Yesterday I saw the fascinating Anh Duong, who walked alongside me out of the 77th Street station. 
Which reminded me that I should have mentioned that a few months ago I saw Samantha Power talking on her cell on the corner of Madison and 78th.  You can see her quite clearly here in these pictures I took after crossing the street.




SEE?!  I should totally get a job with Us Weekly.

I really have to hand it to Mrs. Fanning.  She was truly an inspiration.  Despite everything that happened throughout the weekend--and there was drama--she had a smile on her face the entire time, and especially on her wedding day.  She was a model of poise and grace, never getting flustered, never panicking, quietly putting the bridezilla myth to bed without any supper.

And thank god she went before me -- her wedding was a crucial test run for my own.  It was my first time walking down an aisle since I was a two-year-old flower girl, and I was entirely uncertain as to whether I would flip out and burst into tears.  Fortunately, I was so caught up in fulfilling my maid-of-honor duties that I didn't have time for emotional collapse.  I had a speech to write (of course I wrote it two hours before the wedding -- typical), dress steaming to oversee, and photo shoots to direct.  I had to make sure she ate enough to prevent fainting.  Worst of all, I had to get up at six in the morning to get my hair done.  And this was after the raucous late-night rehearsal dinner.  That is love, people.  And I must really love this chick.


[My only picture from the wedding day -- I figured I should attend to
my own duties and allow the real photographers to do their jobs.]

In the end, it was sister Laura who became the emotional wreck, which was so charmingly unexpected.  She stood just in front of me in the narthex of the church, where we prepared to walk down the aisle.  As the organist launched into the processional music, Laura peeked over her shoulder just in time to see the ushers closing the doors in front of Andrea, who would make a grand entrance after the bridesmaids had made it to the altar.  Laura lost it -- tears streaming down her face, she cried, "He's taking my sister away from me!"  I looked at her and said, "Go hug her. NOW!" hoping that this might provide some kind of emotional resolution.  So she ran back, threw her arms around a surprised Andrea, and scooted back to her place in line, just in time to walk down the aisle.  It was one of the sweetest moments I have ever witnessed.

But once she started up the aisle I could feel myself starting to lose it.  Don't cry don't cry don't cry, I chanted to myself.  Then I saw something that slapped hard, cold sense into me: I saw the photographers.  If 21st-century media saturation has taught me anything, it's that it doesn't matter what we feel inside provided we look good in the pictures.  I immediately summoned Tyra, snapped into ice-queen mode, and (according to witness accounts) sashayed up the aisle.  I knew I coudn't look at anyone -- not at Doran, not at Zubin, not at my mother, not at her mother -- because any one of them would break the spell of fierceness and cause me to melt.  I stared at the stained glass over the priest's head the entire way.

Once I got up to the altar and turned around to see the luminous bride, I let myself sob for a few minutes.  Everyone's gaze had obviously shifted anyway.  My only mistake as maid-of-honor (that I'm aware of, anyway), was that I forgot to put the veil over Andrea's face as we had planned.  But it was one of the better mistakes I've ever made.  Nothing should have blocked the radiance of that smile.  It made the day what it was.  As her mom later said, it was a good thing her grandfather was walking her down the aisle, because otherwise she probably would have run.

Everything that came after was a blur, thanks largely to the champagne intake.  I recall dancing -- a lot of dancing.  I may have eaten a little.  All in all, the entire weekend consisted of being either drunk or hung-over.  On Sunday, Zubin and I toured Philadelphia with our mothers; I felt like a zombie.  We spent Memorial Day at his mom's in Wilmington, where I crashed like I've never crashed before.  I slept for about eighteen hours.  I felt like someone had beaten me up.  I cried a lot.  I finally had my own realization that, oh my god, Andrea's not going to be there at the airport anymore when I come home to Detroit.  And, oh my god, we're really adults now.

It's a good thing I'm so damn happy for her.

My mother arrived at the Ritz-Carlton on Friday morning while I was still trying to hoist my hung-over head up from its pillow.  (As mentioned in an earlier post, even though Andrea was supposed to have a very small wedding, my mother managed to catholic-guilt-trip her way onto the guest list.)  Before she entered I could hear her gabbing and laughing with a chambermaid and bellhop in the hallway.  She started knocking on the door, hollering "My daughter is in that room and she better not be having sex!"  Ah, Mommie Dearest had arrived.

