Trek

Update: OK. Correction in comments, followed by another comment by me, followed by another correction. At this point I'm giving up on ever saying anything about Star Trek that I don't know to be an absolute truth. Like, apparently, Spock is at least partially some other species than human. I will point out, however, that the belt buckles in the movie still look ridiculous.
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I Netflixed Star Trek: The Motion Picture the other night and found it average.

Strange how your memory can change things. The movie, in my mind, was great. I saw it in theaters, when it first came out about 50 years ago. Mainly, I had no idea what was going on. Something about a bald lady with a flashlight in her throat. But I thought the pictures were purty.

Since then I had seen bits of it here and there but never watched the whole thing through, and it’s pretty good in bits and pieces.
An art museum in Abilene ran an exhibition by the artist who came up with the special effects, and it was impressive enough to make me begin to think that the movie had been unfairly dismissed (Trekkies usually argue between I and V as the worst, I think).

And then I watch it again, and:

• The special effects people were way too proud of their product. We have about five sequences of shuttles flying by the Enterprise. These sequences usually end with fascinating, minute-long scenes of shuttles backing up into the Enterprise docking bay. Parking in space! This stuff doesn’t stay current, and good directors understand that.
• Stupid side story: So you have this big energy cloud thing that’s larger than the sun, that’s destroying anything that looks at it, that’s on a direct course for earth. You, the new captain of the Enterprise, take off to meet it after giving up your chair to Starfleet legend Kirk, and you spend the majority of the trip there whining. “Woe, Kirk took my job.” “Woe, will my love with the weird bald chick ever be rekindled?” “Woe, will I ever appear in another film besides Brewster’s Millions?”

• A plot that turns on a “no freakin’ way” idea. The big surprise at the end is that V’ger is a Voyager space probe sent out by earth to explore space. We’re told that this probe gathered so much knowledge that it somehow translated into consciousness, then, happy day, it runs into a planet populated by conscious machines, which build it a ship to return to earth. OK, the series has always had to wreak havoc with the laws of physics to move the plot along, but now it’s screwing with the laws of computer programming. A probe, which is really a kind of telescope joined to a radio transmitter, becomes “I prefer CSI to Law and Order” conscious?

Homestead review

Per this request – “When are you going to post a review of the new Home Furnishings and Decor shop in downtown Hico?” -- I’ll be happy to write about one of my great passions besides drinking lots of beer: Crazy expensive furniture and antiques.

And, if anyone else has any questions about Hico, I’ll be glad to answer them, so long as I don’t have to leave the house or talk to someone.

Homestead is a kind of place that you’ll see in Fredericksburg. Or at least the kind of place that you’ll see in Fredericksburg within the last 10 years.

Walking in, my first reaction was, “Damn they spent a lot of money on this place.” How much, I can’t be sure. I am sure that part of the appeal the owners are aiming for is making people think, “Damn they spent a lot of money on this place.” So, for the curious who like old buildings, it's an interesting walk-in. For the not-so curious, you probably have better things to do.

The Homestead building is kind of a Hico landmark. It used to be the Opera House, and for decades after that, a Chrysler dealership managed to hang on there. I never knew how a car place could survive in Hico, but they always had a couple of the latest model trucks parked outside.

The dealership closed, I guess about 10 years ago, and the building was falling apart until these guys moved in. By “Guys” I basically mean some guy named “Bolton,” who is supposedly a big deal in Fredericksburg. He bought up half of downtown and has already opened up two other shops. Other people are moving into his other buildings, from what I can tell.

The whole Hico-Fredericksburg comparison is a little weird. Several shop owners in town are now openly marketing Hico as “The next Fredericksburg.” I can and can’t see it.

Hico’s location is great -- the intersection of Highway 6 and 281 brings in recreational traffic from all over the state, and the place fills up with yuppie motorcyclists every weekend. The rich are buying up ranchettes around here to the point that “Cross Timbers region” is now a marketable geographical name. Real estate agents no longer have to lie and say we are part of the Hill Country.

