kirkerblog 4.0

I'm an early adopter. I was on Friendster when it only had a couple thousand users; ditto MySpace; ditto Facebook; and, now, ditto Twitter. I didn't see Twitter as having much potential at first -- microblogs with a 140-character limit? -- but I now see the transformative power the platform involves, and I'm in it in a few ways:

1) Personal updates. I save literal status updates for Facebook; I put the stream-of-consciousness stuff on my Twitter feed (username kirker, for those who hadn't already guessed). The ground this covers is myriad, including...

2) StockTwits.com, my newest obsession (thank you, Mark (or, in Twitter speak, @sparkycollier)). I was never into day-trading previously, but StockTwits gives you real-time info from the true experts who know exactly what they're doing -- and so far they've been exactly right. Notice the nearly-overnight explosion in the shares of small flu-vaccine companies, as a result of this week's swine flu epidemic (and possible pandemic)? One company in particular, Novamax, saw their shares triple in value over this past weekend, and that I wouldn't have known this fact without the experts at StockTwits. Right now I also have a good-sized stake in a coal company releasing earnings tomorrow, expected to exceed analyst estimates. The stock's already up 10% since my purchase yesterday, and should skyrocket significantly once the earnings announcement becomes formal tomorrow.

3) Following entities I'm personally interested in. Uchi (username @uchiaustin), my favorite Austin restaurant, now has a Twitter feed on which they reveal their daily specials and, more importantly, nights where they're unusually uncrowded (a two-hour weekend-night wait is commonplace these days). Pitchfork (username @pitchforkmedia) has all the latest great album releases. Josepn Gordon-Levitt, the insanely talented actor I had the fortune of meeting at SXSW this year, updates both his acting and music endeavors via his username @hitrecordjoe. And so forth.

4) I've had to drop a few posters due to overposting tendencies. Ana Marie Cox? Love ya, babe, but I can't deal with 40 tweets a day, so delete time is near. Julia Allison? Not sure why I added you to begin with, but ditto. David Pogue? Love your NYT reviews, but you're overdoing it on Twitter, so I may have to retreat to your Thursday tech columns in the paper.

I now have a decent number of followers, but some want my stock-related tweets and others want the lifestyle-related ones, so I'm not sure if I'll have to split into a multiple Twitter personality at some point. We shall see.

Btw prep yourself for a major Kirk Gallery-related announcement come Friday. You have been forewarned.

Okay, so my gallery Web site has been up for a while now, but I'm already looking to launch version 2.0 of it for two reasons: I need to add microsites for the several new lines of furniture we're adding, plus I'd like to jazz up its user interface a bit. The site serves its purpose functionally, and links to specific products are finally starting to show up correctly in Google searches, but visually it doesn't really reflect the "Kirk ethos" (avant-garde design) in terms of its look-and-feel.

I posted an ad for a Web designer on Craigslist this week, specifically to find someone with a strong background in Flash and generally bad-ass design abilities. The inundation of responses I received was nothing short of shocking, even considering how many responses we got when we posted a salesperson-wanted ad a while back. They included people not even remotely qualified for the job, e.g. programmers and software guys with no graphic-design experience whatsoever; a ton of inquiries from India-based firms (which I won't be doing, after hearing anecdotal tales from Web-developer friends about the difficulties of working with people 12 time zones away and, in many cases, not fully fluent in English); and even a few people who've only designed Web pages using Microsoft's geriatric FrontPage program (which was discontinued six years ago). I also stated that I would only pay on a flat-fee basis and asked people to submit a broad estimate, based on the detailed scope-of-work described in the ad, how much they think they'd charge for the gig; I received answers ranging from $350 (from the person using FrontPage) to "I only work for $80/hr" to "I couldn't possibly take on a project of this nature for less than $5,000."

Suffice it to say I haven't found the right candidate yet. E-mail me if you know someone though.

I hate to complain about a one-day trip, but my brief excursion to this year's MACO fair in Mexico City was just depressing. In an economy where the contemporary art market has for all intents and purposes collapsed, and in a country where the dollar was until recently trading at a 50% premium versus the peso compared to a year ago, one would think the local art dealers would have come to their senses on asking prices. But no. Five-figure prices were still the norm (though to be fair, six-figures were much more commonplace last year), and absurd fees were being commanded even of emerging artists minus any substantive CVs. I'd expect this pricing out of ABMB, but MACO? Mexico City may have become an art capital, but it ain't New York or Miami Beach, and yet its prices don't reflect that reality. (Needless to say, I came home empty-handed.) That said, some of the best pieces were sold during the VIP preview (which I did not attend - I went general admission right afterwards), so one certainly can't proclaim the market totally DOA. (Unless, of course, the dealers were being sneaky and trying to fake people out into thinking they'd sold certain pieces. Still, I expect much more success in finding reasonably priced art at arteBA next month.

