Vintage Virginia Wine Festival (2013 Installment)

In previous years, going to the Vintage Virginia Wine Festival has been a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon with friends. It's always had its down points (lack of shade, long lines for tastings, chaos at the wine-pickup and middling food). However, all of those were at least bearable.

This year's installment? Not so much. And, it started at the opening gates and pretty much continued throughout the day.

In previous years, there were two entrances for getting in. We parked midway between the two usual entrances - slightly closer to the one. We saw the line at the closer one and decided to walk to one we'd used in prior years. When we got there, we found "vendors only" (and similar) signs. We asked if we could still get in there (since they had the usual table full of sampling-glasses) but were informed that there was only one gate usable by patrons this year. So, we made the long trudge back to the other gate. It turns out the reason there was such a line, this year, was that there was only the one patron-gate. Two, perfectly serviceable entrances, but they were only allowing patrons in by way of the one.

Fail.

Even better? If you'd bought (and brought) your ticket ahead of time, the line to get your ticket taken was much longer than either the line to buy tickets or the will-call line. So much for being smart and getting the tickets sorted out ahead of time.

Double-fail.

In previous years, the place was organized with with trinket and other sellers arrayed along the fence at the top of the hill, interspersed with food and beverage sellers. They also had what was, essentially, an outdoor food-court. Granted, the food that was sold was middling, county fair style and quality food - nothing to write home about. That said, these food-vendors knew how to move a large number of people through their lines, sold food at a surprisingly reasonable price for what's essentially a captive audience and they gave you more than just a few morsels for the price paid.

I guess this year they were trying to respond to prior years' attendees complaining about the quality of the food. This year, they decided, "lets bring in chefs and 'gourmet' food trucks". While this would have been a great way to supplement the prior years' offerings, they opted to have the food trucks completely supplant the prior years' food sellers. Unfortunately, this caused a number of problems.

At this venue, there's a paucity of shady spots. Given that most years, the weekend they hold the event tends somehow always seems to manage to be both sunnier and warmer than normal for the time of year, the lack of shade really sucks. That said, there was at least some shade available to take refuge in. This year, all of the shady spots were occupied by food trucks. In prior years, these areas had either had cooling tents in them or trinket-sellers who didn't object to you spending time under their tents, even if you didn't actually end up buying anything. All of those sellers were now pushed to the inner area of the field and, apparently, their tend-sizes restricted.

The food trucks were also troublesome from the perspective of service pace. The prior years' "slop-slingers", while pushing middling food, pushed it quickly. If they were operating a 15 foot wide food-stand, they were servicing four to five lines in that space. This year, the food trucks each hogged up 15 feet of shade yet could each service only one line. And, because of how the food trucks operate, that one line they were able to service moved much slower than any one line previously serviced by the slop-slingers. To say that the lines were long and slow would be an exceedingly charitable characterization.

Now, don't get me wrong, lines by themselves aren't an inherently evil thing. If what you get at the end is of sufficient value - tasty, adequately filling, etc. - then it can be a worthwhile tradeoff of the time spent. However, when you're getting gouged for tiny portions of middling food and have to wait in the scorching sun and humid heat for a half hour or more, it's not a good value. It's rage-inducing.

Further, when the food trucks have displaced the cooling tents and reduced the number of places for getting water, particularly in a place where people are consuming a dehydrating substance like alcohol, it's a recipe for fainting spells or worse. Saw the medical assistance golf carts go by on more than a few occasions. Sadly, with the huge lines caused by the slowness of the food trucks' service, those medical assistance carts had a tough time getting to their assistance-targets on a timely basis.

And, whose brilliant idea was it to have a cupcake truck? Really: you want to try to serve up heavy, overly-sweet baked goods in northern Virginia heat? The market definitely spoke on that one: I didn't observe a single person attempting to buy a cupcake. The only people I saw were those who stopped to see if they had any water for sale (they didn't). Otherwise, the cupcake truck sat there completely unvisited (yet still soaking up 15 feet of space that could have been used for sitting down or seeking refuge from the sun).

