Fifthlist is here!

That little list above is coming straight from my account over on www.fifthlist.com, the latest and greatest web service from the people who brought you jebediah.net and pretty much any aussie band site worth mentioning in the last decade.

Head on over, grab yourself and account and start putting your lists in your blogs/myspace things and google homepages!

Nice work Harman!

in ol' melbourne town

Hi all who still remember this thing's here (it seems I'd forgotten until just recently)

I'm back in melbourne to do the edit and composite/vfx work on our film. It's just like catching up with old friends, seeing all the brilliant performances from everyone in the cast and remembering all the good times on set... ahh, the party scene...

anyhow, more on the wonders of low budget filmmaking later, this post is mainly to link to a couple of blogs that need mentioning...

First up, we have Rockran's new blog of his Japanese adventures, which can be found here: RockranRollTokyo

Then we have cuzz'n Piptoi's gestation blogation... well, I'm not sure really... I'll post that one a bit later when I've worked out where it is!

and finally we have Save The Austin! Dad's blog of the restoration of his 1929 Baby Austin 7 in time for me big sister's wedding. Go Dutti Go!

join us next time, when we'll discuss how to solve cutting room arguments between the director, writer and editor ;)

khrob

One word:

Robbed

I've been doing this too long

Walking through the city this morning, I saw a sign up ahead for a store called "The Original SoupMan"

I wondered in earnest what they could possibly be selling. Imagine my surprise when i drew level with the store, only to discover they were purveyors of fine liquid foods.

I honestly hadn't even considered it.

Still More Lesson One

Wacoming this stuff can be a little tedious - I did some on paper this evening, but have no scanner here, so you'll just have to beleive me that they're better than tonight's digital offering!

That said, having ctrl+z at your fingertips gives you freedom to be very bold with your lines, which I'm enjoying (except when I go back to paper and pens/pencils/etc - my right hand is constantly looking for a keyboard that isn't there!)



I'm not going on to lesson two until John K gives me the ok! You hear that John?! I'm gonna keep posting these things until you say...

Feedback/help from anyone would be welcomed in the meantime!

Lesson One Part Three

Here are some comparisons and redraws with discrepancies marked in red.



Again, this was all done straight to the wacom. The only image manipulation was scaling to get the approximate sizes of my pics and the originals about the same.

Glad to see some other people getting into this as well - Happy drawing/animating to all!

Oh yes - before I go - here's the first rough animation I've done in flash (yes, it's not in HD, but the next ones will be)



Looking forward to looking back on this one and laughing - oh wait, I am already!

Woohoo! My first crits! Many thanks Stephen. I'll try this again tomorrow with some graphite and pulped wood.

Here's part 2 of lesson one - I'll do some comparisons and redraws on the morrow.

Ein Neuer Anfang

And with that quote from The Rocketeer, we begin a new direction in T&T&T's life. I'm finally getting around to doing that thing I've wanted to do since I was 6 years old - becoming a 2d animator. Of course, I'm still hard at work at good ol' Souptoys, but in the evenings, with a white russian in one hand and a Wacom Graphire 3 in the other, it's time to get down to the serious business of drawing 'n stuff.

But that's not all folks! (Hah! - you see what I did there?) I'm not only going to do this without paper (alias sketchbook and flash all the way) - I'm going to do the whole thing...

in HIGH DEFINITION!

That's right! Every animation and pic you see posted here will be rendered in crisp, clear, 1920x1080 HD.

The course I'm doing can be found here

Let's go! Before we I get onto lesson one part one (Make an egg model and draw it from several angles using the techniques of construction) I decided to get my hand in with some circles. Here they are:



Mmmmm - jpeggy. Right. On with Lesson One:

Make an egg model and draw it from several angles using the techniques of construction.



I'm going to post before I lost this... Next steps of lesson one coming real soon now.

