Marc Sherman's sorta tour of Austin Cuisine

I had some friends come in town this weekend to visit. My impression was that everytime they come into town, they sit around someone's apartment watching TV. As they insisted on doing this most of the time, I did what I could to take them out for some food you can only find in Austin.

The first place I took them to was Juan in a Million. East of 35 on Cesar Chavez, this place is a diamond in the rough. Someone from work told me about it. "..a mountain of eggs, potatoes, bacon and cheese for like $4, man!" Thats exactly what "The Don Juan" is and it's delicious.

The next day I made them come with me to Torchy's Tacos on First Street between Oltorf and 290. If you've never been to Torchy's and you don't hate tacos, I strongly encourage you to treat yourself to something truly scrumptious. Every time I'm there I hear a lot of people order the "Baja Shrimp" so those must be pretty popular and take my word for it, they're really good. I'd say the best value there is the "Trailer Park" taco: Fried Chicken with green chilis, lettuce and pico with pablano ranch. So sloppy but so delicious.

Football Season

It's football season again and that means I can say goodbye to productivity on Sundays for a while. Unfortunately a freak accident occurred and I didn't get to watch my team (Dallas Cowboys.) But in the time I've had to do so, I've heard they looked mean.

Sounds like Marion Barber has bruised ribs but he's a thug and I'm sure he'll be back next week. Tony Romo had the best game of any quarterback in the NFL, throwing for 320 yards. And T.O had the most yards of any wide receiver in the NFL. A good start for the boys. I'm looking forward to this season. Hopefully there will be no more heartbreak for them in this, their last season .

Movie Review: Death Sentence

Somehow, I found myself watching Death Sentence this weekend. I remembered seeing the preview for it a long time ago so when I saw it on TV, I figured I'd give it a view...

Don't watch that movie. The plot is basically, there is this happy, successful businessman with a wife and two sons. One of his sons is favored more than the other and he is about to go to college. Suddenly, this kid is murdered by a gang at a gas station for no apparent reason. Kevin Bacon snaps and kills the guy who killed his son. The gang retaliates and kills the rest of his family. Kevin Bacon retaliates back and kills the rest of the gang. Roll credits. I've just saved you an hour and a half of your life. I thought the plot was so boring that it doesn't even deserve a better description. It is 10 minutes of character development and 96 minutes of scrawny ole Kevin Bacon killing gang members in a not-so-believable shoot 'em up. I repeat: do not watch that movie.

VMAs

Didn't the VMAs used to be fun to watch? From what I saw, the MTV Video Music Awards was awful. I don't know who the host was but he made me uncomfortable as half of the time, I wasn't sure if he was being serious or making a joke. I don't even know who most of those MTV bands were that were being nominated for all the awards. Everytime I changed the channel back to the VMAs, there was some celebrity or band whom I'd never seen before and they always seemed to look more than a tad on the strange side. I saw Britney Spears for a minute but it wasn't the Britney I'm used to. I guess she quit taking crazy pills because she looked like the 2003 version of Britney Spears and even that was somehow uncomforting. With the acception of Kid Rock, in every performance I saw, the singer was lip sinking and not well. One last thought: Why was the crowd so small?

Austin City Limits Music Festival Dissapoints

The Austin City Limits Music Festival is goin down. When i was a sophomore in high school, 4 of my friends and I packed into my honda and drove from Dallas to Austin to stay with my brother for that year's ACL. I don't remember all of the bands that I saw but I do remember how much going and seeing the whole thing was for me at 16 years old. When I got to St. Ed's, the magic of the music festival experience was easy to remember. I remember feeling oh so happy at the Flaming lips and oh so wet at Tom Petty after waiting in the rain. The bands were all great and some of my expectations blown away (Wolf Parade).

ACL 2007 was a bit of a different story, when I first saw the lineup, I was really excited. So many bands that I wanted to see! The White Stripes, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Muse, My Morning Jacket, Arctic Monkeys, Spoon, LCD Soundsystem!! Then the schedule came out. All of those bands were playing at the same time as another one, cutting my options in half. Then the week before the festival, the White Stripes cancelled their appearance and after show at Stubbs apparently because Meg White was stressed. The half of the highlights I chose to attend were good, Arcade Fire didn't live up to what I had heard, and then to top it all off, Bob Dylan sucked. It was sad really, to see someone so great and iconic headlining a crowd when they have no business doing so. He's just so old, his voice is shot.

I'm not even going this year. The lineup isn't even worth me looking it up to reference. I think there were about 5 bands i really wanted to see and none of them are worth standing in the heat and smelling B.O. all day. I think the best act of the weekend is going to be Beck and I'm not gonna pay $80 for him. I'm no expert and I don't know what it is. Maybe ACL has sold out.. maybe it just cant compete with the flood of new music festivals across the country... maybe the fact that it's in the "music capital of the world" doesn't matter anymore. My point is it's goin down and I don't think it's worth getting exciting about.

Break

I'd like to take a moment to talk about one of my favorite websites.  Whenever I need something to do on the computer and options are limited, I click on my favorites bar where it says "Break."  It's one of those websites where they show funny/shocking/interesting videos sent in by viewers hoping to earn enough hits to get paid. 

In my opinion, its the best, but before you run off and type in break.com to your URL box, know that it's a bit on the inappropriate side.  The site is really entertaining and if they had an edited version, it would be just as good as the raw version but the fact of the matter is that Break.com has as many pictures and videos of hot girls and other not-safe-for-work material as it does G-rated content.  

If you're ok with that, (and I may, in your opinion exaggerate the vulgarity) check it out and enjoy.  They update it a lot so there's always new videos to watch and their picture galleries are awesome.

David Duchovny - Sex Addict

This weekend, I was thinking about how I couldn't think of anything to blog about. I guess a Shotime commercial came on and I saw a thing for the show, "Californication." The thought crossed my mind for a moment that I could write something about the tasteless joke I always find myself telling when someone says anything about Californication. The joke is that in every episode of that show, David Duchovny hooks up with a really hot woman. His character happens to be a writer. So I always say, thats why I'm a writing major. (Thats what my life is gonna be like when I grow up. ha-ha)

Anyway, I couldn't think of a way to stretch that out into an entire blog.. until this afternoon. I somehow stumbled upon this link that David Duchovny has checked himself into rehab for treatment of a sex addiction. Just thought that was kind of ironic.

Here's the link if you wanna read about it.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4676885a1860.html