Buzzworms in the Backyard

If you've got a little time on Saturday evening, drop by Buzzworms in the Backyard, an exhibition of visual art focusing on the impacts of Urban Gas Drilling on people, property and the environment presented by FWCanDo.

The gala opening for the exhibition is scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Fort Worth Community Art Center at 1300 Gendy St.

At 7 p.m., Tammy Gomez and Sound Culture will present a ritual lament called Greed, Caution. Acclaimed artist and curator Benito Huerta will announce the awards at 7:15 p.m.

She: Bike/Spoke/Love

Tammy Gomez got some much deserved luv from the Startlegram on Sunday. Her new play She: Bike/Spoke/Love premieres at 7:30 p.m., this Saturday at the Sanders Theatre at The Fort Worth Community Art Center (1300 Gendy St). And, in honor of World Car Free Day, admission is $3 for those arriving by mass transit, bicycle, walking, etc., $10 for those arriving by automobile. The 5th Annual Fort Worth Jazz Fest will be taking place nearby, so parking lots will be hard to come by. Bicycle parking, however, will be readily available. Please drop by and support Tammy!

Fort Worth News Items

Check out the Stash Dauber for the schedule of event before the Wreck Room rides off into history. Someone needs to get a camera crew together. There's a documentary in this a la Last Night at the Alamo

Ken also reminds us that Fred's is now open on Sunday and closed on Monday and Tuesday. So adjust your schedule accordingly.

A couple of things from the Panther City Boys: 1) A Labor Day Bike Ride is on the board so air up your tires. 2) There is a community meeting scheduled for Sept. 6 to discuss the impact of Barnett Shale drilling on the Trinity Trail. City staff and Chesapeake Energy reps will be there. And so should you.

Kevin reminds us that Lili's is still delicious.

The Fort Worthian points out that Texadelphia by TCU is no more. And Cafe Express is also no more.

Tammy Gomez got blurbed in the D(a)MN.

The Startlegram lists the contenders for Anna Mowery's old state house seat.

Things I've Learned This Morning

I'm in the summer doldrums today. I need to crank out another couple of History of Guns segments, but they are getting harder to write. Plus that and all of the Iraq stuff lately has left me in a funk. So let's have a little fun:

Tammy Gomez reminds us that no matter how much we work on trying to create art and beauty in a vain attempt to be remembered by posterity, what really lasts is the stuff we throw away. If you have to choose one thing to endure: Shakespeare or chicken bones from lunch, you'd probably bet on the Bard. And you'd be wrong. Wow, I'm starting off on an up note!

In trying to find a picture of chicken to go with the first item, I discovered something disturbing: Japan has a history of defacing Colonel Sanders statues. And the Colonel IS PISSED!

Austin frets over its Dallasification.

Hey, WFAA, this is so, like, two months ago!

To lighten things up, a cool blog: Very Hot Jews. They are asking important questions like: What kind of Jew are you, besides hot? Are you observant, just unusually witty and smart, or other? Check it out and get your mitzvah on.

One last thing: I like this new Rangers pitcher. He was on Galloway and was talking about pitching for Team USA against Cuba. "Yeah, Castro was there and he's kind of a funky little dude. He looked like one of the GI Joes I used to play with." Awesome.

Porter Wagoner is back! I grew up watching his TV show, so it's kind of funny to think of him on the same label at Tom Waits and Neko Case. But it sort of makes sense, too.

Late Night Biking

Drop by Tammy Gomez's blog for her post on last night's screening of the B.I.K.E. documentary. I wish I could have been there, but I can't be everywhere. Maybe next time?!

The Week That Was in Cowtown

Enjoyed a great dinner with a dear old friend, Rick Poss and his lovely wife, Marianne, at Benito's on Magnolia last night. Rick is pretty well known in Austin music circles for his guitar work with Jimmy LaFave, Alejandro Escovedo and others. Now he has his solo CD coming out in July. I got a first listen last night and I LOVE IT!

Not to sound like a broken record, but I want to encourage everyone in District 9 to get out and vote for Bernie Scheffler. He's an important candidate that we need on the city council. Bernie e-mailed the other day to tell me they will be walking neighborhoods on Sunday, starting at 4 p.m. Visit his blog for more info. If you can't do anything else, do these two things: 1) Vote early at these locations. 2) Send an e-mail to everybody you know in Fort Worth, and ask them to vote in this city election. There were a total of 1349 votes in the last District 9 election. It is not a cliche to say every vote counts. Also, if you are so inclined, grab a Bernie yard sign or print your own Bernie flyers.

The Stash Dauber knows the real reason Willie's picnic isn't coming back to Cowtown.

There's an old joke that goes everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it. Not true for Tammy Gomez. I talk about it, but she turns it into art. She also had another fantastic poem this week on one of my favorite topics: what does it mean to be a Texan.

Once again on the weather, I'd like to thank Pete at Cowtown Chronicles for confirming that our weather this week was typhoon-like in its intensity. Hope your power's back on, Pete. Mine is.

Check out Big D little d for a bad-ass podcast featuring, among others, The Theater Fire, Midlake, and Bosque Brown. It's got 20 hard-to-find, rare or otherwise obscure tracks total from local artists.

David Garza (et al) at Hecho en Tejas

You know, few things fill me with more dread than a tornado siren. The sirens went off right as I was picking up my daughter from school, and the radio was reporting a tornado heading basically right for my wife's office downtown. Not a fun few minutes.

Even though the Haltom City tornado missed the dealer where my car was, the baseball sized hail didn't. Bottom line was about $2200 worth of damage, but I guess it could have been worse. What's the saying, once is tragedy, twice is farce? All I could do is laugh at that point.

Anyway, I didn't let the weather or the circumstances keep me from the Hecho en Tejas book signing at the Rose Marine Theater. Unfortunately, the crowd was pretty sparse. I saw David coming in the door and talked to him for a few minutes. His brother, Joel, is moving back to town from Houston and I'm happy to have another buddy around. Joel told me I needed to get a better picture of David for my blog. "He looks like he just got out of Gitmo," he said. David and I watched Tony Diaz and Daniel Gomez from Goodwin for a couple of songs. "Wow," David said. "These guys are pretty good." He was right, those guys are pretty good. You can catch them at the Moon on May 11.

Dagoberto Gilb, the editor of Hecho en Tejas, was up first. He's got this great East L.A. Chicano accent that is wonderful to listen to. He read a funny short story about a young guy trying to pick up girls. Christine Granados from El Paso followed him. She's the author of the short story collection Brides and Sinners in El Chuco. Her reading was about a woman who goes on a job interview with her entire family and along the way reveals major differences in the Anglo and Chicano way of looking at life, work and the world. Fort Worth's own Tammy Gomez was the biggest surprise of the night for me. Her poetry borrows a lot from music -- especially hip hop and country. Her images are strong and her voice confident.

Then came David. When my wife and I talked about it later, she said the same thing I was thinking. When you meet David, he is so quiet and unassuming. But get him on stage, and his charisma fills the room. It's like he becomes another person. He's got "it" -- whatever "it" is. He played three songs, the last one was one of Dagoberto Gilb's works that he set to music and it was fantastic. "I hope I can be as cool as this guy one day," David said about Gilb.

Had to take off after that. I had been a bad dad and I didn't feed my daughter before we went. If anyone caught the last part, let me know how it went. Also, what was the deal with the woman who was ironing? Sorry about the crappy photo. I've been having some issues with my camera. It's called user error.