Yes, But Can She Spell Potato?

And this site, has some fun facts about her.

In Your Heart, You Know He's Right

Just as Barcelona's L'Eixample has a Dreta and Esquerra (left and right) or that there's a Left and Right Bank and an Upper East Side and Upper West Side, so there are two sides of the Mission. It's hard to say if it's Mission or Valencia that is the dividing line. There's more than a couple of blocks that separates these two main arteries, but it's surely Valencia that would be the Passeig de Gracia of the Mission. You'll see outdoor dining on both streets, but on Mission it's usually people eating out of trash cans.
I wanted to venture over to 17th and Guerrero where I'd noticed earlier the great window shade (at the top of this post) of Barry Goldwater in the same flat that is campaigning to protect rent control. As LBJ said, "In your gut, you know he's a nut." Just a few doors down is the equally glorious sign for the 500 Club that is (not) open at 6:00. AM. (Pardon my journalistic training, but shouldn't that be 6 p.m.?)
All of you surely know about the famed troll altar run by Alfie at 18th and Valencia, but is the juvenile division of the Mission Police Station now trying to copy him? Or were these dolls taken from the clutches of naughty little children and are left in the window to taunt them until they shape up their acts? They certain lack Alfie's great style and creativity.

I didn't have time to linger and ponder this question since I was cutting it close for lunch at Picaro with an individual whom I can't refer to even with an alias here and am being risky just by giving out this much information. It was pleasantly foggy and cool enough to allow for perfect outdoor dining, though I faced the street and the aforementioned individual sat facing me to avoid being seen by the passing pedestrians/psychopaths.
Paying the bill and parting, I soon heard a ruckus coming up the street as this little group came marching up the street and handed me their handbill for PROUD/UNION/QUEER.
And barely a block later, I turned and saw this sign for a seance being sponsored by Gay Shame, a group I keep thinking I should get involved in but have been waiting around for Gay Avarice instead.

My visions of L'Eixample must have driven me to enter Forest Books with its nearly Zen by Oppression air of incense where I discovered a book by Catalan author Eduardo Mendoza called The City of Marvels. This book set in late 19th century L'Eixample was too hard to resist with this promotional blurb:

Young Onofre first stays at a boarding house whose permanent residents are a distingué closet transvestite, a lady fortuneteller who treats her clients to large doses of doom, a garrulous barber who also pulls teeth, and a scullery maid who protects her virginity with the aid of a ferocious cat.

My kind of book. And what else did I see. Here's a peek.

Jamiroquai You Say? No Way!

I've always loved the campy performances of Vincent Price and the bizarrely macho-homoerotic flicks of Samuel Fuller. House of Bamboo is a great piece of evidence, if only for its wacky production aesthetic. However, I never knew that Fuller and Price once collaborated on the gloriously wacko The Baron of Arizona, a little known film of more than half a century ago about an equally obscure tidbit of lore of wild west self-deluded aristocracy equal to Emperor Norton.

At first it seems a tad odd to see Price in a Western, but he's soon hanging out at a monastery, and then off to Paris and Madrid, making me long to be back in the madre españa in outfits that make his turn in Laura seem outright butch. Oh, the floral waist coats, glam bauble adorned hats, scarves and lace cuffs!

My only complaint with the usually thorough Criterion is that there aren't any extras or director commentary in this volume of the set of early Fuller films. But it's worth checking out, if only for the gloriously arch dialogue. A few samples:

Narrator: But the Baron would not see the Contessa that night as he said. He had other plans. He was ready to come out in the open!

The Baron: Aren’t you happy to see me?

Sophia: I can’t see you for the tears.

The Baron (First in a scene with the Contessa and then with Sophia): I have been with many women before, but with you I am…afraid!

Sophia: I loved you from that first time you gave me a second piece of candy.

I will have to remember this lines the next time I am back in Arizona or, better yet, Spain and can claim my royal heritage.

In Your Gut You Know He's a Nut

I'm posting this one with a tip of the beret to Bryce Digdug, who is not above writing about conservative politicians. Funny thing is, today one actually wishes old Barry was around since today's right wingers make him seem downright sensible. All the same, whenever I see this in transit (where I write this using the rare free wifi offered a Phoenix's Sky Harbor terminal, which along with lack of snow in the winter make it an ideal transit point), I have to ponder: "He's terminal? I could swear I heard that he died at least 12 years ago. However, in case I didn't mention it earlier, I was able to confirm that General Franco is still dead. I doubt he'd approve of those tasty little hombres walking hand in hand along Passeig de Gracia, but I sure did.

Parting Shots

A few final, random thoughts on Arizona:

• Three days here, and I reiterate my scruffy but well scrubbed comment about the boys here. The only time I saw a tattoo was on a fat woman at Wal-Mart. (I know, I know. Lock me up, but I needed a watch battery and didn't have time to waste.) It really reminded me how I want to launch my campaign for a tattoo-free America by 2012. If I want to read in bed, I'll pick up Proust, not look at the ink on my man's ass.
• Why, oh why, would old people want to retire to a place where it's over 90 degrees 90% of the year. I do love the high desert of Flagstaff, Prescott, etc. but Phoenix and Tucson are what I call hell. When I retire, I feel that I have earned my right to live someplace (likely Victoria) where it rarely gets above 60 degrees.
• On top of that I would like to make it illegal for anyone over 55 to wear shorts in public. Most definitely myself included in that.
  
• I am notoriously not attracted to blonds except for those that are a sub-category of those noted in bullet point number 1 and who seem to be in abundance in Arizona -- the aforementioned scruffy and scrubbed, light growth of beard, thinning to premature balding, lightly furry but not those hideous cotton candy forearms, lean but lightly defined, sweetly edgy and slight assertive. Perfection and grow like cacti on the highway here.
• What's up with the "You came at a nice time of year. The weather's gonna be perfect today." It's 95 fucking degrees in Phoenix today! Sorry, there's no amount of air conditioning that can compensate for that.
  
• Say what I may about those libertarian Republicans here, I commend them for providing free internet access at Sky Harbor allowing me to post this piece before I board my plane.
  

TUCSON

As if it weren't confusing enough that you take I-10 East to El Paso in order to go south to Tucson, all the exits through central Tucson where blocked for road construction with only one tiny sign saying you are supposed to use the access road as the freeway through the central part of the city. Being short on time for an appointment, I was screaming like a girl with rabies but did make it on time, albeit frazzled and cursing that I'd ordered a venti coffee 30 minutes earlier..
Doorway art. Don't ask.
Downtown has a lot of this and stumpy "highrise", sort of a large El Paso or tiny San Diego.


Ah, the start of a wonderful friendship. Any scowling barbs will be immediately deleted!!!!
A lot of this between Tucson and Phoenix. More than once I thought I was going from San Diego to Orange County and then remembered where I was.
I was pushing it to make it to the airport, so just managed to snap this campus shot just as a pack of scruffy-scrubbies scampered ou of my view.

They Say It's My Birthday...

Thanks to everyone for the early and on time birthday messages. If I'm lucky my flight home will be delayed the currently reported 17 minutes and not more than that. Woo hoo, what a way to celebrate the big day.

Arizona Highways (as Seen by a Californian)

Lots of miles, lots meetings in less than 30 hours, but I couldn't keep my loyal readers in the lurch. So here's a rundown of Monday and Tuesday.
I have been getting around the state in a Chevy HHR. I'd never seen or heard of such a thing. Imagine a PT Cruiser with birth defects.

TUBA CITY

I spent Monday on a Hopi and Navajo reservation east of Tuba City. Fascinating visits to several villages where photography is not allowed, but I saw several sweat lodges and hogans. I did manage to snap these shots at the little known Coal Mine Canyon on the western edge of the reservation.

Near the San Francisco range south of Tuba City on route 89.

FLAGSTAFF
Huh, huh. I said beaver.
No jokes about the snarling. Having been there twice this year, I think Flagstaff (or Flag as locals call it) has one of the highest cute boy indexes of any college town in the west. Just scruffy enough to have an edge in a freshly scrubbed way. I was thinking about not actually seeing one of them as this one was shot.
Seeing me take self-snaps, an especially yummy boy kindly shot this one of me, but I wasn't so bold as to ask him to let me do the same. Anyway, you can see that he made me smile. I wanted to see if he could make me really smile, though.
Oh, the art.
Overall, I much prefer Flagstaff to Sedona, at least people-wise.

