I’ll pontificate further, after I finish going jobsite (that means yelling at people over the phone, for those of you that don’t speak badowski) on some people.I’ve come to the conclusion that PR firms are kind of like the mafia. Except the mafia has better customer service/satisfaction rates.
Give me 95 and sunny any day over this.
The entire city is shutdown for a bit of ice and snow. The weathermen are all having aneurysms, they’re so excited and the statesman is, of course, calling this the end times.
People in the northeast are laughing at us similar to the way we laugh at their ‘heat waves.’ An amusing anecdote to Texas is that nobody can drive in ice, snow or really anything slippery. We do many things well here, but not that. Hence the metropolitan lockdown.
A bike ride would be pretty cool though…
South Austin is one of those special places in the world. If you’ve never been here you probably don’t understand. Take some old hippies, some new hippies, some Mexican culture, a good music scene that runs the gamut between country to punk, mix them all up with some great food to be found in some fantastically crusty dives, and you’ve got a close approximation.
Artz Rib House is a great example. Serious BBQ, live music, and one of the top five sketchiest bathrooms on South Lamar. Last night they sat our party of four at at six-top in the main room where the music was happening. Soon enough our spare seats were taken by two Old-Austin-Type-Folks. These are the ones who’ve been here since the mid 70’s when there were more prostitutes than musicians and frat boys on 6th street. They’ve been the music scene and presumably they all personally knew Stevie Ray Vaughn.
So J.B. and MariBeth. They plop down at our table, absolutely taken aback that the hostess would try and seat them anywhere other than directly in front of the weee stage, so would we mind sharing our table ? He’s got the long grey hair and leather motorcycle vest thing going on. Dimes to Dollars he’s seen some interesting days in this town and others. A musician, a pianist classically trained. They know and introduce us to members of the band. They know Art, proprietor, slinger of excellent BBQ and sides and introduce us. Orbits and trajectories that would have remained mutually exclusive are smashed together by the inexorable force of gravity that is South Austin. That’s why we love it here.
At the end of dinner, brow perspiring from the excessive meal, I scrape the last resisting remnant of the baked potato through the detritus of a half rack of baby back ribs and sausage. J.B. regards the wreckage of my plate, finished in record time and says, “Son, I’m proud to know you.”
You too man.
Frontier Airlines Rep: No Sir, you can’t cancel your flight for refund, but we can re-book you to anywhere we fly.
Me: Right, but all your flights connect through Denver, right ?FAR: Well..yes…
Me: And aren’t they looking at closing the airport tomorrow..? Like what happened last week ?
FAR: Well.. yes…
Me: So…
FAR: Sir, you can’t cancel your flight for a refund, but we can re-book you to anywhere we fly.
Wow. This is what I get for flying an airline with pictures of cute fuzziness on the tails of their planes.
So I had a bunch of really great posts planned for this week…. I was actually going to start one on Sunday night at the Green Muse. How trendy and emo of me to be posting a thoughtful entry to my website while sipping wine on the porch of a coffee shop.
Or not. Apparently I’ve pissed off some computer god, because my ibook that I just spent two bills getting back into working order, decided I really hadn’t spent enough money on it yet. I open the screen and all i get is this strange screen burn image (like what you see in scary movies when satan is about to jump out of the monitor), followed by vertical lines in pretty colors.
Awesome.
So, I am sans computer for another 7-10 working days, while Apple replaces the positronic brain, hopefully exercising whatever demonic influences are living in the screen. Hence the lack of activity on the site.
Interestingly enough there’s a petition out for extending the G3 logic Board replacement program to my model of computer (I have a G4 and it’s not covered). Over 1,400 people have had this problem, or at least have signed the petition. I wonder how many busted macs it takes for Apple to take notice.
Because if you don’t, you’ll have no justification for yelling at the TV for the next two years. Find your precinct headquarters in Travis county here.
Karl Rove is not Aleister Crowley, Severus Snape, Darth Vader or Satan. You can kill him by ensuring your vote is counted and being vigilant at your polling station.”
From Warren Ellis’s BAD SIGNAL mailing list: (via boing boing)
Update (aka the ‘morning after’ the long dark political hell, that the last 6+ years have been): It’s like a political Christmas, and Santa keeps throwing presents our way…
Somebody (not me) mucked up the mySQL setup, casuing about 18 hours of downtime for the site. Fatwade is displeased.
Yup. I’ve got freakin’ spaceships on my page. Because I’m awesome.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think…
I know this is everywhere, but I think it should be everywhere. The mainstream media is a disgrace and here Bill Clinton gets to call them on it. I hope Chris Wallace’s dad is thoroughly ashamed of him.
Update: Again, just pounding the drum here, this clip of Keith Oberman talking about the interview is almost as important as the interview itself. (Both this and the Fox Video are getting hard to find because of various take-down notices being volleyed by fox’s army of lawyers.)
Update: The Daily Show follows up the follow-up coverage.
So this year there were no weddings, hurricanes or both to prevent us from attending the festival. This thing is really well done. First, the sets are just long enough to hold my attention, the variety is impressive, and the logistics are pretty damn well thought out – free water, miles and miles of port-a-cans, ample food and beverage (at almost reasonable prices), and even some ok stuff to buy.
I also never realized how many tourists come in for this event. There are a lot of out of town people… they’re the ones in heels and jeans (I’m totally serious here, no sarcasm).
Anyhow, here’s the lineup we’ve partaken of :
Day 1
Tristan Prettyman
Stars
Nickel Creek
Gnarls Barkley – Check your thesaurus for overrated, these guys are there
Gomez
Ray Lamontagne – A suprise, awesome live show
Van Morrison
Day 2
Centro-matic – damn fine live show
Phoenix – frenchies who rock out, and good
Galactic
The Shins –
They were probably really good, but seeing as there were so many people there (half the damn town) and that we had an incident with some inconsiderate youths who weren’t aware of some of the courtesies involved in festival going (like don’t walk on our blanket and don’t talk shit to my wife), we bailed a little early. So I almost punched a 17 year old, so what.
Moving on…
Calexico
What Made Milwaukee Famous
Explosions in the Sky – Oh, hell yes.
Willie Neslon – From so far in the back I could barely make out the jumbotron, but hey it’s Willie. (And no, i didn’t take the picture)
Day 3 – In which we are tired, but still walk alot. And we discover the chicken cone.
Jack Ingram – meh
Patrice Pike – hello L.A. rockstar
The New Pornographers – the Cd was better
Sonvolt – Always great
The Flaming Lips
Ben Harper – that hippie has gotten angry
G-Love and the Special Sauce – yeah, rad
Tom Petty – from at least half a mile away, as the first thunderstorm in six months rolled down out of the hill country.
Get more perspective on the fun times here.
