Smallville is a bad, bad show.
On any other network, "Smallville" would have been canceled long ago. It ranks in the lowest rungs of TV watcherdom*, but because it shows on The CW (the bastard love child of failed networks "The WB" and "The Paramount Network"), and has more viewers than "Everybody Hates Chris", its the darling of the CW network.
When I am at the Pearly Gates, St. Peter will be watching my life with me on some super-high-def Pearly Gates TV, and he's going to hit pause and ask me "why? Why did you spend so many hours wasting your life watching this show?"
And I won't know. I won't feel good about it. I don't feel good about it now. I barely admit that I watch the show. And, truthfully, I did stop watching it for a year or more. But then I saw an article on how they were bringing in Smallville's version of the Justice League, and I tuned in, and, well...
The truth is, I don't think I'm just making it up that the first three or four seasons of Smallville were frequently dippy as they tried to mix "Dawson's Creek" style teen-romance with superheroics. But it was a completely different and better show than what we're seeing now.
For those of you who don't know... Smallville was supposed to tell the stories of a teen-aged Clark Kent (the pilot was his first day at high school) coming to terms with his powers and his identity as something other than human. The show cast John "The Dukes of Hazzard" Schneider as Jonathan Kent, and Annette "Superman III" O'Toole as Martha Kent, the two playing his wise and loving parents, guiding him toward his role as Superman.
Anyway, the show was pretty straightforward. Teen-aged kid fights crime, lies to a 20-something Lex Luthor about having an alien origin, and has romantic trouble with the worst character on TV, ever (Lana Lang as portrayed -poorly - by Kristin Kreuk).
For a while there, the show featured name actors, from Rutger Hauer to Christopher Reeve. Terence Stamp was the voice of Jor-El, and a concerted effort seemed to be made to tie the show to the Reeve-starring movie continuity.
The series completed its 8th season this last week. Gone are the days when the show had a budget that could support keeping high dollar actors like John Glover, John Schneider and Annette O'Toole around for every episode. These days, those actors are all gone, the supporting cast of 20-somethings, just happy to be working, mostly appears in half the episodes, and the FX budget appears to be roughly 1/3rd of what it was in the earliest episodes. We're lucky if we see Clark run at superspeed anymore.
More than that, however, is that the scope and scale of the show seems to have diminished, and what writing does occur has been, for several seasons (and through a complete changing of the guard this year in creative leadership) pretty much a trainwreck.
And yet... I keep watching.
In many ways, I really do not understand how supposedly professional writers could be so very, very bad. Just simple, dumb choices have led to an ever escalating parade of dopeyness.
To list or innumerate the failings of the show is probably an exercise in frustration and/ or self-loathing for myself as a viewer. However, as a Superman fan, its fascinating to watch unfold as the show seems unable or unwilling to just go ahead and try to build toward the point at which Clark Kent makes the decision to put on his tights and save the world. It's become less about the young Kal-El's path to iconic status as The Man o Steel and more about the most extended case of "get to the point" in televised history. I say this as someone who watches "Lost".
There were improvements this season. I do not exaggerate when I say that Smallville fell into a weird pattern in seasons 6 and 7 where it wrapped its main plot of the episode and utilized the last 10 minutes of every broadcast to have Clark berated by his "love interest", effectively celebrating something that slid from wicked co-dependency to an emotionally abusive relationship. I wouldn't make too much note of that other than that, based on the Neutrogena and make-up ads, Smallville is geared towards teen-aged girls. Which... is squarely not in the usual superhero demographic. But given how the show insisted that Clark and Lana's deeply dysfunctional relationship was held up as "true love"... it just got creepy by the time Kreuk left the show.
What sort of bizarre superhero show spends 1/4 of its broadcast time each week dedicated to the superhero apologizing and being told he is a bad person? And what kind of weirdo fantasy was that for the audience of teen-aged girls? What do I not know and what am I missing here?
