USS Enterprise and shuttle craft pancakes, Louie's, Baton Rouge

Fred, the master frycook at Louie's, has boldly gone where no frycook has gone before.

RIP Jeanne-Claude

NY Time obit

Love? Life? You? Zero? Infinity?

Adam Carroll - Lookin' out the Screen Door (listen) I saw Carrroll perform a few weeks back and then last night Slaid Cleaves tore through his "Race Car Joe" and another song and I got to thinking Adam Carroll might just be the guy. Like the guy you have that can whip through the NY Times crossword, or the guy you have to help you get that old lawnmower to start, or the guy you know to call when you need to find a globe at a yard sale (I have such a guy and have utilized him in precisely that capacity.) Adam Carroll is the guy you have that writes those great songs nobody has ever heard that are nothing less and not a morsel more than great songs. And many of them are about beer.

Ol' Milwaukee's Best - Adam Ca...

Errol's Song - Adam Carroll

Richard Buckner - Devotion+ Doubt (listen) I drove home after the Red Dragon show listening to this record, wondering whether that "+" in the title is really a plus or just a graphic designer's decision, if devotion is truly augmented by doubt as a plus sign implies rather than what an open ampersand marriage would offer. What is on the other side of the equals of devotion + doubt? Love? Life? You? Zero? Infinity?

Then I started thinking about what a hypotenuse on a right triangle means. The length of your slanted part can be determined by how much you run and how much you rise, things you think define you but really the math of life is in the hypotenuse. Your rising and your running are just little components that figure into the big picture. This is the kind of stuff that singer-songwriter music makes me think of, which in turn makes me think I would be the worst singer-songwriter, trying to cram word problems into songs when what the good singer-songwriters do is just let problems be songs and not spend much time on solutions.

Lil' Wallet Picture - Richard ...

Slaid Cleaves and Michael O'Conner at the Red Dragon, Baton Rouge, LA

Slaid Cleaves and Michael O'Conner at the Red Dragon, Baton Rouge, LA, originally uploaded by real_voodooboy.

You know you are in the presence of instrumental mastery when you find yourself dumbstruck by how beautifully someone played "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" as I was with Mr. O'Conner last night. Having Mr. Cleaves' knife edge lyrics, as well as some ambitious yodeling over it is a wonderful bonus.

classic non-classic

Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures (listen) This is what it sounds like in my head whenever I try to play guitar with somebody. It unfortunately does not sound like this outside of my head.

New Fang - Them Crooked Vultur...

Polvo - In Prism (listen) Like, I'd like to sound like "not quite classic rock" like this song by classic non-classic-rockers Polvo does on this number.

D.C. Trails - Polvo

Six Finger Satellite - Law of Ruins (listen) Though when given the helm, it does tend to go on about as long as this

Sea of Tranquility (Pts 1 & 2)...

love me, love my friends, love my record collection

Fred Weaver - Those Ancient Skies...Came Sweeping Wide (MySpace) - Fred is a good friend of mine, but I put 75% of my innate nepotism aside in recommending his music. I was thinking strident, strained, and (a)stringent this morning and Fred appeared in that Google search of the spirit.

Silver Scooter - The Blue Law (MySpace) These guys have an album called "Orleans Parish" so it seems I though I should have some local cognition of them, but MySpace puts them in Austin, and their sound has them square in the Grandaddy/Fountains of Wayne/Apples in Stereo camp of low-simmer "love me, love my friends, love my record collection" rock. Which is where I am this morning.

Brooke Waggoner - Go Easy Little Doves (listen) and, as if on cue, my former upstairs neighbor of just 5 years ago or so Brooke Waggoner is getting the kinds of accolades from sites on my RSS feed that imply readers should already know her name and style. Nice work, and nice record too. She should sing the princess themes for the hipper versions of Disney films.

Chromates Soft Love - Brooke W...

5 things, 3 of them referencing Spock girl

1. The Chinese Japanese spam machine is still all over the 5 things I said a couple of months ago.
2. We got the new Star Trek movie from NetFlix and my daughter piped in that she wanted to watch it. We told her it is different from Star Wars, not quite as "exciting," I guess, but she's into it. She revealed herself to be a Spock girl immediately, which as a dad is a relief. An attraction to passive-aggressive, emotionally detached know-it-all's has its downsides but the appeal of bare-chested, flying kick cavaliers perpetually getting in trouble is cliche.
3. The book is progressing slowly, like an iceberg melting as I chip at its surface. Any minute now I'm going to hit a watery pocket and will have to handle the flood.
4. The meat pies from Bergeron's are the supreme personality of ground meat, spices and pie crust fried to golden perfection godhead. Hiccup spicy, but the aforementioned Spock girl put some sour cream on hers and rendered it even more amazing. Her logic in this matter was Vulcan sound.
   
5. Spock girl has also been taking drum lessons once a week for a while and is getting pretty good. I keep joking that we are going to form a garage rock family band duo (maybe we can work in a Star Trek theme into it) to play at the farmer's market (or the convention scene), but truthfully, I am going to have to step up my game on guitar soon if I really want that to happen.