… It’s morning, actually, and I’m thinking of cocktails. Mostly because I just finished a brilliant scene for Good Wife — on the promotional tour, it’s the one they’ll all want me to read — and then I rewarded myself with a break. Which somehow led me here, to this lovely post “Literary Cocktails”, which warmed my heart.

I love cocktails. I love the sound of the word, the whole grown-up intrigue about them, the mystery of the ingredients, the potions — stirred, shaken and twists. I love the glassware, the shakers, the slow careful slips, the mood. I love E.B. White reaching down for a bit of cheese to go with the ice cold thermos of martinis he’s brought along in the car (Roger Angell’s driving) in one of my all-time favorite essays ever. (Not online, you’ll need the Complete New Yorker on DVD to read).

I love the Petrossian in New York (is it still there?) and the night John Schmidt and I and his expense account drank the iciest martinis I’ve ever had, with caviar, at the bar.

I like cocktail hours, cocktail parties, having a cocktail with the friends who drop in. I love those little carts on wheels everyone had in the 50s, loaded with gin, ready to roll out and go at a moment’s notice, or 5:00. Whichever came first.

I love cocktails in movies in books, in old pictures.

Anyway, it’s too early for a cocktail now, plus I’m alone and cocktails should be poured in company, don’t you think? Even if “company” is just the bartender. So my craving is books, about cocktails, old books. A trip to Powell’s might be in order. Something to inspire me, along the lines of this post … and of D.’s movie night ideas.

All of you send me a cocktail image, from your favorite movie or book. Cary Grant drinking scotch, Audrey Hepburn drinking champagne. Marlon Brando pours a drink in The Godfather, doesn’t he? What does Woody Allen drink in his movies? I don’t remember. Annie Hall then, maybe, tonight.

Homework kids, chop-chop. We’ll have a cocktail party to go over your answers. Here’s to you.

From Writer’s Almanac: “It was on this day in 1927 that a man named Philo T. Farnsworth transmitted the first ever all-electronic television picture in history.” Farnsworth was a good mormon, rasied on a nice potato farm in Idaho. Napoleon Dynamite, circa the ’20s.

Here’s something to play with at work, if you’re a huge nerd. (I linked to the Lorrie Moore map because everything she writes is brilliant … don’t know if I agree with who they’ve got clustered near.)

It’s ’bout time for a good dinner party, don’t you think? I’ll see if I can scrounge one up in between working and walking the dog and exercising my treadmill and cleaning my van. It’s hard to be this glamorous.

Holy literary feud. Christopher Hitchens figuratively ties Philip Roth to a chair then slaps him silly with hot, wet towels, for about 1500 words. Why? Because Roth just published Exit Ghost, his latest (and last) Nathan Zuckerman tale, and Hitchens (“Zuckerman Undone”) thinks it sucks. Big time.

Read the whole review to see what the “it” is that the luckless goy chick gets. Oh damn, it’s The Atlantic, you can’t see it free online. Okay, well, it’s not a gun. It’s more like Freud’s version of a gun.