Walk It Off
Walk It Offwas recently included in Tulip Tree Publishing’s anthology;Stories That Need to be Told 2022.
This is a tale about a lifetime of missteps, mishaps, and misbehavior, and the cure for the broken bones that resulted.
My父母抚养了四个男孩,两个女孩,三只狗,two cats, six gerbils, a turtle and a bat. Ours was a household filled with love, companionship and mortal danger. If we survived the dog bites, snakebites and kid bites, we still had to contend with smallpox, measles, and mumps – all of which could kill you or seriously hamper your social life. By necessity my mother was adept at the mending of cuts, burns, bee stings, botulism, plague and constipation.
Smooth As Silk
由于这个平台称为Winesnark，我应该指出，尽管这个故事从未真正提到过葡萄酒，但我在写它时确实喝了几瓶。这个故事始于主角遇到宿醉，可能会杀死Kodiak熊，因此我认为这有资格成为葡萄酒博客。
像丝绸一样光滑was recently included in Tulip Tree Publishing’s anthology;Stories That Need to be Told 2021and received the book’sMerit Award for Humor.
With a year of high school yet to complete, I looked west from the interstate entrance ramp, stuck out my thumb and turned my back on New Jersey. Three days later I woke up in a Racine, Wisconsin hospital. My throat was raw from a stomach pump, my back ached from the impact of a hundred cars plowing into one another, and my head throbbed from the impact of several gallons of Milwaukee beer and a bottle of cheap scotch. I was happy to wake up alive but unfortunately a hundred thousand brain cells had perished during the night.
It was this chain of events that brought me to live with my older brother Doug and paved the way for the tremendous bond that was to develop over the next year. Yes, this is the story about the love between me and my first car.
Read MoreWineSnark Gets Physical.
New Book Features WineSnark Memoir
I’握住我的书，我喜欢它的感觉。我的朋友罗宾·罗宾逊（Robin Robinson），作者The Complete Whiskey Course: A Comprehensive Tasting School in Ten Classes¹ explained, “There’s something special about the tactile pleasure of holding your thoughts in your hands.” Conscious ideas and experiences suddenly have paper and ink to smell, an evocative cover to see, and rustling pages to hear. But it’s the weight in my hands that makes me realize that when it comes to the five senses, nothing gets my heart thumping like the sense of touch. I can’t help myself, I’m a tactile kind of guy (no, no – nottactful- 您普通的读者比这更了解我）。我的意思是，当涉及到纯粹的喜悦时，没有其他意义更普遍地融入我的经历中，而不是触摸感。
I Teach Therefore I Am! (Regrettably I Am In New Jersey)
Mark Twain reportedly once quipped, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” For regular readers of WineSnark I’d like to say that despite my long absence from these pages I am not dead, I’m just living in New Jersey.
And when the Grim Reaper finally does come calling , I hope to go out in a trance-like stupor, just like my readers.
Not long ago I told my wife that when my time finally does come, I want to go out like Willard Motley who famously said, “Die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.”
She said, “Too late.”
Read MoreA Magical Christmas Revisited
“丝袜被烟囱悬挂在小心上，希望圣尼古拉斯很快就会在那里……”
I’ve had my ups and downs this past year. First, there was the Lexus that sent me up in the air, and then there was a misstep that sent me down the stairs. That probably explains why I wasn’t buying into the whole “Jolly ol’ St. Nick” routine when the holidays arrived.
到了12月，我是一个与他的内心scrooge保持联系的人，但随后 - 与迪克恩（Dicken）的变革性狂欢的命运保持一致 - 发生了一些神奇的事情，我突然发现霍莉·乔利（Holly-Jolly）在我的脚步中弹回了。出乎意料的是，我颂歌，颂歌，颂歌是与圣诞节精神的怪异（但真实）的相遇 - 我不是在谈论蛋酒。
Read MoreThere Should Only Be One Turkey At Thanksgiving
Don’t Let It Be Your Wine
“Wine is art. It’s culture. It’s the essence of civilization and the art of living.”Robert Mondavi
“Wine. It’s how classy people get shitfaced.”Cocktail Napkin
T汉克斯（Hanksgiving）是一年中特殊的时间，葡萄酒和食品作家感谢他们回收的疲倦的老陈词滥调过度。我坚信作家不应该重新陈述旧的陈词滥调。我作为作家的工作是创造新的无聊陈词滥调。本周，每本报纸，杂志和葡萄酒博客作者都会推出他们的选秀权，供与土耳其配对的完美葡萄酒，这意味着您将听到很多有关黑比诺的信息。那么为何不？黑比诺像肉汁一样与火鸡一起患有心脏病。
On Thanksgiving the family gathers at my house to share good food, great wine, and several strains of influenza. It’s that special holiday where a unique assortment of drunkards, criminals and racists gorge themselves on my hard-earned bounty. No wait, that’s not my family, that’s congress. I want to stress in no uncertain terms that my family are not drunkards, criminals and racists; they’re just drunkards.
Read MoreWineSnark Memoir Included in Book Anthology
The story is also a finalist in the 2018 Preservation Foundation’s Storyhouse Writer’s Showcase.
Life on the Road Without Any Brakes
Gloria Steinem wrote, “More reliably than anything else on earth, the road will force you to live in the present.”
Oddly enough, Ms. Steinem’s words inspired me to revisit the past. This is a tale about life on the road – a passion I discovered long before wine but found no less intoxicating.
It’s not like I thought I was going to die.
My canteen had run dry the previous day, the last of my granola two days before that. I desperately missed the water, the granola not so much. Sure, I was in a desert without food and water, dehydrated, exhausted, a Barry Manilow tune stuck in my head, but I didn’t think it would kill me. By the tenth chorus I only hoped it would.
Read MoreLowering The Boom On Bordeaux Labels
Chapter Seven. Part Three.
Next month marks the 24th anniversary of my life in the wine and spirits trade but my preoccupation with wine actually began about a dozen years earlier. In fact, by the time I bought a wine store in 1994 both my wine cellar and my liver were overflowing with classified Bordeaux. Given my penchant for drinking mature claret you may find it hard to believe that I still own the very first first growth I ever purchased.
In 1985 I visited Sherry-Lehmann for three consecutive days before I finally summoned the nerve and the capital to purchase a bottle of 1982 Chateau Margaux. How different would my life have turned out if I used the money for something more practical – say repaying my student loan for example. I might be writing a blog about fiscal responsibility instead of wine and then what would I do with all those liver jokes.
Read MoreRashomon, the Relativity of Taste & Marquis Fruit Weight
Chapter Five. Part Three.
In Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1950 filmRashomon,four people witness the same crime but recount drastically different versions of the event. TheNew York Timesreported, “The title quickly entered the English language and became shorthand for the relativity of truth: “the Rashomon effect,” invoked to indicate how witnesses to the same event may see it differently.”¹
I studied Kurosawa’s work in college where my professor summarizedRashomon’stheme with the observation, “Truth is relative; therefore there is no truth.” Since becoming a student of perception I’ve come to believe my professor may have gotten it wrong. It is not truth that is relative; it is perception.
Read MoreWine News Roundup, Dateline April 1st, 2018
United Press International (UPI)April 1, 2018
Government Study Finds Evidence of Fermented Grapes in Gallo Wine
Gallo Refinery, Modesto California
莫德斯托,盖洛酒庄的酿酒师unned by a recent government study that found traces of fermented grape juice in their wines. A Gallo spokesman said, “We are launching a full investigation into the source of these unusual components in our wines. While we do allow certain grapebyproducts在我们的葡萄酒,我们不这样做,作为一个规则,允许fermented grape juice anywhere near our fine wines.”
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