Uncategorized

No time to write lately. My energies have been consumed with landscaping. Here are the results thusfar. Again…I know that most of you don’t care about my yard. I’m really posting this for my parents and some friends.

This is the front yard, which I landscaped and planted in April. My-oh-my, how my little sprouts have grown.

BTW…that’s an almond tree in the foreground and an olive tree in the background.

Same front yard from the other direction.

This is the side yard. I did the lay-out this weekend. Ahem…ALL weekend. I’ll spread dark-gray pebbles (same as those in the front yard) over the landscape fabric next month. I’ll plant various drought-resistance aromatic bushes (lavender, thyme, rosemary, santolina and sage…same as in the front yard) next Spring.

BTW…that’s a fig tree.

Same side yard, from the other direction.

This is the far corner where my two side yards meet. I’ve ear-marked this large hunk of dirt as my daughter’s vegetable garden–in the hope that by growing her own vegetables, she might actually eat vegetables.

I refer to that patio space in the foreground as “The BBQ Lounge.” BTW…that’s not a UFO sitting in The BBQ Lounge. It’s a good ol’ American firepit–bought at a Chicago-area KMart and hand-carried across the Atlantic Ocean.

And finally…my other side yard. This is a Weber Grill’s-eye view.

My Ricola-chawing, leiderhosen-wearing, perpetually-yodelling friend, Canadian-Swiss, tagged me on a meme recently. She also tagged Tiiiiina, TBFs and Michael.

Memes are always good fodder for easy, gratuitous blog meat…especially at the fingertips of a currently less-than-motivated blogger. So, here goes.

6 WEIRD THINGS THAT I DO WHILE GETTING READY TO SLEEP OR WHILE SLEEPING.

1. My pre-bedtime, metrosexual routine: Wash hands; remove contact lenses; wash face; brush teeth; floss teeth (it’s important, folks!); wipe-down face with an astringent (preferably Aqua-Glycolic, but normally Clean ‘n Clear); spot-treatment using AcneFree (because it has very little benzoyle peroxide and thus won’t bleach my pillowcases). Yes…as you might’ve gathered, I have pretty oily skin.

2. For most of my life, I slept on my stomach. Over time, however, this proved to be murder on my neck. So with a considerable amount of effort, I trained myself–about fifteen years ago–to fall asleep on my back each night. To this day, however, I’ve almost never wake-up in the morning on my back.

3. I don’t snore. I don’t thrash-around. I almost never need night-time wee-wee breaks. I just don’t. Wee-wee breaks were, for some reason, a source of fixation for the others who were tagged on the meme. I felt obligated to make some mention of it myself.

4. Falling asleep usually isn’t a problem–mainly because of the excessive quantities of exercise that I get each day. During times of stress, however, waking up at 2-4am (and staying awake) is a frequently a problem.

5. Without an alarm clock, I’ll wake-up between 7am and 8:30am. No later. This is true regardless of how late I stayed up the night before. To me, there are few feelings as utterly miserable as sleeping late in the morning. The day is wasted, and the mind and body feel like they’re swimming in glue for the remainder of the day. Total, complete misery. Ick! Makes me shudder just thinking about it. I don’t know how 99.999% of the Spanish population can do it.

6. I’ve more or less trained myself to realize when I’m dreaming that I am, in fact, dreaming. I can’t always do it, but it happens often enough. It’s called “lucid dreaming”–i.e., knowing that you are dreaming and controlling what happens in those dreams. Lemme tell you…it’s fun!

BONUS FACTOID: Somewhere out there in cyberspace is another blog that I write. It’s an anonymous blog. It’s pretty much a download of the bizarre dreams that I’ve had–written in as much detail as I can remember, and written asap after waking-up. I haven’t been terribly diligent with its upkeep. But there’s enough material in there to be pretty interesting. Beside me, only one other person in the world knows where that blog is located and has read it. Only one.

Intriguing, eh?

Doing my part to assure both the continued solvency of Iberia Airlines and the continued tenacity of global warming, I stuffed a disintegrating passport into my back pocket and–for the second time in three weeks–returned to Chicago.

What can I say? I have to get my “Malcolm in the Middle” fix somehow.

But watching television in a language that I can actually understand wasn’t my goal for this trip. At least, it wasn’t my main goal.

No…I had a more important mission. Specifically, to taste, savor, digest–and hopefully not regurgitate–as much midwestern US kitsch as would be humanly (if not humanely) possible.

Mission accomplished! As you’ll soon see.

And, so…with that background in mind, I am pleased to present to my long-suffering, oft-neglected readers…SAL’S KITSCH-O-LICIOUS TOUR ’07.

But first, a little something to put us all in the mood!

MY FLIGHT OVER: A BRUSH WITH GREATNESS.

