Dashwood, Pinot Noir, 2009

splash

the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.
this is a beggar's knife.
this is a tulip.
this is a soldier marching
through Madrid.
this is you on your
death bed.
this is Li Po laughing
underground.
this is not a god-damned
poem.
this is a horse asleep.
a butterfly in
your brain.
this is the devil's
circus.
you are not reading this
on a page.
the page is reading
you.
feel it?
it's like a cobra. it's a hungry eagle circling the room.

this is not a poem. poems are dull,
they make you sleep.

these words force you
to a new
madness.

you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a
blinding area of
light.

the elephant dreams
with you
now.
the curve of space
bends and
laughs.

you can die now.
you can die now as
people were meant to
die:
great,
victorious,
hearing the music,
being the music,
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.

Charles Bukowski






.

Sebastiani, Cabernet Sauvignon 2008

Life is hard.
I offer few answers, tonight... none.

Each step is an ever-increasing stride into the backward maelstrom of eventual regret and sudden disbelief.

Or, is it only a backward winding stairway to the heavens.


As I said, I don't have it all figured out...


I seek only truth, and not especially your version of it.



The best way to tell who really loves you is to love them.

.

Firefly Ridge, Cabernet Sauvignon 2009

I read an interesting article about taste recently, here it is.  It doesn't say much new, but it is worth the quick read.  It posits that music affects how we feel about the wine we drink, how it affects our "taste."

It would be great if a great album would make average wines taste much better.  Perhaps they do. The sense of smell still controls the tongue, however.  It is true, of course. There is no sense in drinking nice wine when you are congested, though some might say that one shouldn't be drinking at all when sick. But it is truly a waste to do so when you can not smell the richness of the wine.

So tonight I am drinking a cheap bottle of Cabernet.  It is passable at best. I enjoyed the wine from last night much more, for the same price.

Well, speaking of the things one is not supposed to do... I have eaten a Vicodin because I am in pain.  It is somewhat preventative when it comes to writing.  I will go now and watch Ugetsu.

My readership has fallen somewhat dramatically since I've started writing this wine blog.  Perhaps I will start a foreign-language film-blog and cut my reader-base in half again.

Soon I will be back to just writing emails.
C'est la vine....

.

Robert Mondavi, Pinot Noir 2010, Private Selection

At $6 a bottle I'm not sure what qualifies this as being from the "private" selection, unless you consider a grocery store a place where private transactions occur.  But the wine is okay.  Ok?

It does not have the depth or richness of the 2008 Pinot that I reviewed previously, but it is neither arrogant nor misguided. If this wine gets its own domain-name one day it might really compete with Google Sauvignon. But right now it's conducting itself in much the same way that a teenage runaway does... overstatement and hyperbole, gross exaggeration of fact, of experience.  I should know, I ran away from home many years before they finally kicked me out.

I was thinking... so many things can be ripped unseen from the hands of industry... so much media, so much content, can be just lifted from the aether.  Why not wine?

I want to remodel an internet in which great bottles of wine might be torrential.


No, scratch that.

I have an even better idea...

Fight for a greater depth of information, a semblance of the analog, a whisper of the whimsy.

Let's rob the blanks, empty the drawers, sniff the panties of eternity.
Let's grab the cash, let's hitchhike askance, take pictures of far consequence.
Let's fear neither rock nor roll, less dance, let us stance.

.

Viansa, Arneis 2010

White wine is nice.  I don't know why I don't drink it more often.  It is pleasant and refreshing.  Also, one need not drink an entire bottle of it in a single sitting.  It will hold for many days afterwards in the refrigerator.  I might have to shift my focus towards some whites. White power, etc.

I've been told that I can also let many reds sit opened, though re-corked, in the bottle for a day. It can actually improve the taste of certain wines, it's been said.  I have an unwritten policy that I will finish any bottle of red that I've opened, and as quickly as possible.  A dangerous and willful policy, I know.  But what can one do, really?

I'm certain that this bottle was a cheap bottle.  It was a gift from an SFPD cop.  Nope, I just looked it up.  It's about $20...  No ordinary cop, I guess.  He must be getting kickbacks. I should have his rotten ass thrown in prison. But what can one do, really?  He used to work undercover in the bathhouses in SF, he would probably squeeze right into prison life.

Ok, buy this wine.  I recommend it...

Never spend more than $25 on a bottle of white wine, until directed otherwise.

.

Gustave Lorentz, Pinot Noir 2008

This wine reminds me of being an altar boy, stealing wine from the priest's closet, just to loosen up a bit for the Sunday performance, etc.

