brykmantra.com

Yeah, yeah, it’s been almost a week since the Irish Festival and all I’ve posted is this video, and it’s just related to the venue and not to the festival itself, and I didn’t even post it here until now — I haven’t even put any of my festival photos on Flickr!

Hey, blogging isn’t what it used to be. Diminishing returns is the name of the game. I blog in short form these days, on Twitter, Facebook, and Blip.fm (as well as Flickr & YouTube & Tumblr and whatever else) and route it through here.

Anyway, here’s this, more to come:

You may recognize the music as Aaron Copland’s Hoedown, better known as the “Beef: It’s What’s For Dinner” music, and as the song covered by ELP in about 1971.

Anyway, enjoy, and check back.

… in which we Americans kick off the holiday season with the traditional Stuffing of the Face.

I hope you’ll pause a moment and feel lucky to have what you have, and realize that there were times in your life when you didn’t have it so good.

For instance: Earlier this week, I bought a pecan pie, as required by Texas law, and today, my wife’s customers at the beauty shop gave her THREE more pies — which makes us a four-pie family this holiday.

For which I am thankful.

And this year I have a job which just keeps getting better, and I’m also getting better at my music projects, and my wife and I just celebrated 13 years of marriage, and we have two beautiful and hilarious doggies, and we have an appreciation of life and the arts and entertainment.

And a lot of people don’t.

So look around you and like it.

Feels good, right?

Yes, I haven’t posted in a while - I’ve been working on lyrics for my music, taking piano lessons, giving computer lessons in return for piano lessions, working part-time, trimming tree branches away from the house, helping my wife cope with her evil step-siblings who are bullying her mom, DJing on Second Life, DJing on Blip.fm, posting things on Twitter and Facebook, and last Friday I cooked a huge pot of my signature beef vegetable soup, as is traditional on the first cold weekend that I have time.

Eh, who am I kidding — I could have posted but I was just dragging butt.

And besides: Look over to the left of the page: my Twitter & Blip.fm posts show up in the sidebar, as well as on Facebook, so it’s just as good as blogging, except you don’t get to listen to me blather on at length about things of no importance.

Like for instance.

Come to think of it, that makes it BETTER than blogging.

ANYWAY:

I have emerged from semi-exile to wish Happy Birthday to two of my readers (which means, to about half of the reading audience that I have left): Former co-worker Todn8r, and longtime blogging friend in Norway, RennyBA

Hope you two make the best of your respective days!

Okay, okay, I haven’t posted a real post since July 4th, but it’s one of my favorite days of the year - the day that the hellish Texas summer is given its eviction notice - so I’m going to try to get a wrap-up posted without murdering 30 minutes to do it:

I actually have been posting on my blog — if you’ll look in my sidebar you’ll see my Twitter feed, which also includes my Blip.fm posts, which are also routed through Facebook. Those things are mostly how I blog these days, so if you want to follow me on those, click each of the links in this paragraph.

But keep coming back here too, of course. Not all of my thoughts fit into 140 characters.

All summer they’ve been tearing up the street in front of our house, but it hasn’t been as bad as I’ve feared (like it was on another street 3 years ago) and the end may finally be in sight. Still, it’s been awfully blasted inconvenient.

I made Employee of the Month for August at my job! Not bad, considering I’m just part-time and I’ve only been there 8 months.

The astounding thing is that this is the first job I’ve had where at least some level of management doesn’t have their head up it. Seriously: first job EVER. I was at the point where I didn’t realize it was possible for management NOT to have their head up it.

At this one place I worked once upon a time, the person who kept getting Employee of the Month was the one who was occasionally known to sit on the assistant manager’s lap. I’m not saying there was any connection between those two facts — hey, maybe it was statistical clustering — but I do know that she was lazy, incompetent and tended to spend all day playing on the computer, so …

But I digress: My point is that I’m amazed and thrilled that my skills and my diligent efforts were actually noticed - and shocked that they were rewarded! Wow. A small sliver of Life actually makes sense.

And for the record, I didn’t have to sit on anybody’s lap.

Another reason I haven’t posted much is because I’ve tried to dedicate September to try to get to the next plateau in my music projects. I haven’t been totally successful so far, but I’ve brainstormed more lyrics in the past 30 days than in all the years since I was in a garage band in Lubbock.

And by “brainstormed”, I mean “come up with a lot of stupid crap that I would never want anybody to see or hear”, but if you don’t do that when you’re brainstorming, then you’re not doing it right.

But there is one musical advance I hope to get out of this month: Tomorrow I start my piano lessons! Yes, yes, old dog, new tricks, shut up. I’ve been piddling around on keyboards for some time now, but this will be my first exposure to actual educated training. I’ve found a music teacher that’s looking for some very basic computer lessons, so we’re doing a swap.

I’m still occasionally Djing in Second Life, including tomorrow night at Belar Inshan Social Club. Drop in at 8 Central if you’re in the Metaverse at the time!

Our big screen TV went out in early August, so we were without it for like 3 weeks, but fortunately it was still under extended warranty, and of course we DO have other TVs in the house.

But that was the BIG one.

Anyway it’s back now and we can breathe again.

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OK, that’s all for now, and I ended up slaughtering MORE than 30 minutes.

But now you’re fed. So follow me on the other things, and keep coming back here.