Stupid Smart People

Or as my close personal friend Bruce Campbell might have said, had it not ended up on the cutting room floor: "Oh, you STUPID Wise Men!"

Perhaps an even more appropriate title might be 'Intelligent Ignorami'

Example the first: My older sister, aged around 13, playing Mario on my new gameboy. I thought it was funny that she would jerk her hands upward as she tried to make Mario jump. Seems the joke was on me.

Example the second: A few years ago, showing my mate Has how to model in 3D Studio Max. His first response - "Why can't I just draw it?" Good question.

I'm fortunate to be surrounded by them. They're intelligent folk, who have no idea about something you do, or want to. If I were a publisher looking for someone to write a textbook, I'd look for someone very intelligent who knows as little as possible about the subject, and get them to write it in an almost diary-like fashion, so students get how someone actually learned the topic, rather than how someone thinks they should learn it.

Just a thought.

And for those back home to whom I haven't waxed lyrical on the subject - I have found a new ideal career - As a tourguide, punting along the river Cam. Big thanks to Lu for putting a roof over my head and introducing me to so many fun people while I was in Cambridge the other week!

"It's dot com!"

It's Time To Play

At long, long last, our little project is live and active...

Come and get the world's coolest desktop toys from Souptoys!

I'll be doing more philosophical bloggings on the subject of toys soon, but in the mean time, I hope you like them!

Khrob

Filing a Provisional Patent

Here is what to do if you want to file a provisional patent application at the USPTO with their ePave and EBX/THX/BLAH templates:

Forget it.

This is by no means definitive, but after many days and long nights trying to decipher the online system, I thought I'd put up our final procedure.

Get yourself to www.nolo.com, and find this book and buy it. Read it. Answer the 9 questions. (Some are easier than others, but I still had to check the spelling on 'Khrob')

Once you've gone through their stuff on how to write it, get these forms:

The Cover Sheet
The Fee Transmittal Form
Credit Card Payment Form

Print them out, fill them in, and (here's the tricky part) Go to the post office and send them from there. (Along with your actual application stuff of course) Send them registered mail and be sure to include the return postcard with the details it says in the nolo book on it.

Because it's registered, you are effectively filing it there and then, and can get on with utilising your invention instead of worrying about how to protect the thing.

This information is provided purely for interests sake, in the hope that someone googling at 3 in the morning stumbles across it and it is of some help. I have no desire to discuss the matter further - for me, the subject of patents is now closed. Yes, the area of software patenting is full of interesting issues, annoyances and stupidities, but truth be told, I just don't care. Please feel free to put any corrections/addenda into comments below for the benefit of those who come after (or if circumstances change). Like I say - that's me and Provisional Patents turning our backs on each other for what I hope is a long time.

Good luck with your provisional patenting

Adventure Gaming

As we wind up to our ever delayed launch (4 to 6 weeks, I swear) and I spend more and more time bashing my head against php and html in notepad (one day I'll get a visual html editor, I swear*) my mind keeps itself handily away from my work by thinking about adventure games and the lack of good ones these days. (I'll stop putting things in brackets after every thought at some point in this post, I swear)

The sad thing was that even back in the day, when adventure games ruled the EGA, most of them were pretty crap. Sure, there were some absolute classics, but it wasn't as rose-tinted as I like to recall. I think that was just the blue gun in my monitor giving up.

The gold was pure though, thanks to these men and the other luminaries at Lucasarts. Great days.

So it was, with great excitement that I downloaded the demo for Bone. I loved the comics (Bish, you'll get them back one day) and I loved adventure games. And possibly it was the unrealistic expectations I had given myself in the short time between discovering and playing the game, but I was to be both exhilarated (hurrah!) and disappointed (boohoo)

Don't take this as a negative review - I've played the game for a sum total of maybe 12 minutes, which qualifies no one to apply the 'review' moniker on anything. It just stirred some thoughts. First off though, the good bits:

The animation, design sound and puzzles. Animation was beautiful, the design of everything was very true to the source and the puzzles, such as they were, were quick and fun. The voices were well performed and the characterisation faultless.

So... where did it fall down for me?
Point 1 - It was very linear. The flow went like thus: Be on a screen. Solve the puzzle/s. Move to the next screen. Latherrinserepeat. In the opening sequence, I forgave this, knowing the story and knowing that the 'game proper' would take place in the valley, but Bone would have to get there from the desert first. I quite liked the notion of ludicrously simple puzzles and nice animations with some character control as an introduction. It worked for me, were I to do the same thing in a game, I would keep this to around 5 minutes.

Then I get into The Valley, where I meet a character I had in fact totally forgotten from reading the comic, which was a nice surprise. But from this point on, I was hampered by having to solve a puzzle to move any further into the game. Yes, the puzzles were nice, and yes, changing the character I controlled to make a different kind of puzzle available to me was refreshing, but this is an Adventure Game - not a hypercard stack of puzzles! I want to explore. I want to find out about this world. I want to meet interesting characters and talk to them when _I_ think it's time. There is a way to do this, if you follow Ron's Guidelines. You could make a valid argument for the linear puzzle genre, but in making things a little more open, when the player reaches a puzzle that takes a little more thought to solve, they'll move away from it and look at some other aspect of the game, instead of (like me) remembering that they're meant to be working and exiting. This wasn't such a problem in the old days. Somehow over a few months you'd scrape together your $70 and then buy the latest Noun's Quest. But in today's try before you buy world of gaming, you don't want anything that reminds the player they could (and probably should) be doing other things.

The other thing that didn't work for me was the dialogue interface. The dialogue itself was very well executed, and there were even some puzzles based on it very early on, where you could (in the one conversation) pit two other characters against each other. My problem comes from the doubling up of information. When I have just read my three possible choices for my next contribution to the conversation, I don't want to wait around while my character reads the line again before I get to what I really want - to hear the other character's reply. I don't care how good the acting is, it's just repetition. Which is dull. Repetition is dull. It's not interesting... repeating things.

And another thing - Let me click through dialogue. I can read faster than characters can speak. We don't have a 'language' for games in the way films, plays and the various forms of literature have. These 'languages' are used to describe the progression of the audience through the information in the story. The progression or flow is used to suggest and dictate mood and interest. In games, and especially in adventure games, the flow is on getting peices of information and _using_ that knowledge to solve the puzzle, not the presentation of the information. It's about action, not immersion.

The team behind Bone have done some fantastic things to breathe life back into a genre that could be so popular (and profitable!) both in terms of modernising the graphics and their business model. If we can solve a few of the teething issues I mention, there's so much fun we could have.

To sum up (and add a few things):
- Give me a definite goal but freedom to approach it from different angles (even if there is only one correct solution)
- Don't double up on the information delivery
- Let me click through dialogue and cut scenes
- Don't have cut scenes
- Except where they're REALLY necessary
- Seriously - even if they're funny.
- And when you do have them - keep the really short. Really short.

Oh, and anyone out there writing an adventure game, or thinking of doing so - take another very important lesson from Monkey Island: Use A Five Act Structure. It Works. It Keeps Goals Clear For The Player. It works across so many genres of storytelling that in not using it you're just being arrogant. If you don't beleive me, play Monkey Island again. I just can't beleive how few games that followed did the smart thing and copied it.

Seriously. Use a five act structure.

Damn I want to make an adventure game now. Maybe I'll just go to bed instead.



* if notepad had tabs on it, and a goto line number option in one of its menus, I'd never need another text editor. Ah well.

So close!

As all five of you out there who read this thing with any degree of regularity may have noticed, our beloved souptoys.com has yet to go live as semi-scheduled. While this is a little disappointing, it's way easier to take than releasing with a product that is almost completely awesome.

The boys have been putting in superhuman performances. 'Bed' is a strange concept these cabin-bound days. 'Sleep' I find even less familiar, because even once the body cries "Enough!" at around 4:00 or 4:30am, the brain takes that much longer to slow down. On the plus side, this means I've read more books in the last 6 weeks than I did all last year. (This is actually not much of an acheivement)

It's not as though forces beyond our control got the better of us. What snow we've had here has been very calm and well-mannered. It's simply that when you're a group of three perfectionists who will happily argue for hours over the colour of a translucent column of pixels for a button that will be seen occasionally by advanced users, everything takes that little bit longer.

And judging from the responses we've had from the alpha - it's worth it!

One of the best responses I've had was that it "looks so professional!" Even with a slight tone of surprise in there, that's a compliment. Mind you - it's not like we've been doing nothing these last 17 months!

So the current release plan? Maybe friday? When it's done?

Or, to quote old Sierra Catalogs:

RSN*

We thought it'd be a good idea to have an early night tonight - recharge a bit for tomorrow. How the hell did it become 02:15am?

Happy 21st Alex!

hvd cfkkafsdsmrjmmc

Khrob out



* Real Soon Now

Yo Seth...

Back of the phone man? (Big one with a screen on the left)

link

Step One

So how does one set about becoming a toymaker in these modern times? I'm no master carpenter; my skills with injection molding are haphazard at best, and that's leaving my sewing 'skills' entirely unmentioned.

Being a nerd helps. Following the resounding lack of wider interest that was 'Raptor Crunch' (coming soon to a crappy java game site near you) the SoupCrew decided to take a different approach. To fully understand this approach, I think it's necessary to form some sort of appreciation of 'Napes'...

Now, 'Napes' or Napier St was not something you could call unique. It was a house dwelled in by two (then later three) uni students. As such, one could expect certain things. Couches on the front verandah. A dead garden. The slightly odd smell that never seemed to go (and was there when we arrived, we swear). 7 meals in 8 cooked on the BBQ (in our case, the mighty 'Beff Baron'). A student house. A place where everyone knows your name. A drop in house of late night imbibery.

They say cleanliness is next to godliness. We were directly across the road from a church. Whether that qualifies us as 'clean' I dread to think, but there you go. (Someone 'liberated' the flag from the church at one of our more.... elongated... parties one evening. I kinda feel bad about that, but it wasn't me, so hey.)

But I'm sure you know the place. You went there a million times during your time at uni. Maybe you picked up your cigarette butts and maybe you didn't. I'm not here to judge. What Napes was though, was a place where ideas could get a good discussion. We had a tradition with some good mates in the Napes days... that of the curry night. Tuesday nights (before we declared Tuesday a freeloader on the 'week') were often a night where a goodly group of us would congregate, eat a curry prepared by one or more of the attendees, and several relaxing ales were taken alongside extensive discussion of our beloved nerdly industry.

Ideas for sharing networks, quiz shows, top five ratings systems and many many more were bandied around at these evenings. Do you know why Pixar invests so much time in storyboarding? It's because one person with a pencil can draw a shot from a film in 20 seconds, and from that sketch, it can be determined whether it's worth letting the other 40 people who have to work on that shot, frame by frame, to get it to the big screen. 20 seconds from one person is a hell of a lot cheaper than a day or a week from 40 others, and even if that person has to draw that shot 600 times, you still wind up with a better product. That's what curry nights were at Napes (and Railway; and Jimbo's; I'm just making a long-winded point here). They were test-beds for ideas.

Some ideas stick.

Others insinuate themselves into your head and kick around there. But the point is, it's easier to shoot down lots of ideas with intelligent and informed mates, than it is to take an idea and try and prove it yourself. Discussion is the storyboard of the startup. I know you've got friends. Cook them a curry. Tell them to bring beer. Talk about what you're thinking of. If an idea deserves to die a cold, heartless death in the idea wasteland, it will soon get shot down.

Just don't be afraid of your ideas shrivelling under that process. One of the hardest things to reassure yourself about is that you WILL have more ideas. Some will be crap. Some will be fantastic. Just don't stop throwing them out there when one does get shot down. This is what the curry and alcohol is for. It both cushions the fall of bad ideas, and encourages... well... abstract thought about the good ideas. Don't worry though - more ideas WILL come.

I'm sure I've said it before, but we have a rule at Souptoys: "All ideas MUST be stated." If you have a bad idea in your head, and you don't tell anyone, it's taking up room for good ideas in that noggin' of yours. Get it out there. We're fortunate in that we're essentially a few mates, and we take the bad ideas with the good; if you have to work a little harder at making an environment where bad ideas aren't used against their originator, so be it. I swear it'll be beneficial.

So when we hit on the idea for toys on your computer, you can rest assured that we attacked the problem from many angles, before any fingers hit keyboards.

So that's Step One. Have an idea and try to kill it with discussion.

To Swim To Play, The Absoluteness Must Be Given

Or so several friends and I were humourously informed by the Engrish manual for some really cool little radio controlled cars that Rory's dad brought back from Singapore. And so was the floor of Napier transformed into a series of jumps and obstacle courses for the two small vehicles. We think it means "Don't get your cars wet".

I love toys. Maybe not as much as John Lasseter, but enough that I visit toystores more often than most in my demographic. I had great toys growing up. From Duplo to Lego and Mecchano, Tonka trucks, bears, Transformers and Matchbox cars. Not just injection moulded plastic toys either - my parents were good enough to keep me in an endless supply of paper, white on one side, old ABC TV schedules on the other, and crayons, then textas, then pencils, then pens, then back to the textas (except my taste in textas now is in the $10-$15 pantone range, but hey!) so drawing, designing and creating my own thing was always encouraged.

I also grew up alongside the Microbee Computer (thankfully I outlived it) and PCs back to the heady days of the 286 and I was allowed pretty much free reign over the various machines that inhabited our home.

All these toys, from the paper through the mecchano to the computer were very open ended and encouraged a healthy exercise for the imagination. Imagine my horror, when in late 2004 I am in a toystore with a few good mates, and we are SEARCHING for toys. Just toys. Plain old toys. But could we find them?

Behind the rows of Dreamworks, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney (should that be Dixar? [that is SO January 2006 - ed]) and Warner Brothers branded merchandise we eventually located some Lego that wasn't pre-cut to only form one possible toy (typically some form of AT-AT or Endor Moon Speeder Bike) and settled for that. But there was a conspicuous absense of honest, open-ended, imagination utilising toys.

And so began an Epic Quest, to bring fun toys back to the world... For 14 months, in and out of basements, bedrooms, disused hotel rooms, bars and prison cells, subsisting off tins of tuna and the meanest of lagers, Tim, Rory and I toiled.

In 9 days, Souptoys will be unveiled. We hope you can be with us.

Carry the rocks?

http://istonythere.castpost.com/

Gold.

Dunnewood Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon

Sure. Yeah. I _said_ I was through with the wine bloggery.

This isn't a wine blog entry though. It's a recipe.

1 bottle of Dunnewood Cab Sav
1 packet 'Twistos' (Oreo ripoffs that CLAIM to be $0.99 and are actually $2.99)

Pour enough glasses of the wine that 'dates back to decades ago' for all present.
Dip one cookie into your own glass and exclaim enthusiastically at the delightful taste that ensues.
If Rory isn't convinced, go for another dip.
Watch as Rory dips his cookie in and tastes the foul and noxious resultant mush.
Laugh.

Find something to take the taste of horrible biscuitwine out of your mouth. Bleach seems to do the trick.

I will resist the urge

to drop into colloquial ockerisms for the remainder of this post, suffice it to say I would like to wish everyone a Vege- er, Very Happy Australia Day 2006. For all its faults, it's still a grous- um, Great place and it's... y'know... home 'n that.

