Hugh Johnson decides to jump in where Jonathan Nossiter left off

I just finished Noble Rot which is a bloody excellent read by the way, thanks P, and was amazed by the criticisms of the English wine press, especially of Jancis Robinson. They were portrayed as self serving creeps to the old chateaus and disdainful of the revolutionary garagistes. As a Star reader, I am more than happy to indulge in hand wringing slagging off of anyone whenever the opportunity arises. Big Bobby Parker, as does Monsieur Rolland, comes over as a hard working saint. OK, simplistic but that's the general pitch.

So then I read this article today on Decanter and just thought what a tit is Hugh Johnson.

He makes an explicit comparison between the 'imperial' style of the current US government and the style of Parker – who is considered the world's most influential wine critic – suggesting that both tend towards the dominant.

'Imperial hegemony lives in Washington and the dictator of taste in Baltimore…Taste in the past was largely a matter of harmless fashion. In American hands it feels more like a moral crusade.'

Johnson's political reference here is just embaressing. Still, nothing stirs up book sales like controversy and and in-depth hard backed slagging of Parker will prove irresistable to RP supporters and detractors alike.

It's a shame, because I think Johnson is an excellent wine writer.

See also this review of the Parker bio. Same journalist, interestingly enough.

Update: Am currently imbibing this and watching all the cares in the world wash over me. You can get it at Union Square Wines. It is so damn nice.

Suck it up

I have been thinking about using a kaolin poultice to tackle the problem of ingrown hairs. A search on the internet has revealed such to be a common cure for ailments to horses' legs. Strange, since I distintly remember my mother repeatedly wrapping a piping hot bandage with the stuff around my thumb for a day or so when I was little to draw a spelk out. It worked miraculously.

I have read about home made poultices of potato which you can use for boils and inflamation, which is why a potato on a zit helps the swelling and redness to disappear. The only thing I can see on kaolin is here and the only one I can find on the interweb to buy is here.

Anyone got any better ideas?

Comfort me with Wine

I realized yesterday that I don't much care to note the age of those younger than me. How very mean and shallow. How very me. They are younger and that is all there is to it. With the exception of 30, which is a damn fine year. Here's to hoping that we are all made of nebbiolo rather than carbonically macerated gamay.

Things I have learnt whilst aging.

Lovers leave
Partners annoy the shit out of you
A broken heart will mend
At a tempo directly proportional to the collapsing of your arches
Zits are not negated by wrinkles
Bleaching of both hair and teeth will make you appear more spritely in photographs
Taken from a distance
Only
You will always lose the ones you love the most
Those you hate
Hang around ad infinitem
Taunting you for your failure to kick their arses years ago
Kill ants
Wear black
Eat red fruit
Biceps rock
Small dogs are gay
And so is my ex
Living alone will become a comfort and then a shield
ALWAYS sell the jewelry
Eat frugally
Drink lavishly
Never resist the call to stool
Fear love
It's a destructive emotion at best and takes that piece of yourself you value the most
And gives it away
Willy fucking nilly
Psychosomatic illnesses make you more interesting
To yourself
Avoid other people's mothers and murderers
In that order.

Ms. Sumner said she had no such intent. "I've always wanted my job back," she said. "I joined Merrill to be a leader." She added that she now has enhanced her negotiation skills.

The Times reports that E. Hydie Sumner is going back to work for Merrill after she sued and was awarded 2.2 million in April 2004. Then she sued again and demanded they rehire her.

Sexual harrassment and discrimination can be debilitating and throwing money at a successful claimant can seem to trivialize the matter. "Here little lady or man. Take your money and now piss off and leave us alone." Taking the victim of the discrimination back into the work place and forcing everyone to deal with them responsibly is the only way to change a corporate culture. But sheesh that takes balls.

As her lawyer said:

"I think most people have little interest in returning to a place that was very painful for them to work," Ms. Friedman said. "The fantasy of most of my clients is to be reinstated, go back and quit."

I'm the boss, do the job, you hired

The Cookbook. I didn't think you could get any better than Get Yer Freak On. But "Can't Stop" is my new favourite "putting the slap on, I'm going OUT" track.

