vote for tom!

Black and Blue is nominated for best cover/tribute band in the Dallas Observer Music Awards. Click here for a ballot.

I missed their gig at the Cavern last night but evidently, they rocked the jernt. Their ya-yas are definitely out.

if it's friday it must be flotsam

Lots of flotsam today so let’s get busy.

First, shameless promotion: Black and Blue and the AllGood Café tomorrow night. Meet me there! The Dallas Observer advanced the show here.

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A month or so ago, my brother sent me this link to Missing Money, a site that searches for unclaimed property (i.e. money). He’d searched my name and found money owed to me. I went to the site, filled out the brief form and forgot all about it. Well shiver me timbers and blow me over—a check for $371 turned up in my mailbox last week! Try it.

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The email subject line said: Press release

The message said: Hope your readers find this press release of interest.

The press release was an attached Word document.

If ever a presentation begged to be ignored, it’s this one. A subject and message that tells me nothing, and an attachment from someone I don’t know. Maybe it’s a perfectly legitimate release with information that my readers would find of interest but I’m not going to investigate. Hit delete, get on with my life. The world is full of cluelessness.

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Here’s a nifty little tip from the NYT tech blog. If you use Firefox, you can bring up the Quick Find box to search a page by just hitting the forward slash key (same key as the question mark). Seconds saved every week!

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Texas Tech University psychology department has launched a series of short podcasts about this and that, psychology-ish, featuring interviews with experts here and there. Here’s the homepage. They’re a little homespun sounding but that’s OK.

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I don’t know why this story is buried on page 3 of the business section, but it’s big exciting news to me. Gas prices are causing people to “stampede” to small car. Can I get a HELL YEAH?

Unfortunately, this is bad news for SUV and truck manufacturers (i.e. American companies). But it's good for the planet, the highways and my blood pressure, since the mere sight of a Hummer makes it soar. I'm very sensitive that way.

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Another of my pet peeves is the luxurification of the world. Have I discussed that before? How we seem to be devaluing all qualities—quaint, cozy, charming, kitschy—in favor of luxurious? It’s one of my favorite rants, I’m happy to go into it if I’ve neglected to rant it here.

Anyway, the DMN has a story this morning that seems to back my point, about a direct sales company called Home Interiors that was extremely successful until new owners decided to aim for the high-end market instead of the cozy low-incomers for whom the brand was developed. It didn’t work and now the company is filing for bankruptcy.

I love having my prejudices affirmed.

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The snarky chick-oriented website Jezebel puts an interesting and believable spin on reports that the depression rate in women is twice that of men.

The Jezebel writer suggests that this isn’t because twice as many women as men get depressed but because women are so much more likely to go for treatment when they do. She speculates that many more men are depressed than ever seek treatment. If some dude is walking around depressed but undiagnosed, does he count? she asks.

It’s a good post, take a look.

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Jezebel has also alerted me to a Ms. magazine article that sounds interesting, about self-objectification or "viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze."

The post continues: More and more women are viewing themselves as sex objects, says Caroline Heldman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of politics at Occidental College, and it's due in large part to the veritable onslaught of advertising images that we're subjected to.

I think this is right on right on but the only solution offered, evidently, is to avoid media images objectifying women, but that would pretty much mean locking oneself in a dark room.
Read the post yourself.

I certainly wish I could stop constantly comparing myself with other women--both media images and women I see every day. It’s a miserable pastime, a distracting little drone in my head: I’m fatter than her…I’m thinner than her...fatter…thinner…fatter…fatter…older…younger….fatter…

What a useless waste of brain energy.

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Hey, the cool website WorldHum linked to my post this week about how rising travel costs might discourage dabblers from traveling. OK, so I alerted an editor to the post in a bit of Shameless Self Promotion, but he liked it enough to link so that was very gratifying.

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Finally, in what may become a weekly voyeuristic feature as long as I feel like it, this week’s Google searches that brought people to this site are:

xoloescuintle price

Thank God I books for sale Castagnini

inside the brain of a narcissist

Narcissist Bully

negative reviews of elizabeth gilbert's eat, pray, love

gmail emails not reaching their destination

derivation of lithium name

cashmere bouquet plant

customer support gmail

outlook autofill subject line

mayeaux pronunciation

odd looking dogs

give me obama email adress and guest 2008@yahoo.com

Xoloescuintle Dog

jack kent cooke Conundrum

gmail to yahoo not getting sent

would you want it?

Keith Richards says doctors want his body when he dies. That's what he says.

rolling stones reflections

On Saturday night, Tom and I went to see Shine A Light, the Scorsese Rolling Stones documentary.

It was a lot of fun and by the end, I felt a little like I’d been to a real concert--kind of worn out and invigorated. We saw it in IMAX and it was a bit hard to watch at times because there were so many cuts and short scenes, but it was still fun to see Mick’s every pore, even if seeing Keith that close up was a little bit terrifying.

Tom was bummed that Mick seems to be a caricature of his former self, so full of jumping and twitching and dancing and mugging that it’s hard to take him seriously. And what happened to Keith? He is no longer the mystery man he once was and now seems like someone’s dotty old uncle. Kind of a rock 'n' roll Smurf, and a little sloppy on guitar. (According to Tom. I was not that discerning during this spectacle.)

