mondosapore

Dreamworld: An Off-Facebook Encounter

Sometimes you wonder if you're becoming like one of those obsessives that populate Russian novels. They live too much in their own heads, their vivid interior lives subtract them from everyday life and they become pathetic husks, always sitting about in their dressing gowns, drinking endless cups of tea or coffee by day, endless glasses of wine or vodka at night, unable to so much as carry on a nonsensical, socially acceptable conversation. 

How much more pathetically husklike it is, then, to live in a social media matrix where "real" and "imaginary" ... "truth" and "lie" ... "friend" and "stranger" become interchangeable. Let the tale of Strappo, old and mad, be a cautionary tale to you!

NYT "anything goes" Thanksgiving pairing post: Still up-ending wine journalism

As you may know, I penned a sarcastic post on November 12 (click here) about the fatuity of turkey-and-jello-marshmallow-salad-type wine pairings, inspired by the admission of the august New York Times that "Finding good Thanksgiving wines may be a lot easier than you think." (Click here for the article that started it all.)

Blogger response to my post ranged from dismissive (Frankly My Dear) to the "chortling" and "chuckling" variety (Do Bianchi). I especially appreciated Jeremy Parzen's use of the subjunctive ("Lest he think..."), not to mention the context which inspired it.

I can't speak for Eric Asimov or his tasting panel of radicals, but I received a torrent of emails and Tweets from anguished wine journalists, or aspiring ones (5). I received many more (2) from simple consumers. All were angry, confused, upset.

Typical of the consumers' ire was this note from Marcia Watson of Watson Holler, NC: "Damn you New York City smart-asses! I was all set to serve a nice little Chenin Blanc from the Loire, France, with my turkey BUT YOU HAVE THROWN ME INTO CONFUSION. I guess it's back to beer and ice tea. Speaking of tea, now I understand the fury of the tea-baggers. Jerk!"

Here's a heart-wrenching email that I got just yesterday from Ivan Scurry of the Council Bluffs Dispatch & Dollar Trader:

Dear Mr. Strappo,

I know you don't mean to hurt people with your sarcastic wit, but you've caused one more American journalist to enter the lists of the unemployed. Me.

You see, I've been the wine writer and reviewer for the paper since 1976. Or, rather, I was.

I started out with a bang.  They loved my columns on what to drink at the Bicentennial*, and it led to the full-time union job with great benefits that I had until this week. I built my entire professional life around wine reviews and pairings for the holidays. I prepared from July, tasting, noting, eating and drinking various pairings. I did it with patience, dedication and good old Midwestern methodicalness. Oh, we aren't exciting or trend-setting out here. We're just hard-working regular people who want a good day's pay for a good day's work.

Thirty-three years I plied my craft, I honed my profession. I wrote a seminal work on Iowan wineries and wine personalities. That's a third of a century, Mr. Strappo. A working man's lifetime. I was young. Now I'm old. 

And I was happy. I had a place in the world. People knew me in the street. Sometimes even when I crossed over to Omaha. My very presence seemed to bring a smile to every face.

Now they turn away. I am nobody. My career and life are in ruins. Thanks to you and those "trendy" folks at the New York Times. People who don't take seriously the struggles of ordinary Americans in the Heartland to wean themselves off of lite beer and cola drinks. People who forget how hard it was to gain all that wine knowledge in the first place.

Management used your words as the hammer to beat me with. "Goodbye, Ivan. Call us next week. Maybe you can freelance for us." 

I'd kill myself. But I'm already dead.

Jerk.

Sincerely,

Ivan Scurry

* In the acclaimed "Bicentennial wines" series of columns Mr. Scurry created the "All Americans Wine Rainbow", which consisted of 100% American-grown and made wines with names that honored different American ethnic groups. It was a surprisingly inclusive list, featuring such favorites as Gallo Hearty Burgundy, Sebastiani Green Hungarian, Carlo Rossi Chianti, Manischewitz Concord Grape (a clever bow to both Jewish and white-bread small-town WASPs) and Richards Wild Irish Rose wine. It remains a masterpiece to this day.

      

 

How to become a big-time importer who is fawned over in revolting ways

It's been a stressful week here in Strappolandia. 

Like, for example, I thought I was having a recurrence of 1993's heart problems.  Cold sweats, pains all over (chestward as well), nausea, deathly paleness, gasping for breath.

