I stumbled on to the funniest thing today… check THIS out. Looks like a sort of professional website, eh? And it probably is, but they have some pretty hilarious “translated” info-pieces on there.
Like THIS one
And THIS one.
It’s almost Christmas! And we live in a crazy world. You’ve got to read that Skimpy G String thing. It’s just too flippin’ hilarious.
I’ve been writing a lot for the slowtrav contest, which is now over (thank god, I didn’t even finish everything, but I can always enter it in the next contest, whatever). This is partly why I haven’t been writing here much, but also there was the Super Furry Animals show at the House of Blues last Thursday, and THAT was fucking awesome. Then I had a party on Saturday, and THAT was fucking awesome. So I am just completely worn to a nub.
Anyhow, getting back to what I was almost talking about before, I was working on my trip report from my very first trip to Italy for the slowtrav contest, and I was adding some resource links for places I went and stayed, like the Autogrill. And this is when I discovered, Autogrill, that fantastic roadside Italian chain, is this huge conglomerate that also owns HMS Host here in the U.S. HMS Host, operators of bars that serve up nasty-ass chowder and seven dollar glasses of Fetzer Chardonnay in airports from coast to coast.
WHAT UP WITH THAT? OK… I love the Autogrills in Italy, even though after years of eating at them I realize that they are pretty much Italian fast food and that they serve up the same stuff year after year in all their locations. At least it’s good “same stuff,” and you can get a plate of pasta and a half bottle of wine for about the same amount as a double Stoli Bloody Mary at one of HMS’s fine Sports Bars or a Half Caf Whacked Snack at Starbucks. My question is, if Autogrill is responsible for feeding us at our airports, how come they aren’t busting out the REAL Cafe Macchiatos? Where are the hunks of Parmesan cheese? Where are the half bottles of Chianti?
I guess American airport visitors don’t know, or want, what the Autogrill in Italy has to offer. And I reckon that if Autogrill changed the name and concept of it’s restaurants/holdings in whatever American airport from Sbarro or Wolfgang Puck cafe (which they own) to an actual Autogrill they would still charge $7.50 for a crappy piece of pizza, and they would still make you pay $7.50 or a crappy glass of wine. I have my ways of having what I want, when I want in an airport terminal, but still, the thought of an Autogrill in one of our airports is almost orgasmic, especially when I think of the airport in San Diego.
Kind of trippy… all the talk of globalization and how McDonald’s is taking over the world, yada yada. And here there is an Italian company, running a bunch of food franchises in the U.S, and they SUCK! And more importantly, we are all SUCKERS! Americans, demand the right to have the actual Autogrill in our airports! Demand decent wine at a reasonable cost! Me, and the two of you who are reading this, we can make a difference. Oh, we can’t? You are probably right. Guess I’ll have to keep drinking my smuggled wine out of a Starbucks cup. Oh well.
Life sure is mellow all of a sudden. After all the craziness of the past few months I have been holing up and cooking like a madwoman. Last night I made chile rellenos and tonight I made stuffed cabbage AND stuffed zucchini. Plus I am getting ready to make a bunch of lasagna for the weekend. But I’ll do that later. Right now I have to eat something and I don’t feel like it because I have been cooking so much. After I cook a bunch of stuff all I want to do is order a pizza. Weird, huh. I’ll eat one of the chile rellenos since it would be sort of stupid to make a bunch of food and then not eat it.
It has been very dreary here. I kind of like it. I love summer and the long days but it feels good when it starts to get dark early and it is cooler out, because then you can spend the whole day in your house cooking stuff and doing other random acts of nothingness. In the summer I feel like I have to be out. In the winter, I don’t, and that is very liberating.
I know this is awfully boring, but all I can think of other than dreary days and a steamy kitchen is, in the past few days I have seen people I know down at The Vine, and two of these guys asked me about my love life. I think I have dreamed or lived this scenario so many times now it is like a broken record. I could almost say the words before they did. “Seeing anybody?” “Any men?” As always, like I have for the last year, I say “no, but I am not really into that right now.” Which I am not, but this seems to put the Baffled Bullet into some people’s brains. However adamant I am about how much I like being alone, they’ve got to interject with that “everybody needs somebody” bullshit. For one thing, that’s not really 100% true, and for another thing, I do have some somebodies, I am just not fucking them, and I don’t have to live with them.
I have been married twice and been in a bunch of relationships and I’ve kissed and/or whatever probably eight gazillion guys. It’s not like I don’t have, uh, experience. I speak the absolute truth when I say I am content being alone, that I don’t really want the hassle of going on dates and shit, that there is no way in hell I am going on match.com. But these guys still don’t believe me and say the same exact thing everytime I see them. I just don’t get it.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, and I’m not saying I’m never going to be romantically or sexually involved with anyone ever again. But, I can say that I’m not pining away in loneliness and desperation (or even desire, except for Mr. Britt Daniel and that ain’t never gonna happen). I guess I just need some new retorts, like “fuck off.” (Just kidding. I would never say that to my friends.)
