Re-Tex-Patriated

Nothing makes you appreciate a place like leaving it.

Except maybe going back.

This Texas Ex-Patriot returned to the Republic for an all-too-brief visit over the holidays. It was 6 days that included 3 cities, a decent amount of Christmas shopping, and as many friends as could be squeezed in (sadly, only a fraction of those on the original list to see).

After returning to my former workplace for general comraderie and a sense of home, Shelley and I made our rounds including a gathering of close buddies, meeting new inclusions in the friend-sphere, learning about a certain engagement, and finally a nostalgic stroll along the San Antonio Riverwalk on a foggy weekday morning.

We actually went to Austin with another long list of contacts to make, but opted instead for a very chill stay-in / housewarming with a few close friends.

What's killing me are the trade-offs. For every friend we did see, we essentially had to give up the chance to see another. Going to one cherished favorite restaurant meant there would be another San Antonio-only culinary experience we would miss out on.

In much the same way, I had to revisit, for no practical reasons, the choice I made to leave San Antonio. In doing so, I left a lot of good friends, a job that I can only describe as excellent-but-frustrating, and the first home I had that I didn't want to leave. No offense to my parents, as all teenagers I was ready to fly the coop when that time came, but for reasons which have nothing to do with my parents, and are not intended to be offensive to anyone still residing there, I have simply zero desire to ever again permanently reside in my native Oklahoma.

But not so with Texas. I'm not racing back; in fact I'm quite curious about what life would / will be like in many different cities, states, countries? But I now know that Texas, and San Antonio in particular, is a good place, for me at least. And that makes every choice I make to go or to stay somewhere else all the more difficult.

Maybe there is somewhere else I would like even more than San Antonio, but there are certainly many places I will like less (New York being one of them over a long enough time span), so it's hard to justify not just going back. Is that defeat, or just knowing what I want? Probably could be either, though that doesn't help me make any decisions.

Now I'm just mumbling. Sorting it all out. I've only been gone a short time, but I already miss my Texas life, my Texas friends, in short not "Texas" but rather the world of "myTexas" in which I lived for 8 years. That's a home that is not easy to rebuild, and hard to do without when your life plan doesn't currently allow for permanence to any serious degree.

Many of my friends are now at the point in their lives when houses and mortgages start kicking in. Well, more power to you. I can't even figure out where to set down my luggage, much less lay a foundation. Perhaps I'll just take it like the early settlers of the American West, and keep moving until I find something that's mine, or until my wagon wheel breaks. Of course, following that analogy, I'll end up back in Oklahoma. That is the only reason people stayed there, right?

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot

We All Live on Google Earth

I'm not sure at what point it became official, but somewhere in the past five years, Google became the most astounding intellectual force on Earth.

It's not their search engine, and it's not even the web advertising plan they pioneered which has changed the way businesses interact with individuals on the internet.

Programs like Google Earth literally changed the way we see our world, while Gmail (and G-chat) changed in less significant but perhaps more prolific ways, the manner in which we connect with each other.

Anyone who bothers to read blogs doesn't need me to tell you about all that Google has created, especially now that Google owns Blogger & YouTube. In fact, you the reader probably know more about all this technobabble than I do. Whether you get Google News updates on your iPhone, Google e-mail alerts on your favorite topics, or check the weather each morning on your Google desktop. The point is the internet has changed from being a tool we access when needed to an integral part of our lives on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

Google is not (yet) all powerful or all knowing, but let's face it, George Orwell could have envisioned no greater alliance for evil than the ingenuity and infectious convenience of Google Apps and the legal flexibility of, for example, the Bush administration.

Google's latest cool tricks include the Weber-approved Google Chrome browser and some bonafide badass voice-recognition software for the iPhone. It allows users to ask a question verbally, which it then interprets, answers, and sends personalized info back based on your GPS location/ google profile. In addition, they've applied the Arbitron marketing research techniques to identify music from radio or CD by the iPhone, and better yet, connect you instantly with iTunes to buy the song you like.

Frankly, it's getting creepy - but darn convenient. The Goog-411 service, for example, is incredibly useful, totally free, and hard to hate.

But what about the things we Really need? Sure, directions and e-mail are useful, but when was the last time somebody updated the odd intellectual problems of Dr. Peter M. Roget? Microsoft's Word-based Thesaurus is frankly disappointing, and the (non-Google) web versions, including Roget's official site, remain totally unimpressive. I'm a grad student for pete's sake, I need more precise modifiers and nuanced adjectives!

Why not cut to the chase? Google, your programs are designed to look at my browser history to 'get inside my head' and guess what other things I might like. ok, fine, while you're in there, how about lending a hand keeping the place clean. When are you going to help 'defrag' my mind, 'spam-block' my subconscious, or best of all, install mental 'drag-and-drop' compatibility with Windows (ok, fine, Google) office.

Point is, Google is an amazing industry of thought, convenience, invasion and programming. Better still, they're always looking for new ideas, and it's hard to think of limits to their potential. What about sites where you could upload your christmas list, access lists of others, provide available on-line retailers, and alert to shipping deadlines for the holidays? They already have that! And they keep track of all new projects with a US Patent-searching app!!!

My imagination can't even keep up with what Google keeps turning out.

Maybe Google could help me Google-up my own imagination?

how do I search for that? "I'm Feeling Lucky?"

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot

Super Good Feeling

There are a lot of things I miss about Texas, and as the temperature on my virtual desktop continues to drop (It's 19* outside my single-pane windows!), that list isn't getting any shorter.  But there was one thing I always wanted while I live in SA that I was never able to arrange - a concert by Ben Allison.  He's a bassist and composer living in New York, and I had tried for years to come up with some excuse (or enough cash) to bring him to San Antonio.  

Such things aren't so far-fetched when your day job is running a jazz radio station.  Over the years, we brought in artists like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner, Dave Brubeck, etc.  It's a long list, and I'm very proud to have been a part of such efforts (and Kudos to the KRTU-crew for their recent Tom Harrell/Mulgrew Miller and upcoming Kenny Garrett shows), but despite my most cunning ploys, there was just 

never a good fit for Ben Allison, who it must be said is a very talented, but comfortably middle-pack jazz player.  He has his fans, such as myself, but he's not especially well-known even among jazz fans in general, nor is he one of these all-star sleepers that only the hippest know about and will one day burst out into international fame.

As for my potential BA man-crush, let me state that I an avid fan, but no obsessive.  I don't know his home address or his wife's name (I only know his daughter's name, Ruby, because of a song title, ok).  I happen to like his records, which I started digging early in my jazz education, and which have impressed me more and more with each new release.

He's played in NYC since I've been here, but I've never gone because... you know, who's got the time/cash/lack-of-excuses?  A free concert put on as part of a series by Carnegie Hall out in Queens gave me just the chance I couldn't pass up to finally fulfill this wish of mine.  

and it was great.  The music was good, the band was loose and having fun, and I happened to catch the band in only their 2nd or 3rd incarnation with a new member, the very talented and unique jazz violinist Jenny Scheineman.  

And I got it all on tape.

Well, solid-state digital to be more exact, but yes, I recorded it.  Boot-legged.  Pirated me some lo-fidelity club sound.  It replicates perfectly the experience of being an inhabitant of Liliput mistakenly dropped into someone's pocket on the way to a jazz club.

I didn't hang around for band autographs, only because I forgot and left my 5 Ben Allison CDs at home, thus having nothing for him to sign.  Since then, I've gone back and listened to the recordings a few times, and re-listened to some earlier Allison cuts.  I even did a one-hour webradio special on it, which you can check out here.

And it's got me thinking about the nature of fandom.

When I was younger, I was really into a band called Bleach.  Really into them.  I didn't think they were the most original, amazing, or coolest thing ever.  They were a christian alt-rock band, one of many, but one which for whatever reason really affected me.  I got all their albums, which I still enjoy, and I started going to concerts.  In fact, Bleach was my first concert ever, and it was amazing - played outside on a stage setup across from a columned court-house in downtown Oklahoma City right as a thunderstorm was starting to break.  I remember that, and most of my other Bleach concerts, vividly.  I was thrilled when a picture of the back of my head (identifiable at that time due to an unfortunate blend of black hair dye and actual bleach, which turned me "super-sayan" for anyone dorky enough for the reference to catch) from one of their Dallas concerts made it onto their website.  I even convinced my best friend to drive all the way from San Antonio to Nashville TN to catch their final concert, which I own on DVD, and find moving to watch.  How 'best' a friend is he?  He was the only jewish fan in a standing-room-only venue.

