Left Coast Cowboys

Just as we did last year at about this time, we are facing a battle of the pop-culture vampires, spearheaded by the sequel movie to Twilight, New Moon. Excuse me, I’ll pass. And that’s despite being a secret vampire fan. Not that I dress in Goth gear and wander around clutching an Anne Rice novel. It’s just that there’s something about vampires. I never miss a vampire movie. The only genre I like more is Law & Order derivatives. If Dick Wolf ever gets around to making Law & Order: The Undead Squad, I’ll think I’ve died and gone to Transylvania. But the thought of Twilight, books or movies, leaves me colder than vampire flesh. A few excruciating excerpts were enough to warn me that I wanted nothing to do with these moody, mopey, angsty teen bloodsuckers, even if their skin is all sparkly in the daylight. (And what fun is it having Vampires out in daylight?) Besides, we all know by now that the whole premise of Twilight is a parable of abstinence. For vampires? Vampires are ALL about sex. That’s why I’ll take my vampires in the steamy, libidinous woods of Louisiana. Yes, that’s right, my vampires of choice are in True Blood, the great new HBO series that starts Season Two on June 14th.

Truth be told, the Sookie Stackhouse novels the series is based on (Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead and about a dozen more books with “Dead” in the titles) don’t offer writing of much higher calibre than Twilight. It’s kind of embarrassing to be caught reading them. I read the collection alone in a barn in Sonoma while winemaking for six weeks. I plan to unload them at the nearest used bookstore before anyone can comment on the disintegration of my reading list. In other words, these novels won’t have pride of place next to my Jane Austen collection. But at least author Charlaine Harris gets the sex right. There’s loads and loads of it. Seems the undead have sex ALL the time. Kinky sex. Sex in crazy places. Sex in close proximity to swamps and alligators. Apparently, once you are undead, there’s no need for Viagra or a sex manual. You are, as James Brown would put it, a Sex Machine.

I'll pass on the mopey, morose teen vamps mooching around the rainy Pacific Northwest.

 When HBO got their hot little fists on this property they juiced it up even more. And added wickedly sly black humor into the mix. In other words, the HBO series True Blood is the Harris novels on steroids AND viagra with a Liberal East Coast college education and a well developed snark.

The sweaty, hot sauce doused Southern vampires of True Blood are just so much more...er...hot blooded.

Let me backtrack in case you missed this one. The True Blood series is set in the steamy woods of Bon Temps, Louisiana, peopled by tough working class gals, blustering Southern sheriffs, philosophical Cajuns, oversexed Southern boys in cowboy boots and, of course, scores of the undead (plus a few shape shifters.) Our heroine is a plucky waitress at a swampside honky-tonk who just happens to be able to read minds. The premise is that the Japanese have discovered a synthetic human blood, True Blood, that has allowed the world’s vampires to come out of the crypt, as it were, and try to mainstream. Some are doing this with more success than others. (One vampire equates a diet of True Blood as “a lifetime of sipping Slim Fast while watching a parade of Filet Mignon walk by”.) Complicate this all with the fact that vampire blood apparently has the effect on humans of a massive concurrent dose of Viagra, Ecstasy, LSD and steroids. It’s become the illegal substance of choice in True Blood World and “vampire drainer” seems to be the upward career path for those who were formerly running Meth labs. Then there’s the Southern mega-church that is leading the holy crusade against vampires. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues. So you keep your dopey, mopey teen vamps with their unfulfilled desires skulking around the damp, cold Pacific Northwest. Sunday, I’ll be watching a steamy Loo-zee-ana orgy of Southern Fried Vampires, gals in Daisy Dukes and sweaty Southern boys in bandanas. 

If you missed Season One, HBO is rerunning all the episodes this week and next. Tune in. It’s good to the last crimson drop.

So yesterday I was shamelessly pimping for votes for the Ninth Annual Weblog Awards, The 2009 Bloggies. Today, I’ve sunk even further. I found out the Blogger’s Choice Awards were accepting nominations. Having no shame at this point, I nominated myself. Went out for the day and came back to dozens of hits on my site directly from the Blogger’s Choice site. Hmmmm. When I logged back in, I found I was featured on the front page and had garnered two more votes. Wow! Two other people voted for me for Best Humor Blog. And they weren’t even friends or Andy or anybody I’d paid, since I hadn’t told anyone that I’d nominated myself. Except what about all those people that were coming from the Blogger’s Choice Awards site to my site, BUT CLEARLY HADN’T VOTED? Hey, you need to go back and vote! Vote for me. Okay, maybe the post you landed on wasn’t my best. But read this one about bacon and this one about vampires. Funny, right? Okay, now go back and vote for me!

Here’s how:

1) Scroll down on this site to the point in the middle sidebar where you see my nominations. Click on one. It will take you to a place where you can vote for me in that category.

