Getting Things Sorted...
Before one can go out and play, they must first toil. Today's activities started with none other than, you guessed it another pick! Talk about excitement!
Our biggest challenge of the 5 ton chardonnay pick was to separate burned bunches and pieces of rot from the healthy clusters. No easy task as nearly every cluster had a portion of one or the other. Translating the fact that we had to toss clusters with heavy sunburn on the ground to the Mexican crew was no easy chore. The picking crews see each cluster as a lump of money as they are picking piecemeal. Thus, you can only imagine the grief I took as I ransacked the picking lugs throwing out clusters that didn't make the cut.
Up ahead of me I could hear loud and clear "What the hell is this gabacho doing? Trying to take are salary or what?" Needless to say I don't think I made too many friends on the vineyard floor today.
To complicate matters further the fruit was sold through a broker to a winemaker out of Napa from a vineyard managed by a fellow who used our company for labor intensive jobs, e.g. harvest. While the broker was friendly enough, the guy transporting the grapes exhibited the social graces of an angry showbiz chimp. Do people not understand that if they are affable they will recieve good service in return?
Cutting Out to Rock Out
By four pm we were on the road to the bay, double fisting cups of iced and hot Goat coffee and singing the praises of clean mid-western living. That is the fact that the mid-West could create a powerhouse of sweat and chub that composes the band Dillinger Four.
Entering Fog City
Before heading to Bottom of the Hill we swung by Grimm's flat in the Castro to polish off a few bottles of Zinfandel, the 2006 Limerick Lane Molly's Block Zin and a stuning 2007 Gravity Hills Zinfandel the Sherpa that knocked my blood pressure up a peg or two.
At the venue Chris, Tim, Steph and myself (Janet being our DD) got down to business sticking to champagne with a number of rounds of Miller Low Life. I quaked and slugged it back wondering what kind of mess my bowels would be in by the morning.
Dillinger Four as always did not disappoint. A majority of the set was comprised with songs from Situationist Comedy. However a few classics including "#51 Dick Butkus", "Doublewhiskeycokenoice" "Superpowers Enable Me To Blend in With Machinery" and my personal favorite "Maximum Piss and Vinegar." For a split second I was 18 years old again and standing crosslegged and nervous with hands in pockets at the Atomic in Buffalo, NY.
This time around I was dancing my ass off (quite possibly pogoing) and jumpkicking around a sweaty out of shape mosh pit. Homoerotic, just maybe. St. Patrick did shave his balls in front of a packed house. Nothing we haven't seen before.
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