Are There Any More Cookies?

Dinner with Madame X

2009-11-14T19:49:00.004-05:00

Last night I was reading a book and watching Lana Turner as the title character in Madame X when I realized I hadn't eaten dinner yet. I was kind of tired and run down from the mess my sinuses have been all week, so I wanted to make something simple, and I thought I might just make some hummus. It's easy, and I could pick at it all night without worrying about it staying hot or cold, so I went to the cabinet for the beans and started looking for my recipe.

While I was pulling it out, I spotted this other recipe I had marked in a food magazine and left on the counter for roasted garbanzo beans with rosemary and parmesan cheese.

"Ooooh, let's try that!"

"What if it sucks?"

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"A sense of adventure is why Lana Turner is faking her own death right now. That's where it leads. We should just make hummus."

"Oh, for God's sake. What does this recipe call for?"

A lot of beans, for the most part:

While garbanzo beans are easy to rinse (and I always rinse mine; I have no idea what that slime in the can is, and I never want to know), the recipe called for them to be dried, too, and that took forever. I shook the strainer, let it drip while the oven preheated, poured them onto paper towels, blotted them with more paper towels, and still they seemed wet.

Eventually I decided they were dry enough, doused them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then spread them on my foil covered baking sheet to roast. I didn't want to deviate from the recipe on a first attempt, but even then it didn't seem like nearly enough salt or pepper. I figured maybe the rosemary, which I added in the last few minutes of roasting, would add some more flavor, as would the parmesan cheese I dusted the beans with when they were finished roasting:

I was doubtful, but hungry, and I took a spoonful and hoped for the best.

When I looked up, still chewing, I saw that Lana and I were making the same face:

That's right. The beans were as bad as being drunk, depressed, and crying while living in a Mexican flophouse under a fake name in an ugly bathrobe. It wasn't just that the roasted beans were pretty much flavorless, but they'd also had all of the moisture roasted out, so they were flavorless, hard, and dry. Even worse, the rosemary also dried out, so it was like a bowl of slightly softened BB's dusted with pine needles.

Like Madame X, I should have made different choices. She shouldn't have cheated on her husband, and I should have just made hummus.

It's a cookoff!

2009-11-08T18:58:00.002-05:00

I never ate chili before I moved here. People who know me well won't be surprised by this, since I still have never eaten a chicken wing, because it has a bone in it, or a kiwi because I don't know if you're supposed to take the brown hairy skin off or not. I never ate pizza with sauce on it until I was in college, and never had a salad until I was in my mid-twenties. In 2003 I decided I needed to eat more fruit but had only ever eaten apples and bananas, so I went to the grocery store and got one of each fruit they had in the produce department (except kiwis), took them home, and tried each of them.

The end result is that I still prefer apples and bananas, but the point that I'm trying to make is that I am new to a lot of foods that people take for granted, and one of those foods is chili. I haven't had a lot of time to become a connoisseur or anything, and my parents probably don't even know that I eat chili now (they will once my mom sees my flickr page), but I know that I don't like big chunks of tomato, I don't like Texas style (without beans), and I like it with sour cream and shredded cheese if available. With that basic knowledge, I was happy to accept Bryan's invitation today to the 4th Annual East Tennessee Chili Cookoff.

For unknown reasons, the ribbon on the sign says 1st Annual, so I guess they've been reusing the sign for four years now. It was a very nice, surprisingly warm day to be downtown, though, and once we picked up our tickets we got checked in and were given our tasting passes:

I've only ever seen cookoffs on the Food Network, but it seemed pretty simple. Each booth had a number, and when you went to the booth they would punch off your number and give you a tasting sample:

Each booth also had a drop box, and when you decided which was your favorite you filled out the card at the bottom of the tasting pass, tore it off, and dropped it in that booth's box. The booth with the most is the audience favorite, and all of the votes are put in a raffle for other prizes. I'm assuming I didn't win, since no one has called, but I have the phone right here on the end table just in case. I did get a lot of chili, though.

Out of loyalty, we went to the school's booth first:

While they just have a nice generic autumn harvesty display in front of the booth, some of the other booths went all out with costumes and themes, like the Pirates of the Chilibean:

who served their chili out of a treasure chest:

or the Mowing Monkey's Chili:

Because, really, everything is better with monkeys. Some people, on the other hand, didn't really seem to think this whole naming thing all the way through:

I can think of no possible combination of "chili" and "lube" that doesn't turn out disgusting. Why not just call your chili The Runs? I didn't even sample their booth, because the name and the mental images of the aftermath of eating it put me off so much. Sorry, The Lube, but no votes from me.

My vote, instead, after I finished sixteen of the thirty chilis present:

(there are thirty-one on the card, but number seventeen was a no-show) and could eat no more chili was for the Laurel High School's chili, number twenty-seven. They kept talking about their secret ingredients being smoked poblano peppers, which I really couldn't taste because I had so much pepper in so many chilis that all I could differentiate was mild, hot, and mouth on fire:

and smoked pancetta, which was spectacularly delicious. There were so many beef chilis, a few with chicken, at least one vegetarian, that the pancetta really stood out, especially when you bit into a little nugget of it and got that smoky, salty almost bacon flavor. They didn't have many other votes, probably because their meat choice was so nontraditional, but since I'm not a chili traditionalist it really was a standout for me.

Once we finished and voted, we walked around for a little while to take in the rest of the sights. There was live music onstage, bouncy bounces for the kids:

some extremely tasteful shopping:

and, of course, the chance to observe my fellow Tennessee residents:

Thanks for keeping it classy, Tennessee!

Oklahoma, OK!

2009-11-04T18:07:00.002-05:00

I won! I won the state quarter game!

As you may or may not recall, this was the unhappy scene in my kitchen back in May:

I thought the last one I needed was New Mexico, but then I discovered that Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain and the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet was actually Oklahoma, state of unfilled quarter slots and broken dreams. "Oklahoma," I cried, hunched over my counter in grief, "Why do you hate me? Why can't you be more like whichever state that is with Helen Keller on it that I get all the time?"

Oklahoma, like Helen Keller before the day at the well, had no answer.

At long last, though, after getting a bagel for lunch today, the void in my life is filled:

I've never been so happy to see a bird and a bunch of flowers in my life. I love you, Oklahoma. I love you.

Comfort Food Sunday

2009-11-01T19:33:00.002-05:00

I had a quiet day today. I thought I would get up early and go out for a walk along the river, but I slept too late and woke up with a headache (which seems to have been caused by caffeine withdrawal; all the soda I drank this week was orange and grape, and had none, so I had a headache all week), so I decided to stay in. I finished a book, reorganized some bookshelves, did a couple of loads of laundry, and made some comfort food.

I started with Sunday brunch, and decided that I would make a childhood favorite, Mom's Welsh rarebit. I've been craving it for a couple weeks, so I email mom this week for the recipe:

Mom's Welsh Rarebit

2 TBLS butter
2-3 cups milk
Salt, pepper, onion powder
Shredded orange sharp cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Start with your basic roux- a couple of tablespoons of butter melted over medium heat. To 1/4 cup flour, add salt, pepper and onion powder and add dry mix slowly to the butter to pull it to a thick consistency. Let this cook about a minute. Gradually add milk to make white gravy. Bring this to a gentle boil to thicken. Add milk if too thick. Add cheese and let cook until all cheese is melted. Add Worcestershire and serve over toast or in a fondue with crusty pieces of bread.

That seemed really easy, but then I remembered the Cheese Danish Incident and my suspicions about mom leaving things out of recipes, and I gave it a closer, more suspicious read, and something jumped out at me. Nice try, sneaky mommy, but I've caught you this time!

I e-mailed back: "How much cheese? Like a cup? Two cups?"

"Oh, ooops. About 1 - 1 1/2 cups"

I imagine her sitting at the computer, muttering, "Curses! Foiled!" while typing that, so I couldn't resist throwing in an extra jab about how we need to work on ricecakes while I'm home because mine still don't come out like hers. I'm on to these tricks now, and she won't be able to sabotage while I'm right there in the kitchen.

The Welsh rarebit came out really well, just like I remember from when I was little:

The only problem was on my end, not with the recipe, and it's the same problem I run into every time I make a roux: I start off well, but then I add the flour too fast and it gets all clumpy. I'm getting better, but I need a lot more practice. Since I'm not a big gravy eater or thick sauce maker, though, I rarely make a roux, so my progress is terribly slow. Also, my sauce is a lot thicker than mom's, because I added two cups of cheese.

I really like cheese.

For dinner, I decided to make hot dogs and to try out the recipe I saw in Food Network Magazine's November issue for the Deen Brothers' baked hushpuppies. I have always loved hushpuppies, and they are pretty much the only thing I will eat at Long John Silver's. My parents used to love going there when I was younger, and they gave up on trying to make me eat things I didn't like by the age of ten or so (that "Mommy Dearest" trick where you make the kid sit at the table until they eat whatever it is didn't work, as I am as stubborn as my parents are), so they would order their fish and I would eat a dozen hushpuppies and be happy, if slightly malnourished.

I never make hushpuppies at home, though, because you need a deep fryer for that. I know that living in the south I should probably have one, but I feel fat enough already. Having a deep fryer seems to me like the last step before giving up and moving into floral muumuu/"I wash myself with a rag on a stick" territory, so I continue to resist as if not owning this one appliance will somehow make a difference. Besides, we all know that if I owned one it would only be a matter of time before I battered and deep fried a candy bar, and that's just a kitchen disaster waiting to happen given my track record. This recipe seemed like a good idea, though, since it didn't need a fryer, so I gave it a try:

My tiny hushpuppies, made in a mini-muffin pan and artfully arranged on an abstract ketchup drizzle (the hot dogs, meanwhile, were sliced and dumped in a pile on the plate right after I took that picture), look just like the ones in the magazine, and they taste like hushpuppies should taste. Overall, though, I have to give them three out of five stars, because the lack of frying prevents them from having that thick, crispy outer coating that good hushpuppies always have.

On the other hand, I won't have to wear a floral muumuu to work tomorrow, so maybe it's worth the sacrifice.

Pop Quiz and Halloween Photos

2009-10-31T21:46:00.002-05:00

Pop Quiz!

While blanching green beans, or haricots verts if you are somewhat French or Martha Stewart:

which of the following do you think of?

1) Blanche Devereaux, sexpot Golden Girl
2) Blanche DuBois, who has always depended upon the kindness of strangers
3) Blanche Hudson, crippled prisoner of her sister Baby Jane
4) What the hell is blanching, and how do you do it to beans?

