Vaca

No new posts for a week; I'm off to the beach. Last time I was there it looked like the picture off to the right; that'd be Hurricane Isabel. Hoping for better weather this time around.

I'm a "Not Yet Replied"

I am here not to praise Evite, but to bury it. I have had quite enough with the ubiquitous invitation service, and quite enough with my friends using it to organize even the most modest of functions. I now receive Evites for backyard barbeques and weekday drinks. From people whose e-mail addresses I have memorized.

E-mail, I think, is vastly underutilized. You may have thought that was impossible; I did, once upon a time. And then along came Evite. I say we go back to sending party invitations via e-mail. It's simple; you can be just as clever; it does not require your invitees to be clever in response, the most repellent feature of Evite.

Why do I hate the service so? Time for a list.

• I do not like the name. The cute trend of prefacing a common word with an 'e' began, I suspect, with electronic mail, a usage which makes so much sense there's no reason to dislike it. But it has since proliferated to "Emachines," "Epinions," and "Evite," just to name a few, all of which are grating.
• I do not like the spam. Whenever I am added to an Evite, I can be assured of receiving at least a half-dozen future e-mails, kindly reminding me of the event and notifying me that my response is "not yet replied" (my standard reply to an Evite). Also, I strongly suspect that Evites are mined for e-mail addresses by other spammers, or that Evite flat-out sells information to third parties. Note that I have absolutely no evidence for that baseless allegation, but I lodge it nonetheless.
• I do not like the graphics. Apparently, when you compose an Evite (I've never done it, incidentally), you're required to choose from a limited selection of background templates. These invariably do not match the theme of your party. For instance, a friend of mine is throwing a rock-and-roll-themed party this weekend. He is planning to dress like Angus Young. The text of his Evite references "doing blow off a stripper's ass.

The background art: A cartoon Elvis, in front of the words "The King" in lights. I assume that my friend did not have the option of choosing an Angus Young cartoon, or a picture of a stripper doused in cocaine. But sadly, the net result is that the invitation makes no aesthetic sense.

• I do not like composing a positive response. There are some people in this world who are very clever Evite responders. They don't just respond "Yes" or "Maybe;" they come up with something funny to say about the party or the person throwing it, or what they're going to do at the party. I am not one of these people, and yet I feel compelled to try. The results are more often than not pathetic.

• I do not like composing a negative response. Sometimes, I'm waiting to see if there's something better to do that night. Sometimes, I just don't feel like going to your fucking party. But I can't write either of those things. And because of the clever Evite responders in the world (see above), I can't simply respond "No" without some additional explanation. Hence, my frequent "not yet replied" reply. Most of the time, it's not that I haven't seen your Evite or haven't thought about whether I want to go to your party; it's that I don't fucking feel like coming up with some clever goddamn response

So I'll be a permanent "Not Yet Replied."

Virginia is for lovers of bad red wine?

This weekend, I drove out to Oasis winery in Virginia with some friends for a tasting, some cheese and crackers, the usual fru-fru bullshit.

The winery's a bit on the redneck-slash-industrial side -- no caverns here, or classical music. We sipped wine on your standard wooden deck to the dulcimer sounds of Coolio as two dogs growled at each other nearby. It was beautiful, however; about 85 degrees, and a view of vineyards sweeping up to the Blue Ridge mountain.

The trip, though, continued a pervasive trend that I've noticed with Virginia wineries. They can't make good red wine. Of any varietal. And what they can make, they can't sell for less than around $20 a bottle.

Oasis, for example, makes excellent champagne, of all things, two pretty good chardonnays, and a drinkable blush (95 percent Riesling, 5 percent Cab sauvignon). The Riesling alone was disgusting -- it tasted like tonic water, and shouldn't have been served. But the two reds, a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Merlot, were the most disappointing of all. Neither was very full-bodied or complex. They were almost indistinguishable, in fact; the winery had used 7 percent Cabernet Franc to cut both wines, and the Franc predominated in each. And Oasis wanted $20 for its Cab and $25 for the Merlot.

Let us pause for a diatribe. I suppose there are good Cabernet Francs made someplace, but I haven't tasted one worth the money Virginia wineries want to charge. It's a boring grape, in my experience -- completely non-complex (meaning none of those plum or blackberry undertones that wineries like to brag about) and a bit watery. Yet it seems endemic to Virginia, as if it's the only red that vineyards in the state can manage to grow.

Like every other Virginia winery I've ever visited, there were no Pinot Noirs or Zinfandels to taste at Oasis -- two of my favorite varietals.

So this is what I'm getting at: For reasons of soil or climate or vine age or something, is it simply impossible to make a decent red wine in Virginia? And is Cabernet Franc the only thing that grows with any success?

If you know a place in Virginia to find a good indigenous red, let me know. Or if you know why there are no good reds in Virginia, let me know that too.

Jason Rojas is an American hero

I exaggerate: he's merely a University of Florida hero. My school should erect a statue in his honor. Does he have a legal defense fund? I want to contribute.

This month's pop culture endorsement

"'The Bourne Ultimatum."

As several reviews have noted, Paul Greengrass has emerged as simply the best action movie director working today. Do note this rather contrarian review, by Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post -- he hated the movie, but writes an entertainingly negative review.

My take: It's the second-best of the three Bourne films. (Chris Cooper and Clive Owen give the first movie a little more gravitas, plus it was fresh at the time.) "Ultimatum" is really just a continuation of the "Supremacy" narrative -- Bourne's still trying to figure out who he is and why people are periodically trying to kill him; it even starts where the second movie leaves off. This movie is more conclusive that the second, however; they can make a sequel if they want, or they've got things pretty neatly tied off if they don't want. And I think the locations and action sequences are just a bit more dramatic and spine-tingling than in the second movie; a sequence in Tangier, noted in every review I've read, is breath-taking.

As Hunter notes, however, the title of this movie doesn't make sense. I guess it's in keeping with the sequence of the Ludlum novels, which I either haven't read or read so long ago -- I think my parents have them laying around their house in paperback -- that I've forgotten them. But there's no ultimatum involved. In the first movie, we were introduced to the Bourne identity, and in the second, Bourne certainly reigned supreme. The titles made sense. This movie should have been "The Bourne Revelation" or "The Bourne Source," something like that.

Anyhow, go see it.