34 posts tagged “vox hunt”

Show us your favorite food from the country of your heritage.
Submitted by MexicanRobot.

I couldn't really swear that it's my favorite, but it's certainly the native American food I'm most craving right now.  The country of my heritage is America.  I am sure there are Americans who can still trace their descent back to one county, but I wouldn't think that most of us can.  I'm mostly Irish, and since we're fairly recent immigrants and since we settled in the South and were poor dirt farmers, we didn't mix with other ethnicities as much as we might have elsewhere.  There is possibly some Scottish and a stray German or two in the mix.  There are also at least two different Indian tribes mixed up with us, the Quapaw and the Osage. 

So, like I said, the country of my heritage is America.  One of the things I love about America is that being American has nothing to do with your ethnic background or race or any kind of language or religion that's holding us together.  I don't know what is holding us together anymore, and maybe there never was anything except happenstance.  It once seemed to me that the thing that was supposed to be holding us together was a basic agreement about the ideals that America was founded on--which, admittedly, need constant vigilance to maintain and improve--and ideas about what constitutes a good life, but increasingly it seems to be something much less. 

The Navajo taco is native to my home country--not just America, but Southwest America.  It's also good eats.  If you find yourself in the Four Corners region, stop in at some dubious looking roadside stand and have one.  What the heck?  Since you're enjoying a Navajo taco, listen to the Navajo radio station for a while.  Personally, I always found living in such proximity to the great Navajo Nation inspiring, in terms of what it means to be an American.  Kind of like growing up amongst "Hispanics" who can trace their property rights back to land grants from the king of Spain.  Context is everything, and the thing I love most about New Mexican food is the way it reflects its context.  If I wanted to get all romantic about it, I might tell you that you can read the history of the American west in every bowl of pozole, but let's not exaggerate.  In most places in America, it's the minorities who feel like and are treated like interlopers.  In New Mexico, it's the white people who are the interlopers.  The Navajos won't say that to your face, of course, but there are some people up in Chama who might.

Maybe that's what I need if I'm going to stay in America, to get back to my roots. Maybe I just don't belong around white people.

Show us a picture of why you love the ocean.

What if I fucking hate the ocean?  Did you ever think of that?

Today is the first day of fall. Show us an autumn leaf.

Let's see some antipodean outrage!

Let us hear the weirdest song from your music library.
Submitted by Hydranokaori.

Isn't that a little subjective?  What makes a song "weird"?  If I think a song is weird, that doesn't necessarily mean you think it's weird, does it?  And things that sounded weird 10 years ago don't necessarily sound unusual today.  Not to mention that some songs that are weird don't sound as weird as they actually are (for example, there's a Frank Black song--I think it's "Parry the Wind, High, Low" but I could be wrong) where in one segment he has the drummer playing in one time signature and the guitar in a different one.  I don't give it any thought, but if you really stop and think about it while you're listening, it does sound distinctly odd.  I think the drums are in 3/4 and the guitars are in 4/4...or maybe one of them is in the always-baffling 5/4.  I can't remember.  The point is, it's a weird thing to do to a song).

Maybe I don't have any weird songs in my collection.  Maybe that's the problem.  Maybe the task of finding a weird song is making me self-conscious.  Am I weird enough?  If my musical tastes are found to be unweird, will people still like me?  Is even mentioning Frank Black a sign of my age and secretly all the kids are laughing at me?  The burden of trying to be weird.

I have Camper van Beethoven singing about the day that Lassie went to the moon.  I have Los Amigos Invisibles singing a discofunk song about having a pimple on your nose.  I have a song called "Cowpunk" that apparently some people find odd and even off-putting.  I have the Reverend Horton Heat exhorting you to eat a thing that goes moo.  I have "Parry the Wind" for sure.  I have a song about mighty dwarves flying in the sky and fighting in the night.  I have an entire CD of solo accordion (hey, the accordion don't need no reason).  I have much music by famed weirdos Danny Barnes and Timothy Young.  The first time I saw Tim Young play live he was wearing sweat pants with cowboy boots and before the show he was standing by the bar muttering to himself.  Danny Barnes was the sort of lead guy in a kind of bluegrass band that consists primarily of Danny on banjo and other instruments plus Mark Rubin on tuba and acoustic badass bass and then a fiddler, which is probably weird, and then they did that Butthole Surfers song about Pee-Pee the sailor. 

