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After 3 weeks of working my butt off remodeling the house, I treated myself to a day at the lake with some friends. It’s the perfect time of year in Arizona because it’s warm enough to want to go swimming and the lakes are cool and refreshing. On the way to the lake, we passed by a chopped Chrysler 300 near downtown Tempe. I scoured the Internet and found a crude photo. Even though it’s not the most flattering shot, you can see that the car is pretty sweet.

Sweet.

We went to the lake to ski, but I spent most of my time admiring the scenary. Here are a few photos from the afternoon.

That’s Four Peaks in the distance, made infamous by our license plates and a brewery.

Candyce enjoying the sun.

Danny (striking a pose), Lauryn (confused), and Candyce (confident)

Grillin’ and Chillin’

Most of the day on the lake was serene, but the final hours was nothing but surreal. We finished skiing and pulled up to a sandy beach to grill some dinner. There were a half-dozen other boats there, each the main stage of a their own little spring break in September. Big speakers on their boats echoed “Party Like a Rokkstar” around the canyon walls. Males were drinking, yelling, and insulting each other. Females were strutting around in their bikinis showing off their new tattoos. It was a bizarre scene in the middle of the desert. I lit the grill and started cooking. One by one, they backed off the beach and cruised out of the cove. The last boat left leaving a trail of music bouncing through the canyon: Will.i.iam’s “I Got it from my Mama.” Then all we heard were birds and bugs at dusk. Humans really are an unruly species.

Rock the Boat

Before I move on, I should explain that Saguaro lake is the fourth and lowest lake in a series of four. Roosevelt feeds into Apache, Apache into Canyon, and Canyon into Saguaro.

I was flipping the chicken when our placid lake began to ripple with a strong current. This is bizarre, because lakes don’t “ripple with a srong current.” We were all staring into the distance trying to make sense of this, when I looked down and saw a pair of flip flops (left by a party girl) float off the sand and into the water. Within minutes our sandy beach had become smaller than my kitchen.

We hopped up onto the boat and ate dinner and listened to Jason describe his plan for sailing from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. Before we knew it, it was dark and it was time to go. Unfortunately, the water level had lowered, and our boat was a beached whale. The guys got out and rocked the boat for ten minutes until we were finally floating again. It was a funny scene because the girls were in the boat and it looked like we were harrassing them I read in the paper earlier this week that they were lowered the water level in Canyon Lake by 20 feet to repair the dam. They opened up their dam upstream and flooded our picnic.

The cruise out of the lake was magical. It was dark and we were the only boat still on the lake. You couldn’t see the canyon walls, so we had to drive slowly. The sky was illuminated by a full dome of stars. It’s been so long since I’ve seen so many stars like that.

We stopped for twenty minutes and just floated in darkness, staring up the the sky. In the distance a camper was staying warm by a fire of mesquite wood, filling the air with the smell of autumn. It was such a calm moment at the end of such a severe three weeks of remodeling.

I think its embarrassing that Americans squabble with one another one whether or not a restaurant serves authentic Mexican food.

I am delighted that people are concerned about getting the real deal–not some imposture food prepared by the kitchens of chain restaurants. Part of our insecurity comes from our fear that other countries judge American cuisine by our most famous ambassadors: Burger King and McDonalds. It’s natural that we would look across the street at Taco Bell and know that they’re not doing the Mexican thing right. To be clear, America is a better place because it’s citizens are concerned about authentic cuisine. Bravo.

Now the problem: we’re so damn obsessed with authentic cuisine that we can’t think straight. Consider our decades-long obsession with authentic Mexican food. This is of particular interest to me because I live in the Southwest, and everyone who comes into town wants to know where to get authentic Mexican food. Before I can even open my mouth, they usually go on to clarify what qualifies authentic Mexican food:

1. Avocados come from California, not Mexico.
2. Rice is an American addition to the burrito.
3. The burrito is an American addition to Mexican cuisine. (Well, which one is it? Did we add the rice or did we add the whole burrito?)
4. Mexicans don’t use tomatoes because they require too much water, which they don’t have a lot of.
5. Tex-Mex is not authentic Mexican food.

Each of these sounds like reasonable qualifiers for what constitutes authentic Mexican food. True or not, I’ve patched these together in an attempt to shore up my understanding of authentic Mexican food. Before we try to check Yes or No next to each sentence, let’s consider this whole conversation from the outside.

Mexico is a big country.

How naive do you have to be to assume that the entire country eats the same way? I mean in America, you have different cuisine in every region of the country. Isn’t it reasonable that that Mexico is the same way?

Mexico has thousands of miles of coastline, and I guarantee that the ocean-side cooks in Mexico have a different authentic food from the inlanders. There are more fisherman in Baja Mexico than there are cowboys, and you can’t try to convince me they eat the same thing. So this whole pursuit of authentic Mexican food is a waste of time. But let’s keep thinking about this.

