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.

More Universal Discussions

Currently listening to:                 Elliott Smith.  From a Basement on the Hill.

Remarkable album, really.  About a year ago I finally initiated my Elliott Smith fandom and purchased Roman Candle.  It's pretty bare bones as far as instrumentation, which makes for nice driving music.  The stuff he wrote at the end of his life is probably the best.  If you ever get around to it, listen to this album or Figure 8.  Not that I've been sent here by the record companies to convince you to up the sales of Elliott Smith albums.  That's not what it's about.  It's just fantastic music, and of course Youtube will have all of his songs.  Check it out, jam out.  Realize the sweet sound of Elliott and his heartfelt songwriting.

So it's the middle of the week.  The slow part here, and what that means for you is more random posts about life, the universe, and everything.

What if I had wrote, "...and everyfig"?  Would you have thought, "Geez, can't this guy review his own work to make sure it makes sense?  What a goober!" or would you have thought, "He is going to talk about every single fig.  Remarkable"?

It's been a long weekend, readers, but rewarding in some respects.  On Thursday nights I get together with a group from church to have dinner and Bible study.  It's called Pulse and mainly consists of twenty-something graduates who are now making it as young professionals in the world.  Every so often we get together to do some outreach and this last Saturday we went to a little park off of Locust and 14th to cook and serve breakfast to the homeless who live around there.  Although getting up at 4:30 am to get ready and make it there by 6 is not my favorite thing, seeing people getting loved and fed is well worth it.  We had over a hundred people come to line up and eat the fresh bacon and eggs we grilled right there on little camper grills.  We also cut up some fruit and handed out juice and water.  It's wonderful to see their joy and to know that this is exactly what Christ was doing all those years ago: serving those who are left to the side and forgotten and making them feel they are worth the time and work.

Rest of the weekend consisted of a lot of Teavana.  Which is always a lovely experience.  There I'm serving a different sort of people, people with money with my goal being to help them drop some more money.  Gotta love retail.

We do have some new tea stuff, which I guess is cool.  I'm not going to buy it.  Except for "Slimful Chocolate Decadence" oolong tea.  I hate the name, but the tea is so good.  They should call it, "Mounds Bar Tea".  "Slimful Chocolate Decadence" is a name you give some food product women would eat (No misogynist).  Seriously though, first it has the word, "Slimful".  Already, it's saying, "Hey, you there!  You fat?  Feel fat?  You won't after this!" Next it has chocolate.  We all know that chocolate is catnip for women.  Finally, "Decadence".  That sounds like, "Oooh, your doing something your not supposed to (but enjoying it), but it's okay because we preceded this entire statement with 'Slimful'".   My mom bought cereal last week.  She bought "Special K Granola".  I'm already confused about my masculinity due to the foods I'm eating.

Dear Teavana,
Stop selling to just women on this one and call "Slimful Chocolate Decadence" "Mounds Bar Fun".  Everyone loves fun.  Name someone who does not love fun.  Okay, that person sucks, name someone else.  Good.  Copyright infringement with "Mounds Bar" from Mars Bar company?  Fine.  Call it, "Tropical Chocolate Mountain Race".  See, I threw in race to slip in that, "You won't be fat if you drink this".  Genius.  Take care Tea Lords,

XOXO
Michael Lee

No more word on the elevators or bathroom stalls.  I let you know as further news breaks.

And I think we're done for the day.  Thanks for coming and hanging out.  See you about the same time next week.

Good Ideas

I'm eating Dunkaroos.  Yes, the little snack that was unhealthy and packed with deadly sugar but you still loved as a child.  Or at least I did.  Enough to become fat (more on that later).  A friend of mine found them and bought a box for me to indulge.  To her I could not be more grateful.  Mostly to have another opportunity to live in the 90's again.  Which, by the way, reminds me of the great thing Teen Nick has decided to do.  In an effort to, I suppose, just give up on making any new material, they brought back the classics of 90's nick.  Which is fine by me for two reasons:

1).  90's Nick made life okay.  It brought me up into the wholesome human being I am today (along with probably a few other things).
2).  The stuff they were showing on there before they got the bright idea of replaying old shows in their 11pm-1am time slot was trash.  Sorry.

I don't blame you, Teen Nick.  I do not blame you.  So, to that, I give the head nod of appreciation.  It's the highest form of flattery from me.  You should consider yourselves geniuses for the decision you've made and retire somewhere nice.  Some place with palm trees.  That's just my preference.  I'm sure you've got some good ideas.

