Dirty South Wine

Micro-Post- How to change the world starting with Starbucks

Super-Size sissy drink for Hardyn-- Who the hell is that?

Simple steps to change the world in 2012.

Starbucks-

There are far greater evils in the world than Starbucks.  But, hey, we do what we can where we are at. The simple protest could be to just walk away and vow never to enter, but sometime you just need free internet, a clean restroom, and a coffee milkshake.

Two Simple Ways to Create Change:

Name:  About 10 years ago, the asking of your name, and the ceremonious calling out from behind the bar of your 23 syllable drink / name combo was something to rejoice in.  It was a "check out what I got, suckers!"- Or more like - "Whoa, Tanya's drink and hair is going off!"  But in 2012, there is more of a desire for not-quite anonymity, but closer to mystery--  Like "who got that?"  For 2012, when asked your name at the counter-  It is Billy-Ray.  When all the drinks start being called out for Billy-Ray, we've won back some of our identity.

Sizes: The sizing of Starbucks is well engineered marketing strategy.  Tall, Grande, Venti, Trenta...  Words that Starbucks has co-opted.  I've never felt comfortable ordering by the Starbucks name-  instead always by S, M, L, XL-  but for this year, I will be a little more vocal-  When the person on the register calls out "Venti Mocha Snuggler for Billy-Ray"  I'm going to swing my arms infront of my body and bark back-  "Billy-Ray ordered a LARGE!"

If we can change Starbucks, we can change the world.

And if you are having a bad morning and want to throw in a jab at our coffee-overlords just to make you feel better...

Food:  Breakfast Sandwiches

From here on out to be ordered as McMuffins.

 

The 2012 Wine Survey

This is important

Go on-  Take it!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2012winefuture

Oh H*** NO! Hardy P Wallace Jr dot com?

That's right.  The hardypwallacejr.com site has launched.  I'm o-fficially a super-goon for hire.

 

The One Wine Wine Dinner?

The one wine wine dinner.

A few weeks back, I wrote a bit about porking corks (cruising through a gazillion bottles wine dinners and rushing through the flights) and perhaps mising what that wine had to say.

It got me thinking a bit of a knee jerk thang-  what about the exact opposite?  One multi course dinner with a single wine. 

Before you go "Ah Hell Naw!"  It isn't about consuming less-  A man gets thirsty at the table- I know!  But that multiple bottles (if needed) of the same wine are poured for the dinner.  This isn't about leaving them parched, it is about experiencing that wine more.

To do this well (while keeping it exciting) is probably pretty challenging.  To find the buttons, the hooks, and and the interplay- where that juice has something different enough to say...  Cuz, As good as it is the first time, the last thing we need is four courses of "Half Breed" on repeat...

 

Wine- Otterpops, Space Aliens, and Cher

So going deeper-  Why not just have wine?  Why does it have to be pigeonholed as "natural," "industrial," "made," "commercial," or whatever you want to call it?  Perhaps that is the easy way?  "Everyone is a weiner!" (even though we hate your guts, and my kid is wayyy better than your lil' Ricky who can't field a grounder unless it came rolling towards him in a KFC bucket)- It isn't that there has to be pigeonholing (which might be worse than a cornholing)- but we hope that process or lack of it is something to celebrate.

It isn't about superiority or inferiority-  It is about difference.  Alinea is a different experience from Chez Panisse which is a different experience from eating sushi at 5AM in a stall at Tsukiji fish market .  With food the consumer knows this. They seek it out.  They don't sit slurping oysters on the edge of Tomales bay expecting microfoams from the shucker, and they don't go eat Richard Blais' food for him to just stick a raw turnip on a plate.  These differences are consciously or subconsciously understood.  You go out for sushi, molecular gastronomy or to a steak house...  They aren't superior cuisines- just different.

But step into media-  We remember that first scene in the original Star Wars (after the text crawl) when the Imperial Destroyer flys over head-  that is not real, but duuuude, back in '77 we were therrrrre!  It captured the imagination, transported us to a place in space that neither exists or doesn't and that became the mythology of many of our dorked out lives.  It wasn't real, but to me, at the age of four, Star Wars was a documentary.  Later, once I realized there was no Greedo-  it became even better.  It was real in the sense of a real product of the imagination. (Now- who wasn't pissed with the remastered / altered Star Wars?)

Where it reaches the point of obscurity is when the altered reality we are presented with is done with the idea of skewing reality-- The covergirl on Glamour mag-  Photoshopped leaner, removed of character / imperfections, and put into a place that is physically unobtainable-  but yet sold as real.  Made wine isn't going to produce anorexic teens trying to attain immortality-  but it when pushed to extremes, when it is the market, it warps the idea of reality.  This isn't about vinous nips and tucks- it is about a complete space aliening transformation being presented as a new reality.

Same as when blue raspberry flavor becomes a child's reality of rapsberry.

When Cher's auto-tuned Cher's "Believe"-  comes on when I'm cruising between the hills of Alexander Valley, don't get me wrong-  windows down, volume up, I get a little excited-  I used to feel guilty, now I get all fuzzy up in my personal Jimtown

But then there's Aretha...  that doesn't get your Jimtown, her inflection, character, and touch gets your soul.  It is a character that is filled with character. 

We don't want to stop progress, but we don't want to lose touch with our souls

This isn't raising one and damning another-  It is about seeing things for what they are-  Celebrating the making or non.