16 posts tagged “texas”

A friend of mine and I went out last night for dinner for my birthday and for election night. We were excited that Barack Obama would actually win the presidency. I was still very cautious. I am glad he won. I am glad the Democrats have the majority in the House and Senate. However, they may not get their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but they still did well. I am glad a lot of red states went to Obama.

Austin, TX and Travis County always go to Democrats, and it definitely went easily to Obama this time around. However, it kills me that Texas, as a state, has to be so backwards and go for McCain. If you look at an electoral map, you will see that the large urban areas (where most of the people live) all went to Obama.

Prop 8, which bans homosexual marriages, will probably get passed in California if the current results are correct. That is disappointing, but I guess that will just take time for people to get over their hangups about same-sex couples. I still believe that time heals all wounds, but that's not true if you run out of time.

The positive perspectives from around the world about Obama as the new president are very nice. I like the idea that the rest of the world may like America again. I always think globally. If I had enough money, I would live in a different country every month.

In other news, there is a lot of good music out there right now. Here is a mixtape that became available on the M.I.A. Fans message board today (http://miafans.co.uk) ...

http://fairtilizer.com/radioclit/the_very_best.zip

The music definitely has a "world music" sound to it. Esau Mwamwaya is featured heavily on the mixtape. He has done his own versions of "Paper Planes" and "Get It Up". I have posted his songs on here before. M.I.A. also put some vocals on a demo of his song, "Rain Dance". I think I have all of that right. The mixtape is also available on MySpace here ...

 

My parents and I went to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens this past Friday (October 10, 2008), and they were really cool. They are much larger than the Zilker Botanical Gardens in Austin. We almost went to the Japanese Tea Gardens, which are also known as the Japanese Sunken Gardens (I think a scene from the 1984 movie, "Cloak and Dagger" was filmed there), but we didn't have that much time, and I thought the Botanical Gardens would offer more.

My expectations at the Botanical Gardens were far exceeded. My parents got a new Canon camera that is like my Canon SD750 camera, but theirs is a newer version.

Here are some of the photos we took ...

For some reason, VOX is giving me a real hard time uploading these photos so I will try to get the rest up later.

Here are a bunch of photos I took yesterday with my friend, Travis, as we walked around downtown Austin. I thought the pictures came out a little better than usual, and I think it is because it was so bright outside. As pale as I am, I can't believe I did not get sunburn or sunburned or sunburnt (however you are supposed to say it ... probably the first one).

OK, here are the dazzling photos (well, a couple of them) ...

I went to the Dallas World Aquarium this past Saturday with a friend, and I took a lot of video with my Canon PowerShot SD 750 because I am a nerd like that. I decided to try to make a long video with all of the short videos combined. I used Smashing Pumpkins, Tori Amos, and Enya as the background music. Here is the final result ...

You can watch it on Google Video, too, but the quality is not any better (I was hoping it would be). I wish I could share a video online, and it would look as good as it does when I watch the original version on my computer.

I watched something on TV about various beneficial effects trees have on a city, and it was really fascinating how much trees can do to help a city. Here are some of the things they do ...

http://www.americanforests.org/graytogreen/energy

I think the above link just talks mainly about how trees can lower a city's electric bill, but the special I watched on TV that time showed a lot of other ways trees can help and improve a city (well, they are nice to look at for one).

Anyway, I looked up tree-planting programs in Austin to see if there were any programs in place, and of course there are (Austin is pretty nature-friendly). One that caught my eye was Tree Folks.

http://www.treefolks.org

Tree Folks helps plant trees in Austin and the surrounding area. They do other stuff besides that, but that was enough to make me want to donate some money to them. If you live in Austin, and you want to keep seeing signs of nature downtown and throughout the area, you may want to donate some money to them.

http://www.treefolks.org/store_donate.asp

I don't have that much money to donate, but I try to give a little here and there. I also donate to the Alzheimer's Association and Barack Obama's campaign.

Here is a Tori Amos song that I was listening to today. It's pretty cool (and old). The ending of it is the beginning of the song, "Horses", from her album, Boys For Pele (which was the first Tori Amos album I ever bought).

Tori Amos - Fire-Eater's Wife/Beauty Queen (demo)

 

Madonna has a song on her new album, Hard Candy, called "She's Not Me", that is pretty cool. Wendy Melvoin from Wendy & Lisa and Prince's band, The Revolution, is credited with playing the guitar on the song, and her name is even mentioned in the song. Like other songs on the album, the sound of the song changes at certain points, which keeps it pretty interesting. The song reminds me of Garbage's "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)". Listen to both songs and maybe you'll hear the similarity ... maybe not.

Madonna - She's Not Me (produced by Pharrell Williams)

Here is the video for Prince's song, "1999", which I have always really liked. I don't know if Wendy is in this video, but it's still topical for this blog post ...

Prince is very picky about where his music and videos can be shown/streamed so I could not find the "1999" video on YouTube, but I did find it on imeem.com.

Here is "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)" by Garbage ...

Here is another song from Portishead's new album, Third. It is the first song on the album, and I love the phrase, "did you know what I lost, do you know what I wanted", that is repeated in the song.

 
Here are some songs from the new Santogold album. Most of the songs on the album have been shared on the internet for years, but it's nice to hear high-quality versions of the songs. Santi White of Santogold is friends with M.I.A., and they seem to travel in the same social circles, but Santogold is a group that definitely stand on their own talent-wise.

Santogold - Shove It

Santogold - Unstoppable

Santogold - Anne

In other news, I guess I am not M.I.A.'s #1 fan anymore because I did not go to her concert at La Zona Rosa in Austin on May 1st. I had to work the next day, and there was no way I could go to that concert and make it to work the next day. Also, by the time I even considered risking it and going to the concert, the tickets were sold out. I am sure the show was awesome, though, because her last show there a couple of years ago was full of energy and the sound was perfect.

Here is a picture from the Austin concert ...

I think all of the photos were taken by David Reagan for the Austin American-Statesman's blog aka Austin360.com.

I went to a cool Italian restaurant last night in downtown Austin called La Traviata (just like Verdi's famous opera). It was pretty good. It's right next to Manuel's, a Tex-Mex restaurant that has decent mole sauce. I got the Rigatoni with Spicy Lamb Meatballs, and it was very good. My friends and I also got some Pinot Noir to drink with the meal, which is unusual for me because I never drink wine, and I am not a big fan of it. It was good, though. Anyway, here is the link for it ...

http://www.latraviata.net

I have a friend who is obsessed with reading reviews of places on Yelp.com so here are the reviews for La Traviata on Yelp ...

http://www.yelp.com/biz/la-traviata-austin (some of the reviews are not so kind, but I had a good experience so I am hoping the bad reviews were based on rare circumstances)

To go with the theme of this post, here are my favorite parts of Verdi's opera, La Traviata (which is the opera they played in "Pretty Woman") ...