I forget how much this bottle of wine costs, but it was about $2000, maybe a little less.  A little pricey, for my tastes; just a poor altar boy from the outback, patentless, patient, educated by Jedi's.

But it is the type Pinot I enjoy, as if it is from another time, and I don't mean 2008, I mean from my childhood.  It tastes like the wine I used to sneak/steal from my friends parent's houses, though in all honesty that was probably only Me, and Ernest and Julio, down by the schoolyard.  Who knows, it was perhaps a 2 liter plastic "bottle" of wine cooler, and not even wine at all; some vile carbonated soda with alcohol mechanically swirled into it, for sales.

Wait, it was Bartles and Jaymes, I remember now, it is all coming back to me, like a court testimonial.


I once took a bet.  The year must have been 1984.  The bet was that I would drink a 2 liter bottle of wine-cooler in less than 10 minutes.

I did.


It took much less time to forever purge my body of the vile liquid.  It happened towards the rear of the Ponderosa steakhouse parking lot on S.R. 436, in Altamonte Springs, for those interested in checking the facts....

There were many witnesses, though none reliable, other than your faithful wine critic, of course.

.

Bourgogne, Pinot Noir 2006

I have made it out of Sonoma Valley, once again.  There is a wine shop here that specializes in wines from other areas.  I believe I've mentioned it before, the Valley Wine Shack.  I go there when I want to develop a comparative basis for my tastes, to become more international, continental, etc.


Recently I was accused of being impoverished because I didn't share the tastes of another.  It was strange.  I won't bore you with all of the details but the essence of it was that a woman thought that a model that my friend had photographed was beautiful.  I found the image to be beautiful but not the model.  I found her to be oddly proportioned, positioned, which she was.  I went on to explain that in all beauty there is some strangeness of proportion (I believe it was Bacon who uttered this sentiment, though I am not sure).  This elicited the reply that if I could not see beauty in this model then I am suffering from a form of poverty, she then went on to bolster support for her forcefully demanding aesthetics with the contention that she would have sex with the model before she would with "any young little chicken, for sure!"

Oh, fuck it... here is the whole dialogue, for anybody interested.  It can be found in the comments section.  I suppose that I will bore you with all of the details....


I started thinking about the idea that in all beauty there is some strangeness in proportion, and why this is not as true with wine, perhaps not at all.  Do we seek strangeness of proportion in wine?  Mostly not. We seek balanced flavors, not extremes.  Hints are preferable to arguments.  Partially because we are ingesting it to enjoy, not to be challenged by it, to tussle with its many oblique wonders.

Wine is only external for a few moments, mostly it is enjoyed internally, or during the brief interval of transition on the palate.  Once on the inside it can conduct the most hideous felonious disgraces and we mainly forgive it, re-seek its friendship. We damn only ourselves for its cascading misdemeanors and lingering loss of balance.

Enjoy.

.

LaRochelle, Pinot Noir 2008

This wine sucks, at almost any price.  It's my birthday and I went to the wine store and chose one that I've looked at many times, and have wanted a few times in the past, but passed it over for other wines, for whatever reason.  I was sucked in by the clean design lines of the label.

It is far too acidic and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  It lacks the pleasurable complexities of other wines in the same price range and from the same region.

What really pisses me off is that it was very close to the price of the Frei Brothers wine posted earlier.

(brb)....

Ok, problem solved. I just went to the wine store and bought a bottle of the Frei Brothers Pinot, shown below.  Same image from earlier, different bottle.

Ok, I'm being cheap with the images, here is a different image, a more expensive one:

I love this wine.  It is delicious and open and has much to taste.  

It is a metaphor for what the wine drinking experience should be.

.

Frei Brothers, Pinot Noir 2007

I must be honest, I drank this wine weeks ago.  I have lost some of my fervor for writing about wines.  I kept the picture up on my web browser, occasionally looking at it, hoping to guilt myself into writing about it.  I felt bad for not writing as I really liked the wine.

I am drinking a different bottle (LaRochelle) now, and one that I don't care for nearly as much. Perhaps it only needs to open.  I was brought under the spell of design, I liked the label.  You will see it in my next post, which might be in just a couple of minutes if I decide that I REALLY don't like this one.

Yes, I used all capital letters for emphasis, such is the strength of my feelings on the matter.

I strongly suggest this Frei Brothers Pinot. I believe it was around $18 and worth every hard-earned dollar.

