Month: March 2005

The weather today is fabulous. The weather Friday was amazing. Saturday and Sunday…unending spittles of cold rain. Zoe had a couple of days of adventure as she ran off through the neighborhood to escape the thunderstorm. She has a severe case of thunder-phobia. Matt put up signs on Friday and a woman called on Saturday with a Zoe sighting on Kavanaugh. Thankfully he found her. She slept most of the weekend.

Matt and I made a lame attempt at having a birthday party on Saturday afternoon, but with the weather and the holiday, people stayed away in droves. Oh well. More cheese and beer for me.

I spent Sunday compiling tracks for the numerous volumes of Mix CDs I’m preparing for many many people. However when I hit the Big Red Button to start the first burn, my machine old me I have no writer. The new CDRW drive I got from Ben is clearly marked “CDRW” so I’m not sure what the problem is. Probably some driver crap. Pooter.

Und ve conclude ze Ploggy goodness veet dis final selection uf abschtracht art.

Today we have pictures from last weekend’s Austin jaunt to South by Southwest.

I’ve got a backlog of photo journal material. Maybe I can get it all done. The first bit is ready now.

Proper update regarding the details of last weekend’s trip to Austin will be forthcoming. Stay tuned.

And on this day is birthed a new blog format, courtesy of Heath. Certainly the gift that keeps on giving. Still much stylistic widdling to do on it for me, but that shouldn’t take long. Still some bugs here and there – the IE layout is not safe (get Mozilla Firefox). But let me know what you, my adoring and sporadic audience, think.

I have digital cable and cable internet now! Prior to this Friday I had no cable TV and a 56k internet connection. Now I have more channels than I even know about, and a properly speedy web connection. Ordinarily such a rapid shift would cause me to get the infotainment bends, as the oppressive weight of 20th century technology was so quickly ripped away. But I’ve been taking it easy, watching only VH1 Classic and only sporadically checking my email. And playing drums a lot. VH1 Classic is amazing, though. Their definition of “classic” is apparently very loose: the latest Beastie Boys track is classic? Obscure metal videos by Tangier and Enuff Z’nuff are classic? Perhaps “classic” refers to the formula, like Classic Coke, whereby the channel does what a music video channel used to do: play music videos, new and old, popular and unpopular. Itls magnificent. The danger is that I’ll waste an hour sitting in front of the TV waiting for a good video to appear. Just like I did in the 80’s. If they bring back “Yo! MTV Raps,” I’m doomed.

Friday night Jessica and I went to see The Aviator, which was really quite good. I managed to forget that Leonardo DiCaprio still looks like a 12 year old, which is a credit to his skills as an actor. Cate Blanchett rocked the Kate Hepburn impression. I think it’s much harder to play a real person than to invent one, because if you invent one, there aren’t millions of people out there who’ll know that you got it wrong. And much props to the soundtrack for re-introducing me to Django Reinhardt’s “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” I’d forgotten how much I love that song.

UPDATE: I’ve just discovered that VH1 Classic does, in fact, have a “Yo! MTV Raps” hour block. So far, of the stuff I’ve never seen before: Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s “Mistadobalina” and Dana Dane’s “Tales From the Dana Side” featuring Kwame and Kid n’ Play. This is as close as I’ll get to time travel. One observation about hip-hop: in the old school videos, the rhymes were all about being the best MC. Today it’s about having the most money.

Sad.

Last night I went to Memphis to check out Steve Vai‘s show at the New Daisy Theatre. My previous two experiences seeing Vai were both abbreviated G3 appearances, but this was a full 2+ hour show. Quite a difference. I heard many many notes. Several of them high and squealy. Steve make guitar go zoom zoom. I think they may have had an off night, though. I’m a fan of maniacal guitar abuse, but even I was a little worn out by the end. We were in the balcony so we missed all of Billy Sheehan‘s bass; the signal probably just went straight under us. And the venue…good lord the New Daisy needs some ventilation. It was like living inside an enormous cigarette. Bleah. I still smell it.

My drums arrived yesterday as well. I would be putting them together right now were it not for the fact that it’s painfully cold outside in the garage. The weather should warm up soon, though. Hopefully it will be tolerable tomorrow.

Also I met with Mara Leveritt from Arkansas Times today. She’s doing a piece on blogging and wanted some info on blogging in general and me specifically. I have to admit I’m a little concerned about the publicity this might generate. I mean, what if people actually started reading this crap?