Texas was part of Mexico.

When you consider the lands of Texas used to be a part of Mexico, Tex-Mex food should have as much of a stake in the claim to authentic Mexican food as anywhere south of the border. It’s arrogant to dismiss their 120 yr-old Tex-Mex food today as anything less than authentic.

Here’s another point to consider: what if authentic Mexican food sucks? Maybe the reason Tex-Mex food has stuck around for over a century because the authentic Mexican Indians were tired of the same old stuff. What if they were amped that the Spaniards brought in good stuff that made their blah dinner taste better? And there’s no convincing them to do it any other way. Those first Tex-Mexers fixed this new food for their kids. Those kids did it for their kids.

I know I’ve just lost people here. This sounds implausible to a lot of Americans because it’s fashionable nowadays to disown the ocean-hopping Europeans that settled/took over North America. It’s popular to think that everything they brought (religion, culture, gun powder) was nothing but trouble. I’ll let someone more knowledgeable than me pick up that debate–I’m here to talk about food. All I’m suggesting is that you have to respect Tex-Mex, the Spanish-Mexican fusion that they still love in South Texas today. It’s here for a reason, and it’s here to stay.

Who cares?

I guess I’ve gone off for the last 45 minutes about this whole issue because I’m tired of being caught in the crossfires of the Authenticity Debate. I’m tired of being judged by people who think they know more than me. As a white man, I always defer to my close Mexican friends, only to realize that they were confused too. The only differnce between us is that they just quit caring.

There are better things to do than to cause all of this needlessly complicated, racially-contentious drama over very simple food. There’s no use wasting time trying to decifer authentic ingredients. Shut up and eat your taco.

When my out-of-town friends ask me where to go for authentic Mexican, I spare them the debate and get right to it: you’re in Arizona and you want authentic Mexican food? Go to Filibertos. It might be a low-budget chain restaurant. Every Filibertos looks like it was built in a building that once sold burgers and fries. But their menu doesn’t explain their numbered “value meals.” They don’t have sales or specials, they don’t introduce new food. Their salsa bar is poorly lit and looks unappealing to me. But regardless of how formidable the restaurants may be, they are everywhere. Mexicans work there and Mexicans eat there. What can be more authentically Mexican than that?

For my money, I’d rather eat at the sanitized chains like Rubio’s or Baja Fresh, but I’ll never try to convince you it’s authentic Mexican. It just tastes better and that’s all I need.

Candyce and I met Franky Bones at Radio Milano, LGO’s newest restaurant at the corner of 40th Street and Campbell in Arcadia. Frank is a 2nd generation Italian who was raised in Arizona. I hadn’t seen him in a while, so was a natural fit to invite him to join me and Candyce at LGO’s “new Italian” restaurant on its first week. I’ve enjoyed LGO’s other restaurants, and was anxious to see what they came up with.

If this were a new restaurant in another part of town by a different restaurateur, I wouldn’t be so critical. But LGO has momentum, so you expect creativity, especially when it comes time to branding the restaurant. Having said that…

The atmosphere disappointed me. It’s one thing to keep a visual theme in all of your restaurants, but it’s another thing to re-use old ideas. The interior is all-too-familiar: lots of hard surfaces, concrete floors, block walls. These surfaces might be hip, but it makes the dining area too loud. Even with a full spread of fabric curtains stretching across the back wall, the voices of the room roared too loud for good conversation.

The only thing that sets this restaurant’s interior apart from the gang that is LGO is the ceiling and the seating. They inherited the unique architecture from the previous owners, and they played up the low, wood arched ceilings from wall to wall. The chairs and tables were wood laminate held up by thin, spidery legs. When compared to the volume of the room and the scale of the arched ceiling, the furniture combined for the busyness of a high school cafeteria.

There were a couple details that did please me. The front windows look like they’ll swing right open in nice weather, a detail worth carrying over from their other restaurants. The lower portion of the windows is a wide concrete shelf that will serve as a bench for folks inside and outside. It’s a clever way provoke the social life through the restaurant walls. Like Chelsea’s Kitchen, waiting for a table might be as fun as having a table.

The other details I like were at the back of the restaurant. Behind the wide curtain on the back wall were glass doors that will most likely open to the narrow strip of courtyard. The young trees planted in an orderly row will give some organic relief to the industrial vibe inside. If they’re smart, they’ll make friends with their neighbors whose back wall defines the far edge of the courtyard. A whimsical Italian mural could set the tone for the whole restaurant. (And why not? The wall is shielded from the harshest desert sun.)

The food? For the record, the restaurant is a “new Italian” concept. Aside from the fashion capitol the restaurant was named after (Milan), there wasn’t much on the menu that spoke Italian. I didn’t expect numbered pasta dishes, but I expected to read through creative interpretations of Italian classics.

We started with the vegetable plate. It was fresh and tasty, but it was hard to figure out how you can charge $11 for a handful of vegetables with two thin slices of fresh mozzarella. Listen, if you are a “new Italian” restaurant and you are going to anchor a dish with an Italian staple, then make sure to slice like that mozzarella like the hungry Italians do. And I am talking about a handful of vegetables. I could’ve scooped them off the plate and put them in my pants pocket.

Perhaps the waitress was too scared to tell us the truth, but we were under the impression that we got real entrees with descent proportions. The menu seemed to be divided into appetizers and entrees. Come serving time, we were surprised to see we bought appetizers that were priced like entrees. The confusion grew…so this is a new-Italian tapas restaurant?

I understand the concept of a tapas. You get lots of little servings and you share them with friends. You explore the menu and discover different flavors. But that only works when you have dozens of options at reasonable prices. I’ve been to several tapas restaurants and enjoyed every part of the dining experience. But Radio Milano’s menu was short, and every item was stickered between $10 to over $14. It’ll take five orders for a couple on a date to feel full, and all of a sudden you’re inching towards $100 with tax and tip. Where’s the fun in that? For less money than that, you can have the timeless $10,000,000 atmosphere of Sassi up in Pinnacle Peak.

Anyway, I was served my main course. I ordered the meatloaf because I like to see how chefs spin a comfort food classic. It was tasty and moist, but it was just a fraction larger than a biscotti I ate that morning with my espresso. If you can make it bigger and serve it to me at Chelsea’s Kitchen, I’d order it again. Candyce and I didn’t bother ordering anymore when we realized the cost of the night had already run over $50.

After dinner, Candyce and I walked to the car and we both admitted to still being hungry. We flirted with the idea of going to LGO Grocery across the street to buy a salads or a couple sandwiches to go. If our night had ended there, our evening would’ve been a big let down. But we swung by Safeway and got a big massive sub sandwich from then sat by Tempe Town Lake under the night sky. It was the perfect night, almost a little too cool with the breezes coming off the lake. (Could this really be June in Phoenix?) (Could that’ve really been LGO’s newest restaurant?)

Sunday night I gave the baccalaureate speech for Mountain View High School in NE Mesa. It was an honor to give the keynote in front of the proud graduates in the caps and gowns. Half-way through my talk, I explained the importance of using your life to lift others up. That we aren’t made to take everything in this world for ourselves we were made for more. I explained that this world needs more players like Steve Nash. Someone who makes everyone else around them better. Every head started to nod in the church walls.

:::

The Suns got knocked out of the NBA playoffs. It’s been melancholy around town, and I haven’t been in the mood to write about it. Candyce and I were downtown at Stoudemire’s restaurant to watch Game 5 at home against the Spurs. We were without Diaw and Stoudemire because of an unjust rule in the NBA that killed us in the closing seconds of Game 4 in San Antonio. We won that game, but we were punished in the series.

Stoudemire’s restaurant was proud and rowdy. Even the kitchen crew came out into the restaurant to watch the final quarter of the game. The place was a happy riot until the final minutes of the game. The Suns came up a few points short in the final minute, and we lost the game. Slowly, the crowd emptied into the streets. Nobody spoke. Everyone just walked to their cars, stunned by the reality of our bad fortune.

On our walk to the packed streets past the stadium and to our car, I was encouraged by dozens of fans I didn’t know. “We’ll see you back Sunday night…we’ll get ‘em back here in Phoenix.” There were 25,000 friends walking those streets. How fantastic is that? Sports break down a cities walls so that absolute strangers are able to encourage one another and show compassion.

By the time Candyce and I got to our car, I was overwhelmed with by how much the team fought in that game. They were undermanned, but they fought with every fiber of their bodies. They left it all on the floor, and few people in this world really know what that’s like. Even though I was discouraged, sitting in my car beneath that humming street lamp, I had such a profound respect for the tigers that are the Phoenix Suns. Victory or not, they were tigers.

:::

Earlier this season (sometime after the All-star break?), ESPN ranked people throughout the NBA according to different statistics. Steve Nash was ranked number one in fist bumps: putting his fist out to his teammates as a sign of encouragement on the court. He gave the other people high-fives, encouraging words, whatever was he showed connection with the other players on the team. This is important because players have feelings too. Teams have spirit, a collective self-esteem between all the players and coaches. You need a team leader who can contribute to that spirit and to make that team better. You’ll never see Steve Nash angry at his teammates. He never shouts at his guys on the court, even if they miss an easy shot.