While any answer is acceptable, mine involved me stirring the pot while muttering, "But ya are, Blanche, ya are in that chair!" and giggling. I was blanching the green beans because I was making a bean and potato salad for our office soup and salad luncheon on Wednesday. While we don't have a fixed date for it, we've had one every year I've worked here to celebrate the change of seasons from summer to fall, the season of my birthday and of Halloween.

Even though the official holiday is today, my Halloween festivities started a little early when I was invited to judge the floor decorating contests in one of the halls. While some of them were pretty haphazard and low effort, some of the floors went all out in terms of theme and effort:

I voted for the "Nightmare Before Christmas" floor, but have not heard who actually won. I also forgot to take pictures of the "Batman: The Dark Knight" floor, which also had a student-made video playing for us, but it was very impressive. On my way back to my car afterward I also saw this impressive graffiti in one of the bus stops:

I love the way it looks like the heads are actually made out of the map. I didn't examine it closely enough, but it's possible that they actually are.

Today, Halloween itself, was also a home football game, and I was working. I wasn't sure what would happen when we mixed a dress up holiday with football, but other than a random costume here and there:

and a line stolen from "The Exorcist" to compare our football coach to Jesus:

there wasn't much difference from normal. The rain probably had something to do with it, but also the fact that most of what people wear to the football games borders on costume on a normal day means that we didn't see anything really outlandish.

Unless, of course, you count the Vols Team Grill:

or the Vols office chair:

but even those aren't that bad if you remember the basic rule that you can paint anything in Tennessee Volunteer orange and someone will buy it.

My shift at the game only went to the end of the first quarter, and since it was dark and raining I decided to just head back to the parking garage and go home:

but on the way I had to walk past Ayres Hall. According to internet legend, the lawn of Ayres is haunted by spectral phantoms of Civil War soldiers, a story grounded in the fact that the building where Ayres now stands was a hospital for the injured of the Battle of Fort Sanders. Ayres is a beautiful, collegiate-looking building, but is currently closed for renovation. Given that it is empty, fenced off, dark, allegedly haunted, and that it was night, raining, Halloween, and that I was alone, I crossed the lawn for a closer look in spite of the knowledge gleaned from years of horror movie viewing:

No ghosts, but plenty spooky.

Twenty Questions, Weekend Edition

2009-10-25T16:28:00.002-05:00

1) Why does soup in a breadbowl come with extra bread?

I'm sure the reason is that Panera has an "all soups come with bread" policy, but if you're paying the extra charge to have your soup served inside an entire loaf of bread, why would you need more? When I ordered, she asked if I wanted crusty french, and I assumed that meant the breadbowl would be crusty french. I'm not complaining, as I enjoy dunking bread in my soup, but it just seems odd that when you order the breadbowl they don't ask if you want more bread or offer to swap it for a cookie or something.

2) Why is Tender is the Night such a slow read?

Normally I fly through F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is my literary crush (sometimes I daydream that he and I are best friends, and we drink and listen to jazz and sometimes make out; shut up, it's totally normal), but I've been slogging through that book for a week and it just kind of creeps along. I read it through my entire dinner at Panera before meeting people at the movies, and I think I only made it through five pages.

3) Why can't the people who put the letters on the shopping plaza sign spell correctly?

Beautful? Really? Normally I wouldn't call them out, but this is the third time I've spotted mistakes in the same place:

Even if the guy getting paid to put the letters up doesn't catch it, shouldn't the store managers?

4) Did the building on the Wall Avenue corner of Market Square, which has been boarded up and under renovation for three years now, always have faces on the front panels?

If it did, why didn't I notice them before? I'm down there probably every two weeks, if not more, and the faces are pretty striking:

They look kind of like Clive Barker's drawings, but I doubt he was here in Knoxville marking up buildings.

5) What does this mean?

Speaking of Clive Barker, this looked and sounded just like something out of Imajica or Everville:

Poetry? Doodle? Message from beyond? If I were actually in one of those books, then reading the poem and taking the picture would ensnare me in a magical adventure which I may or may not survive, so if I vanish suddenly everyone will know where to start looking: somewhere in the beyond.

6) Would you park your car here?

I realize it is expensive to build parking garages, but I've said before and will say again that it does little good to revitalize and refurbish downtown if the places where you have to park to go there look like the places where Batman's parents got shot.

7) Is it true that there is beauty in distortion?

I think there is. I've heard people say it before, and I agree even if I can't articulate exactly why. There's something noble about ruins, a sense of history and loss and things that are gone, and contemplating that can be beautiful:

A friend said once that I take too many pictures of boarded up windows and rusty doors and signs with the letters falling off, but these things speak to me. Everything ends, entropy will claim us all, and you can't ignore that by not looking at the effects of it. Tarot card dealers always tell me that Death is a card of change, and change isn't always a bad thing. Decay can give you hope, and it can teach us things about ourselves that we otherwise wouldn't have known or considered.

8) Who is Dr. John Mason Boyd?

I've noticed his monument on the courthouse lawn many times but never gave it any thought before yesterday, when I went for a walk down there:

The monument is pretty scant on information, other than that it was a gift from a grateful public. It turns out that he was a surgeon in the Confederate Army, but I didn't find much else on him online. I'll keep my eyes open for information next time I tour a Civil War exhibit.

9) Did you know that Knoxville was the first capital of Tennessee?

I didn't. Based on that marker, it was also the capital again a couple of times after that.

10) Did you know the first governor of Tennessee, John Sevier, is buried on the courthouse lawn with his wife?

Their original tombstones are also set into the wall of the courthouse:

I'm not sure how I went to the courthouse to renew my driver's license and didn't notice any of this then or any of the other times I've been down there, but I guess I learned something. Also, I always thought this statue, which I've only glanced at from the road, was some kind of Civil War monument:

but it turned out to be for the Spanish American War. It's amazing what you pick up when you actually read things.

11) Why haven't I ever seen a movie at the Bijou?

There are two renovated movie houses downtown that show vintage movies, and even though I've been to the Tennessee Theatre about a dozen times I've never gone to the Bijou Theatre, which is only a block away:

I need to get out of my shell more, and break out of my routine of going to the same old places for the same old stuff, so I'm going to see at least one movie there. Also, it is listed on several websites as one of the city's haunted places, so there's always the chance that I could get some really good pictures.

12) Does Lyle Lovett have another, smaller band?

Or is his band so large that it's famous just for its size?

13) Did you do anything this month to fight breast cancer?

I donated at the grocery store, and got a nice t-shirt from the American Cancer Society.

14) Is campus close enough to the restaurant for the Cafe 4 delivery cart?

I'm betting our office is too far away, which is sad because the grilled cheese and tomato bisque that I had yesterday for dinner was really, really good:

I don't normally like tomato soup, but the cream in tomato bisque cuts into that acidic tomato flavor and makes it tolerable. I didn't really taste the squiggle of cilantro cream across the top, but I'll take Cafe 4's word for it that it contributes to the dish. Personally, I thought it was way too subtle and easily overpowered by the soup's flavor.

15) How can something fun also be sad?

Yesterday was the first ever international bout for the Hard Knox Rollergirls, as they took on the New Skids on the Block from Montreal, Canada, after an opening bout against Athens, Georgia's Classic City Rollergirls:

It was sad because it was the last home bout of the season, and I probably won't see our girls again until spring. It's odd that with college sports and the local baseball and hockey teams nearby that the team I feel most like a loyal fan of is our roller derby league, but derby is awesome. It's less commercial, a little more rowdy, and easier to get more involved because you are sitting right on the track. Girls crash into you if you're in the wrong seat, and it's part of the fun. A lot of people look at derby and don't see a real sport, but those girls practice hard, and they take a lot of pride in what they do. I'm happy to support them.

Last night was also sad because my favorite skater, Lady Pain, was sidelined last night and couldn't skate. I saw her between bouts and she explained that she's bruised her knee pretty badly and is not allowed to skate for a month, but will be back next season. Unfortunately Bruisey Quatro will not be, as last night was her last bout with the Hard Knox Rollergirls, and she took an emotional final lap around the track to the cheers of the audience. We wish her the best.

16) When did it become acceptable not to take your hat off during the playing of the national anthem?

This is not ok. I know society has become lax on things like white shoes after Labor Day and it suddenly being acceptable to wear track suits and pants with the word "Juicy" stitched across the butt pretty much anywhere, but keeping your hat during the national anthem is disrespectful and unacceptable.

Taking photographs during the national anthem, on the other hand, is hopefully ok.

17) What happened to our old mascot?

We still have Sphere This, our mascot, but suddenly she's no longer a she, and is instead played by a man:

It's hard to tell from that picture, but it's a large man, and he needed a shave. Where did our old girl go, and is she coming back?

18) Who is this?

Momcore is not in the program, and I don't recall seeing her skate before. Where did she come from? Why isn't she listed? At least she did a good job of knocking those girls from Georgia down, whoever she was.

19) Aren't Canadians supposed to be tree-hugging pacifists or something like that?

How did girls in bright, cheery colors:

who skate their intro to the New Kids on the Block's "Hangin' Tough":

end up kicking our asses? They were fast and rough, and their blockers were an impenetrable wall that our jammers barely got through:

Our girls fought for every point they got, but the Montreal girls were like some kind of genetically engineered uber skating team that danced around us like we weren't there.

Also, their coach was kind of scary, and looked like a mid-80's member of Duran Duran. You wouldn't think that would be frightening, but it somehow was.

20) Why do I only have 19 questions?

I don't know, but Nineteen Questions is kind of a dumb name for an entry.

Sightseeing Adventures

2009-10-18T18:15:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure I could ever fall out of love with Tennessee. Where else could I see a cursed crypt, a tow truck museum, a touching memorial with a laughably awful statue, a hall of fame, the world's steepest inclined railroad, chocolate birdhouses, fake bronze statues, the world's largest something, a metal ice cream cone, and a restaurant that my mom saw on TV, all in one day?

I'd actually planned this day trip back in late August, but then football was upon us and the other day that was open there was rain, so I didn't get to go until now. My friend Bryan, who you may remember from the Ten Commandments Road Trip and numerous roller derby bouts agreed to go with me and to drive, which was a bonus since it frees me up to take pictures out the car windows. Not that I wouldn't be doing that anyway, but it's at least mildly safer when someone else is driving.

