Wine

I got 2 Groupons to buy some wine online. I dabble in wine, whereas I have a deeper investigation of beer. Beer is cheap and can be local. Wine is expensive and comes from exotic locations like Chile and California. But the Groupons gave me an entrée, ou bien, une rentrée into this lush, red-velvet world.

[The only wine worth the effort is red. I don't dislike white, but I'd rather drink beer.]

Now, after having drunk 2 bottles from this order ($25 for $75 not including shipping), I am excited - re-excited - about wine.

The first wine in this whole process was actually at a bar: a 2008 Cab from the Libery School winery in the Pablo Robles region of California. Delectable. Never mind the fact that I paid $10 for a glass and found out today that you can buy an entire bottle for as much. Such is markup in downtown upper-middle class restaurants.

Later that evening, after COT's He/She, my ladyfriend and I killed a bottle of Vinum Africa from 2007. Another Cab, this one is from, you guessed it, South Africa. See? Exotic. And really good.

Finally, for Mother's Day, I brought a bottle from my Groupon order (from Barclay's) of Roza Ridge from 2005 - another Cab. This one, from Rattlesnake Hills, WA, was also totally worth the effort and money, giving me a reason to reach for it over beer.

I cannot abide by 3-buck Chuck. Tastes like the poison alcohol pretends not to be. 3-buck chuck is about $.75 per glass, which does work out to be less than most beers. The cheapest beer I can bring myself to buy is $9 for a 6-pack, about a buck-and-a-half per bottle. This wine, at full price, is about $15, so $3.75 per glass. And you wonder why wine is so expensive by the glass!

All 3 of these wines were worth it, regardless of whatever notes of this and that try to assert themselves irrelevantly on my palate. I prefer to taste the goodness and leave the notes to the mystery. It is, after all, just grapes transformed by time.

all the world's a stage

This started as a minor annoyance and grew to something worth writing about.

I live in a mansion. We call it the Kedzie Castle, because it's on Kedzie Ave and looks like, well, a castle. Not a super-fortified mofo from the before times, but something in ornate limestone. Like Neuschwanstein if it were made 200 years earlier by an anarcho-syndicalist band of itinerant farmers.

Like attracts like, I guess. While most of my housemates aren't tilling the earth, per se, they would gladly start growing a certain ilk of plants indoors, using sunlamps and what not - if it were legal.

I get along pretty well with most of them, but there's always one...

Let's call him Stan - a pathetic attempt to dissemble his identity.

Most "discussions" I have had with him - there have been about 3 or 4 I can firmly recall - end up with him pontificating passionately, a tirade of fuzzy logic and empty statements. They start out innocent enough - I'm a sucker for debate, especially when someone says something that needs to be challenged - but then quickly become one-sided, vapid, foaming-at-the-mouth statements of fact like "Everything is language!"

Yes, usually fueled by alcohol, though I never think he's drunk enough to just excuse it like that.

While trying to watch the Bulls and Hawks games - the end of one, beginning of other, simultaneously at the bar - he launched into it. It started innocently enough; he comes up and says "rrr-rrr-rrr" [grumble] and then "tee-hee" [giggle], and then says "ha, it's all the same."

I was confused. Whence grumble? Whence giggle? Wherefore equation of the two?

I said: "Context?" A simple word, a simple question, a request to which most would comply. Not Stan. "No. No context. You shouldn't need a context. [grumble], [giggle], it's all the same. You wouldn't need context if you read more Jane Austin. Charles Dickens."

Me: "I don't read Jane Austin. I would consider Charles Dickens."

Stan: "Wha? No Jane Austin? That's a crime. It may be a hundred years old but people are the same." And then something about class conflicts and people saying one thing and meaning another - totally profound.

Oh man, it wouldn't end. From class conflicts, it turned to sports, which was all around us on 3 big screens, to which most of the eyes in the packed bar were glued. He said something about wanting to play hockey and/or basketball but not watch them.

I can appreciate that, but he missed my point about why people really watch sports. It's not necessarily about gladiators galavanting for our amusement; it's about building community around a team.

But it was only later that I really understood his point: he doesn't like to spectate, preferring to be the center of attention. He doesn't like to listen but likes to be heard. He also happens to be an actor, working in the theater. So was it all just a big, lip-flapping performance? [And by "lips", I mean "anus."]

Certainly, ass-flapping. [And by "ass" I mean "donkey."] But I think he really meant it when he said: "Language is everything, and music is language. And it's not what you're saying but what you aren't saying." I think he was leaving out too much.

The people around us at the bar were either really impressed that we were having such a deep discussion or completely annoyed at how redundant it was getting. I felt really self-conscious and embarrassed to even be a part of it.

I finally found an out and went to a different bar, Revolution, to watch the rest of the hockey game.

