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Year: 2006

Country Wave

March 24, 2006 • • 4 Comments

It’s strange how things in life come in waves. I frequently find something new – or at least new to me – only for it to suddenly appear, quite independently, in several areas of my life, sort of like opening a random book to a random page only to find the perfect bit of advice that I need right then. Then I open another book and find something that reinforces the first bit as if the Universe – or at least my library – is saying, “don’t miss this.” Lately, I’m not to miss old-school country music.

After finally seeing Walk the Line a few weeks ago, I bought Johnny Cash’s 1968 CD At Folsom Prison. It’s a great record in which Cash plays a number of mostly prison and outlaw tunes. In the liner notes, Cash explains why he likes playing for prisoners:

Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform for. We bring them a ray of sunshine in their dungeon and they’re not ashamed to respond, and show their appreciation.

Cash’s performance is one of genuine engagement with his audience, and the listener can truly hear the appreciation of the inmates. The CD is more than just a collection of great songs, it’s a documented moment of providing hope to the hopeless. I spent the next few days thinking about what that must have been like to be locked up and then find that Johnny Cash would be coming to perform and what it would be like to hear those songs in that kind of an environment.

So Cash is where the outlaw country wave began. Then on Saturday night we saw Willie Nelson at the Backyard. Willie and Cash were fellow Highwaymen along with Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. The wave grew and finally peaked on Tuesday.

Every week guests are brought in to motivate, inspire and sometimes entertain the kids. This week a couple of guys came in to do a Johnny Cash show. Now, I don’t exactly teach in a prison, it’s more like county lock-up for kids, but then this wasn’t exactly Johnny Cash. The effects, however, were similar to what I imagined.

The singer was an older gentleman who played guitar beautifully (despite a bandaged hand) and truly did justice to Cash’s material without imitating it. He also played other songs, but Cash was the focus. He opened with “Folsom Prison Blues” and played a number of songs from At Folsom Prison, which I might not have known had I not just purchased the CD. He did stay away from some of the rougher material such as “Cocaine Blues” and added such classics as “Ring of Fire” and “Walk the Line.”

I was surprised to see many of the kids who were raised on punk and hip-hop actually singing along. I think most of them even enjoyed the show, which gave me an approximation of what it might have been like to see Cash at Folsom Prison.

As the show was wrapping up, I mentioned to the teacher sitting next to me that after having seen Willie on Saturday night and now a Cash tribute show, I’d need to somehow try to catch Kris. Then he started into his last song: “Me and Bobby McGee.” I think that’s where the wave broke. Good enough for me.

52

March 24, 2006 • • 2 Comments

Last week, while driving down North Lamar, I came to the light at Airport and rolled to a stop. In front of me, a well used Toyota (I think, but we’ll call it that nonetheless) vibrated in time to the thumping bass within.

As I sat there waiting for the light to change, mentally reviewing the long list of errands I had to run, I noticed that the back end of the Toyota was slowly rising. I’ve seen plenty of rides (though I had thought this was just a car rather than a ride) pimped out with hydraulics so this wasn’t anything special. Not yet.

Once the back end of the car had reached its summit, the trunk popped open. Now fascinated, I found myself gawking and wondering what could be trying to escape from that trunk. Garish red light bathed the interior and before I could ask myself why the trunk needed to be filled with red light – or any light for that matter – I noticed that a pair of neon tubes affixed to the inside of the lid were the source of that light.

The lid continued to rise until it was fully open at which point I could see that the tubes were not meant to illuminate, but rather to enlighten. It was a sign. Actually a number. 52.

I stared at it for some time trying to think of all the 52’s I could. Cards in a deck. Weeks in a year. After going two and out and still pondering it when I got home, I checked Wikipedia and found that 52 also represents the number of white keys on a piano, the atomic number of tellurium, and the international direct dial code for calling Mexico.

