So here are a few pics … Thanks to Jeff Minx for the skateboarding shots.
Riley with his current favorite stick…
Me, landing a shove-it rock ‘n’ roll…
Me, spinning an end-over to fakie 360.
Me, spinning an end-over to fakie 360, from a slightly less flattering angle…
Last night we went to see Johnny Marr and his band perform at the Majestic Theater, in Dallas.
The Majestic is a great venue. There’s not a bad seat in the house, and it’s a classic-looking oldschool performance hall.
The sound was great. Johnny and his bad were great as well. My wife was lucky enough to see the Smiths play Dallas at the Bronco Bowl back in the late 1980s. This is the closest I will come. Yes, we have seen Morrissey a couple of times, but frankly I don’t like his solo material, and he’s annoying. Johnny Marr played three or four Smiths songs, and his versions of the songs are all really good. Obviously the guitar sounds similar, but the rest of the band is very different.
A fantastic show.
The opening band, James, is not really my thing. Kinda hippy stuff. A lot of the crowd really liked them though, so it’s fine.
So at risk of repeating myself, probably my favorite things to do is listen to music with my wife and going to see shows with her. The Smiths are certainly one of her top 5 bands, and are high on my list as well. She saw them many years ago, before we started dating. Being there with her to hear Johnny Marr play some of those songs meant a lot to me. It’s times like that when we feel like we are in our early 20s again. I wish I could have shared that Smiths show with her, so this was a big deal.
Here are a couple of videos from a ditch session in Austin last weekend. I had a good time down there. This ditch is pretty gnarly, and I only skate it about once a year, so I don’t exactly have a lot of lines. Rather than going all the way down the ditch and having to walk back up the hill, this year, I just dropped in, did a trick on the face wall, and then popped back out. It was fun.
Well, StupidFest day 2 began with the traditional breakfast of weirdos as Casa Maria. Seeking not to have diarrhea the rest of the day once we go into the heat, I ate a plain American breakfast of pancakes and eggs.
First stop after that was the annual curb grinding fest at Stelmo school’s parking lot. Second was Zombie Baby ditch. We had a fun session there, which took us to well after noon. I got a couple of good tricks on video for next year’s NeverWas video. Then we went to another ditch spot, for more antics.
We capped off the evening with the premier of the NeverWas 8 video at Carjack’s amazing home in the hills west of Austin. Pizza, video, and good company. Lots of fun.
Spent most of the day eating food with friends. Seriously. Had breakfast with my friend Jack, who I’ve not seen in quite a few years. It was great to spend a few hours with him. Then had a late lunch with my friend Patrick. Finished the day at my friend Jason’s house for a cookout with a bunch of the skaters.
It was really hot today, and I just didn’t handle the heat very well. Poor planning on my part, really. At too much breakfast, then the heat really made me feel like shit. Still, I had a good day. It was so good to catch up.
One really cool thing that happened — my friend Shane, who I met at StupidFest a couple of years ago, told me he enjoys the blog! That really made me happy!