Ok...
got fed up with the site not displaying properly in firefox - and with barnes and noble always horking up the images by replacing gifs with jpgs... so i'm going to be playing around with the layout a bit. Still dorking with the template/style sheet - have to do things in freaking CSS - pain in the ass... probably take me a couple hours of fiddling and i need to drop into photoshop and build a footer...

anyway - going to clean it up a bit more, might point the current anime watch list to the fansub provider i source from instead of the wiki - it's easier to find the wiki than a good fansub... probably add a section for old books i've read - maybe review them like i have the anime i've done (click densuke for that (that's the dog for those of you playing at home without a net))... though i'm a lot harder on bad books than i am on crappy cartoons as i've vested more effort into making them work, so that might not be a very nice thing to do. plus - i've got at least 3 or 4 books to add to my list...

probably add a 'what i'm working on' or a 'what i'm listening to' as i get to it...

SXSW Review

Out in town for SXSW all day with Jake. Scrounged up a good parking spot early then began the trek back and forth... started with Kimya Dawson (of the Juno soundtrack fame) who was someone Jake really liked and wanted to expose me to. She's good - a funny Ani Defranco. I suggested that i'd love to mix some of her songs with Wesley Willis... because her 'my songs all start off the same' and wesleys 'my songs all are exactly the same all the way through' would work well together. Still - it's a niche thing for me - and whereas i certainly enjoyed it it wasnt MUSIC writ large for me.

So we wandered off to the free japan bash show at mother egans - an excuse to see one or two of the bands from the japan night that neither of us saw the night before (jake wanted to see Destroyer and, honestly, without go!go!7188 like last year i just didnt think i'd see anything that'd blow me away. Then again - Mick Jones and Tony James were doing a set over at Waterloo (close by) at 5 - so we figured we'd go, check it out, see if there was anything worth seeing, and bail to go see our Clash/GenerationX new incarnation...

it didnt work out that way... 3 3 piece bands took care of that...

The band taking stage when we got there was Sodopp... a 3 piece all girl pop-punk outfit with way way WAY too much energy - and a bass player that was shredding while pogoing for WAY too long. Just because it's girls doesnt make it smarmy j-pop... these 3 could play. Really. Honto ni Honto ni. Plus - the drummer was cute... and they were awfully tight - lots of very good progressions and a very very busy baseline in all their tracks. This was the throw away show - they'd done their big showcase last night - so they were having fun - and damn if you couldnt tell. I mean - they were tearing up the joint and gigglingly happy about it. This is why i love SXSW... you get exposed to things you never thought you would. It was good... different... but technically crisp. The songs were MUCH better live than the mp3s i'd listened to when figuring out whether to drag my ass down to Elysium. After, the girls came rolling through signing everything and taking pictures with everyone and just oozing excitement and happiness. It's sooo much fun to see a band hit the stage, capture the crowd, and come off feeling like they owned the joint. I think this was about when Jake realized 'wow... these bands are fucking fun'...

The emeralds followed - and I've seen/heard a lot of them as they've been here several times. 3 piece surf-punk - which sounds a bit better produced than live - but they were still great to watch. (and just because i dont glow over them doesnt mean i didnt like em - it's just i heard them last year)

Then Detroit 7 took the stage.

Another 3 piece... much more garageband... i'd heard some of their stuff from their myspace page and wasnt really thinking this would be what it turned into. I really wasnt expecting this... the lead in the dress and the leather chucks was a good sign - but hell, anyone can LOOK the part... but these 3 hit it hard from note one and absolutely owned it. I mean... their music is so different live than off cd (i know because i bought a couple at the end) - it's got a driving energy that they havent captured in studio yet - or they havent written the right song to show it off. The lead singer has a very husky/smoky voice - and the set built... and built... and there were good songs to build it with... so after 20 minutes they hit 'this love sucks' and come on and god damn... i mean - Sodopp set the table and these guys emptied the bases - this is EXACTLY why i love this festival. The fact that these guys had another cute drummer (yes Miyoko Yamaguchi - that's you) who, honestly, burned more energy in that set and did more with that crappy kit than any drummer i've seen in a looooong time - and even then... this girl was born to beat the crap out of things with sticks - so keep her away from bamboo shinai when she's anywhere near me please. They did some shows with Go!Go!7188 recently (god damn wouldnt THAT be a show to see...) - sigh... I loved this band - and if they come anywhere near you (which, of course, they wont... because japanese bands almost never come to the states and the dollar sucks so bad even when they do they lose money) go see em. No - really... these 3 really fucking rock.

So needless to say both jake and i were so blown out by all this we totally blew Mick and Tony's new project off. Sorry guys...

Went and grabbed some awful bbq downtown then later went to see NOFX... who did basically the entire Punk in Drublic album in lieu of anything remotely new, an album which they hadnt played in years but in typical punk fashion declared that they didnt care and just wanted to have fun and if you didnt like it you could go watch the Breeders' Deal sisters do a 69 on each other on the other stage. That that album is one of my alltime favorite punk albums meant i was screaming lyrics in harmony all the way through - bouncing and singing and having a grand ole time. But Detroit 7 owned the day - and considering how much fun I had at NOFX that's saying something.

Does anyone remember Up With People?
(that's all the warning you get)

but what makes this one priceless?
funny you should ask

So the Obama campaign is having a contest...

