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Author: James Brush

James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.

Signing Strayhorn’s Petition

March 29, 2006 • • 4 Comments

Democrats accuse Carole Strayhorn of being a Rick-Perry-in-a-skirt conservative. Republicans despise her for being too liberal. It seems to me that if both parties hate her, she may be a good candidate for those of us who want a better Texas, but couldn’t care less about the fortunes of either party.

I think the real reason Strayhorn has earned the ire of the two major parties is the fact that she has, over the course of her career, strayed from both. Quitting both parties is troublesome for partisans when the so-called quitter is one of the most popular politicians in Texas.

I suppose her lack of loyalty to the major parties makes her something of a traitor in their eyes when in actuality having quit both parties is merely a sign that she’s come to her senses.

Strayhorn and fellow independent hopeful Kinky Friedman both need to gather nearly 50,000 signatures to get on the November ballot, and I’ve been going back and forth on whose petition to sign. Here’s the situation:

  • Rick Perry (R) must be defeated.
  • Chris Bell (D) will lose.
  • Friedman will shoot himself in the foot, probably after draining Bell’s support.
  • Strayhorn can beat Perry.

In addition to her potential as a candidate, Strayhorn is genuinely interested in doing right by Texas schools and Texas taxpayers. I finally signed Strayhorn’s petition. I still have a lot to learn about Bell, so I don’t know if she’ll get my vote in November, but I’m convinced she deserves a spot on the ballot.

Perhaps in the coming weeks I’ll explore each candidate’s positions in more depth.

Fighting Spam

March 28, 2006 • • 7 Comments

I’ve been getting inundated with comment spam lately. WordPress has a nifty feature called Akismet that blocks most of it out and puts it in a queue for me to check over before dumping it. I’m used to the occasional “Hi. I love your blog. Check out my deal on Viagra” type comments, but lately, the comments have been pretty weird:

  • “love give give – that is all that table is capable of , steal plane is very good tournament”
  • “, increase soldier is very good soldier”
  • “rape table is very good boy pair will player unconditionally, expect play do – that is all that round is capable of”
  • “to kill corner you should be very universal when tournament percieve cosmos loose , girl will player unconditionally”
  • “grass can forecast slot: when grass is grass it will roll chair”
  • “con soldier is very good cards: international is feature of astonishing gnome , industrious chair steal or not”

Each comment also has random words set up as hyperlinks that go to sites like CNN, USA Today, MSNBC and Hollywood Reporter, which is odd since I wouldn’t think those well-established sites would need to go spamming the backwaters of the blogosphere for traffic.

The URL for each spammer is often one of several sites (not to be mentioned here) that have to do with movies. I won’t click through from my dashboard (so as not to encourage these vermin) so who knows what’s really there, but I’ve been getting inundated with this garbage.

So far Akismet and WordPress have been effective and caught 471 comment spams. Akismet remembers the spammers’ URLs, IPs and content and becomes more effective each time it catches something. In addition to that, WP holds any comment with three or more links for moderation. Still, a few are suddenly getting through. WordPress has a number of plug-ins available for CAPTCHA so I’m installing one (Bot Check) that looks easy to do. If it doesn’t work, I’ll try a different one.

I hope this isn’t inconvenient for anyone. I would appreciate it if someone would post a comment here so that I know it works, and please email me if you see problems or can’t comment. Unless you’re a spammer in which case please go to Hell.

The Education of Greyhound Phoebe, Chapter the Seventh

March 28, 2006 • • 5 Comments

in which Phoebe gets bored while reviewing for finals

Last night’s class was not much more than a review for next week’s final exam. Most young scholars, be they students of literature or canine obedience, don’t really enjoy exam review, and Phoebe proved to be no exception.

She grew bored mid-way through and forgot who I was. She decided to ignore me completely and invest all her energy into her peer group. I don’t think she’s involved in drugs or gangs, but I’m watching her writing to make sure there isn’t any secret tagging going on.

The exam will consist of a demonstration of everything that has been learned so far, but for Phoebe ‘sit’ and ‘down’ have been modified to ‘stay,’ so we practiced stay, and we stayed, and kept staying. Phoebe nearly stayed a hole in the ground she stayed so well. Of course she is quite staid in public…

At the end of the class we were given a final project to do at home. The teacher wants us to teach our dogs a trick using the things we learned in class. She recommends ‘shake’ or ‘high-five’ so that’s what we’ll be working on as we cram for next week’s final.

<< previous chapter | next chapter >>

[saveagrey]

Monday Movie Roundup

March 27, 2006 • • Leave a comment

Only two this week…

11:14 (Greg Marks, 2003)

At 11:14 pm a car accident takes place near an overpass. It all happens very quickly, and it takes a little while to get into the groove of this fast-paced thriller, which is as much a dark comedy as a meditation on the seemingly random nature of connected events. Director Marks presents a sequence of events out of sequence so that the puzzle for the audience becomes finding the connections in this mystery rather than figuring out whodunit.

