TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Ilene is on strike from showering. She claims it's because she's afraid it will "make her too cold." I think it's because she's worried I may be masturbating in the bathtub. Hey, some fears in life are completely reasonable!

No, seriously, I would tell her if I were doing such things. Even though she would almost certainly demand that I scour the tub using a combination of a toothbrush and my tongue. What's more, I would have to pretend to enjoy it. I'm not prepared to do either of these things.

Now, all I have to do is come up with a believable explanation for all those laminated copies of Hustler scattered throughout the bathroom...

TALENT? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' TALENT!!!

Overheard at MK Restaurant today during the Terry Thiesse grower Champagne tasting:

"I have just a terrible palate - can't taste for shit. I've gotta be the worst sommelier in the city of Chicago."

I turned quickly to see who dropped this bombshell. It was a tall, fey guy with a shaved head in a suit - almost certainly hotel management material. I didn't recognize him. Kinda wish I did, but then again if I knew how much money he makes it'd probably just depress me.

Hey! Talentless, no palate? I know a wine shop where he'd fit right in!!

Le Weekend

This was one of those eventful weekends where nothing much happened. Plenty of small moments of interest to distract one's self from the overarching directionlessness of the days. Time passed, I slept and woke and went about my business, and had some fun in the offing. Just two more days I'll never have again, but in retrospect wouldn't have spent them any other way.

Enjoyed some delicious food and drink tonight at the house of my friend Josefa, formerly of Maverick Wines. We were wining and dining to celebrate the 37th birthday of Steven, the often-despondent guy I mentioned in my last post. He was actually in decent spirits given how depressing birthdays can sometimes be, flush with happiness in his new relationship with a very decent guy named Frank. Started with a Robert Weil 2004 Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken, which was open in the fridge when I arrived with my good friend and fellow Maverick alum Dan. This was a delicious way to kick off the festivities, a taut, mineral-driven Riesling that was more trocken (dry) than its "half-dry" designation would lead one to believe. This is a great style of wine for spicy food, as the austerity and acidity are in dynamic conflict with a touch of residual sweetness and searing minerality. Tough wines to pigeon-hole, they keep calling you back for another taste-test, and before long the bottle's gone.

Next was my contribution to the par-tay, a Riesling from Nahe in Southern Germany, the 2004 Schlossgut Diel Dorsheimer Burgberg Riesling Kabinett. Yes, I know the Germans seem borderline retarded to give their wines names this long. Thing is, quite apart from the language barrier, vineyard location and wine style are paramount to describing German wines, and they include all that information right in the name. To break it down, 'Schlossgut Diel' means "Diel Winery," 'Dorsheim' is the name of the village, 'Burgberg' is the name of the vineyard in the village of Dorsheim where the grapes were grown, 'Riesling' is the grape variety, and 'Kabinett' refers to the level of ripeness of the grapes at harvest. Granted, it's a mouthful. So was the wine, rich and unctuous with frank tropical fruit notes, especially of pineapple. Fortunately, plenty of minerality and some petrol notes to back up the fruit as well. Think of gasonline-soaked pineapples, and you have some idea of how the wine smelled. No really, it's a good thing, I swear!! Weighty on the palate, not as filigreed as the Rieslings of the Mosel or even some from the Rheingau. Got this bottle at my favorite Chicago wine shop. I think this is Howard's preferred style of German Riesling, but I must admit I'm partial to the rapier-sharpness of the wines from further north.

We drank the Rieslings with mussels that were perfectly cooked and served with an herbed cream sauce that was essentially a vehicle for delivering cholesterol and saturated fat into the body. It was almost ludicrously delicious. This was followed by a soup of garlicky cured Russian sausage that had the texture of Vienna beef, as well as heirloom beans, chard greens, and tomato. I'm trying to think of an adjective for this soup more original than "hearty," and am failing miserably. Fuck it, the soup was most definitely "hearty." And again, delicious. With it we had quite the treat: 2003 Saumur-Champigny "Le Bourg" from cult producer Clos Rougeard. This is a wine that every Michelin-starred restaurant in France fights over, and while it's very rare in the U.S. it's virtually impossible to find in France. Made from Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon's little brother, this is the greatest red wine made in the Loire Valley and one of the finest in the country. 2003 wasn't France's greatest vintage, but even coming from this hot year the wine was nimble and elegant, like a Brioni suit or a Maserati. In truth, in addition to its beguiling graphite and dark brooding fruit the wine showed a bit too much oak, an indicator (at least in wines of this quality) that it hadn't fully integrated yet. We probably shouldn't have opened such a recent vintage, but nonetheless it was a very nice birthday gesture on Josefa's part.