Our day started with a drive to Cleveland, Tennessee, to view the Bloodstained Crypt of Little Nina Cragmiles. I initially heard about the crypt on a "haunted places in Tennessee" website, which offered the following story:

"In 1871 a little girl from a prominent Cleveland family, Nina Cragmiles, was killed in a buggy accident. Soon thereafter her grieving parents had a white marble crypt built in her honor in the churchyard of St. Lukes Episcopal Church, downtown Cleveland. No sooner had the crypt been completed than pinkish red stains appeared on the white marble. Local residents tried scrubbing the stains away and even replaced some of the white marble stones, but the stains reappeared. As other members of the Cragmiles family met tragic ends over the years, the 'bloodstains' seemed to grow larger and more prominent."

Spectral non-removable bloodstains? I'm in!

The church was pretty easy to find, and the crypt, too, since it is for some reason the only crypt in the churchyard. Did the Cragmiles family also build the church or something? Where are all the other Episcopalians buried?

Anyway, we approached quietly, as instructed by the egraving on the step beneath the doors:

Through a bizarre coincidence, we managed to visit one day before the anniversary of Little Nina's death, which is stamped on the door on the right. From the door we could see both Little Nina's resting place:

and the largest of the spectral bloodstains:

Now, I don't want to be skeptical or anything, but Bryan was quite vocal in his belief that the stains were actually discolorations in the marble. He maintained this belief even as we inspected them more closely:

and then added insult to injury by being inappropriately mirthful on the playground equipment that's located, for unknown reasons, right next to the crypt:

Now, I'm not saying whether the bloodstains have a supernatural explanation or not, but I would say that if Little Nina decides to enact some spiritual vengeance on the anniversary of her death, one of us was polite and respectful, and one of us was irreverant and pretty loud about it. In case that's still not clear, go for Bryan, Little Nina, not me, ok? Thanks.

On the other hand, I was struck with an equally inappropriate attack of the giggles a half hour later at the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum's Wall of the Fallen, honoring tow truck drivers who have been killed in the line of duty:

I was kind of ok until Bryan whispered, "I think there's some trash in the water" and I realized it wasn't trash. It's a sculpture of part of a car:

The whole thing is supposed to be some sort of rescue tableau:

but for me the fake tail light sticking out of the reflecting pool moved the whole thing from serious to absurd. The giggles got especially bad when I wondered if it lit up at night.

The giggles didn't stop when we got inside the museum, either. They settled down for a while as we viewed the various antique tow trucks and exhibits:

including the Cadillac tow truck, of which only two were ever made:

and the quilt commemorating various models of towers and wreckers, including the original one, which was invented in Chattanooga where the museum is located:

but I totally lost it when I realized many of the signs are written in Southern grammar:

"Oils was pumped"? Was they really? And the museum had been so educational up to that point. I would say up until that point, but am worried about spelling "until" after reading this sign:

Maybe I'm the one who has it wrong? Probably not. Anyway, after we'd seen enough of the museum and exited through the Hall of Fame corridor:

we headed just down the street to Chattanooga's famous Incline Railway, the steepest inclined railway in the world:

It doesn't look that bad from the ground, although it is immediately obvious that the car is rather slanted:

You climb into this weird slanty car at the bottom station, and by the time it gets to the top the seats are level and the car is more like a staircase:

As you get closer to the top, you get to watch the horizon move from the front windows to the ceiling:

and you can stop leaning way back in your chair because it becomes upright:

It was a strange ride, and if getting to the very top of Lookout Mountain still isn't enough for you, you can walk through the gift shop:

and to the observation deck on top of the train station, where you can allegedly see several states on a clear day:

We did not have a clear day. Not only was it overcast, it was cold, unseasonably cold for October. Shivering, we decided to tour Point Park anyway, since we'd driven all this way and it was kind of the point of the trip. Lookout Mountain is the scene of the Battle Above the Clouds, one of the major engagements of the Civil War, and the entrance to Point Park, which was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the shape of their castle emblem, is the largest representation of their emblem in the world:

I learned these things while touring the park. I also learned that most of the battle took place on the slopes, not on the top of the mountain itself, but that there were a lot of artillery emplacements there to shoot down at the enemy:

that the water fountain at the lookout point is broken:

and that sometimes your travel companions just don't listen to you:

There's no need to be that close to the edge, especially when you have the car keys and I don't.

After we finished touring the park and hiking the steep trails that veered dangerously close to sheer dropoffs, we took the train back down and debated getting lunch at the pizza place across from the station:

It has a giant metal ice cream cone like the one I love on Chapman Highway:

but we decided we weren't hungry enough to eat yet, and waited until we got back to town, where Bryan suggested we get pizza at the locally famous Pizza Palace restaurant:

As you can see from the sign, they've been featured on the Food Network. Now that I've eaten there:

I'd have to agree that it's pretty good, even if that means I have to agree on something with Guy Fieri on something. I guess these are the sacrifices we have to make for a day of adventure.

In My Tribe, or We'll Always Have Swamp Thing

2009-10-14T21:20:00.006-05:00

Websters Online describes a culture as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a specific group. It's a matter of background, shared experience and knowledge, common language, and a sense of belonging. Sometimes people are brought up in a culture, and sometimes people choose one of their own.

I grew up as a military child, and as such had a somewhat shifting, unstable existence. I didn't grow up in a culture of extended family, because our relatives all lived far away and my parents both had issue with their parents or siblings on some level or another. We didn't really have a religious identity, because my mom was Catholic but didn't always go to church, and my dad had no religion whatsoever and only went on Christmas and Easter when my mom hassled him. We didn't really have an ethnic heritage because my parents both come from pretty mixed families, and while there were some predominantly Italian influences from my mother's side, there wasn't really an overriding nationality. I didn't have a hometown because we moved every three or four years, and I didn't have long term friends for the same reason. That there are people now that I speak to and have known for ten, twelve, or twenty years still seems a little odd to me.

The constant in my childhood was comic books. The first sequential comics I bought were "The Saga of Swamp Thing" number fourteen and fifteen. I picked up the first when I was seven at the flea market, where my mom liked to go on weekends and would bring us along to, and it ended on a cliffhanger. I brought it to my dad and asked where and how I could find out what happened next, and he got me to a grocery store with a spinning comic rack the next month so that I could get the second half of the story. From there, a love of comics was born, and the steady act of purchasing them became a habit.

In Tennessee I got comics at the grocery store and the flea market. We moved to Alaska next, and I got them originally on base at the shopette, a convenience store on base that stopped carrying comics after the general's son saw an issue of "Dakota North" that had sex or swearing or something in it. After that we had a grocery store and also, once a month or so, a trip to the comic store two and a half hours away, one way, when mom and dad made their monthly visits to Sears and McDonald's. Moving from Alaska back to New York, there were grocery stores and bookstores, and when I got to college the comic store at the mall when I could convince a friend to drive me there. At about the time that I got out of college, comics moved out of grocery stores, so it was good that I had a car, since it was comic stores from then on.

As I've gotten older, the comic store has become my cultural center, for better or worse. It is the seat of my tribe, the place where we can gather to discuss our shared experiences and speak our language of retcon and reboot, of company wide crossover and variant cover, of Earth 616 and pre-Crisis continuity. My friends may not have been constant, but my knowledge of the various incarnations of Supergirl and the complete list of dead Teen Titans always is. Comics have been a point of stability in my life when I have no others, and my comic store gives me something to look forward to and somewhere to go no matter how badly everything else is.

This is my comic store:

Moving here from New York was kind of stressful for me. Two weeks before I moved, a drunk driver hit my parked car and totalled it:

On top of that, I was moving off campus for the first time ever. My parents, who normally call once a week, were calling six and seven times a day despite repeated requests to please stop doing that. I had to pack everything I owned, move away from the place I had lived for five years (the longest time I have ever continuously lived in one place in my life), leave all my friends, and come to strange city where I didn't know a single person that wasn't a future coworker. I didn't have an address, or a phone, or furniture, or a car, or a grocery store, or cable, or internet, or a comic store, and I set about trying to remedy those things as quickly as possible in the two weeks I had before my job started.

I got an apartment:

I got a bed:

I got a car:

and I went looking for a comic store.

My first attempt did not go well. I went in, explained that I had just moved from New York and would like to find a new comic store, and began to ask questions. The answers to all of my questions were "no", and also "Thursday".

"Can I set up a subscription, or a pull list?" Most comic stores have these. You tell them what comics you regularly buy, and they pull them for you and keep them in a folder for you to come pick up.

"No."

"Can you special order a trade paperback if it's available and you don't have any in the store?"

"No."

"Are new comics ready on Wednesday?"

"No. Thursday."

It was horrible. I'm not sure if the guy hated Northerners, fags, or just customers in general, but he did not seem at all interested in having me spend money there on a regular basis, and I was crushed. What if the other stores were just as bad? What if they were somehow worse? Where would I buy my comics? I might as well just move back to New York if this was how living in the South was going to turn out. I posted this note for my friends and then fell asleep in my big people bed:

" *tears* The comic store was ok, but not perfect. Also, comics here come on Thursday, rather than Wednesday. Before I go back tomorrow I'm going to check out the other store in town."

Dejected but hopeful, I headed out the next morning to the second of three comic stores in town. This is the note I left for my friends when I got home:

" *sunshine* *sunshine* *sunshine* The comic store was wonderful! They had everything I want, and they do a pull list so that I don't have to come in the day they come out, and the guy was so nice! It was so much better than the store I went to yesterday. *sunshine* *sunshine* *sunshine* "

The nice guy was Mike. I walked into his little store next to the paint store and the coffin store and gave my speech about moving from New York and needing a new store, and he responded with a "Welcome to Tennessee!" and then started running down everything his store offered. He asked how I was settling in, what brought me here, whether I was enjoying it so far, and didn't once make me feel like a filthy carpetbagging Yankee. I felt accepted and welcomed, and over the past four years I've continued to feel that way. Mike and his wife, Tess, ask about work, offer sympathy, listen to complaints, answer emails, and offer a place where people like me can discuss Beppo the Super-Monkey and the final issue of Dazzler ("Because You Demanded It!") in an environment where it is not only welcomed, but encouraged.

I didn't have an address, or a car, or a bed, or a couch, but I had a comic store, and everything else would fall into place. Once again, comics were a refuge of familiarity and stability at a time when my life was completely in flux and I was convinced that I was going to die alone in the rain, probably at night, and Mike and Tess are the people who provided that. They're not just the people who take my money and give me comic books and Aquaman figures; they're also friends, and when they announced via the mailing list two weeks ago that they had to close the store for family obligations, I felt like I got punched in the gut. I've had two weeks to cycle through my stages of grief combined with a hefty dose of "Where will I get my comics now? I can't go back to that first store!" selfishness, and today was the last Wednesday that I will pick up comics at my store. On Saturday, they will close forever, but it won't just be my store that's gone.

The regulars will scatter. We may see each other at our new stores, but the other people there won't know us. It will take them a while to learn our names and our likes and dislikes. We won't feel comfortable jumping into discussions in their stores when we walk in, and they won't feel comfortable including us at first. For a while, we are going to be strangers in strange places, and the things we took for granted will be questions, not certainties, but for a while we were also a tribe. We had a culture, and a way of life, and a home, and I want to thank Mike and Tess for giving us that. I wish them the best, and they will be missed.

Odds and Ends

2009-10-11T16:49:00.003-05:00

I have a random collection of images from the past couple of weeks that don't really go together or tell a story, but I like them and want to share. This being Tennessee, some of the "odds" are very odd, but I'm saving the best one for last. Skip to number nine if you want, but remember that some things, once seen, cannot be un-seen.

1) The Most Smartest Class Ever

Admissions has been telling us all year that the freshmen class that came in this fall is the smartest class ever, but I think they meant to say "most smartest", because I keep seeing things like this around campus:

Is it ever too early to start weeping for the future?

2) Trying Too Hard

This car was in front of Jeannie and I for a while on the way to the Auburn game a couple weeks ago:

One bumper sticker might be funny. Two, plus the "Fear This" graphic, plus the hanging skeleton in the back, plus the hologram skulls in the side windows (not pictured) is just too much. You just know the guy driving has double-dyed black hair, skinny jeans, and eyeliner, and his girlfriend's name has a Y where an I should be.

3) Sunrise, Sunset

Sometimes the sky is really pretty.

4) Jack O' Pepper

I saw this on the counter at lunch and it made me smile:

5) Golf Among the Ruins

I'm not sure how I found the website originally, but every month or so I check Roadside America for anything new in my area. In September, someone posted that there was a peeling hillbilly/pirate statue on Dollywood Lane that no one had noticed before, and sure enough, they were right. One of the dozen or so mini golf places closed, and is rapidly rotting in the heat and humidity:

I think the thing in his upraised hand was a sword, based on the hilt that's left. You can see it better here:

Even though the place is closed, the gate was partially open, and there wasn't a sign or anything, so I went in and poked around. The motel next door, the River Chase Motel, has been using it as a dumping ground for broken furniture, and most of the golf attractions are gone, but there's still a little to see and contemplate:

Someday I'll have to talk about my fascination with urban ruins. Probably with a therapist.

6) Gorilla Fireworks revisited

The first time I went to Pigeon Forge after moving here I drove past Gorilla Fireworks and snapped a quick picture from the car:

I don't usually take that route home from Pigeon Forge, so I haven't been past the store again, but I did today, and decided to pull in and see the gorillas up close:

I know this sounds odd when discussing a peeling concrete statue of an eyeless fuscia gorilla, but it seems oddly regal.

7) Sexy Stuf

I can't think of anything less sexy, as a noun or a verb, than the word "stuff". I'm not going to go all Miranda Priestly and give a ten minute lecture on "stuff" and how much it offends me and diminishes whatever it's talking about, but I would have liked to be a fly on the wall at the marketing meeting where they decided to call the store that and then decided to spell the word incorrectly.

8) Viva los Vols!

I don't usually approach the used bookstore from the interstate, so I never noticed this mural before:

Sadly, the restaurant it is painted on the side of is closed:

More urban ruins.

9) I laugh every time I look at this picture

I've noticed the Smoky Mountain Fantasy Golf before, and noticed that they had a pegasus in their waterfall. I never noticed before today, though, that the pegasus has dragon wings, and that it's anatomically correct. How on earth could you focus on golf with this staring at you?

It's like the side of a '70's era conversion van gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The guy at the booth wouldn't let me go in and walk around to take pictures without paying full price, but I saw everything I needed to from the parking lot.

Cheese Danish and Marching Band

2009-10-10T18:05:00.002-05:00

I feel sometimes that every time I turn on the oven I'm just finding a new way to hate myself. If that's true, I'm also some sort of kitchen masochist, but I guess I should just embrace that and move on, the way I've embraced my fear of walking anywhere barefoot or my blind and reasonless hatred for Nellie Furtado.

Today's adventure in culinary inadequacy involved mom's super easy, no-fuss cheese danish recipe, which I decided to bring to the game today. Reading the recipe, and seeing how little actual cooking is involved, you'd wonder how it could possibly be screwed up, but somehow I managed.

Mom's Cheese Danish:

2 tubes crescent roll dough
2 8 ounce blocks of cream cheese, room temperature
1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
cinnamon sugar

Clearly, this is not a diet recipe. Nothing that takes this:

and this:

and puts them together:

could possibly involve dieting. As if that wasn't sugary enough, mom's alternate recipe involves mixing a can of pie filling into that, too.

Anyway, the directions are, like I said, pretty easy:

1) Preheat oven to 350 F.
2) Open one tube of dough and unroll it into the bottom of a 9 inch by 13 inch baking pan or dish. Use your fingers to press all the seams closed.

3) Mix cream cheese, egg, sugar, and vanilla. I also mix in some of the cinnamon sugar, but mom does not.
4) Spread the filling on top of the layer of dough in the pan.
5) Unroll the second tube of dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment paper. Put another piece of wrap or paper on top and then press or roll the dough until it is the right size to cover the layer of filling.
6) Sprinkle the top with cinnamon sugar.

7) Bake 18-22 minutes until top is golden brown. This is where I ran into trouble. I baked for 22 minutes, opened the oven to see if the top was golden brown, and discovered that my top shrank:

"Hmmm. This never happens when mom cooks it."

"Yeah. You must suck."

That is, of course, one possibility. On the other hand, I am reminded of the story in Martha, Inc. about how the young Martha Stewart, when asked for recipes, would cheerfully give them out, but leave out some key ingredient or process so that it would fail and not turn out as perfect as hers. I'm certain my mother would never do such a thing, but my danish didn't come out like hers does, and my rice cakes didn't come out quite like hers do, and my cake box cookies never seem to come out like hers, either. I'm not trying to fingerpoint a super-dramatic "J'accuse!", but there was this exchange on the phone earlier:

"How did your danish come out?"

"It tasted good, but the top layer shrank when I baked it."

"Oh. That's never happened to me."

"I think I let the dough get too warm while I was doing the rest." I've learned from the Food Network that you have to keep pastry dough cold. "I left the tube out on the counter while I was doing the other layers."

"Oh, yeah, you have to keep that tube in the fridge until you use it, so it stays really cold. I forgot to tell you."

J'ACCUSE!

I mean, you know, thanks for the tip, mom.

Nobody at the game seemed to think there was anything wrong, since they polished off the entire pan and two of them cut the last piece in half because neither one would let the other have it. They could have just been really, really hungry, but I'll choose to view it as a compliment instead.

Speaking of the game, we beat the hell out of Georgia. I didn't watch any of the actual game, but I went and peeked into the stadium at halftime to see the bands. Theirs wasn't bad:

but ours was awesome:

They did some kind of circle move which everyone around me was talking about and seemed to think was a huge deal:

I was pretty impressed, and clapped when they took their bow at the end:

Also, Nick Lachey was at the game somewhere, but we didn't see him.

2009 Hallowe'en Art Show

2009-10-03T08:37:00.002-05:00

Last night after work I went back downtown to go to "Poe", PoMoNoBo's 2009 Hallowe'en Art Show:

This year's show was a little smaller than last year's, but that was nice because I got to talk to more people, and I also met Brian, who draws the cathedrals that I see downtown:

The theme of this year's show was art inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, and there were a lot of very nice pieces and a lot of cute decorations:

Bran made a Poe puppet:

but I had to leave for late dinner before the puppet show started. On the way out, I got a very nice Martin Harris print, which I got a frame for this morning:

I like it so much I put a nail in the wall to hang it, the only time I have done so in over three years in this apartment. I didn't realize until I got home that it also matches my couch, but that's a nice bonus. Now I suddenly want to hang other things on the wall with it.

"First Contact" is the only Next Gen movie you ever have to own

2009-09-28T20:07:00.003-05:00

This weekend I was at Target, not because I needed anything but because Target is there and it makes me feel warm and loved inside even though they have Christmas decorations on sale already and that fills me with rage. There are ninety days and two other holidays (three if my birthday counts) between now and Christmas, and it wouldn't kill Target to let people enjoy all of Hallowthankmas season instead of just the Chriskwaanuka part.

Moving away from that rant for a moment, I was wandering the DVD section when I saw a boxed set of all four of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" movies. For a second I was totally excited, even though I claim that I'm no longer a huge Trekkie, and I started looking it over, but then I remembered: As much as I love Star Trek, and the Next Generation, they only made one good movie and three bad ones. "First Contact: is the only movie in that boxed set worth owning, and here's why:

1) "Generations" is the movie that they had to make to go ahead and get the old Star Trek movies off the table. They had to give Captain Kirk a sendoff before anyone would accept the new movies, the same way they had to give the old series a sendoff. There's a reason why Admiral McCoy appears in the very first episode, after all. It's to wave goodbye.[1] You can practically see the Next Gen cast checking their watches and drumming their fingers impatiently on the pieces of scenery that Shatner isn't chewing while they wait for the movie to hurry up and end.

2) "First Contact" has a logical, credible enemy. In "Generations", the Enterprise is destroyed by Lursa and B'Etor, which is kind of the equivalent of the United States being invaded and conquered by WWII era Poland. Granted, they had the advantage of the Enterprise being incompetently captained at the time by Counselor Deanna "What's a warp core?" Troi [2], but still, this was almost as bad as the ship getting disabled by the Pakleds.

We'll skip right over "Insurrection"'s evil, face stretching aliens. That whole movie was like one overlong episode more than it was like a feature film, and the enemies there weren't a credible threat any more than the Duras sisters mentioned above. As for "Nemesis", yes, the Romulans are a credible threat, but the logic applied to using them in that movie was a little flawed. For one thing, where was Sela? If you're going after the Enterprise specifically, why would you not use the person in the Romulan empire who knows them best? The absence seemed glaring to Trek fans. [3] The other problem with the Romulans in that movie was the idiotic presence of a Picard clone that was, for inexplicable reasons, also bald. Picard wasn't born bald, but the movie crew must have decided that the viewers were too stupid to connect the clone to him without the shiny bald head, so they ignored that Picard had hair when he was younger, like we saw when he was de-aged in "Rascals" or in flashback in "Violations", and had a twenty year old bald clone wandering the Romulan ship instead.

