Wine Alert! Wine Alert!

My buddy Steve just started co-managing a wine store called the Wine Room – they do mostly phone sales but do have a physical presence as well. The guy who ran this place before Steve stepped in bought about 80,000 times more wine than he was selling. Hence, the Wine Room has too much wine. Therefore, they are selling a bunch of it off at FIFTY PERCENT OFF.

I called on him last week to say hi and drop off a catalog and ended up walking out with a case of wine. There goes my commissions from this account for infinity, but oh well. This is one of the few bad things about my job – excessive wine purchase disorder.

Whatever. Anyone into good deals on wine should check this out. Of course, you’ll have to pay shipping, but seriously some of the deals here are too good to pass up. I can’t actually list the wines due to the wineries freaking out if they see this. Here is the website. Call and talk to Steve and Jason and they’ll tell you what they’ve got going on. Tell ’em poptarticus sent you (they probably won’t know what the hell you are talking about.)

Wine. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

I am shattered. I saw Wilco at the Greek Theatre in L.A. last night. I worked on the way up, and the way down; sat in traffic for a million years. Then I got home this afternoon and immediately went to The Vine for five hours.

I am burnt out, toxificated, and jellied. But man oh man was that a fucking great show.

I love Wilco, and this is no news to anyone who knows me or even someone who doesn’t know me but perhaps occasionally reads my blog. I LOVE them and I love Mr. Wilco, Jeff Tweedy, more than plenty of other Wilco freaks out there, I am sure. But whateves, I am not trying to play the “I love him more than you do” game. I am merely trying to show you, on your screen at home or work, how intensely I feel about this one person who has a major role in making my life livable.

Somehow, the show snuck up on me. It wasn’t like November when I was throwing myself violently into the general vicinity of the experience. All of a sudden, it was time. So after a day of working in the sprawling, uber suburban deadscape of the San Fernando Valley, I made my way slowly up the Hollywood freeway. An hour and fifteen minutes later I finally made it to to my destination. Thank you, Hollywood Travelodge, just for BEING THERE. On those nights when all I need is a clean, cheap pillow to pass out on…

I checked in, pounded a glass of Hendry Zinfandel, and hit the pavement. I walked to the theatre, almost two miles away. It was a fantastic walk through a modern fairyland. I think people have the wrong image in their minds when it comes to Hollywood. Hollywood is so cool. Awesome architecture, great places to eat and drink, an in-general killer vibe. I seriously could live there. There are trippy things hiding in every nook and cranny. I could go on and on about the fabulousness of Hollywood, but this entry is not about Hollywood. This entry is about Wilco.

I arrived at the Greek and went to the bar. No surprises there right? For red wine they had Robert Mondavi Woodbridge something and Columbia Crest Cabernet – the lesser of two evils, obviously. So I asked for a glass of that. “That’s only available by the bottle,” the bartender told me. “I can get a BOTTLE?” I asked. She shows me this plastic carafe thingy, that they pour the bottle into, then you can take the whole thing to your seat. “SWEET,” I say. “How many glasses?” She says. “ONE,” I say. “SWEET!” she says.

I took my bottle of wine and went and got a hot dog. It was some famous Hollywood hot dog and it rocked, especially with some fine cheap Washington Cabernet. I sat by the condiment stand and watched the crowd talk on their cell phones. It was definitely an L.A. crowd.

The opening act, the Roots, were well into their set when I arrived, and I should have gone to my seat to watch them, but I waited until they were done to make my way in. I had a great seat – I am no judge of distances, but Jeff Tweedy’s head was perhaps the size of a walnut. You get the idea. My seat was at the end of the row and within minutes another single person was sitting right behind me, and he started talking to me almost immediately. I will encapsulate our conversation into a sound-byte dealie-bob here:

Mike: I love Wilco.
Me: Me too!
Mike: I came from San Diego for this show.
Me: Me too!
Mike: I live in Ocean Beach.
Me: DUDE. Me TOO!

Is that weird or what? Bonus! It is always cool to be around other OBcians, but an OBcian who loves Wilco? We both danced like total geeks. (That’s not the OBcian – that’s the Wilco part, I think.)

