Klaus Nomi: Total Eclipse (1981)

I just watched the 2005 "Nomi Song" doc. One snobbish commentator said that in this song, Nomi had "sold out" because he was performing with a rock band and there was the case of "their faces" (seriously, this idiot was offended that the players had natural human faces rather than personae or literal masks) and their "stupid" guitars and their overall lack of panache. While my initial reaction was to agree that Nomi should indeed appear in a more refined atmosphere... Appearing here with back-up hold-over shaggy rock musicians didn't detract from Nomi's persona at all---in fact, the contrast was a bit interesting. The late-'70s SNL-type house musicians and the New Wave (though much more than "New Wave") Nomi breaching the gap...

Klaus Nomi: NYC's early-cable "TV Party" (1979)

I don't know anything about opera. I've read that Klaus Nomi was a talented "Counter Tenor."
Was he actually good? Could he have been a real talent in the 1700s or 1800s, or whenever opera was at its peak?
He is mystical and beautiful to listen to. But, again, I don't know if this singing is really good or not, for the ages or not.
What I do know is that he ended up in NYC in the late '70s. His talent roughed up for the then-current times. And perhaps his sexual habits roughed up for those current times. (As an honest American gay man once recently wrote: "Being gay ain't all about rainbows and Pride parades." While, via social media propaganda, younger people have been led to believe in the latter and not the reality.)

Klaus Nomi: Lightning Strikes (1982)

[Verse 1]
Listen to me, baby, you got to understand
You're old enough to learn the makings of a man
Listen to me, baby, it's time to settle down
Am I asking too much for you to stick around?
Every boy wants a girl he can trust to the very end
Baby, that's you, won't you stay? But till then
When I see lips begging to be kissed
I can't stop, I can't stop myself!

[Chorus]
Lightning's striking again!
Lightning's striking again!

[Verse 2]
Nature's taken over my one track mind
Believe it or not, you're in my heart all the time
All the girls are saying that you'll end up a fool
For the time being, baby, live by my rules!
When I settle down, I want one baby on my mind
Forgive and forget, and I'll make up for all lost time
She's put together fine and she's on my mind
I can't stop! I can't stop myself!

[Chorus]
Lightning's striking again!
Lightning's striking again!

[Verse 3]
There's a chapel in the pines
Waiting for us around the bend
Picture me in your mind, love forever!
But 'til then
When I see lips begging to be kissed
I can't stop, I can't stop myself!

[Chorus]
Lightning's striking again!
Lightning's striking again!

Two Hoots and a Holler Live: '91 Black Cat Lounge (Austin)

Austin streets taken over by street-racing incidents | FOX 7 Austin

issues

Let me tell ya a story... Years ago, my father once said to me upon reading a news story about people spray-painting graffitti on buildings: "Shoot 'em. That'll stop it."

At the time, I was horrified. ("You don't just SHOOT someone for graffitti!")

My military dad was also once stationed in the Philippines under Marcos in the '70s. He was impressed that there wasn't much street crime under Marcos.

If modern-day Marxists can't control something basic like street crime (or illegal border crossings or fake racial issues), then there's going to be a response from law-and-order/merit advocates. And at this point, despite my own liberal past up through 2016, I'm going to 100% support whoever can control the chaos and utterly destroy the "Woke" idiocy.

RE the video of what happened this past weekend: Austin police funding has been decimated by the Marxist Austin City Council. And two whole rookie police classes were cancelled. This chaos is the result.

One sadly hilarious quote from one Marxist council member Ryan Alter after viewing the above: "We need to look at this holistically." (No, Ryan, we need to fire you and ask questions later.)

Rent increases in Austin

I moved into my current 2-bedroom apt in Austin in 2017.

Rent History:
$1275 (2017 and 2018)
$1350
$1377
$1600 (May 2022)
$1800 (Just rec'd notice of my new rent)

Oh, how sociologically interesting: What is to become of me. I guess I can just barely afford $1800 monthly rent, though I can now no longer afford to replace my 2011 car. (And the apartment owners just tacked on a random $15 "Renters Legal Liability Fee," though I already have Renters Insurance.)

I like my current place for its 1200-sq-ft. Though there's no view or sun whatsoever. There's a small backyard, though you can't sit in it without neighbors looking at you from 10 ft away. The laundry room is close, and the pool is close. The maintenance room next door is sometimes loud during the day, but not after 5:30pm.

I have a job where I work from home, so there's no driving. I would really like having the sun come into my windows. I would really like a backyard where people aren't looking at me, and where maybe my cats could go out. It would be nice to have laundry connections in my own home.

You'd think that for $1800 a month that I could have something much better. Currently, I have a decent-sized 1200-sq-ft place, with no loud neighbors (and only occasionally loud maintenance men during office hours). I've lived here for 6 years, and hate to move. Upon a brief search on craigslist and Zillow, there's nothing else available in Austin.

All of that said: Who pays $1800 for a place with no sun that you don't really like? Who pays the grand sum of $1800 per month for a place that isn't a palace of some sort? I've got to move out of protest, but...where the hell to move TO? I've lived in Austin since 1983, when I came here to go to school. Ever since then I've lived in many a cheap student place: garage apartments, duplexes, apartments, etc. (ranging from $250 to $675). And then later, a house where I paid $810 for 6 years.

You'd think that $1800 per month would get you something actually good, like a HOUSE maybe... I'm utterly trapped. The new price of my current apartment is totally outrageous, but where am I supposed to move TO?

----------------------------------

Met with my apartment manager on Tuesday, 2/21 after receiving the above notice last Friday. Gave her my arguments re why my rent should not be $1800 per month: 

(1) I've lived here for 6 years and have never been late with rent.
(2) The same-sized apartment next to me has been empty for 6 months, listed at the $1800 price. If I moved out, and my apartment were only empty for 2 months, the company would lose more money than if it let me stay at a cheaper rent for a year.
(3) The company website and Craigslist both have apartments of my size going for $1756. I should at least get that rate.

My manager was nominally nice: After she consulted with her company, I was then offered $1725 per month rather than $1800. Initially, I celebrated! But then I read the lease: Aside from the new $15 per month fee for "liability" (no option to change this), there's also now a new $20 "pet rent" fee per pet. I officially have 2 cats, so that's a new $40 per month. $55 new fees total. So... Though my $1600 rent just went up to $1800, and I then allegedly got a break down to $1725... The new fees of $55 just brought me back up to $1780 per month. Weeeeee! I was paying $1600 last year and now I'll be paying $1780 instead of $1800! (With all of the utility add-ons, there's always at least $100 tacked on to the bill. I pay a stupid $50 per months for sewage, for instance.)

I'm fucking sick. But, as I've pondered before: Where the fuck else am I supposed to live. I wasn't prepared to move this year. And I've, of course, checked out various other options on the Austin market. There's nothing else out there for what I'm paying, unless I move to a shitty crime-infested neighborhood, or move 50 miles outside of town. I'm fucking trapped.

Let this be a lesson to me: Plan ahead for next year. Spend the next 12 months of being trapped in this idiotic, awful lease planning to get the hell out of it this time in 2024.

George Jones: Live in Tennessee (1993)

GEORGE JONES - Austin City Limits (1980)

One thing I noticed was the huge up-sweep in energy when fiddle-player Gimble came on and did "Ida Red." George reacted to him in a great way, musician to musician (Same with "Milk-Cow Blues."). Most of the rest of the show was Jones being a tame show-pony for his hits. Not as he used to be onstage.

I also appreciate the "Tammy Wynette" T-shirt on the keyboard player!

George Jones: The Grand Tour (1974)

Sam Smith, Kim Petras: Unholy (Official Music Video)

I like this song as a song.
But let me see if I get the theme right: Mommie is supposed to be worried about her fat slob of a husband (is the schlubby Sam Smith supposed to be decadently sexy?) getting it on with trannies at a sex club....
Sam Smith: Nah. Sex Club: Nah. Anyone who's actually been to a sex club (and I have) knows how actually creepy and depressing they are. 

And sorry---despite all of the current Trans propaganda, Kim Petras doesn't pass as a sexy woman (much less one capable of giving her man a baby, as she claims, in auto-tune, in the song). In general, we as a society need to stop encouraging trannies' mental illness: they're not women. We should be tolerant of them but not be forced to participate in, or honor, their mental illness.

Four Whole Days Without Cable/Internet!

From Wednesday, Feb. 1, thru Saturday, Feb. 4, I had zero cable TV or Internet. Austin had a freeze on Tuesday night that extended into Wednesday; my electricity was out thru 1pm on Wednesday---which I understand contributed to why Spectrum cable was also out thru 1pm on Wednesday. At that time, I got a text from Spectrum that cable/Internet would be restored by 4pm Wednesday. It was not. Despite the fact that there were no more freezing temperatures in Austin after that. After that one text from Spectrum, I heard nothing else.

I called Spectrum on Thursday and Friday and Saturday. Asked to speak to representatives. Tried to be, and was, polite to the poor suckers who had to take such calls. (Each time: "Please tell your higher-ups that it's not cool to not tell customers when service might be restored. And Austin hasn't had freezing weather since Wednesday---why is the cable/Internet still out?")

Four whole days without cable or Internet was the first time I'd been without such since I moved into my current apartment back in 2017, and Spectrum sent a series of incompetent idiots to hook up my service, which ended up not being on for about 2 days after I moved in. I thought THAT was bad! (I was also enlightened during that time to how insanely left-wing NPR Radio was! When I'd previously only listened to them for 15 mins or so in the car, they seemed perfectly rational...)

This time in 2023: First and foremost is the inability of Spectrum to contact their customers to give updates on progress for service restoration. Again: I completely understand why service was off during the freeze (which ended Wednesday). But why then did it take another 4 days (during non-freezing weather) to get service restored? And why no updates to customers?

As for my personal habits: As was first made painfully clear to me back in 2017, I am utterly addicted to cable TV and the Internet. (Well, also: Since I've worked from home since 2020, I absolutely need the Internet for work, though there was a workaround with a smart-phone hotspot---much slower access to files, though.) 

As for personal use: I just like having the TV on. I live alone, and I like having news stations or "On Patrol Live" or TCM or sports on low in the background, either while I work from home during the day, or while I try to go to sleep at night. I lived out in the country as a kid, and that was fine for going to sleep in utter silence because everyone else around you was asleep at the same time. But in the middle of this apartment complex in Austin in 2023? I need some white noise. And, frankly, I also need some thought-blockers! The natural psychedelia that goes on in my mind in utter silence at the end of the night isn't as charming or interesting as it once was when I was 15 or so! (p.s. That's one reason that I've never taken LSD, despite the left-over rock-press hype from the '60s when I was growing up in the '80s---I absolutely do NOT need any more of that!)

Soooo, the last 4 days: Rather than just filling the silence with music (which is hard to work and think to), I had to have some low-key visuals and talking in the background, so started putting in some of my DVD collection that I hadn't yet watched. During the workdays last week, had on various films from my 9-disc "Busby Berkeley" collection, which was good for that. And stuff like "42nd Street" was also good to go to sleep to the first two nights. And then I tried to just read myself to sleep in silence, like in the olden days---that was an OK experiment for one night. And then on Saturday evening and night, sans any work or any other stimulation for the whole day, had on DVD docs for The Knack and Lizzie Borden and Tammy Wynette videos and a "Hee-Haw" episode (featuring George Jones and Tammy Wynette) and then, finally, a 4-hour PBS doc on Andy Warhol that took me to sleep. When I woke up today, Sunday, at 6am, the cable/Internet was finally working, thank god!

Now, I do have some DVD sets of Bergman and Fellini and Cocteau films that I could have started working thru from the beginning... But I didn't want to do so while so utterly uptight at not having cable! I want to watch those in leisure, in a calm frame of mind!

"I don't know what to tell ya..."

Took a break from work around 10am to go get gas and beer and smokes ahead of what's supposed to be an upcoming winter ice storm for the next couple of days in Austin. (Already had cat food and Cokes and milk---but had to make sure I had my cigs and beer to tide me over!)

I got my gas/beer/cigs, and as I was returning to my car, an agitated young lady at the next gas pump stopped me and said, "Did you see that guy around the corner?"

I had not. She went on: "He came up to me and was asking me weird things..."

I looked around and didn't see the weirdo. I didn't know what to say to her---she obviously wasn't from my neighborhood, where I see weird things regularly!

I let her vent for a bit, then told her two things: One, there are a lot of homeless guys in this neighborhood. And Two, the recent story of when a guy that I thought was a scary crack-addict came up on me in my apartment complex and asked, weirdly, "Where you from?" (After reporting this to my apartment manager, turned out he was a retarded guy who lived with his parents in the complex.)

I guess I was trying to make her feel better, as in: "You see---the drug-addled homeless guy bothering you might only be a retarded guy trying to make friends..." She laughed at bit...

Today's social media (and mainstream media) might call this young woman a "Karen." But I'm old enough to remember when drug-addled creeps weren't wandering randomly around neighborhoods. She was obviously from a more innocent place and was confused about the weirdness she'd just encountered.

All I could do, sadly, was try to explain about "random homeless guys" in the neighborhood. And then make a lame comment: "Well, at least it wasn't at midnight and there were other people around." And, finally, "I'm sorry you had to start your day like this!"

The Breakfast Club

A recognized classic in 1985, and still today. Back then, my fellow teen/just-post-teen cohorts asked of ourselves: Which are you?

I'm about 50% Dork, 30% Rebel, 8% Claire, 8% Jock, 4% Emo. I reluctantly admired Claire and the Jock. But I absolutely hated Ally Sheedy's character---I still hate that type today, though I've lived for a very long time in Austin: the very Nanny-State, nurturing heart of the mildewy, incompetent Slacker. (If there's anything I'm not, it's "incompetent.")

Old King Kong (George Jones: 1977)

I've got most of George Jones's entire career on CD, via Bear Family boxed sets from '56 to '71, and after that, via all of the subsequent available two-fer and other CDs, up thru his death.

Some Jones records, though, are still hard to find on CD, including the 1977 album "I Wanta Sing" (with its utterly horrible cover)! Last year, I did buy this album as an album, just to help complete my George album collection, but I hadn't yet listened to it on my record player.

For some reason, the George song "Old King Kong" came up in searches this week, and it rang a bell... When I went to YouTube to listen to it, I got a pleasant shock. I haven't heard this song in over 40 years!

When I was a kid in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the '70s, this song was constantly on country radio. I must've heard it a million times (though, as I later found out, it only reached #34 on the country charts). At the time, I thought this unknown-to-me singer's voice was weird, but I still thought the song was extremely catchy---to the point where I still remember just about every one of the lyrics today!

So it's been fun to hear this particular weird song for two reasons: One, because I thought I'd heard everything from GJ a lot in the past few years---but had completely forgotten about his song on a "hidden" album. And Two, because it was a fun reminder of a very long time ago when I used to hear George all the time as a kid---and I liked the songs, long before I ever knew who "George Jones" actually was or that I wasn't supposed to like "country music" as a wannabe hipster kid.

Tammy Wynette: Womanhood (1978)

Is George singing the bass backup on this? Various random online sources say yes,
but I've not found a definitive source to confirm.



He said hold on, Patricia
I only tried to kiss ya
She said okay and then said don't you dare
She seemed so badly shaken
He thought he was mistaken
But it sure looked like she bowed her head in prayer

I am a Christian, Lord
But I'm a woman too
If you are listening, Lord
Please show me what to do
I've tried hard to be what mama says is good
As I step into my womanhood

Shortly after midnight
She turned off the porch light
Walked into her bedroom all alone
She sat down and said well, Lord
Tonight I've been through hell, Lord
Wondering if I did right or wrong

I am a Christian, Lord
But I'm a woman too
If you are listening, Lord
Please show me what to do
I've tried hard to be what mama says is good
As I step into my womanhood...

Tammy Wynette: One of These Days (1976)

I won't have to chop no wood, I can be bad or I can be good
I can be any way that I feel one of these days
Won't have to answer to anyone, I'll get up with the morning sun
But I'll be gone like the birds that fly one of these days

I might be a woman that's dressed in black, be a hobo by the railroad track
Goin' any place that I want to go one of these days
Do anything that I want if I want to or if I don't
But I'll be gone like the wayward wind one of these days

One of these days it will soon be all over, cut and dried
And I won't have this urge to go all bottled up inside
One of these days I'll look back, and I'll say I left in time
'Cause somewhere for me, I know there's peace of mind

I might someday walk across this land and carry the Lord's Book in my hand
Goin' 'cross the country singing loud as I can one of these days
But I won't have trouble on my back, cutting like the Devil with a chopping axe
Got to shake it off of my back one of these days

One of these days it will soon be all over, cut and dried
And I won't have this urge to go all bottled up inside
One of these days I'll look back, and I'll say I left in time
'Cause somewhere for me, I know there's peace of mind
There's gotta be peace of mind for me one of these days...

George Jones does Little Richard (1995)

This is why I love George so much.
Weird and wild and freaking out (showing off) for his staid ex. (And Tammy ain't havin' it!)

Tammy Wynette & George Jones: We Go Together (1971)

"George and Tammy" series

I learned a few months ago that this bio about George Jones and Tammy Wynette was to be a 6-part Showtime series, but since I didn't have Showtime, I wasn't going to subscribe or anything, though I was, of course, curious... Just found out this weekend that my basic Spectrum cable was now offering the series "on demand" for free... Watched 4 episodes late last night, and 2 early this morning when I woke up...

All I can say now, without too much introspection at this point, is that I cried constantly throughout half of the 5th episode and through most of the last episode. I already knew much about these two via their music, and via reading many biographies. And I was expecting these actors to be cheesy and false... But Jessica Chastain, especially, seemed very much to channel the wounded Tammy Wynette. Michael Shannon looked nothing like George Jones---and he did not at all reflect George's fun-loving, manic side. He did convey Jones's innate simplicity and sincerity and darkness---but Shannon's eyes were dead the whole time. If you watch any video of George Jones, he's got a spark in his eyes that this actor did not have.

A flawed production, and I was cold to the first couple of episodes, but I was ultimately very much moved by the honestly dark portrayal of these two deeply flawed, but loving/obsessed, people.

My heart was heavy after watching this, and after crying on behalf of George & Tammy, and of myself, and of any two humans who ever tried to love but were unsuccessful.

Apartment Decorations