JdBLetter Vol. 5 - Happy Thanksgiving, I guess

December 3, 2021 John deBary

my mom took holiday hosting very seriously

I suspect i’m not the only one who has very mixed feelings about Thanksgiving. I grew up in a very rich, very white suburb of NYC and even though it was relatively progressive, I was still fed a heaping mound of whitewashed lies about how great Thanksgiving was for everyone involved. Even in middle and high school when teachers got “real” with us about american history, it was still hopelessly sanitized with the myth that there was some magnanimous reconciliation between colonizers and the indiegous population following a period of forced relocation and genocide.

I had a pretty fairy tale upbringing, and part and parcel to that was an elaborate, Martha Stewart-aspirational Thanksgiving filled with warmth, family, and great food. I am sustained and fortified by the memories of those days. It’s challenging to reconcile these two very different constructions of the holiday.

The mechanics of reconciling a festival of genocide with a festival of gratitude are far too complex and heavy for this silly little narcissistic newsletter, but I will say one thing: Reparations. I would urge everyone reading this to consider donating something to indigenous causes this Thanksgiving. This piece from The Cut has some great suggestions, as well as this listing here. Earlier this year, Restaurant Workers' Community Foundation’s Racial Justice Fund granted to I-Collective, which is an autonomous collective of indigeous chefs that promotes food sovereignty. If money isn’t possible, you can do things like find out what Indigenous land you’re on, follow Indigenous people, or read up on how to decolonize Thanksgiving. Or, you could even reject the idea of Thanksgiving altogether.

As you’ll see below I had a few opportunities to benefit by creating Thanksgiving content, the least I can do is pay it back to those who have been harmed.

Drinks and Stuff:

I think this might be my favorite installment in the Drink What You Want video series to date. It’s the first one we shot in the studio, which is a totally different vibe from shooting at home, because there is more of an audience behind the camera to play off of, and I think that’s pretty apparent. The at-home videos have more personality from a visual perspective, but I feel like I was way sassier in the studio. You can watch it HERE and check out the full recipe HERE.

This video is also great because I netted a new nemesis: Annette. The comments got deleted but I screengrabbed them for posterity.

Every time I put on lipstick now I think of miserable little Annette. Spite sustains me.

(And if you missed any of my prior videos, here’s a handy playlist of all of them so you can catch up instead of spending time with people. )

What to drink for every hour of Thanksgiving Day

Next up, I wrote an hour-by-hour drink guide to Thanksgiving which I am particularly proud of because I managed to make it a 50-50 split between alcohol-based and alcohol-free drinks. Read it here, while there’s still time to prepare.

…and listen to this!

I joined the Genius Recipe Tapes podcast to talk about last-minute Thanksgiving prep. Listen HERE.

I interview drag stars on a monthly basis now

It was a dream come true to finally interview Biblegirl, who is truly one of the best Instagram and Twitter follows you can ask for. Read the interview HERE and follow Biblegirl HERE and HERE

No music videos, just an assemblage of links:

Thanks for reading. Forward this to someone you think will like me.

Love,

-JdB

JdBLetter Vol. 4 - A New Hope

November 19, 2021 John deBary

It is too late in the season to buy watermelon

Speaking of late, I read this piece that got me thinking about why I’m always obscenely early to everything.

Those of you who’ve known me for a while will probably have the experience of me texting to apologize for being early, or, in rare instances, apologizing for being four (4) minutes late. My new policy that I developed with the help of a therapist is that if i’m going to be less than seven minutes late and the stakes are low, don’t bother with a heads up, it’s more of a nuisance than it is helpful. Anyway, the piece is not long, go read it and come back.

There Are Two Kinds of People: Those Who Get To the Airport Two Hours Before Their Flight or More, and Those Who Are Wrong

I used to think that i got everywhere early because I feared being late, when actually, in most cases being late would not have been a huge issue (except for things like air travel or shows of course). But instead i now realize that I like to be early because I appreciate being nice to myself.

