The Next Big Thing

In reading your topic of the week today
I wanted to let you know that in spite of what you may have seen in Seattle, Austin, TX is most assuredly being prepared to be the Next Big Thing. Seattle already had some fame with Grunge. Austin is becoming the place to make your movie, to break your band, to get a degree... we're the Bat Capital, the Live Music Captial, and we're the place with "That tower that crazy guy shot all those people off of." And the population here must have tripled since I moved here five years ago. Corporate America has already moved in... I'm sure you will soon.

Now you've posed an interesting suggestion here. I have been to Houston a number of times, and if it wasn't for the fact that I have a genetic trait which has been passed down through many generations of male Glassers, I would acually consider Texas.

You see, like all male Glassers, we sweat. Big time. Since my father moved to Tampa, he has lost about 80 pounds. I figure most of that was due to him sweating 24 hours a day. I mean, seriously... at our wedding, my father sat in his car with the air conditioning on until the Justice of the Peace started, then came out, gave me a hug and Janet a kiss, and then went back into the car.

It was a bit comical... like knocking on the Godfather's car window. He would roll it down, give us his blessings and roll the window up. All he heeded to do is say "Buona sera... buona sera..." and I would have been transported into the middle of a Mario Puzo novel.

Texans are very nice and cordial people. I guess knowing that anyone has the right to possess a concealed weapon would make you think twice before picking a fight. The beer scene is getting better there, even though Celis Brewery is now controlled by Miller. And yes, Austin is becoming the next big town for the twenty to thirty-something crowd.

But boy damn... it's way too hot there.

-- Avery

yeah, i gotta say, i could see austin being the next big thing, and i'd flock there as part of the movement, partially because i really dig austin (where else can you see a woman who does such authentic janis joplin covers that she passes out drunk on stage?), and partially because i'm obsessed with anything texan. i try to get there at least twice a year, i have an extensive collection of armadillo paraphanalia, and sometimes i ask the men i'm dating to dress up in wranglers and cowboy hats. (ok, maybe i don't do that, but i am obsessed with texas). so obsessed in fact that i actually took a whole trip there once just to see lbj's ranch. sad, i know.
so yeah, i'd move to ausin, except that on some level i'd be offended living in the city michael dell thinks he built.

When I wrote that I felt that Seattle was a contender for the "Next Big Thing," I suppose I meant gentrification-wise. San Francisco was once a city largely made up of friendly little mom and pop shops and restaurants, but judging by the article I read in today's Bay Guardian, in a few short years it has the potential to be the first fully gentrified city in the entire US. Everyone, residents and businesses alike, is being forced to leave the city due to the rapid influx of the wealthy upper class. Like SF, Seattle seems like a city that once had individuality -- unique things that made it unlike any other urban area. When we recently visited, though, we saw malls and chain stores under construction literally everywhere we looked. I'm sure that once that SF is filled to capacity with yuppies (or once they tire of living here), they'll beat feet up the coast to another ready-and-waiting (soon to become) sterile urban city. I'm sure they won't even notice the difference!

I was debating it...
I was fighting with myself over it...
I know it's gonna get pulled almost Immediately.

(screw it.)

I got yer Next Big Thing RIGHT HERE!

(this was brought to you in honor of all East-Coast cabbies)

Hold on... does anybody have a magnifying glass?

Awwwwwwww......

Now COME ON!

That was so damn unfair.
Only because I LIKE you guys that I don't go the next step with this and get really disgusting (that and the fact that you know where I live, have seen pictures of me, and could pound the snot out of me without breaking a sweat, of course)

but OTHER THAN THAT!!!!!

BTW, y'all. Denver is "The Next Big Thing" and I fucking hate it. Come visit, and then take yer asses home.

Slappo,

You know I don't mean it... and since I could pound the snot out of you... you know we're I'm not recanting my previous statement out of fear :)

-- Avery

PS: Actually, I'm recanting it out of sheer pity :) Did you ever get your home page up and running again?

Righton...

ALLRIGHT PEOPLE! I KNOW YOUR FREAKING FINGERS AREN'T BROKEN!

GET TYPING!

Hey Avery, you wanna talk about sweat? Slap fits the definition of greasy, ghumba, deigo, WOP, sweat machine to a tee. Oh, and I hope that didn't offend anyone, I was a good little mountain girl before meeting him, now I have all these racist things to say about Italians, which HE taught me. Often through REPEATED viewings of The Godfather, Goodfellas, Moonstruck, and on and on and on...

In any case, it can be ten below, twenty below, windows open, and sweat pouring out. Sweat permenantly staining the tee-shirts. And let us not even get into sex.

The next big thing? Well, Denver is currently the big thing. But I hafta say, I think the south is in for a revival. Sad as that may be. The civil war has been over for awhile, it's about time their economy bounced back, wouldn't you say? I'm not talking the deep south, just right below the Mason-Dixon line (Virginia, North Carolina). I bet in five years, Denver will be played, and everyone is gonna start looking south. And if I'm wrong, no big loss, right?

aaack! My eyes! I have invisioned Slappy while in the act of coitus. Now, I am blind... are you happy now?

The vision of Slappy naked and sweating all over you has rendered my beer buzz into nothingness.

However, I have to empathise with my Denverian (is that a word) counterpart when it revolves around sweating. No matter how cold it is in our apartment, I have to have the fan on. My father is worse. Many a-night when I was growing up, my father would be laying in his bedroom, the window open and the ambient temperature running around -10 defrees farenheit.

When Janet and I got married, my father refused to stand in the 80 degree heat. He stayed in his air conditioned car until the ceremony started... then he came out, did his fatherly duties, and then returned to the car. It was like a scene out of the Godfather. I would go to the window, he would roll it down, give his blessings and then roll up the window.

So, nobody knows the Godfather like this little Jew-boy.