Happy birthday to youuuuuu
Happy birthday to youuuuuu
Happy biiiirthdaaaay Herr Von Beethoven
Happy birthday to…

What’s that?  He can’t…?  You’re kidding, right?  Surely you jest.  My goodness, I had no idea.  Perhaps that’s why he still has his back to me.  Well, could you just give him this present for me?  It’s a box of Q-tips.  Well thank you so much.

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Comments

Ashley, A HUGE fan of Beethoven

2004-12-16T20:56:38.000Z

Dude, when I heard the bit on NPR this am about Beethoven (and how it’s his birthday (go Sagittarius)) I got a tight throat and wet eyes.  I always feel this way when I think about him, listen to his music, etc.  He was, is, and always will be my musical idol.  I can’t even really explain why I have such deep emotions for him and his music.  But I can tell you that when you commune with him through your fingertips as you play his works you (if you are a sentient being) gain this silent and indescribable bond and understanding.  I know of a few other Beethoven fans that will understand what I am talking about.

Last night, some guy in Columbus, Ohio hopped up on a stage where Dimebag Darrell Abbott’s current band, Damageplan, was playing. According to some witnesses, the man muttered something to the effect of “You broke up Pantera” before putting 5 or 6 bullets into Darrell’s body. A cop working security proceeded to use a shotgun to bring the shooter down. Three other people were killed, others were injured.

[image:LGT.Members.Travis Holmes.Blog Pictures.Dimebag Darrell]

I never would have imagined that a picture of Dimebag Darrell would have made it into my blog. I haven’t really thought about him or Pantera in years except for the rare occassion when I’d put on one of their albums, like while I was writing sometimes and in need of a particular mood. When I was a teenager though, holy shit, Pantera was absolutely IT for me. They were the dark metal sun around which all other music in my universe orbited. I compared everything to them, even non-metal. If it didn’t get me going the way Pantera did, then it sucked and its makers deserved severe punishment. When I started playing guitar, the first thing I did was learn every riff on Vulgar Display of Power. I even saw them once during the summer of 94 at the soon-to-be-developed-into-a-strip-mall-or-whatever Southpark Meadows. I was eighteen and much more willing and able to suffer the brutality of a mosh-pit going at full speed. I think that show made my fucking year.

So here’s to you, Dimebag. Thanks for being a big part of my high-school soundtrack. I’m sorry some crazy asshole decided to take you out.

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Comments

A random bag of meat and water

2004-12-13T03:19:44.000Z

It’s been way too long since I played “Cowboys From Hell” (My HS percussion section ROCKED OUT to that on many a bus ride). Let me clear up some info about this unfortunate incident:

“
An email I recieved today, thought I’d share it with the fans…

(fuck you haters.)

Hello Danny,
My name’s Drew. I sang for a band called “Saddleback Shark” here in Columbus. We did 3 albums, toured, got national airplay (on heavy stations) and were one of the top drawing bands at the Al-Roas Villa for years. I met Dimebag when they (Pantera) showed up backstage at one of our shows at the Al-Rosa that we were playing with a band called “Lord Tracy” (They were apparently friends with them) Pantera was touring for “Cowboys from Hell”. They were playing at another club here called “The Newport”.

I remember saying “who’s that fucking drunk guy with the mohawk in our dressing room?” That’s when I was handed a tape and my roadie said “dude, that’s Phil Anselmo these guys are fucking awesome, listen to the tape.” I’ve loved them every since. Dimebag was a super cool guy,…just like everyone keeps saying. We almost went to the Damageplan show. After talking to all of my friends that were there, I was amazed at how many different stations were reporting erroneous information.

This guy, Nathan Gale, was a failed musician (tried to sing for a band but couldn’t-he sucked) and a fan of Pantera. His friends distanced themselves from him sometime ago when he started acting “weird”. I struggle to come to grips with the fact that Dimebag fell dead just 5 feet from where I first met him.
Nathan Gale went up to the tour bus about an hour before the show and asked Damageplan’s security guy if he could come on the bus and party with them. The guy said “They don’t party”. Nathan Gale said “Whatta ya mean they don’t party?”, flipped him off and then walked away.