.

Sebastiani, Pinot Noir 2009

Ok, more poetry....
 to describe my very brotherly feelings about wine

Is there any other time, Welles,
or any way?
anyhow.
ok.
que?

-Qrson.



In fact, tonight I might do an interpretive jazz dance to reflect my innards, feeling.


In a previous life, about 4 years ago, there used to be this semi-annoying kid that was vaguely dismissive about anything that he hadn't done himself.  He was a self-proclaimed avant-garde dance enthusiast, or so he claimed.... in utter unhypnotic hipster denialism.

Hold on, let me see if I can find his digitally preserved moment of public obscurity:
Well, here it is, sort of....

The video doesn't seem to want to play for me, but the comment: "I get it...the "art" isn't what's on the stage, but the anger that it causes in me. And the strong urge I have to slap that tubby bitch in the face."  

This insightfully accurate comment serves the purpose of my point perhaps better than I ever could.

One morning I wrote freely on an open community chalkboard: "Avant-garde dance is neither."

I liked the circularity of the statement, almost solipsistic, but in open opposition rather than in the usually self-serving way, yet entirely self-serving in its humor.

The sentiment reigned.

Avant-garde wine is also, either.

Well, the wine above has nothing at all to do with what I am writing about.  What I am writing about has very little to do with what I am writing about.

Tomorrow I will write about another bottle,
to not do so would be un-animatedly inauthentic, as conceptual dance.

.

"It's a Head Snapper", Pinot Noir, 2009

I didn't want to sleep.  I do not want to sleep tonight.  

I have an October Hare running clumsyjack inside of me, 

Lepus as a Hatter, sadder made, never mad..... 

some few people I know I get stricken,

the marble-touched bounce in Spring, 

some fall, some wicked.       

hardly stepping; 

all.ways: always calling.

picked. chosen. 

Tonight I am catholic half-kidding, 

half-falling, along the awful augur of Autumn,

soon frozen. 

I opened a split-second, stalling, another bottle of wine; after some minor deliberation, a sudden frenzy of impatience. . .  the seconds passed, wine barely lasts, and even less does time. 

with time, we are all in, and usually dozing.

I decided to back-up my computer and then update the system software, a menial task; something I strongly advise the dangerous to do,... while drinking, heavily and slow. 

through n' through.

I work at a bar,  iShould know.

and u shud 2 

So often I have problems; though I have not had difficulty in some time sleeping.  

Night falls here in this valley with a deadening unheard chime, and away we go breasily... 

slumbering along with the timber-ghost of London, tumbling away, tussling, 

with endless Chinese echoes in the night, a handful of racist ghosts in flight.

It is true, that all moral judgments of the past are strictly and currently right.... 

But, c'mon London.... you great white trIpe.... 

your tightness impaired you far too young, 

genius or none, pedestaled or hung, 

or perhaps your westward hype has been re-sung, 

by dung, by night.

"To Establish an Inferno lite...." by Jack-Ass, 

(not a donkey, not a mule, mostly horse, of course...)

#ftards

#nowords

#slite

Otherwards....

These days have emboldened us all to tempt the stars, to challenge the clouds, 

the celestial clocks, ever ticking inwards....

... just tonight have I sat in this living room, 

at some dull computer, in silence, 

yet heard the distant doppler of automobiles both distant and in distance, 

and motor-heart cheered., set thusly 

See,thingly.

I've followed the red shifts above, 

the antithetical unknown voice inarticulate, 

the ever-fading of going, 

cars never slowing, 

towing along my failing ears, 

glowing with the steering stars. 

failed years.

Again, once only

I want the sound of cars to be triumphant, 

as it was when Bruce Springsteen was here, 

dear, lonely, Boss,

It is midnight time for the Bosses to fuck off.

If not, 

then I guess 

we'll just accept 

the sleepiness 

of the 

Occupy kids...

tossing off.

getting teared,

both here and thear'd

fueled,

we slog on

for two plates of

macaroni 

and some 

stale bologna.

the mind knows mostly shit.

minds don't occupy, minds inhabit.

inhabit it....

git it?

.

Rex-Goliath, Pinot Noir

Again no vintage printed on the label.  I suppose when you're naming your wine after an infamous 47 pound cock you really don't have to provide much more information. The Gallus gallus  was apparently a circus attraction near the turn of the century.  This fowl behemoth apparently drew them in from far and wide.  I imagine a 47 pound cock would really scare the kids, perhaps even mom... money well spent. One wonders if they ever let the thing get drunk and run through town late at night.

His sobriquet was His Royal Majesty.... the label on the neck of the bottle reads "Lush and Velvety"

Indeed.  The bottle is no thicker than any others were on the shelf, perhaps this Giant 47 is made up of only legend and whispers.....


Enough about cocks, royal or otherwise.
We all have work to do around here.

.

pro-mis-Q-ous

This wine was $10, and that's exactly what it tastes like.  They didn't even bother putting the vintage year on it, meaning it was likely made from the harvest of a few different years.  It's the type bottle of wine that is cute to bring to a dinner party and slip in with all of the nicer wines, hoping that nobody will notice, or if they do, only that they'll think the label is cute, or provocative, fuck-worthy.

I suppose you can't blame them.  I mean, it is clearly advertised as only being "california red table wine" and that's exactly what it is, though not bad by that standard alone, table wine.

To be perfectly honest this is what I was referencing in my last post.  That I am fast becoming an ignorant wine snob.  I very well might have thought that this wine was vaguely wonderful a few years ago.  My taste for wine has increased in the last few years and I can feel the sense of savor suddenly raising its expectations of self, since Sonoma... alliterally....

I don't mind.  I could use some change in my tastes, even if they are for the worst, and semi-permanent..... It is called preference promiscuity, intercourse inclination, a danger dive.

It is also called other things, based on chance circumstance, the accidental dance, drunken wine rants.

.

Francis Coppola Pinot Noir 2009

I am on the precipice* of snobbery,  I've been practicing my exaggerated sighs, etc.  It's becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy cheap wines.  I try to keep the price of the wines I'm buying under $20, and that is usually easy to do, while still getting some very good wines, but if I go below $10 I often suffer.  I used to be able to find, and enjoy, many wines for right around the $10 range.

People warned me that this might happen and it is to be fought.  It is difficult to regain simple joys.  I know.

I've had this ubiquitous Pinot before, many times.  A good friend back in New York stock-piled the stuff and I would come over to his loft and drink his wine whenever he would let me.  It is a good and easy wine to agree with, not great, but very drinkable and consistent.

I rushed the picture of it... I used a flash.... something I rarely do.  It was getting dark when I got home and I couldn't seem to get a stable shot of it.  So be it.

Because the second "P" is washed out from the flash it looks like "COP OLA"... I was going to write about the entire thing as if it were cop wine, a Pinot made especially for cops, but I got bored with idea before I even started.


* I considered using the word "verge" but it didn't seem good enough for the new snobbery, me.

.

Dashwood Pinot Noir 2009

Ok, I've learned my lesson.  

Readers Against Writing Drunk contacted me.  R.A.W.D. has spoken....

I will try harder next time, or softer. whatever.  But no more 

There was a Pinot from New Zealand (Villa Maria) recommended to me from a good friend. I wasn't able to find it but I was able to find this Pinot from the same region, Marlborough. So here goes....

I like it.  

We drove around today enjoying the country.  Here is a pic to give you an idea.

Yes, it is a beautiful place to live. This is the view from the Arrowhead tasting room. I preferred their wines to those of St. Francis, the tasting room we visited just before this one.  It was a decidedly Catholic experience, St. Francis. 

He is a hard imaginary saint to hate, but I'll give it my Catholic best.

Robert Mondavi Pinot Noir 2008

I watched a "documentary" called Mondovino.  It was the "Super-Size Me" of the international wine business, sort of.  Nearly the entire time that I was watching it I wanted to throttle the filmmakers, other times I was bored and might have pleasured myself, by sleepfulness.  If not choke them then at least slap them, perhaps a throttling is, how do you say in continental smugness.... extreme, no?

They trotted out the same old tired dogma that everybody wants to hear:  the world is changing, and for the worse, globalization is destroying everything that is precious, the only authentic people are the aging underdogs, silly americans can do nothing right,or only by accident, they are to blame for most, if not all, of the world's problems, they say stupid things, just watch, etc.

Some of those assertions might be true, but coincidentally those same observations work when changing the national proper nouns.  I learned it from YOU FRANTZ....

But when watching the film I couldn't possibly help or stop myself from feeling that they used the very best hard-wrought footage of the poetic Frenchies wandering their vineyards, waxing poetic about the meaning of tradition, the love of earth, terroir.... but when others are on camera not only did they use the worst possible footage, the questions were leading, if not accusatory.  It is difficult to imagine any American agreeing to another interview after their portrayal.  Though if that turns out to be wrong then I simply assert that there are stupid people everywhere, they are conditioned to love cameras.

