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Mixing it up

If you can dream it up, bartender Lolly Mason has probably mixed it. Chocolate and tequila, gummy candy ``surprises" at the bottom of a glass, grapefruit juice and habañero peppers with tequila.

Mason started working at nightclubs in Boston in the early '80s, then moved on to upscale restaurants such as Upstairs on the Square and Meritage, where she currently works. But where she's really made her presence know is on ``Lolly's Remedies," a cable-access cocktail show that airs on several Boston Neighborhood Network stations.

Barcode recently sat in on a taping of her show -- which is filmed, directed, and produced by her husband, Mason Vincent -- in Waltham. The program, which has been airing since 1993, is like a Julia Child show on acid. Fruit is strewn everywhere, and the counter is crowded with 46 liquor bottles; 13 cans of nectars; 15 bottles of soda and juice; 10 containers of spices, herbs, salts and sugars, and teas; two cups of swizzle sticks; a mug of Twizzlers; and a shaker of sprinkles.

``You never know when you might need sprinkles," says Mason, who is rail thin and has a crimson luster to her dark hair. She looks something like Joan Cusack channeling Patti Smith, and when it comes to her mixing sensibility, she is the Betsey Johnson of bartending. This episode's featured ingredient is ginger beer, and Mason casually narrates the creation of four completely different cocktails made, respectively, with rum, gin, bourbon, and flavored vodka. And there's a whole lotta muddling, zesting, slicing, and shaking going on.

Mason is on a crusade to convey that you don't have to go out and spend a fortune on cocktails. She advocates a do-it-yourself approach, showing viewers how to make infusion sachets with cheese cloth and rhapsodizing about the quality of Monin brand syrups for ``people who don't wanna deal." (She doesn't believe in doing everything from scratch.)

``A lot of ideas come from watching National Geographic and seeing how different cultures use some things in ways we wouldn't necessarily use it," she says, citing a Brazilian drink of blended avocados and milk. `` I don't see why you can't marry fancy ingredients with fun."