Bottlecaps

Technology's revenge

OK, I posted a heartfelt and thoughtful blog on Monday, then didn't manage to follow it up at all this week.

So, just in case I don't get back to you with a Foto Friday, I wanted to at least keep you informed and entertained.

Informed: The boy had his appointment with the audiologist this (Thursday) morning. He can hear just fine, of course. This was just a necessary step in the path to the speech pathologist. But it's always nice to hear a distinguished man with lots of diplomas on his wall pronounce your child to be "perfectly fine."

Entertained: A new favorite web site is thereifixedit.com. Any true guy who doesn't appreciate the finer points of "Aggie engineering" (and I can say that because I'm an Aggie), well … why would that kind of guy read this blog?

Here's a sample: 

OK, that's all I got. If I get motivated tomorrow, I'll post some pictures. If not, we'll see you on Monday.

Technology

I've been on a clearing-out-junk spree, either throwing it away or trying to sell it on eBay. We're even having a garage sale in a couple weeks if you want to come buy some of our junk.

(In fact, yesterday, I sold about 400 old bottlecaps to some woman for $20 in the parking lot of Cabela's. They were about half old Lone Star and half old Bud Light caps dating back from my 1999-2001 tour of duty in San Angelo. It's weird to think that the cap of some Lone Star Beer I drank a decade ago in West Texas is now going to be an objet d'art for a retarded kid in Austin.)

Among the crap in the man room I was clearing out is all our old VHS tapes — including some blank ones. I had a stack of a dozen of them, unlabeled, so I sat in there last night and ran them through the old VHS recorder to make sure there was nothing of value on them before I threw them out.

And it struck me how incredibly clunky this technology is compared to DVDs and DVRs. I mean, you have this black box, essentially, with no idea what is on it (if it's not labeled) and … well, you all remember VHS tapes.

(But I'm going to save one, so I can see the sheer look of disbelief on the boy's face when I explain to him that this used to the height of technology.)

I know I am a nostalgist of the first order, and I know I call myself a Luddite in this blog, but I've come to realize that I'm not exactly against technology. I'm just a late adopter. It was 1998 before I got a CD player. It was 2002 before I got a cell phone. DVD and DVR came after that.

I might resist the newest technology, but ultimately I give in just like everyone else. I might wax poetic about how I used to stop at pay phones in podunk towns when I'd driven long enough to work up the nerve to call a girl up and ask for a date … but … now I'm annoyed when I can't reach someone on the cell phone on the first try.

I will probably join the iPod masses at last this Christmas season. I don't care to have a smart phone, but I'm sure I will eventually.

Only occasionally do I join in with the rest of the world: I jumped in the blog thing while everyone was still doing it. I snatched up the first vinyl record-to-MP3 technology. I was in on the Chuck Norris facts before it got lame, somehow..

All this leads to me to wonder, should I reconsider my stand? Revise my approach? Should I join in a little faster? My next job, whatever that will be, I'm sure will require me to be at least semi-current with the technology. I doubt my print experience will mean very much unless I can convince someone that I can apply that experience to Web sites and Twitter and whatever's next.

Should I join Facebook? I've been considering it. Should I Tweet? Even if I secretly think it is confoundingly useless, if not downright dumb? Should I get, God save us all, an iPhone?

It's a weird and wireless world out there. I don't like it much. But maybe for my career's sake and to at least delay the boy thinking I'm an unbelievable dinosaur doofus … maybe I should fake it a little bit.

Besides, I can always retreat to the man room and listen to my vinyl records if it gets to be too much.

Foto Friday

Howdy. Just a few pictures today from "Goin' Bananas" on the south side. Well, north Manchaca, actually.

Anyway, the boy didn't really go bananas this time around. Not sure why. But he played a little bit …

We made a brief appearance in the 3-and-under inflatable, mostly to check out the doggie with some other kid.

I imagine this is how kids see Goin' Bananas.

Really, dad. I'm just not that into it today.

We did spend some time in the "shark" inflatable.

But we found it a bit tiring.

Is it time for barbecue yet?

We spent most our time chillin' in the casa.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Cat Scratch Fever*

The latest Texas Monthly has an article about Ted Nugent. I don't recall who wrote it, and I'm sure as hell not going to go downstairs and check, but he/she includes this fantastic line:

"Ted Nugent isn't an asshole. He just plays one in real life."

