For less than $5 a month you can have space on a web server. For a few bucks a year you can have your own domain name. With a computer at the public library and a plain text editor you can then publish a website that can be seen more or less all over the world. THAT IS POWER. It just requires a tiny bit of knowledge and effort to do your own thing. You should do it.
This morning I indulges in some obsessive blog theme adjustments. I changed the color of all the links. I felt like the previous maroon shades were kind of harsh. I didn’t like them. My goal is that this blog be easy to read. It is, in the end, about the words. I think the various blue shades retain plenty of contrast, and the mouse-over pink let you know you are on that link.
I’ve been fiddling around with other blogging platforms a lot, but I’ve had this blog running on WordPress for almost 20 years. I just can’t see changing it until the day comes that this theme is no longer working with the system and there are no good themes available. Now, that might seem crazy, but I have looked and for the most part all the themes are horrible corporate bullshit looking things.
However, this theme looks good on computer, phone, or tablet. It works. So I’m sticking with it.
While I do maintain some blogs over on micro.blog, I am not crazy about the notion of having my main blog housed on a “service.” Micro.blog is fantastic, but the owner is one guy. He’s a genius, but he’s one guy. Same with Bearblog. Hosting on Dreamhost.com — having my own WordPress installation or whatever static site I might decide to build, seems a bit more solid.
I’ll be honest. I had a long day before the show. I’d gotten up early and we took the dog for a long walk in the humid and sweltering nature preserve, then I was outside in that same miserably humid and hot weather (luckily it was at least cloudy) for a 5-hour library outreach event at a neighborhood block party. In short, I was depleted and tired.
I give this background because I didn’t really want there to be an opening band. I wanted to just go enjoy the Wedding Present starting at 8pm and be at home in bed and asleep at 10:30. I was…tired as shit.
Turns out the opening band, the Tubs, was great! Loved ’em! Gonna order their music!
Here they are…
Welsh rock band the Tubs
OK, on to the Wedding Present.
We saw them here in Dallas back in 2018, so it has been a while. They are absolutely one of our top 10 bands, and probably top 5.
Nothing makes me happier than going to see great bands with my wife, especially if the band is one of her favorites. I love sharing that with her. I absolutely can’t imagine spending my life with someone I don’t share that with. So there we were with all the other old post-punk/indie-rock gray heads to see this incredible band that so few people know about. This morning at breakfast we were wondering why the Wedding Present never really “broke” in the U.S. when so many shitty bands did. Even in circles that really know indie rock music a lot of people are clueless. It’s – just – fucking – weird. Did they just not make good business decisions? Are Americans just THAT stupid? (there is strong evidence to support this).
At any rate, the ignorance of the masses was the gain of the enlightened few last night, when The Wedding Present played at the Deep Ellum Art Co, a small venue set off from the main douchebag wankery of the majority of Deep Ellum by a couple of blocks. I suppose it might hold 200 people max, and it was not maxed out last night. This is simultaneously a shame because the band deserves more turnout whilst being a boon to us, as we were able to stand about 6 feet for the stage as if we were seeing the band at a small club in Leeds when the band formed, the way the Gods of Rock intended.
The band launched into their show, in which they played their entire Bizarro album and delivered a tight and blistering show. Other than the singer and songwriter David Gedge the lineup of the band has changed a lot over the years. The current lineup is impressive. At 65 years of age, Gedge shows no signs of slowing down. It really says something about a musician and a band to be touring in place where perhaps only their devoted fans will show up, not making a lot of money, and still absolutely killing it. When we walked in, Gedge himself was staffing the merch table. We spent a lot of money and got some really good stuff.
I’ll close with this. Go see your favorite bands live.
the Wedding Present performing May 17 2025 in Dallas Texas.
I’m just sitting here on the sofa, lights dim, listening to this staggeringly wonderful album pour soundwaves all over me, and I’m feeling all the feels.
Tonight I’m continuing the Radiohead. 1997’s OK Computer is such a beautiful album. I can’t believe it is almost 30 years old. The years have gone by too fast.
Anyway, this record is just so beautiful. I’m sitting here with my cat and dog (wife is out of town) and I just want to weep from the otherworldly bliss. Yes, I find it that moving. And yes I like being a little sad sometimes. It helps.
If you don’t love this album you should be asking yourself “Why am I broken?”
Radiohead. Hail to the Thief. So good to fill up the room with this beautiful brilliance. Was going to listen to Kid-A, opened the CD case to find it empty! I probably ruined the CD in my car and threw it away years ago and forgot to replace. Oh well. Replacement now ordered. Being an adult with a little money is cool.
When this is over I’ll pull out the iPad and read some blogs post from people I follow using the Reeder app.
I started watching the new Daredevil: Born Again series on Disney Plus. I loved the Netflix DD series. I have watched three episodes, weeks ago, and I feel no need to watch the rest. Which is weird, because not only is it great, but DD is my favorite Marvel character. Charlie Cox does an incredible job as Matt Murdock/Daredevil.
I’m sure that eventually I’ll watch it. This is not confined just to this show. It is almost any show on TV. I watched a couple of episodes of Andor. It was great. I never finished it. The list goes on.
I think there are a couple of things going on. First, over-saturation of the nerd media market. There’s just too much. Way too much. Second, I have my own creative endeavors and hobbies. I prefer to use my the precious few hours of my precious short lifespan to do those things rather than watch shows. This weekend I listened to a lot of music while I did some writing. When I was too tired to write last night I watched Aliens (for the 5 millionth time) on Blu-Ray. Watching something for the 5 millionth time is comforting. It’s still great but the fatigued brain doesn’t have to keep up with a lot of new stuff.
Honestly, the same thing is happening in most areas of interest, I think. In skateboarding you can watch completely nuts skateboarding 24/7 and never watch the same clip twice. All stuff that normal humans will never be able to and really why would anyone want to. I have no desire to launch myself down a set of 20 stairs, which is actually pretty tame compared to some of the daredevil shit going on now. It’s boring and not relatable. I always love seeing my friends skating. But that’s it. Even pretty tame stuff, like some kid learning a new freestyle trick — I’ve seen it all before. Not interesting. Don’t care. When I was 14 I didn’t try to force the whole world to watch my learning process.
Even with tabletop roleplaying games you can swim in the sea of new material, thoughts, opinions, and and media all day, every day.
In each of these areas I find myself reducing my circle of contact. Tighter groups. Fewer websites. Less social media.
It is Sunday evening and I just opened this multi-disc Led Zeppelin live collection, How the West Was Won.
I can’t even imagine what these concerts must have been like. Holy shit — just so good. Mind-blowingly good. I’ll bet a lot of auditory nerves were well-damaged those evenings without a single complaint.
Damn I love having a nice stereo. Really the only good reason, other than having a yard for a dog, for owning a house.
I just finished listening to Coda earlier today. Also just amazing.
Yes, I’ve decided to make the 1000th post on this blog about our dog, Riley. Our cat, Lefty, approves. After all, Lefty has been the topic of many blog posts, and he is big enough to say “Hey, yeah, Riley has been a good boy and deserves a post.”
In October we will have had Riley for 3 years. The time has passed fast. It doesn’t seem possible.
Honestly, I have always liked dogs but never had the desire to actually have one. Too much responsibility.
However, my wife has always wanted a dog and fell in love with her sister’s sheltie many years ago. After going through cancer treatment at the height of the Covid pandemic, then getting well enough to finish her PhD dissertation, she said “OK, I want to get my dog.” After such a superhuman effort, how could I say no? Truth is I wouldn’t have said no anyway. I want her to have whatever she wants.
She said she didn’t want to leave this world never having known the love of a dog. That was enough for me.
I could write a book already on our time so far with this dog. From the first 6 or 8 months which were just hard (neither of us had ever had a dog before much less a 9-week old puppy) to now it has been a true journey of discovery.
