Houston – Page 34 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Merry Ho Ho Ho!

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You gotta give Dune TX credit, they made the Big Top very festive during their 6th Annual dunetXMAS Freakout show on Saturday night.

At the homestead Cynthia is baking cookies and the house is smelling like the holidays.
We had Jim over for dinner and dominoes on Sunday and gave him an early xmas gift.

It’s a Tracker IV metal detector. Jim has been enjoying finding coins lately.
Just pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters here and there. Figured he could use the assistance.
I got one for me, too.
Now we’re going to be those old guys you see walking down the beach our out at the park in the cold, scanning for treasure.

We’re gonna be rich I tells ya! Rich beyond our wildest dreams!

Schmoozing

Hangin’ with celebrities…

Tonight I raced to hang out with THE amazing duo of Dekan and Carrie Ringwald…

…oh, and some guy named Uchena and his wife, Joyce.

The end of an era

Kaveh Kanes is closed.

This is a sadness.

Technology Bytes has hosted our monthly geek gathering there since March of 2002. It was the scene of our 10th anniversary party featuring Drop Trio. It was the only place downtown to grab a good cup of coffee and have some relaxing wi-fi. The space was just COOL!

GAH!!!!

There’s a rumor that two long term employees may re-open it. One can only hope.

In the meantime we need an alternate location for the January geek gathering.
Maybe Cafe Artiste.

Metroblogging

I was invited (via Katie) to participate in the Houston arm of the Metroblogging project.

What is Metroblogging?

With almost 40 active sites, Metroblogging is the largest and fastest growing network of city-specific blogs on the Web. From San Francisco to Bangkok, from Karachi to Toronto, Metblogs are a hyper-local look at what’s going on in the city. Our hand-picked core of regional bloggers give each site a new perspective on daily life; less calendar listings, more friendly advice. With Metblogs, you can read about life and times in your neighborhood, your favorite places to visit, places where you’ve never been, or get a feel for them all with the daily “best of” blog on the hub at metroblogging.com.

This from Wikipedia:

Metroblogging is an online local media project founded and owned by Sean Bonner and Jason DeFillippo. Started in Los Angeles in November 2003, the project currently includes 33 city-specific blogs around the world making it the largest location based network. Contributors include Xeni Jardin and Wil Wheaton (Los Angeles), Johannes Grenzfurthner (Vienna), and Joi Ito (Tokyo).

The Metroblogging network was recently voted into Forbes Magazine’s Best of the Web and has been quoted in and written about by various media – such as USA Today and Tagesschau. Parts of Metroblogging are also in Technorati’s “Popular blogs” list (the Top 100), which is measured by link popularity among the blogosphere.

Basically, Katie is my editor. I have not yet been granted an account on the site so I send my Houston specific posts to her for inclusion at Houston Metblogs. With all of my other projects/responsibilities I can’t dedicate too much time to it but it’s nice to be invited.

There are some good writers there and based on my log files the site gets a fair amount of traffic so it’s only going to add awareness to my other projects, plus it’s a chance to extend my writing even further.

Perhaps as time allows I will be able to contribute more to the project.

This is not a restaurant review

I’ve been in Houston most of my life and without disclosing too much we’ll just say that’s a long time.
This city has grown and changed over the years and looks nothing like it did even a few short years ago.

Houston landmarks are disappearing or changing with greater and greater frequency. The Houston Coliseum where the Beatles played is gone. The Houston Summit where I saw some of the greatest rock concerts of all time slowly changed to become the Compaq Center and is now the home of Lakewood Church. The eighth wonder of the world, The Astrodome, has gone from a magnificent baseball and football stadium to a convienent and expendable evacuation center for those seeking refuge from the devastating effects of hurrican Katrina. KLOL, Houston’s premier rock and roll radio station, is now a Spanish station playing Reggaeton, Spanish hip hop and pop hits (bleh!). Even Astroworld is slated to close it’s doors before the end of this year.

But some things never seem to change, thank goodness.

It’s been a long time since I have eaten at Star Pizza and when I was invited by my colleague Dwight Silverman to meet up for dinner to discuss the future of Technology Bytes with his friend Chris Hearne, the founding publisher of the Houston Press it seemed a most logical choice.

Founded 30 years ago by Hank and Marilyn Zwirek, The original Star Pizza at 2111 Norfolk has provided Houston with it’s most well known outlet for procuring a genuine Chicago style pizza in our fair city. It has also been a place one could go to get a tasty Italian meal and, more importantly, it has been an inner-city gathering place with easy access to the heart of Houston for all these years. It’s super casual with plenty of dining space inside and out. The atmosphere (combined with delicious pizza and adult beverages) is very conducive to a most animated and thoughtful conversation. Just about anyone you talk to knows about Star Pizza.

I don’t know if we accomplished much last night but I am sure glad I went. It’s comforting just knowing that they’re there and you can walk in on a Thursday night and get some good food served by a friendly and attentive staff of pizza proffessionals.

Musical time travel

Seeing Beetle at the Big Top last night had the look and feel of what it might have been like to see The Beatles at the Cavern in Liverpool back in the day.

The Knitters put on a fine show at The Continental Club which also hearkened to a bygone musical era.

Gosh, I recall listening to X way back in the early 80’s as I was sowing the seeds of my musical dissidence.