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I Agree with Every Damn Thing Obama Does

I agree with every damn thing Obama does.

It's as simple as that.

Tired of not being covered for your pre-existing medical condition? Solved!

Hate pissing away our blood and treasure in foreign wars? Ended!

Tired of Wall Street stealing you blind? Reformed!

Oval Office redecoration? Lovely!

It took eight years for this country to be destroyed and it won't be fixed in two, so I don't know what people are bitching about.

UNLESS ...

We've just become soft.

Doughy.

Morbidly Fat and Happy.

We've forgotten how to suffer and be Americans.

We liked getting our yearly $300.00 checks from Bush/Cheney, even though China was picking up the bill. It was kind of cake for the masses. Moon cakes. On a credit card.

We loved fighting wars we didn't have to fight. Shared sacrifice our ass; It didn't have to be our kids. Put that on the card too.

And we adore sucking down a Mexican joint at wine and dine parties with our yuppie friends, never mindful that it costs a few decapitations and mutilated children for the high. Sorry, still cash only.

And that's just off the top of my head ... complain about this President and you betray to everyone just how limp and wimpy you really are ...

My God what happened to you man ... where's your pride?

Peel 'em and Eat 'em Shrimp

Faced with pangs of hunger for something more than a baloney sandwich, yet not possessing the strength to prepare anything more complicated, I decided to go simple and messy.

The most difficult part was mixing the dipping sauces ... I chose to make classic seafood cocktail with LOTS of horseradish, creamy tartar with plenty of relish, capers, lime juice and cilantro, and for a Mexican touch, guacamole.

Chef at the restaurant thinks I put too much garlic in my guacamole ... for that matter so does my family in Mexico ... of course this is nonsense; you can never have too much garlic in anything  ;-)

The boiling water was salty-salty with a helping of San Francisco Bay seasoning, and I picked up a sourdough boule, just in case any sauces were leftover and wanting of attention.

All in all, it was a most satisfying dinner, whipped together pretty quickly and effortlessly. The most time was spent waiting for the photographer and food stylist.

Twister

A couple of weeks ago we had a tornado in Dallas.

In fifty years I have never seen a tornado in person before, and considering where I live you would think it would be as casual as seeing cows.

Once in Mexico I was indoors and suddenly out of nowhere a cold wind blew through and everything in the garden stood up on its hind legs. Laundry, dust, scrap paper, all of it suddenly whirled-up in the air. I ran outdoors and a funnel passed over the house, and I excitedly pointed up in the air and said, "Tornado! Look!"

"Noooooo Gringo," they said, as lackadaisical as if they'd seen a cow, "It's a remolino." Cold air comes down from the mountains in the afternoon and mixes with the hot desert air in the valleys and creates these 500 foot high whirlwinds.

With civil defense sirens going off that Wednesday and the thickness of the air and the lowness of the scudding clouds, I knew I was going to see a twister. I had even been following it on radar and knew where to look. I saw the wall cloud, but buildings and things were in the way from my vantage point and I couldn't see anything.

As it turns out, it was a very very polite tornado, mostly kicking up dust and debris, then casually flinging an 18-wheeler into a warehouse, and no one was hurt. It was the perfect tornado for Dallas: All of the drama and none of the commitment.

Dreamtime

After what has arguably with few exceptions been the dullest forty-five years of car design, finally some cars are coming around that get my blood pumping.

I nabbed this pic from the Mercedes Facebook page (figured they wouldn't mind)  ... but it doesn't near do it justice. Someone keeps pulling up in front of the restaurant in an SLS AMG just like this one, and the valets do their duty and park it as conspicuously as possible so that mere mortals can bask in its glory and walk away swearing a new purpose in life.

If car companies designed cars like this all along they wouldn't be mere bankrupt companies, they would be nation states.

Step up!

Kenneth Special K

This is Kenneth Special K.

He is a dancer who specializes in "popping", the sort of jerky robotic-like movements in some flavors of hip-hop dancing. Lucky for me, he also likes to model.

