Let no man put asunder…

Worth the wait, too.

I’ll be giggling for a week now, and it’ll be impossible to explain to anybody who asks.

Kevin Micheal Grace - The Last Laugh

I don’t know if you’re following the sundering of Canada’s parliamentary system of government and concomitant descent into full-on wackadoo banana republic, but KMG has an exceedingly eloquent post about it (which I shall not excerpt.)

Colby Cosh, too, of course.

Jane, if you want to jump in here with some thoughts, lemme know. I’ve only barely caught myself up with it this weekend, so I could use some inside info.

Just dug this CD out of the suitcase, and I remembered how bloody happy I was to hear some honest zydeco on Bourbon St. Most of what you get down there is hideous cover bands playing for frat boys and over-the-hill dorks (not that there’s anything wrong with that, just not my scene if I can avoid it). But Sunday night, at 11PM, I happened to wander into Papa Joe’s and got religion all over again. Jimmy Thibodeaux and band were burning a few hours playing, and I couldn’t have been happier. I spent the rest of the night rooted there, until my peeps had had enough (freaking NOLA first-timer Journey lovers) and dynamited my humogous arse out of there, and we wandered down to the Old Absinthe House.

Sorry for the digression. Point being, Jimmy and Co. play Papa Joe’s Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights. If you want some racous, hell raisin’, coon-ass zydeco, go see ‘em. Order their CD, too. It’s right this minute washing the taste of just thinking about idiot Cowboy Rap out of my head. All I have to do is think of this teeny little sprig of a gal bouncing off the ceiling playing the rub-board and I get a ginormous grin:

I ♥LOVE♥ that kind of raw music, especially when they’ve played it a million times, and can still get all fired up about it. I can’t believe I found it on the commercial ass-whip of Bourbon, either. A fine cigar, the Old Absinthe, and now Jimmy Thibodeaux — I might have to change my opinion of that drag.

Not having to listen to the pop-rocking schmucks at the Ticket* talk about pointless tool Cowboy Troy’s new rap-country album:

Even since Troy made his debut providing a robust rap on the Big & Rich single “Rollin,” he’s excited some fans and appalled others. The debate will certainly continue with Loco Motive, as it blends, mixes and sometimes sandwiches hip-hop, country and rock.

No, there is no debate. It’s a bunch of marketing crap-talk, and it’s completely useless to anyone with a passing appreciation of country and western, and it’s totally typical of the tampon-selling shite that Nashville expects their fans to swallow. Open wide, idiots…here comes a barn-shovel of manure for you to chomp on. More from Mr. Ron Wynn:

Personally, it’s enjoyable to hear someone stretching and testing idiomatic limits, and the attitude and musical sensibility remain heavily country, if not completely so. It will certainly be interesting to follow the reaction that Loco Motive gets in the coming weeks from the country establishment.

Ass-kissing ignoramus. My bold, because “the country establishment,” as it is defined in Nashville, is completely effed in the head, so who gives a damn what kind of reaction they might dredge up from the depths of their collective thimble-deep souls? I’m sure they have a Word macro to praise this kind of schlocky junk. Of course, it will sell millions to the fooking idiots who still starch their jeans and listen to the Wolf or whatever is the Tennessee butt-muncher station around here.

Gah — this would ruin my day if I didn’t have HUGE plans to do some more good and fine Texas music around these parts over the next few months. Screw the revenue and the appraisal district. I’m gonna buy some goats for the ag exemption and lock the damn gate. I work too hard.

* Head honcho has a Tom Petty cover band. Need I say more? Don’t think so. Relevance = zero.

OK the stupid thing is out and running at the picture show. Can we quit talking about the damn Star Wars BS, already, please?

IT’S A MOVIE, YOU FREAKING IDIOTS!

Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

I bought the latest Tom Clancy novel, mumble-mumble-mumble, at the NOLA airport for reading on the trip back. I seem to have left it in the seat-back pocket. Besides the total waste of $8.50, I’m not at all bothered by that…it reads like the guy was writing a screenplay, even 100 pages in. Now, I enjoyed the heck out of his first couple of books, which were no great literary shakes, but they had interesting characters and cool plots. I basically quit reading about the time Jack Ryan got thrown into his umpteenth unplanned horrific national security crisis. This, though, was so freaking cadboard, it was almost sad. Practically a Word macro…like a Grisham or a Koontz for mil-diplo wonks.

I wouldn’t be so harsh if I didn’t see so damn many people toting his books around. What’s up, peeps? Just enjoying the serial? That’s cool by me…I love serials. I gotta say, though, that I haven’t found any new good ones in a while. Everything seems to be written by chicks for chicks with main chick characters. Is that an unplanned Oprah effect? Whatever it is, I can’t get into it. None of them are hard-drinking, heavy-smoking, ass-kicking (and -kicked) super-hard-boiled badasses like Inspector Rebus from Ian Rankin.

I’m no cigar expert, but this is quite possibly the finest cigar I’ve ever lit up. I had one three nights in a row. I can honestly say that I did NOT expect a decent smoke from a Bourbon St. emporium, but I have no problem recommending them to you cigar-heads out there. Mercifully, their per-box mail-order price drops down into the affordable on a daily basis range.

All my companeros had different types, and each one of them reported a good smoke, so you probably can’t go wrong. Cigar Factory New Orleans - give ‘em a try.

$194 per night, and this is Night #3 of being locked out of my own freaking room. Let me repeat that — it’s one hundred and ninety-four dollars per night. And they can’t make they keys work. Idiots.

I love business. I’ve been so far out of the stoopid media blog / media loop it’s not even funny. Have the last three years just been a waste? I don’t want to ponder, much less answer, this question. So, I’m gonna go have a drink, a muffaletta, a Lucky Dog, and talk some more damn business.

Shouts to my poker buddies for their great and th0ughtful advice, which mostly can be boiled down to PLAY, YA BIG DUMMY!

PS I’m going to kill the punk playing the frikking 10-piece, 5-gal bucket, drum set directly below my window. I think I can just edge this teevee out…

Should I go and play tomorrow night after working all day, including knocking down and packing up the exhibition booth? Or should I get a good night’s sleep, and hit it for a full day on Thursday?

BRILLIANT INSIGHT UPDATE: How about two good nights of sleep? I’m full as a tick, and I don’t feel like inflicting myself with further Gen-Y obnoxiousnesses. For the record, though, Coop’s Place on Decatur is a fine establishment, with a superb jukebox of Waylon Jennings and Frank Zappa and George Thorogood. I don’t feel like I’m eating enough, though…I’m still ambulatory.

Story of my freaking life — I come back to the hotel being as I ran out of coffin nails, and it’s midnight anyway, and I’m pretty tired anyway. Can’t get into my room with my key, go get a new key, can’t get in with that one, have to go up with the security schlubs, they can’t get in with their Big Whoop master keys, I have to wait around for Neo and Morpheus to show up to reprogram my GD door lock, and now it’s 3AM, and whatever buzz I had and whatever friends I have are long gone when the a-holes at the Marriott finally figure out the GD door lock/key card conundrum. And at this point I don’t even have the vigor to go track down a Lucky Dog vendor and make it a complete night. I worked until 10pm being Mr. Salesy, didn’t eat any kind of dinner, and I’m GD starving. Yet my wife will tell you that this is somehow something wonderful and glamorous and fulfilling and enviable. What-effing-ever.

Go ahead, give me one good reason to not jump off that bridge into the welcoming bosom of the mighty Mississipp.

At the airport, fixing to go to my favorite city on Earth, New Orleans. Il’m going to eat my weight every day. Might even play a little Harrah’s poker.

…down on the Brazos. Had a nice thunderstorm roll thru last night that kind of cooled things down. Tonight we have the pleasure of Terry Rasor and his Over the Edge band playing for about 200 bikers. I was very glad to hear that the great Johnny Mack, Master of the Rubboard, is going to be sitting in, too. Of course, the two greatest Texas Musicians you’ve never heard of, Mike Choate and Dirt Stinnett are playing in the band. I’m already cracking the cool ones, and I’m heading down to grab a good seat for the show. Maybe even have a BBQ sammich.

I talked to Terry briefly, and it looks like we’ll have Davin James back this year for Raz on the Braz (Aug. 18-20). Davin’s won about 10,000 awards all across Texas, and he’s from Houston, and he always puts on a super-strong show. John Nitzinger will be here, too — a living freaking legend that can still slay it. Best of all, though, for me — the greatest living Texas Music outlaw, Billy Joe Shaver, our Poet Laureate, will be back — in fact, he’s flying in from a tour stop in Ontario, Canada, to do Raz. I’m smiling and giggly like a schoolgirl.

So, start saving your pennies now. It looks like we’ll have actual online ticket sales this year, after years of begging and pleading. Tentative price will be $40 for the weekend, $20 for a day pass. You can bet I’ll have a link to it.

I hope your weekend is going as good as mine…I just wish The Little Lady wasn’t out slaving away for the unappreciative, unrewarding, indifferent, apathetic Dallas music scene.

MORNING AFTER UPDATE: Oh. My aching head. Need coffee. Breakfast burrito. Ice water. Alleve. Better judgement when someone sticks a flask of hooch in my hand.

Freaking hilarious:

And Taranto:

Voinovich called Bolton “the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be.” He said Bolton would be fired if he was in the private sector.

How the heck would Voinovich know? The résumé on his Senate Web site lists no private-sector jobs and a string of government positions beginning with the Ohio House in 1967 and lasting through the present, continuous except for a two-year gap between 1988 and 1990 (during part of which time he was campaigning for the Ohio governorship). There is a six-year gap between his graduation from law school (1961) and his taking a seat in the Ohio House, so perhaps he practiced law or some other occupation for a time 40 or more years ago–though his official congressional bio shows that he was an assistant attorney general in 1963.

And of course as an elected official rather than a civil servant, he is guaranteed a job until his term ends, in January 2011. Which perhaps explains why he has engaged in behavior that would be unacceptable in the private sector–to wit, missing a series of important meetings, then finally showing up and demanding that business be brought to a halt until he can get up to speed.

You know, you feel like a real dumbass agreeing to a chop, and then come in 2nd.

Great little tournament tonight, except that I came in 2nd* and not first. I got verrrry sloppy at the end, and I had an opponent who made the right moves to capitalize on that. All I can say is, goshdarnit, I was out of beer. Congratulations, and a hearty Great Game! to Wes the Gigantic Pirate, the winner of the 3rd WPBT seat in the WSOP $1,500 No Limit Hold ‘Em event. See ya in Vegas, matie!

* Read the rest of this entry »