Lyrics:

What I'm sayin, you the man, I'm in love
And I like when you do it rough
Hey shorty I can't get enough
Can't stop, won't stop - call me Puff
Hold me down to the ground, pick me up
Now move it 'round, break it down, hold up
Scream loud, black and proud, let's fuck
Nine to five, do it live, sho' nuff
I be thinkin 'bout the way you do it good
I like it cause you raised in the hood
Uhh, you put your back into it
I tell you no, change my mind, then I do it
You cute, you fine, you fire
I'm the boss, do the job, you hired

It's so so so good.

The Wall Street Journal details the bachelor party of Thomas Brudeman today, who makes his father-in-law, Dennis Kozlowski, look frugal.
WSJ-[subscription required]

This was my favourite part however:

The fun included a stay at the ritzy Delano Hotel for some, a yacht cruise and entertainment by at least one dwarf hired for the occasion.


"Some people are just into lavish dwarf entertainment," says the 4-foot-2 Danny Black, a part-owner in Shortdwarf.com, an outfit that rents dwarfs for parties starting at $149 an hour. Mr. Black says he spent part of the weekend on the yacht and worked as a waiter on the Friday night at a high-end Miami eatery alongside what he called "regular size" people. "A good time was had by all," he said, declining to provide further details.

Ah Wolfgang Siefert, I think I would quite like you if you weren't so nasty about cucumber sandwiches..

You lost me and I was so very nearly all yours with this so very close to perfect sentence:

"With this fart of nothingness, the leitmotiv of this cuisine became clear to me. It was the old nouvelle cuisine."

OOF

Ex-WorldCom CEO Ebbers sentenced to 30 years -- WSJ (MCIP, VZ) By Carolyn Pritchard
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive officer of WorldCom Inc. (MCIP) , was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday, almost three years after the telecommunications company collapsed in a massive accounting fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site. Ebbers was convicted in March of all nine counts against him, including conspiracy and securities fraud, related to the $11 billion scandal, the Journal noted.

Vendage
A picture from the gallery of the folks who bring us Chateau de Beaucastel

I want to move to Languedoc-Roussillon. They have it all - chardonnay, viognier, grenache, merlot, mouverdre, syrah and muscat blanc a petit grains. It is the home of Banyuls and Cremant de Limoux. They have amazing cheese, oysters and Georges Freche, the maverick mayor of Montpelier who wants to change the name of the region to Septimanie. How could you not love it? It's all just so Marcel Pagnol.

Today I also discovered what I had thought to be undiscoverable, a very drinkable chardonnay from the Hamptons - Wolffers 2002 La Ferme Martin. Very nice with chicken curry.

"Frailty, thy name is woman!"

Aye, I am fickle. I remember, perhaps four years ago when living in Curacao, the ladies gathered at the home of the fabulous H and watched Tommy Cruise in Mission Impossible II. It wasn't the scene at the beginning where he clings to to rockface with the brute force of his pectorals which had our knickers hitting the floor with a sodden thud, but the one we often replayed in slow motion after the Audi TT road chase where he flicks away the hair from his face. How we howled. Innocent as we were to the rumors of his sexuality, we lapped him up.

So strange it may seem, or not really, that I now can't stand him. I mean it's not as though I know him or anything and I couldn't give a toss about his relationship with either sex. He's a celeb and he has to do whatever he thinks, or his PR thinks, he needs to do to get the film contracts and you know all power to him. The stupid TomKat media crap fest and the ludicrous ranting about over-made-up Brooke should nail the coffin on his sex appeal to women a lot faster than any revelations of porking cute male married pop singers ever could. In my mind at least, lustable leading men not only have to appear to enjoy women, they must also accept them. Hamlet had no sympathy from women readers and he was at least a prince. A prince! Tommy did no one ever tell you that short men have to work harder? Also, how old was your father when you were conceived?

So I had a shallow laugh when I read the marvelous review by David Denby in the New Jerker this week. I have to admit to a crowing glee whenever movies flop. I don't really know why I am affected such other than this revealing me as nasty and small minded. I loved it when the Gigli flopped and I couldn't have cared less about the Bennifers. Maybe that was it, maybe I should have cared more.