I knew that my Kitsch-o-licious Tour would be a smashing success, and I knew it before I even left Madrid.

How so? Because as I walked down the airplane aisle in search of seat 27D, I noticed that my seatmate was a slumping, disshevelled dude who looked like the fruit of a coital coupling between Will Ferrell and Hellboy.

I gingerly lowered myself into the seat–hoping not to disturb him. And also hoping that the undercover air marshals were both nearby and fully-caffeinated.

But as it turned out, I had nothing to fear. My seatmate wasn’t Satan’s spawn. He was this man:

Santa Fe artist and documentary film-maker Adam Jonas Horowitz.

And what makes Adam great? Well, Adam is the artist that created this:

Fridgehenge (aka, Stonefridge)!

Perhaps you’ve heard of it. About a decade ago, Adam swaggered over to a Santa Fe landfill and built a Stonehenge reproduction made entirely of discarded refrigerators.

Loved and hated in equal parts, Fridgehenge has been the subject of a decade-long battle of wills between Adam and the artists community vs. Santa Fe’s Sanitation Department and other humorless tight-asses.

Adam was the most fascinating seatmate I’ve had. He chatted half the flight away, talking about the documentary that he is filming for PBS (currently in the editing stage, it’s about US weapons testing in the Marshall Islands)…talking about why he looked as frightening as he did (he had been partying in Morocco and hadn’t slept for three days)…and making an omnious prediction.

His prediction was that Santa Fe officials would take advantage of his extended absence by whacking Fridgehenge once and for all–and then, blaming it on the weather.

Well, guess what? HERE’S what.

LET THE TOUR BEGIN! FIRST STOP ON THE TOUR: SMOKIN’ JAC’S.

We all were introduced to Smokin’ Jac’s BBQ Shack in THIS post.

Remember? Smokin’ Jac is the man that car-jacked the Partridge Family, stole their bus, sawed the ass off of it and bolted a smoker the size of Pennsylvania to its floorboard.

He then finds a cozy-looking parking lot, parks the bus, fires-up the smoker and slings Q to passers-by until his inventory is depleted or the local health inspector leaps from the bushes–whichever occurs first.

With the aid of a local intermediary, I made contact with Smokin’ Jac a week earlier…and he confirmed that he would be peddlin’ Q throughout the entire weekend of my visit.

Well…Smokin’ Jac was either a liar, or narcoleptic, or had just completed a course in Spanish Business Practices.

Why? Because when I arrived at his bus–licking my chops and pining for a little “rib tips, chix and ore”–the only thing smoking was a well-tattooed woman in a tube top standing in the adjoining parking lot.

Still, a legend is a legend–even if that legend was lying dead in a ditch at that very moment. So I decided that I should, at least, seize the opportunity for an impromptu photo-op in front of the legend’s arsenal.

NEXT STOP: DOGGIE DRIVE-THRU.

My mourning at the loss of Smokin’ Jac didn’t last long. In fact, it lasted only long enough for me to turn my head to the right.

That’s when I saw a sight that cranked the kitsch-o-meter up another notch. Doggie Drive-thru!

I’m sure you’ll agree that there are few things as dangerous as driving around with a hungry dog in the backseat of your Toyota Prius. What if he tries to eat your head at 65 mph?

But the good citizens of this sleepy midwestern town need not worry about Bowser’s rolling blood lust. That’s because Doggie Drive-thru sells a wide assortment of baked-goods to sate your famished pooch. And best of all, you can buy them without leaving the air-conditioned comfort of your car or–God forbid–making use of those archaic, outdated appendages that medical experts refer to as “legs.”

Doggie Drive-thru even sells “holistic food.” It says so right on the shack. That’s good, because you never know when the aforementioned Bowser might have a taste for Free-range Alpo or gluten-free Milk Bone Dog Biscuits.

And for those of you wondering…MSG will be withheld upon request.

HOOKED ON LUNKER’S:

Lunker’s is a sporting goods superstore. It’s definition of “sport,” however, is rather narrow–being limited only to those in which wildlife flesh is pierced with hooks or projectiles.

Lunker’s is enormous. It is as big as that government warehouse in the last scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”–only much more well-stocked. Who would’ve thunk that garter belts come in camouflage?!

Hidden in various nooks and crannies of the store are glass pens holding a wide array of fierce beasts. In one corner, there is a live adult alligator. In another is a tank full of piranhas. And in another is…oh my God!…that well-tattooed woman in the tube top!

But there were two aspects of Lunker’s that really got my juices a-flowin’.

One was this:

That’s right! An 8,000 lbs. fiberglass large-mouthed bass smashing through a brick wall. Believe me, folks…this picture doesn’t do it justice. Let’s sit silently for a moment and bathe in the understated brilliance of this elegant masterpiece.

[Solemn pause.]

I wonder how many midwestern husbands have caught a frying pan to the skull for a firing-off a pearl of wit like, “Look, hon! His mouth is almost as big as yours! Yuk, yuk…THUNNNNNNNG!!!”

The other was this:

The Angler’s Inn! A totally kitsch-o-licious restaurant located smack-dab in the middle of Lunker’s.

It’s decor is…let’s just say, “eclectic.” Imagine an “Ernest Hemingway meets Nanook of the North meets Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island” motif.

The entire ceiling is packed with hanging Christmas lights, to give the joint a “dining al fresco under the stars” feel. But then, those Christmas lights are peppered with tiki dolls. And on a far wall is a stuffed moose head.

Each booth has its own fish tank. A different type of fish in each tank. Below the fish tank of my booth was an autographed picture of a barely-pubescent Cassius Clay.

Let me tell you about the food. Which, I should mention, wasn’t half bad.

The Angler’s Inn has a menu that offers….well, just about everything. I had the buffalo burger. I almost chose the elk burger, but the waitress wouldn’t commit as to its gaminess. I’m told that the ostrich burger tastes just like ostrich.

It also offers frog legs…perch…walleye…blue gill…alligator.

But it doesn’t stop there! The Angler’s Inn serves Mexican food. And Greek gyros. And Italian beef. And sushi.

Sushi!

The Angler’s Inn’s signature dish is “Boom Boom Shrimp”–although I decided against this specialty because I feared that “Boom Boom” referred to its morning-after effect on the human colon.

So…by now you’re probably thinking, “Fridgehenge, Smokin’ Jac, Doggie Drive-thru and Lunker’s. There’s no way that Sal can top that.”

Well, guess what? I can!

THE PIECE DE RESISTANCE: MODIFIED LAWN MOWER RACING.

Check it out! There are guys out there who spend their free time suping-up lawn mowers and racing them on weekends. And there are guys like me who pay money to watch them.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Jeez! What could be more boring than watching a bunch of middle-aged men sputter around a track on a lawn mower?”

Oh…how wrong you are. Because these are not just lawn mowers. They’re MODIFIED lawn mowers. As one of the drivers proudly told me in the pits, “These babies can hit 40 mph on the straight-aways.”

40 mph, my friends! This ain’t your father’s lawn mower.

Just check-out the looks of intense concentration on the drivers’ faces. Or…maybe it’s not concentration. Maybe it’s the Boom Boom Shrimp.

I am tempted to poke fun at this “sport,” but I won’t. And I won’t for two reasons.

First, this group of racers–and everyone else sitting in the bleachers–were about the friendliest, most genuine people you’d ever meet. It’s ironic, because you’d expect a modified lawn mower race to be precisely the type of venue where you’d be beaten and left for dead just for something like…oh, I dunno…having the only car in the parking lot that was made in Japan.

But nothing of the sort! I’d bring my daughter to the races without hesitation.

The second reason for not mocking it is that…well, to be honest…I really got into it. It was damn exciting, and a helluva lotta fun.

My new-found love for this sport notwithstanding, I won’t deny the fact that modified lawn mower racing is, more or less, the Holy Grail of kitsch.

Thank God that I could be a part of it, and God bless America!

But that’s not all! The races had yet-another surprise in store. A pot luck lunch!

For $4 dollars a head, it was all you could eat. $3 a head if you brought a dish to pass. Pictured above is what I ate. A hot dog, a hamburger, a Ramen noodle salad, some black beans and corn taco salad, and…as promised…Hamburger Helper Stroganoff.

Bocuse certainly wouldn’t approve, but it did taste kinda like stroganoff.

Not pictured above (because I inhaled it in the blink of an eye) is dessert: Rice Crispy Treats, and some magically–not to mention, surprisingly–delicious Lucky Charms Treats.

IN CLOSING:

Let this post be a lesson to all you pretentious foreigners who claim that the US has no culture.

The US has tons of culture! But finding that culture is a bit like finding slugs before a rainstorm. You sometimes need to turn-over rocks and poke-around in places where you might not normally care to poke.

Hey! How about song? One that really captures the essence of Sal’s Kitsch-o-licious Tour ’07!

Yawl come back now, ya hear?

These notes are…hemidemisemiquavers.

That’s it. That’s the answer.

What’s the big deal about hemidemisemiquavers? Nothing, except that I used this word several times in my “Sal Comes Up for Air” post and only one of you noticed. I guess the rest of you use the term “hemidemisemiquaver” conversationally on a daily basis. Sorry…my bad.

And now for yet-another teaser!

