NachoProviCon: Day Four

When I woke up the morning of the last day of the conference I had to conclude that the weird puppet group of cultists did not in fact summon Cthulhu and that the stars must no longer be right for the calling of the Great Old Ones from out of space and time. This came as quite a relief. Three days of Lovecraftiness however had taken a toll on me and managed to just drag myself out to the last few panels, they being the customary “WHY CTHULHU?”—IS HPL TOO MAINSTREAM?” hipster bait and the patting ourselves on the back “LOOKING FORWARD – AND FAREWELL!” panel. We had survived, but only just.

Sadly what had not however was my desire to eat more nachos. You’d be hard pressed to find someone more into nachos than myself, but apparently even I have a limit, and that seems to be four dishes in three days. I figured walking all over this eldritch city would arouse strange and terrible hungers in my belly, but the nachos themselves being strange and terrible seemed to cancel that out. I’d seen many an otherworldly thing on my days there, but perhaps the most otherworldly thing to find would be nachos that taste good. With one day to go, I had to throw in the towel. I was done with nachos. At least the ones in Providence.

Seriously, this is Providence, not Bavaria. How can a building this strange be in this city but good nachos not?

So what did I learn about Lovecraft and Providence and Nachos and Conferences and NecronomiCon and NachoProviCon and Myself?

LOVECRAFT may or may not have been a racist, or he might have just been a little more racist than other people of his day. I don’t think we’ll ever know.

PROVIDENCE may be known as “The #1 Food City in the U.S.” by a Travel + Leisure poll in 2012, but if that’s the case the raters must not have had any nachos, or the places they went were secret ones I had not located.

NACHOS are as always delicious, however eating them every day for days in a row, probably not the best idea.

CONFERENCES will have uncomfortable chairs. There will be a lot of panels you want to go to, but going to them all instead of resting is a bad idea. You may feel like you need to get the most bang for your buck by doing and seeing as much as possible, but a good night’s sleep is worth much more.

NECRONOMICON was a great time, especially for a first time conference. However don’t have panels run right up to the time of the next panel, especially when the next panel you want to go to is a ten minute walk away and up to the 18th floor of a hotel when there are only three tiny elevators from last century to get you up there.

NACHOPROVICON was excellent in theory, but that theory was under the false assumption that the nachos would all be good, or at least not all meh. Perhaps the next NachoProviCon will be better...

MYSELF , well, I quite enjoyed myself, but not even a nacho lover like me should eat as many nachos as I did.

While there may be many things about the city that ol’ Howard would recognize from his time, all in all the changes would have probably disgusted him. While Lovecraft may have been Providence, Providence is no longer Lovecraft. The very idea of nachos probably would have disgusted him, from the fact that they were invented by a Mexican to the uncivilized way you consume them to probably just them being spicy. But whatever, he and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, so let’s just enjoy him for his writings and not for his views on race nor food. I think that is something all Lovecraftian scholars can agree on.

NachoProviCon was over, but the one day the stars would be right again and it would return. Maybe the nachos would be tastier then, maybe not, but we will see. As the Innsmouth Jews say “Next year in R’lyeh”, I say “Next year in Providence”.

You may be Providence, the city, but in matters of nachos certainly not Providence, the noun.

Backwards to NachoProviCon Day Three!

NachoProviCon: Day Three

Another day in Providence, another day of sunshine with the lurking threat of cosmic horrors trying to worm their way through to our plane of existence. Madness was obviously in the air as immediately outside the hotel I was accosted by a homeless gentleman accusing me of being the 1% and that I was responsible for his situation, only this was relayed with a lot more salty language. If I was H.P. Lovecraft I probably would have gone into paroxysms of terror, become physically ill and then write a racist story about the event, but I knew the fellow must have noticed my Vistaprint made Nachonomics shirt and recognized me as an up and comer in the world of nacho reviews, so I paid him no mind. Fun Lovecraft fact of the day: he once called his friend’s wife a vegetable. What a ladies’ man. At least he didn’t refer to her with a racial slur.

Chili, Cheddar Cheese, Salsa, Hot Peppers, Scallions

Today’s nachos come courtesy of Spike’s Junkyard Dogs, which are best known for their delicious hot dogs, but they make a mean order of nachos as well. After finding the fair of the area restaurants rather lackluster I needed to branch out to something quick and dirty, which these definitely are, but they were honestly the best I had in Providence. There’s no doubt that they’re just glorified concession nachos, and what they call “cheddar cheese” is just nacho cheese, but man, they are a taste sensation. Are they as good as their hot dogs? I don’t know if I would go that far, but compared to the rest of the nachos you might have had in town, definitely a vast improvement. When something covered in nacho cheese beats out a bunch of regular restaurant nachos, something must be going wrong with the very fabric of reality...

