Category: Travel

Posted on

The Dating Game: Florida and My Mister Roberts

Last week I was in Florida, visiting my sisters with my brother and his family. My parents also drove down from Alabama, and we rented a beach house on Indian Shores. The trip this time was very mellow, just hanging out on the beach and with each other, eating grouper sandwiches, bitching about our siblings, building sand castles. And then along came this dreamy bipedal humanoid cryptid whom we shall call Mr. Roberts. Mr. Roberts and I had been conversing online for several months, but having seen only one picture of his fur-ensconced upper half, I had no reason to believe that such a creature could actually exist outside of a fetishist’s CGI enhanced imagination. He lives a few hours away from my sisters, and drove over to spend a day on the beach with me and my family. He was indeed real, and as hairy as his photo suggested, no CGI enhancement necessary. I couldn’t keep my hands off of him, for in addition to looking like something that should be petted, he was just so accessible and welcoming, a 6’2″ shaggy pooch. We drove to Fort deSoto, a beautiful undeveloped island near the mouth of Tampa Bay, and waded and bobbed around and got to know each other better, before heading back to the beach house and a yummy dinner with fish that my brother and brother-in-law snatched from the Gulf that morning. We watched the sun set, one of those spectacular pastel fiery blood orange Florida sunsets, as my family danced in the makeshift cabana/disco they set up behind us. Feigning tiredness, Mr. Roberts asked if it was okay if he could stay the night, so we pushed together the sofas and tried our dangdest to bridge the gap between the two couches, but my sister, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew kept coming in and out of the room. Like, all night. An exasperated Mr. Roberts breathed “Is your family name Kockblocker??” Somehow we ended up falling asleep, various limbs noiselessly entwined, our interaction unfortunately more Hardy Boys than X-Tube, the next day coming way too soon.

Posted on

A Wedding in the Midwest

I spent a week in Moline and Chicago recently to attend the wedding of BC’s niece. And to help with the flowers, table settings, and then emergency wilted flower resuscitation. Everything came off splendidly—except the chicken, which I’ll get to in a bit—the bride swaddled in white, the groom surrounded by sexy 20-somethings, everybody dancing. I adore BC’s family, and their extended network of ex-husbands, childhood friends, and very sexually active octogenarian neighbors. It’s like stepping into a sitcom, every moment so filled with jolly repartee, bright bubbly guests, and hushed musings on So-n-so’s investment in African gold, brother What’s-his-face’s wife who hasn’t spoken to her husband in years yet still shares a bed with him, What’s-his-name’s squandering of his wife’s inheritance on the riverboat casino, the love child, the father who’s now a woman, the son without a father…

The chicken at the wedding was without a doubt the most challenging thing I’ve ever encountered in edible form. Overcooked, sauceless, characterless, flavorless and cold, accompanied by… what, I can’t even remember. Please, let me forget, but not without giving thanks to the brave chickens who gave of their breasts to our festive group mastication.

BC and I went out a few days before to dinner at the local steakhouse, accompanied by the bride’s mother and her current beau. The midwest is where you should always order steak. Mine was impossibly tender, like butter. I didn’t even need a knife. I completely ignored my dinner companions and made love to my New York strip, right there on the table, the juicy object of my ravenous appetite, slicing it into tinier and tinier mouth-watering morsels, hoping it wouldn’t end, licking my plate and knife as it disappeared forever.

Everybody in this area either works for, or has worked for, or their children will soon work for John Deere. Including BC’s stepdad, now retired, who took us on a private tour of the combine factory. We got to climb into a giant combine and were then driven through the plant in a golf cart and through the process of the combine’s creation. Most of the workers calmly pushed buttons that controlled machines that did the work that I had imagined the workers would be doing. The John Deere Company, with headquarters and factories and facilities all over the area, is hardly noticed, except that every other business is “John Deere” something or other. They’ve minimized their visual presence by integrating their buildings seamlessly, sensitively, and beautifully into the urban and rural landscape, as much a part of the community as the community is of it.

We got to see a wonderful show of chairs at the Figge Museum, “The Art of Seating,” including some of my faves—the Lavernes’ Lily Chair, Herbert Von Thaden’s Adjustable Lounge Chair, George Nelson’s Medium Arm Fiberglass Chair… I got in trouble for taking pictures. An attendant ran up three flights of stairs—perhaps she viewed me on some monitor somewhere, or someone alerted her to my violation via walkie-talkie—to breathlessly request that I please stop photographing the chairs.

