Friday, blessed, friday.

Good news! It looks like the Soft Set may have found a record label. Well, for Europe, anyway. We're talking to Becalmed Records out of London about releasing our new record there sometime just after the new year. Nothing is set and maybe I'm jinxing it by talking about it but I think its pretty cool. There's also talk of a Japanese EP. Come on, US labels, we're waiting for you.

Speaking the soft set, it looks like we're gonna be playing a Pixies hoot night at the carousel lounge on sept 12. Details soon.

I wussed out on going to see the American Psycho Band reunion show last night. I was just too tired to trek downtown. That's ok cause I'm gonna go see Sea of Thousand, Ultimate Dragons and Vice Versa tonight. It will be a rock n roll evening.

More good news. Its a three day weekend. I plan on wasting it thoroughly.

Good, well, er, Lord, Christopher Hitchens has got some set of balls but that's why I love him. Check out his latest column in which he picks apart the ten commandments one by one. I'm not making any comment on the content of his argument, but I do admire how much he seems to loath the world.

These days I find myself with more and more to say but less and less inclined to say it on here. Its an odd thing what you choose to put out in the world (even in this limited format).

We went to the crazy ass party where apparently someone was shot (after we left) on sat night. Its looked like something out of a movie. Hundreds of people just going nuts (well, actually, most of them seemed to be wondering around aimlessly). It was tons of fun, though. They had enough beer to last well into the night. I saw lots of folks that I didn't expect to and hadn't seen in a while. I almost had to carry SB to the car.

On sunday I finally got to put the farfisa into action at soft set practice. This is gonna be good thing. Playing an instrument that I'm not too familiar with (that being keyboards in general not the farfisa in particular) makes music a lot more fun and exciting again. Many times I just don't know what kind of sound is gonna be made. With guitar, pretty much anything I do I know exactly what's going on but not so with keyboards.

So last night SB and I went out to dinner. It was very nice (and yummy). I dig me some Italian food. Then over to lovejoy's to meet up for beers. I think I was on carb overload last night between the pasta and the beer. I couldn't hardly move by the end of the evening. I did manage to play my best game (or at least the first half) of pool in ages. I was kicking some ass but then I lost it. At least I'm consistantly inconsistant.

Yow! I needs me some sleeps! We went to the erstwhile "draught horse" last night. Funny how too much beer makes me tired but not sleepy. Well, I sure am sleepy now. HaHa.

Still, its friday and there's something to be said for that.

Yesterday I bought a Farfisa Mini-Compact organ. Yay for organs! As I emailed my bandsmates, "we can now play louie louie, 96 tears and all the stereolab songs we want!" Not that we would want very much (except probably 96 tears).

For those of you keeping track, today is wednesday.

I got some choice vinyl scores at half-price over lunch ~ Low by David Bowie, My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello and Surf's Up by the Beach Boys. Rock. Also procured was a hardback copy of Soulsville USA: the Story of Stax Records. More Rock!

How come the people at Pro-Tape always try to convince me that the tape I need for my eight track doesn't exist just cause they can't find it at that moment? Its on their website! Scroll down to where it says "QUANTEGY 457-1511J1
QUANTEGY OPEN REEL AUDIO TAPE GRAND MASTER 1/4'' x 1800' 7'' P" if you don't believe me.

Right now I am listening to the Stanley Brothers.

By the way, my buddy Amanda has a new webzine up over at ExcessMusic.com. One of my reviews from Sound Bite Reviews is posted on the reviews page.

For those of you keeping track, I have visited 26 states plus the District of Columbia. My own personal goal was to get to all 50 before I'm 30, but as I have only a little over a year til then maybe I'll just have to settle for the 48 contiguous. Much of the great plains and the pacific northwest await me.

The other night I dreamt that I had a old, green Gretsch guitar but that it was really beat up. When I looked closely at it the neck was extremely wide, like six inches across or more, and the nut was weird and only had spaces for five strings and even then the guitar only had four strings on it.

Give Dan props for keepin the dream alive. He has set up a new Austin Show List over at www.showlistaustin.com.

So at the same time that I picked up my new baby (read 8 track) last week, I also got the mastered copy of the wisdom teeth ep. What does this mean? It means that as soon as I get some artwork together I'm going to put out that there cd. Its been a horrifically slow and procrastinated process but I can see the end now (it looks like a large black hole in which I toss my paycheck). So wish me luck and buy my cd when it comes out!

Whatever happened to East River Pipe? I can't find any info on what's happening with a new record.

I'm thinking about ERP because I went yesterday and bought a Tascam 388 8-track recorder which happens to be the same model that ERP uses. Hopefully, I'll be back in the home recording business soon which means I'll have to shell out some $$ for all the mudane stuff like mic stands and cables and those little phantom power converters for condenser mics.

I can't find any good links about the beauty of a 388 so here's a link to a East River Pipe article where he talks a bit about it.

There's a review for Gigantic (the They Might Be Giants documentary) up over at Soundbite Reviews. There are some other fairly new reviews also. Go forth...

You do know, of course, that this is so heavily edited for content that it only BEARS the slightest resemblance to reality.

Wow, that last sentence has got to win some kind of award for banality. I'm trying to pass time before I can go home from work. It seems to be working.

I took a nap in the sun again today while on break.

I had a very nice lunch with Sarah Beth at central market.

When in doubt about a word (such as banality - either spelling or exact meaning), don't be afraid to go to dictionary.com.

Tonight I am going to see Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns which is a documentary about They Might Be Giants. To this day, I tear up when I hear Ana Ng.

Just now, I fell asleep while on my break. Outside in the courtyard. On a bench. With my hoodie as a pillow. It was beautiful.

Also, blogs are like talking to yourself in public.

They are also more fun than work on monday mornings.

Guess, what else! I got me a sore throat.

Also, these words of wisdom were given to me, "You are connected to 353926 people in your Personal Network, through 73 friends."

Also, I still have a job. Hooray, job!

Yay! I got the Nuggets boxset! And I got it for cheap, too. It doesn't take much to make me happy these days.