Today was a good day.

Ok, so as an unwilling member of the legal profession, my prose tends to be prolix. Re-reading my crab house post will tell me that. We've also been keeping ourselves pretty busy here, so combined with my tendency for lengthy posts, this means that this blog is less likely to be updated as regularly as I'd like. I'm going to try to keep this post short and punchy.

We're in San Diego now, hanging with my friend Dave (we graduated high school together). San Diego is awesome. We did some fun stuff yesterday, but that will be the subject of a photo post later. Today, we went to Sea World. You're never too old for a really good theme park.

The day started with a fish taco and a mesquite grilled shrimp taco from Rubios. Rubio's appears to be a reasonably large chain, and I have to admit that some of the tacos I've had at smaller chains so far have probably been better. Nevertheless, this place is famous for fish tacos and that's where we chose to have breakfast. The important thing is that my day started with my fingers smelling of sun block and tortillas cooked in pork fat. That's a pretty good way for your day to start.

Anyway, Sea World. The Shamu "Believe" show was really cool. Even as amazingly over-produced as it was, and with a pretty good understanding of how animal training works (they don't actually enjoy waving to the audience or splashing them with big jumps, or even understand what their trainers are saying. They're recreating trained behaviours as a to the physical gestures of the trainers.), it is ultimately impossible to be unmoved by the sight of a magnificent, gleaming 7 tonne animal soaring through the air mere metres in front of you. Great stuff. We sat in the soak zone so I copped a chestful of shamu tank water.

Then we went to Old Town for dinner at Casa Guadalajara. I have no idea how it compares to other Mexican restaurants, since I've only eaten at cheap taquerias thus far, but we had a carne asada based house special, a chicken and mango quesadilla, and the lime and tequila shrimp, washed down with giant fucking margaritas (way too sweet compared to the margaritas I make, but I guess they know better than I do). It was all amazing, and a mexican dude sang lovely songs with his guitar through the entire meal. After 7, tiring hours wandering around Sea World, and with a giant margarita making me positively inclined towards my fellow man, it was one of those moments where I found myself both inwardly and outwardly reflecting that this, above others, was a fucking good day.

Old Town is also one of those districts which is EXTREMELY touristy, but still maintains a degree of charm. There are a lot of stalls selling Native American and Mexican souvenirs at a ridiculously high price. I, however, managed to pick up a Lucha Libre related T-shirt for only $15, which I consider to be a fucking bargain, so I was ecstatic.

To cap the day off, we stopped at a liquor store for me to pick up a 40 of O.E. Olde English is a popular malt liquor, favoured by homeless people and college students for its low price and high alcohol content. In the same way that port is a fortified wine, "malt liquor" is like a fortified beer. Sugar is added to the mix during the brewing process in order to increase the overall alcohol content. The end result isn't any sweeter, though, since the sugar is converted into alcohol. Anyway, the concept of a 1.2 litre bottle of beer, in a glass bottle, with a screw cap, was way too amusing for me not to try, and I've actually been curious about it since all the "growing up in the hood" movies I watched as an impressionable young Tupac-listening teenager, so I had to give it a go. The verdict? While you don't taste the sugar that has been added during the brewing process, it does appear to be slightly less bitter, which I assume is attributable to the decreased use of hops. Basically it tastes like any shitty mainstream Australian beer (VB, Toohey's New, Carlton Draft etc.), but with almost twice the alcohol, and available for a ridiculously low price in 1.2 litre bottles. Taking into account the increased alcohol content, each bottle is roughly equivalent to a 6-pack of regular beer, so fearing that on top of the giant margarita I'd get too drunk to do anything tomorrow morning, I only picked up one. I'm really regretting that now, as I'm feeling nicely mellow after polishing off the first.

On top of all that, I had a Ben & Jerry's Creme Brulee ice cream to accompany the beer. Sweet Custard Ice Cream with Caramelised Sugar Swirls. I'm in a good place right now.

080927 - The King & The Duck

Venice Beach

Venice Beach basketball courts. Pretty much the whole reason we went to Venice Beach.

Unfortunately, nobody was really on the courts except for a dumb Asian.

Somewhere along the walk from Venice Beach to Santa Monica, Jono decided he needed to climb a rope.

Rope climbing makes Jono a little too happy.

Post-menudo Jono in Olvera Street.

And here endeth the photos for that day. My photo taking definitely waned hard because I had something (or some scratch) in the corner of my right eye that pained me all day. It felt like some invisible being was constantly rubbing soap into my eye.

EDIT: I have just discovered trying to post photos on Blogger is akin to a sandblast enema.

Jono is a stupid stealer of photos.

I would've made my inaugural photo post. Instead, I will post my distatste at my brother's photo stealing ways.

On our way to Venice Beach I spotted a cunning piece of editing that would've made the Tele proud. Jono stood under it and I took a photo, as I am apparently the sole camera-wielder of this trip (even though I gave Jono my old camera to use on this trip should he want to take photos of his own.) All was well.

UNTIL HE STOLE MY PHOTO.

So Jono, who smells like cat pee in the FACE, is the world leader in auto-rape as President, Treasurer and sole member of:

LA is pretty fucking awesome.

OK, I'd been quite ambivalent about visiting LA from the get go. Why? I'd been here three times already. The first two times, I was a kid, and all I did was go to Disneyland, Universal Studios, watch TV, and eat a bewildering array of breakfast cereals. The third time, I was on the tail end of a 3 month backpacker trip of Europe during which I'd visited amazing museums full of art and history, and frankly, I was happy to just spend a few days unwinding at my grandmother's apartment. The only thing that made LA interesting for me this time around was the prospect of authentic mexican food, which I'd been interested in since I read Rope Burns by F.X. Toole. "People put fish in tacos? Fucking awesome, I have to try that."

Anyway, it was stupid of me to write LA off before I even got here. It's far from being one of my favourite cities, but it can definitely kick some ass. On the flight here, I read a book by Anthony Bourdain called "A Cook's Tour", in which he has the following to say about food:

"...the best meal in the world, the perfect meal, is very rarely the most sophisticated or expensive one. I knew how important factors other than technique or rare ingredients can be in the real business of making magic happen at a dinner table. Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life. I mean, let's face it: When you're eating simple barbecue under a palm tree, and you feel sand between your toes, samba music is playing softly in the background, waves are lapping at the shore a few yards off, a gentle breeze is cooling the sweat on the back of your neck at the hairline, and looking across the table, past the column of empty Red Stripes at the dreamy expression on your companion's face, you realise in half an hour you're probably going to be having sex on ceal white hotel sheets, that grilled chicken leg suddenly tastes a hell of a lot better."

Within mere hours of landing at LAX, jetlagged out of my fucking mind, I had an experience that illustrated this point.

My aunt and uncle, who I'm staying with in LA, took me and Jo to a crab house in Redondo Beach. Apparently the crab house we went to is famous, but being a weeknight, the place was pretty quiet. Being from out of town, there were a few things that made the whole meal exceptional for me.

1. The experience: While the place was run by Koreans (like so many places in LA), the kitchen staff were all Mexican. The Korean proprietor, upon being informed of our order, yelled out the order in terrible Spanish. "Yeh, Sajangnim" (Yes Boss), replied the staff, with impeccable korean pronunciation. They would continue to use their phrase book korean throughout the evening, always with amazing pronunciation. As I would discover later, Korean food prepared by mexican cooks is par for the course in this town. Evidently Mexicans are some of the finest trained cooks in the world, with the majority of the behind-the-scenes cooks in any fine dining restaurant in the US being Mexicans. And as I would later discover, there are unexpected similarities between aspects of Mexican and Korean cuisine, so I'm sure that preparing food for a family-oriented Korean restaurant is a walk in the park for some of these guys.

Sidebar 1. - Only in LA: The conversation being had by 4 girls at the table immediately behind us "Yeah, he didn't realise how much she loved him until he got shot, and she was at the hospital caring for him." No, they were not talking about a soapie.

2. The view: The scenery was amazing. The restaurant on Redondo Beach is located on a wharf. Outside the window was an uninterrupted view the ocean, people fishing on one of the wharves, with their fishing lines illuminated by the setting sun so that they resembled gossamer...what the fuck am I talking about. Fishing lines were shiny and it was all very pretty. Right outside the window was one of the biggest seagulls I'd ever seen, looking at me with the exact same look that Harley gets when she's begging for a corner of my toast. "You're not going to leave me hanging, are you? Look how pretty I am!!!"

3. The food: I love crab. My mum makes a wonderful Korean spicy crab soup, which we eat quite regularly. That's blue swimmer crab, though. I'd never before had larger crabs (in this case, Dungeness crab) that have been prepared only by steaming. In case my reference to the scenery and the Anthony Bourdain quote gave you the wrong impression, let's be clear; this crab would have been delicious in any setting. Not only is the meat fantastic, but there's something primal about smashing open a crab claw with a wooden mallet, breaking it apart with your fingers and eating the sweet, succulent flesh with your bare hands. The melted butter they provide as a dipping sauce was a bit overwhelming, making everything taste like popcorn, so I refrained from dipping the more flavoursome leg meat (crab meat from the legs has a higher mineral content, giving it a stronger flavour.). The blander meat from the body, though, I couldn't help dunking in the butter now and then.

Also interesting to me was the different approach that everyone had to wielding their mallets. I opted for a rythmic approach which was evocative of the opening riff of Metallica's "Leper Messiah" - dun-dun-DUN! dun-dun-DUN! My sister, on the other hand, preferred a "One Strike, One Kill" philosophy, like an old school karateka. To each their own.

