The Most (Un) Interesting Man in the World

One of my dinner companions is a person named Keith. He appears to be the quintessential nuevo-riche redneck ass who probably runs a contracting business, though from what I can tell, he only travels with his father-in-law. Close cropped hair with a touch of grey in the temples, tall and somewhat handsome, Keith is the travelling companion of “Uncle Joe” the millionaire. I’m not sure if I have enough bandwidth to explain it all, but Keith is better than anyone else at sucking everything from everyone in the room to fill his enormous ego.

Joe is a wealthy retired guy, from high-end contracting I believe. Keith and Joe are fast friends and have done a lot of travelling around S. America apparently. Keith has a story or solution for everything and insight that is both certain and invariably full of crap.

In Argentina, he and Joe masqueraded as diplomats to get special details on gems at a mine. The way to fight jetlag is to always stay on Pacific Time. The way to get thousands of dollars in free drinks on board ship is simply to act as a bar shill. Keith’s personality alone will guarantee success. The way to get out of trouble due to 9/11 is to rely on the guy you inevitably know at Alamo rentacar in Phoenix, and on and on and on…

But where it’s most difficult, at least for me to be around is to listen to his incessant prattle about wines. No one, and I mean no one knows wine and liquor like Keith. He loves to hear himself expound on it. He loves to harass wine stewards and wait staff by showing them that he knows more than them about anything in a glass, and in fact he claims to know more about the glass itself than anyone else as well.
Unfortunately, there are other people in this group who are wine pretenders, and they get wrapped up in this, hanging on his every word. It’s beyond the talk about what is fruity, more full-bodied, oaky, and that kind of nonsense. There’s a lot of talk about wine being so young it needs a nipple, fantastic Beringers that are never sold to the public, but Keith knows where to find it, or the mythically fantastic wine cellar at a Chinese restaurant in Hanford, of all places. Or of the cellar at Joe’s fabulous ranch in Temecula, with a wine cellar entrance behind a bookcase. Joe and his wife sold it five years ago, cellar and all, to simplify their lives.

I’ve sampled some of these wines, in perhaps the worst waste of liquid since climate change began to melt glaciers. I have such an unsophisticated palate, and I’m not crazy about wine. They don’t all taste the same to me, but I can’t discern any advantage to something that costs $60-100 per bottle versus two buck Chuck. I suppose that there are subtle differences, some commonalities that might determine that some wines are better than others, but to spend thousands of dollars and months of life, to drive or fly or sail thousands of miles, to determine that the chemistry of certain kinds of lead crystal and methods of pour affect one’s experience, all of this seems perilously close to idolatry.

And Keith is insufferable, at least to me. Fortunately, I see him only at dinner.