Day One: Here We Are in Costa Rica

Posted on by Elise
Our vacation home for 10, at night.

TAMARINDO, COSTA RICA — Hello from paradise. After a travel day involving unattended bags, long waits, angry car renters and a sweaty but amiable cab driver, 10 of my favorite people and I are all together in this tiny surfing town to chillax. (And also, so I won’t be alone for my 30th birthday. Talk about awesome friends, right?)

We’re staying at a gorgeous home atop a bluff, complete with an infinity pool and gorgeous views of the mountain and beach vistas. My blood pressure has lowered considerably since arriving. And because our group happens to include a little HD video camera, a photographer, five reporters, a blog platform creator and an internet connection, HeyElise will be hosting our vacation vlogposts all week. WOOT!

The Mystery Postcard from the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House

Posted on by Elise

I returned from Oklahoma to find this on my desk. Who sent me this mysterious smiley-faced postcard from the Elizabeth Cady Stanton house?

Things I’ve considered:

1. Whoever addressed the card switched from normal casing to ALL CAPS for the NPR address. What gives?

2. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is a 19th century women’s rights leader. Could this have been sent by a third-wave feminist friend of mine, or just by someone who happened to visit this place and decided to send me a postcard?

3. Stanton’s house is in Seneca Falls, New York. My friend Reeve, whose handwriting could be on this postcard, was recently visiting New York. But it seems the Elizabeth Cady Stanton house wouldn’t be one of his top destinations. I think Reeve prefers Susan B. Anthony.

4. I have ruled out both friends who consistently send me postcards: Sudeep “Man of Honor” Reddy, and Dave “I Love The North Pole” Levinthal. It’s not from Dave based on handwriting and because he only vacations in places with subzero temperatures, and I ruled out Sudeep because he never addresses postcards to me, he sends them to my beagle, Saidee Hu.

Help me solve this mystery.

UPDATE: Reeve has texted to say “That postcard did not come from me.” He adds that this mystery is “creepy.”

SC Hearts Newt

Posted on by Elise
You can recognize that back-of-head from miles away. (Photo by Brad Horn)

 

Big night for Newt Gingrich, as voters in South Carolina (who have correctly chosen the eventual GOP nominee since 1980) picked him by a large margin. The win has upended and extended this race, making for some fun new drama and unpredictability. He’s certainly a force of nature, the kind that gets me backin’ into walls.

The Ties That Bind Me To The Belleville Outfit, Or, Why I’ll Never Get Over Their Breakup

Posted on by Elise

There are places I remember in my life (though some have changed). The time I spent in South Carolina and Texas happens to overlap neatly with that of Rob Teter, Marshall Hood, and their band(s). It wasn’t until young Rob was in DC over the weekend that I realized how much that overlapping influenced my larger journey.

I met teenagers Rob and Marshall — and their pal Jeff Brown — in their last year of high school and my first full year in Spartanburg, SC, their home town. I was doing a story on the minor musical resurgence of Spartanburg, and the boys, who were 17-year-olds playing old Americana tunes as The DesChamps Band, were abuzz. They performed for the photog and me on Marshall’s parents back deck, and I turned a quick story, below. (This is embarrassing, as I was age 23 and sounded like a 12-year-old.)

A year later, I started my new TV job in Austin and the boys had disbanded to attend college, but never stopped playing music. Marshall had moved to Austin, too. That’s where he met Phoebe Hunt, an Austin native and one of the most talented young fiddlers around. A few months later, Rob and his buddies from college in New Orleans joined up with Marshall and Phoebe to jam, and through circumstance and serendipity (a spot opened up at MerleFest), they became The Belleville Outfit. The boys took a break from college, converged in Austin and followed their musical journey. (Spoiler alert: It worked out for them. The band was not a flop.)

Because I found them for that story when they were so young, I feel a real familial kind of relationship with some of those guys. I got to know Uncle Seth and Cousin Warren and moms and dads. Rob and I reminisced about the fall night in 2007 when the band came over to Casa Hu-Stiles at 3am after a “meh” gig to help finish off the beer and food from a party we threw earlier that evening. Queso-blurred memories.

Continue reading “The Ties That Bind Me To The Belleville Outfit, Or, Why I’ll Never Get Over Their Breakup” →

Reunited in South Cackalaka … For A Few Minutes

Posted on by Elise

Ah, South Carolina. What crazy memories I have from those 728 days I lived in the foothills of Appalachia. The reporting assignments in places like Sugar Tit (real name) and Fingerville (yep), the big debate over whether the new Dollar General was going to ruin one of the old mill towns, all the fantastic friends I made that I think about quite often.

It’s also the place the campaign trail could come to a halt for my former governor, Rick Perry. So I contacted one of my fave television photogs, Steve, flew down on Sunday morning and we joined forces, just like the old days, to shoot a political event — Perry’s return to the Palmetto State for a 21 day tour/likely last stand. (See earlier post.)

Grabbed a few behind-the-scenes snapshots from the event, and I want to test out my new slideshow plugin (more on that to come, eventually), so here goes:

Did He Say “Extra Governor?”

