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July 17-23, 2003 naked city The Mix Master
A local author prescribes drinks and delivers the proof. Certain occasions call for specific alcoholic companions. On New Year’s Eve, you drink champagne. At Sunday brunch, you sip mimosas. At the Kentucky Derby, you cool off with a mint julep. But New Year's and the Derby are only once-a-year events and, really, how often do we sit around having a leisurely Sunday brunch? To fill in the gaps for the rest of the year, local journalist Duane Swierczynski has put together The Perfect Drink for Every Occasion (Quirk). The book lists 151 cocktails, each one matched up with a milestone, holiday or social situation, complete with mixing instructions, a little bit of history and a few snarky side comments. Swierczynski, a Philly mag editor who's also had gigs at Men's Health and Details magazines, says that his original idea was to write an article on this subject for Details. He hit a snag when his then-editor "hated the idea [and] thought it was useless." Swierczynski turned the idea into a book proposal that was picked up by his hometown comrades at Quirk, who encouraged him to break the mold of traditional cocktail books. "A lot of cocktail books you see just have long lists of recipes, and not a lot of background." The drinks and occasions in the stylish, thorough book range from actually enlightening (want to freshen your breath during a night on the town? Avoid beer and try a vodka and cranberry) to just plain silly (to impress Julia Roberts, order a scorpino, a Portuguese drink using lemon Italian ice that the Pretty Woman once talked up on Oprah). He and his researcher, Philly mag's April White, interviewed bartenders all over the country and read 100-year-old cocktail manuals. Swierczynski tried quite a few of the drinks himself ("I need a 12-step program after doing this book," he jokes). While a simple Scotch on the rocks is his drink of choice, the libations in The Perfect Drink can be far from ordinary. Very few readers will be attempting to mix the drink Swierczynski recommends for impressing the editors of The Guinness Book of World Records, which includes 5,250 gallons of margarita mix and 1,313 gallons of tequila. That is, unless they want one hell of a headache. Whether the entry is of the been-there, done-that variety (drink cosmos while watching Sex and the City!) or digs deeper into drinkers' lore, the reader is offered an impressive roster of possible drinks, each accompanied by a built-in conversation starter. Swierczynski spent days laboring over each entry, researching and asking friends. So, City Paper decided to put him on the spot with some (often stupid) situations that didn't make it into the book.
What do you order for a boyfriend/girlfriend you are about to dump? "It could be something sweet, to let them down easy. I think more important is what you drink afterward, in which case my all-purpose drink is the old boilermaker, a shot in a beer. That always kind of says goodbye."
How about a drink for meeting your future in-laws? "That's funny, I had a drink like that in the book, it was cut out [for space]. My first drink with my father-in-law was a big tumbler of Scotch. Right before I got married, my wife-to-be and I had a canoeing trip with my in-laws. I brought a bottle of Scotch. It's like two in the morning and [my father-in-law and I are] out there in the middle of the woods, just getting ripped. At some point he starts to tell me that he used to, in his younger days, break legs for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton mafia. Now, ordinarily I wouldn't have believed him, but we were just so drunk that I was terrified. So, the next morning I say to my wife-to-be, "Did you know your dad worked for the mob?" And she started laughing. To this day, six years later, I'm still the butt of that joke. So, the [short answer] is, a lot of Scotch."
What would you recommend to our major sports teams, since they probably need a drink? "I wonder if there's a loser's punch out there, or some kind of consolation drink. Maybe, actually, they shouldn't be drinking so much, maybe that's the problem."
What’s the perfect drink for daylight savings? "I'd heartily recommend doing a "power hour.' Any college student can tell you this is when you drink a shot of beer every minute for a full hour. I can't think of a better way to enjoy a gained -- or mourn a lost -- hour."
What should we drink during a Martian invasion? "I’d recommend the snooter rooter, which is what you should drink if you have the common cold. As you probably know, the common cold is what killed the Martians in the H.G. Wells classic, War of the Worlds, and that’s probably what the government will release into the air if the little green guys show up with their atomizers and a plan to enslave the human race."
What will you drink at your book party? "Whatever's free." 
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