OK, well, I feel really silly making a post about the Jesus Lizard. Of all the bands that I would consider my favorites — Unwound, Superchunk, Jawbreaker, Melvins, Gang of Four, Tar, Unsane, Jawbox, Mission of Burma — I would generally not include JL in that list. But to tell the truth that would probably be a kneejerk reaction to their popularity. Back in The Day, in my world, the Jesus Lizard was just about the most obvious band for everyone in indie rock to like (or claim to like). As in, even frat boys eventually knew about them ’cause they could come to the shows for the mosh pit, which of course meant that my kind would turn up our collective noses at them.
This week JL started a reunion tour (another thing I used to turn my nose up at) and are playing in Atlanta tonight. I bought my ticket as soon as I heard about this, two months ago, and have been practically giddy with excitement ever since.
Touch and Go has rereleased all four of their JL albums (Head, Goat, Liar and Down), remastered and with new liner notes, and they are as stellar as the day my scrawny college ass first heard them. Even better with the liner notes and having now actually read all the lyrics. (that David Yow is not right in the head)
Damn, this is embarrassing! Go on …
JL were simply the kings of the indie rock world in the early 90’s; only Fugazi would be comparable in my mind. A whole generation of dudes will hear the words “I don’t know, he’s a nice guy, I like him just fine” and know that what must follow is “but he’s a mouthbreather” and then commence convulsing to some sound that only they can hear.
The Pure EP debut lacked McNeilly, but produced the perennial live crowd pleasers “Blockbuster” and “Bloody Mary”. With the Head LP they burst out of the gate as a full fledged four piece, an entire album at full gallop. The locomotive bass riff for the opening track, “One Evening”, has popped into my head at least once a week for literally two decades now.
Goat followed a year later and is the album that contains most of the huge “hits”. Opening with the sinewy stomp of “Then Comes Dudley” (and, live, the requisite Yow moves on that one) , it cruises through the triple threat of “Nub”, “Seasick” (I can swim! I can swim!) and “Monkey Trick” on the the way to becoming one of most iconic albums of the decade. Picking favorite songs as about as pointless as picking favorite bands, but “Nub” may very well be the best JL song for me, starting with the Duane slide opener, waltzing through typically creepy Yow lyrics and pounded flat by Sims and McNeilly. The first video in the Youtube search linked above is a proper video for the song — who knew that JL did videos?!
There were albums after that, but I guess I lost interest. Frankly I had perfection in my hands already with Pure, Head and Goat. Sorry guys.
JL are the most pure expression of rock power and abandon that has ever graced a stage. I remember listening to the LPs over and over, but all that was just an appetizer for seeing them live. Checking my old show list just now … I saw them 7 times in 4 years, meaning I never missed them whenever they passed through town. Duane Denison alternating his iconic Travis Bean (with the aluminum T headstock) between pastoral, chiming runs and stinging, roaring chords, all with that characteristic twang. David Wm. Sims’ fearless but workmanlike attack of his bass, doing his spasmatic guitar neck yanking moves. Mac McNeily’s from Atlanta so we took pride in seeing our hometown boy make good by punding out rhythm for the most furiously rocking band ever. As Joe Lally says in the new Head liner notes:
The Jesus Lizard is my idea of a perfect band. A classic drum-bass-guitar trio playing a music aggressive enough to drive their front man to physical feats that alter reality and leave witnesses wondering weeks later what exactly happened.
And David Yow is still getting pushed to that limit. I traveled to Chicago in Sept 2006 partially because Yow’s and Sim’s earlier band, Scratch Acid, was reforming for the Touch and Go festival there. Yow and Sims did their thing there as well as ever that night and I’m looking forward to it tonight. I’m going to be in pain afterwards though, that’s for sure.
Hey look, Mac McNeilly wearing a WREK T-shirt!
UPDATE: Services were rendered to my great satisfaction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1mHjzxfo8
I’ll keep this relatively short for now. This weekend we are hosting a loooong planned event at our house: the full moon will be rising over the trees across the street, and I’ll have all three of my telescopes set up for anyone to look through. We did this once in 1997 or so, with 
We invited a gazillion people, and if you’re reading this chances are you got the invite, but if not then just come on down. If you don’t know where we live, or don’t know how to contact me, or don’t even know me, well, sorry!
