Category: Random Stuff

The catch-all category for random things about life in Austin, food & drink, politics, the occasional rant, whatever else.

Sucked into Lost

December 1, 2005 • James Brush • 2 Comments

A few weeks ago we started watching Lost (season one) on DVD. I was nervous at first because I try hard not to get sucked in to new TV shows. I only watch a few on a regular basis and as much as I might like a particular show (Seinfeld, King of the Hill, Queer as Folk), I’m always glad to see it go. I guess it’s like I get that time back rather than having to schedule a block of TV watching into my life. The best way to watch a show is after it’s been canceled as I learned when a friend loaned us Freaks and Geeks on DVD. The series was fantastic, and more importantly, safely cancelled.

So we started watching Lost, knowing that one day we’d catch up and ourselves become trapped on the island. Still, we recklessly blazed through season one (like Locke through the jungle), sometimes putting away three or four episodes in an evening (the way Charlie once put away heroin), and then the first part of season two that we had hoarded (like Sawyer stashing supplies in his tent) on our DVR. It was kind of like watching a very cool movie that didn’t end, and now I’m hooked (like Jack pushing that damn button that doesn’t do anything). As of last weekend, we’re caught up so now it’s no longer like a movie. It’s TV, albeit very good TV.

Later we’ll be watching last night’s episode on DVR, but we will have to wait a WHOLE WEEK before we can find out what happens. And what if next week is a rerun? It could be weeks before we find out what happens! We’ve been spoiled by DVD and a backlog of DVR. For all our new technology, I still can’t escape watching regular TV programs. Oh well. I guess there are worse fates (okay last one – like Hurley winning a cursed lottery) than this.

File Under: Ouch

November 30, 2005 • James Brush • Leave a comment

Here’s a headline from cbsnews.com that I couldn’t ignore if I wanted to:

Fat Buttocks Need Longer Needles

Yes, I suppose they do, but(t) I wonder if there is a standard buttock-size-to-needle-length ratio or would a patient need to negotiate that with his doctor?

Sounds like there should be something included in the Patients’ Bill of Rights.

Checking Out the Checkout

firedoglake has this, which made me think about checking out at the grocery store. It’s gotten very depressing these days.

Standing around waiting for my turn, I find myself glancing at the magazines available. I see things about space aliens, celebrities I’ve never heard of falling in and out of love and marriage, ways to look better this winter, recipes for weight loss and diabetes management, the low-down on upcoming plot lines for soap operas, and suggestions for teens who want to get a great date for the prom (start wooing that high school hunk now!)

Okay, what should I expect, right? I’m in a supermarket. Still, one would think that there would be something – anything – examining the fact that our president lied to bring us into a war, that the party that controls our government is plagued by corruption and influence peddling, that we are facing an imminent oil crisis, that our lands are being raped for profit as never before, that the administration is full of incompetents and traitors, that anyone who expresses honest (and, yes it’s patriotic!) dissent is labeled a supporter of terrorists, or that our congress would like nothing more than to take away what little we do for our poorest citizens.

Just one article? I’m not even asking for a cover feature.

I understand the market (not the supermarket) decides what goes in the magazines that fill the checkout racks. They’re filled with what people want, and it seems that what we want is nothing more than to pretend that this ain’t happening, to utterly divorce ourselves from reality and live in a fantasy land of soap operas and chocolate pie.

Kind of like Dubya.

Thanksgiving

November 24, 2005 • James Brush • 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

It’s so simple: family, friends, food, football. I love that there’s barely any commercial aspect to it. I love that it’s a secular holiday that people of any faith and any political stripe can appreciate. I love that so many businesses aren’t open on the Friday after Thanksgiving (retail being the exception, but I prefer to avoid that nightmare altogether). Thanksgiving is the one day of the year set aside to just chill. Unless, of course, you’re cooking, but then that’s what the next day is for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A New View

November 17, 2005 • James Brush • 2 Comments

There’s nothing like seeing familiar sights anew to make a person appreciate what he takes for granted. Just one tiny shift in point-of-view makes the familiar seem so unexpectedly exciting. I love those moments when, as David Byrne once put it, you suddenly notice the color of white paper, and I was treated to one yesterday.

Being a North Austinite, I rarely find myself needing to go from East-bound 71/Ben White/290/Whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now to I-35 North, so I’d never driven the new (to me anyway) overpass that connects the two highways. Nevertheless, yesterday, I was ascending the overpass thinking, Man, I am up here!, and as the roadway bent northward, a stunning view of the city that I’d never before seen rolled into view. The overpass is high enough that you can look down on St. Edward’s University, which is usually hidden, and clearly see the main building dominating the foreground, and in the background, the downtown skyline rises up from the trees in a way that the buildings all seem to huddle together making them seem somehow taller and the city denser than it appears from some of its other views.

The crisp wintry air that (finally!) arrived the other day just made it appear all the more inviting.

White paper never looked so white.

Visiting Orange a Month After Rita

November 14, 2005 • James Brush • 1 Comment

We had to drop everything last week and head off to Orange, TX for a funeral. My wife’s aunt passed away peacefully after many years of suffering and that brought us back to her hometown on the Texas-Louisiana border. This was my first post-Rita trip to Orange.

It’s been a little over a month, and the place still looks like a war zone: trees uprooted or still standing but snapped in two, twisted piles of metal torn from who knows where, buildings ripped apart, FEMA tarps on nearly every roof, crooked signs and street lights, many businesses still closed. And all this after a month and a half. Everyday, there were trucks lumbering along the roads randomly picking up the sawed remains of the forests and trees people once had in their yards that are now piled high in front of their houses.

One of the most striking things about the hurricane’s aftermath was how bright everything appeared. My wife had noticed this a week prior when she’d come to visit her aunt in the hospital, and it was, I think, both the most startling and most subtle aspect of the damage. The dense, dark forests of the Piney Woods were so thinnned throughout the town that there seemed an over-abundance of sunlight. Orange is supposed to be dark and a little mysterious, but it seemed so bright, the forests so thin, that some of its swampy bayou mystery was lost.

Driving around town was odd as we were constantly rubber-necking to view the damage while my wife pointed out buildings and homes that despite growing up there, she’d never seen because of the thick trees that had always hidden them from the road.

The sound of chainsaws is constant, and there’s plenty of work to do, but people seem to be taking it in stride. At the visitation, I watched one old guy walk over to a friend, shake hands and say with a straight face, “Need some fire wood?” It was obviously a well-worn joke down there, but they both laughed anyway.

Near Meteor Crater

November 13, 2005 • James Brush • 1 Comment

I took this photo near Meteor Crater, Arizona in March of 1992:

These old cars are about a quarter of a mile from the service road that connects I-40 to Metoer Crater. I’ve been there several times, and I find that the cars are as engaging as the crater itself so I always try to photograph them. This is my favorite one.

A few days after one trip out there in 1995, while browsing the CDs at Waterloo Records, I found that the cars had also served as cover art for Lee Ranaldo’s excellent East Jesus album.

“I’m Against It!”

November 8, 2005 • James Brush • Leave a comment

Today is election day in Texas. We have no bastards to throw out… well actually we have many, but not the opportunity to do so for still another year. Today it’s just a series of propositions to amend the constitution, the most controversial of which is prop two, which will re-ban gay marriage.

So off to the polls we went this morning with Groucho Marx’s voice singing in my head:

“I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it!”

Surprisingly, my precinct was not using those cool little electronic voting machines that turn all votes cast into votes for the incumbent so I had to actually use a chisel to carve my vote into the stone tablet, but considering the backwards nature of the thinking that went into prop two, it seemed somehow appropriate.

I then affixed my little ‘I Voted’ sticker to my shirt and went outside whistling along with Groucho, thinking, “Well, I voted against it, but next time I think I’ll vote against the other pronouns,” as I ashed an imaginary cigar on the sidewalk.