Add in what occurred with a different supporting character this season, and we've moved into coded messages about the nobility of aiding and abetting a known murderer, with a heavy dose of Stockholm Syndrome, sexual predation as romance, infidelity and physical abuse.
Hoooray, Smallville writers!
And still, I watch. Mostly at this point for the same reasons one would watch Melrose Place back in the day. By driving all character decisions from a plot standpoint rather than bothering to try to have anyone behave rationally or explain their actions in anything that makes sense (and doesn't require heaping guilt upon our Superman), everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, on the show seems as dumb as a bunch of cattle. But unlike Melrose place, eventually the writers seem to sober up at the end of the season, realize they've written their supposedly heroic characters like a herd of morons without a minder, and try to backpeddle out of the other 20-odd episodes of mistakes with a lot of speechifying and self-serving rationalization.
But I cannot look away.
There's a fundamental difference, I think, between how writers typically handle superheroic comics and how Joe or Jane TV writer handles a TV show, or even where those writers are coming from. My guess is that the writers of Smallville are work-for-hire writers with little in the way of a comics background. If their reference point for superheroics are within the loop of madness that Smallville has become, then the reference points just aren't going to be there for the writers to know that, hey... Superman isn't going to be much of a Superman if every cross word from a pal is going to send him into a tizzy of inaction or ineffectiveness.
Superman didn't become Superman because he was unwilling to take action or let grouchy "friends" dictate his actions.
At any rate, I now have a few months to consider whether I'll watch the show next year, but even in that, I know I'm caught in a loop. Smallville always starts out with the best of intentions for a season, and the first two or three episodes don't usually hint much at the madness which is to come. Its when they start setting up the plot for the next 20 episodes that things get out of control.
Lost is really onto something with this whole shortened season with an end point business.
*Week May 4-10, 2009, Smallville was the CW's #2 show, pulling in 3,392,000 viewers. "Dancing with the Stars" pulled in over 20 million. The real news is that, for some reason, America's Funniest Home Videos pulled in almost 7 million viewers. That's a lot of people watching other people get hit in the nards, Leaguers.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
In this one I talk about "Lost" and "Ghost Hunters". So there.
Leaguers, I hope your week has found you well.
Apparently there's a good deal going on in the sports world right now. Basketball playoffs, Brett Favre causing trouble, baseball steroid scandals, and probably something with Dancing with the Stars. But I'm blissfully unaware.
I did watch every episode of "Lost" this season.
Spoilers below
I'm still enjoying the show. My complaint today is the same complaint I had with the show when it started. Somehow the writers have a very hard time getting the pieces of their show to flow organically from a character standpoint, and so, a bit like on a soap opera, characters tend to simply move about the playing board to create new and different conflicts instead of making rational decisions. Someone explain to me why Kate wanted to save people on the island? Aside from that it made a vehicle for the trio to return to the island? I know the show needs to be heavy on plot just to wrap up, but sometimes I wind up feeling that its all plot and they kind of fake the character bits unless it comes to Locke and Linus.
Also: I am deeply concerned that the season spent so much time on Time Travel issues this season, and not once did a single character point out that they couldn't actually be successful in resetting the clock, or none of them would be there to try, which would mean that, hey... this isn't going to work. Too often, time travel is a narrative dead end.
And no Juliet next season? Do not approve.
End spoilers.
I also think I'm... sigh... giving up on Ghost Hunters.
After five years or so of watching these guys scare themselves in other people's homes, businesses, and now THEIR OWN BUSINESS (they inspected the inn Jay and Grant's wives are now, apparently running), I think I'm going to have to say its been fun, but I'm checking out.
The show seems to increasingly ignore their own investigative techniques and use stuff like "I think I saw..." and questionable audio blips as evidence. I'd think that with as many hours as they've logged and as many of these investigations as they've undertaken, there'd be something of a payoff, but they seem to be moving in the opposite direction. And why they think a single night in any location is sufficient to gather enough evidence suggests some vestigal past from a lower budget operation, that I assume they no longer are.
