Category: Books

Hornet’s Nest

I decided to stay in McKinney with Diana this week, rather than make the trip back down to Austin.  The early part of the week was heavily work focused with some system challenges keeping me busy.  I’m hoping we’ve turned the corner on those now, performance has been great the last few days.  Hope I didn’t just jinx things.

There were no silly 4th of July questions this year.  It seems that every other year or so, somebody asks me “Do you celebrate the 4th of July in Scotland?”.  I know they don’t mean do we celebrate being free of the responsibility of the United States.  Ha.  We celebrated with late morning workouts and then lunch at Toulouse in Legacy West.  Diana was excited when her choice for restaurant stuck – the other two options we discussed were closed for the holiday.  We enjoyed a delicious white wine and steak tartare with frites.  I know, you’re thinking our diet is almost exclusively raw meat these days – only when we go to French places that do it well.

Dinner was the more traditional holiday fare – burgers and veggies on the grill at home.  I was pretty brave to spend as much time by the outdoor grill.  Why is that?  Well…are you familiar with the expression “A Real Hornet’s Nest”?  And did you know that I’m highly allergic to wasp and bee stings – swell up like the Elephant Man.  Turns out hornets nests are not always in trees.  We found five piles of sand in the beds next to the grill, looking just like ant hills without the ants.  Further investigation showed some kind of bug burrowing into the ground and kicking out sand.  We decided to leave well alone and wait for the pest control experts.

The pest control professional arrived on Friday morning and confirmed hornets’ nests.  He was very careful in spraying them, commenting that they can be very aggressive and their sting hurts a lot.  Lots of mud-dauber and wasps nests were also removed.   We feel like we’re under attack from flying stingers of all varieties.

Friday was a light work day for me – I was able to enjoy a swim and watch some good Wimbledon matches.  Coco Gauff’s recovery to win over Hercog was very impressive, more so considering she’s 15 years old and on the Center Court.  I enjoy picturing my Mum and Dad talking to the TV as they watch Wimbledon.

Saturday started with a swim and crossword, before settling in to read and enjoy the tennis on TV, while McD sunbathed.  Then I surprised Diana with an early dinner at the Grape.  She says she had been thinking about going all week – must have some special ESP going.  We started by sharing the chicken liver mousse, which now has the pistachio topping added back – last time we visited, over a year ago we guess, they had changed it, and not for the better.  Then we split a delicious salad, followed by steak frites for Diana and scallops for me.  A lovely evening and way too long since we’ve visited the Grape.

It was an early start on Sunday to get a swim and crossword in, before packing to start traveling at 1pm.  Me over to the bus to Austin, and Diana to the airport for a flight to Tampa.  We both arrived at our destinations about 30 minutes late – which is not too bad for the weekend after the 4th of July and the hordes of people moving around.  As I finish this post up, I’ve just finished troubleshooting the internet and TV service in the apartment – the third reboot was the charm.

We received a couple of entertaining pictures from Denny and Anne this week as they continue their travels through Europe.  This week in Berlin.  Here Jack and Mason recreate the famous picture of them peeking their heads in to the cottage in New Orleans as we were waking up.

And here Dad and the boys manage to find an Irish bar in Berlin to watch the Womens’ World Cup Final:

Two short, quick reads were a very welcome change of pace on the literary front this week.

“The Parade” by Dave Eggers,  a very favourite author, is a spare and powerful story of two men, Western contractors sent to work far from home, and tasked with paving a road to the capital in a dangerous and largely lawless country.

Four and Nine are partners, working for the same company, sent without passports to a nation recovering from ten years of civil war. Together, operating under pseudonyms and anonymous to potential kidnappers, they are given a new machine, the RS-80, and tasked with building a highway that connects the country’s far-flung villages with the capital.  Four, nicknamed “The Clock,” is one of the highway’s most experienced operators, never deviating from his assigned schedule. He drives the RS-80, stopping only to sleep and eat the food provided by the company.  Nine, however, spreads chaos: speeding ahead on his vehicle, chatting and joking with locals, eating at nearby bars and roadside food stands, he threatens the schedule, breaks protocol, and ends up fighting for his life when contracting malaria. His illness, corruption, and theft compromise their high-stakes mission,  and Four and Nine discover danger far greater than anything they could pose to one another.

Impending doom seemed to be lurking through the last third of this book but never arrived.  Then it all struck in the very last paragraph of the book.  Wow – wasn’t expecting that.  This book is a very impressive allegory for so many of the civil wars that are tearing countries apart.

“Biloxi” by Mary Miller is quite different than any book that I’ve read in a while.  Miller  skillfully  transports us to her unapologetic corner of the South—this time, Biloxi, Mississippi, home to sixty-three-year-old Louis McDonald Jr.  His wife of thirty-seven years has left him, his father has passed—and he has impulsively retired from his job in anticipation of an inheritance check that may not come. In the meantime, he watches reality television, drinks beer, and avoids his ex-wife and daughter. One day, he stops at a house advertising free dogs and meets overweight mixed-breed Layla.  Unexpectedly, Louis takes her, and begins investigating local dog parks and buying extra bologna. Mining the absurdities of life with her signature “droll minimalist’s-eye view of America” (Joyce Carol Oates), Mary Miller’s “Biloxi” captures every day life in the South perfectly.

The exotic turntable picture is for you Raj – hope you’ve completed your audio penance.

I found this song was in my Blues Piano book as I revisited it this week.  A great exercise in dexterity and I’m nowhere near up to speed yet.

Speaking of revisiting, I played this album from Charlie Hunter again this week and enjoyed it just as much as on first discovery.

And here’s a new jazz trumpeter from Italy that I enjoyed.  The album gets a bit repetitive, but I do enjoy the modern sound.

The week started well with a relaxing and delicious lunch at June’s All Day brasserie on far South Congress.  This is the place that Mark took me to for lunch when I interviewed for my job in Austin, and I hadn’t been back since.  Diana and I both loved our lunch – delicious wines, smoked salmon nicoise salad for D and steak tartare for K.  The heavens opened as we were finishing up and so we had to stay for coffee and wait for a brief respite in the rain.  Temperatures dropped 15 degrees in a few minutes and the humidity was thankfully gone from the air for a while.