Whatever it was, the stoplight turned green, the trunk closed, the Toyota jacked back down, and we drove our separate ways with my life having been made just a bit more surreal. Perhaps the owner of the car was helping to keep Austin weird or maybe I was just the random victim of a drive-by numbering.

The Education of Greyhound Phoebe, Chapter the Sixth

March 21, 2006 • • 4 Comments

in which Phoebe spreads the gospel

Despite last Saturday’s adventures, Phoebe was ready for class on Monday evening. She didn’t like me so much on Sunday morning but after a few rides in the car and a walk, things got better, and she realized that I wasn’t out to get her.

Last night’s class focused on combining lessons such as sit, stay and heel. Phoebe still won’t sit, but she does have a fairly good stay. We practiced walking around meeting other dogs who weren’t in the class. At each new dog, I was able to get Phoebe to stop, stay, politely greet the strangers and then resume walking when we grew bored talking to the new people.

We ran into several people who wanted to pet her because they’d never met a real live greyhound. I guess it isn’t everyday one gets to meet a former professional athlete, even if it is a dog. Phoebe loves the attention and wags her tail like a propeller, which of course the apes find amusing. It’s what got dogs out of the cold and into the cave all those many eons ago, but I digress. Phoebe made new friends and I got to do a little bit of greyhound proselytizing.

Her favorite new friends were a heavily tattooed lesbian couple walking their new puppies. They were impressed by Phoebe’s tattoos and will probably be going to get numbers tatooed in their ears just because Phoebe was so cool what with her tattoos and all. Their puppies were a bit much for Phoebe, but she wasn’t rude.

After witnessing to the hardships of greyhound life and how she was born again as Phoebe she got to spend the rest of the evening watching her classmates play and asking for treats from their owners.

<< previous chapter | next chapter >>

Visit Phoebe’s friends at the Carnival of the Dogs and don’t miss Doug Petch’s comment-a-thon benefiting greyhound rescue.

[saveagrey]

Willie Nelson at the Backyard

March 21, 2006 • • 9 Comments

Willie Nelson Poster

On Saturday we went to the Backyard to hear Willie Nelson. I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve always wanted to see Willie play and now I am complete. Watching a show under the big oak trees at the Backyard is always a great experience and Saturday night was no exception. Despite a forecast for rain, the weather was quite nice: cool and overcast but not too humid.

Willie opened with “Whiskey River,” a perfect set opener if ever there was one. He spent most of the evening playing familiar classics including “All of Me,” “On the Road Again,” “Still is Still Moving to Me,” and my personal favorites “Me and Paul” and “Pancho and Lefty.” With as much material as he has, he probably could have played until dawn, but I’m glad he stuck with the classics. He’s Willie. He doesn’t have to impress anyone.

His band was low-key and mellow, which is about what I expected from Willie, who is now 73. They didn’t really sound like a typical country band. Instead they noodled in out of folksy jam rock, almost jazz, and western swing. Sometimes they sounded country, but they really sounded like they were a bunch of old friends (which they are) just kind of jamming together as they segued from one song to the next often without pause, just drifting like a bunch of people who just enjoy getting together to play a few tunes on the front porch. Perhaps it’s this semi-sloppy, thoroughly endearing aspect of Willie’s music that I love so much. He’s an incredible singer and a talented guitarist, but he’s really just there to enjoy himself and we get to come along for the ride, joining that band of gypsies as they go down the highway.

Check out Lenwood for a rundown of Willie’s Friday night show.

