wtf man. summer is over. had man fun. mad shows. can't believe the year is almost over. wow. what does fall 08 have in store? so much stuff i want tp do man. want to start making money blogging. bout to start a comic blog. i feel i can a lil money on that. i feel real bad about what's happened to this blog. but all bad. i learnt a lot selling this blog out. i learnt about buzz words and traffic and all that. would really like to take things further. we'll szee where things go.
On April the third, two thousand and eight, around six thirty in the evening, I attended a wined tasting at The Tasting Room Restaurant in downtown Manhattan, sponsored by BrooksBrothers and MasterCard, with GQ contributor David Lynch as the host. The place was jam packed as soon as I walked in, and I was on time. The Tasting Room is a small and intimate Restaurant with brick walls and homely decorations like parcels stacked atop a shelf and faux cowhide hanging on the wall. The setting was dimly lit with a dinner feel, with heour d'ouerves of popcorn and sour cheese on a table about eight feet by four feet sitting in the middle of the front of the room and an empty floor in the back that looked fit for a dance floor with dinner tables along the walls of both areas with plates of popcorn on them.
The DJ played soft mid tempo jams to put the apparently upper crust crowd at ease but the music had enough bounce to satisfy the tastes of urbanites as well. A bespectacled man took the microphone at about six forty five to introduce or host for the night, GQ Magazine contributor, David Lynch, who writes articles on wines and food for the glossy.
With so many people packed in the intimate setting and food all around, I was ready to dig in to the libations about to be served. And what would be more fitting for an evening of wine tasting than an apertif of champagne from Champagne, France. The waiters and waitresses strutted out with glasses of Pol Roger NV Brut, a luxury champagne that was bright and celebratory in it's taste. It is harvested from about two hundred acres of vineyards that is still family owned in Champagne France. According to our Program, this champagne retails at about forty five to fifty dollars a bottle. It was very lively in my mouth and I would recommend this champagne for any celebration. They served the champagne in wine glasses which led to new champagne experience for me. Champagne taste better when you can smell it first. Keep that in mind. As we were drinking our champagne, The Tasting Room Restaurant was treating us to samples from its own menu, which was very delightful, because as these Private Party events are always catered, guests are hard pressed to find the food or drinks that were served, that being, you can attend a party for a clothing line and know where to find the clothes, but the chicken wings they served were so good, and you don't know who catered the event so you don't know where to go to get it again. That was not the case here. The Tasting Room started of with steamed fish scallops. Mouthwatering good. Steamed fish scallops and champagne make a great combination.
After our apertif of Paul Roger NV Brut and fish scallops, we were in for a treat of four rich and aged red wines from California to Italy.
The first one was a well tempered Handley Cellars Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2005 from Mendicino County California. As the wines were being served, Mr. David Lynch, our Professorial hosts got atop his chair and educated us on the kind of grapes used in the wine, the elevation they were grown on and the economics behind the Prices of a bottle of the wine we were having. His lecturing style is that of one of your favorite college Professors so google his name and buy his books and if you see him hosting an event near you, attend. It would be good for you. Our Programs for the evening had a wealth of information about each glass so a lot of what I'm relaying to you here was culled from the program and what I recall from Mr. Lynches lectures.
The Handley Cellars Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2005 is from, as its' name implies, Anderson Valley in California, its a wine made from tempestuous grapes which are grown along a coastal appellation in Mendocino County. This wine sells at about thirty dollars a bottle and is very soft in its taste. This is a good wine to drink on a Sunday evening after you've read your New York Times and are ready to mellow out for the evening. Its bitters aren't very rich but its sweetness is bold and flavor just heavy enough to awaken the tastes of whatever meal you would want to have with it.
Following that was one of the most flavorful wines of the evening. La Rioja Alta Rioja Reserva "Vina Alberdi" 2000 from Rioja Spain, and one of if not the best Value of the night at twenty one dollars a bottle. The sweetness was deeply rich and well mellowed with a full biting bitterness and sharp aftertaste. This wine is sold at a minimum of five years old, and according to our program it is one of the youngest wines from the Rioja Reserva. At a retail price of twenty dollars a bottle, this is one of the steals out there with wine prices riseing due a weaker U.S. dollar. The La Rioja Alta Rioja Reserva "Vina Alberdi" 2000 is aged two years in the tank, two years in the barrel, and one in the bottle before it hits the market.