Hico has plenty of antique houses, in all conditions. Which, while charming, is how we’re different from Fredericksburg. Fred is 1850s German settlement. Hico is 1890s Texas rapscallions and farmers. Fred has almost no unsightly houses and ridiculous real estate prices. In Hico, we’re plenty big into the mobile home lots. With the rusted, wrecked cars. Next to the chicken coop. In the front yard.

Also, the nearest German restaurant is in Granbury, and walking around here with a beer will get you arrested, if an angry pack of Baptists doesn’t tackle you first.

So, maybe Hico will become the knick-knack center of the southwestern corner of North Texas. Or maybe it’ll just end up one big truck stop for the traffic on 281. We’ll see. I don’t care, so long as my land is not surrounded by vegetarian herb farmers and Starbucks by the time I die.

So, now that I’m completely off the subject of the store …

The stuff is nice. It’s a mix of antiques and new things based on old designs. Mostly wood cabinetry and overstuffed furniture of one sort or the other. And hella expensive. I walk in and am immediately conscious of my wallet and the way it’s pulling down my self esteem. Some of the merchandise is just useless decorative stuff that, to me, would be marketable only to ranch house pretenders.

On the other hand, you also have over-stuffed, leather chaise lounges. It went for $1,500, but Mom gave it a look of passion that my Dad hasn’t seen in decades, so it’s ours now.

I have managed to make one purchase, a garden statue of Saint Fiacre. Nothing I’ve planted has died yet.

Saint Fiacre of the Humongous Dill Weed

Unnnnnghh ...

Whoa. It's been a freaking week since I was here. Sorry. I've been going through a caffeine purge, so the main thing on my mind at 7 a.m. nowadays is finding a will to live. I'll write more later.

Recreational Buddha

From Brian in Abilene, posted with no comments...

No actual offense is intended to any Buddhists (current or in future incarnations) who may be reading this.

From Wikipedia, with annotations by yours truly.

The Buddha games list is a list of games which it is reputed that Gautama Buddha said that he would not play. As such it dates from the 5th century BC and is the earliest known list of games.
There is some debate about the translation of some of the games mentioned, and the list given here is based on the translation by T.W. Rhys Davids of the Brahmajâla Sutta (Digha Nikaya 1, translated in Dialogues of the Buddha) and is in the same order given in the original. It is also given in a number of other Buddhist works, including the Vinaya Pitaka.

-- Games on boards with 8 or 10 rows. Note that Chess as we know it was not invented at this time. (Yeah, man. The Buddha ain't gonna join your chess club. Geek.)
-- The same games played on imaginary boards. (Whoa ... that's heavy, maaaan.)
-- Marking diagrams on the floor such that the player can only walk on certain places. (You mean like ... er ... crosswalks? Aha! Down with crosswalks!)
-- Using nails to place or remove pieces from a heap with the loser being the one who causes the heap to wobble (such as pick-up sticks). (I knew there was a reason I didn't like that damned Jenga game.)
-- Throwing dice. (Again, uh oh. My years of D&D back in high school and college will single-handedly keep me reincarnating for the near future.)
-- Hitting a short stick with a long stick (there is still some debate about the translation of this line) This game ... I ... I MUST HAVE IT.
-- Drawing a figure on the ground or wall after dipping a finger in lac, red dye, flour or water, and having the other players guess what the picture is going to be. (Buddha Hates Pictionary!)
-- Ball games. (There goes all of Western society.)
-- Playing with toy pipes made of leaves. (As opposed to putting leaves in toy pipes. Which is only legal in Amsterdam, I think.)
-- Ploughing with a toy plough. (Because that's fun!)
-- Somersaulting. (I never could do one, so I'm safe here.)
-- Playing with toy windmills. (A problem that even today plagues our youth.)
-- Playing with toy measures. ("Hey, Billy! Let's go see if the curb is level!" "Rockin'!")
-- Playing with toy carts. (No Hot Wheels.)
-- Playing with toy bows. (No more scaring your sister/the dog/your school guidance counselor.)
-- Guessing at letters traced with the finger in the air or on a friend's back. (A sure way to get a harassment suit these days.)
-- Guessing a friend's thoughts. (If I could do this, I wouldn't be worried about seeking enlightenment. It'd be rich!)
-- Imitating deformities.

