Circa 1996, Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan was an angry fella, composing scathing screeds like “Ænema.”
Fret for your figure and fret for your latte and
Fret for your hairpiece and Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your prozac and Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and Fret for your car
It's a bullshit, three-ring circus sideshow of freaks here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away
Any fucking time, any fucking day
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay
So it is with copious amounts of irony that, 12 years later, Keenan is spending his time…signing wine bottles at southern California locations of infamously overpriced grocery store chain Whole Foods? It's like a real life version of the recent Onion article that proclaimed Twisted Sister “now willing to take it.” But this foray into the wine business is nothing new; Keenan has been at it for a while.
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Keenan, also known for his work in A Perfect Circle and solo act Puscifer, will be at the massive Whole Foods in Tustin today from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., singing wine bottles with his business partner, Arizona vintner Eric Glomski. The name of their Sedona wineries are Caduceus Cellars, Merkin Vineyards and Arizona Stronghold, and the first two names are pure Maynard (arcane, pretentious foreign word and an obscure sexual reference). The tour takes them to the Whole Foods in west LA tomorrow, yes, the same place Tool once expressed a desire in wiping off the face of the Earth.
There are plenty of rules to go along with the events: you must be 21 years of age (well, duh), no photography (darn!), cameras not allowed (OK, probably wasn't gonna bring one given the previous rule), only wine bottles purchased during the event will be signed (alright, they want to make some money there, sure), two bottle maximum (apparently not that much money) and no personal property will be signed (keep those CDs at home!).
Is that really something people do, anyway? Get wine bottles signed? It's not really the same as getting a book or an album signed – theoretically, that's something that you'll keep around forever, and whenever you go back to it, you're like “Hey, I met the dude that did this!” A wine bottle is disposable – it seems like asking Subway employees to sign the wrapper of your Chicken Pizzaiola. They are sandwich artists, after all.
