Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Justin's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
8:06 pm	One last change of residence Livejournal has served me well, but I've always intended it to be a temporary solution. I've decided to abandon Livejournal and move to wordpress. I hate making folks change their bookmarks, and I might lose some of you to no longer being in your friends section of Livejournal. I hope to spruce up my blog on wordpress, but I guess if it's not good I can always come back to old faithful. You can now find me at bestnamesaretaken.wordpress.com. I hope this isn't too much of a hardship. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
10:51 pm	My favorite line from a film review this year In his review of 300 A.O. Scott wrote the following: ...it offers up a bombastic spectacle of honor and betrayal, rendered in images that might have been airbrushed onto a customized van sometime in the late 1970s. (Comment on this)
10:27 pm	"I'm fully focused, man." (when I'm cooking) For some reason I don't write too much about my cooking, but perhaps I'll start. I've been doing a great deal of cooking. Alton Brown's books are incredible for learning how to cook, not what to cook. Don't get me wrong, there are some tasty recipes, but most of the book is devoted to teaching yo different methods of cooking. I've read through it a couple times now. He's taught me proper sauteing technique, gotten me to be a better searer, and has made me a huge fan of frying my own food. Tonight I made a baked polenta dish. I made and set polenta (I did this on Sunday to save time), made my soon-to-be-patented tomato sauce, cooked up a cream sauce with gorgonzola and spinach, layered everything in a casserole dish, baked it for forty minutes, and finished in the (gas (swoon)) broiler. Everything was a bit more wet than I would have liked, but pretty tasty. I also took the leftover bits of polenta, oiled them, and through them in my getting-to-be-awesome cast iron pan. This went on the top rack of the oven (the casserole was on the center) and in an hour I had delicious polenta chips. The polenta dish was a variation on a recipe I found in a great vegetarian book, but I've always been pretending to be a chef and whipping up my own dishes. Last night I used my already-awesome immersion blender to make a tasty pea and corn soup. I through a couple cloves of garlic in a pot with some hot oil. After a couple minutes I added a can of vegetable stock and some water. Once everything was boiling I put frozen peas and corn (two to one in favor of peas) and a little rosemary. Once things had gotten back up to a boil I suddenly realized there was a clever way to get rid of the parmesan regiano rind that so often goes to wast. I bit it into a few chunks (stuff is too hard for a knife) and tossed it in with everything else. I added some chili sauce and reached for my immersion blender. The blender made short work even of the cheese rind, and in no time I had everything purred to a nice consistency. That's just one of the adventures in cooking I've had of late. I find it incredibly relaxing. Hank the Dog isn't doing so well these days (he's regressed after making lots of progress in late January and February), I got rejected from University of Illinois, and I had some strange health problems last week. I've needed the relaxation of cooking lately. It just makes me feel better. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 11th, 2007
10:45 pm	Two Recommendations I had written off the latest The Hold Steady album, Boys and Girls in America while in China. The other day I stumbled upon a bizarre video of them playing in a gym a song from the album to a bunch of high school students. I decided to give the new record a chance, so I bought it on iTunes. I really like it. It's not a revelation like Separation Sunday, but it's filled with top notch songs. Craig Finn does a lot more singing and lot less talking/yelling. It doesn't always work, but I'm not one to get hung up on "how things used to be." The new piano player brings adds a great deal to the music. Beki and I watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. It's a fine film. Those kinds of movies are often terrible, but the jokes in this are actually funny and sometimes even insightful. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 10th, 2007
10:12 am	Sparks will fly The static electricity is so intense here that I dread shutting the car door and touching my ipod. The cat has it particularly bad. She's white and incredibly fluffy (which causes me to hate her every time I want to wear a black suit jacket). She has been known to try and lick the metal legs of the chair. There's an audible pop. At night, on the wool blanket, in the dark, she comes to you and demand to be pet. You can see the electricity when you run your hand down her back or rub her ear. It's pretty; like stirring up phosphorescence in the Gulf. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 9th, 2007
