Blue Monday

Ron Silver 1946-2009

On a sad note I would like to show my regret for the loss of Ron Silver, for those of you who don't have my pathological love of the West Wing, he was a great actor who took on the role of Bruno Gianelli the campaign manager. His Machiavellian character made his West Wing appearances memorable. Fox ran a piece on him today about his outspoken political views, a life long liberal who believed in President Bush despite losing friends. Goodbye Ron and thank you.

Today was another day with not much in the way of doing big music stuff. Just a day wandering around with no aim in life, this is what a vacations supposed to be about I guess but I am eager to get things done. So I took pictures instead, a lot more than yesterday. These will be followed up shortly, but I went down to the heart of old Austin on South Lamar to catch up with a friend Steve at Austin guitars. He was telling me how business was down which is a story all across town. There is a huge guitar show on Saturday which he is not attending he believes he will be busy enough through South by anyway. This is big business for everyone in town and the investment in Austin is huge, 136 million last year and rumours of upwards of a billion dollars this year. This blog though is about the heart of Austin and the things that make it move. There are two main published newspapers in Austin; The Austin American Statesman and the Austin Chronicle. The Chronicle is a weekly and is seen as the liberal paper that keeps an eye on city hall. The Statesman is a traditional daily that is seen more as the established press, as the years go by it makes things more difficult for the Chronicle to pitch itself as the young start up when everyone in town is advertising in it but for liberal commentary about what's happening in Texas its a good read and also has some odd things to say at times in its job to Keep Austin Weird. Compare yourself at Austin Chronicle and Austin American Statesman
South Lamar feels like the heart and soul of the city, its quiet underdeveloped with lots of independent stores and very few chains the occasional strip mall offers alternative medicine, music, clothing, and movie theatres. A strange selection of stores very individual to South Austin, it is a wonderful thing to just hang out down there and watch the world go bye.



I am having a rest up for the rest of the day so have a good night and the pics will be posted in a minute, have a nice day.