I should like to take this occasion to wish a happy birthday to my friend Ryan. In this age where Facebook birthday wishes are, albeit pleasantly, the norm, I wanted to take some more time to celebrate Ryan sans Zuckerberg.

Having been in Austin but a few short months before he and his better half joined us in the River City, it was great to make his acquaintance at the Magnolia Café on SoCo one fine brunch. Thanks to his swift purchase of a home, it was more often than not that we were chez lui than chez nous (and the time he did come over he helped us move heavy stuff). For this I would say that Ryan is hospitable. This is not a feature of him alone, but also of his lovely parents who also hosted us before the Radiohead show. I know that a good child is a source of pride unto his or her parents, so for what it’s worth, I think the Steans parents should be quite proud. Oh, and like I said, he helped us move heavy stuff, so it’s worth noting that Ryan is strong and helpful too.

It’s impossible to miss that Ryan’s genetics code for ice-fishing and axe-weilding while laying waste to tundral villages. Thankfully, in modern times, he is a kind sort. He cares very much for those in his life, the human and the non. I belive most men believe that to be A Man (tm) is to swallow stress by the gallon and to nobly support your household through all seasons. I have seen Ryan do this, for his lovely wife as well as for the canines and felines of household. So for these reasons I would call him admirable, manly, and kind.

And now, to the drinking part of the encomium. As aforementioned, his home has often been opened to us and where whisk(e)y meets ice (in his case), the good times let roll. University of Texas coordinators are vilified for their maneuvers and when the pontificatin’ hat &tm; is on, wisdom erupts. For these reasons I would call Ryan fun and, betimes, wise.

For many years my favorite part of Austin was queso, but now , here along a blustery San Francisco street, as the sun fades unto its Asian transit, the best part of my experiences in Austin all seem to have happened at his home.

So to Ryan, who celebrates a birthday today, I wish a Happy Birthday, and my regrets that I’m not there to hand it over in person.

• Sources

• Homage

Thanks to Julia for the footage…

Weekdays it is common from APD units to do radar checks on SB 183 access road between Oak Knoll and Duval. The officers tend to sit in the median at Pavillion, or before or after the Catfish parlor.

I appreciate the desire to keep speeds on the access road under control, but this their presence in these particular spots induces more danger and erratic driving.

The problem is that people are coming off of 183, while others are entering 183, while others are trying to cut quickly into the Academy driveway. This is normally a pretty dicey move, but then you have people noticing the radar gun officer and the reactions vary.

Some coming off the ramp hit the brakes, some in the access road hit the brakes, all while those about to enter the freeway are trying to enter the ramp and accelerate to meet traffic.

All this because we don’t know if we get ticketed for 5-4-2 mph over.

It’s a really dangerous situation made worse by the APD presence. If APD were to move the control point slightly past the catfish parlor, you could catch the most egregious speeders and ease the danger.

If you want a sure thing, patrol Riata trace on the other side of the highway, people at the office park use that like a drag strip getting to 183 NB.

Regards,

Steven Harms ]]> http://stevengharms.com/letter-to-the-apd/feed 0 http://stevengharms.com/a-happening http://stevengharms.com/a-happening#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:51:48 +0000 steven http://stevengharms.com/a-happening It’s 10:04 as I write this, and I normally wouldn’t say such a thing as this for fear of a jinxing, but for my later-rising friends I feel I should recount that:

…on the way out the door I felt a breeze that was distinctly not reminiscent of Thermopylae

…I smelled the smell of fresh cut grass

…my mind briefly flashed to the Texas v. Tech football game ( traditionally in late October )

I could be wrong, but I believe that I felt the faintest, slimmest, most gossamer hint of the suggestion of the remembrance of the season known as fall.

And sure, today I’m sure we’ll run a tight tangent line to the hundred degree mark, but this morning, soft as a robin’s breast, gentle as a snowflake, tender as Lauren’s right cheek, I felt the idea of fall.

“I really love those characters in Thai script”

As she turned I realized that the shirt had the shape of Angkor Wat and realized i had made a bit of a faux pas: Egyptians would get a bit irked if you said the Pyramids were in Saudi; the Hellenes if you thought the Acropolis was in Crete. I hastily apologized realizing I was a Cambodian.

Thus I had a chance to speak to her a bit about Khmer script and how the words hang together. As a take away she taught me how to say “eat”, it’s a tonal sound /ɲam/.

What’s really interesting is this, I read up a bit on Khmer at Wikipedia and apparently it has social registers: different verbs for speaking of / to royalty, monks, commoners, or intimates. “Nyam” is is for the third category.

Can you imagine learning an entire deferential sub-language for four social registers? Very interesting.

In college, that time when you’re supposed to “stay up all night” my version was to go to sleep at 11 and get up at the crack of dawn: 4am, 5am, to study / do homework / etc.

In my later years of study, I was blessed to live with my friend Brown and his great dog, Bailey. When I would wake up at such an hour I would sit at my desk, the blankets still warm from my slumber, and work away until a single, solid, bonk of wet nose against my door would let me know that Bailey knew I was awake and was wondering, in that ever-so-polite-yet-insistent canine manner, if I wouldn’t please mind opening the door for him.

Invariably I would accompany him out to the front yard, where he would strangulate my New York times and then, bite-kill accomplished, head off to do what dogs do before playing a few fetches with me.

