| Updated at least 26½ times a day |
| CONTACT THE LIZARD |
| OUR OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY |
|
| Check out our blog the monitor |
| Sign me up to receive the free weekly |
home
articles
editorials
bites
blog
gossip
love
letters
retractions
vacancies
competitions
about us
philosophy
contact
articles
editorials
bites
blog
gossip
love
letters
retractions
vacancies
competitions
about us
philosophy
contact
| _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
REGULAR FEATURES
The Epicure's Thanksgiving
A Lizard Diary, Part X
by A S H Smyth
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sunday, November 25th, 2007
The tenth day. My mother’s birthday.
I arise, and shine (as always), and prepare myself for outdoor pursuits.
But first, coffee. After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, we stop in Sausalito,
on a quest for caffeine, but also for camera batteries. Batteries ticked off, we
dodge the ubiquitous Starbucks and wander into a converted trailer where
they sell us coffee for a buck. Bonza.
Then on to Muir Woods.
NB Muir Woods must not be confused with Bretton Woods. Bretton Woods is
where they chopped down all the trees in order to make the paper for the
money that the World Bank and the IMF might need. Muir Woods is where
they signed the UN Charter and filmed the Ewoks (albeit on different days).
Muir Woods is emblematic of various things. The glory of massive Coast
Redwoods, mostly, and benevolent folks (like John Muir and William Kent)
who are rich enough to think it’s important that vast tracts of land go unused
in the name of giving men of leisure somewhere nice to stroll…
A Lizard Diary, Part X
by A S H Smyth
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sunday, November 25th, 2007
The tenth day. My mother’s birthday.
I arise, and shine (as always), and prepare myself for outdoor pursuits.
But first, coffee. After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, we stop in Sausalito,
on a quest for caffeine, but also for camera batteries. Batteries ticked off, we
dodge the ubiquitous Starbucks and wander into a converted trailer where
they sell us coffee for a buck. Bonza.
Then on to Muir Woods.
NB Muir Woods must not be confused with Bretton Woods. Bretton Woods is
where they chopped down all the trees in order to make the paper for the
money that the World Bank and the IMF might need. Muir Woods is where
they signed the UN Charter and filmed the Ewoks (albeit on different days).
Muir Woods is emblematic of various things. The glory of massive Coast
Redwoods, mostly, and benevolent folks (like John Muir and William Kent)
who are rich enough to think it’s important that vast tracts of land go unused
in the name of giving men of leisure somewhere nice to stroll…
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007
Really tall trees
… but also the grip that the Green lobby
has on us these days. One sign
deceitfully informs us that the world
leaders who came here in the spring of
1945 did so in full awareness of the role
that nature would play in world politics*
– or somesuch equivalent bollocks. It
makes no mention of the fact that Muir
Woods just happens to be miles and
miles from the dangerous Bay-side parts
of SF, and well-camouflaged in case of
Japanese air-strikes.
We walk around the woods, and I resist
the urge to toss my Styrofoam cup into
the foliage just to see how the wildlife
freaks would react.
has on us these days. One sign
deceitfully informs us that the world
leaders who came here in the spring of
1945 did so in full awareness of the role
that nature would play in world politics*
– or somesuch equivalent bollocks. It
makes no mention of the fact that Muir
Woods just happens to be miles and
miles from the dangerous Bay-side parts
of SF, and well-camouflaged in case of
Japanese air-strikes.
We walk around the woods, and I resist
the urge to toss my Styrofoam cup into
the foliage just to see how the wildlife
freaks would react.
Sensing this destructive urge, my attorney rightly discerns that it is high time
for some champagne, bundles me into the car, and drives post haste for
Gloria Ferrier’s vineyard in Sonoma.**
10:30am. Champagne, and three types thereof. Needless to say, my
plebeian palette immediately declares the cheapest one (though hardly
cheap, I wouldn’t have said) to be by far the best. I struggle manfully
through the ‘bad’, expensive stuff, battening it down with some salami, nuts
and olives.
On to Sebastiani, where the tasting takes place in a dark, Christmassy kind
of cave, full of the same gaudy kitsch that, by miraculous coincidence, so
offended my dainty sensibilities at almost exactly this hour last Sunday. If
hell were run by Santa, this is how it would look (except the Dickensian
fireplace would doubtless turn out to be full of fluttering ribbons, producing –
ironically enough – no heat whatever). I’m glad we came in here while I was
still relatively sober.
We plough through the wine list, making chit-chat with the nice middle-aged
lady doing the pouring.
