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We went to Corpus Christi this weekend, so my honey could get a couple more tattoos before she started school. We drove down on Friday afternoon and checked in to our awesome hotel, the Red Roof Inn on Corn Products road. Do you know it? Well, if not, Esther took some pictures lest we forget (and trust me, she will never let me forget the Red Roof Inn on Corn Products Road). It was already late by the time we got there, but we went out to eat anyway because that's what you do when you go out of town, even though none of us, apparently, were hungry. We found this exotic Chilean restaurant where we spent $20 on a couple salads and some delicious hot-off-the-microwave macaroni & cheese for the baby. The next day we got up bright and early (noon), dropped Melina off with her aunt & uncle for the day, and then headed over to Skin Illusions to see Bruce, Esther's favorite tattoo artist guy. We spent the next, oh, eight hours in his studio while he etched little holes in my lover's skin. In the end, she came out with some fancy needlework on her right arm and shoulder blade: Ghandi's "Seven Deadly Social Sins" and a demon, similar to the one she already had, "for him to play with."
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This is insane. Less than a week since Apple introduced the Mac mini and iPod suffle, products and services tailoring to these devices are already popping up on the web:
- Mac Mini Colocation is a web hosting company based right here in Austin, TX. You send them your Mac mini (or purchase/rent one from them) and they put it up in their datacenter with 24/7 monitoring for a low monthly fee. While the mini isn't powerful enough to serve popular sites with tons of traffic and/or dynamic content, this is a cheap, novel solution for small business or personal sites that want to run their own dedicated server.
- About two seconds after the Mac mini was intro'd on-stage by Steve Jobs, message board whores started pointing out that its size (6.5"x6.5"x2") was the perfect fit for an in-dash car stereo component. Now Classic Restoration in Sloatsburg, NY is offering custom installation of the mini into any standard DIN slot, including a touch-screen LCD panel to navigate the system while you drive.
- Meanwhile, Cyndustries of Los Angeles, CA is working on a Mac mini-based synth module which combines the digital ease of OS X with the analog beauty of traditional synthesizers.
- Of course, if you just want to use the Mac mini as a computer, Tom Bihn has a mini-sized carrying case so you can lug it around in style.
- And in the land of iPod accessories, Speck Products in Palo Alto, CA has announced the first in a soon-to-be-long line of iPod shuffle carrying cases. You can get a glimpse of their SkinTight mockup here.
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A lot has happened lately. Esther and I got a new apartment and moved in together, along with her 3-year-old niece, Melina. After a period of adjustment, I think we're finally settling in. My family came to Austin for the ACL Festival, so I hung out with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dinosaurs_exist and scootmonkey for a few days, sweating my balls off and eating $4 cups of shaved ice. And, oh yeah, listening to music. I've been here a year now, and while I certainly feel like I've made a nice little existence for myself, I'm still not sure what I'm doing with my life. Sometimes I want to just get out there with my video gear and make a movie, but then the reality of production slaps me in the face like a large trout. Other times I think I should work on some kind of web-based service, since technology seems to be the main focus on my interest these days.
And now for something completely different:
Music: Elliott Smith - Twilight
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I'm at CyberDogs in Seattle with Esther, watching Harold and Maude. Last Friday, on a whim, she suggested we jump in the car and "drive far away from here." "Right now?" "Yeah." "Okay." I put on my shoes, grabbed the car keys, and we just headed north on I-35. We picked up a map, travel-sized toiletries, underwear, socks, cordouroy pants for me, a pretty white dress for Esther, and lots and lots of junk food along the way. We stayed in crappy, sometimes-creepy roadside motels, we praised the Lord Jesus for Wal-Mart superstores, we listened to every Beatles album ever made. Dunno when I'll be back, but it's been fun so far... See y'all when we get back.
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When you hang out with scootmonkey, you have to be prepared to do stuff you would never think to do on your own, whether it's sucking tapioca balls through a giant straw or just playing a game of Scrabble in a coffee-shop parking lot. So when she brought up the idea of seeing the H2HO's on Friday, I was like, "Yeah, sure, whatever." I mean, synchronized swimming? At the Elk's Lodge? Where does she come up with this stuff? The Austin Chronicle, that's where. Apparently, they had a big write-up about the group, and infinity of people showed up for the opening-night performance. Turns out it was really good! (Who knew?) The music by Wishing Well was surprisingly groovy, and the whole atmosphere with the pool and the lights and the city at sunset was dreamy and soothing. Plus:
- Finally, a year and a half after I stalked the production, snuck onto the set, and accosted director Elias Merhige at lunch, I saw the trailer for Suspect Zero, which is set to open at the end of the month.
- In the grand tradition of following bands around the country (Blonde Redhead from Austin to Dallas, The Shins from Portland to Seattle, Broken Social Scene from Austin to Coachella), I will be embarking on a mini-roadtrip next week, following Liz Phair and The Cardigans from Houston to San Antonio to Dallas in three days.
- The Emo's website now lists a shitload a really great bands coming in the next few months. I already ordered tickets for Phantom Planet (8/26), Minus the Bear (9/7), Blonde Redhead (10/10), and Clinic (10/19). Woohoo!
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The Slam on Wednesday was strange and quiet, with everyone gone to nationals in St. Louis and only a handful of regulars at Ego's that night. kangaroosequins and bigsleep666 performed some of my favorite pieces (Liz did her self-effacing "I'm not a very good girlfriend" poem, and Mike did "Dignity", which I saw a few months back and loved), Tara tried out a new poem, and Karyna (McGlynn, that is; great poet, good friend of mine) came in at half-time to help wake the audience from their slumber. ohiojake's friend, Jeremy, was there and we ended up hanging out; talking about women and Europe and moving to Austin to escape one's past over booze and, later, tacos at the oh-so-tasty Cabana (c'mon, you knew that was coming). First Thursday I got a call from Jenny in the afternoon, worried that the e-mail form on her site wasn't working. I assured her that it was, and then scrambled to figure out what the hell went wrong. It was an easy fix, but it had already made her nervous ("I'll just tell everyone not to e-mail me"), and when I showed up at 5:00 she was standing with beer in hand, fiending for cigarettes. She had a really good night, selling around 12 of the 15 or so paintings she brought to display. I was surpised at how many return customers showed up, people who had bought her work months ago and came back to her spot to get more pieces. Everyone was really excited about the website, too, so that was cool. Since I did it in trade, I got to have first dibs and took home the "eyepatch" painting that I wanted last month, but was supposedly sold to someone else (the fools never returned with the money):  Afterward, we headed down the street to the Continental Club for drinks and dancing and a really fucked-up game of pool.
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