11:57 pm	Bored of Washboard Abs I went with Leslie, Dave, Ben, and Mike to see 300 this evening. It was disappointing. That's saying a lot, because I expected to dislike it. I wasn't a fan of Sin City (another film based on a comic by Frank Miller), so I was expecting have similar feelings about 300. I expected to think it was neat looking for the first fifteen to twenty minutes and then have a strong desire to either take a nap or leave. Both films are entirely devoid of any kind of meaning, relying entirely on creating a unique visual experience and lots of "cool" deaths. I'm rarely impressed by "cool" deaths, they just feel pathetic. I'm slightly more swayed in a video game like Prince of Persia, but for the most part I find them dull at best and barbaric and pathetic at worst. I am, however, willing to take a peak at truly good visuals. Both Sing City and 300 are all about the presentation. Unfortunately the visuals in both films can't hold my attention for very long. I saw everything I needed to see in Sin City after the first scene and the same holds true for 300. My hope with 300 was that I would get to see poetry in motion. Unfortunately this only happened once. They rest of the film was a series of tableaus. Tableaus are great, but what's the point of film if you have are stationary pictures? Why not sell me a really neat PowerPoint presentation? I'll take ballet over this stuff any day. A few nights ago Beki and I had a conversation about whether or not there was really a place for "escapists" films. I get frustrated by folks saying, "It was just a silly movie and that's all it was trying to be. I don't always want my entertainment to be serious or important." I certainly understand this sentiment; I've said it myself, and I certainly have a love for mindless films (I'm a huge fan of the The Transporter movies and look forward to seeing Crank). But I'm not sure that we should demand nothing of our escapist films. I think we ought to demand that they not be demeaning and condescending. Beki held up the new Hugh Grant film Music and Lyrics as a good example. One of my favorite bloggers also wrote a post that made a similar argument. I think they're both right on. A film like 300 is nothing more than two hours of harmful stereotypes about what makes "men" "Men" and "women" "Women", stupid platitudes, and stupid amounts of blood. I'm all for pretty movies, but let's keep them to twenty minutes if that's they are. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 8th, 2007
10:34 pm	Guns and Fauns Pan's Labyrinth is an impressive film that doesn't quite reach it's full potential. This post will be a little critical of the film, but that's only because it was good enough to be taken seriously. The story centers around a little girl living in Franco's Spain. She and her pregnant mother have been taken to her step-father's (The Captain) army base in the country. The Captain is busy waiting for his son to be born and trying to kill off the rebels. He's a horrible human being. To escape her lousy life, Ofelia creates a fairy tale in which she is a lost princess trying to get back to her thrown. The film alternates between Ofelia's surreal, grotesque fantasy and the horrors of her reality. Part of the goal of the film seems to be to juxtapose the unsettling images of Ofelia's fantasies with even more unsettling reality of the war and The Captain. She is confronted with all manner of disturbing images in her daydreams, but none as difficult to handle as her everyday world. At first the filmmakers seem to be trying to get at the horrors of Ofelia's surroundings by ironically having her to confront grotesque, frightening fantasies that can never live up to the horrors of The Captain. The monster with eyes in its hands that eats little children who taste of his banquet is nothing compared to The Captain who beats an innocent man to death with the butt end of a wine bottle. This kind of irony only takes us so far. The filmmakers want us to experience the horrors of human interaction by contrasting it with the most upsetting situations they can think of for a little girl to invent. But in the end they must rely on showing The Captain stitching his own mouth in order to make us cringe at the ugliness of man. The director, Guillermo del Toro, never quite lives up to the promise of his concept. Films like this are trying to get us to understand, through art, what it is confront inhumanity as well as ultimate sacrifice. The problem is that showing us depraved acts doesn't get us there. I think his contrast of fantasy and reality has a great deal of poential, but del Toro isn't convinced by his own idea, and so resorts to just the kind of things that everyone else has for 100 hundred years. The opening battle in Saving Private Ryan is the rare film that offers an experience solely through recreation (and after that first fifteen minutes turns into a mostly cliche war film). Perhaps some one will be inspired by del Toro's attempt and give it another go. I'll reiterate that I think there's a lot to admire in Pan's Labyrinth. I've focused on only one aspect of the film. I'd recommend it as one of the best films I've seen in the last year. Check it out on the big screen if you can. It reminded me of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle without being seven hours and chock full of endless, impossible symbolism and mythology. I just gave Alba catnip. We keep in a sandwich bag. She likes to stick her head all the way in the bag, inhale, and take a bite. She does this for a few minutes and then runs around rubbing herself on things and trying to play with my feet. (Comment on this)
6:04 pm	Bel Canto My days at work have been spent reconciling a general ledger account for all of January and February. This means that I get to listen to a lot of radio and audio books. I'm currently listening to Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. I like the book, but the first twenty pages (I'm guessing since I'm listening not reading) are sublime. It's hypnotizing. The narration travels from person to person, but not in Mrs. Dalloway way. The description of a short series of events flows unlike anything else I've read. Next time you're in a library or bookstore pick it up and read the first dozen pages. Much of the book is about music, and it's some of the finest writing about music I've come across. Here we're dealing with the sublimity of the world's finest soprano. Music plays unifier and pacifier for a group of terrorists and their hostages. I'm always excited to come across great music writing. I guess it's because I'm so affected by music and it plays such an important part of my life. Having some one else describe their experience of art is endlessly fascinating. I often find it difficult to express the impact of music on myself and others. I'm not always sure how worth it it is to describe art (I'm all about the experience, but I'll save you my theories about art for now), but when some one like Patchett does it, I'm all for it. I'm going to see Pan's Labyrinth tonight. Wish me luck. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 4th, 2007
11:00 pm	A Buger and a Christ Figure Stuggling to find Enlightment in a Depraved Mexico Yesterday Ben, Dave, and I went to Bobcat Bite for a burger and The Screen to see The Holy Mountain. The burger was amazing. It is a green chile cheese burger. I got mine with grilled onions. Bobcat is in the middle of nowhere (see the post about The Red Elvises for more about places in the middle of nowhere). It's just far enough outside of Santa Fe to make it annoying, but not far enough to call it "a nice drive." The building was originally some kind of trading post ("I bet you could just come here, get drunk, and shoot stuff," said Dave), but became the Bobcat Bite in 1953. It's a tiny place with a counter and six or seven tables. The walls are adorned with horrible but oh-so-perfect paintings of bobcats. We were early, so we got a table right away. What makes the burger so good? I imagine that they haven't cleaned their grill in the fifty-four years of its existence. The burgers are just the right doneness. I like mind medium rare, although Dave and Ben both approved of their medium burgers. It was probably the best burger I've ever had. The onions and home fries were not to be overlooked. I took most of the onions off the burger so as to enjoy the perfect meat and chile, but they were delicious on their own. Top it off with some ice tea (they don't serve beer) and you have yourself a perfect meal. From the Bobcat we headed to a sporting good store to buy racquets for racquetball. We've started playing a couple times a week, so it was time to step our games with our own equipment. We then drive over to The Screen at the College of Santa Fe. It's a great theater that shows lots of stuff you won't seen anywhere else. We were there to see Alejandro Jodorowsky's, The Holy Mountain. It's truly a bizarre movie in the mode of the more surrealist works of Godard and Bunuel. I can't say it's a great film, but it has it's moments. The first half has almost no dialogue and is filled with a mostly naked man carrying a partial limbed dwarf around a Mexican city. Just read the link to the Senses of Cinema sight and scroll down till you find the photo of crucified, skinned chickens. In the paragraphs surrounding the photo you'll find a pretty good synopsis. Much of the film was just silly and unenlightening, but there were moments when the whole experience of the images really comes together. You start doing away with the kind of logical truth statements that usually represent ideas and start to really understand the importance of experience over semantics. I also like how he gives up on trying to portray the horrors of violence and instead gives a good sense of why art will never quiet get it right. I think these kinds of films are worth seeing from time to time. It really puts a lot of other art and experience in a new context, even if many of the ideas and experiences don't hold water. I don't know what to make of the rather warped portrayal of sex so prevalent in these kinds of films. Very rarely, if ever, did you see a woman who wasn't either topless or having some kind of sex. There were some women in the film who were powerful and part of the elite ten that the second half of the film focuses on, but so much of the film centers on the depravity of sex acts. But in nearly all the sex acts it is the woman who is the object. Men don't get off easy, but they're almost always in control. Part of this is intended to be satire, but I wonder at what point it stops being satire and starts to be part of the problem. The same thing happens in David Lynch films. Overall it was quite a strange day. When I came home Beki had gone to see the new Hugh Grant film, leaving me alone to play Wii. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
