“Andrij the Ukrainian Orphaned Rescue Dog” : Chapter 25: Mass Carnage and Putin Executed

Bob, Fay, Mr. Gordon Lightfoot, me, Reggie, Bosco and Dylan were sitting in the front row at a Toronto benefit concert for Ukrainian orphans and security was extremely tight as you know there is a bounty on my head offered by Tsar Putin.

I remember a bright flash and then walking along a tunnel toward a bright light. I was not sure where I was. Bob was holding Dylan in one arm and Reggie in the other. I was following him. Mr. Gordon Lightfoot was carrying Bosco.

Yes all of us are dead. As facts later played out several members of a Russian gun club in Toronto were behind this terrorist bombing. Wire transfers from Russia show the reward money being paid to Igor Pushkin the president of the Russian gun club. 540 spectators were also killed

Tsar Putin was seen laughing on Russian state television proclaiming the end of the Russian hater curs.

Boy did he make a huge mistake. Two days after the carnage Canada declared war on Russia followed by the United States, Germany, France, Greece, Finland, Sweden and most NATO member states. Within 48 hours the Russian army was smashed to pieces. Certain precision missiles were launched into Russia “accidentally hitting” schools, shopping malls and churches giving the Russians a taste of their own war crimes. Tsar Putin was executed by 5 shots to his head by most likely some in his inner circle.

Am I sad? No all of us are proud of what we did and a terrible price had to be paid for positive results And wait until you hear about our arrival in what Reggie often refers to as the land beyond.

Please cry no tears for us and forgive all those innocent young Russian soldiers. Not all were genocidal rapists.

Santiago de Cuba: July 1996: Carnival and Begging Cuban Children?

Hotel guests were invited to Carnival Parade in Santiago de Cuba. We were only a few who accepted and it was an absolutely unforgettable experience of Afro-Cuban culture. We took a bus into Santiago de Cuba an impressive but decaying example of colonial architecture. Everyone was out partying in the street. The air was heavy with beer fumes. We had a tour of the parade route. Lots of pink and white colours and the streets were brimming with people drinking beer and buying food from stands. Tradition requires one to take a chamber pot put a sausage in it and fill it with beer. Almost everyone had a clay pot but some had plastic ones. Our guide Eli warned us to hold our belongings tight as Santiago de Cuba has a tradition of training the world’s best pickpockets! Brought a sandwich and a banana for dinner but the banana got mushed in transport and made the sandwich soggy and inedible. Fries from a stand were excessively greasy. Beer was $1. We had an excellent view in the grandstand sitting with local dignitaries. A never-ending stream of dancers and musicians paraded by in colourful costumes. All the villages in the province spend the entire year practicing for the parade and it shows. Some of the performers were singing in Creole. Most of the procession were blacks and one village portrayed the evils of slavery. One troupe had a horn that played what can be called a hypnotic tune. All were having a the time of their life. We left at 1 a.m. and the party was going on. A large group of children pounded on the bus door asking for “dollars”. Not sure if they were begging or just being kids?

Santiago de Cuba: July 1996: Fighting Cubans

Took a 6 km bicycle ride along the coast. Roasting hot but a nice breeze cooled things down a bit. The coast is rugged and rocky with crashing waves sending up a big spray. About 2 kms from the hotel there is a rather run-down amusement park that looks like something from a Flintstones cartoon. It is called Il Mundo del Fantasia. Met a couple of young Cuban boys who looked in a state of disrepair like the amusement park. Ripped jeans and no shirts and smoking cigarettes. I was asked for clothes. I later heard from a guest at the hotel they had taken two suitcases of clothes to the amusement park and fights erupted amongst families scrabbling for the clothes. No thank you just requests for the clothes off their backs! Another couple heard this story and simply gave clothes to the nurse on duty at the hotel to distribute as she saw fit. The beach at the amusement park was littered with rubbish including construction debris. Not a nice memory of Cuba and of course the security guard at the hotel carrying a baseball bat.

RKS Wine: Cabriz Colheita Selecionada 2019 from the Dão in Portugal

The Cabriz Colheita Selecionada 2019 breezes in at $14.95 a welcome price point in these inflationary times. I contemplate with some trepidation what it might cost next year.

Enjoy this wine with a Tomahawk Steak; Photo Robert K. Stephen

It is a blend of 40% Alfrocheiro Preto, 40% Tinta Roriz and 20% Touriga Nacional and was aged in French oak for 6 months.

On the nose some bright raspberry shimmers upwards leaving behind a solid base of blackberry and black cherry. On the palate an easy drinking wine with some gentle tannins creating a bit of a dusty wine. It is a solid wine with a firmness that best suits food. I recall my last media trip to the Dão enjoying this wine in Viseu accompanied by a few slices of grilled tomahawk steak. Sublime.

Drink now or hold until the end of 2023.

(Cabriz Colheita Selecionada 2019, DOC Dão, Global Wines, Carregal do Sal, Portugal, $14.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 247973, 750 mL, 13%, RKS Wine Rating 88/100).

RKS Quote of the Day: “Confessions of a Shopaholic”

“That moment. That instant when your fingers curl round the handles of a shiny, uncreased bag-and all the gorgeous new things inside it become yours. What’s it like? It’s like going hungry for days, then cramming your mouth full of warm buttered toast. It’s like waking up and realizing it’s the weekend. It’s like the better moments of sex. Everything else is blocked out of your mind. It’s pure, selfish pleasure. “

Sophie Kinsella “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, 2001 Dell Publishing

“Travels to a Different Time ” : Santiago de Cuba: July 1996: The Pudge Boys from Hamburg

There are two rather pudgy boys from Hamburg that are staying at the hotel. Both are called Ollie. They rise late and soon after begin consuming vat quantities of Mayabe beer until they retire at 2 a.m. Both are students at the University of Hamburg and both have ponytails. They enjoy heavy metal and punk music. They are pool rats and never set foot in the ocean. I never see them at the dining room. Could they be surviving on beer alone? One night at the disco the pudge boys were trying to fondle some girls without any success so back to the pool they went to down Heineken’s they had bought at Hamburg Duty Free and swilled back many a bottle listening to Metallica. They said if you do not like Metallica you are stupid and right wing and probably work for an insurance company or a bank. They love their soccer team and watch them drinking a lagoon of beer.

