What Paradise Looks Like
Photo taken by jaq when she was in Phoenix this March, and slightly doctored by me. (This post is tagged “Texas” because Bluebell is a Texas thang.)
south of the loop
Texas Roots
On the 22 Clark bus on my way home. Talking to my mom.
Me: Oh! Ohohoh! I just saw a coyote in the cemetery!
Mom: Your Uncle Tom caught one a couple days ago.
Me: I don’t think I want to hear about this.
Mom: He had a trap set up.
Me: I don’t think I want to hear about this.
Mom: And then he shot it.
Me: Yeah. I didn’t want to hear about that.
* * *
current book: I really just need to suck it up and pick up Kavalier & Clay again. I put it down for The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, but for some reason I’m just not motivated to get back into it.
current music: Anner Bylsma’s rendition of Bach’s Cello Suites. It’s my writing music. I’ve been listening at work to try to get more writing done, but who the fuck can do work when there’s SIX FUCKING INCHES OF SNOW IN THE FORECAST?! Honestly, this winter is ruining my life. It is an evil, soul-sucking, spirit-breaking behemoth. Somebody please make it go away.
current socks: Excellent Easter socks: two bright orange carrots on each sock with a gleeful white bunny at the top.
Sign City
Austin is not what I’d call a particularly beautiful city; although relatively small, it sprawls, like most Texas cities, spreading from the State Capitol into suburban-esque neighborhoods punctuated by strip malls and monster grocery stores. The areas around the city center have the most character, with pockets of historic homes with purple front doors and stretches of the funky boutiques and independent coffee shops you’d expect near a major university. Burnet Road, one of the main drags northwest of downtown, feels delightfully haphazard, with faux-adobe Tex-Mex restaurants next to baroque neon signs advertising Japanese food, all next door to a run-down car dealership or an even shadier business. Once escaped from the downtown grid, the streets meander like rivers, looping this way and that with no apparent method. From a distance, and on a clear day, the skyline is small and bright and sparkling above the Colorado River. A little closer, and you’ll see dozens of people running and walking along the river path, most of them wearing burnt orange.
Despite its happy-go-lucky layout and its suburban stretches, there is something striking and beautiful about Austin: its signs. Every shop, restaurant, cafe, seems to have made their sign as much of a destination as the store itself. Neon, shimmering reflective orbs, unusual fonts, paint thrown over the entire store front. And they weren’t just for self-promotion—the city has absorbed a Tex-Mex sensibility for color, painting doors bright azul y rojo, populating their outdoor seating with bright lime and lemon chairs, concocting mad neon designs. I’ve never seen a city with so many beautiful, wonderful, crazy signs. I’m angry at myself for forgetting my camera on Saturday, which was perfect and sunny and bright, and when Laura and I wandered around shops in the North Loop District, one of the better areas for sign-watching. (The North Loop District is one of those stretches of funky boutiques that pops up in the midst of an otherwise dull stretch of road.) I remembered my camera on Monday—the weather was grayer, so the contrast isn’t as good (also, my camera sucks)—and I took pictures of nearly every sign I came across. Here’s a few.
Frisbees
I got sort of obsessed with two stacks of frisbees on Laura & Mark’s back deck. The dirty, bright plastic disks contrasted so starkly with the half-green, half-dead grassy expanse behind their house. This was one of my favorite shots. There are more.
* * *
current book: Nearly halfway through with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The book itself might be nearly perfect. My problem is that I don’t have a deep or inherent connection to comic books, and I really really really want that to better appreciate this book. I’ve long been fascinated with the American idea of the superhero, especially Superman, but I’ve never really taken that fascination into any serious study of comic books. Kavalier & Clay is, so far, a rich and expansive fictional exploration of the beginnings of the the comic superhero in the 1930s. I just want to love it more, if that makes sense.
current music: Neko Case, Live from Austin TX. LOVE IT. She does a bunch of songs from her first album, Canadian Amp, which was the only album to her name when I saw her on my birthday years ago at the now-defunct Volcano Room in Indianapolis. My girl-crush on her grows and grows. Up next, a few CDs I bought at Waterloo Records yesterday: Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, The Spinto Band’s nice and nicely done, and Jamie Lidell’s Multiply.
current socks: Yesterday I wore my new fair isle SmartWools in a lovely brown and green design. Today, relatively boring red SmartWools with an abstract snowflake design. But boring won’t matter in a few hours when the temperatures drop from 45F to 5F. Can’t wait for that.
Flip Flops in January
Believe it.
Thundersnow
The winter storm advisory in effect for Chicago right now states in part:
SNOW IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP AROUND MIDNIGHT TONIGHT AND CONTINUE INTO FRIDAY MORNING AND LAST UNTIL ABOUT NOON ON FRIDAY. THE SNOW MAY BE HEAVY AT TIMES WITH SNOWFALL RATES OF 1 TO 2 INCHES PER HOUR AT THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM. WITH THESE HIGH RATES OF SNOWFALL…SOME THUNDERSNOW IS POSSIBLE AS WELL. (emphasis mine, but the caps belong to the National Weather Service)
I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced this thundersnow phenomenon, or even heard of it, despite having lived in cold climes the better part of the last ten years. (I even just asked Google if it was a typo). I grew up in Dallas, where we used to get sent home from high school in the middle of the day if the s-word was even in the forecast, and where the entire city shut down if so much as a half-inch of snow fell. (As I write this, Dallas is getting a freak snowstorm. I trust that all the girls at my alma mater got sent home midday at the latest).
I used to think I liked cold weather, and I harbored romantic notions of attending a small liberal arts college in New England, where I would attend class in red-brick buildings wrapped in bright fall foliage, and then, much later in the season, I would curl up with a mug of hot chocolate, read Aristotle, and watch the snow fall.
