The ice storm came and went, and I took as much advantage of it as I could. I live across the bridge and causeway from Corpus Christi and didn’t have any work so pressing that I would have risked life and limb to cross them. So I closed up and settled in for a long cozy weekend with the wife and family. The Oscar nominations had been announced, and there were about five best picture nominees none of us had seen. It has been a perfect weekend, and it’s barely Friday afternoon.

So this morning, I dragged the dogs out into the cold and took some photos of the rare ice accumulation. It was treacherous in places where the ice had accumulated but no one was harmed, and after their walk and pee I put them back in their warm fresh indoor kennel and set out alone, because it is Friday and that means breakfast tacos.

In Portland, Texas, there are a few options for breakfast tacos, or rather, there are few options. None of the places here really compare to the middle-tier taquerias in Corpus Christi proper. There’s a place just a few blocks from my house that does drive through tacos and it often has cars and trucks blocking the street in both drive throughs. They move them through fast, but the tortillas are shelf, and so they don’t meet the criteria to be compared to decent CC taco shops. There’s another place across highway 181 that has all the trappings of a real taqueria, but their drive through invariably takes 45 minutes, even though there’s never more than two cars in line. There’s even a new spot that has opened right on the highway that has replaced Bad Brad’s Barbecue – which was unfortunately aptly named, though it might have been more apt if it were rearranged to Brad’s Bad Barbecue, but it isn’t open for breakfast. That leaves La Iguana #4, which has been around here longer than I have, and now has a liquor license. I didn’t order any margaritas this morning, but if I had they’d have been frozen, as was the sloped sidewalk into the place – even with the salt.

The Tacos: I ordered a chorizo & egg, and a barbacoa on flour. The chorizo and egg was strong, with a good chorizo to egg ratio.  It had the hallmarks of a good C and E, but the taco didn’t travel well, and it while the tortilla was bright red – it was a little too dry to be truly great. The barbacoa was lean and a little too dry as well. The tortillas seemed to be handmade, but by the time they’d made it into the house they must have travelled many places from their point of origin and their flavor and texture was less than fresh. The red salsa was good and filled with red chili.

I have eaten here out of necessity a few times and I always come away disappointed, though I can never quite put my finger on what it is about it that’s responsible. Today it might have suffered from the frigid ride home in my unheated pickup with the windows down so I could see out. Then again, it might have been as average if I’d have eaten in. If you’re trapped on the north side of the bay and you have a hankerin’ for a good breakfast taco, you might as well go to HEB, get the fixin’s, and make it yourself. If only HEB sold horchata.

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Katy Mixon

It is hard to put into words the nature of the charm of Ms. Mixon. Is it her crooked smile? Her dimpled cheeks? The way she fills out a dress? There’s more to it. Her gen-you-ine southern accent and squeaky voice is at once charming and alarming, leaving you wondering why you don’t dislike it. Her over the top makeup reminds one of Tammy Faye, if Tammy Faye was young and bangin’ hot and not old, dead, creepy, and tragic.

Bred and buttered in Pensacola, Florida, Katy comes from a large family and set her sights on singing and acting at an early age, eventually graduating  Carnegie Mellon University‘s Drama Conservatory in Pittsburgh, performing at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and eventually ending the pilgrimage in Los Angeles, where she made her bones with the Upright Cabaret, and had a few strikes with tv pilots before hitting it out of the park with her role as the April in HBO’s Eastbound and Down. I don’t know what it is about her I like, but I know I like it.

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at Whetstone Graphics on a Friday morning of your choice. Offer subject to cancellation by order of the wives of the tacoteurs.  Enter to win by emailing your name on the back of the NSFW finale of season 1 of Eastbound and Down to tacos@tacotopia.net.

I’m 40. I know there are about half of you who wish you were 40 again, and the other half who dread the thought. My teen years were a time of trying to figure out where I was, and who I was. My 20s were a time where I still had hope and ambition that I would do something great. By the time I was in my 30s I was trying to adapt to the world, rather than bending it to my will – and I was managing my expectations. I’m not going to be a rock star. I’m not going to be a director, or an actor, or developer of some piece of software that would change the way we think. At 40, I’m lucky if I can make it through the workday. And I’m not just saying that. I do, now, feel lucky to walk out to my 10 year old pickup at 5, or 6, or 9, and unlock the passenger door because the keyhole on the driver’s door is jammed from when someone opened it with a screwdriver to steal my blue Fender Jazz bass many months back. I hop in, drive across the harbor bridge and the causeway with the sun over my left shoulder turning everything in front of me magenta and orange, looking at the water that is a different color every day. It never gets old.

So, in my 40s I hope it will be the decade where I start fresh – with a more solid footing and more realistic expectations, and wisdom. I don’t know everything, but I know more than I did yesterday. I see parallels in my experience and the American experience. We got kicked in the teeth 10 years ago, thinking nobody had the nerve to take a shot at us. Now we know what it’s like for every other country in the world – to not be untouchable. We got the wind knocked out of us, and got off balance when we tried to punch back. We took our eye off the ball, and by the time we came to we’d been had by the government, by globalization, by the banks and the financial industry, by the republicans and the democrats who feed us the illusion of choice, the fed, big oil, big pharma, and anyone else with a bar of soap and a towel at the blanket party. We’re not going out like that. We’re coming back, stronger and smarter. We will do what our country does best – reinvent ourselves.

Corpus Christi can do it too. I lived in Austin in the 80s, before it blew up. During the S&L crisis there were tons of new office buildings that were totally empty. They turned it around, and their population has doubled in that time. Austin looked forward, and embraced education, diversity, and the future. Corpus Christi could take a hint and quit holding on to the past and start looking forward. Youth is our future, and if we don’t make this city a place they want to stay in they will leave, and we’ll fade away. I’m talking to you, city council. Work together, instead of fussing like children. Texting? Really? Is that your job? Arguing about texting? When half of the buildings downtown haven’t been occupied in more than a decade and are uninhabitable, and no one does a thing about it? They should be brought up to code or razed, I don’t care who owns them. It’s disgraceful to see the Lichtenstein building with gaping holes all over it’s rear – and human feces all over the stairs from downtown to uptown, and the only people who seem to care is Bill H on the vacuum cart and the hellishly efficient meter maids. And Brad Lomax, and Alan Albin at the DMD, and the folks at K Space, and Joe Hilliard, and last but not least Casey ‘the Rooster’ Lain. These are the people who are keeping this cities’ culture alive. Even Produce, though they took liberties with my companies’ logo on the last artwalk poster, and let’s not forget Glassworx, cuz the 20 somethings like to smoke things while they wear their kicks and their weird baseball caps with the bills on the side, and the Yin-Yang Fandango because anachronism is entertaining, and pachouli smells better wafting off a hippiechick than an incense stick, and SegCity cuz segways are like big girls – your friends may not think they’re cool but they’re a hell of a lot of fun. As long as I’m just plugging, stop by the Treehouse Collective who are not, as far as I can tell, commies – in spite of their name. And while you’re there you could do worse than to stop by Surf Club Records, or if you want the really cool shirts, or to get your cooking or pocket knives scary sharp, Whetstone Graphics – where you can even pick up a Tacotopia Tee. Let’s not forget Aloe Tile, in the old Studebaker dealership; The only downtown business I know with a banjo-playing co-owner. The most important person in the whole scheme of things (not to sound like Fred Rogers) is you. Go out and do something cool, or help someone who’s doing something cool, or at least don’t be a jerk.

This weeks taco joint has reinvented itself too, even since the last time we were there when it was Chacho’s. Now it’s El Lucero, and the atmosphere is a little different. Where once there was Harley memorabilia and steel, now there’s blank walls and disenfectant. I don’t know which is better, though in my experience cleaner taquerias do not necessarily render tastier tacos.  The chorizo & egg was pretty bland, not much chorizo, not much salt, not much flavor. The carne guisada had a ton of salt, and flavor – though it was very food-servicey flavor. The tortillas were good, both flour and corn, both salsas were passable – the verde was excellent, creamy with some heat.  This was their grand opening so I should go back and see if it get’s better later in it’s lifecycle.

Sorry for the extended hiatus. I’ve started 10 different posts that haven’t made it online, but the world is turning around me and I’m trying to get back in the fray.

The taco award winner for the week is:

Adrienne Barbeau

Barbeau in 1981

Long overdue for some respect is the talented and beautiful Adrienne Barbeau – who at 65 is still able to lure monsters out of their hiding places as she did in Creepshow, The Swamp Thing, and The Fog. Monster movies weren’t her only outlet for performing, even though she was married to one of the elder statesemen of the genre – John Carpenter, as she was in the classic Cannonball Run seen here trying to talk her way out of a ticket. Before her scream-queen days, she worked as a gogo dancer in New York and as such worked for the mob. She also played Rizzo in the Broadway production of Grease, and wrote a couple of books, and even had a kid at age 51 with her husband who happens to be the brother of little Steven Van Zandt. Now that she and I are both married I guess our long distance romance will never be consummated but I will always have a spot in my heart for her massive talents.

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at  to tacos@tacotopia.net. on a Friday morning of your choice. Offer subject to cancellation by order of the wives of the tacoteurs.  Enter to win by emailing your name on the back of a copy of the European release of the Swamp Thing to.

4450 Greenwood Dr, Corpus Christi, TX 78416 • (361) 814-1350

I watched a documentary about hillbilly dancing called Talking Feet last night, and enjoyed it. I lived for many years in the hills of Arkansas, which in many ways is caught in an ebb of time, drawing itself backwards toward a point antebellum as is much of the south and west lately, begging the question: did the union win the war between the states? Consider Governor Steve ‘Ironquaff’ Perry’s entirely opportunist secesh invocations. Not that the other side has a spine left to break, as they can bend so easily without it. People are stupid enough to vote, me included, but I can’t help but think it’s hopeless. Now that this election has ended the 2012 presidential race can begin in earnest. God help us. Politics is hell, pass the ammunition. Both sides think we’re in bad shape, at least we can agree on something.

When I stopped at Grandma’s Gorditas today, there was a guy pulling a campaign sign out of the grass on the side of Greenwood. I half expected him to replace it with another. Switching my ipod from podcasts to music I pulled into the drive-thru. The sun was bright and the sky clear, briefly. I ordered and drove around to the 2nd window. The excellent hand-painted signs sat on layers of peeling paint over rotting wood siding. Two doors on the back of the building must have at one time been restrooms but now one is padlocked shut and the other is unmarked. I got my food and pulled under a long free-standing shade structure, probably built in the 50s, with wind damage bad enough that I worried about the integrity of the thing.

The first thing you notice is the size of the tacos. They appear normal if somewhat square within their wrappers but once they’re opened up the appear to be almost half again the size of many of the local tacos. The chorizo & egg had a good strong flavor, not too salty, with a bit in the back of the throat. The carne guisada was good, chewy but tender, and also had very little salt. I like salt, but I also like it when food comes with little salt in it so I can add it myself. The tortillas were fresh, but not quite newborn and a little dusty with flour. The salsa had a very strong red chili flavor. All in all, this place is not bad.

I should mention that this place has a special place in my heart, as I bought about a gross of tamales for my wedding from here. They do catering as well, and though I’d doubt it’s anything like the catering Water Street does, I can vouch for the tamales.

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Nicole ‘Coco’ Austin

Anyone who is a fan of comic book heroines or old school rap should appreciate Coco, who in part bears a striking resemblance to the eponymous Coco de Mer. She’s not a rapper and she hasn’t been in a comic, but she does have the proportions of a superhero and she is married to Ice-T, 21 years her senior, who is so old-school his website has a flash progress bar. I’ve scoured Coco’s twitter feed, her website, imdb, wikipedia, and google all in search of some intellectual of altruistic counterpoint to her mind-bending hotness but have come up empty. All of this makes me wonder if the sheer mass of her curves might not tear a hole in the fabric of space-time just like what was predicted with the LHC. In spite of this I post the picture to your left and hope the universe survives.

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at  to tacos@tacotopia.net. on a Friday morning of your choice. Offer subject to cancellation by order of the wives of the tacoteurs.  Enter to win by emailing your name on the back of Coco.