Wine mouth. I guess it's the tannins. The difference between white and red wine, basically, is that the grapes for red wine are pressed with the skin and for white they're pressed without. There are tannins in the skin that make the wine darker. Or I could be talking complete smack. Anyway, I always get a kick out of the desperate look of red wine mouth, when the teeth get kind of purplish. It's basically why I stay away from red wine when I'm out. Last night I ran into a friend, she's one of the prettiest girls I know, and she had wine mouth. It changed her whole face, I think. But what are you going to do?

The worst case of wine mouth I've seen was on this guy Dave whose band my brother-in-law Brian used to play drums for. We were going to this industry meet and greet thing in NYC and were meeting Dave and their other band-mate there. By the time we got there Dave had flaming wine mouth and was running around like an idiot trying to meet industry guys. He had this butter-soft silver/grey silk shirt on with an ostentatiously placed business card in the breast pocket -- the shirt was that soft that you could see it. And you know he looked in the mirror in the bathroom and liked that people could tell he had some industry guy's card in his pocket. Lame. Dave was a good songwriter but a jerk. He kicked Brian out of the band -- stupid, Brian's an amazing drummer -- and then attempted to contact my other brother-in-law, who happened to be an exec at Sony at the time, the very next day. Nothing came of the band whose name I won't mention. And it's no wonder Dave is all by himself on the old website. It's the wine-mouth! Not really, it's more likely his crappy personality and passive aggression. I think it's funny when people are manipulative but not smart enough to pull it off. I always want to say, "dude, you'd be much better off being honest because you'll never be successful at taking advantage."

On a completely unrelated subject, I just got a call from my sister Mary. She and my niece Jessica, prompted by the new installation of a Christian coffee shop in town called "Holy Grounds," were talking about plans for a Christian ice cream shoppe. There would be flavors like Virgin Mary Cherry Vanilla and Testament Chip, sorbet flavors for all of the Commandments and a sundae for every deadly sin. Sounds Good to me. I like to mix religious terms with the mundane. Like Leg of Lamb of God. I want to make a movie called "Burger King of the Jews" about a friend of mine who cracked up a little one summer and ran around the city barefoot rounding up homeless people and taking them to Burger King for food. It's funny--he's such a nice guy it makes sense that if he's going to freak out he'll turn more St. Francis than anything else.