Nothin’ much to report at present, but I thought I’d pass off a couple of truly scary things. For the strong-stomached among you, The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World. For the, uh, equally strong-stomached, there’s also this. I cannot freakin’ believe my ugly mug now graces the (Web) pages of SPIN. That’s disturbing, […]
Props to Lomax over at HouStoned for this one — it turns out this year’s Peak Oil conference hit Houston last week, and author/anti-petroleum/anti-car guy James Howard Kunstler was there to finally sample all that Helltown has to offer. Now, I should state up front that I do agree with a heck of a lot […]
And now, ladies & gents, for what’s rapidly becoming my weekly dose of political bile. My in-laws happened to have the TV on this past Sunday night when we were over there, and I walked into the living room just in time to see Katie Couric interviewing Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph […]
Ah, man. You may’ve already heard, but Lance Hahn, longtime fixture on the pop-punk scene both in Austin and San Francisco, passed away this past Sunday after a long string of health problems. Hahn was one of those people who always made/make me feel inadequate just by the sheer amount of cool stuff they managed […]
Time to interject some (more) non-musical stuff here… As a relatively-recent dad, I’m utterly terrified to talk to friends with high-school-aged (and even middle-school-aged) kids these days. Maybe it’s an incorrect perception, but it sure sounds like the lives kid lead are ridiculously, insanely complicated and busy. How can it be fun, to be continually […]
Nice, all you right-wing whackjob guys (and gals — no, I’m not forgetting about you, Michelle Malkin), real nice. In order to combat Democratic PR about how the Prez is giving the finger to poor kids, what do you do? You smack down a twelve-year-old and his family, setting off a firestorm of hatred and […]
This is too freakin’ cool. (Either that, or I’m a big, big dork.) It takes some practice, but now I can switch directions pretty easily — at one point I had to multiply 5 x 5 in my head to get it to go from counter-clockwise to clockwise…
Here’s my damn-near-perfect evening, as of this past Saturday, after dropping the munchkin off at Grandma’s for a little spoilage (I love the midget, but y’know…): Dinner with the love of my life at Spaghetti Western. Sweet-ass Italian margaritas, vintage memorabilia for Westerns you’ve never heard of (call me a Philistine if you will, but […]
And here’s one to lighten the mood a bit: Geostationary Banana Over Texas. ‘Cause there just ain’t enough fruit floating around up at high altitude, y’all. Although, sadly, it looks like the H-town environs only merit a loop or two of the banana’s projected path; it’ll be spending most of its time floating over Austin. […]
Nice, Mr. Limbaugh — if somebody actually fucking serves in the military and they disagree with you, they’re “phony soldiers”? What an absolute, complete ass you are, sir. Rush, have you ever served in any branch of the military? No? I didn’t think so. So who gave you the authority, the expertise to decide who’s […]
I’m fairly sure I’ve waxed eloquent before in these (digital) pages about the wonder that was Silkworm — simply put, they were one of the bands that truly formed my musical universe back in the college days, and one of the first to make me realize that songs don’t have to go verse-chorus-verse to work […]
Okay, so maybe I don’t have my Cynic-O-Meter dialed up as high as it probably should be right now, given the current reign of shameless corruption, but didn’t we create the office of “Director of National Intelligence” specifically to coordinate all our intelligence agencies and make sure we never again put political gains over national […]
Regular readers might remember that back at the end of July yours truly got to play a bloodthirsty, mindless creature of the night in a video for emo-indie guy Jonah Matranga’s new track “Not About A Girl Or A Place”, filmed by SCR bud Mel House. Well, I missed the big-screen premiere, sadly, but naturally, […]
Ah, yes — home sweaty home. Been back a week or so, actually, but I’ve been feeling a bit weird about the Internet thing and music in general (more on that in a sec); sorry it’s taken me so long to finally crawl back online. It’s strange to be back in H-town, I have to […]
It’s been an odd few days, that’s for sure… I dragged the wife out to the Houston Press Music Awards this past Sunday in downtown, and although we got there late (right at 8PM), we still managed to catch some darn good bands. First we saw part of The Scattered Pages’ set at Venue (they […]
So, a while back indie-emo solo guy (and perennial SCR favorite) Jonah Matranga came to town to do one of those stop-by-on-the-way-to-SXSW shows. I caught his show up at Super Happy Fun Land and then hung out for a bit in the wee hours of the morn with Jonah and show organizer, temp Jonah bassist, […]
Yeah, so I’m probably overreacting just a smidge on this one, but c’mon: doesn’t this sound exactly like how Gamera got his powers? “Gamera is really neat / He is made of turtle meat / We are eating Gamera!” Ah, MST3K, how I miss you. (And hey, maybe JJ Abrams is as smart as everybody […]
It’s probably at least partly because I just finished watching American Hardcore, a decent documentary that covers a scene I missed out on utterly and completely — the two local bands I knew of in beautiful Killeen, Texas, were both crappy metal bands (we had nothing but metal, rap, and country, in various combinations); I […]
Okay, so my dad sure as hell doesn’t read this blog, but what the hell: thanks, Dad. I know we don’t always get along, and your musical tastes are pretty damn wretched, but there are some things I’ve learned from you over the years, and I feel like now’s the time to give Pops some […]
Oh, man. I caught this one measly time on MTV, waaaaaaaay back in the day (like, when Illadelph Halflife came out, back in ’96), and it made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt. Flash-forward to the age of anything-in-the-damn-world-is-online, and here it is on YouTube, The Roots‘ video for “What They Do,” which happens […]
DSCN1294, originally uploaded by gaijintx. Worst day in a while; apologies for the non-postings, but I’ve been dealing with more “home” stuff than SCR stuff lately. Rest in peace, Toby. We love you.