No, 'twas just depression, anxiety, panic attacks.  They act like heart attacks, sort of. The tests came back with HYPOCHONDRIAC written all over them.

Depressive hypochondriac at that. 

Still, what with Joe Dressner having his well-aired brain tumor and Kermit Lynch plinking out folk ditties, I wondered what I could do to become recognized as an important, aspirational sort of wine importer. You know, I'm not getting any younger and even though this wine gig is a new thing for me, I've got lots and lots and lots of Life Experience, which ought to count for something, no? 

I confess that I can't hang my hat on some magical mantra (sorry for the shoddy alliteration) like Natural Wines*. Cue the heavenly choirs. 

Yummy Italian Wines You Can Afford doesn't stake out the high-road position. Autochthonous Italian Wines isn't exactly a crowd-pleaser either. As the implacable Jeff Mazen would say, "It's business!" Business. Certo, sell we must. We're selling. Things are good. Shipment may get waylaid or forgotten about, but things are generally pretty, pretty good.

But it's not just business. It's ego. It's pride. It's the deep human craving to have one of those Sally Field moments every now and then." So," I ask meself, "what can one do to create an aura of almost hieratic importance in the world of wine importers?"

I've come up with a sure-fire Five Point Program to stoke the mystique of Strappo, the Odysseus of wine importers.

1. Always wear the shades. Never take them off no matter how wretched the lighting. (Nice when you're bored and want to catch a cat nap.) It is necessary to cultivate that aura.

2. Always wear jeans, the cruddier and more threadbare the better. Preferably with expensive Italian shoes and no socks and a Brioni shirt hanging untucked, as with a discreet sneer at bourgeois niceties.

3. Always refer to Rudolf Steiner and Luigi Veronelli with casual reverence. It can be done. This will win over the nut cases and the ones who revere a man who made a career of staying for free at many interesting stately homes throughout the country.

4. Mention at least three obscure grape varieties in the first five minutes of any conversation, e.g., "You simply MUST try a Tintore. It is the future of Italy!" (A categorical pronouncement always wins adherents.)

5. Regale all and sundry with anecdotes from the field. Literally. Per esempio:

    I slipped and fell deep into the winter mud of the steep vineyard. Raffaele smiled wisely and said,     "Now you know what it is like to be a natural-grape farmer. Is never easy. We fight the bugs. We     fight the mold. We fight the heat. We fight the cold. But our passion for our tradition, that is what     make us carry on."

 Doesn't it all bring a tear to the oulde eye? Doesn't it promise authentic bliss in the glass? Doesn't it make me look like the intrepid son of a bitch you aren't, you routine-bound slave to your under-water mortgage, three kids and SUV payments?

On such wee foundations grand reputations can be erected. 

    

 

* The Peroni Nastro Azzurro beer I'm drinking now proclaims "Tutti Ingredienti Naturali" on the collar label. Boh.

3 Bicchieri 2010: Valle d'Aosta, Liguria, Puglia

Click here for today's Tre Bicchieri news for three vastly unimportant wine regions.

Shit Europeans spend money on

I'm in a contemplative mood. I just got back from the Yitzkor service at the synagogue. You get somber when you spend two hours devoted to the dead.  The fact that most of the service is in Hebrew helps; you can drift easily.

So my heart and mind were open as I came across town in a taxi. I saw all the happy people prancing around town on their New Yawk vacation, often wearing the same bewildered-but-we're-determined-to-be-delighted look you see on Americans wandering around Rome and Paris. My heart was heavy as I considered all the expensive toys these Europeans have -- all the shopping they do thanks to our low prices and death-spiraling dollar. 

Item 1: Every European tourist carries around his neck an expensive camera with a vast assortment of expensive, complex lenses. Americans are content with a point-and-shoot digital job.

Reason: Americans spend their money on health care.

Item 2: So many of these tourists lug around big shopping bags stuffed with goodies -- from Saks, Bloomingdale's, Chanel, Tiffany, D & G. Americans tote bags from Daffy's and H&M.

Reason: Americans spend their money on health care.

Item 3: Europeans can be seen eating in voluble, greedy groups in glossy Midtown restaurants. The only Americans you see in such places are on expense accounts, and those far fewer than formerly.

Reason: If Americans have jobs, they're spending it on health care. If they're unemployed, they're going bankrupt from spending on health care. Hello, Subway.  Hello, Quickie Mart.

