Austin360 blogs > Miss Adventure > Archives > 2007 > January
January 2007
Today in breathlessly obvious journalism
I don’t do celebrity news often —It’s so tiresome to think about people other than myself— but I had to post a link to today’s bit of hard hitting NOT AT ALL OBVIOUS journalism, courtesy of Digital Spy. Apparently, Britney Spears wants Justin Timberlake back.
In other late-breaking news, puppies are cute and the earth is round.
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Smitten with Smitty’s
Okay, I only THOUGHT I didn’t like Texas ‘cue, but I was wrong wrong wrong. I don’t like mediocre Texas BBQ. Smitty’s —that glorious Lockhart institution— is incredible. It’s what angelmeat must taste like. Lovely, smoky, angelmeat.
I had never been to Smitty’s, or in fact any place LIKE Smitty’s. You order your meat by weight in the smoke room, where they have an open fire and long cast-iron smoking pits, and where the men behind the counter who look for all the world like Hephestus slice your meat onto a sheet of butcher paper. This isn’t gimmick butcher paper, it’s the real thing. You take your meat and your extra-refined-for-goodness squishy white bread and head into the dining room that looks like a honky tonk refectory, with long tables and people of all makes and models eating with their fingers and drinking Big Red. You “git you a drank,” hunker down and dig in.
There are no forks and few napkins, and, as my pals Amy and Ben discovered after devouring our two pounds of “Fat beef,” you can write your name in the grease left on the table.
Always the sign of a good establishment.
So thank you, dear readers, for your suggestions. My next question…where can I get good carnitas?
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Best BBQ in Lockhart?
I may not know much about my readers, but I do know y’all enjoy a good dose of Vitamin B. Some pals and I are heading down to Lockhart for the afternoon tomorrow, and I’d like your opinion. Where should I take them?
I make no claims of being a Texas barbecue connoiseur because I don’t (now dear readers, cover your eyes) really care for the stuff. I know, I’m sorry, but I am just not moved by it. I grew up eating Tennessee style BBQ, usually pulled pork in a vinegar sauce so deliciously tart it would make angels cry and demons pucker. So I throw myself on the mercy of this court. What is the best BBQ joint in Lockhart?
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Bizarre mechanic’s triangle
It’s not unusual that I would, in the course of an afternoon, inadvertently crash either a possibly-illegal gambling den or a small Mexican child’s baptism party. It is unusual, however, that I would do both within the span of about 5 minutes. Oddly enough, that is just what I did on Saturday.
My pal Torvald (the burly-astrophysicist-who-will-someday-move-my-couch from Monday’s blog) and I had taken his gargantuan truck up to Arlington for fun, adventure and a bit of planetarium gazing. After filling up on mediocre brisket at authentic-looking but disappointingly sub-par Bodacious BBQ, we parked and dashed into what we thought was a local mechanic’s shop. It might actually have been a mechanic’s shop, that is, if David Lynch had given up film making and dedicated his life to the care and feeding of Buick Skylarks (tangent: it’s very inconvenient for the purpose of this narrative that Torvald doesn’t drive a Skylark, because if he did I could make jokes about Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” but there’s nothing to be done about that now).
We walked through the propped-open plywood door into a noisy, claustrophobic room full of what looked like low-budget digital slot machines, each with a shabbily-dressed man or woman sitting in front of the screen, intensely focused and clutching cash in their fists.
It might surprise you that I don’t spend a lot of time gambling. I have no real moral objection to it, but I know if I put four quarters into a slot machine odds are I won’t get anything back. If I put four quarters into a laundry machine, however, I have clean underwear for a week.
Torvald and I, completely over-dressed for appearing on COPS, scooted out of there as quickly as our law-abiding legs would take us and, after standing outside a moment, located the mechanic who promptly walked past us, keys in hand, and unlocked a darkened glass-walled room for us and turned on the television, but not the lights. “Wait here” he said.
As our eyes adjusted to the light — or lack thereof — we saw a strange display. A dozen round tables, draped in white and baby blue and topped with flowers, toy bears and mylar balloons reading “Feliz Bautizo.” A bizarre counterpoint to the den of possible inequity we’d just witnessed.
We waited outside.
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‘Hello Ms. Major, or can I call you Ursula?’
Saturday, my pal Torvald — a no-foolin’ astrophysicist who can only be described as burly — and I hightailed it up to Arlington for a day of fun and adventure. It’s always strange going on a long car trip with someone for the first time. It’s like a first date, except more nervewracking. See, there will always be plenty of fish in the sea but only a select few of those fish have the magical combination of gullibility and a really big truck. These fish are incredibly important because, if fed and watered properly, they will move your couch for free while you drink something with an umbrella in it. By this definition, Torvald is a very important fish.
We went to see the UT Arlington Planetarium because Torvald is on the board of directors for Friends of the Austin Planetarium and is into such things. I am into such things as well. I grew up attending Repressed Oaks School for WASPs, and we had a planetarium in our elementary school. I won’t write about how pathetic it is that my elementary school had a planetarium yet The Greatest City in The Greatest State in The Greatest Country in The World doesn’t, but trust me. It is.