I don't personally buy into the paranormal, but it doesn't mean I didn't want to see something amazing and inexplicable on TV. But at this point... well, alert me when and if it actually occurs.
I guess I'll just return to watching Mythbusters blow up cars and whatnot.
Apparently there's a good deal going on in the sports world right now. Basketball playoffs, Brett Favre causing trouble, baseball steroid scandals, and probably something with Dancing with the Stars. But I'm blissfully unaware.
I did watch every episode of "Lost" this season.
Spoilers below
I'm still enjoying the show. My complaint today is the same complaint I had with the show when it started. Somehow the writers have a very hard time getting the pieces of their show to flow organically from a character standpoint, and so, a bit like on a soap opera, characters tend to simply move about the playing board to create new and different conflicts instead of making rational decisions. Someone explain to me why Kate wanted to save people on the island? Aside from that it made a vehicle for the trio to return to the island? I know the show needs to be heavy on plot just to wrap up, but sometimes I wind up feeling that its all plot and they kind of fake the character bits unless it comes to Locke and Linus.
Also: I am deeply concerned that the season spent so much time on Time Travel issues this season, and not once did a single character point out that they couldn't actually be successful in resetting the clock, or none of them would be there to try, which would mean that, hey... this isn't going to work. Too often, time travel is a narrative dead end.
And no Juliet next season? Do not approve.
End spoilers.
I also think I'm... sigh... giving up on Ghost Hunters.
After five years or so of watching these guys scare themselves in other people's homes, businesses, and now THEIR OWN BUSINESS (they inspected the inn Jay and Grant's wives are now, apparently running), I think I'm going to have to say its been fun, but I'm checking out.
The show seems to increasingly ignore their own investigative techniques and use stuff like "I think I saw..." and questionable audio blips as evidence. I'd think that with as many hours as they've logged and as many of these investigations as they've undertaken, there'd be something of a payoff, but they seem to be moving in the opposite direction. And why they think a single night in any location is sufficient to gather enough evidence suggests some vestigal past from a lower budget operation, that I assume they no longer are.
I don't personally buy into the paranormal, but it doesn't mean I didn't want to see something amazing and inexplicable on TV. But at this point... well, alert me when and if it actually occurs.
I guess I'll just return to watching Mythbusters blow up cars and whatnot.
Troubles Taste Tests Trek
Jamie tastes the all-new Trek breakfast cereal. Here.
And, yes. The communicator, tricorder and phaser are all mine. I waited 25 years to have a communicator, tricorder and phaser, so shut up.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
High School Musical
Here's an interesting bit.
Apparently, Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls and solo fame, teamed with her old high school drama teacher to put on a musical based on a Neutral Milk Hotel album, which was inspired by the story of Anne Frank. Or something.
Here.
Reading about it and watching a few minutes online did, indeed, make me miss the brief period of footlights and greasepaint from my own youth. I would have loved to have been involved in anything this interesting for a production in high school, and while we didn't stick to kiddie-stuff, I was often disappointed we weren't tackling material I might have had more interest in actually performing.
It is true that I, myself, tried my hand at acting in high school. Nothing as elaborate as bringing in a popular indie rock star, but we did several shows a year. We had auditions and rehearsals before school ever started, and usually ran two shows before the winter break, tucked a musical in there, had a spring show and maybe another. Its hard to recall exactly how it all went down, but we ran a lot of plays.
Admittedly, I wasn't much of an actor. I had a hard enough time getting "off book" (I plead made-up learning disability), and was never comfortable with the pantomime that has to occur in stage acting so that every facial movie, every line delivered, etc... reaches the person in the last row. And inhabiting other people's skins wasn't something, I suppose, I was terribly good at.
Also, my assumption is that my line delivery was akin to the sing-songy line delivery which marks most high school and community theater.
