I gotta ask…

What church rocks more than Bayside?

Experience Christmas at Bayside

Merry Christmas from Diva and Ted!

Hey Mambo!

We always enjoy finding a good value wine that goes with just about everything. Hey Mambo! Don Sebastiani and sons have come up with a “sultry” blend that is very approachable, and food friendly. It is rare that we buy a case of one wine, but in this case we did. It is not a high end wine, but for an everyday red we give it three snaps and a Diva lean!

A blend of Syrah, Barbera, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Malbec and Alacante Bouchet this wine has something for everyone.

Embarkation and Setting Sail

The second installation of our Summer 2009 vacation to Alaska and Seattle. This film has been comically edited for content. Enjoy!

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Easter 2009

Excerpts from the Clendenin family Easter 2009…He is Risen!

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Seattle September 2009

Seattle, the Emerald City. Our first stop on our 2009 vacation. This clip features adventures in Wallingford as well as Darin Clendenin at Tula’s Jazz Club.

Enjoy

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I feel pressed to speak out

We live in tumultuous times. its true. I was about to say in my life I have never seen such behavior as I have lately by “so called” responsible adults, but then I caught myself. I have seen this brand of raw hatred mixed with rhetoric whipped up into a frothy rage in several passages of history. In old black and white clips from the forties, fifties and sixties of bigotry and racism. During the civil rights movement. When the nazis  were stirring up unrest in the German peoples. But I have to say that the most disheartening thing about this is not people acting like children, or the hate speech being thrown around (there will always be that fringe). It’s not even the disinformation, misinformation or outright lies that are being cranked out like a factory in the 24 hour news cycle, by the birthers, tea baggers, wing nuts and other extreme nut cases. What really disappoints me is the real root reason of why everything is so messed up. Is it really because our first ethnic President wants to make the country socialist, I mean really? Did you go to a public school? Have you ever had a library card? If so, then you are a card carrying socialist! Is it because there are secret “death panels” trying to devise the best ways to kill grandma? Do you really believe that? No, the bottom line here is that we have been carefully and completely conditioned over generations to be mindless consuming “Sheeople”. We stuff ourselves with high trans fat fast food, and wash it down with high fructose corn syrup, so big pharma can sell us lipitor , vytorin,diabetes meds and viagra. I never saw a single pharmaceutical commercial growing up, now that is practically all you see. When it’s time to “ask your doctor about a drug”, he is no longer your doctor, he’s your dealer. Children with type 2 diabetes is a concern today (that didn’t exist when we were young). We (as a country) are more concerned about status, pop culture and the BS that a faceless, heartless corporate greed machine feeds us than acting in our own best interest. These muti-nationals tuck away historical record profits into tax shelters in the Cayman islands without paying a dime of tax while our schools and public works and economy are in shambles. The worst is the health insurance companies. When a CEO makes over $300,000 a day…that’s right a day, by denying coverage to sick people, and we are 37th in the world in health care, you have to question where we went wrong? There is already a bureaucrat between me and my doctor. It’s a heartless for profit insurance executive. Can somebody tell me exactly what service health insurance companies provide for their 30%?

Don’t get me wrong here, there is nothing wrong with making a profit. Our country is based on a free market system. But there is no longer a free market, there is only the system gone wrong. This system can only work if it is fair. In the 1970’s a credit card agreement was 2 pages, now it is 35. The basic priciple was sound, you buy something and pay it off with interest. You get your goods, they make profit, everybody wins. Now it is about teaser rate then balloon interest rates. It is more about how can they get you to buy too much then cheat you. This is a big part of why we had the sub-prime meltdown. Nobody is protecting the consumer anymore. It is the same thing with foreign trade, I believe that if he playing field were fair America could compete on the global market, and kick their butts! Yet the only things we produce now are garbage, debt and lawyers.

Freedom and Democracy are not a privilege, they are a responsibility. A government of the people, by the people and for the people cannot be more perfect if we trade it for a Chinese made tivo and ipod. We cannot make rational decisions about our government if choose to be informed only by sound bites from corporate owned media using the boogey man to frighten us into lining the pockets of Haliburton, Bectel and Blackwater with hundreds of billions of dollars. In Iraq a transport lost 9 billion (with a b) in cash. Let’s put this into perspective. We are talking many pallets of $100 bills. If you spent $10,000 a day every day since Christ was born to today, you still would have not spent $1 billion, unbelievable! We as Americans have over the years left the crucial responsibility of our interests in the hands of the lobbies that have only their interests in mind. These lobbies demonize government because they really don’t want people to be active and civic minded. They would much prefer that we stay fat and stupid, we are much easier to manipulate and control that way. By the way, that big bad government that is supposedly trying to ruin your life is actually you, the people. We are very easily distracted and they know this. It doesn’t take much for them to play a shell game with us, we are pretty easy to control. SHAME ON US!

