May 24, 2003

tragedy


But it's just a pet.

I had been waiting all week for the arrival of 'my' baby. She was born - I was highly considering naming her a biblical name cause she's my little power of prayer/miracle baby, Sarah was a strong consideration. She's a honey brown color and is 'nutty' hence I think she's going to be called peanut brittle - we'll see.

Ok, so that was the good news. The bad news is lost the mother. The baby was unusually big and literally 'ripped her open', they were going to do surgery by no luck she died on the operating table. I don't know any more details I'm just going to live with the fact that the baby was too big, but is alive.

But if left me in a bad situation - I now can't go to HD3 and meet people! I'm depressed.

The baby is being bottle fed, a lot. I'm working with her at another farm to hopefully get things straight for her to join our herd in Atwater.

Oh well, it's the start of summer it'll get better - I hope.

In order to be worthwhile a song has to have four things:

DRINKIN'! CHEATIN'! KILLIN'! AND HELL!

Let me get straight to the point and say that this gig was the best I have seen this year.

Where else could you see a head banging mandolin player and have the audience cheer loudest for the instrumental songs even when there were also AC/DC songs on the bill.

I know most people would have come to see the band play Acca Dacca covers but they played a whole lot more than that and also had some of the best comments between songs I have seen apart from GIT (who really play songs between chatting).

The Gershwin Room at the Espy was the most packed I have ever seen it (it took me 10 minutes to get out to go to the dunny) and I heard one comment "It's just like the old days."

It also seemed to be a somewhat older crowd to those who usually come to see bands at the Espy, which is not a bad thing as some youngsters aren't into so-called country music.

Probably the only Australian band I could compare them to are The Prayerbabies as they have a similar sort of idea (Hillbilly versions of popular songs), but a totally different execution.

Some of the stand out comments from the lead singer:
Relating to the whirlwind promotional tour of Australia -
"For us it feels like that a woman we've had our eye on for fifteen years, comes up to us in the bathroom, unzips our fly and licks our dick twice, puts it back in our pants and says 'see you in six months'"

about the audience:
"It's been a good night, but it would be better if yall be getting nekkid in a pile!"

He also did the usual 'this is our favourite city' stuff and a used the platypus to demonstrate why you shouldn't pigeonhole music in general. The mandolin player got really emotional after the encore and yelled that he wasn't going back to the US.

It was an excellent night and I would recommend seeing them when they come around your way. Now I have to pick up their CD and wait for the other three to come out in Australia.

I almost forgot, I also saw Shonkytonk and the Cliffy Davis Goodtime Band playing support. Shonkytonk where great as always but I didn't really think much of the Cliffy's (I went downstairs to see if Gazoonga Attack where still playing in the public bar during their set.)

This is a big weekend for me for going to gigs as I saw the Prayerbabies last night, Hayseed Dixie and two other bands tonight and have two others to see tomorrow - Red Hot Poker Dots and GIT.

I'm kind of out of the loop these days: is saying, "I am interested in the complexities of socially constructed gender roles," code for "I am gay and a grad student"?

Today is “Best Friends’ Day”. This is an idea Xie thought up months ago and has been planned for and delayed and rescheduled multiple times but as I type ten 15/16 year olds sit eating a lovely, somewhat formal 5 course dinner that they prepared themselves.

Ground rules (from the kids):

• This is a dress up occasion
• Share the work

          4 of them cooked the pasta primavera last night
  	2 of them made the pumpkin soup at another house last night
  	1 of them made the plantain egg rolls (a desert item?)
  	1 made cookies
  	1 made and brought salad
  	several brought soda
  	1 brought garlic bread
  	1 made chocolate cloud cake
  		

• From the mom who lives here:
• Yes, there will be photos.
• Encourage them to plan ahead. It takes a lot of work to pull off a sit down dinner for 10.
• Some limited adult help is needed to pull this off. The teens really did the work but still required an adult to drive, shop, supervise cooking, make sure all the food is hot at the same time and serve at mealtime. (Once every one got here the excitement level was too high to expect any further productive “work” from the kids besides I don’t mind, I munched yummy food as I played waitress and short order cook)
• Adult take over is not good. So what if the soup bowls are paper and the tablecloths don’t match. They did a lovely job and they own this party.

Dinner’s about over, they have exchanged quirky gifts and taken photos. Soon the music and DVDs will break out and the usual family room pile of fully stuffed kittens will ensue.