…for a price. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times (via @LauraNelson, via @RumDood) notes a startling fact: Several new models of digital cameras include a cuisine or food setting. If you aren’t interested in camera features, skip down to here to read about the problems arising from increasingly easy food photography.
Nikon’s Food Mode appears to be available on many models of its CoolPix line of point-n-clicks. Olympus calls it Cuisine Mode. Sony offers a Gourmet Mode, along with larding their cameras up with smile detection and blink prevention shutter modes. After looking at the Sony features, I suspect they also have a secret paparazzi version with a Nip-Slip Detection mode….

Sony Labs… Working for you!

There is relatively little useful information out there about what exactly these food porn shooting modes do. From what I can glean from a variety of sources, they are all macro focus modes, letting you practically crawl into the glass or plate. All seem to bump up the saturation of pictures until you can smell the herbs. Each also has some form of white-balance correction, some automatic, some on-screen, to make sure your Pisco Sour doesn’t come out blue. The fact that you have to work so hard to find useful info about this feature tells me it isn’t going to turn you into Sara Remington with the push of a button. But if it gives you the courage, or just the impetus, to do more food or cocktail shooting, that’s great.

Or is it?

It is one thing for us to take pictures of our own drinks (or dishes) to share on the web or with friends. It is a great way to add interest, promote, inform, and learn. But the LAT article focuses on what it calls the Food Paparazzi. In the picture above, a blogger named Misty Oka is snapping away in the middle of a restaurant. It’s a narrow, crowded space, and she is in the way of servers trying to work and patrons who might also like to see the show kitchen. I’m smacking her around a little because, well, she deserves it a little, but I did check out her blog Noms, Not Bombs. She has a nice chatty style of blogging, an interesting take on the LA food scene, and lots of photos. If I lived in Southern California, I’d probably add it to my RSS reader. (Misty, if it was the Times who suggested you stand there, I apologize.) And as an aside, would it have killed the Times to embed a link to Misty’s blog? This standard practice by mainstream media outlets dwarfs any and all of the outrageous behavior outlined below.
UPDATE: I contacted Misty about this piece, and she points out, as the Times does not, that the picture was taken during a closed media-only event. She been standing like that in a regular restaurant open for regular business. You can read more from her down in the first comment below.)

The article contains some really obnoxious behaviors which are apparently becoming common. If I may channel my inner Jeff Foxorthy….

• If nearby patrons are asking to be reseated elsewhere because of flashes or shutter noises emanating from in front of your face… you might be a douchebag.
• If your complex meal takes an hour longer than it should (with others stewing in the bar) because you are doing a five minute photoshoot with each amuse bouche and intermezzo… you might be a douchebag.
• If you have a party of two, but reserve a table for four to accommodate your tripod(!)… you are most definitely a douchebag.

(All tales from the Time article)

Now, most of this behavior is not bloggers or other (allegedly) higher forms of journalists. But we are not immune from idiocy either.

So this month, on the eve of Ludo Bites’ grand opening, Lefebvre happily cooked a private dinner for 18 food bloggers. His wife set up a portable light box in a corner of the dining room.

Even before the bread plates hit the table, the crowd went nuts. As each new dish arrived, the bloggers rushed over to the light box to get the shot, then returned to their seats.

Lefebvre fought for patience. His forehead wrinkled in frustration as he watched the steam dissipate off bowls of escargot and plates of fish.

Finally, he broke.

Respect the food! The salmon’s getting cold! Lefebvre bellowed.

The crowd turned to stare. Six people pointed cameras at the chef. Click.

I realize that they were there for promotional purposes, but come on. Eat your serving first, then go photograph the samples! Priorities. (Here’s Misty’s story on that event, by the way. She sensibly only seems to have visited the light box once.)

Can I make a few suggestions about common sense camera etiquette in bars and restaurants? These aren’t tips. Virtually every one will make it harder for you to get the shot you want. But they will cut down the amount of hate in the world… hate directed at you.

• No flash. Ever. It is distracting, occasionally blinding, and seldom improves your shot anyway.
• Keep your butt in your seat. Learn to take shots from where you sit. Your camera has a macro setting (yes, it does). This will help you get acceptable shots without your needing to impede and/or direct traffic.
• If the place is quiet, turn off the sound effects. If you are shooting real film, with a real shutter… just keep being awesome.
• Do not take pictures that have random, unknown patrons in them. Respect people’s privacy.
• Don’t even give the impression that your pictures might include other patrons. Whether your photos actually invade someone else’s privacy or not, if that person thinks they do… damage done.
• The same goes for pictures of the staff, unless you ask first.
• Consider the fellow diners in your own party as well. Do not insist on everyone waiting to until you have gotten your shots of everyone’s dishes before they dig in. Unless you want to eat alone in the future.

Yes, I know I haven’t been posting much this month. Call it a hangover from TIki Month. I even have lots of stuff to write about, but no motivation to write anything worth reading.
I’ve got Liquor Fairy tales to tell of Ardmore scotch, Treaty Oak rum, Original Herbsaint, and a poker-related tale of Firefly Sweet-Tea vodka. I’ve got politics to discuss. But I’m suffering from ennui. Wish me luck in getting my blog-groove back.
In short, I got nothing.
So here’s a picture of a bunny with a waffle on it’s head:

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Eleven Bloggers Blogging,
Ten Cajuns Shaking,
Nine Buddies Boozing,
Eight Barmaids Serving,
Seven Blues a Blazing,
Six Glasses Gleaming,
Five… Golden… Rums!
Four Cocktail Books,
Three French 75s,
Two Jars of Olives,
And a Shaker Full of Martinis!

Please note, I’m not talking about why I decided to have the Liquor Fairy, I’m saying why I and bloggers like me, have to have such a device.
The FTC has decided to come out and issue regulations regarding commercial speech in the modern age. Among other new rules, the American government has decided that they need to require disclosure from bloggers who receive product samples or payments for writing about products. I’ll get to my thoughts on how this directly affects me, other bloggers, and American citizens in general in a moment, but I want to highlight just a few points that Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey makes in his post which don’t have to do with my kind of blogging.
First, the regulations also apply to celebrities talking about products they’ve been given or loaned outside of clearly accepted advertising environments.

That is going to make the Red Carpet Show before the Academy Awards pretty hilarious.

Exactly, I’m going to tune in to watch just to hear Jennifer Aniston channel her inner Dick Trickle:
Joan Rivers: ” Jen, you look gorgeous today! Tell us about your dress.”
Aniston: “Well, thanks Joan. It’s been a hard fought effort for the Yves St. Laurent team getting me ready for tonight’s walk up this carpet. I want to thank all the good folks at Goldberg’s of Beverly Hills for providing us this gorgeous necklace. And of course, none of this would work at all without the excellent work on my hair by my crew at the Jacob Nash Salon….”

Also, the regulations somewhat opaquely refer to not only bloggers, but “other ‘word-of-mouth’ marketers” as well. Here’s Ed’s question:

Where does the FTC’s jurisdiction end? If I get a free tube of toothpaste in the mail and say nice things about it on Twitter, Facebook, or in a PTA meeting, do I have to disclose it as a freebie or pay the $11,000 fine the FTC imposes? What kind of disclosure can one fit into a 140-character Twitter message, anyway?

Anyway, what does this mean for the Pegu Blog and other blogs of all sorts?
First, let me say that this is an issue of merit. We bloggers should disclose when we have received an inducement to write about a product. It should build trust between us and our audiences, and that is important to me, at least. What is more important, of course, is that we should remain independent in our writing. And that’s where the regulations won’t help, and may actually hurt. They could hurt for other reasons as well.
First off, the reasoning behind these regs seems to be that reviews and promotional writing are powerful market forces and capable of skewing consumers’ information stream. While I wish this were true, I doubt it, at least so far. Also, much more powerful media venues, such as newspapers, seem not to be covered by these new regs. (Apparently they have lobbyists to schmooze the rules writers into not including them. Do the regulators have to disclose this? Just asking….)
At any rate, a consumer looking for help in choosing a new bottle of gin, or a new video game, who just Googles the name, hits a random blog they’ve never seen before, and buys the product based on a review there deserves whatever they get, good or bad. I think it is reasonable for a consumer to establish a chain of experience with any source they look to for advice, before they follow it. And I’d say that it is the consumer’s responsibility, and not the state’s, to do that. And if the consumer get too complacent that Big Brother is looking out for him, then he’s likely to trust too much what he reads. Not good.
Also, the disclaimer requirement are murky, so many of us may feel we need to plaster everything we write with disclaimers to the point that no one reads them any more, and what the hell good is that?
Finally, enforcing regs like this will be expensive. It will cost the government a lot to enforce, and it will cost companies a lot to comply with. You will pay for every red cent, and more, that is spend on this. As I point out above, the benefits are small, possibly illusionary, and likely undermine people’s ability to think for themselves.
As to why I went to the lengths I did to establish my own disclaimer policy, which I hope will satisfy the feds, it goes back to the trust thing I wrote about before. I want and need you to trust me, or you won’t come back to read my stuff, in which case you won’t be assaulted by my advertisements for my real business. I need you to break down and hire me to arrange the death of your friends….
Long update below the fold. (more…)

And you can too!

But I wouldn’t recommend it.

Yesterday, I was out with my monstrous regiment of women, and we went for ice cream. Now, I was working on a drink for my next post that needed that extra touch, so I thought, Ice Cream Shop—Dry Ice—Extra Touch!

So home we went with a brick of frozen carbon dioxide and I headed down to the basement to stash it in the freezer until mixing time. When I got downstairs, I heard the sound you least want to hear in your basement, a drip. I examined the water heaters, and sure enough one was leaking from a pipe atop it. I reached out to turn off the valve just above, and the merest touch sheared off the pipe! Hot water showered everything, including me. Working furiously, I got it shut down after what seemed like an eternity.