Last week my attorney told me a story I was certain was a stretcher, in
which he schooled the pourer at some vineyard on the grape involved in a
particular wine. The pourer – who, in his defence, had only been on the job a
week – was obliged to look furtively at his notes under the counter, but
concluded that my attorney was right.
This, I now discover, was the vineyard in question. And this in my hand is the
product of the aforementioned grape (a hybrid, developed at UC Davis). As if
on cue, the nice middle-aged lady walks back into the tail end of the
conversation, and finds herself on the receiving end of Malcolm Gluck’s
viticulture savvy. Sure enough, she’s never heard the story either, and ducks
under the counter.
I am convinced. More importantly, the lady behind the counter is impressed.
Somewhere between our good looks, charm, my accent and my attorney’s
wine knowledge, the tasting fee is waived, and we make good our escape,
full of the premium booze she was never supposed to pour.***
On to Ravenswood. This place seems to have no staff who work more than
about 3 hours a month, but the guys behind the counter can nonetheless
point precisely to the square foot of vines just outside the window where
the very fine Zinfandel I’m knocking back once grew. Then there are some
more very fine Zinfandels. They seem to specialise in Zinfandels. There is no
charge again. On, on!
Lunch at a taco shop. I am unbelievably hungry, and cannot work out why.
Nor can I work out why every girl who comes through the front door reminds
me of Kirsten Dunst in the shower in Wimbledon. The mysteries of life…
A windy mountain track – a short cut, I’m told – over into Napa Valley (‘If it
was easy it would just be “the way”’). We stop at St Supery where, thanks
to my attorney’s membership, we are ushered upstairs and though some
muslin drapes into the ‘premium tasting’. It feels like we’re being sized up for
a porn movie, but the wines are damn good. Everything’s pretty good,
actually, now I think on it.
We are served by a genial codger called Joe. He tells my attorney what he
knows about Notre Dame football, and my attorney tells him what he knows
about wine. I keep quiet, partly through ignorance on both topics, but mostly
because my tongue no longer seems to be entirely under my control. We get
the good stuff; the premium stuff; the stuff no-one’s supposed to know
exists; and the stuff Joe was planning to use a libation on his late mother’s
grave but then decided what the heck he’d let me drink the remaining half-
bottle what with us being old friends and all.
No charge, mercifully.
In undignified haste we dash to V Sattui and drink everything on their list. (I
say ‘we’: my attorney is present throughout, but since he’s driving the
pourers are gleefully inflicting his share of tomorrow’s suffering on me.)
Apparently this place is very good for madeiras. There’s a charge, but I’m
long past caring.
Finally to the Frank Family winery, which was once Marilyn Monroe’s
favourite. Tragically, the last tasting of the day has already kicked off, and I
have to make do with only a couple of glasses of whites and reds (and
possibly ports and madeiras… who knows?).
On the way out, my attorney remarks that, ‘There were, of course, some
idiots who insisted on speaking who thought they knew something.’ While I
fully agree, I am absolutely unable to convey this: in a neat logical circle,
though, this presumably means I was not one of the offenders in question. I
am relieved, and express this with a wan look and a thumbs-up.
Fortuitously, he takes this to be the unvocalised agreement. A win-win
situation, in the circs.
Calistoga, and the Indian Springs and Spa. Mud baths. My attorney’s
‘treat’.**** We are stripped of our clothes and given flip-flops and
unnaturally fluffy dressing gowns. Still, everyone seems to be striding about
with a purposeful sense of machismo – like in Top Gun, for example – so I try
to get into the spirit of the thing.
Wandering about in the steam I confidently expect Robert Shaw to leap out
at any moment and attack me (I could take him, obviously; if he’s not dead
he’s gotta be at least 100). But nothing untoward happens, so long as you
discount a gym-trainer chap asking me to remove my fig leaves and hop in
the shower.
The nice gentlemen in tracksuits then point to a massive mud bath. It would
seem natural to approach such a challenge gingerly; but when everyone in
the room can see quite clearly that you’re not, as it were, ginger, there
seems little point pissing about. I raise myself over the edge of the stone
bath, lower myself into the mud, and shriek like a little girl.
In a place like this I imagine the help see a lot of ridiculous things, but quite
how these boys manage not to laugh (openly) at a naked, drunk Englishman
with a burnt arse, leaping around and shouting ‘motherfucker!’ I do not
know. They deserve a prize.
I take my wounded pride and reddening buttocks back into the shower,
while they shunt some mud around to make things more comfortable. They
assure me that it’s safe to re-emerge, and – muttering darkly, in the words
of Doctor Johnson, that ‘A burnt arse is like a burnt dog’ – I demand they
prove it by putting something living into the mix and withdrawing it,
unharmed. They do so, and I go once more unto the breach.