But I have become drained with the endless ridiculous posturing and double dipping as flaunted by the soon to be Mr and Mrs Crooze. The fact that both have ended up with box office blockbusters is something I believe is superfluous and in fact in spite of their recent media oversaturation. I guess there's no better way to promote your personal belief in aliens than by acting like you were recently abducted by them. I also think that as actors go Tiny Tom is actually quite a good one. I liked him in Jerry Maguire and Cocktail. Oh God Cocktail. How hilarious was that movie. I should go through Tommy Thumb's back catalogue on Netflix as opposed to the pretentious foreign crap I insist on renting that I can never bring myself to watch.

So I was rather pleased to read some fabulous gems from Mr Denby slagging the movie. Because I am evil like that. The last paragraph particularly thrilled me:

There isn'’t even a hint of a subplot, of destinies intertwined: when Ray's seventeen-year-old son (Justin Chatwin) peels off, the movie doesn'’t follow his adventures but stays with Ray and his clever little daughter (Dakota Fanning). Almost immediately, father and daughter wander into an abandoned house in which bug-eyed Tim Robbins, clutching a shotgun, has holed up in the basement. I think it might be stated as a general rule that no one in a movie should ever enter a basement where Tim Robbins lurks; and certainly this movie, suddenly static, begins to die at that point.As the scenes of destruction cease, one has time to ponder the oddity of a science-fiction movie without science, or even routine curiosity. Who are the aliens? What is their chemical makeup and how might they be vulnerable? What does the attack mean? Nobody raises any of these issues. The movie is given over to a family in flight, the primal survivalist drama. ItÂ’s as if the aliens landed and everyone died so that Tom Cruise could grow up one more time.

I think I want to go and see it anyway. But only after this one.

Pump. Pump it up.

Is what you have to say whenever you call in and order food from these guys. Which I do everyday because I am obsessed. I am all about the protein. Plus they have the best turkeyburger I have ever tried. Their vegetarian chilli is yuck however.

I am so behind the times, completely out of it, as Ms Justine Hariri can obviously testify, but looks like meth is the new coke.

1983, is so, like, over.

Why don't we all just kill ourselves now?

So I am almost half way through reading The Long Emergency by Howard Kunstler. It's a great book and he's a great writer in that he has an ability to explain to even the most simple of folk, such as myself, things like nuclear fission, hydropower (or not as it may turn out) and the gradual depletion of fossil fuels.

And we are all fucked as it turns out. Well those of us who are still here in seventy years or so, which will naturally include myself since I am immortal. There is nothing, apparently, in our current level of knowledge which can save us. There is nothing which will make sense on the ERoEI formula - energy return on energy invested scale. And whilst I believe him and the concept that when oil runs out and we have no coal, no natural gas, insufficient hydroelectric power and insufficient means of capturing solar power, I am thrown off-target and into suspiscion by his hysterical rhetoric and proselytizing:

"Clinton, the architypal yuppie suburbanite, did nothing to prepare the nation for hte post-peak era and enjoyed the luxury of ignoring energy issues generally..."

"Great Britain benefited enormaously from the North Sea bonanza. The sclerotic old empire had been suffering a wasting disease of de-industrilaization since World War II and the North Sea acted like a miraculous tonic. Scotland, especially, perked up having lost its mainstay shipbuilding industry and become a welfare basketcase just before the oil boom."

Mr Kunst..., calm yourself. You are broadcasting alienation rather than education.

This is a tactic which should have been edited out of another otherwise excellent book I read this year, The President of Good and Evil by Peter Singer. I would quote from it to demonstrate but I lent it to someone, unfortunately.

I think what I am trying to say is that I resent writers lecturing me on what they think I should believe. I am capable of forming my own opinions, and whilst there may be many series of books that do actually lecture to readers and probably successfully, I neither want nor need them and there's no way that I am ever going to love them.

Can you just present a reasoned argument and let me form my opinions? I don't want your bipartisan insecurity in my reading material. Please trust your readers, for the love of God, otherwise what you end up doing is repulsing us. And we have enough of that going on already with the current adminstration.

Amen.

Podcasting

I am really all about Time Elliott on Winecast and Grape Radio.

Available on iTunes.

Things that scare me

Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman Supreme Court justice and a decisive swing vote for a quarter-century on virtually all the major legal issues of our time, announced her resignation today.

From the Washington Post