The Wine Commonsewer™

Believe I'm Sinkin' Down

Happy All Hallow's E'een Gentle Readers,

TWC went down to the Crossroads in Clarksdale Mississippi (pretty sure that's pronounced Misipi) with the newlyweds* a week or so ago. Highway 61 between Tunica and Clarksdale is the flattest highway in the world. Makes Kansas look like the Rockies. There isn't a hint of a curve or a rise for thirty miles.

Spent a spell at the Blues Museum in the old Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad freight depot where they had carefully reassembled Muddy Waters' sharecropper cabin. Interestingly, Chatalaina's daddy was born into a depression era sharecropper family as well. Those were hardscrabble days in the Delta no matter your skin color.

Tommy Johnson never made any bones about how he learned the blues.....

You want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where the road crosses that way.....just a little ' fore 12 that night.....be playing a piece there by yourself.....A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want.

Legendary bluesman Robert Johnson was not as forthright as Tommy but the rumors and innuendo persist. Some of that is traced back to Son House.....

When Robert Johnson got through playing all our mouths was open. He sold his soul to the devil to get to play like that.

Henry Goodman saw the vision and said it was Rosedale, not Clarksdale, where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Man In Black, and I don't mean Johnny Cash.....

Robert Johnson thinking about Son House preaching to him, Put that guitar down, boy, you drivin’ people nuts. Robert Johnson needing as always a woman and some whiskey. Big trees all around, dark and lonesome road, a crazed, poisoned dog howling and moaning in a ditch alongside the road sending electrified chills up and down his spine, coming up on a crossroads just south of Rosedale. Robert Johnson, feeling bad and lonesome, knows people up the highway in Gunnison. Can get a drink of whiskey and more up there. Man sitting off to the side of the road on a log at the crossroads says, You’re late, Robert Johnson.

Chatalaina told us that day that any crossroads in the Delta would do so long as it was isolated and the moon was right.

Video here. 

As Ever,

The Wine Commonsewer

Photo Credit: Bill Kalles

*No Star has done made sure that Lone Chatalaine ain't lonely no more

He Couldn't Bear It

Thoreau on Fear of the Dark

I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the saying goes….

Leave Your Body At The Door

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

There's no escape from death's embrace, though you lead it on a merry chase.—The Book of Counted Sorrows

This is a particularly creative mash up of scenes from the Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas.

Video here.

Wayne had this played at his funeral.

As Always,

TWC

This is Halloween

Video here.

Tip of the glass to J.C.

A Public Service Message From TWC

The Doctor Is In (Five Cents Please)

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Sometimes TWC hangs out his shingle.

Guy told me today that he passionately hated his medication. It made him violently sick most of the morning, tapered off later in the day I guess. He asked me how anybody could be sick and starving simultaneously. Not being an MD, TWC took that question to be rhetorical in nature. Said his head felt like somebody had the back of it in a vise grip and that it makes him bitchy at his family. Pretty sure he wanted to say more about that but he let it go. Says when nobody is around he screams in rage at things that wouldn't ordinarily bother most people. The dogs hide.

I wanted to go over some paperwork with a sweet old woman this week. She's worried about the specter of assisted living and made some arrangements for an annuity. I talked to her rep at the bank on Friday last about it and must have spooked her. Like an old time melodrama, Ms Snidely Whiplash showed up at the old lady's doorstep on, get this, *Sunday Morning*. Put the arm on her to sign the papers and transfer the money, presumably so the bad old accountant wouldn't put the kabash on the whole deal. I might have, too, because the deal wasn't what the rep told my client it was. Hate people that manipulate old people. Most people blame the institution, but really, it's just the snakes that work there.         

Years ago a Jehovah Witness Latino gardener client broke down in the office. Great huge gasping sobs, the kind where it feels like the wind's been knocked out of you. It was Christmas. Mexican folk and Witnesses and my wacky sister are all old school. It is the *MAN's* job to take care of his family and my guy couldn't bear that his wife took a job so's the bambinos could see proof of Santa that year.

My advice to all?

Drink more red wine.

Five Cents Please.

Bonus:

As Ever,

TWC

“Nothin’ Says Lovin’ Like Something From the Coven.”—Tim Allen

2008 Louis Jadot Beaujolais Villages

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Ordinarily TWC pays the same attention to Louis Jadot wines as he does to Two Buck Chuck, but it's Mundane night and there it was.....

I've always suspected that mega-mass-marketed Louis Jadot Beaujolais Villages was sort of foisted on America as payback for calling our most insipid poseurs by names such as Hearty Burgundy.

Beaujolais of any stripe, pronounced Bo-jah-lay---with a soft 'J',  isn't my favorite but this one isn't bad, actually better than some of the Pinot Noirs I have had lately. That is a less surprising observation than it would otherwise seem. That's because Beaujolais is made from the Gamay Noir grape, an earlier ripening cousin of the ever so fickle Pinot Noir grape.

The Jadot is a medium bodied wine with clean acidity, light tannins, and a little strawberry on the palate. Pair it with lighter fare such as chicken salad, grilled salmon, or antipasto. Drink this now, Beaujolais isn't a layin' down kinda wine.

You'll find it around town for under ten bucks American. 

As Evoir,

TWC

Love My Baby Like the Finest Wine (Happy Birthday Darlin')

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

As the Summer of Love faded into the warm clear days that mark Southern California in October, the stork assigned to the Fullerton run showed up at St Jude Hospital a little early. In his bundle of swaddled cotton were a couple of teeny preemie twin girls. Nobody had thought up ultrasound yet and consequently Mrs TWC wasn't expected and gave them all a bit of a startle.

She's my pride and joy.....

Gotta go now, because we're taking the birthday girl to Sunday brunch at Taps. 

Katie & Mom

Video here.

As Ever,

TWC