Cauley Square = Fail.

I went to Homestead both days this weekend. Yesterday, I went to Knaus Berry Farm for strawberry milkshakes and honey and cinnamon rolls, and then to Fruit and Spice Park (Boo-ringgg), and then to Schnabley Winery (skip the $7.00 tour, and go straight for the $6.00 tasting of almost-palatable wines), and then to Rosita's for Mexican food (Yum!).

Then, today I got a bug up my butt to go to Cauley Square, because I'd never been.

I'd never been for a reason, apparently. It's comprised of creaky little buildings, inhabited by little old ladies selling dusty dolls and milk-glass. It depressed me. Add to that the setting, which is heavy on the creepy Key-West vibe, and the place was downright unsettling. I wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as I got there.

On the plus side, it's inhabited by a group of diurnal raccoons, who made quite a show of scampering through the banyan trees, and wrestling on the roofs of the little houses. They were the highlight of the trip.

Otherwise... I wouldn't waste my time, unless you're pulling in for 10 minutes on the way to somewhere less... bleak.

What do you mean, Yes, you have no bananas?

In less than a week, I'll be home; the winding, tree-lined streets of Columbia, Maryland, to my parents' seemingly enormous house, on a seemingly sizeable chunk of property. Columbia, where 95 is lined with forest; Columbia, where the streets are named "Bright passage" and "Grey Star Way," and Columbia where every place has the product you need.

Having lived in Miami for seven years now, I'm accustomed to the ebb and flow of the days (the traffic, actually) and the weather (the varying degrees of humidity) and the language ("Buenas - Can I get half a pound of ese turkey pastrami, oh, y hay rye bread? Si, one of those too please - can you slice it?") and the fact that thirty percent of the time, the thing you went to a place to buy, is out of stock... or the store you've trekked across hell and creation to get to... is closed - at 6 p.m. on a Friday.

I find that shopping for things (aspirin... WD-40... eggs...) is sort of like a dice-roll, and I always feel like I WIN, when I walk out of a store with exactly what I needed.

Even BETTER is when a store is out of something one time, when I needed it, and they have it the next time I'm there. When this happens, I invariably buy the item, even though I don't need it, because the "naches" (Yiddish: Pronounced: Na-chh-is. Definition: Joy, gratification) of seeing the product there, that wasn't there the last time, makes me have a variation of following monologue in my head, "Ground Beef at CostCo? Don't mind if I do! Never know the next time they'll be carrying ground beef here; Better stock up!"

Once I went to CostCo [for ground beef, actually - I was making "chili for a crowd"] and they didn't... uh... have any ground beef.

It was WEIRD...

And I had to make "chili for a crowd" using ground turkey... but I wasn't bummed, because I was like, "Oh well. No beef here (sidenote: at a GROCERY STORE) today. No biggie. There's ground turkey, and I can use that for chili... I really don't feel like having to go to Publix as well tonight... and at least they have SOMETHING!"

And it was at that moment when I reached some sort of Zen-like oneness and clarity with this City... right there in the Meat Section of the CostCo on 87th Avenue... and attained the realization that I had stopped fighting Miami and was just...going with it.

Back home, people don't "Go with it," presumably because they don't have to... there is no way that Safeway won't have any fresh rosemary (Riiiidiculous!) and no chance that RiteAid won't have hydrogen peroxide (Preposterous!). The Giant, being out of BANANAS, would be unthinkable.

But in Miami, it is TOTALLY possible that Tire Kingdom won't have any tires that day... or that the McFlurry Machine at McDonalds is broken. My response has developed into, "Can you help me find the __________? It should be right here, huh? Is there any in the back? No? Okay, so you don't have it? Oh well... thanks," and as I have this exchange, I'm brainstorming where else I can get that item...

When I lived in Spain, at first I marveled at how difficult it was to get the simplest tasks done, and after a while, I felt very productive when I had gotten some pictures developed, bought a pack of cigarettes, and popped by the MoviStar store to charge my phone minutes... all in one day! The Americans who adapted well to studying abroad were the ones who just... went with it. "Oh, the Travel agency is closed on Wednesdays - I'll come back tomorrow!" Those who didn't were constantly pissed off, and not really fun to hang out with.

Gradually, I feel like that's what happens to you when you come from...well, anywhere else in the country, to Miami. You either reach that Zen one-ness with the fact that even the simplest task can become a struggle here, or... you move. (See: most of my friends from law school.)

I'm not really sure how to end this post, because I guess the message of this post is to just "give up the fight," because otherwise you'll go nuts, but candidly, when I encounter people who have moved down here and are banging their heads against the wall because of our fair city's "idiosyncrasies" my advice to them is, "Give in, and accept it... and it'll make your time here a lot more pleasant."

It makes me feel like a battle-scarred warrior, dispensing sage advice to the new troops...

Sad Trombone...

Who's got two thumbs, and needs to lose quite a muffin top before squeezing into his Skinny Jeans for Art Basel?

This guy.

Once reviled... and now I'm going to grow one.

There's really no way to sugarcoat what I'm about to say, so I'm just going to come out and say it:

I'm going to grow a mullet.

Let that sink in.

Now, okay, I'm not growing a MULLET-MULLET, not like a mullet where I have a crew-cut on top...with gross stringy hair in the back - I'm going more for a "hockey-mullet," which is really just an excuse to grow a head of bouncy, layered hair in the back. Last summer, when I got grotesquely fat, I grew out my hair (an unfortunate time all around...) and learned that yes, Virginia, the back of my hair will curl. Now that I'm rockin' this beard as a poke-in-the-eye to the Corporate Establishment in which I participate, Monday - Friday, 8:30 - 7:30, I figure, "Hell, why not go the whole hog and grow the Mullet-Beard combo?" It'll actually look good on me... I have good hair.

I actually decided "Mullet-Time" a while back, and had the nice moron at the Hair Cuttery begin the process of layering the back. Her work was for naught, and the back of my hair is straight as a pin... but I'm approaching a critical time in my mullet-growing. I either need to shit or get off the pot, because I've got to start sculpting my tresses, if I have any hope for the Mullet to be hitting its peak by Art Basel. Or, I just need to go back to my normal "messy" haircut.

Actually, I think despite my best-laid plans, the mullet is still going to be in its infancy during Basel, which is sort of a shame. Instead, I may have to compensate for the lack of hair Hipster aesthetic, by wearing skinny jeans and looking supremely bored allll-the-time. (As a side note, skinny jeans are unnnnnnncomfortable, and they look like I'm wearing tights. And also, where do people who wear skinny jeans keep their... ahem... junk?) Maybe I'll go to the gallery openings wearing a retarded pair of stupid glasses. Or maybe that'd be overkill. We'll see.

At the end of the day, though, I have an image of what I want in my head... It's below on the left. A little shorter on top, a little longer on the back...



Bienvenidos, Mullet.

You know someone has lived in Miami too long when...

Boss (originally from Tampa): Who's that decision by?

Me: O'Sullivan.

Boss: (reading case style) O'S-U-L-L-I-V-A-N.

Me: You had to read the case to figure out how to spell that? You've been here too long.

My Girls.

Well... I'm going to be listening to "My Girls" by Animal Collective on repeat for the next few days until I get sick of the song.

Those kids = rich. They went to the Park School in Baltimore. Faaancy. Faaaancy like going to Gilman or Boys Latin...

Tick-Tick-Tick-Tickets

Today, in a fit of fall cleaning (that's what we have down here - fall cleaning, when the blood starts to run, the humidity drops below 1,000%, and everyone is suddenly cheerful again) I attacked my car.

My disgusting Mercedes, repository of ancient receipts and highlighters...

And parking space tickets. Slips? What are those things called? Chits?

For those of you outside South Florida, coin-operated meters are being phased out, in favor of electronic machines that refuse to eat any but the most crisp and delectable dollar bills, and usually can't process credit cards, for some reason or another, thereby completely defeating their purpose. They also refuse to swallow coins at a rate of more than one coin every thirteen seconds.

Therefore, the beloved and time-tested ritual of standing, ass-out-in-traffic, muttering and scrounging for a quarter on your floorboards, is being replaced by a new ritual: going from machine, to machine, to machine, hunting for a Credit-Card-Processing-Card-Printing-Parking-Machine that will take your dollar, or process your credit card. After you find the one machine in four that actually works (you can usually find it, because there's a line to use it), the machine spits out a little sheet of paper that you then take back to your car, and toss on your dashboard. This slip is, in effect, your parking meter, and it tells the Meter Maid when it's finally time to give you a ticket. It's a colossal waste of time and paper, and it's extremely inefficient.

After you're done, and you've left, you have a souvenir of where you've been, and what time you had to leave, in the form of a slip of paper that yellows on your dashboard, before sliding into the crack between your dashboard and the windshield to form a nest for ants or roaches, or dropping, like an autumn leaf, onto the floor of your car, to form a slippery ante-carpet of parking rectangles.

I'm not sure whether this retarded brilliant parking invention now graces other cities, but because everything down here is busted and stupid (see - Metrorail) and everything everywhere else is awesome (see - D.C. Metro System) I assume that this particular parking quirk only exists down here, where everyone's an idiot.

First, I don't understand how it works. How do Meter Maids read those slips things? They're printed in this odd digital-dot-matrix font that blends together to resemble Sanskrit to me. I'm a lawyer, and I can barely read the slips, and I'm assuming most Meter Maids don't have a degree in print Journalism, with focuses on Urban Planning and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Miami.

Second - they're messy. Really messy. Cleaning out today, I pulled like fifty slips out of various cracks and crannies in my car, in various stages of staining and yellowing.

Third - They're environmentally disastrous. How many trees are we bulldozing so that I can amass trash in my car? Why can't I recycle these stupid slips for future parking credits? How much money is the City of Miami (Beach) spending on toner or thermal paper for parking slips? Is this a budget item? Is this where my property tax money is going? Are these meters not self-funding?!

Fourth - They're just STUPID! Who devised this system?

I could go on, and on, and on. Okay - here's what I'll concede - it's REALLY NICE to be able to pay for parking with a credit/debit card. That's awesome. But how about olden-day meters, that can either jam with accept Coins and flash "FAIL" but can also accept and wirelessly-transmit credit card signals? Huh? No fuss, no muss?

It's like... communist or something. Park, get out, go to machine, buy slip of paper, walk back to car, put slip of paper in car, close and lock car, go about one's business, spend an hour cleaning trash out of car a year later...

At the end of the day, though, the system totally doesn't make sense. And seriously? I have enough going on in my life, not to have to remember to throw out those goddamn slips when I get home. It's tempting me into becoming a parking-slip littering vigilante, just to get back at the Man... the Man being the Miami (Beach) Parking Authority.

So, when you see a pristine Kompressor, its owner laughing maniacally and tossing handfuls of parking slips out the windows, honk and say, "Hi."