Holding Pattern? / "The Psychic" / Duolingo

So, here I am at the weekly writing group meeting without an idea of what to write about. Not the first time, but this might be the first time I've begun writing with the words "without an idea of what..." included in the initial missive. Has it come to that? It can't have. Let me dig.

On the watching front, we watched the Lucio Fulci film "The Psychic" last night. Ronin Flix/Scorpion Releasing has put out a nice new Blu ray edition of that one, after the Severin released DVD had been out of print for quite a while. Glad I've finally learned to not shell out money for out of print boutique label releases. It seems that these labels are not only flourishing but seem to be increasing in number as well. Just wait a few months, and another label will pick up the rights and issue an even better edition! Anyhoo....

"The Psychic" was released in Italy as "Sette Note in Nero," or "Seven Notes in Black" (thank you, Duolingo!), although for some reason the screen title is "Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes." The movie is a thriller with some horror elements in it, although for folks who are accustomed to certain Fulci movies' gooiness, it might seem disappointing. Michelle and I liked it quite a bit. Michelle loves the stylish set piece films, and this one was loaded with that. There was clearly a budget in play here. The synopsis is: the main character, played by Jennifer O'Neill (Hermie's objet de desir in "Summer of '42"), is clairvoyant and begins having visions of what she thinks is a past murder at her new husband's country manor. I thought the movie was perfectly paced and had (rare for these Italian movies) a decent English dub job. For most of these Italian genre movies, I watch with the English dub on, as you see most of the actors, regardless of nationality, speaking in English anyway. I like the mouth movements to match, even if some dubs are fairly atrocious. Not the case with this one. Four stars! Here's the only thing I can find on YouTube directly connected to the movie (it ain't a trailer):

I mentioned Duolingo earlier. That's something I discovered last year and have been consistently using since August. It's an app designed to teach other languages, and I've bought into it completely. And by that, I mean I bought the Plus version, so I have all features enabled. I began with Italian, trying to learn some Italian before our Italian trip in October. And I needed something to while aways some time during the Hickoids' August tour, and Duolingo certainly fit that bill. Unfortunately, I don't think I used it as I should have before going to Italy; I still didn't have many basic skills in Italian by the time we went on the trip....things like counting and basic phrases used in travel. If I were to start in Duolingo today, I would have done it a little differently; there aren't any real helpful instructions with the app itself, although I believe there is a helpful Wikia page.

But now, Duolingo has reached epic proportions in my life. I've decided to brush up on Spanish and French with it, and have added Czech, German, and Japanese to the languages I'm attempting to learn. I've gotten all crazy go nuts with it. Plus, as one of the Duolingo advertising phrases reads, "15 minutes on Duolingo will have you learning another language. What can 15 minutes on social media do for you?" I like that thought.

There are apparently other language-learning apps out there. I can't compare them, as this is the only one I've used. Plus, I bought the dee-luxe version, so I'll be staying with this. At least, for the next eight months or so. You have a few different learning methods in Duolingo, all included in the lessons. You have straight translation from the foreign language to English, there is English to the foreign language, there are speaking exercises (although this one is a bit wobbly; I know for a fact I've butchered some pronunciations and still pass muster), and there are exercises where you transcribe spoken words. The listening and speaking exercises can be temporarily turned off if you aren't in a place where you can use those options - that's a nice feature. There are also pre-tests you can use to place out of some basic lessons; I used that for Spanish and French. I got a bandmate using it for Spanish, and he's stayed with it, too. We'll see how I do with Czech and Japanese, which are both fairly daunting. Czech has nothing even remotely close to English or a Latin root to work from, so that's a crazy one. I feel like I'm picking some of it up, but it's a crawl at best. Japanese I just started last week, and that one begins with Hiragana....yes, symbols. Oh, boy. Well, we'll see.

And tomorrow, it's back to the day job. It will be interestng, to say the least, to see how that goes. First of all, I wonder if I'll even be able to log on to our system. After five weeks, who knows what will have taken place. I'm going into the office, and my shift starts after all my work compadres, so they will have tried before I do. I'll know at 9:30 am tomorrow. I figure all projects will be scrapped and started again; maybe not the material already built, but the demands will have changed. Hoo boy. Thanks, gubbimint. And then we might have to go through all this again in three weeks. I love being a football. Good thing I have drumming and other interests.

Oh, one more thing. I finally, after looking at them for six months or so, bought a cassette to mp3 converter and have begun converting my old cassette tapes to digital copies. Unfortunately, most of the transfers I've done so far have a fair amount of machine noise bleeding in. Some more than others. It seems that's going to come with the territory, although I did upgrade the transfer the cable to minimize the noise somewhat. So far, I've managed to transfer most of the Lather stuff I have with some success. (Lather was a three-piece band I was in from April of '92 to October of '93). I have unearthed a healthy stack of tapes to do this to and suspect I'll be doing a lot of this next week, when I'm working at home again. I can just run this stuff in the background while I figure out whatever the hell it is our crippled work organization is supposed to be doing now.

I have now run out of topics for this session. Stay pretty!

Smorgasbord of Angst

Howdy. I'm 57. Been around since late 1961. Not the oldest person I know of, for sure, but old enough to have "seen a few things," as current Farmers Insurance advertising goes.

What a state of heightened confusion we live in now. A good bit of the world, certainly, but I'm going to focus on America for this writing. The government, or certainly some integral parts of it, is shut down and has been for 33 days or so. There doesn't appear to be any easy way out of this one, largely due to the current leader elected to be President. Even if he hadn't owned the shutdown on national television, I think you'd be hard pressed to find another person to directly blame for it. Over a wall. Literally.

I've found other writings stating a lot of these same things, but I boil the current state of affairs down to two main instigators, the commercialization of the news and the internet. Kurt Andersen, a writer I admire tremendously, likes to point to the 1960s and technological advances as these instigators, and I think he's largely correct, although I tend to think of the 1960s separately as a social phenomenon. Andersen looks to the 1960s as a time where people began to feel freed of "the way things were" in previous American time periods. And it's an interesting point; I just like to look at more immediate causes, perhaps.

When I was a kid, there was no cable, or at least, we didn't have it where I lived. We had three networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. (When I lived in the Rio Grande Valley in the late 60s/early 70s, we only had two channels to choose from. One network's prime time programs were shown amidst some late night programming; "Mission: Impossible," my favorite, for instance.) Each network had its evening nightly news program, 30 minutes, and each local affiliate had its nightly news program, 30 minutes. That was it. Maybe a special report would cut into programming if something really devastating happened, somebody's assassination, for sure. Other than that, the news was done.

The evening network news carried the really heavy stuff, such as the death toll from Vietnam that day. That stuff's burned in my brain. As many have pointed out, that was the first televised war, and I arrived just in time to see it. Bloody soldiers lying on the ground, some wrapped in makeshift tourniquets or whatever was available, was a common visual accompaniment to my dinner. The local news generally contained a recap of important national news but was more fixated on what was happening locally, including weather, but also included sports news and human interest stories. Not a lot of bite in the local news, usually, and people probably preferred that.

But that was it. In late 1979, things changed. The Iran Hostage Crisis began. In an attempt to keep people informed, networks would broadcast after the late local news with any updates on the crisis. After a while, there wasn't much in the way of updates, but people were watching. So, ABC decided to create Nightline, a 30-minute rehash of what had happened in the crisis (if anything). Soon, this format expanded to take on other topics and brought in people to provide opinions. The next thing you know, we had CNN, debuting June 1, 1980, a 24-hours news channel. Now, from an advertising point of view, with a crisis going on, this made sense. Unfortunately, from a hardcore true news point of view, this was terrible. You don't have to have too high an IQ to realize there just is not 24 hours worth of news to report, not on any day. So, what do you fill the news up with? You fill it up with "news." And by that, I mean a continual repeating of the day's headlines, followed by panel after panel of qualified and unqualified people commenting on these headlines. What does it mean? What's next? How does this impact your Aunt Sally's tomato garden? And on and on. Gradually, we had more and more news networks, some more committed to actual news programming than others. Some networks had their opinion people drive the overall tenor of the network (I think you know the ones already). All of them kept real news reporting in there somewhere, but for most of them, it constitutes the minority of their airtime.

As a sidebar (or maybe not), one of my favorite movies of all time (in the top three, for sure) is "Network." Although the movie was made in 1976, it's completely relevant today and shows how damaging commercialization of news is. Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the original screenplay, was one prescient person. It's chilling in a way.

And then you have the advent of the internet. Information without any sort of knowledge or integrity check flying anywhere and everywhere. I don't think I even have to elaborate on this too much, but it's easy to see the negative effects of this, even if the internet (and technology) have brought us some wonderful advances. One thing the internet has done is made everyone a star, even if only in their own little world. I mean, look at what I'm doing here; writing in a blog I don't even publicize (yet), writing just because I can. And like to.

And so, if everyone's a star, egos rise. And then, everyone starts to think that his opinion is vital, important, and perhaps original. But mostly, that that opinion is the correct one. Humility has gone by the wayside. I'm right, you're wrong. Read the comments section after any online news article for a full examination of that (once you wade through the obvious trolling).

Now, if you put all this together, with commercial news channels spewing mostly biased opinion, and people free to spew the spew online....well, you see where we are. My mother often says "I liked it when we had three networks." Although I like watching Netflix as much as anyone else, I have to agree with her when it comes to certain things.

I don't know if I have much else to say on this issue; certainly, I have no ideas to correct course. In the meantime, I mostly watch PBS for news. But then they have sponsors, too. Sigh. Back to the drums....

Star of Texas Tattoo Art Revival Stage Managing and Other Duties

It's another Shutdown Monday. (Sing that to the tune of the Prince/Bangles song.) Will it ever end? We've been assured back payment through legislation signed all the way through......but damn!

I finished with another Star of Texas Tattoo Art Revival tattoo convention at the Long Center this last weekend. It's three days of fairly brutal work, most of it mental. This year's went pretty smoothly, although there was time drama and a bit of sound drama. More on that in a bit.

I've been involved with the convention since its inception, in 2002, leading to the first one in 2003. I've known the creator/head honcho since 1995, and she had been talking about doing one in Austin for a couple of years before actually throwing down and making it happen. My initial involvement was only in creating and maintaining the website. That website still exists, although it's been modified much over the years. For a while, Head Honcho had five conventions going in five different cities, so the website expanded greatly. It's a website that's looking creaky now, as most folks have moved to content management systems to streamline content and make websites look like everybody else's (i.e. boring). Still, it's functional, easy to navigate, and yet, I'm slowly working on replacing this website with one built in WordPress. Work for later.

Over time, HH decided she wanted to add entertainment to attract more customers, so she asked Michelle to start performing bellydance in conjunction with the convention. So, when the Austin convention was still at the Red Lion hotel, Michelle performed in adjoining areas. Bands would also perform in areas away from the main floor, but that idea became less attractive after a while. Other acts began to be brought in, specifically sideshow acts. For quite a while, a guy named Chris Longo did the announcing at the convention, and I always thought he was rather good. He knew a lot about the tattoo world and could always fill up time with interesting stories. I would always show up and talk to folks I knew at the convention and just hang out in general, but I had no specific job at the time.

I can't remember what year it was, but HH asked if I would be the announcer for the next convention. I told her I'd like to, but I really knew very little about the tattoo world (basing that rationale on the previous announcer). She said that doesn't matter.....give it a go! So I did. Around the same time, or maybe it was the next year, she realized she really needed someone to wrangle the performing talent, and I got that job as well. I wasn't quite a stage manager at the time, but that's what I became. So now, however many years later, I find myself the website maintainer, convention announcer, and stage manager for all the entertainment. It's a lot, but I always pull it off somehow. And with very limited/creaky equipment.

So, 2019's convention went fairly well overall. There were a couple sticky areas, but we plowed through. I'll try to give a basic rundown of what I do.

I get to the convention floor on Friday about opening time, grab the wireless hall microphone (courtesy of the Long Center), and begin setup of the entertainment stage. Our stage setup is pretty basic and doesn't take too long to accomplish. We have two sets of preset LED lights, so I put those downstage left and right. We have a simple four-channel PA (an old one of mine; it's being replaced for next year) and two speakers with that. Pretty simple. I usually make hall announcements every 30 minutes or so on Friday, and then when I can on Saturday and Sunday (more on that later).

Announcements usually consist of what entertainment we have for the evening, details about the convention (we have a Kids Area, after party info, tattoo contest categories and where to sign up, Tattooed Gloves boxing info, etc.), and "notices" (we found your credit card, phone, etc.). It's harder than it sounds, as none of this is written out, and I pretty much wing it each time I turn the mic on.

Entertainment runs Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday late afternoon. This last one had Michelle doing bellydance, the Jigglewatts Burlesque troupe (who've done this about seven years now), the Lizard Man sideshow (he's going on seven or eight now), Altercation Punk comedy (first time), and the Divas of Illusion drag show (third time for them). On Friday night, we always have plenty of time for entertainment, because it's the first thing hitting the stage. Saturday and Sunday are different stories. We have tattoo contests both days, and we hold them on the entertainment stage, beginning at 2:00. And the amount of time the contests take is highly variable, due to the uncertainty of number of contestants, how long the judges will take looking over the pieces, etc. What this means is both Saturday and Sunday could get way behind timewise and become a major headache for your poor stage manager. In other words, if the contests run overtime, then that is likely to push the entertainment later, and well....people can become unhappy quickly.

And we had a big case of that on Saturday this year. Now, over the years, we have streamlined the contests to run pretty smoothly. I'm the announcer for the contests, and I'll call people to line up and get ready to go on stage. They'll go up there, show the work to the judges, and then exit to get their picture taken. The last few years, we've had our trophy presenter really step up to the plate and help out tremendously in not only keeping contestants wrangled but in signing up late entries (we usually have a ton of those, and once you've opened that possibility, everybody seems to want to sign up as late as possible). So, imagine you're sitting there for several hours, calling up contestants and info about what they're showing, coming up with your own ever-so-witty asides, occasionally switching to the wireless hall mic to announce something in there, having people interrupt you to ask you questions while you're trying to do all this.....well, it's a mess sometimes, but it's kind of a fun mess, I have to admit. Once the contests are over, it's time to strike stuff from the stage and get everything ready (music, lights, etc.) for the entertainment. Saturday.....uh.....

So, this year, Saturday was loaded with contestants. I mean, loaded. And to make matters shorter timewise, we had added comedy to the slate of entertainment, so that meant another 30 minutes was taken up. Not good. We'll have to change that next year, no doubt. This year, the entertainment to begin at 6:00 began at 7:00. That's not a good thing to do to performers who may have gigs elsewhere they have to get to. And a couple of the Jigglewatts performers on Saturday had to leave for other commitments, so I let them go on first, followed by Michelle. Which was a good thing, too, as I had Michelle scheduled first for some reason each day. The bad thing about starting as late as we did was that the audience had dried up significantly by the time Michelle had finished. There was most definitely a smaller crowd on Saturday than we had on Friday, and that's never the case. Friday is usually our slow night. This time, it was the entertainment portion's best audience. Weird. But understandable. I think we should have the comedy on Friday only, if we're going to do it next year, that's for certain. Or trade it for something else on Saturday. The drag show was not happy with the lateness of their slot on Saturday, and I can't blame 'em. It's tough when, as stage manager, you're the face of the entertainment machinery, but you have absolutely no control over the clock.

Sunday was better. We had time for everything, but a sound snafu happened during Michelle's performance. The music suddenly "went out" toward the end of her performance, due to, I think, the main volume having a dirty pot. The PA being used incorporates a PA head that I bought in 1988, if that tells you anything about what I'm working with here. The aux RCA inputs on the front feed directly into the main channel, so I can only control the music volume on whatever device it's coming from. After some scrambling, I got the music back on in about a minute, and Michelle, to her credit, jumped back up and finished her number. She was a trooper, for sure. I do have HH convinced we need a new PA before next year, and I'm shopping for one now.

So, that's about it to report about this year's tattoo convention. Other than Saturday's lateness (and we still got to the Tattoo of the Day contest only 25 minutes late, by some small miracle), everything went fairly smoothly. Next year, the convention is in a larger hall, so that should be interesting, and I hope, better.

End the shutdown!

Shutdown Continues / "Singapore Sling"

So, the government shutdown continues. On and on. And on. And on. I'd really thought by now I'd be back at the ol' day job, but Washington, DC has become an utter circus of dysfunctional personality. All it took for someone as unqualified (in every way) as Donald Trump becoming President to see this to its ultimate lockup. Good God.

A few folks have suggested that Trump becoming President may be a good thing in the long run and instigate a reset of our entire government (its officials, not the Constitution). I'm starting to think that just might be the case. But it'll be a long, painful process. In the meantime, I just try not to think about it too much. The annual tattoo convention I work for is next week, so that'll keep me occupied for a few days. And make some much needed scratch toward impending property taxes. Now, we federal lackeys are supposed to be paid when the shutdown ends, per bills passed in the House and Senate. So that'll be money for doing nothing; I couldn't blame people for people being pissed about that one. Yep, one fucked-up situation.

In the meantime, I finally watched a film I've had in the ol' collection for several years but had not watched - "Singapore Sling." This is the kind of movie that's hard to write about. I would even suggest visiting other websites to read about the film; not sure how my synopsis will turn out, but here goes.

There are only three characters of note in the film (you see glimpses of a couple of others at times): a man who's apparently a detective, and a mother and daughter, who look very close in age. The detective speaks Greek, while the mother and daughter speak English. The mother lapses into French at times. But there is so little dialog in this movie, I would say that even if you have an allergy to subtitles, there's nothing to worry about here.

The movie is gorgeous to look at, despite what happens on screen, being shot in black and white with very interesting noir-y lighting. That may be the best thing about the movie - it's simply beautiful. The plot? Let's see. The detective is looking for a lost love named Laura and has just been shot somewhere, somehow. We see the mother and daughter burying a body, during which some the body's internal organs fall out along the ground - in gorgeous black and white. Sometime after this, the detective, after sleeping in his car for some time, makes his way to the women's house. They bring him inside, and things pretty much stay there the rest of the movie. The women alternately take care of the man, masturbate with fruits and each other, torture the man, torture each other....let's see, what else? Whenever the man starts talking about Laura, we see the daughter dress differently (there's also a portrait of her in the same garb). Music from the 1944 film "Laura" plays whenever this subject comes up.

So, you can see this is one interesting film, and it's arresting to watch, even if not much happens during its 1:51 runtime. In fact, one of my major criticisms of the movie is its running time. You could easily cut 20-30 minutes out of this and not lose a thing. The atmosphere of the movie is thick; it's established in the first 2-3 minutes. An hour-fifty-one was not necessary and I think works against it. Still, I would recommend this movie to certain art movie afficianados. Myself, not sure I'll watch it again, but I'm glad I did. I'll just put it that way. I'll also say that I've already forgotten how the movie ended, and I just watched it two days ago. So, again, plot is not important here.

Michelle and I actually made it out of the house for the second Saturday in a row. We went to the Parlor for We Are The Asteroid (missing Sabbath Crow....waaah!), saw a play at Ground Floor Theater and then went to see The Beaumonts at DaveFest at Kick Butt Coffee. Busy night for us! Other than a weird interaction with a very unsavory door person at Kick Butt Coffee, all was a lot of fun.