I'd like to go out for lunch. I'm sick of tuna fish sandwiches. But I'll open a can.

Reason: I just sent in my health insurance premium.

Shit.

Di recente in Italia..

Recently in Italy...

Here are some pictures of Italy -- in Tuscany, when I was still fresh and felt like playing Paparazzo -- complete with my usual clever commentary in the captions.

We stayed here. New place, very welcoming, great dinners. Located near Lucca

A view of the pool at Corte Benedetto

Favored transportation at Corte Benedetto

Inside the city walls at Lucca. Near via Elisa, which seems to have been named for Jeff's wife

A view from the ramparts at Lucca. There used to be a moat -- quite a wide one -- where the green grass is today

Lucca is very pretty and laid back

There's always a via Roma. Uncle Silvio is watching you

Then there was Pisa...uffa...

Cheesy Pisa

God what a hole.

All the charm of the Gowanus Expressway

In and out.  While we'd dawdled around Lucca and had a nice walk on the city walls, at Pisa we came, see saw, we bolted.  

Sorry, the one at the pizza place on Route 1 north of Boston is just as good

Highlight of the trip. There IS a Duff Beer!

No spleen. No shirt. No blog

After some reflection I've realized why wine blogging lost its allure for me. I'm no longer angry all the time.

It's true.  Anger, the desire to ridicule and expose the institutionalized bullshit of the wine world, frustration with my own shitty existence -- all fueled the fires of spleen that got me going and spurred me to rip it up.

As I've read the occasional blog post and the frequent Twitter and Facebook entries in recent weeks, I've noticed the aggression and anger in a lot of them. And the sniping and the bullying and the small-minded assertiveness that seem to propel the bloggers as they jostle for mind-room and bigger-media exposure. I'd ask an irritated "what the fuck is that all about?" except that I know the answer.

As with everything else in our culture, the initial impulse to communicate rather quickly becomes a choice to a) inform b) perform or c) reform.

If you choose to inform in a wine-blogging context, you write even-handed reviews and provide background information without too much editorial coloring.  After all, you're not there to be an advocate or polemicist, your mission is to tell people accurately about a wine, a grape, a region, etc.  In other words, you offer balanced, relatively objective reporting (relative objectivity being the only kind there is). You sane and sober reporters know who you are.

Most of us are less disciplined and more egoistic. We wish to perform. We have an attitude and perhaps a few little axes to grind. We're tummlers. There's an element of aggression in what we do, but there's also the saving grace of play. There's nothing inherently wrong with this choice, but the sheer numbers of bloggers who elect to go this route contribute to excesses in rhetoric and phony controversies. The strategies of "performance" are varied and tricky, and some of the choices made do add a lot of unnecessary noise to the blogosphere.

In other words, a lot of silly, annoying bullshit. Sophomemes, I'll call them. Most of us tummlers are guilty of perpetrating this sort of stuff from time to time.

Finally, in my neat tripartite taxonomy, are those who are on a mission to reform. A self-appointed elite who display all the characteristics of all self-appointed elites: loneliness and contempt.  For they few are bearers of a superior knowledge and purveyors of scorn for all who fail to attain their standard. Quick to sneer, eager to denounce. Foolish in their pretense. 

Once this would have been the point at which I launched a satirical attack on such intolerable asses. But I can't work up the spleen. Splenetic no longer, I am mild as a lamb. My venom has been milked. The fires of hatred have been banked. 

Baby, I'm over it. Got others things to lay waste my powers upon. Arricazzoderci.

   

   

    

Season of the witch

It's been an illuminating hiatus, this break from blogging.

Detached from it, the scene appears noisy and repetitive, and increasingly personal but not in a good way.  I see some going mainstream like Neal Dorosin, who is now contributing to Wine & Spirits.  I see some assiduously hoeing their well-tended rows, like Fredric Koeppel and Deb Harkness.  I see some churning bloody water as wine bloggers make like sharks and chomp on one another -- often, it will be noted, on Twitter, a vehicle suited to limited-character attacks.  It's become Joe Dressner's new medium for launching his cryptic sarco-bombs against perceived over-reachers like Alder Yarrow. 

