A good drink talks to you, and a good drink listens. It tells you when you’re done, when you’ve had too much, when to have more. A good drink thinks. It’s not mindless, not easy. You don’t make it in a keg or a cooler or a plastic bowl with a freaking cartoon character on the side of it. It takes a second to sip and 10 more to taste, a couple nights more to forget and a year to master mixing perfectly, to become intimate with.

A good drink is your agent. It turns you into the hit maker and the delivery man, the person who can craft pure happiness with their bare hands and a couple of limes and deliver it into the hands of the masses so smoothly they won’t even break eye contact with the person they’re talking to while you slide it into their hand.

A good drink connects. It brings together a pothole-filler and a pioneer with a word and a sideways glance, connects you back 50 years to lost loves and lost dreams with a couple fistfuls of crushed ice and a simple question: “Who’s that girl in your wallet?” “What’s your story?”

“…What happened?”

And a good drink, a really good drink, is immortal. It’s survived hellfire and mortar fire and napalm, and lived through the Great Depression just as easily as your own depression. It’s sterling silver, flame-retardant and covered in Kevlar. It’s downright invincible. It’s just there, waiting for you to say the words, tip the bartender and persist right alongside it. Right until you leave.

That’s a good drink.

Here’s another.

The Manhattan

Here’s what you need:

2 ounces rye whiskey

1 ounce sweet vermouth

2 dashes Angostura bitters

One maraschino cherry

Here’s what you do:

Pour the first three ingredients into a shaker filled with ice.

Stir with a spoon 40 times (just trust me, there’s a reason), then strain into a martini glass.

Garnish with the cherry (which I clearly didn’t have handy).

Drink, and listen to this track from De La Soul and CeeLo. Held Down:

See you next time.