"First Contact", on the other hand, has the Borg. They are the quintessential Next Gen enemies. Looking at all seven seasons, the dramatic climax of the series comes between the third and fourth seasons with "The Best of Both Worlds". Nothing before it or after it matched the drama and tension and flat out awesomeness of that two parter, and the events of that episode hung over the rest of the series whenever they encountered even a whiff of the Borg. Them showing up in "First Contact" established without doubt that this was a Next Gen movie, and in true classic movie fashion it managed to show us that everything we thought we knew about the Borg was wrong without undermining everything that came before. The appearance of the Borg Queen answered so many questions that were still hanging from the series, and she was so incredibly creepy and flat out evil that you couldn't help but love her and hate her all at once.

3) There is a logical reason for the crew to be reunited in "First Contact". Worf hadn't moved to "Deep Space Nine" yet in "Generations", so that movie doesn't really count here, but they didn't even bother explaining why he was around for "Insurrection". In "Nemesis", he forgot to go home after Riker and Troi's wedding and just started working on the Enterprise for a little while instead, as if anything like that would happen in any military in the world. While we know, as viewers, that the whole cast contractually had to be there, at least in "First Contact" they have a reasonable explanation for picking up Worf and letting him come on board for a while.

4) Everyone stays in character in "First Contact". Dr. Crusher violates the Prime Directive and the laws of time and space to bring Lilly, her patient, on board, as if this same thing didn't get her captured by terrorist in "The High Ground", didn't almost get the whole crew killed by an angry god in "Angel One", and didn't almost get her fired and drummed out of Starfleet in "I, Borg" or "Suspicions". She has a definite moral and ethical code and she sticks to it. Captain Picard's lingering scars and pain from his previous encounters with the Borg are almost palpable, and he doesn't randomly wander in Kirk's "find the female alien in charge and sleep with her" territory like he does in "Insurrection". [4] Data's striving to be human is key to the plot. Everyone hits their notes and it feels like the crew you know and love, and they're not forced to act like idiots just to satisfy the demands of an implausible plot like they are in "Nemesis", where they let B-9 freely wander the ship as if they never ran into Lore or Tasha Yar's evil sister Ishara and then act surprised when he turns out to be a tool of the Romulans.

4) Nobody gets mind-raped in "First Contact". This is kind of a nit pick, but is there a reason why Counselor Troi has to get mind-raped in "Nemesis" other than to continue painting the character as a damsel in distress and again undermining the little credibility she has? We know that Betazoid people have mental blocks to foil telepathic invasion, because Deanna's mom trots out a stream of them in "Dark Page", so why doesn't Deanna have any? Especially after getting mind-raped by the memory specialist in "Violations" or turning into a psychic waste receptacle in "Man of the People"? People who are physically assaulted get dogs, or take defense classes, or hire bodyguards, but Deanna Troi gets mentally assaulted about once a season and keeps hoping it doesn't happen again.

I'm not saying "First Contact" is totally without flaws, but out of the four movies in that boxed set, it's the only one worth watching more than once, unless you're confusing fandom with masochism.

Notes:

[1] And not just him. After McCoy, who is apprently 150 years old, shows up in "Encounter at Farpoint", Sarek shows up a couple of times, then Scotty, then Spock. They even revisted "The Trouble with Tribbles" in an episode of "Deep Space Nine".

[2] This is an actual quote, from "Disaster", and for me sums up the essence of Counselor Troi's character as a bimbo in a bunny suit who had no credibility. Sure, she was a counselor, but she was also a Starfleet officer, which means she went to Starfleet Academy like all the other cadets and had to take classes in the basic operation of a starship no matter what her specialy was. That's why Wesley had to answer that question about the matter/anti-matter ratio on the entrance exam in "Coming of Age". For Counselor Troi to show up on the bridge every day for six years and not know what the warp core was is kind of like being a flight attendant for six years and not realizing the plane runs on jet fuel. Michelle Forbes, playing Ensign Ro, deserved an Emmy for the two second, "WTF? Did you really just ask that?" look she shot at Counselor Troi when she blurted out that question.

[3] While this was not mentioned in the movie, it is entirely possible that Sela was breaking rocks in some Romulan prison or even executed following her massive failures in the invasion of Vulcan in "Reunification" and the Klingon Civil War in "Redemption". You only get so many chances in an imperial society, especially one where the Tal Shiar can have you ejected into space just for questioning their orders.

[4] Sleeping with female aliens (and the occasional genderless alien who reproduced by mutually fertilizing a husk) was Riker's job, not Picard's, even if there was that time that Picard sexually harassed the Chief of Stellar Cartography into transferring to another ship.

One fest, two fest...

2009-09-20T18:13:00.003-05:00

On Saturday I traveled from one end of town to the other, and, festival wise, from one end of the world to the other. Well, metaphorically, anyway. In the literal sense I went about six miles, and Greece and Spain aren't really that far apart, but it sounded so much more exciting phrased the first way, right?

I started out Saturday by heading to St. George's Greek Orthodox Church for Greek Fest:

I drive past the church every day, so every year I see the signs for Greek Fest go up and then come down, and everyone in the office always raves about how fun it is. They also all mention how expensive it is, so I was rather surprised to find out that the parking was free and admission was only two dollars. Then I got there on Saturday and found out why: all there is to do at Greek Fest is tour the church, watch some dancing, and buy things.

Mostly you buy food:

It's good food, and almost every booth had a little sign explaining what the food was for people not familiar with the cuisine, but it was on the expensive side. This tray of partries, for example:

set me back about six dollars, and two dollars a cookie at a church festival seems a little steep to me. The baklava was delicious, though:

even if I did have to eat it beneath the unsettling gaze of a one-eyed centerpiece:

While eating, we got to watch a cooking demo by the guy who owns the Pizza Palace, a restaurant downtown that was featured on the Food Network a few years ago and that, somehow, I still have not managed to visit:

He taught us how to make garlic and oregano pork tenderloin, a Greek salad, and a pasta side dish with Feta cheese and brown butter sauce that I made for dinner tonight. It was really good, and super easy. There was also the added amusement of watching someone root around under the counters during the setup without realizing that a room of hundreds was watching her crawl around on the big screen TV:

That giggling, alone, was worth the two dollars of admission.

As underwhelmed as I was by the festival (why not just honestly advertise under a "Come Buy Some Greek Food and Copyright Violating Nesting Dolls

Festival"?), I was almost awed by the Church. I grew up Catholic, but we mostly went to modern, less than a few decades old Catholic churches on Army bases. Maybe if I'd gone to a church with better windows and more shiny things like this one I'd be more religious, but now we'll never know. And you wouldn't know it was so impressive from outside, either, where it looks rather plain:

The same window on the inside is beautiful:

(I'm not really familiar with the scene depicted on that window, but if I had to guess just by looking at it I'd say it was from the time that Jesus was a rock star and surfed down a mountain and over some prisoners on his cross while the crowd shook his hands. I'm pretty sure that story's in the New Testament somewhere, right?)

Anyway, the inside of the church had a lot of nice windows:

a fancy altar:

with a lot of inlaid tile mosaics:

and the most impressive feature of all, a mosaic that covered the entire inside of the church dome:

Not only was the church impressive, but it remained shockingly lightning-free even though I walked through it, and as an added bonus I can tell my mom I went to (a) church this weekend. Everybody comes up a winner, I guess.

After I toured the church I wasn't still hungry, so I left Greek Fest and drove downtown for the HoLa Festival, which celebrates Hispanic countries. It was spread all through Market Square, and as soon as I walked up from the parking lot I immediately ran into a lady from the zoo, who was educating us about barn owls:

I'm not really sure how either of those things tie into the theme of the day, but I like the zoo, so I just shrugged and moved on.

There were a lot of booths selling food and cultural items, and some things that were a mixture of both:

I also got there just in time for the parade of nations, during which representatives wore traditional costumes and in many cases performed a traditional dance. This was both educational and entertaining. I learned that Chile also includes Polynesian islands:

and that Honduras apparently has a lot of cowboys:

The costumes were all very nice, though, and the dancing was fun to watch.

There were a lot of kids in the parade, too and they looked very cute in their little costumes. I thought this one was adorable:

She was trying so hard to be serious and precise, and didn't smile the whole time. It was awesome.

After the parade, a local dance troupe that one of my coworkers is part of performed and gave a salsa lesson:

It was really hard to get good pictures of them, since they were moving so fast, so for the first time ever I took video with my camera:

They did a fantastic job, and it was a nice way to cap off the day.

adventures in soupmaking

2009-09-15T19:29:00.002-05:00

I end up with at least two food magazines in my house a month. I mentally refer to them as food porn, because everything in them always looks so good, even things I don't like, and I always feel like maybe if I tried to make it this time it would actually turn out like it does in the picture. In between attempts, I watch "Top Chef" and I dream.

This week I decided to try making a corn, potato, and sausage bisque. It seemed kind of easy, since it called for a lot of basic ingredients, and I thought, "Hey, how bad could it be?"

The potatoes should have been the first indicator of disaster, the harbinger of terrible things to come. The recipe said that I should bake two potatoes and then dice them, but I am a lazy chef in addition to being a mediocre one, so I bought a bag of the precut and ready potatoes. When I tore it open, though, I discovered this:

That's not a potato. I realize I'm not always 100% familiar with vegetables, since they're not made of candy, but that is a carrot. The bag says potatoes, not potatoes and carrots, and doesn't even have one of those "Maybe also contain" warnings like my peanut butter that may also contain peanuts does. In some cultures, that carrot would be an omen, like an egg with a blood-red yolk or a two-headed calf. All soup preparation would cease while the shaman was called to sprinkle salt around my kitchen, but I don't live in any of those cultures.

I should start, though, because that carrot meant disaster. That didn't come until later, though.

In the meantime, I steamed the potatoes in the microwave, sliced up the sausage (I used turkey sausage, under the vague notion that it was somehow healthier), drained the corn, and thew it all in a holding bowl until it was time to add to the soup:

After that, I pasted an onion.

I've mentioned before that I have trouble with the texture of onions. It's all crunchy and slimy at the same time and disgusting, but the flavor is good. For a while I was just chopping them down into specks, but my chopper broke, so now I'm pasting them down to mush in the food processor. That's an onion the size of a baseball in there, and the added benefit of pasting them is that I don't cry.

