Craxy’s Neighborhood

Subtle.

The Bacon Veneer company totally pwns the search results for the term "bacon veneer." Well done, sirs.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be using Vox -- maybe this will remain a convenient place to use as a public scratch pad, or it could be that I'll want my new online home at extraface.com to have all of that. There's a lot I like about Vox, but when the character of the QoTD's didn't really appeal to me anymore and my own neighborhood started to quiet down (with the notable exception of navelgazer, who keeps the fires burning in the trash cans) there was less and less motivation to come around. It never really bothered me that much that I couldn't take my data with me, but now that I'm starting to situate myself over at Extraface.com, maybe I'd like be able to take some piece of my Vox experiences with me over to there. I guess one way to do it woudl be to surface a feed of this there. I certainly don't want to lose track of or touch with my Vox-specific friends, but I figure I can just follow them via RSS either way, and don't necessarily need my own presence here for that.

On the other hand, I like how deliberately informal Vox feels. It's diaryish without being excessively so. There's no expectation here that I need to stick to some kind of deliberate formula or focus.

One thing I can credit Vox with is making Saturday blogging enjoyable. One of my favorite ways to use it has been sitting down like I am today with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, and publicly laying out what my plans are for the weekend. It helps me clear it out of my head, and my track record has been pretty good at doing most of what I say I will, or at least thinking it through. It's a more involved process than just going through a task review on a GTD list, and involves some degree of public commitment, consideration of presentation, and vanity. I end up thinking more about the aesthetics of how I'm saying what I'm saying as I write it up, more so than if I'm just reviewing tasks and picking what I can get to today. It's more constructed, in a good way. It helps me see what conflicts with what, too. That's a habit I hope to keep up whether I keep a presence here or not.

For an update from the other side of the house, there's this.

And here's my list of events, tasks, and things I hope to get to this weekend:

• Today there's the East Atlanta Strut, which involves a parade, a 5k, local businesses, food vendors, drink specials, and lots of friends and neighbors. Heh, I mistyped "neighbro". Maybe I'll start to socialize that as slang.
• More work to be done on the aforementioned extraface -- I've done a couple of sets of revisions on the site part, and then took a little time off. It's time to do another major push, including using some of the feedback that you good people gave me, and styling a WordPress blog for it.
• I'm developing a prototype to hopefully present at BarCampAtlanta. Need to spend some significant time with that this weekend.
• My BlogOrlando presentation/discussion focus plan needs some attention too.
• Raiders are playing the Broncos Sunday at 4pm.
  
• LSU, my adopted college football team, takes on Middle Tennessee tonight. I may have to skip the rest of college football today in order to get anything done. But I'll catch some College Gameday this morning maybe.
• There's a party tonight at friends' house. Hope to get to some of that.
• Emails aplenty to get to. Now that I'm maintaining inbox zero I don't like to do much emailing on weekends -- rather let everything rest for a while unless it's super-urgent. But this weekend there are lots of balls I need to keep in the air.
• Sunday dog park of course.
• Straighten, tidy, and clean, all of which mean the same thing.

I keep saying I'll just come in to the main page and answer the QoTD to kickstart the voxing again. But none of the QoTD's have been doing it for me. I'm developing another blog elsewhere and it's tbd whether I'll keep this one up or not.

Please enjoy this presentation developed by Creevus on the comparative merits of Shirts vs. Snakes. It's hosted and shared via SlideShare.net.

Lance tagged me for this -- actually I think this is his second attempt, and perhaps due to meme inflation this time around I owe 8 instead of 5. Come to think of it, Josh had tagged me for a 5 as well:

1. I was delivered by an Admiral in the Navy. That's a fairly rare occurrence. It just so happened he was the only obstetrician on the base when I was ready to face the world. I made the base newspaper that day. Bonus tangential random thing, growing up we all for some reason thought my dad was a cook in the Navy, which is completely untrue.
   
2. I'm fascinated by shower handle usability, and try to take photographs of every shower handle I come across. I'm in the process of centralizing them at 43showers.com.
   
3. At the Flatiron in East Atlanta, I made up my own brunch dish -- scrambled eggs over Flation fries. And now I want some.
4. I learned how to play bridge during a year as a student in London(we were bored and nerdy), and would like refresh my memory and start a young person's bridge club.
5. I'm a ridiculously huge Oakland Raiders fan. My parents took me to games from age -0.5 to around age 3 when they lived in Oakland. I try to get back to Oakland for a game every year, even through these lean years. I'm also a pretty big Boston Red Sox fan.
6. It is (still) a dream of mine to do a shot-for-shot remake of Trading Places, a little at a time, using whichever of my friends and family would like to perform in each individual scene and irrespective of their suitability for the role.
   
7. For pay, I have: delivered pizzas, been a deli boy, worked in a movie theater, been a PA in indie movies, delivered newspapers, been a freelance designer, and audited a database of tissue samples. As a volunteer, I have: cleaned emergency rooms, scored Samoan ethnographic surveys, handed out pamphlets, and created a filemaker database of original historical photos.
8. The first record album I ever bought for myself, with my own money, was The Great Adventures of Slick Rick.

I'm now tagging:
Zon
Tom
C-will
Imtrendywendy
Oolonging
Paul
Jerry
Cap'n Ken
(+2 more:)
Craxy
Cupcake Brigade

I'd been told a zillion times that Chastain is an awful, awful venue. It's mostly corporate season-ticketed tables set up for dates and the country club set, and most of the patrons don't seem to know who it is who's performing that night. But it's Morrissey, and I'll go wherever he's playing. Last time he was in town I had a ticket but was too ill to use it, so I was overdue.

As we came in I was immediately struck by the strange fancy foods and sea of pastels and bermuda shorts. People were in line to buy high-end beer and wine, big blocks of cheese and baguettes, and many were toting pickinick baskets. We walked past the merch table and I spotted a batch of shirts that say "Moz Posse." I wonder whose idea that was, and why Morrissey put up with it. It's a far cry from the "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" pillowcases.

The seats that aren't table seating are somewhere between benches and molded chairs, and aren't uncomfortable but they're all attached so the energy of the whole place is sedentary. There are few aisles and you're clearly just supposed to remain seated and stay calm during the rock and roll. Boo. I wondered to myself and to my neighbor if the guys sporting Brooks Brothers "golden fleece" polos ever thought about getting golden fleece tattoos.

After the opening act, I think her name was "Not Morrissey," in the twilight sky someone spotted a bat. It was having a blast divebombing for mosquitoes and thrilling us with its death-defying stunts. I was pretty sure it was going to lodge in some poor, unsuspecting Buckhead hairstyle. I guess I was watching it with too much interest, as some woman sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked, "Excuse me, what's the significance? What's the bat doing here? What does a bat have to do with Morrissey concerts? Is there some symbolism there?"

I did not intend any snark whatever when I replied, "I don't know. Ask the bat?" I guess she thought it was part of the show. The bat did stay for the entire show, and was joined by some friends as well. They did not rush the stage or give Morrissey a rose and a hug.

The main event started and as Morrissey appeared on stage he had a book in his hand. Words to the effect of "I have mine already. Turns out I was way wrong on this. A Morrissey-Solo commenter has it that he held up a box of Cheez-its or the like and said: "You've brought dinner; I've brought mine."

He opened with Panic, and seemed to slip a little on the lyrics/rhythm. We stood up and sang along in our seats but there wasn't much energy in the crowd around us and we felt like we needed to be closer. After a few songs three of us ended up together somewhere near where the floor seats end and the risers start. Granted, we were poaching seats, and there were signs on our row that indicated no one was supposed to sit there, but it was the only way we were going to actually get the experience of being at a rock n roll show. The crowd up higher in the risers could have been anywhere, watching anyone.

I think it was at the third or fourth song when the people behind us asked us to sit down. We begrudgingly complied, but then a song or two later, the same guy handed me his fancy digital SLR and asked if I'd take his picture with his lady. They were seated at a table with a white tablecloth, glasses of white wine, and various snacks. I declined, saying I was busy trying to enjoy the concert. After a moment's thought I took our my iPhone and snapped a photo of him.

Once Morrissey got rolling I had a really good time. I twittered the set list. I missed a few new-ish song titles but here's most of it:

• Panic
• In The Future When All's Well
• Disappointed
• Let Me Kiss You
• Girlfriend In A Coma
• You Have Killed Me
• Every Day Is Like Sunday
• I Will See You
• The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
• Irish Blood, English Heart
• Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
  
• How Soon Is Now
• (encore)Last Of The Famous International Playboys

Full onstage banter report over here.

I was pretty pleased with the song choices. He's got so much material, I'm just looking for a decent balance between Smiths stuff and his solo stuff. And the version of Please Please Please was inspired. How Soon Is Now included some heavy gong action, and there was also a trombone solo at one point.

A couple of decent antics -- he pulled a little girl on stage with him and couldn't quite get out "this is my daughter" without cracking a wide smile. He then said something like "this isn't working out" and handed her back to her folks.