2) Or visit http://bloggerschoiceawards.com

3) If you don’t see my blog on the front page, go to the top right hand of the page to the search field

4)  Tap in leftcoastcowboys (no spaces)

5) When you get to my nomination page, you’ll notice you have a choice of several categories I’m nominated in (okay, that I nominated myself in!) Pull the little menu down to Best Humor Blog. VOTE VOTE VOTE! I don’t know if you can cross vote for me in the other categories, but you might as well, if it’s allowed. I mean you’re here and all. I’m just saying.

By the way, if I win, I’ll share my prize. Which I understand is a big fat nothing. Except bragging rights. But I’ll share those.

Okay, enough of that nonsense. With all these awards and holidays and friends having babies all over the place, I haven’t been up to check on the farm in weeks. Which is probably okay since everything is mostly dormant. But I thought I should check on my Brussels sprouts, since they were demonstrating very bad tendencies the last time I saw them. In fact, if Brussels sprouts could become juvenile delinquents, mine were on that slippery slope. One look at them (see picture above) confirmed the worst. They are more like cabbagy flowers, all open and floppy, than like nice tight little heads. I guess my run of beginners luck is over and I might actually have to study up on this gardening stuff.

See I’m not a real farmer. I just play one on the InterWebs.

Not sure if these are the fava beans I planted. Anyone know what a sprouting fava bean looks like? Is this one?

On a brighter note, I have been able to grow some grass in the former dirt patch around our barn. Well, I didn’t actually cultivate it, but it did sprout and grow on my watch. I’m taking credit.

One crop is coming in. Grass for the pasture.

So I saddled up “Old Paint” and went to check the fences, the orchard and the vineyards.

If you saw the body work on "Old Paint", you'd realize how apt a name it is.

The vines are trimmed and tied and ready for winter.

Finally, I supervised a Sonoma sunset.

So now I realize I’ve completely ruined any chance I had that anyone will vote for me for any awards, let alone an award for humor. I mean it, go back and read those posts about bacon and this one about vampires.

What else can I say to convince you? My posts are full of cabbagy goodness. That’s it. So vote for me.

The last election already proved that voting can shake things up and change the status quo. Now, I’m calling on you to do it again.

Yes, the Ninth Annual Weblog Awards, The 2009 Bloggies, are now accepting nominations. You know you’ve been coming to this site for a glimpse of the World’s Most Beautiful Baby, to follow the antics of the Wonder Terriers, to find obscure Christmas tunes and, in general, to learn what not to do when attempting organic farming, bio-dynamic wine making and Green Acres style “city slicker to country bumpkin” type life changes. Let’s not even mention the informative posts I’ve done on bacon and vampires. Now it’s time dance with the one what brung you. [She said in full rural mode.]

On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog. And apparently no one knows Left Coast Cowboys. Help me get some recognition.

Don’t let the Dooces and mommy bloggers steal all the awards yet another year. This is the year the underappreciated bloggers –we who toil and write for a few breadcrumbs of comments — should have their long-overdue moment in the sun.

Here’s the deal:

1. Follow this link to the voting place. That’s http://2009.bloggies.com/

2. Now scroll through the categories (on my browser, I have to scroll to the right rather than down) until you see the categories BEST WRITING OF A WEBLOG and BEST-KEPT SECRET WEBLOG. (Listen, don’t quibble about whether my writing is actually that good. I’m trying to make this easy for you.)

3. Here’s the important deal. You must vote for AT LEAST THREE BLOGS. So here’s what you do:

In both categories, nominate me, Left Coast Cowboys, URL is http://leftcoastcowboys.com . Also nominate two of my deserving bloggy friends:

If Dickens characters could blog, here’s the site they’d maintain. I’m thinking of one of the secondary characters who had an incredibly optimistic outlook in spite of mountains of trouble. Think Mr. McCawber or Martin Fezziwig. That’s Mad Asthmatic at http://www.rustzeb.blogspot.com . If, like me, you giggle when hearing arcane British terms like “whilst”, “lovely” and “tinned food”, you’ll love this one.

The third vote you’ll cast will be for CarmaSez at http://carmasez.blogspot.com . What can I say about her? Wife, mother, possessor of snarky wit and suffering from a strange and consuming addiction to giant Cheez Balls.

And hey, as long as we’re at it, how about casting a vote for one of the best food blogs around? Scroll over to the Best Food Weblog category and nominate Kat (and her partner in crime, Matt) for A Good Appetite at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com

On a more serious note, here’s who you should nominate for BEST WEBLOG ABOUT POLITICS: Verite Parlant (speaking truth) is an African-American writer, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, newly returned to the city and trying to make sense of race politics, rebuilding and today’s divided America. Her voice is not one that is often listened to in the mainstream media and it deserves a hearing. Find her at Whose Shoes Are These Anyway at http://bigsole.blogspot.com .

