Chicago
Wind: 5.0 mph / 8 km/h from the NNE Wind Gust: 18.0 mph / 28 km/h
Austin
Wind: 14 mph / 22 km/h from the NNW Wind Gust: 22 mph / 35 km/h
It was exceedingly windy last night, i thought surely it would storm and rain. For while the branches scratched their nails across the blackboard of my windows, and while my sleep was tempestuous as the squall without, no rain came, only the weather that is violent motion.
As you may have guessed, the use of “go” in the headline here refers not to an idiomatic expression indicating loss of mental stability, but is a not so clever play on words referring to the ancient Asian game of “go”. The SB bought me a “Go” set and I have found myself fascinated by its symmetry, it’s strategy, its beautiful aesthetic as well as how completely poor a player I am.
I mean, it’s not that I’m just bad, I’m terrible.
The instructions left too much to be desired and I’ve been brushing up with online tutorials. I decided last night, during a bout of insomnia, that my best bet was to play some Yahoo! Go against humans. I found myself getting schooled by a very nice high schooler in Beijing who also explained to me that he believes the Chinese were going to revolutionize the world with knowledge and that he studies 24/7.
I for one welcome our new Synic overlords.
Update: I neglected to add in another paragraph that my girlfriend when we played a quick match on a 9x9 grid also beat the snot out of me. Things are looking bad for my deep Asian insights into the nature of strategic battle.
I mentioned that I thought the PRC was going to have a heck of a time revolutionizing the world without free press, labor unions, or the ability to report that soldiers on the Tibetan frontier were using traveling pilgrims for target practice. I didn’t want to get the guy thrown in the gulag though.
In Other News Apple has released the new Merom-based Mac Book Pro. I have been counseled by elders that i should hold off whipping out the credit card for a few weeks to see if any major issues appear. I shall stay my hand a few weeks. But am I exxxxxxited. I love the Apple packaging, the smell, the matte box, that foil-like taste of metal you get when you first open it.
I didn’t like it.
It’s not to say that Augusten Bourroughs can’t put a pretty funny spin on growing up with a mentally unhinged family, getting adopted by said mother’s psychotherapist’s family, and having a boyfriend double his age (!), but the tragicomedy loses its Royal Tenenbaum’s “Hey life is surreal and filled with crazy people!” feel quickly and moves into that sick to the stomach feeling that comes when someone is so desperate for attention he doesn’t know he’s being raped.
I suppose I had this coming, I was biased by the film trailer which promised something zany, quirky, insane, but not quite horrid. I was expecting drug experimentation, yelling matches, New England prep-school ennui, but sadly, these were only fleeting themes and instead I read the particularly horrible tale of a very unfortunate boy leading a very tragic existence.
I’m going to get into The Brief History of the Dead this afternoon to see if I can’t change the tenor.
We still don’t have cable at the house. Part of me thinks this is a good thing ( I’m not spacing out watching shows after work, I’m doing something like reading A Brief History of The Dead, James Dedman ). Another part of me misses Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars and … well, if I got going the list could go on and on, and that would certainly get us back to the other hand which says, maybe it’s a good thing that you don’t have cable.
Nevertheless, I was a bit curious about the exploits of the Lorelais and noticed that the famous Alamo Draft House hosts a TV party featuring GG and VM on Tuesday nights. So, Lauren and I met up there after work and watched the shows. It was a bit strange watching them in such a large cavernous space, but it was a real treat to have some Drafthouse cuisine while watching some of the CW’s stronger offerings.
Afterwards we had a coffee and went home.
Saturday night Lauren and I went to see the fabulous Ladytron at Stubb’s.
It was a really great show, with really great sound work. I’ve posted some pictures on Flickr. We had a really good spot in the 2nd row which afforded me the opportunity to grab some very good pictures of Mira Aroyo.
I thought it was pretty funny to think that only in Austin one could see the very ‘antiseptic’ band Ladytron whilst munching on a chopped brisket sandwich ( Stubb’s BBQ is not to be doubted ).
Today I went over to The League of Melbotis’ new home where I occasioned to meet Melbotis himself, ate a hamburger, read the League’s copy of 300, and then came home to meet up with my girl.
We had Rounder’s Pizza for dinner and I then picked up some new music: New Brazilian Girls, Regina Spektor, and the new Cardigans record. I also grabbed Running With Scissors in anticipation of the theatrical release.
Right now the Rolling Stones are playing in Zilker park. Their lights show and sound system are bellowing with enough ferocity to clear the highway sounds and reverberate into my den.
I took this in September when Lauren and I were visiting San Francisco to attend my friend Jeff’s wedding.
As anyone whose known me for the last decade knows that I love The Cardigans: since 1995, always will. I think they’re such consumately talented artists and I love each and every one of their records: including the difficult ones that aren’t so easy to love.
Entertainment Weekly seems to have found occasion to remind the world of The Cardigans as their song “Lovefool” was referenced on a recent episode of “The Office”. Here’s a link to Entertainment Weekly’s refresher on The Cardigans.
Dear Apple,
I have now saved sufficient money such that if you were to release a new Mac Book Pro with a dual-core Merom processor, I would buy it lickety-split.
Please hurry,
Steven
Ladies and gentlemen, let us discuss a truth.
There are times in life, when a person needs a beer after work.
It’s not my usual practice to drink very much. Sure the occasional glass of wine with pasta, or a ‘rita on the rocks with a fine mexican meal, or a Negra modelo with queso, but alcohol, on the whole, doesn’t find a daily involvement in my life. Although, by the previous sentence, if I ate a diet of “fine mexican meals”, pasta, or queso exclusively, it might just, but I digress.
With Lauren working until later in the evening, and me having too many hours to kill until she got home, the prospects for the early evening were go home (crickets) and surf websites or write code ( something I’d done enough of yesterday, thankyouverymuch ), watch DVDs, and I’d missed my yoga class. The weight of continued wranglings with my new LDAP infrastructure were heavy upon these shoulders and as 80’s era McDonalds used to say: I deserved a break today.
So I decided that it was a good opportunity to find a beer and a jukebox. I had received a ‘calendar reminder’ that Rosie Flores was playing the Little Longhorn saloon on Burnet, so I decided to go, have some bar food and a beer or two, and catch Rosie’s show. I arrived in the early evening and had a Shiner, some Fritos, and watched the Simpsons and Seinfeld power-hour ( some things about Austin’s TV programming never change ) and waited for the show to get on the road. Game 7 of the NLCS was on so the time flew by until the arrival of Rosie and her band. Local area musician Dale Watson even stopped by while I was waiting, i was hoping he’d hang around and do a bit of playing with the band that night, but, he left - alas!
The show was phenomenal. Rosie sings a honky-tonk, rockabilly style, with some espanol overtones mixed in - it’s just great! She came in, thin and leopard-print-panted, and pulled out a baby-blue, hollow-body Epiphone whose paint would not have seemed out of place on a ‘57 Chevrolet. With the music underway I sent Lauren a rapid fire series of text messages instructing her on how to navigate to the saloon.
Lauren arrived for the inter-set gap and we grabbed a small table. The 2nd set opened up with a trio of Elvis covers which included a bi-lingual love me tender, rendered both in English and in Espanol. Those 50’s crooners’ songs really translate well to Spanish ( See: “Llorando” from the Mulholland Drive soundtrack).
Rosie’s got a great stage presence, working with the crowd as she rocks away, fingers working bar cords up and down the neighbourhood between the 5th fret and the 10th. She’s got a great smile, a great spark, and the show was tons of fun. She tells stories about the old days of country music, before Hollywood Nashville got too big for its britches. She had a great song about LA’s legendary Palomino Club ( which closed in 1995, not to be confused with any burlesque houses in Las Vegas ).
Lauren and I ducked out about halfway through the second set after dropping some green in the tip bucket to grab some breakfast food over at Kerbey Lane before we headed home. Rosie thanked us for coming out in-between the verses and all was right as we wandered out into the rapidly winterizing Austin night.
Next time I go down for Rosie night I’ll have to invite my sister and / or The League.
Note: This meeting actually took place on Tuesday, and it wasn’t a meeting, it was brunch at Magnolia Café on South Congress, but I’ll be damned if i let the facts get in the way of my alliteration
The League of Melbotis and his non-tertiary-personally-named wife have relocated to the capitol city and met up with myself and Lauren. The League has already posted about the meeting, but on the whole it was very enjoyable, except for the scene when a ninja stealthily emerged from the kitchen, seeking to kill the League and use his still-beating heart as an ingredient in his blood-reveng paté.
Fortunatley our waitress was a maîtresse of the bladed fan and with a quick flick of her wrist she severed the ninja from her hands, and brunch continued unimpeded ( save for the mop crew ).
Ninjas: Haters of lovely brunches.
I also had the opportunity to tell the attendees that I had greatly enjoyed John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise. I will now tell you that as well. I greatly enjoyed John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise. It’s a collection, arranged like an almanac, of worthless trivia that is entirely made up by the author. This sounds a bit egotistical, or dumb, but I assure you Hodgman’s deadpan ( in print? ) delivery is absolutly riotous.
In other news, not warped my by fanciful reinterpretation of time, the weather in Austin has turned decidedly chilly, this morning it was 55 as I headed to work. Fall and winter in Austin is a great time of year. I suspect that my dear girl will be a bit cold, but it’s a good opposition to the scorch factor of summer, and I don’t know, there’s an energy and an intimacy to the winter that I’ve always liked.
