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“He doesn’t just let things happen, he makes things happen.”

“John Q. Hammons saves lives.”

Just two of the totally awesome statements in this staggeringly piece of video hyperbole regarding hotel magnate John Q. Hammons.

John Q. Hammons is a legend in Springfield, a business giant who’s name graces two office buildings, the local Chamber of Commerce, the statue above and a minor league baseball stadium, all within a two block radius downtown Springfield. We came across him on our last trip out here, after noticing the deeply sober statue of him (seen above - read dedication plaque here) at the corner of East St. Louis Avenue and S John Q Hammons Pkwy in downtown Springfield. Standing in front of his statue, it’s immediately apparent that every building you can see, save the Federal Courthouse, is named for him.

What’s so intriguing about him is his statue. I’ve never encountered a piece of statuary more somber, more honest in its portrayal of a man than John Q. Hammons bronze representation. There’s something magnificent and dignified about it, as if it’s totally devoid of pretense. It’s basically a statue of a pudgy older man in glasses and a common suit, wielding a flat file. It’s as if he showed up to sit for his statue and forgot to put his work down.

above - Hammons Tower, a strangely ominous and sort of phallic building that bears John Q.’s name. If you look up into the upstairs windows you can see giant chandeliers - I like to think that he rules his hotel empire from this black building, using his dark side powers to crush the larynx of disappointing middle managers from afar.

Technorati Tags: statue, statuary, John Q. Hammons

I love leaving the comfy ideological lock-step of California to see how the universe is organised outside. While my home city and state are by no manner deprived of religion, or even the “extreme religion” of the truly devout, Christianity’s oddities in California have an outpost quality. I look at my road trips as an opportunity to explore the head-space of my fellows, something that’s difficult to do unless you experience the environments that shape their lives.

While it’s certainly not threatening, there’s something very alien to urban me about places that are religiously homogeneous.

There’s nothing like this back home, a 2-300′ white metal cross, on a tiny hill (hillock perhaps?), surrounded by an assortment of other crosses. You can’t see them here, but there’s always a crowd of folks milling about at the bottom, looking tiny and almost mysteriously reverent at the foot of the symbol of their god. I love how the giant cross mirrors the telephone and electrical poles that run along the highway. Someone should build the “World’s Biggest Telephone/Electrical Pole” with giant Dale Chihuly sculpted resistors.

Technorati Tags: cross, religion, christianity, Christian, Texas

I’m in love with Bass Pro. It’s one of the highlights of my visits to Springfield. A massive wonderland where I could, should I feel the need to, purchase everything from a pontoon boat to a $2000 crossbow, Bass Pro is possibly the largest sportsman’s supply store in the world. It even has a museum attached to it. I cannot say enough how much each visit to Bass Pro factors into my understanding of the society I live in, nor how it brings out the firearm and hunting enthusiast in me.

It’s impossible to explain Bass Pro, except in pictures. They’re totally okay with people taking photos inside the store, because it’s basically like Disneyland for sportsmen - people are posing for snapshots with all kinds of things.

above - Me with a giant novelty fishing lure.  I know so little about fishing that I actually considered the practical use of this as a lure as possible.  I totally want one of these fo Chanukkah.

above - a view of the hunting and killing section of the store, seen from the 4th floor, after taking the glass elevator up.  You could arm a deadly serious militia with the goods on this floor.  There’s an archery range behind the archery section in the back.   This is like 5% of the store.  I tried taking some panoramas, but none of them came out any good.

above - a live bass, seen in a tank in the store.  There are numerous displays of live animals in the store, including displays of ducks, bass, trout, poisonous spiders and snakes.  There’s a cool display in the back of the store where a 75 year old turtle lives in a tank.  The turtle is massive.

above - In front of the Fine Guns section, you can marvel at this $7000, limited edition safe, airbrushed with the image of The Duke, John Wayne.  Why is this gun safe seven grand?  I have no idea.

above - No, this is not the glass pipes section of the store, you unreformed hippie.  This is a locked display of what appears to be an insanely expensive variety of duck and bird calls.

above - a map of Bass Pro, seen near the elevator.  Those boat shapes at the bottom of the map?  That’s the boat department, where you can buy full size boats.

above - Me with one of the polar bears that I famously killed with my bare hands during my last expedition to the arctic.  Sure. That’s the ticket.

So apparently all I eat in New Mexico is hamburgers.  So What.  I like hamburgers, and it’s the only state where they’ll throw green chilies on them, so I load up while I’m in the state.  Besides, I gotta warm up my meat gland before the barbecue onslaught that begins when we hit Springfield.  I’ve gotta have my intestinal track in carnivore mode before we get to Kansas City.

Enter Blake’s Lotaburger.  Like Bobcat Bite, I’ve eaten here before, and I’ve come back for more burger-y love.  The best way to explain the basic premise behind Lotaburger, is to call it the Santa Fe version of Tommy’s shack. Everything is made to order, and the patty is almost razor thin.  Where Tommy’s makes use of their legendary chili, a proper Lotaburger has a nice coating of spicy red and green chili on top.  Also like Tommy’s, Lotaburger has an excellent slogan, which is emblazoned on their bags - “If you are what you eat, you are awesome.“  This slogan is spouted by a drawing of an Uncle Sam-ish character or mysterious origin - perhaps he’s the Lotaman?

There’s something wonderfully idiosyncratic about the process of food prep at Lotaburger.  They write down your order on the back of the bag it’s going to be served in, and the folks working the grill, frying and topping stations pass the bags back and forth.  They follow this up by attaching each bag in your order to another by spearing them together with a toothpick, they use this same method to seal the corner shaped bag that contains your burger.

Fortune smiled on us during this visit to Lotaburger.  It’s a bit of a wait and I was in line behind two women, one of whom worked at Lotaburger as a teenager, as they conversed.  Outside of some technical details of the assembly line process by which each burger is made.  So that’s a positive - folks who worked there as teens still eat there.  Probably means that there’s nothing shockingly disturbing going down in the kitchen.

While we were eating, a metalworker named Tomas joined us at our table.  Further extending Lotaburger’s credibility, he informed us that he has been eating at Lotaburger, at this location, for 45 years, and that the same woman has worked the order window the whole time.  And like everyone we seem to run into during our travels, he knows San Pedro.  Years ago, he worked as a welder and pipe-fitter at Pier 5 in Long Beach Harbor.

an aside - both times I’ve eaten at Lotaburger the customer base has intrigued me.  It’s a mix of super blue collar Latinos and white office workers - everyone seems to eat there.  There’s always a bit of a weirdness, too.  Last time there was this really strange guy on a recumbent bike, who wouldn’t leave his low slung position to do anything, and this time there was a pack of developmentally disabled adults, at least of one who’s Wookie-like yelp revealed exceptional excitement.

above - the burger.  While nothing to look at, it’s delicious from top to bottom.  The magic is in the chilies, a spicy-sweet mix that infuses every bite with peppery goodness.  There’s no sauce on the burger, so you’ve got to provide you’re own from the ones on hand.  I added a little ketchup, but this burger really needs nothing, a simple snack.  The patty is labeled as Angus beef, but that’s largely meaningless to me.  It’s well done and has a nice greasy grilled flavour.  The bun is light, and the whole thing makes a nice snack. 

above - fries.  I’m an idiot for not ordering my own.  I usually will skip the fries, unless their reputation is legendary, as they’re usually a disappointment.  I must have had a lapse in memory, as these are glorious fries.  I don’t know if they’re cut on site, but they’re skin on and have an excellent crispy exterior, matched by a soft and potato-y interior.  They’ve got a bit of that beef tallow flavour that McDonald’s built an empire on, and they’re filling, but not in a greasebomb way.  Few good burger joints have fries to match their burger, but at Lotaburger the burger and fries are exceptionally matched.  They give you little packets of iodized salt to go with the fries, too, and little tubs of ketchup.

The damage.  The two of us were lunched up for about ten bucks, and we shared fries and I had a Gatorade from the car.  So it’s definitely easy on the pocketbook, and it’s by no means a gut-busting commitment, so you’re not wandering about feeling like a blimp all day.

This was my second visit to Bobcat Bite. The Bite has weird hours and days of operation, and although the details are a little fuzzy now, I’m sure that we actually planned our trip around their schedule - the burger is that good.

above - Bobcat Bite, from the parking lot. Bobcat bite is about 4 miles outside of Santa Fe (which as a city is about 15 minutes in diameter - it’s almost creepily small seeming). It’s easy to find, and both times I’ve been there it has been packed. This time we were there right after they opened, and it was full of diners. Last time, we were there right before they closed, and there was a long wait outside, and it was raining. That’s a good sign.

