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The Who: Setting an example for seniors everywhere
I’m getting tired of you Foo Fightin’ fan young punks crabbing about The Who performance during the Super Bowl halftime show.
Go ahead, you try to a manage an electric guitar and The Clapper simultaneously.
And so what if Pete Townshend had a wardrobe malfunction that showed off his gut? At least his fly stayed zipped.
Remember when Roger Daltrey used to swing that mic around in the air? He doesn’t do that anymore for fear he might hit Towshend in the head and Townshend wouldn’t notice a change.
Instead of a magic bus, these guys look like they’re riding a golf cart at Sun City. But more power to them for getting out there at their age. That’s the Paleolithic Age.
Anyway, their performance led me to write The Who some new lyrics to their huge hit “My Generation.”
“People try to put us down,
“Just because our guts are round.
“Not trying to cause a big sensation,
“Talkin’ ‘bout my hypertension.
“My hypertension. My hypertension.’
“Gettin’ too old for a rock ‘n’ roll bloke,
“Jump too high and whoops, a stroke.
“Lookin’ like I’m about to croak.
“My hypertension. My hypertension.”
“Used to stay up ‘til half past three,
“Then I joined AARP.
“Tagamet’s my drug of choice,
“Now that I have lost my voice.
“My hypertension. My hypertension.
“Sure, we’re old, but what’s your beef?
“Hard to sing without no teef.
“My hypertension. My hypertension.”
“Bout time this darned song ends.
“Glad I put on my Depends.
“My hypertension.
“My hypertension.”
Photo: Eric Gay/Associated Press
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Palin gives handwriting a whole new meaning
It could have been so much better for Sarah Palin. She could have written orange juice, beer and Toll House cookies on her hand.
I know a guy who used to write his grocery list on the hood of his truck, since his truck was so ugly. Palin would have been better off if she had followed suit and put her grocery list on her hand.
But no, now she’s writing crib notes on her hand while speaking at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, so she would remember what she was supposed to be talking about.
She wrote down “energy,” “tax cuts,” and “lift American spirit.” And you could see her referring to her hand during the presentation.
Oh, there are some good things you can say about Sarah Palin writing crib notes on her palm. It’s very green-ey, and save-the-planet-ey. That’s Palin speak for green and save the planet. While speaking to the Tea Party folks, Palin asked how that hope-y change-y stuff was working for them. But, it was environmentally concerned-ey for her to write on her hand-ey hand hand-ey.
At least she didn’t waste a piece of paper. Maybe she was trying to save a tree. Maybe, being from Alaska, she was going for the polar bear vote.
Maybe Palin used to pull this stunt while cheating on tests. Maybe she wrote notes on her hand in third grade to pass arithmetic. Besides, it proves she has good hand writing. If I tried to write notes on my hand, I wouldn’t be able to read them and I’d probably end up getting ink all over my shirt. I have lousy penmanship.
It’s Palin’s hypocrisy that dazzles me. Here she was, blasting Obama in front of the Tea Drinkers for using a teleprompter during his speeches. And here she goes doing the elementary school-ey thingy of writing her speechifying notesees on her hand. Do the Tea Partiers care? No, of course not. They’re all glassy-eyed about the message of smaller government, and linking guns to Christianity.
I didn’t know Jesus packed an AK-47. Palin could come out in favor of smaller government while playing the Star Spangled Banner under her armpit, and these robots would give her a hand.
Again, maybe it’s a green thing. By using a teleprompter, Obama is wasting valuable energy, right? Maybe he’ll take that into account and start writing his speech notes on his hands.
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Would the mysterious Badx please stand up and be counted?
I had a redneck/hippie bar fly friend who insisted on being called the Shadow. He was tall and dark and menacing to look at, and he was crazier than a March hare. He’d been thrown out of just about every beer joint in South Austin. One time he ticked off his girlfriend so bad that she put a pistol on him at the construction job site where he was working. He got on his hands and knees and begged for forgiveness. When a friend died he showed up at the funeral wearing one glove, even though he had two hands.
The Shadow, may he rest in peace, reminds me of the anonymous characters who leave comments underneath the articles published in the free on-line edition of this newspaper.
My favorite was left underneath my Sunday column poking fun at PolitiFact, the service this newspaper uses to ferret out the truth from politicians.
And speaking of the truth, the commenter, who identified himself as Badx, took credit for my weekly paycheck.
“I made Kelso what he is today,” Badx wrote. “About 25 years ago when he was a struggling, young columnist I granted him an interview. After that was published his career took off.
“Us columnist (sic) kinda rake at each other once in a while ‘cause we just like to do it. If the place I write had a forum I’m sure John would be comfortable with coming over and taking a shot or two at me.”
Who is this mystery man who launched my career a quarter of a century ago by allowing me to speak to him? Who is this fellow columnist? ‘Course, I don’t believe a word of this. And why should I? Anybody who won’t use his real name probably has something to hide — like the straight story.
On the other hand, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Badx did launch my career. Maybe Badx is a writer. So Badx, if you really did let me speak to you a quarter of a century ago, do it again. Send me a message telling me who you really are, and I’ll buy you a beer.
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If you owed taxes, Bullock would even take your turnips
In my Tuesday column that appeared in the driveway edition of this newspaper, I wrote about a new book out called “Bullock: God Bless Texas” (UT Press) by Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson.
McNeely was the Statesman’s former political writer. He’s been covering politics for so long that there were horny toads when he started. And Henderson worked for the Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Times Herald — back when there was a Dallas Times Herald.
Anyway, these guys collected a bunch of colorful stories about Bullock. And many of the stories that show up in their book tell about Bullock cussing out this person or that at the Capitol in spectacular fashion.
When Austin developer Ed Wendler Jr. saw my column, he decided to email me a story about what happened to him.
This went down in the ’70s when Wendler, “a kid not even out of college,” went to work for Bullock in the comptroller’s office.
Wendler said he was put in charge of Bullock’s Raiders, the comptroller’s team who went around Texas seizing the property of people who didn’t pay their taxes.
“Bullock promoted people to positions beyond their ability and experience,” Wendler wrote. “It wasn’t even sink or swim; it was swim or he would hold you under until you drowned.”
“One morning I got a call and was summoned to Bullock’s office,” Wendler continued. “It was like going to see the Wizard of Oz and I was the Scarecrow. He demanded to know why I hadn’t raided English’s, a bar/restaurant on Guadalupe. Luckily I had already done my homework and knew there were no assets to take in a raid. He ranted for a bit and it became apparent the issue was more personal than tax related.
“I finally said, ‘Mr. Bullock, I just don’t know what to do. You can’t get blood from a turnip.’
“He screamed back, “(GD) it, I take turnips.”
Wendler wrote that English’s was “soon raided.” No word on which vegetables Wendler seized out of English’s refrigerator.
If Bullock were alive today and using the same management strategy, he’d get sent to human resources. But you wouldn’t want to be head of human resources when he showed up.
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No home, no teeth, but one car part and some talent
On Monday, homeless guy and musician Timothy Howell was doing some low-brow marketing at East Riverside Drive and South Congress Avenue.
He was trying to sell what he said was a “clip” for a car’s front end grill. He was standing there, while holding the car part in front of him. It was the only part he had, and he didn’t have the rest of the car.
Timothy was displaying a homemade (since he’s homeless, I guess it wasn’t really homemade) cardboard sign that said: “It looks like I need 50 cts for a bus pass don’t it?”
At first, Timothy said he got the “clip” from “a friend who has a welding yard.
“He said, ‘Make a dollar any way you can,’ ” Timothy said.
A few minutes later, when I shot video of him, Timothy said he had the part because he’d been in a wreck the night before.
“There’s advantages to being homeless,” Timothy said. Like what? I asked.
“You don’t have to pay no home owners’ insurance,” he said. There is that.
While I was talking to him, Timothy burst into song. He bounced about a bit as he sang.
“I’m a guitar picker, no place to play;
“I’d love to get high, but I can’t find a way;
“And I can’t get no money, ‘cause I don’t draw no pay;
“I’m a guitar picker, with no place to play.”
Keep smiling, I told him as I was leaving.
“I ain’t got no teeth, Mister Kelso,” he explained.
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Col. Sanders signed a barf bag?
My Friday column about PETA offering to build a big statue of Col. Sanders made out of chicken droppings for the town of Corbin, Ky., caught the attention of Jim Meeks, a self-appointed “old hippie” who has an air-conditioning business in Dripping Springs.
Meeks, 57, says he was about 14 when he got Col. Sanders to autograph an air sickness bag on a Delta flight headed from Dallas to Detroit via Atlanta.
The young Meeks was sitting in Love Field in Dallas when here came the Colonel.
“He just came walking through,” Meeks recalled. “He was wearing a white suit. It was kinda yellowish like it had been around a long time.”
Was it really Col. Sanders? “This guy looked like the real stinkin’ deal to me, man. He looked like the kind of guy who didn’t miss a lot of meals, man, “ Meeks said.
