Chris Berman’s recent outbursts captured and posted to YouTube have gotten a lot of attention lately, but here’s one where he’s chatting a woman up about Chardonnay.

He seems to know what he’s talkin’ ’bout. Just don’t get on his bad side by giving him some lousy wine or something (Warning: Not Suitable For Work).

As my friend Ken told me today, it’s been a while. So I thought I’d pop in and wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and share some pictures and news.

Titanic Halloween Party

On Haloween I was honored to attend a very cool themed party at Jordan Winery, and yesterday Sarah Belk King at Wine Review Online published a nice recap of the event.

John outdid himself this year, and Chef Todd’s food was, as always, delicious. To the right is a pic of my lovely wife Candace enjoying herself at the party. I’ll spare you the pics of me in an old style tux with tails and white gloves, but rest assured they exist somewhere, just waiting to be used as blackmail material.

Truffle Trees

Did you know you can cultivate your own European black truffles? I didn’t, until recently. Now I’m hard at work implementing a plan to plant a small grove at the vineyard. It will take 5-8 years (depending on the cultivar) to show fruit, but the rewards are more than worth it. And for as low as 22 bucks a tree, why not give it a shot for yourself if you’ve got some room in the yard?

Tow It Outside the Environment

In honor of the recent oil spill in San Francisco bay and due to the dearth of good political comedy since Colbert went off the air, I leave you with the following clip from 1991.

The solution to environmental disaster: tow it outside the environment. Brilliant.

Tina and Lee took me up on my recent offer for free A’s tickets and were kind enough to send back a pic of them enjoying the game this past Father’s Day.

Unfortunately the A’s lost, giving up buckets of runs for only the second time all season, after taking a 4 run lead in the first. I recall being pretty depressed listening to it all unfold driving down I-5 on the drive back from Hat Creek.

Tina reports that they had a good time despite the loss. And really, how could you not when you’re sporting The Shirt?

Thanks for the pic guys and glad you enjoyed the game! And be sure to check out Tina’s new blog The Wine Broad and contribute a Rowdy Topless Taster story.

You’ve got to hand it to Steve Jobs, he gets people talking. In his latest Keynote, which I shamefully watched in its entirety last night over a glass of the new Emeritus (formerly goldridgepinot) Sonoma Coast pinot, the man famous for his “reality distortion field” showed off a couple new features of the new Mac operating system set to come out later this year.

One feature in particular, Stacks, caught my eye because I thought I spied the words Sonoma and Winery while he was demoing the feature. I hit rewind, slowed it down and sure enough, there it was, a pdf file of Sonoma County Wineries.

Nice! Now let’s see if the rest of Mac-topia takes notice.

Now lest you think that this is a fluke, or that Jobs doesn’t compulsively obsess over every single detail of his Keynotes and commercials, consider the following story which ran just this Monday analyzing one of the new iPhone commercials:

The section showing internet features of the phone highlights New York Times stories about the Democratic take-over in Congress. A neighboring story is about a key resignation at the White House. A related television ad on the site shows a headline about scandal pressures on the GOP, and the main close-up story is about the burdens of housing costs as incomes stagnate.

Nope, this inclusion was most definitely on purpose. Jobs loves him some SoCo juice.

Warning! Spoiler alert.

Like everyone else who watched the finale, Candace and I thought that the satellite feed had gone out when Tony looked up and the screen went black.

Such an abrupt cut after so many minutes of building suspense makes sense best if you buy the theory that David Chase went ahead and whacked us, the viewers. It’s my favorite interpretation, and I think it’s brilliant.

Looking back, the episode where Tony and Christopher steal, drink and proceed to sell a few cases of Pichon Lalande (for only $300!) is still a favorite, but I was happy to see the show go out with a bang.

Even if it was us that took the bullet instead of Tony.

Not that I condone excessive drinking, but this article on Modern Drunkard is really pretty entertaining. Andre the Giant, best known (by me) for his fantastic turn in the legendary Princess Bride, is by one author’s account the world’s greatest drunkard. The evidence? Compelling.