Anyhow. Conversation stopped when Wilco took the stage. An idyllic moment… dusk, in that fantastic amphitheater in the Hollywood Hills, surrounded by trees and clueless L.A. people… that moment in my brain when visual is replaced by aural is the moment when I really and truly love life. Setting is drowned out. I don’t even need to see anymore. Hearing is enough for me.

And hearing Wilco for two hours? It makes my heart hurt just trying to write about it. Six guys on stage, sometimes quiet, sometimes out-of-control manic, always totally into it. When you love a band like I love Wilco, seeing them live is a religious experience, but damn if Wilco doesn’t live up to every fervorous stigmata-ish episode that’s ever gone down in the Christian world. Wrap that feedback around my brain, and that is all I will need for quite a while. In the words of Jeff Tweedy himself, in Handshake Drugs:

Saxophones started blowing me down
I was buried in sound

The end of this song ends in distortion. At this show, Jeff and Nels Cline, an cruelly amazing guitarist, stood face to face and just emptied their guitars of sound, filling the theatre, and my soul, with the most gratifying static. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to Zen, that kind of sound.

I could go on – Jeff’s trippy congeniality, the bonding with his family, who was in the audience… but I prefer, in my exhausted state, to leave you in distortion. I may be getting older, but I am serious when I tell you, I hope I never tire of my own Zen.

Everyone is all in a mega-uproar (or in that “I told you so” pose) about Michael Jackson walking out of that courtroom today a free man. I wasn’t surprised. How can you prove that shit? Especially when you’ve got boocoo bucks to pay a really good lawyer. The whole story, the whole scenario, is totally stomach turning. I am glad it is over.

I have to say though, that I do feel kind of bad for Michael Jackson. That guy is so twisted and out of it that he doesn’t even understand he has done some really fucked up shit. I really don’t think he knows. His ranch is called Neverland – in his brain, it is neverland. Coming out of the courthouse today he looked so drugged he could barely lift his head or wave at the 100 people there screaming his name. He was acquitted, but he is dead. He is the walking dead.

Yeah, it is messed up that he did what he did and walked away. Yeah, if he was poor and black instead of rich and white (now) or even poor and white, it probably wouldn’t have gone down this way. Let’s just hope he gets some serious therapy, that the boys involved get the same, and that this vicious, twisted cycle gets stopped here.

The media has sucked all the humanity out of us. Michael Jackson is a human being, though he made himself look like a circus animal. What came first, the media or the circus? I am not trying to defend him. I am just trying to say – make it stop. And let the healing begin.

There is an interesting thread going on over on the slowtalk message board. It’s a thread about moving – not to other countries (for once), but to other places here in the U.S.

It’s no secret to anyone how much I love Ocean Beach. It’s been three years, and I still love it. I love the ocean, I love the vibe, and I love the funkiness of this little beach town.

There is one huge problem. I can’t buy a house here. I’m sorry, but I am not going to pay just under a million bucks for a half-rotting beach cottage. I’m not only not gonna pay it, I CAN’T pay it. Mostly because I don’t have any money.

One thing that we sometimes forget here in Ripoffville, is that there are lots of other places to live where you can actually afford to buy a nice, big house. Then you can paint the walls purple if you want, something you could never do in a rental (though when I was eight my mom painted the trim in my room in our rented house purple, just to make me happy.)

As I get older this whole idea of buying a home presses on my brain more and more. Do I really want to be an old lady still renting? What if the world doesn’t really blow up like I think it will? What if it KEEPS GOING? Then I’ll be up it without a paddle.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is, eventually I will move, just so I can buy a house.

There are a few things that are very important to me – having live music venues around (now I have to drive up to L.A. all the time for that, which really sucks, and is expensive, plus there are a lot of L.A. people there); having wine around, like decent wine shops, and a bar or two with good wine, otherwise I’ll be spending too much time at home; having like-minded people around, even if it’s only three or four; hmmm… what else? I guess a Whole Foods type place. And someplace, anyplace, that I can sit by a body of water.

The cool thing is I can pretty much take my job anywhere.