I still recall the look of horror on the basketball coach's face when I informed him I was (a) quitting the basketball team, and (b) that I recognized I needed an activity to keep me off the drugs, so I was going to try out for a play.
Amazingly, I landed an understudy role in a 40-minute version of "Midsummer Night's Dream", which actually had The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons in it as "Flute" and Broadway actor Charlie Pollock as "Bottom". And, come to think of it, Jeff Miller of Christian rock band Caedmon's Call.
Huh. never thought of it that way before.
Anyway, it was for a UIL competition, and we had an honest-to-god scandal and were booted out of state competition for a minor rule infraction. All very dramatic.
Its probably important to note that I was not quite of the proportions then that I am now, so people were not looking for me to play "Thug #2" or "Man-Child #7", as I have no doubt I'd be cast now (and did, in fact, get cast a a man-child in a friend's scene in college). We did "Rimers of Eldritch", "Rumors", "The Crucible", "You Can't Take it With You", "All My Sons", "Watch on the Rhine", and, I am sure, one or two others.
We had a few musicals. I sort of preferred backstage work. (A) It was less likely I'd screw up while standing in front of however many people came to the play. (B) Building sets, hanging lights, messing with all that stuff, was a lot more fun than running over the same lines, over and over. There's a lot less in the way of access to power tools when all you're doing is acting.
I don't know how or why, but I wound up in the "fly booth" when we did "Bye, Bye Birdie". This meant I did only two or three things during the duration of the play, but I couldn't leave the actual booth as I couldn't turn on the lights needed to make it from point A to Point B. So for about three hours I had to just sit in this box, and on cue, move signs up and down on a few cranks.
Its a job that is supposed to go unnoticed, but a few pals came to the show, and when I dropped the first sign onto the set, I heard a chorus of "Steeeeaaaaannns" erupt from the audience, just as they'd done when I was shooting free throws on the basketball team. It was sort of gratifying.
What I'd say to our younger readers: I've only seen small bits of the Disney hit, "High School Musical", but... the movie doesn't really reflect much of what happened during any of our plays. There was less dancing, singing about our love, and a lot more snarkiness and sitting around backstage chatting and missing our cues. I don't if the fiction of Disney's musical is particularly helpful, and I'm sure its led to all kinds of confusion for eager-faced kids ready to sing and dance, and finding out that its mostly standing around and occasionally getting yelled at by a tired drama teacher who doesn't want to wrangle any more kids.
I also worked backstage at a bizarre cash grab by the Performing Arts teachers at our school. Someone cooked up the idea to do a revue. Which meant a large cast, lots of set changes, and getting practically any kid who auditioned into the show. And then $8 a head for their parents and friends. And with a cast, band, crew, etc... of around 100 students doing 4 shows, we went SRO all four shows and did okay. Apparently it helped fund our next show or two.
We had a complete set change between every number or two, which was interesting. We had to recruit a bunch of freshman who'd never worked a play before, but we got our act together, and our little unit never missed a beat. I'm still proud of those kids.
Oddly, I blame this play for my recurring nightmare. Its not dissimilar to the standard "I'm back in school, and I need to take a test" dream that, reportedly, you never shake. About 3 or 4 times a year, I still wake up in a cold sweat having dreamed that I showed up to work backstage at a play, but I was supposed to be in a musical, singing and dancing. I have neither skill, so I feel frustrated that someone put me in the position of being in the play in the first place, and I am not clear on how it got to be opening night and I never knew I was in the show.
Backstage, its very much like the "Bit O' Broadway" musical revue. But on stage, I have no idea what's happening. Its something else entirely.
To my credit, I refuse to give up in this dream, declare that the show must go on, and always sort of wander out on stage, waving my arms around and sort of shuffling to the music. I will be happy to demonstrate sometime.
Not wanting to draw attention to my lack of rehearsal, I always kind of hang around the back of the chorus, just try my best to lip synch to the rest of the kids, and get off stage as quickly as possible. Sometimes I have to improvise a solo, but most times, not.
