November 17, 2006

Picture of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts (or in this case, Blackheart) during their first song Tuesday night. Stubb's was pretty full, with the typical, wonderful motley crue of multi-generational fans she attracts. They played several songs off the new album "Sinner," and they were nice fun Joan Jett songs - a mix of covers and little-heard songs from previous albums, along with a couple originals like "Riddles" and "Change the World." While she played her standard "...We're Going to Make it After All" from the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I felt like I was really going to finish my dissertation. I'm sorry, I find ways to derive inspiration from even the cheesy songs she plays! Everyday People? Check. Favorite song on the setlist? Love is Pain from the I Love Rock 'n Roll album. But damn, Crimson & Clover kicked ass too. Maybe that was the best.

This was my fourth time seeing her; I was trying to recount the other times so I wouldn't forget (this is why I need a diary):
1. 1998, at Parker's Casino in Shoreline, WA. Waited in line for an hour to meet her after the show and then chickened out. Surprise opening act: Fastbacks! By far the best of the four.
2. 2000, at the grand opening of the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Great grand opening weekend, stupid museum.
3. 2004, at a warehouse in East Austin at 2am during SXSW. Silver Zephyr was there!

Eagles of Death Metal opened, a garage-rock type band from I'm guessing California. Check out the 'stache on that guy! (below) I think a lot of people are curious about them because the drummer is/was in Queens of the Stone Age. They were all right. They surprised me by singing falsetto about half the time.

November 15, 2006

This is exactly why I feel absolutely no compulsion to go see the Borat movie. I'm glad someone had the ovaries to put into print what I'm sure many people think about this style of humor, but are afraid of being labeled as humorless, uptight, too sensitive, and the like.

November 13, 2006

This is where I'll be tomorrow evening:

"Joan Jett is still a badass. The 48-year-old has managed to outlast many of her male punk counterparts, look good doing it, and still put out viable albums. Sinner, Jett’s first since Clinton was president, finds her hellbent for leather pants, with muscle from longtime band the Blackhearts. Is she still pissed? Just drive through “Riddles,” and order three-chord punk with a side of political doublespeak..." more from the Austin Chronicle preview.

In other news, I will be putting myself on a strict self-disciplined regimen for the next approximately 16 weeks. If I want to actually try to graduate next May, I need to have a full draft of my dissertation by March 1st. That leaves three weeks - until March 22 - for revisions, one month for the other four committee members to review, and then defend the last week in April. I looked up all the deadlines and was dismayed to learn that you have to submit the final, formatted, approved dealio to the graduate school by May 4th. Why does the semester have to end so freaking early? Sheesh!

So anyway, I'm under the impression, however mistaken it may be, that I can do this. Or at least get damn close. I'm dropping one of my jobs to buy myself more hours in the week, with the trade-off of barely eeking out a living. (I seize every opportunity to use the word "eek"). Sixteen weeks! Sixteen weeks! I can do it!

Rumsfeld is gone!

November 8, 2006

Today is a good day. Twelve long years it's been, with the last six being particularly hard. I stayed up watching the results last night til my eyes crossed - I didn't want to go to bed! My favorite moment was impulsively calling my mom in Montana to celebrate Nancy Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House-elect. The most powerful position ever held by a woman! I had tears in my eyes.

We also added two women to the Senate (and didn't lose any), a few more to the House, and overall twenty new pro-choice House members. An informative overview of what this all means can be found here. The people of South Dakota gave a big F-U to the misogynist christian industrial complex (I'm trying to coin a new term here, akin to the 'military industrial complex,' or the 'prison industrial complex.' Help me out! And grassroots organizers in Arizona defeated a hetero-marriage amendment.

I don't want to worry yet about what comes next, I just want to bask for a while as the clouds have finally parted a bit.

Yay!