I’m thinking Austin might be cool, just because of the music scene. St. Louis also appeals to me, and so do the Carolinas because I can live by the ocean there. I am telling you, when you start to think about this stuff, it starts to get crazy, because all the wanderlust in me starts coming out. It’s unstoppable.

For now, it is just talking to myself. But it is an intriguing dialog…

A few nights ago, I was at The Vine and ran into Bryan, one of the guys from Stone Brewing and his buddy (oops. forget his name.)

Anyway the buddy gave me a sample of a lip balm he is selling, called Zinka, your basic lip balm in a skateboarder type package. I told him if he really wanted to appeal to the ladies, to make a lip balm with the flavor of Absolute Mandarin vodka, and to put glitter in it.

So if an orange vodka flavored glittery lip balm comes out into the market soon, DUDE – THAT WAS MY IDEA.

Getting back to the point, I was talking to these two guys about some stuff that happened in the late eighties and the buddy goes “whoa, you are OLD!”

“Uh, yeah, I am forty,” I said. Then Brian said, to his friend, “aren’t you turning forty soon?” That guy was the same age as me! Sometimes the politics in this town can be pretty twisted.

In other news, it looks like Jack White from the White Stripes just got married. All kinds of shamans and shit, plus his ex-wife as the maid of honor. What is up with that weird hair and that hat? Is he blow-drying every day? Or just using a lot of product? Whateves, maybe it will work out with his supermodel. In the meantime I’ll keep getting older.

A long time ago, in a galaxy totally close by, I produced a play based on the TV show “Bewitched.” I haven’t thought of it in ages, but in a random search I came across a little bit written by Mr. SF, Hank Donat, who I kind of remember, a little. Before you start coming after me with scripts you want me to produce, let me tell you, this production cost very little money. I think we had a fund raiser where we lost money because so much sangria was consumed. Still, we somehow made it.

I even acted in the second incarnation of the stage production of Bewitched. I was the “Commercial Girl” and in between acts I did commercials, alone, on stage. I silently mixed cocktails, and drank them, I smoked a cigarette out of a long holder, drove a car, and hula hooped. Sometimes all at the same time. At the end (because it was Christmas) I got to go into the audience and throw toys at people. It was time consuming, nerve racking, and fun.

Someone quit in the speaking cast, after awhile, and then director Prentiss Smithson (who was also one of my best friends) made me take a speaking part. That part, a one-liner, was a lesbian activist who falls in love with Joan of Arc. My line? I remember it very clearly. “I like HER. I REALLY like her.”

That was a million years ago, really. It always feels like time is going by so fast, but that was eleven or whatever years ago and it feels like an eternity. So maybe time is not speeding by the way we think it is. Maybe days, and months fly, but years don’t. Doesn’t it seem like last June was a really long time ago? It does to me.

I haven’t seen Prentiss Smithson in forever, and he was a very, very good friend. It’s weird how people come and go in life. I remember so many insane nights sitting in the front room of Prentiss’s house on 16th Street in San Francisco, with all this Egyptian shit painted on the walls, drinking wine and ingesting whatever, eventually slithering around with a bunch of bohemian types to the soundtrack of “Hair” or the Velvet Underground, or Ween. It was quite a scene and I met a lot of people there. But now I am gone and they probably don’t remember me anymore.

But I remember Prentiss! And I know some of the people who read Poptarticus will, too.

I desperately want this dress but check out the freaky mannequin! You have to zoom in for the full effect. (Track marks, forgot to wipe off makeup for two years, among other things.)

My good friends Pauline and Steve lost their cat Butch today. I know how much they loved him, so I am drinking a glass of Chimney Rock Cabernet in Butch’s honor. Farewell, Butch! In the next life I want to come back as a cat that is as loved as you were. Even if I can’t wear any Betsy Johnson as a cat.

Butch! Take care of yourselves P & S.

I bet you all are wondering, did I pay a million dollars to stay one extra night in Vegas, to see Queens of the Stone Age.

Well, no I did not. But I did try. For a while, until one reservation lady said “we have rooms, but it’s gonna be expensive. Stevie Wonder is in town, and he’ll sell it out.”

