The world adores matt hayward

Mini is in the shadow of Federation Square. And also very much in the shadow of Yu, the brilliant and authentic Japanese noodle restaurant it shares a lane way with. That’s pretty stiff competition in anyone’s book. For those that came in late, Yu is a real revelation in Japanese and style. But let’s forget that upstart.

Let’s not forget though that in walking distance is Chocolate Buddha, Movidas, Circa and god only knows what other iconic restaurants. Mini blurs the line between after 5 CBD bar and classy restaurant. There’s both a bar menu and an a la carte menu. An extensive wine list which highlights organic wine. My choice was a lovely Greek Cab Sauvignon. The missus had a beatiful French Chardonnay.

For entree we had a lentil soup with sheep’s fetta and some scallops in butter and coriander. Both equally tasty and worthwhile. Both very Greek inspired dishes beyond the standard souvlaki and backlava, with modern touches.

The meals themselves were heartier than expected but a bit overpriced. I had a hardly extravagent (or remarkable) Greek fetuccini in a tomato and cheese sauce. A great vegetarian meal, but a stretch at $23 odd. $35 was about the average price for a meat dish.

Gorgeous homemade turkish bread and oil is served and it was almost better than the meal! And although they charged for bread, it kept coming! The staff don’t mind talking about their treasured wine and are extremely knowledgable.

While it’s pretty good, this is more a Friday come 5 bar than a top brass restaurant. And while it deserves its 15 minutes in the limelight, except for the wine list it won’t remain remarkable.

3.75 out of 5 stars. Just not special enough!

With this wikipedia article on the bogan, a new colloquialism is born. It’s about time that people recognised they’re not bogans, they’re not metros, they’re bogäns. The Stupid fuckers. Anyway, read it, comment on it, add to it.  Be proud to be a bogän!

Nothing happened here that didn’t happen last year. There is nothing remarkable at the show. Even more so than last year.

If you even contemplate going and spending approx $20 to get in (I didn’t fortunately), send me the $20 in a stamped self addressed envelope. I will shit in a bag and send it back to you. Get your bag in the mail, hang it up, then punch it. I promise you this will give you more amazement and value for money than the motorshow in its entirity. UNLESS you think the new Toyota Avalon replacement constitutes entertainment.

At least with my way, people will ask why you’ve got poo all over your hands, and you will have an interesting story to tell them. If you tell them you’ve paid $20 odd to see an Avalon, you deserve to get beaten - repeatedly.

Otherwise, don’t bother!

Johnny bloody Cash, what a legend. The big, brooding ‘man in black’ just was rock hard cool. He never wore rhinestones and as an old fella covered Soundgarden tunes and put out a full page ad in Billboard sticking his finger up at the entire country music scene. But what about the man? What’s his story? That’s what made this movie instantly compelling to me. Though I must admit, Joachim Phoenix(?) playing the man in black threw me a bit.

Like Ray, this is a production that could probably only be made after the subject dies. Because let’s face it, no one reads - especially me. Simply it sheds too much light on the junkie factor the greatest hits album liner notes always gloss over.

What I really enjoyed though was the whirlwind pace this movie starts off with. Johnny’s career seems to kick off with intense fervour. He’s playing off the back of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis as they take the piss and cover each others’ songs and just plain rock out. Then all of a sudden, it just hits the fan. Johnny boy falls in love with his co singer, a love that would last till his dying day, and starts hitting the pills harder than a DJ in Manchester, 50 years before their time.

Suddenly Cash is a success stuck in second gear. Joachim plays all this really well. Although I don’t quite reckon he can sing like Johnny (who the hell could) he has the brooding look pretty down pat. And he is pretty good looking. But holy crap! Reese Witherspoon is so good looking in this! While I conceeded with her that Phoenix is handsome, Reese is just unbelievably gorgeous in every scene. I honestly think my missus could watch it again just for her wardrobe. I could just because she is absolutely fantastic looking as a raven haired 50s chick.

You get the feeling that this movie, whilst lengthy doesn’t embellish the truth too much. Wikipedia tends to substantiate virtually all of it. There are some sheerly dynamite scenes though. My favourite being a big arsed drinking session after a gig, where Johnny Cash, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and all bandmates have had an all night drinking and jamming session after a gig, throwing their empties all over the stage. Reese’s character comes in enraged at Cash who’s forgotten a day time gig and starts throwing the empties at them!

What I wouldn’t do to be in that debauched jam sesh is just indescribable. It’s scenes like this, and the band on the road which are so indescribably compelling. The chemistry too between Phoenix and Witherspoon is cute, deep and often just plain funny. They show the complexity of the professional and emotional relationship quite well.

My only criticism is that this movie wasn’t so much about the rock and roll recklessness, but the endearing love affair between Cash and his second wife and co star June Carter. I kinda wish they focused more on the prison gigs at Folsom but their love was remarkable. And so is this story.

Have been hanging out to see all two hours of this movie and every last bit of it was worth it. Four and a half out of five!

