Idle Hands

Nikki & I did a 20 mile long run/tempo combo on Saturday before Red & I headed to Seattle for the night. We shopped, ate heirloom tomato pizza and bottled coke, checked out our place on lend from a co-worker of his in lower Queen Anne, and ubered to the Crocodile Cafe where there was an Idle Hands wine release party for The Underground Wine Project. The Crocodile is black button-punched high-necked booths, art blown to arch necked views, with church stained glass in colors above the booze. It has a cool history; in its first run bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Cheap Trick, Yoko Ono, R.E.M., my favorite - Neutral Milk Hotel, the Beastie Boys came through. We sat in a booth, surrounded by lookalikes, all men of tall stature, an uncanny Vince Vaughn, an older Louis CK. Others continued to sidle in before someone from the band bought us all a round of Tequila, another unfortunate prompting on my part. The first time - towny todd poured us poor tequila in the middle of really good wine and I had a hangover like noneother. This time around, same thing, different city, except I thought I was being funny.

TUWP is a collaboration between Washington wine makers Mark McNeilly (Mark Ryan Winery) and Trey Busch (Sleight of Hand Cellars). In 2009 the pair released their first collaborative wine, Idle Hands. With only 100 cases produced, it quickly became a cult favorite; the impetus for what would soon become the UWP. Idle Hands is 92% Syrah and 8% Cab. Sauv.; it's prescribed as having ripe notes of bing cherries, cola, and raspberry liqueur intermixed with subtle notes of vanilla from barrel aging. Full bodied and lush in texture. We got to talk a little to the winemen, which was refreshing, and in return they had that lovely loose-wristed pour.

Entirely mesmerized by the events Red invites me to. I don't ask a lot of questions, because I don't care what the answers are. I don't care how I'm dressed for the occasion, or who I should or have to know. I make all my own assumptions, analyze the antics, and own what sort of exhaustive level I'm operating on without guilt. And in that space I've found myself at 3-piece suit wealth-stuffy ballrooms watching plays with a bottle of wine at my feet, bowling against and riding ferries with my favorite winemaker, Jed Steele, or listening to buttrock at a bar rich in music history. It's like last fall someone gave me a gift of everything Red in essence, hair, wine, heart, blood and said, Sip.

So Hobosexual came on. And they're a two-man band of saturated long hair, white ankle socked glory.