Category: Life

Here’s a picture of Tara and I from the Dallas trip. And I wrote a small press release with a group picture on it. I really should get my own digital camera. The one we had was kind of crusty.

Last weekend Heather Smith and Ben Matthews got married. Two days before they asked me to play bass on a song they wanted to sing together at the ceremony. I said sure. It was “The Promise” by Tracy Chapman and it was a tricky little tune. The parts were recorded on a fretless, and probably a 5-string, but I did what I could and it didn’t seem to overly suck. So that’s always good. After that I went home to Harrison for the first time since spring. Yes, I’m a terrible son.

Meet my mom.

I need to buy a new suit. I suppose I’ve taken for granted that my job doesn’t require any great measure of formal dress. I mostly wear khakis and something with a collar. I haven’t worn a tie in I don’t know how long. This weekend my office is going to Dallas for the Katie Awards (a website maintained by yours truly, by the way) and it’s a formal affair. I’ve outgrown my old suit (yes, I really only own one) and several of my Oxford shirts, which is a scary proposition for me. The belt doesn’t even go around my waist anymore…I guess that’s more a comment on how old the suit is rather than any unusual weight gain on me. I’m still only 160 pounds. So anyway, I’m going to this thing, and I invited Tara up from Austin to join me. It should be a fun weekend. Hopefully I can meet up with all my Dallas people.

Next weekend I hope to get up to Harrison to see the fall colors…November 1 is the day Heather and Ben are getting married, so I won’t be able to start the drive until about 3 or 4 p.m. I realize none of this information is at all useful or amusing to you, so I’ll try harder in the last paragraph.

I’m also working on a website for Ross Rice and trying to update Jan Cyrka’s site as well. And I still haven’t finished reorganizing this site. And I haven’t updated Little Rock Guitar in forever…so little time! I guess I’ve been slacking off on the web stuff in favor of books – I just recently finished Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway and Steven Soderbergh’s Getting Away With It. Speaking of Soderbergh, I found another copy of Schizopolis on VHS at the junk store up the street. Price tag: $1.00. Rock on. Now I need to find somebody to give it to. Who would enjoy such a bizarre film…Barry? Heath? I may give away both copies I have now that I’ve just discovered that it comes out on DVD next week.

Exclamation of excitement! Hearty recommendation to others about film’s quality. Caveat to the less adventurous that the film is initially hard to understand. Reassurance of quality.

Click here to see an interesting scene from the sky via MSN’a Terraserver.

Other things you can find the American desert: Sky City. Acoma, New Mexico is a place that inspires Jamie Myerson’s Sky City albums, and it’s also place beloved by writer Natalie Goldberg. The connection between these two artists is that Bassgirl Natalie gave me a Goldberg book in which Sky City is mentioned and I gave her a CD featuring a track from Jamie Myerson’s Sky City.

Today’s word is "synchronicity."

Good show at Cajun’s on Saturday. Finally we had a decent gig, so Natalie won’t think we’re total losers. Brian the soundguy said she sounded even better than Roy. Plus she brought cookies. Mmmmm…cookies.

Sunday it was rainy. I saw two ambulances on Rodney Parham within 300 yards of each other. One was for a no-injury accident. The other was at a retirement home. Few things are as depressing as seeing an ambulance at a retirement home. In the rain. You’re pretty much assured that someone has died or is very near death.

So I went and got a smoothie. Then I went to Banjo Center, which is evidently where all the guitar-twanging kids go on a rainy day. I guess it’s not the best weather for skateboarding. I bought a bunch of bass and drum magazines for $1.99 each. And I talked to Frank Cox and his kid for a bit.

Last night I watched “The Red Violin” which is a great film about the history of a 300-year old violin. All the stories about its creator and owners makes me wonder if in 200 years someone might make a movie about the life of a vintage Fender strat or something. I wonder about the lives of my guitars sometimes. What secrets are they keeping? What have they seen? Well, only a couple are older than I am…so maybe they haven’t seen or done a whole lot. Although most of them were born on another continent…

As I was leaving work on Friday, Jo told me that I was the coolest guy she’s met online. That’s always nice to hear, as I assume she’s met several people online. Maybe I’m wrong. So I thought, “that’s such a nice thing to have said about me, I think I’m going to write that on a certificate and present it to myself.” Well instead I goofed off in Photoshop and made this thing. I would’ve spent more time on it to make it more clever, but I’ve had other stuff to do this weekend like being sick and studying for the LSAT.

Is it Cold and Flu Season already? Perhaps it’s the recent temperature drop around here, or maybe it’s because I haven’t been taking my vitamins (Total cereal says it has 100% of my vitamins covered – perhaps it’s all just another lie), but I’ve been sick since Tuesday night. I felt it coming on after leaving the UCA gig. We had the classic no-audience gig for the first time. We were playing a pep rally at UCA (colleges have pep rallies?) and we went on after the peppiness. Evidently there was just enough pep left in everyone to grab their free pizza and evacuate the building. I suspect that the populace of the rally were coerced into attendance by their respective frats and sororities, and once that obligation was fulfilled, they exited post haste. Oh well, we got a paid rehearsal in a big hall. We used the time to goof off as much as possible. I turned my guitar up really loud and played some Steve Vai riffs for my own gratification.

And here’s the new bass player for Superflux, Natalie. She’s a jazzer and a pianist, so she’s like a real musician and stuff. She’s the first bassist we’ve had that seems to really lock in with the bizarre sense of humor that Steve, Cara and I exhibit. Not only does she tolerate our dumb (yet often overly erudite) jokes, she openly participates in them. So that’s a real plus. Not to mention that she has pretty much nailed the tunes in just a few weeks’ time. Plus she’s cuter than Phil or Roy. And they’re both handsome men. Not that I’m gay or anything. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Heath and Mary Beth are getting married! Like many of our nation’s nubile youth, they’re choosing a low-key, quasi-elopement ceremony devoid of the conventional cultural trappings. Like the Odegards, Parsons and Mumfords before them, they’re getting married on their own terms and eschewing the public eye. It’s easier, it’s less stressful, it’s more intimate…marriage as a sociological event continues to morph as the years pass. Who knows where it will lead? The date is set for October. Next in line: Adnan and Kelly.

New Photo Album. Drawn mainly from pictures that have been sitting inside various cameras waiting for their rolls to be filled up. Mostly road pictures from July’s Nashville trip and May’s Dallas trip.

Isn’t this a swell picture of Nica? She’s all orange now. It works.

Tonight I discovered the joys of Turner Classic Movies. I watched most of “Witness for the Prosecution” (still on a Billy Wilder kick I guess) and it was great. Plus I dug up an interview with Gregory Peck that’s just beautiful. I need to go get “To Kill a Mockingbird” on DVD.

Last weekend I played a dive called Ultrashock in Levy with my friend Thelton’s band Jacobin Club. The band played from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. I had to drink a tall cup of EZ Mart coffee to stay awake. Luckily I only played two of the four sets, since they just needed someone to fill in on the songs that required the extra guitar. Their main guitarist recently departed, leaving them only with Andy, who is a keyboardist first and a guitarist second. The venue was…downtrodden. I knew I was in for a fun night when I saw that the soundman had a handgun and Pantera CD on his deck. But it wasn’t as bad as, say, Patrick Swayze’s Road House. But then, what venue can ever aspire to that level of skank? I forget if it was Tom Servo or Crow who was so fond of the line “I’m gonna make you my main Saturday night thing,” but it was my Saturday and Friday night thing last weekend.

Free mix CD to the first person who can tell me to what “Jacobin Club” refers AND tell me the name of the titular road house in which Patrick Swayze was employed. Without looking it up on the Net.