ok beauties

More tradition filled our Sunday as well as a couple new discoveries. We started with traditional Oklahoma food from the omnipresent brown food group at one of our favorite stops every year - Del Rancho. That fueled another day of rodeo for us. Our newest discovery this year was the monument to Oklahoma's Miss Americas and surrounding walk of fame. Gloriously creepy, but only blocks from some true beauty by Oklahoma City architect Robert Roloff: the Gold Dome and neighboring Citizens Tower. The citizens tower is a striking hexagonal mid-Century tower now on the Register of Historic Places designed with references to Frank Lloyd Wright. After all these years, still making new discoveries in Oklahoma City.

same ol

A good say at the rodeo. I think this may be my 16th year coming to this one, and for the first time it was in a different arena - not as nice, but a little smaller and better air conditioned - so given the heat of Oklahoma City on a Memorial Day weekend, I'm not sure if it was an upgrade or downgrade. Seemed to work just fine... Otherwise, the day was kinda like it always is, which isn't a bad thing. We hung out for the day at the rodeo, and Myron's dog Earnest got his requisite amount of attention from passers by. We added to our quotient of fried food and later caught some of the Big 12 Baseball Championship at Bricktown Ballpark, and then capped the night with our rodeo friends at the bar. I guess there's comfort in repetition, so we'll do more of the same today.

smooth sailin

Day one of our weekend trek to the Oklahoma City Rodeo: Somehow we completely lucked out on traffic. Every year we leave at a different time and have never figured out exactly when is too early or too late, because invariably we get stuck in some backup - its just part of the trip, but this year we somehow managed to sail right through. We stopped at our annual favorite spot for the best fried pies anywhere - in Davis Oklahoma (exit 51 - Turner Falls; you can do a search above to find old posts with more detailed write-ups). After making it into town and researching and resting up, we ventured to a place we hadn't been before - TapWerks in Bricktown. With hundreds of beers on tap (and not 3.2 Oklahoma beer somehow) its definitely a new favorite. And then out to kick off the rodeo with some friends and beers and a little two-steppin. Good way to start the weekend.

trippin

I'm in Dallas for the annual pilgrimage to the Oklahoma City Rodeo with my friend Myron. I spent all of the day on planes. I was reminded that flying in and out of Salt Lake City seems to always come with some pretty scary turbulence, which seems twice as rough when your plane is really teeny; and also learned that SLC's airport wifi is free, but so weak that you can't make a connection. No wonder its free. Anyway, when Myron picked me up he said we should go to one of his new favorite places in Fort Worth, I was hoping it was the place he and our friend Ron had both posted about recently, and in fact it was. The Love Shack is chef Tim Love's new place right in the middle of the Stockyards. The food was good (no raves), but the setting and atmosphere was perfect. Wedged in between two old buildings, outdoor wooden terraces and levels overlook a stage and tables in one direction and the Stockyards Hotel and streetscape in the other. I always forget what warm nights feel like and how much I love them, and this was a perfect place to spend one. Shiner on tap also was a good welcome, but serving any beer in styrofoam cups (really? Styrofoam??) is unforgiveable. Still, a perfect welcome back to Texas for me; tomorrow we hit the road for Oklahomaoklahomaoklahoma.

flavorable

I told myself I wasn't going to keep posting as much about the Tuesday Food Truck court at LAX, because it seemed to be giving people the wrong impression of my diet. And the last couple weeks have not been great weeks for the food truck lot - mainly because all the parking has been taken away, plus last week was cold and rainy, so while the samplings from @Coolhaus and @LeesPhilly were good, they didn't seem to rate posting. This week didn't look promising either with the same parking situation and a couple of the trucks slated to be there absent. The @derbsgourmet truck (actually a trailer) caught my attention before we even got to the lot with a tweet about a soft shell crab special. I grew up on soft shell crab sandwiches, so I was intrigued. Their line was long, and the confusion after ordering didn't bode well - they were slammed and it seems a few orders got mixed up or lost, which led to a lot of unhappy people hanging around. Luckily for us, our wait was reasonable (waits for food from the gourmet trucks are rarely short - be prepared) and the food was better than I could have expected - maybe just because it was such an unusual treat. My friend went for the soft shell crab and I tried the killer shrimp, which was somewhat similar to barbecue shrimp, though a different seasoning. The soft shell was cooked in the same broth, both plenty flavorful, with pretty big shrimp, and perfect for dipping the bits of french bread that were included. By the time we finished our food, everyone had closed up, so we stopped into the farmers market for a couple more tastes. And that was followed by yet another treat - Weihenstephaner, who's HeffeWeisse is my favorite of all, had a beer called Victus on the list at BrewCo. We had a couple - turns out its a Weizenbock, and pretty tasty. Served with a setting sun over the ocean makes for a pretty good combo. Another flavorful day in LA.

flavorful

A bit of a tour around the South Bay today; we started with some Googie architecture for lunch at Chip's on Hawthorne Boulevard. It wasn't quite as well-preserved as we had read or hoped, but still interesting to see and experience, and worth trying. Remnants of other Googie or Googie-esque sights filled our trek that led us down to the Point Vicente Lighthouse, one of my favorite spots in LA, and also near to Lloyd Wright's Wayfarer's Chapel. Just a litle farther was the Point Fermin Lighthouse and tons of great glints of old character all over San Pedro. After all that, I decided I had earned a beer, so we capped the day with a brew on the marina at Naja's in Redondo. Maybe not your typical tour of LA, but one with plenty of flavor.

blue skies

Believe it or not, today was my first Dodger game of the year. I've cut down on my games this year - seems the responsible thing to do as the ticket prices soar. My friend Stephen is in town again from Mississippi so I dragged him along, as well as Joe and George - so it was both Joe and Stephen's first Dodger Stadium experience. Despite it being a cold day elsewhere, it was surprisingly toasty in the park. Although the boys in blue have been on a roll lately, today wasn't our day. We lost the game, but of course the fun thing about baseball is that its a fun time even if the game isn't what you'd want.

gettin it write

Nike Football is getting massive buzz with this spot (partly because they announced it as the greatest television commercial ever, which just forces everyone to chime in an opinion.) Greatest ever or not, its a great spot; I love how many cultural touchpoints they hit. The spot was directed by Alejandro Inarritu. According to merinews, "The Write the Future campaign was created by Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, with post-production by The Mill. The production company behind the ad campaign is Independent Films. The music track is Hocus Pocus by Focus." It's worth a watch if you haven't seen it.

YouTube: Nike, Write the Future (full length)

more updates

As mentioned before, I am continuing to add more projects to the recent work section of my site, with several more still to come in order to update work since 2008. The first of the new updates is a package from even earlier, but one that stayed under wraps for a long time. It is a project that continues to develop called "The.News" (they pronounce the 'dot'). The.News is a newscast produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions for broadcast in schools to students. Many factors played a role in the design, all aimed at being smarter and more modern than a typical news package. Traditional colors, textures and 3D were avoided to stay away from the negative connotations of most newscasts (the type mocked by the Daily Show or Colbert Report graphics). In the package, the dot is always the focus; whether highlighting locations or opening up to provide more information, the news is always in the dot. The second project is a show graphics package for Style Network designed as part of their 2009 new look refresh. The package is a generic package based solely on elements of the look so that it can be used for shows on any topic by only updating the title text. And the third is an open from the package for a TLC show produced by Authentic Entertainment about Kenadie, a little girl growing up with primoridal dwarfism. The approach for this was a very traditional scrapbook style, highlighting objects that reference her age as well as her size. Check em out here:

jonberrydesign.com: recent work