The Blog of Lou

City Boy

2008-09-14T08:47:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I like living in Los Angeles...at least the part that is near the ocean. But every once in a while, I find myself split by the confines a city creates.

There's nothing like being in a big city, with all the different people hovering around for different reasons. Your senses are constantly excited and challenged. For me, the real draw comes with food and entertainment. 10 minutes from where I live, I can sample creations from anywhere on the planet and hear people from different cultures spin into the meld of the city. That's cool.

But this whole stimulating existing counters right up against some other basic desires I have.

I want to live by a stream
I want to grow fields and fields of cilantro and pick olives from orchards.
I want a 1951 pickup truck (red, of course) that I can take to a smaller, local town with dirt streets and guys sitting on porches.
I want a barn, with that great old wood/oil smell, where I can build furniture and not have to worry about cleaning up.

So, you see, these country stylings are in direct contrast to my city life and, unless I make 18 billion dollars and buy a canyon or a hill on the city outskirts, they will never live in harmony. At some point, one will give.

The L.A. BBQfest is coming!

2008-09-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

How perfect does the smell of hickory BBQ, the beach and a Johnny Cash cover band sound? Anyplace that Baby Blues BBQ serves up their love is good with me.

I am so there.

A Gargantuan Return

2008-08-27T20:51:00.001-07:00

Been way, way, way too long. The spread of my family, finding new means of putting thai food and sushi on the table, and the undeniable proof of some sort of mental tilt -- has kept me away past my shore leave.

So, I return -- with goodies.

This kid should have a show of his own -- or more schooling.

Free

2008-02-25T16:44:00.000-08:00

Chris Anderson has a wonderful essay about the whole notion of the free economy in this month's wired.

Click. It don't cost nothin'

Worry

2008-01-31T10:14:00.001-08:00

I had some family health issues to deal with recently, and I was reminded of a book I read recently by a business acquaintance. There was a particular section that I found very helpful this past weel; I will include some of it below:

The wise words of FDR, “The only thing wqe have to fear is fear itself,” might be amended by nature to “There is nothing to fear unless and until you feel fear.” Worry, wariness, anxiety and concern all have a purpose, but they are not fear. So any time your dreaded outcome cannot be reasonably linnked to pain or death and it isn’t a signal in the presence of danger, then it really shouldn’t be confused with fear. It may well be something worth trying to understand and manage, but worry will not bring solutions. It willl more likely distract you from finding solutions.

In the original form of the word, to worry someone else was to harass, strangle, or choke them. Liekwise, to worry oneself is a form of self-harassment. To give it less of a role in our lives, we must understand what it really is.

Worry is the fear we manufacture — it is not authentic. If you choose to worry about something, have at it, but do so knowing it is a choice. Most often, we worry because it provides some secondary reward. There are many variations, but a few of the most popular follow.

*Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do anything about the matter.

*Worry is a way to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we’re doing something. (Prayer also makes us feel like we’re doing something, and even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than worry.)

*Worry is a cloying way to have connection with others, the idea being that to worry about someone shows love. The other side of this is the belief that not worrying about someone means you don’t care about them. As many worried-about people will tell you, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.

*Worry is a protection against future disappointment. After taking an important test, for example, a student might worry about whether he failed. If he can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it, so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it happens. But there’s an interesting trade-off: Since he can’t do anything about it at this point anyway, would he rather spend those same two days not worrying, and then learn he failed? Perhaps most importantly, would he want to learn he had passed the test and spent two days of anxiety for nothing?"

The Gift of Fear
by Gavin DeBecker
p.347

Who Says Kids Watch Too Much TV?

2008-01-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

Office #3

2008-01-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

With a newborn at home and the office suite next door doing some Concrete Plishing, I had to get a temporary new office. I could get used to this.

A Great Journey of Sauce

2007-12-30T18:32:00.001-08:00

I usually cringe when I pass the salsa section in the market. Beyond the simple vinegar/pepper basic sauces like Cholula or Tabasco, there has never been one that doesn't end up reminding me of bad airports and 2AM meals. The manufacturers of these so-called salsas take the most over-ripe, watery, tasteless tomatoes, mix some vinegar and lots of salt together with what has to be a cup of sugar, to make something that resembles face paint. For the "chunky" versions, they might throw in some odd-shaped thing that crunches, but I could never get beyond the clumpy sauce to see if it was, in fact, a vegetable, fruit or Styrofoam. I suppose there is a place for these sauces -- perhaps on the edge of a chip at a SuperBowl party where you are more interested in what your date/football buddy/drunk/friend/accountant is saying than what you are putting in your mouth.

The newest craze is adding the smoky flavor of Chipotle to these sugar soup salsas, as reminders that there is still some spice in the world that can be marketed and sold as new and improved and invoke some emotion of salsa's original origin.

I remember reading Rick Bayless' classic cookbook when I was a teenager, and I was impressed that a white guy from Oklahoma could nail authentic Mexican cooking so well. The only other white person who "got it" was Jane Butel, the so-called Mother of Tex-Mex, who looked remarkably similar to Betty Crocker but really knew how to hang further South. In fact, if there wasn't such an age difference between the two, I would have really liked seeing the two of them get together as a couple, if only to get invited over to their house for dinner.

So there I am, wheeling my cart with one jammed wheel that wobbles and forces me to compensate else Taquitos will fly, and I decide to take a break in front of the salsa section to rest my driving arm.

Side-story: My wife is VERY, VERY, VERY pregnant, and I find myself making more trips than usual to the supermarket to help out with things, because the last thing I want to do is tell my future kid that he/she was born in the milk section of the supermarket when Mom reached up to the top shelf, while Dad stayed home watching "Scrubs." No, I would rather it be me answering the cell phone in the milk aisle and dashing over the cash register line ala O.J. Simpson to my car, speeding home with a police escort and huffing into the house to find my wife on the couch in labor; and moments later, a child.

And, even though this is our second kid, the whole fatherhood journey repeating again is making me somewhat nervous, and I find myself once again asking the bigger questions in life, though in a mellower and less edgy way. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, imagine a naked whitewater rafting trip where you get tossed around and eventually end up underneath an overturned raft, freezing, bruised, and hurtling down torrid rapids that never seem to end. No, it's not that feeling. That's the first kid.

This is like the same boat, same river, but you're just starting out, and you're no longer scared of capsizing because you know you WILL capsize; it's just a question of when. Yes, that's what it's like.

But I digress.

Most people in "life changing" emotional situations find outlets for their feelings -- Guys have bachelor parties, women have baby showers; me, I stand behind my gimp shopping cart and stare at fake tomato condiments.

And as I stood there, exhausted, awash in the green fluorescent, indirect light, perceptively moaning along to the Kenny G playing over the loudspeaker between ads for Jimmy Dean sausage, I fought the urge to topple my handicapped cart and reach over with one hand and destroy all these impostor salsas, just wipe them into the air and onto the linoleum below for some scary bagboy to mop away after I had been hauled away.

I spent 10 minutes in this coma, and finally came to the realization that I was too tired to go home and make some good salsa myself, but that this salsa aisle represented something bigger. I figured that if I could find a good salsa amongst all these mass-marketed, low-cost "grabbers" just by looking at the ingredients and what shined through from inside the bottle, well then, there might just be hope for our misdirected, consumer driven, idealistic society; and, yes, even perhaps my own future as a father.

If there's one thing we should be able to control in our lives, it oughta be our condiments.

This is what goes through the mind of an expectant 2nd time father. It's not pretty, it's not much fun, but like most such things, it's all about the journey and not the destination, so it's better to just sit back and let the insanity run.