The afternoon was spent learning about how calling Lovecraft’s oeuvre “The Cthulhu Mythos” is a misnomer and how it should instead be called “The Yog-Sothoth Mythos” as that was who he wanted his main creation to be. Did that just blow your mind? Probably only if you are a casual fan, as a real fan would have already known that and a not fan is probably only here for the nacho reviews and can’t wait until I get done with all this NachoProviCon nonsense. For dinner I would have gone to some other place for another order of most likely subpar nachos, but instead I had dinner with the renowned game designer Sandy Peterson (He put the Lovecraft references in DOOM and Quake) at a restaurant so fancy that it didn’t even have nachos. What it did have was a massive steak and a delicious slice of Key Lime Pie, both of which I ate, wishing with every bite that they were nachos instead...

Who would have thought this crew would be lovers of complicated board games based on the writings of early 20th century horror authors?

The night ended with a Providence event by the name of WATERFIRE, where they light the very canals which run through the city on fire, much like the Cuyahoga River, play some Nordic music, and just come off as thoroughly badass while the frightened citizens cower in terror. What made tonight’s events all the more terrifying were the addition of chanting cultists and Lovecraftian monsters flopping around and gibbering in the streets in honor of the conference. You can hear their terrible chants here, or you can take my word for it that it was BADASS, for the first few minutes that is. Fifteen minutes of chanting later I was bored out of my mind, unable to find any nacho vendors, and headed back to my hotel room. They may have summoned Cthulhu after I left, but I wouldn’t know. I’d obviously be a terrible cultist.

The summoning.

dexgormenghast's video on Instagram

Forward to NachoProviCon Day Four! ----- Backwards to NachoProviCon Day Two!

NachoProviCon: Day Two

The day began like any other that you might spend in a hotel, with the overly complicated alarm clock failing to go off. If not for the forethought that failure of electronics is a side effect of the thinning of the veil between the spheres I could have kissed going to another day of panels on whether Lovecraft was a racist or not goodbye. This not being the case, I dressed and was promptly birthed from the hotel into the downtown, or DT.

There are currently fewer people living in Providence now than in Lovecraft’s time a hundred years ago. If judging from who I saw around me, most of them appeared to be the sort of folks that you would find at a bus terminal, which is to be expected considering that their bus terminal is located directly downtown. They’re also the sort of people that Lovecraft would have been terrified of, if you know what I mean, but that's unsurprising considering he was also afraid of seafood. Fun fact of the day; Lovecraft really loved ice cream. He also had nice things to say about Hitler, although to be fair that was before he was aware of what was going on over there in Germany. But how about those nachos.

Pork, Mole, Cotija Cheese, Cilantro, Crema

Today’s dish was at Viva Mexico Cantina Grill, a lovely establishment serving authentic Mexican food, and, if you go Friday evening, a live mariachi band. Service was slow, enough so that I mention it here because usually I let that slide, but not today. Also they don’t technically have nachos, instead they have “Chips Rancheros” which for something they don’t call nachos are a lot closer to nachos than the ones yesterday down the street at Ri Ra. The chips were fine, nice and homemade. They were covered with Cotija Cheese, which is that powdery Mexican cheese that looks like Parmesan or Feta but isn’t, so if you’re not a fan of that watch out. The Pork was fine, nothing super about it one way or another.

Where the trouble began was the mole. Mole has the interesting property of when it’s overheated it turns into a kind of bean cement that’s not particularly appetising, and that was the case here. The bottom of the dish was a mass of chips glued together in a crunchy beany conflagration that was not so pleasant on either the eye or the tongue. This was the same for several other parts of the dish where what would have been correctly sized delicious bites had overheated in several places and turned into large ungainly chunks. Overall, again not impressed with the state of Providence’s nachos.

The remainder of the day was made up of more panels and more scholarly debate on whether he was a racist/homophobe/xenophobe/misogynist/anti semite, or just no more of any of those than anyone else during his time. No consensus was reached, but when one of the panels talked specifically about racism in Lovecraft and not only were none of the speakers people of color but 99.99% of the audience were also honkeys, not sure how good a sign that is. H.P. also loved cats! Does that make up for something?

Guess the stars weren’t quite yet right for the end of days/nachos. Perhaps tomorrow will be...

It only took five and a half hours, but we managed to save Arkham from the foul Shub-Niggurath. Good thing the ton of nachos I had for lunch were enough to power me through.

Forward to NachoProviCon Day Three! ----- Backwards to NachoProviCon Day One!

NachoProviCon: Day One

Well friends, it’s here. The stars are right, the gates are open, the veils cast aside, the colors out of space and shadows out of time. The some Lovecraft reference is something else related to some other Lovecraft reference, which with the H.P. Lovecraft conference NecronomiCon currently taking place in Providence, RI is to be expected. This of course means that concurrently the even grander nacho event, NachoProviCon, is going down as well.

