Friday Night Videos

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is, in my estimation, pretty much the perfect music video. What's not to love? It's got dancing ninjas, leather-clad biker gangs, football players, some kind of weird S&M shindig and, last but not least, a bizarre "Village of the Damned" boys choir. And none of it makes a lick of sense. As far as overblown, melodramatic power ballads go, Celine Dion could learn a thing or two from Bonnie Tyler. Turn around, Bright Eyes!



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Paul McCartney.

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Friday Night Videos

The late '80s collaboration between Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello proved to be a good one. With someone to work off of and challenge him, McCartney's old songwriting strengths returned to the fore, without any of his sentimental pap to weigh them down. "My Brave Face" was the best McCartney single to emerge from the collaboration, even better (to my ear) than Costello's excellent "Veronica." Sadly, neither the single nor the album, "Flowers in the Dirt," were major hits despite widespread critical acclaim. Had the album come out a few years earlier instead of the baffling "Press to Play," I'm certain both would've been huge blockbusters. As it was, the public and record industry seem to have written McCartney off by that point. Still, "My Brave Face" remains a fave...



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Grateful Dead.

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Mission San Xavier

As a break from the personal chaos afflicting my life at the moment, I offer to you this false-color infrared image of mine from inside the Mission San Xavier replica in San Marcos.



No great story to go along with it, just (in my opinion) a nifty-looking picture.

Now Playing: Various Classical masterpieces, vol. 2

Status update

Here's a quick status update for those of you who keep up with these things--since I'm most likely to be under radio silence the rest of the week.

My mother is in the hospital. Saturday evening she fell in the garage--we're not entirely sure how, tripping over a dog remains the popular theory right now. In the process of falling to the hard concrete floor, she broke both wrists and gave herself a concussion. There was some degree of drama involved in getting her to the Columbus hospital, since most of the family is scattered around the state, and she was pretty much incapacitated. Once she'd gotten to the hospital and patched up, my estranged father (estranged from pretty much the entire family) showed up, apparently out of concern (this is out of character for him, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now) and promptly had a not-insignificant heart attack. So he was transferred to Houston, where a battery of tests revealed all sorts of surreal weirdness going on with his heart. So my brother John, who is the only sibling living in Columbus, had been dealing with all the drama and managing the situation (good for him) until last night, when word came down that his fiancee's grandfather--who she was very close to--had passed away. So now he has to pack up and fly down to Mexico to help with the funeral arrangements. Suffice to say, this triple-whammy of stress has got him beat down pretty much.

So I'm in Columbus the rest of the week, taking care of whatever needs taking care of and hoping that this is all the excitement I'll have to face for the next year or six...

Now Playing: The Kinks The Kink Kronikles

Friday Night Videos

The fact that the Grateful Dead had a top 10 hit in the late 80s to qualify as "One-hit wonders" despite several decades as a successful touring act with many big-selling albums to their credit gives me no end of amusement. "Touch of Grey" was an excellent song, of course, but sounds oddly out of place when listened to in the context of other hits from the 80s. The album from which it sprang, "In the Dark," was pretty darn good too.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Moody Blues.

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A passion for passion

So yesterday I'm in the back yard playing with the Bug. He goes off to ride the skateboard down the slide, so I take the opportunity to pull a bunch of old, deal passion vines off the dog run fence. I discover two surprising things--one is an incarnata vine under most of the dead foliage that is still green and growing. In February. Incarnata passion flowers invariably die back to the ground at the first hint of cold and resprout every spring. The fact that this one is still alive and growing well past the middle of winter shows just how warm weather has been these past months.

The second surprise came when I pulled up one dead vine and about 18 inches of root as thick as my little finger came with it. Goodness! What to do with this find? Passiflora roots are hardy things--regrowing in the spring and all. So I did what any passion flower nut would do. I cut into sections and planted them around campus in isolated semi-wilderness areas today during my lunch break. I've thrown seed out in the past, but haven't had any take. This time, however, I'd expect the odds are much improved on having passis blooming by midsummer.

Now Playing: Johann Sebastian Bach Romantic Movements vol. 8

First Born

Hookay, The Wife tagged me with this "First Born" meme, which means I'm morally obligated to answer lest she put me out. Even though these questions are obviously intended for women only. Such is my life.

The idea is to answer the following questions about your first born and then tag other mommies to do the same.

1. WAS YOUR FIRST PREGNANCY PLANNED?
Yes

2. WERE YOU MARRIED AT THE TIME?
Yes

3. WHAT WERE YOUR REACTIONS?
Relieved -- she'd been driving me nuts about it.

4. WAS ABORTION AN OPTION FOR YOU?
No

5. HOW OLD WERE YOU?
28

6. HOW DID YOU FIND OUT YOU WERE PREGNANT?
The Wife started bouncing off the ceiling like a Warner Bros. cartoon.

7. WHO DID YOU TELL FIRST?
My parents

8. DID YOU WANT TO FIND OUT THE SEX?
No, but I didn't have a say in the matter

9. DUE DATE?
Nov. 19

10. DID YOU HAVE MORNING SICKNESS?
No. Neither did the wife--instead, she opted for the 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, for-the-duration sickness.

11. WHAT DID YOU CRAVE?
I craved the time when I could fix something as exotic as unflavored oatmeal and not have her scream "What's that horrid stench!?"

12. WHO/WHAT IRRITATED YOU THE MOST?
Everything, because everything irritated The Wife. I seriously considered finding her a sensory deprivation tank.

13. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CHILD'S SEX?
Girl

14. DID YOU WISH YOU HAD THE OPPOSITE SEX OF WHAT YOU WERE GETTING?
No

15. HOW MANY POUNDS DID YOU GAIN THROUGHOUT THE PREGNANCY?
I dunno. But The Wife lost significant weight through the first half of the pregnancy because of the relentless nausea.

16. DID YOU HAVE A BABY SHOWER?
Yes. I had to attend some of them as well.

17. WAS IT A SURPRISE OR DID YOU KNOW?
Being a supportive husband doesn't extend to remembering stuff like this.

18. DID YOU HAVE ANY COMPLICATIONS DURING YOUR PREGNANCY?
Unrelenting nausea.

19. WHERE DID YOU GIVE BIRTH?
Scott & White in Temple

20. HOW MANY HOURS WERE YOU IN LABOR?
6 or so

21. WHO DROVE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL?
I drove The Wife.

22. WHO WATCHED YOU GIVE BIRTH?
I was the lone spectator. No Junior Mints were available, though.

23. WAS IT VAGINAL OR C-SECTION?
Vaginal

24. DID YOU TAKE MEDICINE TO EASE THE PAIN?
The Wife got an epidural, and then vowed never to suffer that--or pitocin--ever again.

27. HOW MUCH DID YOUR CHILD WEIGH?
7 lbs 5 ounces

28. WHEN WAS YOUR CHILD ACTUALLY BORN ?
November 23

30. WHAT DID YOU NAME HIM/HER?
Calista Felice

31. HOW OLD IS YOUR FIRST BORN TODAY?
10

Now Playing: Jimmy Buffett Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads

Friday Night Videos

Who'd have thought a relic from the 60s like the Moody Blues would score a huge hit in the 80s? Not I, for sure. Until "Your Wildest Dreams" started getting heavy airplay on the radio, I hadn't even heard of them. Of course, I'd heard their music, I just didn't know them as a band. The success of "Your Wildest Dreams" also made them one of the few bands at the time to have scored top 10 hits in three consecutive decades, or something like that. It's a pretty nifty video, as well. Now I know where Mike Meyers pinched the opening for his first Austin Powers flick...



Previously on Friday Night Videos... ZZ Top.

Now Playing: R.E.M. Out of Time

25 writers...

In between updates on giant pythons, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan's nipples, Bill Crider saw fit to tag me with the "25 Writers Who Have Influenced You" meme. I think I've read more than 25 books in my life, so I'll give it a shot...

List the names of the 25 writers who have influenced you in the "Write Note" box, then post and tag your friends. Author Raymond Benson started this meme -- so tag him, too, when you tag your 25 friends who appreciate fiction and poetry or other writing. My list, of novelists and screenwriters, in no particular order is:

1. J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Arthur C. Clarke
3. Connie Willis
4. Greg Bear
5. Charles de Lint
6. Anne McCaffrey
7. Robert Arthur
8. Patrick O'Brian
9. Joe R. Lansdale
10. Nevil Shute
11. Ian Fleming
12. Greg Egan
13. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
14. Gregory MacDonald
15. Jonathan Carroll
16. Dr. Seuss
17. Clifford Simak
18. Herman Melville
19. Nalo Hopkinson
20. Denny O'Neil
21. Mike Grell
22. Lois McMaster Bujold
23. Lillian Stewart Carl
24. Steven Gould
25. Lester Del Rey

Standard disclaimers apply--authors are in no particular order, nor is this list by any means complete or exhaustive.

My taggees (knowing full well most of these have probably already done this meme, but am too lazy to check) are: Nalo Hopkinson, Maureen McHugh, Jeff VanderMeer, Mary Robinette Kowal, Derek Johnson, Mikal Trimm, Alan Porter, Chris Roberson, Michael Trice, Lee Martindale, Kristine Smith, Kelly Sedinger, Scott McCullar, Jess Nevins, Chris Nakashima-Brown, Michael Burstein, K.D. Wentworth, 17 John Klima, Julia Mandala, Todd Stone, Dwayne McDuffie, Matthew Bey, Jennifer Contino, Mike McIlvain, Rory Harper

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25 random things

Yeah, yeah... I know this one's been going around for a while now. The Wife tagged me two, maybe three weeks ago, and I dimly recall other folks tagging me as well. In the interim, several more listish memes have made the rounds as well, and I've been duly tagged with them as well. It suddenly strikes me that I may not be the most prompt tagee on this here interweb.

I'm not tagging anyone, though. Pretty much everyone I know has already contributed to this meme, so if you haven't, and are reading this, consider yourself "it."

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1) It is my sincere desire that The Wife drop all the false modesty crap and accept the fact that she's a hot, leggy, blonde.
2) Conservative friends of mine invariably assume my beliefs are far more right-leaning than they in fact are. Liberal friends invariably assume my beliefs are far more leftist than they are. The truth is that my innate beliefs are all over the map, but pretty much guaranteed to alienate both camps in some manner were the truth known.
3) I generally, if reluctantly, side with liberals on most issues simply because I'm mortally offended by the right trying to shove religion down my throat.
4) I abhor hypocrisy.
5) I am hypocritical on occasion. Yes, I am aware of the irony.
6) I have a shitty relationship with my father. I've actually based my parenting philosophy on him to a great degree, in that if he would've behaved a certain way in a certain situation, I will pointedly take the opposite course.
7) I feel intense guilt that I don't devote enough of myself to my family.
8) I feel intense resentment that there isn't any "me" left after everything I devote of myself to my family.
9) I homebrew my own beer and honey mead. I know what I like with beer, and am damn good at it. With the mead... well, I'm getting better.
10) I am a writer. That's not a choice--I must write.
11) I hate writing. I love having written.
12) I am utterly undisciplined as a writer, which is why my production sucks so badly. If finding reasons not to write were an Olympic sport, though, I'd be a five-time gold medalist.
13) Excluding work-for-hire (ie the day job) I have never turned a profit writing. I've broken even a few years. I find this troubling (see 10, 11 and 12).
14) The Wife is smarter than me, even though she denies it. And although I won't confess as much to them, I strongly suspect my three children are as well. I don't know what this says about me, other than most of my genes must be recessive.
15) As far as I'm concerned, the British Invasion begins and ends with The Kinks. Actually, the same can pretty much be said for rock music in general--although I'll make allowances for Billy Joel and Pink Floyd.
16) I love backyard astronomy and astrophotography, but I'm seriously out of my depth beyond the most basic levels.
17) To any conservative, religious parents out there that believe withholding sex ed information will keep your children wholesome, pure and morally chaste... well, from my particular point of view the exact opposite is true. The only thing institutionalized ignorance did (other than instill me with a lifelong fascination with nudity) was make me an easy butt of jokes for all the upperclassmen from elementary school on up. Seriously. I'd have been better off had my parents sent me to school with a "kick me" sign taped to my back every morning.
18) Someday I shall own a 1937 Studebaker President or Dictator sedan with suicide doors and sidemount spare. It shall be two-tone maroon/burgundy. It will turn heads, oh,yes.
19) NASCAR bores me to tears.
20) I love Texas A&M athletics. I love that baseball and basketball are competitive on the national scene. We'll not speak of football right now.
21) I nurse a bitter, spiteful grudge against Texas A&M and Robert Gates for killing off the journalism program there.
22) I make an awesome hot salsa. I use cactus in it.
23) I'm fascinated by passion flowers. I have a dozen different species that I grow with varying degrees of success. Someday I hope to develop successful hybrids that've not been attempted before and name them after my family members.
24) I'm writing a book on the infamous La Grange Chicken Ranch. See entries 11 and 12.
25) At one time, I had a collection of Dr. Demento syndicated radio shows spanning close to five years. That's a bunch of CDs. I sold the all off via Ebay this past year and used the money to buy my Canon XTi, some lenses and related equipment. My photography skills are slowly improving, but most of the time I feel like a basket case drooling in the corner.

Now Playing: The Kinks The Road (Live)

The Day the Music Died

Wow. It's been 50 years since that fateful plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. FIFTY YEARS! Now, I know I'm just a young whippersnapper in the grand scheme of things. Holly, Valens and the Bopper were all long-buried for a decade before I was even born. Growing up, I remember watching eagerly as "The Buddy Holly Story" with Gary Busey aired on network television for the first time (I even took time out from playing with my Evel Knievel funny car and motorcycle for the event) and had debates with my best friend, Bill, over who was more important to rock music--Holly or the recently-dead Elvis. We were philosophical kids, even though we made up most of our arguments and were familiar with maybe a handful of the most famous hits from either of them.

A half-dozen or so years after that, La Bamba hit the theaters and made Lou Diamond Philips a star (though not a big enough star to keep Melissa Etheridge from stealing his wife). I really identified with that movie more than it probably warrants, since I was dating a Latina at the time and caught the most abysmal stream of unrelenting shit from my parents anyone could imagine for it. So yeah, La Bamba etched itself into my psyche.