Come to think of it, the whole article is excellent. Why? Because the author resisted the easy temptation of just stringing together a bunch of quotes from Nugent and calling it a day.

And, trust me, any writer can write a good story about Nugent. You just have to get him on the phone, tape record what he says, play it back at half speed so you can type it into your Microsoft Word document, edit out what your publication won't allow, throw in a few half-hearted transitions and you have a very interesting article.

I know because A) love him or, more likely, hate him, Ted Nugent speaks in run-on sentences and rambling thoughts that are so outlandish that you can hardly stop reading and B) I have done this exact thing.

This was back in my San Angelo days in 1996. Nugent was playing our RiverStage for whatever reason I still can't imagine, and I volunteered for the story. My interview was at 8 a.m. (back in these days, I usually drank at the bar until closing time and slept until past noon).

I dragged my ass out of bed at 7:45 and called the number at the given hour, not really knowing what to expect. Back then, the Internet was really just kind of a novelty to me, and I had done my research with the Tom Green Public Library's most recent books, which were a decade out of date at least.

Nugent sounded like he had been awake for hours and killing things the whole time. He didn't wait for questions, he started talking 100 miles an hour and kept at it for 30 minutes. You couldn't really ask him questions, but a sentence fragment would at least get him speeding off in a different verbal direction.

I don't remember the story all that well but I do remember — when I asked what this Detroit man knew about Texas — him screaming "Texas! I AM Texas!" And I remember him personally blaming Ann Richards for the Luby's massacre in Killeen (that part was later edited out of the story).

But I do remember that the story was good. Not excellent. I didn't have any analysis or thoughtful commentary of my own, but I managed to pull those quotes together in a cohesive and entertaining way.

Sadly, though, my story was completely upstaged by the star local television reporter. I can't remember his name (let's call him Chris), but he was a rather smarmy and effeminate guy. On live TV before the concert, he asked Nugent something that didn't sit right with ol' Ted, and he said "Well, Chris. How about I kick your ass right here?"

So now, of course, every time we mention how Ted Nugent came to San Angelo, everybody remembers the TV guy and no one remembers my story.

Of course that same TV guy was later run out of town for something sleazy that I can't remember, either. (You know, I don't remember a lot of this story.) We all agreed, though, it was a shame that Ted Nugent didn't kick his ass on live TV.

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I talked about guns some months ago. Here's pretty much how my stand on automatic weapons breaks down:

Would I like to shoot a fully automatic weapon? You bet. Tommy gun, .50-caliber, Gatling gun, M-60, Uzi, whatever. I would love to. Damn shame I never got to.

Would I like to own a fully automatic weapon? Well, if I were wealthy enough to buy access to a place where I could shoot one and wealthy enough to buy ammuniton to shoot it … it might be fun. But I can't see any reason why I really need one.

Do I think the idiot down the street should have a legal right to own an automatic weapon? Fuck no. I wouldn't trust him with a slingshot.

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* I have actually had cat scratch fever. It actually was nothing like Ted Nugent says it is.

Miscellany Part III

No, I didn't go to Poodie's Picnic on Sunday, though I probably should have. We're at the point in time where anything that resembles a Willie Fourth of July Picnic could be the last.

Kind of wish I had gone.

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So, Michael Jackson had wanted to get in shape, and so he hired Lou Ferrignou?

Why? That's like me saying I want to start running again, and hiring Olympic legend Michael Johnson. … I could probably just start with the local running coach down the street.

And if Jackson had wanted to put on some muscles, hell he could have probably started with Richard Simmons.

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Of all the celebrity deaths to happen over the last few weeks the one to affect me the most was: Hi! Billy Mays, here!

I kinda loved to hate that guy. Every time I saw the "Awesome Auger" commercial I would sputter with furious self-righteousness … "no damn $20 cheap-ass drill is going to dig through anything but goddamn kitty litter with that sorry ass spindly piece of shit!"

Inhaling too much OxiClean? Done in by the Secret Society for the Auger? Killed by Stuart Scott because he ESPN parody commercials were funnier than anything Stu's ever done?

Who knows? But I'll miss that guy.

