Quite a day in Santa Fe.
We started the afternoon by heading to a new (to us) movie theater. The parking lot was confusing, but once inside we were greeted by a nice woman who might own the place. We bought some popcorn (she gave us a discount because she’s friendly) and went to find seats. Rather than theater or airplane seats this theater has couches. The room is terraced and each terrace has a couple of couches, each with its own coffee table. It gives the whole place an informal, homey feel that really works for a theater that shows pretty exclusively films I’ve never heard of. Beyond indie and into the obscure.
We were at the theater to see what claims to be the first and only feature film shot entirely with with a Navajo cast, by Navajos, on a Navajo reservation. It was shot on mini-dv with what were obviously non-actors. It’s called Mile Post 398 The story is about a man wrestling with an alcoholism that’s tearing his family apart. He’s torn between supporting his family and sticking with his childhood friends. The plot is simple and at times almost sentimental, but the emotions are complex and heartbreaking. There aren’t any easy answers.
The story is interesting on its own, but what makes the film truly compelling is all about the context. We live in a country that all but exterminated the native population and pushed the rest of them onto isolated chunks of land. There’s a whole population that the average American has no interaction with and knows very little about. I live in a state with one of the highest Native American populations. To get to civilization I have to drive through no fewer than three reservations (called pueblos around these parts), and yet even I almost never interact with natives unless they’re selling jewelry in The Square. We all know the stereotypes, but to see these folks tell their own story is completely different. It was startling to see the matter-of-factness with which they dealt with alcoholism within the Navajo community. The disease is just a part of the tapestry. Alcoholics don’t appear to be the rule, but they no one is surprised by them. The disease touches everyone’s lives. AA is mocked. In the end the main character makes a change for his family and through the inspiration of a father figure that he never had. His friends learn to accept his decision, but there’s no expectation that they will change. The three of them will have to try and do something other than get drunk around a fire.
The lack of professional actors is a mixed bag. There are some almost painful moments of people trying to deliver their lines, but there are also some brilliant scenes and actors. The dialogue is sometimes delivered pitch perfect, with actors actually sounding like people. All do respect to the great actors of the world, but they never actually sound like people. Here folks stumble over lines and are being forced to improvise just to survive. I don’t this film is coming to a theater near you, but if it does, I highly recommend you check it out.
After Mile we went to lunch a a place called The Cowgirl. The Cowgirl is sort of a touristy spot in Santa Fe, but I’d never been there. I should have gotten the barbecue, but instead I broke with my vegetarian diet to have a game burger. It’s a burger made of venison, buffalo, and elk. It wasn’t very interesting. We spent the first part of the meal looking at the photos of cowgirls that line the walls. In an unfortunate bit of kitsch all of the staff wear bad cowboy hats. The second half of the meal was spent making fun of a pair of fellow diners.
The girl was a pretty fifteen year-old. Her boyfriend was a skinny white guy wearing a very silly hat and baggy pants. We thought it was a funny pairing, but it was when he stood up and donned his jacket that things got memorable. The jacket was a black cotton number that went to his jeans. It was decorated with neon green and yellow lines that might or might not have been trucks. The piece was topped off by an enormous hood, which unfortunately covered his hat. We left shortly after they left and got to see them walk down the street. They were a fetching pair.
From the Cowgirl we went to see our second film of the day at the brand new Regal 14. Our second feature was Hot Fuzz. It was fantastic. Even funnier than Shaun of the Dead. I refuse to give any of the film away. Go see it and see it in a theater with good surround sound.
It’s not often that I can get Beki to see to movies in one day, so it was a rare treat.
I was listening to the Good Food podcast today and one of the critics was talking about a restaurant in LA’s Chinatown. He was going on and on about their steamed fish head. When I was in China I ate a lot of steamed fish head cooked just like he was describing. The head is gigantic and covered in fresh red chiles and garlic and oil. The best heads were some of the best food I had in China. While steamed fish head is nothing new in China, it is suddenly extremely popular. I was told by numerous Chinese folks that the fish head dish had exploded in the past year. Every restaurant does it and everyone orders it when there’s a large group. I find it fascinating that a food trend from China can reach across the Pacific. How amazing is this world-wide culture?
Yesterday Ben, Dave, and I went to Bobcat Bite for a burger and The Screen to see The Holy Mountain.