So I did. All 48 bottles, from chunky to green to Pineapple to Lime to Cheese. More MSG and crap that you didn't even knew existed. The ice cream in my pseudo-cart melted, the chicken started to smell and some old lady with a bag on her head was staring at me like i was crazy, but I pressed on, jumping from mass-produced shlock from the same company that brought us Baken Ets, to some salsa from Norway made of salmon mousse, which, the last time I checked, was not salsa but actually fish.

Finally, it was done. It was time to go. I had reacquainted myself with my least favorite condiment and, through the process, discovered what I thought was a decent looking candidate. The boat had been flipped over and I could catch my breath again.

My cart and I did s-turns to the checkout conveyor and, later, I loaded my bags in the car. The air was cool that night and a full moon was just rising over the telephone poles in the distance.

What? The salsa? Oh, yes. Remember Rick Bayliess? Turns out he has made one of the best jarred Chipotle's I have tasted. There still might be hope for him and Jane. I wonder how many kids he has.

What's With The Seat?

2007-12-16T19:49:00.000-08:00

I don't mean this in a disgusting way when I say that, as a guy, I've had about 39 years of experience in peeing standing up. I merely point this out to put the subject of this post in context. Peeing upright is one of the hallmarks of being a man. It's right up their with smoking cigars, pull-my-finger, and NEVER asking for directions, no matter how lost you are. Granted, there are times when I pass on the glory and just sit down on the seat, but it's usually because I'm tired, have something unimportant to read, or just love the warming feature of my Toto.

My son is 4. He started his upright journey (as I'm sure many do) shooting like an Afghan at a wedding -- all willie-nillie, seat up, seat down, toilet, floor, wall, shower curtain -- you get the picture; and it isn't a pretty one.
"Modern parents" suggested throwing Cherrios in the tank as target practice, but I was worried he would reach in and eat one. He's becoming better now, even though, at 3' 4" tall, his unit ends up shooting parallel to the seat; yet somehow, someway, he gets that arc dialed in and all is dry in our happy home.

Which is more than I can say for most people.

Probably one of the worst feelings in life is sitting down on the toilet and noticing that somebody has neglected to raise the seat and, instead, peed all over it. It's even worse when it's not your seat and you don't know who was on it before. Doesn't matter if you use one of those toilet seat covers -- that just turns your butt into paper mache. And the whole feng-shui-design-within-reach-lifestyle mood lighting makes it nearly impossible to see whether or not your seat is safe. You've got to move around to see if you can catch the angle at which droplets reflect. But I digress.

Used to be that this would happen every once in a blue moon -- maybe in bathroom at a concert or in one of those public kiosks in London or at Miami's International Airport (right near the Nathan's stand). But more and more I'm seeing this everywhere. The momentum is gathering. In fancy restaurants and markets, art galleries and bakeries. Either public bathrooms are becoming populated by sub 3' tall people who are rebelling against the Cheerio method, or our country has become so lazy, selfish or angry at each other that they can't even raise the seat. You cut me off on the 405, I'm going to pee on the seat. You asked for a latte and got a mochachado, pee on the seat. Your out of cigarettes, splash away.

Actually, I really don't care why people do it. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that it has to stop...now...for the good of humanity. War, recession, hurricanes, these things are all fine, but ths toilet seat thing is what is really going to fuck us and put our democracy on the end of a boot in China or India. At least in Rome they had elaborate plumbing and outdoor bathrooms, so you could see whether or not someone was going to ruin your day. Here, it's like "surprise me."

Amtrak Does Not Suck (in some ways)

2007-12-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

Found another little thing to throw up here as wallpaper. somewhere near San Diego.

Santa Monica Mountain Malibu Fire

2007-12-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

I was culling photos today and came across this one from a ride where my city was on fire. Click on it to see it closer.

Laundry in Bermuda -- The Quickie Lickie

2007-12-09T20:40:00.000-08:00

I soiled myself when I drove past this on a recent visit to the island.

No, seriously, what can you say?

I don't know, it seemed like a good idea at the time

2007-12-02T21:43:00.001-08:00

Bono came to visit the Other Day

2007-12-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

He and my son got along.

