Carmel by the Sea

Barton Springs

Barton Springs is a spring fed public swimming pool in the city of Austin, Texas. The spring water comes from a nearby limestone aquifer.

The people who swim hear, on what I assume to be a regular basis, seem fittingly hirsute and or/ aged as if to blend in with the large slabs of limestone at the bottom of the pool and the algae covered man made interventions, like the hand rails and slimy steps down into water.

German Texas

At some point in the recent past Germans settled into this part of Texas (Boerne, New Braunfels, Fredricksburg, Comfort etc ). I'd like to think their responsible for the type of Barbecue served in the area and the kinds of clothing you find that they might have left behind in the thrift stores: functional and standard in every way. The Barbecue feels the same, but the emphasis is on craft, and perhaps a purist approach. The menus in the restaurants are to the point, only giving essential information.

The eccentricities of the German settlers may have been left behind in the Black Forest but not their love for kitsch and practicality. The sculpture garden near downtown Boerne can attest to this, where the meaning of sculpture has been evaluated by its most time tested expressions. These accepted forms bring to light the long legacy of representational sculptures of small children, larger than life renditions of prickly pears in steel, and chrome whirligigs.

The Saltlick:

blackberry cobbler with blue bell vanilla ice cream

the spread of brisket sausage and ribs on each plate served with top split hot dog buns, pickles and onions. The sides served with the meat were somewhat sub-par. The beans were a little unmemorable, the potato salad was warm with lots of mustard, hence the yellowish color and the slaw was just cabbage dressed with mayo white vinegar and sesame. But I guess you don't go to the Saltlick for the sides... Although, the moist brisket called 'marbled' brisket was a little lean for my tastes.

TX; part 2

We've been in TX for 4 days plus the night we came in. All the drinks I've had came in a Styrofoam cup. The sweet tea tastes like syrup, but in a good way. And the small size is large.

 

Fair Oaks Ranch is the the neighborhood where David grew up. It used to be one continuous ranch totaling some 5,000 acres. Now it's been divided into several different suburban communities like Deer Meadows, Fair Oaks Garden, or Windermere. The roads curve and wind and are filled with trucks, SUVs and deer, some dead.

Fast food, albeit is fast food, and I'm not here to tell you anything different. However, I sense there is a subtly to the fast food of Texas not as fleshed out in any other part of the country.  I might dare to say that the folks down here value their fast food, even uplift it to a different standard, as if to exist in world devoid of diabetes and obesity and filled to the brim with simple and basic olfactory pleasures derived from animal. 

The circle west; part 1

The conference ended around 5pm and David and I decided to locate little Phnom Penh in the LBC. We had heard from Zac Holtzman that 'Stacys' was one of the best Cambodian restaurants in the area. Our trip to Texas seemed to be coalescing on the horizon and this meal seemed to be the perfect dispatch.

'Stacys' was set in a large flat stuccoed building with terracotta roof tiles, the seating like a streamlined diner or a train-car. The junior waiter or food runner seemed nervous like he was waiting to make someone smile.

The first dish that came was Such KohNgeat (Beef Jerky), described in the menu as a slow cured beef that is made moist by deep frying. The dish came with a rice vinegar sauce with black pepper that added a slight sweetness to the deep beefy flavor of the dish, which was also more like extreme dry aged beef rather than say Jack Links, which is the unfortunate association to the word 'jerky.'

 

 The second dish was Thai Boat Noodles at medium spicy, which was barely tolerable for David. He said he felt like Bud from  Kill Bill when he gets stung in the face by a black mamba. This dish came with thinly sliced beef, tripe, and 'beef ball' which was sort of like a ball of bratwurst. The most enjoyable part of boat noodles must be the masochistic amount of heat derived from the fresh or sometimes fried chilies and paired with a rich beef broth. The dish also came with Chinese broccoli which set off a pleasant texture difference and slight bitterness to the soup. 

The final dish was Ngorm Sdao or sdao salad with 'three layer fat pork.' Sdao, something I've never heard of or had till today, seems like a mustard like green but had the flavor and feeling of bitter melon in the mouth, except slightly more refreshing than bitter but still severe. The dressing paired nicely for its simplicity: rice vinegar and fish sauce.

Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times has a disposable quality. How can I qualify this? It must be the pace of the film, having a speed slightly faster than reality- 24fps. Within the night time department store a new world opens up to Chaplin's character and that of the young street urchin. Oversized beds, large pieces of cake, gargantuan barrels of gin, port, whiskey, endless sandwiches-so large they bow at either end when held in the middle. This is hunger.

The opulent life of Hollywood films, and the Hearst Castle is seemingly caricatured here as well. But the decadence of this moment is fleeting. Such opulence passes quickly through the hands of Chaplin and his companion. The notion of dreaming is paralleled well here, having the sequence take place at night, in the abandoned department store, and all of it dissipating in an instant the next dreary and hungover morning. The young street Urchin flees the scene in the morning under the ever-watchful eye of the clock, a reminder of 'reality.' Its gaze dutifully sees her out of the store before the store opens and resumes its intended purpose as place of both capitalist transaction and capitalist dream.

