Houston

1. Writing in this format again. I missed this. I’ve been writing in it since the last century. The other day I was consolidating everything I’ve written online into a single place, killing the filler and just having a grand old time revisiting old thoughts and experiences. So, I thought I would start doing it again, just with far less intensity (and a different voice and a broader net-cast). Frankly, I miss tinkering with HTML too.

2. TA’s Cargo Club. A townie bar in an Oak Forrest strip center, just north of 34th on Mangum. Imagine the Shiloh in a world where it was important to keep up appearances and no one had invented methamphetamines; no Yelp listing, no Facebook fan page. Just a sunken bar, a non-internet jukebox and conventional height chairs with those wheels they have at Luby’s waiting to embrace you in their decidedly uncool arms. What could be cooler?

3. Earl-Jean – I’m Into Something Good.

4. Jeremiah. You know, I’m all about trashy post-apocalyptic visions of the future; no concept is too ridiculous for me to suspend my disbelief. Mass sterility? Check. Giant Comet? Puh-lease. Unexplained flash of light that transports Nantucket Island two thousand years in the past and changes the underlying properties of the universe, leaving the world left behind without access to the benefits of gunpowder, electricity or anything dependent on high energy physics? Into it. So when Netflix’s suggestion engine served up this 2003 Showtime series, I couldn’t help but add it to Watch Now and fire up the Roku.

Now, from the outset, don’t make the mistake I did, of thinking that something produced by Showtime would be on par with any series on HBO. And while I want to reserve judgment till I’ve finished its limited run, let me go ahead and say that if your show features Malcolm Jamal Warner and you have a character named Theo and MJW isn’t playing him you’re doing it wrong.

5. The Houston Press Music Awards Showcase. It’s this weekend. Downtown. While my muscle memory wants to launch into run-on-sentence-filled exultations, ruminations and prognostications, there is part of me that knows I will spend the day with friends (who in the past rocked it Rice Loft VIP) instead. However, you should definitely go.