  

Within an hour we were in the Ritz-Carlton lobby, sucking down Eric Ripert's bloody marys.  The lobby of the Ritz was designed as a bad copy of the Pantheon, and it has recently been renovated with 21st century, vaguely orientalist design details -- it all makes for fabulous kitsch.  We saw Miss Laura scurrying through the lobby and called her over to us.  Much to our excitement, she informed us that her new boyfriend was going to be coming into town from Detroit, despite the fact that he was not invited to the wedding.

Brief backstory: Laura is in the process of being shipped off to the Caucasus by the Peace Corps.  Everyone knew for months that she was going to break up with her then-boyfriend, J, because of her two-year obligation abroad and lack of interest in attempting a long-distance relationship.   J was scheduled to come to Andrea's wedding anyway -- his plane ticket had been purchased.  But then Laura broke up with him a little earlier than expected.  Not because she was leaving the country for two years, but because she met someone else.  Whence the new boyfriend, S.

This will all lead up to a dramatic finale, I promise you.

In any case, it had been decided by the family that it would just be too awkward for new boyfriend S to attend the wedding given the freshness of the breakup.  (We'd all been terribly attached to J, no one really knows this new guy, etc.)  But since they can't bear to separate themselves any longer than absolutely necessary, S drove from Detroit to Philadelphia just to be with Laura, albeit secretly. 

Moving right along.  We went to St. Mark's Episcopal Church for the rehearsal that evening.  If I do say so myself, I did a pretty fine job of picking out the bride and groom's church for them.  It's a beautiful Gothic Revival structure built in the mid-19th century under the auspices of the Oxford Movement -- which means it's as Catholic as you can get without being Catholic.  It's a surprisingly cozy space -- not cold and lofty as so many Gothic churches can be, probably because the ceiling is wooden rather than vaulted (according to a church employee, it's modeled on a ship's hull, meant to bring to mind Noah's Ark). 

I cried during the rehearsal, which did not bode well for my ability to hold it together during the actual wedding.

After Laura and I practiced our sashays and the bride and groom practiced their 'I wills', we headed toward the charming Black Sheep Pub for the rehearsal dinner, which began smoothly enough but concluded in infamy.  Perhaps the trouble started when Andrea's hellion half-brother started ordering the most expensive alcohol available just because the groom was footing the bill.  This project began with Chimay (which was apparently too much for his Bud Light-accustomed taste buds) and climaxed with a bottle of newly-legalized absinthe. 

Between the beer and the absinthe, the party got wild.  Said hellion half-brother started hitting on my 55-year-old mother, which was truly revolting.  Laura gave a drunken "I love you, man" speech to the other half-brother, about how he is the bright shining star of the family.  General revelry ensued.  Soon enough, my absinthed mother whispered excitedly to me, "[new boyfriend] S is here!"  We were all atwitter with excitement about the party crasher, wondering what would happen next.  But by this time the whole family was too pleasantly toasted to be dismayed by the uninvited guest, who proved a charming gentleman indeed.  His presence did, however, lead to the evening's crowning moment.

Andrea, assuming that S would now be staying with Laura in the hotel room that the two sisters were originally sharing, decided it would be perfectly logical to stay with her fiancé that night.  She was unaware that S, in fact, had other accommodations.  Laura, hearing that Andrea intended to break with tradition by whoring it up on the night before her wedding, flew into a psychotic rage.  The alcohol, needless to say, fueled the flames.

She ran after her sister, vociferously forbidding her from staying with Doran for the night (as if it weren't bad enough that she'd invited him to her bachelorette party).  Laura then (ahem) slapped her sister across the face.  Not really hard, but hard enough to create a foley track.  Naturally, what was our bride left to do but, yes, slap her sister back.  Again, on the face.  Again, just hard enough to make a point.

This actually happened.

Claws out and apparently ready to tackle the bride-to-be, who scurried shrieking to the other side of the room, Laura was held back by (wait for it) her eighty-year-old grandmother, who grabbed her by the blouse and shouted for her to stop.  At this point I bear-hugged Laura in the hopes of preventing a broken octogenarian arm, and tried to inform her rationally that there had been some kind of terrible misunderstanding.  I then noticed that the new boyfriend was mere steps away, and it occurred to me that he was the only one in the room who would be able to subdue her.  I shouted his name, gazed intently into his eyes and said "GET HER."  I then hurtled Laura into his open arms, which thankfully tased her into a state of acquiescence.  Fortunately, I think most of the guests were too tipsy and distracted to comprehend what was unfolding.

