It's Gonna Be Pissing On Us All Night

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain!

Last week I took a trip down to hectic San Antonio to visit T. I left at 2pm, and thanks to the ridiculous downpour and about a billion other turds who apparently had the same fucking idea as me, it took 3 1/2 hours to get there.

On the way, stuck in thick stop-and-go traffic, I took in plenty of bizarre sights from the road: a submerged SUV, a couple fighting outside their car in the rain, and of course, Juanes and his deadly sinful eyebrows:

On Saturday we went to lunch at Chris Madrid's. Good little burger place. They got their own thing going there, piling melted cheddar cheese on anything and everything, and it was just the stuff my hungover queasy stomach needed for the drive back home (which, thankfully, only took the usual 1 hour). Fuck you, I-35!

Here's a shot of the little Walnut Creek trib behind work that I go check out from time to time. It was flooding quite a bit the other day and had risen around four feet:

Yessss

Grand jury indicts Vick
Falcons QB faces charges related to dogfighting

Good. Good!

Go Botz

Holy shit! Jake la Botz. I really dig this guy's fucking music. Apparently, so does Buscemi. I mentioned him as a standout on the Little Radio 2007 SXSW compilation (son of a bitch! that would have been a nice show) with his tune "For the Brothers." I checked out his myspace, which has some great videos on it. Come to find out, this was the guy that played the slide-guitar rapist slash lead singer of my favorite fake band from a film, Blueshammer from Ghost World. Fortunately his stuff sounds nothing like that mess - "I been ploooooooowing, picking cotton all day long." Heheh. I hope to pick up his latest record, Graveyard Jones, very soon. He's coming to inkfest on September 21 (what a month for music). I fuckin love it, you can pay him $400 to come play your tattoo parlor. It's gotta sound great with the buzz of the needles in the background.

Browsing the Hoard, Contd

Shapes and Sizes - Shapes and Sizes - Eh, not so much. Sort of a weak Of Montreal.

The Clientele - Strange Geometry - Now this I got into. Kinda like a really well updated Byrds. Good British pop. "Since K Got Over Me" and "Impossible" are probably my favo(u)rites.

Blonde Redhead - 23 - Yeah, they're good, I guess that's old news. I liked this one also.

Still on a strict Bitburger diet as beer goes.

Hey shit, how about that Wimbledon final? Almost too entertaining. Querido Roger, I'll be back next year wey, love, Nadal.

J'accuse

Browsing The Hoard

A friend shared various tunes with me this last week, here's my impressions of the hoard.

Medeski, Scofield, Martin, and Wood – Out Louder – Typical jammy background music from these guys. I have and like three other MMW records, particularly Combustication; Scofield apparently added his guitar to this one. Not bad but not immediately spectacular.

Black Before Red – Belgrave to King’s Circle – Austin band. OK indie rock, but I was pretty bored listening to it. Like a boring version of Shins or Band of Horses. Again, nothing put me off but nothing really caught on, either. Yawn.

Grupo Fantasma – Comes Alive – Hey, guess what, latin music. Whoopty. There’s probably a time and place where this might entertain me, but this morning at work just wasn’t it. It reminded me of all the superfluous Vallejo/Scabs/Grooveline Horns combinations I used to choke down back in the day. Yawn.

Now It’s Overhead – Dark Light Daybreak – Didn't really get into this one, either. Like a boring Oasis - Calexico - Gomez mix. Yawn.

Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures – Interesting indie rock. Sounds like a mix of My Morning Jacket, Pinback and Sun Kil Moon. I liked the “California” song, very gentle like the final tracks on early Pearl Jam albums, but sung by Paul Simon. “You” is decent as well.

Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood – Smooth smoky surf country. The music (echo, heavy on the wammy-bar, brushed snare percussion) sounds like Chris Isaak, but Neko’s vocals are less sad than groovy. I had heard “Hold on, Hold on” once before on internet radio and I loved hearing it within the context of the rest of the record. “Dirty Knife” is also great. The lyrics are all fairly interesting.

Darin Murphy – Haunted Gardenias – A boring Rufus Wainwright. Generic and forgettable. Yawn.

Emily Haines – Knives Don’t Have Your Back – I’m back and forth about miss Emily’s solo and Metric material; her work for Broken Social Scene, however, is untouchably awesome. This album has nice piano and vocals but it was just too slow and quiet and nothing really stuck. Her lyrics have always been a dark mystery that I never really cared to try and decode. Track 6: “Bros before hoes, disagree on the sideline. Fight for a fee... the man needs a maid? The maid needs a maid.” Erm, ok. It all seems like mopey Lilith Fair opener material to me.

Little Radio Spring 2007 (SXSW) Sampler – Wasn’t familiar with the site before I heard this record. It seems pretty cool, though they really took a shit on the new Interpol and I take extreme exception with their review. They put together a pretty good little compilation, including these memorable numbers:
Welcome – “All Set” – twangy Who- and Kinks-like rock and roll
The Mooney Suzuki – “Alcohol” – a silly, clever, wordsmithy tribute to boozing
Jake la Botz – “For the Brothers” – deep dark delta guitar accompanied by a slow drawling voice, pouring out a lil’ liquor for those that have gone before.
Eleni Mandell – “Twin” – very enjoyable female vocalist and music.

I Heard Transformers Sucks Ass

Yeah. From a couple of different sources. And they didn't completely shit on it either, but the things they didn't like about made it sound like exactly the kind of movie I don't want to pay to see. So, I hereby pre-meh Transformers.

We watched Nightwatch over the last couple of evenings, and it was a real mess. Like a confused Russian Underworld. Nonetheless I will still try to rent the sequel, which the director says will be significantly different in speed and style. There were maybe a few interesting elements lost in the mix but overall the first of this apparent trilogy was disappointing.

I've tried a couple new restaurants in the past 2 weeks or so. Me and c2 went to North By Northwest (or NXNW to you, broham) in the middle of the week. It wasn't anything special. Tries really hard to be fancy. The crowd was lame, too: split down the middle between skinny, faceless Austin chickadees and the rotating cast of all the old Bill Brasky skits on SNL. If you like to eat at places that specialize in things like pan-laminated pork castles and basil-elucidated fish nard ambrosia, then you'd probably love this place. I had the cobb salad and it was ok, c2 tried the pasta fazool (or something, I don't remember the name), and it had an overly sweet tomato-onion cream sauce that got real old real fast. I had their "Northern Light" (beer!) and it was a light beer, nothing more, nothing less. I expect I'd try the rest of their line if someone else was paying, but I don't really feel like going back so it probably won't ever happen.

I also ate at Moe's Southwest Grill. Had a chicken club quesadilla and it was mighty fine. Queso was thick and tasty. All in all very satisfactory for a decent price; I'll go back.

Fourteen Oh! Eight and Others

After hearing a few good reviews we went to see 1408 this weekend. It was pretty decent, with tons of really creepy shit, but the beginning and end were both really slow and cheesy. I can't wait to stay in a hotel again, just for the inevitable flashbacks of all the strange imagery this movie has sunk into my mind.

Finished the first season of Entourage, fuckin awesome. Great characters and plenty of hilarious cameos. Each episode is a short little treat of dirty hollywood b.s. skewered for my amusement.

Also saw Apocalypto, which was much better than I expected. It was pretty damn violent, disturbing like Braveheart on speed. I looked around online to get a feel for how accurate it really was, but there seems to be points of view from both sides (on the internet... imagine that!). Some elements from the film were no doubt creatively intuited (to have actually happened in Mayan culture), and the historical timeline was something of a mishmash, but it really doesn't change my opinion of the movie. I thought the costumes, scenery, and acting were spectacular, but a couple of the plot elements were a tad trite.

Foxjerky

As I was picking up some Stella on the way home from work yesterday, I stumbled into this unfortunate mess: official Jeff Foxworthy beef jerky. I was honestly stunned for a couple of seconds. Could this possibly preclude my enjoying beef jerky for the rest of my entire life? When my mind was done wrapping itself around the concept of a comedian-endorsed meat product, I laughed heartily and drew my camera phone. I'm still not certain whether you get 10% more jerky or 10% more sleeping-ferret moustache. In other news, I still like Stella very much but after having them both in a short time frame I think Bitburger continues to be my No.1 preferred lager.

Schlotzsky's gives you a pickle spear now! I don't know when they started doing this because before yesterday I hadn't eaten there in quite a while. In any case, it's a damn good pickle! I can't find anything about it on their website but it was really fresh and had an interesting flavor. Their sandwiches are still very good, and I went ahead and doused mine in a bunch of their hot sauce, which I hadn't done before. It was excellent. It was a relatively new location out in a big strip mall development near work, all pimped out inside with lots of big wood beam framework and free-use computers and wifi. I remember hearing that they were having some kind of bankruptcy situation or something a while back; I guess nothing substantial ever came of that cause the place was about as big as the one down on Lamar. I remember that seemed like it was going to be their home base back in the day, as big as they could get. Now that I'm thinking about it, me, Aner, and Mutton all went there on the last day of high school.

How Long? Walter E. Long!

We went to Decker Lake on Sunday (a.k.a. Walter E. Long Lake) for a little fishing action with the pops. It's supposed to be "excellent" for bass fishing and I've heard good things about the white bass there but we didn't run into much luck. First, we tried for some catfish early on with some cut up shrimp and bobbers in the power plant outlet; nothing doing. Then we moved around the main bend in the lake and checked out a little cove where shad were jumping, a good sign. We threw in a few spoons and floating lures with no response until my dad confirmed that the dark shape I had earlier witnessed chasing the little shad out of the water was a gar, and there were several of them about. To finish up, we started at one end of the dam and floated along throwing in some minnows. Finally c2 got a hit and pulled in a little bass, a little one but welcome company nevertheless. A few minutes later dad caught a freshwater drum. He croaked at us and we let him go. A couple of times on the water the sky opened up and dropped a downpour on us. Dad's little boat has a canopy on it so we were able to stand (or crouch) underneath and get some protection from the rain, but it was definitely the visual of the day to see the air thick with precipitation and the surface of the water turned into a layer of dancing spray.

This was a disgusting update on the abu ghraib b.s. It focuses on Taguba's account of the events but provides some believeable side sources, only a few of those anonymous. My favorite part is definitely the Top Gun-esque moment with Rummy and Taguba in the locker room. I can't help but envision Rummy head back, popping his gum in Taguba's face. "The plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies room." And I'd never heard of the terrible video they mention... all in all some lovely information, just great. Fuck! Of course those wonderful New Yorker cartoons definitely live up to their vacuous reputation. If comedy was beer they'd be piss warm chango.

I finished that last Vonnegut book I was talking about, Slapstick. There were plenty of amusing little ideas in the storyline but it ends really sloppily and nonsensically. It's a fairly unconventional story overall and just sort of comes apart after the main body is spent. Still, there's some great examples of his dry imagination buried throughout Slapstick, but the other two novels I discussed earlier were a little better.

I can't help but add one more Top Gun quote:

Slider: Goose, who's butt did you kiss to get in here anyway?

Goose: The list is long, but distinguished.

Slider: Yeah, well so is my Johnson.