It’s nice to show up to the restaurant a bit early and have time to look around and maybe sweet talk them into giving you a nicer table, or get to your friend’s place a little early and pop into that bookstore you’ve been meaning to check out, or walk around the block and see something new. Having time is a luxury and I will do anything to give myself more of it.

It’s a subtle shift but it casts my hyperfocus on punctuality/being early in a healthier light. I’m not terrified of being late, I just want to get to where i’m going and fucking chill for a minute. Shit.

I can’t get over how great this Eater interview came out. Fun fact: the writer has been working on this interview since January of 2020. The piece was put on hold during the pandemic and we did a catch-up interview a few months ago, and I’m glad it worked out that way, because my life got more interesting in every dimension over the past 18 months.

Also I was randomly quoted in this article about Danny Meyer investing in Panera Bread.

I was revisiting some of my old pieces for Liquor.com and came across this one. It’s amazing to see how far the conversation has come since then...Sober Bartenders Say They Feel Great. But Does Not Drinking Hurt Their Business?

If you are in a place where you have the emotional resilience to read something truly disturbing, read this: Artificially intelligent advertising technology is poisoning our societies.

Lastly, I’m really pissed of that I haven’t yet made a charcuterie gingerbread house and this must be remedied immediately. Any volunteers?

Legitimate Drinks Content!!!!1!

Literally this piece went live two hours ago. Thrillist asked me to check in with some of my favorite bartenders to see if they had any fabulous fall recipes, and they delivered! Read it here. (And thank you Lauren, Chris, Masa, Shannon, and Austin)

Music Video Assignments:

Kylie Minogue & Jessie Ware - Kiss of Life }{ Kylie just keeps continuing to give it and i am happy to take it. I’m also loving this trend she has of using vintage cameras that began with her Jimmy Fallon live performance of Say Something that is just stellar (pun intended).

Tove Lo - Are U gonna tell her? ft. MC Zaac }{ In an attic somewhere there is an oil painting of Tove Lo getting less and less talented
Mis-Teeq - Scandalous }{ I hadn’t thought about this song/video since literally 2003 until it was featured on Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK in one of the best lip syncs ever (spoilers for last week’s ep, FYI)
Charli XCX - Good Ones }{ I tried to get tickets to her show in April but they sold out in 24 seconds I hate t*cketmaster

Thanks for reading. Forward this to someone you think will like me.

Love,

-JdB

JdBLetter Vol. 3 - I guess this is a regular thing now huh

November 10, 2021 John deBary

I do some of my best work in the Proteau storage unit

Going into this newsletter earlier this week I had this whole screed planned about how I am a proud and dedicated NYC Board of Elections Election Day Worker even though I have no faith that electoral politics will save us and how we’re 3-5 years away from total societal and ecological collapse but even so it’s important to vote in all elections, especially the “small” ones because a lot of times the decisions made by city and state electeds are way more impactful on our lives than federal ones and those elections are decided by way fewer votes so we as voters have way more leverage that we think plus even though there are overlapping looming disasters on the horizon and diligent voting as at best a marginal intervention, it still makes sense to try to improve our material conditions however possible and for me I have the ability to serve the public interest by handing over 14 hours of my life on election day due to the various privileges afforded to me,

BUT

yesterday was my birthday and i spent last night first visting Grand Central Oyster Bar, then drinking obscenely overpriced sparkling wine at the top of One Vanderbilt and finally drinking more wine at the Feeling Asian Live Show and dressing up as a Squid Game VIP and exchanging furtive glances with Asa Akira on stage while eating a Solid Wiggles Eyeball Cake, so today i am tired and my propensity for prose is diminished, so this is all you’re going to get.

Go vote.

