it’s time to find out. and it’s also time to retire my dear old blog, let them eat cheese. it’s been a good run. hopefully all four of my regular readers will find my new and exciting joint blog (co-blog?) what’s the heckamobile? a reasonable replacement. crankin and i have even managed to make a few posts already.

thanks for the fun and come visit!

as usual, there’s been a severe lag between posts on here. but that’s all about to change, as crankin and i have plans in the works for a new and exciting blog we intend to work on together (we planned to do this probably more than a year ago, but progress moves slowly for us anymore). which means there’s a good chance it’ll be updated more frequently than twice a year. undoubtedly this will send shockwaves through the blogosphere.

anyone who knows me is probably aware of my extreme aversion to the presence of saxophones and other horns in songs. somehow i had always been under the impression that this was at least vaguely connected to the songs of the 70s that i have such a strong physical reaction to (queasiness). and that may indeed be the case, but it seems i must have blocked the vast quantities of sax solos in 80s tunes. oddly, though, while i genuinely dislike a lot of those songs (i’m looking your way, billy ocean), they’ve never managed to inspire the feeling of illness i get from such dreaded 70s songs i heard on family road trips. much of this might have been a pavlovian response to feeling car sick in the backseat of my dad’s 2-door cadillac, with its sunken down seats and oh so small windows, while being forced to listen to the little river band and neil diamond.

i actually wrote this post a long time ago (almost two years ago. yikes!), but never got around to putting it online. i was reminded of it recently, though, when this piece about bad sax in songs was published. for the most part i agree with the choices, except for the radiohead one. i kind of like it in that song. the one i agree with most, though, is blue thunder. saxophone just completely wrecks it, but thankfully there’s a non-sax version. phew.

as is usually the case these days, i only get off my ass to make a post if we’ve gone to see a show. well, last friday crankin and i went to the austin city limits festival. it was a last-minute decision, but i’m glad we went. as usual, it was a pain getting there and getting through the damned security gates and whatnot. our goal was to be there in time for crowded house at 4:30, so we left about 3:15 or so. however, we didn’t make it all the way into the park until approximately 4:28. and we live extremely close (about 5 minutes by car, although we bussed it and walked partway). it was surprising how badly planned the entrance/security gates area was, particularly since this is the 6th year or so of the festival. we waited in line for over half an hour and saw approximately 4 different people faint from the heat while in line. they stupidly had one person per line (of which there were too few; 5 people, i think) who was required to take your ticket, search your bag, and, if you had a 3-day pass, they were supposed to put a wristband on you. seems likely this job could have been handled by several people, assembly line style, to ease the flow of traffic. ridiculous. oh, and on top of it all, i didn’t actually see the person managing our line look in anybody’s bag, including our own. yay.

so anyway, we got through the gate, walked straight to the stage, found a spot and within 30 seconds of arriving, out comes crowded house. excellent timing. they played a great set, as expected, but it was far too short. that is by far my biggest complaint about festivals. and i wouldn’t have gone at all, probably, had they been planning to play a non-festival show while in town. i did try, somewhat feebly, to get passes to see them for their austin city limits show taping. it didn’t work out, though. i think klru has about the dumbest, least fan-friendly way of handing out these tickets. they announce when the tickets will be given away the day before the taping on a radio station and then people are expected to rush there, get in line, get their tickets, and then show up the next day for the taping extra early to stand in line (again) and attempt to get into the taping — as you see, the tickets they give out don’t actually guarantee admission. they give out more than they allow in. anyway, one of my problems with this is that people who couldn’t give a crap about the band will get tickets and then sell them on craigslist or elsewhere. and keep in mind they’re selling you something that doesn’t guarantee you’re going to get in. also, another issue is that this method of handing out tickets is terrible for anyone that has an office job and can’t get away at a moment’s notice.

but back to the festival. crowded house played lots of good stuff and the weather cooled off for most of their set and there were even a few raindrops falling on us. icy cold ones. it heated up again after they were done and we headed over to see m.i.a. she was most entertaining. then we slogged it over to another stage to see spoon. they were good as usual, but they must not have had a sound check because all the levels seemed off on their first song. i’ve seen spoon tons of times over the years and this was by far the biggest stage/crowd i’ve seen them play. good for them. well, after spoon was the other big reason we went: björk. i have to say her set made the hassle and cost 100% worth it. wow. just a lot of fun, and such an amazing voice. so often you’ll find that a singer doesn’t sound quite as good as they do on record when you get them in a live setting. she, however, sounded even better. she has a ton of energy and was wearing a gold lamé outfit along with some crazy-ass face paint that most of the others on stage were wearing, too. in addition to an all-female icelandic brass band, björk was accompanied by some crazy new-fangled synthesizer called a reactable. read more about it here. it was really interesting.

so, i’m glad we went. i think next year i’ll make more of an effort to buy tickets in advance. if we decide not to go, we can always sell them.