I wasn't planning on going out tonight, since I have to leave for Mexico City relatively early tomorrow morning for a quick trip to the MACO art fair, but my friend Matt announced he was going to the My Bloody Valentine show at the Austin Music Hall -- apparently their sole major Austin appearance ever, save for an opening slot for I think Dinosaur Jr. 17 years ago. Matt has undergone some rather dramatic medical treatment as of late, specifically a partial elbow replacement at the Mayo Clinic, details of which are extensively chronicled on his blog. I hadn't seen Matt since he returned from Minnesota for his elbow-replacement surgery, nor have I ever seen MBV live, so I couldn't pass the opportunity up. I tend to get worried when the door staff are passing out free earplugs to every entering guest -- though MBV's rep for extreme loudness precedes them, and we'd brought our own -- but owing to Matt's injury and the broken foot of someone else in our party, we finagled ourselves into the VIP upper-deck -- with comfy seating and a waitress -- with relative ease. The noise wasn't an issue at those lofty heights, from which this pic was snapped, until a 10-minute-long closing set, at which point I wished in hindsight I'd used the plugs, given that my ears are still ringing. Still, it was easily the best non-SXSW Austin music set I've seen thus far this year, and it was great to see Matt doing so well after such relatively recent major surgery.

Off to bed now, as I have a full day of traveling and art fair-hopping tomorrow, followed by a dinner with the design director of the Mexican furniture collective we're launching next month. I have a full roster of unanswered topics in need of resolution before we can proceed further.

My friend Paula and I roadtripped to Longview this past weekend for our friend Allison's wedding. Instead of taking the Google Maps-recommended route up I-35 and east on I-20, we decided to travel roughly as the crow flies and take a route straight through the core of rural Texas. Frankly, it's a disturbing place in many ways. I think the downtowns of literally every town we drove through were mostly boarded up, and these were mostly place small enough to even have a Wal-Mart (I think we saw one the whole trip up).

The wedding was great, albeit rather untraditional. It was held in the backyard of Allison's grandmother's house, and cocktail hour started before the nuptials, so I had my Knob Creek & Diet Coke in hand during the (very short) ceremony. Although I rarely dance, I was convinced into doing so, and of course landed flat on my ass. Embarrassing in the extreme.

On the way back -- after dining at the fried chicken restaurant where Anna Nicole Smith got her start (see pics of that and everything else in the photo album link to your right) -- we made the random discovery that, not far from Mexia (where Anna lived), there was once a town called Kirk. All that's left now is a historical marker and a graveyard, but apparently before the Great Depression it was a thriving community with an active farming-oriented culture. (I guess this part of Texas, not too far from Waco, may have suffered the same Dust Bowl droughts in the '30s depicted in "The Grapes of Wrath.") Still, kinda cool to have visited Kirk, TX.

While I sit here in my lovely hotel room in Longview -- seriously; it's a brand-new Hampton Inn, and aside from the window-unit A/C and some overly thin walls, it trumps any Marriott or Hilton I've ever seen, e.g. 42" LCD TV and the like -- waiting for my date (in the next room) to wake up after a moderately raucous wedding reception, I figured I'd share some tips on how to buy a car. I'm a little obsessed with them. My dearly departed grandmother always liked to tell the story of taking me down to the parking lot of the high school a block from their old house in Dallas, and me being able to identify every car in the lot. I was 2 at the time.

As everyone knows, the car market is going through a major upheaval -- which sucks for numerous reasons, one of them being that the American car manufacturers finally *are* making cars that can realistically compete with Japan's -- and even, in some cases, Germany's -- finest. Pontiac's G8 is the rough equivalent of a BMW 5-series for $20K less (and that's before the undoubtedly huge fire-sale prices they'll have to sell them at, now that GM is phasing out the brand). The Saturn Aura and Astra -- two more cars that will have fire-sale pricing -- are direct derivatives of European-model Opels, and for the money they're pretty damn good cars. The Dodge Ram won a "Car & Driver" comparison full-size pickups, but in Austin at least, they're being unloaded for $15,000 discounts. (While I do not recommend buying a truck unless you *need* a truck, e.g. you own a boat you need to tow or do a lot of off-roading, this is nevertheless a spectacular deal. Ford trucks aren't discounted as much, because Ford isn't in anywhere near as dire economic straits, but then again, they went too far with the 18-wheeler look on the redesigned '09 model, so I'd go with the Ram regardless.)

So ... what to buy. The problem with buying the Saturns and Dodges mentioned above is that their resale value will be jack shit. If resale value is your chief concern, and you'll be owning a car for less than four years, I have three words: Toyota, Honda and BMW. If you'll be owning a car you'll be driving into the ground, or if you're looking at used cars (which btw are selling for record-low prices, in many cases, because new cars are so cheap at present), again: Toyota and Honda (and their cousins, Lexus and Acura). After I got laid-off during the Great Dot-Com Bust of 2000-2001, I was forced to sell the nearly new Audi TT Roadster I could no longer make the payments on and buy a 10-year-old Lexus SC400 coupe from a family friend. It had nearly 100,000 miles but was still, mechanically speaking, perfect. The leather had worn out on the driver's seat, but I had that fixed for a couple hundred bucks. (That car, by the way, is the only one to have owned, at various points, by me, my dad *and* my two brothers -- which is a little odd, given that we can all afford new cars, but we're an odd family. It didn't go downhill until it fell into Daniel's hands. By the time Dave got it, the electrical system was glitchy, and the A/C no longer worked. He finally got rid of it a year or two ago, but aside from the A/C thing, it had no major mechanical failures in 150,000 miles of driving.)

Jeff's Picks

Best small car: Mini-Cooper. There's a reason why Mini defied last year's car-market collapse and posted a 30% sales increase: it's a BMW-made sports car that gets 37 mpg for under $20,000 (add a few thousand more if you want the dual-pane sunroof, which I highly recommend, along with the sport package and some decent rims). I'd go for the S-model convertible myself, but I'm a convertible freak, as most of my friends know. Oh, and there's also an electric version now in limited production.

Best mid-sized car: Believe it or not, I'm gonna go with the new 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. Not only does it top its main Japanese competitor, the Nissan Altima Hybrid, in gas mileage (41 mpg to the Altima's 35), the Fusion has better J.D. Power numbers than even the vaulted likes of various Toyota and Honda models. I know the new Prius gets 50+ mpg, but sorry, folks: it's ugly and has no performance worth whatsoever (at least the Altima and Fusion have good handling and acceleration).

Best sports sedan: This is a toughie, given that I previously owned what I would've ranked as the best, the BMW 335i. But then the 335d (d is for diesel) just came out and changed the whole equation -- it nearly equals its gas counterpart in performance, but gets 35 mpg. While we 'Muricans still equate diesels with clackety VWs and Benzes from the early '80s, most of Europe is driving them at this point, and the engines have been refined to the point of being virtually unnoticeable, sound-wise, versus a gas engine. Exhaust has been refined to meet even the most stringest standards in the U.S., so it's basically the same as a gas car (and the days of black smoke are long gone). Diesel prices have been steadily falling as U.S. refineries have gotten their new diesel systems -- required to meet the new emissions standards -- online, and as of this writing they're on par with premium-unleaded gas (which you'd need in a standard 335i). The 335i still outperforms it acceleration-wise, but taking the gas-mileage factor into account, the 335d win. (Runner-up is the 535i, which has the same (gas) engine but much more room. No diesel version has yet been announced.)

Best large car (non-luxury): Why you want a behemoth is beyond me, but the clear winner is the 27mpg Toyota Avalon.

Best SUV: Best, period? The Lexus LX570, which is the most refined SUV on the planet and, given its LandCruiser underpinnings, capable of some serious off-roading (not that 99% of its buyers will ever go more off-road than perhaps a dirt parking lot), but it's also the most expensive SUV on the planet, save the Porsche Cayenne Turbo. Really, any Toyota wins this comparo, but believe it or not, I'm gonna recommend the Chevy Tahoe & Suburban. My dad bought the latter last year for our place in Utah -- where we actually have a *need* for four-wheel-drive, huge storage capacity and nine-passenger seating -- and I was shocked at its luxury car-like level of luxury and driveability. The Tahoe should be basically the same, but a couple feet shorter. I'm only recommending them, however, because you should be able to get a $15K discount on them, putting them well below a comparable large SUV from Toyota or Nissan. This is all assuming you don't car about gas mileage, of course.

Best Luxury Car: The Lexus LS460. My dad bought one last year and it is the shiznit. Most refined car I have ever driven, period, and it parallel-parks itself! (Don't go for the hybrid though - basically you're paying 40 grand extra for a 4 mpg mileage improvement.) Hell, it even gets 24 mpg highway - not bad for a huge V-8. Most Improved Award goes to the BMW 750iL, which has finally been "de-Bangled," but its $100K+ price tag, fully loaded, is a hefty price to pay, to put it lightly.

Best Batshit-Crazy Car Ever: The Bugatti Veyron. Well, let's see: 0-60 in 2.5 seconds. Top speed of 253 mph. Tires cost $25K a set. The car costs $1.5 million, and barely 100 have ever been made. (The only one I've ever personally seen was in L.A.) Yep, craziest ever.

Car I Would Buy if Money Were No Object: Well, there's the aforementioned Veyron, but if we want to get even more batshit-crazy, let's talk 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California. It's one of the rarest, and coolest, cars ever made, and one sold for $11 million last year (granted, it sold for a slight premium due to its celebrity ownership, having once been owned by James Coburn, and that was before the global economic collapse). But really, if we're talking something I can drive day-to-day, even in traffic, I'd have to go with an Aston Martin DBS. Certainly much more subtle than a Bugatti or any Ferrari, new or old, and as comfortable in rush-hour traffic as it is on the racetrack.

I'm a car nut, which I'll expound upon in later weeks, but I just re-watched the chase scene in "Bullitt" (thank you, Netflix on Demand), inarguably one of the most seminal car-chase sequences ever filmed. 100mph through the streets of San Francisco? McQueen doing much of his own driving? Will never be repeated, in this age of insurance and litigation. The most incredible part, in contrast to modern-day filmmaking, is that the ten-minute-long scene is filled with no music and no dialogue, period, but instead nothing but guttural engines & exhausts and screeching tires.

In contrast, "The Bourne Ultimatum" -- lauded as having one of the best car-chase scenes in recent memory -- was actually shot at speeds of no more than 25 mph, per NYC permit regs. Rapid editing made it seem faster, but that's tantamount to a cheap trick to avoid doing the real thing of careening around inner-city street corners at 60 mph, as McQueen did for "Bullitt." Then there's the increasing use of CGI to depict oncoming cars, seen in everything from "The Matrix Reloaded" to "Fast & Furious."

Old-school is better is many ways; this is one of them.

My writing's been getting me into trouble since the fourth grade. Back then Mr. Paolicci said we could write an essay about anything we wanted ... so I took that literally, and while I'll spare you the details of its content, suffice it to say it landed me in the principal's office. In high school ... shit, I don't even want to go there, but the fruits of my labor singlehandedly kept me from being inducted into the National Honor Society that year, and turned me into one of the school's most notorious kids overnight. (LTers: any comments posted on this topic will be erased!) College went fine -- well, except for misquoting a visiting Israeli dignitary, in an article for the school paper, to imply that he supported the PLO, but that was really more of a typo -- but then I went to work for a certain well-known local company that shall remain nameless and, through a rather complicated series of events, wrote a highly vitriolic e-mail to the media director of the largest grocery store chain in the Southwest that ultimately resulted in my termination. (Granted, she totally had it coming, in essence trying to pin the blame on me for her own fuck-up. Still, I had not yet mastered the art of diplomacy, and instead of letting my supervisor handle the matter, I fired off an angry e-mail on my own.)

I since have mastered the art of diplomacy, but every now and then I get particularly pissed off at something and hit the send key on an e-mail when I really, really shouldn't haven't have. I did so last night, and in the process managed to completely alienate a work colleague who's basically a good guy and didn't deserve my overreaction to a certain bit of news I heard about him. So yeah, not my best day, and not helped by the torrential rain a bit.

Tomorrow the literal skies unfortunately aren't clearing, but the metaphorical ones are; my friend Paula and I are roadtripping to Longview (for you non-Texan readers, it's about 100 miles east of Dallas) for a mutual friend's wedding, which should be a blast (except for the 300-mile drive in what will likely be torrential downpours). We're taking the scenic route, which only takes 20 minutes longer than the freeway (according to Google Maps), so we figured we may as well catch a slice of central and east Texas we may never seen again. (That said, most of the parts of said areas are not ones I'd like to spend much time in, but there are a few charming towns and undoubtedly lots of wildflowers along the way, given all the rain we've had lately.) I'll snap some iPhone pics and post them next week.

