Mr. Shirley and Big Al.
Here’s a nice shot. One of the Dancing Sisters took this one. Not sure who had the camera at this point.
Art Car Parade Prep - Allen OldiesMobile
Whew! I’m still breathing hard. Just got back from the beer run for Saturday morning.
I usually have regular thursday night and friday night plans. I bailed on both of them. No thursday games with friends. No friday running sound for the Ringwalds.
I helped out Allen Hill in preparing the OldiesMobile for the Art Car Parade on saturday. Lot’s of starts and stops, and success and failure, as art cars are want to be. But I think we’re ready for the morning.
I borrowed a generator from our service department. It is built to support an ambulance, so it’s totally over engineered for running a band. Loading into my car with a fork lift was the first warning - this things gonna be heavy.
Thursday, Allen and I moved it from my car, tested it, it worked great. We moved it into the Mobile. Friday I get home, he’s in my driveway, we move it from the Mobile, it’s a no-go. We call Sir Henkel and with three, we 1) pick it off the ground to a table, 2) off the table to the hood, 3) off the hood to the roof. Job performed, Sir Henkel retreats. (more…)
Art Car Season
This motley group can only mean one thing.
Okay, it can mean many, many things. And most of them are dubious. But not this one. It means it’s time for the Art Car Parade.
(This photo is from the parade 2007 - photo by Virginia)
I’ll be driving the Allen Oldies Mobile this year.
Themes in the Ether
This weekend I spent the weekend in Wimberley, Texas. One of the boardgames someone wanted to play was Goa - a trading game themed on the historically important region of India. But it’s a four-player game and we had five people, so it never got played. 
Another that was high on the list and did get played was Perikles - by well-know boardgame designer (yes, there are a few), Martin Wallace.
On the return trip I listened to the NPR Puzzle podcast from the previous weekend. Will Shortz had just returned from some sort of puzzle tournament in Goa. The on-air puzzle was categories in C-H-A-M-P, and plays by Shakespeare was one of them. Can you name a P- play by Shakespeare?
The El Orbits on a Monday Night
Between today and the last time I was at the Continental Club, with the El Orbits, and letters and numbers, it’s been a while.
I saw quite a few familiar faces last night, some whose names I know, and some I don’t. Virginia O, Pete G, Allen H, Thomas E, Bob S, Lance, Mark & Catherine, Jennifer N, Christopher, Adrian, Squid.
Nothing used to keep us from the Satellite Lounge and the El Orbits. Do you remember Ally McBeal? We skipped out on that skinny fad. Instead we had a Lonestar and/or a martini with our lounge music and new Houston friends. I met more than one friend that I still have to this day on a Monday night with the El Orbits!
Going out on a weeknight has been a bit unfamiliar of late. It used to be my standard operating procedure. Now, I like my sleep. I have a commute.
Others need to start coming out on Monday night again, enjoying the evening. You can leave by 10:30 or 11:00 and still get plenty of sleep for that tuesday morning meeting.
Rat Snake on the Gulf Coast
I was cleaning out my overburdened in-box and came across an old email from Kim. A photo of a rat snake they found while doing yard work at her mother-in-law’s place in Palacios, Texas. It’s a quite impressive snake.
Palacious is on the Tres Palacios Bay, a small inlet off of the Matagorda Bay, and is about half way between Houston and Corpus Christi.
