Longhorns Surprisingly Good Season Ends at the Cotton Bowl - and Year One in the SEC

A few years ago, my alma mater, former employer and preferred college sports program - the University of Texas - announced that they were leaving the Big 12 Conference for the SEC.  I hated this decision then, and I hate it now.  In fact, it's fair to say the past fifteen years have seen me come to really dislike the "business" of college football, including NIL deals and the way the tail is now wagging the dog on college campuses - even as I totally get that there are people who will genuinely believe universities only exist so we can have football.*

My beef with the move to the SEC stemmed from my belief this was shortsighted and only benefited one of the many NCAA sports in which the university competes, while also punishing the athletes, who now had to travel across the continent every time the Longhorns had a match, meet or game.  Which is fine if you only play on Saturdays in the Fall semester, but sports like Volleyball, Soccer, Tennis, Swimming, etc... would have to *also* travel like this, and be in their Econ 302 class by 10:00 AM the following day.  Despite whatever money Quinn Ewers made this year from Dr. Pepper, these athletes are still students.

Christmas 2024

the official White House 2024 ornament, amongst some family ornaments

Our mode the past decade or so has been to throw as much Christmas as we can at the wall so when something doesn't pan out or something bad happens, at least *something* Christmassy occurred.

This year we got up decorations inside and outside the house early.

We put up the Super Tree

Happy Thanksgiving, Pals

Here in the US of A, it's Thanksgiving.  

I love Thanksgiving.  It's about food and hanging out.  Ideal. It's also a nice break between the shenanigans of Halloween and the all-consuming maelstrom that is Christmas.

May you find yourself with some quality plans.  Watch the parade!  Watch a dog show!  Put on some football!

We're not hosting this year - that honor lies with KareBear and The Admiral.  Mom is prepping a bird, she'll have potatoes and green beans, and I'll be a happy boy.  Jamie is pitching in.  She started prep a few days ago, staling bread for stuffing.  And Wednesday, she both prepped the stuffing (making the house smell amazing with butter and onion).  She also cooked a turkey breast to ensure we'd have turkey for sandwiches if the turkey was fully consumed at my folks' house.  

No - We will not have too much turkey.  I love turkey.  I understand people don't, and that's fine as it means: more turkey for me.  The likelihood I'll just slowly eat a couple of turkeys given the chance is greater than zero.  As is the possibility I'll make like a 1930's cartoon and just inhale a turkey, leaving a pile of bones.

I wish those of you who can be with family the absolute best.  It could be a colorful year.  Take care of yourself.  But it may go really well.  Here's hoping.

Our plans currently include dinner with my folks and watching football both Friday with some Nebraska fans, and Saturday - as we see if UT can beat A&M in the their first match-up in some time.

And, of course, we'll be putting up our share of Christmas decor, inside and outside the house.  

US Women's National Team (soccer) comes to town! We went!

Hey, friendos.  

Jamie and I went to see the US Women's National Team (in soccer) play Iceland this evening at Austin's Q2 Stadium where we usually take in Austin FC.  

The game started a tad early - 6:40 or so.  And so we drove in rush-hour traffic all the way from Lower Austin to Howard Lane to catch the train to Q2.  The drive:  terrible.  The train - amazing.

lightrail!  It works!

I've liked to try to follow the USWNT since being completely won over by the team in the 1999 World Cup.  Brandi Chastain's goal is, in my book, one of the great sports moments of my lifetime.  I followed the team through the Mia Hamm era, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan...  The US women tend to dominate globally for a variety of reasons.  However, the World Cup in 2023 did not go our way.  But!  the current line-up under coach Emma Hayes won Gold in the 2024 Olympics, and is... great.

So, yeah, finally getting to see this team is 25 years in the making, for me.  Also, Austin needs an NWSL expansion team.  Just saying. 

Jamie has watched USWNT with me since 1999, and so getting to go to this together is real partner stuff for us.

For posterity, here was our starting XI.

Not bad, right?  I've wanted to see Rose Lavelle play for a long time - but this whole line-up was pretty awesome.  (spoiler: Lavelle did not disappoint - nor did anyone)

Me and "Batman" (1989) - at 35

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Batman.   

Our final episode of The Signal Watch PodCast covered this movie.  I invite you to join Jamie and me through a chipper discussion of the movie and the forces around it.  And I've previously written about me and Batman.

To repeat some of what's the podcast and maybe elsewhere - I very much recall my excitement around Batman in 1989. 