...

Ah fuck it.


snaggerssheilasvegiebarbiestinniesfootiesandgrop-
ersgrouseaussieinstertappropriatenounebvbswandra-
ftcottobhboonieborderwarnieaflgothedockersthongs-
barriesboganswestiesdownsouthsurfinsummertruckie-
tanssteeringwheelhotnesscricketgreenandgoldshort-
eninganygivennametosyllableoneplusObackyardcrick-
etoksothatsarepeatofcricketandthereitisagaincozi-
tssodamnaussieaussieaussieoioioiaussieaussieauss-
ieoioioiaussieoiaussieoiaussieaussieaussieaussie-
oioioibryanbrownportiaderossithatheathfellajebse-
llemacphersonkatefisherhuntersandcollectorsthela-
nddownundermoretinnieseskieshillshoistssidneynol-
anthrowyourarmsaroundmecatrionarowntreethechanne-
lnineweatherchickanythingsaidthroughthenosewhing-
ingaboutwhingingpommiesmaybegettingaroundtosayin-
gsorrythisyearflagtattsinthenewspaperboardiesand-
ofcoursethebestlookingbabesinbikinisonthebestand-
longestandsandiestbeachesonthisearthohmygodhowca-
niforgetthehumbleyetohsowonderfulandpraiseworthy-
bainmariemeatpiefromtheservobloodybeautymate

There's only one cure.

My colleagues are cheese men. Hell, I've been known to dabble in the eating of various cheesy comestibles in my time, in fact, I like to think of myself as something of a cheese appreciator.

Yet there are two forms of cheese I will never eat.

Version one: Kraft Easy Cheese. Aerosol and off milk should never go together. It's as simple as that. It's like some form of edible silly string that doesn't shoot as far. This is what's Rockin' Rory's Stomach (just like gastro-enter-i-tis did)

Cheese two: Grated Parmesan & Romano in easy sprinkling form. Now, this one's actually a bit misleading, because I _have_ and will eat this form of cheese again. No, what I will avoid is the remnants Tim has taken claim of, which have the delectable expiry date of June. Twenty-seventh. Two thousand and TWO. I've seen blue cheese, I've seen orange cheese, and oh so many variations on yellow cheese.

Brown cheese?

Please.

The cure?

White Russians and lots of 'em.

Wine Updates

We never did finish the Red Truck.

Foxhorn Vineyards do a nice little number that accompanies COD2 very nicely, and at $6.99 (plus tax) for 1.25L it's (as they say here) a no-brainer*.

We've been drinking some south aussie red by the large bottle too, mainly because it's cheap (east aussie wine seems to be about $1/gallon here... west aussie, if you can find it, is the sort of prices one would expect) and tastes like wine rather than some sort of wine-like fruit drink filled with sugar.

Rory just broke a glass. Whoops. That's going to hurt when he staggers out to his corner of the desk in the morning.

Ok. I'm done with the wine blogging. It was swell while it lasted, but as Lori Petty says, the swelling's gone down.

From now on, it's... umm... y'know... stuff. Dave, if you're reading this, let me know how the real title for the Dirty Dozen project's coming along.


* which by the quality of the wine I guess means I'll have no brain by the morning. C'est la vie.

Here and There

Here they don't have street lights.
There they don't have snow.
Here they put salt and sugar in EVERYTHING
There I didn't know what salt was until I moved to Napes
Here they drive on this side.
There they drive on the right side.
Here is way closer to New York.
There is way closer to Cott.
Here the toilets use lots of water.
There the toilets have spiders.
Here they too few roundabouts.
There they have too many traffic lights.
Here you can order stuff online.
There you can buy beer on a sunday.
Here I drive an Audi
There I drove an Excel
Here I spend all day with norm & ror.
There I spent all day with norm & ror.
Here we're travelling to the big city to celebrate our national day
There I'm missing a pool-party or seven.
Here the butter comes in little sticks.
There the tomatoes don't cost $1.10 each

Here we're approaching alpha...

