I’m a few weeks removed from taking in another Joyce Manor concert. Every time I catch one I tell myself - “this is going to be the last one you attend. soak it in”.
Then they put out another record that I really like and I start to think about how there’s a handful of songs I haven’t seen them perform live or maybe I have someone in my life that I’d like to expose them to live for the first time and that right there was reason enough for me to take my niece to her 2nd ever concert.
I took her to see the band GHOST a few years ago and that was smashing success. If you’re not familiar with the costume band, they not only dress up in crazy costumes. Their stage show and music slants “satanic” and there’s a ton of pyrotechnics. My niece may grow up to like a lot of pop music or maybe attend a Taylor Swift concert…. she will however be forced to say that her first concert was “Ghost”.
Having her check out Joyce Manor was a real treat. Not only are they an all-time fave of mine, I think they have material that my niece would totally get consumed with. Without fail, Joyce took the stage and captured my niece’s heart and imagination. Outside of getting to stand in attendance with her, it was getting to spend the afternoon with her. Talking about the show and asking her in advance what she looked most forward to. While there she got to experience a number of things for the first time. She saw the crowd form a “pit”. She saw someone crowd surf and get dropped on their head. She also got to see a fellow concert attendee drink too much and then puke all over herself.
I’m not sure how many more concerts we’re going to be attending with one another going forward but I hope we get to fit more in before she gets to an age where she doesn’t want to hang with her Uncle and be seen in public with him.
11 of 52
The Ballad of Jullian
I can’t begin to describe the level of stress I was under last week. The plan was to get thru a short work week and then travel up to North Austin to treat my niece to a concert and some South by South West activities. More on that later…
We had some rain storms swing thru San Antonio 2 weeks ago and as soon as the rain letup, I took Canelo for a much needed walk around the neighborhood. Roughly a block away from our front door, a little dog runs up to us. This will occasionally happen…. a neighbor will have their dog off leash and it will run up to greet us. This time, there wasn’t a neighbor insight. The dogs played for a minute and I noticed he had a leather collar with the name “Julian” blazoned upon it. Kinda like one of those belts you get your named engraved into when you go to Mexico. As the dogs continued to play, I assumed the dog would lose interest and then run back to its front door. I then noticed a few scrapes on its face and noticed he wasn’t fixed. It occurred to me at that very moment that Julian was likely a run away in search of a dog in season. Got home and called a local veterinarian in hopes of the little guy having a microchip under its coat. Outside of having his name on his leather collar, there wasn’t a tag or contact information for its owner. Took him to the vet and learned he wasn’t microchipped. Then was given some steps to take to help find its owner.
The steps are as follows:
Go onto the NextDoor app and upload a picture. People usually look for their dogs there.
Go onto Pawboost - broadcast that you found the dog. People also look there.
Go onto Facebook and see if there’s a local community page and post the dog picture there.
Did all three things above and found no owner. The next two days I drove around local neighborhoods in hopes of finding posters/flyers for the missing dog. Randomly stopped and talked to strangers if they knew anyone who was missing a Boston Terrier. No luck.
In San Antonio - after 72 hours, a dog without a Microchip becomes yours. I had to drive up to Austin in a few days so I started to look into local non-kill shelters to surrender the dog. I quickly learned that all of the options near me are filled with dogs so I would have to keep him for a minimum of 20 days before I could even take him in for an evaluation.
A number of places have different steps and requirements. Some places require you to pay a fee to help re-home him and get him into a no-kill shelter. I then learned that “no-kill” isn’t always no-kill…. so I turned my energy into finding him a forever home after 72 hours.
Thankfully my sister had a co-worker who was looking for a second dog so I was able to get Julian into a loving home. Those 72 hours however were really stressful. Doing the right thing is always the right thing but if you ever help a pet - be prepared to keep it.
10/52
From Ghana with Love
Got an invite last week to attend a one night exhibition over at Mercury Project. There’s a group called “Deadly Prey” out of Chicago that obtains movie posters out of Ghana, puts them on display and sell them to art collectors.
I learned about these a few years ago while visiting some local antique shops. Much to my surprise the posters on display last week were legitimately great and in some cases they were priced to move. Most of the posters fetched around 1k dollars. While a number of them amused me I didn’t exactly see one that I wanted to eagerly have on display in my home. Framing a thing that big would also be expensive…. I went in however ready to buy something if I ran across something amazing.
9/52
Life Post Rodeo
Took up an invite a few weeks ago and attended my first ever proper San Antonio “Rodeo” event. I’ve technically been to the Rodeo stock yard where you can get funnel cake and other carny food when Rhiannon was alive, but I’ve never had any interest in checking out any of the events. I know that the Rodeo pulls in a number of musical guests that aren’t “Country” but I thought they were putting on concerts throughout the two week period. What I learned is that you take in a Rodeo event and then after that’s done - they make a stage in the center of the arena and people in attendance are then treated to a performance.
Anyhoo, said friend works for the rodeo in some capacity and I was treated to some amazing seats to take in a skills competition of some kind. From what I gathered, a number of ranch hands from a handful of ranches throughout Texas - do a number of events that are scored and then one ranch is proclaimed a winner. Its kinda like medieval times but unscripted. As far as I’m concerned everyone at both events is in costumes.
I’ve never seen someone bronco bust in person before and that was pretty cool. I found myself rooting for the animals throughout the event and that may not be what other people in attendance were doing. I’m inclined to think that animals don’t like to be tied up and bent into shapes that are unnatural. One event involved slapping a full sized cow into the arena and then four guys tried to stop it from running to milk it a container of some kind.
Point of this journal entry is that I now live in a Post Rodeo Existence.
8/52