While one can certainly agree with the last one (and playing with toy windmills has never been my thang), doesn't this list cover just about every cool game ever made?

Apparently, the Buddha had no problem with card games, so those are safe if you wish to still get together with friends on the weekends and still remove yourself from the karmic wheel of eternal Samsara. It's nice to know that one can take the Vow of the Bodhisattva, resolving to save all things from ignorance and move creation toward enlightenment, while still enjoying the occasional round of Go Fish.

The idea of the Dalai Lama playin' a mean game of 21 has to make you smile, at least somewhat.

Brian
Full of Fascinating, Odd Facts

The Alaska adventure/grizzly death

From Jeremy in Oklahoma:

Yeah. One day I'll have a camping story that includes the sentence: "And then Scott killed a bear with his compass needle."

Smokey the Bear says:

I likes mine stuffed with Monterey Jack and jalapenos. Eat up, nancy boy.

The Friday Night Lights of Sixth Street

So I watch the newscast that NBC is going forward with a new show based kinda-sorta on "Friday Night Lights." (To be called "Friday Night Lights.")



My first reaction when I heard the idea is that it won't be good. The subject's good for a book and movie, but all that teenage angst against a stark small-town background can get tiresome really quick.

Still, I was eager to know where this show would be based. They couldn't do it in Odessa, that's been done before, so they'd have to pick some kind of fictionalized West Texas location. And they did, so long as you consider Austin to be West Texas.

Yep, the network morons decided that Austin and the hill country is the perfect location to film a drama about a West Texas football team. The name of the fictionalized town is Dillon:

From acclaimed writer/director Peter Berg and Brian Grazer.

In Dillon, Texas, high school football isn’t just a sport, it’s a way of life. This year, the Dillon Panthers are expected to go all the way. That’s a lot of pressure for Eric Taylor in his first year as head coach. Not to mention, the pressure on the athletes who all have their sights set on college and the NFL. Coach Taylor is ready to mold these boys into champions and encourage them to be better men. Will they rise to the challenge?

Is NBC up to the challenge to keep this show out of lameness? (That would be no.)

To pick nits here, whatever location they come up with in Austin is not going to do justice to the original idea. What made (makes) Odessans nuts about football is that it's the only game in an extremely isolated town. The landscape (described by one reviewer in the Washington Post as "oddly beautiful", which made my day) purveys that sense.

In Austin, high school football plays second fiddle to UT sports. And what's on Sixth Street. And Whole Foods' latest deal on Pinot Noir.

Would have simply been impossible to set up their operations at least somewhere close to the right area? Fort Worth comes to mind.

Whatever. If the show comes on and they have a straight-on kicker, I'm swearing off NBC.

A post only for people who like cartoons

Have come up with my next Hico project. I’ve spent the last couple of days working on my Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It’s a typical New York kind of accent, but the consonants are hit hard so you have to be able to force it.
I’m hoping I get it working soon so that I can keep ahead of the curve. I didn’t get my Barney from the Simpsons down until I was out of college and everyone else had moved on. The Comic Book Guy is limited to saying "Worst [fill in blank] ever" and that got old quick, especially since no one gives a rat’s ass about the Simpsons any more.
So, as Carl would say, "Hey, it’s a new era ... of loneliness. ... Oh, God."

Random thought on 281
Watched the famous and critically renown anime "Ghost in the Shell" on Sunday. And I’m left with two thoughts:
– I’m filled with overwhelming despair.
– I have no idea why.
Anybody who watches anime can help me out now. (What the hell was the Ghost anyway? Some kind of leftover soul thingy?)
Mainly I’d like to know how the Japanese are able to get out of bed each day.

Psyched

Went to a psychologist for the first time in my life last week. There's nothing weird going on here that isn't normally associated with being me. It was just pre-marital counseling. And I can say what strikes me now is how nervous I was beforehand.

Your mind can do weird things when it doesn't know what to expect. I half-expected to walk in and answer about 10 questions, at which point she would pull out a picture and yell, "This is what you look like inside!" -- and show me some Fruedian-based image of such personal destruction that I would break down like an 3-year-old fat kid throwing a tantrum. Then the hour would end and I'd be dragged out by two men in white coats.

But -- not that I'm going to go into anything personal here -- I talked about what I wanted to talk about and she gave common-sense advice. I had to remind myself not to look at my watch. She looked like she was bored and wanted to move on to the people with real problems. I wonder if I should ask her next time if the fact that I was anxious means anything?

Nah. Last session is Friday.

***

Bah bye, couwze
So, we're now getting rid of the 30 or so cows recently put to graze at the farm. There's a problem with the electric fence that would be too boring to describe. I just wanted to say that they smelt bad and left plenty of the material cows are known to leave, but I'll miss watching the suckers frolick, the entertainment they provided for the dogs and the way they made me hungry for barbecue.

***

Random thought on 281
I've noticed that this has become an object of praise in at least three out of the last five "I luv Texas" songs I've heard recently, and someone needs to state this plainly: Lone Star beer sucks. Badly.

Keeping it

My friend Todd just sent me a link for the perfect T-shirt:

Yep, perfect for the wedding reception. The great thing is that I don't need pants. I'll just get the XXXLarge version and wear it like a mumu.

Sorry, but football

I know that whining about how it’s not football season is a Texas cliche. Cliche on the level of male-college-student-listening-over-and-over-to-Pearl-Jam’s-“Black”-after-some-girl-done-him-wrong cliche.

But ... God, I miss football.

The feeling came over me while I was perusing the Star-Telegram and found myself reading a preview of the World Cup ... in Germany ... and considering France’s chances.

WHOA THERE. I don’t hate soccer, and I’ll probably even keep up with the Cup until the U.S. goes down. But I care deeply for soccer about as much as I care deeply for the brand of motor oil in my Saturn wagon.

I realize that there are some things to be grateful for on the present sports scene. The Dallas Mavericks are in the finals. The Rangers are on top of a lousy division. Yay.

But June is just starting and I’m hot and bothered to see what kind of quarterback Tech will have.

I’ve been hoping that this will be the year for the Raiders of Red, but Oklahoma gave every indication it was putting things back together by the end of last season. At least Tech should have a shot at Texas with Vince Young gone. The Aggies are hearing big paws getting louder and louder.

These things get so wrapped into my head that I can smell the crisp days and chill nights and constant breeze around Jones Stadium when the mood takes over.

I don’t care so much about the NFL, because it’s really impossible to care much about the Cowboys nowadays. But here’s what I’m looking for:
– Dallas clings to mediocrity while winning just enough games to keep things interesting until the last three games of the season. Or they may just collapse and suck. Either way, Terrell Owens will screw things up. Yes, bold prediction, I know.
– Former Texas Tech great Wes Welker will continue a successful career with my second-favorite team in Miami. If I’m lucky he’ll pull a Kenny Rogers with the Herald reporter who keeps on whining about how he’s good but not good enough.
– I’ll finally be able to add a “but ...” on the end of the sentence: “Yes, I admit that Vince Young is one of the greatest to ever play college football.”

Back on

I've been gone for a while, but I have to say the last week was extremely lame. Damn rabbits.

I've added what turned out to be an epic post on my backpacking experience a couple of weeks back. Glad to be posting again.

"The Call of the Stupid" or "Next Time I'm Staying Home and Playing EA Backpacker"

We left at about 6:45 a.m., and immediately stopped at the Koffee Kup for breakfast. This is probably not the way to start a long drive that’ll take you to one of the most remote regions of the state, but we wanted donuts and other oily foods.

Smokey the Bear says
Never begin a day of hiking with a large greasy omelet full of jalapenos, onions and bell peppers. Trust Smokey on this one.




We were headed to Guadalupe Mountains National Park for a weekend of backpacking, and the plan I had laid out was kind of ambitious. Actually, you could just sub “idiotic” for “ambitious” and it’d be more accurate.

