Lasagna cat

This is one of my favorites:



Check out all the rest, you really need to see a few of them. Awesome shit.

Tom Waits 6-22-08

You can't tell from this horrible picture, but Tom is playing piano here accompanied by the standup bass. The view from the 21st row was much better than it looks in the photo. He discussed strange but dubious trivia between songs during this set, like the eating habits of vultures and the Nazi alphabet soup with little swastikas instead of letters. Most of the show featured the entire 5-piece band including his son Casey on percussion (and maybe another son to add congas on "Hoist that Rag?"), a lead guitarist who touched on Mark Ribot's style but with his own classical/flamenco flair, a very talented guy on sax (two at a time), harmonica, and another woodwind instrument, and a keyboardist who also played accordion. They were very tight and played several songs in distinctly different arrangements from the originals to great effect. Waits himself was a seasoned legend, still growling after all these years. When accompanied by the full band, he stood ringed by instruments and crowned in megaphones on a large circular platform, which was covered in dust so that he raised clouds of smoke when he stomped for emphasis. They covered a decent amount of ground emphasizing the last few records. The acoustic bass and guitar version of "Day After Tomorrow" was intimate and chilling. The slow blues groove version of "Murder in the Red Barn" totally snook up on me and I didn't recognize it until the chorus. All the songs were great and performed with his typicallyamazing showmanship, and I even got to hear "House Where Nobody Lives" so it was a perfect experience for me.

Except the driving around in Houston part. Ugh, what a mess. Google knows jack shit about Houston.

Here is the setlist from the show:

Lucinda
Down in the Hole
Falling Down
November
Dead and Lovely
Lie to Me
Day After Tomorrow
Hoist that Rag
Get Behind the Mule
Cemetary Polka
Trampled Rose
Jesus Gonna Be Here
Lucky Day
Tom Traubert's Blues
House Where Nobody Lives
Innocent when you dream
Make it Rain
Murder in the Red Barn
Come on up to the House
Dirt in the Ground
Eyeball Kid

Encore:
Goin' Out West
All the World is Green


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In the coliseum

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Heart of Sunday Night

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Nooobody knows...

Bitch goes to jail
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Downtown H Town

Tom Waits for me
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Amateur architect hour

Some random douche creating flaming sculptures at Mollys in League City
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Storm clouds

Above League City's most distinguished resident
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Balrog wins again

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daily stream 6-16-02

Rummy is more talkative of the two. He argues in insistent, pointed phrases, tempered by the caution of age and usually waxing from a low growl to a sharp bark all in one utterance.

daily stream 6-15-08

The blue grey disc described a counter-intuitive arc as the wind caught it and spun it hard to the right - directly into the fluttering embrace of a tall sycamore. A few branches and leaves fell softly into the drain creek below, but... nothing more. Alas, poor Reaper! Will you forever remain aloft, only revealed annually by your captor's winter defoliation, like a Pompeian skeleton clutching a beloved toy? Or will you only briefly be beholden to your arboreal host, merely biding your time until a strong enough bluster and lucky enough traveler team up to put you back into play? However temporarily, your seed has been sown and the next time you blossom it will be for another. And if they throw anything like your old companion, the process will repeat itself fairly shortly.

daily stream 6-14-08

A large family, white, at least three generations worth, dressed in unremarkable middle class suburban Texan pastels, sitting down at dinner in a local mexican food restaurant. Digging in. Stuffing about four baskets worth of delicious chips and salsa in their faces while they wait for the rich entrees to arrive. The wide brims of their water glasses extend just beyond the catches of their mouths so that a few glistening beads escape and run down their jowls every time they pause their inhalación de tostada to drink. Their faces, aglow with alimentary satisfaction, boast knowing smiles as they listen to the litany of each other's adventures, old and new. All in all an ordinary sight, but for the teenage boy seated at one far end of the table, closest to our own table, wearing a frayed and faded jean jacket with the arms ripped out, an appropriately harsh band name scrawled on the back at shoulder level in dark red puff paint surrounded by white this and that, skulls and whathaveyou. The jacket leads the eyes to the crown of this glaring domestical juxtaposition, consisting of a meager wave perched on a crew cut, effecting a penciltop eraser used just three our four times. It's a scene from a sitcom. All it needs is a sarcastic grandma and a orange furry alien chasing the cat around.

Sampling a gas station ditch near Orange

A colleague had to climb down and collect soil and water that appeared to be contaminated by product leaching into the pit.
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Rummy and Luna

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Emmitt Smith at Beaumont Papadeaux bar

Either him or a damn good imposter.
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PST installation in Port Arthur

Tank being buried at gas station under construction. The water needs to be pumped out and the tanks will be pressure tested, buried, and hooked up to the dispensers. It was hot as balls out at like 930 in the morning.
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Lunavision

Soy y will @ cure

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The cure at amh

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This was a great show. They played everything I could think of, plus a whole lot more. These guys may have been doing this for a while but they are still tight and rocking as hell. That being said, Austin Music Hell sucks a bucket of ass. The sound and view of the stage appeared to be decent from everywhere, but it was hot as satan-balls on the floor, even on the outer rim of the crowd. A cloud of steaming human juices hung about, smelling of sweat and black eyeliner. I got to see Robert Smith leer toothily in person; I can check that box now.

I've been listening to quite a bit of Wish ever since, and it immediately took me back a specific set of memories that I have associated with this record. This happens every so often, usually where I had intense crushes on briefly borrowed albums but never actually bought them myself, leaving something like a time capsule. I borrowed this from my friend Ben (or was it Laura? both viable candidates...) and loved it immediately. It was maybe 1-2 years after it came out. I vaguely remember being somewhere out of town playing it on my tape adaptor-fitted discman, the red and blue cover art, from "Open" to "End." Except for that brief affair with Wish, I've been surviving on Show my whole life. Unfortunately I never had the same experience with Disentegration as an album (though I know most of them and I always loved "Love Song"), but it's blowing my mind now. Better late than never. This time around I can really hear the Interpol influences - the wall of guitar and effects over grooving basslines - great stuff.

Here's a video I found on the web from the show:





Here's the setlist and Statesman review.

Penelope Princess of Pets

Watch this twice.

Ken Gaines at the mahogany

www.kengaines.com

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Flat ass Midland

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Midland's a weird place. The two times I've been there, it's either been dry and very cold or dry and very hot. There's a lot of money there right now, with more jobs than people supposedly. I talked with some dudes that got their CDL after high school and started making 60 grand a year immediately driving trucks on oil fields. Not a bad gig for 19 or 20 year olds, but there's not much to spend money on out there either. The city Wiki led me to some pretty interesting revelations, for example, the one religious tv station in the city (jewish), or the creepy fates of the two dudes mainly credited with rescuing Baby Jessica (who apparently had a baby herself in the recent past, damn I feel old). The best places to eat there, I've found, are:
* Wall Street (on Wall Street) - Great steaks and fresh seafood.
* Luigi's - Decent italian with cheap drinks.
* Fabelas - Between Midland and Odessa. A lunch diner for all the workers in nearby facilities with great homemade mexican food, etc.

Downtown Midland

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