The courthouse is now the library.

]]> http://www.elmada.com/?feed=rss2&p=6875 0 http://www.elmada.com/?p=6870 http://www.elmada.com/?p=6870#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:29:32 +0000 Adam http://www.elmada.com/?p=6870 Shortly after emerging out of the bowels of the Atlanta airport I met up with PseudoWife and her Real Husband – and after exchanging hugs we headed out to their car—and they immediately wanted to reassure me.

By the time they finished reassuring me, I wasn’t clear if I was visiting Johannesburg, Bagdad, or some “modern” American city. They told me the city was safe as long as I stayed away from a few select areas – including a few areas where bypasses had been built so that people could safely drive around the constant barrage of gun fire.

And then they took me through the intersection where recently some poor innocent driver was shot to death, making sure to tell me how about this—I slid down in my seat, trying to keep a low profile, making sure that I wouldn’t be shot if something happened to happen.

Finally the closed out by telling me that because they lived next to a school that there were no sexual predators living in the area.

Once the paranoia was over, we headed to the Carter Center, which as Disenchanted warned me, was a bit disappointing – he’s a good man, but it’s not clear to me that the Carter Center is really that well done – although as I say that I really cannot put my finger on any one reason why that is so.

We closed out the day with a movie (35 Shots of Rum) and a trip to Disenchanted’s favorite burger restaurant in the world.

Now before I say what I thought about The Varsity, I should report her opinion:

So, you can imagine my joy when I learned that The Varsity had added a couple of locations in the outskirts of Atlanta!

The food was just as good as I remembered.

My opinion: It was nice for one meal – but I found it a bit strange how my burger seemed to be smashed shut together and glued down, with a similar look to the hot dog.

I’m glad I went—but I think tomorrow we’ll be checking out other options.

I’m in Atlanta to visit Pseduo Wife I and her “real husband”. They moved to Hotlanta so that he could pursue higher education—which, quite frankly, is probably the only reason to have anything to do with either Atlanta, or Georgia the state in the United States.

Before this journey I’d never given either a second thought beyond thinking of Atlanta as a place where people change planes—the idea of leaving the airport is as foreign to me as the idea that there’s anything more to the Vatican than closet homosexuals, lots of pedophiles, all headed by a Nazi.

Well, that’s a lie: Atlanta is where the repetitive 24 hours news channel CNN repeats all of its news repetitively in order to fill 1,440 minutes a day with the same news every five minutes or so in case you tuned in now instead of five minutes ago or five minutes from now, or, as I’ve noticed, the same news at 7 am and 7 pm, thus ensuring that you’re always updated on what was said earlier and what will be said later right now.

Atlanta is also home to the greatest gift the south ever gave the north: Coca-Cola.

That’s it.

Wait—I was in Georgia, the state in the United States, with Disenchanted on a spring break trip. What I remember most was the omnipresence of Waffle House and a religious song with lyrics that went something like, “If you die tonight where will you wake in the morning.” I was totally distracted; thankfully Disenchanted was looking out the window of the car and noticed that we needed to stop rapidly.

Anyway, I digress from what I really want to babble about: since I am essentially ignorant about all things Atlanta, once I knew I was going, I decided to find out if there’s a “there” there, if you know what I mean. After starting at the Atlanta Travel Guide, I decided that looking at websites was pointless and I looked for a paper version to order. There wasn’t any until I went to the Explore Georgia website and found a place to order information—and I ordered:

• Georgia’s Official Highway and Transportation Map
• Georgia Travel Guide
• Georgia’s African American Heritage Guide
• Georgia’s Travel Guide for Brits
• Atlanta Street Map and Visitor Guide

These are, in order: vaguely helpful, helpful, interesting, mildly amusing, and useless.

Starting with the last: I really wanted information about Atlanta since that’s where I’m going, but the provided Atlanta Street Map and Visitor Guide, printed by “where maps”, was totally useless and annoying. It’s a large fold out map, with little detail, save for the downtown inset, and riddled with commercial advertisements promoting things that I don’t care about like Hard Rock Café (there’s one in every city) and the inside CNN tour – two things that you’d have to pay me a lot of money to visit.

From there I next picked up the guide to Georgia for Brits—which was mildly amusing. It stood out because it was printed on different sized paper from the other Georgia guides. Ultimately it actually gives a pretty decent history and overview of the state. I found it amusing that in the section on shopping, the writers felt compelled to explain:

Shopping malls (large, enclosed shopping centres) are anchored by a few large department stores and occupied by dozens of smaller speciality retailers.

