Barry's Life in Napa Blog

About once a month, I run across a news story about some place that may be "the new Napa." This means a place that has beautiful vineyard views and great wine, I guess, but also maybe spas, incredible restaurants, ballooning? I'm not sure what criteria writers use when coming up with the proposal that a place may be "the new Napa." Maybe by looking at some of these stories we'll understand. The New Napa Valley? Idaho wine region receives national grape-growing designation "Marketing wine works fine for southwest Idaho vintners, but will work better as word spreads about the area’s new nationwide designation. “The name Snake River Valley gives us that distinction,” said Neil Glancey, winemaker and general manager at Carmela Vineyards near Glenns Ferry. Carmela Vineyards has won national awards for its wines. Some people at the competitions would express surprise when they find out the wine was grown in Idaho, Glancey said." Mendoza, Argentina: The N...

Here's what the in-style deluded people will be wearing this summer. For ten years or more, I have heard people ramble on about electromagenetic fields from power lines causing cancer and nuking your brain by using your cell phone too much. Now we have this woman from the UK claiming she has some kind of general allergy to energy in the air. She is particularly bothered by wireless networks, she says, and she claims she can feel it if there are electro-magnetic fields in her vicinity. She calls it electro-smog. As you can see from the photo, she has fashioned this sort of tinfoil hat extender, this veil that protects her from all the bad stuff. And if you read the article, you will learn that she has a layer of tinfoil under her wallpaper and special metal curtains to block stuff from beaming in the windows. Far be it for me to suggest this woman is some kind of nut case, whack job, loony, addled-pated, screw loose, fuzzy headed, psychosomatic case study. I would never say such th...

I was at a lunch meeting yesterday, and someone made an announcement about a trip the club had sponsored to take needy kids to a baseball game. The report was "We had a great time, took a whole bus load of kids to the game, and it was the shortest game in a long time - an hour and fifty-seven minutes." It strikes me that this is a common approach to evaluating one's baseball experience. We want to go to the game, we love the game, but we don't want the game to last too long. Even the announcers will once in awhile say something like "This one is really moving along!" If we love it, don't we want it to last forever? Seems a little like a love-hate relationship - take me out to the ballgame, but good grief, don't get me stuck in a 14-inning nightmare than will scar my psyche. Doubleheader? You must be insane, sir. Does this translate to other aspects of life? Something we look forward to and enjoy, but on which we impose an unspoken time limit? I propo...

WARNING: Mildly offensive terms used with the best intentions. I worry that our language is suffering. Yes, there's the degradation that comes with the race and gender slurs that have become part of everyday conversation, the kind of thing that got Don Imus in trouble. And there's the overuse of the f bomb ad nauseum. (A friend long ago would offer a one-word comment when someone reeled off a particularly good swear - "crisp," he would say. But you could only keep it crisp if you didn't pull it out of your pocket every five seconds. Overused, it became stale.) But my greater concern is the loss of color in everyday language as all our great colloquialisms and figures of speech fade away. For example, I'll bet it's been awhile since you heard someone say "He doesn't have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot." Or " it's colder than a witches' tit." Or since we're on the subject, someone with their "tit caught in t...

My son recently said, "Dad, you're such a nerd." To which I reply, "Thanks, son." High praise indeed. Maybe someday he will call me an early adopter. That would really make my day. But I'll settle for nerd today. You see, I have reached a new level of nerdvana with the successful connection of my PC to the HD plasma screen in the living room. I am at this moment viewing my post in a full 42-inch 16:9 aspect ratio, riding on my wireless home network, of course. O bliss, technology is thy name! (In fairness, I must credit David, my uber nerd guide in all things digital, for getting me perfectly set up. I am low on the Nerdlichter Scale, maybe a 3.7, but David is a plate-shifting 8.2. Thanks, pal.) What's that? The big dealio? Well, this means I can watch worthless You Tube videos from the comfort of my easy chair. And when the Next Big Thing comes along, I'm ready. There's truly something to ponder here. I have the power to access more information ...

There's been a flap in Napa lately over a high school that wants to require freshman to take a geography course. The required class would cause some kids to lose the option of an elective, or have a longer day of classes. Some people have pointed out how rotten we've gotten at knowing where things are on the map. About once a year you get the news story on how kids can't locate their own state on a map, or can't locate the map in the glove box, or can't remember where they parked the car. Actually, those last two problems are about me, not about kids today. But don't try to distract me. This relates to today's problem: the town of Jericho in the CBS TV show appears to be somewhere in California. (Relax, this will all tie together in the end.) I put this show in my "guilty pleasures" category, because it is badly acted and kind of soap-opera like, but I dig the post-catastrophe scenario and it has a little currency to it what with the terrorist nuc...