Last wine, I promise you, and it was a great one: Mas de Daumas Gassac 1997 Rouge from this Rolls Royce of Languedoc producers. Holy sheep balls, this was delicious. Velvety in the mouth but with a firmness that reminded you it wasn't fucking around. Every five minutes the wine showed something new, from herbs to cedar to cherry to dark mineral to cloves et cetera. Just outstanding. I kept taking tastes and trying to imprint the precise sensory impressions into my olfactory bulb and frontal cortex, repeating to myself: "this is what a truly great wine tastes like. This is what a truly great wine tastes like. This is what..."

Oh, and then we had cake. I was happy. It's true what they say: the simplest pleasures in life are the best.

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One more bit of weekend ephemera to relate. Spent Friday night in the company of the redoubtable Nathan Tumulty and Tressa Taylor, intellectual power-couple of the West Loop and all-around awesome people. We caught the last third or so of Flash Gordon, a movie I hadn't seen in something like 15 years. You could say that the years have not been kind to this movie, but then you would instantly qualify yourself as a humorless, obnoxious scold and I wouldn't hang around long enough to see what other absurd opinions you held. This was pure campy joy in film format. Brian Blessed plays hooky from his usual role of lusty Shakespearian enforcer (see Henry V and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) to star as Prince Vultan, one seriously goofy-looking dude wearing brass wings that somehow allow him to fly in atmosphere-challenged deep space. He's got a mouth that could kick-start a Harley and a deep resonant voice that at one time would have been described as 'fruity,' before that word came to mean something else entirely. Timothy Dalton as dashing, morally-ambiguous Prince Barin makes some small penance for later inflicting The Living Daylights and License to Kill on an innocent world. Even Topol quits fiddling on rooves long enough to get involved with the shenanigans as Dr. Hans Zharkov. Then there are the two main characters, Flash Gordon himself and female lead/love-interest Melody Anderson, who are admittedly a come-down from the razor-sharp supporting cast. I will say this for Flash: his hair is so blond, it's almost frightening. Anyway, this unlikely group of allies finds itself pitted against the forces of one Emperor Ming (played by Max von Sydow... Jesus H., this movie's got everybody, no?), who's hell-bent on destroying Earth. Deadly, earnest space combat ensues, which since this movie came out in 1980 basically means hilariously disjointed fight sequences and supremely cheesy special effects. Speaking of cheesy, guess who did the soundtrack. Give up? Queen. Freddie Mercury-era Queen, natch. Oh yes, people, this one's a thing of beauty. This is why they invented Betamax, Blockbuster, Netflix - hell, this is why they invented cinema in the first place. Or at least, that's my pet favorite rationale. Move over, Jean Renoir.

SOMETIMES EXISTENCE BITES. HARD.

Or, as I put it in a text message the other day, "Some days it feels like life is fucking you in the ass with a lawn dart."

Just for a kick, let's do an old-timey blog entry intro, fashioned after the delightfully obsolete livejournal.com

Current Music: 'Moya' by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Mood: Hide the razor blades.

Or to put it another way: I was at a rock show last night with a friend of mine from my former company Maverick Wines, who's one of the more misanthropic and morose people I know. He couched it perfectly:

"I don't love anything. There are just some things in life that I hate marginally less than everything else."

Bingo.

Some things I hate marginally less than others:

Achewood

M83

Vittorio Zecchin

Wallace Stevens's The Idea of Order at Key West

The Cocteau Twins' 'Lorelei'

Aphex Twin's video for 'Windowlicker'

Barolos from Giuseppe Mascarello and Giacomo Conterno

Burgundy from Jacques-Frederic Mugnier and Armand Rousseau

Riesling from Robert Weil and F.X. Pichler

The schmaltz and sentimentality of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

The spare brutality of Le Samourai

The Foie Dog and Duck Fat French Fries at Hot Doug's

See now, I feel better already! And I've only just started...