I just returned from Chicago this morning (yes…that’s twice in three weeks) and will soon provide all the details on…”Sal’s Kitch-o-licious Tour ’07.”

I won’t spoil the surprises, but I will tell you that the story involves 40 mph lawn mowers, Hamburger Helper and a large-mouthed bass smashing through a brick wall.

One might speculate, from the dearth of new material on this VTB, that I’ve either lost my blogging mojo…or suffered a debilitating brain injury…or found some other, more satisfying outlet for my irrepressible creative impulses…or devoted my life to memorizing pi.

All of pi.

Well…those are all good guesses. But, in truth, the answer is 42.

Now that we’ve cleared the air on that one, let me tell you about my past month or so.

When we last parted ways, I had just turned 40. Many people have since asked me how it feels to be forty. Well…I can honestly say that it’s a lot like being 39 and 11 months old; give or take a month.

Contrary to popular belief, age is NOT a state of mind. It’s a state of body.

I’m feeling rather 17-ish from the mind down, so I greeted the arrival of middle-age last month with more amusement than panic.

My mind, however, *does* feel 40. I consider that a very good thing. Have you ever tried talking with a 20 year old?

And, so…in order to prove that a bit of fizz remains in this old can of Dr. Pepper (and also to ensure an adequate supply of grief counselors in case I ceased to believe the questionable assertions that I typed in the prior three paragraphs), I invited a bunch of friends (pictured above) over for the type of meal that has killed plenty of other people before the age of 40.

I dusted off The Salivator and made 15 lbs. of pulled pork–7.5 lbs. of which was stuffed into Zip-loc bags and carted-off to four separate homes when the party ended. As Big Mamma says, “Better to make too much, than not enough.”

The party went well. The food turned out kinda great. And I had such a good time that my heart was doing hemidemisemiquavers for much of the afternoon. And that, my friends, occurred despite the fact that everything I drank that day would be properly classified as a depressant.

But alas, there was one tragic element to the party. Felix, my beloved uke, broke his A-string a few days earlier. This meant that there would be no musical accompaniment to my guests’ singing of “Happy Birthday” unless I could somehow coax a replacement string from Spain’s notoriously one-dimensional retail industry.

Why “one-dimensional?” Because the only product that you’re 100% assured of finding at a Spanish store is cigarettes.

Needless to say, my guests sang a capella. But it wasn’t a total loss. I did get to blow-out all forty cigarettes on the birthday cake.

Speaking of Felix, he has been repaired. I bought a set of replacement strings last week–IN CHICAGO!!!–and the passion between my hourglass-shaped lover and me burns brightly once again.

Hemidemisemiquavers are certainly more difficult when attempted with one’s feet, but a piece of cake when compared with the earlobes.

And now for a picture of my beautiful daughter. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

She, by the way, is just a few short years away from having black belts in aikido, jiu-jitsu, muay thai boxing and another, as-yet undocumented martial art taught only to a select group of neckless yak herders living on a windswept mountaintop in southwest Bhutan. Bruce Lee had a pretty fast roundhouse kick, but my daughter…well, she will kick in hemidemisemiquavers.

So to any four or five year old boys out there reading this, heed my seven-year advance warning: Don’t EVEN think about it! If she don’t get you, I will.

My boss at Acme Low Carb Tongue-Depressors, Inc. recently forwarded me a Chicago Tribune article listing what each US presidential hopeful would like to do for a living were he/she not in politics.

Barack Obama would be an architect. John McCain, a foreign service diplomat. Mike Huckabee, a bass guitarist for a touring rock band [He gets my vote]. Tom Tancredo, president [Nice try, brown-noser…but I’m pretty sure that you’ll have to settle for President of your local Moose Lodge instead.].

Hmmmm…what would I like to do for a living should this legal gig ever run dry? I was having trouble coming-up with an answer, until a friend in the midwest US sent me this photo:

An old school bus, a metal saw, and a smoker big enough to make Pulled Elephant.

I nearly wept with joy when I first laid eyes on this photo. And do you know what’s the best thing about this set-up? If a customer should contract salmonella from your coleslaw, you and your smoker can be over the state line in a hemidemisemiquaver.

Acme called me over to Chicago for some meetings last week, and I didn’t need them to ask twice.

It was a typically fabulous visit.

I saw friends and family. I jogged several times with my boss. I bought a stack of Nick Jr. DVDs at Borders and sun dresses at Target (Jeez…cotton products are so much cheaper in the US!!!) for my daughter. Hertz was kind enough to give me a Mustang convertible. My brother, Frankenfeet, was kind enough to deep-fry a turkey.

And best of all, I got to eat…

…Mexican food at Frontera Grill.

And…

…Cajun food at Heaven on Seven.

Take THAT, Big Finn!!!