Inside the place is maybe 300 square feet, being generous. It’s tight, but cozy, not crowded, and the staff is all family, a really nice bunch of exceptionally helpful people. Eating here, you really feel like a guest.

The restaurant is located at the mouth of the larger Bobcat Ranch, and there’s a guest house where you can stay on site.

above - the Bobcat Bite Burger, plated. As you can see, there’s nothing complex about this particular animal, and that’s at the heart of its greatness. Like a street taco, it represents how food is often best at its most basic, where quality ingredients and careful cooking accomplishes what fancy plating or “clever” ingredient lists often fails to do. I order everything in New Mexico with chilies, as that seems to be the rule here, and any excuse to eat a heaping pile of chilies is a good one in my book.

The menu at Bobcat Bite has burgers, in four basic combinations, plain, with green chili, with cheese and with cheese and green chili. You can also get bacon on your burger, which Michele got last time we were here, and it was very good bacon. They also serve steaks, but I’ve never had one, nor can I recall seeing someone order one. That’s not to say that their steaks aren’t likely to be exceptionally good, it’s just that their burger is so damn good.

Sides consist of basic salads, potato salad and home fries. I’m neither a basic salad or a potato salad guy, so I order the home fries. They’re basic, well cooked and don’t distract from the burger. Eating at the Bite is really all about the burger - all other items appear to be secondary. I’m pretty sure the reason they don’t serve fries is that the kitchen, which is about 6′x 8′ in size, couldn’t possibly accommodate the addition of a fryer. The lone cook’s attention is solely on the grill in front of him.

above - rareness. There’s no bending over to idiotic fears about contamination at Bobcat Bite - they’ll serve pretty close to alive and kicking. Personally, I’m suspicious of burger joints that won’t serve rare - it tells me that they won’t stand behind the quality of their meat.

The reason I eat here is the meat. Not only are the tomato, lettuce and bun of exceptional freshness and quality, but the meat is exceptional. If I had to give sub-category awards to America’s great burger joints, Bobcat Bite would dominate in the “Best Meat” category. Eating here is simply an opportunity to enjoy a tremendously good beef chuck mix, cooked well and accompanied by the right notes. Just check out this burger close-up, if you need further proof.

The flavour of their burgers stays with you. I could taste the quality of the chuck for a good thirty minutes after leaving the building. Last visit, I had a half of one of their burgers cold, the next day and it was better than most of the burgers I’ve eaten in my life when they were hot and steaming on the plate.

The Damage - A burger and side will set you back about ten bucks, and a steak will cost $16 - $18. Not what you’d like to spend on lunch everyday, but not bad coming from LA, where I recently spent $14 on a burger at The Counter. If you go through Santa Fe and don’t eat here, you might as well convert to rabid veganism and start working on that whole raw food thing, you cheap bastard.

I’m on the road as of two days ago.  Lots of food and art crap coming!

This is AGCC business, but I’m so happy about it that I’m pimping it here. Slobodan Dimitrov is a photographer who’s best known for his amazing body of work documenting labor in Southern California. In addition to being a brilliant photographer, he’s also in possession of one of the keenest minds I know, with an deep education in the fields of labor history, general history, philosophy and theology, and it’s always a pleasure to speak with him about any of those areas.

For the past several projects, Slobodan has been documenting some, or all of the participants.  What has emerged is a striking series of portraits of the people who’s creative energy and sweat makes it possible for the Center to put on the exhibitions and projects that we do.  We’ve created a Flickr group so that they can all be viewed in one place, and we’ll update the group as Slobodan shoots more images.  Check the Flickr group out here.

up top - yours truly.  I got shot as I was the curator for FR8, where we commissioned Slobodan to shoot all of the participating artists.

I’m still going through my Thailand photos, but this is the end of the road for “novel foods.” I’ve just switched to my new Thinkpad, and I’m trying to process all of the photos on my old computer. I’m also trying to knock out some old business before I get on the road tonight for a two week ride across the states with Michele, visiting art museums, family, “world’s biggest” stuff and eating an insane amount of barbecue.