RKS Quote of the Day: “Little Fires Everywhere”: Celeste Ng

“All her life she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly:  a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or, perhaps, to tend it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder of light and goodness that would never-could never-set anything ablaze. Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity. The key, she thought. Was to avoid conflagration. “

Celeste Ng “ Little Fires Everywhere” : Penguin Press 2017

RKS Wine: Fighting in the Trenches for Gewürztraminer

Wine drinkers aren’t exactly running to the shelves snapping up the latest Gewürztraminer releases. I have given up trying to figure out why other than noting it has characteristics and likes to make a statement. It simply may frighten off those so comfortable with Ontario Riesling and Chardonnay. So if you don’t appreciate a heavier on the taste and body wine so be it. But at least give it a try or two and figure out why you don’t connect with it. Or discover that you like it.

I remember having a glass of Cave Spring Gewürztraminer on their patio restaurant on a sunny fall day and was glad I made the choice as it suited a cheese plate and some herbed fries to the tee. Or was it the beautiful fall day that accompanied it so well?

So I saw it in the June 18th Vintages release and wanted to verify its goodness.

The wine has a dark gold colour so dark it strikes me as a late harvest Gewurtz. Peach, apricot, mango and Romanian honey on the nose. On the palate this may qualify for a full-bodied monster. Its flavours are not on its sleeve for sure instead buried deep in the wine. There is apricot, Greaves’s peach jam, mango nectar and a hot and spicy lingering finish. A spicy curry would wrap its loving arms around this beauty. A wine that walks down the street with swagger but get to know its soul it has a quiet and fierce determination to win you over.

(Cave Spring Estate Gewürztraminer 2019, VQA Beamsville Bench, Cave Spring Vineyard, Jordan, Ontario, $19.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 302059, 750 mL, 14.5%, RKS Wine Rating 91/100).

“Travels to a Different Time” : Santiago de Cuba: July 1996: How About the Food? The Ignoramus With The Baseball Cap

The property I am staying at is managed by Canadian Hotel company Delta Hotels. As I understand Cuba a good part of the food is brought in from Canada. It was Canadians that gave a shot in the arm to tourism here. For example if you look at the juice dispenser the juice is from a company in Scarborough which is a suburb of Toronto. The food is simply prepared and tasty. There is not a huge selection but given the lack of meat and many foods available to Cubans I am content to be low key. The average Cuban hardly has any meat to eat. There is usually a good selection of fresh tropical fruit for breakfast and the papaya and mangoes are sweet and in season. There are grapefruits and oranges but they are not particularly sweet. The breakfasts have a Canadian edge to them with French toast, pancakes and made in front of you omelettes. The Cuban coffee is excellent but the milk rather ruins it.

There is a fish dish for both lunch and dinner.

Lunch is varied with a salad bar and copious amounts of fresh fruit. On Tuesday there was pasta with cream sauce, pork in tomato sauce and rice and beans. On Monday there were some burgers with fries.

There is a juice bar with a dispenser that makes a huge clackety noise every time juice is dispensed. The beer is light and fizzy which in this climate is appreciated. There is usually ice cream and meringue desserts. The cakes aren’t bad but there is an obsession with pink icing.

I saw a few turkeys on the tennis court one morning. There was roast turkey for dinner! I would call the cooking home style and I have no complaints. Especially since I hear the property next door too often serves hot dogs in tomato sauce.

What I find annoying in the dining room is not the food but a rather sluggish man with his overly fleshed girlfriend always grousing about the damn food. And he wears his baseball hat for every meal. How crude and ill mannered. I heard him at the airport in Toronto when we arrived saying how they were going to go to McDonald’s and get some “real food”. Idiots like that embarrass me. I hope the Cubans ignore that ignoramus. Cuba is a super cheap destination which you might say attracts a certain type of tourist.

On the Ledge Part 6: The Smell of Money: Wine Medals and the Big Wine Drinker Swindle!

As a former East German spy dedicated to the advancement of the proletarian revolution that has begun to fail miserably I have tasted the profits “Truth in the Vine” have been sending our way. Swindle wine drinkers for profit in the ratings game was a huge incentive to maximize profitability through medal awarding events. A winery that realizes a 90-point rating has a Willy Wonka ticket to the grand sweepstakes but gold and silver medals at a wine “competition” is even more profitable. Charge an entry fee, a fee for tables to taste wine, a set-up fee, a dismantling fee, a fee for labels to attach the winners is a gold mine. The stupid wine drinking public can be manipulated so easily without even thinking they have been duped. The small producers can’t afford our exorbitant fees. When I say our fees, we set up numerous benevolent and noble companies to sponsor these competitions! Of course we didn’t advertise every winery wins a medal. And the poor judges trying far too many wines with their burnt-out palates were dupes. These judges were trying at times over a hundred wines a day. My professor at the Karl Marx University in Dresden had studied the efficacy of wine competition judges and opined that a professional taster was only effective with 46 wines in a day punctuated by breaks including full lunches and dinners. To hell with that as when you taste the blood of profit you want more and more. The wine judges were dupes. The public were dupes. Our bank accounts swelled and the public lapped it up as did the Liquor Discontrol Board of Ontario. Sell. Sell. Money. Money. There are thousands of suckers born every minute!