DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Starring Woods’ most familiar character, Stone Barrington, Dead in the Water is a memorable thriller set in the Carribean islands. Part mystery, part courtroom drama, this book is a quick, enjoyable read, with a nice twist at the end.

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This is a typically hilarious Hiaasen romp. If you’ve never read him, start here… but save yourself some shipping (or extra trips to the bookstore) and pick up the rest of his novels too. You’re going to read them all anyway.

Skin Tight tells the story of a corrupt plastic surgeon amid a cast of lunatics. The dialog is clever, the timing impeccable, and the characters are unforgettable. The story is pure Hiaasen — not really a murder-mystery, not really a true-crime story, not really a comedy, but somehow all three: a breezy, darkly comic page-turner where the bad guys nearly always get exactly what they deserve.

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• Amazon

And so I found myself in Healdsburg, wandering around the square, when I stepped into the Sebastiani tasting room for a few minutes to see if they might be pouring some Zinfandel. They were, as it turns out, but it wasn’t very good.

They were also pouring a new “tasting room selection,” apparently not available elsewhere. I’m not immune to marketing scams… but I’m also not immune to good deals on tasty red wine.

I’d never heard of Ruby Cabernet, but I have to say I enjoyed it more than I expected. It’s not a Cabernet blend, but a hybrid grape — a cross of Carignane and Cabernet Sauvignon, developed especially for warm inland California regions. I’ve just looked up some details on this and laughed out loud at a comment in the Super Gigantic WWW Winegrape Glossary: Ruby Cabernet is “currently used in jug-wines as ‘backbone’.” Ha!

There are really only two rules for buying wine at tasting rooms. You can follow one or the other. The first is this: buy only in bulk, to take advantage of case discounts. Or, for infrequent social visits, you can follow the second rule: buy only a bottle or two and try not to think what you paid for it.

It was with rule #2 in mind that we bought a few bottles of Ruby Cabernet. What they’re selling, and what we’re buying, is the right to stand around in a million-dollar room sipping free vino, pawing the fancy oils, vinegars, cookbooks, glassware, grape-themed tchotchkes, etc. and acting like well-to-do people on vacation.

Of course it helps that we were well-to-do people on vacation.

I’ve made my peace with my flat-screen monitor. I have, in fact, found a solution.

On the one hand, I’ve got a low-radiation, small-footprint, high-resolution display device. On the other hand I’ve got the fact that my eyes can’t resolve text on the screen very well.

The 30-day return policy on the monitor has not yet expired.

And so I’ve decided: I’m going to have eye surgery.

I saw another Hugh Grant movie today, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. Is it just me, or does he usually play wieners ?