Fishing At Percy Priest Lake On An Overcast Day

Vespas Park Wherever They Want

For my short, non-interstate commute to work and back each day, this would be an awesome vehicle for me to have. Not a shabby choice with gas prices continuing to rise. I want. I want.

Gore Gore Girls At The Basement Tonight

I'll be there. Will you?

What To Do In Nashville, Tennessee Today?

With respect to those I love, who are not here this weekend, I have an entire Saturday of zero obligations and am thrilled at the opportunities before me. But what to do?

I could take my dog to the Shelby Dog Park and socialize with other dog lovers as she socializes with other dog lovers' dogs.

I could catch Reservoir Dogs at the Belcourt Theatre. I may catch Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man tomorrow.

I hear that David Sanborn is playing at the Music City Jazz, Blues and Heritage Festival at Riverfront Park tonight at 6:00. But tonight, I'll be catching the Gore Gore Girls at The Basement. Jazz loses to rock tonight.

A friend saw a t-shirt and thought of me. The shirt read, "No One Cares About Your Blog." I love that.

Mystery Train - The Last Half Hour

I hate that. I zoned out and watched the replay of the Titans game while Mystery Train was being played on Flix. I just happened to flip around and catch it. Jarmusch at his best. At least I came in just in time to hear Tom Waits' voice as a DJ playing Elvis' Blue Moon.

Fucking cinema owns my heart.

Mike Birbiglia!

Is it somewhere between 9:00 and 9:30 PM CST on Friday night for you right now?

Then join me in watching one of my favorite comedians, Mike Birbiglia, on Comedy Central right now.

I love this guy.

It's 9:04 as I type this and you have already missed some seriously hilarious stuff.

Oh, and look up Keith Alberstadt. He's not on right now, but I used to run around the neighborhood with him when we were kids. Now he's an accomplished comedian and funny as hell.

KeithComedy.com

What Time Is It?!!

I love The Time. Morris Day, Jerome Benton, and crew have been sorely missed on the music entertainment scene in my opinion.

I also love a genre known as jump blues. Thanks to DJ Pete of the local radio show, Nashville Jumps, I know this music that was so popular in the '40s. It's blues minus the guitars and plus the horns. It's fun and fast and just a bit dirty. Innuendos are sung with gusto ("Keep on churnin', 'til the butter comes") and the bands play like they are on fire.

I saw one preview for Idlewild a few nights ago and it looked like a good mix of what The Time was doing in the '80s and what jump blues was in the '40s. The movie features Outkast's Antwan A. Patton aka "Big Boi" and Andre Benjamin and follows them through a fun and wild ride through the 1930s South. From some early reviews, I gather that the storyline is a bit weak but the musical numbers (of which there are many) are outstanding. Also in the movie are acting phenoms Terrence Howard and Ving Rhames. Good enough for me.

I just found the soundtrack online and am listening to it now. No, not listening - grooving. I'm only four songs in and it rivals some of Prince's best stuff. Funky.

[I'm a nerd. I'm playing the soundtrack to Idlewild and sorting through my Webshots pics online while chatting with a friend. About twenty minutes into my idle surfing, I think to myself, "This music is really cool. They should make a play or a movie out of it." Oh, yeah. They did already. Sigh.]

Music Gets In The Way (Not That I Mind)

I would have gotten about four more minutes of very necessary sleep last night if not for the fact that just as I was about to go to bed WRVU's radio show, I Like Songs, played Bob Dylan's "If Not For You." And so at approximately 3 A.M., I sat back, pondered the lyrics, enjoyed the melody, and was enriched.

If I Won A Million Dollars...

I'd buy:

• Two wireless speakers for my laptop
• One bitchin' CD player for my '91 Honda
• One iPod
• One cell phone that works

I'm not sure. Maybe I'd buy more stuff too. But I'd definitely start with the above.

Gore Gore Girls Are Coming To The Basement

Saturday night will find me at The Basement listening to some refreshingly simple, in your face rock n' roll. Gore Gore Girls are Amy Gore (guitar, lead vocals), Marlene Hammerle (guitar, vocals), and Mayuko on drums. They hail from Detroit and draw comparisons to The Kinks, The Stooges and The Marvelettes. If you are familiar with the garage band sounds of the 60s then you have heard all of this before...but you haven't heard it in a while.

If you want to experience the angry and sexy Detroit sounds of a beautiful Motown/garage-rock hybrid, then come down to The Basement Saturday night. With rock n' roll on stage and Yazoo on tap, it looks to be all a rockin' Nashvillian could possibly need.

Black And Gold, Strong And Bold

Vanderbilt at Michigan
September 2, 2006
Ann Arbor, MI
ESPN - 11:00 AM CT

Everything you need is right here.

If And When I Run For Office

You will know for whom I work.
I work for you! See? It says so on my official seal.

Clive Thompson, Not The Toilet Guy

While reading the popular emdashes, I saw a link to a very interesting interview with Collision Detection's Clive Thompson.

Inside The Story: Clive Thompson

Got Two For UGA This Weekend?

If so, my wife would like to know about that.

She'll be in the actual Athens of the South this weekend and needs two seats to watch her mighty (but sans David Greene) Georgia Bulldogs take on Western Kentucky. She'll be taking my son - who used to root for the Florida Gators before he met her - and wants him to experience his first game at Sanford Stadium.

So, if you've got two extra tickets and you're looking to get rid of them, not rich off of them, let me know. Otherwise she'll just buy some cheap scalper tickets after kickoff.

A Vacation From Blogging? Are You Mad?

Thursday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting piece on bloggers and the dilemma of what to do about vacation time. (I'd link to it here, but it seems only to be available to subscribers.) It studies the problem bloggers face on whether or not the blog should go on vacation when they go on vacation. An unattended blog can lose substantial "unique visitors" per day.

One answer that some choose is to appoint a guest blogger (think Joan Rivers subbing for Johnny Carson), but then readers complain that posts lack the same "voice" that they have come to enjoy. And, again, unique visitors drop. Much to the chagrin of many bloggers' families, the posts continue from the beach. It's the vacation that really isn't a vacation.

It's easy to read the article and think, "just get a life." But the article is focusing on bloggers not like me (a comment or two every once in a while, maybe ten regular readers), but on the bloggers who make their livings with the blog. My job is responsible for my income and my blog is responsible for my creative outlet.

The bloggers referenced in the article are the ones whose vacations are paid for by the blog itself. They need the traffic to keep the ads. Without daily posts, traffic dies and the ads follow soon after. And I know they don't want to have to apply for my job. They've got to keep the blog alive and, to do so, they have to keep posting.

Personally, I'd love to be faced with that dilemma. It sure beats clocking in.

An excerpt from the article:

A banner stripped across the top of the Daily Dish declares that the popular Web log’s host, Andrew Sullivan, has "gone fishing." Mr. Sullivan declared a two-week vacation and opted to leave his political blog behind. Several thousand of his readers have done the same. Despite the efforts of three verbose guest bloggers, replacements handpicked by Mr. Sullivan, the site’s visitor tally has fallen. The Daily Dish, now part of Time magazine, usually garners around 90,000 unique visitors, or individual readers, each day. At the start of the first workweek without him, Mr. Sullivan’s blog received about 67,000 hits, according to Site Meter. This week, traffic has hovered around 57,000. "The frequency of emails of ‘Bring back Andrew’ and ‘This is stupid. Bring back Andrew’ is definitely higher than anything I’ve ever written," says David Weigel, a 24-year-old assistant editor at Reason magazine, who is one of Mr. Sullivan’s guest bloggers and has filled in at other sites in the past.

In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit. To be sure, most bloggers don’t agonize over this decision. Of the 12 million bloggers on the Internet, only about 13% post daily, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Even fewer — 10% — spend 10 or more hours a week on their blogs. Yet for the sliver of people whose livelihood depends on the blog — whether they are conservative, liberal or don’t care — stepping away from the keyboard can be difficult.