The other picture is from neighbor Tim Ganey and shows of some of us standing around my old homebrew telescope out in the street, after I moved it out there later in the evening to look at Jupiter. Sadly there are no pictures of the “real” telescopes set up on the front porch. Who knows, maybe we’ll do this again someday soon!
We’ve got a brand new front porch and the Halloween weekend event will be christening it for us. 
To the left is a picture of what it looks like now, post rebuild, and to the right is what it looked like before. Probably doesn’t seem like much of a difference to you, but pretty much everything underfoot was completely rotten or otherwise unnavigable, and I hated the old columns. All that has been replaced and we can now have people tramping across our porch without us worrying about them falling through into the basement! Or falling off the edge, because there was no railing before either. And the steps don’t strike fear in the hearts of elderly anymore. And so on.
First up was the demolition and rebuild of the front steps. The old lower section had been poured in place, but over time part of it had settled, to the point where the amount of “rise” for each tread was basically a random number between 6 and 10 inches. The old upper section was a strange prefab design, made of formed concrete piece fitted together. 
The steps were actually evenly spaced, but the whole thing basically felt loose, and when you stepped on it the sections would clatter a bit, making a disconcerting hollow rattle. Altogether, this made for a worrisome adventure for pretty much any visitor.
When a construction project gets going, it’s really impressive how fast it can move along. The steps were demolished in a couple hours one day, and then one day later that week 
the wooden form for the new steps was built, and on the third day there was a 4 hour period when the concrete was poured in and the steps finished off. (yes, the concrete subcontractor lead guy is in a wheelchair)
Next up were the columns. We wanted to keep the old brick columns but the tops needed to come up in height a bit. It’s hard to match brick and mortar between old and new brick, so the old columns were torn down and rebuilt. In the meantime, the roof overhead was held up by a couple 2×4’s, anchored onto a floor that was completely rotten, so that pretty much scared the crap out of me. Visions of half-collapsed house dancing in my head.
The original plan for the floor had been to rip up the floorboards and replace them, but keep the joists / substructure, since they had looked fine from our inspection via the basement. But when the contractor actually got the floorboards up, we could see that the structural beams were completely rotten away in the corner where they joined into the brick columns. 
The floorboards themselves had actually been all the structural support there was at the corners; with them removed, the porch was literally a seesaw, pivoting over the still-intact center piling. Well, OK, frankly this kind of thing is expected in a rebuild — you have surprises as you tear down the old construction, and just hope that the surprises stop at some point. Fortunately they did stop, and replacing the entire structure turned out to be fairly cheap, just a couple hundred dollars of materials and a couple hours of labor.
Now things were rapidly approaching the finish line. The floorboards went in and were painted, and the railings were built. The previous porch had no railings at all, which made it somewhat unsafe and aesthetically … odd. I have this thing about weak railings — a railing should be able to support a LOT of horizontal load and not just be there for show. So I specified to the contractor how he was going to anchor the railing’s support posts into the beams below, with the result being a railing that any number of people could lean on and that thing ain’t goin’ nowhere!
The new wooden columns went up last, with the taper that is characteristic of these old bungalows.
The club has a small hanger near the airstrip with the four communal aircraft jammed in there. It was fun watching them slowly untangle the delicate knot of 4 gliders that they’d managed to fit inside. Two of them are single-seat models, and two are tandem models used for “discovery” flights like the one I was to take.
these photos, these gliders are light enough to be moved around by a couple of guys. After some basic checkout of the controls and flight surfaces, each glider got hooked up to a 
tow vehicle (e.g. golf cart) and the long walk out to the end of the airstrip began.
the glider guys assembled at their little place to the side of the airstrip, and the tow plane waiting on the other side. As gliders were ready to go, the tow plane would fire up, a tow cable would be latched onto the nose of the glider, and off they’d go.
When we showed up at 11am, the guys were standing around looking at the sky and muttering about the low deck (around 2500 feet), but they expected it to rise as the day wore on, and it did.