I'd really come to comics in 1986, and like a lot of readers at the time, I mostly read X-books and the Bat-titles.  Bat-comics were kind of exploding at the time in the wake of Dark Knight Returns and with the arrival of the terrific talents of folks like Alan Grant on writing chores, veteran Jim Aparo and fresh talent Norm Breyfogle on pencils.  I think this era is one of the many well-loved eras for the books, and with good reason.  

Even in the era of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, Batman was the first movie I ever followed through development and to release date - then through box office and into home video.  It was not the first movie I ever loved, but it was the first movie I felt a level of personal attachment.  

I recall articles in Comics Scene, then the paper.  Reading Nicholson was the Joker and feeling uncertain how that would go.  Prince would be on the soundtrack, which seemed bizarre.

So excited was I - I purchased the novelization prior to the release of the film, and was half-way through reading it when I realized "this is a very dumb thing to do" and I cast the book aside.  I didn't know the term "spoilers" then, but I realized I was going to maybe ruin the experience a mere 4 or 5 days prior to seeing the movie.

My memory of seeing the film itself will always be tied up with a few unrelated things.

Lollapalooza, Rock n' Roll and where we're at in 2024

 

Back in the summer of 1991, with a newly minted driver's license, I drove from Spring, Texas to Austin.  We picked up a friend of my brother's, and then we pivoted, driving into Dallas just before dusk.  

The next day, my brother, his buddy Mike, my buddy Scott and I attended Day 1 of the first two dates in Dallas of the first Lollapalooza tour.  Back then, Lollapalooza was fairly small, and a roving event that moved the artists and associated folks from city to city.  Dallas had sold better than expected, so they added a second day, which was, because of scheduling, the day before the original date.

We kind of knew about the music festivals in Europe, but at the time, music festivals here had sort of died out except for the very successful Monsters of Rock thing (the history and complexity of which I won't get into here).  Bands mostly played 2-3 acts together at most.  Something like Reading was way out of reach on our shores.  You had to have Farm Aid to see anything like a festival that I was really aware of.

Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell somehow cooked up the idea of his caravan of 120 Minutes friendly bands (we did not have the term Alternative in 1991), pulling together a fascinating herd of musicians, hitting cities all across the US.  That I could see Jane's Addiction, Ice-T, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Rollins Band in one day was mind-boggling.  As promised Farrell also brought along artists and international food I wasn't familiar with (I recall looking for food from Africa every year and never regretting it).

24 Years of Wedded Bliss

So, April 28th, 2024 marks the 24th anniversary of Jamie and I making it official.

We'd "dated" for years prior, back to 1995, but that's if you call "dating" two people just saying "yup" to each other and now we were an item.  There wasn't much in the way of trying to figure things out regarding our status.  I wasn't taking her to a movie and then dropping her off and wondering what she was thinking.  We were just together.  And while I didn't know that we'd get married in the first months, there was just not a lot of work there - we just didn't have a trial period or casual dating phase.  

When I hear about people having relationship drama, I'm just of the opinion that you aren't writing a romantic novel about overcoming all kinds of obstacles in liking each other.  I'm not saying there isn't any work or misunderstandings, but, kids, it can be pretty good pretty early on.  With Jamie's medical history, we wound up having plenty of drama that wasn't us arguing, so don't mistake things for being all smooth sailing.  And I got cold feet a couple of times as we headed toward what looked like a lifelong relationship - what with college ending and next phases of life starting.

But into those next phases we headed, sharing an apartment for two years before nuptials.  We got married on a Friday in April of the year 2000.  We were 25, which was pretty young by the standards of my peers.  But, also, most of my friends responded to the news with "shocker, man".  Which means people probably knew we were getting married before I knew.  

Me vs My Facial Hair

Beards are in.  Facial hair is *in*.  Cool dudes are wearing beards.

I'm not one to care much about remaining trendy or fashion (he said, wearing his Bugs Bunny t-shirt as if to put too fine a point on it), but beards and mustaches when I was a young man were for girlfriends' dads and people trying to show you they were, in fact, an iconoclast.  Which, in itself, was super strange.  Facial hair is a pain and it *should* be far more normal to have a beard than not have one. After all, to have a beard, all you have to do is nothing, and a beard happens, if your genetics are so inclined.

And yet...  it's often been the fashion to have a smooth face.  And not just recently.  George Washington?   Chin clean as a newly washed dinner plate.  Paintings of renaissance dudes?  Maybe a twirly mustache.