The clock is the ultimate conceptual map of the city, perfect in every sense. While the clock has no actual power of physical coercion it keeps the order of the urban hierarchy in tact. It signals the beginning and end of the work day. It is the mechanical coalescence of order, it overlays a synchronized conceptual map of human experience in the urban setting (see Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth)

 Yet as we accept the presence of time, we can also bend it and mold it into a far different map within those initial constraints. This is evident in the ways that era's past are re-imagined and re-historicized, framed through different theoretical approaches, i.e. the feminist reading (blatant example).

Last Day in New York

Met T-FUDGE in front of the Victoria Secret boutique at the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Ave and 34th Street. Waiting inside the boutique, before she arrived, I rode up and down the white-railing-ed escalators -the profuse smell of saccharine perfumes wafting about. I watched folk, young and old, black and white, dig through drawers of push-up bras, lacy panties, and gold glitter printed pullover sweaters. I almost bumped into a lady backing up to instagram a truly monumental store display: it was wreathed in magenta-pink velvet upholstered benches, and crowned atop with an ostrich feather-ed wing-ed victory mannequin -headless -a classic reference to classical statuary, except lamé silver paint-ed with black lingerie.

I stepped through the revolving doors, past the eastern European tourists in Ugg boots, and stood in the middle of the sidewalk. I situated myself behind a young couple -girl and boy- taking a photograph of themselves in front of the world's largest Macy's. T-FUDGE appeared then, ten feet in front of me, moving diagonally through the crosswalk densely grey with afternoon shoppers. I watched T-FUDGE scan the crowd, like a lost cat, trying blindly to pick up the scent of a lost hot cat piss trail. I walk towards her as if to shoulder her in the face.


My iphone dies.

T-FUDGE and I walk down Broadway to the Korean food court on 33rd street. We leave there and walk to the Ace Hotel on 28th and Broadway. T-FUDGE walks up a set of marble stairs and down the other side just to be on the other side of the lobby. Our path crosses a woman with a similar intent. A over size American flag, as if taken from the Miley Cyrus music video Party in the U.S.A., is hung above the bar. There is a brown animal-looking fur skin draped on a couch- it could be teddy bear. I could have also cradled the butts of countless wealthy celebrities. There is a pair of stuffed badgers in a glass case that faces a long black table. The table is cut down the center by a row of antique reading lamps, identical. Their shape and design is suggestive of municipal use. The light is more than dim. Everyone seated there is illuminated more brightly by the soft chrome glow of their personal computing devices.

Opening Ceremony at the Ace Hotel:  we squat on the floor -as if we were preparing to defecate in a Japanese toilet- reading fashion editorials. Dazed and Confused was admired for its particularly aesthetically pleasing spreads. We touch everything, move every coat hanger in the store, unzip and open every wallet and bag, and then leave.

D-PANTS is at the MoMa. We're late, we don't care, we want to see Times Square. We leave the Ace Hotel and walk past all the wholesale jewelery and bead stores. People are jam packed trying to see the Broadway musical, Annie, on a Friday night. Five lucky people on the Bank of America red ticket steps get their faces superimposed on cartoon images of the statue of liberty on a 10ft by 20ft LED screen facing southwards. We walk to MoMa.


Waiting in the museum lobby we are gestured at to leave the closing museum.  A girl passes wearing a light blue fur hat with ear flaps. I have to use the bathroom now- #2 @hiltonavenueoftheamericas. D-PANTS and T-FUDGE are preparing to be coolly be ejected from the Hilton- being that my approach in their periphery vision appears like the gait and uniform of a Hilton employee who's sole job is to eject bums and lumpens from the Hotel lobby. Bums and lumpens who are waiting on a friend in the toilet to make an efficient but overly caffeinated deposit into the municipal waste disposal infrastructure of midtown Manhattan via the Hilton on 6th Ave.

 A dinner at a Japanese restaurant ensued.

In Bushwick on the rooftop of D-PANTS' studio building we looked at a graffiti painting of a cat that looked liked it had blood in its mouth. D-PANTS played with fire, and somewhere in the distance Kelly Clarkson songs were being played. D-PANTS needs an instagram.

at Myrtle Willoughby TEDRTLE, T-FUDGE and I watched the first ten minutes of Boogie Nights. T-FUDGE and I drank sprite and whiskey and ate cheezits. I looked at pictures of T-FUDGE's B-Day party at her place of employment, one of the pix featured a cosmopolitan cocktail in the foreground, garnished with a hear-shaped piece of watermelon, beside a white stage set and white spiral staircase set against black in the background. T-FUDGE falls asleep.