October 27. 2006

Chris Bell is the only candidate for governor who signed the NARAL Pro-choice Texas Prevention First Pledge, which says that if elected he will "work toward the common-ground goals of supporting access to family-planning services, making birth control, including the “morning-after” pill, more affordable and accessible, and teaching our young people honest, realistic sex-education."

This makes my decision pretty clear.

October 25, 2006

Sandy West, Runaways drummer, died last Saturday. That's her on the far right.

October 20, 2006

Celebrity Sighting at South Congress Cafe

Yesterday M. was craving crab cakes so we went there for lunch around 1:00. There was one of those signs on the door indicating that if we went inside we were granting permission to be filmed for an upcoming episode for a new show to be tentatively called "Giada's Weekend Getaways." We look at each other quizically, say "huh?" and then M. looks in the window and proclaims, "there she is!"

So we went in to wait for a table. They end up seating us right next to her table, though out of camera shot. The tables that were within the camera angle were filled with extras!! I thought that was pretty weak. But M. thought maybe they had to do that so the people sitting around her on camera wouldn't constantly be turning to look at her. Like we were.

She was tasting the carrotcake french toast. The funniest part was when they were done shooting, the sound operator guy sauntered around to her half-eaten plate and helped himself to a bite. Hee hee! A quick search reveals the series will premiere on Jan. 12.

And yes, her head really is that big in real life.

October 5, 2006

How come no one ever told me about Chango's? Motivated by a glowing review in the Fearless Critic, I decided to check them out last week and have been back twice. Chango's is to Manuel's what El Chilito is to El Chile, so it's quality stuff. I have had the del mar taco, which has marinated & grilled mahi mahi (you can request shrimp too), but my favorite is the al pastor. Holy macatoli! Served simply with lime, cilantro, onion and pineapple, it doesn't need any hot sauce. Everything is fresh, healthy, and the best thing: self-serve aguas frescas with apparently free refills.

There's nothing in the restaurant that explicitly says you can have free refills, but I read about it in the Fearless Critic review so I tried it and was not tackled by an employee (unlike the time I tried to sneak some free ice tea at taco bell in the Texas Union building four years ago). And oh the selection! Canteloupe, Watermelon, Coconut for god's sake, Honeydew, and of course Horchata.

Chango's is locally owned and has two locations in Austin. And note to Silver Zephyr: according to their website, "Chango's" roughly translated means "little monkeys."

October 2, 2006

The recent barrage of girl-hating has my stomach lurching and me just generally feeling helpless and angry and ultimately depressed.

There was the woman dragged to death by her husband in Colorado, the girls singled out, sexually assaulted, and one executed at a Colorado high school, and the girls singled out and three executed at a Pennsylvania school today. These sacks of shit seem to always kill themselves afterward.

And, in other news, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would make it a federal crime to evade one state's parental consent laws by taking a minor to another state for an abortion. The Senate passed the similar "Teen Endangerment Act" in July, so all that's left now is to work out the final version for the president to sign. Yippee.

September 27, 2006

Always wanted to know what your ecological footprint is? I have. I have tried to live my life by one basic mantra: to somehow justify or at least modify the space and resources I am taking up on the planet (by being a middle class white person living in the United States) by contributing something back to the world and being conscious of the waste that I create. Some may call it white liberal guilt, I call it rational. What that something is, is heretofore unidentified, unless little things count, but that's another subject (that I really don't want to talk about anyway).

This nice website will tell you what your ecological footprint is in the world. Apparently the average for people in the U.S. is "24" or "25." Mine was a "9," but I think I fudged on my car's gas mileage. My footprint is much more to my liking now that I don't commute 60 miles roundtrip, and I ride the bus twice a week. Anyway, try it out if you want!

September 6, 2006

My 35th birthday fell on Labor Day this year, marking the traditional end of summer as well as my youth, as I dryly and somewhat morosely put it to a colleague yesterday. The end of one’s youth being a completely arbitrary point, of course. And I don’t really think of my youth as over, but the rest of society seems to. One of the most depressing-yet-strangely-liberating realities of turning 35 is that I am no longer in the coveted target demographic for marketers, 18 – 34. It is this growing irrelevancy to the mass market that depresses me, because I’ve always liked the fact that as a 20-something and early-30-something the world kind of revolves around you. Once the mid-30’s hit, it becomes abundantly clear that there is a whole crop of young up-and-comers behind you, who are probably smarter, more creative, and have more energy than you. Of course I’ve been on the other end of this tension and still am to a large degree because everyone in my field is 5 to 25 years older than me, and when I started out as a 25-year old with a master’s degree, well, I struggled to be taken seriously and was constantly asked by consulting clients if I was “in school.” Ten years later, I still don’t seem to be “old enough” to garner any sort of credibility with senior colleagues. But I digress.

Aging out of the target demographic should be freeing! Free to be me! A certain power comes with not being in the crosshairs of the marketing machine. Similar to my experience ducking the patriarchy in my early 20s by not shaving my legs, not wearing makeup, and cropping off all my hair. That sudden invisibility to men was both scary and exciting. I also take heart by looking to women I know who are pushing 40 and 50, and swear they feel like they’re 18 on the inside – though this also means the aging process doesn’t get any less weird-feeling the older you get. And as my mom said, there are plenty of cool, happenin’ women in their 80s to whom I am but a mere baby.

P.S. I highly recommend the black pepper sorbet with strawberries at Uchi.

August 31, 2006

Mark your calendars, Jett-heads: Tuesday, Nov. 14 at Stubb's will have Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Eagles of Deathmetal, and the Riverboat Gamblers. Tickets are on sale now!

Today was my first day back as a graduate teaching assistant in two years. For some reason I remembered it as being not very labor-intensive; talk about rose-colored glasses or something. The professor who runs the class changed up his style a little and now has 5 short papers (multiplied by 104 students = 520 papers to grade), a fill-in-the-blank portion on exams (which means actually reading these answers as opposed to sending them to the testing center to be scanned), and occasional little in-class surveys that require me to go home and enter data and run frequencies. Yuk! I am already plotting how I can swing Spring semester financially without the TA gig.

My research fellowship is so far looking like it will be fun, interesting, and challenging. I'm going to have a cute office in the School of Public Affairs, a laptop, and opportunities to travel to conduct interviews and do archival research on a topic I have a professional stake in. I haven't really started yet though so I'm trying to ratchet it down to a cautious optimism.

August 28, 2006

Poopapalooza 06

Last week we found out from our esteemed developer-neighbor-dude that weeks ago during the demolition of the house next door to us, the sewer line was broken. So for the past few weeks we've been merrily using the facilities, as it were, without a care in the world, unknowingly contributing to a burgeoning cess pool down the hill. For the past week we were advised to "limit our usage," and every time I flushed I pictured the contents landing on the roof of some SUV speeding down Riverside Drive below. Luckily, esteemed developer-dude has temporarily moved into the other side of our duplex until some other dumb house of his is done, and the sewer backed up into his apartment (not ours, ha ha ha!). However, some white substance did bubble up a little out of a PVC pipe in our front yard. Gross! So tonight it finally got fixed, and we made him clean up our yard. Talk about environmental health hazard.

In other poopy news, about this same time over the weekend Frankie got a horrible case of the runs coupled with vomiting (she's okay now). The whole mess smelled like, well, gag-inducing poop. Also at this same general period in time, our backyard began to smell like hot dog poop baking in the sun, because esteemed developer-dude happens to have two big yellow labs who poop all over the damn place (big ones!) and he never picks up after them. They (the dogs that is) also strategically leave their "calling cards" right in front of our entrance gate about every other day.

Poop on you, developer-dude!