Posted on by Elise

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Dropped in on the campaign trail real quick to get some video of my former governor, Rick Perry, in my 2004-2006 stomping grounds, Spartanburg. This is the same place where my friend Latoya and I met at Denny’s nearly every Friday night for dinner because we didn’t have much else to do. (Or anywhere else to eat.) And the same place that a guy killed his girlfriend by throwing a hot iron at her head and telling the police that all the blood on the carpet was actually an explosion of condiments like hot sauce and ketchup.

Speaking of ketchup, Perry spoke at The Beacon, a South Carolina drive-in-that-doesn’t-have-a-drive-in-anymore and a standby for visiting politicians. Here’s how my colleague Don Gonyea described it:

There’s no paper or computer here — J.C. takes your order, then hollers instructions to cooks in The Beacon’s unique lingo. For instance, a chili-cheeseburger a-plenty means your plate is going to be covered with french fries and onion rings.

The place goes through 300 pounds of chili on a Friday night. Just the kind of crowd a campaign is looking for.

“If you want to be elected for president, you better come to The Beacon,” Stroble says with a chuckle.

It goes without question that all the food here is predictably greasy — cheeseburgers, onion rings, chili cheese. The Texas governor ordered something which I believe was the go-to order, Chili Cheese A Plenty (double or single patty available). But he gave it a name of his own:

The New Year Mussels

Posted on by Elise

The thing about holidays is that they tend to be annual, marking time in a helpful way for disoriented people like me. So during last night’s New Year’s Eve celebrations I was reminded of how we spent New Year’s last year. We were in Austin, with my besties Jimmy and Skyler and the clan. Jimmy made a crazy fabulous Spanish feast, including way too many mussels. So Jimmy and I tried to polish them off in our standard, gluttonous fashion.

“These mussels are either going to go in our faces, or in the trash can,” Jimmy said. “So we’re gonna get as many in our faces as possible.” (This is after we had already collectively feasted for the previous two hours. But we didn’t want the mussels to go to waste.)

You can hear someone in the background saying, “I love mussels as much as the next person, but that’s sick.”

2012 Resolutions: Hold Me Accountable, People

Posted on by Elise

I’m not going to come up with crazy stuff like run a marathon cause I’ve done THAT before and it was the opposite of fun. Instead, some somewhat lofty but likely attainable goals:

1. Send More Handwritten Cards and Letters
What happened in 2011? I am so into stationery, pens and paper* but I couldn’t even pull it together to send our customary batch of Christmas cards this year. Get ready, cause I am going to overcompensate for my dereliction by sending you a note for whatever reason I can think of in the coming year.

2. Organize Photos Immediately After A Set Is Taken
Who knows how many photos have been lost to the cyberwilderness due to the too-many-photos, too-little-time problem? It’s time I try to be more like the wizard/best damn photographer I know, Channing Johnson, and download, sort and edit photos as soon as an event is over.

3. Become Conversant in Spanish
In recent months I have traded in my usual happy hours for twice a week, 90-minute sessions with my private Spanish tutor, Hilda. After being away from Espanol for more than a decade, I decided to get serious again, and Hilda is helping me. Here’s hoping I can be conversant by the end of 2012.

4. Visit Seven New Countries and/or Territories
I’m feeling wanderlusty again. Seven is a good prime number, so that’s how I landed on it. Sudeep wants to hit Iceland, Mom’s basically already signed me up for Morocco, and Beam is planning some Southeast Asian adventure. This resolution will cost me money I don’t have since we’re about to buy a DC house, but like my parents always told me, exploration is invaluable.

*Karl Rove is, too. We go to the same paper place in Austin. He’s really into Moleskin notebooks, Crane paper and Pilot “Varsity” pens, the ladies tell me.

One of My Favorite Chuck Klosterman Hypotheticals: The Cheating One

Posted on by Elise
The one time I met Chuck Klosterman I totally whiffed my pickup line.

For Christmas, Matty got me a set of Chuck Klosterman Hypothetical Cards. (If this sounds lame, he did get me other stuff, too, like a TripIt PRO account! I was most excited about that and promptly started updating my TripIt on Christmas morning.)

Anyway. There is one hypothetical on each card, and they involve situations like what you’d do if you came home to a trashed house and Shaquille O’Neal was in your shower, or whether you’d own up to the fact you accidentally got selected to be saved from a meteor crashing to earth. Stuff like that. Every time we’ve been in the car since I got the cards, we have chosen one hypothetical to talk through or argue about.

But the reason I enjoy Chuck Klosterman hypotheticals so much in the first place is because of this one — the one about cheating on your girlfriend:

“This question raises a larger point about everything we pretend to understand about relationships, and particularly what we assume we understand about monogamy (and when infidelity technically begins). So while your answer to this question might seem unambiguous, the criteria you use to reach the conclusion are generally more important than the answer itself.”

If you haven’t considered this one, read it through. Once you’re done, we can have a conversation about it sometime over food and beverages. Regarding whose side I’m on, I’ve consistently held my position and am happy to defend it. Then again, if you’re a friend of mine that goes drinking with me, you probably already know whose side I’m on.

My 2011 in Instagrams

Posted on by Elise

Having finished my obligatory Year in Review, I thought I’d do a more visual look back at 2011. I use the Instagram app to take photos, add fun filters, and share them with pals in the Instagram community. I took thousands of “Instagrams” with my iPhone this year, but journalism is about selection. So I picked 47 of my favorite to help look back on the year that was.

https://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf