Category Archives: weekend

Houston Press Music Awards Showcase 2009

Once again the Houston Press Music Awards Showcase is bringing the best live music value for your buck to a summer Sunday afternoon in downtown Houston. $10 for 5 hours of music from a variety of ~50 bands.

What’s up with all the capital letters and spaces? I talking to you, B L A C K I E (how do you google that?), dUNETX, D.R.U.M., i N D I G I N I S, and MELOVINE.

Okay, my off-my-lawn moment is over. Time for me to complain about the Houston Press’ inability to make print a grid when they plan a festival style review. I’ve been complaining about that since I was young! (well, i only could find the post from two years ago, but i’ve had that complaint for much longer!)

So, I got off my duff and made it for them again. You can grab it from this google doc. Some special care has been take for distance between venues because I’m still hobbling on a bad ankle with a cane. (Ideas for improvements welcome.)

Random Notes:

The Blaggards have a Google Map of all their concerts.

The Paul Beebe showcase is 6 – 9 at Hard Rock Cafe. Beetle plays every Thursday happy hour at the Continental Club if you want some near-end-week Beatles covers. Katey Stucky is a great singer. I caught her last year at the Showcase.

RÖCBAR – (you really should pronounce it rook-bar for being over pretentious) has the curse word showcase capped with a 70s influences rock fusion band (Spain Colored Orange).

Red Cat Jazz Café – they usually have the lighter fare. It’s a nice place to catch a casual show, but very poorly laid out for people coming in and out constantly, which they will be on Sunday. Me with a cane means I will totally avoid it.

Martell’s – A new name to me, on the north end of Main Street. With the Tontons and the Blaggards ending things up, it’s sure to be a crowded spot. Both are great shows.

ISIS – Located in a spot that continues to fail for restaurants and bars on Main @ Prairie. Ryan Scroggins is an offshoot of the Skarnales clan and I enjoy their Mexi-ska-country groove. They surprised the locals out at Big Al’s crawfish boil in Trinity and put on a great show.

Flying Saucer – Last year it was a crazy end of the evening scene in there, will see if D.R.U.M. gets the place as cranked up. Sean Reefer is just one of THE best Country musicians writing country music (instead of Arena Pop with a Hat). He’s usually on the German Country Charts (which are sizable – those whacky Germans). Bonus: Texas pints are on sale on Sundays.

House of Blues – There’s been a lot of mutual stroking since this mammoth moved to town. I have yet to make it to this venue and have heard 5 bad things for each good one. The inability to keep hydrated without a financial backer is the main complaint I hear. Hopefully this weekend will give me a chance to change those second hand impressions. Nick Gaitan’s wonderful melange of music, Umbrella Man will be playing there. They close this place with Los Skarnales and Sideshow Tramps! This will be the place to be. Both of these bands put on extremely high energy shows, and when they’re only given 45 minutes … beware!

Now time to go read about the bands I don’t know to see who I’ll try to introduce myself to this year.

The Houston Press does a lot of work and puts on a great show. All my complaints are really minor (well, there have been years where some venues were unlistenable – that’s a major problem – but not recently).

Another complaint I have is: what does it cost to get a beer in this place?!

Some places have $2 Lone Star or $3 (uhg) Bud Light. But some venues (hey, speaking of that, what happened to The Venue?) have only liquor drinks, $6.50 crap beer, and $5 8 oz. Coke. One of the deals of “We’re gonna bring you a crowd on Sunday of new people who aren’t familiar with your place” should be you have to have one cheap beer available for the patrons, and if you sell out of $3 MGD by 5:45, you have to sell some of your precious Dos Equis, et. al for cheap. Houston Press, force it!

Houston Roller Derby Starts This Weekend

BGG.Con

2 Replies

It’s been over a month since I went to BGG.Con – the BoardGameGeek.com‘s annual game-o-rama, and I need to get down in print the games I played, so here they go.

This year my procrastinating paid off. I ended up splitting a suite with four people, minimizing costs. I managed to never actually meet one of the roommates – the geeks don’t spend many waking moments not playing the games.

Unfortunately, there was no general wi-fi available, and no signal reachable from the main game room. Apparently there was a twitter contingency, but I was unreachable and unaware.

So, here a listing of all the games I played.

Yspahan – I have played this before, and own it. One of the many “Ys” named games from Ystari. It has an interesting dice mechanic. You are creating goods in a small town and trying to ship them out on the caravan.

Agricola – I finally got to play last years trendy game a little bit before the Con, but played it some more here. Certainly a good game with quite a bit of replay-ability. Nice interaction with other players in access to resources. Building your small farm-house, family, fields and livestock.

Destruct 3 – The open-area lobby always has many dexterity games set up. This one was new to us. You set up a tower, jenga-like. You roll a dice to choose one of three tools. You try to knock the tower over but not too far (off the board is minus points). This was a fun one, would be great fun for young boys.

Airships – I met my current regular game group last year at this Con, and I’ve played this game several times with them. I ended up teaching this to several different people at the Con. It’s an easy to learn, and not too long game of building zeppelins.

Hamburgum – My high school friend and college roommate Manuel came from SoCal for the Con. He was only there Thursday and Friday and was brain-fried; he was amazed I could handle two more days. He saw that I had played this game before and had me teach it. I like this game more each time I play – an interesting rondel mechanic and interconnections of actions that force you into a balanced game. And beer is one of the resources – how could that not be good? Continue reading →

Lights in the Heights 2008

3 Replies

The year’s party has come and gone. It’s been at my house for eight years, and coincides with Lights in the Heights which is put on by the Woodland Heights neighborhood, which is half a block from me.

We had an estimated 400 people at the peak, and perhaps 600 people throughout the night. Bubba Coltrane & the Train Wrecks (Bob, Ed, and Mike) played again, after taking last year off and adding a great new guitarist to the lineup (Kenny). After providing the music last year, DJ Larry returned and filled the spaces before and after the band.

For the third year in a row, no police came to complain. This is attributed to 1) the Lights in the Heights is getting considerably larger. We used to be the only large rowdy party. We still likely go the latest, but we’re not too loud after 1am; 2) most of the neighborhood is currently empty with houses under construction, the other neighbors are used to it (and many are at the party). Also, cooler weather means no one is sleeping with their windows open.

Once again we had some fabulous flaming art cars parked in the front of the house. Also a sizable early contingent of roller derby girls, and some in for the long haul. Quite a few friends made it in from Austin and at least one from Dallas. We had a crew of party supporters buy an extra keg of beer for the party. Props to the NTN Crew!

The five kegs of beer ran out about 12:15, there was a small surge about 2pm from some industry folks, at 2pm there were about a dozen people, and somewhere after 4:30 the thing finally wound down. I was up again at 10:30 beginning the cleaning, and spent 5 hours at it. Conn spent about as much, and that got it about 80% cleaned up (but with about twice as much more time that needs to be put in â€“ that last 20% of cleaning is the most laborious.

Only two vomiting incidents (that I had to somehow deal with) and one broken window (very likely accidental from the Star Chair. Three people slept over, two of which called in advance and reserved a spot. The following items remained that didn’t begin here: a cell phone, a plaid woman’s jacket (belonging to “Emily S.”), a small trendy women’s jacket, a suitcase, a back pack (with 2 full beers), an elf hat with ears, a pink pirate hat/beannie, a pink helmet, a wrist guard, a baby bottle containing water, a gray cloth glove.

Personal party gifts from friends: some nice tequila, an insulated longhorn mug, and St. Arnold Devine Reserve #2. Thanks (you know who you are).

We also have a few minutes of walk-through of the party from Rob Zipp:

Back at the Board

Houston Press Music Awards Showcase 2008

4 Replies

I saw many good friends and lots of great bands, and missed just as many good bands.

Asli from the Tontons 5

baldheretic

Here’s what I managed to see at the HPMA Showcase 2008: Flying Fish Sailors, The El Orbits, Umbrella Man, Katie Stuckey and the Swagger, The Tontons, Buxton, Los Skarnales, Blaggards, Bring Back the Guns, Thee Armada, Young Mammals, and Sideshow Tramps.

I only caught a song or two of a few of the bands. I really liked the Tontons; it was the first time I had heard or seen them. Thee Armada had an amazing ability to empty the room at the Venue – where the sign had been corrected: Three Armada.

I enjoyed hearing from a few guys in Pale that they enjoyed Miss Leslie a lot.

I noticed both Jay and Eric at many of the venues taking photos. And it seems Julie and Ginny were as well.

Guardian of the Non Sequitur

bare pate roue