Daily Affirmations Birthday Meets Buck Owens' Birthday

My birthday precedes by one the birthday of another Great American-Buck Owens. Forget the character on Hee Haw-Buck Owens was one of the most innovative and revered country and western music artists ever. 20 #1 country chart hits. Covered by the Beatles. Innovator of the "Bakersfield Sound." Member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Every year (this will be the 17th annual), the Continental Club in Austin has a Buck Owens' Birthday Bash, with local musicians covering Buck Owens songs. Buck himself once showed up a few years ago. Its also a benefit for the Center for Child Protection.

I've decided to attend for the second time, and invite all of you to join me. Its August 12th at 8 p.m. Let me know if you're coming, and I'll buy your ticket. The drinks are on me. The Continental Club (Austin) web site is here, and it is located at 1315 South Congress Avenue. Hope to see you there!

Useful Information

I thought it was time I stopped using this blog to talk about "did you ever wonder" subjects, and talk about something useful.

So here's all the speed traps I know of in Austin.

No I did not just get a ticket.

Barton Springs Road, near the railroad overpass.
I-35 near the MLK/15th Street exit.
Ben White, right before S. Congress Ave.
MLK near I-35, catching people on the west feeder illegally turning right on red.
All of Bee Caves Road in Westlake is a speed trap.
All of Rollingwood is a speed trap.
Mopac just north of 2222 used to be one, but not too much anymore.
I-35 north, just after Rundburg/Rutherford.
South Congress, just after Oltorf.
183 North, near MoPac.
All of Sunset Valley is a speed trap.
I-35 near the south city limit, near Buda.
I-35 near the 2222 exit (to go to Highland Mall).
The airport exit, and the turn-in to the airport.
All of Lakeway is a speed trap.

For out of town trips, do not speed through Elgin, east Bastrop, or Waller County. Selma and Schertz aren't so bad anymore-they've become San Antonio.

Never, ever, ever speed in Williamson County. Make sure every tail light, head light, license plate light works; don't have anything wrong at all with your car. Do not look out the side windows. Comb your hair, and keep saying "thank you" and "yes sir" if pulled over. There are innocent people rotting in jail for the next 50 years who just happened to look wrong while driving through Round Rock.

Comment if you know of others.

ETA:
How could I have forgotten Scenic Burton, home of the Historic Cotton Gin Museum, and one squad car/ticketing machine? Also, SH71 near the I-10 intersection, may as well be a donut shop. I-37, the closer you get to Corpus, is a speed trap. All of the "villages" in the Houston Memorial area are speed traps-go 5 miles below the speed limit, unless you're a soccer mom in an Escalade. I-10 near Katy can be kind of bad. I've read Sugar Land (US 59), Estelline (US 287), Arlington (I-20) are bad too. Oh, and slow down after you cross the Sabine River (either direction) on I-10, and as you head into Lake Charles. Shame on you though if you're not already slowing down by that point to go to Darrell's.

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

I always thought that I would know
When it was time to quit
That when I lost a step or two or three or four or five
I'd notice it
Now that I've arrived here safely
I find my talent is gone
Why do I go on and on and on and on and on
And on and on and on and on and on?

Randy Newman, "He's Dead"


You all know Pete Townshend, right? Leader of The Who, champion of the '60s Revolution, expositor of the Pop Art movement, hero of the counter-culture rebellion against authority, devoted spiritual follower of Meher Baba, writer of the album "The Who Sell Out" ridiculing commercialism. Yeah, that guy. Uh, he's charging $50 to join the Who web site, which allows you to read his blog postings. The web site gives you a choice of buying standard, normal, working class tickets to future "Who" concerts (and by the "Who" I mean the two Who members that aren't dead yet; bearing in mind Pete and Roger were playing in Vegas as the Who within days after John's death), or the deluxe "VIP" package.

How about Woody Allen? You know, Bananas, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters...his last movie was something called Cassandra's Dream.

Or maybe Bill Clinton? The Comeback Kid. Singlehanded leader of the Democratic Party revival. Landslide second term winner. Defeater of the Contract with America? Last we heard from that guy, he was trying to crash a Kiwanis Club pancake breakfast near the West Virgina-Pennsylvania border.

These guys, and a whole lot of others, need to apologize to their 30 years ago selves for becoming the overfed, inert, corpulent windbags they warned us all about (30 years ago).

Seems like, what with modern medicine making people live longer than they're supposed to and all, we are facing the increasing scourge of guys hanging around way past their "sell by" date. These guys are just like Wooderson in Dazed and Confused, who kept hanging around with high school girls even though he'd graduated the year before. From Dan Aykroyd, to Francis Ford Coppola, to George Lucas, to Sylvester Stallone, to 3/4 of the US Senate, there's just too many guys (and its mainly men) that just don't know when its time to leave the stage, buy a ranch or a Corvette, and shoot the TV set when Robert Goulet or Mel Torme come on.

For example, MSN.com just published a list of 10 musicians who need to stop playing music before they embarrass themselves any further. The list ranges from Joni Mitchell (who wrote the song "Woodstock"), now signed to Starbucks' in-house record label, to the Rolling Stones, who at this point look and sound more like a Stones cover band at the local nursing home.

This is something that affects musicians, actors, artists, and other prominent people, but it also afflicts people in less famous walks of life. I've encountered several once-great lawyers who've lost it, either from losing their energy or ability to focus, or through not changing with new ways of practicing more efficiently. I'm sure you've run across doctors, preachers, salesman, teachers, and many others, who need to call it a day.

This happens in different ways. Sometimes the times and styles change, and you don't or won't. Sometimes technology changes-a lawyer who can't use computers basically can't practice law now. Sometimes the economics of an entire industry change, such as in the recording industry, where merely signing to a label now no longer gives a musician any assurance of financial success, or when airline farecutting and computer ticket purchases basically drove travel agents out of business. Sometimes people just get tired of your shtick (signed, Mike Meyers).

Change is about the hardest thing to do, and it gets harder as you get older, and harder even still after you've mastered a pursuit only to find the techniques and skills that allowed you to succeed no longer work. The reluctance to change can cloud your vision and judgment, deluding you into thinking there's no need to change, I can do it like I've always done it. But like Austin Powers, or the proverbial old guy at the club, or your boss who never got the message that racial and sex jokes aren't quite as popular as they used to be, wishing won't make it be 1985 again. Which really is great, because 1985 was an extremely unfortunate time for music.

There's another explanation for some of this, which is guys hanging on for a payday. Industry is littered with these guys. Lots of this is legitimate, like the guy who's trying to hold on long enough to get his youngest daughter through college. Not the responsible one, but the one that got on sco-pro her second semester because she spent most of the first semester drunk with her boyfriend Ricky and driving around in his sweet El Camino, and is trying to get her grades back up at the local juco while working part time at the Home Depot. That guy I don't begrudge. But John Cleese, Dan Aykroyd, Kevin Costner...guys, its time. When your biggest role in years is the father of Shrek's girlfriend, its time to write your memoirs and let someone else have a chance.

Now, this is not some sort of ageist rant. Long ago I lost eligibility to be a member of the Austin Young Lawyers Association, so I'm not taking after anyone for adding more birthday candles. Plenty of example exist of people finding great success in later stages of their lives, like Clint Eastwood (who went from movie action hero to Oscar-winning director), Joe Gibbs (who moved from coaching in the NFL to building a successful auto racing company) or my first boss (who left his career as an attorney in his early 50s to become an Episcopal priest). No, this is a rant against the refusal to change or acknowledge the need to change, thereby tying up positions better held by someone with more energy and skill. Change is the only thing that makes life worthwhile throughout your whole life. If everything were exactly the same month after month and year after year, there's no point (unless you're a Victoria's Secret catalog photographer; I mean, c'mon). Change is the only way we renew ourselves, the only way we can continue to contribute.

The problem is when you lose your fastball, you lose it in a hurry and usually you're the last one to know. Unfortunately your closest friends usually won't tell you. There's a story about Clark Gable, once the most desired man in the world, propositioning a hotel maid in the late 50s. She said she would charge him, and he replied, "I thought you'd want to, just to say you had." Better to hear it from your friends, I think. But that's not going to happen, so I propose that everyone should get a life clock in their palm, like in Logan's Run. When it starts flickering, you're on notice that you better ramp up. If it goes black, then you either need to renew or head for Sanctuary.

Shoot out the TV screen when you get there.

Happy July 4th

We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans.
We're Americans. With a capital A, huh?
You know what that means? Do you? That means
that our forefathers....were kicked out of every decent country in the world.
We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog.
We're mutts.
But there's no animal that's more faithful...
...that's more loyal, more loveable than the mutt.
Who saw Old Yeller? Who cried when Old Yeller got shot at the end?
Nobody cried when Old Yeller got shot? I'm sure.
I cried my eyes out.
Yeah.
So we're all dogfaces. We're all very, very different.
But there is one thing that we all have in common.
We were all stupid enough to enlist in the Army.
--Bill Murray, Stripes

I hope everyone has a happy, fun, and safe holiday today. The fourth is one of my favorite holidays, mainly because I like fireworks. One of the great things about where I live in the city is I can literally walk to the end of my street and see the Zilker Park fireworks.

Hopefully also everyone will take a moment to think about the freedoms we enjoy (and which sadly seem to erode each and every year in the very name of "freedom" and "safety"). These freedoms initially came about by the sacrifices of poor farmers, rich landed aristocratic white men, and their wives and families. Although the rebellion started off primarily in protest against taxes, it quickly spread as the British decided to reassert their sovereignty through occupation troops. Ironically, those rich landed aristocratic white men, who probably benefited the most under British rule, were the very ones leading the rebellion. Unlike other rebellions, this one quickly took on the mantle of an idealism beyond mere "self-rule." Although many of these rich white guys may have thought of freedom as something only they would enjoy, like the barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, Jefferson, the greatest American intellect ever, would have none of that and put it much more broadly. In so doing he managed to state the American Ideal in exactly one sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These rebels knew that in merely signing the Declaration, they were subjecting themselves to a British death sentence, but nonetheless declared: "for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." They could not possibly have imagined how the spark they lit would change our country and the world.

All throughout our history, young men and women have sacrificed to protect those liberties. From British invasion in the early 19th century, from secession and slavery in the late 19th century, working for recovery in the Great Depression, from German, Japanese, and Russian threats in the 20th century, on the barricades in places like Selma and Montgomery to make our laws mean what they say, and now against threats of random indiscriminate acts of murdering Americans that masquerade in some parts of the world as "war." All the generations of Americans have protected our freedoms, down to today. Generation X went inside the World Trade Center and Pentagon to save lives. Generation Y is fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our people fight smaller but no less important battles every day, to enforce the laws, to protect the helpless and weak, to protect our rights from encroachment and erosion. Every country in the world can heap venom on us, but their citizens vote with their feet day after day in trying to come here. As Bill Murray went on to say in Stripes, "We're ten and one!"

So as you swill your Natural Light and feast on hot dogs and generic potato chips, possibly watching the Astros tank yet another game, think for just a minute about what it means to live in the United States. Enjoy!

You Are In the Audience, Not the Movie

Ladies, you know I love you. Really, I do. And this is going to kill me (and I know some of you will finish me off for this)….

But for the love of God, why are you all wearing your best prom gowns and bridesmaid dresses to go watch the Sex and the City movie? And renting limos for the night, so that you and your 12 other BFF’s can catch dinner at Applebee’s before?

I know that your beer-swilling galoot of a husband or boyfriend rarely leaves the La-Z-Boy long enough for a shower, much less long enough to make it all the way through a quality dress-up affair. I get that you need to take whatever kind of formal to-do you can get. But glamming up to go to the movies? Really? You’re putting on your best clothes, makeup and shoes, and maybe even shaving your legs, to go hang out with a bunch of chicks in a dark theatre sitting in a chair that probably has about five wads of gum on it, with your best shoes sticking like Velcro to the mystery goo that coats most movie theatre floors? What is that?

Let’s get this straight. You are in the audience. You are not in the movie. You’re never going to be in the movie. Even the actors who play characters in a movie don’t wear their costumes to the premiere. What’s happening on the screen is fiction. There is no such person as Carrie Bradshaw. She is a fictional character, played by an actress married to Ferris Bueller and who often doubles for Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. If she saw you in the street she would at most give you 30 seconds of her time while motioning for security. It’s not like Carrie or Samantha or any of the rest of the gang are going to turn to you from the screen and ask for your advice. Mr. Big isn’t your boyfriend either.

Basically, y'all are putting yourself right alongside those Star Wars losers who dress up like storm troopers or jedi knights while they’re waiting outside the theatre to watch the preview for the next installment (and then leave before the movie they’re actually showing because they have no lives outside of Star Wars and playing dress up). You know, the ones who line up outside the theatre for three months before the next movie opens, and who have the complete set of Star Wars models and action character figurines in their room in their stepmom’s basement? The ones who wear their costumes to the local park for their “light saber practice” while they do beer bongs? Yeah. That’s right. They dress in character for the movie too, just like you. Welcome to nerd beach, nerds. Signed, Chad Vader (Darth's younger brother grocery store manager).

Would you go to La Bohème dressed like Mimi, in rags and dying from tuberculosis? Or to see Merchant of Venice dressed like the moneylender Shylock? Or to the IMAX shark movie, dressed like a land shark? No, that would be stupid, right? What’s the difference?

Now you could say you’re just celebrating the lifestyle shown on the screen, and honoring the fact that it reflects your life. Tom and I went to Lebowski Fest, after all, and there was a costume contest. But that was a party, not a movie at the theatre. The problem there is lots of movies show something in society, and honor it. Like heroin addict hit men in Pulp Fiction, or mob soldiers in Good Fellas. But I didn’t exactly see a bunch of dudes in black suits and ties at Pulp Fiction, or dressed in Members Only jackets or velour warmup suits like South Jersey guidos at Good Fellas.

And why exactly would you want to dress like the Sex girls anyway? Look very carefully at that picture above. Is that how you see yourself? Do you really want to start rocking the “growing a plant from my head” look? Who-ville chic may be alright when Yertle the Turtle or the Lorax come over for a Who-feast with roast beast, but unless you can headline a major motion picture, the Cindy Lou Who look really doesn’t make the scene at Sky Bar.

Maybe it works in reverse. Maybe you ladies are inspired to live the lifestyle by the movie or the TV show. That could be dangerous if true though. Can a movie inspire behavior? There were a bunch of idiots provoked into racing their Honda Preludes on downtown streets after they saw The Fast and the Furious. Navy enlistment went up after Top Gun came out. But I don’t think it works that way. Would that we could make the Bloods and the Crips watch West Side Story about 20 times. Kind of hard to do a drive-by when you’re prancing down the alley in unison singing “when you’re a Blood you’re a Blood all the way.”

Now I do have to give you that wearing jerseys to sporting events is similar, but would say that's at least borderline. Its not like if you wear a Rafer Alston jersey Rick Adelman is going to call you down from the upper deck to run the point, or if you wear your Lance Berkman jersey to the yard Coop is going to call you out of the bleachers to spell the Big Puma. The difference, I think, is that the game is actually happening in front of you, the teams encourage you to cheer and show your support for the team, most people don’t wear a full uniform, just the shirt, and everyone does it so its an accepted convention. But its still kind of ridiculous to see some 50 year old guy wearing his XXXL size LaDanian Tomlinson jersey, like he could turn the corner and take it to the house. The only corner that 99% of these guys can turn and take to the house is the entry into the men’s room after about 1 or 50 beers.

So, what we have learned today is civilians should wear their ordinary Old Navy and Academy clothes to the movies, no matter what's playing.