Video Editing for Spring Break

March 20, 2006 • • 4 Comments

Alas, spring break is over. This year’s spring break was a busy one for me. For the past seventeen years, I’ve been involved with Camp Periwinkle at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. It’s a camp for childhood cancer patients and their siblings. It lasts a week and no expense is spared to create the ultimate camp for these kids who want nothing more than to feel normal and do normal things despite being fragile, bald and swollen with chemo drugs. It doesn’t cost a dime for the kids to go and we roll out the red carpet. My main duty at camp is to do the video production work. This includes training videos, cabin skit videos, some promo work, but mainly a yearbook video. So most of spring break was spent editing our footage from last year’s camp. Usually I’m finished by now so spring breaks are typically spent cycling and goofing off, but a catastrophic hard drive failure on the video editing system left me starting over again about a month ago. So I spent spring break mainly watching kids have fun last summer. It’s cool to see those smiling faces having a rare good time. I laugh with them and the editing goes more quickly and I don’t mind not being outside on gorgeous days. I’m reminded that I can reasonably expect many more. Suddenly spring break ends, and I’m back at work. This year it was different than in previous years. I was actually happy to be back, although I really could use another week to edit.

Monday Movie Roundup

March 20, 2006 • • Leave a comment

By sheer force of happenstance (okay, that’s probably not really a force and if it is it’s certainly one of the weaker interactions) our movies for the past week related the stories of screwed up kids, misfits trying to find their way through this mystery called life…

The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985)

This was actually the first time I’d ever seen The Goonies. I think that if I’d seen it when it came out (and if it had come out a few years earlier) I would have loved it. A group of misfit kids, led by the shy Mikey Walsh search for pirate treasure so they can help their parents buy their homes, which are about to be demolished to make room for a golf course. It’s a sweet, mostly innocent tale of kids caught up in a caper being run by bumbling adult criminals. The kids aren’t too screwed up in this one, but they don’t really fit in either. Finding buried treasure makes up for a lot, though. Three stars.

Thumbsucker (Mike Mills, 2005)

Thumbsucker is so named because Justin sucks his thumb, which is a problem when you’re seventeen. This makes him a screwed-up kid. Justin is smart, but lacks confidence and over the course of this bizarre comedy/drama he tries several solutions including spiritual ones under the guidance of a weird zen dentist dude played by Keanu Reeves. He experiments with ADHD meds and self-medication, trying out different personas on his journey to discover who he is. Justin’s battle to stand free of his thumb is an interesting, at times funny, sometimes flat movie that seemed longer than it was, but ultimately worth the watch. Three and a half stars.

Back to the Future III (Robert Zemeckis, 1990)

Last week we saw Back to the Future II, so this week we had to wrap it up. Back to the Future III is the least interesting of the trilogy, probably because it doesn’t really explore the time travel paradoxes that make the first two so much fun. It’s mainly a western, and in this one Marty finally gets his life in order. Nothing special, but a fun diversion and a fair ending to the series. Two and a half.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002)

Now if ever there was a screwed up kid, it’s Anakin Skywalker. This punk gives in to hate, seeks revenge, loses control of his feelings, helps brutal Sith lords, defies his Jedi master, shows off and acts arrogant at every turn. He even slaughters a whole village of Tuskin Raiders. Is it any wonder he grew up to be the most evil man in that distant galaxy?

I loved Star Wars when I was a kid, but I wasn’t as disappointed with these new installments as everyone else I know. For one thing, I didn’t expect much and for another I probably would have skipped the original trilogy if I was the age I am now back in 1977. Unless I had kids, of course. So no, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones isn’t great, but it’s fun and it works if you’re not looking for more than that. Three stars.

The United States of Leland (Matthew Ryan Hoge, 2003)

The United States of Leland is about a teacher named Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle) who works in a correctional facility. There are plenty of screwed up kids in a place like that and one of them, Leland Fitzgerald (played by Ryan Gosling), is there for murdering a retarded boy. Pearl is an aspiring writer in search of a novel and as he gets to know Leland he thinks he may have it. Following the conversations between Pearl and Leland, the film focuses on the effects of the killing on both the family of the killer and that of his victim.

