Call Me Kitty V - Martini Night

If you've come here looking for Lovehammer stuff, there's plenty a little further down. Well worth the effort to scroll down. Just be sure to stop back for Martini Time! and make the Reverend Horton Heat proud. This is the fifth installment in the Call Me Kitty series. Our hero Dave has been known to be a connoiseur of the finer things as the following observations will attest to.

Small, perfect spheres of water formed on the surface of the stemmed martini glass that was set on the bar. Within its empty chamber, a pile of ice was quickly stacked, rising several inches above the rim. The individual cubes melded loosely to one another and formed a haphazard ice sculpture atop the glass. A quick jet stream of dry vermouth collapsed against the icy sculpture with a small splash, and after rebounding in all directions it joined the drops of the slowly dissolving ice host and slowly found its way down to the glass. As the walls of the spotless stemware chilled in one spot, a stainless steel cup down the bar began its own chores. It readily accepted a long pour of gin from the baby blue glass bottle that had been waiting on the shelf against the mirrored wall and then received a hearty scoop of ice that was retrieved from the bin below with a recognizable crunch. Unlike their counterparts in the showcase martini glass standing in the bar’s spotlight, these cubes would not bond and form any such sculpture. Almost immediately, the contents were covered and the steel chamber was shaken violently. The cubes cracked against the unforgiving steel walls with each toss, oblivious to the chill they were losing to the potent liquid that had been waiting on the bottom of the cup prior to the disturbance. Now the once calm gin that had been showcased on the mirrored wall, tossed and turned like the sea in the storm that shipwrecked the Minnow on Gilligan’s Island. Finally the storm subsided, but instead of making a radio out of coconuts, the distilled gin, now clouded, settled and found itself amidst miniature icebergs floating scatteredly across its surface. Across the bar, its glass mate had developed a small pool in the vortex of its chamber, collected from the run-off of the miniature mountain of ice upon it. Not sharing the permanence of nature’s mountains, the tip of the barkeep’s index finger prompted a single rotation of the glacial mass within the glass. With the glass now coated with the icy mountain rivers that flowed down its side, flavored with a hint of the vermouth that had visited, the structure’s contents were quickly dumped into a waiting sink, and the glass again placed on the bar well-prepared for the main event. A matching strainer placed over the stainless steel cup served as a cue for it’s temporarily settled contents. A quick swirl softly stirred the solution before it slid down the side of the cup and through the gated jaws of the wire strainer, which denied access to any cubes despite their cracked condition. As the chilled alcohol formed a brief waterfall over the edge, the chilled glass accepted it at the same temperature, and together they knew that they were meant for one another. A refined mixture, it politely pulled up short of the rim and waited distinguishedly. Two olives, one with a small rectangular pimento almost flush with the hole, and another that had somewhere been separated from its filling, were each subsequently stabbed with a small skewer, complete with the cool little sword adornment on the end. Instead of being drowned in the waiting cocktail, the skewer was balanced in a scale-like fashion on the edge of the glass, one olive on the inside rim, one on the outside, forming a symbol of jurisprudence one might find on an attorney’s stationery.


After the masterpiece completed a short slide across the bar, the olive barbell was immediately dunked in a blatant disregard of justice and the drink pounded by the thirsty inebriate. It was nearly enough to make the martini artist cry, but the generous tip helped him overlook the mockery of the spirited consumption.