Packaged goods
You’ve come a long way, baby. Remember that catchphrase? If you do remember it, you know, really remember it, then you’ll remember what it was all about. Cigarettes. Virginia Slims cigarettes, to be precise. Pretty smokes just for pretty babes. Apparently, in the late 1960s women were just waiting for a stylin’ cigarette to show […]
Cody McCormick
A perfect role The head honchos of the Buffalo Sabres huddled together about half an hour after their recent victory over the Florida Panthers. The teams had played evenly for four minutes and 55 seconds of overtime. Tyler Myers had slipped over the Cats blueline, and had blasted a slap shot at the Panthers’ net. […]
Outside the box
Last week we discovered the link between the English and their love of Bordeaux wines. The wine imported by the English wine merchants was known as Claret. This name was derived from the French word clairet, which was a pale or rosé wine. Claret was made in a similar manner as a rosé wine is […]
Of dead fish and stickers
The noxious green plastic package arrived in early January and sits on my desk like a dead fish. My tax return, needless to say. Perhaps to compensate, I have been reading my other mail more carefully. Fascinating things, those gas bills. And the mail I have been reading most thoroughly (I insist, I do have […]
Mother, father, sister, brother
Family. Family Day. One way or the other, we’ve all got family. Ya, you can deny it if you want, but you’ve got family. And what does a family really look like? Even today, a lot of folks don’t stray too far in their definition of family. When I was a kid going to a […]
Delicious desire
It is fascinating to establish the connection between Bordeaux and England. You may recall from an earlier column that, in the 4th century, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Bordeaux area had suffered incursions by both the Goths and the Vandals, who were just passing through. The Visigoths later resettled the area. It […]
NFL Hall of Fame
Inductees of 2011 “Turn out the lights! The party’s over!” Those were the words of “Dandy” Don Meredith, a former Dallas Cowboy. Every Monday night, when there was no doubt in the outcome of a National Football League contest, Meredith would sing that tune, horribly. The Super Bowl party is over in Dallas. The Packers […]
Heart of my heart
It could hardly be the month of February without thinking of love, loved ones and hearts. Since 2004, hearts have been on my mind, almost every day of my life. Big old internal organ hearts, not the Hallmark Moment hearts on the shelves of the local drug store. As you may remember, I wrote about […]
Pairing with lamb stew
Now, as the Cistercians improved the quality of the wines in their vineyards, they subdivided the Côte d’Or into individual microclimates. Many of the names given to these parcels still resonate. For example, a Bare Hill (Mont Rachet) or The Roman, La Romanée, suggesting a Roman vineyard on that site. Their success did have some […]
Super Bowl XLV
The game, the event and the circus A man had 50 yard line tickets for the Super Bowl. As he sat down, he noticed that the seat next to him was empty. He asked the man on the other side of the empty seat whether anyone was sitting there. “No,” the man replied, “The seat […]