10:23 am	The Bear Skinner I forgot to write about a particularly frightening man at the Red Elvises show. We were eating, talking, and generally minding our own business before the show. Beki got up to get a drink and overheard a conversation between a couple guys near the door. They were big, middle aged guys. One said, "You ever skin a black bear? They are the oiliest mother fuckers." Another answered, "I know, and once get the skin off they look like a human. Creepy." The third returned, "And if you nick the gut they smell somethin' awful." Beki got her beers and promptly returned. Somehow I missed her tell this story when she returned, so my first introduction to our hero was when I noticed the hunting knife on his belt. He was leaning against a wooden post, arms crossed. He was about 6'4'' and 230. He had a well groomed beard and mustache, a flannel shirt, nice fitting jeans, and cowboy boots. The look was completed by a cowboy hat and the knife. Everyone was a little scared. Once the show started (it was late because their van broke down (Beki's worst fear is of breaking down in the middle of New Mexico)) we headed to the dance floor, which had previously only been occupied by couple in their mid-fifties wearing Hawaiian shirts. The man had on shiny, red wing-tips. The floor filled and the band stated. Somehow The Bear Skinner caught Dave's eyes and he spent several minutes in a peeking battle with our hero. Dave would try to get a good look at him, then The Skinner would slowly turn his head and catch Dave's gaze. I'm not sure how long this lasted. The Bear Skinner was forgotten until the intermission (which the Elvises used to hawk their goods). A drunk Beki was trying to get a drunk Ben to talk to a hot hipster girl, when suddenly we saw The Skinner make bee line to the object of Beki's affection. He avoided the dancing duo and confidently introduced himself. We all held our breath. The conversation only lasted twenty seconds and we all wondered about the outcome. He headed for the bar and we were certain he was buying her a drink, but that never panned out. In retrospect it is clear that what we saw was our hero's incredibly dignity in the face of rejection. I only caught glances of The Bear Skinner throughout the rest of night. One thing is certain, we were all afraid and in awe. My only question is: How do they know what a skinned person looks like? (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
9:16 pm	"Closet Disco Dancer" Last night I went with Beki, Ben, Dave, and Leslie to see The Red Elvises. I hadn't seen the Ybor City staple in several years and was pretty stoked to see their giant red bass guitar and hear their Soviet surf-rock in all it's glory. They played at the Santa Fe Brewing Company, which has decent micro-brew, but pales in comparison to Sarasota Brewing Company. I had an extremely mediocre hamburger, which was especially disappointing because I so rarely eat meat these days. The venue was, like so many places in New Mexico, in the middle of nowhere; an oasis of light, wood, and cars. The Elvises were as great as I remember. I'd have never thought a really loud whistle could add so much to a rock song, but the bassist used it to great effect (using his mouth, not a whistle like your middle school coach used). They had a really good keyboard/accordian player. She was short and Russian and wriggled around to great effect. The sax/flute/clarinet player was pretty good. He even played a lot of baritone sax, which I happen to love. The drummer was quite good as well. At one point all five of the band members played a drum solo that culminated in everyone leaving the stage to drink beer. It was just the drummer up there going off for five minutes. He's no less than six feet six with a huge wingspan. He moved from a funk breakdown to surf groove to a Don Cabellero freakout to his best Elvin Jones impression. It was pretty impressive. The Elvises (which is really just the guitarist and bassist) are incredible showmen. They've taken the do-it-yourself way of conducting a music career and run with it. At the end of the show, after doing four encores without actually leaving, they announced that they were, "The Red Elvises; your favorite band!" It's amazing what two Soviet artistic defectors with a dream can do. The crowd was a strange one. It ranged from high schoolers to middle-aged women in terrible jeans. One of these drunk forty-something crushed Beki's toe with her high-heeled black boots. The older men spent the evening trying to holler at young girls. I've often cringed at men coming on to women, but never has it been so upsetting. Everywhere I looked there were men leering at these women. I can't imagine what that must feel like. Whenever Chantal and I would ride our bikes to downtown Sarasota, she would marvel at how no one would honk at her when she was with a man. I thought that was telling, but seeing it in such full force last night took my understanding to a new level. Today featured the best hamburger I've ever had and surrealist film. But I'll save that for tomorrow. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
5:11 pm	China all over again Today, I played hangman with nine accountants. It was awesome. They were way better than twelve year-old Chinese children. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
8:19 pm	Nothing like fried fish and the Oscars Beki, Ben, Dave, Leslie, and I watched the Oscars on Sunday. I've never actually watched the Oscars, but Beki wanted to make fish tacos, so we invited folks over to complain about the winners and bash the dresses. There was also a drunken bet regarding The Departed between Leslie and Ben that needed to be settled (I was not a fan of the movie, but maybe more on that in the future). The tacos were my first experiment with frying in my new 12 inch cast iron pan. Beki got a recipe for the taco filling from a guy at whole foods (kale, grapefruit, garlic, onion, lemon...) and I was in charge of frying the salmon and cooking up my famous black beans. I reread the section on frying the Alton Brown's book (a must have for anyone interested in cooking). I prepared my dredging station of flower, egg with a little water, and panko bread crumbs. We had a pound and a half of salmon cut into chunks; it took me a half hour just to bread everything. On Saturday I purchased a candy/frying thermometer. I filled the pan with oil so that each piece of fish was half covered, heated the oil to about 375, and went to town. I must say that I impressed myself. The thermometer allowed me to keep the oil at a constant temperature, which resulted in brown, crunchy salmon without a hint of sogginess. Beki's filling came out great. Add heated corn tortillas, a little rice, some tomatoes, and my black beans to make a great feast. This was all washed down by sweet tea and followed by some homemade truffles. The Oscars themselves were mildly entertaining. I had no idea that they were so long, but with five people and a cat screaming at the television, it wasn't so bad. The girl who won the Oscar for that movie about Motown sure can sing. I was glad to see Scorsesse win an Oscar, I just wish it had been for a good film. I was pretty taken aback by just how self-congratualatory the whole thing is. It made me understand why people like O'Reily can so easily demonize Hollywood. I almost threw up when DeCaprio called it the first "green Oscars." On Saturday Beki and I went to see the Oscar nominated animated shorts at the center for contemporary arts. It featured the nominees and the runners up for nominations. The short that ended up winning was by far my favorite. It really used animation to it's fullest. The great part about the art form is that you can things that just don't work in live action. I'm not talking about drawing things that we can't make; you can do damn near anything with CGI these days. I'm talking about using the fact that things are animated to have things happen that just don't make sense when you have real people doing or pretending to do them. In the short that one the award there is a scene where one of the main characters is forced to leave the love of his life behind. He just falls flat on his back and is dragged away. It just works in the context of animation, where it would be stupid and awkward with real people. Unfortunately most all of the shorts went for kind of cheap laughs and that's about it. I don't quite understand why animation has been relegated to more of the world of entertainment and/or beauty. I'm all for both those things, but the great part about the winner is that it's about something important. Also, too much animation about animals. Why can't these people make stories about people? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
9:03 pm	Look who's back Sorry for the lapse in posts. I really have no excuse. I started my job last week and only have one thing to say, "Yesss, I have an office." OK, I have more to say than that. I won't make it a habit to blog about my job, but I will give you low down on what I do. I am the Executive Administrative Assistant to the CFO of Los Alamos National Bank. The bank is actually quite impressive. It only has a few branches, but it's incredibly successful. It makes a point of not having fees, instead making all its money from loans and various investments. It's the winner of the Baldrige Award and does it's best to make the employees happy (free massage and memberships to a bunch of gyms). It's my job to work with the folks who do that investing. I manage securities and help make sure everything goes smoothly for the CFO and Chief Cashier. I also serve as the backup for everyone in the accounting office. So far I've learned how to wire money around the world and pay the company's bills. The nine to five also puts me back on a regular schedule. I'm back on a good workout routine and once my gym memberships start on Thursday, I'll be back in the pool. I've also finally started Godel, Esher, Bach. I've been meaning to read this book for years and it's time to stop postponing. I promise to get back to writing more and more of substance. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 19th, 2007
