The Wine Commonsewer™

Zorro & Manyana Tempranillo

Gentle Readers,

Been stoking the furnace non-stop, seven days a week, for the last couple of weeks so I decided to knock off around seven. After all, it was Friday Movie Night at Casa de las Rocas Grande. I plunked on the couch along with Mrs TWC,  Sonny Boy, The House Blond, Blackie, Daisy, Leo and a bottle of 2001 Manyana to take in the latest incarnation of Zorro on Mrs TWC's hang-on-the-wall TV.

We were excited. I mean, how can you miss? Antonio Banderas. Catherine Zeta-Jones. California's fabulous Zorro legend, which was drawn from the Curse of Capistrano. How can you miss? The promise of two hours of romance, drama, and the thrill that old guys feel when childhood heroes are resurrected. They missed. Avoid this clinker like the plague. I kept looking at Mrs TWC and mouthing you bought this? She kept shrugging and grimacing and mouthing stuff back like I didn't know.

Historically inaccurate and saddled with idiotic writing on a par with any Power Rangers movie, this ghastly movie played well with the under-10 crowd, but it is so, well, stupid, that suspension of disbelief, the key to any enjoyable movie experience, is impossible. Legend of Zorro is a perfect illustration of style without a dime's worth of substance. Any and every B&W Zorro episode was done better than this flick, so no more rock throwing at 1950's TV.

The reason Hollywierd continues to make crappy movies is because you can't get your money back. You open up the sour cream and find mold, the store takes it back. Buy a camera at Costco that malfunctions, you get your money back. Pay to see a movie that sucks, well, like Stevie Crown says, ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

The Manyana didn't help, neither.

I suspect that the name Manyana is Anglicized to appeal to our romanticized vision of a warm Spanish afternoon spent gazing at the garden surrounding the courtyard fountain with the azure sea just visible beyond the wrought iron gate, glass of the red nearby.

This Spanish Tempranillo is a sleeper. It's a great bargain and you should be able to pick some up for under $10.00. Pay no attention to the hologram label featuring a hammock on the beach that seems to change from chick to guy and back again. That gimmick is just that, don't shy away from the wine out of kitchy label fear.

The Manyana had more of the feel of a good Chianti than a Tempranillo (tem-prah-knee-yo). Medium bodied, deep red, with a nice balance of fruit and acid. Definitely a keeper and as TWC is fond of remarking, I've had wines that cost two and three times as much as this one that weren't nearly as good.

The wine will be excellent with pastas, pizza, empanadas, and most Mediterranean style dishes.

Now back to the grindstone for me (no rest for the wicked).

Salud.

As Ever,

TWC

Nyxem Ain't For Indigestion:but it might give you some on Friday

Gentle Readers,

Many, if not most, virus warnings circulating around the Internet are false or misleading. Apparently this one is not. As if on que my AV program is downloading over 8 mb of artillery to fight off this bugger.

Here's the dope:

There's a virus out there that will rear its ugly head on Friday.  It's known by various names including 'Nyxem' and 'Blackmal' and could delete Office and Acrobat documents from your computer. On the third of each month, starting this Friday it will destroy Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Acrobat files plus Access databases among others.

If you have anti-virus software (and if you don't, why not?) then make sure it is up to date then run a full scan over your computers.

Your AV software should have detected any nasties when they first arrived, but some can slip through so regular full scans are a wise move. For the same reason, you might want to do a backup of your documents.

The original virus might have arrived as an email message with one of the following subject lines:

Funny :)
My photos
Crazy illegal sex  (ed note: does your wife know you opened this?)
Real show
Miss Lebanon 2006
Give me a kiss
School girl fantasies gone bad (ed note: tell me you didn't open this)

Once running on a computer it can infect other computers on the network so even computers that don't have normal email access could be infected.

Symantec has details here as well as a fix if you've already been infected.

As Ever,

TWC

tip of the glass to Office Watch

So Long, Al

Gentle Readers,

Alan Greenspan, former jazz saxophonist, hard core free-market capitalist, and member of Ayn Rand's inner circle is taking a hike after presiding over the 14th hike in the nation's benchmark interest rate that now stands at 4.5%. While nobody is happy about a bump in interest rates, compared to the double digit figures from Jimmy Carter's self-described era of malaise, 4.5% still seems a bargain basement rate.

TWC always wondered how Greenspan reconciled his role at the Fed with his free-market writings. Maybe it was just a simple case of being Stuck In The Middle With You or Making The Best of a Bad Situation.

As Ever,

TWC

   

Boot Camp or Jail?

Gentle Readers,

USA Today tells us that....

A judge offered a 20-year-old man facing sentencing an unusual choice: Enlist in the Army or go to jail for up to a year.

That wasn't particularly unusual in my yoot. TWC's squad leader for 63 days (count 'em) at Uncle Sam's Misguided Children's camp in San Diego swapped four years in the Illinois state pen on an armed robbery beef for four years in the Marine Corps. There were several others in our platoon in the same boat, including the highly motivated Private Slaughter who once confided that he signed on to get away from heroin and the mean streets of Detroit. The military has straigtened out more than one life....

As Ever,

TWC

Tax Organizers

Gentle Readers & Clients,

Just  a reminder that the 2005 Personal Income Tax Organizer is available for download. All 2004 tax and business clients should have received the organizer via email.

The Tax Organizer is a fill-in .PDF form that opens in Adobe Reader. Most everybody has that program these days but if not it's available for download here for free.

As Ever,

TWC

Without Comment

tip of the glass to Chas

Gotta Work Late Babe

Gentle Readers,

This guy is as full of you-know-what as a Christmas turkey.

As Ever,

TWC

tip of the glass to Doc E