The funny thing is, as shocking as all this sounds, this is pretty much standard operating procedure for the Burmann sisters.  This was a mere repeat of any number of fights I've witnessed between them since we were in elementary school.  It's almost like I had been in training for this very moment for the past twenty years. 

Once I had one sister under control, I checked in with the other one and explained the entire situation.  There was a misunderstanding etc etc, we can continue with the original plan etc etc, Laura loves you and just wants to have one more sleepover with you two as sisters etc etc, I'm pretty sure she will not claw your eyes out in the middle of the night etc etc.  Andrea was so cute about it, complaining not about her sister's actions, but about the obligation to stick to all the traditional rules about grooms not seeing brides before the wedding and so forth.  "I'm really not traditional!  I'm not even doing the something old new borrowed and blue!"

"Yes you are," I said.  "You just don't know it yet."

(Incidentally, our heroines spent a peaceful night together, and still love each other.)

Well, I successfully married off my best friend, Andrea, who will henceforth be known as Mrs. Fanning.  It suits her.  It required no psychological leap on my part to adjust to this name -- she was born to be a missus.  I think that I, on the other hand, may be a permanent Ms.

Naturally, one of my most important duties as MOH was the organization of the bachelorette party, which was scheduled for Thursday night in Philadelphia, two days before the wedding.  By the grace of God, Thursday just happens to be the night of the weekly Drag Show at Bob & Barbara's, a.k.a. the Greatest Dive Bar in America. 



[ The first cocktails of a very long evening ]

Miss Laura (Mrs. Fanning's sister and sole other bridesmaid) and I managed to rip the bride-to-be out of the arms of her groom-to-be just long enough to drag her down to South Street.  But it was a close call -- the pre-dinner drinks had already gotten to her, and she even had the audacity to invite her fiance along to the bachelorette party.  (Her excuse was that they "never see each other"; it apparently failed to register in her mind that he is whisking her across the Atlantic Ocean, away from us forever.)  Thankfully, his brilliant reply was "Why would I want to go to a bachelorette party?"  Smart boy. 

The cast of characters involved was a motley one: besides the bride and her two maids, we had her mother, her aunt, her underage cousin and her brother's underage girlfriend.  I had called ahead to check whether we might be able to sneak in a couple of 19-year-olds but there was too much ambient noise to have a functional conversation with the bartender.  I decided to risk it -- I was far too determined to give my best friend an appropriately inappropriate bachelorette party, whatever obstacles the gods might lay before us. 

Alas, there was a bouncer checking IDs at the door.  I hoped the parental accompaniment would suffice.  Regardless, the underage cousin somehow managed to sneak past the bouncer while he was studying ID cards.  Meanwhile I made it in safely with both Burmann sisters, the elder of which immediately caught the attention of a hot black queen in a slinky gold lamé dress.  "Is this a bachelorette party?!" she asked, doubtless tipped off by the white feather boa that I'd forced our bride to wear.  (There was also a blinking bachelorette button and a phallic candy necklace, neither of which I had anything to do with.)  Our gracious host immediately escorted us to a special table right next to the stage, which bore a sign reading "RESERVED for Miss Lisa's guests".  Score! 

It was right around this time that I noticed that half our party was missing.  I retreated and peeked out the door -- sure enough the mom, aunt, and underage girlfriend had been stopped by the bouncer due to the latter not having an ID.  They huddled confusedly on the sidewalk and told me what had happened.  I managed to maintain composure and immediately snapped into action.  "Let me go talk to the gays," I proclaimed decisively.

I scurried back in, found the hot black queen in the slinky gold lamé dress, and sheepishly begged, "Miss Lisa, I'm so sorry, but one of our friends is just shy of 21 -- is there any chance you might be able to help us out by getting her in?"  Without a word Miss Lisa stomped (fiercely) out the door, pointed straight at the 27-year-old Miss Laura, and commanded in a motherly tone, "You can't drink." 

Trying to suppress laughter, I gestured toward Tiffany, the brother's girlfriend.  "Er, no, the other one," I explained.  Miss Lisa shifted the pointy finger toward Tiffany and repeated her commandment of "You can't drink," to which we all nodded reverently.  Score! 

So we spent the evening forking over dollar bills to drag queens and downing PBR.  The range of performers was fascinating.  From a pudgy, wigless queen in short shorts named Desiree who I think may have needed a shave, to a smoking hot post-op queen in sequined pasties, we witnessed quite a range of gender performance.  Our poor bride inevitably got brought up on stage by Miss Lisa and mercilessly hazed.  She was drunk enough not to refrain from embarrassing details (confirmation of fiancé's assets, etc.) despite the presence of her mother and aunt.  At least she got a free Bob & Barbara's t-shirt out of the deal.

  

[ L: our underagers ; R: our bachelorette ]

We got unbelievably trashed.  Those of us under 40 danced our asses off after the show.  The underagers got hit on by local boys.  Miss Laura nearly impaled my right foot with her stiletto, and I immediately got the feeling that I would be limping down the aisle on Saturday.  Most importantly, Andrea had fun.
 

My brother's girlfriend is meeting Barack Obama today in Grand Rapids. 

My best friend met Prince William last week in London at a charity polo match.

I got nothin.

It has come to our attention that there is another Shannon and Zubin out there on the internet, and, even more appalling, in real life.  This came to light when I was innocently googling the words Shannon and Zubin in various combinations (i.e., procrastinating), and discovered mysterious references to a Shannon who did not sound much like myself, and a Zubin who was clearly not my own beloved.

Clearly, we only have one option when confronted with a situation like this.  THERE MUST BE A DUEL TO DETERMINE THE BEST SHANNON AND ZUBIN.  

Now, I’m willing to admit that the other Shannon and Zubin are worthy competitors.  Indeed, there are a few areas in which they may even have a bit of an edge.  

1. They have already begun reproducing, and their daughter, Mira, is absolutely beautiful. (Yes, I have seen the baby pictures.  No, this did not require creepy levels of stalking.)  Yet, this fact may also work to our advantage, in the sense that it bodes well for our own future Indo-Euro babies.  And I have a feeling that the inclusion of my Zubin’s Kashmiri blood, in addition to the Parsi, will put our genetic makeup over the top.  So just you wait.  For a year and a half, at least.
2. The Other Zubin’s father’s name is Xerxes.  Now, our Zubin’s father’s name is Jatindar: a fantastic name, truly top notch.  But we just can’t compete with Xerxes.  I mean, have you seen “The 300”?  Xerxes is, like, 30 feet tall, has a voice like a death metal bass line, and rules over many, many a minion!
3. They’re Canadian.  My Zubin actually doesn’t think this is an advantage but I grew up listening to the CBC and I know the truth: Canadians are by and large smarter than Americans, have cuter accents, and have highly refined ironic sensibilities.  

Clearly our work is cut out for us.  But I’m convinced that with some babies (apparently I must now have at least two; thanks a lot, Other Shannon and Zubin), some enhanced cuteness, and perhaps an online poll in which our friends vote for their favorite S/Z combo, we have a good chance of coming out on top here.  

On guard, Other Shannon and Zubin.  On guard.

This is why I told my father, PLEASE send me a copy to proofread before you publish the announcement.  Witness the travesty of this combination:

1. "Masters Degree"
2. "bachelor’s degree"
3. "Master’s"

People!  If you are going to talk about me, please be consistent in your capitalization and apostrophe usage!

Everyone turned 30, and everyone freaked out.  That’s the only way to explain the sudden wave of nuptial activity amongst my friends and myself.  I am in three weddings this year, with a very different role in each.  This month I'll be a maid of honor for my best-friend-since-fifth-grade, Andrea; in July I'll be a flower girl for my dear ex-roommate Tejal in Vienna; and in October it will, inevitably, be my turn to be the bride.  Actually, make that four weddings, because I'll be a bride again in December, when we have our Hindu ceremony in India (in case the first time doesn't take, as Zubin says).  My enthusiasm for wedding planning has surprised my friends, but not myself.  I’ve never really wanted to be a wife, but I've always wanted to have a wedding.  I love ritual, I love parties, and I love glamorous dresses; this is my excuse to have all three (and twice!  I love multicultural relationships!). 


[looking for the one]

Over the course of planning these weddings, I have learned more than I expected about myself and my best friend.  We are each other’s maids of honor and our approaches to this whole operation could not be more different.  She’s enormously excited about the destination rather than the process: she genuinely wants to be married, which utterly mystifies and impresses me.  She was, in fact, close to eloping in order to escape all the trouble and expense of a wedding.  She’s slowly been sucked into having a proper event, however, and I think she won't be sorry for it.  Sadly though, in the meantime she has been subjected to mad drama of a familial variety, which has partially been a result of her attempt to have a very small affair on the east coast, far from our midwestern origins.  Even her aunts and uncles aren’t invited.  My mother, however, managed to cry her way onto the guest list.  Andrea, ever eager to make those around her happy, easily agreed to include her.  Andrea informed me of this incident over email, and concluded her message with the revelatory summation: “Weddings sure are a big deal!”

At first I found this charmingly naïve.  Then I realized that we simply have two essentially divergent perspectives on what weddings are supposed to be, both of which are equally valid.  She believes that weddings are an intimate celebration of love.  She’s a romantic.  And she should be, given the circumstances under which she found her groom-elect.  I, on the other hand, have a very Irish Cath(alcoh)olic approach.  Weddings, like birthdays and family reunions, are an excuse for people to get together and drink.  They’re ritualistic not only in a spiritual sense, but also because they are part of a cycle of Major Life Events which give people an opportunity to reconnect and laugh and inspect the skyrocketing height of youngsters. 

Really, I suppose this perspective isn’t just a working-class midwestern one, but more broadly, a pre-modern one.  Maybe this is the medievalist in me, but I just don't feel like weddings are ultimately for the couple; they’re community events meant for everyone involved.*  This hit me ages ago, at Tejal’s engagement party, when she brilliantly said that one of the reasons why engagements and weddings are nice is because they remind all the older married people attending them why they had plunged into marriage in the first place.**  Reaffirmation.  Validation?  I'm trying not to be too cynical.  I'm a closet romantic.  I think my boyfriend is really dreamy, and I know we'll happy together. 

Now if only I had a dowry.

* Speaking of pre-mod, I also think arranged marriage is a really good idea, and that there should be more of them, but that’s another story.

** This was one of the Big Moments when I realized getting married wasn't such a bad idea.  The other was when Andrea's mother suggested that marriage is economically necessary should your husband ever decide to "trade you in for a younger model."

The sign listing the hours of operation at Bangkok's Grand Palace concludes with the warning "Beware of wily strangers."  Certain devious locals have this nifty trick where they tell you that the Palace is closed to the public due to a Thai holiday and you have to "hire" a native to take you inside.  What ingenuity; I love it.  There's a kind of playfulness to these interactions between locals and tourists -- the taxi driver who took us to our hotel gave us an encouraging smile, seeming almost proud of us, when we refused to let him charge twice what we offered for the cab fare.



We packed in the most touristy stuff in a single day.  The sunlight bouncing off the gold-coated palace and temple buildings seemed to make the day even hotter.  I felt dizzy and confused; the sensory overload and extreme climate exacerbated each other.  We spent some time with the emerald Buddha in Wat Phra Kaew, which was comparatively peaceful but still bustling with both the faithful and the gawkers. 

We departed and made our way past dozens of amulet sellers toward Wat Pho, which was, I think, the "temple experience" we were waiting for.  There were far fewer tourists, the sun had begun to sink, and we were able to meander at ease throughout the complex, stare dazedly at the various golden Buddhas, and get reflexology done at the massage school.  Oh yes.  I nearly converted to Buddhism by the end of the day. 

Zubin finds the image veneration so prevalent to religion here to be contrary to Buddhist teachings.  As a medieval art historian, of course, I'm not so bothered by iconophilia.  There's a reason I'm bored to tears by Protestantism.  I rather like the idea of utilizing materiality to access the divine; I suppose this is why I came out as Chalcedon compliant on the Heretic test.



The Bangkok pictures (so far) are here.

Anyone see Daily Candy today?

I emailed them the following response:

I am offended by virtually nothing, but was completely horrified by today's Daily Candy.  As if women aren't guilt-tripped enough into buying products that claim to solve "problems" they didn't realize they had, now we must change the shade of our assholes?  Now we must obsess not only about our outward appearances, but about our invisible parts as well?  Perhaps we should begin dyeing our intestines; they ARE rather vulgar and un-pretty.

Not only is this product manipulative to the extreme, it also has a rather racist undertone, propagating the notion that darker skin is less desirable.  I'm taken aback that Daily Candy would promote this product.  Despite its appreciation in materialist delights, I thought Daily Candy was savvier and more progressive than this.  I'm unsubscribing.

I've had a hard time getting back into writing, and I'm not sure that I can solely blame orals-related exhaustion. 

Problem 1:  I'm not sure what this live journal is for anymore.  Since I started it, it's primarily served as an anecdotal medium rather than a confessional or exploratory or editorial one.  And lately I've felt too bored and boring to contribute anything.  I've become a domesticated academic with an absolute dearth of anecdotes to relate.