i’m betting you, like me, occasionally drank from a water hose as a kid. it’s possible you even still have a sip now and then while doing yard work. and odds are, you use a hose to water your garden, fill your dog’s water bowl, or fill the kiddie pool up for the tots. well, i saw some piece on good morning america the other day (a show i try to avoid watching, but somehow got sucked in while looking for the weather) that was about high lead levels in garden hoses. so, i thought i’d see what else i could find since i had never before heard of this. here’s an article from consumer reports from several years ago. i don’t know if i’ve been completely oblivious, but this just doesn’t seem like common knowledge. i have no idea if the hoses we’ve got fall in the “safe” category or not, but i’m sure as hell not going to drink from them or let my kids or dog drink from them either. luckily, this year we don’t have a vegetable garden, but we’ll buy new hoses before we plant one next year. more info here.

that’s the sound we heard for more than an hour and a half last night. the cause? well, there was a massive gas leak on our street. there’s a gas main at the corner of our street, about 3 houses down. i was about to go to bed at around 11:30 and crankin and i were standing in the living room and suddenly heard this hissing sound. i thought it was maybe something like air coming out of a tire or a tow truck or something, although it seemed loud even for that. so, we opened the door and it was a billion times louder. i immediately thought of the gas main (or whatever it is. big ol’ gas-related pipes of some sort) and felt a sinking sensation, hoping our street wasn’t going to blow up. crankin ran into the street and there was so much gas coming out of the pipes that he couldn’t see the traffic on the cross street going by. sooo, i called 911. the fire dept. came (and the gas company and the police and a bunch of other “official” people, including, apparently, someone from the railroad commission) and about an hour and a half later they finally got it shut off. but not before the entire outdoors smelled like gas. it was sort of stressful not knowing what the hell was going on and not really wanting to go to sleep until they shut it off for fear of, you know, not waking up. although surely they’d evacuate us if it was that dangerous. right? anyway, turns out a tree had fallen on it and broke the pipe. why did they place it next to a massive tree? huh? crankin saw some gas company guy standing by it this afternoon looking generally confused. no telling when it’ll be fixed.

after a disappointing last-minute cancellation a few years ago, i was glad to finally get to see morrissey again. it had been probably 13 years since i last saw him play. it was a fantastic show, he played lots of great stuff (opened with the queen is dead). my biggest disappointment about the show had nothing to do with him, but about the sorry state of the venue’s surroundings. while it was once surrounded by the wooded hill country and you parked on dirt lots and meandered through darkened paths to get to the show, the backyard is now surrounded by a horrid strip mall filled with all manner of generic big box stores. we parked by linens ‘n things, for god’s sake! it had only been a couple of years since we were last there (when we saw belle & sebastian), but things sure have changed.

but back to the actual show. the opening act was someone i’ve never heard of before and can’t actually remember her name, but she was somewhat kate bush-like in sound, if kate bush had been more spastic, and was fairly entertaining (albeit probably unintentionally humorous). if nothing else, she was committed to her look and sound (and appeared to have some garbage incorporated into the giant ruffle on the top of her dress). she played a synthesizer and had a drummer.

mr. morrissey was a lot of fun. i wholly enjoy his sense of humor. and his band genuinely rocks. the hits they played (that i can recall, and not in order): everyday is like sunday, lucky lisp, life is a pigsty, the first of the gang to die, the last of the famous international playboys, the national front disco, how soon is now?, disappointed, panic, you’re gonna need someone on your side, the boy with the thorn in his side, let me kiss you (during which he removed his shirt on the line “but then you open your eyes and you see someone that you physically despise” — ha!), and irish blood, english heart. i hope he comes back soon.

it’s that time of year again — time for the french open. odd that a tennis tournament can make me think back (so fondly) to the year our daughter was born, but it does. we spent many of the wee hours of the first weeks of her life watching the french open live as we stayed up with her. it’s hard to believe she just turned 4. and that our son will be one year old this weekend. time sure does fly (trite, but true).

adele had her birthday party the weekend before last (it was a cat theme, including a “pin the smile on cheshire” game). we invited all the kids in her class from school (at her insistence, as we would have preferred a smaller gathering). sadly, it seems nobody is polite enough to rsvp anymore despite being given ample notice. okay, there were a few rsvps, but of the 14 invitees, only 4 parents responded. makes it tough to plan when you’re looking to serve lunch to your guests. sheesh. not too many kids came, but adele had a great time no matter.

nathaniel’s birthday should be a much more low-key event, possibly with one or two friends stopping by for baby-friendly cake (i haven’t decided which to make, but it’ll be one of the first birthday cakes from this issue of martha stewart kids [a magazine which is sorely missed in our home]). have you ever had to go to one of those ridiculously large birthday parties for a one-year-old? the last one we attended had 60+ people at it, i think. yowza. yeah, we won’t be doing that.