• Andre drank 7,000 calories worth of booze every day
• Andre once drank 16 bottles of expensive plum wine, a gift from the Japanese government, in one 4 hour stretch on his way to a wrestling match
• Total cost for his bar tab during the month he spent filming the Princess Bride? Just over $40,000
• In one 6 hour sitting, Andre drank 119 12 oz bottles of beer. Thats 1 beer every 3 minutes.

But it’s all not just debauchery and overindulgence. Something extremely positive came from the Giant’s incredible tolerance for ethanol. A medical breakthrough in fact. From the Modern Drunkard article:

The time arrived [for back surgery due to effects stemming from his glandular disease], and the anesthesiologist was frantic. He had never put a person of Andre’s size under the gas before and had no idea how much to use. Various experts were brought in but no solution presented itself until one of the doctors asked Andre if he was a drinker. Andre responded that, yes, he’d been known to tip a glass from time to time. The doctor then wanted to know how much Andre drank and how much it took to get him drunk.

“Well,” rumbled the Giant, “It usually takes two liters of vodka just to make me feel warm inside.”

And thus was a solution found. The gas-passer was able to extrapolate a correct mixture for Andre by analyzing his alcohol intake. It was a medical breakthrough, and the system is still used to this day.

Fascinating. So I suppose the next time you or a loved one have to go under, be sure to say a littler prayer of thanks to Andre the Giant, the World’s Greatest drunkard.

It’s either really early or really late for Halloween – take your choice – but when I saw that a guy named Len was offering to draw custom monsters based on a title of your choosing on his website Monsterbymail.com, I knew I had to get one.

So I chose “Pinot Swilling Parker Zombies From Hell!” naturally.

I’d actually hoped for a fleet of zombies slavishly following their master, who I hadn’t pictured as a zombie himself – more of a mad scientist type, but Len decided to go ahead and draw Parker as a zombie. Artistic license I guess.

Anyway I’m still stoked on the picture and I even had Len make a time lapse video of himself drawing Zombie Parker. Darn good likeness!

Unfortunately due to high demand Len has had to shut down Monster By Mail temporarily, but he promises to reopen for orders soon. You can get more Monster By Mail details here.

A few thousand years removed from the empty tomb, some of the most influential folks in the world are still talking about ol’ JC. Here are some Easter sentiments from our favorite rockstar and geneticist.

Bono:

“It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

“It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the Universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that ‘As you reap, so will you sow’ stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff…

I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.”

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project:

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds.

My earlier atheist’s assertion that “I know there is no God” emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, “Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God…Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit.
- John 15:5

Hope you have a happy Easter. And by the way, Pinot goes realy well with honey sliced swine. Mmm.

Thanks to an email from Zach I have some pics of the house in Austrailia made of wine bottles. Behold the future of personal living spaces:

As you can see the bottles do indeed still have the labels on them. An interesting design choice. Takes the whole shabby-chic concept to a whole new level in my opinion.

El Jefe mentions in the comments that homes made of bottles are nothing new, and he’s right. Zach sent another link full of interesting pics of homes made from bottles dating back decades. Who knew?

Check it out.

From ABC News Online:

“A house in Western Australia’s south-west is being built entirely from recycled wine bottles.

Around 13,500 wine bottles will be used in the walls of the house, which owner Peter Little says will save energy.

He says by filling the bottles with water, the entire building will be insulated.”

No picture, sadly. I’m curious if he removed all the labels or not. It would be interesting to have an entire wall of the dining room made up of Grand Cru. Impress the guests. You could probably craft a suitably feminine powder room out of burgundy bottles. And in the bedroom? Wall to wall Magnums, of course.

The key, I would think, is finding the right neighborhood to build in. A few well-thrown rocks while you’re hosting a swank dinner party in your bottle barn and you’ve got yourself some serious issues. Not to mention potential litigation. But hey, at least your heating bill will be low.