So Meeks, who was headed to Detroit, gets on the plane, and as luck would have it, Col. Sanders is on the same flight.
“I get on the airplane and there he is,” Meeks said. “When you’re a little kid you can get anybody to do anything. So I just marched that air sickness bag halfway through the flight and had him sign off on it.”
Meeks thought “it was kind of ironic” that he got a fried chicken bigshot to sign a barf bag.
When Meeks got to Detroit, he showed the autograph to his buddies. But none of them believed it was really signed by Col. Sanders.
“When I showed it to my friends in Detroit they all thought it was total bull——,” he said. “It was like I’d told them a flying saucer story or something.”
By the way, Meeks no longer has the air sickness bag and he doesn’t remember what happened to it. “It just sort of faded away into oblivion, lost to the sands of time,” he said.
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I better not pull over in Alabama anytime soon
My recent column making fun of Alabama and Alabamans regarding the existence of rednecks there certainly caused a ruckus.
Before we go any further, let me just say I really like and even admire rednecks, as long as they are of a pleasant demeanor. Sadly, Austin has a shortage of rednecks, or good old boys, these days. I’ll bet there aren’t a hundred guys left in Austin who know how to open a longneck on a truck.
And that’s sad.
I made several jokes in my article about rednecks in Alabama, and for that I was called the following in emails: “true idiot” (as opposed to what? a fake idiot?), “blasphemous,” “asshat” (I’m not sure what an asshat is, but I wear a size 7 3/8ths if anybody is going to send me one), “Santa Clause” (several people pointed out I look like Santa, but not all of them can spell), “racist, bigot” (several people said the article was racist because it made fun of white people; and several writers pointed out that Texas has a large number of Hispanics, although they didn’t put it that nicely), “typical” (that one hurts), “pompous ass,” “ignorant,” “classless” and “silly.”
One writer referred to Texans as “sackless, yellow-bellied pig farmers.” Not sure what sackless means, either. “I’ll bet your mother is proud of you,” somebody commented. Somebody always brings up my mother. One writer said she was doing something untoward with a chicken. And one writer said the article was the worst “dribble” he’d ever read.
I pointed out to him that “dribble” is what you do when you judge a chili cookoff. I assume he meant drivel.
The article was intended to be humorous. But some people couldn’t tell a punchline from a fact, or chose not to. At least two readers pointed out that Tuscaloosa is not the Indian word meaning tube top.
I kind of figured that.
And there were the usual number of folks who said their football team, in this case Alabama, would use the article as bulletin board material and get pumped up because of it.
Though the claim has been made several times over the years, never once has anyone proven to me that one of my articles has been placed on a locker room bulletin board.
It doesn’t bother me too much when people don’t think an article is funny. Although, obviously, I prefer it when they do get some laughs. What does bother me is when people don’t recognize a column was intended to be funny. It makes me wonder about the quality of high school English teaching these days. When I was in high school, I had a teacher who taught us about Jonathan Swift and satire. I get the impression Swift isn’t getting much attention in school anymore.
Ah, but through all the haze and name-calling came one shining light — provided by Steven Adams, an Alabama fan who lives in Atlanta. He thought the article was funny enough to respond with his list of Texas fan jokes.
“You’re probably a Texas fan if … ,” he wrote.
“You can play the Texas fight song using your armpit.
“Your wife’s idea of cleaning house is throwing everything out in the yard.
“The Roto-Rooter man stops by your trailer and asks, ‘What’s that smell?’
“You’re a member of the Skoal Frequent Purchaser Program.
“You joined Alcoholics Anonymous so you can drink and use a different name.
“You won’t buy a Japanense car because you’re afraid you won’t understand what they say on the radio.
“Your kids go to private school and they won’t tell you where it is.
“Your Granny beats you in the tobacky spittin’ contests.”
I’m proud to say that I do know a Texas fan who can play the Aggie War Hymn and other tunes under his armpit. Thanks to me, he and his armpit performed on Jay Leno. I don’t recall what song he selected for his TV appearance. But he won’t play the Eyes of Texas under his armpit because he’s afraid it would insult his beloved University of Texas.
So?
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If Texas doesn’t score, some Alabamans do — with a free car
If Alabama shuts out Texas in the national championship game Thursday night — or in other words, if hell turns into a skating rink or Bernie Madoff is named Man of the Year — there will be a lot of extremely happy recent car buyers in the Tuscumbia, Alabama, area.
This is because of a promotion run by the Jim Bishop car dealership in Tuscumbia.
The promotion worked this way: Buy a car from the dealership between Dec. 28 and Jan. 6 (Wednesday) and you get the car for free — if Alabama keeps Texas from scoring. It’s possible. Man made it to the moon. Texas A&M produced the maroon carrot.
Apparently a lot of Alabama fans think the shutout’s going to happen because 111 cars were sold through Monday afternoon, when the promotion tapped out. Who said this is a lousy economy?
“We didn’t expect this sort of response,” said Don Wood, the dealership’s general manager. Seems the $3 million insurance policy the dealership took out on the promotion came to its limit Monday, ending the promotion a few days early.
Do Alabama folks really think Alabama can keep Colt McCoy from getting the Longhorns at least close enough to the end zone for a field goal?
“I don’t know what the odds are, but we’re big Alabama fans and we feel if anyone can shut them out, Alabama can,” Wood said. “And if they do there are going to be a lot of very excited folks in the valley here.”
Wood says the dealership got the idea from a furniture store in Boston that had a similar promotion regarding the Red Sox sweeping the World Series. But a car beats an easy chair, right?
So what does Wood think the score’s going to be? “24 to nothing,” he said without hesitating. I didn’t have to ask him who he thought would get the 24.
I think the score will be 34-31, Texas. If that turns out to be right, I’d like one of the Austin dealerships to give me a VW convertible.
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I got the Bear Bryant hat because there isn’t a Mack Brown one
Maybe it’s a sign of senility. But Wednesday I ordered a houndstooth hat just like the one Bear Bryant wore from the Paul W. Bryant Museum. The museum is located on the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
It’s not surprising the University of Alabama has a Bear Bryant Museum because who else would they have a museum for? George Wallace? Gomer Pyle?
That I bought the Bear Bryant hat does not mean I want Alabama to beat Texas in the national championship game next week. Far from it. If Alabama doesn’t get a first down that would be fine with me. I would have ordered a Mack Brown hat if there were such a thing as a Mack Brown hat. Sadly, there is no Mack Brown hat. This may be because Mack Brown still has hair.
Only a very few legendary football coaches were known for their hats. Bear Bryant, one of a few college football coaches named after a forest creature, was one of them. Then there was Tom Landry. I’m not sure what animal he should have been named after. Maybe a penguin.
Bryant coached six national championship teams and became the winningest coach in the history of college football with 323 victories, it says on the Paul W. Bryant Museum Web site. (He is currently fifth on the list of winningest college football coaches.) What the Web site doesn’t say is that he was also a tough old booger.
Mike (The Pirate) Leach got fired from Texas Tech for allegedly making a player stand in a dark shed because he thought the player was faking a concussion. Back when Bear Bryant was coaching, they didn’t have concussions. They had headaches, and he would have punished the player by making him drag the shed from one end of the field to the other.
When I get my Bear Bryant hat, I’m going to wear it around for a while and see how many people mistake me for Bear Bryant. Probably nobody, because I’m not much of a hard ass.
In case you’re interested, the houndstooth hat cost me $27.45, including shipping, and is just one of several items available on the museum Web site, including a Crimson Tide Christmas ball.
Which is ironic because Bear Bryant would have kicked Santa’s butt for being out of shape.
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Leffingwell digs the Texecutioners. Go figure
It’s looking like Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell isn’t the boring, dull stiff we all thought. If Leffingwell, a former airline pilot, had flown past Minneapolis, it probably would be because he was watching roller derby on his laptop. Apparently His Honor is a fan of the sport where hot chicks roller skate and clobber each other.
On Thursday Leffingwell presented Austin’s Texas Rollergirls all-star team, the Texecutioners, with a proclamation for their regional championship and their second place finish at the national championships.
As part of the deal, Leffingwell proclaimed Friday Texas Rollergirls Day. Like the song says, it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. You can see Leffingwell out there in the stands, screaming and hollering on his favorite babes to bust each others’ chops. So who is Leffingwell’s favorite butt kicker at the show? “The answer is a complicated one,” the Mayor said by email. “The Rollergirls are talented athletes with the most creative names, such as Lucille Brawl and Olivia Shootin’ John.”
The mayor knows the lineup. “Juliana ‘Bloody Mary’ Gonzales is an Austin original,” he wrote. “She is the Texecutioners’ co-captain and on the executive team of the national coalition for the roller derby. Most of all she is an Austin small business owner. She owns the Corona Cafe in Windsor Park - a great place to have a cup of coffee and read up on the Rollergirls’ recent scores,”
So if you are visiting the Corona Café, don’t mess with your wait person unless you want a fat lip.
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Twin Liquors’ twins, the Jabour brothers, had staying power
Reading about the death of liquor business owner and World War II vet Theodore Jabour in the paper the other day brought back a memory about Austin growth.
It was the early 1980s. I was on Sixth Street, in what we now call the Entertainment District, interviewing the owner of a new business on the street called Juan Goldstein’s Caviar Bar. At the time Sixth Street was undergoing a yuppification rejuvenation. Big change had come. The plastic ferns were growing like weeds. Trendy new businesses were moving in and replacing basic old beer joints. Juan Goldstein’s sold various sorts of caviar.
I pointed out in my article how the place contrasted with some of the older more down to earth businesses on the street, among them Jabour’s Liquors right across the street. I don’t know what rude description I used to get across the point of down to earth, but the article managed to anger somebody, I think, in the Jabour family. Anyway, I got a call.
Though I didn’t know them well, I’d always liked the Jabour brothers. They weren’t the kind of guys I wanted to tick off. In other words, they were nice guys. So later on I walked in the store to apologize in person to one or the other of them (I couldn’t tell one brother from the other). The brother I talked to couldn’t have been kinder. No big deal, he said.
The irony here is that Juan Goldstein’s Caviar Bar is long gone. I don’t think it lasted much more than a year. And since then, that little down to earth liquor store across the street that the Jabour brothers ran has turned into Twin Liquors Fine Wine & Spirits, a 59-store business and the largest wine and spirits chain in Central Texas.
This proves two things. You never know how things are going to turn out. And people would rather drink Wild Turkey than eat overpriced fish eggs.
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Cancer? What cancer?
You may remember that back in June I announced to y’all that I would be going in for six weeks of radiation treatments for a cancerous tumor that had been surgically removed from my mouth.
Guess what? The cancer’s gone. I went in for scans Wednesday, and the report says there’s no cancer left.
This is like having a rhinoceros removed from your back.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that it could come back. My doctor tells me that if this sort of head and neck cancer is going to return, it usually happens in the first year.
But for now, I’m clean.
This has been the roughest summer of my life. There was the time I got dehydrated from not drinking enough water. I thought apple juice would cover it. It didn’t. I felt like a dead man for a couple of days.
There was the second time I felt like a dead man. That came about two weeks ago when I wasn’t eating enough. When they remove a tumor from under your tongue it messes up your tastebuds. Eating is drudgery.
You know how you dine for enjoyment? Not me. Food isn’t so much food anymore as it is medicine. I eat to survive. But I’ve finally gotten to where I can eat some real food. It takes me about two or three days to finish off a standard size chicken breast.
The main staples in my diet are Ensure nutrition drinks, and ice cream shakes laced with vitamin powder. The trick is to find the ice cream with the most calories per bite. Let’s hear it for Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s. They’ve helped keep me alive.
In the process I’ve lost almost 40 pounds, having dropped from 208 to about 170, although recently I’ve gained about five pounds of that back — a major victory.
I got invited for an evening out at Esther’s Follies a few weeks ago, but before I could go I had to hit the mall and buy new pants. The old ones would have just fallen off on the floor. The people in the audience would have thought it was a trick done by the Esther’s Follies house magician.
A friend of mine who I haven’t seen in months has called up a few times to ask if I want to go to lunch. I’d love to see him. I just don’t want to see his food. I haven’t seen him yet.
It’s been a long tough road. Many people have been supportive. A friend at work has made me a couple big custards because it’s something I can actually consume. Others have said I’m old and should just retire.
There were a few weeks there where I couldn’t even talk. Now, I can speak. But there’s still a sore spot in my mouth, and when I speak I sound like I’m gargling gravel.
Thursday morning when I asked a lady at work if she could “shred” a piece of paper for me, she made a copy of it. She thought I said “scan.”
But the cancer’s gone for now and things are looking up. And one day, if the good Lord is willing, maybe I’ll look back on this and say, “Boy, was that ever a pain in the ass. How about a T-bone and an order of rings?”
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Today, I celebrate my ‘Excellenc’ (sic)
I was proud as punch to finish first for general commentary in Division 2 of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors’ Contest.
Just got the plaque today and it said: “Excellenc-In-Feature-Writing Contest 2009.”
Maybe the misspelling of “excellence” on the plaque was because of an E shortage I didn’t know about. Maybe we’re just flat running out of E’s.
Anyway, for the victory I won $500. As long as they didn’t misspell “five hundred dollars” on the check, I’m a happy man.
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Jones goes digging on TV
Jerry Jones sure knows how to pick ‘em.
During the Cowboys’ first game at their billion-dollar stadium, the Cowboys’ owner was caught on camera picking his nose — on national television.
Just goes to show you. You can take the boy out of Arkansas, but you can’t keep his finger out of his nose.
The occasion? The Giants had just intercepted a Tony Romo pass in the first half and gone ahead 10-7. So Jones responded by going after the big one. Folks, you can’t do this stuff in public anymore unless you want to be a media star. Within moments, a video of Jones picking his nose appeared on the Internet along with the headline: “Jerry Jones Picks a Winner!”
But his efforts went unrewarded since the Cowboys lost to the Giants on a late field goal.
A lot of you people will write in and complain that this isn’t very dignified, even for sports coverage. But look at it this way. You won’t get this sort of information from reading Maureen Dowd.
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Oklahoma reactions
One commenter said that “your mother should of (sic) aborted you at birth.”
“You Sir, are a blowhard…. a moron…. an idiot…. a columnist wannabe…. a jackass that lives off peoples (sic) emails and attention to your nonsense columns,” wrote an emailer who calls himself cowboyup97.
“You are an old fart with a beard,” wrote an emailer who identified himself as Freddie Douglas.
Those were some of the love notes I received to my Tuesday column making fun of Oklahoma football. In the column I pointed out that Oklahoma takes college football way too seriously, and it’s no wonder because what else does it have worth taking seriously? I also said that this was a time of great joy for Texans, since OU had started the season 0-1, which may send the Sooners to the Tidy Bowl.
In a way, it was nice to hear such vitriol from worked up Okies. The sad truth is that a columnist would rather be chased down the street by an angry mob than ignored.
Besides, almost every year I fire off a column insulting OU football, and the column has become such a regular feature that I had been getting favorable replies about it from Oklahomans, who apparently had come to expect and enjoy the yearly put-downs.
So it was nice to get back to the way it used to be, when Okies would write in and tell me I’m a miserable no account son of a add your own noun here.
Folks, let’s get one thing straight here. I write a humor column. I am not George Will, nor am I trying to be George Will. OK, so my stuff isn’t always funny. I’m not Mark Twain or Will Rogers (speaking of Oklahoma). On the other hand, it’s my intent to bring laughter to your doorstep.
So when I put things in the newspaper, as I did Tuesday, that say, for example, that Oklahomans are so ate up by the importance of football that they exchange jock straps under the Christmas tree, I don’t really believe it.
And I don’t expect you to believe that I believe it, either. I expect, or at least I hope, you’ll realize it’s a joke.
But some of you, apparently, can’t tell the difference between a joke and a historical footnote. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get responses such as the one that said, “May you rot in hell.”
Folks, when I write that Oklahoma is so, uh, rustic that a “clean restrooms” sign is a tourist attraction, I am only pulling your leg, OK? I know better than that. Everybody knows there are no “clean restrooms” in Oklahoma.
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A pile of fat with fat in the middle
Rank has its privileges. Take Colonel Sanders. If he had been a PFC instead of a colonel for KFC, he might not have had the authority to come up with this really disturbing sandwich called the Double Down.
KFC’s new Double Down sandwich has no bread. Instead, where the bread is supposed to be, the Double Down has two pieces of the Colonel’s original recipe fried chicken, with bacon, Swiss and Pepper Jack cheeses, and the Colonel’s sauce.
In other words, the Double Down is two pieces of fried chicken with a fat filling. Instead of the Double Down, they should have called it the Double Over.
“Obviously, it’s a sandwich that’s designed for somebody who’s looking to be filled up,” said KFC spokesman Rick Maynard, from KFC headquarters in Louisville.
Obviously, it’s a sandwich designed for somebody whose stomach blocks the view of his sneakers.
If you want one of these things and you’re here in Austin, you’re out of luck. The Double Down is being test-marketed in Omaha, and Providence, R.I. Maynard said KFC has a lot of test marketing going on here and there, so those cities weren’t selected for any particular reason.
I thought maybe they picked Providence since the sandwich is about the size of Rhode Island.
“It’s the sandwich that’s so big there’s no room for the bread,” Maynard said. It’s weird how American restaurants keep coming out with these gut bombs, even though there’s the constant drumbeat of the country having a fat boy problem.
“That’s one of the good things about our brand; our customers have a choice,” Maynard said. He mentioned that the Colonel’s grilled chicken meal with corn and green beans has about 450 calories.
What about the Double Down? “We don’t do nutritionals for test market products, but we’ve estimated about 590 calories,” Maynard said. I think he underestimated by about 590 calories. I mean, a pile ‘o chicken with cheese. Come on.
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Want vanity? Try out these plates
A private vendor will auction off vanity license plates for the State of Texas to the highest bidders, which makes me wonder: Who’ll grab what messages for the backs of their cars?
We know we’ve gone over the seven-character limit on the new plates, but here are a few suggestions for certain select state ‘celebrities’:
University of Texas football coach Mack Brown: STOOPIFIED
UT sack artist Sergio Kindle: EATSUMDURT
UT quarterback Colt McCoy: BOMSAWAY —
Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell: NERDAHED
Former Austin Mayor Will Wynn: USED2BE
Texas Gov. Rick Perry: HAHAHAIR or HOHOHED
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson: WHIPIZAZ
State Sen.Kirk Watson: GOVRNOT
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Schieffer: UHURDAMABRUDR
Comedic gubernatorial hopeful Kinky Friedman: HEREHEISAGIN
Famous Austin crossdresser Leslie: NOPANTZ
Austin Water Utility lawn watering spokesperson Daryl Slusher: TURNITOF
Willie Nelson: SMOKAFATTY
John Kelso: OLDASDRT
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Save water; grow weeds
I’d like to thank Vignette founder Neil Webber for being the only Austinite to make it onto the list of the city’s 10 top water users in each of the past six months.
It’s an Austin drought we’re caught in, so I think it’s important that we have local talent leading the way.
Between February and July, Neil “H2 Oh Oh” Webber used up more than 1.74 million gallons of water. I don’t know if that’s enough to fill up the big hole west of town previously known as Lake Travis, but it’s a start.
Webber did not respond to calls for comment on his water-using habits. Of course he didn’t come to the phone. He was too busy messing with his sprinklers to get to the phone.
Meanwhile, to try to keep the area from drying up and blowing away, the city has come up with a new set of law watering regulations designed to cut down on waste. For example, at my house, used to be I could water two days a week. Now it’s down to one.
Fine with me, because it means I only have to drag out the hose on Sundays. I have more important things to do than fool with yard work. I would much rather be sitting on the recliner watching baseball. So I appreciate the city giving me an excuse to do more couch.
The new water restrictions are pretty stiff. Used to be you could skate if you just told them you were a dumb ass. No more. If you get caught watering wrong, it could set you back at least $400.
My main problem with the new watering regulations is that they don’t go far enough to fix the drought. What the city ought to do is make lawns illegal. What do we need lawns for? Sure, they’re cute. But even if you don’t have a lawn in your yard, something else will come along and grow there. These are called weeds. If you mow weeds all the same height, they look remarkably like a lawn. And you don’t have to water them.
So let’s pass an ordinance making it a Class C misdemeanor to even have a lawn. We have a best-looking lawn competition in my neighborhood in far South Austin. Instead what we ought to have is a best-looking weeds award. I’ll volunteer to be one of the weed judges. As long as the judging doesn’t interfere with my hectic baseball-watching schedule.
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Lack of dental gauze worse than the teeth pulling
When President Obama made his pitch last week for national health coverage, I’m sure the occasional lack of proper pharmaceutical supplies was a subject he had intended to address.
Take the case of my sister-in-law, Pam Eckroat, who grew up in Spearman, about 90 miles north of Amarillo. Just conjecture on my part. But perhaps you can attribute her “sad dental story” in part to having grown up too close to Oklahoma.
Pam, a sales manager for a Fort Worth company that sells trailers for big rigs, is the only person I know who had to use tampons for dental gauze.
At the time, Pam was a single mom living in Canyon, just south of Amarillo, at home alone raising two little kids. “Here I am, mid-20’s, two small children and I’m getting braces,” she recalled. “Before the braces I must have eight teeth pulled - four bicuspids and four wisdom teeth.”
So to give Pam a hand, Pam’s mom drove her home from the dentist, then went to the pharmacy in Canyon to pick up some necessities “and help me out a little,” Pam remembers.
Help? You call this help?
“We get to my house and the pain medication is wearing off fast,” Pam recalled. “So Mother goes for the prescription and the gauze pads the dentist has recommended. When she returns she says, ‘The pharmacy was out of gauze pads, but the pharmacist says that tampons are sterile and they will work just as well.’ ”
So Mom bought them and took them to Pam; who had time to be picky?
“I mumble to her (Mom) to please cut off the strings,” Pam said. It probably sounded more like “Cuhoff‘a swings.” Or something extremely muffled. “I was grossed out beyond belief,” Pam remembered.
In short order, there were problems.
“New pain medicine has not kicked in and I begin to cry, swelling up my nose and making it difficult to breath. Can’t breath through my mouth, as swollen tampons are blocking access to air. Now I’m regretting having the strings removed.”
Wonder if Aetna would cover the tampons?
“It wasn’t long before I decided I would rather risk eight dry sockets than suffocate to death on tampons,” Pam tells us. “I had to pry them out with my fingers.”
Did anybody see this escapade other than Pam and her mother? This would have been just great for YouTube. Can you imagine how many million hits this would have received?
“Do you really think I would let ANYONE but my own mother see me like this?” Pam asked.
So if Obama gets his health plan passed, I sure hope he includes a medical supplies shipment to the Panhandle. They could use the help up there.
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RIP to Castell’s famous rooster
It always happens in threes. First it was Farrah Fawcett, then it was Michael Jackson.
Then it was Cockaroo, the pet rooster who used to have what you call your sexy time with the Billy Bass at the general store in Castell, a small town (pop. 13) near Llano.
“That’s how I broke it to them,” said Max Scarborough, one of the store’s owners, who found Cockaroo dead in his cage Friday. “I said, ‘It’s horrible about Farrah Fawcett, and they said ‘Yep,’ and Michael Jackson, and they said, ‘Yep.’ And I said, ‘It comes in threes — I found the cockaroo. He was just laying there.’ “
Jackson was known for doing the Moonwalk. Cockaroo was known for his X-rated performances with the battery powered Billy Bass.
The fun would start when Randy Leifeste, Scarborough’s partner in the store, would lay the Billy Bass on the ground outside the bird’s pen. Then he would push the red button on the toy fish, which would get the fish to flapping while singing “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”
Then Leifeste would take Cockaroo out of his cage, put him on top of the fish, and the bird would go to town on the fish, so to speak.
The act attracted many tourists. “He performed his act over 10,000 times in the last five and a half years. That would kill anything,” Leifeste said. “He’s worn out 26 Billy Basses.”
Leifeste is having Cockaroo taxidermied. “I think he’s going to have him mounted — on top of the Billy Bass,” Scarborough said.
On Friday at 5 p.m., the store will have a wake for Cockaroo. “We’re cooking chicken gumbo,” Scarborough said. But Cockaroo won’t be in it. “I think it might be a touch tough.”
So what is the store going to do for an encore? Leifeste says he’s already found a replacement.
“I just don’t know who’s going to train the damn thing,” Scarborough said. “I guess Randy again. He’s going to wear out his knees.”
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TV or Not TV, that is the question
Sometimes you do things to yourself that make you feel really stupid, and this little yarn fits under that category.
On Saturday my wife Kay and I went over to Best Buy in South Austin to buy a new TV set. Seems our 37-inch Sony in the living room wouldn’t come on. I jacked around with that set for an hour or so to trying to get her to crank up. I even called Time Warner Cable and asked for help.
The Time Warner dude on the phone told me to reboot the cable box. I did. It didn’t help. The TV still wouldn’t come on.
So Kay and I hopped in the car and drove over to Best Buy.
We were in the store for about two hours before we managed to complete the deal on a new TV set. It took the sales lady about half an hour on her computer to figure out that the Samsung model we picked out was out of stock in the store.
To fix that problem, the sales lady told us she’d sell us a Panasonic that was pretty much identical to the Samsung we were trying to buy. So I said fine. Then it took the sales lady half an hour to 45 minutes on her computer to find out the store didn’t have that TV set available either.
At this point my wife, who is sitting on a stool, scowling, is starting to take on the facial expression of an out-of-work serial killer, looking for employment.
“Is something wrong, ma’am?” one of the Best Buy employees asked her.
“Yes, there is,” she said.
Sensing trouble, another sales manager came to the rescue, and offered us an upgrade on the Samsung we had tried to order to start with — at no extra charge.
I said great, let’s just get ‘er done as fast as possible.
Finally, we signed the paperwork on a new 50-inch Samsung TV set and headed home, exhausted and about nine kinds of ticked off.
On Monday, my wife discovered the problem with our old TV set is that the remote control needed new batteries.
So now we’re in the process of trying to cancel the order of the new set with Best Buy.
Boy, do I feel like an idiot. Maybe I should change the battery in my head.
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