Here’s a picture of a Koffee Kup donut. I included Scott, who is 7-foot-2, in the background for scale. I’m convinced that if you threw one of these in a Krispy Kreme, the entire store would collapse into a paper-thin piece of dough.

After breakfast, we finally took off, stopping for gas a couple of times before hitting Andrews. This was my first disappointment of the day. I had wanted to introduce Scott and John to Buddy’s, a legendary West Texas eatery famous for its steak fingers. Their steak fingers are nothing like what you got in school when they blended the leftover soybean chicken fried steaks together and served it as finger food.

This was actual steak, hand-battered and fried up. I was introduced to the experience on an earlier trip with Oklahoma buddy Jeremy. Sports writers from all over the state have written about them. People from Lubbock travel hundreds of miles out of their way to try them. Texas Country Reporter even did a segment on the place.

Scott and John’s verdict? “Bland.” “Missing something.” And I couldn’t eat something that greasy at the time (see entry on omelet), so there was no way I could tell.

Eh.

I could have seen it as an omen, but that would have been stupid.

We passed through Carlsbad and arrived at GuMo at around 4:15 p.m. We hadn’t made good time. The park headquarters was about to close and we had to rush through our trip preparations with the ranger (So I had no time to make a comment on his strange looking earring) and grab T-shirts for the women back home, so they wouldn’t kill us out of anguish on our return.

Strapping on our backpacks, I was a little anxious. The sun went down around 8:30. The first part of our trip was steeply uphill with a sharp drop-off on our left. We had to climb for three miles, and it could get dangerous in the dark.

At the trailhead.

But everyone was excited to get going, and we set a pretty good pace. Things went well. We were excited to be there and had plenty of energy for what I thought would be the roughest climb of the weekend. We made it to the top just as the sun was fading out.

Here’s a shot of me going up. You’ll note the white lines cutting across the mountain. That’s the trail up and ahead.

This picture is also a pretty good illustration of the way I feel on the sad clown face days of my life.


Ahem.


There was much adolescent giggling at this point.






On with the trail. You never really appreciate dirt until you can’t walk on it. You really miss it when you’re stumbling over a trail of nothing but loose rock in the dark. Our flashlights out, we kept going until we finally reached camp (Tejas on the park map).

We then fumbled through our packs for our cooking gear, got dinner underway and set up our beds. There was not a lot of conversation -- the last two miles of stumbling around in the dark with no rest stops had been brutal.

We were joined by three deer that kept running around the camp, refusing to leave. Really, it kind of takes the fun out of seeing deer if they don’t act skittish and you have to worry about them kicking your head while you’re trying to sleep. John resorted to yelling out sound effects from “The Simpsons” to drive them off.

Stars. Lots.

All in all the first day had gone well. We had made our destination, we had full stomachs, and everyone felt pretty good. I drifted off to sleep, occasionally awakened by a birdcall or the sound of John yelling “homina-homina-homina-homina.”

Things started to go wrong the next day. The hike to our next campsite (Marcus) turned out to be much longer than I expected. We didn’t have a lot of hills to climb, but the second day is always the toughest, because your body hasn’t adjusted yet to the outdoors.

Grass in the valley.

Plus, we also began to descend out of the mountains, which meant the heat that we had so far avoided started punishing us. We got to the next camp at around 1 p.m., our water supplies dwindling. We took a nap. And I was worried about the next step. Our walk to Dog Canyon, which has a ranger station and a water supply, looked like a long freaking way to go.

I had planned all along to get water, then hike back to the campsite in time for dinner. I was beginning to have my doubts. All of us were tired and we might not feel like walking back. At least it looked like a nice, flat easy walk there.

We left for the water after a quick nap. All of us dropped most of our gear at the campsite, as there’s no need to take it if you’re just going to walk back. Heh.

About a quarter of a mile from our campsite the path (called the Bush Mountain Trail), suddenly took a sharp turn up a hill. “No problem,” I said, we’re just going to skirt this mountain.”

Then the trail took another turn. Straight up the mountain.

Another turn. Higher up the mountain.

“My God,” I thought. “The Bush Mountain Trail has a mountain on it!”

It was the worst thing that could happen. We were all tired. A rough climb would leave us with no energy. And we still had three miles to go. Our water ran out about halfway up. We tread up a little longer, before stopping under a tree for shade.

I really felt like excrement. This had been my plan. I had told both Scott and John that they would only need about a gallon of water and not to carry any more. Now they were both looking exhausted and the heat was getting to all of us.

We finally decided that I’d go ahead and get help (I’m in a little better shape as my job requires me to stay on my feet all day). I went ahead as fast as I could. The mountain topped off quickly and the long path down started. And the fear of everything that could go wrong begin to take hold of me.

I got to Dog Canyon a blathering fool and called the ranger using the pay phone emergency number. He walked out of his house nearby and came to talk to me. I told him the situation, he asked me how much water we brought with us. “One gallon.”

His eyes kind of bugged out of his head and he clenched his jaw. “That’s pretty stupid.”

Smokey the Bear says
Treat a ranger as you would a cop who just caught you doing 90 in a school zone.





“Yes sir, it sure was.”

He talked to me a little, mainly to calm me down. There was no reason to think anyone was in serious danger at the time. He told me he’d go up the trail and take water.

About the time he had dressed and made his way up to the trailhead, Scott and John stumbled in to camp. They went immediately for some water, then met me. The ranger was pleased as punch that he wouldn’t have to spend his off hours searching for some poor city slobs.

We all talked to the ranger a bit about what to do next. Our equipment was back at the campsite, and no one was in shape to make a trip back over the mountain. So, the ranger allowed us to stay in the station’s bunk house (usually used by work crews) for the night.

The accommodations, after what we’d been through, were first rate. Showers, toilets and a microwave. The ranger chatted with us for a bit, but we were all dead tired and not much for conversation, so he said goodnight.

I would have liked to talk to him more, as rangers tend to have good stories. Instead, we listlessly watched “The Princess Bride” on the cabin’s TV and crawled into bed.

Hummingbirds at the ranger station.

The next day, we split up, much like the fellowship at the end of book two in “The Lord of the Rings.” I would hike back across the park to where the car was parked and drive to Dog Canyon. Scott and John would go pick up all of our equipment and bring it back.

Damn I look creepy in this one.

We said our goodbyes and headed off.

I had a nice walk. The trail went by one mountain peak, but beyond that was pretty easy.

Walking back. Bored.

On the way back down the cliff face that we had climbed on the first day, I ran into a group of people headed up. On the entire trip, they were the only other people I saw save for the ranger. That’s one great thing about GuMo – you can practically have the whole place to yourself, even on a weekend.

I stumbled into the parking lot and immediately headed for the water fountain -- where a couple of people had decided for God knows what reason to set up their laptop computer. My apologies for splashing water were not really sincere.

Anyway, I took the hundred-mile drive back to Dog Canyon. I took a nap for a bit before Scott and John showed up. “If we found a shady spot, we were resting in it,” Scott told me.

We hadn’t kept to the plan, and we had very nearly got ourselves into some major trouble. Still, everyone was in a good mood. Like a kid whose first sled ride takes him speeding out of control, down the mountain, over the busy highway and under a moving tractor trailer into the brush beyond the road, our survival was a tangible thing to enjoy.

We’ll do it again before too long.

We stopped in Carlsbad for dinner. The town is actually a nice little desert spot. It was about 7 p.m. and the time and temperature sign said it was 102.

Main street, Carlsbad.

In the flatlands of West Texas, the sun set, and in the dark around us, lightning storms lit the sky from horizon to horizon.

We drove back to Hico, listening to a surprisingly good classic rock station out of Hobbs.

Smokey the Bear says
“Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band says all it needs to say in the first 30 seconds, but manages to go on for about 25 minutes. You can drive across a West Texas county trying to understand the line after “Blinded by the light”, which sounds like “Caught up like the reducer on the rudder in the right”, even though you know it’s wrong and it’s driving you nuts. Sheesh.

*By the way, some of the pictures here look good. Those were taken by John.