What's weirdest is that some mental sub-routine always actually has songs going to some made up dream musical that some part of my brain is writing. There are sets and costumes and the whole nine-yards that my conscious brain is incapable of putting together. I'd really love to know what this musical is, sometime. Which reminds of the library in the Sandman comics, of the books that people had dreamed but which had never existed.
Anyhow, it always has a sad lack of Amanda Palmer.
Apparently, Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls and solo fame, teamed with her old high school drama teacher to put on a musical based on a Neutral Milk Hotel album, which was inspired by the story of Anne Frank. Or something.
Here.
Reading about it and watching a few minutes online did, indeed, make me miss the brief period of footlights and greasepaint from my own youth. I would have loved to have been involved in anything this interesting for a production in high school, and while we didn't stick to kiddie-stuff, I was often disappointed we weren't tackling material I might have had more interest in actually performing.
It is true that I, myself, tried my hand at acting in high school. Nothing as elaborate as bringing in a popular indie rock star, but we did several shows a year. We had auditions and rehearsals before school ever started, and usually ran two shows before the winter break, tucked a musical in there, had a spring show and maybe another. Its hard to recall exactly how it all went down, but we ran a lot of plays.
Admittedly, I wasn't much of an actor. I had a hard enough time getting "off book" (I plead made-up learning disability), and was never comfortable with the pantomime that has to occur in stage acting so that every facial movie, every line delivered, etc... reaches the person in the last row. And inhabiting other people's skins wasn't something, I suppose, I was terribly good at.
Also, my assumption is that my line delivery was akin to the sing-songy line delivery which marks most high school and community theater.
I still recall the look of horror on the basketball coach's face when I informed him I was (a) quitting the basketball team, and (b) that I recognized I needed an activity to keep me off the drugs, so I was going to try out for a play.
Amazingly, I landed an understudy role in a 40-minute version of "Midsummer Night's Dream", which actually had The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons in it as "Flute" and Broadway actor Charlie Pollock as "Bottom". And, come to think of it, Jeff Miller of Christian rock band Caedmon's Call.
Huh. never thought of it that way before.
Anyway, it was for a UIL competition, and we had an honest-to-god scandal and were booted out of state competition for a minor rule infraction. All very dramatic.
Its probably important to note that I was not quite of the proportions then that I am now, so people were not looking for me to play "Thug #2" or "Man-Child #7", as I have no doubt I'd be cast now (and did, in fact, get cast a a man-child in a friend's scene in college). We did "Rimers of Eldritch", "Rumors", "The Crucible", "You Can't Take it With You", "All My Sons", "Watch on the Rhine", and, I am sure, one or two others.
We had a few musicals. I sort of preferred backstage work. (A) It was less likely I'd screw up while standing in front of however many people came to the play. (B) Building sets, hanging lights, messing with all that stuff, was a lot more fun than running over the same lines, over and over. There's a lot less in the way of access to power tools when all you're doing is acting.
I don't know how or why, but I wound up in the "fly booth" when we did "Bye, Bye Birdie". This meant I did only two or three things during the duration of the play, but I couldn't leave the actual booth as I couldn't turn on the lights needed to make it from point A to Point B. So for about three hours I had to just sit in this box, and on cue, move signs up and down on a few cranks.
Its a job that is supposed to go unnoticed, but a few pals came to the show, and when I dropped the first sign onto the set, I heard a chorus of "Steeeeaaaaannns" erupt from the audience, just as they'd done when I was shooting free throws on the basketball team. It was sort of gratifying.
What I'd say to our younger readers: I've only seen small bits of the Disney hit, "High School Musical", but... the movie doesn't really reflect much of what happened during any of our plays. There was less dancing, singing about our love, and a lot more snarkiness and sitting around backstage chatting and missing our cues. I don't if the fiction of Disney's musical is particularly helpful, and I'm sure its led to all kinds of confusion for eager-faced kids ready to sing and dance, and finding out that its mostly standing around and occasionally getting yelled at by a tired drama teacher who doesn't want to wrangle any more kids.
I also worked backstage at a bizarre cash grab by the Performing Arts teachers at our school. Someone cooked up the idea to do a revue. Which meant a large cast, lots of set changes, and getting practically any kid who auditioned into the show. And then $8 a head for their parents and friends. And with a cast, band, crew, etc... of around 100 students doing 4 shows, we went SRO all four shows and did okay. Apparently it helped fund our next show or two.
We had a complete set change between every number or two, which was interesting. We had to recruit a bunch of freshman who'd never worked a play before, but we got our act together, and our little unit never missed a beat. I'm still proud of those kids.
Oddly, I blame this play for my recurring nightmare. Its not dissimilar to the standard "I'm back in school, and I need to take a test" dream that, reportedly, you never shake. About 3 or 4 times a year, I still wake up in a cold sweat having dreamed that I showed up to work backstage at a play, but I was supposed to be in a musical, singing and dancing. I have neither skill, so I feel frustrated that someone put me in the position of being in the play in the first place, and I am not clear on how it got to be opening night and I never knew I was in the show.
Backstage, its very much like the "Bit O' Broadway" musical revue. But on stage, I have no idea what's happening. Its something else entirely.
To my credit, I refuse to give up in this dream, declare that the show must go on, and always sort of wander out on stage, waving my arms around and sort of shuffling to the music. I will be happy to demonstrate sometime.
Not wanting to draw attention to my lack of rehearsal, I always kind of hang around the back of the chorus, just try my best to lip synch to the rest of the kids, and get off stage as quickly as possible. Sometimes I have to improvise a solo, but most times, not.
What's weirdest is that some mental sub-routine always actually has songs going to some made up dream musical that some part of my brain is writing. There are sets and costumes and the whole nine-yards that my conscious brain is incapable of putting together. I'd really love to know what this musical is, sometime. Which reminds of the library in the Sandman comics, of the books that people had dreamed but which had never existed.
Anyhow, it always has a sad lack of Amanda Palmer.
Giant Octopus vs. Mega Shark (or something like that)
...all I know is that I am going to watch this movie.
God bless you, little Debbie Gibson.
God bless you, little Debbie Gibson.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
I have absolutely nothing of interest to say
Which, I suppose, is nothing new. This is a blog with a readership of about 12.
You're on your own for the next 24 hours or more.
I'm going to read a book or something.
You're on your own for the next 24 hours or more.
I'm going to read a book or something.
Monday, May 11, 2009
hat and san francisco
Howdy, Leaguers!
Retiring Pontificatin' Hat Mark I
Leaguers who've made it out to League HQ or run into me at Barton Springs or ACL fest will be familiar with my Pontificatin' Hat.
I look faaaantastic here. Also, in my hand? That is "Pontificating Fuel", kids. Ask your mom where you can get some!
As you can see, the Pontificatin' Hat Mark I didn't ever fit exactly right. With summer here and ACL Fest tickets secured, I decided it was time to step it up a bit. Get a bit more in space around my noggin' and a bit more acreage out of the brim.
The Pontificatin' Hat was dubbed as it somehow tended to make appearances at the end of parties when we'd find ourselves on the back porch, chatting. One does not wear a "thinking cap" for such occasions, Leaguers. I recommend securing a Pontificatin' Hat of your own.
I'd expect Pontificatin' Hat Mark II, a Guatemalan Palm Cattleman's style hat, to start making appearances as early as this weekend. Heck, I just wore it outside at 9:30 at night to water the trees.
For fashion and lifestyle reasons, I resisted a cowboy hat for many a year. But after living in Phoenix and dealing with the relentless sunshine there, and deciding I kind of missed cowboy hats instead of grass-weave bermuda hats that were common in golf-mad Arizona, upon my return to Texas I felt it necessary to obtain and employ the traditional hatwear of my home state.
I'm certainly hanging onto the Mark I. I have a lot of affection for that sweaty, beat up hat.
San Francisco CA
It looks like Jamie and I are actually taking a vacation of sorts this summer. This is not something we normally do. We have a lot of logistical issues to resolve every time we leave town for more than 48 hours as Jamie needs dialysis Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week. That requires her to find a clinic where she can go that takes our insurance, etc...
Traveling is also tiring for Jamie, so add in a dialysis day, which usually means a lot of resting, and we need to plan in pretty good detail what we're up to.
Luckily for us, The Dug and K. live in the Bay Area, and so we were already thinking that heading out that way was a good idea. Throw in that they became engaged a week or so ago (something I'm still excited about) and its a good time to fly out there for a visit.
No idea what I'll do, and what Jamie will want to do and see, but we've got a pair of Bay Area regulars to show us around, and that ain't bad.
In truth, my knowledge of San Francisco, etc... comes mostly from movies, TV and Mythbusters. But I'm not too worried about running out of activities. I had lunch with David G. today, and he had a very specific place he recommended for breakfast that I have to remember.
Anyhow, if I disappear for a few days in July, now you'll know why.
I should probably look up Bankston while I'm out there.
Also, I'm going to do this...
Retiring Pontificatin' Hat Mark I
Leaguers who've made it out to League HQ or run into me at Barton Springs or ACL fest will be familiar with my Pontificatin' Hat.
I look faaaantastic here. Also, in my hand? That is "Pontificating Fuel", kids. Ask your mom where you can get some!
As you can see, the Pontificatin' Hat Mark I didn't ever fit exactly right. With summer here and ACL Fest tickets secured, I decided it was time to step it up a bit. Get a bit more in space around my noggin' and a bit more acreage out of the brim.
The Pontificatin' Hat was dubbed as it somehow tended to make appearances at the end of parties when we'd find ourselves on the back porch, chatting. One does not wear a "thinking cap" for such occasions, Leaguers. I recommend securing a Pontificatin' Hat of your own.
I'd expect Pontificatin' Hat Mark II, a Guatemalan Palm Cattleman's style hat, to start making appearances as early as this weekend. Heck, I just wore it outside at 9:30 at night to water the trees.
For fashion and lifestyle reasons, I resisted a cowboy hat for many a year. But after living in Phoenix and dealing with the relentless sunshine there, and deciding I kind of missed cowboy hats instead of grass-weave bermuda hats that were common in golf-mad Arizona, upon my return to Texas I felt it necessary to obtain and employ the traditional hatwear of my home state.
I'm certainly hanging onto the Mark I. I have a lot of affection for that sweaty, beat up hat.
San Francisco CA
It looks like Jamie and I are actually taking a vacation of sorts this summer. This is not something we normally do. We have a lot of logistical issues to resolve every time we leave town for more than 48 hours as Jamie needs dialysis Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week. That requires her to find a clinic where she can go that takes our insurance, etc...
Traveling is also tiring for Jamie, so add in a dialysis day, which usually means a lot of resting, and we need to plan in pretty good detail what we're up to.
Luckily for us, The Dug and K. live in the Bay Area, and so we were already thinking that heading out that way was a good idea. Throw in that they became engaged a week or so ago (something I'm still excited about) and its a good time to fly out there for a visit.
No idea what I'll do, and what Jamie will want to do and see, but we've got a pair of Bay Area regulars to show us around, and that ain't bad.
In truth, my knowledge of San Francisco, etc... comes mostly from movies, TV and Mythbusters. But I'm not too worried about running out of activities. I had lunch with David G. today, and he had a very specific place he recommended for breakfast that I have to remember.
Anyhow, if I disappear for a few days in July, now you'll know why.
I should probably look up Bankston while I'm out there.
Also, I'm going to do this...
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