I think I need a new jingle

Just saw a commercial for Cesar Canine Quisine which featured the Magnetic Fields' "I Think I Need a New Heart". It was... unsettling. Random. Strange. It's the first time, I believe, that I've heard this particular band's music on a commercial.

Although it was jusst the instrumental part. It could feasibly be that somebody just paid the licensing fees for a performance of the song and then just replicated it.

Or maybe Stephin Merritt is a dog lover (cf. "Fido, Your Leash is Too Long"). Who knows?

Youth Group; Cheap date night; Tapes 'n Tapes; 2 down, 6 to go, and the Brazos River Bottom

3/12

I made it out to Susan and Jerry's in time to catch Dad's return to town and have dinner with everybody before Mom and Dad headed back to Waco and I headed back into town. I met Cindy at the Daily Grind (next door to Walter's) where she was having dinner after returning from the neuroscience retreat, and when she was done we walked a couple dozen yards over to Walter's in time to catch...

Youth Group. I had been quite thoroughly addicted to their soaring anthemic pop last summer, and though my enthusiasm for them had waned somewhat in the intervening months, I was still excited for the chance to hear them play live. Disappointingly (for me at least), the band was only opening (for Matt Pond, PA), but they had enough time to play through most of their album, plus a b-side or two. As I stood there, marinating in a pleasant beer buzz, the memories of last summer came rushing back. Youth Group may not be particularly innovative or represent high art, but there's something to be said for an album that has that affect on you. That emotional impact alone made the show worthwhile.

Sadly, Sabrina, who had taken to the album in a similarly enthusiastic manner, was in Japan (not that I blame her) and couldn't make the show.

Matt Pond, PA were OK, but I don't think we stuck around for the full set. They managed to transcend the (perhaps false) notion I had gotten of them as a poor man's Bright Eyes, but I haven't exactly sought them out since then, either.

3/13

Grafiti found in the stairwell at the apartment complex:


Will and I opted to take advantage of the Angelika's Monday night "cheap date night" special, which, with the purchase of a reasonably priced student ticket to any film, entitles one to a free drink and pop corn, and is thus just about the best deal since Cecil's $1 Mondays (at least, when they used to be $1).

We opted that night to see Capote, and though it was dark, it was plenty interesting. In particular, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance as the titular author managed the feat of being charming and irresistably magnetic despite his misuse of the people who surrounded him. When a neutral observer finds someone likable despite horrible things he's done, the actor has certainly played his role well.

3/14

It was South by Southwest week in Austin, and, consequently, Houston was treated to some of the overflow of musicians eager to call anything raised a foot or so off the ground a "stage".

Tapes 'n Tapes were (at the time) newly Pitchfork-hyped band whose music owed a certain debt to the Pixies. As the tour was booked before the hype hit, they were scheduled to play (as the second of four bands) at art co-op Super Happy Fun Land, which was a great opportunity.

First, as you may remember from my post last summer, the venue is BYOB, so Jeff, Cindy and I loaded up my small cooler (best $10 I've ever spent) with an assortment of beers packed in ice, which we then loaded up into Jeff's Audi and ferried up through the Heights to SHFL.

The other nice things are that the venue is quite small, draws a small crowd (30? 50 definitely seems like s stretch), has a nice artsy vibe, and, if you can forget what you know about the place, really feels like you're seeing a show in somebody's house (which you sort of are).

T 'n T put on an impressive, energetic show. In some ways I wish that the crowd had been bigger, as I think there would have been a nice synergistic effect, but I was perfectly thankful for what I got. The following bands weren't exactly worthwhile, so we sat in the back and finished off the remaining beers from the cooler.

There was talk of heading to a bar after the show, but I can't really remember if we did that or not (Jeff would know, if he's still reading this). The Proletariat seems likely, but we could have just as easily decided against it.

3/16

So, turns out that unbeknownst to me, my classmate Matt had decided to "take a leave of absence" (which is a way for the school to avoid counting somebody as a dropout for as long as possible) to go work for a startup run by some of his college chums. To be fair, the lab Matt wanted to join hadn't had funding for him, and he had never quite gotten into what he was working on in the lab he ended up joining.

It did surpise me, though, that he was willing to go work in Illinois, away from his wife of almost two years, who was a year ahead of him in graduate school (and also in Lauren's lab, Graham's half lab, and Will's potential future lab).

We had previously had another student exit (though she made no pretense of a leave of absence) to get to work making the real money; she had been in my lab. Consequently, 2 of our class down, 6 to go...

Char and Graham had arranged for Matt to join us for drinks (or the singular in Matt's case) at Cecil's that night as a sort of farewell. Jean Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport was on the television, which seemed to frequently interrupt the the flow of the conversation (I hate TVs in bars; you ask me, I blame sports).

Matt took off, and we made arrangements to move on. Samara met us, and we took off for Gentrified Midtown. We started out at... some place that was in a strip center, which is usually a bad sign, and this was no exception. Graham suggested we go north a block and check out a place called Brazos River Bottom. My Waco heritage and consequent affection for the Brazos caused me to voice support for this idea.

We went in, and I noted a strip club-style entryway. Passing through this, I noted that the place was... very country. And there was something... queer about the bartender that made me feel immediately out of place. The presence of the word "bottom" seemed rather important all of the suddent.

Samara and I figured it out before the other two guys. Char caught on when he couldn't resolve why the girl that a guy was making out with outside had a beard.

Yep. We were in a gay bar. Graham and Char became visibly uncomfortable. While three of us finished off our beers as quickly as possible, Char was, perhaps not surprisingly, taking his time. While Samara and I relished their discomfort, we pointed out the neon rainbow beer signs.

Once we finally got ready to leave, Char noted a poster for Brokeback Mountain at the entrance. I would have loved to have taken incriminating photos had I thought my camera phone would capture sufficient detail.

We decided to go toward the northwest corner of Gentrified Midtown and check out either the Front Porch or Komodo Lounge, settling on the latter. Samara doubted my sense of direction, but I got us there directly. We had a round (or two) and I recounted my previous Komodo experience with the change-licking bartender.

It was getting late enough that it didn't matter that it was getting later, so we decided to go off in search of food. We walked a few blocks to a diner nearby that's in the shadow of I45 and looks remarkably out of place (I keep meaning to go look at it again; something mysterious about it). We found it closed so we returned to our cars and got us some sweet, sweet Late Nite Pie and then called it a night.

Ward talent recognized (not mine!)!

Rebecca has been selected to do an installation for the New American Talent exhibition. I was told that 1000 artists were considered and 20 Texans were chosen and 20 exhibitors were chosen from other parts of the country, so it's quite an honor.

She was chosen on the strength of pieces such as this:

Computer store openings are the new movie premieres

From computer pariah to place to be seen. It's slightly surprising that Apple's Fifth Avenue store opening managed to attract any celebrity at all, let alone such a wide assortment of them. The linked-to photo library provides an impressive assortment of celebrity sightings.

Poison Girl with Sabrina; Drama 5; Rudyard's; Cecil's and Katie; Mates of State; Power Lunch 2, Google Edition; Weekend with the Wards

3/5-6

I returned to Houston, did some laundry, and found Brina husbandless for the evening, so we went to Poison Girl to get some drinks. On the way there I called Cindy and talked to her for a few minutes. I met Brina, and then got a call from Cindy, who was had felt neglected the previous Friday at Han's, and that she hadn't superceded Sabrina when I returned to town. We were on the phone for a while, she told me she thought we should take a break from seeing each other, and I tried to talk her out of it before giving up.

I managed to salvage the rest of my evening and have a good time with Brina, at least.

Within 24 hours, Cindy called me again and had changed her mind. She blamed things in part on being in a tough spot as far as school and friends were concerned. I was just happy to have things resolved.

3/7

Cindy and I went to Rudyard's for a couple rounds, if I recall correctly, though I might have this one wrong.

3/8

So round about Thanksgiving, I get a message on MySpace from this cute girl who liked my (minimalist) profile. It was right before my committee meeting, so it took me a while to get back to her. We occasionally exchanged messages for a while. She seemed pretty cool, and we had similar musical proclivities (which I usually take as a good sign). She was living in Spring at the time as it was near her parents and her job, but about a month previous to this had moved into town to be closer to where the action is.

It was with that that I finally got around to meeting her in preson. Due to her 8 to 5, she and I were on slightly different schedules, but we managed to agree upon a time to that evening to meet at the Harp for drinks.

So I ironed a shirt, went up to the Harp, and we had a few drinks before she had to go get to bed. She seemed like a cool girl, and I enjoyed getting to know her better. I tried to keep up with her for a while, but things have lapsed a bit. I felt a little guilty at the idea of seeing someone else while things with Cindy were getting more serious every day (though we had not actually ever agreed to be exclusive, it's quite possible that one could assume it was implied by this point). In the end, it was something I might have pursued with some fervour if not already more deeply involved with someone else.

On my way home, I swung by Woodrow's and had a couple rounds with Char, Leroy and Will.

3/9

Cindy and I went to see Mates of State at the Engine room. They were enjoyable for a while, and I like the video game-ish synth sounds they used, but eventually everything was too... homogeneous. We didn't stick around for the encore

3/10

I had another opportunity to go to lunch with our Friday seminar speaker, this time an employee in Google's research division, who had created the prototype for Google Scholar. the lunch was again mediocre, but the conversation was good, and I learned a lot about the company.

The talk itself was interesting but lacked a lot of detail, which had been removed.

Mom and dad were in town, so I met up with them at La Madeleine's up in Susan and Jerry's neck of teh woods for dinner before heading back to my part of town. I stopped by Dan's for a few minutes to drop off a small subwoofer I was loaning him, helped him hook it up, had a round with him, and then did him a favor and went to pick up a couple more, since he couldn't leave his daughter. After that? I'm not so sure. Maybe some beers with Will? Or maybe not.

Waco

3/4

I took off in the early afternoon to head to Waco for Jim Lane's wedding, an event for which David and Bennett would be in town.

I got into town, got snazzy (or at least as much as possible given the portion of my upscale wardrobe which is currently too big), and took off with my parents to the depths of Bell County.

Actually, the house that they were having the wedding at was beautiful. Ranch style (architecture, not beans). The ceremony was short, low key, and very nice, and was in the back yard which had a beautiful view of the edge of Texas hill country.

The ceremony over, David and I started in on the beer, got some food, and sat down for dinner with Megan and Bennett near the band. The beef was good.

We stuck around for a while, and once the party died down, gathered up the rest of the beer and headed to Jim's Temple residence. Megan went to bed shortly afterwards, and then Win came by after work. We had a good time talking about old times and whittling down the beer leftovers. It got late, and David had to be up to catch a flight in the morning, so win gave me a ride back to Waco, and we listened to some Centro-Matic (since I was still on my recent Will Johnson kick).

Published

It's official.

New toy and the Village; TV; Thumbsucker; Power lunch and happy hour

2/27

I got a new toy: a 500 GB LaCie hard drive, thanks to my fellowship. In addition to providing a good backup solution and the opportunity to offload some files from my laptop's hard drive and clear up some space, I also began the arduous process of reripping all of my CDs in Apple lossless encoding. I'll write more about that in an upcoming audio-related post, but, the difference is apprciable and I've been enjoying the improvement.

Cindy called and invited me to meet her and some friends in the village at O'Neil's. Thankfully we didn't stick around long and moved onto the Ginger Man, where quality beer was consumed.

2/28-3/1

I have something written down about TV. No idea what that's about. I really need to keep better notes.

3/2

Cindy and I finally got around to watching Thumbsucker. It was enjoyable, but didn't quite capture the Wes Anderson vibe that they were going for (though it did so better than, say, Napolean Dynamite). The Polyphonic Spree's soundtrack fit but I doubt it would stand particularly well on its own.

3/3

Our Friday seminar was given by a guy from the National Library of Medicine (who fund me), and there was a call for students to go to lunch with him (a new thing). Of course, I never turn down a free lunch. Instead of doing something worthwhile we went to the Rice Faculty Center. I mean, yeah, the meal was free, so it satisfied some basic requirement, but a restaurant would have been much more preferable. The conversation itself was at least moderately interesting.

I got an invite from Dan and Kristin to come over for dinner. Kristin made a great lasagna. The company was good. Good times all around.

There was a GSC end of term happy hour at Han's Bier Haus, which was new to me. It turned out to be a nice place. Nice front and back porch, nice beer (or is it bier?) selection, etc. Cindy met up with me and we had a nice time (or at least I did; this one too would come back to bite me in the ass).

Drama pt. 4; Dim Sum; Will, Exiled; the Undertow Orchestra; Sabrina, Shawn, and Grey

2/20

(I changed this from how it was originally written; I got my weeks mixed up.)

I got back into town and contacted Cindy, who, true to form, had spent her day off working in lab, and said that she wouldn't be able to hang out, but that we needed "to talk about us". I seriously thought that she was going to break up with me. This hanging over my head, I went on out to Cecil's and had a couple of cheap rounds before Cindy called and asked me to meet her at Rudyard's. Some discussion followed, particularly of the fact that I had gone out with Char and co. the previous Thursday. There was other stuff; I won't go into details but eventually it was over and done with.

2/22

Cindy had found a dim sum place in the village which we checked out for dinner. Some of the food was maybe a bit too authentic for me, but I enjoyed the experience.

2/23-2/24

Will had to vacate his apartment to allow one of his roommate's some time with a lady, so he came over for some TV on Thursday. The situation repeated itself the following night, so we went for beer... somewhere before going to Chipotlepec for food and more beer and then the Proletariat for more beer, and finally back to my place for some comics before Will was given the "all clear" to return to his place.