August 24, 2006

In an earlier post, I alluded to my disgust with the inherently misogynistic culture of the U.S. military. Robin Morgan recently wrote a short commentary in The Guardian that connects all this to the bigger picture.I do not believe the rape-murder of an Iraqi girl was an isolated incident. It seems almost weekly I read articles about yet more American servicewomen who have been assaulted by fellow soldiers (I actually know someone who this happened to), and it's common knowledge (isn't it?) that rape has routinely been used as a weapon in war. Also see Susan Brownmiller's excellent history of rape in the military in Against Our Will. Now, I'm going to have a drink.

Victory!

The political godbags at the FDA finally caved! Emergency contraception will be available without a prescription for women over 18. The sound of that sentence is just weird. It's like, am I really saying that in 2006? It's so 1960. I suppose now the battle will continue to focus on the whacko pharmacists who will try to either not stock Plan B or refuse to dispense it - as women will of course have to show I.D. before the pharmacy decides whether she can purchase it or not.

Thank you NARAL, Planned Parenthood, Dr. Susan Wood, and everyone else who worked so hard on this.

August 23, 2006

Just a few pictures from a week spent in south central Alaska...

A sight for sore eyes - mountains and water!


View from our train seat on the way to Seward


Aialik Glacier, in Kenai Fjords National Park (kayakers in foreground)


Alaskan sea lions


Humpback whale falling back to the water after breaching (you gotta enlarge this one to really see it)


M. freezing to death on a boat off the coast of the Kenai Penninsula


Back to Anchorage...


These are the "sound of music" hills I grew up with...the base of the Chugach mountain range




Going to the top of Alyeska, the ski resort 45 minutes south of Anchorage


This is classic - taken in Talkeetna, AK


The Pioneer Bar in downtown Anchorage - in the same location since 1917. Anything older than 1964 (when the earthquake hit) is old in Anchorage.

August 19, 2006

Some highlights from four days in Seattle

Our first night in town, leaving The Funhouse (sort of like Seattle's Beerland) where we visited with friends and listened to weird bands.



Mt. Rainier hovers over Seahawk Stadium and Safeco Field (where the Mariners play) in the distance...taken from Victor Steinbrueck park by Pike Place Market, where I used to eat my lunch in the old days.



Documenting our visit to Cupcake Royale in Ballard. I had the lavender frosting and M. had the orange. Legalize Frostitution!



My favorite dog in Seattle, Eve, with whom I used to live. Here she hangs with us at the Lava Lounge on Second Ave.



Rachel Flotard and Ben Hooker, Visqueen, playing on the Vera Stage at the Capitol Hill Block Party Friday July 28.



Ms. Led wows the rag-tag crowd of old hippies, families, crazy people, elderly Scandinavians, and Block Party escapees at the Ballard Seafood Fest, Saturday July 29. The next night we met Lesli and Matt for a drink at the Whiskey Bar in Belltown.



The crazed throng gathered to see the one-time-only reunion of the Murder City Devils, Capitol Hill Block Party Saturday July 29.



Good-bye Seattle! The view from Elliott Bay

August 11, 2006

I am still organizing all the photos from our trip, but wanted to put this one up first. This is my godson/psuedo-nephew, 7 months old, of whom I am a huge fan. The picture was taken in Talkeetna, Alaska with Mt. McKinley a.k.a. Denali shrouded in clouds behind us.

August 3, 2006

Greetings from Alaska - once again I forgot to bring the card reader to upload pictures, but here's a quick update:

-M. is ready to pick up and move to Seattle (loves it).
-M. got sunburned in Seattle (ironic).
-Yesterday we rode the Alaska Railroad to Seward, and on a 6-hour ocean tour we saw sea otters floating on their backs, some shy seals, scads of sea lions, Aililik Glacier which is a humongous tidewater glacier that is calving huge chunks of ice into the bay, and three humpback whales, one of which breached (jumped out of the water) not once, but twice - super rare to see that. Also saw tufted and horned Puffins, and several eagles.

We miss our kitties and puppy and our friends, but not the 99 degrees. It's like 60 here today.

Carry on!