Carless in Dallas: The Heat Is On

Being outside feels like hugging this

Just when I got my mind set on going carless, something frustrating happened. My brother called me and mentioned that he would be gone on tour for a few weeks this summer, and that if we wanted, we could borrow his car while he's gone. I mentioned it to Julie and said that we don't really have to take him up on it if we don't want to. She said, "Yes, take it! Now!"

Those are the words of a woman who has already grown tired of walking a mile in the heat everyday to pick Nigel up from school. Honestly, the car was a blessing, and we view it as God's provision for us in his bizarre, inexplicable way. God is like that, I think, and I don't know why. However, that was over a week ago. In that time, the temperature has risen over 100 degrees, and I find myself wondering: how sweaty is too sweaty?

When I'm on my bike in the afternoon, there's no cooling breeze anymore. Instead, gusts of hot air lick my arms and face.

Thankfully, another friend, Toby, read this here blog and has volunteered his car for most of July and all of August while he's on tour. It looks like we're going to get through this thing without having to sweat it out too terribly thanks to the kindness of my bro and friends like Toby, who is a good guy. 

God's better though.

And as my family walks through this tough time of saving cash before we buy a new car, instead of getting into debt over it, I feel God's providence. It just feels like we're in the right place, in the pocket, in the groove. Even on those blazing walks. Even when I have a near death experience trying to bring home groceries on my scooter. Even when we're making those groceries stretch further than they've ever stretched before.

We're already about a third of the way there.

Carless In Dallas: There Will Be Blood

#ouch

Julie spent a lot of time getting mentally prepared for today’s trip on the DART Rail. Before bed last night, she spent a substantial amount of time calculating her trip on the DART website. She’s like that: well prepared.

Julie works from home, but on Thursdays she has a staff meeting to attend, so I stay home with Townes and take Nigel to daycare. As she said her goodbyes this morning, Nigel, in all his excitement, somehow ricocheted off of her leg into the coffee table, biting into his upper lip.

There was blood. Lots of it.

Julie immediately knew what to do. She threw down her bags and scooped up the boy. He bled all over her work clothes. I, on the other hand, frantically ran around for a minute until I came up with my sole contribution.

“I’ll call the doctor,” I said, hoping to avoid the emergency room (and, secretly, the co-pay). The doctor said she could see us in 20 minutes, so I scrambled to get out the door with both boys screaming. That’s when I cheated on this whole carless thing.

“You go to work. There’s still time to make the train,” I told Julie, and she sprinted in the direction of the train station. I threw both boys in the car. The one my mechanic told me would never be safe to drive. Ever again.

The doctor’s office is only half a mile away, but it was too rainy to walk there with both boys.

By the time we got there, Nigel was fine. The Tylenol we gave him had kicked it. The doctor took a look at him and said he’s OK. It looks a lot worse than it is, so no trip to the emergency room (and no co-pay), she said.

Relieved, I put the boys in their respective car safety seats and returned home. When we walked in the door, Julie was standing there. She missed her train. I was kind of glad. It turned into an impromptu rainy day in for our whole family.

We were all pretty beat up from this morning, but I can’t complain. We have it so good.

Carless in Dallas: There's No Way to Avoid the Wetness

#citykids

The adventure of going carless began pleasantly enough today. To catch up those of you who are new here (judging by this blog's pageview report, that would be all of you), yesterday my mechanic told me our only family car is dead. So, starting this morning, we are traveling by foot, moped, or DART.

It was warm and a little humid when I set off on foot to drop Nigel off at his daycare, just half a mile away. He was in a stroller, I was in jeans and a t-shirt.

I think I'm going to like that part of being carless, just me and the Nige (one of his many nicknames) walking the streets of Deep Ellum, looking for cool things like a weird rock, something painted a primary color or a birdie. He points them all out to me as we pass.

When I got home, Julie pointed out how sweaty I was. I had a set of imposing pit stains. Turns out, though, that it wouldn't be the only time I'd be wet today.

#soaked

Later on at work, our bosses planned a sort of staff field trip to a nearby watering hole to plan an upcoming issue of the Observer. As I hopped on my moped to go to the meeting, I noticed some dark clouds overhead, and halfway there, I was pelted with big, stinging raindrops.

"Our bathroom has some of those hand dryers," said the lady behind the bar when I walked in. I found the men's room and peeled the soaking denim shirt off, running it under the hand dryer for about five minutes. It was a waste of time.

Two hours later, with a cold, wet shirt clinging to me, it looked like the meeting was winding down as my coworkers went for their third and fourth rounds. I noticed a break in the storm. That's when I made my move.

Only a few minutes into the trip, the storm came on strong again. The rain sprayed, stinging my face and arms, and by the time I got home I was completely saturated. Drenched. Soaked. Cold.

Thankfully, when I got home, there was a hot shower waiting for me. Somewhere else in Dallas, someone was caught up in the same storm and didn't have the same luxury as me. With that in mind, I look back at today as a success. A giant step into a simpler life.

Tomorrow, Julie takes the DART Rail to work for the first time, and I'll have another sweaty shirt before 9 a.m.

So Long, White Shadow or Going Carless: A Social Experiment

In the words of our esteemed governor, "Adios, mofo."

Tony shook his head and made a cringing face as he stared under the hood of my white 1999 Honda Civic, or as I like to call it, The White Shadow. Actually, I've never called it that. Not once. That, just then, was the first time. I tend to come up with great ideas too late.

"It doesn't look good," he said. Tony, a short, peppy hispanic guy, has been my mechanic for years. Everytime I bring my car in he points to it's many dents, scrapes and ghetto paint touch-ups and makes fun of the terrible shape it's in. This time, there were no jokes.

"Your head gasket's blown," he said. "Ooooh," I gravely replied, pretending I knew what he was saying. "What does that mean, exactly?" He went on to tell me that, in summary, the cost of the repair is greater than the value of car.

"Ooooh," I said, this time with a bit more gravity. On the drive home (the car is still drivable for a short time until it inevitably will explode, Macgyver style), I started thinking of options. There weren't many. After all, besides my moped, it was my family's only source of transportation. When I got home, Julie and I talked.

She asked me a simple question: "Why do we need a car?" It was so outside-the-box that it took me a few minutes to actually consider leaving behind the convenience of owning a car. Considering my moped and the DART Rail station literally across the street, I couldn't really come up with a good answer to her question. We don't need a car. At least not for now. We certainly don't need the debt that comes with a new car.

So, our plan is this: For the next four or five months, we will live on a tight budget and put away enough money to pay cash for a reliable car.

In the meantime, we will ride the DART Rail, which Nigel will love. I'm excited about looking at our city's public transportation (the largest light rail in the nation) as a necessity rather than a luxury.

What I'm most excited about, though, is looking at this as a way to simplify our lives.

drums for sale

hey guys, got a few drum items for sale. check em out.

set of 14" new beat hi hats. these are excellent hi hats for rock. very crisp and dark. no keyholing. good condition. I'm asking $75 for the pair.








22" ride. i love this ride, i'm just ready to move to a darker sound. very crisp and heavy. i really hate to part with it. 1 year old. no keyholing. just a little wear.
asking $150





snare. this is a 1966 ludwig supra-phonic 5"x14"(date stamped on inside). rough shape. lots of pitting as you can see, and a little rust. matches my 1966 kit, but no match for my black beauty! still sturdy and sounds great!
asking $100


1970's ludwig 6.5"x14" vistalite (smoke) supersensitive snare drum. super rare. there is a small bb-sized chip on the resonant side bearing edge. other than that, great condition and beautiful drum.
asking $400









don't like the prices? make me an offer
d.s.hopkins@gmail.com

Adventures in Radiant

My favorite Radiant adventure (to date) happened during New York's CMJ festival in October, 2006. We drove down from Boston, parked our van at The Hero Factor's hotel in New Jersey and, through a series of events involving a busload of Haitians and a man urinating on the subway, we found our way to Greenwich Village at about 10pm.

We met our friends in a bar smaller than your average elevator, and crammed the entire band, The Bear (road manager) and Lance (good times coordinator), in the door. Lance did his job well as the good times rolled until about 4am.

The next day, seeing as it was our first time in NYC, we helped ourselves to a tour of Manhattan. At 10pm, we took the subway back to New Jersey, and got back in the bus full of Haitians. Only this was the wrong Haitian bus. We appealed to the driver to turn around, but instead he kicked us out.

So there we were, stranded in New Jersey in the middle of the night. Thanks to The Bear's inner GPS, we could at least walk in the right direction. After a few miles, we realized we had entered a freeway's on-ramp. We then realized that the freeway had a large wall in place of a shoulder. The night had reached rock bottom. At least that's what we thought until we stared into the flashing lights of the police car that was pulling us over.

After a brief explanation, the officer ruled out what I thought were the obvious solutions: offer better directions or offer a ride. In a stroke of genius he shouted "I'm gonna turn on my lights and you guys walk in front of my car!"

The six of us walked single file in the slow lane of a 6-lane Freeway for about a mile, until we reached the safety of our beloved van. That was one of the craziest adventures we ever had.

NEXT TIME ON ADVENTURES IN RADIANT: how the Chicago police thought we were attempting to blow up the Sears Tower.

Running on empty

Sitting here watching an old Jools Holland rerun that I tivo'd and one of the guests is Jackson Browne. It's been a while since I've seen a performance so inspiring as when he just played "These Days." It was sobering, really. To hear him sing "These days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do," and "Don't confront me with my failures, I have not forgotten them," makes me look back over the last decade with a little regret. I think, "did I work hard enough?"

It can be so confusing when you realize the thing you thought you were meant to do, might be holding you back from the rest of your life. How in the world can you cut ties with what you love? I don't think I'm supposed to, but it is sad to see Jackson Browne celebrating a beautiful song that he wrote years ago, and for the first time think, "i might not ever get where I want to go."

I've always had high hopes for me and music. I always thought the the best was still to come. Maybe it is, but this is the first time in my life that I doubt it.

Maybe I should take a lesson from Mr. Browne, "Gotta do what you can to keep your love alive."

more on drums...

I guess it should come as no surprise after writing a blog about musical skill, that I sit here humbled in Blackwatch Studios in Norman, OK. Levi and I made a weekend trip to start work on his new solo record.

For the few of you who have never recorded drums in a studio, the process is simple. Levi records a "scratch track" as a metronome keeps him in time. After that, I sit down and play along to Levi's track and the metronome. Then the engineer, Chad, performs a sort of audio surgery, in which he zeros in on and corrects each beat that is out of time. It turns out that my performance was stuffed with those things.

Chad's extended time fixing my out-of-pocket rhythms certainly put me in my place...which is a good thing. I'd like to work on that area of my drumming, but in the meantime I will console myself by taking a lesson from my last entry.

Art vs Ability

I'm a professional drummer... well, semi-professional. It sounds braggy until my part-time job at Starbucks enters the equation. When I'm not slinging lattes, I can usually be found behind the trap-set in several capacities. I play at churches. I play in bars. I play in studios. I play for punk bands. I play for pop bands. There is nothing I'd rather do than play the drums.

I cross paths with a lot of musicians with different ideas on what makes music "good." Many of them can be found on the wrong side of the battle between Art and Ability. 

People devote their lives learning how to shred like Steve Vai. The drummer for Dave Matthews Band spends most of the song letting you know that he is better than you at the drums.... and for some reason people love it. Unfortunately for these misguided souls, somewhere along the way they forgot that music is not a sport. 

But, those of us who are not so great at our instruments (true story) can breathe a sigh of relief, because music is art. That means Flea can slap his bass guitar until his fingers bleed and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are still bad.

I'm not saying that skill is a bad thing. I'm saying that it's not the most important thing. Ever since the Velvet Underground's debut, musicians have been shaking off the idea that you need skill to make great music. 

From the mom that hums as she sweeps the floor, to the little girl who sits in the back seat of the car and sings a weird, out of tune song, great music is all around us. It's usually not coming from the people we call Virtuosos. Heck, the Beatles were not great players, but they are the fundamental artists of pop music. 

If I want to watch someone with great skill, I will watch Tony Romo throw a football... er, nevermind.

Until then, tune in next time for my take on Art vs Commerce!!!

My ghetto history with technology

When I was a kid, all of my friends had compact disc players, nintendo, cable television, and cordless phones years before I did. I remember the embarrassment when over at a friend's house one day I was asked to put a CD in the player and I put it in upside down.

It's no wonder that I'm just now getting an iphone, but there's a catch: it's not activated, nor will it be. My brother gave me his original iphone when he received his iphone 3GS in the mail the other day. 

I'm not sure how long my pockets will tolerate so much technology with my ipod, normal phone, and now the iphone, be we're going to try to make it work.

I'll keep you updated.... riveting stuff I know.

daniel

Dallas Observer Review

Here's a link to a review I wrote for the Dallas Observer.

For me it's kind of like the first time Radiant played at Trees. I wanted to play there since I was fifteen, and when it finally happened, I was ecstatic. Hopefully there will be more to come.

Daniel

The Plan

Recently, I've decided that I'm going to take my writing to the next level. I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but my short term goal is to get one article published per week. My long term goal is to transition from my job at Starbucks (which has been a terrific place to work) to a serious writing job by 2010.

I'm not sure how this is going to happen. In the meantime I'm hoping you'll see more articles by me in various newspapers and magazines around here. I love you. I'm tired. Goodnight/morning.

Air Review- Concert Review

Air Review might be the best band in town, but there’s a reason you haven’t heard of them. They’ve only played one show. 

Last Friday night, Air Review took their place in a short line of Britpop-inspired Dallas bands as they played in front of a full room at the Curtain Club. I had forgotten that the balconies were lined with Cabe Booth’s brilliant paintings of Dallas’ top bands over the past few decades, which created the perfect atmosphere for Air Review’s first concert. This showcase was an opportunity to prove that they are already just as good as any band up on that wall, and that’s exactly what they did.

As the first few notes were played, it was obvious, these guys aren’t joking around. Each member of the band is a seasoned player, every note was deliberate, and everything down to the lights went according to plan. The arrangements resembled Radiohead’s darker side, while lead singer Doug Hale summoned the energy and drama of Muse’s Matthew Bellamy. This is the first time I have ever seen a band’s first show when every part was so calculated but they still maintained a sense of spontaneity and energy.

There were a few lulls, however. More than once the chatter from the audience was loud enough to match the band during mellow moments like on the intro to “All Because.” But the band always managed to fight back with huge hooks and choruses, often with all five guys shouting their guts out into the microphones, like on “Chasing Corperate,” which is an obvious choice for the first single.

With their next show on June 5 at the House of Blues, and an album release set for sometime this summer, Air Review is already generating a lot of buzz around here.

I've been TERMINATED!!!

as a sheltered kid, there were certain things i was barred from. smurfs, he-man, rambo, anything that occurred past 9pm,  pg13 and r rated movies, etc. being barred from these things only made me more curious. 

i found myself daydreaming about being rambo's sidekick. i frequently organized round table discussions about freddy kruger, just to hear what i was missing.  

all this to say that i finally satisfied a desire that laid dormant since the 1980's. i finally saw the Terminator. it was amazing! despite bad special effects, cheesy violence, and ostentatious one-liners, the story gripped me instantly. 

i can see how cyborgs sent back from a nuclear war torn future might be a little heavy for a 7 year-old, but for a 28 year-old man....just right!

my first published work!

i wrote an article about black tie dynasty and it was published!!!

here's the link:

lakewood-now.net

it's on the front page, but probably not for too long!

daniel

ANGRY DOG

in the past 8 days, i've eaten at the angry dog 3 times. i might be obsessed. i'm convinced it's impossible to put a better burger in front of me, than the one from the angry dog. if the demise of deep ellum ever reaches the dog, it will be a sad, sad day.

my brother in-law and i have had an ongoing debate for nearly a decade, and we both continue to hold strong to our opinions. of the songs "born to be wild" and "bad to the bone," we are debating which song is better. while "bad to the bone" is one of the greatest catch phrases of our time, "born to be wild" inspires a full body spaz-out consisting of a windmill air guitar solo followed by a feat of strength.

this is why i think "born to be wild" rules...

daniel

green room antics

sitting in the backstage musician chill-out zone talking about nothing. caste systems, illegal movie downloads, india, marriage, injustice, red light districts, and white people. more on this later.

sorry this post is kind of a mail-in...

my wife and i.

my wife and i, only seconds after being pronounce man and wife.

crooked necktie

last night julie, stephanie, justin, jesse and i went to natalie kriefels twenty third birthday party. it was only minutes after we began our descent into the bowels of rockwall, when a woman in a chevrolet suburban full of kids flipped us off in a most unsavory way. i'm sure we added fuel to her unexplained fire when we simply laughed it off as we pulled into the chick-fil-a drive-through. one thing was certain about last night: it was going to take a lot more than one redneck to derail our good time.

once we got to the party we ran into several old friends and had a great time catching up. i quickly shuffled over to the drink station, where i decided to pour whisky into my sweet tea. the first sip was like an epiphany... the ramshackle cocktail nobody thought would make it to the second gulp was delicious. i knew it needed a name, so i gathered our small group together to form a think-tank. 

justin's contribution was "cock a doodle tea," i came up with "texas joose," and stephanie, whose contributions were mostly names that censorship laws will not allow me to publish, came up the the winner: "crooked necktie."

so next time you belly up to a bar and the bartender assumes you're going to ask for a sarsaparilla, tell him you want an ice cold crooked necktie...he will probably have no idea what you are talking about.