The fake Lindsay Lohan headline I posted the other day has by now generated a whole mess of Google-directed searches to these hallowed pages. The high fever of naked-Lohan seekers is starting abate once they realize that I'm not pandering to their pathetic voyeurism. It was sort of like the accidental posting of Liev Schreiber's picture last summer, when every college student in the US and eventually 'round the world hankered to see the Liebster in his wifebeater. That's ebbed twice now and only a few latecomers or real obsessives are searching him in his blood-stained undershirt.
Each of these things has a life cycle and a demographic of its own. (Most of the Lohan-seekers are in Red States, interestingly enough. In the USA, Lieb is the pinup boy of Blue States and Blue Pockets like Bloomington, Indiana.)
How does this relate to wine?
Harumph. I postulate, gentlemen, that wine memes are similar in their mysterious flare-up and demise. There was the Mateus meme; the post-soda sugar-filled-pseudo-wines meme (Annie Greensprings, Bartle & Jaymes, etc. etc.), the Chardonnay meme (a pretty long half-life for that one), the Mr. T red wine meme (fool, you go' LIKE 16% Pinot Noir or I go' kick yo' pansy ass), and the weedily emerging biodynamic/organic wine meme (save the planet by saving your immune system -- ew, kinda snively), and so on. Big memes, little memes, short-lived memes, age-old memes (Champagne, cherie!) and so forth.
These too have their demographics and their social castes, which is a partial of explanation our professed hatred of blush Zin (plus it sucks) and the shall we say Red State genuflection to the Mr. T meme. (Ominous equivalency...wine that socks you in the face = real he-man American-type wine, pal.)
Well, that's my cheap sociology. Even if it, like pink Zin, sucks, it isn't costing you $10 and a hangover, so no vile screeds if you please.
What I'd like to hear from you is...what do y'all thank -- I mean, think -- of this wine meme notion? Got any wine memes to suggest?
Meanwhile, in a short while we've got our friend Julie coming over for dinner, and we plan to enact one of the oldest human memes of all: Getting plastered on a Saturday night.
Why does voyeurism have to be pathetic?
Posted by: Fredric Koeppel | August 27, 2007 at 03:13 PM
It may actually be ennobling, as Blondie sang 30 years ago:
It was my finest hour
The one I spent
Watching you shower
Churchill, the Battle of Britain AND voyeurism all alluded to at once! A masterpiece of post-modern concision!
Posted by: Terry Hughes | August 28, 2007 at 10:13 PM
The only wine meme I've come across that seems to have any staying power is Wine Blogging Wednesday: http://www.winebloggingwednesday.org/
I've participated in the last couple of sessions and while I can say that it does not automatically form a tight-knit community or result in a ton of new visitors to your blog, it at least gets you to taste and think about something you may not have otherwise tried. It's also sometimes interesting to see the different angles that all of the participants take on the same topic.
Posted by: David McDuff | August 29, 2007 at 08:29 AM