About the only good part of the food trucks? With everyone stuck in line waiting for food and water (the food trucks displaced prior years' beverage sellers, too), the lines for the wine sellers were much shorter this year than in prior years.

Unfortunately, the value of the shorter lines was greatly reduced by the size of this year's pours. This year's pours seemed to be maybe half the size of prior years' pours.

While this may be a positive from the standpoint of making it harder for people to get blind-drunk, it also makes it difficult to actually tell "do I like this wine enough to buy a bottle of it". And, to be honest, the reason I go to wine-tasting events is to see what wines I'd like to buy and to take home a case (or so). I'm not there to get smashed, I'm there to find stuff I want to buy. However, when you're pours are so small I can barely fully wet my tongue with it, let alone swish it around in my mouth to fully experience its flavors and textures, it's not going to make me want to buy. And saying to me, "this one has a really great mouth fill" after having poured me something that doesn't allow me to experience that feel makes me want to just punch you in the goddamned throat.

Needless to say, the usual case-plus that we've bought in previous years wasn't repeated this year. The folks we were with also bought radically less. Prior years, one of our complaints was the wait to pick up the wine we'd bought inside. Judging by the nearly non-existent lines at the wine-pickup area near the venue's exit, it wasn't just our party that was buying considerably less. If I were one of the wine-sellers, I'd be pissed at this year's changes.

I'm pretty sure that 2013's incarnation of Vintage Virginia will have seen the end of our attendance at these events.

Girl?

I did not watch the Super Bowl, this year. I had no interest in the teams playing. The commercials - frequently the best part of the whole thing, any way, were all immediately available to view online. I had no interest in this year's halftime-show installment of the over the hill gang.

Once the Super Bowl was over (thank you FaceBook for being the barometer for this), I hit the NFL.Com website to see if the commercials were decent. Some good ones (the various car commercials seemed the best) some mediocre ones and some that made me wonder why they bothered (pretty much all of the movie ones - especially the one for Phantom Menace - sucked).

FaceBook, Twitter and Plus were all aflame with how good Madonna's performance was (even with an undercurrent of "I don't know why she didn't play the 80s classics" and "I don't care for the new stuff). People were talking about it at work and it was being mentioned on all the news. The news stories, however, were the most annoying.

Madonna hasn't been "The Material Girl" for twenty plus years, now. When you're post-menopausal (presumably), you're no longer a "girl". If the AARP is starting to recruit you, you're no longer a "girl". If you look great from a distance and in soft-focus, but closeups reveal aged, crepey skin, you're no longer a "girl". As such, it's more than slightly ridiculous for newscasters to still be referring to Madonna as "The Material Girl".

Value Proposition of Movies

Last night, a buddy of mine and I went to go see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. It wasn't a horrible movie but it was hardly "art". Two tickets for the non-3D version ran $24. Add in two 1qt bottles of water for $9 bucks (that's $18/gal. for water - even at its peak, gasoline wasn't that expensive) and you're at more than $30 for two hours of mid-grade entertainment.

Today, while at work, a box arrived from Amazon. In that box was the full, 8-movie BluRay set of Harry Potter movies. Sixteen or so hours of quality entertainment. Total price? $60. And that's $60 for unlimited viewings by me and any number of other people that might come over during our ownership of the discs (and, lets not forget loans/swaps with neighbors and friends).

So, tell me, again, why Hollywood thinks that piracy is why annual ticket sales are down by a half-billion seats?

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind spending money if I'm getting good value. But when every trip to the theatre becomes a $20-$40 gamble whose odds are worse than rolling a hard-8 in Vegas and it should be fairly self-evident why everyone's staying home.

Les Habs vs. The Killer Bs

I love good game of "old time" hockey. Tonight, I watched the spectacle that was the Boston Bruins vs the Montreal Canadiens.