We started talking about eating rat early into my trip. I was in Pattaya, which is a resort town where creepy Dutch tourists go to pick up children for sex and Euros retire on the cheap in an astounding array of condo towers, meeting with an amazing artist named Jiang at his studio, when the subject came up. Jiang had been out to Kalasin with Jessada before, and he started talking about the rat, and how he wouldn’t eat it. I was like “I’ll eat the rat, no problem.” Anyways, Jessada brought it up a couple of times, and my willingness to eat pretty much anything well established, on my last night in Kalasin, he took me out to the fields to hunt and then cook and eat an animal that I really only know as an adorable pet and a storied pest. I’ve never really been able to see rats as either threatening or gross, probably due to many repeated watchings of The Secret of NIMH.

This was the same day as the trip to the Temple on the Mountain - a long, long day. About 9pm or so, Jessada said “let’s go”, and we hopped on his moped, and went about w miles outside of town to the farming fields. where we met up with Danoi and Ole, who had already shot one rat.

above - Danoi with his fist rat. We met up at a place Jessada called the “farmer’s school” a half ruined raised hut where the farmer’s teach their children. They re-build the roof of the hut each year at the beginning of the school year. In the darkness around us, we could hear other groups of farmers and young people drinking, and laughing, but they were all far away. Occasionally we could see the flashing headlamps of other night hunters in the trees in the distance - they were hunting birds. When we drove up, the rat was laid out on the mat in the hut, but Danoi really wanted to show off his trophy.

above - Everyone was kind of chilled out when I got there. Danoi and Ole made a lot of cell phone calls to girls while we sat and had a few drinks. Much of rural Thailand has skipped ever having land lines and gone straight to cellular phones.

above - After some hanging around, Danoi and I made two excursions to hunt for more rats. We got nothing on the first excursion, but bagged rat number two on the second one. This totally took me back to my days growing up, playing at Lord of the Flies in the back canyons of Palos Verdes. It was also a surreal experience, trudging along in designer vans, greased up with “no mosquito” cream and carrying a $1400 camera behind a young man hunting with what turned out to be a percussion cap shotgun ( you can see a shot of him reloading the five foot long muzzle loader here). It was really beautiful out in the fields at night, and we moved across a series of barely visible paths, looking for watering holes where rats gathered. At one point we saw a small running animal, about the size of a rabbit, but it was far away, and Danoi showed no interest in it.

above - back at the hut, Danoi cleaned the rats while he and Ole made phone calls to girls and we drank a healthy amount of Kalasin whiskey, which by the end of my trip, I had developed quite a taste for. Cleaning the rats involved burning and singing their hair in a fire, and then shaving the hair off with a knife or tearing it out in big chunks. It took a really long time, far longer than I would want to spend cleaning an animal that produces so little meat.

above - Danoi and Ole riding back to town. The rats cleaned, and the boys done making cell calls to cute girls, we piled on to mopeds and drove back to town. This picture is possibly my favourite that I took in Thailand - it sums up all of the country’s complexities and identities as I know and love them.

above - Ole prepares the rats for the grill. We went to Danoi’s house to cook the rats. Danoi’s house was very different from Jessada, my host’s, or even Ole’s house. While Jessada has a full modern kitchen (although half of it is outdoors) and refrigerator, and Ole has a gas stove, Danoi’s family seems to do all of their cooking over a single charcoal brazier in the backyard. Danoi was also noticeably poorer than either Jessada or Ole. Cooking procedure was the same as other meals I’ve seen the boys cook, everything cut on a round of wood with a single oddly shaped knife, all food being mixed and prepped in plastic bowls or buckets. Ole separated the entrails of the rats and wrapped them in a banana leaf.

above - the rats grilling in a grill basket. Anything small enough seems to get cooked over charcoal in one of these baskets. Around this time, my anxiety began to kick in a little - what was I doing? Was I trying to prove something? WWTBD? I was committed and determined to consume these guys, though.

above - this was a treat. While we were cooking and waiting, Danoi eased our souls with Kalasin whiskey mixed with Kalasin honey. The honey was raw, the bottle had a bee floating in it, and the two together were heavenly. Later, during the meal, we ate sticky rice dipped in raw honey - it should be the new popcorn, I could have eaten it till dawn.

above - our finished meal. Ole let me shoot the entrails, but he wasn’t happy with the way they came out, as I think he had a bad seal on the banana leaf. So we didn’t eat those. The rats were reall, really well done, and I’m not sure why. They were crispy and super-gamey, a lot like rabbit, but with a “grain/grass fed” taste that reminded me no New Zealand beef. In my notes, I also compared the meat’s texture to a less stringy, fattier frog leg. It’s a white meat, and the legs were really tasty - every other part of the rat really requires some serious work to get at the meat. Regardless of any nervousness I might have had about eating the rats after the long anticipation (It was like 2 AM by the time we ate), I really enjoyed it. It was new, and sometimes in my post-Thailand existence, I get cravings for the gamey flavour of one of these guys.

After eating the rats, we went straight back to Jessada’s and to bed, we were beat, and the next day we had to drive several hours to get me onto the series of aircraft that would carry me home to Los Angeles.

May my hair sweep the floor as I bow low in apology for the above bad post title.

While I was in Kalasin province, we went out to what my hosts described as the “Temple on the Mountain”. The temple is a massive Buddhist complex near the Laotian border, with a mountaintop spire that’s Statue of Liberty tall. We were there on a holiday, and the place was packed. The most interesting visitors? Thai and Laotian teenagers on either mod style Vespas or chromed out choppers looking every bit Anarchy in the U.K. and paying their respects to the temple. No matter how much of a rebel you are in Thailand, you don’t rebel against either the King or Buddha.

More on my trip to the temple in another post, as I still haven’t edited all the images from that visit. This is about the post-temple meal, which we ate on a little raised platform at a restaurant on the road to the temple.  Just like Disneyland in Anaheim, there’s a road of businesses that have sprung up to catch the temple traffic.  There were two different open air markets at the temple itself, in the parking lot, with vendors selling food, but it was not good food - also just like Disneyland.  The whole time we ate our meal, an adorable little pig was wandering around the platform, hoping for scraps.

above - that’s us all enjoying the meal. The meal consisted of sticky rice, two green papaya salads, a deliciously sweet barbecued chicken and a fish and ant soup that I’m going to go on a bit about.  The rice we ate was brought from home - it’s normal practice to bring your own rice with you, especially if you’re going out for the day.  The little baskets that people carry rice in often have shoulder straps, or an attachment for shoulder straps.

First order of business - way in the back, behind Danoi’s (the fellow in the yellow shirt) knee is a little dispenser for toilet paper, which here is mainly used as disposable napkins - few bathrooms in Thailand have toilet paper in them at all, but it’s commonly found at the dinner table. Second order of business - the chicken.  The chicken was really good, and was eaten wrapped in lettuce leaves with either a hot or a sweet-hot sauce.  The taco is a universal concept, I tell you.

above - Ole hoists his whiskey high.   Everybody loves this stuff.  There were little stands on the road to the temple that sold another locally brewed brand, but the boys brought their own from Kalasin.  I got the impression that the local stuff was brewed out of people’s home, unlike the Kalasin stuff, which comes from a factory somewhere.

above - the highlight of the meal, the fish and ant soup.   Imagine the best Thai fish soup you’ve ever had in the states, add 50% more savoriness to it, add fresh river fish and then top the whole thing off with spicy ants and larvae that pop in your mouth like salmon roe.  The ants were all white and had little red dots for eyes.  Totally different fellows than the annoying and tiny bastards who are always waging war on my kitchen at home.  I got lucky and got half the head of the fish and the tail, the meat was just amazingly tender and delicious.  I must have eaten a half dozen little bowls of this stuff and I felt like a bit of a glutton.

My dear friend Edith Abeyta is still in the Netherlands, salvaging the wreck of a residency gone wrong. She sent me the anemic, photocopied invite to the Something’s Brewing exhibition, though. The backside is the same, but in Dutch. The multicolored tickets are for the beer that was brewed as part of the project.  The idea of Dutch art intellectuals trying to intellectualize Edith’s work, while tippling, seems comical and alien.

Also, she sent me this bizarre old Dutch postcard, too. I’m not sure what the symbolism is here, other than “the Netherlands is all about windmills, wooden shoes, wacky hats and tulips”, but the accordion fold out photos seem to suggest that if you look up a nice Dutch Girl’s skirt, there’s images of pastoral Dutch life to see. Since nearly everyone I’ve ever known who’s gone to the Netherlands sent me dirty or pornographic postcards or both, this postcard seems beautifully surreal.