Yesterday, on the spur of the moment, Cookoff and I decided to run over to the Crawfish Festival in Old Town Spring to meet a few friends after she got off work. Beer, live music, crawfish, vendors selling all manner of arts and crafts, what's not to like?

This entailed first stopping at the local Wal-Mart to buy suitable clothes, as she was in her uniform, and I had been running around all day in the heat and my apparel needed to be fumigated.

A quick trip to the rest rooms at the store for a quick washcloth defunkify and change, and I was suitably attired, and less likely to slay the elderly, the young, and the otherwise infirm with my manly odors.

The Festival was a blast, as there were three stages with live acts. We watched Luther and the Healers, a local blues act, Duck Soup, a venerable oldies band out of Austin, and a zydeco band who's name escapes me.

By far, the highlight of the evening was seeing Bleu Edmondson, a young country act. I'd never had a chance to see him before. Bleu played a show of his original music, peppered with traditional hard-core redneck country (think Waylon, Coe, and Merle, folks) and a smattering of Southern Rock (Allman Bros., Skynrd).

The crowd was young, enthusiastic, and packed in the front of the stage, as the band fed off their energy and put it all out for them. Some acts are much better in the studio than in a live setting, while others (George Thorogood and The Killer come immediately to mind) can only be appreciated in person. Bleu and his band belong in that latter category. They didn't leave much on the stage

It was refreshing to see an act so unapologetically retro. In between songs, Bleu carried on a running conversation with the crowd, as he and the band slammed brews and preached the gospel of traditional country music. I had to laugh when Bleu stated that he really wanted to Make It Big, so he could meet Tim McGraw and whomp him upside the haid for being such a "CheeseAss." He must have been referring to the recent popularity of syrupy love songs that are all the rage these days in Nashville recording studios. If so, I can heartily concur.

I had happened to have the AGFA along, so I snapped a few pics from down in front. Bleu's bassist, a lean skrawnky dude, was a particularly fun subject to shoot, as he played his instument with boodles of body english, twisting and jerking around the stage with every plunk on his five-string.

As I was shooting, a few of his fans asked if I would email them a pic or three, and I promised I would put them up on the web. Folks, you can find more pics of the band here.

Unfortunately, our evening ended a bit early, as CG got kicked in the Achilles tendon while she was dancing, and was in a good bit of pain. She couldn't walk, and had to be taken to the car in a golf cart, after being examined by the medics on duty at the festival, and having it wrapped and iced. As it turns out, it was a deep bruise, and she'll be OK. Kudos to the EMT's.

Texas has recently given rise to a new wave of country acts, as performers like Pat Green, Cory Morrow, and Roger Creager have grabbed market share and airplay from the more established names of Nashville. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Bleu Edmondson as the next young performer to join this procession. Catch him now, while the tickets are cheaper and the stage closer than at the Houston Rodeo. He'll be there. You heard it here first.

Related Links:
www.bleuedmondson.com www.texascrawfishfestival.com More Bleu Edmondson Pics

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."

• Mark Twain -

I would offer this: to the extent that Xianity is a moral code that gives practical proper guidance to living life in this world, then for me it has some validity, even though I happen to believe that near identical moral codes can be followed without reference to what to me is a superstitious belief in some omnipotent deity that takes a personal interest in our lives.

To the extent that Xianity emphasises the delay of justice or personal happiness until the afterlife, the patient bearing of fardels, tolerance of the law's delay, or the oppressor's wrong, then it becomes what it has been for most of it's existence, a tool of the powerful to control the ignorant masses.

One thing I think Xianity leaves unexamined, and can be seriously called to account for, is the effect it has on the mental health of its followers.

Poor self-esteem is the pandemic underlying cause of most mental problems. We have drummed into us the following axioms:

First: that you are, flawed, unworthy, intrinsically rotten to the core of your soul.

Second: that you are unable to redeem your broken nature through any amount of worthy actions, personal virtue and/or willpower.

Third: that your only hope of redemption is through the agency of a supernatural being.

We are taught this from the earliest days of childhood, by the powerful authority figures that your childish self looks upon as having near god-like powers themselves.

We are taught this before we've developed even the ability to question the validity of the beliefs being injected into your head by those figures,

I cannot help but believe that is the main contributor, the Primum Mobile, as it were, to this our lamentable cultural condition.

One need look no further than the words of the the legendary preacher of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, as a classic example of this type of conditioning... "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours." While preaching this doctrine with this degree of fire and brimstone scare tactics is currently out of mainstream Xian fashion, it is still not unknown, and there is still no basic contradiction with the foundation of Xian theology, that we are flawed, and doomed to eternal damnation without the intervention of Jesus.

Xianity, of course, is not the only religion to make sure and begin the process of assimilation into the faith in those delicate formative years. In fact, nearly all of them do. "As the twig is bent..."

If you are of the faith, please don't take this as a personal affront, but it is my belief that any attempt to inculcate faith into minds younger than the mid to late teens is unfair to the point of being nothing more than a widely accepted form of abuse.

Of course, if you are of the opinion that the faith in question is the One True Path, then you would be remiss in not taking every advantage in indoctrinating the young, wouldn't you? That's how the Muslims manage to keep a supply of suicide bombers in the pipeline, by effective training starting in the cradle. I'm not implying a moral equivalence here, as the ends do validate the means at times, (or not), but the parallels do exist.

I will offer one final story.

While I served in the Marine Corps, I served with two brothers, the Tunez brothers. They were born in Cuba. Their father, a dentist, managed to smuggle his family out when they were young, sometime in the mid sixties.

But not before they had attended the first few grades of school under Castro's regime. I have this story from them.

When recess time came around the teachers would tell the children to lay their heads on the table and close their eyes. Then they were instructed to pray to Jesus to bring them some ice cream for a treat.

Of course, nothing happened.

Then they were told to pray to Fidel Castro and the Communist Party for some ice cream. As they did so, the teacher and some assistants would pass around little portions of ice cream. The kids would open their eyes to the treats.

Outrageously offensive, is it not? But I ask you, how different is that in effect, if not technique, to what most people do to their children by subjecting them to religious instruction at an early age, always, of course, presented to them as if this particular sect's doctrine is the One True Way?

... Link (1 comment) ... Comment

Went for a walk yesterday along the levee in the late evening. After a mile or so, I put my foot down on a brown stick.

Except it was a snake. I hopped away in a heartbeat as it whipped at me with it's head but missed, then slithered off. I couldn't tell with a quick glance in the gloom whether it had the delta-shaped head of a pit viper, which would have made it a copperhead or a water mocassin, or if it was just one of the several dark and onery water snakes that are found around here.

He was evidently enjoying the residual heat of the road that runs along the top of the levee on this coolish night, before I so rudely disturbed him.

So, today I've been earwormed all day, with the old silly Tom T. Hall song "Sneaky Snake" running endlessly through my head. It's horrible. "I don't like old Sneaky Snake, He laughs too much you see, When he goes crawling through the grass, It tickles his underneath." He was lucky I was in a good mood. I'm a snake-eater, you know. :-)

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment