The correct way to drink Franzia, minimalizing the actual time of oxidization, which, for Franzia Merlot to go from bad to worse, is .05 seconds

There are things I have always meant to get around to trying, but kept putting off. For example, one of the backburner projects that I finally accomplished in 2008 was the viewing of one installment of Girls Gone Wild. This year, I finally put a glass of Franzia boxed red wine to my lips. My first thought, even before the finish arrived, was how I could empty the other 4.9 litres into the sink without actually making raw sewage smell worse.

Don’t get me wrong: I am no snob to bottom barrel fermenters. I have tried the five Premiers of Les Cru Classés en ghetto: Mad Dog 20/20, Cisco, Wild Irish Rose, Night Train, and of course Thunderbird. In fact, I think Carlo Rossi Paisano and Almaden Chardonnay is drinkable swill.

Still my favorite joke about boxed wine goes like this: How do you keep boxed wines from going bad? Answer: you may never find out.

Napa, Sonoma, and Columbia Valleys are increasingly using aluminum vats to ferment their wines. Robert Mondavi was one of the first to start this more consistent, standardized use of equipment. Don’t think the cellars of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild in the Pauillac aren’t buzzing with computers either. So the aluminum bladders of boxed wines are really not to blame.

Still, if you are in the company of teetolers when dining out, I suggest you order the house wine if you are ordering by the glass. I still remember the waiter nervously asking me how my glass of pinot noir was at the Red Barn in Connecticut. It was atrocious, but I smiled and ordered the house wine. Logically, the oenophiles would order an entire bottle even if they were drinking alone. That leaves the casual diners like myself, who just want a better tasting table wine with our dinners. Unfortunately, casual diners tend to drink casual wine. So that immediately got me thinking: just how long has that bottle of Pinot Noir been sitting on the shelf opened?

Restaurateurs will tell you their number one concern is how fast their supply is moving on a daily basis. The reason is one of freshness. That’s why oftentimes, experienced diners will peek into a restaurant they come across to see how packed it is, not for the purpose of following the masses, but as an indicator as to how fresh the ingredients back in the kitchen will be.

In these tough economic times, restaurants will probably keep that good bottle of Haut-Medoc a little longer than they should. Regardless of airtight vacuums and refrigeration, I still think house wines are fortified to last longer after being opened. They move quicker anyway, and therefore, stay fresher.

And of course, the beauty of my advice lies in the fact that you can never really tell when a glass of house wine has gone bad.

I don’t have a stomach for murder.

Guess that’s why to date, I haven’t seen one single episode of Law & Order, CSI, or it’s 854,211 offshoots (ie. CSI: Wasilla).

The public’s fascination with murder is not a recent fetish. The sensational news reports of Jack the Ripper in 19th century London’s Whitechapel to the Boston Strangler in the 60s, and all those lurid 70s private detective magazines are just descendants from times when public executions in town squares were viewed as entertainment.

The most shocking TV moment in 2008 for me was a scene when a couple in Discovery Channel’s Cash Cab was asked a question about serial killers. The girl chimed enthusiastically, “Ohmigod! I should totally know this one, I LOVE Serial Killers!” It’s not the only instance, as I have known many well-adjusted, family women who voraciously read bios on murderers and detailed accounts of murder scenes. The stuff makes me cringe.

I did read Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, even though the Loci Method (described as Jesuit Matteo Ricci’s Memory Palace after Cicero’s story of Simonides) was the biggest draw in the book for me. The Memory Palace is architecture as mnemonic device, where the layout of a building is used to aid one’s memory. Around 500 BC, the Greek Simonides of Ceos was having dinner with his pal Scopas when he decided to step out to have a cigarette. Scopas outsourced his banquet hall to Roman contractors because he didn’t want to provide a 401 K plan. So not only did the contractors hire illegal Scots who jumped Hadrian’s Wall to apply for Bank of America credit cards, they also took ages to complete the structure, vindictively slapping together a poorly built structure which collapsed and killed everyone when an overweight guest suddenly decided to perform interpretive macarena.

After his smoke, Simonides realized he forgot his breath mints when he heard the ambulance tearing around the corner, so he had to hurry and sort through the rubble and dead bodies. In order for him to recall the position of the last dinner guest he saw with a pack of Eclipse mints, he had to resort to his memory. That’s how the Method of Loci came about.

As you can see by the ease with which I recalled this story, my Memory Palace is basically a cardboard box.

I think to appreciate the horror of Hannibal Lecter, one has to spend some time in the kitchen with a real life culinary master. I will always remember how startled I was when I first saw my favorite tv chef, sweet Jacques Pepin demonstrating how to slice french bread. The sheer violence and precision of his (very hairy) arms bringing down the knife raised my eyebrows, which was then accompanied by a nervous scamper to hide behind my stuff animals. Also, if you’ve ever had to practice his famous 20 second deboning of a whole chicken for a ballottine, you’ll probably learn more about silencing a lamb than all the CSI you can stomach.

Bet those three words never got uttered in one breath, but it’s true: I guess I was complicit in mentioning Nancy Kulp’s name in one of my recent posts. Someone just remarked to me: “I got it! I can sum up your dressing style in two words: Jane Hathaway.

At first, I panicked. Thinking it was that nice attractive girl that everyone likes so much these days. But no: That’s Anne Hathaway. (Well heavens! it could be worse: if I am ever told there’s even twelve degrees of separation between me and Gwyneth, Angelina, or Beyonce….I would positively die!).

Happily, Jane Hathaway is the stickly, banker girl from The Beverley Hillbillies, voted as possibly America’s homeliest tv girl ever (yayyy!!!). I’ve never seen an episode before, so I decided to tune in after that comment was made about me. Sure enough, outfit after outfit, I was like “OMG! SHUT UP! I HAVE THAT EXACT OUTFIT! NO WAIT, I WORE THIS OTHER OUTFIT JUST LAST NIGHT!!!!”

Some interesting facts about Nancy Kulp:

Long divorced, she came out of the closet at the age of 67 and admitted she was a lesbian.

Had a Masters Degree in English & French from the University of Miami (Fla.)

Ran as a democratic candidate in Pennsylvania, but lost only after that dastardly Barnaby Jones shot from the hip and ran an ad for her opponent, stating that she was “too liberal.”

Contrary to the “love-starved” persona she portrayed in The Beverley Hillbillies, Kulp had a steady stream of admirers and dates among Hollywood’s showbiz community.

Can you say: cool?!