Frank Rich

2 weeks ago | vulture.com | Frank Rich

When I started as a drama critic in 1980, I learned how little I knew about how the theater business actually works. A stagestruck adolescent growing up in Washington, D.C., I had the same romantic view of Broadway from afar that every kid like me did back then — and maybe still does. A fantasy patched together from books (in my case, Moss Hart’s Act One), movies (All About Eve), and, with luck, family holiday trips to the big city to see a Big Broadway Smash.

2 weeks ago | drunkard.com | Frank Rich

It’s National Beer Day in the United States. The holiday has been around since 2009, when Justin Smith of Richmond, Virginia announced it on social media. It has since spread like wildfire. So why April 7? Because on this day in 1933, the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect, making it legal to drink 3.2% beer for the first time since Prohibition started. In a single day, 1.5 million barrels of beer were energetically consumed.

Jul 27, 2024 | drunkard.com | Frank Rich

It’s National Scotch Day. Also? It’s National Bagpipe Day. And what goes together better than Scotch and bagpipes? It’s like bourbon and hillbilly music, PBR and punk rock, pinot grigio and the French horn, a jug of Boone’s Farm and ’60s psychedelia. Did you know that Scotland exports an astonishing one billion bottles of scotch a year? Staggers the imagination, doesn’t it? And guess who the biggest importer is. Not America, we’re a distant second at 120 million bottles. Are you ready to be surprised?

Jul 25, 2024 | drunkard.com | Frank Rich

It’s National Wine and Cheese Day. That’s right. Today we are celebrating drinking wine and eating cheese at the same time. The French used to call that lunch, but nowadays people call it pairing. You ask me, the whole pairing thing has gotten far out of hand. There are literally hundreds of books telling you how to pair different alcohols, especially beer, with a whole cornucopia of foods.

Jul 24, 2024 | drunkard.com | Frank Rich

It’s National Tequila Day. Like a lot of people, I’ve had a changing relationship with the agave spirit. Once upon a time I merely viewed it as a bar shot, or the necessary tang of a margarita. Too many of us became acquainted with it as the raw fuel powering an excursion into Juarez or Tijuana.