Most guys track sports stats. I have countless friends in fantasy football leagues. My brother can probably recount baseball stats in his sleep. I, on the other hand, track 20th-century design results.

Christie's and Sotheby's -- the 200-pound gorillas across every microcosm of the collectibles markets -- had their spring 20th-c. sales a couple of weeks ago, and stranded unexpectedly in Kentucky for a few days, I delved into their results. Like every auction since the October economic implosion, they were a mixed bag, particularly Sotheby's. Nakashima lots made a comeback ... but then, this was right after the head of Sotheby's 20th-c. department said publicly (in "Art + Auction") that the Nakashima market was being driven by only two obsessive collectors, so who knows what to make of the results. I've maintained for a while that the so-called "design art" movement is, well, fucked, and these results only bolster my theorem; most of the lots by Marc Newson and the like went unsold. More disturbing is that Sotheby's several Paul Evans lots, including a gorgeous Argente cabinet, went unsold, but Sotheby's is not known for its concentration on Evans work, and there will be far more -- and far better -- pieces available in two weeks at Rago. (Including one of my own.)

Christie's results, as a whole, seemed much stronger, with great Nakashima prices across the board, though the question of whether Maria Pergay is woefully overpriced (as some argue, including the head of Christie's rival 20th-c. department) remain unresolved. The last two Gehry lots flopped bigtime, however, and someone got a great bargain on them.

An earlier visit to the Domain, coupled with Marques Harper's recent interview with former FactoryPeople proprietor Le Popov in the Statesman, prompted me to blog about the rather sorry state of men's fashion in Austin, and also a few tidbits on the origins of my admittedly sizable wardrobe. There are precisely two good men's stores in Austin: Barneys Co-op at the Domain, and Bows + Arrows in the Bridges on the Park building on S. Lamar. (On the downside, they have a significant amount of brand overlap, e.g. Rag & Bone, Loomstate and Shipley & Halmos, but then again, those three brands are doing some of the most interesting stuff in independent men's fashion today.) Please do not e-mail me to complain that I left off Service Menswear, Estilo, The Texas Clothier, etc., because they just ain't my thing. Service is good if you're a sk8r boi or into the retro-'50s thing; Estilo is great if you're going clubbing in Ibiza; The Texas Clothier is wonderful if you're a Republican legislator. (And I had to leave Neiman's off the list because they've discontinued carrying both John Varvatos and Paul Smith, two of my favorite designers, though it's still far and away the best place in town for men's shoes.) I was so upset when Austin's all-time best men's store, By George, shut down two years ago that I offered to buy the place and keep it open. No, I'm not kidding. My talks with the owners never amounted to much, probably because they just wanted to be done with the thing, but Co-op opened shortly thereafter to provide my local fashion fix, so I was somewhat appeased.

Anyway, now that that's off my chest, I'm going to reveal my deepest, darkest (clothing-related) secret: not only do I never buy anything full-price, I usually never buy anything unless it's 50% off -- and, in most cases, 60%-70%. My two best buys ever were more like 90% off. Here's how:

1. eBay. Seriously. For suits, it simply can't be beat. It's where I scored one of the aforementioned best-ever buys: a $4,000 Brioni suit, brand-new, for $350. (No, it's not a fake.) I also bought a used black Miu Miu suit -- still my staple for weddings and funerals -- on there for $175. (Prada has since discontinued Miu Miu for men, alas, but the suit's pretty classic.) How do you buy a suit on eBay? Suit fits rarely vary within the same brand, so go to a store that sells good suits (Neiman's is your best bet locally), figure out your size, and then go home and buy one on eBay; it'll fit the same. Oh, and plan on having it tailored; if it's new, the pants will be unhemmed (so you'll have to go regardless), and off-the-rack suits never fit perfectly. Austin, unfortunately, doesn't have any truly remarkable tailors, to my knowledge, but Ace can handle any basic suit alterations.