Anyway that’s my rant for the day. The only bad thing about not living with anyone is having too many chile rellenos around.
This week my home away from home, the OB Vine, was written up in the Night and Day section of the San Diego Union Tribune. It’s about time they (the newspaper, not the bar) got hep, but whatever. Also, let’s just hope I always have my favorite barstool. It would really suck if The Vine got so busy they didn’t care about me anymore.
Also, slowtrav.com got a big mention in an article about, well, SLOW, in the Toronto Globe & Mail today. I’ve got one thing to say, besides congrats. STEVE COHEN, MANY PEOPLE KNOW YOUR NAME. For sure I do!
Other than that, tomorrow I am working at the San Diego Little Italy Festival. I thought I might be getting a cold but I think it was maybe just exhaustion. Someone accidentally posted Britt Daniel’s personal email address on a message board. And I made it way past the 3rd without mentioning his name!
I’d never have the guts to email him though. I’m such a pussy.
Yo. My storefront is up on CafePress. Check it out. It’s almost Christmas, you know.
A long time ago, I was in love with a man. Really in love, and that man became my first husband. There was a time when I was returning to this man, this love, on a plane, and on the way home I kept pressing my shoes into the floor to drive the plane home faster. Out the window, there was a view of that ethereal New Mexican snow. But I could not see anything except what was waiting for me at the end of the runway.
That was quite a few years ago, and that love is gone. But I’ll never forget driving my heels into that airplane floor. Driving myself into the future. How is it that I forget so much, but remember a pair of thrashed leather boots and a frayed carpet? The smell of cheap wine and air freshener? The feeling of that pull, that agony of waiting to see if what you fell in love with is still there?
This is not about my old love and my failed marriage. This is about my home. Today I drove home from Santa Barbara pushing the floorboards of my car, to get home, after two and a half weeks away. What is it about this place that replaces the need for human love?
It’s an interesting thought, though not a new one. Places rather than people dominate an awful lot of literature. I feel I may bore people not familiar with Ocean Beach by going on about the way the sea air smells, or the way the palm trees blot out the ocean fog if you make a loose fist over your line of vision. I figure people won’t understand when I tell them how I can be hurtling slowly through space, and how that disorients and ungrounds me, but when I get back to OB the sound of a skateboard or even the sight of Sky the bartender at the Vine calms me and brings me back into the real world. The world outside, the world where I have to be “on,” the world where it is dangerous to not be alert, driving eighty miles an hour in a land of constant danger, vanishes fairly quickly here.
So. In my world, the one I have chosen to inhabit, the sun goes down and the sky is gray and pink. Palm trees sway against a hill full of expensive houses. I live down below, in a small bungalow I can’t ever imagine leaving for good. This place chose ME.
I am so lucky, to come home to this, and to feel the way I do. And that is my message after a long trip. Is this intense love permanent? Probably not. But while it is here, I am going to embrace it. I love you, Ocean Beach.
I just wrote this really long and boring entry of the last ten days – a marathon of gluttony. Then it all crashed and I lost it. That’s the universe telling me something there.
So, I am at my brother Jay’s house in my old hometown of El Granada. His wife Carrie is about to have my nephew. Yesterday was the family shower. I won a box of See’s Candy. Dangerous, since I’ve got another six nights of motel rooms to go and we all know that calories don’t count when you are on the road.
I was thinking all kinds of poetic stuff to write about last night in bed but now I can’t remember what is was. I am headed to Paso Robles today. It’s making me thirsty. Plus watching my brother watch football is making me crave my mom’s clam dip. The mind is a trippy thing. Like I haven’t been eating enough. Plus my dreams have been insane. Even more than usual.
Home Saturday. Then I can write more. Fall is here, and when I get home I am going to make some soup.
I am in San Francisco. Yesterday it was cold. Today it is hot. So I brought something with me.
I’ve been on the road for just under a week but it seems like so much longer. Wednesday I drove on a two lane road from Lancaster to just south of Bakersfield. One might think this would be a hellish, boring road. But really, there is something very special about that part of the world. It’s special because there is nothing built there yet. It’s a hot and wasted land, but with wildflowers as far as the eye can see and an ominous mountain range in the distance.
I was talking to someone in The Vine a couple of weeks ago, about the magic of Coalinga. Coalinga is a nothing town off the I-5, but there is a motel there way off the interstate that I sometimes stay at when I have to pass through. From the door of your room you can see the sun set over the mountains to the west, and though it is hot, and desolate, it is beautiful. It has a lonesome, unnoticed kind of beauty. Like the highway from Lancaster to just under Bakersfield.
