Whoever you are, I hope we have the pleasure of meeting someday.
But until then, get the flying f— out of there.
(In case nobody has heard the news, authorities are telling people who for whatever reason choose to stay behind to write their names and Social Security numbers on their arms with Sharpies, so that the bodies/parts can be identified later.)...
How in the world does a sheriff’s department in a mostly-rural west Texas county justify having in its possession an armored personnel carrier?
This was a picture taken during the raid a few weeks ago on the property of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
I know there have been some serious allegations regarding this religious group. And hopefully this will be looked into with all proper due process. But think about it: all of this happened because of one anonymous phone call. That was enough to send more military-grade hardware descending on the place than is usually seen escorting Vice President Cheney on an excursion through the green zone.
It just lends itself toward making you wonder: how long has the Midland County Sheriff’s Department staff had such equipment, and why did they believe they needed it to begin with?
And how many other ...
Remember how Smokey and the Bandit was about smuggling a lot of Coors beer from Texas to Atlanta, because at the time it was illegal for Coors to be shipped anywhere east of Texas? Well, right now I feel a bit like “Big Enos” Burdette ‘cuz even though I don’t drink beer, I do now have something that is still as hard to get outside of Texas today as Coors was thirty years ago…
It’s a six-pack of Dublin Dr. Pepper. Last month when I went to Texas, I got to visit the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco. That part of Texas is the only place that you can find what is called “Dublin Dr. Pepper”, which is Dr. Pepper made with real cane sugar as opposed to corn syrup. They were selling the Dublin Dr. Pepper at the gift shop there, but since I was going back ...
I’m gonna go ahead and knock the rest of this thing out of the ballpark, ‘cuz the next few days are going to be crazy busy and I’ve put off doing this long enough. So here’s the rest of the photos from Texas (here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2).
One of the things that I’d wanted to do while I was in Texas was visit my brother-in-law Jonathan, who’s a seminary student at Baylor University in Waco. On Friday, the day after I went to the Alamo, Deborah and I hopped in my rented Jeep and took off for Austin, where we’d catch I-35 north.
Here’s Austin as we were entering town…
Here’s Deborah. The last time we’d seen each other, it was at Star Wars Celebration III in Indianapolis two and a half years earlier.
This was taken while we were on Congressional Avenue, with the ...
Here are more photos from my Texas adventure. When we left off at Part 1, I’d arrived at my friend Deborah’s house in Texas. The next morning, before anyone else had woken up, I went out for a walk around her house.
Here’s Deborah’s backyard. As I told her when I got there, “You could throw a dead body back there and nobody would ever find it.” Also fun to keep in mind that this is Travis County, which was the setting of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just think: somewhere in those hills, Leatherface could yet be lurking with his trusty Stihl…
Some road I found, that goes… Lord knows where.
Here’s a shot of Deborah’s house from the backyard. That’s Deborah’s sister’s dog Sophie who’s bouncing across the grass…
Here’s the scene from Deborah’s front porch…
And some of her front yard (the pics can’t do any ...
Here they are finally: photos from the trip to Texas that I made earlier this month. Took awhile to get around to posting these ‘cuz there were so many (over 380) across a six-day period, and I’ve been extremely busy since getting back. Obviously this isn’t all of the pics, but they’ll give you a gist of what went down there (except for during Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 itself because cameras weren’t allowed in there). And because there are so many (and also ‘cuz it’s a bit late) I’m going to break these down into two parts. The second installment of pics, I’m gonna try to have up later on Saturday night. Anyhoo, here’s the first batch of photos from my odyssey to Texas!
I flew out of Raleigh-Durham on the morning of December 5th, en route to Orlando and then the plane would go on to Houston. On the south-bound flight ...
So here it is: my review of Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9, the annual 24-hour long film festival hosted by Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News, which was held at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz in Austin, Texas this past weekend on December 8th through 9th. It might be worth noting that according to the yearbook that we all received, I was the attendee who was from the most obscure town anywhere: a miniscule spot-on-the-mind somewhere in North Carolina, as opposed to being from Austin or Los Angeles or Atlanta.
This was also my first Butt-Numb-A-Thon.
First film festival ever for that matter.
Heck, this was my first time in Texas, period.
I left my friend Deborah’s house around 10 a.m. and was in Austin about 30 minutes later. I parked at the Hilton ...
I got home just after midnight, local time (though my body is still on Central Time). Have a few things on this end waiting for me but expect a wazoo-load of stories and pictures in the next few days, and a full report on what happened at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 🙂...
And my butt is, literally, numb after watching movies for 24 hours straight 🙂
I’m going to file a more complete report later on, maybe even after I get back tomorrow, about what went down. But for those who are curious: we didn’t see Cloverfield or I Am Legend or the new Rambo movie (although Sylvester Stallone did send two new clips from it that we got to watch and one of them is pretty violent even for a Rambo flick). However we did get to see Sweeney Todd… and I’m going to have tons of stuff to rave about that after it’s had a chance to settle in. We also got to see a couple of movies that won’t be coming out ’til late next year.
Around 8 or so this morning came one of the most diabolically evil things that I have ever witnessed in my entire ...
Still can’t get the pics to load at the moment (our digital camera is more used to hooking up to a Windows XP machine and it’s nothin’ but Macs here) but I’ll be showing the cream of the crop from the bunch when I get back. In the meantime, I can report that it was another action-packed day here in Texas…
My friend Deborah and I got in my rented Jeep about 10 this morning and headed to Austin. She got us on Congressional Avenue and I got some awesome photos of the Texas State Capitol. Then we headed over to the University of Texas at Austin campus, and Deborah got a pic of me standing in front of “The Tower”. And yes, this is the building from which Charles Whitman shot and killed all those people. Which isn’t really why I wanted to see it: it’s always struck ...