The Week in Review

Note to a loyal reader: Yes, a post on a recent trip to your town is coming. You have not been forgotten. How could I? It is already in my edit folder, but it requires pictures. Pictures take awhile when you don't have a digital camera, and even longer when the photo lab loses your film.

Random highlights/observations from the past week:

1. Fondue. Sounds gay, tastes delicious. Never been to the Melting Pot before last Thursday night. It was a fantastic evening. It was like a miniature Festival of Meat, except you dip your meat (and other foods) in melty goodness. Again, sounds gay (the last sentence, a bit disturbing), but again, tastes delicious. Points off from the manager, though, who (very) awkwardly tried to shush our party for being too loud. Bad form. Happy birthday, LB.
2. Obesity. Not the best segue from all the food observations, however I noticed this past week that it is a good day when my patients weigh less than 200 pounds. Ugly airways, diabetes, heart disease; there is a long list of bad things that go along with being fat. Smoking is a horrible public health problem; obesity is much worse. For the love people, exercise. It isn't that hard.
3. Walk the Line We went to see this movie on Friday night at the Franklin Cinema, and it was fantastic. Great performances by Joaquin Phoenix and (especially) Reese Witherspoon. We especially enjoyed the ongoing audio commentary from the folks sitting behind us. We concluded that it was their one night a year to come to the big city, perhaps to eat at Golden Corral, and then catch a flick. They were wonderful. However, perhaps part of the blame might lie with us for choosing a theater that serves alcohol.
4. Nickel Creek For some reason I'm just getting around to their music, and I'm sad it hadn't happened before. Their first disc is traditional bluegrass, but they get more experimental over the following two. The last one, Why Should the Fire Die?, is my favorite. Its a great breakup record. Its too bad I'm not wanting to breakup with anyone.
5. King Kong I saw this preview the other day, but I can't find anyone else excited to see this movie. There is a short list of film directors who get a free pass, meaning I enjoy their body of work enough that whatever film they choose to put out next I'll go and see, no questions asked. A few of those directors include Spielberg (can't wait to see Munich next month), Scorsese (The Departed, 2006), M. Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water: An apartment super finds a sea nymph living in the building's swimming pool. Really.), and Peter Jackson.
Peter Jackson's last film was Return of the King. It won lots of Oscars, and is one of my favorite movies of all time. So he gets a free pass. It helps that King Kong is the movie he's wanted to make since he was a child, so he's emotionally invested. However, his next film could have been The Care Bears Meet the Seasonal Affective Disorder Prairie Dogs and I would be there on opening day. He would find a way to make it good. That's why he gets the free pass.

Houston: U2 and the Festival of Meat

So last week I was on vacation, on my Tour of Places I Once Lived. First stop in said tour was to Houston, where I spent two and a half years in graduate school. While I don't miss Houston as a city (big and hot and dirty), I have several close friends there that I was looking forward to hanging out with.
There was another reason for the trip, too. Friday night I finally got to see U2 in concert for the first time with my friends Andy and Brant. I'm really no longer a fan of big arena concerts. There are several reasons for this. One, I'm getting old. Secondly, the smaller the venue the more intimate the music, and third, most of the musicians I like will never be popular enough to play in big arenas like this. This concert was a huge, huge exception. My first thought at the end of the concert: Why have I never seen U2 before? My second thought: I will never miss a U2 tour again. They were phenomenal. They played music off of every record except for the unfortunate Pop and Zooropa discs. Pride, With Or Without You, and Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own were all transcendental. I've rarely seen musicians as appreciative of the audience as Bono and the band were, and it showed through their music. We were stage left and up about fifty stories above the stage, but they still had the ability to draw everybody into the show. Even the drunk teenage lesbian hookers who sat in front of us, but that's a different story.
Saturday night I partook in my favorite Houston tradition, which I will refer to as the Festival of Meat. Andy, Jeff, Mia, and myself went to one of my favorite restaurants, Fogo De Chao, which loosely translates into Feast, you Gluttonous Carnivore. Fogo is a Brazilian steakhouse, or a churrascaria, if you will. There is no menu. You sit at your table. There is a fancy salad bar that you must ignore, for it would only take up valuable stomach space. A small card is placed in front of you. On one side, it is red; the other, green. You take several deep cleansing breaths, and turn to the card to green.
Almost immediately, like some wonderful meat fairy, waiters, dressed in bright gaucho outfits (gaucho roughly translates to gay cowboy), swoop out of the air with skewers of meat. A cornucopia of meat. Garlic sirloin, filet mignon, top sirloin, beef ribs, leg of lamb, pork ribs, parmesan-encrusted pork, various other animals. It goes on this way until you flip the little card back to red. Once your plate is cleared you can flip back to green and the fairies swoop in again. Basically you eat until animal fat oozes from your pores. Complete and utter yumsters.
One unfortunate side effect of the Festival of Meat (especially when combined with the huge portion of beef fajitas consumed before the U2 concert the night before), was a complete work stoppage in my colon. The whole system went down, and it took a few days for it to come back online. Thought I should share the bad along with the good.

ps. I wanted to give a public shout-out to my friend Andy, who, a few days after the Festival of Meat learned he passed the Bar Exam. Congratulations! He can now officially usurp Mr. Adler to become the next Texas Hammer, at least among Houston's Korean population.