After the Break, a Con(te)stant

[There were six short paragraphs here of meta-blogging. I was probably wise to cut them; I'll probably be foolish enough to post them in the future anyway.]

Well, fooey. All I want is to rap about American Idol.

Two seasons ago I never gave it a passing thought. I don't remember how I got hooked in the first place, but now I unabashedly am, and for the same reasons as most viewers: reasons that have zero to do with the songs or the quality of the singing.

Idol makes me laugh; it makes me gape in horror; it rouses my incurably sappy side; it gets me thinking along the lines of inquiry I trod way-back-when, in pursuit of an American Studies degree (armchair theorizing almost makes TV time feel useful, don't it?); it makes me see aspects of my teaching self in Ms. Abdul (yikes). And I like looking at the outfits. Then there's the ecstasy-agony of smug little Seacrest's "........after the break" foreplay. They're simply making plain old shameless, good TV, those savvy bastids.

Anyway.

Last year I was drawn to Mr. Hicks, despite myself. I enjoyed the man. I did not root, but if I had rooted, it would've been for him.

Now I picture: our old living room with its big bay windows, faux fireplace, piles of New Yorkers slipping and sliding totally out of control, drifts of cat fur, early spring light waning. Myself and Todd on the couch with plates of Home Run Inn sausage pizza and glasses of red from the Rico. And Taylor Hicks on the boob tube. You are fucking charming me, I think, watching him holler and grin. I should maybe be worried.

And I picture: sheer white words, like ripped plastic in bare branches, floating above our heads: In eight months you'll be living in this dude's hometown, and an Idol-proud town it is. You have no idea. . .

We started watching Idol again last Wednesday: same couch, same tube, different view out the window.

Simon calls some scrawny big-eyed kid a bush baby, and the bush baby's obese, lisping friend comes in all hopeful and says I've got a great personality, and when the disaster's over you get a parting shot of the two walking away together, and I just want to cry for humanity, and it hurts real good, just like they want it to, and what I know is: I feel like an addict.

What I don't know is: What are the words above my head spelling out now?

A Dark Story

From an interesting New Yorker piece on industrial color consultants:

"Regional patterns can't always be explained by anthropology, but they exist," she went on. "Birmingham, for example, is a heavy brick market, so even the sided houses tend to be brown or brick red. It's a very dark story. You still see more colors in Birmingham than in Dallas, but the colors in Dallas are more diverse--grays, greens, yellows. Tampa has more stucco, so it skews very light. Washington, D.C., is beigeville."

Happy to learn we don't live in beigeville!

And now I also know that the funny, or funky, green chairs I recently adopted should maybe be called wasabi green, rather than lime green. Or else specified as one of fifteen different shades of lime green. I'm not sure which one. Help. I do want to be accurate.

The Good Kind of Blustery

Steve Chiotakis* on WBHM this morning: "If you're a fan of cold and blustery weather, this is your kind of day!"


*Looked up his name to spell it correctly and found out he's from northwest Indiana--Merrillville, to be exact--near Chicago. Know any Chiotakises, GK?

Had to Have a Part Three

More info on Trinity: Totaling about 60,000 square feet, the office buildings have an Art Deco look and features like an engraved ship and train to represent a couple of the industries that fueled the steel industry that thrived there for nearly a century. Although the interiors are in poor condition, inlaid wood and marble await refurbishing.

(!!!)

And: Consisting of 14 individuals from the architectural, engineering and construction professions, the three teams are scheduled in April 2006 to present their ideas to the city and county in three categories: industrial, mixed-used and "outside the box."

What, I wonder, might "outside the box" mean in this context?

And/But there's this. (Hmmm.)

Ingalls

Re: Dystopos' comment: The building you like is the former offices of Ingalls Iron Co., a fabricator of steel products and the parent of Ingalls Shipbuilding.

As we were driving away from the abandoned building yesterday, I noticed the big letters -- I N G A L L S -- on its facade. And when I got home, the first thing I did was google "Ingalls building Birmingham," which gave me a link to a Northrop Grumman page and another that mentioned Ingalls Shipbuilding. And these caused me to remember something.