I guess it had to happen eventually, but it still breaks my heart — in the wake of the quasi-empowered Democrats’ roll-over-play-dead strategy when it comes to dealing with the White House, peace mom Cindy Sheehan’s decided to pack it in. Fuck. Granted, she wasn’t the only person out there trying to stop this stupid, […]
Went to work, spent most of the morning working on a handful of teeny-tiny little problems; watched out my 17th-floor window as the power substation at 59 & Buffalo Speedway blew sky-high; frantically ate dinner and played with my little girl a while; then watched out the window as a gigantic funeral full of gang […]
…but an evil, petty little part of me desperately wants to sing “ding-dong, the Witch is dead — which old witch? The Wicked Witch!” as I dance gaily around the house. Like I said, crass, but what the hell — the man did a lot of evil, awful things in his time on the planet. […]
This could make the show below a little, er, surreal: Sun., May 6 – Mute Math/Somebody Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin/The Cinematics @ The Meridian
Yep, today, April 22nd is Earth Day, which, although not technically Earth’s birthday (like we know when that is), is still a good occasion for celebrating the wonders of this planet and everything on it. I don’t think there’re any festivals or anything, but what the hey — if the weather holds, at least it’ll […]
I don’t get out much these days. In fact, I’ve only gone to see shows sporadically for quite a while now, long enough that I can count on one-and-a-half hands the number of times I’ve caught a live show this past year. My evenings these days consist of coming home from work, eating dinner, playing […]
Ah, Internet, how we love you. No, not because you help us find the nearest drycleaners or figure out effortlessly which curly-haired actress was in Felicity (for the record, yes, it was Keri Russell; sorry, Kim…), but because you open our eyes to the obscure world of weird, weird, amazingly neat things that lurks out […]
Man. So I just caught Avril Lavigne on SNL, and…well, damn. I haven’t seen somebody that wooden on a stage in a long, long time. She’s punk the way a twelve-year-old girl from the ‘burbs thinks punk should sound and look like. I mean, c’mon, when your backup singers are more dynamic and interesting to […]
Damn. This is a shame; I know Kurt Vonnegut was getting up there in years, sure, but with him gone I feel like yet another chunk of my heroes of old, people who spent their lives fighting against the outright stupidity we get force-fed every single day, has disappeared. A bit of the smart, sarcastic, […]
Case in point: my wife bought my three-year-old daughter a cloth Dorothy doll (of Wizard of Oz fame) a while back, and noticed today while the midget was playing with it that the doll for some reason had gigantic ears that were tucked under her hair. The subsequent exchange went like this: My wife: Hmm…I […]
Sadly, I am neither quick nor witty enough to have come up with a decent April Fool’s post, so instead I’ll just point you to somebody who has: “Jandek: It’s Truck Month” Props to a.different.ryan for making me read the damn thing about twelve times before realizing what fucking day it is. Funny and terrifying, […]
Ah, the best-laid plans… I’d intended to hit the 2nd night of the Noise & Smoke H-town band extravaganza last night, but alas, it was not to be (sorry, Conor…). After a week of my little girl having the stomach flu, my wife finally caught it yesterday herself, so I stayed home to take care […]
This is a wee bit strange. I tend to visit the Houston Press blogs a fair amount, partly because they’ve been kind enough to have this little site in their blogroll since the get-go, so the other day I got curious about some of the other blogs/sites listed. I happened to click on The Bald […]