Driving along Highway 99, you enter each town with it’s mile high signs for McDonalds, Motel 6 and Chevron, and you cringe. In Coalinga, you look one way and see the mile high signs, but you look another and you see a desert sunset. In the Central Valley of California, it is pretty bleak. You’ve got to seek out the hidden beauty, no matter how elusive. If you can do this, you can make a boring road meaningful and colorful.
Anyway. I am in San Francisco, staying in the flat I lived in the last four years I lived here. It’s like going home, but now, after four years away, it’s like going home in a real-time memory. Yesterday, after a marathon slowtrav party (more on this later, like tomorrow) I got into the city and walked up the wood staircase to the flat. My old roomies Leigh and Laurie were there, and just happened to have a bottle of sparking wine on ice. When you live with someone for four years, it is beyond familiar, and that was how it was yesterday, walking in there.
Then they had to go to rehearsal for the new play they are doing called Mudd’s Women which is based on the 4th episode of Star Trek. Leigh is playing Captain Kirk and Laurie is directing and is one of the women. Based on this alone you can probably tell how fun and cool Leigh and Laurie are.
Left alone in the flat, I walked around a while absorbing my past. Everywhere, there are things to look at in that flat – my roommates are consumate kitsch collectors and fabulous designers. Even when I lived there I use to look at everything all the time. I would have just stayed, drank some wine, and ordered up some takeout, but there was something else going on that I had to at least try to check out, and that was the Arcade Fire show at the Warfield Theater. I did not have a ticket, but I had to try to get in, and first I had to eat. So I headed out into a windy and cold San Francisco night.
My old home! What a trip to walk down to Church and Market in footsteps I’ve already walked in a thousand times. I had a dozen places I wanted to eat, many dishes I miss and want to eat while I am here. I ended up at Chow on Church Street, because there is this weird thread on pizza on the slowtalk message board and I just needed to eat pizza out of a woodfired oven really, really bad.
It was magical in Chow. It’s a life I no longer lead, but for the first time in four years, I missed San Francisco. Sitting at the counter, watching the staff with their crazy hair and nose rings, the whole place packed and crackling on a happy Sunday evening, drinking a glass of Banfi Corvina while waiting for my pizza… it was, well, like putting your cold foot into a warmed, furry slipper, one that has been stuck under the bed for a while. It only took a second to realize who the guy sitting next to me, pounding a Thai noodle salad, was. A bartender at a place called the Orbit Room down the street, a guy I always had a little crush on, a muscle car type with a slight lisp. Once, he carded me, and when he read my ID he said I was a couple of months older than him. This was years ago, and I still know exactly who he is. And he is now 40, just like me. This kind of familiarity with someone you don’t even know could only happen after living in the same place for fifteen years. I was over San Francisco, but now, I suddenly miss it. I love Ocean Beach, but I don’t have that same familiarity there, especially with strangers, if that makes any sense.
So yes. The cold Sunday evening, a wall of voices, and PJ Harvey playing loudly above that, even. Steam on the windows, the streetcar going by. This is San Francisco. This is really, really great. And suddenly I miss it.
Got on the F Line down to the Warfield, where my quest for an Arcade Fire ticket was unfruitful. It sucked – it was a scalpers market, with more buyers than sellers. I had a little sadness trio going with a really tall, skinny British guy and a long-haired nerdy type. The British guy told me he saw a woman hand over fifty bucks for a ticket, but then the guy just walked away without giving her the ticket. The nerdy guy kept saying “I can’t believe I am getting contempt from a SCALPER.” And there was some contempt, because they had us. I told one of them I’d pay fifty bucks and he contemped me. One dude walked by and had an extra ticket to sell at face value close to where I was standing and I was in the wrong spot so I didn’t get it. He made these two people flip a coin and it was brutal. The British guy came up to me and told me he was giving up. The streetcar was coming, and I gave up, too.
I gave up, and that is the only reason I am functioning today. So there is a bit of beauty in everything, even in missing an Arcade Fire show.
An interesting review of Chow! Venice
I am glad to know about the “hordes” of people carrying Chow! around Venice, but as we only printed 3500 copies, I am kind of wondering how many of the 3500 people who have a copy were in Venice when this guy was. Twelve? That would be AWESOME.
Anyhow he still gave us four stars while complaining at the same time, mostly about other Americans. A very odd review. It’s not so much that it is a bad feeling about a bad review, but more that it was a good review with a bad feeling. Or something like that. You’ll get the idea. Sorry that I’ve created a bunch of screaming, obnoxious American tourists and sent them to all your favorite places.
