Red Wine Man

I’VE ATTENDED numerous “tastings” but I make a bad wine judge.  After the first sip I can’t tell a cabernet sauvignon from a pinot noir or even from a gamay.  Furthermore, I don’t care.  All vino is fino.

I have  before me a batch of mimeographed press releases about Wine Week but I’m not going to read them.  I might discover I wear the wrong necktie or something while enjoying my drink.

And by the way, I wish to quarrel mildly with the trend toward serving wine “on the rocks.” It’s heresy.  Did the gods dilute their ambrosia?  Sherry chilled in the bottle, yes.  Over ice, huh uh.

WHILE IN Needles recently a man named Van asked the landlady of the motor court where he was staying where the phone was.  She directed him, then asked if he had any nickels.  “It’s a dime, isn’t it?” he asked.  “Well, we used to use dimes,” she said, “but we found out the Indians around here use nickels so we do too.”  Van tried one and got his party okay.

One way or another, those redskins are going to get even with the palefaces.

COUNT 10
If someone says some day
he’ll bury us,
Let’s think before we get
razzberryous.
-MATTIE RAE

THE controversy over the incredible Watts Towers, 1765 E 107th St., has made them a must for sight-seers, and apparently all sorts of legends are springing up about them.

Sunday, as Mary Jane Maier stood nearby, she saw an old gentleman point out the house number, 1765, engraved by Simon Rodilla on one of the surrounding walls, and heard him remark to his wife, “That’s the year he started building these towers.”

Yep, before the Revolutionary War.

AS LONG AS we’re reaching back in history, Masamori Kojima on Monday intercepted this appraisal of the Christopher Columbus story by a 5th grader named Stan in the Los Feliz area:  “He went to Spain and got King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.  They weren’t sure because there is a war going on and it would cost too much money so he waited six years and then the King and Queen said it is OK to go and so the , King and Queen gives him $100,000.00.”

ONLY IN L.A. — A woman patient phoned her doctor but he was out so she said to his nurse, “I have a pain in my ear.  Can I take the same medication he’s giving me for my stomach?”

 AT RANDOM — The way E.F. Reed sees it, only one final bold step remains for the deodorant people, currently locked in combat for dominance in TV commercials — a salve that simply removes the arm . . . Oops, the chairman of a committee was ticketed for doing 75 in a 45 en route to a safety meeting . . . No truth in the rumor Roz wears her Dodger cap around the house . . . For the western cliche file let us add the scene in which the marshal merely wings the revenge minded youth in a shootdown and the youth says bitterly, “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?”  Also the variation in which the marshal wounds him seriously, then says, “Don’t try to talk, Sam” . . . While in Las Vegas recently Frank Barron overheard a dejected looking tourist remark to a friend, “I had more fun in Winnemucca.”