Sometimes it’s hard to enjoy a movie that mirrors one’s own circumstances (I’m a teacher/writer working in a correctional facility) because it’s so easy to get lost in the that’s-not-really-how-it-is details. This movie gets it right, and with excellent performances by Gosling and Cheadle, as well as Kevin Spacey who plays Leland’s out-of touch novelist father, it’s definitely worth seeing. Four stars.

Jarhead (Sam Mendes, 2005)

Dark, sarcastic military movies almost always go over well with me, and Jarhead is no exception. It follows the basic trajectory of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket from basic training to meaningless war, but where that film lacks a real third act and is overly bitter, Jarhead feels like a complete movie that actually engenders sympathy for its characters as it follows them through 1991’s Operation Desert Shield and into Desert Storm. At times the film is downright funny and other times it’s scary and often sad.

The cinematography in Jarhead is stunning. The empty deserts of Saudi Arabia become a spooky wilderness in which everything including hope seems only a mirage. The most amazing scenes, though, come after the oil fields are set afire providing hellish lighting for the battlefield scenes in which no battles occur. Jarhead is a sort of Apocalypse Now for a new generation and includes several references to that film, most amusingly when a Marine hears The Doors and complains, “that’s Vietnam music, man” and then wonders why they can’t have their own.

At one point, Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), the film’s narrator states “all wars are different, all wars are the same,” and so it is with war movies. This one is particularly good though and a powerful reminder of what happens when we send our kids, screwed up and otherwise, off to war. It’s based on Swoford’s memoir of the same name, which I suspect is probably also worth checking out. Four and a half stars.

Weekend Hound Blogging: Can You Hold Your H2O2?

March 19, 2006 • • 6 Comments

Dogs will eat anything. Anything. Trash, wood, plastic, rotten food, rubber, bones, the list is as endless as a dog’s curiosity. We’ve learned this over the years because our hounds have on several occasions snacked upon that which they shouldn’t. A quick call to the animal emergency clinic gets us the correct dose of hydrogen peroxide for a dog’s weight and then we go out back to induce vomiting. I’ve done it several times.

The first time was shortly after we got our first dog, Zephyr. We learned she was a trash eater when she treated herself to a pound of rancid bacon and whatever else she found in the trash on a day that we did some ‘fridge cleaning. I called animal emergency and they provided me with the recipe for stomach cleaners, also known as hydrogen peroxide shots. I was instructed to give her a tablespoon every five minutes until she threw up.

Out we went to the driveway and commenced. It was nearly half an hour and much H2O2 later before she finally started. This was, of course, right when the neighbor came staggering over to meet the new dog who was now wobbling uncertainly and foaming at the mouth with long bubbly tendrils of bile dripping onto the soggy pile of half-digested bacon in front of her.

Meet my new dog.

The neighbor smiled and said in his permanently drunken twang, “She’s brindle. She’s beautiful.”

Zephyr, a trash hound if ever there was one, got pretty familiar with H2O2 over the years. When we got Daphne it sometimes became more difficult since we didn’t always know who the guilty party was, but we found that Daphne threw up much more quickly than Zephyr so while Zephyr might be hiding in a corner of the yard with her nose jammed under the fence, Daphne might hurl, thus revealing the evidence of the crime and sparing Zephyr another tablespoon of that most insidious poison.

As might be guessed, Phoebe entered the club last night. We came home from the Willie Nelson show to find that she’d eaten a rubberized nylabone. A call to animal emergency told me I would be inducing vomiting.

Despite being the biggest dog we’ve ever had, she’s a true lightweight when it comes to doing H2O2 shots. She asked if she could have it with some grenadine – an H2O2 sunrise – or even on the rocks, but I pointed out that real dogs do their shots straight up. Without salt, lime, or grenadine she took it like a trooper.

She hacked after the first one and then immediately after the second, she threw up, expelling the rubber scraps of her evening adventures. She went to bed singing, “Hydrogen peroxide river don’t run dry, you’re all I got to take care of me.” while I wondered why these things only ever happen in the middle of the night.