All-in-all, this was the most interesting of the guides, although it didn’t really help plan my trip to Georgia.

This led me to read the all-state encompassing Georgia Travel Guide which was actually filled with lists of information that helped me pick out a few things that I want to do in Atlanta. You’ll probably hear about some of these over the next few days. The travel guide was, in general pretty good, although it took further reading for me to suddenly realize something: it’s pretty white.

This became acutely obvious to me after I picked up the African American Heritage Guide that was black—and really black. Seriously, I found only one white guy in any of the photos in the guide, including advertisements. That one white guy, I might note, was a re-enactor from Fort Jackson in Savannah—standing next to a black guy, just to ensure that readers of the guide weren’t offended.

As for the map of Georgia?

PseudoWife and I will be using it Monday to go visit something special.

The plate, free to those who profess belief, are easily recognizable because they have a stars and stripes motif with large text proclaiming, “In God We Trust.”

Now I’m not Christian, but one would expect the Christ-like people driving these cars to behave in Christ-like ways, but the driver of an “In God We Trust” Indiana plate, number DH 2208 (a Pontiac), failed to behave in this manner.

The trucker didn't do this.

I was on US 41 heading south at Mt. Pleasant Road at 11:56 am local (the 18:56 time stamp is German time) when I watched, in amazement, as he put the box you see next to the 18-wheeler on the ground outside his car door, and then creep forward hoping that nobody noticed.

The thing is, I did.

Let me speak directly to the driver for a moment:

Hey, asshole, America is an incredibly beautiful place—even US 41, heading south into Evansville. When you stuck your trash in the middle of the road and drove on south you demonstrated that you do not care about America and do not care about keeping the environment clean. I don’t personally believe in god, but if he does exist, I am sure that he will judge you just as harshly as I do now. In your world, you just bought a ticket to hell.

In my secular world, however, he isn’t going to hell. He just needs to live with the fact that his license plate, Indiana DH 2208, a special “In God We Trust” plate that indicates his self-professed superiority over me, is now forever on the internet with the message that he’s a litter-bug.

I hope your wife, friends, children, and fellow Christians find this and talk about you behind your back.

You hurt America, Indiana, and Evansville today.

Shame on you.

Indiana DH 2208 is a littering asshole. Shame on him.

Mentally I’d settled on going to the Irish Lion—until I popped into the Inner Chef, which is a stylish cooking equipment shop located between my hotel and the Irish Lion. As I was paying for my purchase, I noticed a flier for Farm Bloomington and the clerk was able to convince me to go there: Sit in the bar and order the Lugar Burger was the gist. He recommended the bar because the service was more consistent and better there than in the dining room and the Lugar Burger because it was the best thing on the menu—that and Chili-Cheese Fries.

He’d convinced me; although I don’t like eating in bars and my lactose issues kept the fries of my personal menu.

I should have gone with my gut feeling and eaten at the Irish Lion.

This wasn’t my first visit to Farm Bloomington: it was my third.

Looks Sophisticated.

My first was one or two years ago and it was a long rocking evening with what I can only call a “gal-pal”—the kind of woman I’d want to mother my kids, if I were that kind of guy. We’d had a good and expensive time surrounded by farm implements and bedpans. The second visit was with a different group of friends and we headed for the “Root Cellar” to drink wine and hang out—the root cellar is a bar cum “performance” venue with subdivided spaces and brick walls.

Between these two visits I’d decided that the restaurant was a bit pretentious, expensive, and ultimately a bit phony. It’s not actually some place I expected to survive because there are just so many other down-home honest places in Bloomington.

So I was actually a bit surprised that the Inner Chef’s clerk persuaded me, but I figured why not—how bad (and expensive) could it be?

The answer was, unfortunately, very.

First up, I should have taken his warning and sat in the bar. Instead I sat in the dining room and at first they tried to sit me in the front half where I would have been exposed by its bright lights to passing pedestrians. I’m sorry but (to borrow an old phrase) homey don’t play that game. I don’t want pedestrians watching me eat. I don’t want to be the only customer in the front room. I quickly said no and was ushered into the space behind the host-stand and seated at a small table.