George Washington believed that no congress person should serve more than 30,000 people, because it was evident that they could not adequately convey the will of the people with more than that. Today most districts are several hundred thousand (obviously not what the founding fathers had in mind). Today more than ever “we the people”  need to take responsibility for taking our government back. We need to educate ourselves beyond the sound bites and what the pundits feed us. We need to look not only at what is being said, but who is paying for it. Until this country rises up from the grass roots and removes the PACs and lobbies from Washington, we will get the government that the corporate interests allow us.

I have found a great site that is independent and completely non-partisan, that has only one purpose. To let you know who is paying for what in Washington.  http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php You can check this out on wikipedia, they have been around since 1986, they are legit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Responsive_Politics

When it comes time to vote, take an hour or two and find out who you are really voting for.

I know that a lot of you may not agree with my politics, but I think you’ll  agree;

There’s something going on here, what it is ain’t exactly clear,

There’s a man with a gun over there, tellin’ me I’ve got to beware,

It’s time we stop children, what’s that sound?

Everybody look what’s goin’ down…

Apathy is the fertile soil where demons plant the seeds of evil.  I feel better that I got that out. Alright, I’m done …. for now.

I am sickened…

I am gut wrenching sickened by hate. I can think of few things more poison and repugnant than hate. Those who propagate and perpetrate it are truly, truly agents of the enemy. Diva and I were shocked today when we checked our voice mail in catching up from our vacation only to learn that our house was vandalized while we were on vacation along with three of our neighbors. People are quick to write this off as a kid, but I find it very hard to dismiss this as a random act. There were four houses in a row beginning with ours. Each house had the words “hell / satan” written in chalk on the entryway and sidewalk. Our next door neighbor had a pentagram in the driveway and hell/satan in their entry way. Our house was by far the worst. The driveway had satan lives here with a pentagram and an arrow pointing at our garage and hell/satan written on our entry way. It’s my detective nature to try and figure things out, find common threads, search for answers. I don’t buy that it was kids, kids are random,this was targeted. So then I think to myself, what is common about these four houses out of all of them in our neighborhood? Four houses in a row, one Asian, one possibly (probably) gay, one African American, one outward democrat. When we were in the middle of the Presidential elections we had campaign signs, in front of our house and our next door neighbor. Someone stole them one evening, obviously they do not believe in peoples rights. I hung another sign up where it could not be easily removed, which I’m sure infuriated this individual. I can only imagine that this unfortunate miscreant completely pumped up of rhetorical hate speech, decided that we should be punished. This is cowardice, it is despicable and it makes me want to vomit. This is what it’s come to. This is the country where everyone is free to have spirited debate and political discourse. We truly are living in the end times, and many are already worshiping false prophets and idols. Hate is a real problem in this country. It feeds upon itself, it is destructive, it lies at the very core of most of the problems in the world today, genocide not being the least. Even thinking or writing about it is sickening and feels disgusting. God in Heaven help us all, because left to our own devices…this would be hell enough.

Carmenere

The last time we were at Bevmo, Diva and Deanna were perusing the California offerings. Bored with the usual suspects I decided to wander off (as I often do) into the imported wine section. Ya know, we are so spoiled here that it is easy (way too easy) to just relish in the local vines, there are so many and they are all so good. You could be happy and never really venture out. I was acutely aware of the tendency toward this blissful state. So, forcefully I set out to find some treasures as yet uncovered in the rows of Rioja, Temperanillo, Moueverde and Grenache (not from the foothills, but from Spain)! I knoooow!

There I happened upon a few Riojas at a value which we loved, and stumbled upon this Carmenere – Casillero del Diablo by Concha y Toro 2007. It was reasonable ($8) and boasted that it is Chile’s own varietal. Now I have had some meritage that used Camenere in the blend, but I had never tasted the varietal by itself. Chocolate coffee and spice followed by raspberry and blackberry were among the notes on the bottle. I served it up with a “snack feast”. A “snack feast” is a tradition in our home where Diva and I will put out a small buffet of snacks and call it dinner. Everything from cheeses to Trader Joe’s Spinach and artichoke dip (my fav), to chips, cold cuts, etc. They recommend winter stews or grilled summer barbeque. We were both pleasantly surprised by this wine. It is not in the class of some of the greats from California, but if you want to get an escape from the Zinfandel, Cabs and other local grapes, I would certainly give this a try. Perfect for a departure to the old world, and right for the pocket book!

Sealed for your protection…

Look I understand sealing things for your protection, it’s a good concept. But do they have to seal everything so that it takes “the jaws of life” to get them open? Really.

Question of the day, “What’s wrong with people?”

I mean really…