12:23 pm	For President's Day I am not much of a crier. Nina Simone does it for me and certain passages from Moby Dick get me every time. But for the most part I don't tear up. So I was a little surprised when to find myself tears in my eyes and a tingle in my nose most of the way from Los Alamos to Albuquerque on my way to pick Beki up from the airport. I was listening to Studio 360's episode on the Lincoln Memorial. Many things got the tears flowing in this episode. The obvious one is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech; I always tear up when I hear, see, or read that one. What was most interesting was the patriotic stuff consistently turning on the water-works. I'm a fan of America. It's my home. But I rarely consider myself especially patriotic. I don't own any American flags and I'm always willing to root for the underdog in the Olympics. So why did the words of Lincoln and the sound of Marian Anderson singing "My Country Tis of Thee" put me in such a state? To me it demonstrates the power of nationalism and group identification. For better or for worse, I'm an American. I have no say in the matter. I am a member of the group. Human's are such group animals that we can't help but identify. In my head I know that there's a good chance that the Civil War was illegal. Certainly there's plenty of room for debate. Lincoln didn't set out to free the slaves. He was responsible for the bloodiest war in American history. But he saved America. Just writing those words make my nose tingle and my eyes moisten. It's easy to say that this is simply a product of brainwashing, but that's not convincing. It's closer to pavlovian than brainwashing, but no one ever slapped me every time some one said "God bless America" (I don't even believe in God and that alone is enough to put me over the edge). To me it's evidence of just how powerful our group identification can be. All of this is, of course, overlooking the fact that there are lots of things to be proud of when it comes to the Lincoln Memorial, what it represents, and what's happened in that space. Bill O'Reilly doesn't make me cry no matter how many platitudes about how great America is shoots off. It's in part that I agree with the sentiments (everyone really does deserve a chance!) and part that even platitudes can be sincere and sincerity, not sentimentality, can get me. The biggest crying moment of the episode had nothing to do with America, but with art, and religious experience, and transcendence. The playwright Suzan-Lori Parks describes the experience of the memorial: "For me when I going there I don't even the feeling like, 'Wow, he freed the slaves.' It doesn't even come up in my mind. What comes up in my mind is this religious feeling. Like when I go into a beautiful cathedral I don't stand there and look at the Christ on the cross and go, 'Wow, he died for my sins.' I go, 'Whoa.' It's so much bigger than what I can see." I heard this and all of the sudden I reached a new understanding of transcendental experience. A couple of weeks ago I was watching, on C-SPAN, a discussion between Sam Harris and Reza Aslan, and Aslan was saying that he considers religion to be only a language to describe transcendental experience. I don't entirely buy this because there's just too much in the way of truth claims about the universe to only be a language to describe experience, but I think there is some truth in this way of thinking of religion. My father and I had a talk before I left about belief in religion and when I described Bertrand Russell's teapot example his immediate response was that billions of people don't have a deep feeling and experience of the teapot. I agreed. But I know that I don't have that experience of God and I couldn't say with confidence that I ever had or know what it could possibly feel like. Parks got me a step closer to understanding, although no closer to a belief in the All Mighty. I don't know why Parks' comments made me cry in the same way that hearing the Gettysburg address made me cry. Maybe it's because both have a profound truth and sincerity in them. But truth and sincerity don't always move me. A math teacher sincerely believes and is correct that 2+2=4, but I don't get all misty-eyed in math class. Maybe it's the connection between the common human experience and the truth and sincerity of the statement. Or maybe I'm just too more patriotic than I thought. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 18th, 2007
