Here are some fun facts about Houston:
Houston is the 2nd largest city in the US — geographically, it covers over 600 square miles.
The Houston consolidated metropolitan area is over 8000 square miles.  It’s bigger than New Jersey.
Houston is the only major city in the US with no zoning laws.  (related to fact 1?)  None.  Neat. 
Houston is the most diverse city in the US.
Yee-haw.  Biggest rodeo in the US.

It seems like an all right kind of place.  I’ll tell you more about it when I get there.   

In the meantime, I’ll try to remain up to no good.  I did have perhaps my briefest tenure at a job ever, my week and a half as a customer service rep for FTD flowers.  I don’t know what to say about it, except that when you call customer service anywhere, all of your fears about the people on the other end of the line are always true.  But I did get a little inspiration for stories — my ex-boss’s ex-boyfriend is the Texas Snake Man — check him out.  (Hopefully his website will be back up soon)

Also, we got several interesting callers.  One guy wanted to send a girl a dozen dead roses in a cracked vase filled with dirty water.  Oh, the ways we prove our love!

Check out this skink I found while climbing the mountain behind my house today.  I believe it is a broadhead ground skink, but I could be mistaken.  I also got a picture of a Northern Fence Lizard, also known as a regular old lizard.

This got me to thinking about other foods.  I’d never heard of scrapple until I moved to Northern Virginia, when a guy camping next to us offered us some.  I looked up scrapple on wikipedia today and found out it was a Pennsylvania Dutch dish.  fried loaf of pork scraps — head, heart, liver.   mmm. 

The summer I was in Quebec, the thing to eat was poutine — french fries smothered in a white, cheesy gravy, best enjoyed after the bars have closed.  They also ate a lot of meat pies.  They also had this squeaky cheese that was made nearby — you could by a bag of cheese curds at the grocery store or gas station, and you could hear it squeak as you were chewing it.  Maybe you have to be there to appreciate how neat that is, or maybe it’s just me.

Basically I’ve been spending a lot of time at Waffle House, reading a lot, watching movies, and trying to find someone to pay for all my medical bills.   Waiting to hear back from grad schools, though I don’t really miss school.

Good books I’ve read recently: Twilight, by William Gay; Gallatin Canyon, by Thomas McGuane; Esquire’s Big Book of Fiction; Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem.

Good movies: A Scanner Darkly, Thank You For Smoking, The Devil Wears Prada.

Or maybe it should be "Everything You Never Said," and the show could be about trying to guess what other people are thinking.

Or it could be a different title every week, but it has to rhyme.  Weather, trains, and baking bread.  Severed things are never dead.  Ever bang a guy named fred?  etc.

(Some might say) I spend too much time thinking these kinds of thoughts lately.  Obviously, unemployment is good for the imagination.  I remain, at present, King Bum.  But alas, I must find gainful employment in the near future.  I won’t be able to go out and find cool skinks like this one to take pictures of.
He was at Pinnacle Mountain, which is the mountain behind my parents house in Little Rock, Arkansas, for those of you who don’t know (and where I presently reside).  Here is more of said mountain.

Okay, so it’s impossible to lay out photos on the Friendster page so that they look good.  Use your imagination to align stuff.  Someday I’ll pay for a real blog.

So for those of you that haven’t heard, I got a car.  I got a 95 Honda Civic, because they’re so reliable.  The radiator went out while I was moving to Arkansas with my entourage (Mom and Otto), so we got to spend a couple of days in St Clairsville, Ohio, near the West Virginia Border.  Um, don’t go there.  Yeah.

So, not to be a snob, but I’m going to, can someone tell me why Southeast Ohio and Northwest Kentucky are so f’n trashy?  Like, fat people in spandex and tanktops with dirty ponytails and neon sandals trashy.  I know there’s some people from Cincinnati reading this — Represent!

So I bummed around LR for about 3 weeks.  I went and took the Associated Press editing and writing test, and learned how little I know about newswriting.  To be fair, the computer sort of bugged out while I was taking the test, but yeah, I wouldn’t have called me back either.