My ad:
[black - fade up into video of iraq war... video footage is going to be running in little rectangles as it receeds into a dark background - lots of footage from frontline type shows... rumsfeld talking up the war... bush talking up the war... cheney talking up the war... govt officials saying it would pay for itself etc... all these voices are subtextual - nothing as the primary audio focus]
Primary audio focus... female voice... "In 1992 Barrack Obama had the vision to call the Iraq war a mistake. 7 years later, the war in iraq has cost this nation prestige overseas... through torture it's moral standing at home and abroad... through the abuse of the constitution its even cost us the rule of law... but, in terms of cold hard cash, [begin to pull back... showing girl speaking to left of center as she comes into screen - long haired brunette with big sunglasses, wearing sunhat and flowery laura-ashley style sundress] it's estimated to have cost us 3 trillion dollars. My name is Ashley Dupré [takes off sunglasses] and i want you to understand that that's the equivalent of two hours with me for every man woman and child in the country. So I ask you America... was it good for you? [fade to black]

you know...
there are days you dont want to come out of the house...
days when the world seems a might unfriendly...
but this might be a bit much

Here in Austin it's SXSW time again... i think i've attended, hmm, 4 of them over the years. I'll likely hit the NOFX/Breeders free show saturday, and might try to buy my way into the japan showcase though the only band i'd want to see there is ketchup mania playing at 1am so who knows...

was out at the driskill bar last night - different crowd than usual... buncha longhairs and kids... betting the strip clubs did well last night with all the A&R assholes in town.

Speaking of A&R assholes... Trent released new numbers from sales of Ghost - and 1.6m is a number big enough that a whole lot of record labels had best take note. He's hitting the core value proposition of piracy... if people HAVE money and the cost isnt something they'll notice... they'll pay. This is why iTunes is a success. If you're dealing with kids who have NO money and just want to listen to the music - a) these are not potential customers and b) artists are very familiar with the concept of having no money and wanting to listen to music i doubt artists are too terribly upset. Sure - it was the A&R guys picking up the bar tabs last night (i saw one rolling up a cash register receipt that had to be 5 feet long) - but considering how little else they do for artists i think they can afford it... for now...

You know i've never seen a democrat work so hard at trying to get the attention of a republican who's busy looking for a november running mate. He may not have the republican background but he sure has the credentials!!! - and if Bill's exploits were any indication, there really cant be any question that he's passed the CinC test, afterall, he's just a squirrel lookin for a nut.

so...
the scientific numbers are finally weighing in...

i, for one, welcome our post apocalyptic overlords

Wintermute is gonna be pissed.

as a youth in surburban hell, this game was an outlet... no, we never ended up in the sewers confused as to whether there might be troglodytes chasing us, or utterly tossed aside by the social fabric of highschool (no more so than anyone else in that miserable shithole that was north dallas)... the games got more interesting, more complicated, more social - more about friends having an excuse to sit around and talk, drink a few beers - for some get stoned (and for others get so messed up they swung from trees)... but in the earlier days this was an outlet we just didnt have any other way.

i wouldnt presume to speak for Randy Kirk and Purna - the group i gamed with back in my early youth... but i remember the game fondly. Sure - perhaps hammering Purna's lead figure with a hammer when a 'ten ton weight' fell on him was, well, a bit over the top (sorry about that ;)) - but we really did need something other than polarbear ashburns and kirk's parent's liquor cabinet... and there's no better way to learn the definition of 32,000 cubic feet than a fireball in a 10x10 room.

i think we all know why Obama lost in Ohio last night...

Finally - CNN asks the important questions other news organizations are afraid to ask...

Voted.

A hint as to my voting preference with a question... If Bitch is the New Black... and Johnny Cash is the man in black... and Johnny Cash is dead... does that make Hillary a necrophiliac?

edit:
at caucus - we had maybe 300 lined up out into the cold, some in shorts - many with kids running around... the doors didnt open until about 720 - some last minute voters and then a degree of 'what are we going to do - look at all those people' no doubt. At one point the republicans opened up a side door to another room in the building and screamed 'any republicans out there?'... they were greeted with laughter and silence.

As I stood in the crowd I assumed a lot of those present would be Clinton people - no one seemed to know what a caucus would look like in texas... most seemed to have a vision that it would be like Iowa, with lots of hemming and hawing over undecideds.

We were broken into groups - 3 lines - one for people who had their voter registration cards stamped democrat, which were mostly early voters since those who voted today were given little 'invitations', one for the invitations people, and one for the 'i voted but i dont have any documentation and i look lost'. I was in the invitation group - a smaller line - so they merged us with the confused people. You went in... signed in... filled in the ID# they gave you... then chose the candidate you supported. I saw Obama people standing there, and one lone Clinton campaign person who had this jcrew outfit going and looked like he was sporting a 3 foot stick up his ass. He kept looking at the signin sheets - so as i was standing there i glanced over at them as well... of the 60 or so people who'd signed in by the time I got to the front of the line - every single one signed in for Obama.

When I left, the line out the door was filled with people sporting little obama stickers, wearing shirts, and generally looking like Hillary's worst nightmare.

School teachers, mothers, septuagenarians, couples, yuppies, cowboy boot wearing texans... it was a long line...

it's election day...
time to see how terrifying the electorate is....

Oh wait... nevermind...

not fake...