Weekend Update

Tandy at the Lakeside Lounge. With a firm grip on my camera, and my bag safely hidden under a pile of coats, I went to the Lakeside late Friday night to hear Mike Ferrio with his band Tandy and special guest Matt Mays. And it was weird, mostly because I've seen Mike do primarily solo shows for the last 12 months.



So hearing multiple guitars and harmony? It was like hearing a cover band do your favorite song.

Which is not to say it wasn't a great show. Just one in which I had to stop weighing the solo versions of the set against what I was hearing. Once I did that? Joy. Especially Matt's slide guitar.

It was also Mike's birthday. Happy birthday, Mike.



If this is Texas, you can have it. The choice was, see Dale Watson at the Rodeo Bar Saturday at 11 PM, or see him at 8 PM Sunday at Hill Country Bar BQ. My friend DJ and I opted for Sunday at 8. Big mistake. We met at 7, to be told that the downstairs music room wouldn't be open till 8. Once the doors opened down there, we would be seated for the show. Fair enough. We waited 15 minutes for an upstairs table, ate our dinner, and checked procedure with our waitress. "Sure, you can just take your drinks and food down when they open up," she said. So we did, and parked ourselves at the end of an unreserved table, only to be told that (a) the table was reserved, (b) if we wanted to sit close to the stage we would have had to reserve a table before we came down, and (c) the only unreserved seats at this point were at the bar, with a big honking pillar in the way, or at the back of the room. "I'm trying to do the best I can," said one of their floor managers. "If this is your [expletive deleted] best, then you're giving [expleteive deleted] Texas a [really foul expeletive deleted] bad name," I thought, and after trading an "I am totally effing annoyed" look with DJ, we left. Which is why I ended up in the Park Bar watching the Oscars. And why I will always--keep me honest here--always--choose the Rodeo Bar even if the show starts at 1 AM.



Oscar drinks my milkshake. Saturday night I got this e-mail from an ex-girlfriend who works at Price Waterhouse:

Guru:*

I forwarded your Oscar Predictions blog to some of the partners, and the Stonecutters among them are not happy. You predicted every category correctly for all the right reasons, so they have decided to Lyndon Johnson your Washington Post ass**. They’ve tweaked the numbers so that none of your acting picks are winning, and Best Director and Best Film go to someone else. But they were really amused at your rationale for Best Foreign Film, so The Counterfeiters is still getting the Oscar.

Thanks a lot; you just ruined me on the office pool.

Meroe

*An old nickname from 4 jobs ago.

**Back in the 60’s, when the Washington Post reported in advance that Lyndon Johnson would be enforcing the mandatory retire-at-70 law and retiring J Edgar Hoover from the post of FBI Director, Johnson was so pissed off that he made Hoover FBI Director for life, reportedly saying: “That’ll show those bastards.”

Random Oscar Thoughts.

Wow--there are so many red dresses it looks like a Chinese wedding.

Tilda Swinton is wearing a bedsheet and looks like Ziggy Stardust. The question is: is it her husband’s bedsheet or her boy toy’s bedsheet?

Unless I missed it, Marion Cotillard never mentioned Edith Piaf in her acceptance speech. This is the equivalent of no one mentioning the novelist Winston Groom, who wrote Forrest Gump, the year Gump took everything. Typical Hollywood.

Renee Zellwegger has no eyes.

There were so many clip segments it felt like a VH-1 Special.

Jessica Alba is not a happy person.

John Stewart getting Marketa Irglova back onstage to deliver her thank-you speech was the classiest thing I've seen in years. And in case you missed it, this is what she said:

This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this, it’s just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are.

E-mail conversation with Ava:

MATTHEW: Foreigners! Four foreigners have won American acting awards! What's this country's premier pat-ourselves-on-the-back award ceremony coming to?

AVA: Its senses.