Hold Steady have a new album coming out in october.

We really like Hold Steady, but not as much as the moon.

Yes, that link is to the same old moon song from years ago. I'm stickin to the classics these days. The Moon song is Emo, if I understand the genre correctly.

Miss Universe is on and down to the Last 10,

Trinidad and USA seem to have the best thing going. Switzerland is a bit too sophisticated.  Columbia and Puerto Rico are probably be my next two.

Long weekend.. need to sleep.

“Got up early so I thought I’d Get Home (or try) before Daniel wakes up. 

Last night rocked. Thanks!

                        Gina

Yesterday Dave and I resumed a great old Friday Happy Hour tradition of drinking beer and playing board games for 5 hours.  That’s my kind of Friday Evening.  Later we caught dinner at P’cheen <sp?>, which serves both Delirium Tremens and Pranqster.  That’s a good place. 

After that Dave went off with Kelly, and I returned Yo Gi’s  invite to go to the Mark, which was having a Karma Reunion Night.  She had called me up one night over five years ago to go dancing at Karma, so this was very nostalgic (Nostalgia, she told me, was in the stars, astrologically speaking).   After the Mark we hit El Bar, and then went back to my place so she could sober up.  Sobering up consisted of a game of one athletic one-upmanship.  Her with her yoga, me with my Gymnastics. She did Scorpion, I did one legged squats. She did a back bend, I did Hand Stand Pushups.  She did an arm pose, I did an L-Sit.   She reached into the air and grabber her foot <!?> and I did a Back Lever from the overhead sprinkler system.  All of this failed to sober her up enough to drive, so she crashed on the couch.

When I woke up this morning, she had left the note that I began this post with.  Daniel is her son. This morning she IM'd me saying that she would have stayed for  breakfast but she knew all I had was scotch and cheesecake.   Scotch and cheesecake is now the official breakfast of the WhiskeySlowdown.   You can't get any more WhiskeySlowdown than that.

Lileks weighs in on the autosteer tractor, after seeing an image of Chuck-e-Cheese in a farmer's outfit, with his hat on backwards.

 ...no farmer puts his hat on backwards, okay? I don’t care if he’s one of those modern farmers who has the air-conditioned tractor cab with the GPS autosteer that turns the tractor at the end of the furrow (you think I’m kidding? Hell, you can read a book while you do the back 40 these days. You can take a nap. You can watch a DVD. I have no doubt there are internet-enabled tractors with satellite access that allow farmers to sit in the cab, turn on the autosteer, head for a chat room and bitch about rainfall.) NO FARMER WEARS HIS FEED CAP BACKWARDS.

Okay? Okay.

The bad news about these new tractors is that steering was about the only part of farming I was good at, and I wasn't all that good at it.   The good news is that now if I fulfill my dream of buying a farm in Kansas, I can be even more old-school while I do it.    I can just see myself having a drink at the Crazy R, griping with the old dudes about all this newfangled technology: "You can't hardly FEEL the field anymore,  I tell you. This new breed can't tell the wheat from the chaff".     

I was actually pretty good about carrying the irrigation pipes around, but its all circular irrigation now so my skill set has dwindled further. Its got to the point that there just isn't much physical labor in the game anymore.   Gramps once told me to pull out all the weeds in the pasture, perhaps because there was no real work to be done, I don't know.  After an hour the tuck was loaded 6 feet tall with Noxious weeds, and I was pushing it around the field for exercise.  Grandma drove out to see what was wrong with the truck, which made me feel pretty foolish.  We called grandpa saying that there was another dozen truckloads worth of weeds out there and he said, forget about it, we'll send a plane in. Least he didn’t nuke the field while I was out there: I once got downwind of some ammonia I was fertilizing with and I couldn’t taste food for a week.  

The caricature of the old farmer being technology resistant is patently false, as far as I can tell.   Who else routinely calls air strikes or uses satellite imagery to  plan their season?    Not that technological prowess is what makes them great.  There are too many of those things to count, the least of which is their incredible  'dad strength'.  Grandpa could lift up the hitch of an implement with one arm, lower the hitch of a tractor with the other, and hammer the pin in with his forehead.  He’d do this while carrying his oxygen tank,  all the while I'd be looking for a pry bar. 

But the biggest thing you notice, coming from the city, is their ability to actually do things.  Things you would worry about for days beforehand, they do without giving a moments thought.   Drag a 40 foot wide implement down a city street,  fix an engine,  burn down a an old building,  shoot vermin, and generally carry on. And that’s before Dinner, which is at noon.

You notice this general competency in the old guys, and the 12 year old kids.  The contrast between what they do, and what your typical city bloke does,  will give you pause.  . Anyone who simultaneously holds a negative opinion of “flyover country” and any opinions about the nature and direction of this county, is dangerously ignorant.

It's allways something with me, mostly because I'm just trying to make it fun. It all started with that blasted Silver medal, which was little more than a plastic souvineer which I bragged about well past sufferability. Then I had to make do with Shaved-Head stories, and then I hit bottom with the Suburban  Squash Casserole diaries.  After that there was a decided upswing in content with the Reality show brouhaha, though I tried to keep my personal thoughts on that matter close to the vest.  But now, NOW, there is the Sean-the-Runway-Model meme.  This should be the most fun yet.  

Yes, I got the part.    I told the woman on the phone that I wouldn't shave my chest or model underware.

Hey, I am starting to feel guilty about using all the song lyrics as subject posts because it is by far the number one reason strangers come to this site.  Need I go back and post who wrote each lyric, or would a general disclaimer suffice?    Post a comment if you think I need to annotate each lyric.

I am working on the comments issue.

Hey, the Forth Ward has raised my opinion of Atlanta well out of the “eh”  levels it has been mired in.  I’ll take Rathbuns, Krog Bar, Pacheen, Zuma, Roman Lily, Soto, Fritti, Lenny’s, El Bar,  2 Urban Licks, Thumbs Up Diner, and Six Feet Under, over any set of Restaurants in an other section of the city, and over most sections of most other cities.   

But  I am still thinking of visiting San Francisco for labor day.  Waiting for those truants Kim and Adrian to confirm.

I ran out of things to do Saturday ahead of heading over Eclipse De Luna  so I ducked into Cherry to have a drink.  The downstairs bar was technically closed, except for participants in a modeling casting call, but I pleaded thirst and they let me in to drink and watch.   They were looking for runway models.  Black ones, mostly, I think.  I watched about 20 women strut there stuff and then a couple of dudes.     I walked up to ask what they were looking for and they asked me if I wanted ‘to walk’. I declined, but after another drink I realized that I didn’t yet have anything to write about.  So I went back up and said, “Ok, give me the paperwork”.

They said, “Why don’t you walk first”.  So I kicked off the sandals, did some light stretching, and threw Stallion at them.  They promptly handed my some paperwork, saying “fill this out, and take your time”.      I’m not an ambiturner,  Its gotta be to the left…..

I met up with Gregory , Ash, Dave and Kelly later at eclipse de luna. The lesser luna?  Not Saturday. It was jam packed with foreigners.  Are there group words for foreigners?  Like A Murder of Crows, or Bloat of hippos, It would be neat to say “a Parlay of Frenchmen”.   Anyhow, there was lots of Dancing.    Little by me.

Not that this is an excuse, but I had played basketball for a couple hours earlier in the day.  That game is not as gentle as I remember it.  Me and Gregory, the only two white guys,  battled for second-to-worst player on the court honors.  I think it was a draw, but he definitely won the contact battles.    Good times.