A mud bath is very pleasant, I’ll admit, though if you’re a lightweight you may
feel a little exposed. I glance over to my attorney (glad no-one else is in the
bath between…) to see if I’m doing it right. Evidently I am not: he is fully
submerged, while I am resting on the top like an exhibitionist rubber duck.
Primly, I scoop up a handful of mud and redistribute it. I make a mental note
that ‘real men’ clearly eat rather more than I do.
[I will later discover that James May went to this very same establishment as
part of Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure. This puts my mind at ease about
my masculinity (temporarily, anyway), but triggers all manner of concerns
regarding my having the same sense of manly fun as a hairy 50-year-old
man who buys his jeans from the Matalan catalogue. Also, I can’t tell if May
was ‘doing it right’ because the BBC2 listings in the Times Culture section
tragically only provided a head shot. (I didn’t dare watch the programme.)]
My sense of time has taken something of a beating in the day’s events, so I’
ve no idea how long it is before someone hoiks me out of – or, rather, ‘off’ –
the bath and slings me back in the shower. I have now washed my hair
about 6 times in half an hour, and am starting to wonder if it won’t
eventually just wash off (you laugh, but the one on my chest did…).
Then a 5-minute stint in the sauna where, one presumes, the plan is to
ensure that the air inside you is every bit as hot as anything you’ve been in
contact with recently, so that you don’t crack down the middle like a
windscreen in winter. It works. I’ve long since begun to sweat inwards when
they peel me off the wooden bench, and by the time I get to the bath the
only thing that interests me is the jug of cold water full of chunks of lemon
and cucumber (I’ve only been here about an hour, and look what it’s doing
to me!!). It’s delicious, and the little paper cups are far too small: as I try to
slake my drunken thirst direct from the jug, most of the water goes straight
past my chin and into my lap. Gngggh.
Water tortures over, I am steered towards a little airing cupboard where
someone puts a towel round me – should’ve thought of that myself,
probably – and bits of cucumber on my eyes, and lays me out flat on a bed. I
am slightly delirious and feel like chuckling the whole time. But I can’t,
because someone is playing a tape of whale-sex, the better to soothe my
savage breast.
As we leave – my attorney maintains – I exclaim that this is ‘The gayest
thing I’ve ever done’ and also that ‘I loved it’. Make of this what you will.
Personally, I make of it that my attorney is verisimilitudinally challenged.
Tra Vigne for dinner. The food is definitely all excellent, and there are several
courses of it. I am quite certain I order meat, because what else would I
order after a day like this one? There is lots of red wine, despite my
protestations that I couldn’t possibly manage another drop.
I begin to struggle towards the end of the steak, though, and when the
waitron (gender forgotten) brings the dessert menu I suddenly feel like Mr
Creosote, and have to excuse myself in order to be violently sick. My
attorney – great gourmand that he is – will be rightly wrathful about this;
but there it is. I return to the table in fine fettle, and polish off half his
tiramisu (though I’m a little miffed to note the waitron has cleared away
what remained of my wine!).
It’s at least 9pm, and very definitely home time. In the car I demand the
EuroTrip soundtrack, turn it up full blast, and promptly pass out.
Back in Chinatown I roll into bed and sleep like a baby while the opening
credits roll on another episode of South Park. If I were a psychiatrist this
Pavlovian response might disturb my slumbers. But then, of course, I would
be prevented from falling asleep… so it wouldn’t.
Issue of the Day
Vomitoriums: did the Romans have it right after all?
---
* This while they all raced to be first with the bomb…
** I was not wielding the notebook on this occasion. Accordingly, from this
point on, almost all narrative structure is thanks to my attorney.
*** Naturally, they all tell you this. I suppose they think it’ll make you buy
something. Oops.
**** This is not ingratitude. However, I’m pretty sure he was having great
fun at my expense, and was rightly aware that if my own money was at
stake (it was pricey) I’d have vetoed the plan from the off.
for some champagne, bundles me into the car, and drives post haste for
Gloria Ferrier’s vineyard in Sonoma.**
10:30am. Champagne, and three types thereof. Needless to say, my
plebeian palette immediately declares the cheapest one (though hardly
cheap, I wouldn’t have said) to be by far the best. I struggle manfully
through the ‘bad’, expensive stuff, battening it down with some salami, nuts
and olives.