I’d think that was weird but I just spend $300 on tickets for the Rolling Stones this morning. I can’t believe I spent $75 for each ticket. What the fuck was I thinking of. Now I have two extra Beck tickets, two extra Wilco tickets, and two extra Rolling Stones tickets. I need to take a sober pill.

Anyhow I did not stay, and anyway I truly believe four nights in Vegas is about all I can take. That place is INSANE. And I have spent many a night there. It is even more insane than before, only because now it is expensive AND insane. Before it used to be, eh, a value and insane.

It has changed plently in the five or so years since I have been there. It is a different town.

The very first evening I won $115 on a video poker machine in the truly crap casino at the Best Western Mardi Gras, where we were staying. I hit four of a kind TWICE in something like twenty minutes. This would be my only streak of luck in all four days, but no biggie – I gambled with that money for a couple of nights, and also, I ate very, very well. Because if there is one thing you can do well in Vegas (besides gamble and roast in the hot sun like a piggie being prepared for dinner, also get really drunk on tall, fruity drinks and puke on the strip, not that I did any of these things… except the gambling part) it is eat well.

The very first night, after an excruciating set up of our booth at the Convention Center, me and my co-worker Freddy, plus my bosses Donna and Elliott, motored on over the the Forum Shops at Caeser’s for dinner at Chinois. This is a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, and I booked there thinking the sommelier would hook us up. He didn’t (except for an order of egg rolls – lame) BUT the food there was So Fucking Good. I was starving, and after some sort of crappy, boring appetizers, I wasn’t looking forward to the rest. But it was awesome. Sliced, tender steak with a sweet and sour sauce and Wasabi mashed potatoes, perfect fried tofu, Peking duck with pancakes… it was all awesome. Hard to believe food this good was coming out of a giant Wolfgang Puck type deal. He should go and check on his restaurant at O’ Hare Airport – they could use him up there.

One thing that bugged about this meal though – and I must say it bugs me to no end no matter where I go, was the wine “upsell.” I hate, hate, hate, when Mr. Waiter tries to sell some gnarly-priced wine to unsuspecting customers. Dude, please let us peruse the list and make our own decision. You are NOT a sommelier and are in fact only trying to make money for yourself, and not very suave-ly.

Oh yeah, we’ll take a bottle of that $225 bottle of wine, no problem. NOT! I feel so bad for all the people who got shafted by this guy. Vegas is an expensive town now, but Cristo. I didn’t hit four aces on a $5 machine. It was just quarters.

We got a $65 bottle of Roederer Estate from Anderson Valley and then, much to our waiter’s dismay, a $42 bottle of Australian Shiraz which went PERFECTLY with our food, thank you.

The next day we worked, and that night Donna and Elliott had plans, so me and Freddy went out. I have worked with Freddy (short for Frederique, she’s from France) since 1987, so we have a long history. Our relationship hasn’t always been easy, but time and age have mellowed it. Also we both really care about the company we work for. So it was fun to hang out with her.

We went over to Bellagio, thinking we might sit outside and watch the show on the lake with it’s mile-high operatic spurts. Fat chance. Lucky for us though, we ended up at the bar at Todd English’s Olives. Our bartender, Dave, took fine care of us, not even balking at the $9 glass of Rose I ordered. We had an uber tasty ahi tartare thing, and a flatbread with hummus and greek salad on top. We had one more thing coming (we told Dave just to bring us whatever) but we were full and Sweet Dave held back on the third thing, whatever it was. Instead we had a dessert of three homemade ice creams and three fresh, hot cookies. Then Dave brought us two Espresso Martinis, on the house! Yum! I think I love hard liquor, especially in Vegas.

After, I lost $20 at Blackjack and $20 at video poker. Freddy was so funny, asking questions like “so it’s bad if you go over 21?” All in all, a fabulous night.

The next evening, we went to the top of THEhotel (yes, that is what it is called) to eat at Alain Ducasse’s Mix. I mean, it is at the top – of VEGAS. You are looking DOWN at the MGM. We were way high up and it was so beautiful up there. The sun went down and it was pink and orange and so, well, Vegasy.

