T-shirts in January

About two weeks ago, I complained about the cold weather -- cold by Austin, Texas standards but certainly not compared to Montreal. Austin pays for a pleasant winter with an oppressively hot summer, so when Nature didn't initially pay up, the only option was whining.

Not today. Nature made good on its debt. Great day to drive across town with the windows rolled down or just walk around in a t-shirt.

Attention, users of metric: 0° C is 32° F and 20° C is 70° F.

KRS-One is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist

At a show Saturday night at the Mohawk, South Bronx hip hop pioneer KRS-One launched into a freestyle tirade against Barack Obama, the "New World Order", and 9/11. Apparently he and Austin conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones are good buds!

But KRS-One rapped about more than just inside jobs and secret plots for world domination. He also put on a great show! And this was the first time I was actually able to buy a 40 of Olde English malt liquor at a bar. Only four bucks!

Writing micro songs

It seems I never have enough time or will lately to write songs longer than a minute or two, which is fine because some of my favorite musical artists are known for their short and sweet songs. With that in mind, let the floodgates open! Here's a song about cordless phones. Remember those? It's 54 seconds long. No need to repeat sections over and over and belabor the point. Get in and get out.


Download mp3

Man does funny dance in Mexican restaurant

This singer barely sang while I was watching him last night at Lisa's Mexican Restaurant in San Antonio, but he sure had the moves! The man behind him is playing the music on his keyboards.

Lisa's is in an interesting, working class Mexican neighborhood of SA. Bandera Rd is peppered with tamale houses advertising their delicious tamales with huge neon signs. And if there's one thing I love in a city, it's huge neon signs.

Henry the cat chases a laser dot

Cats go crazy over these laser dots. The fact they are uncatchable doesn't seem to matter.

Baby A's Purple Margarita

It's not the prettiest drink in Austin but it will fuck you up! This seemingly innocuous purple slush at Baby Acapulco's Restaurant Y Cantina is laced with the dangerously potent liquor Everclear, which is why the menu reads:

Purple Margarita
Our most popular margarita. Not for the faint at heart.
(Limit of 2) $7.25

S. and I went there last night with some of her friendly coworkers and had to draw the line at one each. We were driving home after all, and this is DUI in a glass.

Say what you will about Pizza Hut...

...but do not tell me that doesn't look fucking delicious. Even if the reality is closer to this.

If you're as obsessed with pizza as I am, you'll also be interested in the industry trade journal Pizza Marketplace's Top pizza trends for 2009. Number three is ridiculous. (Enough with the social networking already!) Number five bodes well for the cash strapped. (More cheap pizza!)

No fair, Old Man Winter!

We suffered through an oppressively hot summer and now we're having our normally pleasant winter replaced with mildly cold weather! I feel ripped off.

distracteddispatches.com!

If all went well, you were forwarded to this site from distracteddispatches.blogspot.com. Registering my own web address and hosting this blog on an external server not only makes me the master of my own domain, but it also allows me to attempt incremental content delivery improvements. In other words, I get to fuck around with web technologies I only faintly understand to make this blog even more entertaining!

In the meantime, check out my friend Steve's new blog at chungkingmansions.com. He moved to China around the same time I moved to USA.

Driving though SoCo into downtown

Perfect weather yesterday for a three mile drive from South Austin straight up Congress Ave to the Capitol. Join me on a ten minute drive while I listen to the local public radio station. I'm using Vimeo for some video uploads now because the quality is just slightly better than YouTube.