art

Owl barf and other tasting notes

Some odds and ends, my fellow inebriates:

Vodka Gummi Bears

Look how happy the one on the right looks, and how jealous its little neighbor seems. That’s because the big one is positively swollen with vodka. Even its eyes are bulging.

Unusual wine tasting notes

It’s true, I don’t know what “chicken coop” tastes like. Do you? I know what it smells like. There are a lot of weird tasting notes out there:

    • Wet slate. I’ve encountered this several times with white wine tasting notes. Unless you’ve been bullied mercilessly, you probably don’t know what the sidewalk exactly tastes like. (Lick the pavement, punk! Lick it! Now lick my boots. You like that?) But we’ve all smelt the aroma of rain hitting the pavement in summer…ahhhh!
    • Horehound. What the hell is horehound? Apparently the name applies to two genera of flower…or…cough drops. You be the judge which is lurking in your vino.
    • Baked beans, beef broth, spearmint, Kool-Aid. If I ever detect these flavors you’ll be the first to know, peeps. Big pass! (unless we don’t have any other wine in the house).

Broker’s Gin

The Broker’s Gin gents still have not called me. No tweets, no e-mails. Was the lovely Julia Gale messing with me? OMG!

Obama Unicorn Nude Baby Jesus Manger Christmas Card Art Painting

I’m loving my Dan Lacey print. Little did I know, the two small prints he sent with it are actually fridge magnets. Yes!

Fast and loose with the wine tasting

At Christmas my Nana and Papa brought over a bottle of two red wines mixed together. I’ve been wondering how to review them, but I guess I can’t. So let’s just say the bottle was conducive to getting shitfaced.

What the hell are they doing in elementary school?

Grade One is getting more bizarre. My mum opened the kid’s backpack today to find a photocopied picture of vole bones with actual, genuine vole bones glued on. WTF is a vole? Turns out they’re really cute, but not after they’ve been consumed and barfed up by an owl, which this one was. My mum almost puked at the breakfast table. The whole thing seems a bit abnormal, but apparently all the Grade Ones are gluing regurgitated rodent bones onto things at that school. Maybe the school needs funding?

Let’s just say all of the above points to alcohol, somehow.

MONT GRAS SOLEUS Cabernet Sauvignon (2009)—Not art, but that’s okay because I HAVE art

“LB! Wake up, LB!”

It was the six-year-old. I figured she had a frilly dress ready for me—as good a reason as any to yank me out of bed. I had a crashing hangover thanks to my parents’ wine snobbery, but more on that later. I went submissively with Miss P.

She carried me to the kitchen table, on which sat an envelope, addressed to LB (!). And inside….

Yes, yes, YES! A replica of Dan Lacey’s Obama Unicorn Nude Baby Jesus Manger Christmas Card Art Painting, kindly autographed by the artist.

I am so happy.

My joy almost negates the ill-effects of drinking the lion’s share of the Chilean cab we had last night. I was excited when I saw the bottle of MONT GRAS SOLEUS Cabernet Sauvignon (2009)—every Mont Gras product I’ve tried previously has been top-notch for the price point. Organically grown grapes seemed a further plus. The Los Guindos vineyards were planted between 1998 and 1999 about 50km from Santiago and managed organically from the get-go. SOLEUS is made from 100% hand-picked organic grapes and goes for $13.99 at our local booze shop.

A lucky string of excellent sub-$15 red wine finds (reviews to come) over the holidays had perhaps jacked up my expectations, as well as those of my parents. We don’t typically let wine languish in this house, but when the SOLEUS was poured…it sat.

Why?

The color is ruby red and enticing. In the glass the wine sheets, with legs quickly forming. From three feet away it induces salivation.

Three inches’ distance is another matter. Intensely aromatic, SOLEUS has an unfortunate petrol-like topnote with chicken-coop accents. These oddities—fortunately—are caught up in a dried-fruit onslaught, a heavy abundance of ripe red berries with lashings of tobacco and vanilla. The effect is disconcerting and palate-bothering. If you can get past the initial aroma, the front sip is quite acceptable, followed by a confusing mid-palate jockeying of flavors and a borderline-offensive ending.

Which was super for me, because my parents quietly abandoned their glasses, leaving the wine for me to finish. I got freaking wasted, my fellow inebriates. I have no idea what time they carried me to the bed I share with three other bears (who were probably relieved that I was too insensate to grind up against them).

All in all it was an awesome evening. The hangover was par for the course, and it was ameliorated wonderfully today by the contemplation of art.

The secret cure for New Year’s doldrums—Cachaca!

A zillion microbes for your child to play with

My typist abandoned me today to take the kids to an indoor play area, a filthy, sweltering sauna (she complained) that could prompt any sound atheist to conceive of purgatory as being fully possible.

The smell at the play area? Deep-fried things, not necessarily food.

The patrons? The sub-70-IQ ass-crack parade, a truck ride away from Walmart. Big hair, small vocabulary.

Their progeny? The apparent hope of our planet.

If my mum sounds like a miserable snob and potential eugenics proponent, consider that she, with her crap finances, losing snakes-and-ladders game of a career, thrashingly desperate parenting, inability to vacuum, and impending 43rd birthday, is experiencing a post-New Year’s letdown.

I can relate. Our house is officially dry—if you ignore the Malibu dregs and worm-inhabited mescale my parents insist could poison us. A blue bin of empties (which my mum forgot to put out for the collection truck) attests to the fact that we are…bereft of alcohol.

No wonder my mum is being such a drag. If she’s a fraction of the alcoholic I am, she must be suffering. My dad too—he’s watched, like, a hundred episodes of Monk.

I tried to cheer them up by reminding them about the Brazilian rum sample headed our way.

Me: Make sure you’re home for the Cachaca delivery.

To make a copacabana cosmo, you need Cachaca.

Mum: The what?

Me: C-A-C-H-A-C-A. Tropical rum. UPS. You’re welcome.

Mum: Excuse me?

Me: So you have to be home for that. And the painting. We need a frame for that too.

Mum: Why don’t you answer the door?

Me: I’m a bear. Bears are scary. The UPS driver will freak.

UPS tracking says it's in St. Paul, MN. It's getting closer. Thank you, Dan Lacey!

Mum: I’m out tomorrow, sorry, buddy.

Me: NO! You have to be home! I need that Cachaca!

Mum: You’ll live. They’ll put a sticker on the door and we’ll get it later.

Me: Noooooooo!!!!!

Mum: I doubt it’s coming anyway. Seriously, who would send you alcohol?

OMG, my parents are so harsh.