Bridge Over the River Gymboree

Likely not going to have a lot of time to blog this week, and I ought to jump in bed right now as I'm awfully tired and slightly ill … but I had to share briefly the tale of the boy's first big birthday party.

As you might guess from the title of this blog, it was at the Gymboree just north of our old stomping grounds in northern central Austin. The boy had been invited through his daycare.

We got there and once the boy got a look at the "tumbling" area, he could not be contained. He all but forced his way into there until the guy running the place just gave up and let the little ones in.

The party turned out to be 30 minutes of play in the padded play area, 30 minutes of "Gymboree organized activities" and 30 minutes of cake/ice cream/snacks/milk and present opening.

The boy took the first 30 minutes in stride, running about willy-nilly. But the organized activities seemed to a bit much for him. At first he kept watch from the sidelines, but soon he was hell-bound on getting out of the playroom and into the auxiliary room.

Later, when the party moved to the auxiliary room for cake, etc., the boy stayed long enough to drink some milk rather greedily, then was hell-bound on getting back to the play room.

Basically, he REALLY wanted to be where everyone else wasn't. Basically, we immediately became known as "the parents of that weird kid who doesn't want to play with everyone else."

Perhaps he will become more social as we work at this. At least we have spared ourselves the embarrassment (so far) of holding a big party for him and have him spend the whole time trying to bail out on it.

I was a bit nervous about the gift. I hadn't been to a small child's birthday party since I was a small child. And basically, I wanted to get a gift that wasn't so cheap as to cast doubts on my upbringing, but wasn't so expensive as to be creepy.

Fortunately, an adviser at work said pretty definitively that an appropriate gift would be $10-$15. I took that to mean "under $20" and it worked out fine.

We were one of the first to arrive, thanks to my comically antique notion of timeliness, but we were also one of the first to leave. Both of us sweaty from chasing the boy. I think he had a good time.

Now … how do we go about instilling a sense of social interaction?

Blood pressure reducing machine

Yeah, I know that you were expecting something else, maybe. But I just had to quickly show off my kick-ass Father's Day gift from Shannon (thanks babe!), who got me this despite the fact that for Mother's Day, she got the promise of a shoe storage system that I have yet to construct.

I know, I know. You guys are out the snickering. "He's gonna use that maybe 3 or 4 times and then it'll gather dust." But no, this is no spur-of-the-moment decision based on a sober viewing of "Rocky III."

I did take boxing lessons for four years. I truly enjoyed it. I just had to give it up when the boy came along, because I could no longer drive 30 minutes north, workout for an hour, and drive 30 minutes south … when I had to be watching him the whole time.

So, it's been awhile. I gave the heavy bag my first return attempt yesterday. After 4 warmup 3-minute rounds, I tried some power punching and … well, I made it half a round before I thought I was gonna throw up.

The good news is that I'm not prohibitively sore. Just badly out of shape.

Anyway, y'all have a good weekend. Hopefully I'll be more into blogging next week.

"Nevada Smith"

A mini-review of the latest OW (Old Western) I've seen:

If you can get past the first 15 minutes of "Nevada Smith," where the obviously 30-something Steve McQueen is supposed to be a 16-year-old kid — including a scene with his "Indian mother" who looks to be younger than he is by a considerable margin — then you'll find yourself in a pretty good Western.

Of course, he's supposed to be a youngster throughout the movie, but the annoying references to him as a "kid" drop off pretty quick and you can just forget about it.

The 1966 Western goes like this: Three outlaws kill parents of "boy" McQueen. McQueen goes off in search of outlaws. He gets educated by a kindly gun salesman. Years pass. He tracks the outlaws down one by one.

As with any OW, it's worth watching just for the old-school actors. Among the highlights: Karl Malden and Martin Landau as bad guys and a young Pat Hingle as prison trusty Big Foot (he holds his own with McQueen, easily). Also look for Peckinpah regulars Strother Martin and LQ Jones in a brief appearance.

The high point of the film is where McQueen's character gets himself arrested to track down Killer No. 2 in a Louisiana work camp. This is more Cool Hand Luke than Western, but with Pat Hingle doing his part, it's the best part of the movie.

Sadly, I can't really give the movie too much of a recommendation, because the ending is pretty much nonsensical. I won't spoil it for you, but it ends abruptly and with a confusing mess of logic. It does have Karl Malden as a villain, though, and that counts for something.

I enjoyed watching it, but wouldn't watch it again.

No summer for grown-ups

I miss summer. Really, I do. Let's be frank: I don't mind the heat. Never have. I actually like it.

(One benefit: If we didn't have 100-degree summers, you wouldn't be able to swing a longneck around here without hitting at least half a dozen Californians and Yankees. Just think, for every person who A) decided to move here and B) decided to bitch about the heat, there are C) at least 2 or 3 reasonable people who decided it was too hot to live here in the first place.)

But as the father of a 2-year-old, my interaction with summer is fleeting. It means the slides are hot at the playground. It means that someone is selling snowcones. It means that we can go swimming every now and then. Mostly it means watermelons are a major part of the boy's and my diet from April through August.

No, I don't expect 3-month summer vacations anymore (though, that would be damn sweet. In fact, it's why I kept considering being a teacher long after I decided I didn't have the personality for it). I realize I've gotta earn a living.

But that doesn't keep me from wanting to be out there in the sun, sweating and doing some yard work or building a fence or ducking out of the heat into a dark cool honky-tonk. Or road-tripping down to Luckenbach to see what happens there on a Monday afternoon.

My weekdays now are strictly structured. There is little room for yardwork, no time for leisurely drives. Definitely no honky-tonks. And the weekends? They disappear way too fast. I keep picturing long afternoons of working in the backyard, but it seems that once we get everybody moving, eat lunch and run some errands that … damn! it's 3:30 already and I'm tired!

Even back in my San Angelo days, when I didn't have a yard of my own to work in, it seems like I was fully plugged into summer, taking road trips and spending afternoons watching the clouds drift by from the front porch, hand half frozen from dipping it into an icy tub of beer.

Hell, I must have worked just as much in the summer as I did anytime else, but my memory sure doesn't let on.

And so it goes. Growing up is stealing from me my favorite time of the year.

Summer's here. And I miss it already.

Three Aggies walk into a live music venue…

Robert Earl Keen opened with "Feelin' Good Again" and followed that up with "Gringo Honeymoon," and for those two songs, it felt like old times. It didn't feel like I was three weeks from 38, with a 2-year-old son and a stagnant career.

It felt like it was 1995 and I was young, crazy and the terror of the journalism world (at least, in West Texas). I'd been chain-drinking Bud Light since I arrived at Floore's Country Store at 7:45 p.m. with my father-in-law (who, as the designated driver, did have one less drink than I did). We'd gone to see Max Stalling (Aggie) open up (at 9 p.m.) for Robert Earl (Aggie) (at 10:30 p.m.) and for just a moment, it did not seem at all like it had been 6 years since I had seen a Keen show.

I have to admit, when Keen sang the line in "Feelin' Good Again" about how he "wished that you were there" and then he turned and "saw you standing by the stair" … well, I looked not once, but twice toward the entrance for Shannon thinking that, well, maybe …

No, she was back in Austin, sleeping, probably, in between waking for work at 5:30 a.m. that morning and getting up early Saturday for a 10 a.m. acupuncture appointment. This was Dad's night out.

And it looked like all the old characters were still there at those Keen shows: the obnoxious frat boys, the stoic weirdos in their starched western duds, the tough guys, the squealing bimbos, the happy-go-lucky dudes, the kings of the beer line. I wanted to tell them all to get the hell out of my way, I was two-fisting Lone Stars and yelling "Front Porch Song!" back when they were all still asking mommy to drive them to the mall.

For those two songs, all was right in the world. But, as good as the show was (and Keen was good, though he shorted us on the story telling, Max was fine, though he seemed overmatched by the size of the crowd) … halfway into the show I was tired. The beer had reached that saturation level where I knew I could drink more, but I knew I would regret it. (Back in the day, that level was barely noticed, never acknowledged, but now … well, I have obeyed mostly for seven years, strictly for three years.)

No, I didn't feel like that young guy much anymore. And, to tell the truth, I didn't really miss him that much.

One night with the crowds, in the open air, for two shows and two fistfuls of overpriced beer, that's all it takes to look back, visit, and return to being damn near 38 and the father of a two-year-old.

And I'm pretty happy right here.

(Besides, you should see the Father's Day loot I got…)