holiday haul (xmas + my own)

i forgot to mention in my last entry that i rolled 69k on the pickup during my trip home over the holidays. i was somewhere in austin near or on lamar when it happened. i didn’t actually see it.
i also forgot to mention that november 23rd was the one year anniversary of owning the bel air. which just happens to be the exact same day the engine blew. coincidence? i’ve got a pretty good idea of what engine i’m going to put into it — i’m still trying to figure out who i’m going to get to do the work.
in my last entry i forgot to mention that on new year’s day before i packed and took off for austin i decided to eat at brasil for lunch. (because i was already running late, so i might as well go ahead and eat lunch, right?) there was this really cool four-piece playing a lot of folk, country, jazz, and swing kind of stuff. one guy played a washtub bass and the saw, as well as guitar. and the female fiddle player had a really cool voice that sounded like 40’s/50’s female singers. i didn’t catch their name or anything though. last night i did some online searching but came up empty. i finally called brasil and asked if they knew. they said it was a group of whoever shows up, but they also play there on tuesday nights. so i may have to show up at brasil on some tuesday nights to see what kind of stuff they play week to week.
yesterday i had lunch at sylvia’s with the potts clan (minus jackson, who was at a birthday party). i continue to highly recommend the carne guisada and sylvia’s tortilla soup. seriously, if you want some great mexican food go there.
now we get to the part where i start listing all of the stuff i got for xmas, as well as the stuff i’ve bought for myself recently. instead of listing it by who got me what, i’m going to instead break it down into categories that make sense to me…

• sigg aluminum “red alert” bottle (black bottle with red skull and crossbones made from lots of small font icons/images
• “still life” skull votive by kosta boda
• hooligan (skull) rugby socks by lucky 13
• crystal head vodka (now that’s a cool bottle…not sure about the contents)
• skull bandana

• lucky 13 “born to lose” wolf chino jacket — this jacket design is tops! seriously, this jacket is awesome.
• lucky 13 “born to lose” black, studded, leather belt — all sites i saw except one said size “l” would fit me…all sites but one were wrong. it’s still a cool belt.

• all of the absolute sandman volumes, 1-4 (dc comics) — big format, leather-bound, hardcover, slipcased, remastered compilations of neil gaiman’s sandman comics. these things doth rock mightily. i provided a link to the first, you can get to the rest from it.
• 20th anniversary limited edition (1000) sandman and death bookends — mine are 821/1000. they look really cool.
• madman gargantua! (image) — big format, hardcover reprinting the original two madman 3-issue series and the twenty issues on dark horse, plus some extra stuff.
• madman – limited edition box set (dark horse) — this is a limited edition box of two hardcover volumes collecting 1-5 and 6-10 of the dark horse madman run. they come in a black slipcase with a silver embossed madman and exclamation bolt on the outside of the slipcase. (i actually haven’t gotten this in the mail yet…i hope it’s in good shape.)
• the atomics (diamond) — they said they had a hardcover, but they sent me a softcover (recent release by image comics). i bet their website is wrong. i bet they don’t have a hardcover.
• the atomics – spaced out and grounded in snap city! (oni press) — a tpb collection of four individual comics about different atomics characters
• madman t-shirts (from strange candy ink) — that black ringer shirt is awesome! i haven’t gotten this stuff in the mail yet…
• batman pez collector’s set (two-face, riddler, joker, and batman with custom chest logo)

• the unreleased recordings – hank williams (time life) — almost destroyed transcriptions by wsm radio finally make their way to the public, increasing the known recordings of hank by over 50%
• the complete recordings of the father of western swing – milton brown and the musical brownies (Texas rose) — this compilation was put together with the help of milton’s brother, and released with the blessing of the brown estate
• devo: live 1980 – devo (target video) — this is a recording of a devo concert from 1980. i was really impressed by the performance. at one point they showed some punk/new wave girls in the front row with partially shaved heads and lots of black eyeliner and i thought “hey, she’s pretty hot” — which was immediately followed by “hey…she’s probably about 50 years old right now! i wonder what she’s doing and what she looks like these days.”

• oxford american magazine subscription — my initial issue was an anniversary edition with two cds of southern music
• all over the map: true heroes of Texas music – michael corcoran (university of Texas press)
• milton brown and the founding of western swing – cary ginell (university of illinois press)

• reservoir dogs (15th anniversary edition) – tarantino (lionsgate) — blu-ray 15th anniversary edition of the classic tarantino film
• why i am not a calvinist – jerry walls and joseph dongell (intervarsity press) — i don’t want to be a calvinist. even if they do have good arguments. unfortunately, the anti-calvinist camp is usually found to be intellectually lacking as far as reasoning and strong arguments go. hopefully this book remedies that.

• hexbug — mine is delta (the black one)
• various candy and stocking stuffer materials
• some essential oils and soaps from bath and body works
• a container for holding my xmas lights and sundry xmas paraphernalia during the off season

i think that pretty much covers it. maybe.