Build Date: Tue Oct 29 14:10:13 2024 UTC
Just to recap: Hacking mainframes => Good. Hacking children's heads off =>
Bad.
-- Negative Nancy
The Cross Canadian Ragweed Red Dirt Roundup
2006-09-09 11:27:00
Went to one of the only really enjoyable outdoor concerts I can remember (maybe I didn't enjoy it enough). The finest in dirty hillbilly music: The Cross Canadian Ragweed Red Dirt Roundup. For those ignorants, Cross Canadian Ragweed is a horrendous allergan in Texas, and it's also a band. In a great show of humility, CCR was the worst major act in their line up. Fortunately, they have talented friends.
Ray Wiley Hubbard turns out to be every bit as good live as his reputation purports. His new song "Snake Farm" is plenty worth a listen on its own, but all the more so if you grew up seeing Snake Farm billboards around South Texas and hearing the rumors that it was a whore house. The concert was also my first chance to see Drive By Truckers live (out of two attempts; a story for another time). Every thinking person should be a Drive By Truckers fan. They have an entire song dedicated to Steve McQueen that contains the only sucessful poetic incorporation of the word "mesothelioma" of which I am aware. If there were any justice or rationality in the world, we would all know the words to their anthem "The Company I Keep" instead of having our sleep disturbed by the Bon Jovi lyrics that must have been burned into our brains by satellite transmission (because you KNOW you know those words, but you must never admit having listened).
But of course, there's no justice, no peace, and no chance I'm going to be satisfied with the choice of Bud or Bud Light at the former feed lot on which the concert took place. The smell alone would have overpowered the strongest beer. And that eternal truth led me to the Cazadores Tequila/Jack Daniels tent to get me a real drink.
So they had a makeshift cattle pen set up around the tent to keep the beer drinkers out and keep the liquor drinkers in (a lamentable curse of Texas liquor regulations and also a story for another time). This pissed me off a good deal because the placement of the tent meant I was getting the muddiest sound possible from the twin stages at the venue, but shortly, that muddiness moved to the interiors of my ears; so my quibble with the location is really minor in the overall scheme of things.
The bigger problem was that, as patrons approached the Jack Daniels stand, their orders of "Jack and Coke" were met with Jack and Pepsi. Fear not; your humble narrator stuck with Jack and Jack, as is his wont. And really, the addition of Pepsi to Jack Daniels can hardly be called an abomination when the whole point is to cover up the strange banana aftertaste of the ubiquitous near-bourbon. The real problem was the bartenders' explanation of why they were stuck with the Pepsi. Apparently, Coke had not offered enough incentive to have its product represented at a venue at which its fans were literally asking for it by name. Viewed the other way, the concert promoters may have gone with the highest bid from a vendor at the expense of having 10,000 rednecks pissed off that their drinks turned out not quite as called.
Now Lord knows I'm not one to meddle in markets or favor cooperation over competition, but for Pete's sake, how hard is it to see the mutual benefit of having Coke available to mix with Jack? Can I get my PhD for writing that up with a regression table because I am here to tell you that white trash country music fans will for damn sure pay extra to have Coke with their Jacks (and who doesn't instinctively suspect that?). I think there's some kind of externality working there, but I'm halfway through a bottle of real bourbon; so it's a little harder for me to articulate at the moment.
T O P S T O R I E S
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
The end of summer is near and sirens call of Black Rock City are beginning to summons Pigdoggers from all of the world to Burning Man. Spock Mountain Research Labs (SMRL), the world leader in beverage science and leisure technology will be at our second home for a week at 5:00 and Infant (how fitting) as we enjoy the liberated lifestyle of a temporary community 200 miles from nowhere... (More...)
Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument
Mr. Bad and Crackmonkey collaborate on a fine Mr. Bad's List. We put together ALL the TECHNOLOGY you ever need to know in order to STUMP your OPPONENT in a technical argument. Use these only when your back is against the wall -- they're definitely desperation tactics. (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
Pigdog dispatched special correspondent Ratsnatcher for a holiday reconnaissance of America's frozen hell. After ten days of silence, our shortwave radio cackled with Ratsnatcher's static-filled transmission. (More...)
Our team of crack journalists went insane, and made the drive from Concord, California to Concord, New Hasmpshire on Interstate 80. Read the insightful observations of our intrepid travelers made on their journey into the heartland. (More...)
About 14 years ago when I was on a road trip and stopped in Seattle, I was invited to a party. At this party there were these little tiny glasses sitting in a flat-bottomed bowl of ice. Thin cylinders about an inch in diameter and 4 inches tall, with thick glass at the bottom. Into these were poured frozen AKVAVIT... also known as the water of life. (More...)