The beauty of a move lies not in its appearance but in the thought behind it.
—-Aaron Nimzowitsch
… the woman who grows up with the idea that she is simply to be an amiable animal, to be caressed and coaxed, is invariably a bitterly disappointed woman. A game of chess will cure such a conceit forever. The woman that knows the most, thinks the most, feels the most, is the most. Intellectual affection is the only lasting love. Love that has a game of chess in it can checkmate any man and solve the problem of life.
The best way of travel, however, if you aren’t in any hurry at all, if you don’t care where you are going, if you don’t like to use your legs, if you don’t want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature.
Thursday night was a fun event planned at the park – it was the first Set List on the Green, where they had chosen six local musicians to play from 6:30 on, a half hour each. I had not heard of or heard any of the artists:
Work has been tough this week and as the end of the day approached I began to have second thoughts. I had plenty of stuff I needed to do at home. It would be a hurried trip on the DART train downtown. It was getting cold outside.
Sitting at my desk, I decided to make my decision right when I walked into the parking lot. If it felt cold, I would take my car home, otherwise – off to the train station and a ride downtown.
The air temperature was right on the edge, so I hesitated. I’m am trying to live my life outward, so, if in doubt… I go. I went.
I’m glad I went. I had some sliders from The Butcher’s Son and sat down on a little green table to watch and listen. What I enjoyed was the variety of the performers. You really didn’t know what you were going to get – from someone playing Coldplay covers on a solar powered piano to folk music to cool jazzy vocals to complex emotional original stuff to some real banging on the guitar.
I really liked a few of these guys and will make a note of trying to catch them as they appear hear and there in the Metroplex. There is nothing better than local live music.
They will do this the next couple of Thursday nights, and I’m going to give it a shot. Then they will hopefully start up again in the spring – I’m not sure if this will conflict with the Patio Sessions… but at least Dallas is moving in the right direction.
I did not bring my camera, so no original photos – but here’s some youtube videos of the performers.
Bicycling in Dallas is too difficult and too dangerous. Bicycling magazine called Dallas the worst city for cyclists—twice (in 2008 and 2012). As a result, only heroes do it. And the solution is simple. We need only change the way we think.
When the story you are reading is published online, there will appear, without question, comments from people who will assail Mike McNair and hurl insults at cyclists of every stripe for getting in the way of their cars. A number of years ago, golf commentator David Feherty wrote a story for D Magazine about getting run over on his bike by a car in Dallas. He did a turn with Krys Boyd on 90.1 KERA to talk about the experience and his long rehabilitation. Online and on air, a sizable number of people said: “Screw the cyclists! They are a hazard and should get off the road!” Words to that effect.
That attitude is the first thing that must change if Dallas is ever to achieve its world-class ambitions. Bicyclists are like children. They are slow. They are sometimes unpredictable. They weave and wander and clearly think the world revolves around them. They infuriate. But they are our future. So we should not only tolerate them, we should encourage and coddle them.
Great News. The Dallas Museum of Art had free admission when it was first opened, and I was working downtown. While it is worth the paid admission, making it free enables a person to enjoy the place on a more informal basis. I used to go there and look at one piece of art only – really think about it. Hard to do that when you pay ten bucks to get in.
As Nasher Sculpture Center landscape architect Peter Walker sees it, the intense light reflecting off Museum Tower, the 42-story, $200 million condominium complex across from the center, is an “attack on the garden and on the building and on the art.” According to Walker, “What the reflection does is very much like putting light through a magnifying glass, it essentially burns everything that it sees.”
Writing in my Moleskine Journal outside the Mojo Lounge, Decatur Street, French Quarter, New Orleans
Anyone with free time in North Texas tomorrow, Saturday, December 1st, think about coming down to Deep Ellum for the first
Craft and Growler, down on Exposition near fair park, is open and it’s a cool place. A long way for me to drive for a growler full of beer…. but it’s worth it (my car gets great mileage).
An Idea Pomodoro – timer, pen, composition book.
A freelance writer shares his thoughts and experiences using the Pomodoro Technique to cut down on distractions and squeeze more productivity out of his day.
“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air–moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh–felt as if it were being exhaled into one’s face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.”
― Tom Robbins,
A cute couple.
On the way home from the store with a bag of Miller High Life.
Even a tattooed hipster wearing crazy clothes on a skateboard in one of the coolest spots on earth can have bad taste in beer.
She spent a decade of deprivation, dedication, and study at a monastery in the mountains of Bhutan, high on the slopes of unclimbed Gangkhar Puensum, studying the game under the mysterious monks until she returned a Jenga Master.
Now she earns a meager living hustling the game in the city park.
The children are amazed at her skill, but they will never have the patience nor the passion to become a Jenga Master.
“Honestly this category really isn’t fair; but why punish one bar because all the others can’t hold it’s jockstrap? We all know The Avenue Pub is THE beer bar in not only New Orleans but in Louisiana. Nothing against all the other bars in the state but you ALL know you have a long way to go to be mentioned in the same sentence with AP.”
Draft Magazine lists it as one of the 100 best beer bars in the country. They say:
“Only in New Orleans will you find a beer bar open 24/7. The staff is militant about clean beer lines and proper glassware, so even when you stumble in at 4 a.m. you get the best pint in the city. Choose from more than 47 rotating taps and about as many bottles, all focusing on American beer. Go for an exhaustive introduction to local NOLA Brewing or to people-watch from the balcony.”
“Louisiana may not be the first state you think of when you think of beer (sure, they’ve got Abita), but when you change state to city and beer to drunk, it’s no wonder that New Orleans has one of the best beer spots in the country. Avenue Pub features a rotating 47 taps on two floors (so you can get your exercise in between rounds) and once you mix that with some amazing Louisiana cuisine, you won’t be thinking about Bourbon Street no more. And the most important part, here in the land of to-go cups, the Avenue is open 24 hours a day. Yup.”
And all this is right there, right on the Streetcar Line, right when it starts to rain.
I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.
—-Johnny Rotton
Michael Prysock and Mark Deffebach the Mandolin Player
There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.
—-Eugene Chadbourne
Michael Prysock
The late sixties and early seventies were kind of a breeding ground for exciting new sounds because easy listening and folk were kind of taking over the airwaves. I think it was a natural next step to take that blissful, easy-going sound and strangle the life out of it.
—-Alice Cooper
You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It’s the closest music to our humanity – it’s like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.
Bill Chance 