Dead Again

2007-11-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

I was driving home from the airport today along Pacific Coast Highway, watching as the winter sun cast an orange glow on the water, beach and mountains of good old L.A. -- white contrails snaking off toward the North — and iPod playing the soundtrack: Coldplay and Matisyahu and Patty Griffin.

And then the Grateful Dead’s “He’s Gone” from Europe ‘72 came on and the scene was perfect.

And the it brought me back 24 years, to Ventura California — the Ventura County Fairgrounds to be exact, and a guy named Marc Hirschfield, the son of a hollywood businessman. Marc loved the Dead as much as I did, and he walked amonst the tripping and hippie Deadheads who milled like stoned sheep kicking up dust. It may have been 1983, but I think that’s the closest I got to the 60’s.

I googled Hirschfield recently. Found out that he moved to Wyoming. It seems pretty perfect for him, as was the memory.

On Approach to Bermuda

2007-11-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Passing over storm fronts and blue, blue ocean, listening to Bright Eyes' "At The Bottom of Everything."

Now that's fun....

Grow Little Tree, Grow

2007-10-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

i know it's fall and not the best time to plant, but i just had to put this little ornamental plum in the ground. maybe if you all wish really hard it will blossom and grow to be higher than it's current mere 40" tall.

A Little Island on a Pretty Day

2007-10-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

Middle Age Crisis or Stupidity?

2007-10-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

When a man reaches 40 (and you will notice I use the term A MAN here as I am certainly not referring to ME or my rapid decline into the shadow of life).... Anyways, like I was saying, when a man reaches 40, certain changes occur -- things drop, things expand, and everything starts to look a little blurry and center around food. Contrary to most reports, there is very little reflection about taking the wrong path in life or other esoteric musings of madmen; instead, there is an understanding of some sort of wisdom, like those grey-haired gorillas in the forest who get pounced upon by young, feces-hurling prodigies and still maintain a straight face.

But I digress....

Along with this zen-like calm comes a testing-point, like Dirty Harry in Chinatown, where one knows that they could beat the shit out of something IF they wanted to. But you don't actually need to. gritty machoism.

Me, I have one exception to this stoic way of being -- mountainbiking. It's the only time that I get to the point where I say to myself, "Self, what the hell are you thinking." It's where things come too fast and hard to react. No thoughts about health insurance or station in life...Pure Instinct.

I read a story today about some idiot (photo below) who decided to face this beast by mountainbiking down a ski slope -- at 130 miles per hour (212km/h) . I must admit, the guy has got balls, but there's a point, isn't there?

Storytime

2007-08-20T06:17:00.000-07:00

For the past 3 1/2 years, I have been telling bedtime stories to my son. sometimes they involve things he has seen during the day, sometimes people he knows, or sometimes just pure fantastical riffing.

with the extra time, sunday is the best day for stories, and last night was a pretty good one. the tale involved a family of fish -- a rotund dad, a squeaky mom, 20 babies, and a skinny relative fish from deep in new jersey -- in essence, my family to a tee.

these fish swam around and discovered an anchor and a boat captained by my 13 year old and 8 year old nephews, who love fishing and managed to land the dad and the jersey fish onboard and then didn't quite know what to do next. so the relative started talking (in only the way a new jersey relative can) and the nephews were so taken back by the sight of the fat and skinny talking fish noodling their way back in the water that they threw them back and powered back to shore.

at the end of such stories, my son usually has a drink of milk, closes his eyes while rubbing the label of his blankie against his face, and drifts off to sleep as Gorillaz "Demon Days Live" plays in the background.

but last night -- maybe it was the juice -- or maybe he's just growing up, last night he launched into a story of his own about a monkey in a bathing suit and then another about Crazy Frog taking off his helmet and playing in a football game. it was really wonderful to watch his little mind coming up with ideas, mimicking the way i told stories and adding his own little flairs that can only come from being a totally open, developing self.

