“There are various classes of bums in Paris, the high class bum has a dog and a baby carriage in which he keeps all his belongings, and that usually consists of old France Soirs , tin cans, empty bottles, broken dolls- This bum sometimes has a mistress who follows him and his dog and carriage around. The lower bums don’t own a thing, they just sit on the banks of the Seine picking their nose at the Eiffel Tower.”
Jack Kerouac, “The Vanishing American Hobo”, 1960.
“….all you see is marshes and great black distances of night and far off, on hills, the little communities with Christmas lights in their windows blearing red, blearing green, blearing blue, suddenly sending pangs through me and I think, ‘Ah America, so big, so sad, so black, you’re like the leafs of a dry summer that go crinkly ere August found its end, you’re hopeless, everyone you look on you, there’s nothing but dry drear hopelessness, the knowledge of impending death, the suffering of present life, the lights of Christmas wont save you or anybody….:
Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.
“And since I’m well and on the bum again & ain’t got nothing else to do, but roam, long faced, the real America, with my unreal heart, here I am eager and ready to be a big busted nose scullion or dishwasher on the old scoff scow s’long as I can buy my next fancy shirt in a Hong Kong haberdashery or wave a polo mallet in some old Singapore bar or play the horses in Austrailian, it’s all the same to me as long as it can be exciting and goes around the world.”
Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.
“Deni had big plans for what was going to happen at the hotel, which was the El Carrido Per to Motpaotta California potator hotel as I say with potted palmettos and seamen inside and also hot-rod champion sons of aircraft computators of Long Beach, the whole general and dismal California culture a palpable hangout for it where you saw Hawaiian shirted and be-wrist watched tanned strong young men tilting thin long beers to their mouth and leaning and mincing with broads in fancy necklaces and little white ivory things at their tanned ears and a whole blanked blue in their eyes that you saw, also a bestial cruelty hidden and the smell of beer and smoke and smart smell of the cool inside plush cocktail lounge all that Americaness that in my youth had me get wild to be in it and leave my home and go off be big hero in the American romance-me-jazz-night.”
Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.
Ensure your last testament is prepared (COVID Memories)
Yes, rely on the government
And the state medical bureaucracy
Politics and medicine can be a fatal mix
The needle but tricks
Urging a jab, then two or three
Has the scientific mind saved us or grossly miscalculated
Well what does it matter?
According to the rebel right wing blockading truckers we all will be soon dead
Be free from coercion instead
Attributable to rush tested vaccines
From a Trump Warp Speed
We’ll be underground and the daisies will be sprouting seed
And the criticized unvaccinated so haughtily criticized
Will be alive and grateful they never complied
Us the goody two shoes instead to The Great Beyond flied
Robert K. Stephen
“He was dying. He knew now that he was dying. Something was tearing at his body. Meanwhile she was leaning over him, supporting him by the shoulders, and he felt the shoulder blade, ignominiously reduced to skin and bone, flinch beneath his wife’s gentle hand. Ignominy, that was what he was dying of, ignominy. Was there an illness which allowed you to die gracefully? There probably wasn’t, and mankind’s only grace, perhaps lay in that aspiration towards what lay ahead.”
Françoise Sagan, “In Extremis”, 1975.
Rather strange that on my first media trip to Porto in 2014 to sample Ports throughout the Douro region on the bus for the first of five intense days of sampling my seatmate, a French advertising executive, said to me, “Port is an affordable luxury”. It is a statement that has stuck me as to both its veracity and simplicity.
Red Port is massively flavourful with a range of styles and flavour profiles. Ranging from prohibitively expensive to affordable. In twelve years I have not had an “off Port”. Having toured the quality control laboratory at the IVDP, the regulatory body that ensures quality control of Port, all Ports are analyzed and tested before their release.
Now is not the time to elaborate on the 1867 and 1932 Ports I have tried other than saying the 1867 still had life in it and could sail off in the distance for years!
Back to the Croft Port. A blackish red beauty?
Aroma: Creamy. Blackberry. Cassis. Chocolate covered raisins. Santa Rosa Plums.
Palate: Massive and far from timid it represents an “Attack of the Black Fruit”. Firm. Quite a tough baby now struggling for toddlerhood and for a full-grown adult look to 2040. Enormously long finish.
Food: Go conservative blue cheese and chocolate-based desserts. But pair this with rare grilled Portuguese Ox you may not ever want to leave Portugal. For vegetarians pair with a rich pasta sauce with a San Marzano tomato foundation e.g. Pasta a la Norma.
Price: $33CDN. 350 mL.
Comments from the Peanut Gallery: Drinkable now indeed. Give it five more years to show its entirely luxurious side. At this price affordable and a luxurious taste experience. You are paying Ryanair prices for TAP Air Portugal business class!
RKS PORTHEAD ALERT RATING: 95/100. Kim Marcus Wine Spectator 95.
(Croft 2012 Quinta da Roeda Vintage Port)
If at First You Don’t Succeed Try Again?
The Supreme leader and most of his clan met a violent demise
But the regime remains even nastier shouldered by nepo baby who lives witnessing yet another sunrise
Didn’t someone promise to perpetually escape the Middle East quagmire
Well that election promise certainly encountered a flat tire
But will it draw MAGA electoral ire?
Robert K. Stephen
Galen Weston Jr. Did You Forget About Kraft Dinner?
What family wealth estimated at 9 billion
With all this inflation heartfelt thanks for your “concern” freezing prices on Loblaws house brands showing concern for Canadian’s COVID induced ill financial health
But please at Loblaws and your subsidiary Shoppers Drug Mart $2.99 for a box of Kraft Dinner
And $4.39 for four at competitor Metro makes you kind of a sinner
I am shopping at Metro instead of Loblaws and Shoppers just to show you I am a winner!
Sorry to make your profits a bit thinner!
Robert K. Stephen
The Social Relevance and Contribution to Society by the Kardashian Clan
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Robert K. Stephen
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity