FORGIVENESS

They're often the butt of late night comedian's jokes.  Or they're looked on as some sort of   quaint type of cult.  But how many people would have been so forgiving?

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15708219.htm

First Day of Chemo

Today was the first day of chemo for my Dad. I just got off the phone with him and he sounded surpisingly good. He said he felt pretty good, just tired. I know that after just one session it's too early to get my hopes up, but it's hard not to. He said it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. He was bored more than anything, he has to sit around for four or five hours while they give him the chemo in doses. He goes again tommorrow. He plans on taking a book to read while he goes this time. He goes twice a month, twice in those two weeks.

I do have to admit that tonight was a phone call I was scared to make. I was afraid what I would hear. I'm glad at least it's starting out better than expected.

A Rollercoaster of A Week

This has been a very emotional week for me. At the start I learned my Dad's cancer is back. To make a long story short, he's dying. If we're lucky the chemo will help him, if not they're not sure how long he could have. So that's been a constant throughout the week. I'll go awhile without thinking about it, but than it hits me again and it will be all I can think about. The other night I was up most of the night because I couldn't get it off my mind.

I feel guilty when I'm enjoying myself and not thinking about it. I feel like I shouldn't be having fun. I know that's not true, but it's hard to find myself having a good time and than remember what he's going through.

I've talked about the importance of music many times before and this week proved to me how important it is. The week started with Shannon McNally and Charlie Sexton and than later Grayson Capps. It ended with Theresa Anderson and Will Hoge. Listening to their music was very helpful for me.

I don't want to turn this blog into a sob fest of how terrible I feel. I consider myself lucky. I may be losing my Dad and it is going to hurt, but I have to think of the years I have had him. I think about the last ten years of his life. He and my Mother got to retire and move out to the country. With the combination of their retirments they actually have been making more money than they ever had, plus they have a lot less expenses. They have had a good life and have been enjoying themselves. I want to focus on the good, because I know the bad will be be here soon enough.

Theresa Anderson has a song called "Fine Line" that she sang Saturday. It is written by Gary Hirstius.

"Life's hard
But at least you have it"

She turned these two lines into a celebration of life that day in the sun. Listening to her I couldn't help but think about my Dad and in the sadness was joy.

Will Hoge

Theresa Anderson

Saturday and Music

Saturday was one of those days that I was going to be everywhere. It started off with me and Larry going downtown. We spent a few hours wandering the French Quarter and checking out Tower Records. The sad news is that Tower has offically decided to shut its doors. This really sucks for New Orleans. Virgin Records which had a big two story store before the hurricane never came back afterwards and it doesn't look like they plan to. Now Tower will be gone. Tower was a good place for me to go and find some of the harder to find bands and performers I like. We still have Louisiana Music Factory, but it caters to mainly local artists, which is great, but is far from solving the problem.

We ended up eating at Jimmy Buffet's Margitaville. Neither of us had ate there before and we just wanted a quick hamburger. We both agreed that the hamburgers were very good there. Not at all what we expected.

After the Quarter we drove over to the Westbank and checked out the second day of the Gretna Heritage Festival. Mainly today we were here to see Theresa Anderson. Theresa is a great local artist that is originally from Sweden. She has lived in New Orleans for about the last fifteen years. Her last ep is amazing. I have kept in my car and literally listened to it like five or six times in row. If anyone has seen "A Love Song For Bobby Long" (which I mentioned in a post about Grayson Capps) she also has music in that movie. She plays the fiddle, guitar and banjo and sings like a dream.

She gave a great show. She doesn't write a lot of her own material, but she is very smart at picking the songs she covers. She did a cover of Gillian Welch's "I Wanna Play Rock n Roll" and even a Wilco song at the end.

After that we headed back down to the Quarter where we were supposed to meet Heather (see I do mention you in here!), Nicole and Nick. Tonight we were off to see Will Hoge at One Eyes Jacks.

After meeting them we went to Fiorellas to eat. Great meat loaf dinner. And I only had to hit Nick once with my croc.

The show was late tonight so we still had plenty of time. We walked Bourbon Street. I haven't been on Bourbon in a long time, before the hurricane. It was packed. In fact the entire Quarter seemed busy and even later that night when we were leaving at like two in the morning it was still jumping. It was good to see that things are getting back to normal. Big Daddys is still on Bourbon. Sorry, this has a special meaning for me, it was the first strip club I ever went to.

Finally we got back to see the show. As always Will Hoge puts on a great show. He had a few new numbers from an upcoming cd tonight. I really enjoyed "Southern Belle". A good show, but not one of his best. He seemed distracted during the show. Normally he likes to talk and banter with the crowd. Tonight he hardly said two words. One song went into the next. He didn't even introduce the band. Seemed like something was wrong.

After the show we all headed for home and I was ready for bed. It was a long day, but an extremely fun one.

More Pics of Gretna's Heritage Festival

More New Orleans' Pics

New Orleans Pictures

Gretna Heritage Festival

This weekend is the Gretna Heritage Festival. Gretna is on the Westbank, across the river from New Orleans. The Fest is tonight, Sat and Sunday. It's nowhere near as big as the Jazz Fest. They set up four stages and block off the streets and have vendors set up crafts and foods. There are rides and games for the kids. A fun time for all as they say. The acts are ususally local acts or former big names like Grand Funk Railroad. Not that some of these big names aren't worth seeing but I'm more interested in the local acts. Tonight is Irene Sage and Benny Grunch. Tommorrow is Theresa Anderson and Sunday is Rosie Ledet and Amanda Shaw. Tommorrow I'll only be able to see Theresa and than have to leave. Will Hoge is playing downtown tommorrow night. Will is an act not to be missed.

It was strange being in Gretna tonight. I used to live on the Westbank. I lived over there for at least ten years. I haven't been to Gretna in years. I still go to the Westbank because that is where my brother lives, but I haven't had a reason to go to Gretna in a long time. I have to say, it hasn't changed. It looked pretty much exactly like I remember.

Where we were watching the concerts was over the levee next to the river. The rest of the Fest was on the other side of the levee. We had a nice crowd, but not that big. So after Irene finished Larry and I walked over the levee to be greeted by a whole lot of people. The place was packed. I had no idea that there would be this many people there.

So I took some pictures of New Orleans from across the river that I'm going to try to post on here.

Irene Sage

Irene Sage started her show at 6:30 and played till 8:00. The day ended and a full moon came up as she sang her song "Full Moon Rising". She brought Coco Robochieux out for a few songs. They did a killer version of "I Shall Be Released", one of my all time favorite songs in the world. She was great and the entire show was great.

A Perfect Spot For A Concert

This is where the concerts were tonight. Isn't it a beautiful spot? The weather was wonderful too, the humidity was almost non existent. There was a breeze blowing in off the river and it was almost chilly.

Riverboat at Dusk

I think this picture came out pretty good.

Construction Up Ahead

I've been spending the morning trying to update some of the links and other stuff on this site. Some of my links have moved and I've failed to follow up with a new link, some have disappeared, others changed and my poor little old blog has not kept up with the changing times.

So I'm trying to get everything updated. Hopefully when you click on a link it will bring you directly to that site now, not an old site with a link to go to the new site. And I've had to drop a few sites or blogs. If your site hasn't updated in months and months I've decided that you probably aren't going to update anytime soon and I've dropped you. I've also dropped a few that I find myself not visiting anymore. Nothing against the site or blog, I just stopped visiting so I figured there was no reason to keep it in the sidebar.

I've also moved a few links around. Some there were under the comic book sites are now under the blogs I read site. Now none of this will be the least interesting to anyone but me, but I figured that if you were more of a blog about comic books and other things I would move you to the blog section. The comic book sites are more news and what's going on in the world of comic books, ususally done by more than just one person. See I told you none of this is very interesting, just some weird part of my brain that I have to accept.

I'm still working, I've got some new sites to add. But I'm off to get a new stero put in my car. I've been thinking about it for awhile now but the cost was pretty high. And what really chapped my hide (ha!) was that the installtion was going to be close to $200 alone. But I went and talked with the salesman last night and we figured a way to make the installtion about $50 and the whole thing ended up costing me a lot less than I had at first thought.

Back later with more new sites and just lots more fun!

I've drank the Kool-Aid

I've succumbed to the pressure, I just couldn't take it anymore. Yes, I know have a My Space page.

Actually the My Space page is more for my comic book writing and so-called career. I know I talk about it some on here, mention comic books now and than, but I wanted a place that I can network with other writers and artists and everyone keeps telling me My Space is the place to be for that. So I've created a page just for that. And like the nice person I am I've included a link to it on my sidebar.

Now don't worry, I'm not about to leave my blog here. This blog has become fairly important to me over the last year. From the friends I've met on here, to just being able to have a place to talk about whatever I want to. I've acutally had the My Space page for awhile now, so I can do both. In fact if anything I'm more tempted to ignore that page. I've really just started to try and get it going from more than just a small page with nothing on it to something that might actually help me with my writing career.

So go visit it, let me know what you think. I'll probably still bore you on this page with some comic book related stuff, but the majority of it will be over there.

One More Reason I Don't Like Nike

Last night I watched Friday Night Lights. (Which by the way got off to an excellent start.) What I want to talk about here is a commerical I saw on the show.

It was an ad for Nike. They showed a bunch of football players in school, in class and walking through the school and than playing football. While in class the players basically sat around doing nothing and could not answer the question the teacher posed to them. They ignored the teacher and than left class to walk through the school like heroes.

To me and feel free to correct me if I got it wrong it seemed to show that playing football was more important than trying to get an education. Just the type of message we need to be sending our young people. I'm not making an attack on football here, but how many high school players make it to college? How many college players make it to the pros? How many of these players that are considered the great saviour of the team get an decent education that can help them when they don't make the team as a pro. Than what do they do? It may be a cliche to say that a lot of these players are coasting through school and not learning anything, but it's a cliche for a reason. It's true.

And here's Nike helping to tell everyone it's ok to be a big bad football hero and not learn anything. Football is all that matters.

Shame On You Mr Springsteen

You've all seen it. The new cd by Madonna or Mariah Carey comes out, only to be followed within a few months by a new updated - BETTER!- version of the same cd. What it is, is the same cd with a couple of songs added. I always thought this was a shameful process to get the real fans of these singers to shell out more money to buy the same cd again.

Still it didn't bother me all that much. I'm not a fan of most of these singers. But yesterday Bruce Springsteen did the same thing. A few months ago he came out with The Seeger Sessions. I think it's one of his best pieces of work, even if it's cover songs. This is a great cd and even better live. I won't go on about his Jazz Fest appearance doing these songs, just to say it was perhaps the best concert I have ever seen. So yesterday Springsteen released The Seeger Sessions with five new songs added.

Now I'm a big enough fan of Springsteen that I want those five new songs. Especially an offical release of "How Can A Poor Man?" My gripe is with the format. Used to be when a performer wanted to put out four or five songs they would release it as ep. Now this was back in the old days when albums actually came out on vinyl and they were different sizes and speeds. An ep was normally a size between a 45 and an actual album itself. With cds all being the same size today, the physical difference between a 45, ep and album are kind of mote, but they still use the terms and still release the format. CD singles are out there. CD eps are out there....Theresa Anderson's latest release was such and I consider it her best work yet.

So why not put these five new songs on an ep? Charge seven or eight dollars for it. Instead they put it on the same cd that his fans have already purchased and most stores that I have seen are charging more than the normal rate for a cd because of the extra songs. Most new cds go on sale for ten dollars. The lowest I've seen this cd on sale for is 14 dollars, a lot of places are asking twenty dollars for it.

Yes, I bought it. I'm that big a Springsteen fan. And that's what he's counting on. His fans are just that...fanatic about his music. So he knows that most of them will but the cd...again.

When other performers do this it doesn't get me all the worked up. With Springsteen, rightly or wrongly, there is a sort of trust between the singer and his fans. We look at him as more than just some guy getting up there singing songs for a buck. And I guess that's why this act feels almost like a sense of betrayal. No, I'm not saying he shouldn't try to make as much money as he can. But not at the expense of his fans, and that's what this feels like he's doing.

I enjoy his new music on the cd, but someone tell me why he couldn't have released them as an ep?

Grayson Capps

Grayson Capps did a show at the Music Factory yesterday after Shannon and Charlie. Grayson is a local artist. Or he was a local artist before Katrina. After the hurricane he moved to Tennessee and it looks like he might stay there. If anyone saw the movie "A Love Song For Bobby Long" it was written by Grayson's dad and a lot of the music in there was his, including the title cut. This was the first time I've seen Grayson live and he puts on a good show. He had to cut it short because they had a concert in Mobile that night at seven.

Shannon and Charlie

Shannon McNalley and Charlie Sexton did an acoustic show at the Louisiana Music Factory yesterday. This is a record store that specalizes in local artists. They did a wonderful show. Everyone knows how I feel about Shannon, I think she is one of the best artists of the last few years. Hearing her music this way was an insight. Her and Charlie have an easy banter together. Having worked together on her last album it is evident they have developed a friendship. And Charlie ain't no slouch either.

And I learned that her new album will be out in Feb produced by the legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickeson.

Walking Around New Orleans