 

In person he really seems to be like any goth guy with tats and piercings. On the street he wouldn't get a second look, but in front of the camera he blossoms and becomes something else much more compelling.

We had a lot of fun during the photoshoot and hope to do more soon.

On Being a Restaurant Reviewer: A Guide

What actually possesses a person to want to write restaurant reviews is beyond explanation. A simple answer is that he does it for the attention, which is ridiculous because attention is the last thing a good reviewer needs.

To this end, as a budding reviewer do not use a plain name to make your reservation. The surnames Smith or Jones have been done to death, and America is vastly more cosmopolitan these days. Choose something with more vowels than consonants and you will blend right in.

If your cover is blown at the door, don't write about it later. Nobody cares.

Complaining about the noise and temperature is fruitless. "Quiet" restaurants often close quickly because nobody goes to them, and your personal warmth can be well regulated by wearing pants. Move on.

If you want to maintain your anonymity, never ask what part of the Atlantic your salmon came from. Nothing will show your hand more. The question is probably unanswerable because who ever really knows where one's food comes from, and real guests are more concerned with having enough rolls.

Don't bitch about the service. You are gambling on the tender mercies of someone who, for their part, is sizing you up for a tip. After years of hard knocks, your server has developed the antennae of a customs official, and his vast experience tells him that you are, in a word, lousy. If you want excellent service, tip first and ask for extras later. Not only will this assure you the quality of service you have paid for, but oral/genital contact is not out of the question.

Actually, writing anything beyond a simple "Try the veal" once you get to your review is treading on dangerous ground because a reviewer who dwells on such details on the premise that "his readers demand it" is dealing cavalierly with his career, as he is depending on someone who may or may not chance upon his work while sitting on the toilet.

Cody Whitley

These are a few shots I did Monday for Cody Whitley, a model from Dallas.

 

 

REALLY??

Oh well, the best of intentions ...

After promising to blog more, I went from not only writer's block, to writer's blockade, as Fran Leibowitz once put it. Not that I haven't been busy. A lot of my energy has been channeled into my photography as well as my other work.

It hasn't been for lack of current events to comment upon that I have been not writing, simply that I try not to comment upon the obvious. It is this philosophy which dovetails nicely with my new phavorite popular phrase of late, "REALLY??!"

The word as an economical catch-all has always been there. These days I think it borrows from the Warholian "Really?" that he used to mean all sorts of things, from genuine curiosity to breathless excitement to overt suspicion to outright boredom, as evidenced in Bob Colacello's great book about his Factory tenure, Holy Terror.

Actually, I have always said "Really?" reflexively, as a go-to, a conversational bridge, something to facilitate the flow. A client once told me that my "Really?" sounded like "You expect me to believe that horseshit?" He might have been right.

Which leads us back to to its current usage, recently popularized by the exquisitely brilliant "Really?" segment on Saturday Night Live, in which obvious horseshit is debunked by a punctuated "Really??!" that lands with the force of a battle-ax secretary stamping the morning mail.

After all, subjected to the fantastic lies of the past decade, it is the most mannerly and appropriate response to the horseshit they have been trying to feed us, from "Mission Accomplished" to "The Five Million Gallons of Oil Spilled in the Gulf has Magically Dispersed" to "That drink will be eighteen dollars sir" to "Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like Ben Affleck?"

REALLY??!

(Full disclosure: OK, that last one I did fall for and it did lead to a happy ending ... what, REALLY?? As if I was gonna walk away?)

Listen closely to young people when they say "Really?" It has that extra layer of feigned innocence, like the promise of Santa Claus coming to town, but its bitter cynicism is palpable.

If they aren't buying the horseshit, then maybe there is hope after all.

Back in the Saddle

I am writing this from a dry arroyo in Northern Mexico located between dueling narco-terrorists and I am the only one who is getting the story out via satellite hookup . . .

OK, so I'm bored at work.

Remember Snoopy? "Here's the WW1 Flying Ace . . ."

Wisteria