This dog is just so great. He loves everyone and everything. He wants to make friends with any living creature he encounters. From human, to other dog, to cat, to rat, he sees a new friend in everyone. He’s sweet and I’ve never seen any sort of aggression from him at all. He loves to have jobs, from watching to see what’s happening in front of the house and alerting us to “trouble” to bringing in the mail, he loves to work. He’s goofy and playful. And he is attached to my wife. He is her constant shadow. Nothing pleases me more than this simple fact.
She put it best, after reading or hearing this somewhere. They have short lives. It is our job to make every day a great day for him. That is what we try to do. He doesn’t ask for much. He just wants to be with us. What do I want for him? I want him to have a long and happy sheltie life, which is around 12 years or maybe a little more, and for every day to be good for him. I want him to always feel secure and loved. And I’m going to steal this last one from my wife and expand it to include me — when the day comes that he breaks our hearts (may that be a long time from now) I want us both to be here, still, together, to feel it.
This is post 999 for this blog. I had considered making it Post 1000, but I might just post a picture of my cat for that.
For the last few months I’ve been frequenting this message board, 32-Bit Cafe. I’m amazed at the creativity and honesty I see on the sites there. It is beautiful. Seriously – just so great. This is what the internet should be about.
I’ve been blogging for 20 years. Longer, really, but this blog will be 20 next year. When I started it I had no idea that in 20 years personal blogs would be the last refuge of the “good” internet.
But they are.
Young people, at least some of them, are rediscovering the power of blogging. The 32-Bit Cafe is but one example. These are the cool kids. Seriously. These are the youth that recognize the bullshit of the current corporate internet and have found a way to express themselves away from social media. They find community, they create, they use the internet the way it really should be used — with some level of personal autonomy. These are not the kids trying to “leverage AI” to make the world a worse place. These are the young people who care about authenticity.
They get it. This gives me hope.
I am, as I sit here typing this, 60 years old. I plan to continue until the day I can’t type anymore. Oh, I might have to change platforms at some point, but this blog will continue.
This place, where I spent dozens if not hundreds of hours skating during and after the pandemic, has been destroyed as they totally rebuild the city hall complex. Yes, this was the south parking lot of our municipality’s city hall. It joins my freestyle practice spot, which was on the other side of the city hall, on the east side of the public library. They even destroyed the brick banks that ran along this sidewalk (yeah – the sidewalk is gone too),
Here is a picture of my poor old parking lot today…
Click for larger view of this fucking devastation.
To say I am unhappy about this does not capture the depth of my loss. I have no idea if any of the new shit will be OK to skate when it is done about 2 years from now. This place was about 5 minutes from my house. It was peaceful in the evenings and weekends. Both the freestyle spot and Pandemic Parking Lot gave me the solitude I really love for skating.
Yes, I’m being kind of childish about this. I don’t care. Fuck progress. Progress is bad. Change is bad. When things are good they should stay good.
I’m a 60-year old skateboarder and I am not – fucking – happy.
Now I have to find some other places nearby to skate. Places with some shade. Places with no damned kids running around. Places I can play my music loud through my bluetooth speaker and not disturb anyone. I will likely be forced to go up to Allen to the skatepark, which is annoying. It is a 20 minute drive under best conditions and there are people there.
One would think that finding a simple parking lot would be easy, but as my friends Chris and Brian have noted, a good skate spot is more than the concrete. It’s the energy of the place. The vibe. The way it makes you feel. It’s not that easy.
So, we shall see. Like I said, it will be at least two years until this complex reopens. I suspect it will be longer. Due to a bad fire in a server room a few years ago the entire city hall building was torn down and it is being moved to a different position on the land. The public library, which opened the year I moved here as a child, has been gutted and all the surrounding area has been ripped up. I can’t imagine the library will be done in two years. There’s just too much to do. And to totally build a new city hall? Longer. It has to be.