He also made several references to Atlanta's own Pig N Chik barbecue joint:

"We were driving on the road and saw a restaurant - 'Pig 'n Chick' - can barbarism get any worse? Well, I suppose it can."

..as well as a few token anti-Bush and anti-Republican lyric switches. He also made a comment about the whole season tickets vs. one-off Moz fan division and the strangeness of the venue. It was nice to hear he was hip to the venue situation. All in all, he seemed well and surprisingly comfortable in his own skin. I think LA has been good for him.

Some of the other people with us said they were a little disappointed in the performance, and they weren't sure if he was feeling it. I guess measuring a performer's mindstate is a pretty subjective exercise. I felt like he was. His voice was really strong and he kept the Sinatra-like saying-instead-of-singing to a minimum, which I feel like is a decent "I'm not feelin it" level indicator. To the credit of the non-season-ticket holders, the crowd was very appreciative throughout the show, and they knew to give Boz Boorer an extra loud cheer when Moz announced him. There weren't any of the usual stage invaders until the encore, and during the encore I'd say there were about 5 successful drive-by huggers. I heard secondhand that the security folks at the stage had been pretty heavy-handed.

Despite the venue, to which I'll likely not return, I had a great time.

This is good news if you live near East Atlanta. The Glenwood has quickly become a local favorite for both drinking and eating, and we're glad to have more options for lunch and brunch in the village. I'm just sayin.

I'm noticing it's something of a ritual. There's an order that feels right to it.

First go underwear and white t-shirts. I seem to take one more pair than I think I need -- wonder if at some point that was ingrained in me. And I always pack one white tee for each day, though I rarely use all of them. Again, just a ritual.

Then I add in pants(usually jeans), which is easy and not very decision-laden because I almost always wear jeans and  I like most of the ones I have. Often I'll remember to pack swimming trunks at this point.

Then comes a decision point -- which public-facing tees to bring. This takes the most brainpower and sometimes I get stalled. Shortly after that is (if it's not summer), sweaters, non-tee shirts, hoodies, etc.

Then socks. This is usually a hunt around the house and a matching exercise.

Then after socks if there's any other clothing item I can think of (extra pair of shoes, dress clothes for a particular function, etc), that goes in next. Then I grab my overnight kit, which is usually already pretty well packed in its usual state in my bathroom.

Then comes electronics and gadgets. Sometimes I have to make a list so I don't forget power cords, adapters, accessories.

Then papers, documents, organizational stuff, things to occupy my time on the plane. Computer gets packed and put away last of all.

Not that you asked. Am I forgetting anything?

Picked up from Sean's blog, who picked it up from Shane Nickerson's blog. Things I've done/am doing/do want/can has are in bold.

1. Learn early on to enjoy warm soda.  Trust me, it comes in handy.  While you're at it, learn to drink black coffee.
2. Let go of your need to make all the choices all of the time.  Other people have better ones sometimes.
3. Learn to play guitar, juggle, ride a unicycle, do a backflip and play Scrabble.
4. Avoid trends.  Go for timeless fashion.
5. Skip the iPhone.  Get a Blackberry.
6. Learn to enjoy warm beer. (this one is more advanced, but well worth it).
7. Pick a team in any sport and be a hardcore fan.
8. Combine all of your e-mail addresses. 
9. Own a car that doesn't own you.  There may be no bigger waste of stress than worrying about the looks of a car.  Let it go.
10. Love what you love.  Don't trick yourself or others.
11. Cut out people that bum you out.
12. Find joy in condiments.  Similarly, acquire tastes just for the hell of it.  Like Sauerkraut and Whisky.  But not together.  Unless you're high.
13. Stop imagining that people are saying things about you.  They're mostly just worried about themselves.
14. Ignore social constraints if more convenient or sensible than abiding by them.
15. Learn to play D&D.  If you're already laughing this one off, learn it immediately.
16. Feel free to simply let parts of your past go.
17. Get rid of the stuff you're hoarding.  It's an emotional drain.
18. Don't get too attached to any one material thing.  It's just stuff. 
19. Learn the basic rules of the major sports.
20. Get good at frisbee. 
21. Whoever makes you happy most of the time, that's "the one."
22. Change is unavoidable.  Embrace it, on every level.
23.  Learn how to use a gun.
24. When it comes to parking, pay the most for the closest once in a while.
25. Treat yourself to nice underwear.  Life is too short.
26. Get a passport, even if you never plan on leaving the country.
27. Learn how to play poker.
28. Don't be too afraid of "street meat."
29. Always be ready to let go of your original plan...