Since their retirement (Aug 29, 2004), I've been at a loss.  There are still plenty of bands I like (now comfortably outside the Christian Rock world and into the equally evangelical and maniacal Indie Rock zone), but nothing moves me the way Bleach did, and still does.

So what is this affection?   Is it like first love - something in theory we never get over because the first time was special?  Not sure I buy that, but honestly, the feelings I get just thinking about how Bleach tunes make me feel is not... normal?

Association with an earlier, simpler time in my life?  Pavlovian response?  Social conditioning?  I don't know what it is, but I'm a Bleach fan for life, and as new musical interests arise, I can't help wonder if they'll reach me like Bleach, or if not, why?  

I still feel cool, listening and enjoying the music of such recent raves as the Black Keys or Columbia-mascot Vampire Weekend.  I get it, to some degree I'm on the In, but I've lost the ability to get as excited about it as I did with Bleach.  The jazz edge gives me some more "cred" and I do really love it and get excited - but no Ben Allison CD (or even Monk, Mingus, Duke, etc) will ever replace my battered and worn Bleach discs.

so what does it all mean?  Should I abandon all hope and accept it as one of the many costs; that whole "loss of innocense" that my High School English teachers Mrs. Paque and Posh kept assuring me was buried in every novel?

I don't know, but it's making me feel wonderfully nostalgic, and just a little (lame).

Weber

::(lame) Texpatriot

You, Me and VT

Just some odd facts about Vermont:

49th in population with 608,000 making it bigger than the state of Wyoming, but not the city of El Paso. (Insert racist Mexican joke here).

The largest city is Burlington, and the state capitol is Montpelier, which by the way is also the lowest-population capital in the United States, but still has a golden dome.

Before joining the Union in 1791, the proto-state had a 14 year history as the Republic of Vermont, or to put it another way, 4 years or 40% longer than the Republic of Texas.

Vermont is known for its Cheese, Maple Syrup, incredibly slow-turning motorists, independent attitude, and primary communication via bumper stickers.

The state participated in the Revolutionary war by means of its militia, the Green Mountain boys, under the command of Ethan Allen. He apparently made two things well: quality hardwood furniture and total British carnage. Shel gave him a hi-5 for the effort. Oddly, both Amy and Paul, Pete's brother, have also participated in pofessional furniture building. Watch out Brits.

So overall, it sounds like a nice place for a vacation, right? Sip some beer on the lake - they have a big one of those, and maybe take in some Football over the Turkeyday Extravaganza.

Or conversely, you could lock yourself into a house with 6 other people, no Television, "limited" wi-fi and watch the trees shivver while you stoke your only heat source - the wood burning furnace.

And it would still be wonderful!


So it was as Shelley and I ventured north (on the newest craft in the JetBlue fleet) to visit my cousing Amy and her hubby Pete plus family. I had several withdrawl scenarios working against me - caffeine, football, & internet, but the hospitality more than made up for it. By hospitality, what I'm referring to is Amy's home-made turkey dinner, an assortment of locally canned honeys, jams, etc. and Pete's brews. Now I'm not technically much of a beer drinker - truth be told I never touched the stuff before my Euro tour last summer, and my habits haven't changed that much since returning to the states. But when your Cousin-in-Law (go with me) happens to be not only an employee at one of the best regional breweries (Magic Hat), but also an accomplished (award winning?) home brewmaster, you don't say no to a pint or 7.

So no we did not say - not to the free brewery cast aways, not to Pete's latest concoction "Amy Beer," not to the homemade wine Pete's parents brought with them, and not even to the locally conceived Cranberry wine.

Stretched out over a 5 day sprawl, with quaint city tours, a quality record shop, and lots of grad school reading sprinkled among the midst and the snow flurries, it was a thanksgiving to remember. We topped the event off with a stroll through the snow to the local Cantina for $2.50 margaritas and "sledding" in the backyard courtesy of the snow shovel.

Vermont. Live it up.

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot