Sam, I AM

Soon to be making his first Hico appearance: As we've been walking zombies for the past three days, I won't go on long here other than to say that Samuel John Hill Segrist has safely landed in Fort Worth. Thanks to everyone for their help and support.

Here's a quick illustration of why you should pack in advance of your wife telling you it's time to go to the hospital:

Waah! And it’s possible interpretations ...

Waah! Oh, pardon me. Would you terribly mind handing me to the woman?

Waah! I wouldn’t complain. Soon I’ll be adding odor.

Waah! Well, look at that – it’s 4:13:24 a.m.! ... Check it out – it’s 4:13:25 a.m.! ... Whaddya know – it’s 4:13:26 a.m.! ... Hey – it’s ...

Waah! Basic cable is the best they could do?

Waah! This injustice will not stand! I know who you are! You are going to be sorry you ever messed with ... zzzzzzzzzzz.

Please stand by ...

We'll be right back.

Until then, enjoy our selection of Bollywood.

The Great War -- Eh

Watched part two of the latest Ken Burns docu-epic "The Great War." Disappointed.

Didn't see the first episode on Sunday. The Cowboys were on and you have to have priorities.

Anyway. I didn't like Monday's show because of two things I don't expect to see from a Ken Burns documentary: Repetition and shallowness.

The personal stories people told were moving. But they were short. Then he'd go back to the stock war footage everyone has seen about a million times: Cannons firing, planes crashing, bodies emaciating. It's not that this stuff doesn't have an impact. It just doesn't have an impact the 29th time you see it.

I kept on reaching for the remote to turn down the volume of the bombs.

Burns then spends all of 15 seconds introducing Gen. Patton. The best American general in the last century, and we get a brief intro into how he had "New ideas that helped America turn the tide." That's it?

In the Civil War, Burns gave Shelby Foote eight minutes to describe General Lee stopping along the road to make water. And included a map. Patton gets 15 seconds?

I'm guessing that Burns was probably intimidated by the scope of the whole thing, along with time constraints. He talked to live people, probably didn't want to hurt their feelings by not including them. Such is the advantage on doing a documentary on the Civil War, as everybody is for the most part dead. So, he instead includes everybody and never gets really deep into the subject.

Whatever. It's one episode. I'm hoping it picks up steam.

Tech goes blegh

"Oklahoma State slipped away with a 49-45 shootout victory Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium, leaving Tech winless in its last three trips to Cowboys country and Red Raiders coach Mike Leach steaming."

For my own very lame two cents.

(Huh, I start writing this and learn it's already out of date. Tech's defensive coordinator is gone.)

Anyway, from now on, let's at least include one hard team before Big 12 play starts.

It was like a high school coach we quoted the other day said:

"You play the big, good schools because they'll challenge you and expose some things you might otherwise not see."

Things you might not see, like a defense that apparently thinks a good, solid
pointing at a running back will cause him to fall over softly like a baby lamb falling asleep.

If you spot this before conference play starts you might be able to make some adjustments before losing to a team you have no reason to lose to. Again. And Again.

Just slightly bitter. Some folks in Lubbock are calling for some heads, but that's silly at this point.

I don't make this statement from a point of expertise. I do make it knowing that no one reading this gives a crap.

Stay strong Aggies, stay strong

At least for the next week or so.



I understand the guy's an A&M grad attending law school at Tech. I can understand the mental state.

Cornerback season

Read newspapers enough and you'll begin to notice story patterns.

Such as, here we are in the fourth week of the college football season. Most college beat writers have already done a story on the quarterback, plus a story on the team's best running back or receiver. Followed by a feature on a star that has surprisingly emerged.

This week? The reporters ran out of ideas and just started going* with positions in alphabetical order.

So in today's Star-Telegram, you can read about Texas A&M cornerback Marquis Carpenter and how he's matured on the field this season.

Not interested? Then on the next page, try Jimmy Burch's column about Oklahoma State cornerback Martel Van Zant, who is deaf and a source of inspiration.

Don't care? Then try the story right next to it, about Texas Tech cornerback Chris Parker and how he's matured on the field this season (My personal favorite).

*Unless they cover the Longhorns, in which case they go directly to the Travis County prison. Ha!

The Ipod video and 80s silliness

It's the song on the little video Ipod commercial that has been playing every NFL commercial break.

It's about to drive Meredith insane, but for me, I've always been an easy mark for that smokey voiced sentimental thing. And it has a banjo.

Warning: Not safe for work. If you're a guy and don't want the other guys calling you "Fancy Pants."



It's by a group called Feist. I've never heard of Feist. I have no idea where Feist is today. I don't know if VH1 behind the music has done Feist.

A little reminder for me: There's a lot of good stuff going on out there that I don't know about. Good to know that it's out there, tho.

On the other end, VMarksTheSpot sent me this video. Apparently it's associated with the movie "Music & Lyrics," the Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore flop. (It's kind of unfair to call a movie a flop nowadays, isn't it? They're all losing money hand over fist.)

Anyway, it's a parody of an 80s music video and is just about perfect in doing what it tries to do.

Warning: See above warning.



It stars Grant and the dude who plays the paralyzed quarterback on "Friday Night Lights."

Yep, another example that "FNL" got good actors at the expense of getting people who looked like they'd been on a football field.

A call for a seriously geeky moment of silence

Found out last night that Robert Jordan died.

Chances are, if you thought "Lord of the Rings" was lame and can't handle any movies that feature dudes swinging their swords, you have no idea who he was.

And on second thought, even if you don't think those things, but you don't seriously think the opposite of those things I just mentioned, you probably have no idea.

Now, before I confuse myself even more, I'll just say that Jordan is the author of the "Wheel of Time" series, a fantastically complicated fantasy series that now apparently will have no ending.

How nerdy? I recall reading a story a couple of years ago on the Abilene spelling bee champ. He won the local bee on the word "Telemon." Which he said he knew because "Telemon" is also a character in the "Wheel" series.

How complicated? The last book I read, I believe No. 9, spent 300 pages simply warming up.

Warming up, as in, checking in to see how one character was doing, and then moving on to the next 25 or so main characters to see how they were doing. Then he spent another 50 pages introducing you to a whole new set of about seven characters, all with extensive backgrounds and different goals ... And he never freakin' mentioned these people again in the whole damn book.

Anyhow, book 9 was where I bailed. I looked at all the plots and counter-plots and just felt that the rewards of investment were no longer worth the price of my time. And I was tired of the description, "She folded her arms under her breasts." That happened once every five paragraphs. I also got tired of scenes of naked women getting spanked.

Such is not my thang.

But, while sitting here in criticism, I'll say the first five books or so were a lot of fun. And a mountainously complicated feat of work. I still might go back some day and read the two I never got to.

I also admired Jordan the man -- went to military school, did a lot of things with his life, and was able to support himself writing fiction. That's a rare enough thing for someone to do, especially someone who writes about men on horseback charging the castle and women shooting death rays out of their fingers.

RIP

Pet update

How are my animals? Glad you asked.

Ginger

I worry sometimes how much age is starting to affect the ole girl, who is now about 13. She stumbles around more, doesn't play much with the other dog and her eyes are clouding over. Still, she remains as independent as an old stray and is always the one finding new escape routes out of the backyard. Damn dog knows I love her more when she gets into trouble.

The Evil Cat

Still brooding, still planning. Though recently she's not the Evil Cat so much as the Evil Cat For Whom the Litter Box Is Only A Suggestion. Tho maybe that fits in with her plan. Hmmm ...

Jimbo

Good boy. Still showing flashes of brilliance. Still unable to grasp the completely obvious.*

*Yes, he is the one I emphathize the most with.

Welcome home (Breathe)

My sister-in-law's husband Charokee just finished a tour in Iraq, and is back "home" (such as it is) at his base in Italy.

So, with a huge mental sigh of relief, I just wanted to welcome him back.

I don't do politics here, but I'll say that I've been proud and fearful to know a good man who was over there.

It's nice to drop the fear part.

Getting to know you

My marriage reached a milestone today.

At the Kroger, I was following the list Meredith had written, and came to "Jelly with red gingham lid."

The funny part here is that my wife expects me to know what she's talking about when she says "gingham."

The sad part is that, after a year of marriage, I do.

We also had the following conversation before I went shopping:

Me: On the list, you wrote "funny card for your parents' anniversary".
Meredith: Uh-huh.
Me: You want me to pick out something I find funny for your parents?
Meredith: (Pause.) Just get something nice.

Bonus link:
Female porn. (No worries, it's definitely safe for work and your grandma.)

Famous internet stuff

Here's a video that summarizes relatively popular internet stuff in the same way that "We didn't start the fire" summed up 40 years of history. I didn't find either of these things funny so much as diverting and catchy.

"Fire," though, is funny if you add a verse about all the dumb things William Joel has done to himself since he made that album.

Dancing in my videos,

Brinkley is divorcio,

I'll make music from the 50s,

Have another drink.

That took me all of 30 seconds, like it's writing itself. Surely that's been done before.

Anyway, the web thing is a pretty good test of how closely you've kept up with internet pop culture. I've seen about 10 percent of the things it talks about, and heard about maybe 10 percent of the other stuff. For that, I give myself an A.

First post this week

Pathetic.

This is probably the most I've slacked off of this thing since I started taking it seriously.

My apologies. Baby's on the way and it seems like all we have time for is projects and sleeping.

Frustrating as some ideas have popped into my head lately but I just don't have the time to write them down.

I can't wait until he's born so I can get some sleep.

A post solely for my Mom

You're welcome.

Sympathy, man to man

My wife asked me to pick up a couple of sympathy cards when I was picking up some macaroni at the Kroger today.

The strange part was the request: "Get something that’s appropriate to give to a man."

Uh-huh. I remember receiving one sympathy card in my life. It was from a girl I was dating, and my primary thought on opening it was, "If I don’t show the right amount of thankfulness, she’s going to be real ticked off."

So at Kroger, I picked out the plainest cards with the plainest font and the plainest phrase – "With sympathy." After I bought them, I realized that I hadn’t read what was on the inside. I spent more time picking out the macaroni.

Meredith was happy with them. Huh.

So what would be an appropriate sympathy card for a guy to send to another guy?

• The cover: "Dude!" Inside: "Man, dude."
• The cover: Picture of Barney. Inside: "I like you, you like me, sorry ‘bout the death in your family."
• The cover: Jessica Alba in a bikini. Inside: Jessica Alba in a bikini.

Actually, someone could make a killing here, so long as they sold the cards in bars. Seriously, the Postal Service would have to open new branches to keep up with thousands of notes, all reeking of beer and peanuts:

Dude:

You rock. You really rock out. The house. I love you. I love you because you so rock. Out. Dude. Forget about that girl, you’re way better than that angry wench, man. I don’t wanna hear you whining that whine about "Wah! I’m so sad! Mommy!" Dude, you’ll get over it. Because YOU ROCK DA HOUSE.

We love you.

Your dudes

*I get the feeling this has been done before, but what the hell.

Well, that was weird

Driven by Lauren Jones "Anchorwoman" mania, this site brought in 598 visitors on Saturday. This is a 3,000-percent increase over my usual daily visitor total. (I think. I'm guessing that no one here is a real stickler on math.)

Every single one of the newbies was brought in by a Google Image search, and the vast majority checked out within .87 seconds of discovering I did not feature bikini shots.

We were back down into the 20s on Tuesday, and I feel a bit more comfortable.

Thanks for the responses on the Vick piece. I was exhausted when I wrote it, and wasn't sure how it'd turn out. I don't even know if I agree with everything I wrote, but nothing's turned up lately that just blasts out "YOU'RE WRONG" to me.

Michael Vick should play again

I don't know why I've been defending unpopular athletes lately.

And I don't think he's getting a raw deal. I don't like Vick. His behavior was thuggish before this happened. Dogs are the greatest animals on earth. I have serious doubts about running quarterbacks in the NFL.

Vick should go to jail. A year, maybe two.

And then?

The thing is, the crime, along with the cruel and revolting nature of it, is just so freakin' bizarre. And that's why he deserves another chance.

Back in my early reporter days, I was doing a feature story on a retired geezer who spent his time competing in senior activities and pontificating on how the youth of today should also be doing these activities. "Maybe if they was pitchin' horseshoes they'd have less time to get into trouble."

(You do a lot of these types of stories while working in suburbia.)

So, the old man and his wife were thrilled that me and the photographer had come to visit. He showed me his backyard. He showed me how to throw a horseshoe. He showed me a note from the White House that said "We have recieved your letter," in response to a rambling note he had written suggesting the creation of a federal program for the advancement of horseshoe pitching. (He showed me a copy of that.)

And, in one of the more surreal moments of my life, he showed me his artwork.

He opened the garage door. Dead center in front of me was a picture of a rooster, smiling. The rooster was standing in a ring, surrounded by happy little round faces of people in bleachers, also smiling. To make a rooster seem to smile, you can either be one of the world's greatest artists, or one who tries very hard. Feel free to guess here.

And so the man explained his passion for cock fighting and how he tried to translate that onto the canvas. He also had also fought dogs, he said, "But those are harder to draw."

During this time, me and the photographer passed a few looks and said "really?" a lot. I took no notes. The photographer didn't take any pictures.

Afterwards, we consoled ourselves that he no longer seemed to be active in spectative animal killing. I never called the police, and the bit about cock fighting was not in the story.

What was I supposed to do? Attempt to send a married and retired 75-year-old man to jail? The thing about it, the man had no idea he was doing anything wrong. It was out of complete innocence that he showed us that garage.

He probably grew up with that, I thought. He was never in a situation to get out of it.

And so you have Michael Vick. From the poorest, oldest neighborhoods of Virginia. He kept his friends around him after he got famous. We jump on other celebrities who don't do that. He spent his life ignoring advice people were trying to give him.

We hear about these cases all the time. Thing is, it usually involves an athlete beating his wife, pointing a gun at the pizza boy, or having an unstoppable love for the ganga.

Once you do these things, it's a pretty good indication that you are in danger of doing these things for the rest of your life, and have become a menace to society.

But dog fighting?

I don't see this as an addiction or an anger management problem. I see it as a really disgusting activity. I don't see Michael Vick jonesing in prison, dying to get out so he can raise pit bulls and then kill them. I don't see millions of kids across the nation teetering on the brink, trying to decide whether or not to buy their first pit bull.

A person who has served his time in prison deserves a second chance. Understandably, you don't hire a convicted thief to work at a jewelry shop. You wouldn't hire Vick to tend a pet store.

But running around on a football field is a different matter. When he gets out of prison, if he's saying the right things ("I am a moron" and "Dogs should not be tortured"), then he should play again.

Maybe seeing everything he has go poof will keep him out of trouble. If not, he goes back to jail, and he never gets back on the field.

Fox's "Anchorwoman" improves ratings

(Cancelation update at bottom.)

At least for me. This site is getting more traffic than ever before. Lord knows what it's doing for Fox.

To recap, "Anchorwoman" is a reality TV show that puts this woman, Lauren Jones:

in Tyler, Texas, to read the news. It first premiered Wednesday night.


I wrote a bit about this in June.


I haven't written much of anything for the last couple of weeks, but have watched my daily visitor count steadly climb anyway. I reached an all-time high of 68 people on Sunday. (And no one ever comes by here on Sunday.)

What I have to thank is google image search, and the ability to steal pictures that look like this*:
So, thanks for stopping by. My only goal for the site is to try to maintain an atmosphere of friends sitting around a table in a decent bar, right at the 2-1/2 beer level. Sorry that I don't specialize in pictures of wrestling women.


And I don't have much else to add as far as commentary on the show. I work nights, I don't have Tivo, and I don't have any real interest in watching this. I'm guessing it involves a great deal of "hot woman humiliating herself" followed by "small town people expressing umbrage" or "small town people basically saying 'Yahoo' in 20-second mumble."


Here's some early criticism of the show:

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

"None of this is amusing, unless you can't get enough of TV shows depicting Americans as imbeciles to make you feel better about yourself by contrast."

Yeah, that formula never brings in ratings.


Here's something more in line with my thinking, from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"Setting aside the hand-wringing and taking "Anchorwoman" purely as entertainment, the first half-hour of the one-hour premiere is a breezy diversion. It's train wreck TV that often seems less real and more contrived, but it's kind of a hoot anyway."

And later ...

"That may be the real statement "Anchorwoman" has to make about the state of local news: You can't really corrupt something that was already bankrupt before Hollywood came to town."

Lauren Jones apparently hacked some people off by saying that being a journalist isn't "brain surgery." From my experience, I'll say a big problem today is that too many people think it is.

UPDATE: ANCHORWOMAN CANCELED AFTER ONE EPISODE

So, on one hand, the latest jump in visits I've received will go down. On the other hand, I'll stop feeling like a whore.

From the AP:

Here's news that Fox's series "Anchorwoman" wouldn't want to deliver: It's been canceled after one low-rated airing.

The debut of the reality show about Lauren Jones' attempt to turn herself into a news anchor for a Texas TV station drew an estimated 2.7 million viewers Wednesday, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen Media Research.

That number is about a third of the viewership Fox attracted a week earlier with the finale of its popular "So You Think You Can Dance."

... Unaired episodes of "Anchorwoman" will be available on Fox's website through Fox on Demand, the network said Thursday.

I guess you could see it coming. I at least thought it'd make it halfway through the season, but this is Fox.

The front character was a blonde star wannabe, not really a sympathetic type, and the premise wasn't shocking enough to attract the folks from Jerry Springer. Off it goes.

I'm sure we'll all be OK. Except for Tyler. It's chance to be in the spotlight was just ripped away.

Somewhere, Earl Campbell just sighed sadly. Then he smoked some sausage.

*No, she's not near my type.

** It's difficult to find images of this woman fully clothed. I have no idea why people are ending up here.

Cookie problems

Aren't letting blog at home today. (The thing not letting me blog last week was "lazy ass.")

Anyway, real quick, here's something guaranteed to make most of you feel old.

The world that the incoming college class of 2007 lives in.

*Taken from Ace

Brats

I don't really worry too much about being a Dad who doesn't give a damn about what my kid is doing. My primary worries can best be summed up in this article.

“Although most parents mean well and are trying to do right by their kid, they fall into a trap of making the child an extension of their own ego.”