Smug Scout is not a big fan of major holidays except insofar as they free her from work, which, grimly enough, is almost always at the same time as large numbers of riffraff and ruffians who moronically clog stores and roadways. She has a particularly strong distaste for what these same riffraff and ruffians treat as “drinking holidays,” mainly New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, and July 4th. Smug Scout does not need an officially sanctioned holiday to drink more than joyless Puritans believe she should.  Miraculously, perhaps, she manages to create special occasions for drinking that do not require fireworks, dwarfs in green, or throngs of obscenely stupid revelers. She designates these (actually quite frequent) special occasions “going out to dinner.”

Unlike trumped up American booze holidays, Christmas does not inspire quite as much hostility, though she also does not especially like it. Drippy and overplayed Christmas songs make her scowl, excessive cheap and flashy decorations make her shudder, and grinning imbeciles in Santa caps and reindeer antlers make her want to throw up. She is somewhat amused watching television footage of brutal stampedes at low class chain stores. And although she generally insists on doing all of her shopping at FMs and local independent stores, she will admit she took advantage of Neiman Marcus’s free seasonal rush shipping to reward herself with a pair of handmade Pedro Garcia shoes that she will not be able to wear until she is in L.A. again in two weeks anyway.

Yes, Smug Scout is celebrating Christmas on the East Coast, where the air is cold and living trees outside match the decorated corpses inside. She does not feel any Christmas atmosphere in L.A., though the city’s flagrant phoniness seems well suited to that of the holiday. On the plus side, what L.A. may be lacking in old fashioned or noncommercial authenticity, it scores generously in Smugness, especially Smug Christmas trees. Smug Scout will present to you now three Smug Christmas trees, one from Hollywood and two from Silver Lake, and would like to see if you can determine the winner of the Smug Christmas Tree SmackDown.

#1: This Smug Christmas tree is from the Hungry Cat, a restaurant in Hollywood that specializes in seafood and seasonal cocktails. The tree is green. Many of the ornaments are made from repurposed oyster and clam shells with cheery handwritten seasonal messages inside them. There are no gifts, only gift ideas under this tree: Hungry Cat spices and gift certificates. A cute pumpkin sits next to those.

#2: This Smug Christmas tree is from Bar Keeper, a store in Silver Lake that sells retro barware and glassware, exorbitantly expensive artisanal small batch spirits, and local drinking related crafts, such as handmade coasters. The tree is silver. The ornaments are their own coasters, ribbons, and beads. The gifts under the tree are actual full bottles of champagne. These are great gifts, Smug Scout hints to her readers.

#3: This Smug Christmas tree is from Intelligentsia, the breathtakingly Smug “coffeebar” in Silver Lake that sells single source direct trade coffee at the highest price and for the longest wait you could find anywhere. The tree is flaming hot pink. The ornaments are glittery snowflakes and the company’s own branded cups. There is not a single gift to be seen anywhere near this tree, though if you want to give your Smug loved ones 3/4 pound bags of whole coffee beans for up to the not quite bargain price of $80, you will find a large array on the shelves to the right.

Winner: #3. Come now, any competition that involves Intelligentsia is practically over before it starts. But for the record Smug Scout would like to announce that she would not want anyone to spend $80 on a 3/4 pound bag of coffee for her, no matter what kind of fucking Columbian geisha santuario it comes from. Merry Smug Christmas! Or Merry Smug Xmas for you pagans out there.

Smug Scout’s favorite Smug mixologist Lisa was highly displeased to think that another restaurant, that Smug magnet Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica, might offer a cocktail more Smug than any of hers. Lisa really does not need to worry about this. Yes, it is true that one drink, Lift Off, has Old Tom heirloom small batch artisanal gin, arugula, fresh cranberry, lime, agave, and small batch ginger beer in it. Such a drink sets the bar very high for any Smug mixologist. Still, Smug Scout would like to point out to Lisa that she has created many, many very Smug cocktails, so her Smug cocktail output is much higher than that at Rustic Canyon, which has a paltry list. Nonetheless, Lisa was feeling competitive, so she decided to outdo Lift Off, if not send it crashing to the ground, by creating a cocktail whose name is still under wraps but contains Tru organic gin, fresh pressed kale, apple juice, lemon, ginger, and agave. Now it is very clear: in the Smug Cocktail Olympics, Lisa is the gold medal winner.

Smug Scout tried it when she went to Akasha on Friday. She was delighted that Lisa had someone in the kitchen cold press what must have been bushels of kale because there was a huge vat of kale juice. This drink was extraordinary. It was not only the most Smug cocktail Smug Scout has ever had, but it was also one of the very most delicious. It is the perfect embodiment of virtue and vice, the apotheosis of the Apollonian/Dionysian split. In fact, since Smug Scout is also the apotheosis of the Apollonian/Dionysian split, you could say that this kale cocktail is Smug Scout in drink form.

