One of the best Old Fashioneds I have had was made with baconized bourbon. To make it, buy the smokiest cure of streaky bacon you can find – hickory smoked is best – and cook up enough for a good bacon sandwich.

Made entirely in a proper studio, without the home recordings that supplement the other Portastatic discs, it sounds bright and sparkly--the occasional string part adds a classy shine to the familiar Marshall-stack power punch of McCaughan's guitar, and even the quiet tunes are big and open instead of bedroomy.

I can skip past all the traffic on my bike by filtering.

Well, a lot of water has flown under the bridges since then, pally, and while I have been laying off lately, I′m still the same old Joey, which is more than I can say for that O′Hara creep.