2. Wait and hit the bigger stores' second-markdown sales, which generally occur in January and July. Forget the early 30%-off round; you want to get there right at the beginning of the second, when everything is roughly 2/3rds off. (This calculus may change, however: Saks threw the entire industry for a loop by marking down everything by 70% this past December, a month earlier than usual and right in the middle of the usually lucrative Christmas-shopping season. Conveniently, I happened to be in L.A. that week, which has a great Saks -- as opposed to their joke of a store in Austin -- so I bought pretty much my entire winter wardrobe for work there.) I'd suggest visiting a couple times a week during those months until the second markdowns begin. If you're really lucky, you'll get a particularly cool salesman like my main guy at Neiman's who'll not only tell you when a second markdown is about to begin, but put clothes on hold for you until it starts.

3. Gilt Groupe. Gilt is a relatively new phenomenon: an online clearing house for end-of-season sales for just about every American designer you can think of, all at 70% off. It's for boys and girls, and it works as follows: there are usually one or two designers per gender sold each day, and an e-mail announcement about that week's designer sales goes out Monday morning. At precisely 11am CST each weekday, the sale for each designer starts. You will want to go online right at 11, because the best stuff will be gone literally within 10 minutes, particularly if you wear a common size (medium and large shirts, 32-34 inch pants). The site, however, is invite-only, though existing members can invite anyone; e-mail me if you want in.

4. Tread verrrrrry carefully at outlet malls. They have a few dirty little secrets they don't want you to know about. Off 5th, the Saks outlet? Real Saks stores don't carry most of their brands, and very little of Saks' actual inventory ends up there. Barneys outlets -- a new one recently opened in San Marcos btw -- are somewhat better, but the majority of their merch is their in-house Co-op brand. Last Call is hit or miss: they pull the same trick Saks does of selling brands not seen in actual Neiman's stores, but OTOH I've scored more shoe bargains there than anywhere else on earth. (Curiously, only the Austin location at Brodie Oaks -- which, for those of you who didn't know, was the first -- seems to get the good men's shoes. I've been to probably a half-dozen other locations around the country and haven't seen anything but junk.) Gap / Banana Republic / J. Crew? (not that you should be shopping there regardless, but...) They produce inferior-quality lines specifically for the outlet stores; Gap outlet clothes are on par, quality-wise, with those at Old Navy's non-outlet stores, for instance, and they cost about the same.

5. Exception to the outlet-mall rule: Century 21 in NYC. While it is nothing short of batshit crazy that they still, to this day, do not have dressing rooms for men -- body-conscious types should avoid the place, because you'll have to undress down to your boxers if you want to try on any pants -- their prices on many brands can't be beat, and much of their merchandise is true Barneys-grade (but be careful: a lot of it is also Dillard's-grade). Last time I was there, they had a load of Ever t-shirts, which just happens to be my favorite brand. They retail (at Barneys, among many others) for $90; Century 21 had them for $25. I bought one of every style. Btw for those of you thinking "$90 for a freakin' t-shirt???", they're so pricey because the cotton is supersofa and megalight.

6. Don't fear vintage; some of my best clothing finds came from vintage stores, particularly a brown velvet, peak-lapeled blazer that never fails to elicit compliments. Unfortunately Austin vintage shopping sucks, at least for men, but I never fail to visit American Rag when in San Francisco and Aaardvark's when in L.A.

7. And finally, since it'll be arriving in Austin next month (I think): Zara, the phenomenon about which many a case study has been written. But again, tread carefully when buying, because some of their stuff is much better than others. Their outerwear is generally to die for, and I have two coats bought back in 2001 and 2002 -- a double-breasted wide-wale black corduroy coat, and a brown corduroy jacket similar in style to a Levi's jean jacket, but longer -- that I still wear regularly today. Their shirts, however, are rather ill-fitting and poorly made, in my experience, and all of their leather wear simply looks cheap.

P.S. That second best buy ever? A blue Helmut Lang peacoat, bought when the brand was liquidated (and well before it was later revived after being bought by Theory) and they were closing their SoHo store. It retailed for $1,800. I paid $200. To this day, years later, it remains my single favorite item of clothing.

P.P.S. I'm on a clothes-buying moratorium at present for reasons discussed in my last blog entry.

So, my current conundrum: when to diet? I will be the first to admit that I've fallen off the wagon big-time there, starting last summer. The stress of getting my gallery launched, coupled with my wrist surgery three days prior to my September gallery opening, coupled with my multiple-rib damage in February, have resulted in my most sedentary period workout-wise since freshman year of college, and a visit to the doctor today (which has a mandatory weigh-in) confirms the worst: I'm at my heaviest weight in nearly a decade.

Normally I'd already be at the gym 45 minutes a day on the elliptical and bike, as well as doing weight training, but as my own personal trainer points out, 80% of weight loss is diet, and this month in particular I have three weekends that are about as diet-unfriendly as it gets. This weekend it's Kentucky: it's my dad's wife's Ashley's birthday Saturday, so we have a full day at Keeneland followed by Ashley's birthday at some new sushi place, and I'm sorry, but I would feel like an out-of-place clod if I teetotaled during these events. Weekend after is my friend Alli's wedding - and, again, ditto on the drinking; this will not be a teetotaler-friendly event. Weekend after is a double-top-secret event with an ad-hoc drinking society I've recently been asked to join. There is no realistic way to participate in any of the above and abstain without being a major party-pooper.

As noted in previous blogs, I'm erring on the side of caution and cabbing it even when I'm remotely intoxicated, so don't worry about me getting pulled over for DWI, but booze and diets don't mix well, so I think I'm going to have to put off my spring diet plan till May, during which my schedule is fairly free (the first half of the month, at least). But really, my current poundage level is unacceptable, particularly considering I had to go up a pant size this winter, so I need to make a change sooner rather than later.

A little more on Phoenix: reminds me a lot of Palm Springs (or at least the central part of Phoenix does), both good and bad. Lots of good mid-century architecture; lots and lots and LOTS of for-sale signs, many with the tragic "FORECLOSURE" placard underneath. We were staying at the Ritz-Carlton -- not my thing, really, but it's where Lindzonpalooza (an event I'm not sure I can even begin to explain - look it up on Twitter if you want to try and get a handle on it) was transpiring, and Lindzon negotiated a megacheap rate -- which was near the Biltmore, the one thing I wanted to see in Phoenix. The Biltmore has an interesting history: although widely attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright, he was actually only formally hired as a consultant on the project and is not its architect of record. Still, its architectural style is clearly very similar to that of his Ennis House near Griffith Park in L.A., designed around the same time. The exteriors look amazing; the interiors look, well, raped: not one speck of Wright's original design remains.

I was there partially on a mission to find a picture of a chair. Yes, seriously. I own a chair from the Biltmore, but its specific attribution is murky (but most likely a FLW design built by Warren McArthur). The lobby areas of the hotel contain scores of old photos from the hotel in its '30s heyday, and the owner of LA Modern told me there was a shot of the chair adjacent to the former men's smoking lounge. I finally found it, after about an hour of hunting; the second-floor area that apparently housed this smoking lounge is now guest rooms, and the photo was in a dimly lit spot at the end of a corridor.

The area surrounding the Biltmore is apparently the most chi-chi 'hood in town. The road leading up to the hotel contains an endless spree of mansions: some classics from the '30s; some excellent modernist homes; a lot of lookalike Spanish Colonials; and at least a few sickeningly huge, ugly McMansions, one of which (a "mere" 17,000 sq ft) now sits on the market half-complete. There's also a downright odd townhouse development springing up next door to the hotel's golf course: dozens of homes at $2 million and up, including several of the most lavishly staged model homes I can ever recall seeing, and NOT ONE unit in the complex (out of maybe 50) appeared to be occupied (this for a project that was apparently completed a year and a half ago). A partially complete shell of several units sits at the entrance to the complex -- clearly a victim of the economic crisis and Phoenix's housing woes -- thus prompting a few comments about resemblances to Beirut.

Mark and I also paid a visit to the new Mondrian. The lobby is the most over-the-top I've seen short of the Gramercy Park Hotel or the Paris Ritz, including the only wicker version of an Egg chair I've ever encountered. The logic-defying part of this hotel is its rates; on Quikbook, normally a reliable source for discounted hotel rates, its going for $399/night, but on Priceline they're dumping the suckers for $70 a night. Then there are the reviews: most of the ones on TripAdvisor are outright eviscerating. Still, it's definitely where I'd stay if I went back -- at the Priceline rate, natch -- and its proximity to old-town Scottsdale, filled with all manner of kitschy bars and stores, is an added bonus.