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Want to make a fast friend by saving a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you. You can also go here to find out why greyhounds are running for their lives.

If you have dogs who need proven leadership, go here to find a cat.

Outlaw Country

March 18, 2006 • • 5 Comments

When I was growing up there were certain artists whose music was always in the background. Foremost among them was Willie Nelson, and frequently heard were Willie’s fellow Highwaymen: Waylon, Kris and Cash. I always dismissed this stuff as my parents’ music, but it wasn’t until I was on my own without any of their albums that I realized I liked it and that I missed hearing it.

The moment came when I was in college, still new to Austin and Texas, and I found myself sitting around playing guitars with a friend. The conversation turned to secret musical fixations and I admitted to Willie.

My friend, a lifelong Texan, informed me that Willie didn’t count.

“Why?”

“Because everyone likes Willie. They just don’t always admit it.” We took a break from Joy Division and the Grateful Dead, and he showed me how to play a few Willie tunes. I finally had to fess up to something else, but what he said was spot on.

I’ve realized over the years that I can’t stand Nashville country, which sounds to me like it’s in, shall we say, its hair metal phase, but I do like the old outlaw country guys: Willie, Waylon, Kris, Cash, Jerry Jeff as well as some of the new country that comes out of Austin. It’s simple, nonpretentious music with a kind of hard-edged honesty and dark sense of humor that lends it a quality similar to old school punk or gangsta rap.

This all surfaces because of two events. Last week I saw Walk the Line, which put me on a Johnny Cash thing, and tonight I’m going to go see Willie at the Backyard. This will be the second time I’ve seen him play. The first was one of those God-I-love-Austin kind of days.

Back in the early ’90s, word got out that Willie was going to play a free show on the south steps of the capitol building. It was a Sunday afternoon, I think, and I decided to check him out. I rode my bike down to the capitol and waited with the small crowd. Finally, Willie came out and stood in front of the single microphone. He had no band; it was just him and Trigger, all beat up and full of holes.

He played a solo acoustic set that included many of his most famous tunes. I remember the weather was beautiful, the crowd was happy, and Willie seemed so pleased to just be making music for a small group of fans in his home city. Afterwards, he stayed up on stage while people passed him boots, belts, LPs, guitars, and posters to sign. He joked with the audience and didn’t leave until he’d signed everything that anybody wanted signed.

I’ve always associated Willie with Austin and as much as I love this town, it’s surprising that I’ve never made it to a real Willie show so I’m looking forward to tonight. Despite the forecast for rain, I’ll be there. After all, what would Willie do?

Bird Pictures from Canyon of the Eagles

March 15, 2006 • • 9 Comments

Here are a few of the better pictures of birds from Saturday’s trip up the Canyon of the Eagles.

This is a bald eagle. They roost there this time of year. We mostly saw juveniles, which look more like hawks because they don’t have the white heads yet. This is the best shot I could get of an adult. A 300mm lens doesn’t do it justice, but that’s all I’ve got. It looked stunning through the binoculars.

Bald Eagle

Next up we have some pelicans chilling with a flock of ducks…

Pelicans

A couple of blue herons standing in a tree on top of a cliff…

Blue Herons

And finally some seagulls who didn’t mind getting closer to me and my camera…

Seagull

Seagull

Seagull

O, the Fame! O, the Accolades!

March 15, 2006 • • 1 Comment

Morrison is this week’s Catmodel of the Week over at Carnival of the Cats. A few weeks ago, the carnival’s host asked if Morrison’s picture could be used on the Carnival Banner. After checking with his attorneys and press agent, he agreed. People clicked on his picture and now he’s bad, he’s nationwide. You might say that he’s bonafide, he’s got prospects. You’d definitely be correct in thinking that he’s won the people’s ovation forever.

By the way, don’t forget to check out this week’s Carnival of the Cats over at Justin’s Random Thoughts.