(no subject)
So I've gone back to finish watching Leverage. I know a lot of folks here and on tumblr like it, but it started to drag for me at a certain point. Having started it again, though, I think that's mostly to marathon fatigue; it's an episodic show (with larger on-going character plotlines, but still) and if you watch too many in a row, you start noticing the structure more than the individual episodes so it blurs and it can stop being fun. This is not a complaint about episodic shows: it's just why marathons of them should be spaced out - at least for me.
ANYWAY, now that I'm rounding the final bases, I can see a lot of the things that I've seen from fandom - certain character dynamics or tics that hadn't really solidified in the episodes I'd seen.
So you know: enjoying it.
However.
So I've gotten to the winery episode. (Well, half way through it.) And it's really killing me. There are just enough details to show that someone did their research, but then there are other things that are JUST! SO! WILDLY! WRONG! that they can only described as having reached the level of "so off base, it's not even wrong."So: both my parents worked in the wine industry, I grew up in Napa, and...I spent literally half of last year working in a viticultural supply warehouse in St Helena. So while I'm by no means an expert, there are just some things that are just so weird. Like: the whitest vineyard crew the world has ever seen. I have met a few white vineyard managers, but even they were kind of rare. The vineyard crews are always Latino. (And they're like 90% male). Also, the implication that vineyard crews are just random out of work people. just: what.
Okay: so basically, mechanical harvesting is a thing (as is a lot of other vineyard maintance). If a vineyard is being hand-picked, we're talking very high quality vineyards. We're talking vineyards that command like $10k a ton (and estimate about 4 tons an acre). Harvesting by hand is a skilled job. Backbreaking, demanding, not for the faint of heart, but no: not any random person off the street could do it. And no one with a vineyard worth $10,000 a ton would let a random person off the street do it in any case. Additionally, it's been hinted that the Evil Plot is GROW MORE GRAPES, MAKE MORE WINE, TIMES A THOUSAND mwhahaa. But also: no. There are so many reasons for this. One is that the bigger the harvest, the lower quality the grapes (though some people argue against it, it's pretty much gospel. Many vineyards will stress their vines for this reason, the idea being that a stressed vine will invest more (reproductively speaking) in a smaller number of grapes than investing little in a lot of grapes.) So increasing your tonnage dramatically would signal that you were selling low quality grapes, and the price you could get for them would drop. I know it's implied that this is a vineyard owned by a winery, but if were owned separately or even leased out through a vineyard management company, there would be contracts for delivering a certain tonnage of grapes to various businesses , and not any old grapes, they'd also vary in price depending on the levels of sugar and...anyway...masses of more grapes don't mean more money for a lot of reasons. That's before you get into the winery, which also doesn't want to overproduce for a variety of reasons. (Especially if they're a winery that's getting the kind of grapes that are hand-picked.)
It's just.... the show was accurate enough to talk about vineyard crews working from bud break to harvest. And to call the lowest/youngest winery workers 'cellar rats'. But everything else is just so random, and for no good reason? There are plenty of evil plots that would work with just a few details tweaked, and it would not have killed them to hire some latinos for the vineyard crew. At least a few.
So there's that.
In other news, I got my hair done today. I had to have it cut really short (for me) to get rid of the last of the evil layers a hairdresser put in about two years ago. (My hair is fine: layers just make my hair look ragged, and the hair on the end tends to et more damaged. I can get the same look by just not cutting my hair for a year). But now it's really short when I braid it, so that's weird to get used to again. But it looks nice. Despite the communication difficulties that lead me to get full color instead of just the extremely fine and numerous highlights I usually get (because then when it grows out it's not obvious), and also, my hair is now slightly strawberry blonde.
ANYWAY, now that I'm rounding the final bases, I can see a lot of the things that I've seen from fandom - certain character dynamics or tics that hadn't really solidified in the episodes I'd seen.
So you know: enjoying it.
However.
So I've gotten to the winery episode. (Well, half way through it.) And it's really killing me. There are just enough details to show that someone did their research, but then there are other things that are JUST! SO! WILDLY! WRONG! that they can only described as having reached the level of "so off base, it's not even wrong."So: both my parents worked in the wine industry, I grew up in Napa, and...I spent literally half of last year working in a viticultural supply warehouse in St Helena. So while I'm by no means an expert, there are just some things that are just so weird. Like: the whitest vineyard crew the world has ever seen. I have met a few white vineyard managers, but even they were kind of rare. The vineyard crews are always Latino. (And they're like 90% male). Also, the implication that vineyard crews are just random out of work people. just: what.
Okay: so basically, mechanical harvesting is a thing (as is a lot of other vineyard maintance). If a vineyard is being hand-picked, we're talking very high quality vineyards. We're talking vineyards that command like $10k a ton (and estimate about 4 tons an acre). Harvesting by hand is a skilled job. Backbreaking, demanding, not for the faint of heart, but no: not any random person off the street could do it. And no one with a vineyard worth $10,000 a ton would let a random person off the street do it in any case. Additionally, it's been hinted that the Evil Plot is GROW MORE GRAPES, MAKE MORE WINE, TIMES A THOUSAND mwhahaa. But also: no. There are so many reasons for this. One is that the bigger the harvest, the lower quality the grapes (though some people argue against it, it's pretty much gospel. Many vineyards will stress their vines for this reason, the idea being that a stressed vine will invest more (reproductively speaking) in a smaller number of grapes than investing little in a lot of grapes.) So increasing your tonnage dramatically would signal that you were selling low quality grapes, and the price you could get for them would drop. I know it's implied that this is a vineyard owned by a winery, but if were owned separately or even leased out through a vineyard management company, there would be contracts for delivering a certain tonnage of grapes to various businesses , and not any old grapes, they'd also vary in price depending on the levels of sugar and...anyway...masses of more grapes don't mean more money for a lot of reasons. That's before you get into the winery, which also doesn't want to overproduce for a variety of reasons. (Especially if they're a winery that's getting the kind of grapes that are hand-picked.)
It's just.... the show was accurate enough to talk about vineyard crews working from bud break to harvest. And to call the lowest/youngest winery workers 'cellar rats'. But everything else is just so random, and for no good reason? There are plenty of evil plots that would work with just a few details tweaked, and it would not have killed them to hire some latinos for the vineyard crew. At least a few.
So there's that.
In other news, I got my hair done today. I had to have it cut really short (for me) to get rid of the last of the evil layers a hairdresser put in about two years ago. (My hair is fine: layers just make my hair look ragged, and the hair on the end tends to et more damaged. I can get the same look by just not cutting my hair for a year). But now it's really short when I braid it, so that's weird to get used to again. But it looks nice. Despite the communication difficulties that lead me to get full color instead of just the extremely fine and numerous highlights I usually get (because then when it grows out it's not obvious), and also, my hair is now slightly strawberry blonde.