Texas Monthly is weird

Thumbing through the July edition at the barber's shop:

• TM has apparently started a series on where Texans worship. The July edition prints a positive profile of a mega-baptist church in Abilene. I suppose the purpose is to draw more religious types in. The odd bit is that the profile was immediately followed by:
• A sentimental look-back at the pornflick Debbie Does Dallas by Star-Telegram critic Chris Kelly. (The lead: "How do you capture XXX-rated lightning in a bottle?") Kelly argues that the movie has heavily influenced today's cinema, and just coming from the church article, I'm a little too slack-jawed to comment.
• This is followed by An Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy: Please Go Away by one Don Graham. Apparently McCarthy, who wrote The Road and No Country for Old Men has embraced his celebrity, thereby lowering his status on the cool-o-meter. Graham pleads for McCarthy to crawl back under a rock.
• We then get to the main piece, a glorification of the Texas Cowboy by western writer Elmer Kelton. I've read several of his novels, but I find this story a little to sweet to get past the first page.
• At the end of the magazine, Kinky Friedman writes his own love letter, a non-sarcastic thanks to Bill O'Reilly. Seriously.

Strange. They've mapped out the id of Texas.

Nerd/Copy editor humor

Yeah, nerd/copy editor does dovetail nicely.

Anyway, from Caren:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

Massive wind power project slated for West Texas

I reported on the subject a bit (a small bit), when I was in Abilene. The primary complaint I heard about wind energy then was that West Texas did not have the power lines to take the electrics to the I-35 corridor.

The idea here is to change that (from AP):

"In what experts say is the biggest investment in the clean and renewable energy in U.S. history, utility officials in the Lone Star State gave preliminary approval Thursday to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from gusty West Texas to urban areas like Dallas."

I guess this is what T. Boone Pickens has been blabbing about on his radio ads here in D/FW.

The idea causes me mixed feelings. I'm doubtful of wind energy: It's not affordable without a tax break, takes up a lot of space and kills lots of little birds. (Still better than ethanol, which is driving up food costs and killing lots of little African children.)

On the other hand, something that can bring back Fluvanna can't be all that bad.

Netflix recommendation: The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Whoa. I just watched a documentary on this guy from the Austin music underground and am blown away by the story.

I know nothing substantial about music. I'm not going to pretend that I can be any judge as to the songs Daniel Johnston wrote (is writing). His voice is a screechy high-pitched awful and he doesn't play his instruments so much as bang on them. It's like modern art -- best when translated by someone who knows what they are talking about.

If you're like me, the only bit of his work you're familiar with is a piece of his art that became kinda well-known for some reason or other.

Still, the story of a young, creative guy who seems to be making the scene and then goes dangerously bonkers is told well in this movie from 2005. I put it on my movie queue as a random choice.

I'll add it was much better than the film on Townes Van Zandt, which made me want to give up independent documentaries on not-so-well-known-musicians-who-eventually-lose-it.

Le Burger Time

Heh. New York Times does a piece on how hamburgers are now big in exclusive Paris restaurants.

"It is a startling turnaround in a country where a chef once sued McDonald’s for $2.7 million in damages over a poster that suggested he was dreaming of a Big Mac. Hamburgers were everything that French dining is not: informal, messy, fast and foreign."

This is good news. Me and Meredith had talked about a trip to a French restaurant for the upcoming anniversary. Now we can go to Whataburger.

It's interesting. The French have added their ideas to the burger -- odd spices, super-expensive meat. One chef sells his at $56 a pop.

I'll at least give them credit for trying. I tried several burgers in England, and they were universally terrible. It's like they were made as a statement of what they thought of American culture.

Football on the horizon

I divide my summer into two halves: That which happens before the Fourth of July, and that which happens before football season starts. This has been a fun offseason for Texas Tech fans, as we're getting more hype -- Ranked 8 by some!! Two Heisman candidates!! -- then we've ever gotten before.

This is the fun part. The season? Well, most Tech fans are Irish in a way, because every story we tell breaks your heart.

But there's always a chance.

Anyway, you can tell the anticipation for the year is growing.

Exhibit A: This blog post by Dallas Morning News' Tim MacMahon from a couple of weeks back. MacMahon says he's tired of seeing Aggies and Raiders go after each other, and states flat out that Tech now has the better football program.

The following comments section has about 138 posts. People start arguing over which school has made the bigger sacrifice to the nation, for crying out loud.

And keep in mind: This is a debate over who's the SECOND-best team in the state.

Oh good Lord

"The schedule we keep is demanding, but it's definitely an amazing experience," said Kevin during a recent conference call from Paris.

Quote is from the Star-Telegram article on the Jonas brothers, which also included the comment that they get cheesed because people compare them to other boy bands.

Eh, it's a waste of time to spit venom at teenage boys who will unfortunately be setting the fashion standard for the poor unfortunates younger then them.

"Daddy! Can I please have the gray wool vest and pink plaid scarf! All the cool dudes are wearing them!"