For starters, I don't care for either team. I'm a Flyers fan and the Flyers have a bit of a history against both teams. It's a history that makes it difficult to root for one team or the other. About the best one can hope for is that the building they're playing against each other in implodes during the game, wiping out both teams.

That said, while I loathe the Canadiens, I at least have a measure of respect for the Broons. So, when the two play, I'd rather see the Canadiens lose. Given the NHL's current points-award system, I'd rather see the Canadiens lose in regulation time than the game go to a tie (if one team has to get two points for an OT win, there's no point in rewarding the other team for just having gotten to OT).

At any rate, as much as I dislike both teams, tonights game was rather fun to watch. It was high-scoring and both teams were in a pissy mood. It was nice to see them going after each other, physically. Still, for all the hits and fighting, it wasn't as penalty-filled as some past Flyers classics. It's likely to be a long time before anyone matches the 419 minutes of penalties of the Flyers/Senators game on 3/25/2004.

Even though this game paled in comparison, penaty-wise, I did take away some nuggets of knowledge:

• PK Subban's pretty much the Mike Green of the Montreal Canadiens: he's a far better shooter than a defenseman. He's also kind of stupid in his on-ice conduct. Here's hoping for a case of PK jelly-brain!
• Apparently, six is at least one player over-capacity for the penalty box at the Boston Garden...
• I'm gonna have to set the DVR to record the next Habs/Bs game...

Infinitely Re-Watchable Movies

There are many great movies out there and there are many, many awful movies out there. However, it seems that, in terms of ability to be watched, over and over, without becoming tired of it, a movie has to have some other quality to it that usually puts it closer to the awful end of the spectrum than the great end of the spectrum.

One of the earliest movies I recall attaining that status of infinitely repeatably-watchable was The Princess Bride. It was just one of those movies you could pop in the VCR (or stumble upon while flipping through the TV channels) and enjoyable watch it, no matter how many times you'd seen it before or at what part of the movie you started watching it. It's a pretty good movie, but it would probably never be considered a "great movie" (no one's ever gonna lump it in the same category as The Godfather).

The next movie I found that fell into this "infinitely repeatably-watchable" category is the movie The Fifth Element. It most definitely is not a great movie. Its plot and story are absurd. Its characters are barely two-dimensional, let alone having a quality that approaches "depth" - which, given the cast, is probably to be expected. The special effects are merely 'ok'. In sum, there's little about the movie that makes it "stand out". Overall, the movie is almost a pure style-piece. However, at the end of the day, it's the kind of movie that makes no pretensions about what it is, nor does it meander from trying to be one kind of movie or another. It's almost fascinating in just how "empty" it is. I don't know what it is that does it, but it's the kind of movie I can sit down and watch, over and over, and I can do so, no matter my mood or whether I've watched from the beginning or some mid-point.

Beware: Dancing Elephants

Much as I (probably) write too much, I read too much. Hell, I read even more than I write. If you've looked at my post counts, you'll know that if I'm reading more than I write, I'm writing one helluva lot.

In general, I try to stay away from the news. It's not that I don't want to be informed, it's that I don't want to indulge in the theatre of horrors that the news has become. Worse, the news manages to seek out and find more and more horrors on a daily basis. At this point, it's reached a level that transcends horror and becomes more like absurd.

How to deal with theatre of the absurd? Try to enjoy it because it's out of your hands, any way.

Much of what I see, particularly in the financial press, is dancing elephants. I could read and be outraged, but what does that do for me? I'm relatively powerless. I'm just an ant. I can tell that the elephants are dangerous and will someday, in their stumbling about, crush me and everything I hold dear. All I can really do is try to stay out of the way for as long as possible and enjoy the show.

Netflix Horrors

So, last night was a NetFlix night. Could have watched something on Zune or FiOS's "On Demand" service, but, I wasn't feeling like spending the money.

