failure weblog

sunday night i watched broken wings. it’s an israeli movie about a family that has collapsed after the husband/father died. the movie is set a number of months after he has died. the movie deals a lot with the mother and her relationship with her four children. she is trying to hold a job (as a midwife) and be a single mother, and trying to be able to survive and maybe even move on in life. each child is trying to cope with things in their own way, but the hardest hit are the two oldest — a daughter and son. as far as the children, more time is spent on the oldest child, a daughter. it was an interesting film and deals with what would be a difficult time for any family.
monday i took a sick day. you know, i have a lot of sick time. i generally rarely take it. it kind of makes me wish my work would just give us generic “time off” that we could use for sick, personal, or vacation time. i think i’d come out a lot better. it’s not like i take vacation time much either. not that i’d admit it on here anyway, but i didn’t go anywhere on my sick day — i was at home. the only time i left was to eat supper (because i don’t really have any food to speak of in my house). monday night i watched the libertine. it’s a movie with johnny depp and john malkovich about john wilmot, the earl of rochester (played by depp), who lived in 17th century england during the reign of charles ii (played by malkovich). it’s a pretty impressive piece of work — both with dialog and visually. it’s a very rich, decadent film. it’s based on the real life of the earl. the film deals with a lot of overindulgence and debauchery, but there is a kind of sadness in the revelry and what drives it.
tuesday night i watched my copy of valley girl. it’s kind of campy, but an 80’s version of romeo and juliet (“randy” and “julie” — nicolas cage and deborah foreman) set in hollywood and the valley can’t be all bad, right? there is some really goofy stuff, but there are also some pretty cool bits as well.
wednesday at the radio show, we spent some discussing whether it is acceptable to be putting stickers of any kind on laptops. (see the picture of my previous entry to know where i stand on the issue. 🙂 dwight isn’t a fan of stickers on laptops (as his comment on my previous entry states), so we talked about it and had some conversations about it during the show. after the show, i went to the richmond arms with amateria (jamie) and aphelia. jamie had dropped by the studio during the show, and aphelia was in town from england for work, so jamie hatched a plan to meet up somewhere. we picked a place near the galleria since that’s the area where aphelia was staying. i don’t think stickers on laptops came up.
tomorrow is a holiday. i plan to enjoy it.
julie: wait a minute. where are we going to go?
randy: i don’t care.
julie: what are we going to do?
randy: anything.
(from valley girl)

saturday i finally made up my mind. i stopped by high times and picked up some incense and other stuff. (head shops have really good incense, yo. if you like incense, try one.) but before that, i’d headed to the galleria. i called ahead and the store verified they had them in stock. when i got to the mall, i pulled on to the second floor parking by macy’s and sak’s and there was a parking spot right by the catwalk. this was when it was verified to me that G-d wanted me to have this. i walked in, said what i wanted, and was out within 20 or 30 minutes. so without further ado:

yep, i bought a macbook air. and today i modded it to show off its unix roots (as you can see in the low quality, poorly lit picture above). i also got the ethernet dongle, an apple remote, the superdrive, and applecare. i got an edu discount on everything, so that helped some.
i’ve yet to really do much with it, but i got it up and configured and downloaded all of the patches for it. it was kind of a hard decision, even though i was pretty sure it would serve my needs well. in the end, it just seemed like a reasonable choice, and dwight’s positive experience with his review unit helped seal the deal. so hopefully i’ll be happy with it for the next 3 years or so.
later i met up with the potts in hermann park, where they were taking easter pictures of the kids. that was kind of like herding cats. due to some issues, jack ended up taking the kids to eat while sue went with me. we went to chipotle and hung out for awhile, then we came back to my place and she saw the macbook air. we talked for awhile, then i drove her back to her house. we were supposed to all watch snl, but jack had already gone to bed. so sue and i watched the rest of snl and then i headed home.
today i met up with sue at the bopho loft and we went to eat for free at a new chili’s. it was their training period because the store was getting ready to open. from there we went by the yankee candle store in rice village. i have evidently successfully managed to lure sue into the yankee candle camp. of course, i couldn’t help but buy something while i was there too. i bought two big candles: juicy peach and lemon lavender. i mostly got the lemon lavendar because it was on sale…i’m not sure if i’ll like it when it’s burning or not. from there we went back to the loft, and i played some with dietrich and calista, plus i had a nice conversation with ryan (who’d come by with sarah.) he’s also the one i had a nice conversation with at the house of pies a couple of months ago. he seems like a pretty cool guy.

