is looking for help uncovering Luthor’s evil plans, particularly after he manipulates the government into calling for Superman’s arrest, she turns to the Justice Gang. They aren’t exactly keen to get involved, and the perpetually annoyed Terrific especially doesn’t want to get involved in Lois’ ruminations on whether she and Superman, who she knows is fellow reporter Clark when the glasses are on, are just casually seeing each other or in a relationship or what.

Working with a well-thought-out slightly muted jewel-toned color palette (such a lovely change of pace from the DCEU grays) and a not-quite-our-world visual style, Superman is a visually appealing movie and while it doesn’t break new ground with its fight scenes it choreographs them in a way that doesn’t feel like green screen versus green screen nothingness. While the movie does have a few credits scenes (I stayed for one, it was cute) and plenty of “if you know you know” wider DC universe moments, Superman feels like a complete movie, with a full story and developed characters, and not just a setup for some bloated franchise it never quite sells you on. This is a smart, engaging story set in an exciting, attention-holding world ― even better than being a good superhero movie, Superman is just a solid action movie and even if there was never a sequel or a universe extension, it feels like, artistically at least, a success.

Superman hits the right notes, being fun and funny without being quippy, and being earnest and optimistic without being ponderous. A In theaters.

The Studio TV-MA

Yes, this is a TV series, not a movie, but the Seth Rogen-fronted,10-episode Apple TV+ series is a TV show about movies. And for movie fans I feel like it’s exactly the kind of downbeat but optimistic but goofy look at The Movies as a cultural thing, that can get you excited about going to the cineplex. Rogen stars in and co-directs the series as well as co-writing some of the episodes. His Max Remick has just been given his dream job as the head of Continental Studios. He loves being part of the movie-making process, but, as he explains to Patty (Catherine O’Hara), his mentor who he has just replaced, he now worries that his job is not to make movies so much as to ruin them. Take, for example, the Kool-Aid movie he’s tasked with making — IP with franchise possibilities that he claims will be “like Barbie” in terms of its film cred as well as money-making abilities. Can he get the auteur filmmaker with an idiosyncratic take on Kool-Aid or will he have to settle for making an animated movie that hopefully isn’t racist? The show also plays with film genres and styles (it was a description on the podcast Extra Hot Great of the episode “The Oner” with its examination of the one-take shot, that finally got me into the show) in a way that makes you remember why these elements are fun or iconic. And The Studio does this while making you laugh at the extremely sweaty, grimy way that the movie sausage gets made. AThe first season is available on Apple TV+. The Studio has thus far been renewed for a second season.

The Old Guard 2 (R)

The Old Guard, a 2020 bad-ass adaptation of a Greg Rucka graphic novel, told the story of Andromache aka Andy (Charlize Theron), the oldest member and leader of a small band of immortal warriors. Andy, who has been around since ancient times, schools Nile (KiKi Layne), a modern woman who wakes up after being “killed” in action as a U.S. Marine. The Old Guard 2, also a Netflix movie starring Theron and Layne as well as first movie holdovers Marwan Kenzari, Nicolo di Genova, Matthias Schoenaerts and Chiwetel Ejiofor, is I guess a very long trailer for The Old Guard 3, a movie we may or may not ever actually get. Uma Thurman shows up as the very firstest of first immortals and serves as the movie’s big bad — or, at least, one of them. But the movie feels slow and unfinished and it sidelines the characters we grew to know in the first edition for less interesting new people. C Streaming on Netflix.

Heads of State (PG-13)

Another entry in the “presidents being action figures” genre of should-be-fun action, this Prime Video movie is flat like a room temperature glass of hours-old soda. John Cena plays a former action star turned U.S. president; Idris Elba is a military vet turned U.K. prime minister. Neither is particularly fond of the other and they bicker their way through an official meeting. But then a terrorist attack — by someone on the inside, gasp! — leaves them traveling alone by foot with various baddies on their trail. Both actors know how to meet the moment of big silly action, as evidenced by their participation in the Fast and Furious universe. But here neither gets to have much in the way of personality. The movie has that “rhythm of a joke without actually being funny” feel to its script, and whole characters (sorry, Priyanka Chopra) feel thoughtlessly jammed in. Delight in the “President Bad-Ass” genre with Prime Video’s own G-20 (starring President Viola Davis) from earlier this year and skip this AI-mush-feeling endeavor. C-, only missing a D because Idris Elba does get maybe two good moments. Streaming on Prime Video.