Netflix had a lot of "new arrivals." However, I think what they mean is "new to their service" not "recently made". At any rate, we found a movie that looked like it would be amusingly bad. The movie was Eyeborgs. It was just about as horribly awful as one might suspect. I suspect that my watching of "Eyeborgs" would have been greatly improved by intelligence-reducing consumables. Unfortunately, the kind of reducers needed aren't really legal, so, I can't partake of them. There's alcohol, but I don't think I could manage the balance between mental obliteration and unconsciousness necessary to make it a watchable flick.

The Sad State of Saturday Morning TV

This morning, Puckett got me up early. I couldn't get back to sleep. So, I came downstairs and turned on the TV. I was very sad at what I found.

When I was a kid, we only had like three TV stations - four if you counted PBS (but, PBS only counted to kids if they were Sesame Street or Electric Company age). Yet, somehow, those three stations managed to have far more to watch than the scads of stations available today. Today, it seems like the great cartoons of the past have been replaced with infantile pablum. Ugh. I *really* pity today's kids given their choices of Saturday morning programming. No Superfriends. No Looney Toons. No Tom and Jerry. No outrageous slapstic. TV's been nerfed - especially Saturday morning TV. It's all just thinly veiled attempts to sell toys - mostly "kid-safe" toys.

(More) Seen On TV

So, the days that I telecommute, I generally have the TV on, in the background, as I tap away at my laptop. I usually flip on the Fox 5 Morning News when I come down for the day. Then at 10, when that show goes off the air and switches to the dreadful Wendy Williams show (who the fuck is she blowing to get a TV spot???), I change over to NBC for the last hour of their morning show. Unfortunately, that consists of the only slightly less odious "Hoda and Kathy-Lee" segment.

Today, they were doing the whole "iHoda" thing (basically, a "what's on Hoda's iPod" segment). This is the embarrassing segment where they play some song that she has on her iPod. Invariably, the song is dreadfully awful. Definitely not the kind of music I would admit to listening to, least of all would I play it as some kind of pick of the day. Whatever: no accounting for taste.

They also then had some performance group on. Appeared to be four black early-teens doing a song and dance routine. I think the whole thing was supposed to be them performing their music, but really wasn't paying that close of attention to it. The music was awful enough that it caused me to look up to see what the hell they were doing on the show. It was not impressive. They were outfitted in suitably "urban" attire and bouncing about to some horrid piece of music. They were clearly (read, "poorly") lip-syncing to some awful piece of Autotuned garbage. Not sure if I was supposed to be impressed by their "singing", the music, the dancing or their stage-costumes. If I was, then I guess I was missing whatever it was that was supposed to impress me.

Oh well...

Jinx?

Sometimes, it feels as though my favorite sports teams do their best when I don't watch them. When I go to see my teams play live, it seems that, more times than not, they don't really put forth a good effort and frequently lose because of it. While winning's always better than losing, I always want to see my teams bust their asses to at least try to win. Unfortunately, it just seems that the best efforts I see from my teams are in rebroadcasts rather than in either watching live or watching a live broadcast. Could never figure out why this was.

Exercise for Adults

Sometimes, I think if Golds were more like a McD's play-land, I might actually be interested in exercise. I mean, any time I pass by one of those jungle gyms, ball pits or even Moon Bounces, I regret that I grew up. I mean, they were fun. And now, due to age and size, I can't use them. Not fair.

In fact, I sometimes wonder how much money I could make if I rented out adult-sized "moon bounce" things. I know I'd rent one for my parties. I gotta think there's a market for providing entertainment for "big kids". All you have to do is look at paintball, lasertag and other places to know that's true..

MAD CAT!

It's amusing to see Grumbles "mad-cat" up and down his tree (good thing it's wedged in a corner or it'd be on its side, now)

What's Old Is New, Again

Sometimes, I wonder if Dale Bozzio receives royalty checks from Lady Gaga (to license her image/style/etc.)

Where's Buffy When You Need Her?

Twilight would never have happened had Buffy still been on the job.