Victor Ozols

Posts

• Plunge Pools, Cliffside Casas, and Sunset Sails: Three Blissful Days in Virgin Gorda

  On a recent trip to Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands, I contemplated the sublime luxury of Biras Creek Resort and Oil Nut Bay Estates, along with a handful of philosophical questions and particularly poignant first world problems. Among the questions, I wondered if there is a certain level of wealth beyond which every additional dollar represents a diminishment of happiness. Is it possible to be too rich? (Only one way to know for sure.) To the latter, the meme-generators would have a field day with the so-called problems I experienced there. My biggest problem was ridiculously unfounded jealousy. Drew, a fellow journalist on this junket, was given the Fendi Casa to stay in on our last night (pictured below), open living room and all, while I had the marginally smaller--but still amazing--cliffside casa beneath it. At least I got to feel superior to Katie, who had the casa beneath mine. There is some justice in the world.

• Sparkling Rosé of the Summer: Mumm Napa and Carlos Santana's 'Supernatural'

  I had a long, long trip yesterday, not that I'm complaining. I woke up at 5:07 am in a cliffside suite at the amazing Oil Nut Bay in Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands, then hopped a ferry to Tortola, where a twin-engine Cessna buzzed me over to San Juan to meet my JetBlue flight back to JFK. There I decided I had more time than money and took the AirTrain to the subway to Brooklyn. I was at once exhausted and exhilarated, and decided to grab my wife and toast the end of a sublime adventure with a sublime sparkling wine, the newly-released Mumm Napa Supernatural Rosé. It's the latest collaboration that the California winemakers have with legendary guitarist Carlos Santana, and it's about the best welcome-back drink I can imagine, a complex, refreshing, moderately sweet sparkling wine that may or may not have some ghosts in it.

• Comedian Rob Ryan Spoofs 'Game of Thrones' Finale With Pink Video Tribute

  Rob Ryan is one hard-working comedian. Not only does he have a relentless tour schedule at comedy clubs throughout the country, he's also quite a prolific video maker. And his videos aren't just shaky camcorder footage of his live shows, he does excellent sendups of the topics of the times, set to popular songs. Most famously, he did "Newark State of Mind," an ode to America's worst city set to the music of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, but he's done many others, including one exclusively for BlackBook entitled "Lenox Hill Glory" that poked just a little bit of fun at the circus surrounding Blue Ivy Carter's birth. Today, he's back again with a spot-on takedown of the two different types of fan reactions to the recent Game of Thrones finale on HBO, as set to Pink's "Just Give Me a Reason." It's called, fittingly, "Just Give Me a Season."