Bad Alain Ducasse/Mix – lame waiter. Trying for the upsell even on WATER. Sadly we fell for it (well I didn’t, but I wasn’t paying.) We probably had eight $12 bottles of water. Everytime I took a sip of water my glass was filled. When we left, all the water glasses were full of really expensive water. I pissed our waiter off good by ordering two appetizers instead of a appetizer and a main. And I know I could be such a better server and I would never, ever treat my customers like walking wallets. What a wanker.

Good Alain Ducasse/Mix – the sommelier. He ROCKED. For one thing, I asked him about a Pinot Blanc and he had two – one from Chalone and one from a winery called Lorca. He sold us the Lorca, which was half the price of the Chalone, and a bargain at $32. Later our French Corkscrew Supplier (who was paying for this fine event) would order two bottles of expensive, over-oaked red – one Kenwood Artist series Cab, and a St. Julien. Both wines needed to decant for a few hours, and they just didn’t taste good. He should have just let the sommelier decide, but he doesn’t speak any English.

So for dinner, I had an ahi tartare thing (WINNER – Todd English’s Olives) and then some porcini flavored gnocchi. I chose badly on that one. Everyone else was eating lobster and scallops. I just felt so bad for our Corkscrew guy, who was picking up the check, so I was trying to be nice. Then I saw how much he spent on the wine, as he was sitting right next to me. I could have ordered five lobsters for one of those bottles. Oh well. For dessert I had a really bizarre combo of some chocolate wafer thingies and a Lemon Grass flavored ice cream. It did NOT work. In fact all the food there was just OK to me, but damn if the setting wasn’t worth the $150 PP price tag, especially since I was not paying. But, the winner of the week, at a fraction on the price: Olives. I really loved that place. No upsell, fun bartenders, great food. At Olives they know what it’s all about.

After dinner we all went into the high-falutin lounge and had some more $15 glasses of wine. I was totally shocked when a big, fat, ugly bouncer came and told us we had to find another table as the one we were at was reserved. But there were no other tables. We got kicked out! We weren’t cool enough. Also we weren’t escorting any high-class hookers. Oh well.

So this leaves my last and final night in Vegas. I would go it alone. Donna, Elliott and Freddy left for home after we broke down our booth. I went out into the hot night in search of adventure, or at least another four of a kind.

First, I went to the new Wynn resort. It was OK. The outside was really cool with forests and waterfalls. But the inside? Boring. I left really quick and went to the Venetian where I drank a really strong Absolute Mandarin and Soda and lost $40 on a video poker machine. I really know better than to play in a place like that, but I was so thirsty, I can’t even tell you.

I cruised over to the Imperial Palace because they have this area to play blackjack where musician impersonators are dealers and once in a while some hot chick gets up on a stage thingy and lipsynchs to J. Lo. My dealer was Billy Idol and first I was way down, then up. It was fun there. At one point there were these two guys from Liverpool on one side of me and a frosted, older lady on the other. Then this Mariah Carey impersonater gets up and starts doing “Loverboy.” Well let me just tell you I HATE that song with a passion. I hate it, hate it, hate it. It sounds like three different songs with no direction and only Mariah’s practically naked titties could have made that song a hit. But when it was playing loud, in the casino at the IP, with Billy Idol dealing me blackjack, it WORKED. Everyone’s head (including mine) was bobbing up and down. It was pretty sick, let me tell you.

I knew it was time to go.

So I went next door to O’ Sheas. My gambling money was dwindling. I sat at the bar and played video poker, and actually got up pretty high, but of course I was dreaming about the four-aces (PLEASE) and I lost it all. A loud commotion threw me off. It’s Vegas, so I can’t really complain. But I think I’ve written enough, so I’ll continue this later.

Doy. Laurie commented on the last entry, well what happened with the Doves show?

The Doves cancelled a few days before, but I had to learn this from their website, and too late. I don’t know what was up with the Fillmore – no sign, no indication that that show was cancelled. Somehow the word got around – there were only a few people, besides me, who didn’t know what was going on. But still, the Fillmore could have least put up a sign.