Tipping

2007-08-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

Knowing that the US economy is heading into what will probably be a not so happy spill (thought I will be buying heavily in a while), and having Esther Dyson tell me that we may be on the tail side of global social and economic domination, I have to think about what effects this might have on our country and what can be done about it.

It's very easy to take news of stock market woes or loss of status emotionally and cry "the sky is falling." Some people I know have fled to countries like Fiji, Costa Rica, the UK and Canada, but I'm not ready to do something like that. I enjoy it here too much at the moment.

I used to like Jay Leno and Dennis Miller and some other comics who were really funny. Then they became political and Republican rah-rah boys which totally turned me off. And, no, this isn't a "I hate Bush" moment so everyone who speaks highly of him in light of what actually happened is crap -- I find Arianna Huffington equally disturbing on the other side, but maybe her unending drawl has something to do with it.

But though I might not agree with the way they attack, I do think there is some validity in their message. Basically, what Leno and Miller (now that's an act) profess, along with others, is that we are a nation of brats who sit on the sideline (or move out of the country) and complain about what is going on instead of actually doing something about it. There is a sense of entitlement and lax acceptance -- a priviliged passivity.

But how does this affect me? I am an active guy. I like to do things to change my world. I take notice.

My new morning ritual (after exercise, a moment of quiet, playing with my son and scooting to work)involves getting a cup of coffee at my new favorite hangout around the corner from my office. It is quiet before the 3rd Street Promenade crowd works in and I can catch up with some other people who have offices nearby.

Now I have been going there for 2 weeks or so, and, even though I only go in and get a cup of coffee, I always leave a nice tip in the jar at the register. And there's a sign on the jar that says "Thanks! We Really Appreciate It!"

But everyday I throw my change in there for a person who pulls a lever on an urn, I don't get any indication from the people who work there that they really do appreciate it.

And this place is not alone. It seems that the tip jar has been popping up everywhere recently, for such crazy things as dry cleaning and hardware. Now I understand that these people don't make a lot and it's natural to move the money around in a tax free way, but the idea of a "Bonus" for job well done is completely out of the window when nobody actually says thank you.

So this morning, after the woman got my coffee and gave me my change, I stood there, and without losing contact with her eyes, I dropped the change in the jar, making sure that it made a nice clank (quarters work best and pennys suck). She stood there, looking at me and then looking away, like I was some sort of werido -- which I am, but she didn't get it, She finally managed a smile, the kind of smile that goes along with a "Have a Nice Day"" nametag, and I walked away with my cup o' Joe.

Maybe Esther and Leno and Miller are right (still a good duo!). Maybe we are on the other side.

Thanks for reading.

Mixing Starchaphores

2007-08-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

So I was making dinner the other night....

Nothing fancy, just some iron skillet Habanero and Green Chile Chicken sausage and lemon garlic braised brussels sprouts (yes, brussels actually DOES have an "s" on the end -- who knew!) and I thought that some hull-on, red rice that I picked up at the Thai market would go well with all this. And since this was supposed to be a simple meal, I thought I would forego the whole "What can I do with rice today" internal conflict/conversation that plagues my every brush with the rice cooker and, instead, opened the fridge, closed my eyes, and grabbed the first thing I laid hands on.

I picked well.

San Marzano Marinara sauce is the best jarred sauce I have tasted, and smothered on top of the rice and the sausage and sprouts on top just made this simple meal RFG.

Summer's Last Stand

2007-08-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

I walked into a staples this morning and came face-to-face with the reality that the summer is just about over, even though, here in Los Angeles, the hot season doesn't usually get cooking until September.

Staples is a strange concept to begin with. The whole idea of a massive store dedicated to probably THE most boring things for sale in the world (office supplies) is sort of like opening a shop dedicated to lovers of enemas; I don't mean that in a crude way -- I guess everybody has their thing.

But there's also something sexy about Staples. Even though I might go in there when my toner runs low or I need a new 50 pack of purple post-it notes, I always end up walking the aisles for a few minutes to see if there's something else I might want or not need.

Oh yeah, back to my point. Today was different. I needed envelopes and some other stuff, but on my sojourn through the aisles, I saw a bunch of mothers and their depressed pre-teen kids deciding between the Spongebob and Lightning McQueen backpacks. And it hit me like a whole frozen side beef -- that almost primordial feeling of dread and general unease that I felt every August growing up when the summer was nearly over. No more dragging Greg Neuwirth behind the Honda Z50 in a shopping cart (really fun turns -- for me); no more hanging out with friends at Marineland or Pepe's Kartland; no more trips to Busch Gardens amusement park, where you could see wild parrots AND take a monorail tour of a beer factory (though I got to hand it to my mother -- when she would drop my friends and I off at the main gate, she would tell us how important it was that we be back there at 3PM, but she never told us NOT to drink beer).

No, the end of summer stationary run meant that very soon there would be haircuts and homework, and, soon after that, letters sent home about my aversion to both. Basically, the stationary run was the end of living.

So today, I stood in line behind some dour teenagers who looked like someone had sucked all the blood out of their face With my envelopes and dry erase markers in hand, I happened to look down at one of the Staples Easy Buttons, which, at $4.99 has to be one of the most upsetting side-effects of consumerism gone wild. It's a red button that replays a message, that's all it does. A red button. $4.99.

Anyway, for that moment, I went past reality to Lou's Fantasyland, where I imagined that the Easy Button might actually be a way for the good people of teendom to go back in time to the beginning of summer, when there were months of easy days, freedom and Slush Puppies.

And then, smiling, I realized that I didn't have to go back to school, and I wished Staples sold beer.

Vacation

2007-08-03T03:17:00.001-07:00

It has been way too long since I've taken a vacation and way too long since I have posted. I suppose both are similar because they require setting aside time to stop and reflect. Anyways, the family and I have spent the last 2 weeks here in a rented house on the quiet side of Nantucket Island, swimming in the warm Atlantic, taking long walks along the sandy beaches, and getting completely lost on the 14 odd-square miles of unmarked roads. I faintly remember visiting here when I was a kid, but I am still amazed how they have somehow been able to keep the charm and beauty of this place. Unlike so many other places in the world where development has lead to a hodgepodge amalgamation of styles and ego expressions, here everything is the same -- same side-shingeled grey houses, same wooden stairways leading down to empty beaches.

The only part of the island that pisses me off a little bit is Nantucket Town. Sure, it's beautiful with cobble-stone streets and multi-generational family pharmacies like Cogndon's with soda counters where you can get chicken salad sandwiches or a root beer float while a Nantucket policeman walks Main Street with his starched shirt and black cap. It is as if though Walt Disney walked this Main Street when he was planning Disneyland. In fact, the number of families, white families, in Nantucket Center reminds me of the Magic Kingdom without Mickey.

But further out of town, there are some beautiful sites, like the Nantucket Wind/Grist mill and the 3 majestic lighthouses on the island. Food here varies from good to great. You can get pub food at the 1840's The Brotherhood of Thieves or go out to Bartlett's Farm, for some great herbs and greens straight from the fields.

But my favorite place on the island is Nantucket Seafood. The wife and I were looking for some lobster rolls on this island and walked into this shop with no seating. All you see is a display counter and a big window looking into a cutting room with huge fish being prepped. The rolls were over-priced and served on a kaiser roll instead of the normal hot-dog bun, so it took away a bit of the shine, but we had some marinated blue-fin tuna, mako, and mahi-mahi that my bro cooked on the BBQ and they were amazing.

A couple of days before, my nephew had caught a bluefish while surf-casting. I threw it on the grill with some ginger and salt, and it was good, but Nantucket Seafood makes a bluefish pate that is incredible.

So there's my update, from the center of the white world. I've got to go now and get my lime green shorts.

end of day fish in bermuda

2007-06-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

a perfect end to the work week(s). beginning of summer in tucker's town.