A Very Blazing Sun Thanksgiving Special

I have a special treat for all you out in the blogosphere!

Today, instead of writing about things I'm thankful for, I'm going to write about all the things you should be thankful for! Someone needs to sound the alarm and I can't imagine a better person than a shrewd blogger like myself. I'm not going to restrain myself this time. No, no! No more shall my readers be forced to read between the lines and wonder what my real feelings are on the issues. I intend to state my positions frankly, and I warn you, reader, I may come across as passionate in certain convictions! Shocking, I realize, but vital.

Ready? here we go!

#1Are you thankful for the air you breathe? Did you know its actually a carcinogen now!?!?!

Just kidding. Not about the air, but the rest of the list.

I am, as ever deeply thankful for my family, for my mother and father, for my outstanding and incomparable brother, for my wonderful grandparents and aunts and uncles who have all welcomed and supported me. I am so thankful for Saori, who continues to amaze and inspire me. I am thankful for all of my friends and I hope that I am able to support them as much as they have lifted me up.

In defense of selectiveness

I would like to preface this short post by saying that although I have been accused of snobbery in the past, I would like to think I remain true to my ideal that all people are created equal, and that no one  should feel bad about enjoying what they enjoy (so long as it doesn't involve harming or degrading other people, defacing the past, or stealing from the future). Beyond that, I find the standard of what is tasteful is largely a ploy to gain power or money by a select minority.

There is some truth to accusations of snobbery as far as experiences, items, clothing, lifestyles, food, and drink goes. I catch myself being far more judgmental than I have any right to be. However, I believe that if handle my snobbery carefully, in a way which is not judgmental on what other people think or enjoy, then it is a key to a life of enjoyment and moderation.

One thing I am not is a wine snob. Once you cross that $6 a bottle threshold, I'm generally pretty happy with whatever is in my glass, provided its not a dessert wine. It's a good place to be, because my standards are low enough that I can be happy with whatever is on sale. If I was less experienced with wine, I might even be able to enjoy sub-$6 wines.

I am a donut snob. Unreservedly. I just have no interest beyond a single donut from Dunkin' if its put in front of me, and don't even try to tempt me with pastries from the local gas station or grocery store. And you know what, it's great. I won't eat sub-par donuts, so I'm not tempted, and the difficulty of getting really good, fresh donuts makes them rare treats. Becoming a donut snob makes you eat fewer donuts, not more.

The same is true of beer. There are few cases where I will put up with a cheap domestic. You can keep your Coors, your Bud Light, your Miller Lite, and your Keystone. I'll suffer through a Rolling Rock if there's nothing else, but I won't drink it at bars or at home. The US is fortunate to be the home of a renaissance of brewing such that our pub glasses runneth over with delicious, interesting, and complex craft beers. They are also harder to come by and more expensive. Instead of buying (and drinking) two six packs of Natty's, you buy and drink one six pack of Anchor Steam. As you continue up this ladder of beer snobbery, the quantity of beer you drink decreases as the price per ounce increases. One starts to buy ever more esoteric and higher quality beer. You become familiar with the history of the Trappist monks and can name five or six abbeys in Belgium as your beer purchases for the week begin to consist of a few small, dusty bottles from specialty stores. And honestly, did you really need the extra calories or alcohol?

In terms of food, I find snobbery leads to a better diet. Once you have had that '10' steak, what point is there in ordering the tenderloin at Sizzler? Or pretty much anything at McDonalds apart from french fries? Admittedly, there is a kind of nilhism to this outlook. However, I have not dispaired of finding a more perfect steak: everything can be improved upon, and somewhere in the world, there is  a better X than I have ever tried, and part of the joy of my life is searching it out. However, you can fairly easily rule out your local chain restaurants. I'm guessing you've been going there long enough to rule out 'superlative', or, let's be honest, even 'really good.'

There is always the 'settle' argument- you need to eat, you need to feed your family, and hey, Golden Corral is cheap, easy, and it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. If you don't go to Mexico for your tacos, you'll never eat tacos again. Which is also a depressing thought. So I don't advocate that either. Or Golden Corral.

I find, though, that my appetite for American Mexican food has waned, especially in the fast food arena. Keep your Chi-Chi's and your Carlos O'Briens, and especially Taco Bell. Taco Bell's great grandparents were Mexican, but they were raised in California by their super-white uncle and the only thing that's been handed down is some cheesy sombreros. I tried to enjoy it as American food. I tried really hard. I even went there at night when I was hungry, but my standards weren't low enough.

There is a truism that you should eat what the locals eat, unless you're in Papua New Guinea (where they tend to eat people) although I find that generally the American diet really makes one look more favorably on salads. Takeout pizza is a puzzling exception. I have had many pizzas, all around the world, including many different eateries in Italy (expensive restaurants, cheap trattorias, roadside carts), but honestly, there is nothing quite like a warm John's Favorite pizza from Papa John's slathered with garlic butter sauce. Every time I take that first bite, it's "Oh my god" all over again.

For all the stuff, clothing, home items, if you begin to apply the principle of "is this significantly better than what I have?" no matter where you start, you will find yourself buying less and higher quality. Even if you are shopping at The Dollar Store, you can say "you know, this $1 Disney's Tangled-themed desktop organizer is better than just having my pencils roll around my desk."

A lot of people, probably most people, don't really care about selectivity. Many of them can't afford it since selectivity costs time and money. 'Ain't nobody got time for that.' 'Beggers can't be choosers.' You think I want to be shopping at Wal-Mart, asshole? To be fair, I can't imagine what it is like for people with families to feed and clothe and support. It is an embarrassing crime how limited the options are for Americans in the bottom two quintiles. Wal-Mart is organizing a food drive for its own employees.

To wrap this up, for me at any rate, I am happy that my snobbishness enables me to resist a lot of candy, junk food, a lot of mediocrity in general. I may not fill those particular voids, but in most cases, I would rather go with the smugness of self-deprivation than the indulgence of mediocrity.

a dry catalog of the things I did over the last few days

Thursday night, I met up with Quinn and Ryan and finally saw Mike Hauer again. We all met at the Fillmore Vig, a new Vig location a bit north of downtown by Cibo. Really cool place. Nice outdoor patio. I ordered "the last word" a kind of prohibition-era gin martini. Not bad, not bad. Of course, it started to rain while I was there. It would rain for the next two days.

Friday, we picked up mom for lunch and went to The Arrogant Butcher in the CityScape complex. Not bad, but personally I thought the interior design was better than the food. That night, we ordered pizza and watched mom's favorite show, Project Runway. 

Saturday we ran errands. The library, Sprouts, a few other places. That night, we watched a string of Dr.Who specials culminating in the 50th anniversary Dr.Who special, which was inexplicable, inconsistent, but nonetheless interesting and watchable. I am a sucker for John Hurt. 

Today I made eggs for breakfast and we all looked at the gloomy overcast weather outside. We ran to BevMo for more wine and beers, and then the grocery store for Thanksgiving staples. After we got back, I went hiking back into the mountains, three hours of strenuous fast hiking up to the peaks in the Guadalupe range. The feel of the mountain was different after all the rain. There were standing puddles still in the hollows of the rocks, and a few boulder rock falls had water trickling down the face of the stone. The ocotillos had not unfurled their precious leaves, but their stems were swollen, green, and splitting the skins from all the water they had recently sucked up. 

Sausages for dinner and more refrigerator cleaning. Mom gave me her old netbook she didn't use much in Law School so I'm replacing my old netbook I picked up before I moved to St. Louis. The battery won't hold a charge on it, and it is incredibly slow. This netbook is actually probably slower than my Nexus tablet, but there's still some things I can't do in the tablet. (view some websites, add attachments to emails, download and organize photos from my camera card, for example). 

I'm 20% through the Wiliam Shrier book Rise and Fall of the Third Riech. It's of the most appalling books I've read in a long time. Fundamentally, is the story of an organizational and branding genius playing and drawing out unsavory and deep-seated cultural aspects of German peoples and long-standing institutions. How could Nazism have happened? The absolute moral horror, the scientific absurdity, the individual prostitution of some of the great minds of Germany like Heidegger. It's a complicated and disturbing answer.

the high trail

Yesterday, I set my alarm for 5 am to catch Saori on her lunch break, and I got to chat with her for a few minutes before she got called away by her boss. I did end up making the most of the early morning, sending off some more applications.

I also went hiking up into south mountain. I walked over to the 24th street trailhead made a big loop ending up at the Heard Pueblo Scout Camp on 18th street. It's a fun trail, but tiring. The start is easy and the slope not too severe, and crossing the hidden valley is gentle up and down. Once you split off the national trail though it gets more interesting. There's more clambering over large boulders, a rock tunnel, and then when you split off that trail to hike up a trail unmarked on the official park maps, but interestingly, does exist in Google maps. I can understand why.

This is a poorly marked trail, very crude, and very challenging with a lot of boulders. However, it takes you up to another really challenging trail along the ridge line of the Guadalupe range, which are some of the highest points of the park. The trail is really for people who are fit and able to scramble since the trail leads up boulder piles and across some really rough terrain. The views though, are spectacular. From the highest point on the trail, you have a view which encompasses all of the valley from WNW all the way through due W, Laveen through Glendale, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, and Ahwatukee. The hiking is easier coming down when you join back up to the national trail, which takes you to the Buena Vista Lookout where there's parking. From there, its a nice little hike down the Geronimo Trail which I took down into the Scouts camp, the last quarter mile of which is very steep.

Getting through the mountains took me about three hours. It's a six mile trail, so I was averaging a mile every 30 minutes, and that was only because I walk pretty briskly though the flatter, easier portions of the trail.

Is he actually writing about his feet? Ok. He really needs to find a job.

I recently read that people who look younger than they actually are tend to live longer lives, That's great news for Saori and I, provided we reign in our respective vices, but it's also good news for my morbid curiosity about my feet.

In the prime of my life, my feet are ugly, flat, and my toes are particularly Lovecraftian. I have never seen feet uglier than mine (I am not a foot fetishist, so my exposure to feet is pretty typical). Not webbed, but misshapen, disturbingly bent, and many of my toes are wider at the end than at the joint. I can only imagine how they will look in sixty years when I am pushing 90.

More German practice today. Wrote some emails. Wrapped up a preliminary proposal for downtown Phoenix for a donut shop with a lot of my cartooning in characters. Still need to clean the bathroom.

The beans were less spicy today, although they're still so thick its almost like refried beans.

He's raving. Pay him no mind.

The whole "don't go see Ender's Game because Card's a homophobe" strikes me as odd and a bit shortsighted for a few reasons.

If the intention was to deprive Card from making any money off this film, he's got nothing riding on it. He sold the rights to the film, and he's making no royalties off of it. Granted, if there was such an outcry that the studio says "ok, we won't make the sequel" then maybe he wouldn't make any money off of that one.

More fundamentally, do you really think you should not read or see media by people who hold questionable values? You can go ahead and burn A Christmas Carol, and Oliver Twist, and avoid seeing any movies or staged productions related to them- Dickens was noted for his hobby of photographing prepubescent children nude. For something more contemporary, don't see or rent the critically acclaimed The Pianist or Chinatown: Director Polanski is still on the lam for the statutory rape of a 13 year old. And these are the kinds of things that everyone agrees are egregious- we're not even talking about remotely debatable. Should you not buy Ford cars or acknowledge contributions to industry because Henry Ford was rabidly anti-Semitic?

Lastly, the "activism by default" is pretty pathetic. If your only contribution to the Gay Rights movement is not going to see a movie, and then bragging about it on Facebook like you're righteously advocating change, that's spectacularly pathetic. It's worse than the people who stick yellow magnetic ribbons on their cars to show support for US troops.

As usual, I'm not even preaching to the choir- the choir threw up their hands and left ten minutes ago- I'm railing at an empty corner of the church.

spicy

My friend Richard has been trying to get me to do a project with him for awhile and I finally agreed to it since it dovetailed nicely with this whole thing my other friend Ryan was doing, and also because I self-identify as a designer. But Richard, lo and behold, finally got a job so he's bailing. I'm working with his friend Mason now, and I'm kind of thinking ok, lets figure out what we can put together since I've already invested some time on a basic site analysis. I'll be the developer, he can design the buildings. We'll see where it goes.

Took the bus to Lux today. Cool coffee shop. It expanded a lot since I was last in Phoenix. I'm actually happy to see. You can sit there all day and work and drink free coffee refills. Really comfortable place, but a bit noisy with people talking and music. If you can get around that, its amazing. Heard about a cocktail called "The Last Word" which I need to try sometime.

Applied to Oliver Schulze today, a Danish architect/urban planner. Also spent some time drafting a cartoon proposal for a donut shop downtown.

Made guacamole and beans for dinner. The beans took forever, and turned out incendiary spicy, so we just ate the guacamole, which mom and Larry both raved about. Mom said it was the best guacamole she's ever had, which is saying something. I got the recipe from the Rick Bayless cookbook. It's not that complicated, just a lot of preparation.

There's a strange balance in the cookbook between convenience and work. On the one hand, his recipes call for all the sauces to be made by hand from scratch from the freshest, most basic ingredients available. If you're going to make a red chili sauce (chile colorado) you need to buy dried red chiles, devein, seed, and stem them, toast them lightly, and then soak them in hot water just to get to the point of having red chiles ready to be pureed. However, he is totally fine using store-bought grilled chicken, and even recommends store bought tortillas.

My fingers are still burning from the chiles I put into the beans. I've washed my hands numerous times tonight and I can still get a light burning under the fingernails. I'm going to have to temper it with serious cornbread. The flavor is good, but damn, picante.

Tacos after midnight

Yesterday was a good day. I started off by applying to firm in Copehagen, which everyone tells me is an amazing city. I then took busses over to Old Town to meet Rich. Rich and I are working on a 3 week project to propose a grocery store expanded public market for Phoenix.

Took me about 90 minutes to get over there via busses, and the second bus had a guy who was clearly tweaking on something, looking around, looking around, standing up, sitting down, rubbing his face, very erratic behavior. Made me happy when he finally got off.

At Rich's place I met Mason and his girlfriend, who are also deaf, and they're going to help us with the project as well. I communicate more easily with Rich- Mason said I talked too fast to read.

We had a good meeting, picked a site, picked a kind of outline for the program, and set assignments for ourselves before I headed back out. The bus to Tempe arrived fifteen minutes late (note to self- the east valley busses do not run on time) but it was a straight shot that dropped me off at the Tempe transit center just north of ASU where I hopped the light rail over to Mill ave for the concert at the Mill.

There was very little that was not personally significant to this event. The venue is a new outdoor concert space just north of the eponymous mill and the silos on Mill ave. This is actually a partial realization of my capstone project from ASU, the conversion of the mill into a Tempe Urban Arts Center.

It was strange and great to walk around to the far side of the stage, and see the band and the crowd with the silos and the mill looming behind the strung lights. Surprisingly, a lot of the machinery is still in the mill- whoever has been doing work on it has opened up some of the walls.

The headlining band was Black Carl, a band formed not long after I started architecture at ASU, and actually, one of the guitarists, Matt, was in the class behind me from the architecture program, and was friends with Sal. They've had a great rise in the valley, and next month they're opening for True Music Fest with indie icons like the Flaming Lips and Lord Huron. They played at the architecture school's Beaux Arts Ball, and I remember going to a raucous house party for "The Twins," Ben and Andrew, where they played for their friends. People were jumping off the roof into the rented bouncy house, I recall.

Sal met me there, who is of course, a very old good friend, and we also ran into some other architecture alums, people inclined to follow the old band from college. Actually, the crowd was largely made up of people my age or within a few years on either side. Black Carl brought a particular generation with them.

FourPeaks, one of the sponsors, brought five of their beers to tap, and really the whole thing was an irresistible combination to people my age- craft beer, indie music, everything uber local, and priced basically above the usual college crowd.

We drank too much, got some fries from the food truck, and caught the light rail back to Sal's neighborhood after the show. Sal drove us to a late night taco stand illuminated by fluorescents and full of people ending thier late nights with some cheap tacos. Sal grabbed us some asado and pollo tacos and two horchatas. These are not the best tacos I've ever had, but they're Mexican, hot, and hit the spot at 1am.

Sal kindly dropped me off at the house afterwards, completing my cycle through Phoenix sans a vehicle. A good day.

Ten-year watch

A few days ago I got a new digital watch to help me run. It was ten dollars, made by Casio, and it has a battery that will last ten years. It's a strange kind of feeling. Ten years ago, I was just starting architecture, and my life has been a whirlwind up to this point (not counting the stable years of DWL).

Ten years from now, I will be 39, nearly 40. Somewhere, this watch could be ticking at my 39th birthday party where people give me welcome to middle age novelty gifts. I look at the ten-year watch and wonder, will this watch outlive me? I hope not, but a lot can happen in 10 years. This watch could be my son's first watch. This could be the watch that wakes me up to take my son to elementary school. This could be my last possession to pawn on the street.

Or very likely, this could be the watch that I lose in a move or joins the drawer of forgotten watches (most of which have dead batteries) and gets sent to Goodwill in a fit of housecleaning in a few years.

At the very least, the watch face looks at me now and accusingly asks "where do you want to be in ten years?" It's a watch, a ten year watch, but who really is watching whom for ten years? This watch smacks of judgement.

Or I'll read this in ten years, scratching my hair which is beginning to gray at the temples, and think "what the hell did happen to that watch? Oh, well, things turned out differently, but ultimately better than I expected." Or not. More likely "Oh man, I was so eager to change the world back then. I'm not where I thought I should be now, but I'm happy with the decisions that have led me here, and I'm content with who I am." Meh, sounds kind of lame, but I understand that criteria of what is important changes over time. I guess ultimately, I remain optimistic about my own future. If I can get off my lazy ass and do something about it.

I've just finished reading about Hitler's stint in jail after the failed beerhall putsch. Hitler and a very young Nazi party staged a revolution by attempting to coerce the leadership of Munich into seceding basically by getting all three of them in front of him with Hitler brandishing a pistol. Apart from a dozen people killed or wounded, the whole thing could be a comedy. Not the least the sentence- for leading an armed uprising against the state, seizure of government and military buildings by violence, and kidnapping and threatening the government in the state of Bavaria, Hitler was sentenced to all of nine months in prison. Nine months. Hitler could have seen the beginnings of Spring and still made it home for Thanksgiving dinner. In the US, making a joke about armed insurrection is at least a one year prison term. But I digress, as usual.

At any rate, Hitler is sitting in jail, dictating this long book Mein Kampf to his slavish buddy Hess, and basically plotting out his agenda, his spurious and ignorant philosophy, crackpot theories of race and geopolitics and government, starring Herr Hitler as the glorious youth who is going to lead Germany to recapture its greatness. But damned if he doesn't, to the misfortune of pretty much the entire world, including Germany. I hate to be inspired by anyone as thoroughly heinous and irredeemably despicable as Hitler, but there is something to be said about the person who writes their own epic story and goes out and fulfills it.

Semantic antics

After a slow morning of coffee on the patio with mom and Larry, we all went out for breakfast at the Wy-Knot cafe on 7th st, in my old neighborhood north of downtown. Really good, rich French toast, and bacon. I have missed bacon.

After, we went to the Spanish Market at the Heard Museum, where there were a bunch of vendors selling arts and crafts stuff either from Mexico or with Mexican influences. I don't really understand why the Heard, which is one of the foremost museums of Native Americans in the US, is so terrified of the term "Mexican." Perhaps, they struggle to categorize Latin American (actually, the stuff was about 30% Mexican, 70% Mex-Am) under a single name. However, "Spanish" is a really dick move since (A) It was a term used through the early 1900s-1970s to categorize Mexican culture in the United States to not upset conservative racists (e.g. Eduardo's Spanish Restaurant, Spanish rice) and (B) the Spaniards perpetrated the greatest genocide in the history against the indigenous populations of the New World.

Anyway, it was mostly ok artwork, handcrafted stuff I could make, and stuff from Mexico of decent quality but available at 1/10th the price across the border. Fun to poke around though and see the gradations and variations of Mexican-American culture.

We got museum admittance with our tickets, so we joined the guided tour of Peoples of the Southwest which was actually pretty led by a pretty knowledgeable and engaging guide. So it was a worthwhile hour tour.

Afterwards, we drove a short ways downtown to the Certified Local Festival, which was a big street festival with vendors, information, food samples, etc. from Arizona businesses. It was a hot day and after wandering through half, we wanted to find the beer tent. The beer tent was crowded, the beers were served in small tasting plastic cups, and there was no where to sit. I suggested we quit this festival and adjourn to a nearby bar where we could actually sit down in the air conditioning and my companions readily agreed.

So I took them to the Angel Trumpet Ale House on 2nd st, and we ordered a flight of beers there which were mostly misses rather than hits, but I liked my beer, and it's a cool place.

Later that afternoon, I drove to Kiyomi-san's house for dinner in Tempe. She'd just returned from Germany and Copenhagen, visiting Saori and some other friends, and she showed me a photo of the bathroom that Saori shares with her two roommates. The bathroom is so small, the designers had to turn the toilet bowl 90 degrees to make enough space to get to the cubicle shower. Kiyomi said that the bathroom was so small, she had to turn sideways to wash her face, because there wasn't enough room to bend over the sink.

Anyway, Kiyomi brought out the propane grill and made us sukiyaki with a bunch of strange ingredients including pure gluten, tree roots, and some other strange things in addition to the leeks, beef, potatoes and mushrooms. It is, after all, "fried whatever you want." Tom made a pumpkin pie for dessert which we ate with tea inside as it was getting a bit too cool for my comfort out in their gazebo.

Beer and Young Hitler

Wednesday night, I borrowed Larry's bike and took the bus downtown to meet my friends Ryan and Quinn. Ryan was an ASU alum who like me, started working after he graduated, but unlike me, stayed here and is now a registered architect. He and Quinn have just started an organization aimed at raising awareness for the urban possibilities of Phoenix.

Phoenix's bus system is crude but effective. Buses tend to run in straight lines all the way across the city grid, and although they only run every hour they're fairly on time. If they had more frequent buses, you might actually have a usable system. For example, most people's destinations do not lie on a straight line from their houses. If you need to change buses, then you need to factor in the potential 58 minutes of waiting for the second bus. Given that the first bus only runs hourly, you can easily imagine that it would take several hours to make a journey that takes less than 30 minutes by a direct car.

Anyway, I was taking the bus because the proposal was to bike to different bars around downtown. Ryan and Quinn met me close to Ryan's place and we biked first over to Angel Trumpet Ale House. It's a combination of my favorite things- local craft beer, national and international craft beer, all on tap, downtempo, lots of tables, industrial but warm, and an adaptive reuse project. What's on tap is written on a giant chalkboard stretching the full length of the bar. Great beers.

Afterwards, we biked over to the Crescent. Apparently the former home of the crescent ballroom, this music venue is apparently the night equivalent to Lux, and an epicenter of hipster culture. Good drinks as well, and a nice vibe, but definitely a young hipster place. Good chips and salsa too.

Biked back to the bus stop and loaded my bike on the next bus south. It's getting cooler here at night. The night ride along the canals was a bit chilly just in my long sleeve shirt.

I started reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shrier. I'm trying to get a perspective on Germany and the lead up to contemporary history- after all, these are the grandparents of the people running Germany now. It's an interesting read so far. Hitler is a bigger monster than I imagined, although I was shocked to find out that he was recommended to architecture school (but never applied) and that he designed the Nazi standards. The banners, the eagle and wreath, the Roman imagery, he also selected the flag design from submissions. Forget artistry and architecture, Hitler was a born marketer, was a genius of branding. He tapped into the market, studied other brands, understood the value of experience in swaying people, and tightly controlled the Nazi brand. It's too bad he in other ways he was an idiot, and a raging jingoistic racist.

persistance

Last night, I went to the Rhythm Room to hear Terakaft perform. These are guys from northern Mali and they play basically tribal music except with electric guitars instead of the more traditional instruments.

Unfortunately, I forget that when The Rhythm Room says the show starts at 8, this is what actually happens:

8:00- people start doing sound checks.
8:05- the DJ starts his set.
9:14- the DJ finishes his set.
9:15- the warm-up band comes on
10:10- the warm-up band concludes their set
10:15- the warm-up band finishes taking down their stuff
10:30- the band you actually showed up to see comes on stage.

In general, I need to remember to show up upwards of two hours late for advertised shows and I'll be ok. The warm-up band was a family band led by Dad, an aging deadhead, from "Phoenix....Ari-ZONA!!!!!!" just to clarify that he wasn't referring to Phoenix, Iowa. He looked like mid-fifties and wore a tee shirt and bear claw bracelet. Daughter played violin, backed up by a base and a lanky drummer. I nursed my tequila. The best thing you could say about the music was it was loud.

Anyway, it was a light night at the RR, but it filled in slowly before Terakaft came on. It was a good set, they played for nearly two hours and as mellow as the music is, I was never bored by it. All I have to say is I really feel bad for these guys going through TSA. Hope they have Vaseline in their 3oz clear plastic containers.

Today was a reasonably productive day. I called a lighting consultant about a possible job- no luck. Reworked some of my best work from Tatiana into a small three page sample and re-applied to 4a in Stuttgart (they're high on my list, and they turned me down over 2 months ago, so time to apply again. My Mexican friend, who doesn't speak Japanese, got a job at Sou Fujimoto's office in Japan by persistent calling.)

Also applied to another office in Stuttgart where I may have a connection. So that's a work-related phone call and two applications in. I should be doing this every day. Unless I want to end up staying here forever and taking a job as a Revit teacher at a community college. It has now been a month, four weeks, since I arrived in the United States.

What else? I'm making mom calaveras for her birthday so today I went out to buy balloons and tape. Zara is intrigued and a little scared of the inflated balloon. It's really funny to watch because when Zara comes in close to investigate, the balloon is statically attracted to her fur and rolls towards her, and Zara ends up backing up in circles around the room, pursued by the relentless balloon. The Marsh cats are just terrified, on principle.

Went out hiking to give my knees a rest from the running, and ended up walking and hiking in the mountains until sundown. Got in about two and a half hours. Close to dusk, with the sun already around the far side of the mountain, I came across a band of three coyotes on the trail which was new for me. Bigger than foxes, more like dogs, but perhaps not as large as wolves. As I waited and watched, they crossed over and continued to higher ground, keeping a wary eye on me.

10 years of blogging

Today is a kind of special day- it marks 10 years of blogging on the Blazing Sun. It was not my first blog- before this there was Xanga, and even before Xanga, I was running my own website and writing my first blog posts in HTML.

Since middle school, I wrote a monthly newsletter during the boring summer months, and Taylor was my contributor. We ran off one or two copies since the circulation was my household and maybe we sent one off to a few family friends. Taylor, who was about eight, kept a column titled "Ask Dr. Taylor" in which he answered pointed parenting questions posed by Sally and mom. When asked, for example, how to get children to clean their rooms, Dr. Taylor advised bribery. I stole the title, The Blazing Sun, for my own blog after messing around with a few different names. Originally, this was going to be The Postmodern Simulacrum, since I was full of buzzwords in early architecture school.

I started the blog a few months into my first semester at ASU, as a means of keeping parents and relatives appraised of my situation. It was, of course, heavily sanitized (no mention of my early forays into drinking and dating) and I attempted to put a happy face on the unhappiness and alienation I, like many others, felt in my first semester of school.

My blog is also about as old as my involvement with architecture as a full time avocation, and its interesting to chart my interests and views on architecture over the course of the blog.

The writing and purpose of the blog also evolved over time. What began as a censored logbook evolved into a reflective journal and finally into what it is today: incoherent, poorly edited, narcissistic ranting and sympathy trolling. Mostly. Doing interesting things is key to good blogs. The six months I was in Mexico, I wrote more than the prior two years combined. And those two years were in grad school.

While working at DWL where my life revolved around projects I couldn't really discuss, I wrote practically nothing. In the entire year of 2009, I wrote a total of 14 posts, and basically thought I was done blogging. I wasn't particularly challenged or stimulated by much.