But going back to college, me and my Norelco have had fairly regular meet-ups.  I'd shave for work pretty much every day, just as I'd done since, like, 9th grade (when my need to shave was to keep the odd patches of beard and peach-fuzz stache from creeping in). 

Until a few years ago, the longest I'd ever gone without shaving was five days on vacation.  But this year, around Christmas, I let it go for several weeks.  And, then, from March 15th to April 17th, I didn't shave.  

these pics are me "reacting" to reaction videos

Here's what I learned.  

The $420 bottle of Batman Perfume and DC Comics in 2024

Hey, look, a $420 bottle of Batman perfume.

A long time ago now, comic artist and famed "nice guy" Jim Lee became President of DC Comics.  He'd been put in a position of power during the Diane Nelson era, having had brought in the Wildstorm Universe to DC Comics, first as an imprint, and then shoehorning it into the New 52 (pretty much against logic and reason).  And he was the foil to Dan Didio's blustering and general ass-hattery.  

But every time an interviewer put a mic in front of Lee, he'd say things that I found confounding.  Chief among those things was that comics weren't really a form of reading, they were a collectible.  DC was in the collectibles business.  

Which makes sense if you made a million dollars because kids were speculating wildly on comics in the early 1990's, but has made minimal sense since that fateful era that almost killed the American comics industry.

Martin Short Appreciation Post

A while back someone tried to do a hit piece on Martin Short.  It was weird - the legit journalist spent a day or so with Short and his take at the end was "I never thought Martin Short was funny."  Which is super weird.  

The article was not received well by the general public.  

Multiple generations are fans of Short, and, sure maybe he's not to everyone's taste.  Look, if I want to write a blog post and howl into the wind about something, whatever.  But spending time and energy of a legitimate publication to work through my personal taste in comedy, that's super weird and says more about me (and my editor or lack thereof) than it does Martin Short.

But let it be known, at this blog, we dig Martin Short.  From Ed Grimley where we first found out about Short, to his many movies, to Jiminy Glick, to his current work with Steve Martin, both stage shows and Only Murders in the Building - I've certainly liked him.  

I mean, this is how he responded to his pal David Letterman having a massive heart attack.

 

If you never saw Jiminy Glick, I think Short was oddly ahead of his time on this one

And, of course, his Ed Grimley sketches

It is *hard* to remain as funny as Short has over the years, and to keep it relentlessly fresh.  And to find new avenues for what he does.  I mean, there are multiple levels upon which I appreciate Only Murders in the Building, but certainly I'm a fan of how Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez have created some great characters.

Anyhoo, if you've got a favorite Martin Short bit or role or clip, share in the comments!

Twitter is over, and I need a junk drawer

Remember when you'd be over at your friend's house and they'd want to show you the groovy light their parents kept by the water bed in their room?

I have multiple social media accounts, but I don't really want to engage with humanity much on them.  

Engage with people on a topic for a particular issue or topic?  Especially responding to a post on movies or other things I want to talk to people about?  Sure.

But I think we all learned a lesson leaving twitter:  do not actually engage.  Do not start talking to people you do not know in an uncontrolled, anonymous environment.  Do not get into internet fights where you will prove someone wrong.  Do not get mad when someone points out you are wrong.  

But, also, you know, you don't need to live your life out loud on social media.  You don't know those people.

I am currently using my accounts the following ways:

Threads:  a quick scroll and mostly disappointment, but to get the basic gist of what the internet is thinking (last week I pieced together: What does Beyonce know about being Southern? is a racist dog whistle!*  What a time to be alive.)

BlueSky:  I see some Cubs chatter, which is nice.  But mostly I follow it for FilmSky, ie: people who are true weirdos about film who don't give a shit about film twitter, and are opining, posting links and living their best movie-nerd life.  Very friendly, unpretentious and lovely at the moment.

Instagram:  Initially I kind of used it not at all, despite having an account for years.  I am not trying to frame my life as exotic and exciting, and I don't particularly care if actors get to eat spinach salad in countries they don't live in or which fashion company gave them sunglasses.  But I've now followed enough people I know, and I just use dlvr.it it to send Signal Watch blog posts.  I also like to find silly stuff and repost it on Reels.  

Tumblr:  I use dlvr.it to repost stuff from the blog, and reblog funny pictures and some classic film stars.  I also know what people in their 20's who live with their parents and don't seem to have jobs think about the world.  It is wiiiiild.

Facebook (Blog-related):  I use dlvr.it to send Signal Watch posts to the official League of Melbotis page.  People still seem to use it.  I think this page is also linked one way or another, and I'll be looking into that.