The planetarium was ‘eh’, We caught the 1:00 p.m. showing of “Honey I Shrank the Solar System” — not great but not so completely awful as to merit much discussion other than the well-intentioned but completely ineffectual planetarium guide who kept calling all the planets “she’s” (Mars, the last time I checked ye olde book o’ mythology, was a dude.) and called the big and little dippers Ursula Major and Minor, respectively. Of course it should be Ursa. Ursa is a bear, Ursula is a Bond girl in a white bikini. Wrong kind of heavenly body, y’all.
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Champagne wishes, too
This was supposed to post Monday. Stay tuned tomorrow for my adventures in the storm.
There’s caviar in my hair and I blame the dog. I’ve been feeling a bit icky and under the weather recently and I’m doing my best to nip it in the bud before it turns into full blown death. Nipping it in the bud usually involves drinking vast quantities of scalding hot ginger tea from an old plaid thermos and making an inelegant swan dive into a vat of Vick’s Vaporub which -as far as I can tell— hasn’t done a darn thing except for making me smell like the inside of a cough drop. Oh, and eating Special Desickening Foods.
Andy Warhol reputedly ate Campbell’s Tomato Soup every day for lunch for five years because it helped his creative process. I’m not sure I believe it, but I can see the appeal. Not of Campbell’s Tomato Soup — that stuff is on a vile level somewhere between those sugar-free candies my grandmother used to keep in her purse and the stuff between a homeless guy’s toes — but I suppose I understand. Certain foods elicit certain physical and psychological responses. For example: Everyone knows the hot and sour soup from Wanfu Too — aside from being the best in town—has magical smartening properties, especially when consumed after midnight when your woefully incomplete term paper is due the next morning, and that après-club pancakes from IHOP, doused liberally with magenta syrup, will greatly reduce your risk of leaving ill-advised voicemails containing the phrase “ANDLETMETELLYOUANOTHERTHINGABOUTYOU” to people who, technically, are the boss of you.
In the same vein, sour cream and cheap caviar, all wooshed together (what? I’ve been watching Cabaret)and consumed on Ruffles potato chips has magic unplaguing powers the likes of which are rarely heard outside a Sunday morning sermon. As a person of faith, I find it’s my responsibility to eat as much of this concoction — a pal calls it my Republican Comfort Food— as I can. The trick is, when I’m sick, I can’t eat very much at a time, and I usually have to take a bit of a nap before I’m done, which leaves the poor food-covered tea tray to defend itself against two dogs who act as if they’ve never been fed in the lives, or at least not in the past five minutes of it.
That’s how I ended up with caviar in my hair. I fell asleep on my lovely red couch and woke up covered in fish eggs and dairy product. I’m not sure which one of the dogs actually did it, I suspect Dozer, who is wise in the ways of the world — and also tall enough to reach the tea tray — but it’s possible that it’s the newcomer, my baby bulldog, Thomas. He is English, you know… might have just gotten tired of waiting for his tea and decided to help himself.
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The Mrs. Kravitz diaries
I never wanted to be the mean neighborlady. Yet there I was, decked out in mismatched satin pajamas, Libby Wondermop in hand, banging on my ceiling trying to get those darn whippersnappers upstairs to settle down with their rock and their roll. The neighborkid, whose gender I cannot discern thanks to a steady supply of baggy hot-topic t-shirts and vaguely emo hair, has taken to drumming directly above my chandelier. This auditory assault starts shortly after 10:00 p.m. and lasts until I thunk on the wall with the wondermop. I know, I know. I’m 27 and have become an old lady. Just stick rollers in my hair, a Virginia Slim in my mouth and call me Gladys.
Now I’d better skedaddle, it’s time to watch my stories.
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RIP Ramen Guy
The Ramen Noodle Guy died. Frankly, I had no idea there was one person responsible for inventing the Most Important College Food Ever, but apparently there was and now he’s dead. When I had a friend from Virginia crash-land at Stately Miss Adventure Manor for a few months, looking for a job he practically existed on Ramen and chopped up hotdogs.
At the time I was mortally offended — his oodles of noodles insulted the inherent dignity of my gorgeous Le Creuset saucier — but now I understand that ramen is a rite of passage, just like getting your ears pierced or taking a late night road trip to Mexico just to see if the nachos are better there (they’re not).
Since my grandparents who raised us spent so many years in Asia, my brother and I ate ramen fairly often. William liked his noodles dry and without the little silver flavor packet, which I viewed as heresy. I liked mine the way the Good Lord (and Momofuku Ando) intended it, with lots of steaming salty broth. It’s not that I particularly enjoyed the broth which in my household came in two flavors: yellow and brown. I just liked what happened after all the noodles were gone. My grandfather, who is a no-foolin’ Harvard-degree holdin’ expert on Chinese culture, told me the best way to compliment the chef was to sluuuuurp the soup — paying special attention to volume and creativity of noise — and once the broth was gone, to release a window rattling belch.
Just to be polite, of course.
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Back in Black (and blue)
I’m back y’all! With a Brand! New! Puppy! And would you like to know something about puppies? They’re only cute so you don’t kill them. At least that’s my theory. Saturday night I brought home Thomas, a 10-week-old English Bulldog named after two martyred archbishops of Canterbury and an English muffin, and cute though he may be —and he truly is— he’s got a look in his eyes that says “I will destroy everything you’ve ever owned or loved.”
I have no doubt he will.
A few housekeeping notes:
For 2007, Miss Adventure updates will appear on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There will, of course, be updates on other days, but you’ll always get a fresh blog at least three times a week.
Happy New Year y’all!
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