The blog covers a lot of ground in my life. There's a lot of travel (highlighted in green), and also some notable omissions- my parent's separation, which was a bit too personal to write about publicly, especially since the principals in that story probably make up a quarter of this blog's readership, and also 2009, when not much really happened besides Saori taking me to California. This timeline covers a decade of my life. It is, in fact, so expansive, that it has now become a reference document for me so I can look up restaurants, cities, experiences, things I did in the past to give recommendations to friends.

2004, Nov 7 - I begin posting to this blog
2004, Nov 17 - First mention of Jen. We are already in a relationship at this point.
2004 Holidays - Moscow and Salt Lake City, Utah
2005 Summer- Backpacking Europe
2005, Dec 21- Going to my grandpa Perkins funeral in Oklahoma
2006, Jan 4 - Breakup with Jen
2006, May 17 - First professional experience as an intern at DWL
2006, Aug 4 - I mention Saori for the first time in a list of people I know going to Buenos Aires
2006, Oct 21- Saori and I go on a movie date. At this point, I'm still kind of hiding it on the blog.
2006 Holidays - UAE and Egypt
2007, May 10 - I graduate from ASU
2007, May 25 - I get my first car, a Prius
2007, Oct 30 - Saori and I move in together in a 1 bedroom apartment in Phoenix
2007 Holidays - Dubai and Japan, although I don't write about Japan. I think I was too busy.
2008 Jul - Traveling around Peru with Saori, mom, and Tay. I write a "highlights" entry
2010 Feb - Switzerland and Paris
2010, Apr 10 - First trip to St. Louis for the Wash U open house.
2010, Jun - Carnival cruise to Mexico with Saori and the entire Case clan for her 80th birthday
2010, July - The agony of packing and loading and moving all of our stuff to St. Louis
2010, Aug 16 - First day of orientation at Wash U graduate architecture
2010, Dec 18 - Last date with Saori to see Tron: Legacy before our first long distance separation
2010 Holidays - Oklahoma and the UK
2011, Jun 24 - Reunited with Saori in Helsinki.
2011, July - Slow summer with Saori and I living in mom's place in Ahwatukee.
2011, Aug 12 - We help mom finish packing and leaving her apartment and drive Tay to Indiana
2011, Aug 24 - Saori leaves for Buenos Aires and I get a new roommate.
2011, Oct - 10 days in Shanghai for studio
2011 Holidays - Florida and the UK
2012, Mar - A week or two between Florence, Rome, Milan
2012, May - Road trip with Tay and Saori to Bloomington, Chicago, St. Louis, and Oklahoma  
2012, Jun 10- I get a phone call with a job offer in Boston. My first day in Boston.
2012, Jun 20 - Saori joins me in Boston and we move into a college dorm apartment.
2012, July - Easy summer in Boston of making models, softball, beaches, lobster, and brownstones
2012, Aug 20- Thoughts on leaving Boston, returning to St. Louis
2012, Aug-Dec- Working on my final architecture thesis. High stress.
2012, Dec 17 - I deliver my architecture thesis presentation. The crowd goes wild.
2012 Holidays - Skiing and family in Salt Lake City
2013, Feb 13 - Tay joins Saori and I in St. Louis for a wild marti gras parade
2013, Feb 25 - Saori leaves for Germany, I dismantle our bed and move out of the old apartment
2013, Feb-Mar - Road trip across the US with stops in Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona.
2013, Mar 10 - I sell the Prius in Phoenix
2013, Mar 28 - My first day in Mexico City
2013, May - Graduation ceremony in St. Louis
2013 Summer- Living, working, and exploring Mexico City and the surrounding area
2013, Oct 8 - Leaving Mexico City to return to the US
2013, Oct - Visiting dad and Tay in Houston, New Orleans; mom in Phoenix
2013, Nov - Unemployed, living in my mom's house in Phoenix, trying to find work

Just reading the chronology makes me tired, and these are about as broad strokes as you can get.
Anyway, to the three or four constant readers out there, I salute you, and I hope you have enjoyed enduring my overly prolix and verbose blog.

Typical creepy America

Today I applied at another office recommended by Mr. Behnisch. I spent probably too long compiling a book of my best photographs from Mexico. My intention was to print it off on Lulu as a softcover, and I may still do it, but I'm balking at the $40 price tag. It's nearly 200 pages of my best photos, so really its a pretty good deal, and I probably will go ahead and buy it- its just that I'm going to wait and see if any good coupons show up first.

That took a lot of time, actually. Organizing, digging up the photos, transferring them to the big computer from the little computer, cleaning, cropping each photo, doing some light touch ups with straightening and contrast.

I did get out and go for a bike ride. Probably went about seven or eight miles total today. Made a beeline for The Farm, just south of southern and 32nd street. The Farm is a collection of cutesy little buildings- a breakfast place, a lunch place, a dinner place, an organic produce farmers market, some kind of handcrafted goods or organic soap store, all arranged around a grove of pecan trees over grass. It was just a little too cute.

I'm on board with local produce (mom, it turns out, gets her produce from the Maya Farm there), I definitely appreciate places that encourage socialization and foster local identity and belonging, and I also have to support restaurants which have the majority of their seating outside as a demonstration that you don't need to be in a refrigerated icebox for a pleasant climate.

However, something about it was a little too deliberately picturesque, like the ready-made wedding alter/canopy/backdrop from vine covered old wood beams, and a few other random poles and weathered wood follies around the property which serve no other use except as backdrop. The prices for all the menu items was also high. All in all, the whole thing is a little Disney.

Coming back, I overshot the canal to ride as close to the fringe of the city as possible, where south Phoenix meets south mountain. It's a strange area. There are ancient, cheaply built old houses from the 1950's on massive ranch lots with goats, dogs, chickens and horses. Some of them are boarded up, abandoned. There are a few tiny subdivisions of 1960s desert bungalow housing in varying states of upkeep and quality of the original design. There are a few tiny white mission style churches out there too. The rest is either empty lots of native desert, or the asphalt desert of contemporary tract housing development infill. Add in the odd trailhead into the mountains and a few small canals, and it adds up to one of the more surreal regions of the city.

Cycling around, there are a lot of really vicious dogs in people's backyards. That, and the fencing, the high walls, the bunker mentality comes out strongly here, but really most places I go in the US, it feels like there's been a hardening against the outside. Strangers are unwelcome. Trespassers will be shot on sight. (Survivors will be shot again). I need a gun to defend what I believe is mine. I hate to say it, but the ascending cultural trait of Americans appears to be violent hostility.

Slightly badass

Sunday we went shopping again, because outlet malls. I ended up buying a pair of running pants for Germany because I might run in Germany in the cold. At any rate, they're useful for wandering around in if it's cold in apartments.

At a Wilson's Leather, I came across some fanny packs on sale. Of course, they weren't labeled fanny packs. They were "lumbar pouches." I can imagine the following conversation:

"niiiice fanny pack! I loved the 80s too."
"Ugh, shows how much you know. It's a lumbar pouch. They're great."
"Oh! oh. I'm so sorry. That is pretty nifty. I was just feeling insecure about my men's carry-all."
"What, your murse?"

Anyway. Later that afternoon I did my run climb run workout, where I ran 1.5 miles to the mountains, jogged/climbed up into south mountain and down again, and then jogged back to the house. It's a pretty grueling workout, although the last fifteen minutes of running down the mountain, nimbly picking my way down stone steps and rocks and turns, was a bit touchy. My knees are actually not sure about this whole "getting back to running" thing although my legs and lungs and heart seem to be on board.

Today I ran some errands, shopped for Mexican food night and ate tacos for lunch at the Pro's Ranch Market. I also picked up some new light switches at the Ace Hardware. I always feel a bit badass when I'm those stores. Hell yes, I do a bit of light electrical work. You should see me install lighting fixtures, bitch!

The previous tenant of the house swapped out the bathroom light switch with a motion sensor on a five minute timer. The problem is most people tend to close to the shower curtain when they shower, and so when you get to the point of shampooing your hair, the room is plunged into pitch black darkness, and you have to pull back the shower curtain and wave to get the lights back on. So I swapped those out today.

For my weekly Mexican dinner, I made burritos de chile colorado. The chile de colorado was actually kind of fun to make- I took 8 dried california chiles, seeded and deveined them, lightly scorched them in a dry, hot fry pan, and then soaked them in hot water for 30 minutes, which reconstituted them. The resulting puree with some of the reconsititution water, onion, and garlic, was a beautiful deep red and smelled wonderful. I cooked it all down with pork for an hour until the pork was tender, and then ladled it into some big northern flour tortillas (this dish is a nod to the borderlands) and threw on some cheese and wrapped it all up. Good stuff.

The Bright Lights of Gilbert, Arizona

I don't remember how we got started on this, but I've been having a lot of "what is a hipster" conversations with mom and Larry. I finally turned mom loose on a string of youtube clips about hipsters and that seemed to settle it.

Saturday afternoon, I went out and ran 8K in a big loop along the canals. It's the farthest I've run since I started running again, and it was definitely challenging. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be though. I think all the walking I did every day at altitude helped, but all of the benefits from the increased hemoglobin should have disappeared by now. I might be going too hard on my knees though, so I should take a rest for a bit.

After a quick shower, I joined mom and Larry in the truck and we set out for old town Gilbert. Old town Gilbert is a strange place. On the one hand, it is quite literally one short main street with a few shops on either side and a water tower, surrounded by scraggly agricultural fields and a sparse smattering of small, old houses. On the other hand, there are three very popular restaurants which cater to very different lifestyles, facing each other on different corners.

At 6pm on a saturday night, it was hard to find parking, and every one of them were packed. We got real lucky with the timing, since a gap appeared at the bar at Liberty Market and it just fit the three of us. Actually, it only fit two, but I was comfortable standing. We split a pizza for a light supper and ordered drinks.

We were actually there for the play "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" at the Hale Theater, a highly acclaimed community theater in the round off of the main street. The theater held a very different crowd than the restaurants we were leaving. An older crowd. Much older. Lots of heavyset men in their 60s in shorts. Mom and Larry were probably towards the bottom quintile in their age, and there were probably less than five people my age or younger in attendance.

The show was fun, light. There was the obligatory local reference. The dancers were good, the plot moved along, the leads were good (really, the show is all about the two leads), but the music and songs are eminently forgettable. By the time you pull out into the road back home, you can't even hum any of the themes.

The Phoenix Sky Train Because We Were Too Stupid to Get it Right the First Time

Today was a reasonably productive day.
I got an email back from TB with the contact info I'd been waiting for. She must have just given birth, so that's crazy. I'd already outlined cover letters for them, so it was a matter of modifiying it for the recipient and sending it off. Crossing my fingers on these two offices. And HdM.

Aside- I hope that someday if/when I have my own firm and I'm a Reasonably Famous Person, I would be as nice to my staff (although pay them a little better). Her past few emails to me, a former intern, have begun with apologies for returning my emails so late.

I also printed off some application materials for Barkow in Berlin. Trying to figure out why that name was so familiar, flipping through past emails I realized I heard him speak at Wash U in the lecture series. He was showcasing a building with a flow-y digital fabrication concrete facade.

I also made up a flier for my Revit tutorial services, and I got to make my own contact information in QR code format. Check it out:

Will the wonders of the modern world never cease?

Anyway, I caught a bus to ASU and wandered through the halls putting a few fliers up in high traffic areas. Or at least the areas I remember highly trafficking.