I suppose I should write about this weird interaction, just to get it off my chest. It turned out Kick Butt was crazy busy when we got there, and that was great to see. Dave Prewitt has long deserved this sort of respect. Michelle and I walked into Kick Butt. I didn't see anyone checking any IDs, anything like that (I hadn't been there in a while and couldn't remember what their protocol was). After walking in, we walked by a table which two women were sitting at (neither of us saw them when we first walked in). One of the women looked up at me with a really shitty look and said something I didn't understand. I bent down, and she said something about the show taking donations. I said okay and then asked what folks had been giving in general (just to get an idea). This woman then actually yelled at me "well, first I need to put an X on your fuckin' hand!!" I looked at Michelle who gave me a "yes, she did that" return look. So, I extended my hand so she could put the X there; she did the same to Michelle. I reached in my wallet and gave some money to her, but I was pretty stunned. I realize after writing about it here, it all seems rather benign, but I was pretty steamed inside. I saw Mike Flannery talking to her later, so I suspect she works at Kick Butt. I have a feeling I'll be boycotting that place for a while. I did mention it to Dave when I saw him later, and he seemed concerned, but that was not the time for me to tell him about it. So, for now, yay, The Parlor! Yay, Ground Floor Theater! Fuck Kick Butt Coffee. And all hail Dave Prewitt!

Life goes on....

"Rojo Sangre" / What Else? / Roy Haynes

Hello. The government shutdown continues with no end in sight. I've started to lose track of what day it is for the first time in my, I suppose, working life. Weird. Guess I know what retirement will be like now. Except I'll be prepared for that. But really, I have no idea how long this is going to go on. Especially with this utter madman in charge. Ugh. I'll start to feel the real effects of it in another couple of weeks. I have enough money to see it through for quite a while, but still.....

Anyway, the only movie I have to write about today is "Rojo Sangre," which for some reason I thought I wrote about years ago. Apparently, I didn't. I was in a discussion with some friends a couple of nights ago about Paul Naschy, and I recommended "Rojo Sangre" as a good late example of his work. After thinking about it some more, I thought I should watch it again to make sure I was remembering correctly. To my relief, I was.

"Rojo Sangre" is from 2004, putting Paul Naschy at about 70. He wrote and starred in the picture, the plot having to do with an aging actor looking for work in a cruel, young person's world. The early scenes of him at an audition and on a set are pretty painful to watch. But I like how Naschy tempers the character by making him pretty crude at the same time. It gives the whole thing a nice balance. Anyway, Naschy's character ends up being recruited through his agent to be a "doorman-entertainer" at a nightclub specializing in, let's say, interesting and fleshy entertainment. He accepts and begins a new chapter in life, including the "removal" of people he sees as undesirables. That's as far as I'll go into the plot. Quite interesting, and it's nice to see Naschy's screenplay made into a movie as this late stage of his career. This could have been the type of film where it becomes "oh look, isn't it cute, Paul Naschy's on the screen again!," but it's definitely not. Kudos to whoever got behind this project to see it through. The direction is effective, although it contains plenty of the early 2000s variety of "ooh, look, we can create this effect digitally, and this effect digitally, and...." I still recommend it.

One last thing about "Rojo Sangre," though....currently, there's only one domestic DVD version of this around; it was put out by Shriek Show and Fangoria. Unfortunately, it's non-anamorphic, and if you need subtitles (I do), you can't zoom it on your screen without losing the subtitles. An annoyance, for sure, but I keep thinking this might see a better release sometime down the road.

It's kind of funny - after years of spotty writing in this blog, the government shutdown has given me the motivation to write almost daily. With the exception of Friday, I think I've posted every day this week. Good exercise, but now I find lacking a bit in topics....let's see.....

Recently, I picked up an interesting box set dedicated to one of the greats of jazz drumming, Roy Haynes. It's titled "A Life In Time," contains three CDs and a DVD, and has an interesting concept. The first two CDs cover Roy's career playing with many different folks, interspersed with occasional tracks credited to Roy alone. The third CD is credited to "Roy Haynes' Hip Ensembles" and is a bit more "fusion-y," I guess. The DVD has a documentary and some filmed performances. I enjoyed the set more than, as a drummer, I thought I would. The career CDs are pretty fascinating. Most of the tracks feature Roy in some way or have a brief solo, that kind of thing. But then there's one song, where he's playing in Sarah Vaughan's band, and he's basically just keeping half note time on the hi-hat. A really great sampling of a really great drummer's career. Roy's in his early 90s now, and I don't know if he's still playing. He was in his 80s, for sure; there's plenty of video evidence out there. Fascinating, and inspiring.

More information about future Hickoids touring is coming in. We're going to play the Muddy Roots festival in Tennessee at the end of August and then shortly after, hightail it to Europe to play a Spanish festival the next week. It's looking like we'll spend the bulk of September playing in Spain and France, perhaps Italy as well. There's a chance Michelle might join me at the end of the tour, and we can continue gallivanting in Europe. We'll see. Again, this shutdown might play havoc with whatever sort of leave situation I have. Ugh, again. The uncertainty.....

And I'll close with that for now.....

The Swishbucklers / "Ghost Story"

Good afternoon! Your narrator had a pretty damned fabnabulous time last night downtown. Wait, what??

That's right. We're in the throes of Free Week in Austin, which is a time where the downtown clubs band together and charge no admission to see live music. This concept has been going on for....well, over ten years, maybe more now....and in the past, when I've participated in it, still hasn't been the best attendance week. Apparently, the concept has taken hold. Downtown was nicely populated last night, despite chilly weather.

The Swishbucklers had a gig at the Empire Control Room. Set time was 11 pm, and this time, they had a backline!! Yes! So, I got downtown about 8:00 and quickly noticed there were quite a few folks already down there. I parked under I-35, which has been going on since I've lived here....but last night was the first time I did that. Eight bucks. Not great, but not exactly the usual fleecing you get downtown.

After rolling my cymbals, etc. over to the club, I saw on FB that Amplified Heat was playing down the street at Mohawk, so I went down to see them, after stopping in Valhalla to harass Mr. Jason Craig. Seems like I only get to see AH about once a year or so. To my surprise, they were playing outside, where it was pretty cold, but the floor quickly filled up. Very nice to see! There was one guy who kept videoing them with his phone, with the LED light on....and kept turning during songs to video the audience. After the third time of that, I moved to the other side of the floor. Sure enough, after the next song, the same dude walked over and did the same thing again. I really think there are people who are partially brain dead and still function in society. After moving to the back of the floor, I saw a couple more tunes and headed back to the Empire.

The Swishbucklers had not rehearsed since before our last gig in San Antonio, but we pulled it off pretty well. (I rehearsed all the recorded songs at home before going down, so I felt ready for once.) The crowd was dancing, and we sounded okay. Rice had a new guitar he was using, and he was unfamiliar with it still....and yet, I thought he got some great sounds out of it that seemed to compliment what Tommy Rowsey was doing really well. It seemed like we left too long gaps between songs, and yet we managed to play our entire repertoire (all eleven!). The backline kit was playable, although the drum throne had disappeared when I got up there for some reason (the previous drummer didn't use the kit). The first throne I was handed by the stage manager was low to the ground and non-adjustable due to cobbled-together after-market hardware. I was sweating that for a bit, but then the stage manager handed me a much, much better throne. What were they, made of thrones?? Anyway, the snare stand was the cheapest $20 variety, and drifted some but not too much. If it hadn't been downtown, I would have brought my own throne and snare stand, too.

After the gig, I headed over to C-Boy's to see Michelle. Rice and Brandy joined, too. After helping Michelle close down (good training....I might need a job soon!), we headed to Kerbey Lane for late-night grub.

The only watching I'm reporting today was a return to the "Ghost Story" series from 1972-3. I had started watching those many years ago and just stopped after a few episodes. It's a show William Castle produced and had Richard Matheson onboard as well. It didn't do well ratings-wise, even going so far as to change show name to "Circle of Fear" halfway through the run. Still, it only lasted one season, and there are only 23 episodes in total. The one I watched yesterday had Melvyn Douglas and a pint-sized Jodie Foster. It was okay, but I see why the show didn't quite make it. I suppose the idea sprang from other anthology shows such as "Night Gallery," but there's no real visual flair to this show. Where "Night Gallery" used interesting lighting and camera techniques to help invoke mood, this show is pretty static with basic lighting and standard shooting techniques. Still an okay watch. I might check out a couple more episodes before putting the set away for another few years......

The Thursday Report / "Evil of Dracula"

Now that I have more time on my hands in ol' Manchaca here, I'm having more time to write, which is I suppose a good thing. More practice, etc. I'm practicing more drumming as well, on the at-home electric kit. After a good couple of years plus of owning that kit, I finally added a cowbell to create a new "kit," in order to run through some Swishbucklers stuff. The cowbell is paramount for that band. As I've really only used the electric kit for physical practice, I hadn't bothered go beyond preset drum kits yet. Nothing earth-shattering, but making a little progress here and there.

So, yes, the government shutdown continues. I'm cracking up at the way the media usually make sure to say "partial shutdown." I believe all of these shutdowns have been partial shutdowns, as there have always been government workers who were essential and had to show up. And that's the case this time as well. It's just funny to me that the phrase "partial shutdown" is crucial to accurate news reporting now. Oh, well. I'm just now seeing some news stories about how an IRS shutdown will delay tax refunds. Maybe that'll get some outcry started. Again, this whole business just has me feeling in a state of limbo, although I am taking the opportunity to get more in shape again. And practice drums, of course. And watch movies.

I finished that "Bloodthirsty Trilogy" set with "Evil of Dracula" today. What an enjoyable set of movies. As I might have mentioned in my "Lake of Dracula" review, these are not movies of any great import, but they are easy to watch, and have great cinematography and sets/locations. They're also all around the 80-minute mark, so they're definitely no slog at all. No dead parts (pun not intended). I recommend 'em.

I suppose the biggest news I have today is that I hit the Bowflex for the first time in.....maybe two years? It's been awhile; ever since I began having the "mystery leg pain" in 2016 or 2017. As I may or may not have written, when Michelle and I were in Italy in October, I wore my knee brace every day without fail. We walked quite a bit, particularly in Rome and Florence. At the end of the day, my feet were hurting (even with my comfortable sneakers), but the right leg was completely fine. As a matter of fact, some of the residual pain I still had in the leg when we left for Italy had completely disappeared!! I'm still amazed by that. And the pain has not come back. So, I keep that knee brace on anytime I leave the house. No pain. I cannot believe it.

Now, I'm not a doctor (😝), but I think my final diagnosis has been determined. I must have, after my 2002 knee injury and four years of occasional hobbling due to pain until the ultimate torn meniscus surgery, learned to walk a little differently. I remember my knee surgeon telling me how the tendons on both sides of my knee were stretched and would never bounce back to original elasticity. So, I've had instability in my right knee for about 16 years now. Which means I've had to be careful about how I walk. For those first four years before the surgery, if I bent my leg too much and then straightened it, my knee would pinch that torn meniscus. And that hurt like, if you'll pardon the expression, a motherfucker. I'd be limping for a few days after that. Well, after the surgery, I no longer have any pain from, really, anything that happens with the knee, but it's still pretty unstable. So, this is of course where the knee brace comes in. I bought the brace a couple of years ago, but for some reason, almost never wore it. So, this diagnosis has come through trial and error. A lot of error. I really need to tell my physical therapist about this, as while I appreciate everything he did for me, the situation I had was never actually cured. Until I went to Italy and walked endlessly with a knee brace on. That certainly wouldn't have been anyone's prescription, I bet. I'm just glad the pain's gone. Really, really glad.

So, I got on the Bowflex tonight to resume some resistance training. Especially since I've been doing well with the stationary bike riding lately. I didn't really let up on the amount of resistance used...I believe I used the same resistance amounts as before. (Was it two years off? It could well have been.) Anyway, I did the standard 30-minute workout, including rowing before and after the exercises as a warm-up and cool-down. I didn't experience any pain at all, although during the rowing and leg press exercises, each bending of that right knee caused what I think was three clicks in the knee each time. When I was rowing, the knee sounded like a cuica. Perhaps I could start playing Latin music with it. But there was no attendant pain. And four hours later, there's still no pain. So I guess all is okay. We'll see, I guess. Still happy about it all.

Let's see how long I can keep up these daily musings......

Bob Einstein / "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" / "Batman & Robin" / "Dunkirk"

Just saw the news that Bob Einstein died. Unexpectedly, I guess. Most folks probably do not know his name, but to me, he's a comedy treasure. Lately, he'd been a long-running feature of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," playing Marty Funkhouser (how's that for a comic gold surname?). Einstein had a very long career, mostly in writing comedy, going back to the Smothers Brothers Hour, which he occasionally appeared on, too. But I think what I'll remember most about him is what he did to my dad when playing Super Dave Osborne, first on John Byner's mid-80s cable television program "Bizarre." Super Dave Osborne was a very one-note character, a sort of deadpan Evel Knievel-type who always crashed and burned. Really. The stunt would always switch Super Dave to a dummy about half-way through, and very obviously, and it was always hilarious. I loved it, but sometimes I thought the gag was going to kill my dad, he would laugh so hard. It was great to see him when he first appeared on "Curb," and Marty was a fantastic (and fantastically clueless) character. I'll be watching some Einstein stuff tonight, for sure.

[Note: In his CNN obit, I learned that he was Albert Brooks' brother....never knew that. Brooks changed his name, so he wouldn't be "Albert Einstein." Makes sense.]

Last night, New Year's Day, and sort of cold and dreary out, we stayed in and watched the screen. One movie we watched for the first time in many years is a definite fave of ours "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." This is just one of THE best sci-fi relationship movies ever. Well, come to think of it, it might be THE only sci-fi relationship movie, but damn, is it good. This was the first time we'd seen it in maybe ten years, so I'd actually forgotten some major plot points. And that's good.....makes things feel fresher. I won't even go into detail about the movie, as you've probably seen it. It's just brilliantly constructed and full of life truths. And optimistic, ultimately. Nice.

Also last night, my curiosity got the best of me. For decades, I'd heard how bad "Batman & Robin," the fourth and final of the 80s-90s series of Batman movies, was. Michelle seemed to have some fond memories of it, but they seemed to mostly revolve around the design of the Poison Ivy character, not so much about the actual movie content. I decided we should give it a go. Is it as bad as all that?