“I like to order a lot of food because, I got different tastebuds.” – Bobby Brown in a fancy London restaurant.
I hardly ever watch TV except for movies from Netflix. There is the occasional Saturday when I will watch Turner Movie Classics all day, but for that occasion I think I am paying about $90 in cable fees. I usually just watch movies from Netflix.
But Netflix is, all of a sudden, really slow. They used to ship and receive everything lightening fast. I don’t know what happened, but now there are times when I just don’t have a movie to watch, or if I have one I want to save it for the weekend.
So last night I turned on Bravo to watch Being Bobby Brown. OH MY GOD. Do you want to watch two whacked out ex-popstar ghetto freaks say some of the most bizarre shit you’ve ever heard? Then turn on Bravo this week because they are showing the first few episodes over, and over, and over.
It’s sort of hard for me to believe, but Whitney Houston is only two years older than me. I can still see her, dancing around in those bad 80’s clothes in the early days of MTV. She was squeaky clean when she was in movies like “The Preacher’s Wife.” But then she swan dived into crackdom. Everyone said it was because of her husband, but after watching this show, I think she was just a freak the whole time. Even alcohol, cocaine, and an endless supply of downs can’t make you THAT freaky. You’ve got to have acid, peyote, and maybe some ‘ludes unless you’ve got that freak gene going on from the get-go.
I guess Whitney just got out of rehab, but she still exhibits many of the signs of ex-crackdom. In one episode they are at the bar of a Chinese restaurant and she looks like she is about to start convulsing from withdrawals, but one minute later she is all happy and joking. I mean, the woman looked positively strung-out and then she is all of a sudden all happy. Hmmm… rehab, or did someone get her a little something to take the edge off?
I guess it must be hard for her, since Bobby Brown drinks heavily and constantly on the show. At one restaurant, when the entourage is leaving, he pounds a vodka on ice, and then puts down a beer, in about 45 seconds. How the hell is she suppose to kick her demons when he is still totally into his? That man would make me insane without some substance to ingest. I am serious.
The first episodes are Bobby getting out of jail and then going to court for hitting Whitney. Whitney is standin’ by her man. Bobby takes Whitney to a spa. There is a whole bizarre exchange between Bobby, Whitney, and the people massaging them (he gets a girl, she gets a guy, he don’t like that, but then they are in the same room getting massaged and it is just really, really weird). Half the time you can’t understand what they are saying, but Bravo has provided subtitles. This way, we get to know lines like “don’t smother my food with your boogies” and “can I impregnate you tonight?” Without those subtitles, those words would be lost forever.
In the third episode, Bobby and Whitney and a couple of their kids go to England. Bobby and Whitney love England “for the culture and shit” and they arrive screaming “ENGLAAAANNNDDD! ENGLAANNNDDD!” They go to Harrods and spend buttloads of money. Bobby has a fit when Whitney drags him to the children’s section to buy their daughter some clothes. “These ain’t gonna fit me!” he complains. When Whitney picks up a pair of tiny pants for their plump daughter, he says “they ain’t gonna fit her! Baby’s got BODY. Baby’s got BODY.” That kid is going to be scarred for life. She looked so sad and messed up…
Later Bobby runs into the Dalai Lama in front of their hotel. “Mr. Lama! I’m Bobby Brown!” The viewer sort of sits there and thinks, “he did not just call him Mr. Lama.” But he did!
I managed, when Netflix was operating a little better, to avoid Britney Spears reality show, and a lot of other bad TV. But I must admit that I was somewhat riveted watching Being Bobby Brown. One thing I can’t figure out though – how do they still have so much money?
After that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy came on and the straight guy was a NUDIST. Seriously that was some of the most hilarious shit I have ever seen. Carson decides to be nude too and runs around the guy’s house with him, one hand on his crotch and one hand on his breast. Then when of the other guys says, “you see, James, Carson does it right. His hair is good and he has an accessory!” Later the nudist can’t wait to strip out of his tuxedo at a party with a lot of other nudists. They all get naked and dance and the Carson and the guys are practically doubled over from revulsion/laughter. It was a good night not to have a Netflick. Seriously, if you can stomach it, turn on Bravo and you’ll be bound to see at least one episode of Being Bobby Brown.
Foggy, foggy, foggy. I watched a family of tourists walk to the beach today. Poor tourists! They come for a beach vacation and get THIS.
I am stoked though. At the Ocean Beach Street Fair I bought some raffle tickets and I WON SOMETHING. I never win anything! I won a cool necklace with a silver pendant that says OB. The O is a peace sign. It’s hella cool. I got so excited I went and bought two lottery tickets. I really need to win the lottery. So let’s keep the streak going, please. And if I don’t win the lottery, can you please send a couple of visible sunsets my way? Thank you.
