Random Brain Dump

Cowboy Junkies is an alternative rock band from Toronto with their down-right depressing lyrics, nice blend of guitar and harmonica, subtle rhythms and of course the original voice of Margo Timmins. Their melancholic music is a mix of blues, country, folk, and rock. With a lot of depressing with titles like “To Love Is to Bury”, “‘Cause Cheap Is how I Feel”, “Lonely sinking feeling”, their style is a bit off-beat, which to me is appealing. In fact, the band makes a point of evading mainstream: quitting major record label and starts distributing their own music with their independent label. How cool is that?

I first heard their music during my college years; my room-mate Minh had a copy of The Trinity Session. The album was recorded live in a single day in a church in Toronto and basically launched the band, an early album that remains one of their best work. At first, I didn’t think much of the music after casual listening. But during a late night study, I was hooked on their tunes! Guess it’s got to do with ambiance and the undivided attention from a pair of headphones. I found their music captivating and they became one of my favorite bands. I’ve been following their works ever since that one late night.

So I was looking forward to their concert all this summer. Last Wednesday, after the kids were done with their swimming classes, we got them ready to spent the night with their cousin Malia. After their aunt Betty drove them off, Suzanne & I headed to the Mountain Winery. It was our first time there. There were obvious signs of renovations everywhere. But it has a breath-taking view of the valley. The venue is small, intimate and beautiful with the valley below on one side and the back-drop of wineries on the other. I wish I had a chance to take some photographs during the sunset. We arrived as the opening act started playing, so no chance to stroll and tour the place. I lugged along my camera but had to hide it in my jacket as I was scared away by the posted signs banning non-consumer cameras. I was able to sneak in a few clicks though. 🙂

The Bittersweets opened for the Cowboy Junkies and they were very good by the way. The band even blogged about that nite. The lead singer Hannah Prater seemed very down-to-earth and had very nice voice. Not sure the title of the last song they performed but it was a beautiful song that starts with “Good night San Francisco…” (can’t go wrong with lyrics like that). I’ll probably order their debut CD; very talented band and I have no doubt we’ll hear more of them in the coming years.

This was the 3rd time I saw The Cowboy Junkies’ concert and I’d say it was as good as the 1st concert I saw them during the Lay It Down tour (Lay It Down was an amazing album). I was hoping for more numbers from Lay It Down and they didn’t get around to their own rendition of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane as I’d hoped. But they did a few songs from their old album The Trinity Session including Blue Moon. They closed the night with Margo’s masterful rendition of Misguided Angel— it was best of the night.

The Cowboy Junkies are a type of band that is perfect for small venues like Mountain Winery. The ambiance was great. Suzanne & I enjoyed the evening. What’s not to like: good music, starry night and beer in our hands!

Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created in the ’60’s to ensure means for independent broadcasts. Now, the Bush administration is trying to eliminate the federal subsidy to CPB. This funding normally is distributed between the public TV stations and NPR. But in a vote of 357-72 last week, the House overwhelmingly rejected President Bush’s proposal. Here’s the official recorded tally.

The funding for public broadcasting has been threatened by conservatives the last few years. Unfavorable coverage and views on the Bush administration on many programs broadcasted on PBS & NPR have a lot to do with that, no doubt.

As frequent readers of this blog knows, I’m a big fan of public broadcasting. Say what you will of Congress, they did at least something right last week.

This past weekend, I pitched one of our tents in our backyard. May be it was my attempt of compensating the camping trip we missed out on last month.

Katelyn & Allison were excited at the idea of sleeping outside in a tent. After helping me pitching the tent, the girls started “moving” in. It’s only a slight exaggeration as they lugged all their favorite things into the tents: books, teddy bears, blankets, sleeping bags, pillows, toys, snacks etc..

After dinner & washing up, I changed the girls into long sleeves and we headed out with a flashlight. Suzanne showed up in the tent for about 10 minutes before retiring to our comfortable bed and catching up with her Nip/Tuck episodes. We read a few books under the flashlight which each girls fight over all nite. The overcast killed my promise to the girls about sleeping under a starry nite. Katelyn really wanted to see the stars, so she kept waiting for the stars to come through, which they never did.

The girls had a fun night and a good sleep. I on the other hand woke up with a very sore back. 🙂

I was watching the news on TV last night as Katelyn jumped into my lap. The program discusses the coming presidential election. Earlier at dinner, we had a conversion about death which is always a nice topic to bring up at chow time… 🙂

Here’s a little exchange I had with Katelyn, about dead presidents…

K:“Daddy, which presidents are dead?”
R: “You mean you want me to name some presidents that you know who are already dead?”
K: “Yeah!”
R: “Well, a lot of the old presidents are dead. Like George Washington, Lincoln…”
K: “You mean Abraham Lincoln? He’s dead?”
R: “Yes, you didn’t know that? He lived a long time ago and he’s dead just like Thomas Jefferson . Do you know him?”
K: “No I don’t.”
R: “A lot of old presidents are dead like John F. Kennedy…”
K interrupts: “Daddy, how come all presidents are boys and there are no girl presidents?”
R: “Good observation and a very good question, Katelyn. I guess no woman tried to be president in the old days. But that doesn’t mean there will never be a woman president. In fact, there’s this lady and her name is Hillary and she is trying to be the president right now. Did you know that?”
K: “No…”
R: “I’ll point her out to you the next time we see her on TV. Anybody can become a president, even you. Do you want to the president?”
K pauses then said: “Nahhh… I’ll become zoo keeper instead!”

Wow…

While channel surfing last nite, I caught an episode of a new series on PBS called Travels To The Edge with Art Wolfe.

The 13-part series shares the most majestic places in the world with the viewers through Wolfe’s camera lenses. But it’s not just a travel or wild-life program with video of harsh deserts, imposing mountains or lush rain forests. Wolfe actually talks about photography: equipment and techniques!

Tonite, the episode follows Wolfe to The Altiplano in Bolivia where he photographs the giant cacti and the largest salt flat in the world. It was a HD broadcast on KQED and it was breath-taking. HD is the perfect format for this type of series, and I’ll definitely be following the rest of the series.

The episode was simply awe-inspiring for a shutterbug and a hack like me!

One day 2 weeks ago while hitting the gym, I lost my cell phone. I also lost our corporate pager. A few days later, while trying disconnect their UVerse TV service, AT&T inadvertently took down my DSL. Then while hacking some PHP code, I inadvertently brought down this site.

I was left feeling totally disconnected all of sudden. Didn’t take long for me to realize how dependent I’ve grown to these things.

DSL is finally back on, the site is restored (obviously since you’re reading this), Yahoo! replaced the lost pager. The cell phone (which is fairly expensive to replace btw) is still missing.