I lived in Albany, NY for 25 years, then in New Britain, CT (near W. Hartford), Wickford, RI (near Newport), Fall River, MA (near Portugal), Roslyn, Long Island (Nassau County, 20 miles East of Manhattan) and Manhattan, all in the course of 9 years, moving around like some sort of high tech witness protection program. I moved here as outside as an outsider can be: Yankee, New Yorker, Deadhead, gay guy, never lived further South than Wall Street, knew absolutely no one in Austin and only one person in Texas. On my first visit as a resident to a bar I had visited while interviewing a month earlier, a bartender named Beau recognized me, congratulated me on taking the job, introduced me around the bar welcoming me to Austin and bought me a drink. That was almost 15 years ago, and it made a huge impression on me.
I used to go to work at what became a large software company in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and Birkenstocks, and ostensibly, I was some sort of executive. I helped buy the beer for our beer bash on Fridays, sometimes driving to Tom Thumb to pick up the beer myself. I now own a pair of Tony Llamas and I usually know when Eeyore's is. Local mispronunciations like "PURDnalliz" and "San JahSINto" still bug me a bit, but I usually suck it up.
Sometime about 10 years ago I heard myself saying "going to visit my parents" and then "coming home after New Years" and I knew this was home. I have never lived anywhere that suited me as well as Austin does, nor anyplace that exerted some mellow sleepy influence, like island time as a friend once observed, but with an activist infusion as well.
It's home now, so I suppose I'm an Austinite.
Thanks for the beer Beau. You were my first best introduction to the essence of Austin.
[This was part of a thread on Yelp.com, entitled "Where Would You Travel To Eat?" This was my response]
When I was 20 and a dirt poor student, I was lucky enough to be in a study abroad program in London. At the Christmas break, friend Jim and I arrived in Paris on a rail pass one fine morning, and immediately went to the Left Bank of the Seine, near Notre Dame.
A bakery worker was pushing a hand truck carrying a small trash can filled with baguettes across the plaza in front of Hotel DeVille (Paris "City Hall"). We flagged him down, managed to determine a price in bad French and secured 2 for the price of one Franc each (a total of 50 cents), A nearby shop supplied a small Brie cheese and a cheap domestic wine (domestic meaning French, Burgundy if memory serves) for another 6 or 8 Francs.
Jim and I sat on the damp bank of the Seine, used a butter knife swiped from riverside table at a sidewalk cafe to force the cork into the bottle and sliced off chunks of wonderful cheese onto warm baguette and passed the bottle between us, absolutely certain that we were the kings of the world as Paris awoke before our eyes, the river came to life, and our European adventure began. $3 worth of food and wine? Priceless. Even today, when I have good warm French bread, or taste creamy Brie, I am transported back to my first glimpse of Paris, 28 years ago, and smile.
It's Day 2, post nose surgery, (MOHS Surgery, to be exact (see below)) post-eradication of years of hanging out in the sun without sunscreen.
I went in for a bandage change today, and to have the doc look at his handiwork. He seemed quite pleased with the healing, the vascularity (blood circulation) in the edges of the incisions and the prognosis. He's happy with the likely outcome, and thinks my nose will heal well.
I'm not the most vain person I know, but I'm a little concerned with the way the skin flap has raised one side of my nose. Doc says its mostly temporary till the swelling goes down and the (much stronger) cartilage in my nose stretches the (much more elastic) skin into a "normal" position, but the current asymmetry is a bit unsettling.
My beauty concerns aside, I must say that if you need a dermatologist, Doctor William Ramsdell at Central Texas Dermatology is a fine choice. He's talented, easy to talk to, helpful and informative, and not averse to answering questions like so many doctors I know who seem to be intent on playing the "I'm better than you" card all the time.
The doctor and his staff were all very friendly, very intent on making sure I had all the information I needed before, during and after my surgery, via the web, email, and hard copy pamphlets. The office itself is a design treat, elegant, modern, comfortable and zen-like in its simplicity. Little conveniences like a separate surgical waiting area (so you can hang out with other oddly bandaged patients) equipped with TV, coffee, snacks and cold drinks went a long way toward making me even more comfortable. The "call day or night if anything bothers you" thing made me feel at ease too. Its a full service dermatology clinic, with all the usual facial enhancement, wrinkle removal and mini-facelift stuff too, but I felt quite comfortable and in good hands with my skin cancer treatment.
Those words were all I needed to hear after 2 sessions of MOHS micrographic surgery Wednesday morning on the squamous/basal cell carcinoma that used to be on my nose. "Clear" as in "we got it all." It took two “slices” but the second patch was the trick—all the roots and edges of the removed tissue were clear.
I was feeling pretty good till Doctor Ramsdell gave me a mirror. I was looking at my own swollen Betadine-tinted proboscis, but with patch of skin a bit bigger than a dime and thicker than a nickel missing from the right side of my nostril, leaving a bloody pothole or a divot like they had just put a cup in a putting green.
The good doc gave me two options to close the wound: a skin graft from inside my ear which would take well enough after 2-3 months but always look a bit like a Zoysia grass plug in a rye grass lawn or a bizarre, zigzag England & Scotland-shaped flap of skin taken from the top of my nose, a bit of the bridge of my nose and up to the inner corner of my right eye, creatively folded downward like nasal origami and stitched like a schnozz quilt to cover the divot.
After extracting a promise that my eyes wouldn’t look like Joan Rivers when he was done stretching all these flaps into place, I took the latter. An hour later, Doc Ramsdell and all the nurses seemed to think the closure was the right choice, and that it looked beautiful. I think it looked a bit like Jack Nicholson after the knife fight in Chinatown. He hid about 20 stitches behind the curve of my nostril but judging by the other 40-50 stitches I could see, I’ll have a pretty funky upside-down question mark scar on my nose for a while.
The good news is no more cancer, and suddenly I’m a big sunscreen advocate. The pressure bandage looks and feels like a tennis ball of gauze on my schnozz. The Darvocet is kicking in, so I’ll leave you with a few pics and go lay down with some frozen corn on my nose.
That the Catholic church in particular, and most Christian churches in general don't get that whole "judge not, lest ye be judged" thing, nor the "love one another as I have loved you" thing when it comes to gay and lesbian people.
That the current Bush administration lies more than usual
That OJ did it.
That sending more troops into a civil war in Iraq is a bad idea.
That Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.
That the NSA is still spying on Americans without warrants.
That Democrats are better representatives then Republicans at all levels of government
That a lot of Democrats suck too, but suck less.
That Joe Lieberman in particular, sucks big time.
That the Bill of Rights has been trampled by this President, his vice-president, and his Attorney General.
That Cheney directed the outing of Valerie Plame to discredit her husband.
That a defense budget larger than the next 14 largest national defense budgets in the world is too big.
That I don't floss enough.
That Karl Rove is actually genuinely evil.
That Tim Hardaway has probably sucked a few cocks in his day.
That Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election
Ever since I broke 200 pounds, it's gotten harder and harder to get south of that weight benchmark.
That John Kerry won Ohio in 2004. (See above)
That this government and its agents have tortured prisoners in Iraq, on putative US soil in Guantanamo as well as in countries to which we have "extraordinarily rendered" prisoners, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
That any elected or appointed representative who is opposed to a Voter-Verified Paper Trail in all cases and all elections should be immediately be forced to resign.
That Peyton Manning is over-rated.
That news cycles devoted to the circus surrounding the death of a blonde former playmate with large breasts would be better served covering drying paint or dandelion seeds blowing away in the wind somewhere.
That a proper pint of Guinness is a gift from the beer deities.
If you know me, you know I see a lot of concerts for a guy who's more than 20 years this side of 21. I have been seeing concerts since I was in 8th grade, when I went to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center with my cousin Patty and my sisters to see Bobby Sherman. I guess that should have been a big clue I was gay, now that I look back at it. But it was a concert--an event, and I never looked back. In high school SPAC was a summer home. I saw R.E.M. in a converted bowling alley in Scotia for $1.04. All through college I saw and reviewed live music.
But really, I've never stopped seeing shows, when a lot of guys my age get worn out shopping for CDs. My buddy Steve has been a great catalyst in this regard, getting me off my ass and out the door to go to shows I might have missed, or might have skipped had I not had a fellow music lover to go with. I think I have had a similar effect on my friend Jack, an avid fan who just needed a nudge now and again to embark on a series of concert adventures, many of which I count among my favorites. I worked for my dad in Albany after college, making submarine sandwiches for something just above minimum wage. But I had the time of my life thanks to a couple of summers of musical bliss. A while back, a blogger in Albany (NY) asked his readers, "what music venue do you miss most?" and I had no hesitation. I miss J. B. Scott's. Here's the full version of what I posted:
Hi,
I just stumbled across your Blog down here in Austin. I grew up in Albany, and I miss JB Scott's. It was a bland atmosphereless shithole of a venue, with mostly short or weirdly angled sightlines and only an average PA, but the bands that Vinnie Birbiglia booked were outstanding. He had a silent partner (he owned Private Benjamin's) who seemed pretty straight, and another who seemed to be high most of the time, but Vinnie brought in the bands. It was cheap too--most shows were less than $15.
JB's high times coincided with the high point of WQBK-FM (Q-104), back when my friend Dore Stein, along with Lin Brehmer, Ellen McKinnon, Harvey Kojan, Walt Pelton, Peggy Apple & Program Director John Cooper played radio that was NOT programmed and truly progressive. They BROKE bands on radio, and took risks. U2 came back three times in a year thanks to them, and then came back and played a free gig at SUNY's MayFest in '83. I saw them all.
I managed to talk my dad into opening a Big Dom's Subs kiosk in the back of the club, and convinced him that I was the guy to work it. So I had a great seat for almost every show, including U2 in March, May and November 1981. One week that U2 played with Mission of Burma (and the entire band and crew signed my LP) I saw Teardrop Explodes and James Cotton and Romeo Void. Talk about diverse.
The Jam were the loudest band I had ever heard in a club. NRBQ laughed their asses off, and the Bus Boys made harmonizing afro-joke rock the hit of the summer. The Pretenders, The Plasmatics & John Cale blew the doors off the place. Jim Carroll mixed heroin-inspired poetry with rock realism. Roy Buchanan got better the drunker he got. John Fahey jumped offstage in mid-song to take a leak, then hopped back up with a new Heineken in his hand and picked up where he left off in the middle of a bottle slide solo.
Lionel Hampton, Blotto, R.E.M., The Units (later Fear of Strangers), Pat Benatar, David Bromberg, Thin Lizzy, The Bangles, Captain Beefheart, REO Speedwagon, Rory Gallagher, Count Basie, Mick Ronson, Buddy Rich, Squeeze. And The Go-Go's too. The place booked 'em all.
People couldn't get out of there fast enough once the show ended, so it was not like Bogie's where you wanted to hang out before or after the show. Once the lights went on you saw that they must have spent about $50 on décor--it was an old S&H Green Stamp trading store and looked like it always had--they just threw black paint on the walls and hung up a few Bud mirrors.
We didn't sell many subs either (sorry Dad). But I had a fucking blast.
The most recent escapades? How about Massive Attack & DJ Shadow in Berlin, Van Morrison in Vienna and Madonna in Amsterdam--all part of a musical trip through Europe with Steve & another friend, also conveniently named Steve. It's a long way from Bobby Sherman, but it still makes my heart beat faster.
Excerpt from the report on the National Intelligence Estimate detailed in the NY Times (registration required, feel free to use login/password amadjihad):
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
Will it? Or will Bin Laden's alleged body be Rove's October surprise. In a related thought, I think the NY Times has gotten better at criticism of BushCo lately. Even HuffPo has noticed.