I did attend that small New England liberal arts college and I did read lots of Aristotle. I also froze my ass off beginning around the second week in September. Don’t scoff: the average high in September in Dallas is 89F (that’s 32C, Tim).When proud New Englanders tell you they’ve got four seasons, they neglect to mention that three of them are cold. The fact that Autumn could bring temperatures below 50F (10C) wasn’t even in my frame of reference. When I called home my freshman year to tell my parents about the first real snow fall–early November–my mom thought I was playing a joke on her.
The good thing about surviving winters in New England or the Midwest is that these places are, of course, equipped to handle it. My college had all the sidewalks neatly shoveled no later than 8am, and both Indianapolis and Chicago have their salt trucks out long before I ever need to be anywhere. And, having now survived a decade of these winters, I at least have winter coats and woolly accoutrements.
That doesn’t mean I’ve learned to like winter, though. In fact, I probably like it less the more I get used to it. In Dallas, snow was such a novelty! Two inches, and all the kids are outside trying to scrape enough together for snowmen and snow fights. Parents, too. People stay home from work and school and indulge in the wintery comforts you see in Lands’ End catalogues–we’d light fires, make hot chocolate, snuggle up with old movies or a good book. It’s no wonder I thought New England would be day upon day of crackling fireplaces, since I had never really thought about what it would be like to have to deal with snow every day for months at a time. Scraping windshields, schlepping through muddied slush, getting salt all over your shoes. Digging your car out of the snowdrifts made by the snow plough. Months of skies that feel like they’ll never be sunny again.
So, Dallasites: enjoy your freak thundersnow! When I wake up tomorrow and it’s white outside, I’ll pretend I’m back in Texas.
* * *
current book: Yeah. I picked up the latest Economist and left Moby-Dick at home today. I’ll pick it up again. I will.
current music: Soon it will be the sound of snow falling…
current socks: White with bears and moose ice-skating.
Favorite Holiday Memory
My second Christmas. I was 16 months old, so I don’t really remember it, but I could never forget those yard decorations! I was crushed when we moved and got rid of them.
Rough, Tough, and Dangerous
The tattoo is a heart with a mustache in support of Mustaches for Kids, which I first read about last week in Chicagoist.
This past weekend I:
- ate at least four plates full of Tex-Mex food
- drank many a margarita
- went to a gay cowboy bar
- sang loudly to country radio (I’m still a 96.3 KSCS girl, it seems)
- got a (temporary) tattoo
- discovered a dish (at Breadwinner’s, home of such inspired dishes as banana nut bread french toast) known as Manuel’s Eggs, which may have exponentially increased the quality of my life
- went for a run wearing shorts and a t-shirt
- purchased two CDs (Los Amigos Invisibles’ The Venezuelan Zinga Son Vol. 1 and the Gothic Archies’ Tragic Treasury, a collection of songs from the Series of Unfortunate Events audio tapes)
- did not break my personal record in Bluebell-eating (which currently stands at one-half gallon plus one-half pint in four days)
- did put a good-sized dent in a half gallon of Bluebell Cookies n’ Cream
- saw several old friends
- partied much, slept little
- watched Elf and two episodes of Deadwood
- ate at Taco Bueno
- got the first hangover I’ve had in a very long time
- heard a Beatles cover band perform music for a Hora
- watched my beautiful friend L.E. marry an equally incredible guy
* * *
current book: took a break from Moby-Dick this weekend. To be resumed tomorrow morning once I’ve recovered some sleep. Am dead fucking tired right now.
current music: I still need to load my two recent purchases onto my iPod. Last week I listened to Mason Jennings’ Boneclouds at least five times, and you should too.
current socks: brown, green, and blue, in sort of a faux-argyle pattern.
Releasing My Inner Groupie
Kathleen Edwards/Gomez/etc. details to follow …
Reaching My Limits
I am too stuffed full of Bluebell and queso to think, much less write, coherently. So for now, a list of how I spent my weekend at Austin City Limits:
- Paolo Nutini (a Scotsman, strangely enough)
- Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
- Stars (best set of Friday)
- Nickel Creek (they covered “Toxic”!!!!)
- Cat Power & The Memphis Rhythm Band
- Gomez
- Ray Lamontagne (zzzzzz)
- Ben Kweller (only half a set; a bloody nose left him unable to play, even after stuffing a tampon up his nose. I have to say, I use tampons on a regular basis, and it would NEVER OCCUR TO ME to stuff one up my nose, even to stop a blood flow.)
- Nada Surf (for their last song, they brought out the two Calexico trumpeters)
- TV on the Radio (bad sound, unfortunately, so I couldn’t really enjoy them)
- CALEXICO (front row center. Martin Wenk, one of the trumpeters, caught my eye and laughed at me during their last song. I’m not sure if it was because I knew all the words to Guero Canelo–basically a list of drugs, not an easy song to learn the lyrics to–or because, by that point, I was covered in dirt and no doubt resembled a farm animal more than a woman)
- What Made Milwaukee Famous
- Iron & Wine
- Willie Nelson (another show with bad sound–made worse by the gargantuan crowd, since I couldn’t get any closer than a half mile away–so I only saw a song or two before heading over to Massive Attack)
- Massive Attack
- The Stills
- Kathleen Edwards
- Sam Roberts
- Lou Ann Barton (one of the best sets of Sunday)
- KT Tunstall
- Jose Gonzalez
- Matisyahu
- Son Volt
- The New Pornographers (they had NEKO with them, who is the only person who could rival my Calexico crush. I met her years ago on my birthday at a tiny, now-defunct venue called the Volcano Room, and I’ve been smitten ever since.)
- The Greencards (great bluegrass, but badly drowned out by Ben Harper)