2/25

The "Undertow Orchestra" show was that night. Cindy and I started off the evening with food at Jenni's Noodle House. I decided to try their pho, and liked it, perhaps better than Mai's, but Cindy thought you should never have to pay more than $5 for pho (it was $7). She had some sort of vermicelli dish, I believe. We also had some egg rolls which were good.

After a pleasant dinner, we scooted on over to Walter's for the show. The "Undertow Orchestra" was a group of four frontmen/singer-songwriters: David Bazan (Pedro the Lion); Vic Chesnutt; Mark Eitzel (American Music Club); and, the primary draw for me, Will Johnson (Centro-matic). The four had a nice arrangement, switching off various instruments and backing each other up, while each did three songs over two rotations, for a total of six songs from each artist and twenty-four songs total.

My expectations weren't low or anything, but this wasn't a show I had been particularly excited about. That was an oversight on my part, as it was an absolutely incredible show. Will's songs were, as I had thought, the highlight (and an impartial Cindy confirmed this). It was slower material, though whether it was some of the newer Centro-Matic stuff (which is fairly slow and quiet), South San Gabriel stuff (also slowand quiet) or his solo stuff (slow and quiet?). Vic Chesnutt was a bit quirky and also turned out to be great. David and Mark also did a good job, though their stuff ran together a bit.

In the end, it was a night of beautiful music presented in a novel format which surpassed all expectations. Maybe my 5 beer buzz helped things along, but I think most of the credit goes to those fine musicians.

2/26

Sabrina and Shawn thoughtfully had me over for dinner and a viewing of Grey's Anatomy (which turned out to be a really great episode).

Austin

2/17

I got a late start leaving, which would later be a point of contention. I arrive in Austin around 9:00 to find that Rebecca was downtown with a flat tire, and Dad was pissed off at the prospect of buying a new tire, and that snowballed to incorporate that I hadn't made it to this Austin Children's Museum thing exhibit opening that Rebecca was at.

We eventually got the tire changed, dropped Becca's car off at her apartment, and went to Trudy's north for dinner and drinks. Food and drinks were good, but we had the bitchiest waitress. There was a mistake in our order that resulted in more food than we intended to order; instead of doing the kind of thing that makes you a good waitress and taking responsibility for the mistake, correcting the charge, and leaving the food out, she asked what we expected her to do about it and waited while we swapped food back and forth between plates and took the extra back (and removed the extra charge).

Then, when I ordered my second shaker of Mexican martini, she made sure I was aware of two drink limit on that particular item. One would think that a) that was really only important when someone was trying to order a third round, and b) really, it didn't matter unless you were just causing a scene and needed to be cut off, but there you go. I considered having Rebecca order her second and drinking it, just out of spite, but honestly, I didn't want it.

We stiffed her on the tip. Bitch.

We headed downtown to meet some of Rebecca's friends at the Austin chapter of the Ginger Man, where I enjoyed good beer and indulged in a cigar. The weather was cold that weekend, and life was good.

We headed back and Becca made some margaritas, which included blood oranges for dramatic effect, and something else—passion fruit, maybe—and rimmed with chile salt.

2/18

By this point in time, I was in desperate need of a haircut, and had resolved to find out exactly what would posess someone to spend $57 on a men's haircut by going to Rebecca's stylist, the saucy, Vietnamese Hailey. And? Well, she was good. $57 good, I suppose. Whether I can go long enough between haircuts to afford to continue this, I don't know, but I was pleased.

Mom and Dad came to spend the day with us, so we met up with them and went to Central Market to eat lunch and do a little shopping. After that, Rebecca needed to go by school to show a curator some of her work, so we did that, picked up her car, and then reconvened at Rebecca's place, where Dad's bad mood had returned. When he gets upset about something, everything we've ever done wrong comes out. It usually has something to do with money, too. After dealing with his bitchy mood for a while, he eventually snapped out of it and we had dinner before they headed back to Waco.

Rebecca and I went to meet Courtney and Matt at the Draughthouse, which was a fairly charming place. Courtney's flights of fancy took us to Kirby Lane, originally for dessert, though I believe I was the only one who ended up ordering dessert. After that, we went by Courtney's place near Barton Springs, which I had not yet seen, and she made grapefruit juice margaritas, which were very good. Her place was great with an incredible view of the city.

2/19

Becca and I did lunch at South Congress Cafe. The food was OK but didn't make as good of an impression as their bloody marys, made with Tito's vodka steeped in vegetables. They were excellent. Afterwards, I did some shopping at Waterloo Records, and then we returned to Becca's place, had leftovers for dinner, picked up some beer, made a fire, and watched Shaun of the Dead, which I thought was a nice little movie.