October 2004
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Trockenbeerenauslese
Trockenbeerenauslese, from the German trocken (dry), beeren (grapes or berries), and auslese (selected), is wine from grapes that have been shrivelled up by the so-called “noble rot” (aka the botrytis fungus) responsible for the best dessert wines worldwide, like French Sauternes. Tonight we had a bottle of 1995 Johanneshof Reinisch Chardonnay from Thermenregion, Austria. I…
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R.I.P. John Peel
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BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel passed away today. Even in the USA, John Peel was a broadcasting legend. We didn’t quite understand who he was, but the “Peel Sessions” that appeared for every obscure British (and American) band gave many of us our first taste of The Fall, of Siousxie and The Banshees, of…
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Leaves on the Line
Yesterday, the trees were still covered in foliage. After the overnight gales, the acer in our courtyard was stripped bare of its gorgeous bright red leaves. I should have been suspicious. At the rail station, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the 0857 to London Paddington delayed about 20 minutes. The usual autumn excuse…
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Podcasting and iPodder
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Since setting this one up, I’ve spent too much time the last few weeks reading weblogs. But the “meme of the moment” (a phrase courtesy of Dave Slusher) is “podcasting” — weblogs you can listen to. More specifically, podcasting refers to the confluence of a few technologies: first, of course, machines like the Mac, or…
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Robert Smithson
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In LA for a week, we went to see the Robert Smithson exhibition at MOCA. Smithson is best known for his Spiral Jetty, a fantastic Earthwork on the Great Salt Lake in Utah, underwater for much of the time since its creation in the early 70s (just before Smithson’s early death in 1973 at 35),…
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