In Defense of Happy Hour
It's not a problem when it's Pandemic
Before we dive in, I need to confess something: I get very nervous sending out these newsletters. “No one wants to read your random thoughts about an indie dramedy you saw on a plane, Henning,” I think. Or “wouldn’t this have been better served by a group text, or even just writing on a bathroom wall?” Solid points all.
But THEN I puff myself up, get a little taller and think “Hendog [this is my Christian name], stop this pansy-ass cogitation! People are firing off substacks about WAY dumber shit, somehow even less focused than yours. It is your American right to send long-winded journal entries the same way it is your friends’ American right to unsubscribe, or delete entirely.” I calm down. I let the keystrokes flow.
Anyway: I’m back, for at least another week!
At Sunday’s Academy Awards, Best Foreign Film went to a lil’ Danish movie called ‘Another Round’, which is about four middle-aged guys — including Mads “Where is my BB” Mikkelsen1 — who start drinking heavily in an effort to prove something about man’s ideal blood alcohol content, and maybe get their mojos back. The American version of this would be, like, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson, and… hell, Luke Wilson, why not, making drunk TikToks and starting a national movement that quickly gets out of hand, eventually forcing our dudes to realize that drinking is BAD and won’t solve their problems, which include winning back Owen Wilson’s ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston). By comparison, the very-real Danish version is more sober (lol) in its depiction of middle age and its discontents. Another word for this might just be “Danish.”
In ‘Another Round’, drinking isn’t inherently bad. Okay sure, one guy dies and another very nearly derails his entire marriage.2 But the booze bonanza yields a lot of positives, too: reminding these friends of their passion for teaching, for dance, for music. For just doing shit, generally, in the way that can sometimes feel so impossible when you’ve been in a rut for longer than you care to remember.
Show of hands, who’s had a lot more to drink this past year than any calendar year they can remember? (Not counting college, ostensibly the Olympics of recreational drinking when we’re here to talk about a more manageable adult rec league schedule.)
That’s a lot of hands! And I count myself among you, for better or worse, hitting the sauce at a pretty regular clip March 2020. Once we got through ‘Tiger King’ and sourdough starters and tie-dye, I mean, what else was there? ‘The Queen’s Gambit’?
In a seemingly interminable year (that we should acknowledge is hardly over, especially internationally — India’s crisis top of mind), drinking provided some small means by which to make things a little more… terminable.
In my more Jack Kerouac-friendly 20s, I found this quote in ‘Big Sur’ that I liked enough to write down in Apple Notes, and I think speaks to this moment:
"We all agree it's too big to keep up with, that we're surrounded by life, that we'll never understand it, so we center it all in by swigging from the bottle and when it's empty…"
That’s at least one definition of drinking: a temporary means by which we try to corral these larger forces, bring some semblance of order to the seemingly orderless. Do too much of it and yeah, you might veer into problem territory, or if you’re Will Arnett specifically, two seasons of the show ‘Flaked’ on Netflix. But with a little oversight it can also just be, you know, a chill-ass way to end the day.
WFH (“work-from-home,” if you’re a narc) was and is the blessing and curse of Pandemic life for anyone lucky enough to be given the option. You get to keep working, you get to keep making money when so many people are shut out of this by the nature of their field. But you’re also forced to do it in the place that was previously reserved for, you know, decompressing from the work you just left. Your kitchen is your water cooler and your living room is your cubicle and any semblance of work-life balance, hombre, that’s on mute in a Zoom breakout room you don’t have access to. Charitably, I think we can all say WFH is less than ideal.
And that’s to say nothing of its time-flattening effects: the way a lack of a commute, or pants, erases the boundaries between morning, afternoon, and night to the point it’s all just this endless… thing, with no end in sight, a tunnel you’re too far in to remember entering but too short of the exit to see a way out of.
…So yeah, I been drinkin’!
Like anything undertaken in quarantine, the important thing has been building your vices up to the point that you can defend them as hobbies. A couple of beers by yourself, that carries the sting of shame; a few cocktails, though, artfully prepared in the appropriate glass, that’s something you can devote an entire Portrait Mode album to.
I’d hardly call myself a “mixologist” (that moniker is reserved for guys in vests pulling off Tom Cruise in ‘Cocktail’-level moves, or my friend Kaitlin, who regularly uses something called “aquafaba”), but the act of drink-making — I mean, it’s become a meaningful part of my existence this past year.
You probably could have surmised this from my taste in movies or hell, the very existence of this substack, but I’m also a big coffee guy. And aside from the fact I’m just physiologically addicted to caffeine… it’s the ritual of it all that really does it for me. Grind the beans. Heat the water. Pour in three careful concentric circles, careful to let the grounds bloom. Pour in five circles now, for some reason, because you read that one time and assume this must be an important part of the process. I swear this eventually produces a cup of coffee.
Coffee for me is as much about marking time as it is enjoying a dank-ass cup of ethically-sourced Ethiopian peaberry. I perform this elaborate ritual — one that clearly outs me as a single-ish person with no family or responsibilities — and I can move now into the rest of the day, and whatever mindset that entails. When I’m muddling limes for a caipirinha or coating my Sazerac glass with absinthe3, I’m doing the same thing but in reverse: marking the end of the day, saying “onto the next thing” even if that next thing is sinking four hours into the overrated PS5 game ‘Control’ or trying for the 87th time to read ‘A People’s History of the United States’. What happens after crafting a Sazerac is less important than the Sazerac itself.
Life would appear to be returning to most of the states, and with it the chance to enjoy coffee shops, restaurants, bars — to say “gtfo” to your studio apartment that’s come to resemble a nautical cabin, and “boi bye” to the stasis that’s marked these past 365+ days. Maybe we’ll take lessons we’ve learned out into the world; maybe we’ll just forget them and move on. Who knows! All I can say with certainty is that 1-2 well-made cocktails a night has so far only brought a measure of balance to a wildly unbalanced time, and any long-lasting damage probably won’t be apparent for many years. Cheers!
At most two of you will understand this reference
It’s possible I missed the point of the movie entirely
You simply must do this, otherwise can you even call it a Sazerac?