I finally got in range of KNBT while driving back from Laredo tonight, and they played Ryan Bingham’s Bread & Water. Picked me up considerable. I hope it means something for Bingham, too…KNBT is a nationally-recognized Americana station, and hopefully, he’ll get some good exposure. Better than this dumb blog and the cab of my truck, anyway.

When you click thru that splash page, you’ll get to hear Southside of Heaven, as good a song as any to introduce yourself to Mr. Bingham. And it’s another one of my faves from Mescalito.

However, in other stoopid news, proving the deck is stacked against real musicians, NASCAR announces a return to their roots…by hiring Garth Brooks and Brooks & Dunn. <sigh>

No mas Fred, that is. And surely that’s news to precisely nobody. He’s the only guy on the campaign trail who blew my skirt up even a little bit.

Oh, well. As some long-dead bright boy once said, we Americans get the government we deserve, and we get it good and hard.

It’s been a veritable gully-washer of ‘other shoes’ falling around here. All as I wait for my next grandson to make his entrance into the world. At least I don’t have to be there for that to happen…I’m given to understand it’s quite common for granddads to be miles away.

What I need is for a Bud truck to break down in the driveway, and a week off.

Forums > blogs

Dude ripped off by a stripper…pretty sure that’s not just a poker phenomenon, but the sad, sad truth about the poker world is that this sociopathic tart was a celebrity. Well, you normal square johns get Britney and Amy Winehouse, we degenerates get Brandi.

In other poker news, Iggs talks about his departure from the poker pro lifestyle. Interesting stuff. I know how he feels - that fourth or fifth day of sitting on your ass for ten hours, looking at and listening to skeezoid degenerates covered in dandruff and smelling like the bed of your pickup truck in mid-summer — well, you have to wonder when it gets all glamorous and the non-psychotic Brandi Hawbakers start massaging your shoulders. God knows I love poker, but there are times when you’re sitting there folding your umpteenth POS hand and you start wondering, “What would my sainted mother think of me?” and you know the answer is that she’d jerk a knot in your tail pretty quick if she knew.

That right there, more than anything, is why I love all my poker blogger brethren (and…sistren?)…99% of them understand that. Still, if there’s someone more temperamentally suited to the grind than Iggy, I don’t know who it would be. Let it be a warning to you, kiddo, if you’re thinking about doing it full-time.

It worries me greatly that this kind of stuff is going to be lost forever:

Surely there’s some kid rocking this shit somewhere.

Me, I could listen to this till the cows come home.

My idiot Treo 700p is refusing to synchronize with my laptop. No error messages, no nothing — just sits there.

I really detest technology sometimes. I’ve made a decent living off of it, but sometimes I just want to scream, or go to work at a bowling alley. That would be nice, low-expectation fun. “Size 9s? Here ya go. Here’s a coupon for the snack bar, too. Enjoy your game. Remember, leagues start at 7, so start wrapping it up around then. Yeah, we’ll make an announcement.”

Well, all it took was one good evening of reading to get through the slim little Duane Moore update. Overall, not bad. As always, McMurtry makes me laugh out loud when he writes Texas dialogue. Crikey, I can just hear it, because I’ve heard it all my life. It’s a very good ear he has, and I appreciate that.

I also have always felt a kinship to Duane, too, even though he’s about a generation ahead of me and richer than hell. I’ve always shared his overall bewilderment at the world and how rapidly it changes, and the people in it and how unknowable they really are. Particulary women. In reality, though, I’m probably more kin to Bobby Lee, his oldest friend and overall dipstick, who’s equally as mystified as Duane, if not more.

The sex scenes in the second half aren’t all that pervasive like the blurb below would have you believe. They’re there, and it’s not too terrible. Since McMurtry decided to make this about the saving grace of love and sex, they’re fairly inevitable, but it’s less graphic and clinical than a lot of ostensible literature that I’ve suffered through, so meh. Don’t let it keep you from enjoying the denouement of Duane & Thalia.

It looks like Larry McMurty has decided to update his Last Picture Show trilogy with I guess the inevitable.

With less than happy results, McMurtry picks up the story of Duane Moore (Duane’s Depressed) two years after he left him alone in a remote Texas cabin, suddenly widowed and among his fractious brood. As Duane, now 64, returns from an impromptu trip to Egypt, he’s confronted by Anne Cameron, a young, flirtatious computer expert hired by Duane’s son, Dickie (now manager of the small family oil company). Although smitten, Duane is still haunted by the memory of his wife, Karla, and also succumbs to a lassitude about his sex drive that ultimately reveals a more serious health problem. His therapist, Honor Carmichael, decides (after the death of her lover) that all Duane needs is some self-confidence, so she temporarily sets aside her professional ethics (and her lesbianism) to come to his aid. In the meantime, old friends die, as does his tiny town of Thalia (setting of six McMurtry novels, finally swallowed up by creeping sprawl), and his daughters annoy him. Bereft of subplot or complications, this slim novel reads like a short story, and the second half is dominated by vivid but curiously clinical sex scenes. Although amusing in places and full of sharp McMurtry observations and sentences, it’s as weak a book as he has produced.

I didn’t read that before I bought it, since I was in Half-Price Books, but it’s pretty much what the endflaps lead me to believe. I guess Larry’s working out some issues while he works on some of the inevitable co-eds that seek out Archer City to meet the great man. Anyhoo, I bought it, and I guess I’ll read it till I get to the sex stuff. I like McMurtry’s writing a whole lot, I just don’t want him doing Penthouse Forum for me.

That’s a 50th-birthday dinner in Dallas for my oldest pard, a NYE bar & cigar stop in San Antonio, and somewhere along the way, a simple pisser of a virus that has made me feel like I drove off a cliff for the last three days.

I guess the only important thing in this post is that San Antonio now has a steakhouse that I can comfortably make my own, being as fond of Kirby’s as I am. I seriously don’t think there’s a better place in the world, and definitely not for the money. You can spend more, and I have, but it’s simply not worth it.

This Kirby’s allows smoking at the bar, too, so a bourbon and a cigar after dinner doesn’t mean leaving. The best part? It’s a three minute drive home, five if the light’s red.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to coughing my lungs up, sneezing my sinuses out, and pondering the possibilities of using a hand-held drill to relieve the pressure inside my skull. Over…