Ballerina: From the World of John Wick (R)

A sidequel that apparently tucks into the timeline of the John Wicks, Ballerina fleshes out the story of one of the dancing future bodyguards training at Angelica Huston’s dance studio fight club dormitory that we saw in the excellent third John Wick movie. Years ago, when little girl Eve (Ana de Armas as an adult) watched a gaggle of assassins kill her father, she was taken to Angelica, the head of Eve’s father’s tribe or whatever. As an adult, Eve has to live that “lots of guns” protection and murder for hire lifestyle but what she really wants is to find and dispatch her father’s killers. Because everything in this universe is a complicated tangle of baroque diplomacy, Huston doesn’t want her to attack the town in the Alps run by Gabriel Byrne, head of the father-killing organization. But Eve goes rogue — big surprise! — with a little help from Ian McShane and the late great Lance Reddick at the New York City assassins hotel the Continental. And, sure, it’s nice to see them again, just as it’s nice when Keanu Reeves shows up and reminds you what makes John Wick so watchable. But Ballerina doesn’t have the same energy (the first half or so of the movie feels like it could have happened in about 10 minutes and gotten us straight to the relevant fighting) or the same clarity of mission that the Wick movies have. And Armas can’t pull off Reeves’ quiet, almost robotic menace. It’s fine but not necessary in a world where you can just rewatch a previous Wick with its vastly more cleverly choreographed fight scenes. C+ Available for rent or purchase.

The Ghost Lab, by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Quirky isn’t usually my thing, and Annie Hartnett’s latest novel, The Road to Tender Hearts, is most decidedly quirky (just ask Pancakes, the death-predicting cat). The events are bizarre and often tragic, and the characters are eccentric. But at the core of this novel, there is a warmth and genuineness that breaks through its comically dark outer layer.

The story starts with a slew of those bizarre events that ultimately unite main character PJ Halliday, a 63-year-old lottery winner with a long history of drinking and letting people down, with his estranged brother’s young grandchildren, Luna and Ollie.

PJ is not about to let their sudden existence in his life stop him from his latest endeavor, a road trip from his home in Massachusetts to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona, where he plans to woo his high-school crush, recently single again after losing her spouse. (PJ learns about that in the newspaper obits, not because he’s been in contact with her, so this visit will be a fun surprise for her.)

Also joining the trip, begrudgingly, is PJ’s 20-something daughter, Sophie, who is simmering with decades’ worth of anger toward her often absent alcoholic father. She has been tasked by her mother — PJ’s ex-wife, Ivy — to take care of him while she is away in Alaska with her fiance, Fred. So Sophie feels obligated to act as babysitter, for Ollie and Luna, and also for her dad.

The motley road-trip crew is rounded out by Pancakes, who has recently wandered into PJ’s life after a stint as a therapy cat at a nursing home.

If PJ were written in any other way, I think I would have hated him as a character. But somehow Hartnett makes me want to root for him. He, pitifully, thinks of Ivy and Fred as his best friends. He goes to their house for breakfast every morning, and he’s devastated when they don’t invite him on their trip.

When Ivy and Fred leave, PJ decides to quit drinking, again.

“PJ had never had a detox as bad as that one, not even when he had to go to prison for six weeks for the drunk driving, but once the detoxing was over, PJ had a new outlook. … When Ivy and Fred got home in September, he could be a new man. He wanted to be a man who was worthy of being their best man. Without the booze, PJ started feeling hopeful.”

It’s kind of hard not to feel for an old man who is so lonely and accepting of his own faults that he settles for being the third wheel in his ex-wife’s relationship. He’s lived his fair share of tragic events, too, which we start to learn more about as the road trip gets underway.

But for every moment or memory of darkness, there is also light, in the form of sweet moments between characters, hope for better things to come and the perfect amount of well-placed fatalistic humor.

Take, for instance, when Pancakes jumps out of a window of the moving car as Sophie and the kids try to track down a missing PJ. Ollie comments that Pancakes is “suicidal without Uncle PJ.” In fact, Pancakes is pulling a Lassie, leading the crew to PJ, who had been hit by a car while walking back to the motel from a bar after having just one drink and deciding he needed to go back to his family. The car was driven, ironically, by the man he’d been chatting with in the bar whose sad story was that he’d killed his wife when driving drunk. PJ survives the accident with minor injuries, but the man does not.

Emotions run high throughout the trip, as PJ battles his own inner demons, Sophie grapples with her dad’s still-not-great behavior and the kids adjust to their new reality as orphans — although Luna is having none of that. She is convinced her real dad is a famous actor who used to live in their town and whom her mom had always said she’d briefly dated. Luna wants to track him down and make him take a paternity test. This would get PJ off the hook as guardian, so he agrees to veer off course for Luna’s heartbreaking endeavor to find a family.

It’s all very sad, but also funny and genuine. The story could have been depressing, but it’s not. The characters are all well-developed and unique, and PJ’s growth feels honest and real. He’s somehow a loveable underdog, despite his constant lapses in judgment.

The Tender Hearts the title is referring to, presumably, is Tender Hearts Retirement Community, as they are literally on the road driving to that destination. But The Road to Tender Hearts could also describe the path PJ is taking to rebuild his heart with compassion and empathy. It could be the softening of Sophie’s heart as she sees her dad trying to be better and do better. It could be the unwitting journey PJ is taking into Ollie and Luna’s tender hearts.

I’m glad I didn’t let my thoughts of “this is so weird” as I read the first few pages stop me from taking this journey with them. A-

Featured Photo: The Ghost Lab by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Album Reviews 25/07/17

Dawn of Ashes, Infecting the Scars (Metropolis Records)

Back on my goth-rock tip again (for as long as it lasts), bringing you one from a Denmark-by-way-of-Los Angeles-based artist who unironically calls himself Krystof Bathory, a fellow whose wardrobe comes courtesy of VampireFreaks.com and who chooses only the finest gross-out makeup for that fresh-from-The Grudge look. Spooky character, this guy. He was a lot more aggressive in his earlier days (he’s been around since the early Aughts), but he’s mellowed some, I’d say; this LP is quite palatable if you’re into, you know, music as opposed to Hot Topic fashion statements. The best point of reference here would be mid-Aughts-era Wumpscut, and that raspy-growls-and-cheesy-tech sonic verisimilitude is what compels me to recommend this album. There’s some jackboot-stomping stuff on here that’ll please the Rammstein crowd but more than enough dedication to haunting melody that keeps it from being anything close to disposable. It’s for a Halloween-obsessed mindset, then, and does the job nicely. A

Honeymoon Suite, Wake Me Up When The Sun Goes Down (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Meanwhile, back at Frontiers Mercy Hospital, where former and would-be arena-rock bands go to receive emergency transfusions of actual record contracts, look who’s getting wheeled in on a gurney, it’s this Canadian hard rock/glam band, established in (good lord guys, look at the time) 1981 and which hasn’t charted in the U.S. since 1988’s “Love Changes Everything.” On this release, the band’s vibe isn’t ’80s hair-metal at all, more like a mutant cellular fusion of Buckcherry and Dashboard Confessional — actually, scratch that, I’ll say it, Weezer. That automatically lends them a nice fat stack of cred points, almost negating the Bon Jovi-meets-Bryan Adams robbery they committed with “Love Changes Everything,” and yes, I’m being serious, they’ve made a real effort to be 2020s- (or 2010s-) (OK, fine, Aughts-) relevant here, and that counts for something, folks, it really does. There’s some shredding for you Flying V disciples out there, and that’s really the only thing that one might say “sounds dated” (funny that, isn’t it). It’s perfectly fine, folks, and if you’re not convinced, “Way Too Fast” sounds quite a bit like Taking Back Sunday covering a Taylor Swift song, I’m not kidding, go listen for yourself. A valiant effort, really. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• As per tradition, all the “important” new albums are being released this Friday, July 18, which, by the way, is the 12th anniversary of the City of Detroit’s declaring bankruptcy, which is probably prophetic. But what all my older readers want to know is whether or not Chicago-based arena-rock band Styx is promoting a new album, given that they’re playing at the Bank Of NH Pavilion in Gilford this Friday (this time without support from REO Speedwagon, because they’re basically broken up these days, or they might as well be, seeing as how singer Kevin Cronin isn’t speaking to them, probably for good reason). To that I reply with an emphatic “yes”: Their new full-length, Circling From Above, is out this Friday, which, by my calculations, means that the Gilford show is actually a record release party of sorts! Now, I know Styx is sort of a meme band at this point in the eyes of anyone younger than 60, but you should stop it, “The Grand Illusion” was/is a cool song, can’t you just admit it you guys, that’d be great, all you kids should go see this show if you want to be aware of ’70s-era rock music (OK, enough kissing butt so I can mooch free tickets next year, let me go see if this album is any good). Right, so “Circling From Above” opens the album as a two-minute intro thingie; it sounds exactly like something from Close To The Edge-era Yes (I hope there’s at least one person reading this who knows what that even means), and then it goes into “Build And Destroy,” which is even more Yes-ish but also borrows heavily from “Sheep,” Pink Floyd’s only decent song. So, to review, even at the age of 112 or however old those guys are, they’re even better musicians than they were during the 1970s, an admirable thing, which I also mentioned in my review of their previous album. So what’s the upshot, you ask? Well, given that good musicianship doesn’t matter in the Golden Age Of Twerking And Fake Beefs, it doesn’t actually matter all that much, but if you’re a serious musician you might be impressed with some of this stuff; it’s quite decent (you’d be better served buying an old Return To Forever album if you want to hear some serious prog-rock, but you’d be doing so at your own risk, just saying). (Actually, just forget it, don’t.)

• Speaking of music for guitar nerds and other people who can’t maintain normal relationships, blues-rocker Joe Bonamassa is back in the emailboxes of us professional music journalists again, hawking his new LP, Breakthrough! I punched up the YouTube for the title track, and holy cultural appropriation, Batman, this is the most Willie Dixon-sounding tune I’ve heard from a white dude since the last five Willie Dixon-sounding white dudes, like is he this generation’s Ry Cooder maybe? I don’t know, so one of you people can message me the deets if you’d like, given that I don’t care about such things.

• Florida punk band Against Me! has basically been kaput since 2016, but the band’s trans frontperson Laura Jane Grace is still making albums for her wildly devoted LGBTQ+ fan base! Her new one, titled Adventure Club, includes the single “Wearing Black,” a semi-speedy, aggressive tune that combines angular Gang Of Four guitars and Exene-level brattiness. It’s an anthem intended for pride parades, and I’d love to tell you some of the lyrics but I’d get in trouble, so never you mind.

• And finally we have New York City’s We Are Scientists, an indie band that’s never impressed me, but who knows, maybe the 500th time is the charm. Their new LP, Qualifying Miles, features the tune “Please Don’t Say It,” a shapeless meatloaf of goth/pseudo-industrial sentiments that has an emo aftertaste, hard pass on this.

Basil Cachaça Smash

  • A small handful of fresh basil (about 5 g) – leaves and stems
  • 1½ teaspoons granulated sugar
  • 2 ounces cachaça or flavorful rum
  • 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • 3 ounces passionfruit cocktail – you can find this on the top shelf of the bottled juice aisle at your supermarket or in any Latin grocery store or bodega
  • 3 ounces good tonic water to top – I like Fever Tree

Aside from being delicious, the cool thing about this drink is that it is super easy to make, but it also involves several flashy-looking (but easy) bartending techniques.

Drop the basil into the larger half of a cocktail shaker, then add the sugar. Aside from adding sweetness to this enterprise, it is also abrasive, and will help break down the basil when you muddle it.

Cool Bartender Technique #1 – Muddle the basil. All this means is that you’ll mush the basil up with a stick — in my case, I use the billy-club-like pestle from my largest mortar and pestle. Smash the basil leaves up, and grind them up with your muddler (stick) and the sugar. After a minute or so of energetic muddling, the basil will have turned gloppy (a technical term) and dark green. Rattle your muddler against the sides of the cocktail shaker to knock off any basil or sugar that might be stuck to it.

Cool Bartender Technique #2 – Add the cachaça to the basil glop, and dry-shake it. Dry shaking means to shake ingredients without ice. In this case, a lot of the flavor of the basil is found in aromatic oils that you have liberated with your muddling. These oils aren’t water-soluble — in other words, they won’t mix easily with water-based ingredients. They are, however, extremely sociable in the presence of alcohol. (Aren’t we all?) By shaking the basil and cachaça together without any ice, the alcohol will have a chance to strip away the basil’s more sophisticated flavor compounds.

Once the basil oils have been suspended in alcohol, they will mix more readily with the rest of the ingredients. You can add the ice, now. Also add the lime juice and the passionfruit cocktail. (Shake the passionfruit cocktail, in case it has separated.) Seal the cap on your cocktail shaker, and shake the mixture enthusiastically.

Cool Bartender Technique #3 – Strain the passionfruit mixture over fresh ice in a tall glass. There are several ways to strain a cocktail. If you have shaken it in a two-piece Boston shaker, you can simply break the seal between the two halves, and carefully pour the liquid out from where the two halves meet. This will do a good job of keeping the old ice and any large blobs of basil mush from getting into your glass, but you might find yourself with a few more floating bits of basil than you want. I double down and pour the mixture through a mesh drain strainer — about $2 at any hardware store — which limits any green floaters to very small pieces of basil.

Depending on the size of your tall glass, and how much ice you’ve put in it, you might find that your passionfruit-basil mixture fills it almost to the top. In this case you might have to take one for the team and drink a vigorous sip of this highly flavorful drink to bring the surface level down a couple of inches from the top of the glass.

Finally, add three ounces or so of tonic water to the glass, and stir it gently, to add some effervescence to it. Garnish with one of the spent lime halves, and drink with a straw. It tastes fruity and sweet and sour, with funkiness from the cachaça, acid from the lime juice, and a lingering kiss of basil.

Highly recommended.

Featured photo: Basil Cachaça Smash. Photo by John Fladd.

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