I’ll never forget a situation earlier this season when Raja Bell shot an air ball from behind the three point line. This is rare because this is where Bell hits most of his shots, but this season he’s been off. Steve Nash understands that he has to build up Raja Bell’s confidence, just like all of us understand one another need a boost of confidence. So after Raja Bell missed a three pointer, Steve Nash scrambled for the rebound and dished it back out to Bell, still standing at the three-point arch. Of course Bell drains the three, team runs back to the other side of the court and high-fives fly. How many people would offer someone redemption like that?

This season I got to see this up close. I had good seats, maybe 20 rows up from the court behind the scorer’s table. I watched two of the Indiana Pacers bench players walk up to the table and got ready to check into the game. They both slowed down caused stepped over something and then stood patiently at the sideline until they could go in. I wouldn’t have noticed this as anything eventful, but a few seconds later, Steve Nash stepped up to the table. He reached down and picked up a piece of paper and handed it to guys behind the table.  How awesome is that? Those guys thought they were too big too cool and too important to do something as silly as picking up a piece of paper. But apparently the leagues 2-time MVP isn’t too important.

There’s no doubt Nash will leave a legacy in the NBA. He’s still writing that legacy every time he bounces the ball on the court. So nobody knows for sure how his story will be told. But it is undeniable that he possesses a certain magic that take the game to the next level. Anyone with eyes to see knows that he leads a team unlike any team of this generation.

Next season, we’ll see this team do it again.

Tonight was so random. I was sitting in the grocery store parking lot, patiently waiting for the light to turn green so I could drive home. On the other side of the street, I saw two teenage boys dressed in black run away from what looked like a campfire. The flames rose high and began reflecting off the wall just a few feet away close to someone’s house. I was on the phone with Candyce. “Holy sh!t there’s a fire! I gotta go.”

I drove across the intersection through the red light. It was almost like I was on Frogger. A few seconds later I was dialed 911 before jumping out of the car. I ran through the ditch and my flip-flops towards the flame now 5 feet tall. As the 911 operator picked up the phone, I turned back towards my car and grabbed a gallon of milk I just bought at the store.

(Honestly, I look pretty stupid now that I think about it, talking on the phone while running through a ditch, wearing flip flops with a gallon of milk.)

I tore off the top doused the fire with 2% milk. I could smell the chemicals that teenagers poured on the dry bush. At this point, the excitement was over. I stood next to the fire answering the questions from the 911 operator. I looked to the left and right and realized that many other bushes could’ve caught on fire, and I was happy to be there when I was.

I met a cop in the parking lot five minutes later, and he hit me with the typical questions and officer might get someone who he believes is actually the culprit.

1. Where were you when you saw the fire?
2. Did you say there are how many boys?
3. And you just happen to be here?

I couldn’t help but want a laugh in his face. Really. I’m a 28-year-old man, I have better things to do than light bushes on fire, extinguish them with milk, and then report myself to the police. I gave him a quick thank you and then walked back to my car, just like the impatient New Yorkers do on an episode of Law & Order.

My brother is a police officer, so I called him this morning and retold the story. He got a good laugh out of it to.

Not once in my first 21 years did I call 911, but now that I’m out of college, I feel like I do it every year.

1. Several years ago I called 911 after I heard gunshots in my neighborhood. They said that they would send a police officer right over to check things out. I went back to sleep and forgot about it.
2. Six months later Matt Maher and I woke up in the middle of the night to a gigantic BOOM, the sound is so big that you imagine a dump truck filled with gasoline exploded in your living room. The windows of the house shook. He ran outside with his shotgun and I, well, I just ran outside. The dark street was peaceful. We called 911, and they said they would send someone over to check it out. (To this day, I have no idea what would make that loud of a sound.)
3. Earlier this year, I almost ran into a parked car in the middle of a busy street just after sunset. It was tucked behind a median in a dark corner where there were no street lights. I just knew the people driving through the intersection trying to make a green would rear end this thing and get seriously messed up. So I pulled over underneath a street light and ran to the median and back to the car to see if there was anyone inside.

It was empty and totally trashed. It smelled like cigarettes and alcohol in body odor. I felt so dirty. Whoever drove this car lived a life so unlike my own. The car wouldn’t start, but it did have enough juice in the battery to keep the parking lights on. I hopped in my car and drove off to my appointment. The 911 operator treated me similar as how the cop did last night. She prodded me trying to figure out if this was in fact my car and not someone else’s. I was blunt with her this and it’s not my car. I’m in my own car now I’ve got to go. I very neat car, by the way.

Ultimately, my good deed today with the fire was returned today by Leah, Nick’s girlfriend. She made a trip to the grocery store and picked me up a gallon of milk. There’s a true hero—no good story, no excitement. Just a nice thing to do for someone who really wanted to eat Lucky Charms.