Problem 2:  Writing used to be the activity that gave me the greatest pleasure and sense of accomplishment.  Now it's torture.  Academic immersion has raised my self-expectations beyond what is realistic.  I've read too much brilliant material to feel like I have anything to offer the world.  In one of my darker orals-studying moments, I became convinced that I would gladly trade in my own life if God would give Michael Camille back to the world.  Writing my post-orals two-week paper was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life.  I have never been less motivated.  Have I hit my limit?  Can I just retire and become a proofreader?

Problem 3:  I might just be burned out from 2007, which was an emotional cataclysm.  The traumas I experienced proved silencing -- I just don't know how to write about the things that happened.  (In the interest of keeping friends abreast, my would-be father-in-law died in March, my parents divorced in May*, and my grandfather died in September. On the bright side, these events made turning 30 far less traumatic.)

But a lot of wonderful things happened, too.  There were more births than deaths; I got four beautiful new cousins (all girls!: Aubrey, Riva, Saarena, and Aanika), and two dear friends had baby boys (Noki and Ishmael), both of whom will be welcome additions to the multiracial baby utopia I'm planning.  I survived orals, and just started a teaching job -- and I think I love it.  Undergraduate education really appeals to me -- they students are just the right age to be engaged and enthusiastic, but also brainwashable. 

So this is me snapping out of it and rejoining the world.  Here's to 2008, bitches.


-----------------------

* Actually this may have occurred much earlier; they pretty much never told me and my brother anything that was going on whilst it was happening.

I passed orals!  They like me.  They really, really like me.

First and foremost I'd like to thank the Academy -- for supporting my decadent lifestyle of intellectual pursuit for the past few years. 

I'd like to thank my colleagues for their generous offerings of advice and bibliographies.  Especially Michael, without whom I would never have survived my Islamic section -- you are the Kalila to my Dimna, the muqarnas to my squinch, the Salar to my Sanjar. 

And most especially to you, Zubin -- thank you for your unwavering support in the form of delightful dinners, shoulder rubs, and bitch-slaps whenever I complained about the inevitability of failure. 

Finally, I'd like to thank God -- for inspiring so much totally awesome medieval art!  That goes for you too, Allah. 

The stretch of Route 66 between Oklahoma City and Tulsa was one of my favorites -- tree-lined curving roads far from the freeway, and a beautiful thunderstorm, which was a great boon for our by-now filthy Mazda 3 (named Ganesh), which we refused to take to a car wash.  We passed weird unknowns, like this:



There was nothing to do in Tulsa.  The downtown area was completely dead, spooky for a Saturday afternoon.  But the stop in Tulsa was worth it nonetheless, thanks to our visit to a magical little place known as Oral Roberts University.  Our Lonely Planet guide very accurately described the campus architecture as Jesus-meets-Jetsons, and upon arrival I couldn't think of a better way to articulate it.  It was as if the UC Irvine campus -- with its classic sixties white geometricism -- had been dipped in gold.  Walking around campus was very much like being on a science fiction movie set, and I can only imagine how jealous L. Ron Hubbard must have or would have been had he ever seen it.  It being summer, the university was as dead as downtown, and I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe the rapture had happened and I'd missed it.



More Arkansas pictures here.  Trust me, you want to see the rest of the Oral Roberts pics.

We arrived in Arkansas by night.  At a Subway attached to a gas station in Russellville, we asked the young guy behind the counter where we could pick up some beer for our room at the Park Motel.  "Uh, in Russellville? Nowhere."  He informed us that Arkansas is pretty much a dry state, and that we could drive twenty miles to some kind of special alcohol superstore, or we could try to get in contact with a drink dealer, but that was about it.  These poor kids!  Can you imagine the kinds of drugs they must do in order to survive the severe alcohol restrictions? 

Between the futuristic fundamentalism of Tulsa and the archaic morality of Arkansas, it hit us that we were in the Bible Belt for reals.  This was confirmed when we drove into Little Rock the following morning and found that the entire city was shut down because it was Sunday.  We stopped at a shopping mall to pick up some clean underwear, and while much of it was open for business, we were two of maybe ten customers in the whole place.  This is what it looked like.  Creepy -- like, 28 Days Later creepy.  We probably should have just gone to church along with everyone else.  At least then we would have had something to do.  Come to think of it, maybe this is exactly what drives the religiosity of the south -- sheer boredom.

We hightailed it to Memphis, and were saved.