Just recently, a few months back, in face, I was fortunate enough to sit through a lecture by the legendary forensic anthropologist Bill Bass as he took the audience on a step-by-step re-creation of his CSI-style autopsy of the exhumed body of the Big Bopper decades after the singer's death. It seems that the Bopper was found in the frozen field some distance away from the other crash victims, with a gun (owned by Holly, IIRC) in close proximity. Ever since, rumors had floated through the family that the Big Bopper had somehow survived the crash and set off for help, only to fall victim to a mysterious gunshot from a mysterious assailant. Since the Bopper was being exhumed and moved to facilitate a monument being erected in his honor, the family asked Bass to see what he could tell from modern X-rays. Friends and neighbors, let my assure you that the unfortunate Mr. Richardson did not walk any distance whatsoever. And there's no way he survived the crash. You've heard the phrase "broke every bone in his body"? Well, now I know what that looks like on X-ray. And it is profoundly squeam-inducing.

So this infamous plane crash has been a part of my life for a good long time, even though I wasn't around for the actual event. I, and about a million other people, wonder what additional music these guys would've created had they survived such untimely deaths.

Fifty years. Man, I feel old.



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UV Vodka

It's the beginning of the month, which means we have money. Yay! So I stopped a Spec's on the way home to pick up a bottle of Castillo rum, which is a great inexpensive rum produced by the Bacardi company. For the price, I can't taste any difference between it and the top-shelf sibling, so hey, I swear by it. I also picked up a bottle of Creme de Cacao for The Wife, who has developed an affinity for chocolate martinis. Those two selected, my next item on the list was a bottle of vodka.

Holy crap, but vodka is expensive.

A bottle of Absolut like we'd bought on our Caribbean cruise for $12 this summer cost $30-something. Ouch. Even Tito's, a well-regarded brand distilled in Austin, cost $17. I didn't consider any of the Russian vodkas, since Pootie-Poo and the Kremlin gang aren't really our friends anymore. What I wanted was the vodka equivalent of Castillo rum--a top-shelf liquor at bottom-shelf prices. I ultimately settled on a $12 bottle of UV Vodka, an utter unknown to me. But what do you know? I got lucky. Online reviews give this one high marks overall, and more than a few express surprise at its cost-to-quality ratio. It certainly makes a kick-ass chocolate martini, as The Wife (who is picky about what she drinks) gave it a happy thumbs up.

Now all I need is to find good but cheap brands of tequila and gin, and I'm all set. And also, if Wild Turkey would slash their prices in half, that would help as well.

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Mead racking time

The mead stopped bubbling a week ago, so after giving it sufficient time to settle, I racked it yesterday. Right away things became challenging. My small, 1.5 gallon fermentation vessel had vanished. Poof. Not in my office, not in the boxes with my other homebrew stuff, nowhere. I found the screw-top lid, and the tap assembly, but the vessel itself... who knows? This caused me some degree of consternation, as this was what I'd planned to use for my muscadine pyment. And my plethora of water trap airlocks seem to have vanished as well. Grr.

I racked the five gallons of mead into my 2.5 gallon vessel along with two 1 gallon glass carboys, cleaned the sediments out of the big 6-gallon fermenter, then returned the mead to it. I then got the muscadines (which had been thawing for the past couple of hours) and pounded them into a pretty convincing pulp with a potato masher. I added this to the now-empty 2.5 gallon fermenter (after sampling a taste of the juice. Mmmm... nutty, sweet muscadine) then drained 1.5 gallons of the racked mead from the big vessel onto the muscadines. Then I added a half teaspoon of pectic enzyme and closed it up. I sealed it with a jury-rigged water trap using pieces I scrounged out of my homebrew boxes. It ain't pretty, but it works.

The muscadines safely taken care of, I turned my attention to the remaining mead. For the bulk of the mead, I'd decided to try my hand at cyser, which is a mead/apple cider confection. I added one gallon of HEB Central Market organic cider to the mead, then on top of that threw in five Granny Smith apples, chopped up. Then I added an appropriate dose of pectic enzyme and closed the fermentation vessel up.

Only here's the thing: The small tank with the muscadines is fermenting. Not aggressively, but the water trap is bubbling at regular intervals. The apples ain't doing squat. There should be enough residual yeast in there to go nuts with all that appley goodness, but they're not. I washed off the Granny Smiths, so there shouldn't be any chemicals on them to retard the yeast, and the organic cider is merely pasteurized and is supposed to be sans preservatives. This is, obviously, problematic. There's enough existing alcohol in the mead to ward off any immediate bacteriological infection (ie rot the mead) but I suspect I may need to add a second dose of yeast if this doesn't correct itself sooner rather than later.

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