a day in the life, movies "Children are not delicate. When they are dropped, more often than not, they bounce." I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that I look faintly more ludicrous with the moustache than without it.

What say y'all? Headed out on my usual Oxford pickup and perusal of the week's comics. While there, I got a call from a Robyn on her way outta the doctor's office, so we settled on a place to meet up for dinner.

We settled on "Zocalo's" (sp?), a somewhat trendy Mexican restaurant/open bar type area with mandatory valet parking. I got some assortment of enchiladas slathered in a red sauce.

Now, when I say red sauce, I don't mean your standard salsa or chili sauce, I mean a homogenous, thick, deep, blood red sauce, about the color of red play-dough. In taste it seemed to be made up of equal parts chili paste, water, chalk, and food coloring. Much later I determined that I think it was mole sauce, and the chalk I was tasting was the bittersweet of the cacao powder.

I'm a little surprised that I haven't come across this particular sauce before, but I guess I've a simple palate and was always happy to stick with the red and green sauces. why would anyone put powdered bakers' chocolate in chili paste? Blech.

In order to walk off the Margarita assisting me in dealing with the remains of that stupid tension headache from Sunday night, we browsed around the area for a couple hours. However, the place wasn't real browse-and-walk friendly, being little more than a Starbuck's, four bars, and a couple restaurants. The only place that was really browser-attractive was the only bookstore, the local gay and lesbian bookstore (Outwright).

Spent most of my time there thumbing through a coffee-table book of Andy Warhol's prints. (One of these days I'm gonna have to track down a book of his complete work so I can finally decide if I think he was full of shit or not. If his art is legit, it's high-minded enough I can't decipher any but the shallowest surface interpretation.

) Amusingly, I'm pretty sure the place had a much smaller selection of Yaoi and Shonen-Ai than you could find at a typical Borders or Waldenbooks. (Also oddly absent were the more well known assortment of graphic novels with GLBT perspectives..

. like "Strangers in Paradise.") Had I been thinking, I would've looked for KDTunstall's album (remarkably catchy tunes), but I can never remember albums I want when I'm actually in a store that sells them.

Eventually headed over to Videodrome, discovering on the way that a) the valet parking at Zocalo's has a minimum tip of 5$ (well...

guess where I won't be eating again.) and b) no visit to the area is complete without a five minute rant from a crazy homeless person berating your car as you wait to turn into traffic. Welcome to the authentic Atlanta experience.

Videodrome is the best movie rental place I know of. One of my biggest regrets is not taking advantage of it more when I lived only a mile or two away from it. While they glancingly keep up-to-date with the mainstream video releases, their real attraction is the breadth of their material.

Obscure animation (Soviet propaganda cartoons), hilarious re-releases (Gymkata!), foreign imports (Holy Mountain), foreign re-releases (Don't Torture a Duckling), trailer-trash horror (Pervert!), mixed in with political commentary, counter-culture art flicks (El Topo), documentaries of the truly insane, the whole nine yards.

And that's just on their "new releases" wall. The shop itself is damn tiny, and though their ingenious stocking solution lets them make the most of it (a single DVD box holds call slips for every copy of that movie), the place can't possibly be as universal as the obscurity of their titles would seem to imply. I don't know how they vet which movies stay and which go, but the overall impression is that only the absolute classics, cult flicks, and the most obscure pieces stay, while the entire middle-ground is left to Blockbuster.

Makes it the best place ever to just browse and trip over truly legendary films. So we dig around in there for a bit (discovering, in the process, a copy of "THEM!" for $2 in the discard VHS bin), and come out with our selection for the night.

Our (read: my) selection for the evening, Terry Gilliam's "Post a new comment) 2007-05-14 06:55 am UTC i have similar problems with being downtown. only about 1/4 of the time do they get the eye i'm giving out to repel pan handlers, the rest of the time they just harass me for a few dozen feet. except once, i needed directions.

that was the only positive experience. He was nice, and he was right, and i dropped my change to him. oh, and on the moustache.

.. it seems a little sparse.

I would suggest letting it all come in to your chin and then trimming it real short, see how you like that.