All right.  With all of that said and put behind us, we can get to the sweet juice of this post that I've been grinding in my mind all day. 

Pour.

Honestly, though, I really don't have a whole lot to report.  Some cool news that just went down today is that the intership I've been doing at Chalice Press will now become a part time gig with pay.  I'm darn excited.  So, I'll be serving not only the tea lords but also the publishing world.  Hopefully soon it will all lead to something else...like me living in Portland.  It's the next logical step.  Become the west coast beat poet I've dreamed of turning into.  Do hipster things.  Eat organic food.  Wear "vintage" clothes.  Make friends with hip musicians in indie bands with names like, "Collin" and "Tanya".  Yeah man, this whole publishing thing is sure to open some doors to let out my inner yuppie.

Interjection:  I'm wearing some sweet fuzzy pj pants.  They're no match to my Tyrannosaurus Rex/Jurassic Park pjs I had when I was but a tot, but they are stinking comfortable.  I have had them for nearly a year.  I suppose there could have been a better time to mention them in the past, but now you know I have some extremely comfortable pajama-jam pants.  I recommend investing in some.  And if I ever owned a business, fuzzy pajama pants would be mandatory.

"Look Earl, I know it's your first day, but khaki slacks?  Come on, man, chill out.  Throw on these fuzzy pajama pants.  Yes they're clean, smell them.  Yeah, Snuggles soft with a hint of mountain breeze scent.  Now you're ready to get 'em, tiger.  Go out there and power point the pants off them.  But not their pajama pants.  Their metaphoric pants.  We want to keep these people comfortable."

Either that, or we all wear kimonos.  Kimonos and fuzzy pajama pants.  Wow, that's fantastic.  You know you want to work for me now.  Too bad, you have to apply first.  Then there's this thing we do with new folk who want a job: Interview.  And after that is the survival test.  I open the trap door, you land in the room with the t-rex with bear arms and a shark tail that breathes fire.  If you outwit it, we may give you a call back.

Cool.  Well, I'm going to bed.  No, you can't come.  That's  really weird.  Plus Mike Lee is his own man and likes to flail and roll about in his bed.  He needs all the room for his unpredictable sleep movements. 

Take care, take care, take care.  See (or write) you somewhere on the other side.

Motivation.

Alright. So it's been awhile. Forgive me.

I was beginning to wonder if something happened to me as well. "Oh no...what if Michael is in a ditch somewhere with two broken legs and we can't hear him? Oh, wait..."

I wanted to post something back in December. Really, I did. Then I realized it wasn't worth it and that I could just call up David (undoubtedly my most loyal...and really only...blog follower) whenever I had something of worth to talk about. Then I kind of tickled the notion of maybe, POSSIBLY, posting back in January. Once again, couldn't bring myself to log on, stare at the computer idlely until something great popped into my head to type about. But today I figured, "I'm here...why not."

So welcome back! Big news right now...the blog, if you hadn't noticed already, is officially a year old. I thought about getting him a cake so he could slop around in it and then I could video tape the whole thing and show it to him later to embarrass him, but then I realized the blog is not a living entity (In spite of the title).

Still serving the Tea Lords in an endless effort to bring precious capital into their establishment. It's tough because I find little to no reason to give all my effort. When I don't recieve acknowledgement or praise or really any sort of value in my work, I tend to not care quite as much. Especially when constantly it's my weaknesses that are being highlighted and very, very rarely my strengths. Not to say that my pride and ego need to be inflated constantly. Or maybe they do and that's a shortcoming on my part, but I think we should get some return for our work even if it is, "Hey, good job".

It could be that I'm just soft and whiny. Some people never get recognition, work hard week after week, coming home tired with little time or energy left for hobbies or people.

That's the reason there hasn't been a post on here in three months. Lack of motivation. It's like I need some end goal, or something of worth to keep me going otherwise I feel like whatever I'm doing is just killing time and I don't want to kill time because I don't need to. I have things to do, people to meet, places to see, escape plans to make, one life to live. If there is no purpose or value I feel as if it's a waste (Says the man who spends countless hours on Facebook).

I will try to diligently continue to post on this site though. No matter how many people see this I need to understand that this is working the writer that is slowly wasting away inside me. This blog is like practicing scales on an instrument, stretches and exercises before a big run or game, a sketchbook for the artist. There's a muscle in my brain that will need constant training and development, so if I can just focus on that I'll be more willing to post on here.

No if I could just do the same for when I work in the Tea Mines of Moria...