It's interesting to compare and contrast the recent brouhahas over Robert Parker's and Steve Heimoff's severe criticisms of wine bloggers (with Heimoff especially making valid points about the deficiencies of many bloggers) with the word and deeds of bloggers, who are fissioning into the old and the new guard.  A good example of this are the frequently testy exchanges (on Twitter) between Old Guard Lenn Thompson and provo New Guard Joe Roberts.

Whether I've changed or the meta-situation has changed, I'm not quite sure.  But it bores the shit out of me.  

Beatniks are out to make it rich

Two rabbits ruttin' in a ditch

Must be the season of the witch   

Another dreadful podcast

I am a scemo.*

I intended to post another podcast of Dom & the Somm with Susannah Gold.  Somehow I recorded 'cast 2 over 'cast 1.  Really, I don't know what happened.  Forgive me, Susannah.  You should probably do the sound engineering thing next time. 

Anyway, here's the link to the latest thrilling episode of "Dom without the Somm":  click.

It's short -- 7-8 minutes.  

I tried the video version but the results were hideous to behold.  (Note to self: ALWAYS WEAR THE SHADES.)

 

It's all my fault!

* Halfwit, dummy, dope.

The end of Western civilization, part 327

This is something I saw through an Italian's Facebook reference.  What do you say to something like this?  "Put on a burqa!" ??

Eppur si move...

A Muddy Boots controversyette

Clash of philosophies here in Domenicoland

Originally posted on Muddy Boots.  Not in this version

My weak-kneed partners are telling me to lay off the personal, "qualitative" observations.  Present only the facts or, to put it more bluntly, only the facts that are pointedly self-interested.  

For example, they jumped all over me after I posted the one about the wines I'd never import.  (Here.)  And Ken thought a throwaway line was inappropriate here.  "Put that stuff on mondosapore.  That's your safety valve.  You can say anything you want there.  It doesn't directly reflect on Domenico Selections.  That's what you've always used mondosapore for anyway."

They're wrong.  I'm right.

My retort is that if such light-hearted comments aren't thrown in once in a while, Muddy Boots becomes just another boring, smarmy corporate blog: one-note and conventional.  What the fuck's wrong with a little inappropriateness every now and then?  Are we in Victorian London?  Edith Wharton's New York?  Khamenei's Teheran?

Or anywhere there's W?  By the way, I put no stock in the official story that he doesn't drink.  If he truly doesn't, then he really is as stupid as we thought.  

What would you readers, all six of you pathetic dupes, say to support either side?  

This is like Frank Sinatra's tenth farewell tour, isn't it?

Back by popular demand?

It seems I can't give up mondosapore entirely.  My partners are begging me not to.  My sense of loyalty to a vehicle that's helped change my life is a factor too.  Anyway, you know, I need to vent and be my untrammeled self.  

So I'll post maybe once a week.  Or twice if I get a bug up my ass.  (Italians, note that widely used and rather vulgar American expression.)  Simply taking this blog out of the category of must-dos to an elective relieves some pressure and enables me to approach it with some of my old insouciance.  (Hm.  Since when have I ever been insouciant in my entire life?)

Allora.

That's really it for now.  Sorry it's not too momentous, but there's plenty of momentousness going on these days, and all the turmoil, pain and hope can be summed up in one short name: Neda. 

  

Bloomsday & Bloggings Wake

June 16, 1904.  The day reconstructed by a self-exiled Dubliner in Trieste and Paris, whose finished work after years of obsessive rewriting was both the pinnacle and the destruction of the novel.  I refer, of course, to that masterpiece by James Joyce, Ulysses.  

I read the book all the way through three times, twice in the same year.  I haven't got the patience to do it a fourth, and that's my loss.  

Then I think of his last work, Finnegans Wake, over which he obsessed for nearly twenty years, and would have obsessed over longer in new editions if he hadn't died right after his escape to Switzerland as the Nazis spread like ink over France and most of the Continent.  A mad book.  Some sort of mad apotheosis.  This I've never had the patience to read all the way through.  I suspect you need hallucinogens to do so.

There's been much about the changes in blogging of late.  I've weighed in on it.  Fredric Koeppel has. Lenn Thompson has, mostly on Twitter.  Alice Feiring has too, so much so that she's thinking about giving it up, or she says so at any rate.  I'm rather tired of it but now have to maintain not one but two blogs to connive at getting Domenico Selections a bit better known.  Blogging’s gone from being a labor of love to a labor. I think this is, to some degree, inevitable, not least because my goals and my energies are necessarily focused elsewhere.  But we all reach a point where what we're doing no longer seems to work as well as it did or we just grow tired of it.  

You know my heart's not in it as it once was.  The visits and page views numbers reflect the shift of my energies and interests going back to October.  I used to care deeply about the triumphant rise in the bar chart showing a growing readership.  I studied the figures and trends obsessively.  Now I barely look at them. I know the levels are lower than they've been in over two years.  

I do believe it's time to -- not exactly pull the plug on mondosapore, but to devote more time to Muddy Boots.  It means a narrower, less self-revelatory focus, of course.  None of my rants, drunk or sober, no wildly off-topic posts.  For such venting mondosapore will still be personally useful.

Short bursts of op-ed from me will generally suffice.  Twitter, Facebook, the usual minimicromedia.  

Will I really put this blog, the focus of so much energy and passion for so long, out to virtual pasture? Yes yes I will I said yes 

  

 

Here's Eric. Or Erick.

My high-school friend Costanza (Cotita to her friends) asked for more pictures of my "handsome" son. Well, how I can I refuse an old New Rochellean?

Here are a couple of shots of Eric that I think won't embarrass him or anybody else, plus the cover of Golden Error's album.  These guys are pretty hardcore or old school or something.  It's in vinyl.  Also downloadable for those who have thrown out their turntables, given them to their son, or are too young to know what a turntable is.

A final thought: Be careful what you wish for.

Turntables and shitty low-res pix.  What a world my son lives in. 

Striking the rockstar pose.  It's either a) anthemic or b) he's telling a member of the audience where to find the bathroom.

Eric is the one on the right doing the early-Che Guevara impersonation.  I guess the other one's an avid fan (?!)

Another crappy low-res pic.  I think that crowd is too pure to use a digital camera.  

Seriously now, here are some lyrics he wrote a few years ago.  He told me the backstory and made me weep.  His Cleveland band, Tokyo Storm Warning, recorded it.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007 

Sabotage on the Telephone Line They said you couldn't do it All that way across the ocean They said you'd never do it "There's too much water there" They said you'd never do it All that wire across the ocean They said you'd never do it But I've seen that look in your eyes before On that day, you sailed away Scotland to Newfoundland 1500 nautical miles Deepest depths charged On that day September 25th, 1956 Heard your voice Crackling down the line Everyday Mid-afternoon In the sun room Heard your voice Crackling down the line Everyday In the sun room Mid-afternoon Your voice like a ghost And then it.....stopped! SABOTAGE ON THE TELEPHONE LINE (x6) Miscellaneous anarchists Claimed credit for this ...................................................... Now they've got microchips A million words in half a second Now they've got satellites Control your thoughts in half a second Oh how I miss those days Of copper wire Oh how I miss your eyes But they are closed forever......

Aleatico & Soaves

Sorry, folks, another cross-post:

Here!

But of course, I'm not a mere blogger anymore.  I'm a Personage in Italian Wine.  

And how much time do you think I have to fart around blogging?!?!

I've just begun two sentences in a row with a conjunction.  I'm sorry, but I'm done now.  Buona notte.  

"Wine-blogging used to be fun" & other comic laments

Thursday evening and the week should have ended already.  What's taking it so long?  Oh, right, the rotation of the earth, etc.

Well, anyway.  If you're as discerning as I think you are -- you read mondosapore, don't you?  -- you'll discern that it's been a less than stellar week. Not a truly bad one, just frustrating and less productive than one would like.  "Less productive" -- that tags me as 100% American, doesn't it?  An Italian would frame it in, say, terms of philosophy or politics (Berlusconi, they say, is a dynamo of productivity when it comes to picking up teenagers).

I was going to a blind tasting of Beaujolais at the new Snooth office on Madison Ave. (ladeeda), but I couldn't pry myself away from a stream of legally significant emails to do so.  Dealing with expensive lawyers and grasping State agencies.  A bit of comfortable numbness is in order.  

Pictured above:  Angelo Peretti

Some good things have happened -- new accounts, the ordering of a Kindle, the overdraft at CitiBank (God knows they can ill afford it, ha ha ha) -- where was I?  Oh, some of that will be found soon on Muddy Boots.  Or, as Angelo Peretti wrote on his blog, "Moody Boots."  I got a chuckle out of that one.  My reply in italiano was that it's not Moody Boots, although I am moody despite the high dosage of Lexapro, though my boots are joyous when they tramp around in Italian mud.  It sounded better in Italian. Really.