Once the onion was pasted, I got all the ingredients ready to add in stages, according to the recipe:

That's four cups of milk, by the way, and since I was cooking I bought whole milk, just for this recipe. I usually drink skim, because whole milk seems so thick and sludgy, but I figured the soup needs to be thick and sludgy. I was kind of sad that it only needed a quarter cup of flour, because I have quite a bit left after the breadmaking disaster, but I'll use all that up someday. I might even try making bread again. I might also try learning to explode things with my brain, probably with equal success.

Anyway, I melted half a stick of butter, then added the onion:

It was golden and bubbly and smelled good, and then it was time to add the milk. That's when disaster came. I rarely heat cream or milk, because it has this weird kind of explosion point where it goes from steaming to boiling over in about three seconds. I told myself that this time would be different, though, that I would be super careful, that the carrot in the potatoes meant nothing, and I went for it.

You know where this is going, right?

There will be a lot of burner cleaning tomorrow.

The worst part is that I almost made it. I was stirring continuously, watching the consistency, carefully adjusting the heat, and then I looked away to check the recipe and see how much longer I had to stir. That's all it took.

The soup turned out pretty good, though.

The starch from the potatoes thickened it up, and the sausage gave it a bit of a smoky taste. The best part is that there's plenty left for the next couple days, and it can't possibly blow up in the microwave, right?

I guess UCLA is sort of a good team?

2009-09-12T22:08:00.002-05:00

It's fun to go to football on Saturdays. You get invited to cookouts and tailgates, like the one at Volunteer Hall today before the game:

where I had two hot dogs, a cookie, and a coke (in this part of the country, any brown soda is a "coke", whether it's actually Coca Cola or not), and you get to see odd, sort of crazy things that you don't understand and have to wonder about, like this:

Youth juice? I mean, I know what it sounds like to me, but that can't possibly be what's in that bottle. I probably should have just asked, or at least peeked into the cooler, but I didn't want to look like a rube if it's some kind of local thing that I just haven't heard of.

The best part of football for me, though, is that I have absolutely no emotional investment in whether or not we win. I recognize the players' names in a vague, housing related sense ("Oh, that's the guy who turned in his contract late way after the deadline, and that's the one who got billed for the wrong summer mealplan and I had to go and correct it."), but I don't know any of them. I know who the coaches are, but I don't really interact with them, either. The game is the same for me whether we win or lose, mostly because I'm not always sure of the rules. I just show up at the stadium and hope for the best.

Today we played UCLA, a team that beat us last year under our old coach and beat us today under our new coach. We enjoyed really nice weather, and I was without the car pool, so I got to walk around before the game and see things like Eric Berry's enormous inflatable jersey:

He plays some position on our team. It's not quarterback, because the quarterback was just on the news and wasn't him. Anyway, I'm sure he's good at whatever it is he's doing on the team, since he has a giant inflatable jersey and the quarterback doesn't. Hey, quarterback? Try to be more like Eric Berry, ok? Just look at the potential rewards.

Since I was by myself, I also got to go into the stadium after my shift, rather than bolting immediately for the car. We were already losing in the second quarter when I saw the field, but this all looked very exciting just the same:

Next week is our first away game, which means I'll be doing something else on Saturday. We'll be playing Florida, who I think beat us last year, but I can't remember that for sure. I asked the other staff at our gate, but the only answer I got was, "Who didn't beat us last year?"

I have no idea, but football sure is fun.

Abomination Television

2009-09-08T21:09:00.002-05:00

I use the word "abomination" pretty freely. The caffeine free diet Mountain Dew I saw the other day? That's an abomination. The baggers at Kroger not understanding that cold food and not cold food shouldn't be bagged together and that's why they're separated in my cart and separated when I put them down on the conveyer and oh my God is it really that hard to understand or are you just trying to save bags? Their bagging skills are an abomination. That time I was trying to give myself electric blue tips and ended up with a whole head of powder blue hair that ended up being cobalt thanks to a heavy dose of Ferria and prayer? That was pretty much an abomination as well.

Given that, I still feel safe in saying that the new "Melrose Place" is an abomination.

I'm not even sure where to start, but two really awful things stand out:

1) Ashley Simpson-Wentz. I know taking a potshot at her is about as difficult as finding pancakes at IHOP, but watching the scene where she convinces a neighbor she just met, a neighbor that was smart enough to get into medical school, that she should become a high priced hooker and realizing that Ashley's supposed to be the evil girl in disguise made me want to throw a brick at my television. Ashley Simpson is as convincing as an evil mastermind as Tara Reid is as a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

Never let it be said that I avoid easy potshots. Right, Tara?

2) Not only is Sydney alive, but she's sleeping with Michael's son. Michael. Her brother in law. Whose son would be her nephew. Even if he's not her nephew because his mom isn't Jane, something the show hasn't bothered to show us yet, he's still close to being her nephew, and that's gross.

Almost as gross as this abomination of a show.

Five Days Off

2009-09-07T16:58:00.004-05:00

Today is a holiday (Happy Labor Day! Sorry I didn't send any cards.) and I decided last week that a three day weekend just wasn't enough, so I put in for Thursday and Friday off, too. I didn't have any exciting plans or anything, but it suddenly seemed like I just needed a few days to read and watch TV ("Law and Order" and "Chopped!" are tied for most episodes seen in the five day stretch), so I asked for them. As the days off got closer, it looked like I wouldn't be taking Thursday after all because someone was sick and I was worried the office would be short staffed, but my boss called while I was driving in and told me to take it anyway.

He really had to twist my arm on that one, let me tell you. I considered my options for an entire two and a half seconds before I said, "OK" and sped off in the opposite direction.

Here's what I did with my five days off:

Thursday: I lied. I didn't actually speed off in the opposite direction because I was already almost to campus when my boss called. Since I was already up and dressed and out of the house, I decided to swing by the university gardens since they were right there, and I got to watch the sun come up over the plants:

Since no one else was there, I took my time walking around and enjoying the quiet of the morning. I stopped to examine some tiny flowers:

and then the bugs started waking up, too:

so I decided to head out before the bees really came out in force. On my way home, I stopped by the office to pick up my two boxes of picture frames, which were packed in an absurd amount of material:

Those twelve plastic frames came in a box half the size of my couch, and there were two boxes! I drive a Bug! My couch doesn't fit in my car! Not only do I have to feel bad about ordering frames from Wal-Mart, allowing them to continue squeezing out Mom and Pop stores and outsourcing jobs to foreign countries and not paying their employees health insurance by making them work 39.5 hours a week, but I feel like they also cut down a forest and a half just to get the frames to me. People with kids, I'm sorry that they will be both unemployed and shadeless in the barren future I have helped to create, but Wal-Mart was the only company that came in under my budget.

Friday: On Friday morning I slept in a little, and then got up to go downtown to the Museum of East Tennessee History. It was smaller than it looked from the outside (it turns out that there is a whole floor devoted to geneological archives), but filled with interesting things:

I saw one of Dolly Parton's dresses:

and flags celebrating Oak Ridge's revelation to the world:

and I got to leave my comments on the wall of Post-It's:

The highlight of the day, though, was my lunch downtown at The French Market. My coworker, Angie, has mentioned for months (mostly because she had a couple months of maternity leave between the first mention and the more recent one) that she ate there and it was wonderful and that I should try it, but it always managed to stay off of my radar until I walked out of the museum and it was directly across the street.

The French Market only serves one kind of food: crepes. My experience with crepes is mostly of this variety:

They're always filled with fruit and/or chocolate, and there's something sweet drizzled or, more often, gushed across the top. I've never had a crepe that's intended as a meal, rather than as a dessert or a replacement for a pastry, so I was a little dubious. I trust Angie, though, so I ordered the turkey and cheese crepe:

It was so good I want to go back and get another one right now. The inside was stuffed with shredded smoked turkey, Swiss cheese, and Gruyere cheese. That's it. No mustard, sauce, vegetables, or anything, and it was still so good that I practically inhaled it. I hope and pray they're open for the last Roller Derby home bout, because I'm pretty sure I don't want to eat anywhere else downtown again, ever.

God, it was so good.

Saturday: Football came to Tennessee again, and the carpool and I had to work at Gate 23. On our way across campus, since we have to park a bit of a hike away from the stadium, we stopped so that Anna could grab breakfast at Chik-Fil-A and found ourselves in a sea of orange:

If you're not dressed for football, it's best that you not leave the house on game days. Someone might cut you.

Sunday: I slept in, and when I woke up I suddenly felt like the idea of leaving the house to do anything was more than I could cope with, so I stayed in and read, watched more TV, and played games on the computer.

Monday: Today I framed my pictures and took them to work to hang on my walls. Using a yardstick and a level, I think I got them pretty even, and I'm happy now to have some color on all four walls instead of on just one:

I also swapped out the frames from the pictures I had up already, so everything matches. I know that my pictures aren't always good, but I like having them on my walls instead of random school art or posters. It makes the office feel more like it's mine, and the cleaning people probably won't steal my pictures like they did the Superman figure I used to have in there.

Art Saves, or How I Learned to Love Graffiti

2009-08-28T18:12:00.002-05:00

A month or so ago, when I finished reading Scott McCloud's collected Zot (which is on sale at that link for more than half price) I mentioned that there are two comic books that really changed my life. One of them, which I discussed in that entry, was "Planet Krypton", and the other is Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg's The Plain Janes. Neither comic, by itself, was all that life changing, but both of them happened to come along at just the right time when I happened to need a shove.

The Plain Janes is the story of Jane, a pretty and popular high schooler who survives a terrorist bombing in the city. As she picks herself up off the sidewalk, she finds a single dandelion and a Polish art student's sketchbook with "Art Saves" printed on the cover. Jane decides that if these tiny, fragile things can survive, so can she, and she takes "art saves" as her new mantra when her frightened parents uproot her to the suburbs where she can be safe. High school in the suburbs is, as high school everywhere tends to be, soul crushing but on her very first day Jane has the chance to befriend the cool cheerleader types and become again the popular girl she once was, and she decides not to. Instead, she decides to sit with three outcasts, Jane, Jayne, and Polly Jane, and together they are the Plain Janes.

