Later this month Harper Collins will publish "The Wine Emperor" by Ellen McCoy. It's a biography of Robert Parker. I've seen the galleys for the book, but not the final version. The part I saw as interesting and insightful. Whether your a fan or not of Parker (and I'm clearly in the second group) it's an interesting read. The sections that I have personal knowledge about (Parker's era on Prodigy) are accurate in their coverage of things like his inability to allow someone to disagree with him without slipping in a barb in an attempt to put them down or question their motives. I have no $$$ interst in the book, I just thought it was interesting. (I didn't see a mention of his limited inability to smell brettanomyces-but the galleys had no index so maybe it's in there.)
"bfson" in news: snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com... | Later this month Harper Collins will publish "The Wine Emperor" | by Ellen McCoy. It's a biography of Robert Parker.
Sounds interesting. Harper Collins is a publisher of standing, and noted for reference books. Not especially relevant to this topic but still, I suggest, of potential side interest is that in 1975, after a friend of mine built an Altair 8800 home computer from a kit -- the famous pioneering "turkey from Albuquerque" home computer, allegedly the prototype of what you use to read this message -- this friend lent it to others of us and another friend, for good technical reasons I won't go into, took apart this machine and put it back together, but changed. (We were all university students at the time.) Noticing the change, I said to this friend, "Did you know that a Harper Collins Italian-English reference dictionary is in the computer?" And he said more or less "What are you talking about? It has only 1k of RAM." But I persisted. "No, the Harper Collins Italian-English Dictionary actually is _in_ the computer." I pointed. The hefty, redoubtable dictionary had been used to weigh down the insides of the computer, and now was enclosed within the re-installed transparent case. (Such are my memories of Harper Collins.) We then wrote a review of the Altair 8800 which did cause some trouble, interesting in its own right; but not on account of the Harper Collins Italian-English dictionary and not (as I have already admitted) germane to this new biography.
A few years after that, Parker was a topic of lively discussion on this wine newsgroup (in its early identities). This may have preceded the "Parker era on Prodigy" (which, unlike the wine newsgroup, was proprietary rather than public). It seems that the burgeoning big ISPs at the time modeled their own forum services after the already-thriving newsgroups, rather than offering their subscribers access to the latter. (A topic of some reminiscence lately.) This changed in the 1990s (1993?) when A*L at last opened access between its subscribers and the newsgroups, with dramatic effects on both sides. (It was said here not long ago by a Canadian barrister contributor that this decision was lately reversed.)
| ... The part I saw as interesting and insightful. ... | The sections that I have personal knowledge about | (Parker's era on Prodigy) are accurate in their coverage | of things like his inability to allow someone to disagree | with him without slipping in a barb in an attempt to put | them down or question their motives. ...
I myself don't know about that, because again, Prodigy's were proprietary online fora, not public like the newsgroups.
Not especially relevant to this topic but still, I
You weren't by any chance a part of the Homebrew Computer Club, Max? The geography isn't quite perfect, but the timing and machine are right. FWIW, in that era I was exploring the instruction set of the SOL-80, a rival 8080 machine that had been donated to my high school, in preparation to hard-coding a primitive video game ("Tank") into RAM by poking machine code (ack! the folly of youth)
Some of that activity spilled over into this newsgroup in '97. For an illuminating example, involving both Bob and Bill S., see:
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Although the sainted Parker never posted here AFAIK, Rovani filled in as his designated attack dog. Bob Foster and several others (who mostly fled to WLDG after things spiraled out of control) engaged in pitched battles with the Parkeristas and much vituperation was had. Certain fora (Wine Therapy in particular) are essentially havens for the anti-Parkerites who fled Prodigy and here during that era.
So much for our illustrious history! ;-) Mark Lipton
Hey, you guys were from the "other" school. I used to buy 6809s and make them into usable devices. Wrote my papers in university on a homegrown 6809 running Flex OS and some obscure Bell developed typesetting language.
Heh. No way, Mike. I was an equal opportunity geek: my only computer programming class in HS used an M6800 processor, ancestor to the 6809. I mostly remember learning the essentials of stack operations in that class...
No argument here. That's why we drink red wine, no? Helps us keep up our youthful appearances! :P
OK, I admit having tooled around with a Z80 also. Ah, those were the days, when RAM was 64K, CPUs ran at 2MHz (kids today dont even know what a Megahertz is), and you could not afford a 10M hard disk (kids today cannot imagine a hard disk measured in Megabytes, they get more than that on a USB key).
And I still remember most of the codes for TTL and CMOS ICs. 7486 was an exclusive-OR gate. I think.
So back to Parker, what do you think of his portrayal by Nossiter?
I await reading the book because I lived through the early Parker years from
1979-1985 when the Bordeaux book was published and I joined the wine trade.
I have mixed feelings in general about Parker, mostly pride because I and a few other enthusiasts were not only sounding boards but supplied him with information in my case for California and Italy. And I owe much to him.
On the dozen or so times I saw him after 1985 he was the same person he was before-very sensitive to criticism but very gregarious and funny too. He was a lavish host and cooked well and while I never liked his musical tastes except for Neil Young he liked my sick humor and when he was still practising law I used to call him with the latest bad joke. I often helped him out at his early public events. He never asked me to but thats what you do for friends.
When he quit the legal business, we talked about setting up his tastings but between being ITB and my real job I didn't have the time and had much too much ego. He hired Dr. Jay Miller who had the time and inclination. If I recall when I met Jay he didn't know Parker but I believe he came with me for a tasting at Bob's home but Jay would have met Bob anyway as he is very determined.
Basically when I got into the business, contact with Parker, Jay Miller and the origonal Friday night tasters ended for me unless it was at some trade event. Since I was easily inebriated I'm sure I said something about Bob that displeased him and someone let him know, because there was a definite coolness when I saw him. Usually if his wife Pat came with him I chatted with her at her request since she was a little shy and then Bob would look over and I moved on. On almost all these occasions I left Bob alone as he had a host of people seeking him out and I knew he acted much less friendly towards me in public then he did in private. I am sure the fact that I was sloppy, fat, fat and annoying had something to do with it.
I did get to go to one of his lavish tastings at Charleston after I left the business. Both Bob & Bertero Basignani invited me-so they must have been desparate to fill the slot. Nonetheless, I kept my mouth shut and my table manners proper for the wonderful dinner. I was sitting with just about everyone in the trade who dissed me, but for once I was polite. I observed nothing had changed over 17 years, mature men were lining up to kiss Bob's butt and he was enjoying it. I'd act the same if the roles were reversed.
There are other things that still annoy me, but we move on. Bob got me into the trade and introduced me to many great wines and great people. I wouldn't change a thing except to take better care of myself.
As for other Boards, Squires is very anti afw although I'm sure there is no one left from the bad old days.
Parker himself, referred me to the Garr board who have more than their share of Parker-bashers. This was a few weeks before Squires got on line. Me and Squires have clashed mostly over my political rants. I also joined enemy vessal but got booted off for being pro-Parker and giving those effete snobs back the same condescending bull they threw at me. There were only the moderator and importer taunting me but I never was one of the "cool kids".
There's a degree of reverance afforded Parker on the Squires board, Guys who make 6 figures hop on planes to eat with him and in general act as Bob is their school boy crush and slam anyone who dare says a discouraging word. But there is one undeniable fact--because he has integrity and a great palate he has altered the parameters of wine making and selling for the good. Sure there is a downside but if you have an independent mind you'll hurry past the 97 WA signs and seek thruth on your own.
"Mark Lipton" in news:d8pk54$j9t$ snipped-for-privacy@mailhub227.itcs.purdue.edu...
Absolutely. The H[B]CC formed originally around the Altair 8800 and met at the Stanford Linear Accenelrator Center (SLAC) generally, from the middle
1980s, though you would hardly have known it at the time, became known as the meeting place and spawning ground for various innovative firms including Apple Computer. (Later by the way, journalists who were nowhere at all to be seen at the time claimed that time and place, expansively, as their "turf." Success may have a hundred fathers, but it has a thousand chroniclers.)
Thanks for the reference Mark, I will check it out. In post-facto researches of the interval when I didn't read the wine newsgroup, specifically the middle to late 1990s, I noticed at a certain point that various voices that had established themselves separately on private ISP fora -- Squires, Garr, Meadows, Harrington (westcoastwine.net) -- surfaced on the wine newsgroup, referring people to those other fora. With the wide acceptance of the new "HTTP/HTML" tools by the middle 1990s, one by one they switched from private ISP fora to Web sites, some of them spending time here, during the interval.
Some of the most interesting and telling discussion and quotation of Parker that I've seen was here, _before_ the huge popularity of (even ISP) online fora, in the middle to late 1980s, which I read at the time. (Being a "recreational" newsgroup it was poorly archived on the big data bases, but archives exist, in various locations including my own. The volume was lower but the qaulity was sometimes very high.) Some of it concerned Parker's decisive, but then possibly more abrasive, style; some of it was accounts, from various intermediaries, of faux-pas when he encountered tests of his tasting skills that were not under his own control. Parker himself was not yet online I believe, and may yet never have seen or even be aware of this public review of his work, which formed some of my own impressions.
"Max Hauser" in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...
Make that middle 1970s. I started attending Homwbrew Computer Club in 1975, going there with Steve Dompier, one of its organizers.
Fellow Berkeley student Bob Lash has a little online memoir about the club:
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We also started (strictly speaking, resuscitated) a separate organization on the Berkeley campus, the Berkeley Computer Club (BCC), which promoted public education about computers, as well as being how some of us met each other. (It still existed, when I last heard.)
Pray [as old bank checks and, until recently, US Letters Patent said] forgive a further off-topic follow-up, but the owner and builder of the Altair 8800 that I mentioned earlier saw the posting, and sent the following.
-------- So. I lend you guys my only Altair, put together with my own two hands (some of it redesigned on a Pan Am flight to Hawaii - I was in the cockpit), with a barely legal 2MHz CPU one-shot clock, and you guys take it apart and install a dictionary? Whatever for? Did you get it to fit into an S-100 slot? (I know, it wasn't known as an S-100 bus at the time, but I have to call it something. Oh, and the IEEE finally came out with the S-100 standard right about the time the last manufacturer of hardware for this bus went out of business.).
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