As an accompaniment to the meal, my uncle ordered a half-bottle of Johnny Walker Black, which he poured for me over ice. Generally I prefer single malts, and I would never add ice to whisky. Nor would I think that hard liquor and crab would be a good food/alcohol combination. But you know what? With the sea breeze in my face, the sun so low on the horizon that the fishermen on the wharf were now mere silhouettes, and a plate of delicious smashed crabby bits in front of me, that blended scotch on ice tasted pretty fucking good.

Sidebar 2: Candy corn and Mellowcreme Pumpkins My new friend Kat hails from LA, and she has been giving me food recommendations for my trip. Since she seems to know a thing or two about food, I've been following her advice. One of the things she recommended was Halloween season candy; candy corn, and mellowcreme pumpkins. OK, candy corn. Don't eat them. I'm pretty sure I have diabetes now. Seriously. You know those cake decorations on top of overly sculpted asian birthday cakes? Those flowers and leaves moulded from coloured confectioners sugar? Now imagine that on top of being skullfuckingly sweet, those decorations had a slightly buttery, toffee-ish flavour. Now imagine a big goddamn bag of them. That's candy corn. Mellowcreme Pumpkins? Same as candy corn, but twice as big and shaped like a pumpkin. Don't eat them. You will be unable to taste normal food for a couple of days, as your brain will have dulled the flavour signals from your tongue in order to avoid overloading, possibly leading to an aneurysm.

Note: This is a post that I've been drafting for a couple of days. The first 6 paragraphs were written immediately after drinking 9-10 beers, then I thought "Fuck it, I'm too drunk for this, I'm going to crash" and saved it for another day. The beer is so cheap here, it is impossible not to drink. The beer section at a supermarket in LA pisses all over the dedicated liquor stores in Australia. I picked up a sixer of Red Hook ESB, Jo picked up a 6-pack of something called Spiced Pumpkin Ale out of morbid curiosity (think gluhwein, but using beer instead of wine, and with only a fraction of the spices, and almost no sugar, and you'd be on the right track). I would be such an alcoholic in this country.

"Two manky hookers and a racist midget..."

So we left the hotel for our connecting flight, picking up some Dunkin Donuts on the way. I only mention this because for my money, Dunkin Donuts SLAYS Krispy Kreme. At least, the Dunkin Donuts in Korea does. I had a pink sweet potato ring (pink because of the pigmentation of sweet potatoes, not because it was covered in some horrible sugary icing), and it was the tastiest thing I'd ever put in my mouth.

It was about the same diameter as a normal donut, but the tube was much thinner (i.e. bigger hole), and the dough was much denser. It was extremely chewy (I wouldn't be surprised if there was some rice flour in the mix). 10 out of 10 great donut would buy from them again A++++!!!

Now, I had completely denied myself sleep while in the layover hotel because I thought the jet lag would be less crippling if I slept on the plane to LA instead. However, that was not to be, because for the LA leg, we had those fancy video on demand personal entertainment systems in our seats, and for some inexplicable reason, almost all the movies (30+) they had on offer were really good. So I went on an arse numbing movie marathon. Here's a recap.

Redbelt
I am completely unfamilar with the works of David Mamet in film or other media, but this was very good. Mike Terry is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor who runs a struggling martial arts school. He is well respected in the martial arts community, with many holding the view that he would make a great MMA fighter, but he refuses to compete, as his view on martial arts is that they should be used for no other purpose than to put someone on their arse if they threaten the safety of you or your loved ones.

Anyway, the idea of an MMA tournament with the possibility of handicaps is the flimsiest and most nonsensical plot device I've come across in quite some time, but the main character was very well fleshed out, the dude that played him delivers a great performance (I can't be bothered wiki-ing the spelling of his name but I want to call him Chewie Ejewjew), and the martial arts scenes were actually very realistic and well choreographed (except maybe for the wall flip transitioned into an RNC, which seems more suited to a Jackie Chan movie than a jits/MMA flick). Probably the main appeal for me was that Chewie Ejewjew plays the kind of martial arts master that every student of the fighting arts wishes they had. He is charismatic, virtuous to the point that it is frequently detrimental to his own success, and conducts himself with an almost out-dated sense of honour. Shades of the Ghost Dog there, except he's not a socially retarded pigeon fucker.

Iron Man
Nothing to say that hasn't already been said. It's just fucking good, and Tom Morello laying down guitar tracks over the score gets it bonus points.

In Bruges
Probably the most politically incorrect film I've seen in years. Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes are all extremely good in this. I am really annoyed that I stopped using homophobic slurs years ago, because after seeing this film I have an overwhelming urge to go to a belgian beer cafe and say to the bartender "One gay beer, please."

The Visitor
Probably the best of the bunch. A stuck-in-a-rut, starched-collar college professor who has allowed himself to become socially withdrawn after the death of his wife walks into his rarely used NYC apartment to find Tarek, a Syrian illegal mmigrant and his Senegalese girlfriend squatting there. A rewarding friendship forms between him and Tarek, who teaches him how to play the African drums, but Tarek is detained by immigration and threatened with deportation. Shenanigans criticising post 9/11 immigration policy follow.

I defy you not to have a shit-eating grin on your face during the scenes depicting the growing friendship between the two men, and while the second half fails to really nail you in the emotional solar plexus as is obviously intended, the first half is so good that the rest of the film could just be footage from Glitter and it would still warrant a million billion stars. Also the woman who plays Tarek's mother is extremely beautiful.

Be Kind, Rewind
Ok, by this point I hadn't slept in some 32 hours and I was starting to smell like a homeless person's crotch, so I absorbed about 5% of this film. Erm...GHOSTBUSTERS!!!

Stopover in Seoul

Since we are travelling on the pov, we are flying to LA via Seoul. Flight was largely uneventful, although Korean Air now appears to have a three-tiered seating system; Prestige (first) Class, Economy Class, and Screaming Fucking Babies Class. Guess where we were sitting?

I am now sitting in a reasonable little hotel near the airport which seems to cater entirely to in-transit passengers (we touched down at Incheon Airport at 5:30 this morning, and our connecting flight to LA isn't until 15:00).

The stellar view from our hotel window

Me at the computer

Anyway, I have formed the view that it will be easier in the long run to recover from the Sydney to LA jetlag if we resist the temptation to crash on these comfy looking beds and try to catch some Zs on the plane to LA instead. So I'm going to spend the next 4 hours alternating between shaking my head at professional Starcraft TV channels, and listening to Jo make scathing remarks about the weedy, effeminate korean boys in all the K-Pop videos.

EDIT: Jesus suffering fuck, the html tags get really ugly when you let the blogger 'compose' thingy do it for you. Guess I'll have to re-familiarise myself with html.

The Trip

Background
I had no plans whatsoever for a holiday at any point in the near future, being both povvo and saddled with two dogs that I am loathe to leave for any length of time. Then my cousin in LA decided to get married, my sister and I decided to go, and we decided that since we were forking up for the airfares, we may as well make a holiday out of it.

The Plan
LA - San Diego - Denver - Memphis - NYC - Boston.

Why these cities?
LA: Wedding and family will be there.

San Diego: A good friend from High School lives there. I imposed upon his hospitality in Boston to cap off my European sojourn in 2003 and had a good time, so why not mooch off him again? Also, the prospect of authentic Mexican food (which growing up in Seoul and Sydney, I have never before experienced) calls to me like the finest Dutch Double Bubble calls to a university pothead.

Denver: Wait. Why the fuck am I going to Denver? Oh that's right, *grumble something about sister being a one-eyed Broncos fan grumble*

Memphis: If you thought we were hitting Memphis for the music, then you'd be WRONG. I'm going to eat BBQ, bitches. I've been obsessed about BBQ since I was introduced to it by a combination of a shitty chain restaurant in LA and internet message board posters from the South. What we Aussies call BBQ, Seppos* call "Cooking outside". True BBQ means horrendously gristly, cheap cuts of meat transformed into ambrosia by the judicious application of spices and hours upon hours of slow smoking. I am going to eat lunch here every day. Probably have dinner here once or twice as well. Obviously we'll catch some music as well. (Old Crow Medicine Show is playing in the area but we miss them by a matter of days. FAIL.)

NYC: It's NYC, you don't need an excuse to go there. We're going to eat pizza (if the pizza is not floppy like it is in the Ninja Turtles movies, then we're demaning our money back). Also planning on spending a good day at the Met gawking at art (Degas is my homie) and annoying Jo by stopping before every still life from Cezanne's final period and saying "ZOMG I SAW THOSE APPLES FOR REALS!!!! LOLOLOL!!!!!1111one"** General sight seeing and unfunny in-jokes about NYC localities featured in Beastie Boys and Wu-Tang Clan lyrics are a given.

Boston: A very good friend of mine is currently doing his Masters at Harvard, no less. Found it to be a fun town, and Mass. is almost single handedly responsible for the revival of American Heavy Metal, so it holds a fond place in my heart. I am pretty much going to take up residence here for the duration of the Boston stay.

I created this blog as a joint effort between me and Jo, so between the two of us it should get updated at least a few times during the month-long trip, limited only by our access to a computer.

Last one to suffer a major coronary episode loses. Bring it on.

* Septic Tank, rhymes with Yank.

** Atelier Cézanne is a tourist attraction in Aix-en-Provence, and was a major highlight of my 2003 backpacker tour of Western Europe.