Like many of you, I've been sucked more and more into the world of Twitter.  

It's at once amusing, boring, informative (un poco) and once in a blue moon revelatory.  I'm following some famous personages now - Ana Marie Cox (the ubiquitous TV commentator and the founder of Wonkette), Rachel Maddow, James Suckling, etc.  Only Ana Marie's tweets sound like the real thing. They're so full of Washington insider allusions that they elude me, unfortunately.  She's doin' a heckuva job, sticking the voodoo pins of ridicule into every waxen appendage and orifice of our undead political culture.

Here's Ana Marie...in low res!

It seems that my recent advice to Italian wine producers has caused reflection and even a sea change among at least a few of my target audience.  I received an email from a Veneto producer that he has taken my advice to heart.  I had earlier this very day received an email from Lucia Raimondi of Villa Monteleone of her concrete steps to reduce costs for herself, us and you, gentle tippler.  I'll write it up on Muddy Boots soon.  Really. It's done:  here's that link.

Rachel, looking a bit less butch these days: network TV glamour treatment

James Suckling, looking a lot more butch

 

Finally, there was a long thread on Twitter this week in which Lenn Thompson (chronicler of Long Island and other New York state wine happenings) lamented that "wine-blogging used to be fun."  Naturally he wants to return to those early days when no one thought about ethics (Q: Should I accept junkets to Spain or California?  A: Don't be a moron!) and before a notoriously disturbed wine producer upstate began his disinformatsya campaign against said Lenn. The man in question has already been booted off any number of wine forums, on which he posted an endless flow of information and opinions, beginning genially and veering into the belligerent and unhinged.  Even the tolerant Jancis Robinson expelled him after a while.  

Lenn, old boy.  You've worked hard for recognition.  You too have done a heckuva job.   As Lily Tomlin's father told her at the beginning of her career, "Babe, you gotta learn to be popular."  Cranks like "Don Giovanni" go with the territory. 

 

 

    

Obama & Prince Harry: Good for the helicopter industry

Since the Saviour of Capitalism as We've Known It and Prince Polo have hit town, I've heard and seen helicopters everywhere.  E'en now.  Streets were closed all over Midtown last night, although it was hard to know whether it was due to some unfortunate soul's leaping in front of the E train (uptown side at 34th) or the First Couple's Date Nite.  

Two thoughts:

1. Ka-ching, ka-ching, fellow citizens.

2. "Pollution, pollution..."  (pace Tom Lehrer).

I'm just sayin'.

Get through airport security FAST

This is a public service post not for you, my sophisticated world-jaunting readers, but for your usually home-bound aunts, uncles, parents, dippy girlfriends or clueless slacker brothers, etc., etc.

I don't know exactly what it is, but modern airport security -- annoying and intrusive as it is, not to mention a witlessly literal reaction to jihadis (take my belt off??  what kind of explosive device could be in there?) -- can be prepared for and got through with something like a contemptuous efficiency. You know, "Take that, Homeland Security fearmongers!  Take that, moron shoe-bombers!"

Yet I observe, on my frequent forays to airports everywhere, most people dither and fuck up and make the tedious process even more tedious than it is. And it keeps me from quality time in the Crown Room lounge.  So listen up, people, because you've been pissing me off.

Would Pilgrims like all this?  Probably not.  Unless you were an Indian.

Ethics: I am exculpated

In an exchange with the thoughtful, veteran journalist -- a real one, not some illegit blogger -- Fredric Koeppel wrote me the other day, "This whole ethics thing doesn't apply to you.  You're an importer now.  Of course you'll be wined and dined.  They want to sell you something!"  I allowed as that was true, but that we are talking about real money now, and no amount of wining and dining, or free hotel rooms or anything else, is going to influence me if the price and quality aren't right.

So, FK, all this may be true -- and yet -- and yet --   

It was so much fun mixing things up on the topic, exposing the hypocrisies and posturing and subterfuges, etc., etc.  Now you've fucking ruined it for me.  Ruined it!

Another mixer.  And, like me, a very clean old man*

* Who was this man?  And whose grandfather did he play?