There's nothing that puts me on the defensive more than hearing someone say that "the debate is over." If there is one thing I have learned in my life, it's that the debate is NEVER over. Consider that we still debate whether Napoleon was poisoned, the real causes of the Civil War, who killed JFK, and countless other things that have been researched, studied, written about and discussed for decades. Yet still there is disagreement. For those whose brows reside at a lower altitude, there's endless post and riposte over who killed Anna Nicole and what's really happening with K Fed. There are a precious few things in life that are black and white (and I think that's one of the reasons people like sports - you get an outcome every time. There's a topic for another day.) With that in mind, how can one suggest that there is no debate over something that is occuring in the present and may continue to occur in the future? So you can imagine my chagrin when att...

In our marvelous living English language, there is always some new word or phrase being coined, and today I nominate for inclusion in the lexicon, "to go Baldwin." This, of course, is due to the widely publicized message Alec Baldwin left on his little daughter's cell phone, in which he goes off on a tirade, calls her names, insults her mother, etc. Hear it here. Sounds like he is dressing down some go-fer who forgot to put two sugars in his tea - classic Hollywood ass-ism on display. So to join the terms "go postal" (which carries a more physically violent subtext) and " get agro ," we now have "go Baldwin." Sample usage: "He got all up in my grill and started in to go all Baldwin on me." Way to go, Alec, it takes a real man to stand up to an 11 year old girl like that. Don't let her push you around. (Stand by for the meaningless public apology - and perhaps it's rehab time?)

Any good parent or teacher knows that when you have a kid who is acting out, throwing fits, making a scene, you just play into their hands if you give them too much attention. That's what they're after, your attention. By getting drawn into their world, you let the tantrum-thrower take control. I remember one parenting expert who advised the best way to deal with a kid throwing a fit is to simply walk out of the room and deny them your attention. In other words, you will not get what you want by engaging in this behavior. So the Virginia Tech shooter, whose rampage is just another form of throwing an "I'm not getting my way" tantrum, is now trying to draw us unto his world and control us with his calculated acting out. The package of photos and videos that he sent to NBC are clear evidence of not just a twisted mind, but of his goal to perform the ultimate "look at me" act. Unfailingly, the media does exactly the wrong thing in almost all of these cases....

If Virginia Tech was a company and its stock was traded on Wall Street, there would be a lot of selling going on today. You can expect about 30 wrongful death suits to be filed, based on the way the college responded to the first shootings yesterday. This quote from the SF Chronicle nails it: "I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18, who lives in the dorm. "If you had apprehended a suspect, I could understand having classes even after two of your students have perished. But when you don't have a suspect in a college environment and to put the students in a situation where they're congregated in large numbers in open buildings, that's unacceptable to me." The university president and campus police chief said they decided not to cancel classes after the first shooting because the initial indication at the dorm, based on interviews with witnesses, was that the a...

If you're looking for a movie that will spoil all the joys of drinking, try Factotum . We viewed this little slice of seamy life this weekend. Nicely acted by Matt Dillon, and the director succeeded in keeping it cohesive - cohesively depressing. If you're not familiar, this movie is based on the life and stories of Charles Bukowski . He was highly prolific, tons of stories, poems and novels. (You might recall another film for which he wrote the screenplay, Barfly .) I haven't read any of his work, but you only have to glance at one of his pages to see he had a powerful and direct style. I admire that. But it saddens me to think that only the whisky sodden can write tight prose. Is there no severability of talent with words and talent with the bottle? Today's challenge: name three great sober writers. This portrayal of a small part of Bukowski's life did not inspire me. It seemed most of his misery was self-inflcited. And in some ways the film glorified an "hon...

Having earlier admitted that I have questionable taste (see the post from March 18) I feel I can launch into this topic without further disclaimer. You see, I have a suit that I bought at Target. And I really like it. I discern there are two basic types of people when it comes to clothes. There are people who try to look good while spending the least amount of money, and there are people who think they can only look good if they spend the most amount of money. (The latter are the people who buy those ridiculous sweaters like Bill Cosby used to wear on his TV show. You look like you're wearing a rag from Jackson Pollock's studio, but you can brag about how much you spent.) Then there are the people who don't seem to care at all and would probably wear a Hefty bag to work if you cut a neck hole in it. And there are the people who are glad they have to wear a uniform so they don't have to think about this issue. Wait a minute, now I have four basic types of people. Guess ...

When you're on the radio doing a talk show, things happen fast. You've got a caller, or a partner, or a room full of people, and everyone is bantering and making wisecracks and trying to top each other and get a laugh. Somedays it's all flowing and somedays nothing works. But you keep doing it hour after hour, day after day. In my experience, there were the moments when I knew we had just done something really funny or poignant, and when we had been really sucky. And now and then, a little bell would go off in your head that the thing you just said might have been over the line, and you would probably be getting some blowback. If you're Don Imus, I doubt the little bell goes off when you say the phrase "nappy headed hos." This is a show that probably delivered 59 tasteless remarks every day. People expect this level of quasi-edgy standup comedy with a lot of stereotyping, juvenile insult humor, and a general sense that anything goes. I'd bet that Imus is ...

If you've seen the new James Bond movie Casino Royale, you know there is a supercool stunt scene at the beginning ( de rigeur in Bond movies) where the guy Bond is chasing does all these crazy Jackie Chan kind of moves. When I watched it, Jackie Chan-like was the only description I could think of. As it turns out - sacrebleu! - there is a whole sport dedicated to this running-jumping-flipping-bouncing-rolling thing that most of us could only experience trying to get from the car to the house after a particularly jovial party. It's called parkour , and you can read all about it here . Of course, it is only a matter of time until this new thing becomes much more well known, which will happen when some kid gets killed doing it. Wait, some kid already got killed. That didn't take long. That angle is here in a Time article. And you can find lots of videos on YouTube if you search for parkour . I suggest you spend the remainder of the week watching these people do all these ins...

You would think that the fat kid would have liked every kind of candy, but it just wasn't true. And it seemed like there was a mandate that the Easter basket was filled with weird stuff, candy I never saw the other 364 days of the year. Peeps, for example. "What the &%#$ are Peeps?" I would ask myself, pawing through the polyester grass. Being willing to experiment, I took a bite of one of the Peeps, and learned that it is a candy product that is made of colored sugar and marshmallow and, after they are manufactured, placed in a drafty warehouse for 19 months to ensure they are fully stale before making their way to my Easter basket. Even with the the dismay that is the Peep clinging to the roof of my mouth, I was still able to shape words of horror at the sight of an even more appalling candy - Circus Peanuts. So atrocious as to have been included in the list of the worst at bad-candy.com. What torture is the Circus Peanut! From it's abhorrent shape and color, to...

It never fails - once you're at the ballgame in SF you always wish you had worn one more layer. Or that you had a blanket, or a pair of electric socks. You wish the guy in front of you would spontaneously combust to generate a little heat. Last night at the game (Giants 5, Padres 3) I considering asking the hot chocolate vendor to how much he would charge to drench me in the stuff. Freezing is just part of the Phone Company Park baseball experience, along with the big Coke bottle, $8 beer, and loving/hating Bonds. And drunk people, of course. Always drunk people, somebody wants to fight, somebody gets tossed. All part of the experience, and mostly harmless. True as well with the NFL. Even Raiders fans, as scary as they may be, are a lot of bark and very little bite. But there's something extremely different going on across the pond. This week, more reports of outrageous fan violence and blood in the streets. It's becoming the norm that any major soccer match, whether betwe...

The internet, invented by my man Al Gore, is rife with rifeness. In other words, you can find a website about anything you can think of, except of course for the particular thing you're looking for. So I was not surprised to stumble on this site that is all about nostalgia for cassette tapes. Tapedeck.org is a project of neckcns.com , built to showcase the amazing beauty and (sometimes) weirdness found in the designs of the common audio tape cassette . There's an amazing range of designs, starting from the early 60's functional cassette designs, moving through the colourful playfulness of the 70's audio tapes to amazing shape variations during the 80's and 90's. We hope you enjoy these tapes as much as we do! At first I thought, as you may have, somebody's got way too much free time. But as I perused the wide array of lovely, crisp photos of cassette tapes, each meticulously captured and labelled, I became certain that somebody's got way too mu...

In honor of one of my favorite days of the year, I invite you to join me in the Wayback Machine for a trip to the land of April Fools' memories. Back in the radio days, I learned that "funny phone" was an activity that could consistently yield results. Get somebody on the line, get them talking, and it might turn out good. April Fools Day was an opportunity to get some funny phone action going with a broader purpose - pranks. One way to do it was to ask the listeners to give me a setup - somebody they wanted a joke played on. The best of those came from some people at the local Fish and Game office. I called the victim and told him I was from PETA, and we had heard there had been a wine spill into a local creek. I got gradually more outraged as I told him about how all the wildlife was drinking from this creek and getting sloshed. He was so professional and sincere, he didn't even bat an eye when I mentioned "reports of drunk skunks and tipsy squirrels." The...