How I Spend My October: Thoughts on Wine, Fall, and Peter Weller

I would like to take this opportunity to properly apologize to Mr. Peter Weller in my post "Return of a Classic".  When listing other films he participated in I forgot to mention David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch.  Instead, in a frantic mess to think of a third film outside of the RoboCop franchise I listed Top of the World with Tia Carrere and Joe Pantilano.  Although I'm sure Top of the World is a great film (I caught maybe five minutes of it on a Wednesday afternoon on HBO) featuring actors that you remember from one other movie but that's about it, I myself would rather be known for a 1990's film adaptation to a book from the Beat era.  I know it doesn't matter.  But if Pete ever happens to read this (I really respect your work, Pete.  I even bothered to watch that History Channel special on French history you hosted.  Top notch work Mr. Weller) I want him to see and know that fans remember only the great films he's done, rather than the mediocre ones lost in the haze of the late 90's.  Then again, how many of us would want to be remembered for Buckaroo Bonzai (Maybe John Lithgow)?

On second thought, please don't read this, Pete.

I digress.

Welcome back to the blog.  Hope that everyone had a great week.  Mine went pretty well.  The weekend was very pleasant, given the fact that I had no obligation to work under the Tea Lords.  We had some great October weather here in St. Louis.  On Saturday, my long time friend and collegue, Matt Lewis, and I went with his parents out to Stone Hill winery in Herman, Missouri.  If you haven't been and have the means to go, I recommend it.  Herman is a pretty small town about a little over an hour west of St. Louis.  Very beautiful this time of year.  Lots of trees and hills.  Great place to stash your winery.  Anyway, took a tour of the wine cellar, which wasn't as expansive as I recall.  Yes, although this was my first time going to any winery since I've turned twenty-one, I did go with my parents once many years ago.  Probably when I was nine or ten.  All I remember was I played something like Wario World on my old gray brick Game Boy in the car on the way there and was pretty bored.  Watching your parents taste wine isn't the most fascinating thing in the world when your in elementary school.  But now, since I'm of age, the experience is worth the long car ride (Not much has changed, though.  I still played Game Boy, The Legend of  Zelda Ocarina of Time on my friend's 3DS, and he played on his Motorolla Xoom tablet). 

When we get there, we pay a couple bucks, Matt and I get our hands stamped with "21+" since we look like children and wait in the gift shop until it's time to take the tour.  We take it, get a little history about Stone Hill (Which I will not divulge in at the current moment.  I haven't the time nor patience right now).  Of course, at the end, we get to taste the wines.  We all gather round a circular bar thing, with two older people in the middle serving wines.  Now, they pull out the first wine and start pouring a little sample into each of our plastic cups.  The old guy pours for first Matt's parents, then Matt, then he gets to me and pours and says something like, "Are you even old enough to drink this?"

My first thought, "You've gotta be kidding me".

I show the guy my "21+" stamp.  Still, the old man is unrelenting, "Who stamped your hand?"  I pull out my wallet show my ID, the guy finally believes me, we all move on with life.  Matt believes he was trying to be funny.  I think I should have got into a brawl with him right there.  The odds were most certainly in my favor.

I've had to deal with this for years.  Even before I turned twenty-one.  When you're young, its frustrating because everyone who is young wants to be old.  And I've been told by older people when they see my frustration, "It'll come in handy when you're older.  You'll be old but still look young."  The usefulness of that fact cannot come any sooner.  The day I look like a twenty-one year old, it'll be great.  Then I'll stop my complaining.  Until then, I'd rather people not think I'm a teenager.

They had some really great wines.  I ended up buying a bottle of white wine called, "Vignoles".  Normally I would be more into the dry red wine, but none of the wine they sampled was really like that.  Even the reds were fairly sweet.  Even though it's somewhat uncharacteristic for me to like a pretty sweet white wine, this one was very good and had pineapple notes.  I love pineapple.  I was sold.  Matt on the other hand bought a bottle of the Cream Sherry, which in our opinion, had a similar taste to whiskey, without the "burns the whole way down" feeling.

After we bought our wine we decided to head back home.  All in all, a pretty enjoyable Saturday.  They are pretty hard to come by.  A typical Saturday would involve me zoning at Teavana for seven hours, but maybe we'll get into that another time.  At the moment, neither of us are truly interested in discussing it.

All right, I need to go do some other things today.  Particularly showering. 

Thanks for stopping by.  Hopefully we'll both be back soon.

Return of a Classic

Did I mention that I'm pretty excited about the RoboCop remake? Because I am.

For those of you who do not understand, I'll start from the beginning. In the late 1980's there was a little sci-fi movie called RoboCop. It was a gritty tale of a Detroit City cop getting (quite literally) blown to bits by thugs during a bust. His name is Alex J. Murphy, played by the famous Peter Weller (Known for such classics as Buckaroo Bonzai, Screamers, and Top of the World). And since Mr. Murphy was blasted to pieces, the OCP corporation decides to go through with their new project. They take the remains of Alex Murphy and give him robot prosthetics and a partial robot brain. He has lost his humanity, becoming almost entirely machine.

Almost.

See, although he's mostly a robot, he still remembers. He remembers his wife, his son. And more importantly, his assailant. And what he finds later is that the thug who killed him is also in with the lead owner of OCP. It's up to RoboCop to bring down the thugs and the corporation, with his sweet hand gun that fits conveniently into his robo-leg and his finely tuned sense of justice.

Now, with that riveting description typed down for your review, I will explain that as a child I loved RoboCop. The movie was far too violent for a child, so I never really watched the movie. I had action figures, and there was a TV series which came much later. Only in the last four years did I purchase and actually watch RoboCop in it's entirety. Best use of two hours.

As you may already know, there were many fine science fiction movies in the 1980's. There was Aliens with Sigourney Weaver, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, The Thing featuring the alpha man Kurt Russell (Did you know that they're remaking that? Preposterous), The Terminator, and handful of others. But nothing compares to RoboCop. Nothing.

How far along they are into this remake, I haven't a clue. I hope it's soon. After the sequels RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3, and a few short lived TV shows, I believe that the name of RoboCop was ruined. The image, the franchise, was mocked and should have been sealed up tight and remembered for what was, and who RoboCop was, right there in 1987.

But RoboCop is being given another chance. Another chance to blow creeps away. Another chance to use his robo-wit, robo-reflexes, and robo-charm. José Padilha, don't fail me now.

That's it today. Seriously, I know. Next time I'll whip up something intellectual. Or you can send your topics via email at canyon.behind.her@gmail.com. I may or may not get to your topic, but since no one else will send one, yours will probably be chosen to be on Revenge of the Living Blog. I may even mention your name.

Also, you can follow me on the wonderful world of Twitter. Yes that's right. You can follow me @nehemiah810. If you do, you'll see topical tweets like:

"I wish everything could smell like this cake I'm eating."

"Not much for divination, but Phil prophesied about my future wife. She's in Portland and she might be asian."

"Just saw a Propel commercial with Cindy Crawford. Glad to see she's still getting work."

"Important announcement: Good Burger is on ABC Family. That is all."

"Made it through security. Security lady was impressed I have my SNES."

"I finally had that dream last night where I'm about to go on stage to play bass and I'm in my underwear. It was less awkward in the dream."

So follow me, and attain all the rich juice of my life. Because it's there. You just have to have a keen mind to really absorb it and appreciate it.

Alright. Seriously. I'm gone.