Randa's visit and Oliver's birthday; Kristin's Birthday; Jeff's Birthday and the Mink; GS Picnic; Cousin Jer and the Prole

11/7

Having been out of town all weekend I stayed in and got some laundry done. I also, having been taken in by a Wendy's commercial for that burger that has bacon, cheddar sauce, and jalapeños, went to get one... but they fucked up my order, and it wasn't worth driving back for. Stymied.

11/8

Randa (hi Randa!) was in town to catch a cruise with her mom out of Galveston, so she took the opportunity to get a Niko Niko's fix. I joined she, Brina, Shawn, and Cindy for some good ol' Greek food.

Afterwards, the ladies decided to join me at Two Rows' for dollar beer night in honor of Oliver's birthday. Good times were had.

11/9

Keeping the birthday theme of tapas, but changing the local from Mi Luna to Beso (which Citysearch doesn't seem to list). I had fond memories of being there with Lisa and some of her friends after I set up an internet connection for one of them, but this time I found the food had slipped towards mediocrity and the prices high.

Afterwaards, Kristin's search for novelty took us to martini specialists the Davenport. I had a very girly martini which drank like dessert, and then... hmm... round two escapes me. It was definitely something less girly. Maybe another martini, maybe a beer. I liked the Davenport, but I think it belongs in later stage of my life when I can sit around for an evening and sip $10 martinis.

11/10

Absolutely nothing happened.

11/11

The second birthday celebration of the week belonged to Jeff. We met at one of his and Jim's favorites, Mo Mong. Will and I were the only straight ones there (Cindy had another dinner to go to), and I felt... a bit out of place, but the meal was enjoyable enough. There was a free shot from a liquor rep (the fact that I can't remember which one might suggest that they're not the most effective advertisers). There was also some sort of asian beer with a tiger on the bottle. Appetizers were ordered, including wasabi crab cakes, which were good despite my general dislike of wasabi, probably due to restraint on the part of the chef. I settled on some sort of curried chicken dish for my meal, which turned out to be good, fairly light.

Afterwards, Will and I went for drinks with Jeff's crew to some gay club or another. Then we split. I met up with the usual Dan crew and Cindy at the Mink.

11/12

Ah, the graduate school picnic. A keg to polish off, barbecue to eat, parking places to find. After driving around for nigh half an hour, a very nice mother in the car ahead of me let me take a parking space that had just opened up.

So after a quick trek through the park, it was barbecue time. Barbecue this year was provided by Pappa's Bros., and was a step up from "http://houston.citysearch.com/profile/9953169/houston_tx/demeris_barbecue.html"
>Demeris, which we've had in years past, and always seems rather... marginal.

There seems to be a common phenomenon that the homeless people hover, 30 yards away or so, waiting for our leftovers. Which is great. We always have way too much food, and they sure need it more than we do. But when they start asking for beer, it's a bit of a grey area. Thankfully one that David handled, unilaterally deciding that it was probably... a bad idea.

We only had one keg this year, down from two, but it was plenty, and I told David W. that I was committed to helping polish it off. In fact, as the afternoon wore on and the beer didn't, really, a call went out. A call for a keg stand.

And then somebody volunteered me. Keep in mind that, having been to Baylor, and probably having been underexposed to keg culture in general, I'd never done one. So I did. And it was good.

Cindy was next. We got the ball rolling and then decided to make our exit, leaving the remainder of the crowd, inspired to do great things, to finish off the keg.

After that I started out for my aunt and uncle's, realizing soon afterwards that I was almost certainly a bit drunk. So I set course for home, collapsed on the sofa for a while, and then Cindy came over later and we hung out.

11/13

It turns out that decision was for the better, as when I went to Susan and Jerry's on Sunday afternoon, who was in town for a visit but Cousin Jer? So it was good to see him. He wanted to go to dinner at "the boat" which is apparently a wonderfully trashy place to get fried seafood, but that didn't work out so we ended up at something else that sort of looked like a boat, but ended up being a seafood/asian place. Not exactly what he had in mind, but we made it work.