They might notice the razor, but they're looking at the mirror.
Most people do.

And that's just how they treated the people, the "talent," as it were.

The geographic bigotry that was going on was even worse, and much more up front, out in the open.  The message of the film is that the rest of the world has ruined France by making wines.

In Vino Veritas.

There is one scene where they seem to blame the foreman of a vineyard for the fact that Mexicans work for him but they do not own the vineyard that they're standing in.  They act as if it is the iniquity of the Americans that has prevented Mexicans from making great wines.  I suppose it is also our fault that they don't have a space program.

How naive and very French of them; those who invented the potpourri moon....oh, scents..sational....


I'm getting so tired of people trotting out this same tired and assumed dogma.  They seem ever refreshed by the same sentiments.  If I were doing what I truly loved then I would not care, but I reduce myself down to petty differences, and take pleasure there, a broken man



That's why I bought the Mondavi wine tonight.  Because their treatment of him was unfair and even vaguely cruel and accusatory...  a self-made man who only seeks to make good wines and share them, how crass.  The same love of the more provincial examples the filmmakers use against him.  Who knows, perhaps Robert Mondavi liked to eat kittens on his free time.  I don't know and I don't care.  The wine is pretty good.

I do like Pinot's and this one is a good one.  I just took a swig straight from the bottle just to check.   It's good.  You can always tell by swigging.  Poor wines really reveal themselves in that way.  Interestingly the Mondavi wine that I'm drinking tonight seems to embody the old-world winemaker description of wine. I forget the exact words that he used but it seems to possess the very essence of what he described.

Oh, but for a blind tasting between them, instead of that shoddy mockumentary... documentard, fartce.



I was meant to start a one-week detox today but my instincts told me not to, three times, like Charles Dickens and the Doubting Thomas.  I kept fighting my inner voice out of blameworthiness, but finally I came-to and realized that every time that I don't listen to my inner voice I suffer... when I do listen to my inner voice things go along very well for me, even swimmingly at times, but my inter-personal relationships suffer.  As I get older people have shifted their efforts to control me from outright looks of disappointment and stern words to concern for my health.

As if....

My health is as sound as it ever was, just before the other times, perhaps even more so, perhaps less... but in the best of all possible waze.

My health makes lots of sounds, for sure... signs, symbols, hints, secrets, emblems, stains, confidants, rug burns, manifestations, double -agents, breakouts, promises, omens, threats, marquees, logos, intimations and sleeping drugs.  My health is intact, prudently both savoir and laissez faire... and that's a very tact fact, kids.


Just (1 fair, fair-minded, equitable, even-handed, impartial, unbiased, objective,neutral, disinterested, unprejudiced, open-minded, nonpartisan; honorable, upright,decent, honest, righteous, moral, virtuous,principled. Kids.....

.

Rockus Bockus, Proprietary Blend 2007

I have entered a new region of wine drinking here, perhaps a different era altogether.  This bottle was numbered, 468.  I have absolutely no idea what the significance of that number might mean, though I suppose I could take a guess.

It was apparently the product of one of the family members from Gundlach Bundschu, Jeff, and another winemaker (Keith), and also an artist (Ben). Their website doesn't provide a whole lot of information about them but the woman at the wine store mentioned the Gundlach connection and that was all that I remembered, or heard.   For what is little more than a good table wine I thought that it was a little bit expensive, around $15.  But it is a good blend, I would try it again.

I'll be honest, I bought it mainly for the label on the front, such is my passion of marketing.  

It is difficult to see the entire label from the front of the bottle, so I've provided two side shots below so that you can see for yourself the divine duality projected.

It is the wine label equivalent of a mullet: work in the front, party in the back. Sort of.  It inverts that simple message and suggests that the working god also gets to party down.  His alter-ego is some sort of naturally bearded holy-hearth-spirit.  It does seem to be trying to appeal to a certain type of person, someone who appreciates the city and the country.  I mean, don't we all...

I didn't even know that Dionysus had an office job...

If you look carefully you'll see two females, presumably friends, both of different races, near the foot of the god of boogie-down moonlit lightning action, engaged in some sort of skirted praise and adoration. Interesting take on gender, presumably a message arriving straight from the Romans.  

On the back label it cites its "Influences" as Coastal Fog, Volcanic Mountains, Steak....  

I mean, don't we all....

Well, I'm sure some of these messages were intentional, like the pine-cone tipped fennel staff.  They were merely trying to project a sense of duty and fun, along with the god-hood of ritual madness and ecstasy, and oh yeah...  the wine harvest. 

Darcie Kent, Pinot Noir 2007

I just went and bought this bottle of wine.  It was casually recommended by the woman at the wine store, a friend of a friend.  I was told yesterday by a confidant on the inner circle that I like Pinot's because I saw the film "Sideways."  I wonder if that's true or not, it seems unlikely.  I am being told lots of things lately, few of which seem to make much sense to me.  It's as if some of my friends are speaking in code, and I am left without my decoder ring.

I am starting to gravitate away from heavier wines with higher alcohol content, the "jammies"....

I get along with Pinot's, we have lots to talk about, or to just sit comfortably in silence, with the breeze flowing through what used to be our hair.  They have the lightness of a casual friendship, with perquisites.  I also like blends.  When done right they really do seem appealing.  A friend once noted that I do not have any uncomplicated relationships. At the time that she made the observation I think that it might have been true.  It becomes less and less so as the years pass, though I have spent lass and less time with many of them in the last few years.  I have begun to enter my maturing years.  With puberty almost finally complete it is time to pull myself together and ripen, to come of ages.


As I drink this bottle I am listening to "Exile on Main Street" by The Rolling Stones, an album I perhaps listen to a little bit too much.  But if there's a better album in the universe I don't know what it is. The days of successive heat have broken here in Sonoma.  I sit near the window, in the sun, with the music at a pleasant volume and the wine within reach as I write this, the gentle zephyr joining us.  Life is not only good, it is delicious, delightfully ours.

"Thank-you for your wine California..."


I have considered abandoning my previous rating system.  Using only the time spent drinking the bottle can be a bit one-dimensional, especially considering  the implications of the OPERA project on time....  I had thought that recounting my experiences while drinking the wine would flesh the rating system out a bit, but my wife pointed out that it only took a few posts before I was posting pictures of women's butts.  She has a point, you know. I will either revamp that system or scrap it altogether.  Perhaps there is a way of saving it, we'll see.

"We will sell no wine before it is time..."...  Orson Welles would be turning over slowly in his unfinished projects.

.

Firefly Ridge, Merlot 2008

I've chosen tonight to experiment with wines from elsewhere in the region, mostly from base ignorance of geography.  I'm always afraid we'll have some European, probably British, visitors that will arrive on holiday and know this region and its charms far better than I, and better than most.  

Being on this last frontier, this illogical erection of the western empire, almost makes me want to challenge somebody to a duel, but all of the Hamilton's and Burr's are long gone, first one, then the other.

"I'm in a duel to the death with this newspaper.... and one of us hast to hemp."

  

You can't blame them, really, the Brits, they did try to claim this land as their own.  Were it not for the courageous Lewis and Clark expedition the "American" pacific coastline might look very different.  Well, it would look just the same from England's space program, though I guess it might not look the same to "us"....  

What an incredible stroke of fortitude that landed us here, and the Canadians up there.  I've listened for too much of my life to filthy stinkin' after-party Canucks bitching about the weakness of the Canadian dollar in relation to the good 'ol U.S. BUCK...  about them having to buy things... then there was a smug smidgen of years when their "dollar" was valued higher....  Ha!

Now all we hear are silent and desperate prayers, the prayers of repentant drunks and reformed pornographers, transmitted publicly through NORAD communications, not northwards to any strange Nunavut wife-sharing gods and natives, but way down south, all the way to Congress, where the only brides getting shared are the congregation and the church of christ.

Christ, almighty, my wife went to church yesterday.....  She's pregnant.  

What does an atheist say to this?  I gently chuckle at your connection to the universe inside your belly... 

Nope.

Mike Myers, where are you when your nation needs you the most...?

Neil Young, after the gold rust....

I think Sonoma is a well-planned rural speed trap.  

I don't mean cops with radar guns. I mean speed, and traps.

I'm feeling a little bit obscure today, perhaps I'm a hipster without a home.

There are no authentic hips in Marin, there exists within there something far worse, a breed of peoplesters who think that the mutually tired and impotent music they listen to is perhaps what the hipsters are listening to elsewhere, or should be.  

It's as if they're too out of touch to be hipsters and too stupid to cure themselves of the desire to be so...

It is fun for a while, to witness... being a witness is always fun, until you're summoned. 

Wouldn't a savvy team of witnesses be the perfect antidote to hipsterism?

For you, all my love's unseen:

Moving like the fog on the Petaluma River.... 

Let it Ride.... 

(Please listen to this link if you've ever felt, or suede, 

 or even wished us away with us, for a ride, or suadade)  

"I wanna see you tonight

Dancing in the endless moonlight

In the parking lot in the headlights of cars

Someplace on the moon

Where they moved the drive-in theater

Where I left the car that I can't find but I still got the keys to

Let it ride…."

-Ryam Adams, Let It Ride

(Firefly Ridge, mox in, ex post facto)

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Guenoc, Victorian Claret 2009

We went to dinner at a friend's house last night. The vegetarians had vegetables and everybody else had lamb shanks.  This wine was delicious. The image on the label reminded me of a picture of Oscar Wilde.

The Petite Syrah by this same vintner used to be one of my favorites, many years ago.  The label was different then but similar enough that I recognized it right away at the wine store.

Lamb really is delicious stuff.  I know that it is one of the most insulting meats to eat to those who would have you believe that vegetarians are somehow helping along evolutionary progress, and meat-eaters slowing down our march towards human god-hood.  In that sense I am quite indelicate, indulging my carnal passions freely.  Isn't innocence just delicious when baked properly?

The hostess of the evening told me that she does not eat anything that once hopped with joy for being alive. I was relieved when I got there to find that the innocent but wily little beast was already cooked and we weren't forced to make any moral decisions on whether or not to make use of its remains.  It was delicious. This one hadn't hopped for joy too much, it was quite tender.

When it comes to lamb I am very Catholic, almost Greek.  This thing tasted so good it felt as if I had captured and consumed it mid-hop. There is a sense of victory in its flavor. After the first taste I was tempted to chase the rest of it around the room before pouncing on it with my saber-teeth, might even have my "lipstick out."

That would be a great theme restaurant... the patrons could chase already cooked meals around a large dining hall, gorging themselves on delicious veal and lamb and other sexy critters.  When the platters, which would be driven along by an unseen remote control car underneath, had been attacked, then a pre-recorded sound of the little living creature enjoying sunshine would play as the customers feasted on the sexuality of power.  There might also be private rooms where you could enjoy some casual rape of the food before eating it, or during, even after, for those who are just twisted enough to indulge in such a depraved manner.

Whatever.


No, this would never work.  It would end up being ruined by bad press, or being completely misrepresented by SNL (far more likely), and the investors would lose their asses.  Not their donkeys, they would eat those on off nights.  I meant they would lose their investments, their asses, etc.


In a perfect world we would be able to have sex with anything we chose to and all liquids would be made with wine.

La Crema, Pinot Noir 2009

This Pinot has always been one of my favorites.  I know that for many readers this must be a dull and obvious choice, but I like its dependability.  I've always enjoyed each and every bottle.  It is not priced too severely and it makes me feel good.  So few things do.  It is among my favorite things in life.


I work a thankless job, and now I do so in a mall, an outdoor mall, but still a mall.  I'm heading towards my mid-forties more rapidly than I can even admit to myself.  So many of the things that I thought would matter in life didn't.  Each day that I go to work I walk by an Abercrombie & Felch.  It is ironical that Ernest Hemingway purchased the gun that he used to kill himself at this store, but it is also evokes other dour feelings as well.

Difficult to believe, the Hemingway thing, I know.  But I wouldn't lie to you about such a thing.

I stake my reputation as a wine critic on it.

The gun was called a "Boss"...

The other day I saw a reflection of myself in that AF&Itch store front and I looked old and tired and fat.  My mind took a snapshot of the image there, staring back at itself.  All of those who work around me are young and very energetic about what it is they do. They seem to be getting younger each and every day that I must go to look at them.

I live in some twisted alternate version of Oscar Wilde's unknown novel, "The Strip-Mall of Dorian Gray"


Drinking a little bit helps writing.  Drinking too much occasionally hinders it, and oftenly.

I just don't feel very creative lately. Writing is coming to me only with great effort, and noticeably so.  When I go back and read what I have written it is a labor, yet mixed in among other labors, tediums.

There are too many distractions, too many things that must be attended to, no silence in my soul, no poems in my heart... instead there is only the inertia of the rush of traffic, the list of things waiting for me at home, the things that I promised myself that I would take care of,  then there are the broken promises.  There is so little silence in my life, yet sudden beautiful expansive silences all around me, but only driving to and from work, with the windows open, hidden within the roar of highway speeding by.

It is unnerving.

