Sex and the City

Well here's something you don't see every day! The view from my office window just moments ago (NSFW, unless you work in a porno factory, which you might, I guess):



Look closely! The gentleman on top was borderline homeless. The lady on the bottom was a business lady in a suit. And that used to be the library! ON ROSA PARKS BOULEVARD. When they were done, they looked up and saw us all looking and taking pictures and waving and they ran off top speed. And here's the best part: he was wearing a shirt that said KEEP YOUR EYES ON JESUS.

Only one word will suffice, I think. C-L-A-S-S-Y.

Update: after looking at some of the pics other people took, we think we have deduced that the "lady" in question seems to be wearing a hotel uniform of some sort. So we're going to go into the two nearby hotels (we think it's the less-fancy one) and look at her all sideways like we know something.

Ballad of the Hot Beef Sundae

A couple of weekends ago, I went with my friend Meg (see milking parlor pic) to the sad, sad Tennessee State Fair. We heard somewhere it was the 49th worst state fair or something and I can't imagine which one is worse. There was lots to blog about and I might dole out a few stories over the next few days so that it's not one loooong post but I'll start with the Hot Beef Sundae.

Mmmmm! Pot roast with a scoop of mashed potatoes and then gravy and cheese and a cherry tomato. I'd eat it again, no problem. It would have been better if it hadn't been 90 degrees outside, but sometimes you just have to throw yourself on a sword, you know? We washed this down with a fried Goo Goo Cluster.

And then we died. Good thing Jesus was right next door to resurrect us...but more on that tomorrow.

Whatever, Lady

So take a look at this:



This is a big, not-very-good drawing of a knot I did a decade or so ago and for the past few years, it's been hanging in a local restaurant. It's not a great drawing - I have no particular love for it - but it's big and this restaurant needed big art so I let them have it and it's been profitable to do so, as people have contacted me about other work. So win-win, right?

Until. Last week, three African-American ladies - who are regular customers and have been for years and have always been perfectly charming - called the manager-on-duty over to the table to complain that they were highly upset about the racist artwork hanging in the restaurant. Befuddled, the manager asked, "huh?" and then one of them went on a bit about how the big drawing of the "noose" was racist and made her uncomfortable and they were all offended.

Now, I'll give you a second to go back and look at the drawing. Do you see a noose? Yeah, I didn't think so. It really has me befuddled, as if she had said "this painting of a duck offends me!"

I'm not bothered if the restaurateurs decide to remove the piece; it's theirs to do with as they please. And to their credit, it's still up and they seem as amazed by the whole thing as I am. But I am bothered in a larger way, a more political one. Has the social climate become so charged that even someone who is walking around not bothering to pay attention to reality - remember, not a noose in sight - can invent outrage out of thin air and prevail? It's not like it's a matter of opinion - again, no noose in sight - it's an argument against actual fact. I can't figure out a way to be on the winning side of this argument - either I say "no, madam, you obviously don't know what a noose looks like" and piss them off or I say "oh, gee, I see your point!" and take it down which I of course won't... because it's not a noose.

(Just thinking about it, though....I think those book pages that the drawing is on are from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities...in which case a noose would have been entirely appropriate! I must check the next time I'm in there; I can't remember what book I used for it.)

Anyway, at least they didn't comp her food. While she seemed incapable of choking down her "outrage," she had no trouble with the crab cakes, apparently.

The Trip to Bountiful

Enormous CSA basket this week. My mouth hurts from eating tomatoes already. That one yellowish stripey thing is some sort of Asian melon and I have no idea how to tell if it's ripe. The whitish thing to the right is a Lebanese squash, which tastes like regular squash. Two heads of lettuce. In August. That seems crazy. Seven pounds of tomatoes. Hahahaha. Seven pounds.

Eastward Ho! Days 9-11: The BORING states

Did you think I died on my way through Oklahoma and Arkansas? Well I almost DID. OF BOREDOM.

After I left Dodge City, I drove straight south and was happy to see some sunflowers in the Sunflower State.



I tried to see some buffalo on a prairie preserve, but I didn't see any and the Beetle has low clearance and the road was a little rutted so I was worried about that so I turned around and kept going across the border to Oklahoma and on to Tulsa.



This is what all of Oklahoma looks like:




You have to pay to get on the roads into Tulsa, which is a big fat joke because you pay and then you pay again and then your reward is....Tulsa! I kid! Tulsa looked fun. I was happy to see my old friends J&D, though I was disappointed that their new house didn't smell like Indian food like most of the places I had been staying. We went out to dinner at somewhere fancy, which wasn't easy because every restaurant in Tulsa is closed up on Sundays, let me tell you. I guess they're all in church eating wafers one at a time. I had a fig salad and some scallops. I don't have a picture of that, but here's a picture of my Dodge City Across-the-Street steak from the previous night, as well as the weirdest creme brulee I've ever had, which the bartender set on fire in front of me.





Anyway, my friends had a houseguest who was, hmmm, let me be kind....five-star crazy is about right, I guess, but not in a funny way so I sort of felt like I was in the way a little and that maybe they were going to kill the crazy person later and put her in a trunk. So I got out of there the next day, not wanting to be a witness to anything.

This was the worst day, from Tulsa all the way to Nashville, almost ten hours, most of it in the rain. God I hate Arkansas. I have Arkanseen it.

And that is the end of the trip. Mom and Dad beat me back and they close on a house today. Champagne for everyone! But mainly for me.

Eastward Ho! Day 8: Pueblo, CO ---> Dodge City, KS

Today was a sad day; this entire trip I've had it in my head that once I left Colorado, well, I was almost home. Through Kansas, drop down into Oklahoma for a nice dinner with my oldest friends in Tulsa and then straight through Arkansas - The Gem State! - and then home. And once I crossed the Kansas border, I admit I did feel a little down, though Kansas has a particular extreme quality that appeals to me. My disappointment doesn't have anything to do with Kansas itself, only that the geography is starting to signal the beginning of the end of one of the best things I've ever done. So the border crossing was bittersweet...and almost instantly classic Kansas.



Then on to Dodge City, which actually may be the saddest town I've yet visited. And I've been to Green River, Utah. By happy (?) coincidence, my friend Chris is either from here or maybe his grandmother just lives here...I never pay attention when he talks, so I don't really know. Anyway, he comes back to visit twice a year and is always telling me how awful it is and I always roll my eyes and say "now now, everyone says that about where they're from." WELL I WON'T SAY THAT ANY MORE. I asked the concierge (cough cough) about a decent place to eat and she recommended the Kentucky Fried Chicken. NOW. I don't have to have truffled risotto EVERY NIGHT but this is a strict no-fast-food trip. So I called Chris back in Nashville, who couldn't think of a place to recommend to me, so he called his fabulous father Charlie...who couldn't think of a place either, so he then called a friend who lives here and so on and so on and so on and in the end it looks like I'm having steak for dinner. Which makes sense, I guess, since I passed a hundred million cows in feed lots on the way into town. Yesterday I was in Royal Gorge; today, I am in the middle of a cattle feedlot, which I guess is a royal gorge of a different sort.



I made a quick trip to Boot Hill, an astonishingly tiresome imitation-recreation of an old west town built on a real site that would otherwise be compelling and interesting. It's too bad they don't know what they have; the actual museum is quite interesting (except for the part where you stand in a room and hear buffalo stampeding and the floor vibrates with threat; it's like that part at the Holocaust Museum where they make you walk through the train boxcar. Only different!) but it's all surrounded by so much fake stuff - the olde tyme ice creame parlore and the photographie shoppe and ye olde west footstoole museum - it sort of cancels the good stuff out. I like fake, but I like it to be completely sincere, if that makes any sense (though I will say...Dodge City houses the Kansas Teachers Hall of Fame & Gunfighters Wax Museum - THAT'S ONE THING in case you were wondering). This was very half-hearted fake, with local high school boys acting like cowboys and putting on medicine shows and not really bothering to believe any of it. It was a little like those people who when Halloween rolls around decide at the last second to dress up like a hobo because it's
easy.



Tomorrow, Oklahoma, which will be my first "new state" of the trip; I've been to all the others on the route before. Once I check off Oklahoma, I'll be up to 36 total. Stupid Nebraska; I've been all the way around it but never in it.

Oh and one more thing: when I was at Arches National Park, it seems Wall Arch collapsed. It has nothing to do with that Ziploc bag full of rocks in the car. NOTHING. I didn't even GO to Wall Arch.

Eastward Ho! Day 7: Grand Junction, CO ---> Pueblo, CO

Friday was a big day so I was out of Grand Junction by 7. By the way, if by "Grand," they mean "confusing," then they named it right. Otherwise: no. It's a confusing town where directions involve "oh, that's at the corner of F and 23 and a half." Really? Go fuck yourself, Grand Junction.



Anyway! Off to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, a truly staggering place. Like Arches, there's nothing to do but look, hike and gasp. So if that's not your thing, scroll down and read about the tourist trap I went to. I went below the rim of Black Canyon for a two-mile hike - the Oak Flat Loop - and I don't know how on earth I could have forgotten my eye-popping experience at the Grand Canyon a few years ago when I forgot that every step down meant one back up. But it wasn't quite that hard and it allowed for some astonishing views of the almost 90-degree vertical walls of the north rim.






I did my loop, gasped for air as I came back up to the rim and then got in the car and visited the their overlooks, the most amazing one being Painted Wall, the highest cliff in Colorado.



Oh! SIDEBAR! About superlatives: When I was talking about Great Basin a few days ago, I said it was our newest national park. WELL IT'S NOT. Black Canyon of the Gunnison is newer. And I think Congareee in SC might be newer than that even; I'm not quite sure when it switched over from a National Monument or whatever the hell it was before it was an official Park.

I was there about three hours total (moderately okay gift shop, with two books I almost bought but decided to Amazon later), then I hopped in the car and headed east across the continental divide. 58 degrees.



Now...my original plan was to turn south in Salida and visit one more National Park - Great Sand Dunes National Park - before the big push east begins in earnest on Saturday. At the absolute last opportunity to do so before the turn, I noticed that if I did that, I'd miss Royal Gorge. So because I'm spontaneous and not really a slave to my travel book that I put together, that's what I did...headed to Royal Gorge, which has the world's highest suspension bridge.

And it's a hilarious tourist trap! I loved it! I rode a cable car over the gorge, I rode an incline railway down to the bottom of the gorge, I petted a bighorn sheep, I ate a funnel cake. I walked across the bridge and then drove across it as well. It bounces, which I know it's supposed to do but halfway across the bridge I started singing under my breath to the car "bang bang chitty chitty bang bang chitty chitty bang bang I love you" because I had the distinct feeling that I was about to need to fly and/or float when the bridge gave way.





So that was exciting, because the trip has been very heavy on natural beauty and spiritual blah blah and except for the Kokopelli Fried Chicken, not very chintzy. Royal Gorge is privately held, and like most things like that, it's rinky-dink,, poorly signage-d, not handicap-accessible in any way and looks borderline unsafe. Seriously, I expected at least five children to fall to their deaths there, it's so not well-designed safety-wise. I kept hoping anyway, but no dice. It really makes you admire the National Parks Service because in comparison, they're practically a model of organization and clarity. But! BEST GIFT SHOP ever, except for maybe the Trees of Mystery gift shop in Klamath, CA. I cut a swath through the Royal Gorge gift shop like a lumberjack with a chain saw. So check your stockings this Christmas!

On the way from Royal Gorge to Pueblo, I saw this sign. I have no idea what it means, but it works on many many levels.



Then I headed on to Pueblo to try and watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. How'd that guy run sideways up in the air like that? Those crazy Chinese! I did think the globe thing was cool, because when I was a child, I thought people in China walked upside down on the other side of the world because I was right-side up. And wa-la! There they were walking upside down!

Today I head to Dodge City, where I am scheduled to shoot the person of my choice on Main Street at sunset. Will it be you? Stay tuned!