The Goot Blog

San Miguel de Allende is a Spanish colonial city, originally built in the 16^th century. It’s known and loved for its salmon-colored, Gaudi-inspired cathedral The Parroquia, its narrow cobblestone streets, its brightly colored stucco walls and ornate doors. Aside from the bus and truck traffic, the town positively exudes charm.

Lately, however, we’ve seen a slow, inexorable march toward the 21^st century. As increasing numbers of younger, more affluent visitors from Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey come here for weekend entertainment, the number of minimalist boutique hotels, chic urban lounges and top-flight, chef-driven restaurants have begun to emerge.

This past weekend, we were invited to the grand re-opening of the Z-Club. Located in an obscure industrial back alley just beyond the local glass factory, we were greeted by a beefy phalanx of T-shirt clad bouncers and car jockeys. Once inside, our bodies throbbed to the laid-back, but insistent techno beat. As members of the long-of-tooth tribe, we were among the first ones there, we were able to wander around and get a people-free view of the space. It was a marvel. A long, thin room with elegantly set round tables down the center and a glitzy bar at the rear. Down each side were a series of 10’ x 10’ alcoves, separated by billowing white fabric, containing plush sofas and large coffee tables. The walls were covered with blow-ups of grainy, surreal, black & white photos depicting nude or semi-nude women wearing bizarre masks in rococo settings. The one in our booth featured a somewhat disturbing image of a baby with a snakelike, 2-foot-long penis floating above the reclining masked woman. (I don’t know the artist, but we’re unlikely to have any of his/her work in our home.) To top it all off, a troupe of Cirque de Soleil-esque performers soon emerged and began acrobatically swinging from large rings, trapezes and fabric sheets hanging from the ceiling. As the room filled and the music cranked, they circled the room inviting guests to join them on the now light show infused dance floor. As refugees from Greenville, South Carolina, we were pretty much mesmerized. We sucked down free Bellinis, gobbled up the little baby burgers being passed around on silver trays, and gawked. And then we danced. And then, benumbed by the increasingly loud music and intimidated by the increasingly younger demographic, we bailed around ten. One final memory: In the cab ride home, the radio was playing a Spanish language version of Achy-Breaky Heart. Go figure.

# posted by goots @ 1:21 PM 0 comments

Today, July 8^th, we’re facing a high of 72 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 54. Sweater weather, just barely. It’s rained, sometimes heavily, the past three evenings. The air is clean and fresh, and in just a matter of days it seems the landscape has transformed from straw to green. Soon, the surrounding desert will be awash in wildflowers. Did I tell you it’s July 8^th?

# posted by goots @ 9:36 AM 0 comments

Bacon is rebellion
Americans have a guilty relationship with food, and perhaps no food is more guilt-inducing than bacon -- forbidden by religions, disdained by dietitians and doctors. Loving bacon is like shoving a middle finger in the face of all that is healthy and holy while an unfiltered cigarette smolders between your lips.

We live in a time when even a casual trip to the market is fraught with anxiety. Is it OK to buy the salmon? What are the food miles on this red delicious apple? And there is something comfortingly unambiguous about a thick slab of bacon. It's bad for you. It tastes fantastic. Any questions?

John T. Edge, author and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, says, "Bacon is a sort of 21st century tattoo, a marker that declares the wearer to be a badass, unbeholden to convention."

It's telling that, among the many celebrity chefs who have embraced bacon (Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse), it is Anthony Bourdain who has become its most unabashed spokesperson, calling bacon the "gateway protein" for its astounding ability to lure vegetarians back to the carnivorous fold.

You can hear a kind of growling swagger in the introduction to Susan Bourette's "Meat, a Love Story," in which she writes: "[Bacon] is like a bitch-slap to all those reedy, high-minded herbivores..."

"Bacon is the cocaine of the '00s," says author Sarah Katherine Lewis, "a visible sign of decadent rebellion."

Bacon is America
The turkey is the unofficial mascot of Americana, the 20-pound plumper we dutifully cook on our most sacred of national holidays. But really, it should be the pig. Bacon is our national meat. The pig is not an elegant animal, but it is smart and resourceful and fated to wallow in mud. A scavenger. A real scrapper.

"I see bacon as a celebration of an American birthright," says John T. Edge. "Four slices of Hormel Black Label, hissing in a cast iron skillet on a Sunday morning. To wear the bacon colors, to sport a bacon tattoo, is to announce your belief in the possibilities of bacon, in the American goodness rendered by a low-on-the-hog meat, transmogrified by smoke and salt."

I truly love my vegetarian friends, and I even think about my health from time to time, but truth is, I'm a bacon boy and always will be. Buen provecho, amigos!

# posted by goots @ 12:09 PM 0 comments

Las Mañanitas Lyrics (Loose English Translation):

These are the morning songs that King David sang.
Because today is your birthday, we're singing them for you.

Wake up, my dear, wake up. Look, it is already dawn.
The birds are already singing and the moon has already set.

How lovely is the morning in which I come to greet you.
We all come with joy and pleasure to congratulate you.

On the day you were born, all the flowers blossomed
and in the baptismal fount the swallows sang.

The morning is coming now, the sun is giving us its light.
Get up this morning, look what has already arisen.

# posted by goots @ 10:22 AM 0 comments

"Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night."

# posted by goots @ 11:39 AM 0 comments

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

# posted by goots @ 7:08 AM 0 comments