Celebrity deaths seem to cluster together; and today, it was Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. We’ve know for months that Farrah’s health was bad, but Michael Jackson’s heart attack was stunningly sudden.

I disagree with the title he gave himself, The King of Pop (although that act was the perfect embodiment of his almost total self-centeredness), but there’s no denying that his cultural impact was huge.

I was going to embed one of his videos here, but none of his videos on YouTube allow embedding (again, a reminder of how everything was always about HIM), and apparently his lawyers have managed to take down all “unofficial” postings of his videos.

This could be an indication that his biggest legacy is a portrait of a once-great artist who became totally wrapped up in himself until the very end.

Farrah, on the other hand, has always been known for her generosity, strength of character and willingness to work with others.

Here’s the news report of her passing, and a quick review of her life:

I’ve mentioned this guy before, so you know the drill by now: Up-and-coming country singer Jake Kellen, I went to high school with his mom and his uncle (who is also his producer), I went to college with the guy who financed his first album, blah blah blah.

Anyway, Jake has a new album coming out, and here’s the video for his first single!

No one thing worth posting, so here’s a bunch:

Thanks everybody who welcomed me back in my comments! I’ll really try to post more.

It’s June in Dallas, so of course it’s HOT AS HELL, plus it’s miserably humid.

Just worked six days in a row, finally get one day off tomorrow.

Last night I rented “He’s Just Not That Into You” for The Wife to watch while I was at work today, but I didn’t watch it.

I repeat, I DID NOT WATCH IT.

If you want to see more of my posts, friend me on Facebook, because I got my screen name now: facebook.com/brykmantra , of course.

And the only reason I’m active at all on Facebook and Twitter is because I got a widget to make my Twitter posts show up on Facebook. Two birds, one stone, no waiting.

But as it turns out, thanks to Facebook I’m in touch with old high school friends and acquaintances, most of them for the first time in MANY MANY years.

But not many relatives, for some reason, just my cousin’s daughter Sherilynn.

That reminds me, my wife said that my cousin (Sherilynn’s aunt) left me a message today, something about a bunch of other cousins getting together in the Dallas area. I guess I need to listen to the message …

Speaking of cousins, our old blogging pal Gigglechick has been having some intense cousin problems …

Anyway, here’s a cool video I discovered during the winter when my blog was busted. Put on your headphones, turn off the lights, and enjoy!

I just found this out last week: You might catch a glimpse of me in a new movie that’s coming out soon.

Maybe.

You may remember that almost a year ago, I wrote about being in the audience for what was supposedly the pilot episode of a talk show — but it was obvious to me and others there that it was all a big setup for some kind of joke.

At the time I wrote that I suspected that the actor playing the gay Austrian model (who was trying to adopt a black American baby) might have been Jamie Kennedy or Mike McDonald (from MadTV).

It turns out I was aiming too low.

I’m learning now that I was actually seeing Sacha Baron Cohen, best known for his characters of Borat and Ali G.

The sad part is that I had known since the Borat movie came out that Cohen’s next movie project was going to be about a gay Austrian model named Bruno.

But during the taping I just failed to put make the connection — I think that I blocked out the possibility that such a big movie project would actually travel to Dallas and intersect with my life.

But it did, and now there’s a small chance that my image (along with the images of 40 other people) might flicker across a movie screen near you.

I say a small chance because, as I mentioned last year, they weren’t happy with that taping session and did the whole thing again that night. And, judging by previews and advance screening reviews, the audience was “predominantly black”, and the audience I was in was only about 25% African American. (The producers were probably trying to evoke a stronger reaction, so in the second taping they most likely focused on the fact that the baby was black.)

Anyway, I actually hope I’m on the cutting room floor on this one, since I have the feeling that anyone in the audience at the time will be edited to look like a Maury Povich reject.

But I’m getting a kick out of the fact that I got to see Borat, almost up close, even if I didn’t find out for a full year.

I got some sad news yesterday: My mom’s next-door neighbor — a guy from my graduating class — was found dead in his house, apparently from a heart attack.

It was very sudden. He had had friends over earlier in the evening, and they had left thinking he was fine.

Just shows you can never tell.

This also marks the first death in our graduating class, which left high school 36 years ago this month. Other people in the class have passed on, but none of them actually *graduated* with us. Of course, there were only 44 people in our graduating class, but still, that’s a long time to have everybody still alive, especially since three of us have had cancer.

I was starting to think that OHS Class of ‘73 was invincible, but apparently I was wrong.

Now I’m bummed.

Three of my friends (1 former co-worker, 2 Internet friends, all female) are having birthdays these next three days:

First of all, today is the birthday of Kim Novak of Yay! Kim Blog. Kim was one of my first blogging friends when I first started over 6 years ago, and about the only one from that era that I still keep up with. Bonus points: She’s a fellow Texan! Go wish Kim a great birthday, and listen to some of her great music while you’re there!

Tomorrow (the 29th) is the birthday of one of my newest friends, Debra from Atlanta. I met her in Second Life last summer (where she goes by the name of Stephi), and she’s one of my best friends in that virtual world. Bonus points: We were born just 3 weeks apart!

And finally, on Thursday it’s the birthday of Vickie, a longtime reader and commenter on this here blog, and former co-worker at Chucky’s Madhouse, where she still endures to this day. Bonus points: She’s a fellow Texan too!

Happy Birthday to all my friends!