…and this is what happens — a freeze. Reckon I should take that as a sign? I do…

That’s a KJ boat, taking down a $100 pot. Freaking typical. Bet I never see it, too. Still frozen, 30 minutes later. [sigh]

OK, we just got this nailed down. I know everyone thinks I was being a panicky drama-queen girl about going to LW, but this was on my mind and causing consternation, too. I keep telling you, I really do have lots of irons in the fire, and I really don’t feel right if I’m not giving them the attention they deserve. Especially when it comes to gambling my hard-earned mortgage money.

Wow, what an overwhelming response to Dirt’s 2nd Annual Electric Campfire June 10th and 11th.

So here’s the Dirt (ha ha)

$15.00 Admission
$10.00 Camping all weekend
RV spots are limited - $30.00 one day, $50.00 for the weekend

Friday night is ‘acoustic open mic’ till about 9.30pm then it’s Surprise Guest DAVIN JAMES to rock out the rest of the evening. If your interested in performing at the open mic or need any more info about that weekend please give Dirt a ring at 817-456-9918.

Saturday the lineup goes like this here

• Fat Boys In the Round
• Derrick Smith
• Johnny Mack
• Terry Rasor and Over The Edge
• James Hinkle
• Morris Price
• Ponty Bone

Dirt appreciates all the love and support and can’t wait to see ya on the river..

Let me give you my recommendations. Numero Uno, you can rest assured that NOBODY on this lineup sucks. I’ll give you your money back out of my own pocket if you’re not happy (the only question I’ll ask is how fast you can get your lame ass off my land.)

Can’t say enough about Davin James. Guitar-slinging Houston boy with a huge following, tons of respect from his fellow musicians, and he & the band travel in a converted horse trailer, which if you don’t love that, I don’t want to know ye. Terry Rasor is my pard in Raz on the Braz, hottest music festival in Texas. I love him and Tana to pieces. Heard his band two (three?) weeks ago at a motorsickle rally and of course, my legs hurt from bopping around like a fat white boy. Johnny Mack is a FW blues-shouter that plays a mean rub-board. Chances are that James Hinkle will join him and then go on to play a wicked set of brilliant Gibson hollow-body blues. Little secret: I’m still enough of a fanboy to be frightened of James’ super-coolness.

Most important, of course, is supporting my good buds, Dirt and Mike. I’ve written about these two hayseeds before, but I can’t be arsed to dig out the posts. Dirt and Mike aren’t brothers, but they are. They are two of the finest musicians you will find in Texas, both of them. Either one could pick up a stringed instrument and have a crowd around them doing moonshine jigs in 30 seconds. I love them both and I’m thrilled to be able to help out with getting something started for, I guess, Dirt, being as his name is on the thing. But I know Mikey is heavily involved…he’s just shy and prefers to pass (out) in the background.

Bottom line: you get a weekend of local music by some of the finest musicians in Texas, dirt-cheap accomodations (ahem-$50 off the normal price), probably a free beer or two if you walk up to the right person at the right time, river time, and of course, the company of ME. Which is priceless.

C’mon down, hayseeds!

Billy Joe Shaver on 60 Minutes tonight…w00T!!1!!1 7pm CT.

(Looks like it’s the 2nd segment, so you have some time, in case you’re not sitting there hitting RELOAD on TFG)

UPDATE: That was pretty good, if a little short. Looks they rounded up every Baptist for ten country miles for the live show, too. I can’t imagine sitting on my butt listening to Billy Joe. Still, any national publicity the man gets, while far short of what the man deserves, is An Good.

Give or take a few.

I seem to have gotten a lot of things wrapped up enough to make the trip. It was only slightly in doubt, but it did take some doing. Re-arranging corporate travel arrangements to leave for Chi-town from Lost Wages, for example, took two levels of approval. Those of you in corporations might understand the difficulty of that bit of juggling. Changing my outbound Vegas leg from an Austin non-stop to a Love Field 1-stop (Big Swampy) was less difficult, but not easy.

Finding out the Plaza has ONLY dial-up internet access was the next downer. I’m still doing business (that is to say, I’m always doing business) Thursday and Friday, and dial-up just plain don’t hack it no mo’. I’ve always gotten around this by going to Starbucks and using my T-Mobile account there. However, I could only locate one hot-spot downtown that I could be guaranteed of accessing, so that wasn’t going to be an option.

I therefore made a command decision (for which I am justly famous.) I went and got a new Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess plan and PC card. This is the $79/month unlimited data plan they’ve been touting and it uses their new 3G CDMA EV-DO cellular network. It’s rolled out to only a few cities, but Lost Wages happens to be one of them. A fair number of other cities I cover are in there, too. Testing it here at the house shows downloads at 400kbps and uploads at 130kbps. That’s good enough. Funny how we get dependent on things like hi-speed access, isn’t it?

The really super-nice thing about BroadbandAccess is that I’m no longer bound to Starbucks, Kinko’s, Borders, or any other place with a T-Mobile hot-spot. As I age, I find that I am more and more bothered by background noise. Did I say bothered? I should say, thermonuclear, Guns of Navarone Jules pissed. Starbucks has too much music and blenders and wacky steam blowers and stuff. Kinko’s has copiers running non-stop, of course. Border’s is acceptable, but they are rare enough as to be only marginally useful. However, the Third Space (not work, not home) is invaluable to me in getting my work done. With EV-DO, my Third Space can be anywhere in the cities with coverage. Anywhere. City park, bike trail, Denny’s, dive bar full of the degenerates that I feel so at home with. Hell, the front seat of the Big Red F-150.

I tell ya, I haven’t felt this free since my first pair of silk boxers.