How about "Auto Modown?"  Weird?  Or normal? 

Does any of that strike you as "weird"?  I am pretty sure it will strike many of you as "unlistenable."  There seems to be a low tolerance amongst the general public for banjo, fiddle, and nasal vocals.  Well, anyhow.

Oh, right.  I also have a prized copy of Crispin Glover singing about automanipulation.  I consider that entire album that he did to be very weird, but I like it.  I was trying to upload it for your edification, but Vox has declined to accept it.  I'm guessing that once Vox got a whiff of the opening line ("Women are sweet and girls are honey, but beat your meat and save your money") it decided this was not something it wanted any part of.  Maybe I should have tried the classic "Clowny Clown Clown" instead (from the same CD), but I'm tired now and going to bed, because yes, dammit, I am old. 

I spent the entire time I was trying to upload that song listening to Jane's Addiction and rifling through a portion of my CD collection that is sitting on the floor in the bedroom gathering dust.  It's an interesting monument, really.  I think I'm going to get rid of most of them.  I mean, I can't really even remember when the last time I listened to Melt Banana was...ages ago.  That's one of the advantages of moving overseas and putting everything you own into storage; if you lived without it for 3 years in Japan, then you can probably live without it now.  Anyone want a Melt Banana CD?

Show us an awesome mustache.
Submitted by Soup.

Alright, Soup, I will.

  Granted, this is not a mere mustache, and the overall look is quite dependent on the beret, I think.  Still, you have to admire this.  I think this takes a certain amount of huevos, a definite inner confidence.

Although, perhaps not as much as this facial hair/headgear combination.  It's not a mustache, so it doesn't qualify, but you still have to admire the balls.

Show us your favorite comfort food.
Submitted by nosa.

I give you the intensely satisfying and comfortingly robust pozole rojo--all the delicious that one bowl can handle.  Also a good hangover cure, as are most comfort foods.  Mexicans usually argue menudo is a better hangover cure, but let's face it, people:  Tripe tastes like ass, and not without reason.  And who wants to eat ass when they have a hangover?

When I'm hungover or sick or feeling a little blue, what I want is most definitely loads of chile and pork fat.  Yum.

Avgolemono, though, or even pho, will do in a pinch.  I wonder how often people find themselves in a pinch that can be alleviated by the addition of soups of Greek and Vietnamese origin.  I'm guessing not that often.

(The linked recipe for pozole looks roughly adequate to me--I don't use a recipe when I make it, but this is at any rate the right ingredient list.  The only thing I do different is I usually use pork shoulder rather than ribs, but I don't see why ribs wouldn't be equally good.  Anyway, since I haven't actually used that recipe, though, I vouch not for it.  Ditto the pho recipe--it seems about right to me, and I learned to make pho in a Vietnamese restaurant, but I don't ever use an actual recipe.  I can assure you, though, that the charring of the ginger and onion is crucial.  Pho broth that has uncharred aromatics is bleh, very bleh.)

Show us your favorite flower.

The iris.  The standard purple-and-yellow are fine, but not my favorite.  My favorite place in Tokyo that is not a drinking establishment is the Meiji Iris Garden in full bloom.  The scent of the irises--that wet, dense perfume they give off--drifts all the way out to the main path that leads to the Meiji Shrine and it curls around you as you walk toward the iris garden.  I love the weeping, open shape and the patterns of the colors.  

On one of our first dates, I had gone to Nagoya to see T, carrying a copy of a Heisei-era poem that had been composed about an iris garden near Nagoya.  The poem itself, in ancient Japanese, started each line with a syllable from the Japanese word for iris (kakitsubata--thus the five lines started with the syllables ka-ki-tsu-ba-ta).  I wanted to see this garden, allegedly still standing.  T worked on deciphering the poem and its context from the photocopy of the scholarly text I had got it from (don't ask) and found the temple and the garden and took me there.  I would have married him there on the spot.  It's a beautiful little ancient garden, and it was so sweet of him to find it for me.

Show us a good time.

If you're ever in Idaho, I will.

Show us one of the world's great mysteries that you're dying to hear the explanation for.

How did this asswad get elected? 

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

If science can ever explain this level of dumbassery, I will be so very grateful.

Share your current favorite song or music video.

 It's a toss-up.  Either this:

Or this: