Here's Jill having a good time.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Boating
My brother, who is awesome, bought a boat last month. This is no ordinary Budweiser and Sea-do, drive to the bay in my Durango SUV with the Miami Vice theme song pounding in my subconscious kind of boat. This is a Heritage piece. This is a transplant from "Heart Of Darkness". This is a boat where one thinks about rivets. It's wooden, with a long snout and a big diesel engine with an exhaust pipe mounted dangerously behind the leather captains chairs. It is old with a beautiful patina, and begs one to throw on their topsiders and learn about shellac.
Here's Jill having a good time.
Here's Jill having a good time.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Country Fun
By: Ben Tiernan
Dave and Suzy called my cell phone while Andrew was explaining to me the various stages in the season when they spray grapes with growth regulators. Andrew had spent the morning driving around the vineyards checking on the progress of the work-crews, and assigning their stations for Monday morning. I’d accompanied him in the passenger seat of the truck tending to my hangover and trying to avoid situations where I might have to speak Spanish.
Dave and Suzy with a Glock
Dave and Suzy were lost, which was a very reasonable thing to be since Andrew lives among hundreds of miles of vineyards with no distinguishing characteristics to the untrained eye, and vast, unmarked country roads. I told them to pull over, so that we could come find them witch we did with surprising ease.
As a farmer, we, the city folk, like to exploit Andrew’s access to vast, open, untamed space and tap into the lawless wilderness with decadent abandon.
As evidence, we wanted to shoot guns. Andrew recently bought a .40 caliber Glock to protect himself against home invasion because his home had been invaded one night. He also had a shotgun that he carried around in the back of his work truck to shoot at little birds that eat grapes off the vine.
Access to these wholly foreign, but significant cultural icons was too much to pass up. First, we shot the handgun, which was disturbing for a while as I considered that the tool in my hand was engineered specifically to kill people. Then I realized that, with it, I was just like Jet Lee and I cranked out shells rapid fire with my only remorse that I was not wearing a black suit and I didn’t have a gun for both hands.
Andrew and Dave were both much better shots than I was and Suzy, who was a novice, took to the sport with natural aptitude.
Next, we shot shotguns, or rather we shot skeet. The best way to put it would be to say that Andrew and Dave shot skeet and Suzy and I shot shotguns at skeet, but I could tell that the skeet were never very concerned when Suzy and I were up. The take away from the skeet shooting was that there is nothing on this earth that makes you feel quite as viril as cocking a pump-action, 12-gage shotgun.
Another take away was that when they protected the right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, they probably didn't have me in mind. When I'm popping off caps at wine bottles, I begin to wonder if perhaps the NRA lobbys too effectively.
Dave and Suzy called my cell phone while Andrew was explaining to me the various stages in the season when they spray grapes with growth regulators. Andrew had spent the morning driving around the vineyards checking on the progress of the work-crews, and assigning their stations for Monday morning. I’d accompanied him in the passenger seat of the truck tending to my hangover and trying to avoid situations where I might have to speak Spanish.
Dave and Suzy with a Glock
Dave and Suzy were lost, which was a very reasonable thing to be since Andrew lives among hundreds of miles of vineyards with no distinguishing characteristics to the untrained eye, and vast, unmarked country roads. I told them to pull over, so that we could come find them witch we did with surprising ease.
As a farmer, we, the city folk, like to exploit Andrew’s access to vast, open, untamed space and tap into the lawless wilderness with decadent abandon.
As evidence, we wanted to shoot guns. Andrew recently bought a .40 caliber Glock to protect himself against home invasion because his home had been invaded one night. He also had a shotgun that he carried around in the back of his work truck to shoot at little birds that eat grapes off the vine.
Access to these wholly foreign, but significant cultural icons was too much to pass up. First, we shot the handgun, which was disturbing for a while as I considered that the tool in my hand was engineered specifically to kill people. Then I realized that, with it, I was just like Jet Lee and I cranked out shells rapid fire with my only remorse that I was not wearing a black suit and I didn’t have a gun for both hands.
Andrew and Dave were both much better shots than I was and Suzy, who was a novice, took to the sport with natural aptitude.
Next, we shot shotguns, or rather we shot skeet. The best way to put it would be to say that Andrew and Dave shot skeet and Suzy and I shot shotguns at skeet, but I could tell that the skeet were never very concerned when Suzy and I were up. The take away from the skeet shooting was that there is nothing on this earth that makes you feel quite as viril as cocking a pump-action, 12-gage shotgun.
Another take away was that when they protected the right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, they probably didn't have me in mind. When I'm popping off caps at wine bottles, I begin to wonder if perhaps the NRA lobbys too effectively.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
La Tia Lupita's
Tacos for breakfast at a catering truck in Delano, CA. That's Tia Lupita in the corner making tortias. She runs a tight ship.
Friday, June 09, 2006
LA To Bakersfield
I'm driving from LA to Bakersfield to visit Andrew. There's a ton of traffic - it's Friday afternoon. Dave and Suzy are coming up tomorrow.
On the docket for this weekend: Rodeo, whiskey, and can racing. Can racing is a game that involves shooting a can over and over until it leaps so far away that your poor aim prevents you from hitting it.
I'm trying to get into guns.
Jill told me not to shoot myself. I told her that I wouldn't shoot anyone. She told me not to lie.
Monday, June 05, 2006
More Is More
Jill and I are engaged, but the details of the proposal, the champagne, and the love are all a little mushy and not really tin car quality material. A month of premarital bliss has transpired now, and I’ve rarely had an emotion that wouldn’t qualify as schmaltzy. The rights of marriage are not typically the topics that get tin car’s readership going, that is until today when Jill and I participated in the gluttony of wedding gift registration.
The tradition of registering for wedding gifts is a tumultuous and emotionally complex event with the primary emotion being greed, followed closely by entitlement, and aggression. This delicate mental state is pressed into action by primal impulses of consumerism that originate in the brainstem of the children of free-market capitalism who are old enough to fornicate and carry debt. Scientists have speculated that the registry impulse is related to the slightly higher-level impulse function to dry-clean jeans.
As a novice at marriage, I was unfamiliar with the customs of the bridal registry, so I’ve done my best to infer some basic rules to help fellow novices feel more at ease with the plunder.
Here are the rules:
1. Get while the getting’s good
The mores of our culture are set up to give you one good chance to demand that your friends and loved ones buy expensive bobbles for your home, and if you don’t take advantage of this windfall, you’ll never get a second chance.
2. If it exists, register for it
One of the biggest faux pas of a bridal registry is not to want enough shit. Wedding guests are required to buy you a gift by social laws that are older and more binding than congressional legislation, so it is imperative that there is enough shit on the registry for everyone to find a contribution. When you register, the question is not if you need a 6th crystal, fruit bowl or even if you want it. The question is can you tolerate it. Quantity is the issue here.
3. Believe you live in a mansion
You may live in a five hundred square-foot apartment that is questionably large enough to hold a bed and a laundry basket, but shop like you’re filling a Hapsburg palace.
While the building of the registry is afoot, there are some dangerous ideas that may come slithering into mind and these ideas are to be dashed to the curb so you can focus on “getting yours”. Here are some thoughts that may arise that are to be treated lightly and with indifference.
• That’s a lot of money to ask people to spend on a creamer.
• We can’t fit all this in our house.
• I’m really quite sure I’d never use that.
• Won’t people get mad at us for asking them to spend so much money?
• Are the dishes that we already have really so inferior to these dishes?
Don’t let these kinds of corrupting thoughts confuse the issue of engagement. Stay true to the tradition and register like a pirate claiming his booty.
The tradition of registering for wedding gifts is a tumultuous and emotionally complex event with the primary emotion being greed, followed closely by entitlement, and aggression. This delicate mental state is pressed into action by primal impulses of consumerism that originate in the brainstem of the children of free-market capitalism who are old enough to fornicate and carry debt. Scientists have speculated that the registry impulse is related to the slightly higher-level impulse function to dry-clean jeans.
As a novice at marriage, I was unfamiliar with the customs of the bridal registry, so I’ve done my best to infer some basic rules to help fellow novices feel more at ease with the plunder.
Here are the rules:
1. Get while the getting’s good
The mores of our culture are set up to give you one good chance to demand that your friends and loved ones buy expensive bobbles for your home, and if you don’t take advantage of this windfall, you’ll never get a second chance.
2. If it exists, register for it
One of the biggest faux pas of a bridal registry is not to want enough shit. Wedding guests are required to buy you a gift by social laws that are older and more binding than congressional legislation, so it is imperative that there is enough shit on the registry for everyone to find a contribution. When you register, the question is not if you need a 6th crystal, fruit bowl or even if you want it. The question is can you tolerate it. Quantity is the issue here.
3. Believe you live in a mansion
You may live in a five hundred square-foot apartment that is questionably large enough to hold a bed and a laundry basket, but shop like you’re filling a Hapsburg palace.
While the building of the registry is afoot, there are some dangerous ideas that may come slithering into mind and these ideas are to be dashed to the curb so you can focus on “getting yours”. Here are some thoughts that may arise that are to be treated lightly and with indifference.
• That’s a lot of money to ask people to spend on a creamer.
• We can’t fit all this in our house.
• I’m really quite sure I’d never use that.
• Won’t people get mad at us for asking them to spend so much money?
• Are the dishes that we already have really so inferior to these dishes?
Don’t let these kinds of corrupting thoughts confuse the issue of engagement. Stay true to the tradition and register like a pirate claiming his booty.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
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