Birthday party; Day of art; Lunch with Becca

8/11

Birthday weekend (or "Matt Tuesday" or "Ward Fest '06" rolled around. Left school early, met Rebecca and Cindy at my place, and took off for Rudz. Lots of people showed up (Kim & co.; David and Tiffany; Oliver & co.; First Years; Dan, Kristin & Co.; Jeff & Jim; Wanda; Will, Char, and Angela; Second Years; Law School Lauren & Chris—about 30 all together). I had a Rudz burger (a damned fine one), and Cindy tried their jerk pulled pork sandwich (also good). Beers were drunk. Darts were played. Cake was eaten. I managed to maintain well. I got lots of nifty presents:

• From Jeff & Jim, The Venture Bros. Season 1. Jeff's a fan, so he understood my apprecation of the show.
• From Sabrina & Shawn, a nifty shaker.
• From Wanda, a Spec's gift certificate, which will buy me all kinds of nifty hotness.
• From Rebecca, an "Elitist Prick" t-shirt that I had spied in Austin once and never been able to find again. Sort of true but sort of ironic...
• From Cindy, a wall-mounted bottle opener (which I had been looking for forever) and two tickets to see Ben Folds with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

As Rudyard's started to die down, we made our exit and went to Walter's for the Clientele show.

I hadn't really gotten into the album when it came out last year, but in the days leading up to the show I had listened to it for a few times and really liked it. The show was great. Very chill, very pleasant. It was a nice way to wind up my birthday party.

8/12

Saturday morning, I finally got around to checking out the Breakfast Klub. It's a Houston institution, and I'd heard great things.

The place isn't tiny, but not particularly big, and there's generally an hour wait. Rather than just having a line around the block, the owners cleverly purchased a building across the street for waiting space. They had a jazz combo playing, and some French Market-style vendors. It was all very nice.

Our number was called, and we crossed the street to the building, entered, observed the colorful interior, and ordered. Chicken & waffles and catfish and grits were specialities. I'm a big grits fan, so I opted to mix and match and do chicken and grits. Everything was very tasty, if horribly unhealthy and heavy. Great food to be enjoyed occasionally.

Cindy left and Becca and I went to check out some art. We started out at Project Rowhouses. We parked and started to walk around the block of identical houses, eventually finding one that was open, with someone inside working on art. He directed us to their office at the end of the block, where we found a group of African American men playing dominoes. One of them told us that there was no formal tour; that we could just walk around, talk to the artists, and check out what they're doing.

I liked it. Very free form, very performance art with audience participation. The artists there were artists interning there for the summer, each one given a house as studio space. One person did a sculpture (foot cast)/portrait/interview combination of Native American descendents. Another was doing some dramatic paintings with a crucifixion motif.

The whole thing was nicely casual, unpretentious, and interactive. It's funny, as we left I thought of classic role-playing games, where you're in a village (often of identically-formed houses), and you just go in whatever open doors you want and talk to the inhabitants. Funny, it always seemed completely unrealistic before.







Next up was a trip to the the Contemporary Arts Museum, but the Jung Center was right there, so we took a brief detour. Not much there, but some nice stuff...


The main exhibit upstairs at the CAM was by Kiki Smith. Her stuff mainly focused on body parts, organs, etc. Some of it I liked. Some of it I didn't. The stuff I didn't was... well, gross isn't the right word. But something about it seemed surprisingly low brow. The glass water droplets on the floor (pictured) were nice. The glass sperm on the floor? Meh.



There was a neat installation at Rice that Rebecca wanted to check out, a rainbow wall, constructed sort of like a mosaic or like scales. The building seemed to have closed early, though, as the doors were locked, but we got the general idea of it.

From there it was on to the Menil Collection. Rebecca is a Dan Flavin fan, so we checked out the building dedicated to his fluorescent light installation next. It was a neat installation, with very interesting uses of geometry, light, color, and space.


Finally, on to the Rothko Chapel. I liked that the foyer had a very wide selection of sacred texts. The interior was very interesting with its muted greys and purples. Reverant, but a little sad, too. It was paradoxically brightly lit from a skylight above, but dim due to interior color. The large canvases featured prominently on the walls were actually painted in two different colors, which I was surprised to discover. It almost looked like a trick of the light, as they were so similar, but close inspection revealed otherwise. My favorite thing was the skylight, which had a square opening with a solid cylinder sculpture hanging in the middle of it like a chandelier. Standing directly below it and staring upward, the skylight started to look like a solar eclipse, with a dark circle (the cylinder, appearing flat from that perspective), outlined by the sunlight let in from the skylight. It was a very dramatic effect. I would have liked to take a few photographs, but alas the room was guarded. I got the sculpture and reflection pool outside, though.

After that, we met up with Cyndi, I donned my new "Elitist Prick" shirt, and we met Sabrina and Shawn for dinner at Niko Niko's. I wasn't that hungry after such a heavy lunch, but an order of soup and salad turned out to be just right.

Dinner consumed, it was on to the MFAH for another night of the Starbucks mixed media series. Rebecca wasn't impressed with the quilting exhibit ("That's not real art."), but I found it reasonably interesting. The music was nothing special, but Dan had VIP access again, and while we didn't get into the VIP area, his wristband was good for free drinks, a privilege which I readily abused.

Afterwards, it was on to the afterparty, which was hosted in a warehouse north of town. The organizers almost had a riot on their hands when it took about half an hour to get the beer flowing from the kegs, and they were obviously concerned because they got very defensive. They were unwilling to start handing out the jello shots they were charging for (this after we had already paid $10 to get in and drink beer) to placate us, making matters worse.

Eventually, though, the beer started flowing. The party was fairly low key. There was a stench near the port-o-potties, which was a bit intrusive, and Becca disappeared at one point (but was just outside on her cell phone), which worried me, but ultimately, there was beer and good company. It was a nice denouement to the birthday weekend.

8/13

I decided to take Becca to La Mexicana for lunch. It ended up being a good choice. My eggs mexicana and tamales were great. Becca introduced me to horchata, which was, basically, a revelation. Becca's chilaquiles were also quite tasty.

After that, Becca took off for Austin, and I reveled in a chance to have some time to myself. It was a good birthday weekend.

Car and Proletariat; Practice; Freebird's, BB&B, Holly; Tapatia, Village; The Village (again); Guitar Center and BBQ

7/24

Cindy and I left early to pick up my car from The Other Body Shop. It was way the fuck out west, near where Dan used to live (like a quarter mile away from his old house). I saw it sitting in the lot and noticed that a) they neglected to removed the tire rubber marks from the paint and b) they neglected to replace the cracked plastic on the grill. What, did they do the whole fucking repair blind folded? The incompetence is staggering. Simply staggering. Rather than let them do touch my car again, I told them that I was taking it and would let the other shop finish up their shoddy work.

Joke's on them, though, because I never actually paid the deductible.

I enjoyed driving it home, of course, though I was pissed about having to deal with more repairs, and all over a fucking tire tread from an 18 wheeler.

Anyway, later that evening it was another Monday night at the Proletariat, which I was free to actually drive to. What a luxury!

7/25

Another night of band practice. I got Whataburger for dinner on the way home, which is always nice.

7/26

Cindy's birthday was coming up, so I stopped by Bed, Bath and Beyond and picked up the magnetic spice rack she wanted. Stopped off on the way home at Freebird's for a burrito, which I hadn't done in quite some time.

Holly, who I kind of sort of dated a year or so previously, was back in town and I caught up with her and her mom for a round at Two Row's, and I remembered why I don't ever go there for dollar beers anymore: it's fucking crowded.

7/27

Took the car back by Foreign Auto Body ("the good place") and they got the rubber off the paint, which was nice. They ordered the part for the grille, and told me that I could come back in when the part was delivered and they'd install it while I waited.

Got back home in time for Holly to pick me up, and we went to Tapatia for lunch and had a little more time to catch up before she dropped me off at school.

Went to the village that night with Cindy. Had a couple rounds at the Ginger Man, then went next door to Woodrow's, where Char and some of the other usual suspects were. I was enjoying a beer when I saw a tow truck drive by with my car.

I had parked in a spot that was, technically speaking, signed as tow away, though the sign was pretty nonobvious, nailed to a telephone pole at the very corner of the street and about three feet off the ground. People parked there all the time, and still do. Dunno if it was a new pig, or if Houston was feeling poor, or if somebody was on a power trip, but I got fucked.

Took me a while to track down the car, but I eventually went to pick it up, only to see a ticket on the windshield. Grand total was about $250, which I have added to my karma list. This list includes the city of Houston for around $260 (the extra $10 is a recent addition that I'll explain when the time comes), the apartment complex for $50 (erased when I managed to get an extra month at my old rent, and get a cheaper rent than I was originally quoted when I renewed), and $2 at Sam's Roadhouse for making me pay a cover for their crappy bar (also to be explained later). Probably more entities that have screwed me out of money, but those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

7/28

Cindy had been talking up Reggae Hut for a while, so we settled on that for her birthday dinner. It was located on Almeda, and we parked in the lot behind the building and went in. The walls were brightly colored and the place sparsely but likably decorated. I felt very white, but in a culturally immersed sort of way, not a threatening sort of way.

We settled on an order of plantains as an appetizer, an order of jerk chicken, and an order of curried goat. The plantains were given to us immediately and had been cooked to a dark color. Our meals came next. Both were served with some very well-seasoned and tasty veggies, and black beans and rice. The goat was OK. It was very much like lamb, except maybe a bit stringier. The curry seasoning was fairly light.

The jerk chicken, however, was incredible. The meat was flavorful but also moist. The jerk seasoning was spicy but oh-so-tasty. The portions were generous on all counts, and we had at least a meal's worth of leftovers. Consider me a convert.

Afterwards, sraight to Little Woodrow's (carefully choosing my parking this time). We had a few drinks there before things got a little too crowded, and we recruited Char and Angela to go to Hans' Bier Haus. As always, I enjoyed the nice selection of beer but also ran my tab up a little higher than I might like to.

This visit, we decided to try out bocci ball, which I have concluded is the ultimate drunken game, combining positive aspects of pool (rolling and colliding balls), shuffleboard (distance-based accuracy), bowling (hand-rolling), and croquet (but with less frustration). Great fun all around.

7/29

Mom and Dad had agreed to fund a little birthday spending, so I opted for some implements of rocking. I got one of those x-style keyboard stand, which turned out to not be an ideal design for my small and light keyboard (which was later remedied), but also a little shaky on carpet. I also got a keyboard bag which turned out to be a little big, but the extra size ended up being useful in solving my stand problem. Finally, I happened to see the official songbook for Ben Folds' Songs for Silverman and figured I'd grab that, too.

Levi was working and he hooked me up, saving me (or I guess Mom and Dad) a ton of money.

Cindy and I were invited to a couple of barbecues that weekend. The one thrown by her friends started first, so we headed up to the Heights to partake, bringing with us chicken and sausage to grill. There was other good food around, including ice cream cake. We took off a ltitle while later, and I checked in with Anup to discover that his barbecue had ended, so we grabbed some movies and headed back to my place for films and cocktails.

First up was The Squid and the Whale, which was painfully and realistically awkward and had the air of a more serious, more caustic Wes Anderson flick, which makes sense since it turns out he produced the thing. Great movie, but not exactly uplifting.

We also rented (but didn't watch at that time) Sarah Silverman's Jesus Is Magic which was, frankly, crap. There was something else, too, that I watched later, but I can't recall right now.