Facebook (Personal):  I wouldn't even say this is a curated view of my exciting life.  I do still use it because it's the only way I'm in touch with many people, or the best way for me to reach some people.  A bit like why I still have a landline - because I had one in 2006, and that is where people find me, so I can't get rid of it.  Plus, I do get news, weather and other things there.

I do not do politics, or anything remotely, actually "personal" on facebook.  My parents, relatives, former teachers, bosses, etc... are all on there.  So I used to post things that were intentionally obnoxious and silly, but now I mostly use it to be silly.  Or mark "hey, it's Jamie's birthday!".  That sort of thing.

LinkedIn:  I actually kind of do use this at the moment as I'm between gigs.  I hear from recruiters there, and talk to colleagues, plus see what those colleagues are up to.  It's not all bad.  But I don't read those "thought provoking" articles that get reposted.  You know they aren't.

Slack:  I'm on a social slack.  It's all right with like four people.

But the thing I don't really do that I used to do when I was on Twitter is just put a short thread together, and I don't really have a place for things like "hey, remember the weird fluid and light things our parents had?  That was weird, right?"

So, initially I thought I'd use a return to League of Melbotis to do some personal journaling, but I don't know how into that I am as a concept.  Instead, I'm going to try to use it for a goofy junk-drawer for a while, which was often how it was used back in the 00's.  Signal Watch can continue on as a media review site, and I'll put other stuff here.

Deal?  

*our friend Bae is from Houston, and if you wanted to raise the collective dander of everyone in Texas, challenge if we know what the fuck country and cowboy culture are

A Total Eclipse of the Sun..!

taken with my Pixel 4

Well, here in lovely Austin, Texas, we were on the edge of the total solar eclipse.  Around 1:36 PM Central, we experienced about 90 seconds of totality.

I was, honestly, pretty excited about the eclipse.  I've seen probably 4 partial eclipses, including one last summer.  And one lunar eclipse back in middle school when my family was on vacation in Mexico and a guy from a restaurant was standing there looking straight up, and because I am that guy, I looked straight up, and me and that guy stopped and enjoyed a lunar eclipse together.

Austin was a big destination for the eclipse, because we are a very hip town for reasons that escape me, but for weeks we've known it was going to be cloudy here.  A month ago, to get ahead of how crazy things would get, local and state government got involved and declared a "state of emergency" so they could handle the influx of people supposedly coming in.  I heard crazy stories about no way to get a flight in or out for days on either side of today.  But I live here, so I didn't really see anything different.

We're expecting usual Austin-Springtime horrible weather over the next 24 hours or so, and so there was a chance we'd all be standing out looking up at the sun getting hit with hail.  

But that didn't happen.  

The weather sort of held on and we were able to head out to the field and retention pond area in our neighborhood where folks brought camp chairs and blankets.  

I will be honest and say, I also brought a box of Moon Pies and distributed them to folks who wanted one.

Folks were kind of quietly excited, and I realized, thanks to my daily viewing of KXAN news and the breathless reporting they'd been doing on the eclipse for what had to have been six weeks in advance, I was quite the know-it-all about the cosmic event.  

Do bats come out for an eclipse?  NO.  It turns out that they work on an internal clock and are not paying attention to the sun.

I tried to take pictures to show the difference in how very dark it did get, but my camera auto-corrected, and you can't see the change.

I've been fighting allergies, so sitting outside was a bit concerning, but given this was a possibly-once-in-a-lifetime event, I girded my loins, and - giving Jamie a headstart to go chat with neighbors, eventually I headed out.

Honestly, it was an amazing event.  Writing it down is a little meaningless.  You've probably seen plenty of pictures or video.  And I'd argue being there with other people to witness the same thing is part of it.  For the people who were at big civic events, etc... I get it.

As the moon got into position, the sky absolutely got darker and the temperature dropped several degrees.  I wouldn't say the birds went completely quiet, but they certainly toned it down.  During totality, a small bird, maybe a finch? flew weirdly close to us, I would guess a bit confused and looking for cover.  I'd argue I noticed when the birds came back to making noise again a lot more than when it went away, which might have been gradual.

Likely because we were so close to the edge of the event, and because clouds would disperse light, we didn't experience the same total darkness I saw in Indianapolis or other locations on the same path.  I'd say it got as dark as twilight during summer when the light hangs on a long time and you can still see a bit down the street.  But the change was *fast*.  I was pulling my cardboard glasses on and off to look around, and every time I did, it was noticeably darker in the minutes leading up to the grand event.