10:00 am	"I just never actually seen a grit before." I miss a southern breakfast. I went to the LA Cafe this morning to check out their breakfast. At first glance the place looked OK. Bad curtains, fake flours, smooth jazz. I was suspicious because I was the only one there at 9:00 AM on a Sunday, but I thought maybe everyone was at church. Plus, Los Alamos is a small town, so I wasn't going to hold a lack of business against them. Then I saw the menu. Small. No steak and eggs. Only a three kinds of pancakes. A few omelets and the obligatory New Mexico breakfast barritto. I'll note that the best breakfast burritos on the face of the planet are found at a shack called Chile Works a few blocks away. Plus, at Chili Works, you can get your burrito for $4.60 and even buy some meth. Nothing at the LA Cafe was less than 8:00. That's right, with tip it cost me $11 for three floury pancakes and four strips of bacon. I didn't even want the bacon because I don't often eat meat anymore, but there were no grits or fruit on the menu. How can you have a breakfast joint without bacon? This time of year in Florida I can go to Kissin' Cousins and get three big, fluffy, perfect pancakes, fresh squeezed orange juice, an egg, and thick, buttery grits for $7.00 with tip. The thing I miss the most is the pancake. I can make the kind of pancakes I ate this morning: floury, almost light but not quite, misshapen and entirely boring and disappointing. I gave up on making great pancakes after spending an entire morning and afternoon making every variation possible. I came to the conclusion that it's best left to professionals with huge, hot, seasoned griddles and forty year-old recipes. Kissin' Cousins delivered the finest pancakes in town. I miss them. Needless to say, I'll never go back to LA Cafe. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 17th, 2007
12:35 pm	I'm Confused I was at a bar last night that had CNN on one of the big screens. We were there for three hours and every single show in that span (3 or 4) gave a large chunk of time to Anna Nicole Smith's death/will/body/history/child/celebrity. On the one show that covered real news she was on before and given more time than the war. What is going on?! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 15th, 2007
11:32 pm	Watch This I just saw a documentary on HBO called Bastards of the Party. It's part essay film and part history lesson about the history of LA black gangs. It's told through the words and questions of a gang member trying to figure out how the Crips and the Bloods came into existence and how to change them. It's moving and horrifying and frustrating. Everyone needs to see this film. (Comment on this)
8:10 pm	Weekend at Beki's Another weekend alone. I took Beki to the airport this morning. She's going to visit UF. It snowed all of Tuesday and Wednesday, so the roads were pretty bad from here to I-25. When we got down the hill and onto 285 headed toward Santa Fe we hit a valley of fog and mud and snow and ice. They don't use salt here (something about the ph of the soil), so they use mud instead. It is disgusting. Driving through the valley of fog was completely surreal. We slowly climbed out of it and the expansive New Mexican landscape revealed itself. The mountains are all dusted with snow. I don't know if I'll get over the views that I'm continuously assaulted by. This afternoon I took Owen for a walk in the gorge. We got a good eight inches of snow, so the gorge was completely white. Owen dove through the snow with enough enthusiasm that I was willing to deal with wet feet and join him. Actually, I didn't have much choice because there isn't much of a path anymore. We did the Acid Canyon trail and took a side trail that led down into the interior canyon. It was awesome. We got right down the frozen stream. The canyon is only about ten yards wide down there. It really feels like you're in deep in the wilderness. It was just a step away from The Deer Hunter. I start work on Tuesday, so this is my last weekend to eat junk food and play Nintendo. Come Tuesday I'll start triathlon training and I won't have much time for the Wii. Here's to flashing screens, ice cream, and wearing nothing but underwear until noon. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
4:42 pm	Work and Roses I got a job today. I will be the executive assistant to the CFO for Los Alamos National Bank. The pay is OK and the benefits are really nice. Now I can start paying rent! One of the best parts of working for the bank is that you get a free membership to the YMCA, the gym across the street from my apartment, and the aquatic center down the street. I've decided that this means that I should train for a triathlon. I just returned from Smith's (the supermarket across the street) where I was treated to the wonderful sights of last minute Valentine's Day shopping. The carts were filled with alcohol and hunks of meat. The flower section had no fewer than six guys crowding the sole female employee. Each had a look of panic and confusion on his face as they handled boxes of bad chocolate and gazed at half-dead flowers. For my part, I had a dozen roses delivered and I'm cooking what I hope will be a delicious meal of salmon and shrimp steamed in a nice, vaguely Asian, broth. Beki got home little early today and we went out to play in the snow. We put on black gloves so that we could catch and see individual snowflakes. They're small, but really amazing when you see one all on its own. We then had an epic snowball fight. Tonight Beki will make homemade chocolate truffles. We experimented last weekend and they came out pretty well. I look forward to gaining a few pounds over the next 24 hours. (1 Comment |Comment on this)