Last night, I was awed by the amazing performances of Rebecca H. as Annie Sullivan and Brittany W. as Helen Keller in Riverbend High School’s production of The Miracle Worker. When these two young women were alone on the stage, you forgot you were at a…

Evidently not. Last year, we had Lee Anne Washington talking about how she was going to end in-state college tuition for illegal aliens, when illegals don’t receive in-state tuition to begin with.
This year, we have Catherine Crabill, who’s running for the Republican nomination for the 99th district versus Lee Anne Washington, talking about nonexistent “hate […]

I was incredibly saddened back when I heard that Jerome Armstrong was hired by the Moran campaign. This Puma in sheep’s clothing is disingenuous at best, a sellout at worst. The man flat out detests Barack Obama. He constantly insisted that his support for Hillary Clinton in 2008 was merely because he thought she was more electable, that was […]

Buckle up Virginia…
Moonie Times EXCLUSIVE: ‘More toll roads,’ says Va. House speaker
Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell proposed Thursday that his state construct a sweeping network of highway and road tolls that could be leased to private companies, generating new transportation funding to offset declining revenues from gasoline taxes.
The tolls could be modeled after successful […]

I won’t be posting any pretty pictures today. I just want to rant a bit.It amazes me how many photographers and models I come across that shoot with only a verbal agreement in place or in some cases, no agreement at all. No matter what type of shoot it…

I knew an occluded front was due through the area early today, so I took my chase gear with me this morning. Even tho’ I had a radar display updating on my computer I lost track of time and thus had to quickly dash out at 1130 (see radar view above) …

I should probably preface this post by stating that I will point out inaccuracies by anyone, be them Republicans, Democrats, or Independents. I did support and vote for Albert Pollard in the special election that returned him to the House of Delegates in February 2008. One reason that I voted for him was the […]

I left Virginia for the Florida panhandle this week for a business trip in hopes that I would see some warmer sunnier weather. Alas, such was not to be as that area of the “Sunshine State” was socked in with low ceilings, cool temperatures, and rain …

I watched the movie Bottle Shock on DVD the other day. If you’re not familiar, this is the movie that’s meant to be about the Judgment of Paris wine competition of 1976, where the California producers beat the French producers in a blind tasting, putting California wine on the international map from that point on. In fact, the movie is more about Chateau Montelena, who won in the white wine category (Stag’s Leap, who won the more important red wine category, barely gets a mention). The movie portrays Napa Valley at that time as a hardscrabble kind of place where simple farmers made wine, and the place had a small town feel to it where everybody knew each other. Let me assure you it’s not like that today, but never mind. Basically the story goes that Chateau Montelena was about to go under financially, attempting to sell their Chardonnay for $6.00 a bottle until an Englishman named Steven Spurrier came along and organized the Judgement of Paris. Montelena wins, everybody wants their wine after that, Napa Valley becomes one of the most highly regarded wine regions in the world, and so on.

My impression is that this movie took a lot of dramatic license with the real events, but I guess that’s what Hollywood does. The script is just okay, inserting the obligatory love story that goes nowhere and has nothing to do with the plot. The highlight is Alan Rickman, who plays Steven Spurrier. His acting outshines everybody else. The French characters, where they have any dialogue at all, are portrayed as snobs. Overall I’d give it a B-, probably worth watching if you’re interested in the story.

And now an aside on the contest itself. The contest was not the blowout for California wines that many people think it was. For starters, any tasting like this is highly subjective, and the scoring method used was statistically insignificant. Also, take a look at the Wikipedia entry for this event, which shows individual scores of each judge. The winner, Stag’s Leap, was the number 1 pick for only one judge. You could make a good argument, a really good argument, that Chateau Montrose should have won. There were also 6 California wines versus 4 French wines, which I don’t understand. But then again everybody expected the French wines to completely crush the California wines, so that they did this well is pretty remarkable. It also made French winemakers realize they needed to step up their game if they wanted to maintain their reputation, which resulted in higher quality Bordeaux in the years after.

Jake Tapper of ABC News:
According to sources inside the room, President Obama just played peacemaker in a spat between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China.
In the finaly plenary session among the G-20 leaders, Sarkozy and Hu were having a heated disagreement about tax havens.
France and other European […]