Barry's Life in Napa Blog

Since it is almost the New Year, it's appropos to point out new laws that will take effect on January 1, 2009. There are always a lot of handy new laws each year. The one that is getting the most attention now is the new rule against texting while driving. What's next? I suppose they will ban me from other things I currently enjoy while driving, like making waffles and quilting.Fascists.  But there's one new law that's getting overlooked so far - as of 1/1/09 it will be legal to inflict physical mayhem on people who walk slow in front of you - people known as "slow walkers." "It's about time!" you say, and indeed, you are correct. It's time to put an end to this scourge of humanity - these pokey butts who are wasting our precious time with their dawdling, wandering, and general cluelessness.  Let's make it clear this new law does not allow the corporal punishment on the clearly infirm. However, it is acceptable to say to a person with one...

I have been recently accused - fairly - of writing something "dark" during the holidays. So today, I hope to redeem myself with a true story that always comes to me this time of year. It's a "true meaning of Christmas" story. Like so many of my Christmas memories, it features my dad. Avid readers of this blog with fastidious memory banks will recall last year's item that detailed Daddy's lack of enthusiasm for the whole Christmas issue. I think the biggest part of his disdain for Christmas was the excess of it - and this was in a household that did not have anything like a fancy Christmas. We were a working-class family with a working-class Christmas. Although I never wanted for anything necessary, I was just like other kids in lusting after the unnecessary, expensive toys in the Sears "Wishbook" catalog - elaborate slot car tracks and electric hockey games and full-blown cowboy outfits. Things that were out of reach for people of our means. N...

Having recently become a person who spends a lot of time alone, and this being something that is new to me, I thought I would pass on some tips on the topic.  1. Some so-called experts will say you should not drink alone. Hogwash. A much more realistic and useful bit of advice is this: always have one glass of water to match each drink. This guarantees two things: lots of trips to the bathroom, which may result in some type of human interaction (Not IN the bathroom, ok? I don't swing that way) and you will remain semi-sober so you can drive yourself home - important when you are alone. No good to be slobbering all over some cab driver. You may want him to be your friend now, but you won't tomorrow. 2. Consider investing in a cushion. Carry it with your laptop. The chairs at Starbuck's are hard and if you really want to be the creepy guy who's always sitting there, you may find your butt goes numb. 3. Go ahead and wear the sweat pants. After all, you are alone. Who car...

There comes a time every Christmas season when I just want to hit fast forward to January 2 and put it all behind me.  Some years that moment comes early - say, November 1 or so when that first stale Christmas song comes leaking out of the speakers at the mall. Other years, like this year for example, I've made it all the way to the 10-day line before getting the "let's just get it over with" feeling.  Is it the relentless pressure of fulfilling gift lists, writing cards, baking cookies, and trimming trees that wears me down? No, I decline to partake in most of those behaviors, and I play fast and loose with the rest. I am too selfish a creature to inconvenience myself too much.  I think my impatience with Christmas grows out of myriad disappointments, let downs, and downright tragedies that have become part of my personal Christmas history - number one among these being losing my dad to a Christmas Day heart attack. Hey! Have a holly jolly Christmas with that in your...

I come to you today with a saddening report on the decline of a once robust industry. American automobile manufacturing? The steel industry? Textiles? No, all this is old news. The failure I have discovered this week is in an industry that is not American, as far as I know. This crisis is in what I assume must be an industry of the great and powerful Chinese - the fortune cookie fortune business. The problem came to light for me after lunch (Combination Plate, $6.99) at Wah Sing Restaurant in Napa. Ritual demands that I drink a least half of the green tea, save the won ton for last, and open the fortune cookie but not eat it. So I pull the little white slip of paper out and read: "You could prosper in the field of medicine." WTF? What kind of fortune is that?? "Could?" Does this mean if I went to medical school I might become a doctor?? Again I ask, WTF? Whatever happened to "You will soon come into money" or "He who laughs last laughs best" or s...

So here we are again. It's Thanksgiving Day, which means the Christmas decorations have been up for about a month now and I am already tired of hearing Christmas songs at the Starbuck's. And it means within about 6 hours I will once again have that feeling that my ribs are about to crack as my stomach expands like a competitive speed-eater - that feeling I have vowed so many times to never experience again. But thank God, we humans have a short memory! In just 364 short days we can completely suppress the memory of the anguish and do it all over again.  So right away on this thankful day, there's something to be thankful for - short memory.  A list seems to be in order. It's a good day for taking stock. Here, in no particular order, are ten things for which I am thankful. Gas under $2 a gallon. I don't care if this is the result of a worldwide financial catastrophe, it's helping my bottom line. Indulging in rampant personal self interest. See #1 above.  Pinot N...

There's something sad about the fact that I can't actually believe we have elected a black man President. And it's even more sad to realize that I am surprised that no one has taken a shot at him yet. (We interrupt this message to clarify that sentence one above does not indicate that I think there is anything wrong with a black man being President, or that I don't like black people, or that people ought to shoot at them, or anything like that, ok? Let me also clarify that I prefer the word "black" to "African American" because it's a lot easier to type. Let's move on.) It's all sad because my disbelief says that in my heart of hearts I must be believing we are a more racist and hateful people than we really are - and since I am a generally positive person, and out loud I say I believe that people are innately good, it disturbs me that this other cynical, snide part of me thinks so poorly of American society. It's dark in the corners ...

With the big Presidential election looming, and the positions of the candidates all laid out in black and white (oops, that didn't come out right) or perhaps soon to be laid out in red and blue, this useful visual aid is appropos. Most of us may struggle a little with international affairs, so thanks to one of my tens of faithful readers who provided this for our edification. Said provider will remain nameless and blameless. Click on the map for a larger, easier-to-read version. Review this with care, there will be a quiz.

Sometimes on Sundays I am transported to a place that was called Gene and Darlene's. (OK, that sounded kind of Shirley MacLaine. I am not talking about out of body experiences here. It's a memory, ok?) Gene and Darlene's was a bar down on Shoal Creek south of Joplin. The building still stands (photo proof here, taken August 2008.) No telling how many other names the place has had since it was Gene and Darlene's, but that's the name it has in my mind. On Sundays sometimes, when I was a kid, daddy would come up with the notion that burgers from Gene and Darlene's would really hit the spot. Being always in favor of food in general, and carry-out food being really exotic to me, the idea was always a winner in my opinion. I would be eager to climb into the car with daddy and ride along. It was a short trip down to Redings Mill, around the infamous curve that topped a bluff over the creek, where all kinds of carloads of people had suffered hideous deaths in spectacula...

Most of us have never seen a week in the world like this one. Here we are three weeks out from the most notable election of the post-war era - financial markets in free fall and there's no bottom in sight - and then the Norwegian Nobel Committee gives the 2008 peace prize to Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president. I mean, just one whipsaw after another. I can already hear the water cooler chatter across American - "Ahtissari? Who would have guessed?" So with all these monumental stories in the news, it makes sense that I am concerned today about bad drivers. You may have read that surveys unfailingly show that some 80% of people consider themselves to be a better than average driver. That's a classic delusion, unless our streets are like Lake Woebegone, where Garrison Keillor tells us "all the children are above average." Math is not my strong suit, but I don't think that's possible. In fact, we all think we are better than average drivers...

I watched that debate last night and I have made up my mind - I'm voting for Tina Fey for sure. Reason number one: she is just amazing! Imagine trying to be a TV star on two shows at once AND run for President. That takes a lot of gumption, get-up-and-go, and good old American values. Apparently she lives in Alaska, too, which means a lot of really long flights to New York for the TV shows, so that means she has energy. A good thing, because her running mate, the old guy, looks pretty tired. Reason number two: Drill, baby, drill! Tina understands the simple fact that we need more oil. We have not used it all up yet, and until we do, we need to go get it and burn it. She talked about (paraphrasing here) "America's rapacious, unquenchable, unassuageable lust for the black gold, the Texas Tea" and I cannot agree more. Sometimes when I am filling up my tank I take just a small hit off the hose and it is mother's milk to me because I am the average American. Reason n...

Cool Hand Luke is the quintessential Paul Newman movie for me. It brought together all those qualities that he portrayed in his best characters - strong but damaged, sly but true, the blazing smile that floats up out of a deep well of sadness. And always cool, always cool. Newman had one of those attributes you cannot teach in acting class - charisma - and he had a trainload of it. A list of his best reads like somebody's top 20 films. My faves after Cool Hand Luke would be The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Sometimes a Great Notion, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, The Hustler, Hombre , and Slap Shot , which was a gross comedy but Newman brought dignity to it. And you can't hardly find a real stinker in his filmography. He had a real sense of what he did and didn't want to do with his acting, and with his life. In his era you made your bones on the stage, New York was the only destination for the legit actor, and he was the first to play some character...

I know a person could be writing today about Obama and the Tom Bradley effect , Palin's "pay for your own abortion, rape victims" policy , the ramifications of a nuclear Iran, parallels between the crash of '29 and the crash of '08 , and other urgent stories du jour . But I have a nagging question that trumps them all: What the hell am I supposed to do with Facebook? I understand that it's a social networking site. I understand it used to be called "MySpace for college kids." I get all that, but now what? I mean, what am I supposed to DO with it? (BTW, since I am communicating on a young person's topic here, it is necessary that I use terms like "I mean" regularly, and also use abbreviations like BTW, by the way.) No one ever sends me an instruction book for these new things. I am supposed to figure our for myself about "writing on the wall," and "poking" people. What do I look like, Stanley Einstein or something? ...

An observation: people who have car alarms that go off at 4:30 in the morning two days in a row and cause certain people to be awake way earlier than they should be, especially when certain people can never get back to sleep once they're awake, should be rounded up and exiled to Las Vegas. What's the deal with car alarms anyway? (The previous sentence brought to you by Jerry Seinfeld.) There was a time when the car alarm was a novel thing and if you heard one going off you reacted to it. Now you just walk on by, close the window (which doesn't help certain people sleep), turn up the TV. Rather pointless. The Presidential candidate who promises to do away with car alarms gets my vote. Ban leaf blowers, too, and I will vote for you twice. AT&T is promoting their new U-Verse service in my town these days. One of the things they offer is TV (not really cable, but that's the idea) and their pitch includes the promise that you can "record up to 4 programs at once....

Seven years ago this morning everything changed. Seven years ago this morning my son was just a goofy high school junior, and my daughter was only 12. Seven years ago this morning I could still run three miles in 27 minutes. Motivated by what happened seven years ago this morning, my son became a Marine, learned to run three miles in 20 minutes, and prepared for his time in Iraq. I can recall, if not still feel, the anger I felt seven years ago this morning. I might have joined up myself but I was already too old. Now I am too old plus seven years, and have had my anger refreshed. The anger infusion came courtesy of a documentary on the 9-11 conspiracy theories. Discovery Channel? History Channel? Conspiracy Channel? Can't remember which. I think it first aired in 2007. Two hours of a well-balanced look at the claims the "truthers" make, juxtaposed with actual truth. It's amazing that these conspiracy buffs can make some of their claims with a straight face. For exam...

Let me make it crystal clear at the outset, I've got nothing against white people. Many of my friends are white, in fact, and I am married to a white woman and we have white children together. As a reader here, you may be surprised to learn that I, myself, am white as well. But when it comes to whiteness, there's nothing that can compare with a Republican National Convention. If you have been a campaign follower for the last few months, you will have seen many staged candidate appearances, the type that result in eight seconds on the evening news. In these events you can typically see a carefully selected group of people in the background, behind the stumping candidate. If the polls show weakness with women voters, behold, there will be women in the background. If the Hispanic vote is weak for Joe Candidate, the bleachers will be chock-a-block with brown faces. But when it comes convention time, you can't dictate who gets seen, and the last few nights have revealed just how...

And so the grand three-day weekend winds down and I return to work today refreshed, relaxed and rejuvenated. This feeling will last until about 10:30am, but I will enjoy it while I have it. I will have the pleasure of looking back on an eventful Labor Day, when we wondered whether it was VP nominee Sarah Palin or her teen daughter who had recently been in it. Labor, that is. (Hahahaha, funny joke on two meanings of word "labor"! I kill me!) For those who aren't keeping score, blog postings on Daily Kos on Saturday (which seem to have been taken down now?) claimed it was Palin's 17 year-old daughter who gave birth to the 5 month-0ld in the family, not Sarah herself, claiming a coverup. Within a news cycle or two, we got the official word from Palin that the teen is in fact preggers in the present tense if not in the past tense. I imagine they worked overtime at the celebrity gossip magazines this holiday weekend, with a newly famous teen mom who might overshadow the ...

Kind of embarrassing that I missed this one, a story that popped up some 5 months ago in March 2008, but it's still blog worthy. Moses Was High on Drugs, Israeli Researcher Says. Psychedelic Cocktail May Explain Vision of the Burning Bush, Professor Says The professor in question is Benny Shanon. He says you can find the same plants on the Sinai Peninsula that you find in the Amazon, where these plants are used to make a mind-bending hallucegenic cocktail. (One of many versions of the news story can be seen here.) Not only was Moses on the stuff, says the prof, but perhaps his followers, too. That means they were understanding when he came down off the mountain and said "Thou shalt not kill, and does anybody have any Cheetos?" Any story like this, attributing less than divine cause to the great moments in the Bible, immediately draws scalding criticism. Hearken back to the "DaVinci Code" phenomenon, for example. For some people, the lessons in religious teaching...

Once in awhile you get a situation in sports where somebody is playing for vindication. A big contract for an aging slugger- the golfer with the reputation for choking - or more currently, the whole Brett Favre mania. In all these cases, that player comes out to prove he or she's still got it, deserves to be there, is truly the best. There's a vindication story playing out right now in China, in the women's gold medal match between the US and A and Brazil, and she who may be vindicated is Hope Solo. You have to be a real soccer fan to be really into this, I guess, but the Hope Solo story broke out into the mainstream last year. She's the US goalkeeper who played great all the way through the World Cup, then got benched for the semi-final, and Brazil cleaned our clock with Briana Scurry in the net. Solo was the better player at the time, Scurry's best games were well behind her, and just about everybody who follows the game thought it was a dumb mistake by the coach...

The expression we've all heard is "you can't be too rich or too thin." I suppose that gets said a lot around the tennis court at the country club, the changing room at Sak's? I suppose it draws a wry smile every time. Or is it really said in the aisles at Target by people who are at no risk of being too much of either? The expression we've never heard is "you can't be too smart," because we all know it is possible to be too smart. Kind of ironic since we spend a lot of energy trying to force kids to be smart. We pound them with homework, make them take tests, tell them the kids in Mumbai are going to take your future job. We try to get them into the best schools, the ones for the smart people, but they are always at risk of becoming "too smart for their own good." Based on what I've heard about last weekend's Presidential candidate activity, Obama is running the risk of being too smart for his own good. He and McCain did these l...

Indifference rapidly turns to rabid partisanship as soon as the Olympics offers its first big moment, and it looks like that's happened, so let's pump our fists and do a little "U-S-A! U-S-A!" In case you missed it, some French swimmers claimed they were going to "smash" the Americans in the 4 x 100 freestyle. (Imagine that, French bragging.) The race turned out to be spectacular, with the USA winning, so in your Gallic face, monsieur. Maybe you can win some gold medals if they had a smugness competition or a smoking marathon. We know the French could win the sprints if they could just have Germans chasing them. But mon dieu, enough cheap slaps at Pierre. (And in case you missed it and you want to see it, NBC has set up an excellent website to feed video. You can get live streams and archived stuff. Go to the site here, and if you get a message that you need to install "Silverlight" that's cool, don't be fearful.) It's a funny thing th...

I am proud to present my 200th post on this here blog, entitled "George Washington's crotch and other curiosities." You're welcome. George Washington - what do we know? He chopped down the cherry tree (not really) and he threw a dollar across the Delaware (unlikely) and later he crossed the Delaware (maybe to retrieve the dollar?) and he had wooden teeth (true) and he married for money (true) and he was lucky as hell to win the war (true.) But today we ask, did he have a deformed groinal area? Was he, in fact, engaged with something less than a full set of equipment? Were his legs on backwards? I'm not sure just what the heck was going on, but I enter as evidence this photo of a portrait that hangs in Faneuil Hall in Boston. (There may be copies in other galleries, too.) It's called "George Washington at Dorchester Heights" and was painted in 1806 or 1777, depending on what internet source you want to use. We see the familiar face with the wig, the l...

It's more than a little bit sad that bookstores are going the way of the dodo. Not only are times hard for the independent booksellers, but even the big guys like Borders and Barnes & Noble are struggling. (Look for those two to merge and share the pain.) In little old Napa not that long ago there were at least three bookstores downtown. Now the total is zero. Their sales fell as rents rose. On our recent east coast trip I was on the lookout for one of those funky old book shops with stacks and stacks to poke through. Sorry to say after two weeks on the road I never saw a single one. You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to conclude that the ability to buy books online is making the brick and mortar bookstore weak. If I want some old book, chances are I can find it for pennies from some Amazon re-seller - and if it's a new book I'm after, what keeps me from buying it at Wal Mart or some other discounter where you get the same book for several dollars less? (Other ...

It seems that I have three basic states of consciousness lately: Mildly dissatisfied Fully peevish Overly sentimental Oh, and I guess there is one more plane of existence for me - inebriated. Today I seem to be trending toward fully peevish, and it was all set off by what I overheard while on a lunch run yesterday. But let me start at the very beginning, that's a very good place to start. (Cue the music.) Having heard about the newest wine bar/tasting room to open in downtown Napa I popped in to check it out. (It's Gustavo Thrace in the Oxbow District, and you will be hearing a lot about Gustavo in the next few weeks with the opening of the new movie Bottle Shock . It's a movie about the 1976 Paris tasting, and he is portrayed in it.) After my visit I went to their website and noticed they had a blog, so I clicked over to that, too. It's not a real high energy blog - the most recent post is from December 2007 - but what I read was interesting: "Things we hate abou...

The was a good book a few years back (ok, I checked and it was 23 years ago. That's my new standard for "a few years" I guess) titled The Accidental Tourist . Anne Tyler wrote a character who was a travel writer for people who don't like to travel - the kind of people who always stay at a familiar hotel chain where there are no surprises, and seek out McDonald's and Applebee's so they're not confronted with culinary uncertainty. I'd like to think there are fewer risk-averse travelers out there these days, due to the relentless promotion of "close to the ground" travel by people like Rick Steves, and "authentic experience" promotion by the Lonely Planet crowd. We are all expected not to stay at Ho Jo's when overseas - better to rent a spare room in some local's house - and seek out the local cuisine. With all those Food Network shows with Rachel Ray or Bobby Flay chowing down in every wide spot in the road - how can there ...

Ask a dozen people how they define vacation and chances are good you will get something like 1 to 12 different answers. Some like a week at the lake, doing whatever it is people do at lakes. For others there's nothing better than the sun/sand/disposable fiction/rum-based cocktails combination. And then there are your guide book-toting types who need to visit monuments and museums. I admit I fall into the latter category. I can do the laid back beach routine for a maximum of two days before I am itching to read some plaques or slap on the audio tour headphones. I am not capable of just lying around doing nothing - at least not when I am on vacation. If it's a weekend at home and there are eleven projects I should be doing, that's when I am very good at lying around doing nothing. So our recent east coast adventure was right up my alley and down my street - two weeks of tramping around in our three great eastern centers of history and culture; Philadelphia, Boston and New Yo...

Today we are back home after two weeks on vacation. Blessed home! The entire two weeks were spent in big cities - big, humid cities - and our quiet, modest abode has never seemed so perfect as this morning. Do I have tales to tell of my travels to far-off lands? You betcha. More soon

So you're running pretty good all in all, but one day something's not quite working right. You've got a drip, or a squeak, or a pinch. Something's bent. Front end out of line, or you're not hitting on all cylinders. You take yourself into the shop and the doctor seems a little too serious for your comfort. You get to take some unpleasant tests, and you worry that you're getting worried over nothing, but then the other shoe drops - you've got it bad, and that ain't good. Here's the big question - what would you do with yourself and your little life if you knew you were a short timer? Say they tell you you've got six months or a year to go - would you live your life differently if you knew you didn't have much of it left to live? It's a little like pondering what you would do if you won the lottery. (Granted scenario 1 is a little less joyful than scenario 2.) If you won the lottery, you'd have sudden wealth and you'd live a differe...

Nominee for the biggest lie of the modern era: "50 is the new 30." This whopper is right up there with "I am not a crook," "I did not have sex with that woman," and "Mission accomplished." I think there may be whole legions of writers working for fashion and lifestyle magazines who sit around all day coming up with "blank is the new blank" comparisons. They are the Typhoid Marys who spread the " is the new " virus. It may have all started when one of these savants came up with "pink is the new black." This appears to have been spawned in the 1980s, and ever since, we can't get enough of it. "Iraq is the new Vietnam" is an easy one. "Small is the new big" was a line to sell little cell phones. From Wikipedia, we get: Carson Kressley from Queer Eye once declared, "Gay is the new black." There's an entire chart of "is the new"-isms here . It includes even the painfull...

For a short time yesterday I became part of the holstered set. I have been issued a Blackberry at my work, and tried out the nifty clip on holster. Not wanting to look like yet another guy with Batman utility belt fantasies, I have heretofore resisted hanging anything from my belt, and have generally resisted using the word "heretofore," but hey, things change. (Future iconic image of the earlier 2000s: guy with two or three gadgets clipped on his belt and a headset permanently plugged into his ear. That look will be like dresses with big shoulder pads or parachute pants when we look back on it some day. Oh, how we will laugh. By that time we will all have something the size of a button that does everything with voice command, or some gizmo surgically implanted in our brains that just knows what we want and need and produces it. Like, I could use an order of chili cheese fries right now, and I would like that to just appear before me, but the technology isn't ready yet. S...

Atticus Finch taught his children well, that it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mocking bird." One thing I can't stand it's birds nesting in my corncrib. I have always been impressed by mockingbirds. They've got so much to say all the time, and they say it over and over in so many ways, and with such enthusiasm, even though it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. It's kind of like listening to sports talk radio. We have a fairly regular mockingbird presence in our neighborhood. Some mornings it's that mockingbird talk that wakes me before the alarm. Not bad to lie there and listen to what the mockingbird has to say, knowing there's no chance he will go off on how Obama's middle name is Hussein, ...