On to Sebastiani, where the tasting takes place in a dark, Christmassy kind
of cave, full of the same gaudy kitsch that, by miraculous coincidence, so
offended my dainty sensibilities at almost exactly this hour last Sunday. If
hell were run by Santa, this is how it would look (except the Dickensian
fireplace would doubtless turn out to be full of fluttering ribbons, producing –
ironically enough – no heat whatever). I’m glad we came in here while I was
still relatively sober.
We plough through the wine list, making chit-chat with the nice middle-aged
lady doing the pouring.
Last week my attorney told me a story I was certain was a stretcher, in
which he schooled the pourer at some vineyard on the grape involved in a
particular wine. The pourer – who, in his defence, had only been on the job a
week – was obliged to look furtively at his notes under the counter, but
concluded that my attorney was right.
This, I now discover, was the vineyard in question. And this in my hand is the
product of the aforementioned grape (a hybrid, developed at UC Davis). As if
on cue, the nice middle-aged lady walks back into the tail end of the
conversation, and finds herself on the receiving end of Malcolm Gluck’s
viticulture savvy. Sure enough, she’s never heard the story either, and ducks
under the counter.
I am convinced. More importantly, the lady behind the counter is impressed.
Somewhere between our good looks, charm, my accent and my attorney’s
wine knowledge, the tasting fee is waived, and we make good our escape,
full of the premium booze she was never supposed to pour.***
On to Ravenswood. This place seems to have no staff who work more than
about 3 hours a month, but the guys behind the counter can nonetheless
point precisely to the square foot of vines just outside the window where
the very fine Zinfandel I’m knocking back once grew. Then there are some
more very fine Zinfandels. They seem to specialise in Zinfandels. There is no
charge again. On, on!
Lunch at a taco shop. I am unbelievably hungry, and cannot work out why.
Nor can I work out why every girl who comes through the front door reminds
me of Kirsten Dunst in the shower in Wimbledon. The mysteries of life…
A windy mountain track – a short cut, I’m told – over into Napa Valley (‘If it
was easy it would just be “the way”’). We stop at St Supery where, thanks
to my attorney’s membership, we are ushered upstairs and though some
muslin drapes into the ‘premium tasting’. It feels like we’re being sized up for
a porn movie, but the wines are damn good. Everything’s pretty good,
actually, now I think on it.
We are served by a genial codger called Joe. He tells my attorney what he
knows about Notre Dame football, and my attorney tells him what he knows
about wine. I keep quiet, partly through ignorance on both topics, but mostly
because my tongue no longer seems to be entirely under my control. We get
the good stuff; the premium stuff; the stuff no-one’s supposed to know
exists; and the stuff Joe was planning to use a libation on his late mother’s
grave but then decided what the heck he’d let me drink the remaining half-
bottle what with us being old friends and all.
No charge, mercifully.
In undignified haste we dash to V Sattui and drink everything on their list. (I
say ‘we’: my attorney is present throughout, but since he’s driving the
pourers are gleefully inflicting his share of tomorrow’s suffering on me.)
Apparently this place is very good for madeiras. There’s a charge, but I’m
long past caring.
Finally to the Frank Family winery, which was once Marilyn Monroe’s
favourite. Tragically, the last tasting of the day has already kicked off, and I
have to make do with only a couple of glasses of whites and reds (and
possibly ports and madeiras… who knows?).
On the way out, my attorney remarks that, ‘There were, of course, some
idiots who insisted on speaking who thought they knew something.’ While I
fully agree, I am absolutely unable to convey this: in a neat logical circle,
though, this presumably means I was not one of the offenders in question. I
am relieved, and express this with a wan look and a thumbs-up.
Fortuitously, he takes this to be the unvocalised agreement. A win-win
situation, in the circs.
Calistoga, and the Indian Springs and Spa. Mud baths. My attorney’s
‘treat’.**** We are stripped of our clothes and given flip-flops and
unnaturally fluffy dressing gowns. Still, everyone seems to be striding about
with a purposeful sense of machismo – like in Top Gun, for example – so I try
to get into the spirit of the thing.
Wandering about in the steam I confidently expect Robert Shaw to leap out
at any moment and attack me (I could take him, obviously; if he’s not dead
he’s gotta be at least 100). But nothing untoward happens, so long as you
discount a gym-trainer chap asking me to remove my fig leaves and hop in
the shower.
The nice gentlemen in tracksuits then point to a massive mud bath. It would
seem natural to approach such a challenge gingerly; but when everyone in
the room can see quite clearly that you’re not, as it were, ginger, there
seems little point pissing about. I raise myself over the edge of the stone
bath, lower myself into the mud, and shriek like a little girl.
In a place like this I imagine the help see a lot of ridiculous things, but quite
how these boys manage not to laugh (openly) at a naked, drunk Englishman
with a burnt arse, leaping around and shouting ‘motherfucker!’ I do not
know. They deserve a prize.
I take my wounded pride and reddening buttocks back into the shower,
while they shunt some mud around to make things more comfortable. They
assure me that it’s safe to re-emerge, and – muttering darkly, in the words
of Doctor Johnson, that ‘A burnt arse is like a burnt dog’ – I demand they
prove it by putting something living into the mix and withdrawing it,
unharmed. They do so, and I go once more unto the breach.
A mud bath is very pleasant, I’ll admit, though if you’re a lightweight you may
feel a little exposed. I glance over to my attorney (glad no-one else is in the
bath between…) to see if I’m doing it right. Evidently I am not: he is fully
submerged, while I am resting on the top like an exhibitionist rubber duck.
Primly, I scoop up a handful of mud and redistribute it. I make a mental note
that ‘real men’ clearly eat rather more than I do.
[I will later discover that James May went to this very same establishment as
part of Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure. This puts my mind at ease about
my masculinity (temporarily, anyway), but triggers all manner of concerns
regarding my having the same sense of manly fun as a hairy 50-year-old
man who buys his jeans from the Matalan catalogue. Also, I can’t tell if May
was ‘doing it right’ because the BBC2 listings in the Times Culture section
tragically only provided a head shot. (I didn’t dare watch the programme.)]
My sense of time has taken something of a beating in the day’s events, so I’
ve no idea how long it is before someone hoiks me out of – or, rather, ‘off’ –
the bath and slings me back in the shower. I have now washed my hair
about 6 times in half an hour, and am starting to wonder if it won’t
eventually just wash off (you laugh, but the one on my chest did…).
Then a 5-minute stint in the sauna where, one presumes, the plan is to
ensure that the air inside you is every bit as hot as anything you’ve been in
contact with recently, so that you don’t crack down the middle like a
windscreen in winter. It works. I’ve long since begun to sweat inwards when
they peel me off the wooden bench, and by the time I get to the bath the
only thing that interests me is the jug of cold water full of chunks of lemon
and cucumber (I’ve only been here about an hour, and look what it’s doing
to me!!). It’s delicious, and the little paper cups are far too small: as I try to
slake my drunken thirst direct from the jug, most of the water goes straight
past my chin and into my lap. Gngggh.
Water tortures over, I am steered towards a little airing cupboard where
someone puts a towel round me – should’ve thought of that myself,
probably – and bits of cucumber on my eyes, and lays me out flat on a bed. I
am slightly delirious and feel like chuckling the whole time. But I can’t,
because someone is playing a tape of whale-sex, the better to soothe my
savage breast.
As we leave – my attorney maintains – I exclaim that this is ‘The gayest
thing I’ve ever done’ and also that ‘I loved it’. Make of this what you will.
Personally, I make of it that my attorney is verisimilitudinally challenged.
Tra Vigne for dinner. The food is definitely all excellent, and there are several
courses of it. I am quite certain I order meat, because what else would I
order after a day like this one? There is lots of red wine, despite my
protestations that I couldn’t possibly manage another drop.
I begin to struggle towards the end of the steak, though, and when the
waitron (gender forgotten) brings the dessert menu I suddenly feel like Mr
Creosote, and have to excuse myself in order to be violently sick. My
attorney – great gourmand that he is – will be rightly wrathful about this;
but there it is. I return to the table in fine fettle, and polish off half his
tiramisu (though I’m a little miffed to note the waitron has cleared away
what remained of my wine!).
It’s at least 9pm, and very definitely home time. In the car I demand the
EuroTrip soundtrack, turn it up full blast, and promptly pass out.
Back in Chinatown I roll into bed and sleep like a baby while the opening
credits roll on another episode of South Park. If I were a psychiatrist this
Pavlovian response might disturb my slumbers. But then, of course, I would
be prevented from falling asleep… so it wouldn’t.
Issue of the Day
Vomitoriums: did the Romans have it right after all?
---
* This while they all raced to be first with the bomb…
** I was not wielding the notebook on this occasion. Accordingly, from this
point on, almost all narrative structure is thanks to my attorney.
*** Naturally, they all tell you this. I suppose they think it’ll make you buy
something. Oops.
**** This is not ingratitude. However, I’m pretty sure he was having great
fun at my expense, and was rightly aware that if my own money was at
stake (it was pricey) I’d have vetoed the plan from the off.