Anyways.  I went to LA and to Oregon afterwards.  Hear’s the short version.
LA: Beach, sun, $$$ houses, pizza, people in better shape than me, LeAnne’s friends being generous beyond the call of duty, driving, driving, not going to the drum circle with LeAnne, beach, beach, beach.
Oregon: Hippies, bums, economics grad students, moss, good salads, sick, cold beach, Cascades, eustacian tubes blocking up when coming down the Mountains (ouch ouch ouch), waterfalls, sick, Portland, great coffee, canker sores on back of throat (ouch ouch ouch), good beer, Stephen Malkmus drunk.

Check out some pics:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/zmagicbean/album/576460762312203646#page1

It was like this:

A filmmaker/professor that I met at a strawberry festival a couple of months ago contacted me last month to see if I would be willing to take a minor part in a film she’s working on.  I guess Penn State isn’t NY, and she has to take what she can get.  Anyways, the film is about people wearing t-shirts that have aggressive slogans.  Guess what mine was?

We shot at the coffee shop in the Autoport.  Did you know the Autoport had a coffee shop?

So, what’s it like working on the set of an independent, low-budget indy film?  I’ll tell you.

The actors, in this case, me and a Philosophy PhD, don’t know what the hell is going on.  We just sit there and do as we’re told.  Most of the time, we’re waiting for the crew to get set up, making jokes and talking to the director to keep things from getting too awkward.   Meanwhile, the cinematographer makes people move bright lights all over the place, close blinds, move props, etc.  Make sure the girl with the boom mic isn’t showing up in the reflection on the window, that kind of stuff. 

It’s like Behind the scenes on dvds, only longer and more tedious.   Here’s what happens in the scene we shot tonight:
1) I eat some french fries while wearing my t-shirt in a diner.
2) Upon realizing that my fries are not quite salty enough, I ask the guy next to me to pass the salt.  He also has a t-shirt, his says "Ask me if I care."
3) He passes me the salt, and in doing so, knocks his paper off the counter.
4) I retrieve his paper and thank him for the salt.
5) I salt my fries and continue to enjoy them.

Well, what happens in the shoot is, you rehearse everything.  Then you tell the people in the kitchen to turn off the radio.  Then some old lady wanders through the set looking for the waitress.  Then you shoot the scene.  Then someon’s phone rings.  Then you shoot the scene again.  And again.  Then you shoot it from a different angle, which means you have to move all the lights.  And rehearse again.  And shoot again.  And again, because you need to locate the salt before you ask for it, duh.  Then you realize that the one-man band in the bar next door is creating some pretty weird ambient noise.  What the fuck, we’ll deal with it in editing.  SO then you change the angle, and do it one last time.  Then a wide angle, one last time.  Because this is a low budget film, you don’t get new french fries for each shot.  This means that by the end of the night, after you’ve done the scene 20 times, you’ve got the saltiest cold french fries in the world.  But you push on.  For art.

No I’ll be (somewhere) in that sprawling wasteland called "the real world," trying to find a way to get paid to sit on the beach and drink pina coladas.  Perhaps I’ll be a "cocktail quality control consultant," or a "sand profiler."  Natural resources auditor specializing in wet/dry border zones?

To all my non-Nittany friends, you might want to clear out a spot on your couch, just in case.  Me and my sleeping bag could show up in early August.

Summer beer: About five minutes ago, I discovered Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat Beer, which I daresay is damn nigh a perfect summer beer for those of us that like wheat beer and have to pay outrageous Pennsylvania prices for six packs.  Citrus & spice.  Think Blue Moon, only smoother & crisper, with a better finish, and two dollars cheaper.  Not too girly, if you worry about that sort of thing.

Movies: Hotel Rwanda is maybe the best thing I’ve seen in a few months, and maybe the best movie of it’s type I’ve seen since City of God, which is also great.  Munich was pretty good, too, though it had a couple of kind of obvious problems, I thought.  You decide.