Initially this was ok: my waitress promptly took my drink order and then told me a list of specials that was sufficiently long that she apologized and offered to read it to me again. (I started to wonder if I was being pranked the way TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes did back in the 1980s—unsuspecting restaurant patrons would be read a list of specials that lasted at least 10 minutes; their reactions recorded by hidden cameras.) I don’t recall the particulars at this point but there were two soups, several main course suggestions, and an Amish cheese plate appetizer (as I recall).

She left me to peruse the menu and after thinking for a little while, I opted for the previously recommended “Lugar Burger”, which is a buffalo burger coming with cheese, bacon, and a side of potato salad. I omitted the cheese—which seemed to throw the waitress a curve and she asked at least once, if not twice, if I actually did not want cheese.

It was around then that I remembered to give my waitress the card that the Inner Chef had provided – it promised to treat me extra well as a friend visiting from the Inner Chef. I have no idea how my service was different from any other customer’s service; if anything it proved to be worse.

The Senator Lugar is far better than Burger Lugar.

I’d brought a magazine to read so I wasn’t paying too much attention to the clock, but it did seem to take relatively long for my burger to come out—and once it was presented to me, the waitress promised to check back with me in a few minutes. Fortunately she left bottles of mustard and “chipotle” ketchup on the table because I would need a lot of the ketchup—and, as an aside, getting thick, slow moving mustard out narrow necked bottle is difficult—German do it right and provide wide necked bottles that you can put a knife in. I think my efforts amused a diner at another table. The ketchup was a bit more fluid.

I assembled the burger to my liking: mustard, ketchup, lettuce, and onion on top – tomatoes off to the side – and started eating it with my hands. I had just taken my first bite when the waitress returned and asked me my opinion—which I was still trying to formulate.

After choking down the first bite, I lied: “it’s fine”.

She left and I didn’t see her again until after I was done eating.

It took me a few moments to diagnose what was wrong, but basically my meal was drier that the Sahara Desert. The bun was toasted—not quite burned, but toasted enough that it was probably seconds from being burned. The burger itself was pretty dry: I’d ordered it medium-rare and it seemed to arrive with a split personality: the first part was closer to well while the second part seemed to be medium-rare tending toward rare.

I ended up pouring a lake of ketchup and resorting to my knife and fork to cut bite sized pieces of the burger, which would be promptly be dunked in ketchup in an effort to get more moisture into the whole shebang.

Ultimately the only thing on my plate that was actually good was the potato salad.

Apparently the Lugar Burger was named the best burger in Indiana by the Food Network Magazine. Based on my experience I suspect that the judges visited only visited two restaurants: Farm Bloomington and Steak ‘n Shake. Steak ‘n Shake must have been having a slightly off day.

After I finished my waitress eventually returned and I made my usual vaguely non-committal, vaguely positive sounds about the meal – what could they realistically do? She asked if I wanted to see the desert menu, and I did.

Here presentation is everything: I’d picked up my magazine again and instead of leaving the menu on the corner of the table within my vision and letting me pick it up when I was ready, she shoved it in front of my face holding it there until I took it from her.

Thanks.

The dessert menu looked nice but I decided against it—opting instead for the check.

This was a process that started to resemble East German service. She went off to get it, returned awhile later with it, and, since I’d foreseen this, I was prepared with cash paper money waiting and after quickly reviewing the bill, I was ready to pay—and, I was a bit surprised, she promptly took my money. However, she did not promptly return with my change. It took at least 5 minutes, if not ten, for her to bring it to me—and I suspect it would have been longer had she not realized I was staring at her as she walked past.

As I left I was wondering what special service(s) I’d received as a result of the card I gave my waitress. The burger was dry; my waitress was slow and inattentive; and there was nothing extra on the table—unless you count the mustard and ketchup.

It all seemed a bit too much—and fake beyond belief.

The restaurant itself is clearly a part of the current trend for “local food” and “real food”. The food is sourced from nearby farms and ranches—my buffalo burger was once living at a ranch near Gosport, a small town located just outside Bloomington. The restaurant tries to give off an ethos of authentic goodness and farm-fresh quality.

It’s also pretentious, expensive, and ultimately a bit phony. I listened to an older gentleman sit at the table next to me with a first time visitor and he obviously loved the place and knew the maitre-de. He pointed out the farm implements décor to his companion; and yes, the décor is quaint: old-fashioned farm implements are hanging from the ceiling.

There are also bedpans hanging on the wall outside the toilets.

The décor here is authentically fake—it’s not down home Indiana, it’s what the owner thinks that big-city folks want to see in a “real food” restaurant. New Yorkers would flock to Farm Bloomington because of its décor—and be charmed into thinking that whatever came out of its kitchen would be wholesome, authentic, fresh, organic, and delicious.

This is why I’m surprised that Farm Bloomington has survived: Bloomington isn’t New York City. People in Bloomington can be in authentic countryside, visiting authentic farms, and seeing actual farm implements in 10 minutes. There’s no need to visit a pretentious, expensive, and phony joint on Kirkwood to get this experience.

It just doesn’t make sense to me—unless it’s survives because of the university and people who are unwilling or unable to do it themselves.

My favorite coffee shop on the planet is still soma – located at Kirkwood and Grant. The coffee shop has aged gracefully and, I’m happy to report, not much has changed. It still has character. It’s still busy. It’s still awesome. I don’t think there’s a better coffee shop on the planet – it’s firmly rooted at the number one spot thanks to it’s excellent coffee, awesome food, funky décor, and regularly excellent eye candy.

It's Chic!

Downtown Bloomington is amazingly vibrant and from my room at the Hilton Garden Inn, I can safely say a lot is walk-able. I walked to the Indiana Theater for the Pride Film Festival. I walked to Bloomingfoods for some light snacks. I (mostly) walked to campus. I walked to Rachael’s Café. I walked to Greek’s Pizza. I even walked to my favorite hair salon, Be Hair Now—where I got my hair cut by Wendy.

Actually I walked so much that Monday evening when I needed to use the car, I’d forgotten where I’d parked it. I also forgot where I’d put the keys.

seriously, nicest store in the mall.

It’s been awhile since I’d been to College Mall in Bloomington—and I headed out there Monday night to buy shoelaces, only to discover that Smith’s Sport and Shoe was no longer there—so I wandered the mall looking for a shoe store—the one that sounded like it had dress shoes on the mall map was an empty store front when I got there, and honestly the entire mall sucked. I think College Mall is on life support and it’s about to fail. There was no joie de vivre—it was a depressing, soul sucking experience to walk through its dim, vacant hallways.

Fortunately I called Mateo and he told me that Smith’s Shoe Center had merely relocated—and was now on South Walnut next to the south side McDonalds – and after realizing that none of the remaining shoe stores in the mall (Finish Line and Foot Locker) would have the shoe laces I needed, I left—driving on over to the new location—and while I’m not completely thrilled by the location, it does have the virtue of not being in the mall. It was a lot more cheerful inside the new location.

One thing that’s impressed me about Bloomington’s current construction boom (although maybe the boom is over), is that a large number of the new buildings are not just infill—covering up parking lots or other unmemorable buildings—but attractive. There seems to be an emphasis on brick buildings with attention to architecture—something that didn’t seem to exist before. If you go to the east side there are acres and acres and more acres of soulless and hideously ugly cookie cutter apartment complexes. I know; I used to live in one. A lot of these new places are in the best parts of town to live and have bus lines running right past them—perfect for those days when it’s -10C out and walking to campus is not such an attractive idea.

I actually used the bus to get to campus a couple of mornings when it was really cold out and I didn’t want to freeze my way there walking from the Hilton Garden Inn (I did walk back to the hotel as it warmed up and I had things to do between where I was working and the hotel). Bloomington’s Hilton Garden Inn is awesome. The location is brilliant, the staff is great, the facility is clean and nice. It is a chain hotel and one might prefer the Grant Street Inn Bed and Breakfast to get the local charm, but I am often uncomfortable with the endemic nosy coziness of B&Bs, making this a slightly better choice for me.

On the university front—it continues to be an amazingly beautiful campus. Students are students, of course, and I noticed that the kick-off for student government elections is already underway and the campaigns are making unkeepable promises like the one by the “Kirkwood Ticket” to provide “better access to syllabi prior to course registration”. They must have been smoking something when they thought that one up—either that or they don’t know how the confluence of course scheduling, vacations, and professorial work habits means that in some cases nobody knows who’s teaching what until the night before and syllabi are often written on short notice.

Slightly insane. At Scholar's Inn Bakehouse.

Finally, of course, I keep my eye on the restaurant scene. As I once had the most popular site on the net for Bloomington’s restaurants, this interests me a lot. Unfortunately the immediate city center seems to be lacking a nice café. Ladyman’s closed way too long ago and its empty storefront is still there (although I was told this would be torn down in the near future). A long, long time ago, Opie Taylor’s used to serve a really good breakfast—but after the owner dimmed the lights while I was reading the newspaper, I apologized to the friendly waitress and told her I wouldn’t be back—and I never did go back and I still boycott the restaurant—and I might note, they no longer serve breakfast. I stopped by the Trojan Horse for the first time in a very long time and it remains as I remember it: absurdly expensive, small portions, and not really that good. Scholar Inn’s Bakehouse (note: horrid music on link!) is doing a booming business and probably has the best bread in Bloomington, but I find the atmosphere a bit strange—not actually that comfortable.

Really there’s not a lot that I would do to change Bloomington. It’s mostly perfect. It’s nicely walk-able, and it’s friendly.

The only thing I would change is the location of Bloomington’s only gay bar—and this is something I’ve complained about before. I would prefer it was somewhere within walking distance of the square. Because it’s on the west side right now, I’ve only been once because I hate driving to the bar, or any bar, for that matter. When I drive to the bar it means I must commit to either not drinking, or only having one drink and then waiting at least an hour before I start thinking about leaving and that sucks. I like the freedom of movement. I liked it when I could walk over to Uncle Elizabeth’s after arriving from Europe, down a couple drinks, then walk back to the hotel and crash.

I don’t do that any more.

My first day in Bloomington I took a trip to see one of Bloomington’s Celebrity Chefs: Jen.

I’m lucky enough to call Jen a friend and I’ve known her a long time – and I am a regular reader of her blog, That Pain in the Ass Vegan.

Jen is, in a word, amazing, and I wish that I had her spunk, character, and her cooking abilities—for she makes some amazing things, like the Blueberry Bars that she’s holding. The Blueberry Bars are vegan and are to die for. She promises to blog about them soon, so keep checking back to learn more about the bars.

It was great catch up with her and her family.

So to mention them, starting with the two shorts: The Island was an odd live-animation out of Canada in which the filmmaker thinks about how he would respond to a hate letter from the USA-a bit surreal and forgettable. The other short was Make A Mate, an odd animated film in which somebody goes to a “create-a-bear” type shop, except it’s “make-a-mate” and picked out the attributes that were most important, including ambiguous gender. It was cute and forgettable or maybe forgettable and cute.

Which leaves us the two last feature films that I’ve left unmentioned so far: Out in the Silence and Coming Out. These two, along side Switch, were films that were free to the general public and had “guided community discussion” after the films were over in order to enhance the shared experience.

Out in the Silence was actually a rather enduring film that looked at the consequences of publishing the first same-sex marriage announcement in a rural Pennsylvanian city—it actually improved the quality of life for a large number of people including a gay teen who was harassed out of school by his classmates. It was a nice film and one of the directors was present to participate in the guided community discussion. I liked the film: It was interesting; It was thought provoking; It was well done.

Unfortunately the guided community discussion was a disaster. The moderator didn’t understand that her role in this discussion was to simultaneously direct the flow of questions and otherwise keep her mouth shut. I actually wanted to talk to one of the panelists, a fellow University of Wyoming graduate, but I was so annoyed by the moderator that I decided to leave before I did something rash.

The last film of the series, on Sunday night, was Coming Out, the first, last, and only gay film from East Germany—it premiered the night that the Berlin Wall fell. I’ve seen the film several times before and I own a copy of it on DVD. Honestly seeing it on the big screen was a lot better and I saw things I hadn’t noticed before—I was better able to see the nuance. It kind of amused me because it seems to me that the streets of (East) Berlin where the film was made haven’t changed all that dramatically. The S-Bahn still runs. The Strassenbahn are still there. The buildings haven’t changed. About the only thing that’s changed dramatically are the cars: fewer Trabants roam the streets.

The panelists for this film felt that it was a period piece, and perhaps this says more about me than anything else, I find that the film resonates—even twenty years after the fact. It is, in many respects perhaps the most extraordinary and stunning film to come out of East Germany because, and this is key, it was state sponsored and it had a positive message about the place and role of gays in society. I believe one of the panelists pointed this out and observed that the US was behind because its (my/our) government hasn’t sanctioned such a gay positive film—and while this is technically true, I might point out that, in general, the US government isn’t involved in the process of green-lighting films made by film studios.

I would heartily recommend Coming Out (Buy USA | DE/Germany) as an amazing film worth watching—and if you can place it in the context of being made in an authoritarian society by the official state film making agency, that helps explain why the film is so amazing.

I had a Penis to put in front of that (s)quid!