It’s silly to place too much value on a skate spot. We skateboarders know this, but we always do it anyway. It’s like getting a dog or a cat and saying “I’m not going to get so attached this time” and then of course you get more attached. This parking lot was my getaway. When the pandemic started I could go there and skate. When my wife got cancer a couple of months later it was a place close to home where I could skate and feed my soul, but get home quickly if needed. That semi-shitty concrete meant a lot to me. At this spot I reinvented the way I skate. A new way to skate for a time when I couldn’t end up in an ER full of Covid patients. A way I loved so much I still prefer it to how I skated before. Honestly, sometimes I would go there, skate, sit on the curb and cry, and then keep skating.
There’s lots of footage of this spot in my Vimeo library. This, however, is my favorite video I made from my time skating there. Simple, beautiful Fall sky. I think it captures everything.
So in this post I’m going to walk back my statement about all the young people’s music being shit. It’s not. In the last few months I’ve seen two opening acts that I thought were really good. I was really referring to the music that is actually popular with the masses of young people, but I also admit I really have no idea what 20-somethings like. Basically I’m talking out of my ass, based on shit like Beyonce and T. Swift. But the truth is that even when all the greatness of Kraftwerk, Gang of Four, and so many other great bands was being created in the late 70s and early 80s some absolutely ghastly shit was also being produced.
That is my assessment, and a music-historian I am not. I’m just a dirty old skateboarder who likes his punk, post-punk, electronica, and classic rock. And if you are a Beyonce or Swift fan — well — not everything has to be for me, so carry on with your horrible music. Enjoy it, because life is too short to not enjoy things. Same for fans of all the new country stuff or whatever. Again – I’m talking out of my butt because I couldn’t name a single Beyonce or Swift song if my life depended on it. NOT. ONE. For the record, Swift apparently is generous with her crew which makes her a good person in my opinion. Beyonce – I have no idea – but that’s not my world. She did apparently make a country album, and as that may have upset racists it pleases me greatly.
So, to sum up —
Some of the kids are alright.
This band – Othering – opened for Gang of Four. Two guys. One guy played synths and operated the electronics and played guitar, and the other guy played drums. They were really good. I have no problem with people using electronics, actually. These blokes wrote all the music, programmed the synths, and really were great. The drummer as absolutely fantastic. I loved ’em. I don’t think this music video does them justice for how much they actually rock, but here it is.
Then we saw this band Rocket open for Ride a few months ago. Super band! When I saw them it filled me with hope — young people making great music with guitars, bass, and drums. Honestly, I thought they were better than Ride by quite a lot.
We went to see Gang of Four at the Granada here in Dallas last night
Great, great, great show. Two of the original band members, and the two new people (guitar and bass) were fantastic.
A stripped-down show. No bullshit. At one point something in the guitar’s effect chain failed and they had to do some quick patching up of things. Jon, the singer, told stories in the meantime. They got things working and the badass show continued. Great crowd of appreciative fans, and a band that gave it all they had.
We’ve seen quite a few shows this year, and this is maybe the only one that plays with no backing track, no click track, no bullshit. It was real as hell, and so so good.
I believe this is to be their last tour of the America, and I’m so glad I got to see them. A favorite band of mine for quite some time, I never really thought I would. I missed them last time they came through.
Honestly, probably the best show I’ve seen in a long time.
Old Man Rant Alert:One thing I would note. While people were taking some pics with cell phones (clearly I was), compared to the douchey bullshit crowd we saw at St. Vincent a couple of weeks ago I would say there were at least 80% fewer phones being held up constantly. I find it reasonable to snap a few pics to remember a show by, but then put the fucking phones away and enjoy the show. It was quite noticeable, and I’m going to go out on a limb at say that while I like St. Vincent, her crowd is full of younger people who don’t have any fucking manners or know how to enjoy a show — probably because most of their artists and bands they like are shit. It made me even happier to be part of the generation I’m part of. We had (and have) the best music, the best fans, the best souls.
We went to see St. Vincent at the Bomb Factory in Dallas a couple of weekends ago. Amazing artist.
The opening act was this band Glass Beams. I had no idea who they were. They were incredible. I bought their EP on vinyl. It’s very good, but damn, they were so much better live. The music was just hypnotic and immersive. Highly recommend. The Bomb Factory is such a horrible venue but they made it worth the misery of standing there.
