Ask Alfred Soto

what would you say?

alfred, i think i remember a mojito thread where you scold the concept of simple syrup in a mojito. do u have a favored mojito recipe? if so could you describe?

yr friend,

cad

Use two teaspoons of sugar in a tall thin glass, three or four mint sprigs, and two shots of rum. Crush the sugar and mint into the rum until there's barely anything left of them (use a spoon or thin garlic press). Then pour your choice of club soda into the glass. Garnish with more mint sprigs.

the most important thing about the mojito is to take your time crushing the ingredients.

ok, some detailed q's:

1) ice - before or after club soda?

2) when to stir?

3) favored rum brand?

1) Before. It's also important to keep stirring the cocktail while drinking it.
2) Bacardi is the best. The others are too strong.

A good mojito will take two to three minutes to prepare. My dad, the mojito fuckin' master, will walk around talking to people as he's crushing the ingredients.

whoa--did we never talk about lime juice?

Only reviving to say I'm ready to discard my mojito recipe.

And replace it with...?

go gimlet or go home imo

^^ real talk

Alfred, I had a dream about you last night in which you were using the TV show Roseanne as a sort of critical shorthand for sober didacticism. Which I'm not sure makes much sense, but it wasn't too far removed from how Frank Kogan uses PBS, for instance. Also the dream was almost undoubtedly triggered by the thread Girls To The Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on the TV show Roseanne?

I halfheartedly watched the first two years.

Who writes your dreams?

Alfred, name me a power-pop album as good as Elastica's first.

Don't know about characterizing it as such, but Imperial Teen's Seasick is one of my favorite pop-punk records; in fact they've never made a bad one.

a bartender actually served me a vodka coke -- god.

was it because today's your... ?

A drink mix-up. But I do wonder if there are any disgusting savages who drink this concoction.

yo.

http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2009/3/12/128813973389848754.jpg

there needs to be a "john justen and fluffy bear will drink it"-style thread where people name strange alcoholic beverages and strongo confirms that, yes, he has already drunken it at some point in the past

i mean vodka and coke isn't exactly on the level of pureed goat meat and tequila or whatever but i can't understand why it isn't the discerning man's tipple of choice.

should be i "*can* understand why..." clearly i had too many goat-a-ritas last night.

http://www.tumyeto.com/images/uploaded/___vodka-coke_opt.jpg

Andrew WK's smallest gig yet.

are you giving out more A's in your classes too???

Big college-administered grammar test next Wednesday. They're doing well distinguishing intransitive from transitive verbs!

lol

glad you're impacting them positively

It's got synergistic possibilities.

giving them great life experiences i trust

If you could ask Bryan Ferry one question, Lord Soto, what would it be?

"would you swoon as i croon your serenade?"

How have the New Romantics affected you sartorially?

I bought spectacular red pants at Target today for $15.

What's your favorite brad paisley album?

hey, so i've been reading a bunch of biographies, one of which was mccullough's "truman." i know you read a lot about presidents, so i wanted to ask who you think wrote the best fdr biography

A few!

H.R. Brands's A Traitor to His Class is the best recent conventional bio.

Last year's Fear Itself details how the reactionary and racist Solid South made possible the progressivism of the New Deal.

The New Deal: A Modern History is a good recent account of the first Hundred Days, including details on how much Hoover's outgoing administration helped.

And JFK bootlicker Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Age of Roosevelt] has some beautiful portraiture.

Hey Alfy-poo, big starry-eyed question but if you could name THREE grammar/writing skills that your college estudiantes came prepped with, what would they be? Signed, humble public schooling human.

1. Writing more than five paragraphs is okay.

2. Thinking about how sentences look. Students forget 96 percent of what high schools teach them yet they remember that You Can't Start Sentences with Conjunctions.

3. A sense of humor.

I am stealing a lot of my writing and grammar lessons from Kelly Gallagher, who says "show me a five paragraph essay in a real publication and I'll buy you lunch."
Not sure if #2 you are saying teach the rule or know that it's a breakable rule?
Here's the experiment I'm doing this year (also stolen from Gallagher): having them reverse engineer sentence rules and structures from model sentences. (Really brief summary as a PDF here – http://teachwritingsecschools.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/sentence-of-the-week-assignment.pdf)
Number 3 can't be taught but it can certainly be encouraged and modeled, to use some teacherese. It certainly makes GRADING a lot nicer!!

A breakable rule. I had no idea it was a rule! I wasn't taught this.

Oh yeah – I was taught it growing up, and my little superego freaked out a little whenever I saw an author doing it in a book. My fifth grade teacher had the good sense to explain it was a breakable rule.
It's true; they have some weird ideas of "writing rules" but I think they're the ones their teachers marked them down for. Like my kids are gospel convinced a paragraph is exactly five sentences, because the teacher will say "write a paragraph to answer this question" and I guess – same structure – main idea, 3 supporting details, concluding sentence (that is like lukewarm microwave leftovers of the topic sentence). So my kids freak out a little when I show them real authors break that rule, too.

My kids also think you can't start a sentence with "because." ?!?!?

Students forget 96 percent of what high schools teach them yet they remember that You Can't Start Sentences with Conjunctions.

you'd think it's from high school, but lots of college professors (maybe less so in the english dept; i hope so) still enforce this demented bullshit.

well, the trend in net lingo is to use 'because' to introduce a phrase ("I can't see this guy because problems") instead of a clause ("I can't start a sentence with a conjunction because teachers hate it").

The science teachers explained that is a 'rule' in their classes because students tend to just use the dependent clause as a sentence: "Because of condensation."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWlLPJG9Cvg

OTOH I remember thinking as a student that "always answer as a complete sentence" was just a waste of time:

Q. Why does your water bottle get covered with sweaty beads of water in the heat?
A. A water bottle gets covered with sweaty beads of water in the heat because of condensation.

So much pointless writing! Could they not read the question themselves??

oh god it reminds me: one of my pet peeves is improper or promiscuous use of "due to," which theoretically you use only with a linking verb ("I was absent due to a cold"). Even worse: "due to the fact that."

i like that use of because (xxp) as long as it's in the service of melodrama. "But the evaporated water can never remain free; it is doomed always to be recaptured by gravity. Why? Because of condensation."

after blaming college professors for no-opening-conjunctions i should say that it was my experience in college that professors were constantly frustrated (and sorta blindsided) by the elementary-school paragraph recipes you guys are talking about tho. that isn't their fault. cuz man yeah it's beaten in deep, young. i still remember the posters: The Writing Process.