Towards A New Architecture

Andrea Grover & I went back to the Buffalo Bayou to do some location scouting. Andrea took this sweet photo of me and the Houston Skyline and we found the Houston Biodiesel plant. Check out their cool sign!

The second season on Big Love has finally started. For those of you who do not have HBO, you might want to come over and watch it! David Byrne is now the music producer of the show and thus far Season 2 has been as wonderful & odd as True Stories.

Last night Skip from A/V Geeks presented Daddy's Day at the Aurora Picture Show. The 16mm film program on fatherhood was culled from his archive of 19,000 education and industrial films. While the crowd loved it; heckling the actors and raucously laughing, my favorite part of the evening was bring home my own copy of To Skate.... an A/V Geeks compilation DVD that makes me long to be a teenager living in California during the late 1970's.

I love the narrator's burst of inspired poetry at the end of Magic Rolling Board, a celebratory film about skateboarding: "Magic Rolling Board, Magic Flying Wheels, Dance of Perpetual Motion"

Busy packing - here are two photos from Leila Grothe found on flickr

Today we solved the problem of how to get our mail while traveling.
Earth Class Mail is a service for the 21st Century that picks up my mail from a post office box, scans the outside of the envelope and puts the scan on-line. I then have the choice of clicking: 1) Open envelope and scan contents for me 2) Forward unopened mail to me somewhere along the way 3) Recycle or Shred 4) Archive.

My pretty green bike will soon have a lovely new rider. In honor of this I put together a little bike slideshow.

As many of you have heard- Johnny & I will be leaving Houston next month for a year on the road. We will be the Live Video accompaniment to a rock and roll World Tour. Between now and then we are to tricking out our video rig, honing our show and selling most of our possessions. We have also started playing around with some new GPS technology that will allow us to stay in touch with you. Since people seem curious where we are going, I have posted leg 1 & leg 2 (partial) of the tour here. We will travel to South America and Asia after the holidays.

Tue Jul 24-  San Diego, CA
Wed Jul 25- Phoenix, AZ
Fri Jul 27- Gibson Amphitheater- Los Angeles, CA
Sat Jul 28- Berkeley Community Theater- Berkeley, CA
Mon Jul 30- Salt Lake City, UT
Tue Jul 31- Paramount Theater- Denver, CO
Thu Aug 02- Nokia Theater- Dallas, TX
Fri Aug 03- Verizon Wireless- Houston, TX
Sat Aug 4- The Backyard, Austin, TX
Mon Aug 06- Kansas City, MO
Tue Aug 07- Milwaukee, WI
Thu Aug 09- Minneapolis, MN
Fri Aug 10- Chicago, IL
Sat Aug 11- Cleveland, OH
Mon Aug 13- State Theater- Detroit, MI
Tue Aug 14- Pier Six- Baltimore, MD
Thu Aug 16- Quebec City, QC
Fri Aug 17- Bell Center- Montreal, QUE
Sat Aug 18-Molson Amphitheater-Toronto, ON
Mon Aug 20- Univ of Buffalo Center for the Arts- Buffalo, NY
Tue Aug 21- Bank Of America Pavillion-Boston, MA
Wed Aug 22- Chevrolet Theater- Hartford, CT
Fri Aug 24, 2007- PNC Bank Arts- Holmdel, NJ
Sat Aug 25- Jones Beach-  Wantagh, NY
Sun Aug 26- Tower Theater- Philadelphia, PA

BREAK- Come visit with us!
Aug 27- Sept 4 New York City
Sept 5- Sept 16 Portland, Oregon

Wed Sept 26 - Ice Hall - Helsinki, Finland
Fri Sept 28- Hovet - Stockholm, Sweden
Sat Sept 29 - Spectrum - Oslo, Norway
Mon Oct 1- Capitol- Hanover, Germany
Tue Oct 2- Torwar Hall- Warsaw, Poland
Thurs Oct 4 - Lotto Arena - Antwerp, Belgium
Fri Oct 5th - Zenith - Paris, France
Sun Oct 7 - Philipshalle - Dusseldorf, Germany
Mon Oct 8 - Jahrhunderthalle Hoechst - Franfurt, Germany
Tue Oct 9 - Ahoy - Rotterdam, Netherlands
Thu Oct 11- Carling Glasgow Academy- Glasow, UK
Fri Oct 12- Carling Apollo- Manchester, UK
Sat Oct 13- Wembley Arena- London, UK
Sun Oct 21 - Tonhalle - Munich, Germany
Mon Oct 22 - Stadthalle - Eriagen, Germany
Tue Oct 23 - Messe B - Stuttgart, Germany
Thurs Oct 25- Land Rover Arena- Bologna, Italy
Fri Oct 26- Palaottomatica- Roma, Italy
Sat Oct 27- Palasport- Andria, Italy
Mon Oct 29- DatchForum- Milano, Italy
Tue Oct 30- Palasport- Padova, Italy
Wed Oct 31- Eulachhalle- Winterthur, SWI
Fri Nov 9- Newport Centre- Wales, UK
Sat Nov 10- Civic Hall- Wolverhampton, UK
Sun Nov 11- King George's Hall- Blackburn, UK

M.Ward is one of my favorite singer/songwriters. On Tuesday night he is playing in Houston, but the tickets are way too expensive because he is opening for Nora Jones & The Handsome Band. Oh well- I will have to live off the high of seeing him in Austin last fall.

I was first tipped off to M.Ward's music in 2002, when a friend sent me a copy of The End of Amnesia. He told me that he had come upon M.Ward playing on the platform of the Bedford Ave stop of the L train. If this story is true, then it is great to see that he has fully emerged and hit the big time.

Tonight Calvin Johnson performed at the Aurora Picture Show.
A reviewer for the Boston Underground did a great job describing what makes his show so special- "Basically, Calvin Johnson shows are for anyone who likes the things that make life worth living, whether it’s comedy, bass singing, pop, punk, dancing, love, sincerity, or hot guys over 40"

For everyone out there preparing for a long summer of touring with a Rock and Roll band, here is some Tour Yoga from YACHT!

Road Warrior One
Car Cobra

Johnny & I arrived in Houston last July and only one word can describe it- HOT! We spent a few weeks staying at the Modern B&B in the Montrose neighborhood. The B&B was just down the street from the West Alabama Ice House. It was so hot during those first few weeks that we were forced to wrap napkins around our sweating beer bottles and I came to understand why everyone used those goofy bottle cozies.

Since that first month, The West Alabama Ice House has been my favorite place to bring visiting artists for a taste of Texas. The writer Dick Hebdige and I sat under the roof of the shed on a rainy fall afternoon, while he was Scholar in Residence at the Mitchell Center. Matt Coolidge, director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation convened a meeting of curators around a long picnic tables last March. We had spent the day of exploring the Houston Ship Channel, as Matt prepares for CLUIs upcoming residency with the Mitchell Center. The CLUI team will be examining Houston's environs and connection to the petroleum industry as they complete their on-going portrait of the Gulf Coast region.

Ice Houses are the hub of community life in Texas, no matter what community or subculture you belong to. They act as the common backyard or front stoop of social life and are basically a bunch of picnic tables surrounding a shed (the ice house) that serves beer. What makes this Ice House so special is the amazing diversity of folks who go there. While this is a huge and diverse city, it's sprawling nature almost prevents different types of people from getting together and establishments tend to cater to heterogeneous clienteles. But at the West Alabama Ice House oil men in their overly starched button downs sit at tables beside tattooed bikers. Cowboys dance with their ladies to the Rockabilly band playing on the outdoor stage and over in the corner some Houston hip-hopers wearing gates are throwing darts. As the jangle of the triangle rings out folks line-up for hot dogs fresh of the grill. Both the grill-man and the band are "playing for tips & free beer."

I apologize for the fuzzy photos- they were taken with my mobile. But the band & the night were so magical that I could not resist snapping a few shots to share with you. I am going to miss Houston, but in case you are headed this way there is a pretty good travel article here.

Did you know that the slogan DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS was not coined by a redneck wielding a gun? The phrase was actually created for the Texas Department of Transportation as part of a statewide anti-littering campaign in the late 1980s. I found this cute Vermont postcard when we went snowboarding in January. Vermont wins as the smallest state with this biggest personality. Looking forward to being back there in September to do some leaf peeping. If you are up on your Vermont humor, you will love this 802 RAP