There was an incredible mess, but no actual damage, beyond the pipe.

A simple flux in water pressure would have been enough for this to happen. Imagine we were out? This water heater is less than six feet from my Basement Bar, folks…

If I hadn’t been thinking of cocktail blogging, I’d have never gone downstairs yesterday. Maybe not for several days.

$10,000 is a conservative estimate of what it would have cost had this happened while we were out or not paying attention.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Build a Basement Bar, and blog about cocktails so you use it daily, and you too could save ten grand!

Many of you may be unaware of the post that I consider to be the greatest blog post in the history of the Cocktailosphere. Or perhaps, most of you are, all things considered.

Why is it the greatest blog post in our little corner of the web? It has everything any cocktail blogger wants when he or she writes a post:

• It’s obviously gotten a lot of hits, and is the number one web page returned by Google when you make the obvious searches for it’s subject.
  I think all bloggers want first and foremost to be read. Otherwise, why do we write? I don’t know the hit stats on this post, but I suspect (to my personal agony) that this single post outstrips my total traffic since it’s posting.
• It has induced a veritable horde of cocktailians out there to try what it talks about. We cocktail bloggers are like do-it-yourself writers, the point of writing what we do is to share an activity with others. If you spend days experimenting with something, photographing it, then writing about it, you darn sure want folks to give it a whirl.
  You can follow in the comments on this post the myriad readers who have tried to duplicate its process in slavish detail, while others describe their riffs on the theme. This brings us to the next thing this post has…
• 110 friggin’ comments, as of this writing. 110! Let’s face it, you cocktail blog readers out there are a taciturn bunch. Most of us are thrilled with a comment or two on a good post. The best of us get a few on a regular basis. And none of those 110(!) comments discuss Viagra, are in russian, provide brilliant commentary such as, “Fabulous post, but I disagree,” while helpfully linking poker sites, or discuss Viagra in russian while linking to poker sites….
• It has amazing longevity. Those 110 comments have come in, at regular intervals, since it was posted on April 24th, 2008, over a year ago. That’s a comment every eighty eight hours for over a year. That’s a traffic bonanza, and an incredible ego boost. We all should have so much fun.

Oh for cryin’ out loud!
When are you planning on telling us what is this blog equivalent of The Great Gatsby?

Oh all right, but I’m not done with my list.

I’m talking about Jeffrey Morganthaler’s immortal classic, How to Make Your Own Ginger Beer.

• The comments reveal an interesting and informative discussion that expands on and supplements the post. That’s right, I said there are valuable contributions in the comments, both from Jeffery and his readers!
• There is also a ton of funny stuff in there too, such as comment number 109….

I made an early comment in this thread (#6), and through the magic of email subscription have followed the progression of Jeffrey’s post for over a year with ill-disguised envy.

Um…
After this post, I don’t think you can claim that it’s “ill-disguised” anymore!

I’m not being envious!

I’m being congratulatory.

And maybe a little envious.

To kick off our trip to Georgia for the holidays, Maggi gave me an early Christmas Gift, which simply blew away all my gifts to her in coolness. Now I have several more days to contemplate how she has already topped my efforts. She gave me the ultimate traveling kit for the cocktail blogger: Behold!

Dude. I am utterly overwhelmed.
It’s… a backpack.

Always there with the snark. We had been discussing what to pack to ensure a ready ability to mix cocktails during our pilgrimage. I joked that a famous, celebrity cocktail blogger such as myself needed a doctor’s little black bag with the tools of the trade. I could then be ready to dispense liquid goodness in any emergency.
Somehow, in the midst of all the packing, Maggi managed to go out and put together this kit. It’s a bit more impressive inside.

The backpack is a Opteka Computer/Photo Backpack. The inside contains a large number of velcro adjustable compartments, which Maggi used to put in the essential bottles of booze, as well as a shaker, OXO measuring cups, corkscrew, sturdy stemless cocktail glasses, and my mesh strainer. Not shown, as they are in other pockets, are my juicer, channel knife, etc. At the time of the photo, I was still missing a bottle of Angustora Bitters. Readers of this blog and/or my Facebook page now know why I was so obsessed with finding bitters. There also is a pocket with space for two limes. Travel Perfection!
But is is also blogger perfection too. There is also space for camera, a dedicated pocket for memory cards and chip reader, and a pocket for my mini tripod. Finally, there is a large, padded compartment for up to a 17″ laptop. (This last was not included in the gift, an oversight I’m sure. I did get to borrow Maggi’s 15″ MacBook Pro, on which I write this post.)
So there you have it. Whinge in envy, all my fellow bloggers, I have the perfect kit. (No, you can’t carry it on, of course. But you could if you didn’t bring the booze.)