Wild Bunch

They Say:

Some are born to it -

Others just ake a walk there every now and then. All of us come from it. And there's still a little bit in everyone. You don't have to join the wild bunch because you are already a member.

- Come as you are. [as you were, etc.]

Bright red fruit aromas lead late tongue-drenching juicy fruit flavors, with a long soft finigh. Delicious, and fun to share with friends. 2003 Wild Bunch is a blend of Zinfandel, Syrah and Barbera. GET WILD!


Kelly Says:

It didn't taste like it did in the store.

3/10

Gumstripper

Beringer Founders' Estate 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon

They say:

Our wines are a tribute to the Beringer Brothers who founded Beringer Vineyards in 1876. These classically styled, fruit-forward wines are hand-crafted for your enjoyment. [Enough already! Tell us about the wine...] This full-bodied Cabernet Savignon [...thankyou.] exhibits deep berry flavors [sic] and subtle notes of toasted oak and vanilla spice. Serve with your favourite grilled meats or hearty pasta dishes. Enjoy! (their italics)

We say:

"The first thing it did was strip the skin off the roof of my mouth," says Cabin Guy Rory. "A full-bodied red; with an after experience similar to a velvet throat-cushion. My tongue is slow like a bean-bag. A pleasant experience, but lacking in quaff."

5.5/10

Norm says: "Yeah, it's quaffable."

Woodbridge California Merlot

I don't know who Robert Mondavi is, but he certainly mixes a good drop o' merlot. Today we're looking (initially) at a 2003 merlot that poses the question: "The Perfect Toast?"

They Say:

Aging in small oak barrels gives wines softer, more developed flavors [sic] with nuances of toasty oak. We handcraft our Merlot with this traditional method to marry the wine's velvety blackberry, plum and violet flavors [sic] with spicy, toasty oak, creating a soft red wine with a lingering finish. So whateer your "toast" or meal, enjoy it with our flavorful [sic] Merlot.

We say:

Small oak barrels my arse. When a wine is as smooth as this all you need to put on the label is: "Red wine. Does not hurt to drink." As for a 'violet' flavour, I'm listening to some french album that sounds bacony. Please. Much like good reggae, it's inoffensive yet lacks distinction.

6.5/10

Norm has nothing to add.

also,

apparently I aint a starlet.

And wolf creek is getting better :)

Truth in advertising

Much to our surprise, bottle number two stayed true to at least part of it's bottleblurb. In light of this, we're going to let it tell its side of the story in full.

Columbia Crest Two Wines
2002 Cab Sav

They say: [with annotations] Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon is a full-bodied wine known for its immediate enjoyment [we concur] as well as its age-worthiness. [while we can't comment empirically on this, give that it's a 3 year old bottle, it stands up orright.] Toasty vanilla is woven [what is this, an ice-cream rug?] throughout the wine's rich black cherry core. Oak barrel aging adds dimension.

We say: The first half of Wolf Creek is pretty crap. The girl from seachange is cute, but the plot is less believable than The Course. They shouldn't have pushed the car off the cliff and now they're splitting up. For the love of jeebuz.

6/10

Lady in Red

I'm sure anyone actually reading this will want to hear about Brooklyn, Manhattan and all that travelly stuff, but instead, here is part one of the Cabin Guys Guide to American Red Wine...

There are rules, but we won't tell you what they are.

Let's begin.

RED TRUCK
2004 California 'Red Wine'

They Say: All kinds of crap about a fictional red truck on your grandfather's farm making you feel good.

We say: Electric, like sticking your tongue across the terminals of a 9v battery. The aroma is reminiscent of a prosthetic limb production facility. Price was $7.99. Has a slight numbing effect on the lips and tongue, but unlike Kava, it's not really that pleasant. Overall? Pretty bad, but we'll finish the bottle.

3/10