SwampLog 3.0

Oh, Yeah, And One More Thing...

Some housekeeping, to keep me from performing housekeeping:

* When we last heard the waves of DAMradio, Marty and I promised an hour on the Chemical Brothers. We've both been slammed with work, drama, travel, and other things in life. We're still doing the show, and DAMradio should return to the podwaves next Monday.

* Blues Traveler guitar god Chan Kinchla is one of the best human beings drawing air on the planet today.

* I'm debating posting about one of the worst kept secrets since the ROKR phone, but the time's not right yet. The news has broken damned near everywhere else, but for some reason I don't want to post it here just yet.

Aw, screw it. I'm engaged.

To be married.

To someone who loves me in spite of the fact that I'm a complete fuck-up. Regardless of all of my faults (I've been incredibly candid about my 35 years of stupidity on the planet) she has yet to flinch.

She's everything I didn't even know I wanted.

The plan, as it stands now, is for us to tie the proverbial knot in May 2007. This will allow for our collective friends to catch their breath. It will also allow Amanda to have her sister as the Maid of Honor. She has a prior commitment to the United States Army, which should be done my the first weeks of 2007. It's okay. I can wait. Impatiently, though -- I'm a greedy bastard.

A greedy bastard in love.

A Fitting Tribute

Andy Rooney, for someone who is lampooned continually for being a caricature of himself, had this to say following his '60 Minutes' piece on the funeral of 'World News Tonight' anchor Peter Jennings:

"If ABC wants to pay a lasting tribute to Peter Jennings they could provide one hour of prime time news every night of the week without commercials. Call it The Jennings Hour."

A brilliant idea. Hell, I would settle for a half-hour. I know it's not even close to being economically viable, and if nothing's bleeding, the Red States would stay away in droves. I would still watch it more than half of the dreck on TV.

Everybody Wants To Screw The nano

I've been bitten by Moore's Law more times than I care to count.

Right now, I'm working on an aging (by technology's standards) Mac desktop that I should have replaced two years ago. My Powerbook G3, longer in the tooth, bit the silicon dust after my trip to Los Angeles, and I've now been told it would cost more to replace the logic board than Superfly is worth. The fine, upstanding folks at Rawlings replaced my 2nd gen iPod (after it was violated in my absence) with a 4th gen click wheel job.

Now, even that's horribly out of date with the damned sexy iPod nano. Holding this wee beastie between my thumb and forefinger makes my inner geek wires hum. Who wouldn't want one of these bad boys?

Try the CEO of Motorola, Ed Zander.

"Screw the nano. What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?"

Zander goes on to crib notes from my Flying Car manifesto from five years ago. He's right, of course -- the world's mobile users are more savvy than users in North America.

However, when it comes to the iPod, it's the reverse of the Flying Car Theory. Sure, I would LIKE for my music to stay on board with my communication, but if the result of the marriage is the ROKR phone, I'd prefer to keep it separate, thanks all the same. The ROKR's interface is fine enough, but the phone is clunky, the sync with iTunes is kludgy at best, and it's too bloody expensive.

I was hoping Sony Ericsson would release an iTunes phone, and perhaps they will. Or, better yet, Apple will... nah, that's just crazy talk.

Let The Jammer Pass

My love for roller derby has been well documented. I've had a long-dormant fascination with the sport from my childhood, which was sparked once again by the emergence of the Dallas Derby Devils. I still have aspirations of getting a sponsorship group together to get the Devils to the next level, both in prominence and in quality of product.

That can only be helped by this announcement by Paramount, which calls for a roller derby comedy on the slate, something along the lines of 'Dodgeball' meeting 'A League Of Their Own.'

More Than The Sizzle

If you're reading this on Tuesday, I'm inviting you to eat at Tin Star for lunch. Aside from Freebirds, Tin Star makes my favorite Tex-Mex cuisine, and they're doing something very cool. Tomorrow (Tuesday the 20th), all of the Tin Stars around the U.S. are donating 100% of profits on the day’s sales to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.

In North Texas, Tin Star locations include Uptown (Dallas), Preston Center (Dallas), Dallas Parkway (Plano), Coit Rd (Plano), Frisco, MacArthur Blvd (Las Colinas), and Allen.

I was turned on to Tin Star by Jamey Newberg, whose brother manages one of the locations. Tuesday is as good of a time as any to find out why the food gets raves from Jamey, myself, and a legion of other fans.