Next was Luigi Pira Barolo 2003 from Piedmont, Italy. As the Handley Cellars Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2005 this is a wine grown along an Appellation from the cool hills of southeast Piedmont, Italy. I recall this wine being especially light, with a bursting flavor, and smooth aftertaste. It is from a smaller producer with twenty acres of vine and retails at thirty eight dollars a bottle. If your taste is for soft, luxurious flavor this wine is for you as it delivers at its price point. But don't expect it to over deliver however. It is what it says it is, a three year old wine, but at thirty eight dollars a bottle, and with a name like Barolo, you really can't ask for more.
After the Luigi Pira Barolo 2003 was served, the restaurant got a lot lighter. The crowd that was there at six thirty for the champagne and Handley Cellars Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2005 filtered out and so there was an abundance of Chateau De Sales, Pomerol 2004, the final wine of the night for the one third of the crowd that was left. Before the final wine was served however, the waiting staff brought out some delightful treats from The Tasting Room Restaurant during the interim. There was a Pork sausage which I delighted in. I must have had about ten servings of that, along with some very sweet and richly sour deep fired dumplings that were so packed with flavor your taste buds dripped. There was also a Mushroom soup that they served in small Japanese tea cups that were so hot and smooth going down, and was complimented with servings of steamed mushrooms served on bread crackers. Very nice. After that they brought out these petite burgers that were so fulling I could only eat one. I had indulged in so much entrees the burgers just were too much to cap it off with. But it was tasty and the Beef was fulfilling.
Finally our Chateau De Sales, Pomerol 2004, from Bordeaux, France was served. It was a good wine to finish the night of with because in my opinion the wined served that night were so good and so deep, that least flavorful of the bunch, was still a good wine nonetheless. It is grown on one hundred and seventeen acres inPomerol according to our program on a Chateau that once was a Carthusian Monastery. At twenty five dollars a bottle retail, this is a wine in which you get what you paid for. And that's not bad. It's a good wine. Just not nut as bursting with flavor as the Handley Cellars Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2005 or the effusive taste of the Luigi Pira Barolo 2003. It had a bland palette of tastes, no bitterness, sours or sweetness to speak of. It was soft and somewhat pleasant and would probably be a good wine to watch a movie with. Now if you want a wine to eat a steak or a lobster with, from the samples of that evening I would recommend the Handley Cellars Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2005 and the Luigi Pira Barolo 2003.
That was it for the night and afterward everyone engaged in small talk and big talk depending on who you were talking to. But the taste of those fish scallops and red wines stuck with me through the night, and probably will throughout the remainder of my life.
written by Keith Nation for Dony.blogspot.com, and www.ritetrackrevolutions.com.
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The Black Rider
This blog is going to take on a more personal tone. Tonight I hope to blog about three issues of Moon Knight from MARVEL comics. There will be more posts in abundance about comics, albums, magazines and novels, etc, as I share my view on the views of others. I'll also offer my view on film, new and old, and parties I go to, and places that I go. I've also been capchaed by blogger again, so If I don't post mobile news tomorrow, that's why. That might force me to make the switch from blogger to wordpress that their algorithm sees me as a false positive. And while I;m at ranting, what's with adwords? I love google and all, but can they make those ads look better. They look like the trash of the web.
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The Black Rider
I often find that there is time, not enough, to do all that there is to be done. I can write a list after work and by the time I get home and finish my dinner and watch some TV, my list of 10 or 13 feasible thing shrink to about 2 or 3 and I become the chief editor of my tasks and choose the more prudent ones to do. I want to blog a lot tonight, about comics and magazine articles and colors and so on. And I want to places and blog about them too. It's also been a while since I kept a private journal. I will be doing that again. I'm beginning to feel creative again. You can you cannot change the past or excise the demons thereof. But you can become wise of the, and wiser by them. That is a lesson of life I guess. That I can look my death in the eye, and not be afraid of it, allows me to live now.
by Dony V 'the Black Rider'
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The Black Rider
Cellphone: a dictionary with batteries.
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Tell me why my cdr drive plays cd's better than my dvdr drive?
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Time Not Enough
Time is not enough to do all that we need to do. Every day I find myself running out of time or running out of awareness to accomplish schedules tasks. I am constantly falling asleep at my desktop not accomplishing all the tasks I set out to have done. Web sites fail on me, my body fails on my, my PC fails on my and my body fails on me. And there is not enough time to fix everything in time because I have to go to work in the morning. My work does not pay enough to afford to have third parties help to accomplish my tasks so the money is not enough. The knowledge is not enough because I do not know enough to on how to fastest accomplish my goals in the best way possible in the quickest amount amount of time. That takes research and reading and applying. And unfortunately, I do not have the time for that.
I guess the studios got mad and said we can do better than you tube at their own game. We will give our customers the entire movie and in HD too. I guess in high school terms it goes as such, yahoo is to google as youtube is to hulu.