The first stop on  the tour was the Ri Ra Irish Pub, because if there was a group of people Lovecraft cared for it was the Irish. Just kidding, that old racist didn’t care for them much as all, considering their language only a step above the grunting of cave people. The Irish American Alliance was the dish I asked for, which I was assured by the waiter was nachos, but this is what I got.

Dorito Chips, Potato Crisps, Savory Ground Beef, Irish Cheddar, Pico de Gallo, Avocado, Fresh Jalapeno, Sour Cream

Much like the “nachos” at the American flag burger restaurant The Reservoir, these are not nachos, but rather just chips and dip, and not good chips either. They reminded me of chips that had been left out for quite some time so that the Doritos were not solid enough to support the weight of the dip, while the potato chips were just chewy and damp. UNIMPRESSED. The dip was rather tasty, and if they had just put that on top of fresh chips instead of leaving it in a little cast iron pan it would have been way better. Hell, even if the chips had been left out all day they still would have tasted better soaked in dip than on their own. But they didn’t do that, so, unimpressed.  

The first Lovecraftian experience of the day was the keynote address at the First Baptist Church in America, the very church where, as the story goes, young H.P. was kicked out of at the tender age of 5. We were promised greetings by Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and prominent Lovecraft scholar S.T.Joshi, but all was not to be. The former did not appear and instead sent some lackey to thank us all for coming, which was probably not a bad idea as political figures associating themselves with old racists is usually not a selling point (Outside of The South that is) no matter what kind of writer they are. S.T. Joshi however delivered in bulk, including a lovely anecdote about how Lovecraft once played “Yes we have no bananas” on the church’s organ.

Joshi was the only non-honkey at the event, and the rest of the crowd so strange that they would have lost in a beauty contest to someone with The Innsmouth Look.

All this would have been a lot better however if it wasn’t 90+ degrees out and the air conditioning was nonexistent in a church almost 300 years old. Plus a 9 minute rendition of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to start the event followed by a 5 minute Norse dirge while I was sitting there sweating through my pants might have been a bit of an oversight. Was it informative? Yes. Was there a guy dressed like Aleister Crowley and painted yellow and pink? Yes. It was obviously going to be quite the event.

After this was a trip over to the Providence Athenaeum Library for the grand unveiling of the Lovecraft bust, picture above, and a viewing of the original picture of Cthulhu and the original manuscript for Call of Cthulhu. They were both locked away in their rare books room in an area even more secure than the one the Necronomicon itself would have been locked away in. Assuming it was a real book that is.

This little guy here is what all the rage is about.

By sheer coincidence I happened to run into the boys behind the wildly popular and informative H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, which I highly recommend for all your Lovecraftian needs, struck up a conversation with the kind gentlemen and was invited to sup with them that very night. Enter The Union Station Brewery and the second order of nachos of the day.

Tortilla Chips, Cheddar Cheese, Jalapeno, Green Onion, Salsa Fresca, Sour Cream, Pulled Pork

While the pulled pork was a nice edition, as well as being sweet and tasty, the rest of the dish left a little something to be desired. The mound of chips was not layered well, in that there was a thin coating of toppings at the summit, but a massive amount of chips between that and the layer far below, which was only an incredibly small amount of cheese. The chips were also not of the best quality and ultimately created an overall lackluster nacho combination. What was even sadder was that the Union Station Brewery is also operated by the same people who run a restaurant back home that deals in the tastiest nachos around, but that tastiness must not extend into Rhode Island. So far NachoProviCon is leaving a lot to be desired. Also their Root Beer, no free refills, which is a pricey surprise when you have a love for Root Beer that matches your love of nachos.

The rest of the evening was spent adventuring around downtown Providence before finally needing to turn in for the evening. NachoProviCon and NecronomiCon were both just beginning, and you have to pace yourself, even with two new BFF’s. Should the sun rise on day two of the convention and the world continue spinning without the return of the Great Old Ones, there would be plenty more time for Lovecraftian experiences. And nachos of course.

You might not think it to look at them but the ladies of Providence will never forget these two hounds. 

Forward to NachoProviCon Day Two!

Nacho Mail + NachoProviCon

Oh, just FYI, Nachonomics now has a mailbox, you know, in case you wanted to send us anything fun. I don't know what that would be, but you can now do so at:

Nachonomics, P.O. Box 222, Jefferson, MA 01522

Also you may have heard of the H.P. Lovecraft convention, NecronomiCon, which is taking place later this week, but if so forget about it. What you should be concerning yourself with is the other upcoming event taking place this week in Providence, that being NachoProviCon, which will be far more delicious and contain fewer unspeakable beings from out of space and time. Prepare yourself for the eldritch deliciousness, as much as the human mind can that is...