The other day, we’re having drinks at some Russian pancake festival thing at Federation Square in Melbourne’s CBD. It’s a hot day so by the time I got there, the table was onto it’s third bottle of semillon sav blanc (and yes it’s pronounced sem-i-yon). So the bottle has the now cursory twist top. Before too long someone’s complaining that twisties are the ruination of everything and ruining the noble art of wine.

Well i’ve set myself the challenge of showing a few simple facts to show you that twist tops are far from the ruination of that noble beast wine.

About the humble cork
First of all Aussie corks suck. Talk to any decent wine retailer and they will tell you that it takes at least 70 years to grow a decent crop of cork. So if you’ve ever seen those nerds that recycle cork and wondered the hell why, yes cork is that finite a resource.

Secondly two countries, well one and the bordering country, pretty much have a monopoly on cork. Portugal and Spain in that order. Now my mates laughed when I told them that. But if you’ve ever tried a temparillo (yes that’s temp-ran-i-yo), these guys do know a thing or two about shit hot wine. Just because they don’t make a new work shiraz or cab merlot etc. They’ve been at it for centuries and you’ve guessed it, they keep all the good corks to themselves. So much so that if you were to get a good Portuguese bottle of wine, the first thing you’d notice is the quality of the cork.

Frankly, the quality of Australian and Kiwi corks isn’t all that. And you can’t make a cork out of Redgum.

The sprinkage factor
If you’re ever fortunate enough to get off chops on a nice old bottle, at least 20 years old, check out how long the cork is. Mate, they’re a little on the small side these days. Corks must be about 30%-40% smaller. Not quite sure on the reason, but I guess because in Australia in the 1970s, you could drink your body weight in beer but if you had one Chardonnay, you were as good as poofter. In other words, there was no mainstream appreciation of wine. So to an extent, wine back then was bottled to stand the test of time.

Here for a good time, not a long time
Now it’s socially kosher to quaff, people enjoy beer and the vine. So most wine is consumed bloody quickly.  So why waste perfectly good cork on a bottle that’s going to get drunk as soon as the barby is lit? I guess back in the day, there was no macro-economics or corporations involved in wine making back in the day either. Just bloody good product.  So quality, not badge engineering was order of the day. Thus the corks get smaller as wine is made for the same bloke who used to be a beer swilling yobbo.

Don’t taint that cork dude
Without pulling out any articles from the CSIRO, wine botched from dodgy corks is usually around 7%. Cork taint is when the cork doesn’t form a tight enough seal in the bottle to keep oxygen out of the bottle. See oxygen is good. It’s why the wine tastes better ten minutes after you poured it, but the same reason it tastes bland in an hour.

The perfect cork lets in about as much air as a tight fish’s arse lets out. In other words they breathe naturally, but not enough to let your wine turn to vinegar. When using screw tops, wine barely breathes at all and tainted wine (or vinegar) ends up being well less than 2%. Pretty convincing reason for the twist top.

Some wine doesn’t benefit from corkage
Aye bro, ever drunk a Kiwi sauv blanc? Our New Zealand friends make a wicked white. But you know what? Most NZ wines are only good for 2-5 years. And you know what too? That matches the twist top perfectly! Because twist tops let in hardly any oxygen to the bottle. Which long term is bad, but short term, it’s bloody good. So nowadays you struggle to find a Kiwi white or Pinot with a cork. Because it reduces their costs, keeps the wine better. So it’s only the purists that get upset. But anyone that cellars a sauv blanc for 20 years is an idiot anyway.

Same with a lot of $10-20 Aussie reds. A good example are those Penfold’s Rawson’s Retreat (which are frankly shitful anyway). They are consumed usually the same day (we’re a country of piss heads let face it) and they have no longevity beyond 5 years anyway. So shit cork or good steel seal? You be the judge.

Cork or Zork?
There are alternatives. D’arenberg use the Zork. It’s some wretched, patented invention from some Aussies that gets both the benefits of a cork and a twist top. It’s a plastic cork you can put back in the bottle with metal lining inside to prevent oxidisation. So once you’ve opened it, you can put the Zork back in pretty easily. But frankly, they’re a bit tacky.

The RRR food and wine show ‘Eat It’ reckon that some dude in the Yarra Valley is working on a glass O-Ring kind of seal also but I am yet to see it. So who needs gimmicks? Cork or twist you can’t go wrong.

Some wine deserves a cork. But not all wines are equal
It needs to be said. Most of the stuff we drink is admirable, but doesn’t get a purple heart of valour. Now all the people who have spent more than $60 for ONE bottle of wine from a vineyard stand up now. That’s right. About 10% of you. So you can all get stuffed. The only wine that needs a cork has:

• a good cellar life potential of at least 7 years that you intend to lay down
• a solid tannic, low yield, full bodied, estate grown and bottled wine. If you have to ask what i’m talking about, you probably don’t really know or generally care
• Grange and Henschke Hill of Grace will always have corks. Because they’re high quality, low yield and they deserve a high price and the best cork the respective wineries can obtain. The rest can go get stuffed

So, in conclusion..
Anyways, there the hard and fast factettes. They’re not statistically proven, but chat to any wine lover worth a pinch of salt and they’ll agree with a bloody big chunk of it. But I wish people would get over this romantic attitude to corks. It all just depends on whether you want wine for a good time or a long time. When cork is good, it’s bloody great. When it’s not it’s Tiny Tim playing the Beatles on a Ukelele. And as much as I hate the Beatles, Tiny Tim is bloody horrible. Think about that next time you’re at the bottle shop.