Now in a clique of her own making, Jane decides that art can save them all. It can save them from boredom, from apathy, and from the way that high school can marginalize some people and leave them on the outside. Joined by James, the only member of Buzz Aldrin High's Queer Club, they become P.L.A.I.N., People Loving Art In Neighborhoods, and they become guerrilla artists. They knit hats to put on all of the city's fire hydrants in winter, and build pyramids out of paving stones in construction sites. They wrap newspaper boxes and mail boxes up like presents, and cover the lawn of the police station with gnomes. The authorities consider it graffiti, disruptive acts of vandalism, but P.L.A.I.N. has a mission to celebrate art in small ways and bring joy to the masses, and people begin to follow them. There are chalk drawings on the sidewalks and flash mob singalongs and exploding balloons filled with glitter, and in the end, art saves the Plain Janes. Art gives them self confidence, and purpose, and lifts them up from the people they were so that they become the people they want to be.

This isn't an entry about how I moved to Tennessee and became a whole other person instead of continuing down the same path I'd been on for years in Albany. Sorry if it sounded like that for a minute. Instead, this is an entry about art, random art, beautiful art left by people for others to enjoy, and how art saves. It didn't really save me from anything, but it changed the way I look at the world around me. I was trying to explain this to my friend Dabs a week or so ago, and we both kind of laughed it off, but I meant it. In looking at the advertisements and vandalism and the basic colors of the world around me with a different eye, I stopped seeing annoyances, and I started to see art. Now, every time I leave my apartment, I bring my camera with me, because I might see something wonderful. Right when I was trying very hard to stop being a pessimist and start being an optimist, this comic came along and gave me a shove in the right direction.

What is art? The art history teacher in "Art School Confidential", wonderfully played by Angelica Houston, asks the class this. She rattles off a list of the great works of the western world's artistic cannon, and is immediately met with the smug response that "everything on that list was painted by a dead white guy". That response is, of course, part of the movie's wonderfully satirical slap at the pretentiousness and self righteousness of college students everywhere, but there's also a grain of truth in there: art doesn't have to come from the "great masters" to be great. Given that, is this art?

Or this?

What about this?

This one looks like art, so is it?

Or this one?

This is the question that Katherine Watson, played by Julia Roberts, asks her art history class in "Mona Lisa Smile". Is it art? Is it any good? Betty Warren, ably played by Kirsten Dunst as a "mean girl" for the 1950's set, responds that it's not art until the right people say it is.

I've decided that I'm the right people.

This is art:

So is this:

and this:

and even this:

It's art because someone felt something when they made those things, and when I see them, I feel something, too. It may not be the same thing they felt, or even the thing they intended for me to feel, but that person and I are connected for the briefest of moments. It doesn't have to be in a museum or on a wall or in a sculpture garden or a classroom or anywhere expected. It's there, and if you want it to be, it's art, and like Jane, I believe that art saves.

The Rubber Duck Race

2009-08-22T15:31:00.004-05:00

Every year our city has a rubber duck race to benefit the Boys and Girls Club, and every year I end up buying a duck or two. I never get to actually see the race because it's usually on the same weekend that we have opening and the kids moving in, but this year our schedule is off. Opening was last week, the duck race was this week, and Jeannie invited me to go down and see it with her.

We didn't get to actually see the race, though, because of this:

I'll get to that.

The day started out well. We left on time, a rarity for the two of us, easily found parking, and headed down to the riverwalk, which was packed:

I had no idea so many people actually came to see this, especially since the river moves extremely slowly and some years it takes as long as five hours for all the ducks to make it from one bridge to another. We got there about a half hour before the ducks were dropped into the water, which gave us time to see real ducks:

inflatable ducks:

and for the kid to start crying:

because some other kid shot him with water from his ass:

The crying there was understandable, as being sprayed with ass-water can be traumatic for anyone. We gave him a cookie, strapped him back into the stroller, and looked for a spot to view the race. Unfortunately there was no good way to get the stroller down onto the seats in the stands besides carrying it:

We ended up down under the bridge, where it was shady and we could see the riverboat go by:

Unfortunately, that's right where the kid started crying. We had no idea what he wanted, but that's the problem with kids: you never know what they want. You have one, and then until they learn to talk you're just a hostage to the noises they make and are willing to do whatever you can to make them stop. I, for example, figured we could just wheel the stroller under a tree and ignore him for a while, but Jeannie for whatever reason decided we needed to take him back to the car and go home. I guess this is the difference between having children and being childless. Anyway, that's how we went to the duck race but didn't get to see the race or the ducks.

On the way home, I mentioned to Jeannie that having kids seems to pretty much ruin your life, which she shared with Brian. He let me know that it doesn't really ruin your life, but instead makes you question what you're doing, what your goals are, where you can go, how spontaneous you can be, what plans you can make, where you can eat, what you can eat, what you can spend money on, what's important to you, what you care about, etc. etc. etc. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that sounds pretty life ruining to me, but I'm a selfish person with no biological imperitive to reproduce and am clearly not meant to enjoy parenthood. Everyone who has kids must see something I don't, but I get to see a movie without calling a sitter. I'd call it an even trade.

Chicken Not Pie

2009-08-19T20:25:00.002-05:00

Tonight the carpool and I decided that we all needed to eat out, mostly because we've been doing training and opening and stuff for the past three weeks or so and no one has any actual groceries in their apartment. I've had macaroni and cheese four nights in a row because there is nothing else in the apartment besides my lunch supplies, and since I'm taking that in to work every day I at least want a different meal at dinner.

Fortunately for us, a new restaurant opened within walking distance, a combination Italian and Southern place. The combination seemed a little sketchy to me, like one of those restaurants that tries to do a little of everything and ends up doing nothing well, but Jeannie swore that it was good so Anna and I just kind of shrugged and went along.

I ended up getting the chicken pot pie, something I didn't eat when I was little. It was one of those dishes that seemed fraught with danger, because it came all sealed up. What if some of the chicken was dark meat? You couldn't tell because it was sealed inside. What if it had onions in it? Were they small onions, or big hacked off chunks of onions that you'd bite into and get that combination of crunchy and slimy that makes onion so gross? There was no way of knowing. Anything could be inside the pie crust, any number of gross things that you didn't want to eat but might get tricked into eating because you couldn't see. Potpie seemed a sinister, conniving sort of food.

Besides, the brother liked it, so it had to be inherently evil.

As I've gotten older, though, I've actually started eating vegetables, and branched out into every once in a while eating a piece of the chicken that's not snow white (but not with bones in it! Oh, God, I'm so not ready for that still), so potpie suddenly sounded good.

The potpie left me unhappy.

It tasted good. I cleaned that plate, and contemplated asking for a spoon to scrape up the leftover, but at the same time, that's not potpie to me. I know about trends toward deconstruction and reinvention and all of that in food, but I don't want a piece of pastry floating on a bowl of potpie filling. If I order a potpie, I want a pie, damn it. This was more like a potpie stew and pastry crouton, which is fine, but not what the menu suggested. When I order pie, I want pie.

I would have ordered some for dessert, but I was afraid of getting a bowl of apple pie filling with a cookie floating on top.

We survived!

2009-08-17T19:25:00.002-05:00

The students have returned to campus, and we survived getting them in. This is not to say that it happened without problems, but I think this year went pretty smoothly overall, and today we sort of celebrated by attending Volfest on our way home from work:

Even though we're all kind of exhausted and cranky, the students are pretty excited, and it manages to rub off on us.

Hello, Dolly

2009-08-09T09:45:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I decided I needed to get out of town for a while, so I got in the car and headed down Chapman Highway.

There's a statue down there that I keep intending to go see and keep not getting to, so I figured I might as well just go while I had no firm plans and needed to fill some of my time. According to my directions, I could find it easily on the Sevier County Courthouse lawn:

It's not that eagle statue, though. It's the statue of Dolly Parton:

I didn't expect the statue to look so much like her, though, or at least like she looked in a specific era before plastic surgery. I guess it makes sense that it should, but I thought it would end up more like bad wax museum figures, where it looks vaguely like them and your mind fills in the rest of the resemblance by suggestion. Not so in this case:

That's definitely Dolly.

Since it was already early and I was only a mile away, I decided I might as well go spend a few hours in the most wonderful, most horrible place on earth: Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I like to refer to Pigeon Forge as Ten Stoplights Worth of Awful, because it's like Vegas and Branson and Hazard County and Walton's Mountain all rolled into one somehow, all shiny and touristy and awful and dazzling all at once. It's the "all at once" part that really kills the whole thing, because there is no concept of restraint. Nothing is too bright, too out of place, too terrible to contemplate building in Pigeon Forge, transforming the road to the most beautiful national park in the region into ten stoplights full of the tackiest tourist crap available in the United States.

I don't mean the regular stuff, like the fifty or so pancake houses:

I can't even imagine 47 different kinds of breakfast.

I don't even mean the stuff like the two different Christmas outlet stores across the street from each other:

It's stuff like this:

That's the Titanic Museum and Attraction, opening in Spring 2010. It's now the first thing you see when you come over the hill by the Wonderworks:

And that's the central conflict in the town of Pigeon Forge. The city can't seem to decide on an identity, choosing between down home touristy stuff that makes you smile and over the top artificial stuff that couldn't seem more fake if it tried, like the Jurassic Jungle Boat Ride:

I walked past it on my way to see the statue on the front of the Lazer Arcade:

When I walked past, I noticed the two tourists staring at the dinosaur, but I figured they were doing the same thing as me, walking around, staring, soaking in the tacky. When I went past again, walking the other way a good half hour later, they were still there, and I thought, "What could possibly be that interesting?" and looked closer. They're mannequins. The tourists in front of the fake jungle filled with fake dinosaurs are fake people. I can't think of anything that sums up the bad side of Pigeon Forge better.

Given that, my friends always ask what I love about Pigeon Forge, and it's the slightly less fake side. I have a soft spot in my heart, the same one that likes giant Rubik's Cubes and the World's Largest Ten Commandments, for older homemade tourist attractions, and they're still there in between the minigolf with the extremely blue dyed waterfall:

and the light up neon ice cream parlor:

I mean places like the Three Bears General Store:

which inexplicably only has two bears, or Lid'l Dolly's outlet store:

where you can stand and wonder what possible letter that apostrophe could be replacing, or the Smoky Mountain Candy Makers:

where the mural on the side caught my eye. I mean, look at that kid:

He may be smiling, but his eyes are soulless black pits. Was I going to get candy, or going to hell at the hands of a child monster straight out of Japanese horror? The answer, of course, was sugar:

Sugar of all kinds, including still being cooked:

I don't know what was in the kettle, because I didn't ask, but it was steaming and boiling and spinning away:

And, of course, it wouldn't be a tacky touristy candy store without the obligatory chocolate Dolly Partons:

I've only been in two candy factories in Tennessee, and I've seen chocolate Parton bosoms in both. I'm starting to wonder if it's just East Tennessee, or some kind of statewide thing, like Florida oranges or Georgia peaches. Come to Tennessee, and enjoy our chocolate celebrity boobs!

Leaving the candy store, boobless, I realized I was only a few short steps away from the Hillbilly Village:

Not only did they advetise souveniers and gifts, but also an exhibit of moonshine stills and hillbilly cabin life:

Why, it was practically a museum! After spending a minute falling in love with the vintage metal elephant ride out front:

I hurried inside to be educated. The first thing I learned was that hillbillies and racism go hand in hand, based on the items in the gift shop:

It probably explains why I saw George Bush bumper stickers in the parking lot and not a single one for Barak Obama. After I saw enough of the memorabilia, I decided to tour the exhibit, which looked more like a vacant lot:

It kind of was educational. I learned that hillbilly women often lounged on the porch without feet:

that hillbillies built their cabins with their own hands and also made moonshine:

that the cabin roof let in a lot of daylight:

and that these may or may not have been one or more moonshine stills:

I also learned that the Hillbilly Village doesn't recognize that there might, alphabetically, be any male names between Joe and Joey:

so I stomped off in a rage without buying anything.

Fortunately I almost immediately saw an older, run down mini golf place that happily let me walk around their course for free:

Give me a rotting shark:

or crumbling castle:

and my heart soars again.

God bless America, and God bless Pigeon Forge in all its touristy, jerky-pushing glory:

Now if they would just hurry up and get that Titanic exhibit open so I could start trying to convince someone to go with me.

I, Kimberly...

2009-08-04T20:37:00.002-05:00

Of all the catfights and snide comments on "Melrose Place", the following exchange between Sydney and Kimberly is, in my opinion, the best piece of dialogue during the entire run of the series.

"Frankly, Sydney, I find your behavior to be rather childish."

"Maybe it just seems that way because you're so old."

Sydney's retort carries all the folly of youth, assuming that she'll never be in Kimberly's shoes. Technically this is true, since Sydney was run over in her wedding dress, but the point is still valid. Today, at a work retreat, I was informed that "Wayne's World" came out the same year that most of our incoming freshmen were born, and I realized that I am no longer on the Sydney side of that equation. I have become Kimberly Shaw, but without the brain surgery scar or the bomb in the laundry room.

I have become old.

Other than aging, I've managed to do a couple of other things in the past few weeks.

1) I saw them move the Rock on campus.

They couldn't get the rock into the parking lot it now sits next to, so they had to chainsaw one down:

One crane and 90 tons later, the Rock was slowly moved into place:

The students began painting it almost immediately. The new spot for it, though, is right where the band and their families tailgate for football, so it will be interesting to see what happens on that corner once the home games start up.

2) I wondered at this:

What does that mean? Is there a Girl Scout meeting hall down that road? A camp? Maybe a headquarters? Or is there just a bunch of Girl Scouts milling around a parking lot, waiting for people to drive by?

3) I learned that some people will not only stick anything on their trucks, but they will actually be proud of how foolish it makes them look:

I'll be honest, and admit that I'm not totally happy with the Obama administration. He hasn't followed through on any of the things he said he'd do for gay people, and while I understand that there are important concerns right now, I also understand that there's never a good time to handle some issues, and basic civil rights and equality are one of those things that shouldn't wait for political convenience. Even if you put the marriage issue aside, there's still the fact that over two hundred service members have been discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell since Obama took office, and that was something he said he would rescind.

Even if I'm not totally pleased with Obama so far, though, I'll never understand how someone can still see Sarah Palin as the better alternative. She'd probably have quit by now, anyway.

3) I went to the Farmer's Market, where I saw some peppers:

saw a mutant pigeon:

and had the best flavor of Italian ice ever:

4) I went to roller derby, and watched girls on wheels push each other down:

5) I argued with my friend Bryan when we passed these random boots on our way back to the car:

"You really will take a picture of anything, won't you?"

"You're not curious about that? Why are they there? Who leaves their boots on the sidewalk? Those are good boots! Why haven't any of the homeless people picked them up?"

I still have curiosity, which means I'm not quite ready to hop in the coffin and close the lid. I might be Kimberly, but I still have some Sydney left.

A Very Special Issue of Superboy

2009-07-29T18:11:00.002-05:00

This isn't a comics blog, mainly because there are a thousand of those on the web, if not more, and most of those people are better at reviewing, poking fun at, or giving serious thought to comic books than I am. Since I read comics, though, and I like to talk about myself, they're bound to come up from time to time, especially when I'm walking through the comic store and see something like this on the top of the 50 cent bin:

What the hell? This is the cover of a code-approved comic written for children? And what's actually going on in the story? Why is Jonathan Kent dead? Why do the Kents have holes in their walls with slats visible? Did he hang himself? Was it because he tried to watch "Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season" in one sitting, and/or while sober? And why did the editor think it was a great idea to juxtapose the hanging body imagery with the headline for the delightful "Adventures of Super-Baby" backup feature?

I had to know, so I pulled Superboy #189 out of the 50 cent bin and carried it to the register with my other purchases. I could have flipped through it right there, I guess, but it's a store, not a library, and Mike, the owner, has to eat, too. When I walked up with it on top of my pile, he smirked.

"I knew if I put that on top of the bin someone would buy it."

"I just want to know what's going on. I mean, look at it! I have like a billion questions!"

"And for only fifty cents, you can have answers!"

Fifty cents won't even buy me a candy bar, but it can buy me the strangled corpse of Jonathan Kent. When I got home, I still had questions, so I set about finding answers.

Our story opens, as so many stories do, with Superboy showing his parents a gift from friendly aliens. It's the kind of present that fits in every home and decor: a metal bust of Superboy with glowing red eyes that shoots telepathic beams of unknown radiation into nearby people.

I wonder if Superboy #190 is the equally special issue where his mom's brain explodes.

Anyway, like all people with telepathic metal busts of themselves, Superboy immediately uses it to remind his mom to get some dinner on the table, because the whole Women's Lib movement hasn't caught on yet. While we're looking at that picture, I'm also kind of confused by his mother's updo. Where's all that hair going? It's not pulled into a bun or a twist or a knot or anything. It just seems to be "up". Maybe it's just standing on end from too many doses of telepathic alien rays.

Before Superboy can use the telepathic metal bust of himself to order his dad to give him the car keys and some money for a pack of smokes, there's a knocking at the door, and when Jonathan Kent answers a magic noose flies out of nowhere, wraps around his neck, and tries to strangle him before Superboy saves him. In most houses, a disembodied flying rope trying to strangle the patriarch would be kind of a problem, but Jonathan calmly explains that it's just the Kent Family Strangling Curse:

That last guy, if you didn't click the picture to check, was strangled BY HAIR. That's a pretty determined, pissed off ghost they're dealing with, and Superboy responds in the best possible way: by flying off to another, more important emergency. Twice. Rather than staying home to guard his dad, who is promptly half strangled by a tree branch, a garden hose, and a piece of industrial cable from a giant spool that just happens to be laying around the neighborhood. Smallville is a booming center of industry, you know, what with the general store and the bank and all.

Superboy makes it back to save his father each time, to the point that you kind of wonder if maybe he's letting his dad get choked a little on purpose. I mean, that roast beef dinner he wanted still isn't on the table, and fear is a great motivator. Really, though, he's just figuring out that they're not fighting a vengeful ghost, but rather than vengeful disembodied spirits of the Phantom Zone criminals, who were trapped in a hellish bodiless existence for all eternity by Superboy's birth father.

And what are they using to enact their revenge?

You got it: the telepathic metal alien bust of Superboy with glowing red eyes, which Superboy must then destroy to save his father from alien criminals imprisoned in another dimension by his other father.

And this is why Superboy can't have nice things.

Pretty Flowers and Ugly Trucks

2009-07-12T18:11:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was supposed to be my "go to the office for a little while" day and today was supposed to be my "go have fun and run errands" day, but yesterday someone above me had a water line leak and water was coming out of my ceiling lights in the kitchen. There wasn't any damage to my apartment since I'm on the bottom and it was several floors above, but I spend about four hours waiting, mopping, and keeping the lights off while maintenance worked their way down. That meant that everything I usually do over the course of the weekend got condensed to today only, and some stuff got dropped.

The trip I would have taken today was one of those things, but to make up for it I squeezed in an hour of walking around the university gardens between going to the office and going to the comic store. Last time I went it was raining, but it was much sunnier today, and I got some pretty shots:

I love that zoom way in setting.

I also saw some strange, waxy berries:

They looked like they were made of plastic, so I touched them while no one was looking and confirmed that they were real. I'm pretty sure they don't actually use plastic flowers at the gardens, but you never know.

I am also super proud of this picture:

I was sure the fly would buzz away before I could get all the way in and get focused, but for some reason he stayed put, and there it is. That's probably one of my best shots ever, and definitely one of the best ones I've taken at the gardens.

After the gardens I went to the comic store, and then was on my way to the grocery store when I saw this in the old K-Mart parking lot:

I turned in to the Taco Bell to loop back around so fast I'm surprised my tires didn't squeal.

"Did that truck say 'homosexual thieves'?"

Not quite, but close.

A few brief notes for the religious panel truck developers:

1) That's way too many words on the side of a truck for a four lane road. People drive fast on that street, and everybody doesn't have the time or inclination to turn around and see what your truck actually says. I got two words off of that, so you might want to trim your message down to that size. I suggest "SIN = BAD!" It's short and easy to read while I'm scanning the road.

2) Location is important! That parking lot is huge, and now that the bank and K-Mart are both closed, mostly empty. Park that thing up by the corner, so that people stuck at the light can read your huge block of text.

3) Spelling and grammar are important.

"Adultry" is not a word, but "adultery" is. If you want to appear to be an authority, appearing educated enhances your credibility. Also, does that part at the bottom say "Hatred is Murder, Abortion" or "Hatred is Murderabortion"? Do the murder and the abortion even have anything to do with each other, or are they two messages with poor spacing between them?

4) Think about your imagery. I didn't even realize that was Jesus on the front side until I'd gotten out of the car, and he looks pretty rough there. Satan, on the other hand, looks like he just got done working his pecs in Hell's Weightroom. If I'm reading this correctly, the truck is trying to tell me that Jesus equals sweaty, screaming agony, and Satan equals Contestant Number Five at the West Hollywood Halloween Party. Mr. Red Abs and McSteamy Facial Hair is not the way to make homosexuality look unattractive.

I'm probably not that truck's target market, anyway, but still, that's my advice.