Happiness is not killing yourself

On the cover of Wired, there's a statistic that gave me pause: "1 Million Workers, 90 Million iPhones, 17 suicides. Who's to blame?"

What about making our gadgets is causing these Chinese workers to end their current incarnation?

Should we feel responsible? Should we demand that Apple and other outsourcing companies have higher regard for their employees well-being.

17 suicides is a peculiar number. It's not an insignificant number, but it's not unimaginably large. You can almost imagine each individual and the impact their sudden departure made on their families.

But then I thought, really, for a million workers, 17 seems below average. I found the following statistics.d

• Highest rates:
  • American Indian and Alaska Natives — 14.3 per 100,000
  • Non-Hispanic Whites — 13.5 per 100,000
• Lowest rates:
• Hispanics — 6.0 per 100,000
• Non-Hispanic Blacks — 5.1 per 100,000
• Asian and Pacific Islanders — 6.2 per 100,000

First, it's interesting that non-hispanic whites are almost as prone to suicide as American Indian. Second, the lowest suicide rate is non-hispanic blacks, which, if mathemagically converted, is 51 suicides per million.

So, while the working conditions still may not be ideal, this should sound more of a domestic alarm about the suicide rate.

Top 10 of '10 #4.3

4.3) #1 travel partner: Sietske

I was going to a town near Munich to visit Laura, a girl I met on the bike tour in Chicago. We worked out a plan through Facebook to find a time that would work with her schedule. My schedule was pretty flexible (at the beginning of my trip) but got less so as I went, but we managed to find a couple days that worked. At some point just before I arrived (at something like 5pm on a Friday after a long day of carsharing and trainriding) she said I could only stay one night. I was a little annoyed since I didn't have any other plans lined up, but I accepted my fate and made the best of it. She wanted to go to this "film in the square" which happened to be The Blues Brothers, which was a strange mix of foreign and familiar. To make it worse (better?), it was dubbed in German, but, through some glitch in the DVD player, it would randomly switch to English with subtitles. Bizarre. The next day we rode bikes for a couple hours along a river, stopping at the most authentic Biergarten I have ever been to. And really good food. Then, to Munich with no plans for anywhere to stay. Found some wifi at a coffee shop near the station, found no couchsurfing hosts, and, just before I went to wander around to maybe find a cheap hotel, I saw a post from a fellow traveler who was stuck at the train station. She was looking for a host or a travel buddy and ended up finding both. Sietske was from Holland and spoke such good English that I could forget that she was foreign except for subtle cultural differences. We ended up couchsurfing 2 nights in Munich, finding bikes to ride around (mine died just before we left), eating vagabond squatter food, and hitchhiking to the Czech Republic.

On the way to CZ, we had a German guy give us a ride, make slightly inappropriate comments about our physical relationship, and then give us 1000 Czech crowns.* And then a Japanese guy who didn't speak much English or German. And then a Romanian truck driver who spoke better German than English (though broken as hell). And then we were stuck for a long time in Austria near Linz. We finally got a ride to the train station in Linz and took the train to the Czech Republic. But the train didn't actually go all the way; it stopped at Summerau--still in Austria but near the border. It's getting complicated, here's a map. So we got off the train at Summerau and had a half-baked vision of a plan: ask people getting off the train where we could stay, like a hostel or hotel and then see. But there were hardly any people getting off the train. We saw one other backpacker and asked him where his hostel was. His response was totally unexpected: not staying at a hostel, getting picked up to go work at a hotel for the summer. The hotel, it turns out, was somewhere just over the border in the CzRep on the way to Cesky Krumlov (our ultimate destination). The backpacker, it turns out, as well as most of the people who owned the hotel, were Dutch--just like my travel partner. The guys' ride showed up and there was a lot of excited Dutch being spoken that somehow resulted in us going along for the ride and staying at the hotel for something like 20 Euro. It felt like the highest-class resort compared to what I had seen: clean sheets, chickens, goats, a huge breakfast spread, and Budweiser beer--the original. [Looking back on it, this is one of those moments that make you think that you are in the right place at the right time, like the Universe is unfolding as it should; everything in its right place.]

The next day, we continued on and stayed 2 nights in Cesky Krumlov, which, although being a sort of Disnification of a medieval Czech town, was quaint and pleasant. The hoards of tourists were the biggest downfall, but, to be fair, they were nothing like they would be in Bruges or that city in Germany that Russ liked (because they brought in beers from all over Germany, not just one region). After a couple days, I continued on, hitchhiking to Pilsen and then Prague and Sietske went camping and then met up with her friend to go to a Rainbow gathering. It was just a moment, but through the magic of traveling, it seemed like an eternity--in a good way.

* Nothing happened; we each had commitments elsewhere. But now that I think about it, I was aware of some nearly subliminal sexual tension that seemed to start after we left Munich but before we got to the Czech Republic. And it feels like it came from that ride with the German guy, whose suggestion got the ball rolling.

Top 10 of '10 #4

4) #1 Movie: Wristcutters: A Love Story

Netflix was my social life last year when I was living in the cabin in Michigan. I would work all day--fairly productively--and then at 6, 7, or sometimes even 8 or 9, I would sit down with my laptop and watch some foreign movie, documentary, or, well, Lost.

This year, everyone I know has Netflix and I hardly use my account. My roommate has it hooked up to the Wii and there is often a movie streaming in during the evenings--sometimes 2 or 3 in a row. I don't have as much patience for movies and so don't embark on every journey with them; I fortunately missed most of Repo: the Genetic Opera. But sometimes it works out and we all agree on something mind-bending, quirky, rom-com, or doc.

This movie may not actually be the best I saw of 2010, but it was certainly one of the biggest surprises. With a title like that, it seems juvenile, crass, or goth, but it turned out to be endearing, melancholic, and, ultimately, uplifting. It really is a love story.

It begins with a death, self-inflicted, of this guy Zia, distraught over a breakup. He was pretty hung up on this girl, even in the afterlife--a hang up I've been through at least once, probably more...well, once for sure...for real. His afterlife was a bleached out version of some southwestern state: some mountains in the distance, mostly flat desert with highways disappearing into the horizon. And worst of all, in this post-suicide afterlife, you still have to work.

Zia and this other guy drive around in a car looking for stuff: Zia for his ex-girlfriend (who they find out also "offed") and this other guy for other stuff. They keep losing stuff in a very literal vortex into another dimension that exists beneath the passenger seat. They meet this girl who shouldn't be there, for her OD was accidental. And then they meet Tom Waits. And Gob, from Arrested Development. Interestingly, he's a magician of sorts, trying to perform some dimension-bending escape trick: like if Houdini were wrapped in chains at the bottom of a pond, but instead of chains it was reality itself, and instead of a pond, it was the mind of god. I don't know what kind of success he had; seemed like a failed illusion.

It was bleak but comically so. I'm glad I won't be ending up there; I'd rather play the game and lose than forfeit.

I wish I could say that it was still on Netflix streaming, but, as I was just putting my account on hold (saving 10 bucks a month!) I checked: no luck. You should watch Enter the Void instead, which is, so far, my #1 movie of this year.

Top 10 of '10 #5

5) #1 TV experience: Lost

I have Darick to blame for Lost. I went along with him to a Lost watching party some time during the 5th season. Though it didn't make a lot of sense at the time, I actually remembered enough to piece some things together. Actually, very few things. The characters I met in that episode were in completely different situations up until the 5th season. But it was fun to forget about it and then feel like things were clicking in place. I watched the first 5 seasons between January and March on Netflix and then had to somehow catch up on the 6th season (with a lot of googling and bad picture quality). I got caught up and was able to watch the last 3 or 4 episodes live on tv, watching the final episode at my parents' home with my sister (another Lostie) and parents. Watching something like Lost with my dad is always an exercise in patience: he doesn't always hear or understand everything and so if ever he doesn't understand something, he wants us to explain. But what if it's meant to be ambiguous? What if we don't know yet? But it wasn't so bad, and I thought the ending provided just enough closure and unanswered questions. Now I really want to get into Twin Peaks just to see what the fuss is about.

Top 10 of '10 #6

6) #1 Meal: Birthday dinner at Longman & Eagle

I almost picked the dinner at the Gage with Lisa, which I remember being really good... but I can't remember what I actually ate there. Some sort of fish, some sort of good beer. At Longman, I had a gathered a small group (Corbett, Grace, Laura, Joe, Anna) out to celebrate the end of my 31st year, and I remember exactly what I had. Well... except for the appetizer, which was really good but fuzzy in my recollection. I had a sour beer--some sort of Belgian concoction, like a Lambic or something (something about a Duchesse, possibly from Burgundy?)--that complemented the pork belly like peanut butter complements Marshmallow Fluff®. (According to popular legend.) And I think there was dessert. Ok, so I was probably paying more attention to the group symbiosis than the food itself. In fact, in both situations, I think I was more concerned with the human energy than the tastiness of the food. Which is probably the opposite of what you or I might have assumed.

[Maybe I'm getting older (i.e., mature) but I am noticing the taste of food less and less, thinking more about how it feels and, often, how it makes me feel. That could be why I love going to Kuma's. It doesn't make me feel good, necessarily, but it tastes good and feels good going down. It completes you and gives you the ability (and the necessity) to get on the bike and ride for a couple thousand calories.]