But the year before that, I didn’t live so close to campus. So I would wake up and drive into West Campus and park ( a task that, at that time, could only be accomplished via nepotism, Santería, or Fortune ) before walking to Mojo’s on 29^th-ish.

The baristas never seemed too-surprised to see me, but were still a bit surprised to see new blood so soon after the last of the 2am set shuffled out.

I would get a big coffee, and sit, picking apart Monadology or some such.

Those early mornings were great things. You would see such interesting things at that hour and, in some sense, the world felt selfishly yours. The wet strets, for you. The sprinklers, standing for you.

In Austin, one can do this in shorts and a t-shirt most days of the year, sans any cloak or jacket. A virtue of this climate is the ability to get completely dressed in <10 seconds.

I’ve not done such in quite a while, but today I woke at 530 and got dressed. I took trash to the dumpster and heard two dog-walking ladies discuss a rash that indicated they believed themselves to be alone and unaccustomed to contact.

I opened the dumpster and found an middle-aged fellow dissecting a garbage bag in the dumpster receptacle area. He seemed shocked to see me, like a raccoon stopped in mid dig. I bade him goedemorgen and tossed my bags in.

I looked to the Northwest and saw a moon, nearly waning into nothing, such that it looked like a thin circle with a fat sideways smile against the deep azure blue of the night sky.

I saw the roiling clouds that foretell a scorching hot days’ wrath brewing and pushing hot air out of the Orient.

I then hopped in the car and drove down to Epoch café where, as I stood there ordering my drink, the fresh pastries came in. I took a danish.

And now I write you to tell you that much of the world goes on while much of the world sleeps and if you’ve not seen the dawn lately, maybe you should.

Well, Lauren and I took a wild stab at a solution and went to the campus area’s venerable “Hole in the Wall” for “shoegaze” night. I figured it couldn’t be all that bad as I always had a bit of a think for My Bloody Valentine.

We headed down and the bar was sparsely populated. Many people were seated out in the hallway alongside and in back of the bar, sitting in the humid night air with sweating bar glasses stacking indefatigably higher.

We played a game of foosball and I got shellacked. Our pool games that came after were much more balanced but I think I ended up losing that series as well.

Eventually the first band came on and sure enough, they were latter–day disciples drunk from the fountain of St. Greenwood.

This morning I got up and watched the ending of “Shine”, the movie that gives you way-too-many opportunities to view Captain Barbaossa’s butt. I thought the pivotal scene of the Rachmaninoff 3 concerto was absolutely astounding. The emotional scenes between young Noah Taylor and Armin Mueller-Stahl are among the most wrenching put to film.

This is the n^th time in recent memory that Lauren and I looked at austinist, do512, and the chronicle for something to do besides sit at home, eat more mexican food, or watch netflix on a Sunday night and have come up empty.

Seriously, the only thing that sounds remotely good is Shoegaze night at the hole-in-the-wall.

As bad as it may be, rest you assured that it’s better than Sunnyvale, but still…that’s not setting the bar very high.

Laura has a fantastic way of explaining dances physically. She and Matt did a great bit where she said something like:

“You all know Charleston ( big exaggerated moves ) well, people liked it. But they made the music faster and more people came so the moves got faster, smaller, and closer ( same moves, but just tighter and faster ) and it got faster, and faster, and ( they start dancing Balboa ).”

It’s an interesting dance, it’s a bit more regal than the Lindy Hop’s exaggerated hoppity-hop rhythm. It was also a product of Orange County, CA, just like my favorite dance partner, who knew?

…and they’re doing it to “Sweet Georgia Brown”—pass the ball

This weekend the same talented pair will be teaching a workshop on Balboa at Austin’s Uptown Dance.

Afterwards was the main dance, it was one of my favorite co-student’s birthday, so I even dashed into the birthday circle to give her a birthday twirl. The other fun game that was played was called “Snowball”. You start with 2 people at the center of a circle, they dance until “Snowball” is called and then they each get 2 partners from the circle. Well, it gets bigger and bigger, and partners get harder and harder to come by, so it winds up becoming a mad dash for free partners.

Lauren and I booked out at 11:30, got home and a few snacks down the gullet, slept like the dead.

Texas Roller-Girl Action

Last night was Bout 5 of the season featuring the Hell Mary’s versus visiting Northwest Arkansas Hellbillies. It was a shellacking, the Mary’s owned them left and right.

After that the Honky-Tonk Heartbreakers took on the Hotrod Honeys including my favorite, jammer, “Rice Rocket” who helped make sure her team got a spot in the playoffs bracket. It was a good, physical bout with a lot of speed on both sides’ jammers. Very good match.

The Texas girls continued beating the snot out of Arkansas one more time, but by that time we’d seen all the wheels and vengeance we could handle, so we headed home.

Further I think we’d been toxically poisoned by PlayLand skate’s concessions. Between Salt (with popcorn) for Ryan, cardboard pretzel for Jamie, Lauren, and I, and red-playdo with ice masquerading as a slurpee, we didn’t feel well by the time we reached home.

The real up-side was meeting the *Steans clan there ( as they sojourned to that strange world known as “North of the River” ). All in all, I was very glad to have seen them for the first since our return from Canada.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Heartbreakers are in the finals, they looked really good team-wise, but I’m still pulling for the Honeys.