Old Man Claret: Bordeaux at £10 - £15 per bottle

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." - Henry Miller

Why drink Bordeaux at £10-15? Many other wines stride in with hi-how-are-you blasts. At this price, there are many choices for a medium-bodied red wine from nearly every corner of the globe. That’s why some are asking, is Bordeaux even relevant anymore?

rebel

Link: Rebel's Hotbed by Jay Trevor

champagne and real pain

"Captains of industry, great generals, artists of genius, even politicians, are often just people who have discovered that alcohol can enable them to make economic, tactical, creative, or political decisions whose implications would paralyze a sober individual." – John More, in sub-TERRAIN

Finest example: Winston Churchill.

Pol Roger released Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill Pol Roger Vintage Champagne in 1984 to recognise Churchill's attachment to Pol Roger, who "insisted on enjoying the wine at the most dangerous and dark periods of wartime".

My observation is Pol Roger is not as well-known the LVMH (Moet, etc) champagnes; Vintage Pol Roger, even less so, but preferred by people who have drunk too much Veuve Clicquot in their life.


Link: Sir Winston Churchill and Pol Roger

Romeo y Julieta (and other great Cuban cigar names)

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.

Take a deep inhale from a Romeo y Julieta Cuban cigar box in saint-seducing gold.

The smell is pure old-world romance. Even "cigar-box" as a note in fine Cabernet Sauvignon; I absolutely adore it.

And the names of Cuban cigars are romantic. Romeo y Julieta, Montecristo...

Where did the names come from? A clue is the lector (reader) stood on the factory floor and read from a novel to the the torcedores (cigar rollers) in the factory.

Apparently the names of the cigars are named after the torcedores' favourite stories. I believe it, but then I believe in romance to lift us from the humdrum everyday.




Link: official site of Habanos cigars

breakfast of champions

"Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne."

– from Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday, Kurt Vonnegut

Best-selling Manga comic about wine: Kami No Shizuki 神の雫

Two brothers on a quest to find the ultimate classic wine.

A wine-critic father challenges his two sons to find 12 legendary wines. The father dies, suddenly; and it becomes a race to succeed, for whomever finds them all first will inherit the father's £9 million cellar...

Kami No Shizuki – The Drops of God – is a 10-volume Manga series so popular in Japan and South Korea sales of the featured wines shoot up 30% after they are mentioned in the series.

"Any individual wine lucky enough to be name-checked can expect to sell an extra 50 cases within 48 hours," reports The Daily Mail.

The wine descriptions are brilliant: 'Just like a classic rock concert!' says one brother after taking a sip of a 2001 Mont-Pérat made by French winemaker Thibault Despagne.

Here is a part of the comic about Rosso Miani from Fruili-Veneto region in Italy. The region is more well-known for their white wines (pinot grigio, ribolla gialla), so this is a very interesting choice, yes, and a very interesting red wine...


Apparently there is a spin-off video game, called Sommelier... let's just hope it's not, erm, too violent.


Link: Kami No Shizuki 神の雫

get your fizz on

Courtney Love gets her fizz on

A new book on the history of hooch: Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol, By Iain Gately. Gotham Books.

"Real French Champagne was sweet but still. When the English imported it to their warm cellars in the 1660s, it went through a second fermentation and turned bubbly—sacrilege to the French, but soon de rigueur overseas....

One of Drink’s most fascinating subplots, as it turns out, is humanity’s apparently universal contempt for water. In ancient Greece, water drinkers “were believed not only to lack passion but also to exude a noxious odor”"

Link: A History of Hooch - New York Magazine

mindfucking

Edie Sedgwick in Andy Warhol's 1965 film, "Outer and Inner Space."

The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are.

– Iago in Othello, The Moor of Venice

Mindfucking: A Critique of Mental Manipulation is the latest book by Colin McGinn, in a short 96 pages, McGinn defines what mindfucking is: from personal mind games to full-scale propaganda and mind control.

Hey, maybe it's just me, but I hardly use the word mindfuck in a negative sense! These are the two ways I use the word:

• "Wow, that (book, film, conversation) was a total mindfuck."
• "That relationship was a mindfuck. I'm glad it's over."

There has to be an emotional experience, after which your senses feel reorganised (or even, de-organised, like a suitcase of ex-boyfriend's clothes thrown out an 8- story window, "No more!").

McGinn argues mindfucking can be an intrusive and violating experience. Unless of course, you give your consent (!)

That's half the problem, like The Moor in Othello, mindfucking can make you feel like an ass if you are not careful. Or you ending up fucking yourself up.

Maybe if you read this book and know what's going on first, you can mindfuck back!!! OK, that's not the point... (be good, not evil!)

Link: Colin McGinn's blog with forum debate about title

Luis Buñuel's discrete charm of the dry martini

Buñuel's Belle de Jour

In 'Earthly delights', a chapter in Luis Buñuel's autobiography, My Last Sigh, the consummate surrealist describes his perfect dry martini:

"The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients — glasses, gin, and shaker — in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don't take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Shake it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, shake it again, and serve...

Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin."

P.S. I like my martini dirty with gin, olives, olive juice and darkly (ie. no sunlight!) Let's bring back Cocktail Hour (snap!)



Link: A lesson in the fine art of mixology, as seen in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise.

Further tremors after Loris Greaud exhibition yesterday

It's just after 3am. I can hear night birds singing here in London (always the most shocking sound) and I can't go back to sleep. Had a bad dream about doors. It must be those doors at Greaud's exhibition I saw yesterday - Cellar Door (once is only twice).

Those heavy doors rolling down from the roof - nightmarish - painted in industrial-strength black matte paint. Locked in each room, if you go close to the doors to leave they won't open but step away and it suddenly does. Maddening! Also slightly claustrophobic; I felt like I was stuck in a sumptuous hotel foyer in William Burroughs' Dead City Radio, Scandal at the Jungle Hiltons... "Quite a scene it was!"

I've spent a lot of time at cellar doors - vineyard cellar doors - around the world. It's strange I've never really thought about the actual words, cellar door. The guide to the ICA Exhibition explains:

"The title of Cellar Door is inspired by JRR Tolkien's essay English and Welsh (1955), in which the author and linguist remarked on the beauty of the words "cellar door" - they have become a famous example of euphonious phrasing."

Now I'm very awake. It doesn't surprise me Greaud showed "Tremors were forever" in Tokyo last year. Talking about tremors, is there a connection with Miles Davis' 1970 album, also called the Cellar Door Sessions? I am kept awake by questions and reverberations. It's too late to go back to sleep. And I keep thinking of one of the first exhibitions I saw in London at the Hayward Gallery in 1995, a retrospective of Yves Klein (left).

There are echoes of Yves Klein ideas in Greaud. The sweet melodic-sounding celador lollies loll around the mind as much as the mouth (lollies with no sweetness, or taste). Go ahead and repeat the word, cellar door - over and over - and you feel like a child repeating a new word endlessly just for the joy of hearing it.

Advertising and repetition, anyone, anyone? Take a look at the "marketing website" set up for these non-taste lollies. It's the words cellar door, to celador, the brand - similar to International Yves Klein Blue.

Greaud's sense of delight and ideas are a new tremor of Yves Klein. Illusion Is A Revolutionary Weapon, M46 paintball gun with IKB (International Klein Blue - paintballs), 2007 is a M46 paint ball gun with IKB paint balls - a cool tribute to the cool artist. And it also looks fun!

I had to wake up and tell you all this.

Greaud succeeded in waking me up this morning with dreams as vivid as naked women writhing in International Yves Klein blue-coloured paint. The bluest of blue.

Those doors got into my dreams. I hope this 29-year-old artist keeps up and is not taken from the world too early as Yves Klein (at age 34). I might not enjoy these dreams of doors; but I do like meandering through Greaud's imagination and dreams.

Link: This post follows yesterday's post, Loris Greaud: Cellar Door (Once is Always Twice)

I play the drums in a band called okay

Is this book a cliché? Or do (some) bands believe their own bullshit so much that they become cliché? Does that make the band cliché rendered in this novel true? These are the ouroboros questions I asked myself as I read the 9th novel by Toby Litt.