Books: John Updike’s Rabbit series.  It’s what I’m currently working on.  Everyone loves to hate Updike, including me, but he’s pretty damn fun, I also think. 

Farmer’s Markets: Get yourself some fresh strawberries, darn it.  Went to a strawberry festival yesterday at a little organic farm not too far from here — lot’s of fun, eating the food other people work so hard to raise.

TV:  World Cup.  You should be watching it, but you’re probably not.  I’ll help you: USA plays Monday at noon E.T. vs Czech Republic, and Saturday at 3:00 pm vs Italy.  Both will be tough games.  If you’re in a public place, say things like "Reyna will dominate midfield play!" and "Onyewu will knock Koller on his ass!"  — better yet, drink too much, chant U-S-A U-S-A, and act like a hooligan.  This works best if you have twenty friends or so to go with you (particularly for those of you who are abroad).

Go to the pool.  Or the beach.  But go.  Sit by the water.  You won’t regret it.  Have you ever?  Look at this snake we found at my friend LeAnne’s parents’ house when we went to the pool.  It was in the living room.  I recommend snakes, as well.  Awesome.  As was sitting by the pool.  And swimming in the 55 degree water.   

Food:  For this time of year, I recommend any dish that involves a lime.  You could go with a key-lime pie.  You wouldn’t be disappointed.  Yesterday I made a black bean dip that involved black beans, tomatoes, corn, onion, garlic, cilantro, chili powder, cumin, and a lime.  I could give you the recipe, but basically you heat everything but the cilantro and lime up in a little oil, then mix in lime juice and fresh chopped cilantro, and you can’t go wrong.  You might try it with avocado, too — I bet that would be good.  With a Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat beer, perhaps?

The NY Times Sunday Book Review:  get it e-mailed to yourself.  Then you’ll know about all the interesting and not-interesting books coming out.

Seems like I should have more to recommend.  Perhaps I’ll soon put together a list of things I don’t recommend, which could be much longer.

1)  It rained for about a week straight here, just in time for the 1st week of summer session classes.  The rainy weather, combined with the fact that I’m teaching technical writing at 5:30-6:45, inspired a surprisingly strong urge in me to leave, leave, leave, move on with my life.  Last night I was looking at jobs in Portland, New York, Texas.  But perhaps this is another form of procrastinating writing the novel???  I do have a great apartment here.

2)  Speaking of writing, my first fiction pub. will be coming out in The Cream City Review, though they don’t know which issue yet, fall or next spring. 

3)  Today I went for a hike at Indian Steps with Leanne & Moura & their dogs.  The highlight was when the Game and Fish lady came tearing down the dirt road by where we were parked, and Moura jumped in front of her truck and flagged her down and told her to slow down before she ran over someone’s dog.  The look the lady gave Moura was priceless.

All the rock and woods and hills reminded me of Northwest Arkansas.  I need to get out more.  I want to do some hiking and maybe rafting in Virginia/West Virginia later this summer — anyone interested?

4)  Books:  The NY Times recently did an article about the best American work of fiction in the last 25 years, based on a poll of editors, critics, writers.  Toni Morrison’s Beloved won, which I still haven’t read.  What I thought was funny is that Don Delillo, Updike, and Cormac McCarthy all had several books listed as runners up. Phillip Roth had 6.  6!  Give me a break.  Fucking New York Times.

Actually I just finished McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and it is hands down the most violent book I’ve ever read.  But also one of the most interesting — it’s like Faulkner after he’s been up for a week taking speed and reading shakespeare and watching spaghetti westerns.  It’s full of passages like this, when a small criminal army is attacked by Apaches:  "Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and up the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts with one heel hung in the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trotlike creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows."

I also recommend Thomas McGuane, Nothing But Blue Skies, for something a little lighter.  It’s about a Montana businessman who kind of slowly loses it after his wife leaves him.  Funny.