thursday evening i watched cowboy del amor. it’s a documentary about “cowboy cupid” ivan thompson, a down-home cowboy who discovered there was money to be made in setting up lonely american guys with mexican women for matrimony. ivan is a funny guy with a lot of home-spun wisdom, and it’s very interesting to watch him. for $3000, ivan could set me up. of course, it appears his own personal life isn’t as idyllic as his wisdom and matchmaking skills would suggest.
friday was a maintenance day, so i was able to go into work late. i was originally planning to not go in until 4pm, but i ended up not doing anything so i gave up and went into work after lunch. at the datacenter i had some spare time so i logged onto my netflix account through a windows box and randomly picked a movie to watch. i watched film geek. it’s an indie comedy about a guy who is infatuated with film and doesn’t really have any kind of life outside of that. it’s both sad and funny. he ends up meeting a cool girl (who was really attractive…it’s a movie made by film geeks, after all 🙂 and she sort of causes him to come out of his shell. well, some. it’s got a happy ending that sort of acknowledges the absurdity of itself by being over the top. but i was happy to see the movie, especially considering it was a random fast pick just to watch something. (site for the movie: http://www.scottysfilmpage.com/) i had a little more time, so i started watching ham and cheese. it’s a mockumentary about two guys who want to be actors, but aren’t very…aren’t any good. imagine movies like best in show, waiting for guffman, etc. except canadian. 😉 it was pretty funny, but not great. and i didn’t get to finish it because we completed the work we needed to do. of course, it may also be because i was distracted by work. stupid work interfering with my movies. haha.
a few days ago i noticed somafm (www.somafm.com) added a couple of channels. one of them is a jazz-based channel, so i haven’t tried it. but the other is called digitalis, and is geared toward electronic alt/pop rock stuff. think bands like the postal service, lali puna, dntel, styrofoam, ms. john soda, etc. i’m pretty excited about it and have been listening to it quite a bit.
i’ll save yesterday for another post, probably later today. i’ll just say i made a pretty exciting purchase. (well, exciting to me.) hopefully will have a pic or two.

last weekend (feb 29th – mar 2nd) was a pretty emotionally fscked up weekend. jack agreed to hang out with me sunday evening, so i went over to the loft and ended up helping him re-purpose some office chairs that were destined for a landfill. later, we went and ate at the house of pies. and we spent a few hours just hanging out and talking. that helped a lot.
comparatively, this weekend — while still not totally without internal drama — was much better. thank goodness. i prefer it when i’m not sitting around thinking maybe it’d just be best if i got my will in order.
at some point earlier last week i watched young adam. that was interesting. the story is pretty well told, and it keeps your interest even though the pace is fairly slow overall. but the characters and situations were kind of screwed up. it’s one of those things where it seems like everyone is mostly interested in what feels good and not too willing to consider the consequences. (or maybe even care.) a lot of the people were just doing screwed up stuff — like the main character. they were just sort of stumbling through life. i don’t think i’d recovered enough emotionally from the weekend to watch that kind of stuff and not be affected by it. so that was a bit of a setback for awhile.
thursday i was out sick. it was more of a mental health day than being physically sick, and i certainly used the day to work on my mental health. it was a wonderful diversion from the normal work schedule and drudgery of day-in/day-out life. in the late afternoon the ups guy delivered a couple of dickies two-tone work shirts i’d ordered. i hadn’t been sure of sizing or how much i’d like one of the color combos, so i bought two just to test the waters. as for size, i got xxl. the size appears to run pretty big. as for colors, i got a black/charcoal and a black/red. it’s a slightly dark red, but i’m not used to wearing red so it feels kind of weird. i’ve worn it a couple of times. i’m not sure if i’ll buy any more of the black/red or not. i wore the black/charcoal today, but i already knew i’d like it.
friday evening was the geek gathering. sue called me up in the afternoon and asked if i could take jackson and dietrich as they had a scheduling conflict and couldn’t use their normal sitters due to the short notice. dietrich is a bit of a hyper firecracker, so i wasn’t sure i’d be able to handle him at tropioca, but i said i could take jackson if necessary. she called me back and asked if she could drop him off at my work. when she showed up and he was getting out, dietrich was acting really dejected and sad. i felt bad for him, so after jackson shut the minivan door i quietly asked sue if dietrich wanted to go with me, and if he did it would be okay. she said he wanted to, so i leaned in and asked him if he wanted to go with me and jackson, he said yes, and i said it was okay if it was okay with his mom. she said it was okay, so he bounced up and got out. they hung out at work with me for an hour or something. i got them onto pbskids.org since that seems to completely occupy their attention easily. from there we went over to tropioca. the turnout this time around was okay. kd5 brought the olpc laptops again this time, so he let jackson and dietrich use them. i joked that he brought the olpcs and i brought the c’s. jack was supposed to pick them up at 9pm, but i hadn’t counted on that. so after a couple of hours at tropioca (they liked the smoothies, but not fans of the tapioca balls so much) they were chomping at the bit to move on. so i took them back to my house and we watched the empire strikes back (the original theatrical version, thank you very much). jack showed up to get them after midnight some time, and both of them had fallen asleep. i helped take them out to the car, then jack and i stood around and talked about things for awhile.
saturday i watched dark days. it’s a documentary shot in black and white about homeless people that were living in some underground areas of the amtrak subways in new york city. it was really interesting hearing their stories and seeing how they were living. it has a feel-good ending, which was actually somewhat surprising. the extras on the dvd are really good too — they backfill the story a lot and make you appreciate the film and who made it and what went into it.
a little later in the afternoon, i was at my computer when someone banged loudly on the screen door. i heard it open and saw the silhouette of a head coming into the patio and toward the door to the living room. i was thinking “who the hell is pounding on the screen and then just walking into the house?!” i got up and walked around the corner and saw that it was raj. i didn’t know exactly when he was going to be in town, but i knew it was early march. he hung out and talked to me for awhile, then he left.
not long after that i went to the dollar store to pick up some stuff. a little later i drove over to luling city market and picked up some brisket and sausage. i came home and got dressed up in boots, long sleeve western pearl snap shirt, western black leather jacket, and my dark grey fedora. why? chris and mary’s meat and martini party, of course! i was thinking it was possible i was going to have a date for it, but it didn’t pan out. it was still an enjoyable time. at the dollar store i’d bought two plastic barbie plates, a couple of big steak knives, and a plastic/ceramic cross with a psalm on it that ended in “have mercy.” i figured it was appropriate for all of the red meat about to be consumed. i also picked up a couple of bags of dinner mints, because i figured “hey, what is classier than a bowl of dinner mints?” i got to the party and sat up my meat display. i had a few drinks, smoked my pipe, and talked to a number of different people. red meat, alcohol, pipe, conversation — the only thing that would have made it better is having a date. 🙂 maybe next year.
sunday i ate lunch at onion creek with emily and the hartleys. i rode my motorcycle, but i didn’t take any kind of jacket and it was a bit chillier than i’d thought it was. a little later mark and adam showed up. i had a good time sitting there talking and joking with the people at the table. later in the afternoon i met emily at the angelika and we watched be kind, rewind. i really like gondry a lot. i don’t know that i think the movie was great, but it was funny and felt like gondry. i came home, and not too long after i showed up raj and kiera showed up. they got their mail i’d been saving and talked to me for a bit. later sunday night i watched operation: dreamland. it’s a documentary about a group of guys in the 82nd in the army that were stationed in fallujia in iraq during late 2004 or so. i thought it did a pretty good job of just showing what it’s probably like over there for the people, both the u.s. military guys and the iraqis they interact with.
monday when i got home there was an amazon order waiting for me. i’d bought some dvds a week or so ago, most of them were on sale. here’s what i got:

• * aliens collector’s edition (20th century fox)
• * american beauty awards edition (dreamworks)
• * barton fink (20th century fox)
• * desperado special edition (columbia)
• * the terminator (mgm)
• * uhf (mgm)
• * valley girl (mgm)

“my G-d. it’s full of stars…”
-dave bowman 2001: a space odyssey

some brilliant person came up with the idea of removing garfield from the garfield comic strips. what do you have left? a lonely, schizophrenic, bi-polar jon arbuckle. and for some reason, it really speaks to me. i guess maybe i see my future after my cat dies. here are a few examples:

 

 

 

 

go to garfield minus garfield and check out more of them.

even though i went to bed around 2am last night, i woke up on my own around 9:30am this morning. suck. not too long after that, i learned my managers from work had been trying to get in touch with me. in an email they said they’d called me and left a message. odd, since my phone hadn’t rung. i went and checked it…battery, signal, on…no missed calls, no voicemail. after taking care of the work issue, i turned off the phone, pulled the battery, put it back in, and turned it on. i immediately got 3 voicemails and 5 text messages. evidently my phone pretended like it was fine starting sometime around 10pm the night before, but actually wasn’t able to send or receive anything. *sigh* this has happened a few times before. i was hoping i could hold out for awhile, but i guess i may have to look into a new cell phone.
i walked over to jeni’s noodle house for lunch. on the way back i stopped by a custom stationary store to talk to them about getting custom notecards and wax stamps and such. i didn’t make any decisions. i then walked down to the new cactus music. it’s a pretty big store, and they have a whole section devoted to only vinyl. i didn’t buy anything though. they used to have it categorized by type of music, now it’s pretty much all just a-z. i kind of liked being able to peruse the country section. oh well. from there i walked back to the house.
i’ve been wrestling over some issues lately, and this afternoon provided a lot of time for me to do just that. i eventually decided i needed to stop thinking and do something for awhile. i called sue and she came over with the kids and picked me up. i went to a park with them, then we went to star pizza. jack showed up a little later. i talked to them about life and complexity and the seeming unfairness of it all. what can i say? it feels like life is a string of hopes and newness, followed by endings and disappointments. i guess that’s the cycle of life, or the way things are, or whatever, so it’s probably my perspective affecting that as much as anything else. i guess. things would probably be better if i could focus on the good and ignore the stuff that surrounds and undermines the good parts. or if maybe something could come along that didn’t actually have the bad aspects. or at least a minimal amount of them. that’d be really nice.
*sigh*
morgan earp: i read this book, book on spiritualism…
virgil earp: oh, G-d, here he goes…
morgan earp: …said a lot of people, when they’re dyin’, they see this light, like in a tunnel. they say it’s the light leading you to heaven.
[later in the movie, morgan is fatally wounded in a gunfight]
morgan earp: remember what i said about people seein’ a bright light before they die? it ain’t true. i can’t see a damn thing.
–bill paxton as morgan earp in tombstone

well, as i mentioned before i didn’t go home to brady this last weekend, so i was in town. i don’t really recall much of what i did over most of the weekend. saturday afternoon, a former coworker (josh) came over with his dad to look at the vw camper bus. his dad was thinking about buying it. he seemed to like it, but josh later called to say his dad had decided to pass on it (most likely because he decided he already had too many “projects” at home). oh well. it would have been nice to get rid of the bus so easily. while driving somewhere saturday evening i remember being worried i was going to run out of gas, so i pulled into a gas station, swiped my credit card, put the gas pump in my pickup…then they shut off the lights. and evidently the pumps. i got 7 cents of gas. i was kind of pissed. sunday afternoon i went looking for some two-tone dickies work shirts (which i didn’t find), then i ate at star pizza.
i had already asked for monday off, and i was maxed out on my vacation time, so i decided to go ahead and take at least part of monday off. i ended up taking the whole day off. because lucky for me, having monday off provided an opportunity to make plans to hang out with the hot russian chick from work before she had surgery on tuesday morning. (okay, that cutesy pseudonym is getting tedious…should i call her “thrcfw”, “thrc”, “trc”, or “julia”? decisions, decisions. anyway…) she came over and we hung out for a while. i’m happy i was able to spend some time with her before she had surgery, as she will be out of commission (and away from work) for probably at least a month or two. she also gave me her parking card so i can use it to park in the lot at work while she’s out. later i walked to subway and got a sandwich, then came back and watched some more episodes of dead like me. and that was my monday.
so my 3.5 day weekend didn’t really happen like i’d originally planned, but it ended up being a mostly relaxing and pleasurable time.
julia’s surgery was on tuesday during the day, so tuesday evening after work i dropped by the hospital to check on her. she was in pain and pissed off, but she was walking around some. i was planning to go check up on her again wednesday evening, but she and the hospital staff evidently both decided she didn’t need to be there anymore so she went home.
a while back i hooked up my old windows 98 desktop machine, but i never had turned it on. a few days ago i turned it on. i think the last time it was powered up was in 2004 or something. i basically stopped using it in 2002. it booted up — all hardware was fine and the o.s. booted. 98 was a good o.s. i shared the c drive over the network, mounted it from my mac desktop, and spent some time wednesday and thursday going through and finding everything i wanted to copy off. i found a bunch of stuff i’d sort of forgotten existed, or i’d written off to being lost in time. including some pics of tamara i’d forgotten i’d ever taken. *sigh* oh well. once i copied everything i wanted i went over to the box to look around on it, but the screen saver was on and for the life of me i can’t remember what the password was/is. ha. i’m still not sure what i’ll do with the hardware once i’m through with it. it’s all pretty old at this point.
joel: is there any risk of brain damage?
howard: well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it’s on a par with a night of heavy drinking. nothing you’ll miss.
(from eternal sunshine of the spotless mind)

i haven’t done much lately because i’ve been trying to make plans to do something with the hot russian chick* from work before she’s out of commission for at least a month, but she keeps canceling on me. so i’ve been crying myself to sleep every night after sitting at home waiting for her to call.
okay, not really. well, not completely. i don’t think i sat at home waiting for her to call the whole time. and i suppose i didn’t actually cry myself to sleep. i did laundry, i cleaned the house some. a few of the times i even did other stuff. sunday i met emily at inversion coffeehouse for awhile, then later she came over and we watched heathers. and last night i went to inversion coffeehouse for jack’s “opening” of his art installation there (which has actually been up for a couple of months at this point).
last night after inversion i went to taco cabana on kirby near 59. i was in my pickup and was driving a little crazy down montrose and westheimer. i hit some standing water in the outside lane on westheimer and couldn’t really see where i was going, but i think i mostly managed to stay in my lane. and i didn’t hit anyone. then on kirby at the alabama light — where i wasn’t driving aggressively or crazy — i was in the inside lane and it was going real slow after the light changed to green, so i moved into the middle lane. behind me, some black honda or acura or something had just come across all lanes (in both directions) from the whole foods parking lot and gotten into the outside lane. as we got up to the intersection the black car started angling over like it was going to make a wide swinging right onto alabama…except it didn’t…it just kept coming into the middle lane…into the space the front half of my pickup was occupying. i slammed on my brakes and started skidding. my backend started sliding to the right and my front was starting to angle toward a car beside me in the inside lane as i was veering away from the black car, now almost halfway in my lane. fortunately, the squealing of my tires got the black car’s attention and they pulled back into the outside lane they’d be occupying. i had the presence of mind to turn my front wheels facing down kirby again, so when i let off my brakes i didn’t go flying into the inside lane (and the car occupying that space) but instead continued down the middle lane. i caught up to the black car and inside was an asian chick talking on a cell phone. grr. she would have totally driven right into my pickup as she jumped lanes in the middle of the intersection if i hadn’t slammed on my brakes and taken evasive action.
on monday (a holiday for me) i had a late lunch with sue and the kids at lupe tortilla. there was a girl there that looked a lot like tamara did when we were together: same kind of clothes, watch, body type, fingers, haircut, skin tone, etc. it was kind of weird. she had a kid and was there with another mom with a kid. it definitely wasn’t tamara though. after lunch i went back to the yankee candle store and bought a full size red apple wreath candle, plus three small candles: black cherry, buttercream, and juicy peach.
wednesday night at the radio show i got to handle the mac book air dwight has as a review unit. it was pretty slick looking in person. i didn’t actually use the operating system to do anything, but i was able to handle it, open and close it, and check it out physically. i’m still not sure whether to buy one or not. i know it should be able to beat my current laptop in all respects, and i’m not going to be going back to a windows laptop so i don’t have to consider many other laptops, but i can’t decide whether to try and wait for some revs to this air model or suck it up and go with a regular mac book.
over the last week or two i watched all three of the netflix movies i currently have, but i never have mentioned it. i watched munich, which is a spielberg film about mossad agents hunting down the terrorists who killed the israeli athletes taken hostage during the 1972 summer olympics. it was pretty good. i watched the three burials of melquiades estrada, a movie starring and directed by tommy lee jones. it’s set in south Texas and is about a border patrol guard accidentally killing an illegal alien and burying him. the mexican was jones’ character’s friend, so when he finds out who did it he kidnaps the border patrol guard, makes him dig up his friend’s body, and takes them to mexico (on horseback) to bury him in his hometown. it wasn’t as good as i expected it to be, but it was good. finally, i watched late marriage. it’s set in russia, and is about a 31-year-old grad student trying to have marriage arranged for him by his parents. he’s actually dating an older woman with a child, which doesn’t please his parents at all when they find out. i think most of the characters are russian jews. it was pretty good, and the ending wasn’t really what i’d expected so that was kind of cool.
to completely jump offtrack: after looking into the dental bills and the money paid out by my insurance, it does appear that i owed the dentist’s office the $17x.xx i mentioned awhile back. so i sent them a check a couple of days ago. i’m kind of annoyed they were off by that much though. i can’t find their estimate so i’m not sure how they managed to be that off, but they didn’t appear to double-charge me for anything that i could tell. *sigh*
i took off work early today and was planning on going to brady, but my grandmother changed her plans so i ended up staying in town. i’ll be going at some later day. i couldn’t justify two trips close to each other because it’d cost me around $200 just to make a trip. (higher gas prices and old v-8 engines are a costly combo on long trips.) i thought about going to see dale watson at blanco’s, but instead i stayed at home and ate some cereal and watched a few episodes of “dead like me”. (the previously mentioned co-worker is letting me borrow the season one box.)
aside: why exactly does “what do you want me to do?” always seem to have to be such a complicated matter? why must making life simple seem to necessarily strip most of the possible enjoyment and/or benefit from it? what is it about the messiness of complexity? does the uncertainty of complexity allow for a hope somewhere in there that the sterile confines of simplicity just doesn’t have the capacity for? and is it really hope in complexity? or merely distraction?
“doc: my dear, it appears that we may have to re-define the nature of our relationship.
kate: i take care of you doc. haven’t i always been a good woman to you?
doc: yes, yes you have always been a good woman to me. then again, you may be the antichrist.”
–val kilmer as doc holliday in tombstone
* oh yeah. about that “hot russian chick” comment up at the top. not that it’s not true (especially with the new haircut…i <3 short angled bobs), but i mostly phrased it that way because i’d recently said i couldn’t just go and put something like that on here because some people who read this might read too much into it. so, i thought it’d be funny to do it anyway. y’all did note the asterisk and read this footnote, right? right? hello?

back in my jan 11th entry about visiting austin and seeing my nephew, i mentioned i had taken a few pics with the crappy camera on my motorola razr phone. i finally found the license key i needed to activate the image manipulation software, so now i can show you the pics.
this is the banner for linc and heather and miles when they returned home:

it’s a play on the song “miles and miles of Texas” by asleep at the wheel (see below for more on that).
and here’s a picture of miles, and one of my brother:

my brother was out on the front porch, smoking cigars with me and our dad. note the pensive “just what exactly have i gotten myself into? but somehow i’m still happy about it.” look he’s got.
“i rode up into austin, the cradle of the west —
just ask any cowboy, he’ll tell you it’s the best.
i met a Texas beauty, i got friendly with her pa,
i looked into her big blue eyes, this is what i saw —
i saw miles and miles of Texas, all the stars up in the sky.
i saw miles and miles of Texas, gonna live here ’til i die.”
–asleep at the wheel “miles and miles of Texas”
(perhaps my brother is singing it right now.)

about a week ago i ordered some cds from the february sale at bloodshot records. i got them on valentine’s day. here’s what i got:

• * the virginian – neko case and her boyfriends (bloodshot)
• * furnace room lullaby – neko case and her boyfriends (bloodshot)
• * 13 hillbilly giants – robbie fulks (bloodshot)
• * hope is a thing with feathers – trailer bride (bloodshot)
• * hard headed woman: a celebration of wanda jackson – various (bloodshot)

i’m not sure if i’ll like the neko case cds or not, and i picked up the trailer bride cd from hearing one song — but at $6 per cd, why not? i mostly picked up the wanda jackson cd for the wayne hancock version of “let’s have a party” on it, although i like wanda jackson’s music.
speaking of valentine’s day…eh. i wasn’t in particularly good spirits. i got close to watching eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and communing with the spirits, but i ended up going over to the potts.
yesterday i made a spur of the moment decision. i bought a ticket to see a ride with bob at the grand 1894 opera house in galveston at 8pm. i made the decision around 5:30pm. i bought my ticket online, took a shower, got dressed, and drove down to galveston. the weather was pretty bad, but i made it about 30 minutes before showtime. the opera house is really nice. they renovated it starting in the late 70’s i think. i had a decent seat. i ended up sitting next to an older guy who was pretty cool. we talked about old country music, Texas, our german-Texan roots (he was also of mid-1800’s german immigration heritage), etc. the average age was definitely older, but it was cool being in a place with so many people who know who bob wills is, like him, and know his songs. the play was pretty good. i already knew most of the stories they told about his life, but it was nice to hear good live versions of some of his music and see some of it played out on the stage. there was a 13 year old girl fiddle player and a 17 year old boy fiddle player in the show, and both of them were really good. (i think my brother and i may have seen them in san marcos a year or two ago…whenever we went to the western swing festival there.) when i left after the show, it must have been storming because the streets were somewhat flooded. but i made it home okay.
i guess this would be an appropriate time to mention a while back i got the second bear family bob wills box set, faded love. it covers 1947-1973. 13 cds and 1 dvd. i have a heck of a lot of bob wills music now. which isn’t a bad thing at all.
today i met the potts at the half price books in rice village. of course, i couldn’t help but look through the cds…and buy some…

• * selmasongs – bjork (elektra)
• * vespertine – bjork (elektra)
• * violator – depeche mode (sire/reprise)
• * from western swing to rock – bill haley (proper)
• * the boogie man – john lee hooker (proper)
• * louisiana hayride story – various (proper)

from there i was compelled to wander over to the yankee candle shop and see what candles they had on sale during their president’s day weekend sale. i had limited carrying capability since i was on my motorcycle, but i went ahead and bought two medium size candles anyway: canary island banana, and shortbread cookie.
“you can hear the grand ol’ opry in nashville tennessee.
it’s the home of country music, on that we all agree.
but when you cross that ol’ red river, hoss, that just don’t mean a thing —
’cause once you’re down in Texas, bob wills is still the king”
–waylon jennings “bob wills is still the king”
any song that can use the word “hoss” and not sound hokey must be good. and the lines above are that much more poignant knowing the story behind bob wills and the first time he and the Texas playboys performed on the grand ol’ opry. drums were verboten at the time. bob wasn’t excited about that, but they capitulated by telling him they could set them up behind the curtain where they wouldn’t be seen but could be heard. as show time was approaching, bob said the heck with that and had them pull the drums out on stage. it caused quite an uproar. but bob and the playboys wowed the audience, and their look and sound helped divert the direction of country music. at least that’s the way i’ve heard it.