I-10 on the way back East. It means that with our generally evening-oriented approach to travel, we’re finally not forced to stare the sun down into our destination. We’re listening to a collection of grinding R&B beats that Heather put together last night, and I’m grateful to NOT be listening to acoustic guitar…
And Brennan, thanks for your contribution to that too. I have a Megadeth mix of my own waiting to go into the CD player, and then maybe a BBC production of the “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” that I got from Will in Rhode Island.
So, I-10 hasn’t been friendly this morning, coagulating into slow moving clots of traffic here and there on the border between Texas and Louisiana, I’m worried about getting to the gig on time. We’ve got a couple of hundred miles to go yet, and we’ve got two shows to play
tonight.
Last night, we played another show passed onto us by Pete Simple – this one at Dean’s Discount Clothing’s neighbouring venue, Clark’s. We discovered that contrary to Sunday nights, Houston isn’t COMPLETELY dead on Tuesday nights, and we actually had a pretty decent collection of people listening pretty hard, and showing appreciation pretty hard as well. It was a good night, and I was proud to rock out in front of my brother. I DO have to figure out how to get my feedback buster out of my guitar a little faster, because I think it’d be cool to end a song with nasty, moaning feedback.
Hrm, and speaking of nasty moaning, on with Heather’s mix…
The clouds are piling up like 18-wheelers on ice. Nothing threatening, just layers of white on white on white like an incredibly light yet still fattening dessert. I’ve just finished my book, and the ones that Ray brought for me in New Orleans are hunkered in the trunk, safe from my perusal. Nothing to do but type to yoooou.
If I could plug MY computer in, I could write more personally, sending emails to people, but my machine blows the fuses on Heather’s car. Sigh. If it’s not one thing, it’s so much another.
And we move on to a typically robbish mix – from 50 Cent to the Mountain Goats and back again. The clouds have changed in character, and the trees are greener, crossing the bayous and swamps of Louisiana, it looks like we’ve narrowly missed some pretty heavy rain. Still running late but making good speed, the sunlight’s dying and raindrops are flying and I’m worried for our evening outdoor gig.
Limbs broken and shattered
We’re passing through the aftermath
Of a wandering armegeddon
Worthy of our Lord our Saviour
Whoever else had so much anger
As a Father scorned
By 4 thousand million children
Throwing stones
Lightning crashes from behind
Cutting the scene in half.
Rainbow cutting through it all. 18 wheelers hunting through the thunder
Rainbow cutting through it all.
The storm’s picking up just as a half-visible billboard declares “welcome to America’s wetland”. Water’s just coming down in sheets and I suddenly have a half-legitimate fear of hitting catfish on the highway. The storm really hits us as we’re crossing the Mississippi. Lightning picks at the bridge, as does the wind, and we almost hold our breath till we reach the shores near Baton Rouge.
Man, and the rain is just fearless in its kamikaze assault on the ground, and we’re pretty fearless as we continue our hurtle into New Orleans. Alligators could swim up to the car and worry the tires. There looks to be some light up ahead, but I figure that either means the rain has just passed through and our venue is going to be very, very wet. or it’s GOING to pass through which means our venue is going to get very, very wet.
Sigh – I wish we could’ve seen Houston in the rain.
On Monday, Heather and I walked down to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to see their Lord of the Rings exhibit. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take pictures, but it was VERY cool to round a corner and come face to face with a cave troll (well, face to belly), and then later stare up at Sauron himself (an evil lord who is not at all recognized by my spell check). Despite our excruciatingly detailed perusal of the extra features on every LotR DVD, it was still really, really cool to see the stuff up close – to see just how much detail went into every link of armour, and to play act some orcishness to green-screen backgrounds, having our movements translated into Uruk-hai fearsomeness.
I was disappointed at the lack of technical detail – the whole museum was sort of uneven on that front. Incredible density of detail on the formation and chemical structure of gems, and the programming that went into creating individual “autonomous agents” in the LotR movies or the feeding patterns of dinosaurs, but very light on information about so much other stuff. I could go into greater lengths about my angst on that, but –
But the butterfly house!
Ah, the ricepaper butterfly isn’t put off by my scratchy unshaven FILTHY face!
Now, originally we weren’t going to bother going in – Heather’s comment was that “well, we’ve BEEN to a butterfly house”, and though I’m not sure I completely agreed with that comment, enough money had been spent on museums for the day, and Houston in general had been a bit of a pit for our cash, and it wasn’t rolling back in, either.
But then, after completing our wanderings through the Dinosaur Hall, and the Gems and Minerals, the Lord of the Rings, the Kids Hall with its simple machines and optical tricks, and after we were done with their respective gift shops we stopped at a window to peer in at the HMNS Butterfly House. and we saw that it was great, and we saw that it was vast, and there were HUGE winged BEASTS sitting on the pane, gesturing to us.
I went back and bought two tickets.
At the moment, we’re passing over Louisiana swamp on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and I’m cursing the existence of guardrails. not that I’d feel completely comfortable riding so
close to the brackish waters without some form of barrier, but I’d kill to be getting good photographs of the local scenery. I miss my Volkswagon terribly somedays. sometimes because I miss the bed, other times because I miss the space and feeling of HOME. Right now it’s because it would get me p and over these guardrails so that I could capture the endless plains of green and grey, the moving mountains of grey and white shifting above them, and the omnipresent spires of seemingly dead trees, trunks with spare branches splintered and hollowed and grey and dangling with strands of moss.
Fingers of lightning are worrying our chosen horizon, and things don’t look promising.
And back to the butterflies.
After the air-conditioned interior of the Museum, entering the Butterfly House hits you with a fist of head and humidity. unwelcome, but probably still not as fierce as actually stepping outside – and we are cycled through a tunnel that opens out almost directly underneath a waterfall glimpsed through hanging moss and vines and illuminating by a blinding shaft of sunlight. It’s a complete assault on the senses and it’s beautiful.
I don’t think that one can get sick of visiting these butterfly utopias – so much effort has gone into creating multi-tiered, beautifully layered environments, so that within a few hundred square feet of garden greenhouse you can wander for hours watching bejeweled, flitting forms.
It was a pretty perfect day.
Tuesday we even got to go with George and Del to go see Star Wars III on IMAX, which was pretty bad-ass, though it merely amplified my main complaint, which was that the only place a lightsaber seemed to throw light was onto the faces of computer-generated characters. That’s what I’m talking about when I’m saying uneven attention to detail… sheesh…