But I wanted to check with my dad today to make sure I remembered correctly before I said anything about it here. Turns out I did: My grandfather ("Papa") worked most of his adult life for Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss.

How neat and strange is that? I love it when the most unexpected connections transpire.

72 Hours: Art, Soul, Views, Ruins, Snacks

Since we moved to Birmingham there have been several weekends I’ve contemplated blogging about in detail, but haven’t. They can all be filed under “Good Times!” and I think it’s high time I put an image of one up here for you. Yes, you.

So, a quick tour through this fine weekend:

Friday night we went to the opening for our buddy Charles’ new collection of block prints and block-printed functional objects, at the charming and quirky Naked Art Gallery in Forest Park. Charles’ work is colorful, bold, playful, and proudly Birmingham-based. Todd got me one of the small prints for Christmas, a clean and simple rendering of the very train tracks and smokestacks visible from our balcony. Wherever life takes us, it’ll be a sweet reminder of our time in this city.

The show was very well-attended (no surprise there; this town is small and Charles is a key figure in the arts community) and we met some interesting new peeps, including the director of the annual ArtWalk festival (which’ll happen right on our street in September, yay), and a girl who may well be the only zinester in town besides, you know, my husband.

And the Rolling Rock Light was pleasantly ice-cold.

After that, we went to a group birthday fete for five local Capricorns including that fabulous artist mentioned above and our friend Jill. Again, new people met…and, in my case, a few too many drinks guzzled. “You were loud and silly there at the end,” Todd told me Saturday morning. Uh, I think he might be right. I can’t quite recall. . .

Saturday night we checked out a great Birmingham Sound show of soul acts at the Bottletree – and ran into a Chicagoan; how about that? (Really, it wasn't surprising, considering the B'ham Sound project's Chicago connection.) The old black men (and one woman), they did shake it and shout it. And we, the predominantly white, young crowd, et it up.

This morning we met some folks for a most enjoyable and tasty brunch, despite some service problems. Then we took a leisurely little drive up onto the mountain, from which you’ve got a great view of the whole spread of Birmingham laid out before you. (Great houses perched up there, of course. We gawked.) Imagine living up there and watching thunderstorms roll in during the summer. . .

Which reminds me: it was in the mid-70s today, and I noticed several tulip trees starting to bloom. Poor confused trees. Still, they’re lovely, and I was surprised to feel the friskiness that I associate with the first days of true springy weather after a long winter. There’s been, for us, hardly any winter at all. And you know I’ve grumbled about that. Spring just won’t be the same sweet relief, I’ve grumbled. But no matter: there was something about this unseasonably warm January day that tricked my head into registering early spring joy. I swear, I think it’s something organically chemical, something in the very swirl of molecules of warm air and young plant life, plus a delicate balance of sun and cumulus clouds, the tilt of the earth. . .

And then, to top it all off, the abandoned building! The one I’d imagined as an asylum! I’d spied it from I-65 shortly after we moved here: big, dingy white, obviously long vacant. Today we found it with no effort at all. It’s in Titusville, a historic black community just west of downtown (the one Condoleezza lived her early years in!)—and get this: it’s on a small street called Golden Flake Drive.

Golden Flake Drive sounds like an address in the Elysian fields or something -- and in fact, the surrounding streets of Titusville are named for Greek letters: Gamma, Kappa, Theta, Omega, Iota, etc.

But if you’re from the South, you likely know that Golden Flake is a low-priced brand of potato chips and other snacks. Such as fried pork skins. And Golden Flake Drive is named rather practically for the Golden Flake plant that's right across the street from the abandoned building. A sign lists a phone number and says they give tours. Until today, I didn't know that Golden Flake was founded in B'ham. Not life-changing or illuminating info, but. . .

We are so going to tour the potato chip / pork skin factory.

But back to the “asylum,” which turned out to be, I’m fairly certain, part of the Trinity Steel Industries property (thanks once again, BhamWiki), which the city and county joint-purchased for redevelopment in 2005. (Whatever that means. Knowing Birmingham, anything that does happen won’t happen until, oh, about 2015. If then.) It’s a hulking, peeling, institutional shell, its huge windows mostly gone, big parcels of sky and cloud framed in gaping squares and a few still-standing panes, some shadowy innards visible here and there.

And I’m crazy-attracted to it like I am lots of abandoned, dilapidated, decaying, vaguely creepy structures. Who knows why?

I was without camera today, unfort. Clearly, the next step is to jump the fence that’s erected around the grounds and take some pictures. TD, of course, will have no part of this, law-abiding wuss that he is.

I’ll just have to go back by myself.

In closing, I would like to restate my controlling idea*: Good Times!

* I miss students.

Hanna Antique Mall

...makes me very happy. What a gold mine!

Friends afar, please come let us treat you to a fine day that could include:

--morning train-watching, strong coffee, some homemade pastry treat
--a long browse at Reed Books
--a long browse at Hanna
--a beer and snack al fresco in Five Points South
--a prowl through Sloss
--dinner at FonFon (or Bottega or Highlands if we're feeling extravagant)
--after-dinner boozing at the Garage

And the next day we could hightail it to the ATL, only two hours east. What say?

A L O N E

Yesterday a train was stopped for a short time on the tracks spitting distance from our place, and in perfect view was a creamy white boxcar with the word A L O N E in huge, thick capital letters spanning the entire height and width of its flank. The word was just a shade brighter than the rest of the car, sort of in reverse shadow, the way words appear when you trace them in dirt or dust (usually on the butt of an auto or truck). I don't know if that's what had been done here. But if so, man, what a job! Each letter was perfectly drawn (and so huge), which makes me think I'm not right to think they were done by someone for kicks -- but really, why else would a train car have a huge A L O N E on its side?

We sure haven't seen anything like it before now.

I wanted to snap a pic of course, but I was on the phone with my mother-in-law when I noticed it and before I could get off, the train started moving...and then she was gone. Cue Steve Goodman's "The City of New Orleans" or any number of rail-ridin' songs.

Due to the nature of the word, it was a haunting image, uh, freighted with potential meaning. The kind of thing that could easily send me into gloomy reverie. But yesterday was a cozy rainy Sunday, me and my husband and the cats and some readin' -- so all I felt was disappointment that I didn't catch it with the camera.

No, actually that's not true. No gloom, but it doesn't take much for me to start pondering significance, constructed or otherwise -- for me to start building a story in my mind and meaning around a worldly object or phenomenon, idly imagining in any number of directions from this point of depature. And ALONE is a word that I, excessively self-reflective to the core, have given more thought to than many others. I've often thought of its French counterpart, seule, one of my favorites. And solitude has elegance and nuance, with its specifically human application, that alone can't match. But ALONE has its beauty too: the rich tones, the warm thud of its O and N in concert.

And, simply, I like the state it represents with such common grace. I've always enjoyed being alone, too much so for my own good. On the other hand I've been suffocated by aloneness time and again and have forced myself out to grope, winningly and failingly, for companionship, as do we all.

The truth is that I could spend the better part of the day rolling ALONE around in my head -- first as an exercise in navel-gazing, then as a meditation on train-hoppers and the lives they lead. They continue to get some brain time.

Best of 2006

In which people we know play starring roles.

Slap it on your del.icio.us, you big freak.

Simple Pleasures

The highlight of last week? No, I didn't get a new job, not yet. No, nobody stepped up to publish my novel or a short story of mine or anything. No, I did not have a lusciously memorable sex dream.

I did, however, hear WBHM use a Sufjan Illinois(e) song on a station identification bit -- just like they do (or did a good while back) on my beloved WBEZ.

I didn't think it could happen. I was growing resigned to the offensively inoffensive smooth jazz they like to use as aural accent pillows. Bits of musical pap I'd have to live with, I told myself, memories be damned.

Yeah, no matter how you spin it, admitting that this was a Highlight does not flatter me: I'm either a snob or too satisfied to romp in hand-me-down hipster duds (Sufjan has so over-saturated the culture, dude) and thus worthy of your small-smiled pity.

But woo-hoo and/or fk you, it was a nice way to start the day. Grins. WBHM, keep it up.

---

P.S. Can you guess which of the "not highlights" carries a whiff of truth?

Condi!

I didn't know Condoleezza Rice was from Birmingham until I heard it in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, one of my Christmas presents from Todd. (Extremely sobering, especially as holiday gifts go? Yes. A good choice for Sus? Again, yes. Funny that Xmas 2006, for us, played to the very sorrowful soundtrack of that film. Soooo good and soooo heartbreaking.)

Anyway, Condi, Birmingham. Who knew? Not I. Did you? I bet you didn't. C'mon, you really didn't.

(Does it matter? Is there some smart-ass conclusion to be made here? NO!)

:)

Highway 280, the Song

Does a great song about Highway 280 already exist?

Even if it does, I want to write another one.

280 gets me misty for Chicago like few other places/things in Birmingham. Not because I hate driving on that road; I don't. It's more complicated than that. It's kind of pleasant, actually.

Hmm, maybe the local singer-songwriter who recently put out the album Vestavia has a song about 280. What's his name? Ah yes, John Strohm. (Thank Yoogle.)

Nary a Word About Barbecue*

Birmingham, domain of mines, mills and furnaces, has been transformed into a center of freshly unearthed tubers, organic urban farms and wood-fired ovens.

With little fanfare outside the world of devoted gourmets, white-tablecloth establishments that rival New York’s or California’s have bloomed like azaleas all over Birmingham.

Finally! I heard this article was in the works around the time we moved here, so I've been eagerly anticipating it. Birmingham dining's the focus, but you also get a good feel for the best texture of this place. Ms. Dewan's observation that "the downtown streets can have an empty, Hopperesque feel even on weekdays" is spot-on, for better and for worse. And yay for the Sloss mention! (Someday, I swear, I will go there again and take some pictures and have my own little Sloss appreciation post on here.)

I'm happy too that she mentioned the Garage -- Todd and I immediately put that one at the top of the list when we visited here before the move. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find any other bar that matches it for quirky ambience (save for Bottletree, which also gets a nice shout-out, thank goodness). I've heard the courtyard is awash in wisteria in the spring. Can't wait to, ah, get double-drunk on the floral delights of both the surroundings and a good pint of pale ale.

The thing I've noticed about a few Birmingham restuarants so far--and granted, there are many I haven't been able to try yet, like the Hot & Hot Fish Club--is that as good as the food may be, "dowdy" too often describes the interior design. Or, in some cases you'll see attempts at modern style that just don't hit the mark. In some ways, it's a nice change of pace from the ostentatiously outfitted, ultratrendy spots that are a dime a dozen in Chicago. But c'mon, let's swear off poinsettias and big red and gold ornaments as a holiday decorative theme, OK? Ick.

Anyway, Birmingham's dining scene certainly deserves praise, and I hope biz and pleasure travelers alike take note. Frank Stitt, you're the man. If I could, I'd place a big shiny key to the mu'fkn' city right in your sweet little hand. I bet you'd know just how to put it to use. I wonder what's next for you. (How about a cafe downtown, hmm? B'ham's no longer hurting for fabulous upscale dining options. What it could use now, I believe, are several unfussy-yet-stylish new options for everyday, budget-friendly meals. )

-----

Also note: Dre's Ramblings' post on the NY Times piece. I heart his positivity! Give this man a key, too. Dre makes me believe in a bright future for this town-- better yet, he makes me want to roll up my sleeves, stop bitching, and get involved in making it happen.

*almost

I Heart the Gapers Block, or, A Little Horn-Tooting Ain't Never Hurt No One

Cool to see my boy name checked on there today--alongside our buddy Joe and Sara Gruen, who yrs truly wrote about right before she got hot-hot-hot. (That makes Gruen the third author I've covered, behind Davy Rothbart [of FOUND] and John Green, who's gone on to hit it real big. Actually, you could sort of add Joe to that list, too. I wrote about him in the context of Punk Planet Books. And well, thinking about it further, Luis Albert0 Urrea and Ivan Brunetti are no slouches either!)

We're doing some things right, apparently.

It's a good thing to think about today.

Big Day Today

That's all I really want to say about it, but --

If anyone out there is reading this, think positive thoughts for me today, yeah? Especially around 2 - 3 p.m.

Thanks. xo.

Scratch, Scratch, Scratch

Dang it, my shins are still itchy-dry down here.

On a barely related note, I've neglected to whine about the disaster that befell us here a few weeks ago: we were almost entirely unpacked, with boxes long since broken-down and tossed, when I realized that Todd had missed the posters that had been wrapped in with some large paintings, and had thus thrown away some of my Chicago mementos -- including a Chris Ware promo poster from BEA 2001 and my Jay Ryan poster for Andrew Bird's "Skin Is, My," which I chose above all the others because I liked the look of the tall buildings and the transparent hand over them. (I believe I was thinking even then that if I ever left good ol' Chicago, this print would help keep it visually close.) And then shortly afterwards I discovered that the lyrics mention itchy-dry skin just like mine, and don't you know I loved that poster even more.

My "Skin is, My" is mine no more. And the Bird Machine says sorry, nada left.

Any of you millions of readers got one you don't want?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Scratch, sob, scratch.

Jemison Top Five

Top Five Things I Like About The Building We Live In (excluding features of our specific apartment):

5. The parking garage. I didn't think I would care one way or the other, but it is nice to keep our new-to-us car, not to mention my poor beleaguered Corolla (which withstood eight Chicago winters on the street, bless her heart), out of the elements. Plus, you can see old ads painted on the brick walls. Plus, the windows -- probably my favorite part. (As seen here before.)

4. The elevators. Industrial chic. What can I say; I think they look cool.

3. Maurice, our postman. Smile = easy. Size = large.

2. The fact that Maurice delivers parcels to our door. Whoa.

1. TRASH CHUTE! Both Todd and I are inordinately fond of the trash chute. What a luxury it seems to walk a few hundred feet indoors, open a little metal door in the wall, and blithely toss one's refuse to the dark depths below! For some reason it amuses me that we had to come all the way to Alabama to experience a trash chute (because, certainly, many thousands more people use these things in Chicago than they do here). The funny and slightly not-so-nice thing about the trash chute is that it is right next to our apartment. In fact there's sort of a chunk missing from the corner of the front bedroom where I've set up my office, and behind the walls of that chunk is the chute. (Does that make any sense?) So we get to hear lots of bang-clang-crinkle-smash-clunk-bang-crash-clunk whenever anyone drops their trash. And then, from time to time, an electronic sound rising from below, which must be a compacting device, and which reminds me of the sound you hear at the end (or is it the beginning?) of Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine." The trash chute sounds don't really bother me. I just think of them as our residence's experimental audio installation. Trash chute = art!

----

Yes, I am procrastinating a bit today.

YAY! IT'S COLD!

If you happened to be cruising (or walking) down 19th St. in Birmingham, Alabama this morning around 9:45, you could have seen a very happy gal trotting along, bundled up in her black winter coat. That was me, folks, en route to the downtown branch of our bank.

I mean it was really cold out there! Like, face-hardening cold! Runny-nose cold! Of course, the sun is swiftly rising, and an hour from now it'll probably be like 65 degrees, but who cares: I was out walking. It was cold. I wasn't wearing gloves, and I needed them. YES!

The first time I tried to leave the building, I was wearing a hoodie and a hat and scarf; that's all. It's not the first time I've underdressed here. I just get so used to it being warm. But no, not today! I had to return upstairs for the Big Furry-Collar Coat! I was one with my Chicago pals, they who are so far away and so bundled up in the post-snowstorm deep freeze! Could you feel my soul aligning with yours, my brothers and sisters?

(Excited, yes. Small pleasures, indeed.)

The Regions Bank building (until very recently, the AmSouth building -- oh, the bank mergers and takeovers!) reminds me slightly of the Thompson Center, though the only true points of comparison are a food/retail court and central escalators. Today I discovered there's a Planet Smoothie in there! Excitement #2 of the morning! If you know me well enough, you know that I have an unhealthy fondness for a straw-delivered lunch of pulverized frozen fruit, juice, and various nutritional supplements that are supposed to outweigh the obvious negative of excess sugar. Now I know that said lunch is only four blocks away. Uh-oh. (Planet Smoothie is no Jamba Juice, though [yes, I've already tried it at another location].)

There's also a shop called "Oh, Wow I." What an odd name, I thought. Oh, Wow I what? Maxed out my credit card on Hummel figurines? Just got away with shoplifting? Think I recognize this cashier from my online dating service?

Oh, but I was wrong. Once I viewed the store from another angle I realized the sign read, "Oh, Wow!"

Ah. But "Oh, Wow I" is a much better name, is it not?

Playlist for the adventure (courtesy iPod on shuffle):
"The Moon," Cat Power
"Everybody Knows This is Nowhere," Neil Young
"Marigold," Devendra Banhart
"I Know There's Something Going On," Frida
"Here Comes The Sun," the Beatles
"Good to Know," Edith Frost
--Plus one overheard conversation, which was, surprise surprise, about how cold it is.

Ephemeraland

This weekend I finally made it over to a place that several people had urged me to check out: Reed Books, an emporium of used books (and so much else!) . And wow -- it was quite a sight indeed. The owner, Jim Reed, has about 6000 square feet crammed from floor to ceiling (literally) with old books, magazines, newspapers, comics, life-size cardboard cutouts, personal letters and postcards, posters, trinkets, novelty lighting, toys ("Mom, look! A Charlie Brown desk!" I heard a kid cry gleefully), and more. I was daunted at first: I didn't know where to focus, as I hadn't come there seeking anything in particular. So I just wandered around, thinking it'd be fun to come back many more times and while away several hours going through stuff. It's a collagist's goldmine, and the sort of place that really needs to be experienced firsthand.

The friend I was with was looking for books on love and marriage for an art project, and she came away with an incredible hodgepodge of a book from the 70s called The Compleat Lover, plus a little guide to marriage laws "in all 48 states." (There was a crazy 'find your ideal mate' survey in this thing that was Just Priceless.) I was amazed that she was able to find so precisely the kind of stuff she was looking for, but she noted that the books are more or less divided into subject, despite the jumbledness of the place overall.

It's clear that Reed believes passionately in the value of--for lack of a better descriptive right now--old stuff. People throw their lives, their families, the stuff of their histories away, he told me. Here's a way station for those things, a place to linger until somebody bestows upon them new value. A sign near his desk area (equally packed) bears a quote from Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist (and native Alabaman) Edmund O. Wilson: "A society defines itself not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."

Sifting through a hillock of personal mail from the 40s, I agreed with Reed (and Wilson), though it's harder to place the value of a vending machine full of ancient, melted Mentos (one of the items of less obvious worth at Reed Books). I'll certainly make repeat visits--and if I can ever get a steady income going again, I may buy a small set of vintage post office boxes that he's got there (visible in the left-hand corner of the first photo above, along with the lid of my Starbucks cup). I've always wanted some of those!

The bad news is that Reed's about to lose his current space, which he's been in for 10 years (and which happens to be a very quick walk from our apartment). He's looking for a new one. I shudder to imagine moving all this stuff, but the first item of business--finding a new space--shouldn't be too difficult, I think, since there appear to be so many empty buildings around Birmingham. But Reed said that a lot of owners would rather just keep their properties empty than bother with tenants and rent collection. If that's the case, it's a shame. I don't know enough about real estate to comment further though, so that's where this post ends.

Reed Books. A first-rate Birmingham oddity!

If I Can't Have Snow...

...I'll just eat this here fist-sized ball of cookie dough.

Don't tax your brain trying to figure out the logic here. There is none.

In other news, I just bought my first big-girl dining table from an antiques shop on 22nd St. called LAND OF WAS. The brick exterior of the store is painted in big white letters on a black background: LAND OF WAS. The table is gorgeous -- French farmhouse, simple and sturdy and deep amber in color -- and I love that I'll be able to gaze admiringly at it forever and ever and think, "You came from the LAND OF WAS."

And the lady of the LAND is a sweet thing! No awful creature, she.

Back to the dough: Oh, sick now.