And now, some classic newsletter material: ANNOUNCEMENTS

Good Drinks author and JdB BFF Julia Bainbridge and I are doing book signings at Boisson’s Upper East Side and West Village locations:

November 6, Upper East Side, 1025 Lexington Avenue from 5pm-7pm https://boisson.eventcalendarapp.com/u/30709/138032
November 20, West Village, 330 Bleecker Street from 5pm-7pm https://boisson.eventcalendarapp.com/u/30709/138034

And I’m also doing a Proteau tasting event at Minus Moonshine, 433 Sterling Place **November 13, 1-4pm**

I feel like each newsletter should have at least some nominal drinks content, right?

I love absinthe. And I love that i got to write about it, and even got to go on the Martinis and Murder podcast to talk about the horrifically gruesome and fascinating “Absinthe Murders.”

This incident was actually one of the events that triggered the ban of absinthe that persisted in the US until 2007. I got to write a piece for Bon Appetit’s Basically that tried to disentangle the many absinthe myths from the fascinating true facts about this botanical concoction. (Fun fact! This is one of the first pieces I wrote where I got something really wrong. I originally stated that the Pernod distillery was in Switzerland, but it is indeed in France, although very close to the Swiss border…)

Now please familiarize yourself with these music videos:

J. Balvin, Dua Lipa, Bad Bunny, Tainy - UN DIA (ONE DAY) }{ There is something super futuristic about this song and video that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Charli XCX - Good Ones }{ Love the video, hate the trend of sub-three minute pop songs
The Knocks & MUNA - Bodies }{ Obliquely gut-wrenching. I sent this to my brother and he said it brought him to tears.

All of my news links this week are about how bad Facebook is:

...except for this one from 2018 that I found on tumblr (of course) about how an adult human man had to get “married” to an endangered crane ~for work~ (WATCH THE VIDEO)

Thanks for reading. Forward this to someone you think will like me.

Love,

-JdB

JdBLetter Vol. 2 - The Newsletter Strikes Back

October 25, 2021 John deBary

Holy shit I actually wrote another one

Hi!

I’m just as shocked as anyone that I’m sticking with it for second week because I have wild swings in my capacity for self-discipline.

No alcohol for all of 2020? Sure. 100 pushups per day? Easy. But check in with the unused gummi bear-making equipment that still sits in my kitchen after three years, or the 275 words of a post-collapse sci-fi retelling of The Winter’s Tale I have stuffed in some google doc somewhere and they will offer a differing viewpoint.

A few people told me that my first newsletter was a bit too long and that it needed more pictures. Speaking of too long... Did you know that my first draft of Drink What You Want was almost 60,000 words? Yep, I ended up having to cut almost 19,000 words in order to get it down to a manageable length. i learned through the process that cuts don’t have to be deletions, so now i have a 55-page document with all the little bits and pieces that didn’t make it to the final draft that I get to share with you. Here’s a bit on shaking v. stirring cocktails:

”Shaken drinks are best enjoyed super fucking cold. I’ll talk more about this later, but one of the primary goals of shaking, as a technique, is to render a drink stingingly cold.

Shaken drinks are also intended to be quaffed quickly, so super-chilling them dulls the perception of alcohol, and lowers aromatic intensity, allowing you to toss it back in a few sips (gulps). I know this sounds like a super alcoholic-person thing to say, but bear with me, shaken drinks reach a state of aeration and chilling as a result of vigorous shaking and only remain that way for a brief time before settling into uninspiring mediocrity. One of my favorite quotes about cocktails comes from Harry Craddock, author of the legendary Savoy Cocktail book. He was asked the ‘best’ way to drink a cocktail. His response was: ‘Quickly, while it’s still laughing at you.’

The same is not as true for stirred drinks. Stirring is a far less violent act than shaking, and it renders the drink less cold and less diluted. This invites you sip slowly and appreciate the cocktail’s aromatic complexity. With certain stirred drinks it is sometimes possible to get the drink “too cold” and it shuts down, others are not so vulnerable. Generally I find that drinks that are best served slightly less cold are brown-spirit-based drinks and drinks with a lot of complex aromatics and bitterness, like a Manhattan, Old Pal, Vieux Carré. Others, those usually made with un-aged spirits with less aromatics and less bitterness, do not suffer as much from being too cold. The prime example being a Martini.”