ROUTE 89A to Sedona
Embiggen to get the joke. It amused me for the 5 minutes waiting to pass a one lane road.


Scenery on the route.
Scenery with scowling Californian.
Did you know they have a lot of cacti in Arizona? The stay in Sedona was mercifully brief. Honestly, I'd love the place if it weren't for the locals and the tourists there.

Timon of Tuba City

If my presence here next week is less than usual, it's partly because I'll be at the locale above. Perhaps I should take some heirloom tomatoes for the journey. Do they count as part of the carry on gels and liquids.? I can't remember.

For those who don't remember my last journey through this state, barely more than two months ago, it is a place that reminds me of my favorite character chronicled by Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, a once glorious party giver who went on to become a sever misanthrope before going mad in the desert. A pivotal scene in the play is when the once generous host throws a water banquet for his fair weathered friends who are expecting the usual display of opulence he can no longer afford. The play has meant different things at different moments in my life. I keep coming back to it, expecting to find meaning that may never have been there. Typically simultaneously discredited and revered as Shakespeare's most challenging, weired, incomplete, and profound work, I find that I cannot push it away. At once fearful of it yet also intrigued, like German tourists walking in fascination into Death Valley with fascination or like the characters in Eric Von Stroheim's Greed, staggering in the heat with bags of bounty but not a drop of water to drink.

On the Edge of Civilization

I never thought that I would describe Gilroy as an urbane, sophisticated place with great restaurants and shops and a mild climate. But after the past two days of weaving through the desert, it sure feels like paradise as I make my final stop before returning to the JunkPlex and unload the treasures from Lazy Acres.

Ah, those final miles of the towns on Route 66/I-40. Don't forget Winona? Oh, I sure wish I could. Having been on the road non-stop since last Thursday and weaving through a total of ten states and more miles than I want to tally, I must say that the folks in those little desert towns were the spookiest. For all the reputation that Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma have for being backwards, they look like Paris compared to Kingman, Needles and Bakersfield. Never have I heard so much crappy country music (yes, a redundant phrase) as I did in those towns. And bad food and horrible radio stations. Arriving in Barstow at 8 a.m. where it was already nearly 90 degrees I had a caffeine orgasm if there is such a thing when I spotted Starbucks. After two days of McDonald's coffee, my java g-spot had me quivering and would have dropped my scowl if it hadn't been for all that friggin' sun. Supposedly McDonald's has upgraded their coffee, but they still use those hideous foam cups that make you feel like you're being baptised in a vat at a Dow Chemical plant.

And Barstow actually had radio stations that were a variation from the only two options during the past 300 miles -- horrific twangy country or screaming evangelicals. Hearing Duran, Duran ask "Is There Something I Should Know?" made my heart race even before I hit Starbucks. Nothing like '80s pop and caffeine to start a good day.

Regardless, I look forward to heading north and home tomorrow. Let's pray no one breaks into my UHaul tonight. UHaul. I hope I don't call that 800 number for at least another decade.

And what i thrill it is to be in even Gilroy where it's in the 70s compared to Ludlow which I went through at 6:20 a.m. before it reached today's high of 116.

Gusty Winds May Exist

Sixteen hours on the road, 778 miles and the upper triple digits in gas purchases (probably more than I put into my Saturn for all of 2006), and still a few hundred miles to go before reaching home. I'm sure everyone is just dying to know the mundane details of this journey, but since my two brain cells are barely functioning, I'll just share a few shots I managed to nab during the day. I promise not to have so many shots of my scowling ugly face once I am back home.

Welcome to the Cadillac ranch...
...with a rather sleazy looking docent to guide you.
Such politically correct, high minded culture here in Arizona!

No remarks on squinting and scowling unless you can smile while staring into the sun when it's 102 degrees.
I didn't stay here but liked the sign.
At the Flagstaff depot.
This must have been taken in...uh...Flagstaff too.