Dave’s TV Year in Review

1973 was a phenomenal year for California reds. That was the year that Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars produced the California Cabernet Sauvignon that would go on to win the legendary 1976 “Judgment of Paris,” a blind tasting that pitted the best American vintages against the legendary vineyards of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, Chateau Montrose, and Chatea Haut-Brion (three of the four original “first growth” vineyards established under the direction of Napoleon III in 1855). The victory by Stag’s Leap was astonishing. The vineyard had only been producing wine for two seasons, and the French vineyards they defeated had been, collectively, producing wine for a millennium. A lot goes into a growing year like that. The conditions need to be just so: just so much rain, just so much sun, just so much nitrogen in the soil. But when those things come together in the proper way, magic can happen.

A Few Thoughts on Network Upfront Week

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. May is when the semester wraps up here in East Lansing. That means grades have to be submitted, upset students consoled, and sorting through the inevitable set of excuses that accompanies every finals week. At the end of the fall semester the promise of the holiday season and all that it entails gives me the motivation to sort through the meshugas. There are no corresponding holidays at the end of the spring semester. Memorial Day is still weeks away. So I console myself with a pop culture lover’s unofficial holiday season…TV upfront week!