It reminded me of several other films such as Outside Ozona, Memento, and Three Days in the Valley that play with the flow of time and seeming random characters as fate veers towards some connecting calamity, but this film keeps within its limits and pushes those tenuous connections to the forefront. Worth watching, but will probably be forgotten in a few months. Three stars.

Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005)

I meant to see Good Night, and Good Luck when it came out, but then it’s one that I figured would play just as well at home. I was right, and that’s no slam on the movie; besides, it seemed especially appropriate to see Good Night, and Good Luck on a television since the film so eloquently takes us back to a time in which television was new and seemed to hold so much promise for those who believed in its power.

Clooney does a masterful job capturing a specific moment in history, that moment when the media still did its job. Shot in black-and-white and set to a bluesy/jazz soundtrack the film immediately evokes the 1950s as I imagine that time to have been. The photography is beautiful (of course there’s nothing cooler looking than people smoking in a well-lit black-and-white movie) and makes this film as enjoyable for its aesthetic value as for its content.

The content, of course, is what makes this movie so important. The viewer must have at least a basic knowledge of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on America and an awareness of who Edward R Murrow was because it jumps in at the moment when Murrow decides to go after McCarthy at great professional risk to himself and the entire CBS network.

Anyone aware of US history knows how this ends, but it’s interesting to see the role the media played in exposing McCarthy’s corruption and anti-American agenda. Mostly, though, Good Night, and Good Luck is saddening because at its heart is the implicit reminder that the media that once kept a watch on government is gone, now having been replaced by a media establishment whose idea of reporting is nothing more than ‘He said’-‘She said’ without analysis, without questioning, and without seriously taking to task those in power.

Good Night, and Good Luck attempts to remind us that part of the price of freedom is to vigorously question those in power, and that that is why we have a free press.

The saddest truth, though, is that the media gives us exactly what we want. Four and a half stars.

Country Wave

March 24, 2006 • • 4 Comments

It’s strange how things in life come in waves. I frequently find something new – or at least new to me – only for it to suddenly appear, quite independently, in several areas of my life, sort of like opening a random book to a random page only to find the perfect bit of advice that I need right then. Then I open another book and find something that reinforces the first bit as if the Universe – or at least my library – is saying, “don’t miss this.” Lately, I’m not to miss old-school country music.

After finally seeing Walk the Line a few weeks ago, I bought Johnny Cash’s 1968 CD At Folsom Prison. It’s a great record in which Cash plays a number of mostly prison and outlaw tunes. In the liner notes, Cash explains why he likes playing for prisoners:

Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform for. We bring them a ray of sunshine in their dungeon and they’re not ashamed to respond, and show their appreciation.

Cash’s performance is one of genuine engagement with his audience, and the listener can truly hear the appreciation of the inmates. The CD is more than just a collection of great songs, it’s a documented moment of providing hope to the hopeless. I spent the next few days thinking about what that must have been like to be locked up and then find that Johnny Cash would be coming to perform and what it would be like to hear those songs in that kind of an environment.

So Cash is where the outlaw country wave began. Then on Saturday night we saw Willie Nelson at the Backyard. Willie and Cash were fellow Highwaymen along with Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. The wave grew and finally peaked on Tuesday.

Every week guests are brought in to motivate, inspire and sometimes entertain the kids. This week a couple of guys came in to do a Johnny Cash show. Now, I don’t exactly teach in a prison, it’s more like county lock-up for kids, but then this wasn’t exactly Johnny Cash. The effects, however, were similar to what I imagined.

The singer was an older gentleman who played guitar beautifully (despite a bandaged hand) and truly did justice to Cash’s material without imitating it. He also played other songs, but Cash was the focus. He opened with “Folsom Prison Blues” and played a number of songs from At Folsom Prison, which I might not have known had I not just purchased the CD. He did stay away from some of the rougher material such as “Cocaine Blues” and added such classics as “Ring of Fire” and “Walk the Line.”

I was surprised to see many of the kids who were raised on punk and hip-hop actually singing along. I think most of them even enjoyed the show, which gave me an approximation of what it might have been like to see Cash at Folsom Prison.

As the show was wrapping up, I mentioned to the teacher sitting next to me that after having seen Willie on Saturday night and now a Cash tribute show, I’d need to somehow try to catch Kris. Then he started into his last song: “Me and Bobby McGee.” I think that’s where the wave broke. Good enough for me.

52

March 24, 2006 • • 2 Comments

Last week, while driving down North Lamar, I came to the light at Airport and rolled to a stop. In front of me, a well used Toyota (I think, but we’ll call it that nonetheless) vibrated in time to the thumping bass within.

As I sat there waiting for the light to change, mentally reviewing the long list of errands I had to run, I noticed that the back end of the Toyota was slowly rising. I’ve seen plenty of rides (though I had thought this was just a car rather than a ride) pimped out with hydraulics so this wasn’t anything special. Not yet.

Once the back end of the car had reached its summit, the trunk popped open. Now fascinated, I found myself gawking and wondering what could be trying to escape from that trunk. Garish red light bathed the interior and before I could ask myself why the trunk needed to be filled with red light – or any light for that matter – I noticed that a pair of neon tubes affixed to the inside of the lid were the source of that light.

The lid continued to rise until it was fully open at which point I could see that the tubes were not meant to illuminate, but rather to enlighten. It was a sign. Actually a number. 52.

I stared at it for some time trying to think of all the 52’s I could. Cards in a deck. Weeks in a year. After going two and out and still pondering it when I got home, I checked Wikipedia and found that 52 also represents the number of white keys on a piano, the atomic number of tellurium, and the international direct dial code for calling Mexico.

Whatever it was, the stoplight turned green, the trunk closed, the Toyota jacked back down, and we drove our separate ways with my life having been made just a bit more surreal. Perhaps the owner of the car was helping to keep Austin weird or maybe I was just the random victim of a drive-by numbering.

The Education of Greyhound Phoebe, Chapter the Sixth

March 21, 2006 • • 4 Comments

in which Phoebe spreads the gospel

Despite last Saturday’s adventures, Phoebe was ready for class on Monday evening. She didn’t like me so much on Sunday morning but after a few rides in the car and a walk, things got better, and she realized that I wasn’t out to get her.

Last night’s class focused on combining lessons such as sit, stay and heel. Phoebe still won’t sit, but she does have a fairly good stay. We practiced walking around meeting other dogs who weren’t in the class. At each new dog, I was able to get Phoebe to stop, stay, politely greet the strangers and then resume walking when we grew bored talking to the new people.

We ran into several people who wanted to pet her because they’d never met a real live greyhound. I guess it isn’t everyday one gets to meet a former professional athlete, even if it is a dog. Phoebe loves the attention and wags her tail like a propeller, which of course the apes find amusing. It’s what got dogs out of the cold and into the cave all those many eons ago, but I digress. Phoebe made new friends and I got to do a little bit of greyhound proselytizing.

Her favorite new friends were a heavily tattooed lesbian couple walking their new puppies. They were impressed by Phoebe’s tattoos and will probably be going to get numbers tatooed in their ears just because Phoebe was so cool what with her tattoos and all. Their puppies were a bit much for Phoebe, but she wasn’t rude.

After witnessing to the hardships of greyhound life and how she was born again as Phoebe she got to spend the rest of the evening watching her classmates play and asking for treats from their owners.

<< previous chapter | next chapter >>

Visit Phoebe’s friends at the Carnival of the Dogs and don’t miss Doug Petch’s comment-a-thon benefiting greyhound rescue.

[saveagrey]

Willie Nelson at the Backyard

March 21, 2006 • • 9 Comments

Willie Nelson Poster

On Saturday we went to the Backyard to hear Willie Nelson. I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve always wanted to see Willie play and now I am complete. Watching a show under the big oak trees at the Backyard is always a great experience and Saturday night was no exception. Despite a forecast for rain, the weather was quite nice: cool and overcast but not too humid.

Willie opened with “Whiskey River,” a perfect set opener if ever there was one. He spent most of the evening playing familiar classics including “All of Me,” “On the Road Again,” “Still is Still Moving to Me,” and my personal favorites “Me and Paul” and “Pancho and Lefty.” With as much material as he has, he probably could have played until dawn, but I’m glad he stuck with the classics. He’s Willie. He doesn’t have to impress anyone.

His band was low-key and mellow, which is about what I expected from Willie, who is now 73. They didn’t really sound like a typical country band. Instead they noodled in out of folksy jam rock, almost jazz, and western swing. Sometimes they sounded country, but they really sounded like they were a bunch of old friends (which they are) just kind of jamming together as they segued from one song to the next often without pause, just drifting like a bunch of people who just enjoy getting together to play a few tunes on the front porch. Perhaps it’s this semi-sloppy, thoroughly endearing aspect of Willie’s music that I love so much. He’s an incredible singer and a talented guitarist, but he’s really just there to enjoy himself and we get to come along for the ride, joining that band of gypsies as they go down the highway.

Check out Lenwood for a rundown of Willie’s Friday night show.

Video Editing for Spring Break

March 20, 2006 • • 4 Comments

Alas, spring break is over. This year’s spring break was a busy one for me. For the past seventeen years, I’ve been involved with Camp Periwinkle at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. It’s a camp for childhood cancer patients and their siblings. It lasts a week and no expense is spared to create the ultimate camp for these kids who want nothing more than to feel normal and do normal things despite being fragile, bald and swollen with chemo drugs. It doesn’t cost a dime for the kids to go and we roll out the red carpet. My main duty at camp is to do the video production work. This includes training videos, cabin skit videos, some promo work, but mainly a yearbook video. So most of spring break was spent editing our footage from last year’s camp. Usually I’m finished by now so spring breaks are typically spent cycling and goofing off, but a catastrophic hard drive failure on the video editing system left me starting over again about a month ago. So I spent spring break mainly watching kids have fun last summer. It’s cool to see those smiling faces having a rare good time. I laugh with them and the editing goes more quickly and I don’t mind not being outside on gorgeous days. I’m reminded that I can reasonably expect many more. Suddenly spring break ends, and I’m back at work. This year it was different than in previous years. I was actually happy to be back, although I really could use another week to edit.