It's been ten years since I started doing architecture. Over ten years. And it began in the two ugliest buildings on campus, architecture north and south.  I did run into someone I knew, a professor who taught a class ostensibly about unleashing creativity, but was actually more like life coaching sessions. We took the Meyers-Briggs test, did guided meditation exercises, learned more about ourselves (not all good discoveries), identified our values, and ultimately wrote mission statements based on those values.

These were not mission statements like "I am dedicated to the Quality pursuit of Excellence" but actually more like paragraphs to act as a compass in what we are attempting to do, valid for a five year span. Mine expired, although I do feel like I have clear idea of what I am supposed to be doing, obviously different now than when I took the class upwards of seven years ago. Anyway, I thanked him for the class because at the time, it was one of the best courses I'd taken in school. I remember one day after class we were handing in some assignment, he commented on my full name- "That's a really good name! You need to take good care of it!" I assured him I was doing my utmost.

Anyway, after ASU, I walked over to Mill, which of course is constantly changing. It's hard to get a feel for the direction- it feels like the average storefront lifespan on Mill is about six months. I was surprised that Urban Outfitters was still there, and the pizza restaurant we all went to for fourth of July. A sad omission was the shuttered E-joy cafe, which apparently had had new owners. It was the late night go-to for iced coffee drinks during studio. In general, Mill is still the same combination of boutiques, bars for boobs, bars for cheap beers, bars for good beers, livehouses, and fast food: it's just become a lot more polished as the years have gone by.

I stopped at a bar called C.A.S.A. which was an upscale bar with a "foodier" menu, which meant the bar fries were fried in duck fat, where I downed a glass or two of Four Peaks' Arizona Peach Ale. In general, I'm not a huge fan of flavored beers, but the peachiness is very light, the ale is pale, and the combination is fantastic on a sunny, warm afternoon.

I stumbled to the light rail station and caught that to the downtown. On the way, I took a detour to check out the new airport sky train. Arizona is staggeringly stupid in the way things get done. For example, if Arizona wanted to dig a hole, they would give the digger the handle, and wait and see how the hole-digging goes before they would waste money on the shovel-head.

A reasonable city would have said, let's take the light rail through the airport so that when someone gets off the plane, they can take the light rail straight to the entertainment, education, and business districts which the light rail was apparently created to serve. Instead, the city governments decided to run the light rail past the airport and create an entirely new rail line to connect the light rail to the airport. It took years and years to create the new line. In the meanwhile, the transit authority made the sensible decision to run large shuttle busses out to the light rail stop. This was actually a pretty workable solution. You never had to wait long for a bus, and the busses stopped at each terminal.

Now the sky train is open, but it only goes to terminal 4. I happen to know for a fact that the sky train was intended and may someday connect all the terminals. For now though, I hope that they maintained the bus shuttles. If not, once you get in terminal 4, you have to schlep your luggage across the terminal, downstairs, and back outside on a lower level to wait for a shuttle bus to take you to your terminal. Once you have already taken the sky train. And don't even ask about Mesa changing it's mind about having the light rail extended in a straight line the extra mile to the center of it's main city center, I can't even tell you.

So what's the experience like? It's easy, it's free, it's got that 'taste of water' architecture which is indistinguishable from any major international airport. The obligatory walls of glass at least provide ample views of the airport and mountains and downtown, which is a happy accident. 

Anyway, in downtown, after poking through the dia de los muertos events being set up, I realized I've seen about all I want to see really, and I didn't want to hang around and wait for the mariachis for two hours. So I took a bus back to mom's house.

Culinary thursdays

Trouble sleeping last night. Only got a few hours in. Dragged myself out of bed early to drive mom to work, felt like a drugged man. I was not at my most chipper.

Sent some emails in the local hunt and then Larry and I drove to pick up mom for lunch. We went to the Phoenix College Culinary Cafe, the restaurant in the school where the students prepare your meals and serve you (and pay for the privilege to do so). Except they just changed the name to Café Oso since The Culinary Café just didn't sound grown-uppy enough I guess.

The name fit the restaurant well though. It's actually just another large room in the school building. Although they introduced some more sophisticated lighting, its still hanging from a lay-in grid ceiling, and all the tables, chairs, windows, etc are institutional like they came out of my high school.

They did attempt to decorate it up with the usual "fine dining" accoutrements, including soft classical music (although I swear they were playing the "100 greatest classical songs!" CD). Mom said it best when she said the service was willing [but clumsy, and inexperienced]. Our waiter had a tendency to slam down glasses and drop silverware.

The food was pretty good, they bake their own focaccia and baguettes, and while I was falling asleep in the quiche, the seared scallops were perfectly done. The house made cake and cheesecake was good. For about $10, it is a set menu that is hard to beat.

Drove down to Ahwatukee to pick up moms car, and stopped by Michaels to pick up paint and silk flowers for the Dia de Los Muertos altar. Came home, crashed, and was barely cognizant of Larry taking off to go pick up mom. My body dragged itself out of bed again and dove into the convertible with socks and shoes in hand. Trying to clear the cobwebs from my head, I explained I needed to go to a symposium at the Phoenix art museum. There was a symposium on Xul Solar y Borges.

There, I ran into my old ASU prof. Jose Bernardi who was happy to see me there for his talk and insisted we get together for lunch sometime. After the lecture, I jumped on a bus south and ended the night walking back the mile and a half from central, stopping for Taco Bell on the way back.

You know, its really not as good as I remember it. I'm not trying to be a taco snob here, I'm not comparing it to anything I had in Mexico. I'm just saying that compared with a theoretical hard shell taco filled with meat and cheese and tomatoes, Taco Bell tacos kind of fall short.

The new shoes wore blisters on back of my ankles. One of them bled considerably through my socks.