Jim Morrison and Sour Grapes

I'm thinking about Jim Morrison's famous line that goes, approximately, "I eat mo' chicken any man ever seen."

I feel the same way about Concord grape juice.  I was lucky enough to have Welch's as a client for many years and I'll wager you I've consumed more Concord grape juice than 99.999% of the world's population.  Gallons of it, I'm telling you.  Dozens of gallons.  And it was a privilege.  What nice people, and thanks to them for helping put both my children through college.

That said, at a certain point I realized I'd had enough.  I don't drink grape juice anymore.  At least I certainly don't buy it at the grocery store.  I'm more of an Original V8 guy.  And, of course, OJ.  So how much juice can one man drink?

I once managed a seafood restaurant.  One of the perks was that I could eat anything on the menu as my shift meal.  And so, for a while, I pursued lobster with the same youthful enthusiasm one might apply to pursuing, say, Bar Refaeli.  Albeit with better results.  And so, just like with the grape juice, I'm pretty much done with lobster.  I've eaten mo' lobster any man ever seen, and now, lo these many years later, it still doesn't do very much for me.  On the other hand, lamb chops, of which I've also eaten a ton, have never lost their appeal.  Funny.

Insert cheesecake photo to stimulate male blog traffic ...

I do, however, still buy Concord grape jelly.  Or jam.  Or spread -- which is a less attractive word than jelly or jam, but that's okay.  I would call your attention to this ...

Outstanding.  I'm not sure what's going on here, other than the lack of HFCS.  The consistency seems more granular to me.  In a good way.  I think it's the best jelly Welch's has ever made (even though it's not technically jelly), made from sweet, luscious Concord grapes and, presumably, love.  No sour grapes here.

The same can't be said for mouth-breather Steve Coburn, disgruntled owner of California Chrome who, upon losing the Belmont Stakes, launched into a mean-spirited screed about the current Triple Crown structure not being fair to the horses.  Fair to the horses?  Really?  I very much enjoyed John Oliver's take on Last Week Tonight, the HBO news show.  His reaction to Coburn's lame bitching and moaning went something like this ...

"Not fair to the horses?  I'll tell you what's fair to the horses.  Breeding them until they have the structural integrity of a Jengo tower and then, when they inevitably break down, shooting them in the head."

I laugh out loud every time I watch that show.

Every couple of years a couple of shmos (very much in the spirit of the theory that suggests that, given enough time, 20 monkeys with typewriters could write King Lear by accident) manage to come up with a great horse -- Funny Cide rings a bell -- and they get to goof it up on the big stage for a while.  And at first it's a great story.  But by the time the media starts hyping the Belmont, you get mighty damn sick of these knuckleheads and wish that guys like Bob Baffert were getting more screen time.

I'm not going to miss Steve Coburn for even one minute.