There are few things I love more than a kitschy pseudo-museum with life-size ethnographic dioramas.  This is why I was thrilled to discover that the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City Oklahoma (not to be confused with the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum in Clinton) is a hodge-podge collection of just such displays.  Rather than exhibiting nostalgic memorabilia in showcases, the curators have brilliantly chosen to insert them into frozen re-enactments with mannequins for that in-situ, documentarian feel.  How much more exciting is a 1966 pow-wow pamphlet, for instance, when inserted into a scene featuring an injun and his pet wolf?!  Genius.  And so educational.



We slept in Oklahoma City that night, at the Carlyle Motel, where the young desi woman and her mother were quite enthused when I asked them for recommendations for local Indian fare.  After some above-average strip-mall cuisine, we hit up the historic 66 Bowl, a bowling alley with a Route 66 theme on the lanes, and a rockabilly scene in the bar.  Luckily we had rolled into OK City on Friday night, when the bar was featuring live music and some very tall hair.  On this particular evening we got to experience an event called "Tiki Con Queso," starring The Reverb Brothers, a White-Stripesy blues duo, and The Coconauts, a surfy garage band.  The Coconauts included a bass player wearing a fez and a theremin player who'd decorated his instrument with a confederate flag superimposed with a hammer and sickle.  A chain-smoking red-haired sexagenarian served us very bad beer.  It was the best night so far on the trip.

The following morning, the sweet and lovely waitress at Beverly's Pancake Corner (an OKC institution) asked us about our trip.  She was from Amarillo, and suggested we go to the Big Texan Steak Ranch.  We informed her we were actually driving east, not west, and had already been there, which pleased her greatly.  I guess there's a lot of regional pride wrapped up in the Big Texan.  She also suggested that we not leave town without going to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.  We'd been conflicted about going -- it's not as easy to intentionally put oneself through acutely depressing experiences when one is in happy fun-time vacation mode, but of course in the end we were glad we went.

The memorial space really is lovely. As with Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial, it's interesting to see the vocabulary of minimalist sculpture transformed into something... well, representational.  If they were in an art museum, the series of chairs would be a statement about seriality, repetition, and mechanical reproduction.  Here, of course, they connote individual lost souls, each inscribed with its separate identity -- the name of one of the killed.  The massive gates, which would be virile monolith slabs in an art context, are here foreboding signs of temporality.  Though as with large-scale minimalist sculpture, they too are intended to dictate a viewer's movement through space. 



As opposed to the contemplative serenity of the memorial space, the museum was all about sensory overload.  Its primary mission is to make you feel like you were there, and this simulacral bent is both very successful and very freaky.  First you go through a hallway that provides context for Oklahoma City as it was pre-bombing -- the front pages of the newspapers that day, etc.  Then you are put into a mock office room where they play a tape recording of a hearing that took place next door to the Murrah building, and thus captured the sound of the bombing.  So you're sitting there listening to these people calmly carrying on with their banal, quotidian lives, fully aware that in five minutes you're going to hear a huge boom and lots of people screaming.  And then you do, and the lights flicker, and a wall opens up, and you're shuffled into another room full of debris and recovered property -- victims' car keys, shoes, desk tchotchkes, et cetera, while multiple newscasts and first-person narratives play on various television sets.  I very nearly had a panic attack during the playing of the tape recording, and couldn't help the tears when confronted with the images and artifacts of the aftermath.  It was all totally manipulative, but so effective that I couldn't help but be impressed.

The museum details not only the trauma to the city and the lives lost, but also provides a lot of information about the ensuing investigation into the conspiracy behind the bombing.  As I walked through it, I kept wondering how the World Trade Center memorial will compare to it.  The curious thing about the Oklahoma City memorial and museum is that it was planned and completed in a pre-September 11th world, and thus does not tap into xenophobic patriotism in the way one might expect nowadays.  Because the bombing was a product of domestic terrorism, patriotic sentiments are evoked in this roundabout way, through this message of "Americans are so great because they all pulled together to support the city in its moment of catastrophe".  But there is no real Other to be blamed.  I found this really interesting.

As if turning 30 weren't bad enough, I am now moving to Queens.  Sunnyside, that is:  Irish pubs, 7 train.  The apartment is lovely and spacious and cheap and wonderfully convenient to Manhattan, but I don't know if I can make the psychological leap from Brooklyn, where I've lived for seven and a half years, ever since I landed in this city.  In a way I don't mind, what with going into convent mode for the fall semester due to my orals (I may even forsake vanity and chop off my hair for the occasion).  But I can't shake the feeling that this may officially mark my middle ages, and that I may never see my friends, or trivia night at Pete's, or wine at Barbes, or a movie at BAM ever again. 

