Friday night in town

Can't neglect mentioning the weekend music-related activities. There was a fantastic free show in a downtown park on Friday night, staged by a new venture in town called Car2Go. They have a fleet of SmartCars (the cutest little buggers you ever saw) and you can rent one just by using your registration card for access, driving it where you need to go, and parking it at an approved location (like at a parking meter) where the next person can use it. Your clocked time will go on your credit card.

Anyway, they had 5 really good bands playing: The Lemurs, Black & White Years (we missed those 2 as they played too early), Del Castillo, the Gourds and Joe Ely. It felt like summer out there and the high humidity made for a very sweaty night but it’s hard to beat these bands for live performance. Also this stage is solar-powered for extra greeniness.

Here’s a video MrB shot, “Wishin’ for a Rainbow”

The Last Lost

Tonight is the big series finale for LOST, and I am really going to miss it after it's gone, but I think it ended at the right point in the show. Some shows just keep dragging on and on after the real beauty and creative spark is gone, and it become obvious that they are just bleeding a corpse for money {cough*xfiles*cough}.

Frank Conniff (TV's Frank on MST3K) If you've never watched "Lost," the finale will make so little sense that it'll seem like you've seen every episode.

TV's Frank is right. It doesn't make sense. I don't want it to make sense, either. Where's the fun in that? The fun part is the speculation - and like the real location of The Simpsons' Springfield {notquitePortlandOR} I don't think the answers will be handed to us on a platter - or maybe they will. Speculation...

There's a pre-show special that is on here from 6pm to 8pm, then the episode is from 8pm to 10:30, then Jimmy Kimmel has a LOST-themed show later in the night. Lots of frenzy over a TV show, but still a few hundred times less frenzy than there is over the Super Bowl.

The Cafe Society area of the Straight Dope Message Board is always rich with smart threads, and there is already a spot readied for discussion of this episode.

Rand dumb statements

Rachel Maddow has really been shining a hard light of reality on Rand Paul. It's absolutely frightening to realize just how much power the Tea Party movement is gaining - a bunch of mean, racist, hateful, selfish bastards who have managed to take things a few notches down from the other Republicans. The Tea Party and Christian Right (pretty much the same people) could take this country's progressiveness back to the 19th Century.

Oh yes, and if everyone was a Christian or at least religious, we wouldn't need so many laws because people would just naturally behave themselves and do the right thing. How very wrong that is. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and incorrect.

Ugh. Dieting.

Time to reign in the inner child and lose some weight. The diet started on Sunday. It's basically Weight Watchers (using an old Weight Watchers point counter, I can't afford to attend meetings, not that and still be able to afford cat medicines).

They say not to call it a "diet," it's a lifestyle change. After you get into the swing of it, it might be a lifestyle change, but when you are counting out 9 snack chips and putting the bag away - that's a diet. The swing of it is just having all the point values and food journal in your head instead of obsessively tracking every bite.

I started a private blog (just for me) to keep food diaries, point values, and most importantly, daily rants. It's cheaper than the counselors that diet programs provide (and I long ago got sick of those twenty-somethings shaming me for my sins every week like they were clergy. No thank you, I will just beat myself up privately instead).

I figure it will take a year to get where I want to be. That's OK, I have a healthy attitude toward the passage of time. May 2011 will arrive, that's for certain, and I will either be fatter or thinner when it does. Simple as that. Hello reality.

Playing the jukebox

One of things I've been puttering around with is my beloved online jukebox (using playlist.com). The way playlist.com works is it finds and indexes mp3s on the web (and makes some effort to source either music blogs or official sites, although it's impossible for them to effectively make that system perfect) and you can add them to a playlist and post it somewhere. You can also link to an mp3 of your own finding, and of course that breaks down the previously mentioned system completely. Anyhoo, it works with user and found content (so typos and labeling errors are rampant, but what's new --?).

I maxed out my original playlist at 200 songs, so I stripped it down and put together a separate one for the hard-core country stuff [ Real Country ]. It's music I grew up on... my mother's folkie, western and bluegrassy stuff, my dad's honky-tonk, the some-of-both crossover (lots of Johnny Cash), and personal favorites. It's what I liked to play on the tavern jukebox as a kid while the adults were getting drunk, and stuff I had on 45 r.p.m., 7-inch vinyl or full L.P. It also includes some cosmic cowboy, redneck hippie, and outlaw country (music played while *I* was getting drunk), so it spans the '20s through '70s.

The original playlist has no genre restrictions, it's just stuff I like for one reason or another. I prefer the deep cuts to the hits, but there's some of both.

This all resides on my Jukebox page.

Don't drunk-dial FreedomWorks

This is the former Geico voice-actor who got fired for doing that very thing and identifying himself (that was one of the drunk mistakes).

This brightened my day. It certainly did. Hope you got through Monday OK.


More info and found via

Camel-cam

Arabia Day at the Texas History Museum (where we'd gone to see Iron Man 2 at the IMAX)

I was taking the photo above, turned around, and saw that camel #2 was very very close to my head.

Their eyes are beautiful. Their teeth are less so. I love camels and cameloids.

Woodrow's Wits

Always a pleasure to drive by Little Woodrow's and see what the sign says this time.

Arizona's illegal law - Austin boycott

The City Council and the Mayor of Austin have taken a stand against Arizona's Papers-Please law by not doing business with the state. Hitting them where it hurts (in the wallet) is the only thing that may have any kind of persuasive effect for people who support this un-American abomination.

Article and video here.

A Dog's Breakfast

Hopping busy this week, so here's a few minutes of pure silliness.

Monday morning weekend music

A 9-minute jam from Saturday night's Greencards show, starts out with a pretty mandolin solo and then dives into "Roll On Buddy, Roll On," Bill Monroe cover.

This show (with Warren Hood opening) was the only one I had the energy for over the weekend. Running on sleep deprivation, and finally got a decent nap on Sunday afternoon. Every little bit helps.

Goodbye L

My cousin (who I have referred to on this blog as "L") has died of cancer at 60 and was buried yesterday In Albuquerque. She was as close to a sister as I ever had, even though the only thing we had in common were family-related.

She never learned to use email or the internet. She’d always call, it was not even from a cell phone. It was from a land line where she had to pay for long-distance, so I’d generally take a voicemail and call her back on my dime. She had a very childlike personality, not very bright but very loving and sweet – it’s fair to say that she said everything in baby-talk, and everything made her giggle, even bad news... and it was always bad news. New Mexico has never brought me anything happy. I lived there twice while growing up. When my dad was first transferred to Albuquerque (with the Air Force), two of my mother's siblings and their families moved there and stayed.

One was a not very bright woman who talked way too much and too loud, who was married to an abusive, racist drunk who hated everybody. This was a guy who died after a long bout of emphysema and a family friend said that it wasn't worth it to waste money on flowers for the son of a bitch. He beat his wife and kids, and once tried to run his young daughter over with the car. During one family fight, his oldest son hit him in the head with a skillet, but it was self-defense. He was fond of calling his wife a "Mississippi whore" and many other colorful names even while she was waiting on him hand and foot during his last years with the illness. Their middle child was the closest thing I had to a brother. That was one messed-up dysfunctional family, but it was not my recently deceased cousin's family. I have written about hers a few times before:

Fundie racist rightwing Christian step-mother:
Jesus loves me, but he can't stand you
Jesus doesn't need flash

"L's" story, including her escape from the survivalist husband in Wickieup Arizona.
Family Sadness (Long)
About my uncle, and her uncle-daddy, who died last year
Goodbye Uncle
And when we knew that it wouldn't be long
Sad family reality

A few months ago, around the time of that last post, she left me a fairly long voicemail, and it was basically said "I am going to die soon, and wanted to say goodbye." I really wanted to keep that message in digital form, but I was too ignorant on cell phone technology to get it figured out before it expired. Too late now (and I still don't know how to do that).

Get out of there!

Simply a montage of people in movies advising someone to get out of there. These folks put it together, and you can find a list of movies they used at that link. I, for one, am glad that somebody has the time to come up with these things.

Happy Friday.

Found via Odd Todd on Fb.