Old prediction?
Old prediction. From back in the day, something about Toyota being all hybrid by 2012.
But they did start making trucks in Texas.
Gravve Coffee
Granted, I’m no connoisseur when it comes to coffee, but I am an avid consumer? I know what I like, and the first, most obvious, way to test a place that is new to me?
Order an espresso.
Really simple. It’s the basic test, not a fruity, orange foam blueberry white chocolate mocha drizzled with caramel, no, just an espresso. Not worried if there are hints of stone fruit and cocoa, with an elderberry finish, no, not like that all.
Order an espresso.
“For here?”
Yes, please.
Points for cut crystal stemware. More points for warming the glassware on hot summer’s morning, the outdoor setting was fast approaching “broil.” But the stemware was filled with a set of hot water so the espresso stays warm, longer. Marriage. Married? Don’t recall the exact term.
With the creama floating down, it gave the espresso itself a slightly blood-red hue.
I went back for seconds. It was that good. Don’t know anything about other than it has the “Goth” vibe.
Lovely place. Highly recommended. Just ask for a shot of espresso to drink there.
Gravve Coffee
Gravves Coffee
2106 McCullough Ave
San Antonio, TX 78212
Gravve Coffee
The Lowe Job
The book opens, it’s based upon a setting where there is a political person caught in salacious tabloid style, political career compromising situation. It is one of the Lowe sisters, and what ensues. It seems to be the question of agency, and who owns what in post-modern word of interconnected medias.
The Lowe Job
The story is about four sisters, and the puppet master of a mother? Or is there more? Quite a tight plot, trips and turns on itself, and the satisfactory ending, with sex, drugs, and tinny little musical backdrop against the posh London night sky.
While fun, amusing, and plot-driven, there’s also some questions of a female position in our current world.
Just who is driving?
The afterward includes a note about it being a first novel by the author. Polished prose.
The Lowe Job
Possibly one of the best novels I read this year.
Weighing Substack against WordPress
Me looking at this, it isn’t an exhaustive or comprehensive look. It’s a simple, casual, non-techie overview for myself.
I really gots to sort out this crap.
There are differences. When I started using WordPress, it was built on open-source code, freely available, and it had a “5-minute install” package. Cute, but also: really useful. From renting a domain name to spinning up a website, I could do that in less than 30 minutes.
Substack is more pointed towards branded content that exists out in the ethers of the internet-nets.
Both claim: own your content.
As a writer, that means I own my own copyrights. Steal from me and expect the wrath of, I’m not sure, maybe it will rain frogs or something. Get all biblical with plagues, famines, and crops withering in the fields.
Weighing Substack against WordPress
I subscribe to a couple of Substack newsletters. An author I love, actually, might be three or four authors I look to for entertainment and enlightenment, easiest via substack. But the way it works, it’s too limited, and there’s no permanent repository for previous material.
I’ve got archives that stretch back as far as 1993, and that’s just the horoscopic material online. Some of my earlier rambling is even older than that. It hasn’t been scanned and uploaded, and these days, I’m too distracted to care.
There are a couple of points that I need to work out. Part of this is the crutch of using a word-processor front-end that links directly to a WordPress backend. Near seamless and effortless.
In its original design, WordPress started out as a way to wrangle weblog content. The system metastasized into a page builder —slash— web page management protocol, but at its heart was always the weblog-style entry, a roughly chronological series of textual entries.
That’s what I do.
My biggest challenge with this question, how to store, online, the material that I’ve already got, what I’ve already done, archives, memories, dreams, images, and keep that alive?
Weighing Substack against WordPress
Getting kicked off twitter just brought about more focus to this question.
But wrestling the thoughts to paper, so to speak, in which there is neither paper, wrestling, or speaking going on? Typing it out, and thinking it through?
Once place. One copy. Post one place let the software take care of the rest — even if it means getting kicked off twitter for “inauthentic behavior.”
Locations
Prompted by an old find, Anatomy of a good customer?
Where to find me? “Where is Kramer?”
Some years back, an old buddy, friend, co-worker, and occasional mentor? I noticed that he only worked certain events. His advice, this dates back over three decades, but his advice, then?
“Work every show in your home town.”
Or area? Much earlier, I would work every show in the Austin/San Antonio area. Thirty-plus years.
astrofish.net/travel
Times change. The market shifts. Clear divisions exist.
Then, too, there was a local event that was the epitome of a “Charlie Foxtrot” set-up. Even if I paid well enough in advance? A coveted wall spot and table, guaranteed in contractual form, paid for up front? I still used an electrical outlet at the time, but that spot — I had to show up early. Like, get there before the event promoter was there. Scramble with a roomful of irritable spiritualists for a spot to ply my wares. In return? It was usually a financially rewarding event, almost every time. Just, jockeying for a position? Get in early and hope for a spot that had juice?
Locations
One Austin promoter had repeatedly asked for my return to the big Austin shows, but I can’t be half-arsed to participate. Too much trouble, not enough return for my investment.
The new rock shop? Highway construction is brutal. Austin traffic is brutal, but then, I’ve driven in Dallas and Houston, so, no big deal to me.
Austin traffic is brutal, nonetheless.
astrofish.net/travel
A brief conversation with the owner/operator at the storefront in San Antonio?
First off, at the shows she produced? I could show up at 11, rip through my five-minute set-up, and be ready to roll. Professional, quick, seamless, and most important? Problem-free.
Same with her storefront. Super easy for me. Problem free.
Locations
I’m in two locations these days, Austin and San Antonio. If that schedule doesn’t work for you? I’m always available by phone, but the answer to the un-asked question?
No, I don’t do Zoom, FaceTime, or any other of the video conferencing style. Live is in person, at the listed places. Phone is over the wire, like, with a handset.
All consultations are arranged via e-mail only.
astrofish.net/travel
In summary, the bullet points?
Explained?
- astrofish.net/travel (where)
- astrofish.net/contact (contact)
- astrofish.net/shop (price/pay)
Unrelated?
Ghost Town
Author’s name was familiar, the set-up, oddly reminiscent of an adjacent childhood I didn’t have. Certain novelistic experiences, so individual yet universal?
“It was a garden-variety case of the midlife blues, nothing that couldn’t be cured with a little Zoloft and some pickleball, or so everyone told me.” Page 59.
Midlife crisis.
A writer, writing about a character who is writer, who is then writing about his fictional works of fiction, and if this isn’t handled well, it falls apart. But oddly enough, the fictional plot of fictional story told by a fiction author in a work of fiction?
It worked.
Ghost Town
Elements of the two tracks for the story, one contemporary and one culminating in August, 1974, the two threads, intertwined and does it resolve?
The music, the backdrop, my own personal memories flood the text. There’s a touch of magical realism, and one reviewer suggested supernatural pieces. I hardly think a Ouija Board is part of the supernatural.
It’s a novel about the reflection of growing up and how what happened then affects us now.
Ghost Town
Previously, Tracy Flick Can’t Win, looked at here.
I finished read this text after seeing Winedale’s Love’s Labors Lost, which as an adaption of the Winedale season from 1976.
This is where material runs together, part reminiscent, part foggy memory, part historical in looking back.
While both the book and the play’s adaptation used musical references, allusions to tunes that might, or might not, be contemporaneous to the show, the novel, I have to dredge through old memories of the times. Remember the Chevy Vega?
Austin, and by extension, the setting for that version of the play, was the epicenter for a truly revolutionary musical renaissance as it started the rise of the Progressive Country music. The outlaws, Waylon and Willie, et al.
These are elements that shape us, and this book unburied old treasures.
Weird close to a weekend.
Aug. 2, 2026 San Antonio, TX
Venus into Libra 8/6 2:13 PM
Mercury into Leo 8/9 11:29 AM
New Moon 8/12 12:38 PM 20°1’ Leo solar eclipse
Sun into Virgo 8/22 9:19 PM
Mercury into Virgo 8/25 6:05 AM
Full Moon 8/27 11:20 PM 4°54’ Virgo/Pisces lunar eclipse
Aug. 2, 2026 San Antonio, TX
Healing Arts Festival
Eagles Nest
1235 Basse Rd
San Antonio, TX 78212
Store phone: 210-354-7343
11:00 AM — 4:00 PM
astrofish.net/travel
Kramer Wetzel’s Aura Photo
Diners: Smitty’s in Brenham
Really, should be an honorable mention, as it doesn’t look it was ever a 24-hour joint. But still, stands up to a worthy kind of diner. On highway 290, headed to Houston from Austin? Just at the entrance to Brenham?
Smitty’s Cafe and Bakery
Quaint joint. Must’ve been a gas station/service station at one time. Looks like part of it was once a bar, but sticking with what works? Let the market define the goals and outcomes?
It’s a diner-style SOUTHERN COOKING and SWEET TEA kind of place. Help is friendly, but on a weekend morning, slightly laconic, but — small town Texas? It might not be fast, but it is done right.
Very pleasant repast.
I was raised on Kerby Lane and Magnolia Cafe (old South Congress) pancakes. I know a pancake or two. Smitty’s had the best I’ve seen in a long time, better than the recent offering from Kerby. That’s a pretty high bar to try to pass. There’s just something about the edges of the pancake itself, thick with bubble pockets. More than good. Seemed to be done perfectly.
Food was served on aluminum-looking trays, robust, “Chicken and biscuit?” Again, this is a small town. The wonderful side of the small town.
A young grandpa-looking person was bowed over his food, mouthing a low blessing. Two toddlers in tow, the chaperon couple looked like grandparents. When he got up to go to the bathroom, this is open-carry territory, the was a newish Glock, riding in holster on his right hip. Nary a second glance at anything.
Just a little joint by the side of the road. Worth stopping for, really good food.
Smitty’s Cafe and Bakery
4355 US-290, Brenham, TX 77833
Romeo and Juliet
The introduction? Should scream, “Spoiler alert!” The first two-dozen lines give away the plot, the story, and the tragic outcome.
Chatting, over coffee with a couple from Cali?
“She was my teacher at UC Merced, we did Shakespeare in the park, there. Had to come see her.”
“Yeah,” her companion said, “family in Dallas, I had to ask about a barn. In Texas. The heat. The humidity.”
They were off to see Prince Hal and Hotspur duke it out with commentary from Falstaff.
Why I prefer the evening shows, but I’m old, tired, and cranky.
Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is one of the more well-known titles. Couple of famous movie versions, and I’ve seen both, in recent memory, and each has a different take. The updated version was fun.
The farmhouse where we stayed on this trip? A vacation rental, less than a mile from the UT Shakespeare Winedale performance area? First off, it was “farmhouse chic,” and as such, it was perfect. Set next to a pasture, the aesthetics worked just fine. It wasn’t “kitschy,” it was rural in a rural setting. On the porch, a single, large writing spider spun her web.
We got to be friends, I’d like to think, me and the spider with her web. Caught a small roach in the house, one evening, and instead of squashing the bug, I went outside and tossed it up into the web. On a previous evening, I watched as she spun her web around a large, very dead grasshopper.
“Grasshoppers like that, high in protein, good food source.”
Not met with universal acknowledgement as a good idea. That evening, the spider did dine sumptuously. I kept trying to recall which native mythology used the Spider Woman as the one who spins our webs of fate.
The kid playing Romeo was outstanding, and we know how this ends: not well. He used the rafters, and that made the play’s production feel more three dimensional, with the great Queen Mab speech, Mercutio dragged that out throughout the barn’s limited coverage, up and down the aisles.
One place we stayed, there were writing spiders at all four corners of the shed, and several on the porch. Didn’t bother me, and someplace, I’ve got pictures. In this place, there was jut the one on the porch. When we first arrived, the rental hadn’t been cleaned and the manger met us, made dismissive comments about the spider, and I suggested that the writing spiders are good luck. Fewer bugs, and the writing itself? Lets us know where the web is.
Checking out the latest morning, after the Romeo and Juliet show? I kept thinking about that spinner, the web of fate as spun by the spider woman, and what was ahead by looking backwards.
Kid sitting in front of us, walking out after the show?
“That sucks. Would’ve worked out if their parent had just left them alone.”
Yeah, about that?
Romeo and Juliet
Previously at Winedale 2021 & 2016.
(Pulp Romeo and Juliet)
The Richard 2 reference I missed earlier.
#shakespeare