There were reports that Vinnie Paul got shot (injured) - NOT TRUE. The security is pretty tight at the Al-Rosa. The guy (Nathan) walked up to the back door and RAN inside. Coming in from the back door, the stage is immediatley to the left. Dimebag was on the other side of the stage,…he ran behind the singer and bass player and fired 4 or 5 shots at point blank range into Dimebag’s head/upper body. Dimebag fell to the floor, his guitar feedback filled the building. People started clapping at first because they thought it was part of the show. Until security rushed the guy and he started firing at them. Chaos ensued. Vinnie Paul ran from behind the drum kit and up behind the main bar, which is about 40 yards away (where there’s a mic), grabbed the mic and started screaming “CALL 911 !, CALL 911 ! ” Vinnie was then escorted to and locked in the kitchen of the front bar where he remained with a few others while they continued to hear random shots fired. Nathan was trying to reload his clip and had a guy in a headlock after firing random shots into the crowd to keep them away. One officer came into the club through the front and the other came in the back (same entrance Nathan came in). They arrived within 2 minutes of receiving the call.

The officer that came in the back saw him right away and capped his ass. Thank God. Although there are reports that Nathan yelled out something like “You broke up Pantera”, no one that was there (that I’ve heard from) heard him say any such thing.

When we played anywhere, Pantera was always a staple in our box of CD’s that sat next to the boom-box on the hotel dresser of whatever town we were in. I am the exact same age as Dimebag and went fucking numb when I got the news. I know the owner/manager (Rick Cautella) of the Al-Rosa, as well as his entire family. He was always genuinely concerned about security and often allowed some people (Ronnie James Dio, etc.) to have dinner with him and his family the day of or after a show at his
home. He is devastated. Their website is now temporarily down.

That bastard (Nathan Gale) had to know going in that there was no way he was getting out alive. How the fuck can you stop someone that’s willing to die? It really pisses me off that
alot of local news stations are targeting the security staff of the Al-Rosa. Damageplan had their own security too. Nobody could’ve stopped this fucker. I remembered that time when Pantera showed up at our show,…some of their security guys were with them and their shirts said “security” on the back and on the front they said “Fuck you, we’re from Texas”. The true attitude of everyone in the Pantera camp/fan base.

We are all deeply saddened here in Columbus and hate this tremendous loss.

Take care,
Drew
”

R.I.P. Dimebag

It’s been raining all week.  Not just sprinkling, but really coming down.  We’ve been under flood watches, severe thunderstorm warnings, heavy fog warnings, frogs falling from heaven watches, etc.  And yet, everywhere I drive, I continue to pass by sprinklers that are futilely blasting water onto already-soaked lawns.  Now these things are obviously on timers, but come on people.  I mean really, come the fuck on.  We’ve put men on the moon.  We can send missiles down air conditioning chutes.  We can read license plate numbers from space.  Surely there is an inexpensive solution to prevent sprinklers from needlessly spilling a precious resource when it’s not needed!

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Comments

Julie

2004-11-23T23:36:13.000Z

There is such an invention. It’s called a rain sensor and you can have it installed on your sprinkler system so that it won’t come on when it rains.  My old A/R cheap boss had it installed, so it couldn’t have been too horribly expensive.  Although she was obsessed with how much we spent on water, so that was part of it.  I don’t know why people won’t put them on their systems.  Oh, yeah, I know, because they’re ASSHOLES!

I saw this headline this morning, and my initial reaction was a smug smile and the thought, “Good, Bush’s plans are continuing to fall apart.”  And then I realized how cold and insensitive that was.  These are people, not just Americans or Iraqis or civilians or whatever, but people caught in the middle of politics turned bloody and getting killed and wounded in awful ways, and here I am giving a cheer because maybe the Bush administration is encountering what amounts to a minor setback in their book.  I think to myself then, is it okay to cheer when these bad things happen because it shows that the side I identify with is in the right?  No, I don’t think so.  No matter what, these events are still tragedies, the players in the middle of them are still people.  There are a lot of liberals out there who see a silver lining to this Bush reelection in that he’ll show the nation just how bad the hard line right wingers really want to make things and maybe we’ll all learn something.  To some extent, I agree with this thinking.  All the same, in the middle of every silver lining, there is a cloud, and the cloud in this case is more dead soldiers, dead Iraqis, dead people, dead freedoms, lost jobs, a poorer, sicker, and less educated populace and the list goes on.

So I’m at work today, right, and I’m just walking through the office.  And in the hallway, I pass the trainer leading a couple of new people around.  And the trainer person, whose name is Deana says “Hi Travis” and I respond “Hi Deana”…and then one of the new people says “Hi Travis”, and I look up and holy frog, it’s this guy Lance that I knew in high school!  Too weird.  He looks exactly the same.

So in analyzing the results of the election, there’s a lot of discussion surrounding the key role of an issue that people are choosing to call, for whatever reason, “moral values.”  If you pay just the tiniest bit of attention, it becomes clear in about ten seconds that this term is actually code for a number of issues, not the least of which are gay marriage and abortion.  Do not confuse this with actual moral values.  Remember, we’re talking in code here.  Now, I know that there are a lot of people out there that have not yet figured out that both women and gay people are, well, people, and that they have as much right to live free and pursue happiness as anyone else.  But I guess I just thought that there were more people out there who had already figured these things out.  I didn’t realize just how far the ignorance, fear, and even hatred spread.  Because that’s what it is.  Dress it up with the Bible all you like, but it comes down to those things. 

Now here’s what really scares me.  One of New York state’s democratic senators who was one of the Dems to actually make it back into office (thank you New York!) was on the Daily Show last night.  And it was clear that he was extraordinarily baffled by the election.  And the subject of moral values (remember, code) came up, and he conceded (hateful word!) that these issuse had strongly influenced the election’s outcome.  He went on to say that the Democrats were going to have to do a lot of thinking on this topic in order to figure out what to do next.  That frightens me because politicians, no matter what party they are from, want to win elections.  And parties want their people in power.  I have this horrid nagging feeling that Democrats, at least the ones in the red states, may lean even further to the right in the name of luring voters to their side when in fact, they need to be fighting even harder than ever to jog people’s memories so they will remember what moral values really are.  Things like peace, freedom, equality, charity, tolerance, these things should echo forth from the lips of all of us who believe in them, and most definitely from leaders, whether it’s all the rage or not.  This is absolutely not an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” proposition, because that way lies fascism and tyranny.

So we’ve just been sentenced to four more years of republican tyranny, four more years of chipping away at our rights, at hopes for a peaceful world, a more enlightened and united populace.  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Delay, these are the names of just a few of the men in power who think they can force an agenda down our throats, who will push for decisions that could do serious harm to our way of life.  I woke up this morning just sweating with dread, not wanting to get out from under the safety of the blanket.  But the blanket offers no real safety, so I got up like I always do and went to work.  Depression, fear, isolation, I felt all these things, along side of a helpless anger, the kind you feel when you feel just so small and unable to affect even the least bit of change.  I didn’t even want to talk to anybody.  Everyone I talked to, IM’d with, emailed with, all of them felt the same.  I guess I should count myself lucky that in a state that went overwhelmingly towards Bush, I have plenty of friends that feel as I do about how things are going.  And as the day progressed and the conversations continued on and off, I realized that there was something else we shared, this odd kind of hope, like that last little ember that hasn’t been pissed out yet.  I don’t know, maybe it’s insanity brought on by the shock of four more years of this shit.  Or maybe it’s just the recognition that we can either cry ourselves blind or we can laugh in the face of this conservative beast, flip it the bird, and swing back at it.  We can really make something of the next four years.  We can really make a big goddamned liberal nuisance of ourselves.  As my beautiful wife likes to say “Liberal is not a dirty word.”

Guys, you ever find yourself in a public restroom wondering, “did I just walk into the wrong bathroom?  Am I standing here using the women’s facilities?” and then realize that you’re standing at a urinal? 

Yeah, me neither.  I was just wondering.

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Comments

Jeff

2004-10-04T22:36:08.000Z

…is stepping out of a stall & coming face to face with a woman exiting the adjacent stall. We actually had to check the door to see who’d walked into the wrong room, as there were no urinals at this establishment.

Tim

2004-10-05T15:26:04.000Z

when you’re in the stall frantically trying to remember if there were urinals on the way in…

me, Ashley

2004-10-05T18:53:51.000Z

I glance up to check the sign EVERY time I use the restroom at work.  You would think after 10 years I would have figured it out.  But you see the Main Building at St. Ed’s can throw you for a loop.  On the ground floor the bathrooms appear in this order: Girl then Boy.  On the first floor it is boy then girl and the second floor is the same.  But on the third floor, where I work, it is Girl then boy again.  And the bathrooms on each floor are directly above the preceding floor…so if you are prone to walking and thinking as I am you may often walk in and feel your heart stop when you are jolted out of your reverie by the thought “Did I just walk into the men’s room?“.

bps

2004-10-06T17:21:28.000Z

We have two restrooms here. When I was the only employee (aside from the three execs), they were unmarked and we just used them willy nilly. But then when one of our female execs arrived, she placed little signs (crafted in Word and printed on the HP) on the doors marked ‘Girlz’ and ‘Boiz.’ I was irritated that now we had designated restrooms. Especially since there are 12 men here and 2 women. But then someone ripped down those signs and replaced them with ‘Dogz’ and ‘Kittiez.’ Now we have ‘Red Pill’ and ‘Blue Pill.’ So, I assume the restrooms are fair game again and I’ve been using both ever since.

So last night, we come back from eating yummy dinner at Austin Pizza Garden in Oak Hill, which everyone should definitely check out (not to be confused with Austin Pizza, which is also good in its own way), and we’re sitting on the couch pondering what movie we will devote the next 90 - 120 minutes of our lives to, when suddenly our two dogs who are locked in the back yard start going totally apeshit.  My first thought, obviously, is that there is a werewolf loose in the backyard.  Then there’s a knock at the front door, and I look up and see that it’s not a werewolf at all, but a lady with her two dogs (who, by the way, are NOT going apeshit) standing at our doorstep.  We step outside to talk to her, she’s very friendly, and she tells us that she’s been going around the neighborhood looking for people with Kerry/Edwards stickers or anti-dubya stickers on their cars, and asking if they would like a Kerry/Edwards sign for their front yard.  Turns out, she’s got the hookup for the Kerry/Edwards yard sign source and can get them five at a time, that she’s already succeeded in handing out 15 of them.  We talked with her for a little while about stuff like signs and bumper stickers, how even though they’re not going to change anyone’s mind on anything, it’s nice to see them around and know that you’re not alone in your views, especially in a place like Texas.   An hour later, sure enough, she came back with our sign, which is now proudly on display.  The state of Texas may send its electoral votes to Dubya, but no votes from our house will be a part of it.

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Comments

Lino Mendiola, Jr.

2004-10-31T03:18:46.000Z

You may be surprised about the Texas vote, an amazenly large number of young voters have registered to vote here and if they come through it will a November surprise for “W” when he loses the Lone Star State, especially among pizza eaters and Austin Garden Pizza in particular. Call of your freinds to vote and  have them each call five more, there is only three days left. Peace, Lino

HIGH SCORE ON GALAGA, BEEEEEEEYOOOOOTCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!