Posts from — March 2005

My roaster died! Well, it’s dying at least, I’m going to see if I can fix it this weekend. That means I’m out of beans! Yeah yeah, I’ll go get some Peet’s or Caffe Roma, but I like my home-roasted-fresh goodness.

I’m almost out of mate too. In this case I mean mate (mah-tay) the Argentinian/Paraguayan ‘tea’, and not mate, as in a girlfriend. Although I have none of that either. Ohhh woe is me (for now).

I need to do the following-

• add a page/section about Argentina:
General info and resources (rental links, directions)
Restaurant write-ups
Arg. wine notes and info
• Make a writeup for last Saturday’s Rhone Fest
• Add a comments section to the blog
• Restore the DMWT mailing list

The perfectly perky one returns, and my love-fest continues.

Why oh why isn’t Mandy Moore America’s *official* sweetheart? I watched Saved! the other day on dvd, and it’s astonishing that she’s not carrying an official title. She’s not the only good actor in the movie, but plays a great character, and does it really well.

The movie is about some teens in a Christian school but they’re normal kids -they like sex. And I like teens who like sex, ergo 3 stars! Unfortunately it’s not as raunchy as you may hope.

Without giving too much away, the flick’s about indie-star Jena Malone’s character’s senior year at Jesus HS. The movie starts during her summer break right before school opens. Her character is in the clique with Mandy’s queen-of-the-school character. But Jena’s boyfriend comes out to her (in more ways than one) and Jesus-High kids don’t deal well with that. Other problems ensue and it forces the inevitable clean ending of the smarter Jesus HS alums dealing with their X-tian thoughts/feelings towards those who don’t fit inside a mold.

Hey wait, don’t all high school movies deal with that? Yeah, but this one is down with the Gee Oh Dee! It’s a good flick, rent it.

Two other items, the actress who plays “The first Jewish at our school” was great (turns out she’s Susan Sarandon’s daughter), and Macauley Culkin is in a wheelchair for the whole movie.

Oh, before you ask, Mandy does not get naked.

I got copies of Jodi’s pictures and put them in the pics area. Check them out!


    

I’m back from my trip. I should have pics and updates on this site by this weekend. I had a great time in Buenos Aires and now I want to move there. ;)

  

Most of my photos are up in the pics section. Feel free to browse through the pics, and click the images to zoom in a bit more. I reduced the size of most of the pics for faster loading.

Jodi’s pics are being developed and if she gets copies on CD, then I’ll load copies of her pics on here next week.

BTW- if the pics take a long time to load, let me know. I may break them up into two pages (or more) for faster loading.

also. . . I’ll be putting together a separate page with travel stories and restaurant recommendations. I should have that done in a week or so.

EDIT: okay, okay, I’ll bump the resolution of the pics back up and reorganize them. . .

I’m about to head out to SFO to begin the long slow journey south to BA. I’m not sure if I’ll be updating the blog from there, but I will send out an email or two with updates. I’ll try to post some pics before coming back as well.

Paul and Stef had a Zinfest this past weekend. They served excellent lasagne and chicken cacciatore. They also opened up at least 15 different zinfandels to taste.

I didn’t take too many notes (although I did take a pen and a little moleskine notebook) so I thought I’d write down some of the thoughts now before I forget. [btw I'm writing this on Sunday and testing out blosxom's post-dated entry "feature"]

By far the favorites seemed to be the two Charter Oak Zinfandels that Paul had pulled out for the event. I’ll have to double-check my notes with Paul, Stef or Brian after vacation, but I think the two were Charter Oak Monte Rosso and Charter Oak Napa Valley.

I remembered from a past dinner party at Paul&Stef’s that the Charter Oak was hard to get. The only reason I remembered that initially was that it was so popular at the past event I didn’t get to taste any. I had also written on my notes at that past event some tidbits about the winemaker and his setup. I remember it distinctly because I had mismarked it on another wine’s notes. So at this weekend’s dinner it was good to re-associate the name (correctly) and hear Paul tell Brian about the winemaker and his story. Here’s a link.

Some of the other wines that Paul set out were: Cline Sonoma County Zinfandel, Copain Arrowhead Mountain(?), 3 different Rosenblum’s, Turley, the two Charter Oaks, and I think I’m missing one more. Those were set out in order from thinner to fuller? – lighter to heavier? on Paul’s Bar. There was another table with about five different Ridge Zinfandels, including the 1990 Paso Robles(?) that Brian brought. I didn’t try them all as I had to cut myself off for the drive back from SJ to SF. But I do remember seeing at least two Ridge Paso Robles labels, Brian’s 1990, and a Ridge something-something Caboose- which I assume meant late-harvest. Oh, so clever. . . [btw all the Ridge wines were good, but I didn't pay that much attention. I liked the 1990 a lot and I thought the Caboose was full.]

Below are my limited notes from memory. These aren’t tasting notes, just random thoughts, like my movie reviews. The wines weren’t blind tasted and this was mostly a dinner party, so if you have problems with my comments, go screw yourself. You shouldn’t even be reading this if you want ’serious’ wine notes – it’s a @$!$ blog, c’mon.

• Cline Sonma County Zinfandel (2003?) I have a lot of this, it’s usually a great bargain. If you can try some of the other Cline Zinfandels (Big Break, Bridgehead, etc).
• Copain Arrowhead Mountain – I’m not actually sure if that’s the right name, I’ll have to double-check. I was kind of let down by this one. Ever since that dinner at Piperade I’ve been lusting after the Copain’s. So when I saw this one on the bar I was really excited. Then I realized Paul probably had the ones on the bar lined up in some kind of order. Sure enough he did. He told me that originally he had lined up the wines before opening them in the order he thought they’d be in from lightest to fullest(?). The Copain was the only one he was wrong about- he had it near the Turley, and moved it all the way down to #2. Don’t get me wrong, I still liked it, but I thought it’d be a bit better.
• The three Rosenblums – I don’t remember the names of these at all which probably meant I liked them, but not enough to pay that much attention to them. I’ll get the names and update this. I do remember the first of the three seemed like it’d be a great every-day and every-meal type of wine, and the thrid one seemed a bit more for that special type of homemade meal.
• Turley – People seemed to love or hate this one. I didn’t know anything about Turley and didn’t know it was a bit cultish. I tried it, said “meh” out loud but moved on. After I tasted a bit more, it grew on me, but I wasn’t loving it. I do remember thinking, “I guess I’d buy this for dinner”. But then I noticed the price tag was on it and I saw the price. Thanks, but no thanks.
• Charter Oak Monte Rosso and Charter Oak Napa Valley – The two favorites of the night. These are hard to get, but I think they’re worth it if you can find them- see the link above for more info.
• Kenwood Jack London (2000) – I had pulled this out for the party. Paul opened it when I was tasting some other wines and chit-chatting. From across the room I hear “Hey Kenneth, I think that wine you brought is corked.” Uh oh. Does that mean I’d get kicked out of the party? Am I off the invite list? It turns out no (for now). But the wine I brought was “off”. I didn’t think it was corked (for the record, I’ve only had two corked wines before) so Paul decanted it to let it air out so we could try it later. A guy named Wes tasted it and said it wasn’t corked but it was Brett. Who the hell is Brett? It turned out that was a new term (for me at least) and it means two things- either Kristen’s husband or a possible one-dimensional aspect of a wine on the palate(?). I haven’t googled enough, but I think this explains it more.