All Hail Merrie Cherry

I have a monthly drag interview series for Thrillist.This month I got to interview Brooklyn drag legend Merrie Cherry. She’s a contestant on this season of Dragula and is just an all-around awesome person. If you read the piece i linked to in last week’s newsletter about Bushwig (Merrie is a co-founder) you’ll know that there were some participants who called out the organizers for what they saw to be problematic practices.
By design, these interviews are meant to be pretty light—I started doing them as a mid-pandemic check in with drag performers who had seen their worlds contract dramatically. This touched on relatively “real” subjects, such as the pay practices of a still-growing festival like Bushwig, and also what it’s like to film a TV show while mourning family. Read the interview HERE.

#PicklePlay drops today

One of the best things to happen to me in 2021 was getting connected to Food52 as their first-ever resident drinks expert. We have a monthly series called, of course, Drink What You Want, and each month is an escalation of what I can get away with. For instance, they let me completely bleach and re-dye my hair in between video shoots so they didn’t look like they were shot on the same day; I do many of the videos holding our cat Felix; I wore a shirt with Homer Simpson’s buttcheeks on it and no one batted an eye.

And this month I made a series of dick jokes under the auspices of talking about how I like to ~play with pickles~ when making Gibsons. I’ll shut up now. Watch it here.

Now please familiarize yourself with these music videos:

Remi Wolf - Liquor Store | I’ve been a huge Remi Wolf fan for a while now, but after reading this profile in the ny times where she reveals she’s been sober from alcohol since entering rehab in the summer of 2020, totally recontextualizes this video.

Paradis - Garde le Pour Toi | I was acutely melancholy this week that I never saw this song performed live, and never will. My killer app for fully-immersive, plug-into-my-brainstem VR is recreating live music performances, and this is on my list.
Kylie Minogue and Years & Years - A Second to Midnight | This is one of the best-edited and smartly-conceived music videos I’ve seen. Singlehandedly makes the case for music videos as an art form. (Hat tip to Julia Bainbridge for this gem.)
Bjork - Hidden Place | Every effort that i put into my skincare routine is so that i can have skin this good.

How Are You Feeling?

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the excellent Feeling Asian podcast (I was a guest on a couple months ago.), but did you also know that they have a side-splittingly hilarious live show? Well, now you do. Their most recent show which features me as, you guessed it, the token white guy. I show up at the 1hr 22min mark, but you should watch the whole thing.

Thanks for reading. Forward this to someone you think will like me.

Love,

-JdB

JdBLetter Vol. 1 - Welcome to my newsletter. Hopefully this is the first of many.

October 16, 2021 John deBary

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. (If you’re not subscribed you can do so here. and if you want someone else to subscribe please forward this to them. It is your civic duty.)

I consider you important because in order for me to actually push out a newsletter there had to be enough subscribers so that it actually made sense to write this and hit send. As someone who experiences OCD symptoms i am a big check-er, I have, like, no object permanence so I have to check everything to make sure it’s still there otherwise some unspecified horror might befall me. I check my keys, heartbeat, the outside, and yes, subscriber counts. So that means i know who you are and i love you for actually signing up when i asked you to.

A wider reason for why i’m writing this is that I’ve grown a bit wary with social media as a way to reach people.

It crystalized recently in a few ways. One, when promoting Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation’s recent fundraiser, i made a bunch of twitter, instagram, and linkedin (cringe) posts and got maybe one person to sign up. Everyone else who i got to come i did so either through email or direct communication, and my yield was pretty good, probably above 70%. Yeah ok maybe it took more time and was less...fun? maybe? than rolling the dice on social, but it actually worked. It’s so easy to “like” something and make people feel like you actually care about something but be honest, the mindless ::scroll:: ::double tap:: ::scroll:: is a real thing—when was the last time you thoughtfully considered when to “like” something versus saving those vital, finger-moving calories for another purpose?

