Quiddick the Critic

Alone in his parlor, his nose at the ready

Quddick the Critic can’t hold his hand steady.

“I’ve spit and I’ve spit like a short-tempered camel

I’ve got very few teeth that have any enamel.

“My liver has grown to the size of Bulgaria

And my blood vessels look like a map of Bavaria.

My gut has grown huge, I’m immense for my genus,

It’s been several years since I last saw my penis.

“But I’ve got all these bottles, these bottles galore

And with nose and with tongue I must give them a score.

Reputations and lives all depend on my skills.

For my hands to stop shaking, I’ll wash down these pills.”

Quiddick the Critic is the King of all Wine,

His power unquestioned, his gift deemed divine.

One sniff of a wine, one mouthful or two,

A number emerges! Like you squeeze out a poo.

“Cassis and vanilla! White pepper and thyme!

Berries and cherries and girly parts’ slime!

Fresh green tobacco and other parts herbal!

The definitive scent of Tom Cruise’s gerbil!

“Muscular, brawny, with elegant tannin!

A sulfurous note as if shot through a cannon!”

Now Quiddick the Critic is ready to score,

“It’s brilliant, it’s classic, it rates 94!”

Thus Quiddick the Critic has ruled wine supreme.

His followers drank up his every wet dream.

With just one simple score he made up in his head

He can banish a winery to Land of the Dead.

But Quiddick the Critic has seen better days

Subscriptions are canceled, he gets no more praise.

His star has been fading, his flock has dispersed,

He was once the big cheese, but now he’s the wurst.

“I have to do something, I must regain my power,

Or I’ll end up like Verjus, incredibly sour.

Maybe I’ll pack up and travel to China,

Maybe I’ll pray that I grow a vagina.

“Everyone knows when it comes down to palates,

That women’s are better, that men’s are like mallets.”

Quiddick the Critic, at this point, was hammered,

He babbled, he dribbled, he droned on, he yammered.

When suddenly there was a knock at his door.

He reached down and picked up his pants from the floor.

“I rate the wines naked and make my selections,

It’s better than blind, and I get more erections.”

Like every wine critic, though Quiddick was King,

His sex life was barren, he played with his thing.

For a woman might want him because of his clout

But that thing in his pants was most like a dead trout.

“Who is it?” he cried, “Who’s there at my door?”

But his queries were answered with silence, no more.

His instincts were shouting, Don’t answer the knock!

It could be a winemaker armed with a Glock!

But Quiddick the Critic could scarcely ignore

His longing to know who was banging his door.

He opened it slowly, his nerves were atwitter.

But instead of one bitch, he found a whole litter.

For outside his door there were hundreds of Poodles,

Short ones and tall ones, all kits and caboodles.

“We’re here to replace you,” they said as a chorus,

“You’re over and done with, you cannot ignore us!”

“You’re Bloggers!” cried Quiddick, “the spawn of the Net!

You’re posers and douchebags and lovers of Brett.

You cannot replace me, don’t you know who I am?

I’m King of the Critics and you clowns are Spam!”

The Poodles were growling, their barking intense.

They gaped at his size, then said, “Let us flense!”

The first to attack him, he thought he had balled her…

But the one with no punch, he knew, “That was Alder!”

They all were upon him. The nuts and the fruity!

The Blake Grays, the Jim Budds, and even WineDoody.

They cut him and bit him and left him for dead,

And felt proud of themselves, at least that’s what they said.

“Now we’ll be the experts instead of that tub.

Our ignorance though, well, Ay, there’s the rub.

But you don’t need knowledge to start your own blog

You don’t need credentials, you just have to slog.

And you don’t need talent, not even a little

You just need a keyboard upon which you piddle

Your underthought thoughts, your impulsive twaddle.

Your useless descriptions of what’s in the bottle.

The world is much better with endless opinion

With more mindless noise from each mindless minion.

We’ll dazzle the wine world, we’ll learn it much faster.

And screw that damn Quiddick and fuck the HoseMaster.”

With poor Quiddick dead all the Poodles seized power.

Consumers were baffled, the wineries dour.

“They all want free samples, they all own the joints!

Old Quiddick, we miss you, your misleading points.”

But critics were dying and bloggers ascendant.

The bloggers not knowing they were codependent.

Without critics to harp on they had little to say

And slowly but surely they all went away.

The silence is welcome, like when you use Bean-o.

No Heimoff, no Alice, the late Dr. Vino.

And everyone’s happy, from shop to consumer.

Wine tastes so much better sans numbers and rumor.

And what is the moral of our tragic story?

For stories need morals like bloggers need glory.

Well, there’s not much to glean from this Seussic disaster—

Except that the sickest is our famed HoseMaster.