I welcome your comments!

Yesterday I saw your typical shock horror of muslims going crazy, rioting in the streets on the TV yesterday because of cartoon depictions of Muhammad. Anyway, me mate Wayne forwards me this article this morning. In the article she publishes the images that caused all the ruckus in the first place. The following is a quick excerpt:

Last October, I blogged about a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, and its cartoonists being threatened by Muslim extremists for publishing cartoons about the prophet Muhammad deemed offensive by Islamist p.c. bulllies. See here and here.

For the past four months, The Brussels Journal has relentlessly covered the ensuing uproar from the Muslim world and the battle over the newspaper’s freedom to publish provocative speech.

Knowing full well that politics makes for strange bedfellows, i’m still not totally sure I want this woman on the side of freedom of speech. Michelle Malkin claims that for posterity and solidarity with the Danish, she’s publishing the toons for all to see. So that ‘the west’ doesn’t cave into muslims apparently quite happy to parodise Jewish and Christian figures, but is fundamentally opposed to any caricature of Muhammad.  That all seems good and patriotic, she even calls her effort, an act of solidarity. But look around her blog. This woman evidently doesn’t believe in freedom of speech in her own country!

Check out the site. There’s a big old banner ad for the GOP, or the Republicans. I’ve been back a few times and it appears to be a permanent feature. if this isn’t ringing any bells, it’s George W Bush’s party. I can’t think of any one administration that has overseen more attacks on freedom of speech than the Bush family. Just off of the top of my head:

• changing media ownership rules so that the Clearchannel Network own virtually everything. Driving Howard Stern amongst others onto uncensored satellite radio.
• further relaxing media ownership laws so that Ruppert Murdoch to have a reach of three quarters of the worlds’ population.
• strengthening the FCC (headed by Colin Powell’s brother) after something as pathetic as a nipple in the Superbowl. So yeah there’s freedom of speech, so long as the conservative right agree with it. You can’t even say penis on TV any more in the US.
• implementing the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II which inadvertantly make any critic of the war effort a threat to national security.
• keeping tight lipped on the actual number of war casualties in Iraq. Especially considering so many of them are National Guard troops, that should be taking care of stuff like, you know, Cyclone Katrina. And that’s where they’d be if the Republicans didn’t decide that the best defence was attack. Try telling that to to anyone in Louisiana.
• not allowing the coffins of US war casualties being flown home to be photographed or published.

Then you look at her book references. So I always work on the parable that Democracy is two wolves and a sheep arguing over what’s for dinner.  She doesn’t seem to agree with me on this one. Makin’s In Defense of Internment the blurb tells of imprisonment of Japanese citizens in camps during WW2, who volunteered to be imprisoned. You don’t really have to see the book to judge for yourself that the parable applies here. Soldiers come to your door and say that you’re a threat to national security and suddenly you’re the sheep and they’re the wolves. There’s no premise of honest journalism here. So she writes this book because she’s pro racial profiling. Yeah even better, you can say anything you want so long as you fit our profile. I’m sure you’d be saying that if you were a second generation Japanese American in 1942.

Malkin pulls no bones about being conservative. She has her mugshot on every page and admitedly she’s freaking hot. But what journalist puts their profile shot on the page except one that wants to bias you to an uber conservative, Republican, cute Asian chick? Check out the business suit. She has a full fledged glamour shot on another page. It’s that typical, ‘I’m clean cut so how can I be evil? I am the American dream!’ look that means your unbiased discourse is completely out the window. And so is your credibility.

Malkin, if you’re so big on freedom of speech, why don’t you go talk to the ex-Fox journos that couldn’t get their expose on Monsanto aired, covered in explicit detail in documentary The Corporation? It’s a lot easier to stand up for freedom of speech when the enemy is brown isn’t it! Especially when you’re a minority yourself. It’s so much easier to get acceptance.

Now that i’ve finished the rant about Republicans and how they’re America’s own, self installed worst enemy to freedom of speech, how can a conservative US journalist claim to be a saviour of it. Who gives a rat’s arse anyway? So they show a few people in a riot which was probably ramped up for the cameras, how many muslims SERIOUSLY COULDN’T GIVE A RAT’S ARSE. I’ve had a few mates who are secular muslims who would be laughing and joking about it. So why should a few fundamentalist going off chops, discredit the majority of those who don’t?

In the words of Johnny Rotten ‘if it looks like an arsehole, and smells like an arsehole, it probably is an arsehole’. Miss Malkin, i’m with Johnny on this one. Oops, I am probably going to get charged with sedition for writing this. But at least I don’t curtail to false prophets of free speech.