The structure is laid out like a stage, with the drummer at the back narrating the action around him. Each chapter enters stage left like a short story in itself. Then comes the stereotypes beat out in 4/4 time: self-serving loneliness, chicks digging the lead singer over the drummer, drug-addiction, and the tedium of touring. Boom-tish!

Shuffle to the middle of the book and it gets a little more interesting. What happens after an ego-juggernaut stops? Enter the post-band comedown, when they’re in their 30s and it all begins to become too real… bored and jaded by all the fun but not able to give it up, either. For new haircuts, I mean - bands, in NME magazine this week (or last week, or whatever) it may be a nasty shock to see where it all leads. And it's not as tragic as you'd believe. It's downright mundane.

The drummer-narrator could’ve fallen a lot harder. I’ve seen it happen in real life enough to know he kept his sanity (if not his hearing) more than most. But this is fiction, and the band novel is always difficult when truth is often stranger than fiction: can you imagine a novel based on Keith Richards?? Also, the (Canadian, indie) band is called (lower-case, italics) okay; they are not larger than life rock stars. Which left me thinking: who cares?

If the larger-than-life rock star book is what you’re looking for then you won’t find it here. Read The Dirt - Motley Crue: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band for the ultimate band book – for structure, characters (!) and redemption – but I warn you now, only if you can stomach it: it's not okay.

Link: I play the drums in a band called okay - The Guardian Digested Read

Doris Lessing: "Oh Christ... I couldn't care less"

When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature, reporters waited outside her home in North London to give her the news. She responded: "Oh Christ... I couldn't care less."

She is my favourite 88-year-old Nobel Laureate! As the second sentence of The Golden Notebook (1956) says:

“The point is,” said Anna, “as far as I can see, everything is cracking up.”’

Link: Doris Lessing on Nobel Prize

Divine Princes of Decadence

Why have I just finished two biographies about wilful and flamboyant self-destruction through spending large sums of money? I'm bored of my hell, I want to hang out in your hell for a change. Let's dream on in Less-Than-Zero style (£££, that is).

Bunker Spreckels: Surfing's Divine Prince of Decadence is about the step-son of Clark Gable who, at 21, picked up his inheritance in an armoured van ($50 mill) and set out on a mission to destroy himself. He asked his friend Art Brewer to document his life; and you can see for yourself in the photographs: he went from sun-kissed young boy to bloated, drug-crazed, gun-toting sex monster. He died of a heart attack at 27, before his film was completed. But you get the gist. I can't help but get a delicious thrill of schadenfreude observing a surfer self-destruct (Forgive me, but I grew up at the beach yet liked to wear gothic black: not fun).

The other biography is more seductive, or else, educative: Dandy of the Underworld, by Sebastian Horsley. Just like Quintin Crisp, just like Oscar Wilde, Sebastian Horsley believed the artist should also live the artful life, even more than creating actual art itself. To be a Dandy, in the historical sense, is a commitment to a lifestyle completely devoted to aesthetic pleasure and perfection. Even Mr Horsley's moments of pure squalor seem romantic because they are lived with an absolute commitment to his ideal. A few images will scar for me life: the amputee in the brothel with no arms or legs; well, it only proves there is courage in living your convictions.

Unlike Bunker Spreckel, Sebastian Horsley is still alive, living in Soho in London. He signed my book at Foyles bookshop. In ink, he wrote:

Hello dear, always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. This is it. Love Sebastian.


Link: Sex, drugs and rolling surf: interview with B Bunker Spreckels
Link: Sebastian Horsley's blog

advice

"You know what I would do if I were in your place? I'd drink from the milk basin of the Milky Way; I'd swallow comets; I'd lunch on dawn; I'd dine on day and I'd sup on night; I'd invite myself, splendid table-companion that I am, to the banquet of all the glories, and I'd salute God as my host! I'd work up a magnificent hunger, an enormous thirst, and I'd race through the drunken spaces between the spheres singing the fearsome drinking song of eternity."

From the spirit of Galileo to exiled writer, Victor Hugo (1802–1885) during a séance.

Good advice. Must start tonight.


Link: From Conversations with Eternity: The Forgotten Masterpiece of Victor Hugo.
Link: Bruce Nauman, "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths" 1967