FUTURE VERSIONS

Future versions of this blog will be published with their own domain. Future versions of this blog are likely to include images as well as fine writing. Versions of this blog in the distant future may also include smells and tastes. Versions of this blog in the extreme future may bypass browsers, monitors and even words, and I will simply broadcast directly to your neocortex what it feels like to be me for several brief but amazing sessions per week. Future versions of this blog will likely feature never-before-seen b-side scraps from the cutting room floor, such as the two-stage haiku I wrote for Waylon Jennings on the way to work this morning. There may be sub-sections of future versions in which a portion of readers have access to trumped up “premium” content, not for money but for sending in objects of wonder. Posts of this blog in the coming weeks may include lists of CDs I bought but hated and am willing to mail to you in exchange for unwavering reader loyalty, such as the last Duncan Shiek record which was supposedly influenced by Nick Drake but let’s face it, Duncan, you’re no Nick Drake. Future versions of this blog may be tempted to include design features that blind the reader temporarily after reading a post, in order to prevent readers from reading the other blogs. Future versions of this blog will be run by a board of directors that includes corporate Hollywood heavyweights such as Stephen Spielberg and Ron Howard, and they will have forced me out when I refuse to bow to their wishes, and the sad thing is nobody will notice. Future versions of this blog will be funny, smart and slick but somehow lack the soul of these earlier versions. Future versions of this blog will be kept and traded like hockey cards. Future entries in this blog will feature fewer than 350 words each. Future weeks of blogging here will be done by b-level guest stars while I’m otherwise occupied. Entries in the coming weeks are likely to include me bragging about a coming trip to Barbados. Future versions of this blog will continue to leave unfulfilled the wasted potential of its author. So stay tuned.

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ARE YOU GUYS OKAY?

I’m a little concerned about you. All of you. There seems to be a lot of mid-winter blahs going around. Look, this isn’t a cure, just a treatment; every time you feel your mind turn on itself and attack, whistle an ABBA tune. The Name Of The Game is probably best, but any one will do.

Try it. Really!

Hamish cured mine with the much-needed MP3 of Got To Give It Up (Part One). Thanks, dude.

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GAME FOR SMALL SOUNDS

Years ago, when I was young, a friend and I got bored at work and made a game in which we’d speak no bad words. No, not no swears, but no words that were not there to serve what the speech meant. No words that were not right and to the point. We would aim for pure, spare speech that had no fat, you see? It was hard, man. The Game For Small Sounds at the site I like by Paul Ford is like that but it’s more fun, too.

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ZINFANDEL Vs. PRIMITIVO, ROUND TWO

Boy, those American Zinfandel makers are sure touchy. Our attorneys are still pouring over the cease-and-desist letter that came in from the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers. These crybabies claim that a) Primitivo is not Zinfandel, and b) the Italians who say it is are just trying to cash in on all the hard work that grouchy Zin producers put into marketing their product.

To which we reply, wetly; PHHHHHHHHHHHHPTT!

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GOT TO GIVE IT UP (part 1)

Hey, anybody out there got a copy of Marvin Gaye’s Got To Give It Up (Part 1)? Can you rip that bitch and e-mail it to me? I need to hear it. Now. It’s been years.

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THE MONEY MACHINE

I don’t need a time machine. I need an HG Wells money machine. It’d have riveted tin fins and tarnished brass fixtures and a thick glass porthole. I would gun the trembling contraption and go back in money, hoping to trample the butterfly of wild spending that started when I was 10 and blew my allowance on comic books and candy bars. And when I came back, things would be different, all right. Things would be different.

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LET’S TALK ABOUT FOOD, BABY

1) Yesterday in the Italian market we scored a jar of hot and spicy antipasto. This morning we scrambled eggs with a dollop of it and served on toasted poppy seed bagels with aged cheddar melted on top. It was somethin’ else.

2) Also yesterday, we ate a lot of Spanish Manchego cheese on rye crackers, sometimes with tapenade. Washed down with Grappa.

3) We are bullish on the wines of Paul Jaboulet. A while back we recommended his Parallele 45, and we have just last night enjoyed his much fuller Côtes du Rhône “Villages”, but our current favorite is his charming medium-bodied Les Traverses.

4) We are also recommending a Canadian white, Cave Spring’s 2000 dry reisling. We have been recently, unexpectedly, craving it.

5) Research this weekend uncovered a tidbit, which we expect will interest our friend C, who has lately been championing the Italian red wine primitivo. This, from the latest LCBO Vintages release magazine: “Since primitivo and zinfandel are now known to be the same grape...”

6) We have finally, after two years of trying, found a brunch joint that we like here in Ottawa. In a town known for its half-assed approach to life, with its Capital-city, government-employee attitude that has poisoned the entire workforce, nothing is quite as half-assed as the brunches. But we have found a tiny oasis. Hip, small, casual and very, very tasty, we are planning to descend upon it weekly. And no, we are not going to tell you the name. As we said, it’s small.

7) Finally, we intend to make red beans and rice this evening, for no other reason than that it was a favorite dish of Louis Armstrong’s. And we dig Pops.

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