THE
BRAZOSPORT NEWS: Death in Houston: revisiting the sad life of Eagle Pennell, local film legend

My best answer to that is fear. Despite his swagger, his true Texan credentials, his apparent talent at what he set out to do, he was just too damn afraid — afraid of what life would or could be like without alcohol since alcoholics, at base, I think, are ‘fraidy cats.

Or maybe he just didn’t give a shit.

I worry that I’m turning into a boozehound, like my old man and his old man before him, and mostly, when I make the space to look at it, it’s really because I just don’t give a shit. I can remember the last time I was scared — after my first marriage, I was living on the second floor of an old warehouse in south Dallas, and I was doing some work stuff, concentrating hard, and then it sounded to me like an army was coming through the door leading up the stairs. All I had was an old 30-30 and half-box of shells, and I didn’t know with any precision where the shells were. That scared me, thinking I was gonna go down without putting up a fight outside of whatever I could bludgeon the crackhead militia with. I finally found the shells in a suitcase, loaded up, and threw down on the other guy who lived in that old warehouse, who was banging around downstairs moving in some different furniture. Needless to say, we got kinda drinky that night.

That damn 30-30, my grandfather’s Winchester, got ripped off, too, when some assholes broke into my third or fourth place down the line when I wasn’t home (it was fully loaded — I never made that mistake again.) They got the deer rifle my dad gave me as a young lad, as well, and a nice Browning duck gun.

I never made any movies, though, so no one will ever even write a nice article in a respected publication about me. I wish I had a point to this, but I don’t. C’est la guerre. Fight your battles the best you know how to, I guess, because no one else is gonna fight ‘em for you, and they ain’t got a say in it, anyway. They’ll just step over your cold, dead body on the way to their next fight, and that’s the way it should be.

Is Michelle Obama responsible for the Jeremiah Wright fiasco? - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

(One can picture Obama looking pained and sensitive and saying, “Keep my wife out of it,” or words to that effect, as Clinton tried to do in 1992 when Jerry Brown and Ralph Nader quite correctly inquired about his spouse’s influence.)

Hitchens is pretty much my Mencken. There are a million typists on the interwebs trying to reach these levels, yet this man shines above all. I count myself among those trying typists, but there’s an innate knowledge that Hitchens was raised to do this, while I was raised to do something different, like dig holes for fenceposts and make weirdo techie shit.

As far as Mrs. Barry goes, I think she’s got his balls in a jar in the nightstand. If you think that this very smart man wouldn’t be running for president at this utterly undistinguished point in his life (Kay Bailey Hutchison, for one, gots more experience than this lightweight hack) without bitch bites up and down his back, you’re a moron. That’s just the way those people are raised. Liberal red-diaper people, I mean. It disgusts me that I have to say that, but I don’t want to end up an object lesson in an episode of Purposely Misread the Old White Dude.

Via Big Dick up in Austin…

Thank you, Mr Morrow. Worth the wait, but I’m exhausted.

I can’t believe that nobody informed me of this - the Stars have…Ice Girls?

Well, yee haw, ladies.

…because I don’t want to jinx it, is being broadcast by Versus, which is carrying the Canucks’ TSN feed. It’s a genuine pleasure that practically nothing said so far resembles any kind of American sportscast, which mostly sounds like Idiocracy. Beautiful Queen’s English with no stuttering ex-jocks saying “Ya know” and “like” ever third monosyllabic mispronounced word.

Reid Stott has a good post up about the Personal Site. It’s fairly geeky, but you’ll probably enjoy it if you dig all this networked crap.

I have never tweeted a twitt or vice versa, but somehow I have gained a fairly decent-sized following.

I signed up to get a feel for a technology, and just reading about it bugs the shit out of me. I’d throw my phone in a creek if I started getting all that crap.

Mouth of the Brazos: Another cool statistic.

It does prove beyond all debate, though, one thing. An astonishing percentage of African-Americans are stupid motherfuckers. Hell. That’s okay. An astonishing percentage of Honkies are stupid motherfuckers, too. Hispanics. Polaks. Bohemians, Jews, American Indians, Dot Indians, Japs, Chinks, you name it, and I betcha I can find stupid motherfucker in the gang.

I don’t know if JD meant “a stupid motherfucker” or “stupid motherfuckers” there at the end, but I’m willing to go with the plural. For there are an amazing amount of stupid motherfuckers in this world. I talk to them every day, and it makes my head hurt to know that there are Americans extant who don’t know intrinisically that a perpetual motion machine is not just impossible, but that the CIA didn’t kill the inventor. Yes, I actually had that conversation. I didn’t get arrested for murder, either.

I need to get to work so my grandkids can go get learning from the Catholics. Sad that the mackerel snappers are the only hope for my kids not turning out Idiocracy ignorant, when you think of the taxes I pay. I suppose I should just be thankful that the options open to me, no?

And how in the hell did I arrive here?

Grandson #1, licking his plate, much like a hound

Grandson #2, not doing anything, much like a 3-month old

“We’re in a global struggle against thugs and killers.”

Via Vanderleun…

I went to see the Avett Brothers last night. During the show I got kind of bored with the obviously theatrical set-play posturing of the “punk bluegrass” thematic elements, but over all and in retrospect, I really dug what they were doing. Pretty good musicians, above-average songwriters. I’m quite unclear on the addition of the cello to the band, though. That should be a fiddle there, doing those parts. Unnecessarily extravagant and distracting.

However, as The Wife notes here, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the size and the enthusiasm of the crowd in Dallas at a show by relative unknowns who’ve never appeared on the teevee or have any kind of Jessishliegh Simpson connection. There were an untoward number of jam-band potheads from Plano sporting ridiculous dreadlocks and completely unnecessary bandanas, but I’ve got to give them their due respect — they were out on a schoolnight supporting good, original music. That’s a step in the right direction.

The Bad News: I can’t tell you how many crosseyed looks I got trying to explain the appeal of the Avetts to normal American Idol people over the last two weeks. That bugs me, but I accept it. It’s taken me 47 years to realize that my cup of tea isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but I still must insist that the world would be a far better place if it were.

Added to note that this young father joined us for the show, and was thoroughly enjoyable. We talked some serious hockey talk, which is always good for a flatland Southwesterner like me. I’m looking forward to his review of the clambake.