Not Necessarily Interesting News

Walking out of Chuy’s a couple days ago we overheard a guy in the lobby talking loudly into his cellphone.

And I quote: “…unoffically this’ll be my 8th drunk driving conviction…<unintelligble>…and they don’t even know about the other illegal things…”

WTF? Eight drunk driving convictions? And what the hell is “unofficially”? At what point does one acknowledge that they might have a small drinking problem? Killing someone? There is never an excuse for drunk driving in my opinion. If you want to kill yourself, great. The world doesn’t need or want you in the gene pool. Unfortunately, more often than not, you end up killing innocent bystanders.

: Authority Song from the album “The Best That I Could Do 1978-1988” by John Cougar Mellencamp

Dropped by Walgreens this morning to pick up my allergy prescription and passing down an aisle I noticed this. Right above the health bars(soy bars, energy bars, granola, etc) they had a display of pork rinds. Well, Marge, screw the diet. I’m getting some pork rinds instead.

: Run Off To La from the album “Kid Rock” by Kid Rock

Well, I did report for jury duty last week as I was supposed to. I haven’t had time to write about it until now.

I showed up at the courthouse and got assigned to a jury pool and was told to report to the courtroom at 1:30PM. Great, there I was 30+ miles from home with nearly 3 hours to waste. Not really enough time to bother with going home so I bummed around Georgetown for a while and got lunch with my massive $6 of pay I received for showing up. I did find some mud to play with the Defender in so it wasn’t a total loss.

I showed up at 1:30 and was assigned juror number 52. A good thing. They’d have to strike 40 people ahead of me before I could make the jury. By the questions the lawyers were asking it looked to be a nasty case. The defendant was charged with aggravated sexual assault on a child. The defendant was a woman and the victim her own son. Not fun. Jury selection went 2 days for which I received $12. Luckily I was not picked as I couldn’t afford the time off work.

I saw in the paper today the trial lasted until yesterday, nearly two weeks. She was sentenced to 25 years plus 10 years plus 10 years probation to run concurrently. Ouch. I’d post a link to the story online but it requires registration. Click ‘more’ to see the full story.

: Welsh Air from the album “Voice Of An Angel” by Charlotte Church

(Read on …)

The Alamo Drafthouse hosted the World Premier of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle last night. I managed to get tickets to the opening for us and a couple friends. In standard Alamo style this wasn’t any old movie premier. They had a Road Rally to find the location of the premier. At that undisclosed location there was going to be the premier and they had also brought down 3 genuine White Castle grills and 10,000 White Castle burgers. When I heard that I just had to go. White Castle burgers are like heaven to me and I hadn’t had any in about 5 years when I got some on a trip to a funeral in Ohio. Also, my wife, Shannon, had never had a White Castle burger.

We showed up at the Alamo at 2pm ready to roll. We were given a CD and told to listen to track 1. That gave us clues to a location in Austin. Once there we called in and were told to listen to another track which told us to look for something at that location. We then called back with the answer and were given another track to listen to for directions to our next stop. We drove all over town following the clues. We went to such exotic locales as The Gas Pipe, Sugar’s, Exposé, Zilker Botanical Garden, and more. I got to ask a stripper at Sugar’s how much for a Cleveland Steamer(five bucks). I got to squeeze a white man to get an answer. We made about 15 stops in all. We were in the first 10 teams across the line out of nearly 100 teams. The finish line was at an Elk’s Lodge in South Austin.

When we arrived they were just starting to hand out White Castle Burgers from the temporary restaurant. It was all you could eat. Dear Lord, did I eat a lot of burgers. I lost count around 15. The smell of them cooking wafted over us continually as we waited for it to get dark to watch the movie. My wife actually liked them and I think she understands the obsession some folks, like me, have with them. The frozen versions you can get in the store don’t even compare to one fresh off the grill. I even took a couple bags home and am eating one as I type this. I had to take them. I know it’ll be many years before I get them again.

Now for the movie review. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much from the movie and came mostly for the burgers. The movie itself was actually pretty good. It is a typical road trip type movie and has a lot of gags but there were quite a few original things happening in the movie that made it fun to watch. You wanted to see what else could possibly go wrong on a trip across town to a burger stand. Neil Patrick Harris, a.k.a. Doogie Howser, was hilarious playing a debased version of himself. I don’t want to give away anything so I’ll stop here. I recommend you see it for yourself.

After the movie the actors and writers came onstage for a Q and A session which was really a lot of fun. sorry for the crappy pic but it was night and they were about 40 feet away and just out of flash range. My wife and I swear we saw Neil Patrick Harris at the back of the crowd before the movie but he didn’t get on stage. Maybe he heard there was a strip club just down the street. Some of the behind the scenes insights were interesting and got the crowd laughing.

I look forward to the next Road Rally hosted by Alamo Drafthouse even if they won’t have White Castles there.

Man, that was our busiest 4th ever.

My folks offered to watch the kid so we could take the boat out on Lake Travis and party with some friends. We met my friends around noon in Devil’s Cove. We tied off to their houseboat and hung out for many hours. We did some shots of some really good tequila, did some jello shooters, swam, people watched, saw some boobies, etc. We had to leave the cove around 5 just as things started to get rowdy because we were having a bunch of folks over to our place.

We ended up having 14 people, family and friends, over for dinner and fireworks. My wife and mom made homemade wontons from scratch. They did about 300 for the crew. My grandparents brought over homemade ice cream which was delicious too. After dark we broke out the fireworks. We had enough to keep all the guys busy for over and hour and 1/2. Lots of fun and no injuries this year.

: We’re All Gonna Die Someday from the album “The Captain” by Kasey Chambers

I got home today and found a letter from Williamson County. It was a summons for jury duty. See it there to the right, resting on my glorious Select-Ease keyboard. This is my third summons in two years. Of all my friends and family I’m the only one I know of that’s ever been summoned in Texas and this makes three times.

I believe in doing your civic duty and all and didn’t have a problem with my first Texas summons two years ago. Heck, I looked forward to it as I was unemployed at the time and thought it’d be fun. I even got on a jury. But, c’mon, when is enough enough? I get to lose at least a day’s pay to go do this and earn my 6 bucks. I make over 50 times that for a day’s pay. Six bucks doesn’t even cover gas to Georgetown from here.

*sigh*

: Quare Bungle Rye from the album “Irish Drinking Songs” by The Blarney Lads

You are still missed, Roy.

We’ll meet again some day,
Tony

Got a few Gmail invites here I can’t use. Drop me a line if you want one or know someone who does.

: Get Over It from the album “Hell Freezes Over” by The Eagles

Update: I’m currently out of invites. When I get more I’ll pass them out on a first come/first served basis.

I got Shurfoot back from the paint shop yesterday afternoon. What’s the first thing you should do with a new paint job?

Go wheeling!

I took it out to the ranch to play today. As you can see, I also got the new ARB Brush Bar and Warn 9000lb winch installed last night thanks to some help from my wife and son. That combo weighs nearly 200lbs. I played around with the tranny to engage the center diff lock and was pretty sure I got it locked so I could try some more fun maneuvers. I managed to lift the right rear wheel off of the ground about a foot while testing the truck’s articulation before I found out the diff lock wasn’t engaged as I thought. Now I was stuck, a mile from the nearest house in an area with no cell coverage. Oops. I tried rocking it off. Nope. Pushing. Nope. I was in low range and I put it into reverse and let the tire spin while I went to jump on that corner so it could drive off. As I climbed up, I grabbed the roof support to steady myself.

A black metal support. In 95 degree Texas sun. Ow! The skin fell off the dead center of my palm in a big blister about the size of a quater. Can you say painful? Now I was stuck a mile from the road with a second degree burn to the palm of my left hand and no first aid kit. I finally got myself unstuck after about 20 minutes and resolved to actually hook the winch up to the battery before I head out solo next time.

Now I sit here with a huge bandage around my hand. I can’t grasp anything with it and typing is painful. Putting cold water on it to cool it this afternoon almost made me pass out from the pain. Vicodin only dulls the pain. Sleeping tonite will be fun. Tomorrow, depending on how my hand feels, I’ll finish hooking up the winch to power and install the new fender flares all around. Then it’ll get a full wash and wax it now desperately needs after I threw mud all over it today. I did decide that I don’t get enough articulation in the rear. Time to look into spring disconnects and cones.

: When I Fall (Live) by Barenaked Ladies

I managed to get tix to the Great High Mountain Tour playing at the Backyard last night. I got 2 second row center seats for my dad and myself. The tour is a bunch of different bluegrass bands showing off their stuff. Many of them did music for movies like O Brother Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain. There were old timers like The Whites and Ralph Stanley to newer groups like Reeltime Travelers and Sierra and Cody Hull. Alison Krause and Union Station also played.

Once the concert started it didn’t let up for 3 solid hours. Austin was their last stop on the tour and they did a lot of mixing up of the bands. You know, kind of a ‘I always wanted to sit in with y’all. Mind if I sit in this song?’ thing. You also got a lot of jamming when one person would go nuts on a solo and then another player would try to outdo them. Like when Jerry Douglas, on slide guitar, was sitting in with The Whites he and Buck White, on mandolin, kept trying to one-up each other. You could see how much they were truly enjoying themselves. I really enjoyed The Reeltime Travelers . Heidi from their group could really dance. Her feet moved so fast they were a blur. Sierra and Cody Hull, the young’uns, were fantastic also. It’s nice to see that younger folks are learning the old music to ensure it doesn’t die. Alison Krauss and Union Station are by far the best known of those that played but they didn’t overshadow the show at all. They did the same 3-4 songs that everyone else did. The last 1/2 of the show was different combos of bands playing together.

The really neat thing was there was no ‘showmanship’ like at other concerts. The music spoke for itself. No fancy light shows or video screens. No electric instruments. The sound equipment was only there to amplify the music. The musicians did their own sound mixing consisting of moving their instruments closer to or farther from the mic. There wasn’t even a backdrop. They let the trees at the Backyard and the sunset be their backdrop. Even when the cicadas started up at sundown they added to the whole ambiance. You could almost picture yourself back in some Kentucky ‘holler’.

At the end all the groups got up on stage for the closing. There had to be about 50-60 folks up there. They closed with Amazing Grace led by Ralph Stanley. You could see a few performers crying because they knew the tour was over. I gained a lot of respect for Alison Krauss because during the close as she stood near the back and off to the side and let the others take center stage even though she was by far the most popular act. She hasn’t let her fame go to her head.

Now they just need to release a CD or DVD of the concert so I can introduce my son to it. I know not many folks of my generation or younger think bluegrass music is ‘cool’ but I really do like it.

: Old Joe Clark by Reeltime Travelers