Liquid television

The recipe for Lolly Mason's TV success is one part public access, one part personality -- and 12 parts vodka

by Jason Gay

Television, we all know, is the root of all evil. It's too violent. It's too sexy. It's too shameless. It's too . . . everything.

But the real problem with television is that there's not enough hard liquor.

Think about it. These days, you can see everything from the disemboweled bodies of bombing victims to Dennis Franz's NYPD tuchus flashed on the tube, but, for the most part, television remains a liquor-free zone. For more than 50 years, distillers have largely obeyed a voluntary ban on television ads selling liquor. Network programming executives, too, have kept their prime-time shows nearly liquorless. (On Cheers, did you ever see Norm drink anything besides beer?)

So, when you discover gallons of booze being shaken and stirred on TV, it feels like a gloriously guilty pleasure -- the smashing of the medium's final taboo. And that explains much of the appeal of Lolly's Remedies, a long-running bartending/club-culture show on public-access cable television hosted by Boston mixologist Lolly Mason.

Your basic Remedies episode takes place in the kitchen of Mason's Brighton home, where she shows her audience how to craft impressively exotic elixirs, from the sherbet-laden Stepford Wife (a frozen Cosmopolitan-like drink that Mason calls perfect "after a hard day of shopping and aerobics") to the ominously titled Death in the Afternoon to "a big frozen rum extravaganza" called a Skullduggery. Mason builds these brews from a prodigious in-house bar that includes the usual whiskeys, vodkas, and rums, but also an astounding assemblage of unusual spirits, including concoctions such as macadamia-nut liqueur, butterscotch schnapps, and something pinkish called After Shock. (If you have ever stood in a liquor store, grabbed a strangely colored bottle, and asked yourself, "Who the fuck would ever buy this?" -- "Lolly Mason" is your answer.)

Indeed, we're not talking about gin and tonics here. Lolly's Remedies shows you how to make the kind of drinks that, if you served them up at Thanksgiving, would probably knock Mom, Dad, Sis, Grandma, and Uncle Lou flat on their asses till Christmas. One of Mason's signature drinks, Cool Azul, for instance, contains tequila, schnapps, blue curaçao, melon liqueur, Frangelico, amaretto, something called Liquor 43, peach brandy, and, oh yeah, one banana, some grapefruit, lemonade, and ice. (Mason suggests garnishing the Cool Azul with red sugar crystals and kiwi and orange slices. I suggest wearing a flame-retardant jumpsuit.)

What makes the show, however, is Mason herself. A veteran of local nightspots ranging from the now-defunct Fatted Calf and Venus de Milo to 29 Newbury to her current gig at Machine (downstairs at the Ramrod, on Boylston Street), Mason is something of an icon in Boston bartending circles. She looks the part. When we show up in Brighton for a recent taping, Mason, who is razor-thin and possesses fire-hydrant-red hair, is decked in denim short pants, black sandals with red socks, a frilly Hawaiian shirt that looks like something out of the Elvis Presley movie Clambake, and enough beads, skulls, and other costume jewelry to qualify her as a float in a Mardi Gras parade.

With the kitschy Mason at the helm, an episode of Lolly's Remedies can feel like Martha Stewart Living meets Charles Bukowski's Barfly meets a John Waters film. Drinks are poured into ceramic goblets with pirate faces on them, garnished with blue-and-white gummi sharks, and topped with whipped cream and colorful chocolate candies. Mason tells war stories from the club scene and dispenses drinking tips with the dispassionate mien of a family doctor. (Her main piece of advice: "Do not drink this on an empty stomach.")

In an era of overwrought "Just Say No" prohibitionism, Mason (who, it should be pointed out, doesn't imbibe on-air) is pleasingly non-judgmental about self-medication. She's not telling anyone to go out and get wasted, but she's not averse to kicking back with a cocktail, either. In one Remedies episode, Mason even showed viewers the proper drinks to consume while lost in a "K-hole" -- that is, the euphoric state achieved after injecting or sniffing Special K, or ketamine, the potent animal tranquilizer that is a popular drug among some nightclub habitués.

It's not your standard TV fare, to say the least. But that's why Lolly's Remedies is one of the most original programs on television, and a public-access hit in Boston and Cambridge, as well as in Manhattan (where it airs in a robust 10:30 a.m. slot). The show -- which is produced by Lolly's husband, Mason Vincent, and includes dispatches from nightclub shows and Lolly's own music reviews -- has popped up on the West Coast, as well as in Germany, where it aired with subtitles (Ein teil Absolut, ein teil Bacardi . . . ). The show's accompanying Web site, www.lollyland.com, lists drink recipes and solicits audience suggestions and commentary. Several fan e-mails recently griped that her fridge was too empty, Mason says; one told her that her kitchen floor needed to be mopped.

The night we show up for taping, Mason's engaged in a bit of a turf war. Turns out that at a recent bartending awards show, someone from a downtown club took credit for creating a citrusy rum-and-vodka potion called a Mongolian Motherfucker. Trouble is, the Mongolian M.F. has been one of Mason's signature drinks for eons, and the usually laid-back Lolly was ticked. (Feel free to insert your own "That motherfucker stole my Motherfucker!" joke here.)

Tonight, Mason sets the record straight. "Let's make the real deal," she says, priming her blender with ice. She pours a little vodka, a little curaçao, Grand Marnier, peach schnapps, Bacardi, a bit of Midori melon liqueur, a splash of coconut rum, a banana, some peach nectar, piña colada mix, and so on. Justice has never tasted so sweet. Neither, for that matter, has TV.

Lolly's Remedies airs on Cambridge's Channel 10 at 8:30 p.m. Mondays, and on Boston's Channel 23 at 11:30 p.m. Tuesdays.