But in case you believe Nietzsche would have scoffed at such twaddle or simply do not give a fuck, Smug Scout will move on to her next topic: yet another highly annoying conversation she overheard between a polite bartender and, this time, a customer you would have no choice but to describe as a dour Nordic troll. Since Smug Scout likes Nordic people, she would like to clarify here that blonde hair and blue eyes do not automatically signify beauty. Even this gene pool is occasionally befouled by unfortunate features, pasty sickly skin, and freakish balding patterns.

This dour Nordic troll first irked Smug Scout by officiously setting up his iPad on the bar. Smug Scout would not want an iPad in front of her when she is sitting at a bar or, if she really thinks about it, sitting or standing or lying down anywhere at all in the world. Furthermore, she would not have had space for an iPad because she had a Smug seasonal cocktail array in front of her, and this is much more entertaining, not even to mention more ethical, than a gadget made by faceless serfs in China.

Smug Scout should have known that the iPad on the bar was a harbinger of greater repulsiveness. It came when this cretinous specimen spoke. Below is the conversation as Smug Scout would have handled it.

• Smug Bartender: May I get you something to drink?
• Dour Nordic Troll: You do offer seasonal cocktails here, right?
• Smug Bartender: Yes, here is our list.
• Dour Nordic Troll: You call this seasonal? I’ve had some of these so-called seasonal cocktails before. In other seasons.
• Smug Bartender: Do you live in L.A.?
• Dour Nordic Troll: Yes, in Silver Lake.
• Smug Bartender: I knew it. Well, then you must know that L.A. has only three seasons: fire, awards, and summer. Fire season can be a problem unless you like Cajun blackened produce.
• Dour Nordic Troll: So then what are all those cocktails she’s drinking?
• Smug Bartender: Those are seasonal cocktails from the private list.
• Dour Nordic Troll: Can I see it?
• Smug Bartender: No.
• Dour Nordic Troll: Fine, just bring me a beer and some chicken wings.
• Smug Bartender: Great seasonal choices. Would that be Super Bowl season?

Lisa has already informed Smug Scout, in terms you could call absolutely non-negotiable, that she will never be a guest bartender. Smug Scout accepts this interdiction, but she would like to keep Lisa heading towards new frontiers of Smug cocktails. What is the next one? Smug Scout thinks it is organic purple mizuna.

Smug Scout recently had dinner at a French restaurant in Silver Lake called Café Stella. When she arrived, she had no idea she would find an especially high level of Smugness because restaurants aiming to be authentically French do not feel they need to bother with any trifling preferences of American diners, Smug or otherwise. In fact, it is much more likely that French restaurants in this country will imperiously denounce and even operate against such preferences, because they know that Smug people love all things French–the more authentique the better, even when that looks like utter contempt and hostility towards their American countryfolk. Of course, since Smug people also scorn their own countryfolk, especially oversized flyover state philistines who gorge savagely in troughs at chain and buffet “restaurants,” they do not take any hostilité personally.

Still, Café Stella is in Silver Lake and thus faces aggressive competition for Smug business, so for purely commercial reasons it makes sense that the menu will include items such as beetroot, Jerusalem artichokes, and wild arugula. Naturally, Smug Scout ordered and loved these locally grown vegetables, which she washed down with more than one verre (more like a bouteille…non, more like a bouteille +) of eco-insensitive French wine. (Smug Scout does not even want to think about the long journey of those bottles from Marseille to the Port of Los Angeles, though she imagines it to have been a scenic one, perhaps accessorized by chic French sailors in blue and white striped shirts and berets with red pom-poms on them.)

Anyway, whatever opinion you have of Smug Scout’s French wine consumption, most likely not much of one, you will not be surprised to hear that she needed to visit the restroom. And this is where she discovered Café Stella’s hidden monument to Smugness: a roughhewn reclaimed wood sink. Smug Scout’s mouth dropped open when she saw this sink! But this crudely formed deep woods sink is not the only Smug part of the story. No, Café Stella was not content just to have a Smug sink. Café Stella also wants its guests to have a restroom experience Smug Scout can describe only as rustique. First of all, the cold and hot water controls are merely decorative: this sink only dispenses cold water. Furthermore, there is no soap. And finally if you want to dry the cold soapless water off your hands, there are no towels.

Smug Scout was absolutely jubilant as she dried her hands on her jeans. She was jubilant because it is a powerful commitment to Smugness to violate what Smug Scout believes to be a city health code just to give Smug patrons a nonsensically phony yet primitive camp-out hand-washing adventure. She later found out there is a second restroom that has a wood-free sink, hot water, soap, and paper towels. How fascinating that Café Stella has a Smug refuge within what is otherwise a slickly beautiful restaurant. Une autre bouteille de vin de Gascogne s’il vous plaît! Smug Scout will deal with her carbon footprint crisis another time; she wants to go back to that Smug restroom in Silver Lake.