After some brief radio chatter, the tow plane fired up and pulled us down the runway and up into the air. We actually lifted off the ground well before the tow plane did, rising up a few feet before the tow plane had reached a speed where it could take off itself.
They’re not particularly pretty to look at, but they get the job done. We slowly circled up into the sky, gaining altitude until we’d reached the cloud deck, at which point the glider pilot (sitting behind me) pulled the release on the tow cable and we were free.
Apparently you can stay up forever this way, riding thermals indefinitely, until you run out of daylight. My ride was supposed to be only 30 minutes, but I guess that’s just a minimum that they promise you in case they don’t find any thermals, because we were up for nearly an hour. No, wait, I just checked the time stamps on the camera and I was up for 38 minutes! 
I thought it was quite a bit longer than that … I guess because after spiraling up the third or fourth thermal, my stomach was starting to get a little weary of it. Fortunately I didn’t commit the ultimate act of embarrassment, but I was glad to get back down on the ground.
Step 1: Get your $40 DTV coupon. By act of Congress 3 years ago, every household in the country is entitled to two $40 coupons to pay for a little converter box. Don’t worry about what the box does (I’ll explain later). Don’t wonder if you really need it (you might, might not). Don’t worry about getting on some mailing list (you won’t). DO GET IT RIGHT NOW, because the deadline is approaching and there’s going to be a mad crush for them again. You may have heard about a June 12th deadline; well, if you wait until then, you’re too late. Go to 
Step 3: Get a converter box. These are officially called “
Step 4: Get an antenna. This is going to be the trickiest part, but hang in there. Most likely you will be able to get by with just a simple indoor antenna near your TV, like the old rabbit ears. But it’s not quite rabbit ears you need — those work best in VHF, and you need an antenna that works in UHF. The big metal loop part of most indoor antennas is what’s actually important for digital TV. So go to any electronics store and look for a small TV antenna. 
Don’t buy a big one yet — you probably won’t need it! A couple examples are the 
The Tesla Roadster is a slick, beautiful machine, and after 3+ years of salivating it is f i n a l l y reaching the streets. In the last few months they’ve finally started delivering units to their long-suffering customers, and they’re now up to about a 100 deliveries per month. With each unit getting them over $100K in revenue when they deliver, that’s going to very quickly get them in the black, and suddenly Detroit will have a real problem developing for them in sunny California.
Earlier this month I visited family in the San Francisco area and I decided to try to get down to the Tesla dealership (in Menlo Park) to get a look in person. Actually I wanted to see the Model S (more on that below) but I knew they wouldn’t have any so I settled on just looking at a Roadster. Since they’ve finally cranked up the volume on production, they have more units to set aside for sales ops so there was a chance I’d be able to actually sit in one and maybe drive it around the block.
I quickly snagged my brother-in-law for passenger seat ballast (kidding!) and we got familiar with the vehicle. You can read all about it everywhere else, but it definitely is a pocket rocket. Bolting from 0 to 60 MPH in four seconds, it’s like acceleration isn’t an issue anymore — you just decide on a speed and BOOM you are there. One thing I had wondered was how annoying the braking feel woiuld be, since it uses regenerative braking for light to medium braking effort, and it was suprisingly unobtrusive. It just didn’t bug me. What was noticeable was the coasting behavioir, because they have it dialed in to brake slightly when you take your foot off the accelerator.
Which Tesla will be happy to supply. On March 26th they announced their second design, the Model S. Instead of a tiny sports car, this will be a sports sedan that can carry 4-5 adults, basically competing with luxury sports sedans like the BMW 5-series. It’s also priced in that category at $57K, a number which will certainly get “refined” as they get closer to production. It got lots of attention:
But what was unveiled was just a prototype — literally, there is ONE of these on the planet. Really what they are doing is getting the prototype out there so that the federal government will be unable to ignore it and will have to release some funds from the advanced car tech program that Congress approved last fall. I mean, if Tesla doesn’t qualify for this, I don’t know what does. Update 23-Jun-2009: Tesla has indeed today received the ATVM funding, all of the funding they requested! See press releases from 
This past weekend the very first public charging station for Tesla opened up in Northern California. Here’s a 