Questões de Inglês

The Climber

John Slattery ─ actor in just about everything ─ finally rises through the ranks in ‘Mad Men’ 

Veteran TV actor John Slattery spent last year dividing his time between two very different shows about the American íd: Mad Men and Desperate Housewives. One pays well, but the other is the revelation. In AMC’s Mad Men, set in a 1960s Madison Avenue ad agency, vodka-and-milk passes for breakfast, secretaries take alt the wrong kinds of dictation, and the happiness-for-sale modern era is forged. Slattery is Roger Sterling, an aloofly confident boss (“My name’s on the building,” he says) with a taste for everything under the sun ─ except family. As Slattery plays him, you’d love to have a drink (or seven) with the guy. Slattery explains how he pulls it all off . 

• On simultaneous roles in Mad Men and Desperate Housewives: “I had just bought a house. The Housewives producers said, ‘Do you want to do a year on the show?’ The men don’t get as much interesting material as the women, but it’s watched by, what, 20 million people a week? I had a good year.” 

• On the fate of his Mad Men character, Roger Sterling: “The last time you see Roger in season one, he has his second heart attack. I said to [creator] Matt Weiner, ‘What the hell?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry. My uncle had six heart attacks.’ I was like, ‘Okay, right. Fantastic.’’’ 

• On the Mad Men set: “It’s a lot of props: You’re doing dialogue while lighting cigarettes, dealing with the clothes, pouring drinks ... But my sister could roll a joint while driving a Volkswagen Bug, so I thought, Hell, I can do this.” 

• On playing a politician with a urine fetish on (yes) Sex and the City: “Sex and the City probably has a lot of alumni with erectile dysfunction or latex fetishes or whatever. We should all compare notes.” 

(WILL WELCH - GQConnects Aug08)

The Green Fairy Returns

In the 20,000 years or so that humans have been getting pissdrunk, no spirit has earned a worse rap than absinthe. Said to turn mild- mannered imbibers into raving maniacs, it was banned in the US and much of Europe in the early 1900s. (Remember Van Gogh’s ear incident? Some scholars blame the green fairy.) The chemical culprit was thujone, a toxic compound found in the crushed ftowers and leaves of absinthe’s key ingredient, wormwood. Or so we thought. 

Three years ago, WIRED sent me to meet Ted Breaux, a chemist and microbiologist who had reverse engineered the liquor’s recipe and discovered that there was barely any thujone present (November 2005). During harvest and distillation, he explained, its concentration was reduced to a minuscule five parts per million. Breaux’s research-finaIIy published this spring in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry - and that WIRED story have helped change absinthe’s image from drug to drink. The US has been slowly peeling away its ban, and in March, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the sale of absinthes that were “thujone free” (containing less than 10 parts per million). 

To date, there are four brands on US shelves: Lucid (Breaux’s formula), Kübler, Green Moon, and, St. George Absinthe Verte. “The US is lucky in that its first absinthes are high-quality products, distilled from whole herbs,” Breaux says. “In the European market, 80 to 90 percent is industrial junk.” Under the Jade label, Breaux is making his own absinthes in France and trying to get them green-lighted for saIe in the US. “Even at this point, gaining that approval seems to involve more luck than anything,” he says. Luck, and a littIe chemistry. 

(BRIAN ASHCRAFT - Wired / Aug08)

The Green Fairy Returns

In the 20,000 years or so that humans have been getting pissdrunk, no spirit has earned a worse rap than absinthe. Said to turn mild- mannered imbibers into raving maniacs, it was banned in the US and much of Europe in the early 1900s. (Remember Van Gogh’s ear incident? Some scholars blame the green fairy.) The chemical culprit was thujone, a toxic compound found in the crushed ftowers and leaves of absinthe’s key ingredient, wormwood. Or so we thought. 

Three years ago, WIRED sent me to meet Ted Breaux, a chemist and microbiologist who had reverse engineered the liquor’s recipe and discovered that there was barely any thujone present (November 2005). During harvest and distillation, he explained, its concentration was reduced to a minuscule five parts per million. Breaux’s research-finaIIy published this spring in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry - and that WIRED story have helped change absinthe’s image from drug to drink. The US has been slowly peeling away its ban, and in March, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the sale of absinthes that were “thujone free” (containing less than 10 parts per million). 

To date, there are four brands on US shelves: Lucid (Breaux’s formula), Kübler, Green Moon, and, St. George Absinthe Verte. “The US is lucky in that its first absinthes are high-quality products, distilled from whole herbs,” Breaux says. “In the European market, 80 to 90 percent is industrial junk.” Under the Jade label, Breaux is making his own absinthes in France and trying to get them green-lighted for saIe in the US. “Even at this point, gaining that approval seems to involve more luck than anything,” he says. Luck, and a littIe chemistry. 

(BRIAN ASHCRAFT - Wired / Aug08)

The Green Fairy Returns

In the 20,000 years or so that humans have been getting pissdrunk, no spirit has earned a worse rap than absinthe. Said to turn mild- mannered imbibers into raving maniacs, it was banned in the US and much of Europe in the early 1900s. (Remember Van Gogh’s ear incident? Some scholars blame the green fairy.) The chemical culprit was thujone, a toxic compound found in the crushed ftowers and leaves of absinthe’s key ingredient, wormwood. Or so we thought. 

Three years ago, WIRED sent me to meet Ted Breaux, a chemist and microbiologist who had reverse engineered the liquor’s recipe and discovered that there was barely any thujone present (November 2005). During harvest and distillation, he explained, its concentration was reduced to a minuscule five parts per million. Breaux’s research-finaIIy published this spring in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry - and that WIRED story have helped change absinthe’s image from drug to drink. The US has been slowly peeling away its ban, and in March, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the sale of absinthes that were “thujone free” (containing less than 10 parts per million). 

To date, there are four brands on US shelves: Lucid (Breaux’s formula), Kübler, Green Moon, and, St. George Absinthe Verte. “The US is lucky in that its first absinthes are high-quality products, distilled from whole herbs,” Breaux says. “In the European market, 80 to 90 percent is industrial junk.” Under the Jade label, Breaux is making his own absinthes in France and trying to get them green-lighted for saIe in the US. “Even at this point, gaining that approval seems to involve more luck than anything,” he says. Luck, and a littIe chemistry. 

(BRIAN ASHCRAFT - Wired / Aug08)