After the wedding, we drove to Chicago to visit BC’s dad, who lives right around the corner from where the big Gay Pride parade was going on. We walked on over just as the parade was ending, wading through the one-foot deep mound of bottles and cups, and bumping into the drunken stumbling hooting half-naked proud homosexualists. I have never felt so old, so consciously not naked, or so far removed from anything resembling pride.

Posted on

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Last week I visited my parents and childhood chums in Alabama. I spent one of my first nights with my high school buddy James, sipping cocktails and munching on really the best fried green tomatoes of my life at The Club, atop Red Mountain, a swanky private club where Frank and Sammy probably would have hung out if the Rat Pack ever swung through Dixie. Built in the early 1950s, the streamlined curvilinear architecture provides panoramic views of the city, and several dancing, drinking, and dining opportunities, depending on what you’re wearing. We were the guests of James’ friends Barbara and Anneta, two really fun midwestern transplants who share a home with 5 lady dogs. James and his boyfriend have 6 dogs of their own. They all share such a strong bond, I foresee some sort of Brady Bunch union in their future, the 11 dogs and 4 parents cohabitating in a zany suburban household and exploring contemporary issues of gender and cross-breeding.

My mom and Dad took me to the Birmingham Museum of Art the next day, for a stunning display of quilts, and another fantastic show of African pottery and iron work. We stopped by the Aldridge Botanical Gardens afterwards to see the snowflake hydrangeas, discovered and patented by the former owner of the estate, Eddie Aldridge. It’s not often that you get to see snow in Alabama, and these blooms were like an early summer blizzard. My junior high buddy Susan swept me away that night to the Irondale Cafe, the real-life inspiration for Fannie Flagg’s Whistle Stop Cafe. I don’t think I’ve ever so thoroughly enjoyed such thoroughly fattening fare. Susan drove me through the devastation caused by the recent tornadoes that swept through the area. A giant tree fell smack dab in the middle of her daughter’s trailer, who fortunately had earlier sought shelter elsewhere with her husband and newborn. Enormous trees, snapped like twigs.

Saturday James and I took a drive down the Alabama Wine Trail. We visited only three wineries, but there seemed to be a consistent theme of sweetness running through the wines. Not cloying or subtle, but syrupy, lip-puckeringly sweet. The first place we stopped at, Vizzini Farms Winery, in North Calera, featured several “dry style” wines. I asked if the iron-rich southern soil and hot humid climate imparted any particular flavor into their wines. Asking each successive winemaker the same question, I received only blank stares. Terroir doesn’t seem to be much of a concern. Ozan Winery in Calera was the most beautiful, the tasting room atop a hill overlooking the vineyards, with grapes that are actually used in their wines, which we sampled in plastic cups. They make wines with not only the southeast native muscadine and scuppermong grapes, but also with local peaches and other fruit. By the time we got to Morgan Creek vineyards in Harpersville, I gave up on seeking out the essence of place and climate contained in the grapes, and slurped down their undated treacly concoctions, which seemed just the right thing in that hot Alabama sun.

While on the Wine Trail, we stopped for lunch at Pa Paw’s Restaurant, a meat-n-3 in Columbiana. I had the finger-lickingly delicious fried chicken with sides of field peas, mac-n-cheese, turnip greens and corn bread. After the wineries, we headed to deSoto Caverns. Outside, the cicadas chirped hysterically. The cicadas of the southeast materialize only every 13 years, emerging from the earth in the millions. After their 13 year adolescence underground, they shed their shells, and then enjoy six weeks of adulthood, screeching and mating and laying eggs. The cave had been a speakeasy briefly in the 20s, and a former indian burial site. After turning off the lights at one point, and leaving us in absolute and scary darkness, we were dazzled by a laser and spurting water display about the creation of the universe—the 7 day theory—ending with this broadway marquis style glittering crucifix glowing on the wall. A sacred indian burial chamber named after the destroyer of their culture, now a Christian propaganda theme park. Only in Alabama.

Posted on

Empty Nests

A pair of mourning doves made a nest in a planter of ivy on my parents’ deck last month, laying two eggs. Shortly before I arrived to visit with my folks in Birmingham, the eggs hatched. Every day we watched the parents feed the quickly growing chicks with their crop milk. The whole family seemed fine with us sitting only a few feet away, enjoying our iced tea while they regurgitated and pooped, wiggled their wings, and sang us their mournful tunes. After being out with friends one day, I returned in the evening to my dad’s excited announcement that the chicks had flown the coop. I was so excited, I ran up to the deck to see if I could see them around and noticed that dad had taken their nest away. “They’re so messs-ssy,” he complained. Shocked, I ran out and returned the ivy to its former place, and squawked that the chicks were going to be traumatized if they tried to return to their home and it was gone. I had no idea if this was true or not, but they had become part of our family, we had watched these chicks grow, regurgitated meals together. The dark forest behind my parents’ house seemed like a scary place for them to be, I wanted them to know that they had a secure home to return to.

Flash back to 1985. When I returned home the first time after leaving for college, the reproduction Peter Max mural in my bedroom had been painted over, my first edition Hardy Boys books sold, letters from my 6th grade girlfriends and other treasured memorabilia tossed out… no trace of me. Mom and dad, the extreme opposite of empty nesters.

Posted on

The Roman Spring of Coco Poofter

Bob, Reese, Jocelyn and I have returned from two weeks in Rome. It was the perfect time to be there, warm, everything in bloom, not yet crowded. Bob and I frequently traveled there when we were together, and this was our first trip back, indeed our first trip anywhere since our breakup in 2003. We all worked together as a team: I the documenter; Jocelyn the navigator; Bob the cook; and Reese… well, the teenager.

Much has changed since my last visit, including a major cleanup of all the monuments, a reorganization of the national museums, and some new museums for contemporary art, including Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI. The food was exactly the same, consistently amazing. Even a simple dish like rigatoni cacio e pepe brought tears to my eyes. Highlights were the sculptures of antiquity fabulously exhibited in a former power station, the Museo Centrale Montemartini; a day in the country of the Sabine women, eating lavishly of the bounty of the surrounding countryside—prosciutto and pecorino, artichoke fettuccine, cicoria, grilled bunny, house-made wine; the hilltop town of Montopoli; the 7th century Benedictine abbey of Farfa; gelato at Giolitti; Bernini and Borromini’s staircases and Pietro da Cortona’s ceiling fresco cycle at the Palazzo Barberini; carciofi alla giudia; fiori di zucca fritti; the Caravaggios all over town…

I revisited my old favorites: Bernini’s slyly subversive Apollo and Daphne at the Galleria Borghese, Daphne’s twig gently brushing between Apollo’s legs; Stefano Maderno’s tender and brutal Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia at Santa Cecilia in Trastevere; Bernini’s orgasmic Saint Teresa in Ecstasy at Santa Maria della Vittoria; Raphael’s brilliant frescoes in the Villa Farnesina and his proprietary la Fornarina at Palazzo Barberini; all of those humpy river gods and my guys Hadrian, Silenus and Hercules, all over town; the mosaics, 1st century BC frescoes from Livia’s Villa and the poignant hellenistic bronze Boxer of Quirinal at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme; the delighful turtle fountain in the Piazza Mattei…

It’s very hard to come back home to houses that are less than 500 years old and public sculpture that wasn’t created around Augustus’ time, but I’m settling back in. I’ve recreated most of the dishes I ate there, including the previously-mentioned rigatoni cacio e pepe, asparagus leek risotto, bucatini all’Amatriciana, artichoke fettucine, but I haven’t been able to find fresh squash blossoms in the corner store like I could in Rome.
Posted on

Lunch with the Shepherds

If you’re driving to Los Angeles from San Francisco and want to stop somewhere along the way for lunch, there is no more tummy-pleasing a destination than the Wool Grower’s Hotel Restaurant in Los Baños. Big Chrissy and I undertook a recent lunch expedition to this comforting Basque bastion of gustatory gratification. You go in, sit down, and they start bringing all this food to you, plate after plate. And a half-bottle of their housemade wine. A simple and crisp tossed green salad, white beans, vegetable soup, lamb stew… these are all just set in front of you. You do have to decide what kind of animal you’d like as your main course: beef, chicken, pork or lamb. A ridiculously huge portion, then rice, fries… and a little dollop of ice cream to finish it off. Everybody pays the same price, everybody goes away happy and unbuttoning that bottom button and loosening the belt a notch or two. It’s not just about the quantity and variety of plates, it really feels homey, real food, just like what maman used to make.

Posted on

Back in ‘Frisco

I’m back in San Francisco. ‘Frisco, my dad says. We’re supposed to cringe when we hear those two syllables, but I don’t think I understand why. I imagine Edward G. Robinson talking about his ma’ in ‘Frisco, or Ida Lupino pouting through a smoky halo about the man that ruined her life—back in ‘Frisco…

So getting here wasn’t that difficult, despite how hard Virgin Airlines wanted us to stay on the east coast. The morning after seeing the rowdy and raucous Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a very entertaining and educational emo-rock opera that positioned the 7th president as a sort of rock star, our flight back to ‘Frisco on the 28th was canceled. We were rescheduled to depart on the 6th, a week and a half later. Lucky for us, my family is scattered all across this great big land and my big brother Paul lives just a little train ride away in Connecticut. We hopped on the train and spent a few days with Paul and his family, nibbling and imbibing in wintery bliss. Big Chris and I found a flight out of a little airport nearby and used his frequent flier miles to get us back home on the 30th. The only space left was in First Class. I’ve never flown First Class before and could not believe how many beverages we were encouraged to ingest—and all for only 100,000 frequent flier miles. I was finally one of those unpleasant people that every schmuck leers at while schlepping back to Coach. Finally.

Posted on

New York: Lunch at del Posto

So the only reservation we could get for lunch on Monday at del Posto was at 11:30. We hiked through the snow-capped peaks of the West Village and arrived on time for our freshly-demoted-to-one-Michelin-star lunch. The restaurant was virtually empty, due to the blizzard the day before and the mounds of snow still in the streets, the entire staff devoted to crafting a most memorable lunch for just the two of us. It was an amazing feast, the tasting menu inspired by the season and featuring a (to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas) panko-encrusted partridge with a poached pear and foie gras mousse; lobster with ice lettuce and cauliflower; a shaved-truffle topped cod swimming in a beef broth…

I don’t know what they could have possibly done to lose that star, or what else they’re going to have to do to get it back. The waiter did mispronounce the name of my wine—I didn’t correct him—but still, a one-star demotion? Were the Michelin tasters deprived of something as children? What more do they want? I couldn’t imagine a more pleasurable, delightful, and tasty experience. Thank you del Posto.

Posted on

New York: Christmas Weekend

So Big Chris and I schlepped over to Chinatown for Christmas dinner with our Jewish friends at Joe’s Shanghai. It was like being in a Woody Allen film—we waited in line for an hour, the PhDs in front of us discussing their research funding, the graduate student nervously interacting with his visiting mom and dad, someone reading Dostoyevsky, lots of yarmulkes. In addition to our main course, we accidentally ordered two plates of soup dumplings. Of course, we ate them all, having watched a video on YouTube earlier about how to not eat them like a caucasian, and perhaps overeager to display our advanced dumpling handling techniques:

And then the snow came. Like lots of it. So we went to the Whitney to snuggle up with the Paul Thek, Charles LeDray and Edward Hopper shows.  I just love Edward Hopper.  He’s so breathtakingly boring, all those desolate exteriors and empty storefronts, but so of his time, and such a great handler of paint and shadow.

Also engaged with the mundane, Charles LeDray’s show featured dynamite manipulations of scale: miniature hand-thrown and painted ceramic pots the size of thimbles, thousands of them; tiny outfits hanging from tiny hangers… what a nimble and inventive craftsman.

And then on to Paul Thek, who made sculptural installations before all those crappy scatter art things that we keep having to  wade through in all the galleries these days.  In the context of the museum, detached from the environments and performances that the artist staged, the works felt like, well, like the hunks of meat that he created out of wax—parts of something once very much alive.

Back up to Times Square that evening, we got tickets to see Jeffrey Wright in A Free Man of Color, John Guare’s boisterous new play about a pre-historic (1802) sexually charged, racially progressive New Orleans, just prior to the Louisiana Purchase. I was just happy to see Jeffrey Wright and to thaw out my feet.

Posted on

New York: Friday

Yesterday I and Big Chrissy dejeunered with Davide at Gobo, a very veggie eatery on 6th Avenue.  Davide’s looking great, with the coolest glasses, but I wish his strict fashion sense would expand to include something warmer for this weather.  I shivered looking at him in his handsomely tailored feather-weight overshirt—that is, looking at him through my scarf- and muff-wrapped head.  We saw the Coens’ True Grit after lunch, a perfect Christmas family retribution film.  I think I enjoyed their version more than the Henry Hathaway version, although Kim Darby still holds a special tiny place in my heart.

After the film, we walked over to Vaselka’s, in the lower east side.  BC and I had a traditional Ukranian Christmas eve dinner—12 courses, one for each apostle.  By the time I got to Thaddeus and Bartholomew, my tummy was singing a Ukranian folk hymn of blessed contentment.