The burger was amazing. It is a green chile cheese burger. I got mine with grilled onions. Bobcat is in the middle of nowhere (see the post about The Red Elvises for more about places in the middle of nowhere). It's just far enough outside of Santa Fe to make it annoying, but not far enough to call it “a nice drive.” The building was originally some kind of trading post (“I bet you could just come here, get drunk, and shoot stuff,” said Dave), but became the Bobcat Bite in 1953. It's a tiny place with a counter and six or seven tables. The walls are adorned with horrible but oh-so-perfect paintings of bobcats. We were early, so we got a table right away. What makes the burger so good? I imagine that they haven't cleaned their grill in the fifty-four years of its existence. The burgers are just the right doneness. I like mind medium rare, although Dave and Ben both approved of their medium burgers. It was probably the best burger I've ever had. The onions and home fries were not to be overlooked. I took most of the onions off the burger so as to enjoy the perfect meat and chile, but they were delicious on their own. Top it off with some ice tea (they don't serve beer) and you have yourself a perfect meal.
From the Bobcat we headed to a sporting good store to buy racquets for racquetball. We've started playing a couple times a week, so it was time to step our games with our own equipment.
We then drive over to The Screen at the College of Santa Fe. It's a great theater that shows lots of stuff you won't seen anywhere else. We were there to see Alejandro Jodorowsky's, The Holy Mountain. It's truly a bizarre movie in the mode of the more surrealist works of Godard and Bunuel. I can't say it's a great film, but it has it's moments. The first half has almost no dialogue and is filled with a mostly naked man carrying a partial limbed dwarf around a Mexican city. Just read the link to the Senses of Cinema sight and scroll down till you find the photo of crucified, skinned chickens. In the paragraphs surrounding the photo you'll find a pretty good synopsis. Much of the film was just silly and unenlightening, but there were moments when the whole experience of the images really comes together. You start doing away with the kind of logical truth statements that usually represent ideas and start to really understand the importance of experience over semantics. I also like how he gives up on trying to portray the horrors of violence and instead gives a good sense of why art will never quiet get it right. I think these kinds of films are worth seeing from time to time. It really puts a lot of other art and experience in a new context, even if many of the ideas and experiences don't hold water.
I don't know what to make of the rather warped portrayal of sex so prevalent in these kinds of films. Very rarely, if ever, did you see a woman who wasn't either topless or having some kind of sex. There were some women in the film who were powerful and part of the elite ten that the second half of the film focuses on, but so much of the film centers on the depravity of sex acts. But in nearly all the sex acts it is the woman who is the object. Men don't get off easy, but they're almost always in control. Part of this is intended to be satire, but I wonder at what point it stops being satire and starts to be part of the problem. The same thing happens in David Lynch films.
Overall it was quite a strange day. When I came home Beki had gone to see the new Hugh Grant film, leaving me alone to play Wii.
Filed under: Alcohol, Concert, Dancing, Food, Music, New Mexico, Society, Soviet Defectors
Last night I went with Beki, Ben, Dave, and Leslie to see The Red Elvises. I hadn't seen the Ybor City staple in several years and was pretty stoked to see their giant red bass guitar and hear their Soviet surf-rock in all it's glory. They played at the Santa Fe Brewing Company, which has decent micro-brew, but pales in comparison to Sarasota Brewing Company. I had an extremely mediocre hamburger, which was especially disappointing because I so rarely eat meat these days. The venue was, like so many places in New Mexico, in the middle of nowhere; an oasis of light, wood, and cars.
The Elvises were as great as I remember. I'd have never thought a really loud whistle could add so much to a rock song, but the bassist used it to great effect (using his mouth, not a whistle like your middle school coach used). They had a really good keyboard/accordian player. She was short and Russian and wriggled around to great effect. The sax/flute/clarinet player was pretty good. He even played a lot of baritone sax, which I happen to love. The drummer was quite good as well. At one point all five of the band members played a drum solo that culminated in everyone leaving the stage to drink beer. It was just the drummer up there going off for five minutes. He's no less than six feet six with a huge wingspan. He moved from a funk breakdown to surf groove to a Don Cabellero freakout to his best Elvin Jones impression. It was pretty impressive.
The Elvises (which is really just the guitarist and bassist) are incredible showmen. They've taken the do-it-yourself way of conducting a music career and run with it. At the end of the show, after doing four encores without actually leaving, they announced that they were, “The Red Elvises; your favorite band!” It's amazing what two Soviet artistic defectors with a dream can do.
The crowd was a strange one. It ranged from high schoolers to middle-aged women in terrible jeans. One of these drunk forty-something crushed Beki's toe with her high-heeled black boots. The older men spent the evening trying to holler at young girls. I've often cringed at men coming on to women, but never has it been so upsetting. Everywhere I looked there were men leering at these women. I can't imagine what that must feel like. Whenever Chantal and I would ride our bikes to downtown Sarasota, she would marvel at how no one would honk at her when she was with a man. I thought that was telling, but seeing it in such full force last night took my understanding to a new level.
Today featured the best hamburger I've ever had and surrealist film. But I'll save that for tomorrow.
Beki, Ben, Dave, Leslie, and I watched the Oscars on Sunday. I've never actually watched the Oscars, but Beki wanted to make fish tacos, so we invited folks over to complain about the winners and bash the dresses. There was also a drunken bet regarding The Departed between Leslie and Ben that needed to be settled (I was not a fan of the movie, but maybe more on that in the future).
The tacos were my first experiment with frying in my new 12 inch cast iron pan. Beki got a recipe for the taco filling from a guy at whole foods (kale, grapefruit, garlic, onion, lemon…) and I was in charge of frying the salmon and cooking up my famous black beans. I reread the section on frying the Alton Brown's book (a must have for anyone interested in cooking). I prepared my dredging station of flower, egg with a little water, and panko bread crumbs. We had a pound and a half of salmon cut into chunks; it took me a half hour just to bread everything. On Saturday I purchased a candy/frying thermometer. I filled the pan with oil so that each piece of fish was half covered, heated the oil to about 375, and went to town. I must say that I impressed myself. The thermometer allowed me to keep the oil at a constant temperature, which resulted in brown, crunchy salmon without a hint of sogginess. Beki's filling came out great. Add heated corn tortillas, a little rice, some tomatoes, and my black beans to make a great feast. This was all washed down by sweet tea and followed by some homemade truffles.
The Oscars themselves were mildly entertaining. I had no idea that they were so long, but with five people and a cat screaming at the television, it wasn't so bad. The girl who won the Oscar for that movie about Motown sure can sing. I was glad to see Scorsesse win an Oscar, I just wish it had been for a good film.
I was pretty taken aback by just how self-congratualatory the whole thing is. It made me understand why people like O'Reily can so easily demonize Hollywood. I almost threw up when DeCaprio called it the first “green Oscars.”
On Saturday Beki and I went to see the Oscar nominated animated shorts at the center for contemporary arts. It featured the nominees and the runners up for nominations. The short that ended up winning was by far my favorite. It really used animation to it's fullest. The great part about the art form is that you can things that just don't work in live action. I'm not talking about drawing things that we can't make; you can do damn near anything with CGI these days. I'm talking about using the fact that things are animated to have things happen that just don't make sense when you have real people doing or pretending to do them. In the short that one the award there is a scene where one of the main characters is forced to leave the love of his life behind. He just falls flat on his back and is dragged away. It just works in the context of animation, where it would be stupid and awkward with real people. Unfortunately most all of the shorts went for kind of cheap laughs and that's about it. I don't quite understand why animation has been relegated to more of the world of entertainment and/or beauty. I'm all for both those things, but the great part about the winner is that it's about something important. Also, too much animation about animals. Why can't these people make stories about people?
I miss a southern breakfast. I went to the LA Cafe this morning to check out their breakfast. At first glance the place looked OK. Bad curtains, fake flours, smooth jazz. I was suspicious because I was the only one there at 9:00 AM on a Sunday, but I thought maybe everyone was at church. Plus, Los Alamos is a small town, so I wasn't going to hold a lack of business against them. Then I saw the menu. Small. No steak and eggs. Only a three kinds of pancakes. A few omelets and the obligatory New Mexico breakfast barritto. I'll note that the best breakfast burritos on the face of the planet are found at a shack called Chile Works a few blocks away. Plus, at Chili Works, you can get your burrito for $4.60 and even buy some meth. Nothing at the LA Cafe was less than 8:00. That's right, with tip it cost me $11 for three floury pancakes and four strips of bacon. I didn't even want the bacon because I don't often eat meat anymore, but there were no grits or fruit on the menu. How can you have a breakfast joint without bacon?
This time of year in Florida I can go to Kissin' Cousins and get three big, fluffy, perfect pancakes, fresh squeezed orange juice, an egg, and thick, buttery grits for $7.00 with tip. The thing I miss the most is the pancake. I can make the kind of pancakes I ate this morning: floury, almost light but not quite, misshapen and entirely boring and disappointing. I gave up on making great pancakes after spending an entire morning and afternoon making every variation possible. I came to the conclusion that it's best left to professionals with huge, hot, seasoned griddles and forty year-old recipes. Kissin' Cousins delivered the finest pancakes in town. I miss them.
Needless to say, I'll never go back to LA Cafe.
