Sunday, April 7, 2019

Lucinda Williams's Musical Map of the South

Lucinda Williams writes often about her life growing up in the South. I thought it would be interesting to plot these points on a map to visualize her Southern references throughout her career. I actually started this back in the late 90s and I'm not a web designer so it's a little crude but you get the point. The songs are in chronological order and you can click on them to hear a snippet. Enjoy!

Thursday, April 4, 2019

My Oregano Story

The other day my daughter Dara posted a link on my Facebook page to Jimmy Kimmel's interview with Snoop Dogg and Matthew McConaughey, promoting their new movie, the Beach Bum. She especially instructed me to watch the whole thing. So, aside from my love for Austin's own MM, the "Minister of Culture" for the Texas Longhorns basketball team (really), I knew there was something she wanted me to see. It turns out there is an oregano reference at the end of the video. So here's my oregano story.

Somewhere around freshman or sophomore year a bunch of us Yalies went up to Harvard. My buddy "Piss Toes" Pete Weber and I were hanging out in the dorm room of my high school bro Mark Robbins. We had just polished off a pizza so sitting on the coffee table was a jar of oregano I had swiped from the pizza place along with a pipe that we had been indulging from earlier.

A roommate of Mark's came in and joined us. He motioned to the empty pipe and said, "What have you guys been up to?". I don't know why I did this, but I pointed to the oregano jar and said, "that's good stuff man, you should try some". At first he looks at me like I'm kidding but I'm keeping a straight face. He says, "that's oregano, you dumb fucking Yalie" (actually he didn't say the last part but you could tell he was thinking that). So I said, "no, man, we just bought it from a kid out on the street, $5, what a great deal for all that weed!". So again he looks at me like I really can't be that stupid, picks up the oregano, smells it, and pronounces once again, "it's oregano".

Meanwhile Pete has picked up on what I'm doing and he's been doing a slow burn. Just as I'm about to crack up, Pete bursts out, "I'll fucking kill that kid that sold us that shit". And he is livid. I'm like, "what, that's not weed?" and join Pete in yelling about getting ripped off.

Meanwhile the Harvard guy is buying this whole act. It just confirmed what he thought about us Yalies!