These things won't ever die. My sister had Shawn Cassidy 8-tracks, posters, and always watched the Hardy Boys. I just wonder when it started. I know the '50s were full of this junk. Did my Grandmother collect tokens emblazoned in the 1910s with some young pretty boy in a cowboy hat who sang saccharine-sweet love songs on his banjo?

How far back does this go?

Happy Fourth, and notes

And enjoy the day. Meredith's working, so it's me and Sam in bachelor's paradise. I'm thinking burgers are in my near future.

It's been an interesting summer leading up to this point. Meredith survived a job cut, I survived the beginning of my return to school. Sam has learned to pick up and eat even the tiniest bits of debris we leave around the house.

We took him for his 9-month-checkup on Monday and got the "Yep, still normal" OK from his pediatrician. He's ahead of the game in a lot of things, behind in a few. His height/weight percentile's are a little wierd: he's taller than 70 percent of kids his age, and weighs less than 90 percent of them.

Tall and skinny doesn't exactly run through the Segrist family, so Sam can thank Mama. I no longer say "amen" at the end of his bedtime prayers, I start chanting "Six feet tall! Six feet tall!"

Running wild
The doctor says Sam may be walking in a couple of months. That'll add some wrinkles. He's crawling all over everything and getting into everything, as it is.

I just want him to stop licking the toilet. We keep the bathroom door shut, but anytime I open it, he's running towards the porcelin like Emmitt Smith to daylight.

Algebra done with
Summer school is over. I'm skipping the second term for several reasons, but mainly because I'm investigating what I want to do next. There's about 843 different alternative certification programs, and none of them do things the same way.

At first I was looking at UT-Arlington, then I discovered that, to qualify, I'd have to take about 2-3 years of math classes. Then I heard about an online program I-teach, which moves pretty fast. Most recently I hear that Texas Woman's University offers certification with a master's degree so you can start at the better pay levels.

No idea. I'll be making a few phone calls.

Sorry, honey
I had to ask a really strange, disturbing question this morning.

"Did I hit you last night or was that part of the dream?"

All I remember is I was standing in a room and marshmellow cream began pouring in through this tube, and it was vitally important that I stop it. I reached for it suddenly, and then heard Meredith: "Ow! You hit me! You hit me!"

I apologized, several times -- mainly because I wasn't sure if I had fallen back asleep and had only apologized in my dream.

She's OK. The fact that she now has bump makes me queasy.

I can only figure that it had something to do with my tiredness, stress levels working out in sleep. It's been a rough opening of summer and we're both exhausted. The studying has taken a lot of hours and Meredith has had to lose a lot of sleep to pick up the slack I left with Sam. I'm happy we have a few months to put some things back in order.

Just hope I don't become one of those freaks who have to be tied down when they sleep that you see on Discovery Channel documentaries.

Some pictures for Grandma ...

Hmmmmm ...

• Jeremy C. learns Oklahoma is bringing back John Blake.
• Erfort finally sees one Pirates loss too many.
• Todd W. hears about the Sears Craftsman 99-percent-off sale, one day too late.
• Dave T. reads that Willie's next album will be techno.
• David J. gets a call from his mother -- she a found a long lost note for him from "Eva something or other."
• John W. learns that Wierd Al Yankovic has retired.
• Scott M. loses his eBay fight for the Wookie lunchbox with light sabre-shaped thermos.
• Kyle S. discovers he was supposed to use a special glossy sub at 1200 DPI, for cryin' out loud.
• Tom R. learns that Paramount's next iteration of the series will be "Star Trek Follies: Hyperspace High Jinks!"

*Yes, it's old. But my brain works mostly in slow motion.

My wife, blogger

And for a professional publication and everything.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram debuted the "Mom2Mom" social networking site today. (Actual address www.mom2momdfw.com.)

The paper has been talking about and planning this baby for months, so it's good to see it go live. Meredith is blogging under "Mer" and notes something or other about a recent skin disorder she's had.

I'm not going to guess if it's good or bad that I didn't notice.

She doesn't have her pictures up, yet. We were fine with them, tho I'd note that they were taken during Sam's usual naptime, and he definitely doesn't seem to be at his normal level of energy.

Also, they were taken three months ago, just in case you were worried that our kid has suddenly stopped developing.

Cowboy cooking notes

Son-of-a-bitch is the "most infamous*" of dishes from the chuckwagon era, consisting mainly of the cow parts you're never going to see at a steakhouse: the heart, brains, tongue, kidney, marrow-guts, etc., according to Robb Walsh's "The Texas Cowboy Cookbook."

Chuck wagon cook Cliff Teinart has his own recipe for son-of-a-bitch, and also knows some of the less offensive names of the dish: son-of-a-gun, SOB, gentleman from Odessa.

Gentleman from Odessa?

"Because, anywhere else, a gentleman from Odessa would be called a son-of-a-bitch," Teinert said.

*I don't see it beating calf fries, but we all have our opinions.