The second way this crystallized for me was a conversation i recently had with my uncle, a tremendously successful cornell professor with a decades-long career of publishing scholarly works that are cited widely. He was like, “I gotta get on Twitter now, huh” and I gave him this lukewarm pitch for social media about how i got certain job opportunities or got to meet certain people and connect, but mostly I was like, bro, you are wealthy and people listen to you already, social media is a massive waste of time—do not debase yourself by joining.

So anyway, i’m not trying to say that social media is inherently ‘bad’, although there are companies that provide platforms that i think are evil (Facebook), it just—to me—no longer feels like a wonderful use of my time to be on like, 4 different platforms spending hours per week trying to make a go of it and maybe getting a 5% engagement rate on my posts on an extremely good day.

And i’m not “quitting” “”social”” “””media.””” Social media is a very vague term anyway (is email social media?) I'm just trying to manage my time a little better. Sadly, I think that for someone like me, not being on at least Instagram and Twitter is a luxury few can afford.

Yes, i maybe got writing gigs out of twitter or got to flirt with famous drag queens on instagram, but I wonder if I added up all the time spent across the various platforms and instead spent that time on something else (like this stupid newsletter lol), the benefits would be noticeably greater. Who can never be sure.

I ultimately started this newsletter because it became clear to me recently that even people with whomst I considered myself “close,” had huge gaps in their knowledge of my activities and interests, which is unacceptable. This newsletter is a tool that i can use to beat those people (ie you) over the head with whatever it is I have going on, whether it’s deranged ramblings about Halsey (see below), my latest youtube video for Food52, or oblique references to my unlinked tumblr account that mostly reblogs gay porn and astronomy memes. Here we go:

Drinks Content

Presumably most people here know me as a person who makes, writes, and consumes drinks, so why don’t we start with some of that? I’m going of course share new stuff but also recycle some of my old stuff in case you are not up to date? (Although maybe you are super up to date since you are like, my first subscriber??)

Here is something that is only 4 hours old! As you might know, I am Food52’s resident drinks expert and I have a monthly recipe series called, aptly, Drink What You Want, but I was also asked to participate in SHOW OFF, and they paired me with the wonderful Hana Asbrink where we are assigned three seasonal ingredients and battle it out to see what we can come up with. Please watch it here and tell me what my Squid Game reference means because I still have not seen it.

I love writing for PUNCH because i can get verrrry inside baseball while still keeping the writing accessible to a general audience. Case in point is this ode to blue drinks i wrote a few months ago. A reward for signing up for this newsletter is some unfiltered stuff like about how I did not include in this piece that the bright blue kombucha that sparked the piece had a puzzling meth-ey aftertaste and yes, I know what meth tastes like. Sorry Dad.

Also, I was recently on Adam Robert’s Lunch Therapy Podcast and it was really cute. (And Chelsea Peretti was the guest prior to me so I felt very famous by association.) I got to talk about my extremely unglamorous eating habits along with a lot of other self-examination. You can listen to it here, or watch on youtube here.

Here are some random links of articles that I read recently that I have posted on twitter but here they are again

Halsey

Did you know that I am now totally in the bag for Halsey??? I didn’t really have strong feelings one way or the other until a friend of mine (who ironically i met on instagram) posted about their latest album, which was produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. One thing about me that i’m sure you’ll find fascinating is that i am secretly old and so i literally purchase songs on itunes still. So when my friend posted about it, i went over and scrubbed through the album in my silly little itunes store. This track is what did it for me, and the lead single is also amazing and I’m not even sure where to begin with the literal movie they made for themselves.

They also did pretty well on SNL considering that, for some reason the vibes for SNL’s musical performances are almost always rancid and clammy.

Ok, that’s it for my first newsletter…I can’t just drop it all in the first one lol. Thanks so much for reading and if some angel forwarded this to you and you want to sign up, the link to do so is here.

Love,

-JdB