Here, a Cato Institute thinkin' feller and fairly well known blogger links for the second time to my long-ago-penned review of bottom-shelf wines.
From all the feedback I've heard over the last half-decade, from friends and from strangers alike, that wine review is the best bit of writing I've ever published. Yet, ironically, it emerged from a truly nasty-ass time in my life. My family was splitting up, I couldn't get laid to save my life, I was repeatedly in trouble with the law, and I damn near flunked out of college. I generally look upon that year as one in which I teetered on the brink of disaster. So it's odd to find that a piece from then is regarded as a classic, even now, by folks I don't even know. This here innernet shore does stump a feller time to time. Gerblesit.
Posted by FLOG at September 17, 2004 9:55 PM"The finish, though, is a battle of green pennies and bug repellent, with lead paint darting around the edges..."
"It was like waking up in a tire fire."
And yet you wonder why people are so infatuated with that article? It's pure poetry, man, pure poetry.
So I read through it again. The Monroe Dragons? I remember that night. Anyway, thanks for the happy little trip down a memory lane covered in broken glass and lit by blinking florescent lights. The winter of '98 was cruel, hard and cold. As bad as it may have been, at least you weren't contending with pyscho dormmates.
Posted by: Blog at September 18, 2004 11:52 AMPure poetry? I s'pose. But don't give me all the credit. The wine review, you might recall, was really a 3-way collaboration among the brothers Atkinson and Blog himself. You and Mike put up 2/3 of the best lines.
Posted by: FLOG™ at September 19, 2004 6:04 PMDoes this mean you've been holding back on the residuals?
The pink vomit I coughed up that night is probably still engrained in the carpet in room 102. 'Dos were 'da days.
Posted by: Blog at September 20, 2004 4:31 PMTrust me, you don't want these residuals.
Posted by: FLOG™ at September 20, 2004 7:50 PM