Its was swift, shocking, and beautiful.  At around 8:30 pm last night, New Yorkers were wrapped in this:

It’s intriguing what good weather can do to people.

Take San Diego for example.  Enter a manicured landscape of obediently uniform palm trees, Volkswagen beetles used as canvases, and curbside dispensers of doggie walk bags. 


The streets have hardly met with ice in all their years—excepting the occasional 2 a.m. dropped daiquiri—and are now prowled by a demographic often referred to as “troubled youth” whose shoulders prop up boom boxes blasting smooth jazz, so smooth I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the same tunes while on hold with miscellaneous tech support hotlines.  Such an absence of profanity, such a distortion of teenage rebellion, threatens to erode the erosion of society.

But San Diego is the eighth largest city in America, the census takers say.   Where is that big city attitude when everyone says hello to you in the street?   Even a homeless man, who was pushing a shopping cart stocked with a yoga mat and a batting helmet, gave me a neighborly greeting-with-hand-wave.

Delicious, dry-heat afternoons have emboldened the restaurateurs of San Diego’s Little Italy to reach new, geographically-promiscuous dimensions of fusion dining.  Their Italian restaurants push curious specials of chicken gumbo while a British pub smugly occupies the dead center of the district.

Better yet, the sun has inspired the city to unleash a fiesta of urban renewal, culminating in a baseball diamond built in the center of downtown five years ago.  Used to thinking of a major league ballpark as being surrounded by a moat of parking lots, I was caught confused and cockeyed when I encountered a swarm of buoyant foot traffic on the sidewalk, figuring the folks were exiting a bar after watching the Padres complete their sweep of the Cubs on television.   Well, they had certainly watched the game, sans beer commercials, because I had just walked past the stadium itself, which was surrounded on three sides by condos and high-rises (avoid the traffic and watch from the game from your balcony!).  For those folks who don’t feel American without parking lots, don’t fret: half the downtown streets had to be re-routed in a useless attempt to evacuate thousands of car people back to their homes in the burbs.

But wait: there is trouble in paradise after all.  May and June are some of the worst months for San Diego weather.  During that unfortunate stretch, the San Diegans find their mornings a little chilly, with all those pesky sea breezes cooling down the city at night to an intolerably frosty 68 degrees.  The mornings might even be cloudy, and the sun might not bust through until—get this—10 am!   How do they keep their heads high?

And there’s even a name for it: June Gloom.  (I was there at the end of May, but I suppose May Gloom doesn’t have the same ring to it.)  The locals find it so depressing that the city has given up on eating breakfast.  Either that, or a gumbo mafia is at work in San Diego, bullying some of the people into paying $21 for scrambled eggs at the hotel restaurants, while funneling the rest of the hungry folks into an hour-long line in front of Richard Walker’s Perverted Pancake House, home of the friendly girl wearing waffles as pasties.  Keep your whipped cream to yourself.



Speaking of breasts, the military has an intense interest in them.  San Diego’s military bases have their own weekly events paper, four-fifths of which is comprised of ads for breast enlargements: the new Kevlar, apparently.  And much more flattering than a chest-flattening flak vest.



Weather alone cannot do this to people, you protest.  You are quick to point out that a good chunk of the city is in the flight path of the airport, denying the residents of sleep and unscrambled thoughts.  But for San Diego, the jets seem to come in handy, effectively drowning out the tourists demanding a bite of the special waffles in the advertisement.


Special thanks to Kaytie for showing me around and steering me away from the city’s pseudo-Italian joints.

Last fall, I went to New Orleans to offer the services of my stomach in the city's battle against an invasive species.  Ready your camouflage outfit and your spit cup, because the March '09 issue of Perceptive Travel just published the scoop, "Showdown at the West Esplanade Canal."

The March issue also contains a fun piece by Luke Armstrong narrating how Cuban ingenuity and patience delightfully steal the show.  Also look for Chris Epting's contribution in which he reflects on modest-looking but history-changing birthplaces in the States.

Here's a little piece of "Showdown at the West Esplanade Canal" to get you started (you can't leave your comments and heckles over at PT, but you can leave them here!):


Exciting events are not supposed to happen in the suburbs. I mean, what would the neighbors think?

So I wondered what the neighbors thought as I cruised past their curtained living rooms while shell casings flew in front of my nose. It was midnight and I was sitting in the back of a pickup truck between a two-man SWAT team that was blasting away at an insidious foreign invasion threatening to destroy New Orleans.

The invaders, from the lawless jungles of South America, are not aware of their transgressions. That's because they are large, furry rodents called nutria. What's worse, they did not choose to invade America; Americans brought them here.  Imported in the 1930s for their luxuriously soft coats, they were released from farms in southern Louisiana when the price of the fur was high. Now that wearing rat has fallen out of vogue...  (continue reading over at Perceptive Travel)

Don’t get the wrong idea -- I don’t wish to cast any fashion judgment on those who wear comfy clothing. Sure, you might have to worry about those big, billowy pockets getting picked. But as I discovered yesterday, the New York City subway furnishes a hazard equally as heinous as ending up with less cargo in your cargo pants: ending up with more cargo.

It all started when something bumped my ankle. Since New York City is crawling with moneyed parents who don’t have any control over their undisciplined kids, I figured a young one ran into me. Or maybe one of his toys rolled my way.

But when I looked down, I didn’t find a kid. Or a toy. Instead, I met eye to eye with a hairy, quivering rat trying to climb up my pant leg. At this point, I employed evasive maneuvers in the form of what I call the Hey Now Dance. For those of you who wish to try this at home (or if you live in a public transit-free area), you first jump in the air, slightly kicking your legs apart, but not too far, since you don’t want to injure your fellow rush hour passengers. While looking down to make sure the rodent hasn’t matched your dance steps move for move (rodents are a lot smarter than most of the animals that humans like to eat!), yell “Hey now.” Repeat until your fellow passengers learn the dance too. Note: don’t scream. You don’t want to cause a stampede, now do you?

Some of you might be thinking: why my pant leg? What exactly did I have in my pants that the rat wanted? Only the rat knew for sure, but I would imagine he was just looking for a place to hide. A little chill time away from the stress of navigating around all those bipeds that can’t stand the looks of him. Or it might have been that I had waited for my lunch in front of a charcoal grill shortly before I went on the platform; and to a critter whose regular diet consists of old gum wrappers, I must have smelled irresistibly burgerlicious.

In the end, the indifferent fate of the laundry cycle saved me, for while I have cargos, they had not come around in the weekly rotation yet. I wore jeans yesterday. Snug they were -- not Robert Plant-snug, but tight enough to discourage a marginalized mammal from clawing his way into warm, mobile refuge. Thus I avoided the inconvenience of having to take my pants off on the platform. Always wear clean underwear, though, just in case.

While societal pressures to spend are in full force this holiday season (despite another recession), I'd like to update an old adage: the best things in life are free…

Unless it's a kidney stone.



For the unlucky among you who have passed one of these insidious little freaks of nature, you know it's the worst pain you can possibly experience. I passed a deceptively small (2 millimeter) stone a few weeks ago, and I wasn't amused by such a wonder of the human body. Women even claim it is more painful than natural childbirth. The pain can only be understood by those who have had a stone. It's like being part of a club. I guess.

For the rest of you, allow me to describe the feeling, so as not to leave you out. One moment you are fine, thinking about peacefully mundane stuff like buying pet food or whether you should clip your fingernails.

Then a big, dumb oaf shoves a chef's knife into your back. It almost pokes out the front. The oaf is too big for you to push away, so you think negotiating is in order, but he doesn't speak any languages you speak. So you ask him to take the knife out, and he shoves it in farther. You ask him to stop twisting it, and he plays with it. Meanwhile, all of your back muscles on one side spasm in an attempt to grip the knife to stop it from moving, but the muscles just end up crushing one another. Some twitch like a spin cycle on an old washing machine; others turn into stone. Your kidney feels like it's rotting. It's impossible to find a comfortable position. The more you move, the more it hurts. The more it hurts, the more you move.

Then you sweat. And your fingers start to get cold. It's a horror movie with the soundtrack of hurling that you provide. A lengthy, repetitive soundtrack.

During my movie, I noticed that walking was the least painful of positions and activities (perhaps that is the body's way of helping you dislodge the stone and jiggle it down and of your body), so I scurried to the emergency room -- thankfully it was close to my apartment -- where I noticed a funeral home right across the street from the ER entrance. That's just not good for the morale of ER goers, now is it?

Everyone else in the ER was staring at this knotted up sweatbath. The kids were fascinated. I hate feeling privileged or special, but since the other people in the waiting room all looked like they were waiting for the bus, I asked to be next. The nurse had a hunch I was one of the night's kidney stone bearers (they get 'em all the time, like clockwork or something, so she knows the symptoms), so she let me in. A shot of muscle relaxer calmed down the spin cycles, but after two percocets, the pain still came back.

Two millimeters: not even the size of a peppercorn.

After the stone scraped its way down the narrow tube from my kidney to the bladder, the worst was finally over. The last part, the part where it left my body, was happily anticlimactic, for me at least.

I am now free to shop for pet food. I never knew how happy I could be rummaging through the aquarium aisle. Simple things can be so lovely, and should not be taken for granted.

I suppose asking why the human body sometimes makes these potentially dangerous rocks is a religious question. Maybe even a philosophical one. How evolution can keep this damning flaw in the gene pool smacks of imperfection, but then again it's our same imperfect species that can also experience all sorts of cool things like humor and irony. (But apparently not at the same time as a kidney stone.)

So what causes kidney stones? There are several kinds of stones, and sometimes doctors point to the diet of the patient for causing some kinds of them. Chocolate, broccoli, huge servings of protein, coffee, and some teas often get the fingerpoint for encouraging creation of calcium oxalate stones, the most common variety. But at the same time, some of the foods listed above have also received status as protection against stones forming. (Let me guess which study was sponsored by the Association for Coffee Importers.) Only one thing is universally agreed upon: drinking lots of water may help flush them out before they can form or get large enough to summon the big, dumb oaf for thee.

So now I've joined the club, having my seat saved by such past members as Napoleon Bonaparte, William Shatner, and Chuck Palahniuk. As much as I wouldn't mind hanging out (and drinking mass quantities of water) with such folks, I wish I had been denied membership.

OK, now it's your turn. Any tales of health you care to share?

Catch a bird.  Get hypnotized by the tuna girls.  Put that chia pet to good use. 

But don't sweat the land mines! 

My piece in the latest edition of Perceptive Travel will show you how.  The issue is also stocked with travel pieces from Michael Buckley, Joel Carillet, Michael Shapiro, and Stephanie Elizondo Griest.  And let's not forget the latest issue's world music reviews for all you Putomayo whores.  Enjoy.

As many of you know, I've often contemplated the arbitrary line a culture draws between pet and meat. After stumbling on graffiti artist Banksy's latest installation in New York City, I know I am not alone.








"Open for Rare Breeds, Pet Supplies, and Mechanically Retrieved Meat," claims the sign on the sidewalk in front of The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill at 7th Avenue and Bleecker. It's much more fun to watch the above chicken nuggets -- one of the store's window displays -- in robotic motion, each one bobbing its nugget noggin into the sauce. Barbecue flavor, if I am not mistaken. For a British artist, Banksy sure came up with the ultimate lazy American invention: nuggets that dip themselves.







Terrarium-bound hot dogs dipping their casings in water bowls; sausages squirming at one end while the other end is already sliced up like a live octopus at a sushi restaurant; an ape, remote in hand, watching television footage of other apes …





So here we have Banksy's damning fusion of the pet and the meat industry, both of which, not coincidentally, consumer-driven. And what better way to accent their commercial natures than to rent a storefront as the venue? As a soft, jingling banjo soundtrack plays from somewhere, the place even smells like a pet store with hay in the cages and the liverlike-cardboard scent of dog food.

With racks of squeaky dog toys next to cans of Dinty Moore and spam, I suppose you could actually get some shopping done there. Banksy dares you to do so. When I went, the store was full of window shoppers only, though; the two cashiers, dressed in matching overalls, did not have much to do.



If you do buy something, you are forced to think about hypocrisy of protein and pets.  And if you don't, that's even better. I think the idea of opening a store where the point is to buy nothing is fucking cool. Especially when it's located in the center of a neighborhood hemorrhaging outlets where you are supposed to engage in the highly-evolved pleasure of disposing of your income.

I know what you are thinking: tag after tag, Banksy still protects his identity. So how could he install an exhibit in a storefront on a busy Manhattan avenue and not be seen? How do we know he is really behind it? I asked one of the clerks, who kept her thumbs looped on her overalls, if she actually met him. She shook her head. "When I got here, the hot dogs were already movin'."

Sure, we can keep destroying our environment by raising cattle, or we could start munching on some of the world's most plentiful creatures: insects. Given the choice, I suspect many people will still gleefully choose steak frites and armageddon. I think as long as there is moderation, we can eat all the stuff we want. But if Thursday becomes larvae night instead of hot dog night, you might want to check out my review of barbecue-flavored mealworms in the latest installment of McSweeney's Reviews of New Food. (When you've clicked on the link, scroll down a few pages.) And wipe those cricket legs off your chin.

This blog has been silent recently because I’ve been busy falling into holes in the Nicaraguan sidewalk and walking around muzzles of shotguns guarding Pizza Huts in Honduras.

But staying odor-free proved to be the toughest challenge. When a Nicaraguan hotel advertises their showers as having hot water, what they really mean is that an electric contraption taped/tied/strapped to the spigot heats the chilly pipe water before it falls on you. You can already see where this is going: all that water and all those dangling wires make for a frighteningly thrilling way to clean tropical slime-sweat off your neck.

However, in a country where passing cars on blind curves competes with getting gored in the face by bulls as the most popular recreational activity (silly me, I used to think it was baseball!), battling heater coils seems so entry-level. Here’s to being stuck at square one:



Managua water sure was cold. So I figured I had to flick one of the switches on top of the device. That’s when I found out that the labels are all in Portuguese. Hmmm, could these have been remnants of some little-known Portuguese invasion of Nicaragua in 1728 where the conquistadors bathed the natives before they slaughtered them?

The "Quente" setting, whatever that was, wasn’t working out, so I cranked it up to "Super Quente," but only succeeded in electrocuting myself on the box, which just had to be made out of metal. Freezing under the cold water turned out to be a better idea.

On the bus to the mountain city of Matagalpa, I couldn’t tell whether the smoky smell that wafted around the bus was coming from slash-n-burn farming or my still-simmering pancreas. But the Matagalpinos, who survived the constant abuse of the Contra war, find a little juicing from a showerhead to be the least of their worries.


When I was offered a room boasting the above device, I figured it was a little too difficult for my skill level, so I asked, "Have you got any more rooms?" And thus the finicky gringo finally settled on a room with the below heater housed in merciful plastic.


It came with another Portuguese quiz. I can’t wait to return to Portugal, where I probably have to take a semester of Norwegian in order to open up a bottle of aspirin.

Neither setting (one called inverno and the other verao) yielded hot water. Then I figured out that the water was running too fast through the coils to get hot. The trick: first, turn on the water full blast. This causes the coils to switch on, and the flickering bathroom light verifies that the box just came alive with 220 volts. Carefully turn down the pressure and find the minimum to keep the heater on. Find the magical zone.

The water never got hot, just a little warm. But I didn’t get electrocuted. So that means I won.


Just as I was becoming fluent in Portuguese, the clever plumbers of Granada gave me a shower heater with pictograms instead of words.

Perhaps this obsession with staying clean is misguided. After all, the country’s preferred kitchen and bath deodorant sports a curious brand name:

That’s right. What’s missing from your kitchen and its greasy cabinets? A little terror. Fruit-scented terror. Potpourri terror (how insidious!). That should take care of it. Maybe a roach colony living under the sink beats suicide bombs after all.

Thankfully, you don’t have to take a shower to see how tuna is sold in Nicaragua.


And sardines.


I just thought you’d like to know that. In case you’re curious, the girls are dancing for God. And the cans of fish are lent-ready. That’s because Holy Week and Easter are coming up, and the city of Matagalpa knows that the best way to butter up your God is with offerings of hotpants and lemon-flavored sardines. I must have missed that passage in the Bible.