Another interesting NOLA voice for consideration is Cold Spaghetti at http://www.coldspaghetti.org/blog/.  This family is also rebuilding and trying to re-establish a normal life after Katrina. With this twist: she threw away a year of work on a doctoral thesis on slums in Lima, Peru to refocus her dissertation on the culture of Hispanics who moved into New Orleans after the Hurricane. One part mommy blog, one part political and cultural, a big heaping dose of can-do.

There you go. That’s one huge burden lifted from your shoulders. Thank you very much, as Elvis would say. Now go vote.

I’m not going to threaten. Although I do have hundreds more baby pictures that MIGHT not make the Blogosphere if I don’t get some love here. Plus I’ve only just tapped the surface of my large, eclectic and somewhat embarrassing Christmas tunes collection. And there are more funny terrier and winemaking stories yet to come. But no, there will be no threats that those might all end up in a compost pile in Sonoma if. . .

I’m not going to pull a Blagojevich, either, and bring bribes into the mix.

Would begging work?

Seriously, vote. If not for me, than for the other very deserving bloggers mentioned.

——–

Sexy Voter from Google Images.

The hype everywhere is that the teen vampire 90210 movie, Twilight, is opening and expected to be HUUUUGE. Excuse me, I’ll pass. And that’s despite being a secret vampire fan. Not that I dress in Goth gear and wander around clutching an Anne Rice novel. It’s just that there’s something about vampires. I never miss a vampire movie. The only genre I like more is Law & Order derivatives. If Dick Wolf ever gets around to making “Law & Order: The Undead Squad”, I’ll think I’ve died and gone to Transylvania.

But the thought of Twilight, books or movies, leaves me colder than vampire flesh. A few excruciating excerpts were enough to warn me that I wanted nothing to do with these moody, mopey, angsty teen bloodsuckers.

Besides, we all know by now that the whole premise of Twilight is a parable of abstinence. For vampires? Vampires are ALL about sex. That’s why I’ll take my vampires in the steamy, libidinous woods of Louisiana. Yes, that’s right, my vampires of choice are in True Blood, the great new HBO series that unfortunately comes to its dramatic season finale tomorrow night.

Truth be told, the Sookie Stackhouse novels the series is based on (Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead and about a dozen more books with “Dead” in the titles) don’t offer writing of much higher calibre than Twilight. It’s kind of embarrassing to be caught reading them. I read the collection alone in a barn in Sonoma while winemaking for six weeks. I plan to unload them at the nearest used bookstore before anyone can comment on the disintegration of my reading list. In other words, these novels won’t have pride of place next to my Jane Austen collection.

But at least author Charlaine Harris gets the sex right. There’s loads and loads of it. Seems the undead have sex ALL the time. Kinky sex. Sex in crazy places. Sex in close proximity to swamps and alligators. Apparently, once you are undead, there’s no need for Viagra or a sex manual. You are, as James Brown would put it, a Sex Machine.

I'll pass on the mopey, morose teen vamps mooching around the rainy Pacific Northwest.

When HBO got their hot little fists on this property they juiced it up even more. And added wickedly sly black humor into the mix. In other words, the HBO series True Blood is the Harris novels on steroids AND viagra with a Liberal East Coast college education and a well developed snark.

The sweaty, hot sauce doused Southern vampires of True Blood are just so much more...er...hot blooded.

Let me backtrack in case you missed this one. The True Blood series is set in the steamy woods of Bon Temps, Louisiana, peopled by tough working class gals, blustering Southern sheriffs, philosophical Cajuns, oversexed Southern boys in cowboy boots and, of course, scores of the undead (plus a few shape shifters.) Our heroine is a plucky waitress at a swampside honky-tonk who just happens to be able to read minds. The premise is that the Japanese have discovered a synthetic human blood, True Blood, that has allowed the world’s vampires to come out of the crypt, as it were, and try to mainstream. Some are doing this with more success than others. (One vampire equates a diet of True Blood as “a lifetime of sipping Slim Fast while watching a parade of Filet Mignon walk by”.) Complicate this all with the fact that vampire blood apparently has the effect on humans of a massive concurrent dose of Viagra, Ecstasy, LSD and steroids. It’s become the illegal substance of choice in True Blood World and “vampire drainer” seems to be the upward career path for those who were formerly running Meth labs. Then there’s the Southern mega-church that is leading the holy crusade against vampires. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues.

So you keep your dopey, mopey teen vamps with their unfulfilled desires skulking around the damp, cold Pacific Northwest. Sunday, I’ll be watching a steamy Loo-zee-ana orgy of Southern Fried Vampires, gals in Daisy Dukes and sweaty Southern boys in bandanas. Then watch my hands shake as I go through painful withdrawal until the start of Season Two.