My neighbor, Michelle, and I were pondering "oh, yes, you can see exactly why ancient cultures lost their minds about this" and I need to look into what another neighbor was describing about the ancient mounds built by the First People on North America, because I was vaguely aware of them for ceremonial purposes, but not their astronomic/ astrological significance.  

As the news had said, the totality was brief, maybe 90 seconds.  You can get a rough idea of what the corona or ring looked like in my pics.  

And, of course, these pics do it no justice.  It was genuinely beautiful and unlike even the partial eclipses I'd seen before.  And, due in part to the totality and the clouds, if you weren't just staring, you could look at it with the naked eye.

The sliver of light left just before totality is kind of lovely and almost sad, and then... the ring.  In our case it was white light shining through the clouds, just shimmering around the perfect circle of the moon.  Then, when the event is passing, you get the diamond on the ring as the first real rays of the sun break out at the edge and a spot of light formed on, to my eye, the lower left angle.  And it's really kind of lovely.

Did I eat a Moon Pie during totality?  Friends, you know I did, and it was perfect.

I don't know that I'm ready to chase eclipses around the planet, but it was something that will be locked up in my mind's eye, ready to remember.  Glad I saw it with Jamie and our neighbors.  

Birthday 2023 - The Anti-Vibe, Very Good B-Day Week

Wednesday was my birthday.  The celebration lasted a full week as we had some neighbors over last Saturday, and this week we went to see Austin FC play Vancouver.  In the middle was the big day.  I'm now 48.  

Holy cats.

20 Years of Blogging, Part 2 - Together, We're a League of Something!

Editor's note:  This is Part 2 of a series.  You can view the first part with just the click of a button.  

also, this is a cross-post with media review site and PodCast, The Signal Watch.

So, yeah.  

By April of 2003, we were blogging.  For a look at the initial form of League of Melbotis on Blogspot/ Blogger, click on over to The Wayback Machine.  

As mentioned in the first post, soon I was emailing and managing comments from friends and strangers.  But, also, some of those pals already had their own blogs or quickly started one.  It was easy, often free, and gave folks a chance to speak their mind.  People were religious about their choice of platform.  Livejournal people developed quite the mythologizing about themselves that arguably continues to this day. WordPress users constantly complained about what they were using but refused to change.  

JimD started his first blog of many.  RHPT joined in.  Soon I was aware of Maxwell (she of the podcast) starting up Cowboy Funk, which detailed her life as a Texas ex-pat in NYC.  I knew her husband before we met via his own web-presence and mentions on the blog.  

20 Years of Blogging. No, really. (Part 1)

So, twenty years ago Jamie and I were living in the wasteland suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona in a town-turned-bedroom community name of Chandler.  We'd moved out to Phoenix in pursuit of a new job for Jamie.  But, also, we figured we were young and didn't have that many roots down in the years after college and marrying fairly early (2000).  Now seemed a good time for trying new places and things.  

It didn't work out.

You can visit Jamie's occasional remembrances of our time in Phoenix, and that's a goodly part of the story.  But, also, between Jamie's health, the fact I was working crazy hours, and a general lack of opportunity to meet people, we just didn't know many folks in town that we could call "pal".  I either managed or was supervised by the people I worked with, and Jamie mostly worked with men - so she wasn't meeting many women she could pal with-  and everyone she worked with seemed to be at a different point in their lives from hanging our with two 20-somethings.  That, and, man, if you asked me what the culture was in Phoenix in 2003, I'd say "strip malls and pretending you're rich".  We just didn't click with many folks.

So, that's where we were at in some ways.

Jason: Half a Century of Rocking America

I have no recent photos of Jason and Family

March 17th marks my brother's 50th birthday.  

That's a peculiar milestone, because I can remember his birthday parties from elementary school and taking him for a beer while he was just finishing law school and I guess maybe he was turning 25 at the time (we were under the tent at Dog & Duck).  

Jason's birthday was always tricky as it falls on St. Patrick's Day.  In recent years, he's had his own way of keeping his birthday (pizza and beer, essentially) and it's worked well til Covid hit.  Also, he's got kids that went from small and distractable to elementary school age, and I think there's a different gameplan.

Ice Like a Hurricane

We just had a few days of weather here in Austin, Texas.  It's left the city a wreck.  Again.

To understand what happened, my memory of the days as they unfolded went a bit like this:  

Around Saturday January 28th, we knew we were getting a cold front and that the oddly warm weeks of January we'd been experiencing would soon end  (the 28th had a high around 60, but we'd seen the 70's several times during the month).  On Sunday the 29th, suddenly the "it'll be cold and just over freezing, and it will rain" forecast we'd been hearing changed.  Suddenly we were to expect freezing temps, rain and ice.  

I work from home these days, and I didn't think much of it.  It sounded like a pain, but this wasn't the same as the multi-day freeze in the teens and 20's we experienced in February 2021 that took out the city and led to PTSD for almost all of us who sat in the dark, trapped in our houses for days, wondering if we'd die in our own homes.  This would be 24-48 hours of nasty cold and some wet and then we'd be back to normal temps.  We do this every other year or so.

But then on Monday the schools started closing early and planning closings on Tuesday and Wednesday.  

What happened, starting Monday evening and through Wednesday, was that Austin received a tremendous amount of rain, ice, grapple and other precipitation and the temps fell below freezing.  My own measurements tell me we got something like 2.5 inches of moisture.

My Uncle Donald Pearce has Passed

On Thanksgiving night, Thursday the 24th, my uncle, Donald Pearce, passed.  He was 94.  

Donald was married to my mother's sister, Violet.  Violet, seventeen years older than my mother, passed before I was born.  But together Donald and Violet produced my cousin, Susan, who is more a big-sister to me as she lived with us on and off while I was growing up and she's lived in Austin since 2000 or so.   Donald remarried, and so I grew up with an Aunt Vivian, who passed away when I was in college.   

My earliest memories include Donald visiting us when we still lived in Michigan, so I was 3 or 4.   But he was a fixture in my life as we'd visit he Upper Peninsula of Michigan every summer where he and Vivian lived, and they were avid road travelers, so you never knew when they'd roll up in the driveway and we'd get to have them for a while.  He was always quick with a joke and to make observations that hilariously cut to the point with a matter-of-factness that hit just the right note.  

Thanksgiving

This week we celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States.  It's a Federal holiday established for Americans to take a moment with family and friends and consider what good fortunes they've had over the year.  Or maybe count blessings in a year that wasn't so great.

 As kids we get a "teach the legend" version of Thanksgiving and believe that we're celebrating a feast partaken of by the weird-o's who were so miffed they couldn't comfortably be uptight enough in 17th Century Europe, and so essentially moved to an equivalent of what would be a moon colony for us, just so they could burn women as witches in peace.  They happened to have their asses saved by some locals, and giving Thanks seemed like a keen idea.

That comes loaded with the egregious history of how Europeans would then colonize and wage 300 years of war on the people already living here.  So, understandably, if that was what we were celebrating, I get how one would pause to reflect and wonder how this led to finishing dinner quickly to watch The Dallas Cowboys and/ or seeing how much wine is in the remaining bottles and keeping a slow burn til it's all over.

But that is not what we're celebrating.  This isn't Christmas which has deep roots in Christian history, or Hannukah which refers to a specific moment in Jewish history.  I don't think most Americans really think of Thanksgiving as a specific day to sit down in honor of Pilgrims and Native Americans.  That would be particularly weird.  

From the earliest days of the U.S., Thanksgiving was a tradition in regions, but not universally celebrated.  While some Presidents observed the holiday, as early as Jefferson, the holiday was eschewed as religious and therefore not a National holiday.    

The League Goes to Austin FC's first Play-Off Match

Sunday, October 16th, I attended my first Austin FC match at Q2 Stadium here in sunny Austin, Texas.  

This was a somewhat unlikely event.  I've tried many times to get into soccer, but it never really worked for me.  European leagues play on European time, and I don't speak Spanish to keep up with the best soccer in my hemisphere.  And, honestly, cable has usually done a terrible job of covering MLS, the US's soccer equivalent of the NBA or MLB.  Over the years I was more interested in the US Women's National Team - because of the best sports-watching moments of my life is and always will be Brandi Chastain's penalty kick in the 1999 FIFA World Cup (yeah, the one that ended with Chastain whipping off her jersey).  That moment made a 24-year-old me cry.

Anyway, I was astoundingly skeptical of Austin taking on an MLS team.  It was originally pitched very badly by the owners looking to move here,  They made some weird moves along the way - like trying to just say they were going to build their stadium on highly utilized public land in incredibly dense areas of town, something not agreed upon by City Council or anyone else.  It would have created innumerable issues from traffic to environmental, and was kind of ugly and brazen, demonstrating they did not know Austin and did not share the values of Austinites.  

You don't just drop a massive stadium on Town Lake and think no one will notice.