You particularly observant folks may have noticed a slight change up top: I've moved onto blog version 4.0, with title text now in the same shade as my gallery's logo. What's a'changin here? Blog versions 1.0 and 2.0, for those of you with long memories, covered myriad exploits of my personal life during my New Yorker years. In hindsight, I realize the perils of revealing too much detail about my life, particularly once they started getting reposted and dissected on a particularly snarky gossip site that shall remain nameless. 3.0, which has been around since I moved back to Austin about 2.5 years ago, thus avoided personal topics and largely focused on my failed attempt to open a boutique hotel and successful attempt to launch a design gallery ... but, frankly, it's turned out to be pretty damn boring reading, as evidenced by a precipitous decline in my regular readership. Hence: 4.0, a hybrid of all the earlier iterations. I won't be pulling a Julia Allison and start revealing every bit of minutia about my dating life or anything, but my life's frankly gotten a lot more interesting as of late, so I'll be posting about topics of note.

Gallery news: we're making some pretty seismic changes on that front. Top of the list is pulling vintage furniture off the floor. We'll still have it on our Web site, launched at long last a couple of weeks ago, and we have a big blowout sale going on through the end of April, but to be perfectly blunt, buyers off the street just aren't in the market for pricey vintage in this economy. Kirk, thus, will be morphing much more into a Matter/Future Perfect-style gallery focused on the latest, greatest and most innovative modern design. I've already announced that we're about to add Established & Sons to our inventory, but we're also adding two megahot up-and-comer brands that I'll hold off on revealing until we have their merch on the floor. Let's just say May will be a big month for us.

Big change #2, also already mentioned, is that I'm converting about 1/3 of the store's floor space -- since we'll be needing less of it now that we'll no longer be housing vintage pieces on it -- to a bar, which architect extraordinaire Michael Hsu is in the process of designing. We have a preliminary floorplan complete, as well as a thumbs-up from a city permitting-office vet that we should be able to receive the necessary permits and variances for launch. The two big question marks yet to be answered, however, are budget and securing a TABC license, both of which are potential dealkillers. I don't think the budget will be a backbreaker, particularly since the infrastructure (electrical, plumbing, etc.) is already in place, and basically we just need to demo a couple of walls, erect a new one, and add a urinal to the existing bathroom, but then again, I didn't think my gallery's original construction budget would roughly equal the GDP of a small European nation, so I never assume anything when it comes to architectural costs. TABC, however, is another story, given the number of horror stories I've heard about steering one's way through their bureaucratic quagmire.

Social life: been hanging with quite a few new folks as of late. I can't describe too many of these exploits in detail given that multiple family members read my blog, but I'm at least being diligent and taking cabs home when I've had a few too many, and I'm not staying out till dawn when I have to be at work at 10 or anything. I'll tell PG-13 tales, however.

Family life: big news there is my brother Dave got a job teaching at UT, and he and his wife Ally will be moving here this summer ... along with my first two nephews, due in June (but since these are twins we're talking about, an early birth is a strong possibility). Baby brother Chase -- now at toddler age and walking, and whom I'm seeing for the first time since Xmas next weekend -- is still the cutest kid on the planet, though he may have some competition from my nephews. We'll see.

Travel: while not anything close to my 2007/2008 exploits involving visits to a dozen countries, e.g. crazy shit like doing a L.A.-San Francisco-London-Madrid-Paris trip in eight days, along with a cruise to Antarctica, I have a lot of it in store for the remainder of the year. Kentucky next weekend, East Texas for a friend's wedding the weekend after that, NYC in two consecutive weekends in May, Buenos Aires immediately following the second NYC trip, probably Budapest/Krakow/London/Paris in late August/early September (hybrid work/fun trip) and, now that Delta is launching a flight from LAX to Sydney, allowing me to use up my massive bank of SkyMiles on a ticket, a trip down under either in late fall or early winter. Others: possibly L.A. later this month, undoubtedly New York and Chicago multiple times for work, probably a family trip in July or August to our house in Park City, and I'm sure a few more that will pop up on the radar at some point.

Right now, though, I'm zonked from a long (in the metaphorical sense) weekend in Phoenix partying with a bunch of hedge-funders and Silicon Valley types. It's been a few years since I worked in the Web sphere, so the weekend served as a crash course of sorts on Web 2.0, all things Twitter-related, and the magic of cloud computing and the like. More interesting was getting to know some guys who could potentially fund certain ventures of mine and those of people I know down the road, which was the larger point of the excursion.

This week: after a truly exhausting March, I'm happy to report that my social calendar is mostly clear through the weekend. I'm finally starting up with my personal trainer though -- a fall and winter of little exercise, due in large part to my broken wrist and followed by my busted ribs, has taken a noticeable toll on my waistline -- so I'll probably be an ornery bitch you wouldn't want to be around regardless.