We always figured it took something really special for Rachel Maddow to be able to put up with Keith Olbermann every evening. Now we have the answer, courtesy of author/Mac pitchman John Hodgman: A bit of La Fée absinthe mixed with Red Bull, apparently. [Twitpic via BYOT]

• Today in restaurant reviews: Frank Bruni gives Zak Pelaccio's new Fatty Crab two stars; the Post's Steve Cuozzo is pretty pleased with Josh DeChellis's La Fonda del Sol; and Jay Cheshes hits up Minetta Tavern. [NYT, NYP, TONY]
• The good news/bad news about the Cooper Square Hotel's Table 8. [Eater]
• Ryan Sutton on Monkey Bar: "A-listers and alcohol are the main event" while the "food is a simian sideshow." All things you knew, undoubtedly. [Bloomberg]
• It's what every chef dreams of: Tom Colicchio is on the new cover of Guitar Aficionado magazine. Yes, the mag exists and, yes, Tom loves guitars. [GS]
• It looks like the space once occupied by Florent/R&L will reopen as 69 Gansevoort Cafe shortly. It will probably remain a 24/7 diner, too. [Eater]
• NYC will look like LA pretty soon: A second Baja Fresh is on the way. [ML]

♦ Jay Cheshes gives Drew Nieporent's Corton six out of six stars in this week's issue of Time Out: "The best new restaurant I've visited this year." [TONY]
♦ Sweetiepie, the "bizarre restaurant, dessert bar and absinthe den wrapped into one," opens tonight. [GoaG, UrbanDaddy]
♦ A peek at Buttermilk Channel, which opens tonight, too. [Eater]
♦ A roundup of NYC's best absinthe bars. [Metromix]
♦ New York diners are the "toughest in the world," and just like spoiled children, says Alain Ducasse. "A spoiled child is never happy." [TONY]

If you're lucky, you arrive at a party at just the right time. Most times, you're either too early and drink nervously and get too sloshed to communicate. Or, worse, you arrive a tad later than the majority, and everyone else is already shit-hammered, and you are left feeling sort of, well, sober. The latter is what happened to me at the Flavorpill launch party for their Le Tourment Vert Absinthe brand drink, the "Orange Fresh." But all was not lost. After a full day of work and with my belly full of tacos, I headed back to Culver City (yes, again!) to the Denizen Design Gallery to drink some absinthe, look at art by Terrell Moore and listen to beats by Jason Eldredge. It's the kind of effortlessly cool thing that Flavorpill usually touts in their weekly letters.The artist: Terrell Moore

Apparently, there was an absinthe party at the Bowery Hotel last night, attended by some Gawker staffers. (Thanks for the freaking invite!) They report that they each drank a shitload of absinthe and were totally retarded, yet not drunk! Slurring words and strange thoughts were reported (our videographer Blakeley thought it perfectly logical to want to steal a car), yet: "I could still walk in a straight line," even after having "8 to 10 drinks in a 2 hour period." Their memory and ability to remember words was totally shot. Yet, no hangover occurred. They didn't feel high, exactly, yet were thinking and acting strangely. The following party pics of the event, from RandomNightOut (plus an informative History Channel vid) are not hallucinations.

I have a bottle of absinthe from Germany waiting on my shelf—I was hoping to get wild after a day of, you know, bloggin'. But that's just not going to happen: boring scientists recently analyzed century-old bottles of absinthe and concluded that its alleged hallucinogenic effect isn't caused by wormwood but by plain old concentrated alcohol: "The absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof." No way, they're wrong. I just opened the bottle and I swear I totally felt something psychedelic happening. [Live Science]