I got tied up at work until late on Monday evening.  Diana was able to meet up with Sheri (after some confusion on which Kendra Scott store they were meeting at) and then they stopped back into June’s for some Happy Hour champagne.

Then they met up with Sean at the Continental Club to see the amazing Peterson Brothers.  These two young men have so much positive energy and interact with each other beautifully.  May they never lose those positive smiles they have playing music together.  I was able to join around 7:30pm for the second half of the show.    We particularly enjoyed the rendition of “Amazing Grace” on violin by Alex – it was his first instrument in school before graduating to bass guitar virtuoso.

Then the Brothers went mobile, wandering through the club, passing the guitar off to a friend at the bar to jam, heading out into the street and then plopping down in the seats behind us for a few minutes.

I thoroughly enjoyed the second hour of this show.  Just what I needed after a long work day.  Here’s a quick clip of the Brothers jamming:

After the show we followed the typical circuit – Hopdoddy burger followed by Hotel San Jose courtyard.  Sean was able to have a nice chat with Glenn and Alex about when they were going to play in California.

Diana headed back to Dallas on the Tuesday bus and I put in some long days at the office, battling system problems.

I enjoyed a work dinner at Bonneville on Wednesday night.  This is a good restaurant, just across the bridge from the apartment, that I hadn’t heard of but enjoyed quite a bit.  The scallop dish was yummy.

I rode back to Dallas with Vinod on Thursday afternoon – always an enjoyable journey because of the wide ranging conversations.  It was really nice to be home with Diana in McKinney for a few days.

The new movie from director Danny Boyle, “Yesterday”, was our entertainment on Saturday afternoon.  We both enjoyed the movie and the interesting concept behind it.  It really brought home the breadth and differences in the Beatles catalog.  Diana mentioned being reminded of the Cirque du Soleil “Love” show in Las Vegas, and how it gave whole new meanings to the classic Beatles songs.

I had always thought that the Beatles “I Want to  Hold Your Hand” was the number one song when I was born.  I just looked it up and that was actually an honor held by the Four Pennies, with their song “Juliet”.  Have you ever heard of the Four Pennies?  I certainly haven’t.  I like the guitar introduction to the song.  It was only number one for a single week.

Take a look at the number one hits from 1964 – so many classics that we still remember.  I challenge anyone to believe the same will be true of the number one hits from 2019 – most of them will be forgotten a couple of years from now.  Cilla Black has a couple of number ones and she got a mention in “Yesterday” during the visit to Liverpool.  What was in that Mersey water?

I heard a song on Spotify that I enjoyed by Alan Price.  The keyboard sound was somewhat familiar, so I did some research.  I found out why it sounded familiar – he was the organ player with the Animals.  You’ll notice above that “House of the Rising Sun” was number one just after I was born – I still enjoy that song today and remember Billy Joel playing it when we saw him in New Orleans recently.  The Western musical brain certainly loves arpeggios – particularly when a minor resolves into a nice major.

Alan Price is a self-taught musician and was a founding member of the Tyneside group “The Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo”, which was later renamed “the Animals”.   His organ playing on “The House of the Rising Sun”, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, and “Bring It On Home to Me” was certainly a big part of the group’s sound and success.

He also had a big role in introducing one of my favourite musicians, Randy Newman, to the world.  Price’s second album, “A Price on His Head”, released in 1967, featured seven songs by Newman, virtually unknown at the time.

What was number one on December 18, 1964 when my wife entered the world, I hear you asking.  Well – that was a Beatles song – “I Feel Fine”.  Not one that I was familiar with, even though it spent 5 solid weeks at number one.  Oopsy – now that I listen, I know it well.  “I’m in love with her, and I feel fine”.

Changing over from music to the literary front, I finally finished “The Parisian” by Isabella Hammad.  This was a very long slog of a book with lots of Arabic dialog and names.  I did learn a lot about the history of Palestine in the early 2oth Century, and the influx of Jewish immigration that ultimately caused the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that still exists.

Here are some of the reviews that convinced me to embark on this read.  I’m not sure I agree with any of them – this book was really hard work.  I enjoyed the first few hundred pages that were set in Paris, but the Palestinian years were just work.

I’m looking forward to some lighter reading this week.

Here’s the Alan Price song that got me off on that Animals trip earlier:

Diana gave me a beautiful vinyl rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s new “Western Skies” album for fathers’ day.  Here’s one of my early favourites:

How can Bruce still be making such meaningful music while performing every night in his solo Broadway show?

I’ve always loved the music of Robert Cray and came across this recent album.  Ask me about seeing Robert Cray in a small club on Greenville Avenue in Dallas in the late 80s, when Stevie Ray Vaughan joined him on stage.

It was an early (4:30 am) start on Monday to catch the 6:00 am bus back to Austin.  After some shenanigans with Lyft giving me a driver 27 minutes away to fulfill my request for a 4:50 am pickup, I made it just in time for the bus and enjoyed a smooth journey (mostly sleeping).  Santiago, my Lyft driver, did entertain me with stories of his time on the Bolivian national soccer team and his attempt to get his PGA card – quite the sportsman and a very interesting conversationalist.

My main accomplishment for the remainder of Monday was getting D’s car inspection completed, so that she could register the car.  I did struggle on this as the insurance document wasn’t in the glove box (that I could see).  Turns out it was in the owner’s manual in a secret shelf on top of the glove box that tall people would never see.

Another early start alarm awoke me on Tuesday so that I could make my 7:00 am Physical Therapy appointment.  PT is really working well – I was completely pain free when I left and have had very manageable pain most of the week.  I get a few funny looks as I drop to the office carpet and perform the exercises that bring me almost instant pain relief.

Here’s a short riddle that was on the board at PT:

x+8 = 12

x-5=11

x is the same in both equations.  What is x?

Need a hint?  Read down to just before the music section.

On the way home, I stopped into the Saxon Pub for the weekly David Grissom happy hour residency.   You’ll remember me raving last week about the film we saw about the Saxon Pub at the Dallas International Film Festival.  One of the more entertaining characters is Chris who works the sound board and absolutely loves his job.  He does an amazing job on the sound.  Here is on Tuesday night working the sound and also the lights (using some special tool comprised of a rod with a tennis ball on top).

As I was entering the Saxon, I saw a character walk by and thought to myself that the crowd was getting a bit rougher and dirtier.  Turns out that was Chris Maresh, the bass player for David Grissom.  I felt guilty about my initial assessment as it became obvious that Maresh is a world class, virtuoso bass player – reminding me a lot of Jaco Pastorius of Weather Report fame.

He began his professional music career in Austin in 1984 after receiving a degree in Applied Double Bass Performance with an emphasis in Jazz Performance from the University of Texas.  Over the ensuing 35 years, Chris has performed on an amazing 250 albums.  His big break came when he played with guitar legend Eric Johnson for 10 years.  His side project, Alien Love Child, was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Pop Instrumental for the song “Rain” in 2002.

Can you hear the perfect interplay between bass and guitar.  That’s exactly the thing that brought out my “Happy Music Face” at the Saxon.

Chris has also released two solo albums of original jazz material.  I’ve only listened to one so far and the musicianship is very good.

Grissom’s drummer, Bryan Austin,  was equally impressive with some strong jazz capabilities as well.  His online profile is very sparse – all I was able to find is that he played with Santana at some point.

My favourite song of the show was “A Good Day for the Blues”, a song that Grissom wrote in the mid-nineties when in a band called Storyville with Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon from the Arc Angels (and originally Stevie Ray Vaughan).

It’s a rare treat to have music of this quality available for the cost of a tip on my short commute from work to the Catherine.

Severe thunderstorms had been forecast for Wednesday afternoon or evening since early on Monday.  Predictions of 2 inch diameter hail caught our attention as the storm was scheduled to hit both Dallas and Austin.  A lot of folks made plans to drive home early to avoid the storm that was initially scheduled for around 4pm on Wednesday.  Storm arrival time was pushed back throughout the day and it ultimately arrived when we were both asleep.  Diana slept through it in Dallas but I was awoken by the loud thunder just before 2am.  It doesn’t seem like there was any major hail damage.

Diana decided to leave Penelope safely in the garage at home and take an Uber to her first meeting in downtown Dallas.  We were chatting on the phone as she waited for the car to arrive and I was talking about the interesting driver that I had on Monday.  Then this was the view of the boot of the Uber as she went to stow her luggage:

Apparently the driver likes to play the trombone and makes occasional trips to New Orleans to play in a church and at various places on Bourbon Street.  Diana’s bus arrived later on Thursday evening.  I could tell she was ready to be in Austin as I got the countdown clock texts on her arrival time:  34 mins, 22 mins, 15 mins, 10 mins.

Diana had warned me that she was ready to go out on Friday evening, having been cooped up in meetings all week and then on the bus trip down.  We had an early dinner at 2nd bar and kitchen – some of our usual favourites:  smoked salmon rilletes and avocado fundido.  After dinner we walked up Congress Avenue to the Listening Room at the back of The Townsend. This is an amazing room with perfect acoustics that only seats about 60 people.

We saw John Nielson perform with opener Michael Davids.

Michael Davids had a couple of tables full of friends with him.  True to form, Diana discovered that they all worked for a cyber security firm with a couple of the folks employed as ethical hackers.  I swear she can find out more about people in a few minutes than I do in years.  He attempted to get the crowd to engage in a singalong with Jackson Browne and Elton John songs with reasonably tepid results, but mostly played his own original songs.

I had not heard of John Nielson when doing research for McD’s night out, but listened to some of his songs and thought he had a great voice and good songs.  His performance was true to expectations with a number of memorable original songs.  He appears to make some of his living from having his songs used in TV shows.  Here’s one of his performances:

We were walking back home down Congress Street when I heard a good cover of “Have you ever seen the rain?” by CCR coming from the Shiner Saloon.  I had never been in this particular establishment and found it very pleasant – good music and a very nice upstairs patio with various games.  We enjoyed watching these kids playing a very large Jenga game.

Saturday began with workouts downstairs and then Diana put me on notice that she was planning to spend a few hours out by the pool.  It was a perfect day and so I decided to go for  a walk along the river trail.  Here’s a sequential series of pictures looking back on the Catherine that I took on the walk:

The trail is very well maintained with lots of shade.  I came across this sculpture titled “Bikes Forever” that contains 1254 bicycle frames.

Now I was starting to get a bit hot and tired and so stopped for an iced coffee at Alfred’s above the Austin rowing club.  There was a very long line of people below waiting to rent canoes.

On Saturday night we walked over to the Violet Crown cinema (thanks to Shu for pointing it out to us) to see “Amazing Grace”, a documentary of the live recording of a gospel album by Aretha Franklin.

We really enjoyed the cinema – great food and drinks and a very nice feel.  “What about the movie?”, I hear you asking.  Well…I enjoyed it a lot and Diana enjoyed the first 15 minutes as well.  Then she got a wee bit sleepy.  The power and control that Franklin had at the height of her powers in 1972 is amazing.

Easter Sunday morning started with workouts and then Diana joined me for a walk along the river trail – this time on the South side.  Much of the trail on this side is an elevated boardwalk style path that is very well done.  The views back into downtown are quite impressive.

After a nice long walk, we stopped into Bennu for coffee and crosswords on the patio.  Great location but the cacophony of bird squawking was almost unbearable.

We cleaned up and then walked across to Le Politique for Easter Sunday brunch.  I really enjoyed my “Beef Cheek Presse” with a sunny side up egg, chickpeas and avocado.  The beef cheek had a very rich and delicious flavour.  We picked up a loaf at the patisserie next door to enjoy for dinner with some of the cheeses left over from Denny’s visit.

I think we did a good job of taking advantage of what Austin has to offer this week – music, outdoors, and food.

I enjoyed “The River” by Peter Heller this week.  The main protagonists are Wynn and Jack, who have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one.  But, the next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman?  The story quickly pivots from a wilderness vacation adventure log to a harsh survival tale with several twists and turns.

You can tell Heller has spent significant time in the outdoors from his descriptions of nature.  Here’s a passage that I particularly enjoyed describing animals fleeing the impending forest fire:

“The moose trotted to the open margin of the left riverbank and clattered over the broken shale on stiff legs and entered the water without pause, and she stretched her neck and let the water sweep her without concern and set a ferry angle and swam across.  The calf mimicked the mother.  They were only yards ahead of them.  The next was a bull moose, and then a black bear with two cubs.  The cubs hesitated at water’s edge, they seemed frightened, and the mama bear snorted and waded out of the river and got behind them and drove them forward.  They swam.  The littler one lost ground in the current and Wynn thought he would get swept away, but the mother got below him and bumped and shouldered and goaded him across.”

Riddle hint:  Think of a wall clock

Still don’t get the riddle?  The answer is at the end of the music section.

Here’s the orginal version of “Good Day for the Blues” by Storyville that I heard David Grissom perform on Tuesday evening.  I think this is certainly one of his most popular and accessible compositions:

I really enjoy the sound of this song by a band that I heard for the first time this week and can’t remember where.  The National Reserve have good vocals and a great guitar sound with nice production.  They’re based in Brooklyn and have been playing a regular Friday night bar gig there for almost a decade before releasing their first album.  Here’s how they describe themselves on their website, “Founded and fronted by singer-guitarist Sean Walsh, The National Reserve mine an archetypal musical seam, marrying gutbucket R&B, Laurel Canyon lyricism, New Orleans funk workouts, late night soul, and bluesy, boozy rock ‘n’ roll to create their own timeless brand of American music. ”

Samantha Rise is another artist just releasing her debut material.  She claims to play “High Country Soul”.  Again I like her vocals and the excellent guitar accompaniment on this song:

Let’s close out this week with some classic Bob Dylan as heard on the “Billions” TV show this week – I really do enjoy the musical choices for this show:

Mott the Hoople’s Greatest Hits has been one of my favourite albums for more than 35 years now.  I also enjoy the Ian Hunter (lead singer for Mott) solo albums and have one in my collection that I bought on holiday in France with my Mum and Dad (it’s aging very well).  The band reformed recently for a few shows.  Here they are in Boston performing “Saturday Gigs” and “All the Young Dudes” (a song written by David Bowie and gifted to the band as they were trying to get started).

Riddle Answer:  4 am  (I hear you groaning).

Should I make a riddle a regular feature in the blog?

Denny arrived for his Austin “scouting trip” on Tuesday afternoon.  His flight was delayed a few hours and so we skipped the David Grissom show at the Saxon Pub and headed straight to the Odd Duck for dinner.

The weather was nice and so we sat on the patio and enjoyed an outstanding meal.  Some of the highlights of the plates we shared were: egg noodles with goat chili and avocado crema, nachos with grilled mushrooms and tahini chili sauce, and bavette steak with mushroom conserva and charred onion salsa verde.  So many amazing flavour combinations!  The scouting was off to a great start.

I shared the Austin Chronicle daily live music list with Denny before he arrived and was wondering if he would choose the same post dinner show that I thought he might.  We share very close musical tastes and so I wasn’t surprised when he picked James McMurtry at the Continental Club gallery.  The gallery is a tiny music room above the larger Continental Club that feels like a living room and has excellent sound.  We both loved the intimate, solo acoustic show and Diana appreciated it as well.

James is the son of Larry McMurtry, the famous Western author (best known for Lonesome Dove), and his songs feel more like short stories than songs – so much colour and detail.  His 12 string guitar playing was also very impressive.  Here’s a clip of “Choctaw Bingo”:

And here’s my favourite from the evening, “Red Dress”:

We enjoyed the short walk back to the Catherine and then introduced Denny to the view from the Sky Bar.  What a great start to the visit and perfect weather.  We snapped this picture in front of the mural at Jo’s coffee to send to Anne.

Poor Diana had to leave on the bus back to Dallas on Wednesday morning – leaving the two of us unsupervised.  She’s had poor luck on the bus trips lately and that continued as a truck dumped an entire load of lumber a few trucks in front of the bus.  This caused Diana to be late for her client meeting in Dallas but at least she had a good story and accompanying picture.

I met Denny at El Alma for a yummy Mexican lunch on the rooftop patio.   I think he enjoyed the food as much as I do.

After work, we took an Uber over to East Austin, a funky neighborhood that is rapidly gentrifying (like most of old Austin).  We enjoyed a happy hour cocktail on Whisler’s patio and then walked to Kitty Cohen’s, another great patio with a small outdoor swimming pool to dip your hot feet in.

Our next stop was Rainey street – an area of Austin that I’d heard a lot about but hadn’t visited yet.  It’s a street of historic houses that have been converted into restaurants and bars.  I’ll let the pictures tell the story of our Rainey street ramble:

Now it was time for dinner and we chose G’Raj Mahal for a nice Indian.  The food was very good with my only complaint being the watery sauces that were being passed off as chutney to accompany poppadoms.  Even showing the waiter Google search images of chutney didn’t yield any helpful results.  I did enjoy the meal and the patio setting a lot and look forward to visiting again soon.  G’Raj Mahal is about a 15 minute walk from the apartment – just right for walking off a rich Indian curry.

We made one last stop on Rainey to listen to the Canned Beets at the Half Step.  Apparently they’ve been playing every Wednesday night for 5 years.  Another great music option for Wednesday night:

We finished up Wednesday just as we did Tuesday – with a visit to the Sky Bar.  This time my friends Issac and Damon joined us – they had just finished up a work dinner with a vendor and I was impressed with their ability to gain entry up to the Sky Bar without the concierge calling me.  Very resourceful boys.

Denny’s visit finished up with a very pleasant and relaxing lunch on the patio at Shady Grove.  Denny bought himself a Continental Club t shirt that he’s sporting in this picture – he must have enjoyed that venue.  Such a great visit but too short – looking forward to a return visit with Anne included.

I rode back to Dallas with Vinod on Thursday evening.  These trips are hilarious as we share stories and educate each other on a myriad of topics.  Vinod dropped me at Perry’s in Grapevine and Diana and Penelope picked me up there.  We (Penelope was left outside glaring at a Jaguar parked in front of her) enjoyed some of their excellent steak tartare and then headed home.  I complained about how spread out everything is in Dallas and McKinney after the compact, walkable area around the Catherine.

After the usual workouts and coffee and crossword on Saturday, we drove down to the Dallas International Film Festival.

We saw a film called “Nothing Stays the Same:  The Story of the Saxon Pub”.  This is an excellent documentary about one of my favourite music clubs in Austin and it won the Audience award at the South by Southwest film festival a few weeks ago.

A few years ago the land where the Saxon sits was put up for sale and the operators were looking for a new place to host music.  The film director decided to create a record of the club, the owners and the musicians who call it home.  He described it as his “love letter to the Saxon Pub”.

The film does a great job of telling the story of how people are attracted to Austin because of the great music and cultural scene.  That drives up prices of everything and the musicians can’t afford to live there anymore.  And the club owners can’t afford the rent either.  It really is a tough problem.   Many of our favourite performers are featured in the film and there wan’t a bad musical performance anywhere to be found.

There is a very happy ending to this particular story.  Mr. Keller of Keller Williams realty steps in at the final hour and buys the land and tells the owner that he can continue to operate there as long as he wants.  He also worked with the Austin mayor to put together a fund to help do the same for other iconic music venues.  I look at Keller Williams in a whole new light now.

The documentary director, Jeff Sandman, and his team were on hand for a Question and Answer session after the film.  This was an unexpected treat and it was obvious how much Jeff cares for the venue.  A very nice experience and well worth the trouble we took to drive in extended thunder storms to get to the theater.

After the usual Sunday morning routine, we watched Tiger Woods pull off the amazing feat of winning his 5th Masters tournament.  After that relaxation, I fixed Penelope’s windshield wipers and did some light weeding and trimming around the pool.  Everything is in full bloom with all the rain and warmer weather.  Our maple in front of the house seems particularly happy:

With all the activity this week, I was pleased to find a couple of hours of quiet time to finish up a book that I’ve been reading for several weeks.  “The Unwinding of the Miracle” by Julie-Yip Williams is not a positive, uplifting book by any stretch.  I won’t bring everyone down with a lengthy review, but it tells the story of Williams childhood in Vietnam, with cataracts that render her mostly blind, the family’s escape on a barely seaworthy boat, ultimate arrival in America, surgery to restore most of her sight, her graduation from Harvard Law and then, in her early forties, a 4 year battle with colon cancer.  The book is very well written and brutally honest about all the challenges.  The Epilogue by her husband is heart-breakingly hard to read.  Let’s pick things back up now with some new music discoveries.

I love this song by Aretha Franlin with Duane Allman on guitar.  It’s been on repeat play all week:

This live Ray LaMontagne song captured my attention and it sounds great on my home office system – I miss the Linn sound in my home office very much:

This Mellencamp song featured prominently in the excellent episode of “Billions” on TV this week:

And finally, an amazing song from Lukas Nelson and his band.  You can certainly hear what they’ve learned from the last few years as Neil Young’s band:

After surviving the crazy weather on Sunday, it was back on the bus down to Austin on Monday.  Diana was kind enough to drop me off on her way to downtown Dallas.  Having caught up on work emails and the like pretty quickly, I was able to spend the rest of the 3 hour journey reading.  Several New Yorker magazines were waiting for me amidst the mail stack in Dallas and I worked my way through some of those on the drive.  I smiled at this typical New Yorker cartoon as it reminded me of losing to McD at the puzzle yesterday:

My arrival at the Catherine on Monday night was greeted by six packages that needed hauling up to the apartment.   Thank goodness for the hotel valet style trolley that they make available.  This time most of the boxes were of my own doing – cushions, a painting, and a lampshade to finish out my interior decorating.  I think they all look quite nice.

After work on Tuesday I enjoyed a dinner with colleagues Heather, Vinod and Jeff at Shady Grove.  The hatch chile sauce grilled chicken is my favourite.

Patty, Brent and Diana all arrived in Austin on Thursday for a long weekend.  They share our love for good and interesting food, and we ate well all weekend long.

The dining extravaganza started at Peche with steak tartare, deviled eggs, and an excellent duck dish that McD and I shared.

John “Papa” Gros, an excellent New Orleans keyboard player, was performing at the legendary Antone’s club when we finished dinner.  He has a great funky sound and a band that does a wonderful job on the New Orleans classics.  Fortunately we did a lot of walking every day of the weekend to counteract all the excellent food and drinks consumed..

Antone’s was very quiet and so we were able to move around easily and enjoy the band.  Here’s a video of “Papa” Gros doing “Tipitina”, the Professor Longhair classic:

Work called me to the office on Friday morning and Diana was busy with calls.  Patty and Brent entertained themselves with a South Congress ramble – they made it at least as far as Torchy’s tacos.  It’s so nice being able to walk to so many interesting places.  For dinner, Brent fancied some good Mexican and our combined research indicated that ATX (Austin, Texas) Cocina might be a good destination.

We walked across the 1st Street bridge to find an hour wait at ATX Cocina.  No issue,  Diana and I went around the corner to Le Politique (a very nice French restaurant find) for a drink while Patty and Brent did some shopping.  Dinner was well worth the wait.  Brent was quite pleased to find the entire menu gluten free – go nuts, have whatever you want.  The dishes were all very fresh, interesting, and with excellent sauces.  A really creative and different menu in a very modern and popular setting.

After the walk back, we rewarded ourselves with a drink at the Catherine sky bar.  It was a perfect evening for the sky bar and we enjoyed looking over the “Urban Old Skool” music festival going on next door at Auditorium Shores.

Saturday started with workouts and some of my special breakfast tacos, which seemed to be well received.  We enjoyed looking down on the “National Taco Championship” in the parking lot of the Austin American Statesman.  This not only included a taco championship, but also Mexican wrestling and a chihuahua beauty parade.  You can almost spot the wrestlers with their masks in the picture.

Shortly after this, things started to come off the rails a bit.  The VW Passat has a feature that prevents clowns from locking their car keys in the trunk.  Honestly, I’ve seen it in action a few times – the trunk just pops back up when you try to close it.  Not this time – my jacket with keys in the pocket was firmly locked in the trunk.  “Where are the spare keys?”, I hear you asking.  In Dallas – so not too convenient.

After some solid huffing and puffing between Diana and me, the trio walked into downtown Austin for shopping while I called AAA.  Less than an hour later things were starting to get back on the rails.  The AAA tow truck driver had the door opened within a minute of arrival and the interior trunk button did not require the engine to be on to operate.  Whew!

I drove over to downtown to pick up the shoppers who had spent quite a bit of money on jewelry and ceramic bats.  We had a small naming contest for the blue ceramic bat that now nests in our desk area.  After some initial rejections, Brent came up with a winner.  “He’s into the blues, so he must be Bats Domino”.  Perfect!  And another example of that amazing piece of human anatomy that is Brent’s brain.

We had lunch at the original Taco Deli just before it closed for the day at 3pm and then paid a brief visit to my office.  Then we had time for a quick stop at Cosmic coffee before heading back to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was at Juliet Italian, which fortunately is almost a mile walk from the Catherine.  We all loved our food and had lots of leftovers to carry home.   The cioppino  was a particular highlight and I loved my mushroom fettuccine.  A night at Juliet wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Carpenter next door to play a record.  This time, Al Green was Patty’s choice.

Sunday morning was a repeat of Saturday morning and then we walked down to El Alma for brunch.  What a great place with an excellent menu.  Diana and I split the benedict with corn cake, chipotle hollandaise, and crab (ridiculously good) and a side of mushroom stuffed empanadas.

After brunch we attended a “special event” – the annual Austin kite festival.  Diana bought me a kite on the walk along Barton Springs to Zilker Park and I had a great time joining the thousands of other folks enjoying kite flying.  What type of kite do you think would be most appropriate for an Austin festival?

Did you guess on a kite type?  Here it is:

Yes – it’s a bat with a nice long tail.  Here’s a view of all the other kites.  Lots of very impressive flying machines.

On the walk back to the apartment, I came across this sign.  What are your thoughts?

And then we posed the girls next to Patty’s favourite food truck.

After the long walk back (at least a mile and a half), we enjoyed a low key dinner and a movie.  Then we ventured across the street to see if we could see the bats flying for the first time.  There is a colony of over 500,000 bats that nest under the Congress Street bridge and are quite the tourist attraction.  No bats flew on Saturday night due to the cold, blustery weather and so we weren’t sure we’d see any on Sunday either.    The sun had almost set by the time the first few bats ventured out and then many more of them took flight.  It’s tough to capture them in a photo due to the flight speed but you can see some little smudges (if you zoom way in) in the picture where they are moving.

This boat was positioned directly in the flight path while the bats emerged – good way to see the show.

We shut things down pretty early on Sunday night since we had a 5:30am start on Monday morning.

What a lovely visit we had with our first Austin overnight guests.  We’re ready for the next set – get your dates booked early!

I listened to “Carolina Confessions” by the Marcus King Band on the bus down to Austin and this song really caught my attention (the entire album is very good):

I always forget about Joan Armatrading when selecting some music to play.  Very silly of me because whenever she shows up on a playlist I remember how much I’ve missed hearing her unique sound.  Here’s an example from a Spotify playlist this week:

This piece from Joe Henderson is recorded live at the Village Vanguard (I used to love visiting this joint when travelling to New York) and features the amazing Ron Carter (regular readers will remember my rave review of his concert at Birdland last year) on bass.  I love the bass chords that he constructs.

This song popped up on an episode of Billions that I was watching on TV.  They typically use interesting music throughout the show.

And here’s another one from Billions (later in the same show) from the excellent Little Steven.  Guitar player for whom?

If you didn’t know – Little Steven Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren have been the guitar players for Bruce Springsteen for many years.

Baby Penguin (BP) was my company in Austin Monday through Thursday while McD toiled away in Dallas.  I found a new coffee shop reasonably close to the office, Trianon Coffee,  and guess what?  They serve TacoDeli breakfast tacos – perfect!  I’ll have a Jess Special please.  What’s that you ask?  A delicious mix of eggs, cheese, avocado and some peppers.

On Monday night I noticed a bit of a rumpus on the roof of the Hyatt Regency parking garage.  There are often photo shoots up there, capturing the Austin skyline as a backdrop.  This one had some bright lights behind it and what did they spell out?  Tacos!  They’re everywhere.  Some closer investigation seemed appropriate and so I took the lift up to the parking rooftop and found the shoot was for the 512 (Austin area code) Taco Man.  Haven’t come across that truck anywhere but will need to keep an eye out.

I suppose I lied when I said that BP was my only company.  My friend Ron (we worked together for years at AIG) from Los Angeles came to Austin to have dinner with my boss and me.  Our new colleague Damon joined as well.  We started with a drink at the apartment Sky Bar and then walked across the 1st Street bridge to III Forks for a delicious steak dinner.  Thanks Ron!  What a great time we had reminiscing on work experiences, folks we worked with, and just generally catching up.  We finished up at the apartment with some music and banter.

The river was the calmest I’ve seen it so far on the walk back home and I snapped this picture of the Hyatt Regency reflection:

Ron was in Dallas on Wednesday and was able to meet up with Diana for dinner at The Keeper.  So he was able to understand our relationship from both individual perspectives – probably could do some excellent marriage counseling now.  I know, I know:  everything’s perfect and that would be such a waste of money.

My favourite sunrise this week was Wednesday morning and yes, I was awake in time to see it after all the fun with the boys the night before.  Pretty impressive I think.

I caught the bus back to Dallas on Thursday afternoon and then had a busy day on Friday catching up on things left undone for a few weeks:  dental cleaning; Penelope oil change; selecting a new softer mattress for the apartment; Penelope bath; processing the stack of mail…  Seems a lot of my day was spent catering to Penelope’s needs – I suppose that’s fair given that she’s been tolerating Diana driving her a lot recently – poor girl just isn’t used to going that fast.

Saturday commenced with the usual workout followed by coffee and a crossword.  I could feel McD nipping at my heels during crossword time – she finished 10 seconds after me – whew, that was a close call.  Penelope got new tires installed on Saturday afternoon – they were supposed to be done on Friday but there was a mix up on the tire delivery.  She really is a very high maintenance girl, requiring new tires every 20 thousand miles or less.

We met Jens and Glenda for dinner on Saturday night at a restaurant that was new to us – Mexican Bar Co. at Willowbend mall.  The food and company were excellent.  We spent over 3 hours catching up on all that had happened in our lives in the 4 or 5 months since Jens’ 60th birthday party.   I enjoyed a perfect chile relleno and elote (Mexican style corn on the cob with aioli).  I had the leftovers just before finishing up this post.

Sunday started like Saturday – workout followed by coffee and crossword in downtown McKinney.  I lost on the crossword today by 2 seconds – great job McD!  (I could feel it coming yesterday).  Then I did some light weeding and dead bush removal in the garden.  By now it was eighty degrees outside and so we uncovered the pool loungers and spent a happy few hours reading and listening to music.   A couple of light rain showers, while the sun was out and the sky clear blue, interrupted us for a few minutes at a time.  I went inside to take a shower before dinner and heard the tornado sirens going off – time to get out, put on some clothes and check the TV weather update.  We believe the siren was warning us of heavy hail approaching.  Heavy indeed:

Will and his crew were in Tahoe this weekend for snow boarding and skiing.  Christine took ski lessons for the first time and apparently had a great time.  Will’s friend Bryce made it too – that’s him in the picture with Christine.

I thoroughly enjoyed “The Weight of a Piano” by Chris Cander this week.  Cander lives in Houston and has been a writer in residence for Writers in the Schools there.  She also stewards several Little Free Libraries in her community.

The story revolves around an old German Bluthner piano whose music connects two seemingly unconnected characters: a man on an inexplicable quest to photograph it, and a woman who, although unable to play it, can’t let it go.  The strands of the plot twist together with alternating chapters following the family history of both characters.  I think the novel is exploring how music can change and enrich lives in amazing and quite different ways.

Cander makes the piano a credible third character, intimately involved in the plot.  The book begins with Bluthner picking Spruce for piano soundboards in the Romanian mountains: “He knocked them with his walking stick and pressed his ear against them as his intuition dictated, listening for the music hidden inside.  He heard it more clearly than any other piano maker, better even than Ignaz Bosendorfer and Carl Bechstein and Henry Steinway.  When he found what he was listening for, he marked the tree with a scrap of red wool, which stood out bright against the snow.”

The Russian composer, Scriabin, features often in the book, particularly his Prelude no. 14 in E flat Minor.  I’ve listened to this several times and can’t get as excited about it as the folks in the story.  It’s over almost before it starts (1:00 minute long exactly) and is very dramatic and bombastic.  Notice the interesting Jim Morrison looking character playing the version below.

“From her first lesson, Clara had planned to devote herself to learning her father’s favourite piece of music – Prelude no. 14 in E Flat Minor by the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, which he’d looped repeatedly on his CD player at home.  It was wildly energetic from the start through its abrupt and dramatic ending, and very difficult even for an accomplished pianist to play well, her teacher had told her.”

Katya’s father is a piano tuner, and the Bluthner is gifted to him and his daughter:

“But without the German and his music, Katya could fall asleep only if she lay down with her head beneath his piano.  With her hair tangled in the pedals, she dreamed of snow fairies dancing, and gentle rain, and clouds blithely passing by overhead.  In the mornings she tried to copy the sounds, picking the notes out one by one, learning their order.”

“She sighed and sat down at the piano.  Playing always helped calm her nerves, especially now that she had her old Bluthner back.”

The thought behind the title isn’t revealed until very close to the end of the book:

“What if every single thing ever played on her Bluthner left an afterimage, a shadow of emotion deposited somewhere inside the case, on the soundboard or the hammers or the strings?  What if – just as a photo album grew thick with memories of holidays, vacations, family, and friends – the piano gained the weight of each owner and his or her music?”

The final two pages of the book are a piece of piano music named “Die Riese” (The Trip).  I just tried out the first few bars and it’s a pleasant piece that builds in speed and intensity.  The piece is in B major with 5 sharps – not my favourite as I typically play pieces with 3 or less flats and sharps.

I just finished up “Infinite Tuesday” by Michael Nesmith.  There’s a special prize for the first of you to tell me what he’s most famous for.  No takers?  Ok, I’ll tell you – he was one of the Monkees, and was dubbed the brainy Monkee.  The title is based on this cartoon (I love it):

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the variety of stories and topics included.  Nesmith was born and raised in Dallas by a single mother who worked very hard to make ends meet.  After he runs off to California to try his hand at being a singer songwriter, she makes a fortune by inventing liquid paper (the white stuff you used to brush on to paper when you made a typo on a typewriter).  She was a secretary and an artist and found the perfect intersection of both to meet an office product need.

Nesmith lives in Carmel, where he loves the dog friendly beach, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Los Angeles.  I kept flashing to a scene on Carmel beach where Finn insisted on running into the sea (or was it Campbell) and had no change of clothes – Granny and Grandpa had to improvise.

He tells tales of foreseeing the home video industry and buying up the rights to all kinds of documentaries (including the Jacques Cousteau series), only to be challenged in court by a nefarious PBS action.  Then he invents MTV just before it gets popularized.  And lastly, earns a patent for inventing the technology for embedding live video into virtual reality internet environments.   Clearly a visionary well beyond the expectations of any Monkee.

A decent portion of the middle of the book delves into Nesmith’s Christian Science upbringing and various cosmic spirituality pursuits – I kind of tuned out through much of this section.

His stories about hanging out with John Lennon and Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) are excellent.

This book makes a great pool or beach read with the wide variety of entertainment industry and intellectual stories.

Youtube suggested this beautiful instrumental version of “Summertime” by Marcus King and Billy Strings, reminding me of King’s excellent solo set at the Hula Hut last week:

Greg Brown pops up from time to time on my Discover Weekly list on Spotify (songs recommended based on listening preference).  I really enjoyed “Dream Cafe”:

Listening to “The Randy Newman Songbook” while reading, I enjoyed this song that I don’t think I’ve heard before:

And finally,  The Band of Heathens Live from Momos with “Anywhere I Lay My Head”, reminding me of their delightful set at Shady Grove last week, and of the first time we saw them as they played the closing night of Momo’s many years ago:

Last week I left you with my Oscar picks.  How did you do with your guesses?  Here are my results – 71% success rate and one of my better years.  I was pleased to see “Free Solo” – an excellent documentary on the first free climb of El Capitan in Yosemite win.  I enjoyed the movie during my month off as one of my Monday Movie Matinee excursions.  Green Book winning Best Picture, while not my pick, was a pleasant surprise.  I enjoyed this movie a lot and wasn’t able to make it any more than 20 minutes into Roma.  I should have gone with my preference rather than trying to predict the way the Academy would vote.

Best Picture:  Roma

Best Actor:  Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody

Best Actress:  Glenn Close in The Wife

Best Supporting Actor:  Mahershalla Ali in Green Book

Best Supporting Actress:  Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Director:  Alfonso Cuaron for Roma

Best Song:  The Shallow from A Star is Born

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga stole the show with their musical performance:

Diana spent most of the week in Boston for a client visit.  It was very cold there and we know that McD really, really doesn’t like the cold wintry weather.  Fortunately she had some colleagues with her to scrape off the rental car and get it all warmed up before she joined.

Back in Austin, the guest bedroom mattress, desk chair, and bar stools were all delivered on Monday.  I wrestled the boxes up to the apartment and assembled the chair and stools – they look good in position.  The good news is that the trash room for recycled boxes is right outside our door.

Waking up early on Tuesday, I tried the gym downstairs.  I wasn’t sure how many gung ho exercisers would be there in the morning.  I had the place to myself until shortly after 6 am, when several folks started to show up.  I’m guessing they set their alarms for 6 am and then head straight to the gym.

My boss had a dinner recommendation from his Uber driver and so my friend Issac and I joined him at Lin  Dim Sum.  The food was very creative and tasty.  They are known for soup dumplings but I didn’t think I’d be able to consume those without making a mess – particularly with chopsticks.  We sat at the bar and I watched a couple of girls very skillfully manage an order.  We shared a number of dishes and they were all very good.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Diana thinks of this West 6th Street restaurant.

Vinod, our friend from AIG, gave me a ride back to DFW airport on Thursday afternoon.  We timed the drive to arrive just as Diana was returning from Boston and we were able to drive Penelope home from the airport together.  I laughed as Vinod and I passed the Vonlane bus half way into our drive – I had been considering the big comfortable bus chair as compared to the sporty seat in Vinod’s BMW.   We took the Fort Worth branch of Interstate 35 and I was able to check out the building at Gearhart where I first worked in Texas (back in 1987).  It was fun to see what has become of all the lunch places that we used to frequent there.  The Rig, a burger and steak restaurant, seemed to be a Mexican place.  Nothing else had changed too much and the Gearhart building was occupied by another oil related business.

Diana cooked a very tasty dinner of zucchini noodles with beef and pesto sauce on Friday night and we enjoyed a lazy night at home by the fireplace.

Will spent his Saturday off-roading in his souped up Durango close to Hollister, CA.  I love his face when you zoom in – do you think he’s having fun?

We met Steve and Grace, the couple who got engaged recently, for dinner at Sugar Bacon in downtown McKinney.  We thought it was just going to be the four of us to listen to one of Steve’s friends providing the music, but there two other couples (Brian, Evelyn, Jeremy, and Diane) who also joined.  Brian provided some unexpected entertainment when he asked to take over as the musician so that he could serenade Evelyn.  I had ribs and have several left over for dinner tonight.  They were very well cooked and tasty.

After dinner, we migrated down to the jazz martini lounge upstairs from Eclair bistro and enjoyed the Joey Love band until around 11:30pm – a bit too late for us old folks.  Our friends Robert and Ronita joined to listen to the music.   It was dark and loud and so I didn’t get a good video of Joey Love as he played a nicely varied set of blues and classic rock music.  Here he is doing the Allman’s Midnight Rider at another venue:

I’ve almost finished reading “Educated” by Tara Westover.   This book  is very well reviewed, is one of Barack Obama’s favourite books, and made Bill Gates’ holiday reading list.  I had high expectations and was disappointed with the first 100 pages or so as they seemed dry and with too many inconsequential details.  After that, I became very invested in Tara’s journey to gain an education.  When the Holocaust was mentioned in a BYU college history class, she raised her hand because she didn’t know what it was.  She hadn’t been in a classroom until the age of seventeen.  Her religious fanactic father was dubious of public education, believing it was the way the government brainwashes its citizens.  Her mother was not at all diligent with homeschooling and Tara had to ultimately teach herself to gain the necessary score on the ACT to attend BYU.  She eventually earns a PhD from Cambridge.  The strength of Westover and the sacrifices she makes are phenomenal.  This book really underscores the value and power of an education, something so many of us take for granted.  I highly recommend this book and ask you to be patient in the first section as the middle and conclusion are worth it.

I stumbled on to a 2018 album from Steve Forbert that I missed last year.  I love the sound of his voice – quite unique:

Brandi Carlile impressed me on the Joni Mitchell 75th birthday concert when she carried Kris Kristofferson.  We watched her Austin City Limits performance this morning while reading and I was even more impressed by her songwriting and musicianship:

Chaka Khan was another pleasant surprise at the Joni 75 concert.  She has a new album out this week.  I don’t love it but this song has some interesting things going on:

And here’s one from the Sons of Anarchy soundtrack by Curtis Stigers.  I had no idea it was him singing the theme song until this week.