Well, yes....and no. I learned a few fun facts after watching it. After the third movie, "Batman Forever" (which I haven't seen, either), Warner Brothers wanted to get the next one out in two years, rather than the previous movies' three-year gap. And they, along with returning director Joel Schumacher, wanted to play up more of the campy 60s show aspects of the characters. The problem with that idea is these previous movies (and I'm assuming for the third one) were all mostly serious in tone, with only occasional flashes of goofiness. So, without going into too much detail about the plot or characters, I'll say that yes, this is one silly movie in a lot of ways. There is some seriousness to it at times, but it's hard to digest any of that when some awful one-liner shows its head to destroy any tonal solemnity. I looked often at Michelle in disbelief when some of these came up. I think the worst ones were from George Clooney's Batman. Especially that goddamned credit card one. Jeeziz. You expect them from the villains, but those Batman lines, sheesh.

So, I'll say that "Batman & Robin" is by no means a good movie, but it's not terrible, either. I didn't feel as if I'd wasted my time, I'll put it that way. Watch it again? Uhhhh.......no.

And I watched "Dunkirk" again. That's something I've been meaning to do for awhile, as I watched it the first time on a smallish monitor on a computer. And I liked it much, much better this time. Not that I didn't like it before, but the beauty of its construction was much more apparent to me this time. A comparison I would make, which might seem odd, would be with "Mad Max: Fury Road." Both movies don't have much in terms of character, plot devices, or dialog. They rely on the action on screen to tell the story, and both do this extremely well (the fact that both are overwhelmingly practically made, as opposed to the usual CGI glut, helps a lot). One more thing, I really, really like the movie is 1:46 in length. Nice. Most movies today, regardless of genre, top two hours and none of them for any good reason....although I suspect the real reason is "hey, we have an effects budget. And, here it is! All 39 straight minute of it! The studio wants to see those bucks on dat screen!" Nothing gets me yawning faster than continual fake action on a movie screen. If I wanted to play a video game, I'd play a video game. Okay, rant over.

It continues to be rainy and cold here, so I suspect a night of drum practice and movie watching is in the cards once again. I'm using the movie watching as an excuse to pedal my stationary bike more, too. Going to seriously try to lose a few pounds this year. At long last.

A New Year / "Spring Breakers" / "Stromboli" / "Human Beasts"

A Happy New Year to anyone reading this. I hope this particular demarcation of our agreed-upon  calendar brings you joy, health, and the occasional bon bon. I feel tremendously lucky to still be playing drums, watching films, writing in this here blog, etc.

Quick reviews of the last few films watched:

"Spring Breakers," from 2013 and brought to us by Harmony Korine (writer of "Kids," writer/director of "Gummo," etc.) is certainly one of those movies that is much different than its marketing campaign would have you believe.  Even the title is misleading, although, when I think of it, the title might be completely accurate. The plot involves a group of female teenagers who rob a diner in order to facilitate a trip to St. Petersburg, FL for spring break. They have another friend who's definitely on more solid moral ground, albeit through religion, and she joins the trip. Once there, the group is busted at a hotel for using drugs (I think - this part was fuzzy), and a piece of work played by James Franco bails them out of jail. From there, the story gets even more interesting and moves in directions I didn't see coming. Frankly, every time I thought I knew what the next plot point would be.....it wasn't that. I can't say the movie was a stone classic, but it is very good, and I'd recommend it. Especially if you're tired of the mainstream movie wagon.

Hitting the ol' time machine, "Stromboli," from 1950, is the first collaboration between Italian director Roberto Rossellini and actress Ingrid Bergman. This is another one of Rossellini's neo-realistic films from the post-war era. Bergman plays a Lithuanian (!) refugee who is placed in a former POW camp, and while there, she meets an Italian fisherman and decides to marry him. Largely to get herself out of the camp. Once she ends up with the fisherman on his island home of Stromboli, well, she thinks she made the wrong decision. The locals don't take a shine to her, there is nothing of the sort she was used to before the war, and her attitude becomes worse as the picture moves on. Overall, I liked the movie, but I think more as a period piece than an examination of self (which is what the movie is). Good, but it didn't blow me away. I'll be watching the other two Rossellini/Bergman films soon enough, and I should have words about them, too.

Finally, a Paul Naschy gem from 1980, "Human Beasts." Paul Naschy (real name Jacinto Molina, a Spanish horror icon) wrote and directed this one, and it's got one interesting plot. Sort of a kitchen sink story. Naschy plays a career criminal named Bruno who hooks up with a couple of Japanese diamond smugglers (brother and sister). Bruno begins a love affair with the sister. After pulling off their planned diamond robbery, Bruno double crosses the Japanese and ends up killing the brother. And this leaves the sister, Bruno's former flame, to track him down. Bruno ends up, through a series of events, seriously wounded and taken to a doctor's estate, where he's looked after by the doctor, his two daughters, and a servant. Shades of "The Beguiled," in a way. And there's much more. I think this is one of Naschy's best stories. His films are always enjoyable, but this one arguably has the most plot going for it. It's a doozy. The final shot is pretty damned spectacular. See if you're not shouting "that, too??" at the end.

That's it for now....been a lazy New Year's Day. Aaaahhhh......