Or maybe I should just shut up.  In any case, New Yorkers, please still be friends with me.

I've often said that I feel like a bad American for never having been to Las Vegas or Texas.  Now at last I can feel justified in my citizenship because I've finally visited, and even survived, both these locales.  Our brief buzz through the Texan panhandle was chock-full of southern curiosities, from the charming to the... well, creepy. 

Our first stop was Cadillac Ranch, a junkyard-cum-art installation which would probably be far more aesthetically compelling if it weren't continually spray-painted with rather banal (that is, white people's) graffiti.  It's a classic roadside attraction nonetheless.  Our guidebook interpreted it as an unintentional statement about the tragic toxicity of the American auto industry, and I think that reading works as one marvels at the Ranch's series of meticulously organized accidents.  It's also the subject of a pretty rockin Bruce Springsteen song.



Despite my vegetarian special needs and Zubin's interest in culinary wholesomeness, we lunched at Amarillo's famed Big Texan Steak Ranch for kitsch value.  We had a good time posing with the taxidermy and purchasing cowboy supplies in the gift shop.  We did not eat the 72 ounce steak, and we didn't witness anyone else complete one.  We did, however, nearly die from chili pepper poisoning.  It's been a long while since I last felt my entire head go numb.

As much as the Big Texan had to offer, the definitive Bible Belt experience was to be found in the town of Groom, at the site of what was once the largest cross in the northern hemisphere.  (The people of Groom must have been mighty pissed when, "inspired" by their cross, Effingham Illinois decided to construct their own nearly identical version, but made it eight feet taller.)  Aside from the 190-foot white metal cross (note humans at its base in this picture to get a sense of the scale), the site in Groom is a multimedia theme park of Christian fundamentalism.  You've got life-size stations of the cross in bronze, an abortion memorial featuring Jesus holding a fetus, and a gift shop featuring vomit-inducing nationalist imagery.

Particularly delightful to me was the small building featuring a replica of the Shroud of Turin, which is exhibited along with propaganda "proving" its authenticity.  Charmingly, the authors of said propaganda attempt to use art historical evidence to argue for the shroud's pre-medieval origins!  The argument goes a little something like this: because there are early (say, sixth-century) Byzantine icons of Christ displaying facial features similar to those on the Shroud, the Shroud was thus used as a model for these representations, and is hence the burial wrapping of Christ.  What a revelation.  Do I smell a dissertation?!?



More Texas pictures here.

Santa Fe is fascinatingly architecturally homogeneous.  It's the only major American city I've ever been in that has no tall buildings; as a result it took a while for us to figure out that we were actually in it.  And every building is in adobe style or something called territorial style, by public mandate.  I rather appreciate this kind of stifling, dictatorial architectural policy.  I like the idea of places being assigned identities and having to stick to them.  Very quaint.  Plus, it allows specific geographical locales to specialize in and develop their own individual aesthetic vocabularies.  And really, there's too damn much freedom of expression in this country.  Okay, no, but there's too much nationalization and WalMartification; all of America is becoming a mere collection of repetitious non-sites.

The flagrant exception to the adobe law is the Loretto Chapel, a neo-Gothic sore thumb built by Jean-Baptiste Lamy, on whom Death Comes for the Archbishop was based.  It includes a mysterious staircase of supposedly impossible construction that was built by Jesus or St. Joseph or someone of comparable miraculous carpentry skill.
sissychrissy1 wants to tell you a story about it.

Santa Fe also boasts the oldest house and the oldest church in the United States, San Miguel Mission.  But I think the latter title is a disputed one.  Before departure, we dined at Cafe Pasqual's -- fancy (though I favored our late-night dinner at Artichoke in Albuquerque the night before). 


[Route 66, Tucumcari]

We drove on, and slept on the eastern edge of New Mexico, at the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, one of the motel treasures of Route 66.  I wondered why the neon wasn't on when we pulled in, and the next morning the very young and very sweet girl behind the counter informed me that a huge storm had come through a few weeks previously and blown out half the neon on that stretch of 66.  And since there's only one neon specialist for hundreds of miles around, it's taking a while for the bulbs to be replaced.



[Safari Motel from the Blue Swallow parking lot]