Showing Off Santa Cruz

You may remember JennyT's last visit to NorCal. Well, apparently the metallic paper business is treating her well, as she was back in San Francisco on business again last week and this time, she brought her Swedish Meatball husband, Mantis, along as well (you may recall that JennyT and Mantis were Best Couple Ever nominees not too long ago). This time, they stayed an extra weekend for some sightseeing and a road trip to Santa Cruz last Saturday. That's them right there in Fosco's living room (looking purposefully cranky).

The best thing about JennyT (well, okay, one of the best things) is that she, like Fosco, loves the "eating vacation"--the vacation where one visits as many different good restaurants as possible. Of course, we always find ourselves rubbing up against that damn "three meals a day" limitation of the human body. But we fight it valiantly. Mantis, on the other hand, likes to walk on vacation. And walk and walk and walk. He spent most of his week (while JennyT was in business meetings) exploring a rainy San Francisco on foot. But, Santa Cruz is Fosco's territory, which means that we mostly ate and did not walk.

JennyT is such an experienced vacation eater that she managed to find a restaurant that she wanted to try on the drive from SF to Santa Cruz. Well-played, mon ami, well-played. I had never heard of the Bay Area chain Hobee's, but JennyT and Mantis recommend it highly. They arrived on Fosco's doorstep with an entire Hobee's blueberry coffeecake (with cinnamon-sugar crumbles on top!) for Fosco and it was delicious. Fosco will drive up to Hobee's someday soon. You know what else is good about Hobee's? The picture at right (from their website) of their president. He's kind of a tool, huh?

After another (typically) exceptional lunch at Gayle's, I got to show J&M my fave Santa Cruz sights, including the West Cliffs:

The crazy Steamer Lane surfers:

And the view from the Lower Campus at UCSC:

We took the requisite nature hike through UCSC Central Campus and everyone was duly impressed with the mysterious redwoods. We visited a local "attraction" (more on this later). We had a deliciously sushirific dinner at Shogun on Pacific Ave. In all, it was a delightul day with two of my favorite friends.

Which leads us to the question: when will you visit Fosco in Santa Cruz?

Halloween: The Carnivalesque OR The Return of the Repressed

Everyone kept telling me that Halloween in Santa Cruz is a "thing"--as in, a thing not to be believed. This seemed strange to me as I haven't taken Halloween seriously since, oh, around 1985. Maybe five years ago, I dressed up--but that was only to attend a party. So Halloween being a "thing" here is pretty strange to me.

But Fosco is nothing if not a good sport, so he dressed up.

You know those "conceptual costumes" that are really popular with college students? The ones where they dress up as an idea or a pun or a phrase? And all because:

• college students are too clever for their own good.
  
• they're broke and it's easier to make a clever sign than to buy/rent a full sexy nun's habit.

Well, Fosco hates those kinds of costumes. Hates them.

And yet... Fosco is ashamed to admit that his empty pockets (did you know that UC grad students don't receive their first paycheck until November 1? It's true.) and excessive cleverness got the better of him, causing him to resort to costuming himself as... A THEORY. And not just any theory, sadly, but Lacan's Theory of the Divided Subject (the barred S, for those of you who are keeping score at home). I'm not proud of this, but luckily, there are no pictures.

I do have pictures of better costumes, such as those worn by Best Couple Ever nominees Michael and Laurel. As you can see below, Laurel is Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, despite the fact that she is unquestionably lovelier. Michael is tricked out brilliantly as Canadian hockey announcer (and all-around nutjob) Don Cherry.



The Santa Cruz Halloween thing involves going downtown (to the Pacific Avenue shopping district) and people-watching. How could this be entertaining? I guess I forgot to mention that 15,000 other people do the exact same thing.

And it's true: I could not believe Halloween in Santa Cruz could be such an event. For almost ten blocks, Pacific Avenue was packed with thousands and thousands of people in costumes, many/most of them drunk. What were the popular costumes? It varied, not surprisingly, by gender.

Popular Male Costumes

• Nacho Libre
  
• Borat
  
• Ghostbuster (I know! Can you believe it? I think that was my 1985 costume.)
  
• Jedi
  
• sheepfucker (we saw THREE! see one below)

Somehow this guy (whoever he is) fails to be appropriately embarassed. Sigh.

And for women?

• sexy devil
  
• sexy butterfly
  
• sexy angel
  
• sexy cowgirl
  
• sexy woman

Or, perhaps it would be more succinct this way...

Popular Female Costumes

• whore

I really wanted to take a picture that would illustrate this point, but I felt a bit uncomfortable taking pictures of scantily-clad whore-women. Finally, I snapped the photo below from a distance. As far as I can tell, each of the women in it are a different variety of whore...


Does this make anyone else uncomfortable?

As a grad student in literature, there are two ways I like to think about this kind of Halloween event. On the one hand, the downtown scene seems clearly an example of Bakhtin's "carnivalesque"--the state of social disorder/misrule in which authority is (temporarily) overturned. I always thought this sounded like fun; now I'm not so sure. If Santa Cruz Halloween is a good example of the Bakhtinian Carnival, then it's actually pretty scary. Last year at SC Halloween, there were seven stabbings; this year, with increased police presence (and floodlights), there were only two (plus several melees). Although most of the violence seems to be gang-related, it's still pretty scary to be in the middle of a huge crowd where

1. identity is almost totally concealed
   
2. most people are intoxicated or high
   
3. the police (despite being nearby) aren't close enough nor powerful enough to re-install order
   
4. there are plenty of non-costumed middle-aged male spectators standing on the streets ogling the lingerie-clad women

Now, I don't want to live in a police state (did I ever think I would start a sentence like this?), but there is something to be said for everyday norms of public interaction.

The other way of thinking about Halloween is in terms of the Freudian "uncanny"--as the "return of the repressed." But what does this mean for Santa Cruz Halloween? My colleagues and I are puzzled. All of the sexuality on display on Pacific Avenue would seem to be a good candidate for repression IF these costumes weren't so similar to what women wear to go dancing every other weekend of the year. It's hard to consider this spurt of Halloween over-sexuality as a return of the repressed, if sexuality isn't repressed in the first place. Are our notions of Halloween now absurdly out-of-date? Has it become a holiday devoted not to the scary or the uncanny, but to the frankly sexual? I think I would feel more comfortable about this if it weren't just the women who ended up dressing like whores. Can I see some sexy men next Halloween?

Oh yeah, and it was freezing that night (well, actually around 45, but that's cold for here...), so Fosco got a smidge of a cold.

I am Lazarus, come from the dead

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all

You have just experienced, Dear Readers, a characteristic Count Fosco disappearance. But fear not foul play (unless one counts the pernicious influence of Slavoj Žižek as foul play). No--for the last two weeks, Fosco has roamed the Underworld, feasting on pomegranate seeds, and yet... he has been allowed to return to the world of the living.

I have come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all.

You see, it all started with Halloween...