So the Doves are coming back in June, and the tickets I had will be honored for that, so I sold them to some Irish guy in San Francisco. Then they will be in LA but on June 14, when I have a ticket to see Wilco at the Greek Theater. Can’t be in two places at once, homies.

It’s too bad as I just got my hands on a live Doves CD and it is hella rocking and cool. But Wilco wins.

The Doves have become uber-successful since I wrote this in Sicily in September 2000: “Back in my room, my first view of Orion this year, millions of stars, listening to the Doves (very important new British band – now Clea and Alex know.)” That was the same summer Coldplay was just starting, right before Kid A came out, right before my life totally changed. More on this later. (Clea and Alex were classical musicians I met in Taormina. We had a lot of fun there.)

It’s going to be a crazy summer. Already it is getting really hot. It was crazy in The Vine. Not crowded crazy, just the regulars Being Crazy. A couple of them, anyway. Or maybe that is normal. I think I live in a place where crazy IS normal. That place is in my brain.

Next week I am going to Las Vegas for the first time in a gazillion seconds. I dreamed about an alternate universe where people are made out of wax and you get around in roller coasters with no seat belts.

OK, so a little more about San Francisco.

I lived there for so long, that it doesn’t really do anything for me when I go there. I mean, I am not dying to be there; it isn’t like an exciting vacation destination for me (plus I am always working when I am there.) It’s like going home, just ’cause I know it so well. It always feels like I never left.

I ate Thai food twice in four nights there – both times Tofu and Spinach with Peanut Sauce. For some reason they can’t get that dish right here in San Diego. They always throw some broccoli or baby corn in it here. Or they make the sauce too thin. So that was pretty awesome. Now I am thinking about it all the time. That is one of two things I am thinking of.

Staying at the Phoenix Hotel was cool, but MY GOD, was it noisy. I knew it was going to be kind of noisy, but it was like being inside of a club until 2:00 A.M. and then being in the parking lot of the club for the hour after. Cool rooms, uber-nice staff, killer pool. But I’ll only stay there again if I seriously don’t want to go to sleep at night. Well, maybe not. I’ll probably stay again next year, knowing me. Even with the loud bass & drum coming from the bar area, even with the crumpling of beer cans and gay guy giggles at 3:00 A.M.

One night I went to the Edinburgh Castle and had Fish & Chips with Paul, the designer of my book. Do this next time you are in San Francisco – tell anyone who has lived there more than two years you went to the Edinburgh Castle. They will ask you, “did you have Fish & Chips?” Every single person will ask you that. But they are really good – they deliver them from someplace else, all hot and wrapped in paper. Everyone there seemed like 12 years old but they still have The Bends on the jukebox. That place rocks.

Our big wine tasting thing was great this year – after fourteen years, we are kind of getting the hang of it. Plus I must say Andrea Immer/Robinson (she just got married and popped out a brat) is totally cool. She actually came to my table at dinner and thanked me & Chad for working so hard all day. (Don’t know what she was thanking Chad for, hee hee.) THEN she thanked us when she made her speech accepting the award. This is the first writer in fourteen fucking years that did this. Wine writers don’t thank me, though I have probably sold more of their books than any other single person on the planet. It doesn’t do a wine writer any good to piss me off. Let’s just put it that way.

After the dinner a bunch of us went back to the Phoenix and drank many, many bottles (more) of wine, hence the drunk chick picture in the previous entry.

This entry is pretty scattered and needs editing but let’s face it, I am still totally wiped. This is the sucky thing about having a blog, that constant pressure to write something good. Sometimes I can’t, it’s hard, but I have to write SOMETHING or it wouldn’t be a blog, right?

I do have something really cool to write about, the awesome thing, the better than sex thing, the I can’t stop thinking about it thing. But I have to get my head around it a little more. Before the end of the weekend… though I have a feeling only two other people are going to get it. We shall see….

In the meantime check out this interview with Paris Hilton. Man, there’s more to her than meets the eye!

I thought the whole ditz thing was suppose to be an act. Whatever.