As an aside: Richard Hunter has said that Bush Senior and Bill Clinton would make an amazing sitcom duo. I tend to agree.

Killer Queen

Last night, there was an Amigo 'All Hands On Deck' called to go see the Queen tribute band Queen For A Day out at Firewater Grill. Chance's lovely wife Nicole was feeling under the weather, so they weren't able to attend. Woody showed up right as the band was in the middle of the last song -- but at least he was able to show.

Simply, Queen For A Day is phenomenal. I'm a little leery of tribute bands, especially when the band being honoured is still kicking around. On top, I'm one of the biggest Queen aficionados around. I saw them at the Longhorn Ballroom in 1981 on the 'News of the World' tour. Last night, I think there were more people at Firewater than were at the '81 show.

And Queen For A Day KILLED.

They're spot on perfect. They don't bother with over-instrumentation, just doing the four-piece live versions of Queen's repertoire. Not only do they deliver the hits, like the set opener "One Vision," "Bohemian Rhapsody," and "Fat Bottomed Girls," but go deeper in the catalogue for songs like "Is This The World We Created?" -- which has real meaning for singer Greg Finsley, who lost his home in New Orleans when the levees broke.

Even if you're not a Queen fan, go see this band. You will be entertained, plain and simple.

Just Not Lucky

If you weren't watching this week's 'Real Time With Bill Maher' on HBO you missed one of the most concise, scathing indictments of George W. Bush's presidency I've seen or heard. Maher begins by calling for a recall election, a la California's ouster of Gray Davis, and finishes up with this masterful bon mot:

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans...Maybe you're just not lucky!

I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint."

I've said repeatedly that it's difficult to lay the blame on one person, regardless of how fun it is to try. There's equal parts to look at -- Mike Brown at FEMA, Mike Chertoff at Homeland Security, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, as well as the vacationin' Dubya. My question is this: after September 11, 2001, when the Bush Administration rolled out the PATRIOT Act and made the Department of Homeland Security one of the top-level agencies in the chain, wasn't this sort of inaction supposed to be addressed?

Gaaah!

Bill Gates.
Napoleon Dynamite.
'Nuff said.

Damned funny stuff from the Professional Developers Conference. (No, I haven't found the original footage either. If you find a link to it, please leave it in the comments below.)

Why Should I Care?

Okay, first, the asinine facts: Britney Spears has procreated. She had surgeons cut out her Awesome-Blossom-and-Red-Bull scented boy, whom we will call Trust Fund Preston until informed otherwise. Employing her psychic powers, that put the Amazing Kreskin to shame, The Britney predicted she would have a C-Section scar before this was all over with:

"I have a feeling I'm going to have an operation. I don't know why. But I hope so. I don't want to go through the pain... I don't know the sex. I want to be surprised. But I have a feeling that it's going to be a boy. I've always wanted a boy and then two girls."

After the giggles subsided, I had to ask myself why I even cared. Just because she and Kevin the Killer Pimp were able to button it up long enough for The Britney to successfully cart around Trust Fund Preston long enough to survive on his own... so?

While I was at City Streets, we had a DVD of current videos that we would play in between karaoke songs. Whenever Britney's "Do Somethin'" would come on, everything would just stop. It's not a very good song, and the video -- The Britney driving a pink Hummer H2 through the clouds to a club gig and rockin' out -- is laughable at best... yet everyone was transfixed. I was at a loss then, as I am now.

All I know is.. whenever I think of The Britney and the therapy Trust Fund Preston will inevitably need, this is not the image that pops into my head:

No, it's a lot more like this:

...I Have Promises To Keep...

"...if I fall asleep now, this will be lost."

While I was growing up -- in my teens, most likely, the only way I could go to sleep was if I visualized being at the top of an impossibly tall tower. My bed was normal, but perched on this amazing spire. The fan in my room was angled above me, so a breeze would be more natural. When I would position myself to fall asleep, I would dangle a hand or a foot off the bed, knowing that there was just empty space for miles below me.

When I was married before, and when in long-term relationships where we slept together, my body heat at night would make my partner crazy. I still preferred touching somehow -- a hand or a foot that grazed her skin. Falling asleep while spooning was highly desirable, but never feasible from a logistics standpoint.

For some weird reason, this seemed very important for me to commit to record. I think I'll try to go to sleep again.