Does every old rock band have to go Borscht Belt on us? We saw the Dictators a few years ago and they were full of shtick. Ditto Sylvain Sylvain.

Anyway, as always happens during concerts, my mind wandered during the movie, and this time I started paying attention to its twists and turns. I wondered…

Do Mick and Keith dye their hair? Ron Wood clearly does, it’s too black for reality at any age. Charlie Watts has gone gray and one camera angle exposed a balding spot on the top of his head. He still looks great. (Overheard after the movie, one plump middle-aged woman to another: “Who do you think is better looking? The drummer or Mick Jagger?")

Are all those excited young babes in the front few rows ringers? No way would these hot young things be all worked up over a bunch of grandpas.

What is that nasty schmatta Keith wears on his head? How would I describe it in a blog? It looks like it grew there naturally, like some sort of fungus. Does he sleep in it? Does it keep his wig on?

How does Keith find his eyes to apply eyeliner amidst all those leathery wrinkles? He looks like a dried apple head.

Are they really having as much fun as they seem to be?

Does Mick bother with groupies anymore?

Do the other guys ever get tired of Keith getting up in their faces? He sure does like to get close.

Did Jack White dream he forgot the lyrics or otherwise fucked up the night before the show? He looked pretty thrilled to be on stage with the Rolling Stones.

Does the band use stylists?

Is that girl in the front row anorexic?

Does Mick feel as silly as he looks using a guitar strap with the Rolling Stones logo on it?

Did Mick have liposuction on his bingo arms? They don’t look nearly as wobbly as they did when they played the Super Bowl halftime show.

And so on…

rocks on

Black and Blue rocked the AllGood Café. Rocked it right.

Mike Snyder, who owns the AllGood, was tired and grumpy when Black and Blue arrived and told them to go on by 9 and get it over with so he could get the hell outta there. Nobody expected much of the evening.

We were all surprised by the full house. Black and Blue started cautiously but over the course of a two-hour set hit its groove. By Satisfaction, DJ Mr. Rid was dancing, cute girls were dancing, L7 couples from Addison were dancing (yes! that’s the target market!), white-man overbites were occurring, a stray drunken (or something) queen in mirror shades and stylish denim and black was dancing and annoying people. Black and Blue planned to cut their set down in deference to Mike’s exhaustion but ended up playing everything they had with one repeat (Rocks Off) before leaving the stage.

It's the Rolling Stones. What's not to like? No costumes, just the rock.

Mike was a lot less grumpy by the end—one might even say giddy. The band made a few hundred dollars off the door alone, with a $5 cover. (And Mike made his money in drinks, of course.)

Much smiling occurred at the end of the evening.

We all were, dare I say it?, satisfied. (Yikes. That’s really beneath me.)

don't look at me

Exercise. Sheesh. I love it, hate it, love it, hate it.

While I have remained consistent with my yoga practice (except while in India, oddly), I’ve lost interest in everything else of late. The Dallas Morning News has decided it doesn’t want anymore fitness DVD reviews (it’s all local, local, local these days—see yesterday’s blog) and so that's no longer keeping me active. I used to do several DVDs to find one worth reviewing (and unless a DVD clearly and unmistakably bites early on, I do all of them all the way through). Now my fitness library is great and growing but I have no outlet for reviews. I could review them here, but it’s more fun to get paid. Any volunteers?

Yoga and dog walking have not been enough to keep me in shape so I’m now bullying myself back onto the program—yoga, cardio, strength. I’m not sure why I go off exercise sometimes, considering how much better it makes me feel about myself and everything else. When I’m really off the program, even the mantra “suit up and show up” doesn’t work for me like it usually does. I suit up and sit around.

Partly it’s just scheduling. Fitting in workouts around travel can be difficult. Then, once I’m out of the habit, it takes a kick in the ass to get me back in. My kick in the ass came last night, while lolling on the couch watching Gimme Shelter. (We’re all Stones all the time here these days. And, btw, the movie is even better than I remember.) I was wearing sweats and I still felt fat and flabby. Bleah. I kept rearranging my elastic waistband, looking for the place that didn’t make me feel bad about myself. Hm. Now I know why old guys wear their pants under their armpits. It’s the only place the waistband doesn’t cut right through a fat roll. (TMI? Sorry.)

So I just did 40 minutes of dance aerobics and 10 minutes of core on a fitness ball and boy, I’ve slipped. It happens so fast. A month off the program and my abs were screamin’ through the crunches.

Sometimes I wish I could stop caring and just pork out on Popeye’s and chocolate. But I’m hooked. Knowing how good fit can feel, I just can’t let go. Not permanently, anyway. I'll be sore tomorrow, though.

A reminder for locals: Black and Blue, Tom’s new Rolling Stones tribute band, makes its debut at the AllGood Café in Deep Ellum tonight. It should be fun, so if you’re out and about, please stop by. They’ll go on around 9-9:30—nice and early! They’ll do two sets and Tom says the second set will really rock.

and anudder thing...

Tom's Rolling Stones tribute band, Black and Blue, makes its debut this Saturday night at the AllGood Cafe in Deep Ellum, during the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. I'll be there, will you?