BOTTLE OF WINE, FRUIT OF THE VINE

Donald Sensing is waxing poetic about the virtues of German white wine:

A fellow officer of mine named Ed lived a kilometer away in a five bedroom house he and his wife rented. They made a number of German friends in their village of Grüningen. Ed didn’t speak a word of German, but he had a German last name and looked Teutonic, so the Germans liked him. One weekend Ed and Barbara threw a wine-tasting party under a big tent on their lawn.

Most of our battalion’s officers came, along with many of Ed’s German neighbors. Everyone brought at least one bottle of wine. Some wag had gone to the Army’s store and bought some Mad Dog 20-20 and Thunderbird, which are about the cheapest rotgut wine made in North America. Ed didn’t know what to do about the MD 20-20 and the T-Bird. If the Germans saw the skid-row stuff surely they’d laugh at the cheap, unsophisticated American palate. So he put them behind everything else and started with the good German wine, figuring that after everyone had partaken of a number of samples of prädikatswein they’d forget about the rotgut.

But the Germans had already seen the stuff and after the rest of the wine had been uncorked and passed from table to table, they asked about the Mad Dog and the Thunderbird. Reluctantly, Ed opened it - not uncorked it, because it was so cheap it had a screw-on top. With deflated ego, he handed the bottles to the Germans. Amazingly, the Germans loved it! The bottles never left their table. They drank every drop and complimented Eddie for leaving some good wine for the end.

We couldn’t believe it. In fact, we never did believe it. We agreed that they told each other jokes about the idiot Americans and their terrible wine for weeks afterward.

Granted, comparing a good German prädikatswein to swill like Mad Dog is like comparing a backrub to a shattered pelvis, but still . . . they had every reason to feel foolish in the presence of some of the greatest wines on Earth.

I’ll stick to the advice of David Rosengarten, the Food Network’s pre-”Bam!” standard-bearer, who recommended a dry German Riesling with almost any meal. I’ve never gone wrong, and people frequently tell me I must be some sort of food-and-wine genius.

Me a genius? Unpossible! I already missed out on this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau, it would seem . . .

DEAR TELEVISION PROGRAMMERS

OK, I’ll admit I enjoyed the first season of Survivor. And then I kept my mouth shut when the networks conspired to give me 174 hours of Survivor ripoffs per week. I have managed to convince my wife that she’s better off not watching “The Bachelor,” “Joe Millionaire,” and “For Love Or Money,” since there’s really nothing at all interesting about those programs. She has begun to see the light. But

would you
please
just
STOP IT
with
the
interior
decorating
shows
already?

I am not going to live in a house where the dining room is mustard-yellow and the table is made out of abandoned telephone-wire spools.

I do not wish to sleep in a room whose decor is meant to evoke Portuguese university life in the 1950s.

Safety orange is not a good color for the bathroom, in my opinion.

And I will not watch football in a living room festooned with lamps made out of gold-painted abandoned sneakers, pillows that look like giant cellophane-wrapped hard candies, and huge painted eyeballs staring out from every wall.

More to the point, I’d sooner trust the decor of my house to Stevie Wonder than I would to any of the platoon of self-appointed tastemaking bozos you have giving advice. If I wanted to live in the lair of a villain from the old Batman show, I’d be perfecting my sinister weather controlling device out in the garage. ‘K?

Sincerely,

Discombobulated in Dodge County

THE COMMENT THAT LAUNCHED 1000 PHOTOSHOP CONTESTS

The head of FIFA, the international soccer-sanctioning body, says that maybe female soccer players ought to follow a time-tested tactic for getting attention:

“Tighter shorts, for example,'’ [FIFA president Sepp] Blatter told the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick. “In volleyball the women also wear other uniforms than the men. Pretty women are playing football today. Excuse me for saying that.'’

I can’t wait until FARK gets a hold of this. It could lead to an international server meltdown.

As to Blatter’s point, I don’t want to agree with him, since his point is of questionable morality. But he’s probably right, if his only goal is to draw attention. When’s the last time you saw men’s volleyball on TV? That would probably be never, right? But beach volleyball is on almost every weekend, largely because women jumping around in swimsuits is bound to get somebody’s attention. And even “legit” volleyball has become a Spandex festival.

Would Anna Kournikova have drawn so much attention if she’d played golf instead? Those flappy little skirts have at least something to do with her popularity, don’t they?

But, to the credit of female soccer players, most would prefer their sport remain obscure rather than go the dirty-old-man route:

Swiss captain Evelyn Zimmermann and Norwegian players Lise Klaveness and Solveig Gulbrandsen also rejected Blatter’s fashion advice.

“You can’t compare us with volleyball players and, apart from everything else, those shorts are uncomfortable,'’ Zimmermann said.

Klaveness said soccer is about sport, not sex.

“If the crowd only wants to come and watch models then they should go and buy a copy of Playboy,'’ she said.

Added Gulbrandsen: “If I wanted to wear a bikini, I would have chosen to play beach volleyball.'’

It’s sort of sad–OK, more than sort of–that we’re not yet to the point where women athletes can be respected as athletes without having to be judged on their physical attractiveness or how much skin they reveal. But I don’t see human nature changing anytime soon. Comments like Blatter’s may seem to belong to a bygone era, but there’s plenty of evidence that he’s just trying to keep up with the times.

What, you thought all those middle-aged guys at Britney Spears concerts were really into the music?

SEEK, AND YOU MAY NOT FIND

The ever-dependable Andrew Greeley has some thoughts on the search for the “real” Jesus.