I just ran across local photographer William Hundley via Scott Beale’s post about his “Chihuahua On Cheeseburgers” photo. He’s got some great stuff. Go check it out.
May 232008
May 212008
Austin City Limits is launching a new newsletter with a contest. You can win tickets to a My Morning Jacket taping on Monday, August 25th. If you don’t live in Austin, they’ll fly you here via American Airlines. If you’re not a big My Morning Jacket fan (and I’m not), there’s still an incentive to join the mailing list to get info on ticket and contest announcements. The signup page is here.
Also, don’t forget that the REM episode taped during this year’s SXSW will air this Saturday, March 24th at 7pm locally on KLRU. The set list appears to be heavy on the new album with almost nothing before 1990 on the set list. “Bad Day” is apparently a b-side and my pre-date Losing My Religion, but I’m not sure. Otherwise, there’s not much there for die-hard 80s REM fans.
PS Note to ACL people, why bury a banner ad for the episode in a Flash animation? Make it easy for people like me to get the image to plug the show. Don’t make me take a screen shot and then crop it myself.
May 152008
Andy Langer of KGSR, Esquire and formerly of 101X’s Next Big Thing, joins Jason and Deb on Thursday mornings to talk about upcoming shows and music. There were two very interesting revelations this morning:
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Langer claims that he interviewed Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top on Tuesday as a promo for their gig tonight at The Backyard. During that discussion, Gibbons revealed that he would be playing at the American Idol finale next week and also specified that he’d be playing with finalist David Cook. Langer seemed to imply that this meant that the winner of American Idol had already been decided as of Tuesday night when there were still 3 contestants remaining. Not sure if he misinterpreted it or if they’re just hedging their bets. I wouldn’t be surprised if the show is fixed, but it seems odd that he could be so blatant about revealing it. -
He also revealed that the Foxboro Hot Tubs, Green Day’s side project, will be playing Emo’s next Thursday, something Jason just heard last night and was apparently debating about revealing. I guess this isn’t a particularly large scoop since their site and MySpace page list tour dates and include the Emo’s date. They only sell tickets to these shows the day of the event at the venue and it’s a limit of two per person at $20 each. The Emo’s calendar says doors are at 8pm, so I’m guessing that’s the earliest that you can buy tickets. If you’ve ever wanted to see the guys from Green Day playing in a small venue and missed your chance back in the early 90s, you’ve got another chance a week from today. Granted, they’re playing Foxboro Hot Tubs songs, but it doesn’t sound all that different from Green Day, so it’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?
May 152008
We heard the wind around midnight. No hail for us. A large cottonwood branch nearly took out the minivan, but only chipped a bit of paint on a side view mirror; its smaller brethren littered the yard and the tops of both cars. The loudest thing before that was the storm warning that blared out over the TV as we watched My Name is Earl on the DVR. I think Time Warner can tone down that notice a bit.
As of my commute time about an hour ago, the light at Barton Springs and Robert E Lee was completely out with no traffic cop in sight. Cars on Robert E Lee were backed up for quite a distance. Once I got to the intersection, I found an accident with an ambulance and fire engine, but no police car? Very odd. A downed tree took out a section of the fence at Umlauf. It looks like they’ll be doing a lot of cleanup today. Power is out for at least part of the Zilker neighborhood. Leaves and small branches littered most of the streets that I drove.
It was hard to tell, but it looks like there might have been a fire somewhere between Far West and 183 west of Mopac? I haven’t seen any news to corroborate that, but there appeared to be smoke mixed in with the clouds.
Update: Reports from C., the Statesman and Austinist as well.
Update 2 (2008.05.15 17:18 CDT): Some people may be without power until sometime Saturday. Ouch.
May 052008
Is that title too long to catch on? My morning troll through news feeds brought up two things that I think are somewhat related and that I want to highlight.
Today is the 83rd anniversary of the day that John Scopes was arrested in Dayton, TN for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution to his high school biology class. Until roughly 8 years ago, I would’ve told you that we’d made significant progress since that day and that we were still making progress. Now, in 2008, I’d say that we’ve backslid because of a culture of ignorance, a president who shows no intellectual curiosity whatsoever, stories like this. and movies like this. 83 years later, it’s not safe to take a deep breath. We still have to fight against ignorance.
Also in the news today, Mildred Loving has died. She and her husband, Richard, were the couple behind the 1967 Supreme Court case that overturned many state laws banning mixed race marriages. Until then, it would’ve been illegal for my wife and I to get married in Texas and fifteen other states. My parents were married that year and my wife’s parents were married two years later. My parents were not mixed race, while my wife’s were. My in-laws encountered a lot of resistance at the time that they were married though they were in Minnesota, a state that never had any restrictions on interracial marriage. Loving Day is coming up on June 12. It’s amazing that only 40 years have passed since then, only a bit longer than my own lifetime. Thankfully, we haven’t backslid here as far as I can tell, but it’s still important to remember things like this, especially in light of the same-sex marriage debate that rages today.
I suppose it’s not surprising that the same people who want to put science back in 1925 also want to perpetuate the same ignorance with same sex marriages that existed in 1967 for mixed race marriages. Maybe McCain should just promise his constituents a time machine and be done with it.
May 022008
According to the Dreamhost people, my WordPress install got hacked. I tried upgrading from 2.5 to 2.5.1 today and even though their install bot claimed that I’d upgraded, everything in WordPress still said I was on 2.5. I’m not sure if the hack that was exploited was the one fixed in 2.5.1, but now everything’s borked and I’m back to the default theme. It’s going to take me some time to get everything customized again. Sigh.
May 012008
I ran into a ton of traffic on the way to work this morning. Both South Congress and South First were a mess going north and I couldn’t figure out why. I even took a picture of Barton Springs and South First since it took me several lights to get through the jerkoffs who were blocking the intersection during light changes.
Turns out there’s a water main break at Lavaca and Fifth street and the northbound lanes of Lavaca are closed causing traffic problems all around downtown and just across the river.