General – Page 21 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Copenhagen

Cynthia and I have booked the flight and the hotel for a week in Copenhagen. Should be very interesting around Christmas time. Much like our trip to Brussels last year it’s going to be cold. Average temperatures don’t tend to exceed 40° on any given day. There are only about 7-8 hours of daylight with the sun coming up around 8:30am and setting around 3:45 in the afternoon. Even then, the average amount of actual sunlight on any given day in December is about 1 hour total. So lots of gloomy gray skies.

In the above map you’ll notice the Oresund Bridge which is half bridge, half tunnel and runs across the Öresund strait, connecting Copenhagen in Denmark with Malmö in Sweden. That means we’ll be taking a day trip to Sweden, so this trip will involve two countries!

If you’ve been to Copenhagen and have any advice, please post it in the comments section!

#2 – Erik Banti Toscana Carato

Winery: Erik Banti
Varietal: Sangiovese Blend
Country: Italy
Region: Tuscany > Toscana Igt
Vintage: 2006
Price: $11.99

Cynthia’s Review:

I liked this wine. This wasn’t much of a surprise to me when I read the label and discovered that it contained 70% Sangiovese grapes. Although I am a beginner when it comes to wine- I love the Tuscan wines, and I recognized this name. (Although it seems to be spelled in a variety of ways, depending upon the native language of the label designer) The remaining recipe for this wine is 25% Merlot and 5% Sirah. (Sirah is also subject to imaginative spelling it seems !) We decanted this wine about 15 minutes before dinner. I still don’t know exactly why letting the air get to the wine is a good thing, but maybe that’s because I worked for years in the grocery industry, where we spent all our time frantically trying to keep air out of practically everything utilizing skillfully designed packaging. We served this wine with a rather heavy meal- pork loin, augratin potatoes and creamed spinach- and the wine stood up to the challenge. Typically, I am a vegetarian, and don’t consume much of the meat portion of the meal, but I did eat a few bites of pork loin, just so that I could see how it paired with the wine. I actually did notice a difference- the wine seemed a bit heavy with just the vegetables, but that heaviness disappeared when I added the pork loin to my plate. The label also indicates that the wine has been aged for 12 months in American and Slovenian oak barrels. Slovenian??? Maybe someone out there can tell me what the particular benefits of Slovenian oak are??? At any rate, I repeat, I liked this wine: I give it a “yay”. Gerald is 2 for 2 thus far!

Jay’s Review:

The Toscana Carato is not a heavy red wine, though the color might make you think otherwise. It smells fantastic! To the tastbuds, it is mildly complex, but not overwhelming at all. Smooth and flavorful it pairs very well with a drier meat dish like the pork loin we had for dinner. I think this would not have been the case had Cynthia prepared the pork with any kind of rich sauce or gravy as it would have overwhelmed the more subtle aspects of this particular wine.

I really do like the blended wines, ESPECIALLY the Super Tuscans and this one seemed to me to be a very nice mix of the well tempered Sangiovese grape and \just the right touch of the bolder Merlot and the spicy Sirah.

I give the Toscan Carato a “yay” and have even saved a few glasses for later consumption. It definitely goes on the list for restocking the wine rack when the challenge is over.

The $100 Wine Challenge

Cynthia and I have been educating ourselves about wine over the last few years. We’ve enjoyed the occasional trip to our local Italian restaurant which offers a modest corking fee when you bring your own bottle to enjoy with dinner and we’ve especially enjoyed exploring local wines when traveling to Spain.

As part of our ongoing education we have been visiting Spec’s and have the services of a knowledgeable young man by the name of Gerald. He has been giving us good advice and has come to know what we like and don’t like in regards to wine and has been very helpful to us. We’ve taken to calling Gerald our “Wine Sherpa” …

Gerald has been very good about making recommendations about wine that fits our budget, which is in the $15-$20 per bottle range. We’ve occasionally bought more expensive bottles for special occasions or to have on hand and we’ve also had some very tasty $10 bottles.

Since we know it’s quite easy to spend $100 plus on a single bottle of good wine we came up with the idea of finding $100 worth of good wine in the form of 10 bottle for $10 or less. The concept has a lot of appeal to me as 10 bottles of $10 wine will stretch quite a bit further than one bottle of $100 wine. This would also serve as a gauge of our Wine Sherpa’s skill in suggesting wine for us. We told Gerald of our plan and we gave him one week to think about it before returning to his store to let him pick out the wine.

When we arrived at the store yesterday Gerald walked us around and presented us with 10 bottles he thought we would enjoy.

In the spirit of absolute honesty, there is one bottle in this batch that was closer to $11 but the rest were under $10 and the whole purchase came out to $100.74

Over the next few weeks we will be sampling the choices made for us and writing our thoughts about each one and posting them here.

Strange Fruit – Swoon

After having seen Strange Fruit perform “Spheres” on Saturday night at Discovery Green I was compelled to make it back out for their Sunday afternoon performance of “Swoon.”

I was reluctant, Fall in Houston seems rather meaningless. It was hot and humid but I felt the sunshine and the unique photographic opportunity was worth braving the elements for, so I headed out for the 3:00 pm show.

Again, the actors shimmied up their bendy poles, but rather than orbs they donned period costuming and performed a love story (of sorts)…all in pantomime set to music. I was struck by how much the whole thing looked like a René Magritte painting come to life.

The blue sky, the George R. Brown and the aerial acrobatics all combined for a very thrilling and enjoyable show. I like how it appeared that the actors were literally falling from the sky at some points during the performance.

Additional images in the gallery

Strange Fruit – Spheres

Strange Fruit performed this weekend at Discovery Green. It’s hard to describe, so let me borrow from their web site…

Strange Fruit is a Melbourne-based performing arts company that produces and performs a remarkable style of work that fuses theatre, dance and circus, using a unique elevated medium. Perched atop 4 metre high flexible poles of original design, the troupe delivers a sublime performance, bending and swaying in the air, captivating and engaging the audience in absolute fascination.

On Friday and Saturday night they did a show called “Spheres” in which the performers shimmied up to the top of tall, flexible poles and then encased themselves inside of giant white fabric spheres which then began to sway back and forth like so many dandelions bending in a light breeze.

As dreamy, ethereal music played the performers emerged from the spheres in the form of four characters and proceeded to put on a pantomime that was, well…hard to describe.

Again, from the web site:

Creation, exultation, liberation, life, the universe and everything. The Spheres take a whimsical look at physics, the miracle of birth and humanity’s existential relationship to our planet. Giant, illuminated orbs of luminous beauty contain characters that gradually emerge to stand and rise above their spheres of existence. This piece is beautiful, reverent and sublime.

The whole show lasted about 30 minutes and it was really quite beautiful and pleasant to watch. Also, quite a challenge to photograph.

These pics don’t really capture the movement so well. In my next post I cover their daytime performance of “Swoon” and it gives a better sense of how extraordinary this was.

Additional photos in the gallery.

Fab 40

The Fab 40 pay tribute to the original Fab 4 with a free, live performance of “Abbey Road” on Saturday, September 12 at Discovery Green.

40+ (probably closer to 50) local musicians – handpicked by Beatles enthusiasts David Blassingame and Steve Candelari – performed the Beatles’ album “Abbey Road” from beginning to end.

It was an ambitious project. Nearly felled by illness, loss of critical instruments and the weather, it went very well despite all this.

You can see a slideshow of all the photos I took that night by clicking here.

Roy Head

Roy Head is one of my all time favorite performers. He’s a local legend due to his 1965 hit single “Treat Her Right”

Check out the moves on the young Roy Head in this video from 1965

He’s about to turn 70 next month but you’d never know it from the energy level of his live performances.

All shots below with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 on the Sony Alpha 700

Soul Fest – 2009 – The El Orbits

The current line up of The El Orbits is Thomas Escalante on vocals, Jim Henkel on guitar, Allen Hill on the bass and Eric C. Hughes on the drums. On Saturday night they opened for Roy Head, Barbara Lynn and Archie Bell. They also served quadruple duty as the backing band for each of the acts throughout the entire evening.

For this show I used three different Sigma lenses on the Sony Alpha 700, each of which is represented below.

Sigma 20mm f/1.8 – Click for larger image

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 – Click for larger image

Sigma 10mm f/2.8 Fisheye – Click for larger image