FUCKED BY FOOTBALL

A few facts for you:

The most dangerous place to drive is apparently coming through Houston from the east. No less than four near misses and one recent aftermath of stupefying motor vehicle idiocy plus one apocalyptic thunderstorm flood serenaded our drive in the space of about 35 minutes.

The boudin balls at the BOILING POINT restaurant somewhere among the pines off route 10 at the louisianexas border are delicious and gamy but the seafood gumbo is better. Than anything on this planet! And there were more and fatter and slower enormously fat people than ever I have before seen in one room.

Football is big in texas if you didn’t already know by now. Its enormity unleashed the above mentioned F word upon the king hen as well as upon a decent part of the indie and punk music scene in Austin. O don’t get me wrong; Austin was happening all over the place, all blocks of juke joints and restaurants and very good looking women and men of all interesting ilk cruising around.

And the capital building is impressive at night in its park all aglow in a halo of butter light and bats.

But back to the previous fact. Half the people in Austin were in that huge stadium watching their ‘horns' beat TCU in I think the home season opener. Austin was pretty and loud in its barbeque-scented air, all vibrant with people everywhere, but they weren’t here for the music at BEERLAND. Despite the club’s solid reputation, despite the recommended pick in the local weekly, despite that fact that our headlining acts were playing a benefit for some local important guy who was in the hospital without insurance, these people were here to cruise the streets to shout ‘how bout them horns!’, than go to clubs to see live music.

Various folks at the club explained how the all live music fans huddle in their houses when the football people fill the streets—for whatever reason you can make up on your own, I suppose. The place sort of reminded me of Portland more than the previous cities we’ve been to in many ways, but mostly in the way sometimes there seem to be so many clubs and bars with live music, you wonder how there are enough patrons for all the bands in all these places, all at the same time. Or maybe we just got fucked by football.

So we played a great set to about six people, slightly bitter that nobody showed up for us the first band, but things didn’t improve for the remaining four (!!!) bands, while the streets outside throbbed with humanity. And for the first time, we completely struck out in finding a local benefactor to put us up for the night. Local bands have come through for us everywhere we went up until Austin, but that streak is over. Oh they were friendly enough, but just not as generous as elsewhere. Are we starting to look that ugly?

Thinking about the end of another streak--how our surprising run of luck through the music-city segment of our trip ended on a down-note--we drove in silence out of the happy mayhem about 20 miles into the night towards a nondescript moto-lodge.

Fact: nothing soothes the soul of a king hen back to good spirits like a big plate of slow cooked meat. The SALT LICK in the town (?) of ‘driftwood’ was our Sunday salvation, preaching the gospel of barbeque like preaching only can be done in texas.

The further you drive west through texas, the longer it seems to take to get you through the state---especially in a meat-stupor. It’s a huge hell of a lot prettier than I expected, but it’s doing something janky to the minivan’s engine.

And the A/C just gave out with more than 500 miles of texas yet to get through…hmm.