I come home from work and want to drink quickly to try to get the day off of me, to leave it behind, to escape its fevered hunt towards my sleeping, and its nightly stalking of my mind.

There exists only a small window through which I might hope to express or dispel anything, the metaphors of my life seem to be turning towards similes, just simple reminders, little lists of things to do, refrigerator magnets, text messages to myself... temporary screams into the network, another decree to the ghosts... and then only in some vain hope that if I somehow find some time later to look through my phone at who I might need to respond to, to keep my life alive, that perhaps my own name will ring a bell and warrant a response.


Well, except for this bottle of La Crema... I've had a bad day.  This wine is silent and peaceful, it is composed of oceans, deep red oceans, with gentle currents and breezes.  It brings to this dark night what Caribbean sunshine brings to others elsewhere.  Those growing hair and heading south towards the sea lanes... many must shave it.


"There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful." - Oscar Wilde

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Deja Vu

"If you smile at me, I will understand 'Cause that is something everybody everywhere does  in the same language. I can see by your coat, my friend, you're from the other side, There's just one thing I got to know, Can you tell me please, who won? Say, can I have some of your purple berries? Yes, I've been eating them for six or seven weeks now, haven't got sick once. Probably keep us both alive…." - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young   "Wooden Ships" from the album Déjà Vu .

Headbanger Zinfandel 2009

(I apologize for this picture, it was bright out)

This wine was described to me as very "well-balanced," which was true. Not once while I was drinking it, pouring several glasses carelessly from the bottle, did it once lose its footing or come close to falling over.  Not once did it wobble.  I found it to be surprisingly balanced for a wine with such an obviously suggestive name.


I like the christian sub-themes in the label design, the saint and sinner impulses, etc.  I'll leave it at that so as not to further offend the gentle christian sensibilities of my community.


It is my second day off.  Tomorrow I will return to work, cursing my perpetual cowardice.  Every day that I go in to my current job I swallow yet another tablespoon of self-hatred and pitiful soul-crushing self-loathing.  I know that I was not put on the earth to serve mankind in the way that I am, as part of the most beloved uber-aggressive capitalist juggernaut the world has ever known.  Every day that I think about it I am reminded of The Book of Revelations.  I am not at liberty to go into detail, but I work in the belly of the beast, as it were, daily dosed with inspirational laxative.  Nobody seems to understand my odium towards myself for the thing that I do, the thing that I've become, because they all openly love the corporation so much, and so well.  


Well, thanks for your corporation, folks...



“Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.”  - Charles Bukowski




Speaking of revelations.... Has anybody ever noticed how substantially different Christ's voice is in Revelations as opposed to the gospels?  Crazy stuff.  One wonders...  Ok, I have kind of promised a few people I'd let my christianity-bashing go for a while.  I'm told that this is a land of many zealots and I should step carefully, and kneel to pray when in doubt.  Doesn't the warning actually warn of something else altogether?  I get the feeling they are afraid for me rather of me, for once.  We've been shot at since being here.  It took me 30 years to accomplish that in Florida, less than a month here.  I got hit by a car in only a week.  Coincidence?  These hills are tidal waves of danger.




Okay, I'm probably pissing my pregnant wife off in some new way right now, one that I am completely unaware of.  In fact, me being unaware of it will most certainly be a component of the violation.  So few people give the father any credit at all for all that he endures in producing a child.  Everybody jokes that his contribution has been made, he has the "easy part."  I'd like to test this assertion by insisting that all pregnant women live together during their gestation periods.  It would end those casual jokes forever.   


Pray for me tomorrow night, wherever you are, kneel in silence and beg the lord, our god, to send angels to lift my spirits. If you close your eyes and can think of no prayerful words then let these humble words guide you towards the light...

Who knows what tomorrow brings

In a world, few hearts survive

All I know is the way I feel

When it's real, I keep it alive

The road is long, there are mountains in our way

But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong

Where the eagles cry on a mountain high

Love lift us up where we belong

Far from the world we know, up where the clear winds blow

Some hang on to "used to be"

Live their lives, looking behind

All we have is here and now

All our life, out there to find

The road is long, there are mountains in our way,

But we climb them a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong

Where the eagles cry on a mountain high

Love lift us up where we belong

Far from the world we know, up where the clear winds blow

Time goes by

No time to cry

Life's you and I

Alive, today

Love lift us up where we belong

Where the eagles cry on a mountain high

Love lift us up where we belong

Far from the world we know, up where the clear winds blow....

-performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, from the film "An Officer and a Gentleman"

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