RIP Leslie Nielsen

Some things I didn't know about an actor I really enjoyed watching, who died last night in his sleep at a hospital in Ft. Lauderdale.

1) Was born in Saskatchewan in 1928
2) Enlisted in the Royal Air Force and trained to be a rear-gunner, but was deemed too young to be sent overseas
3) Worked as a disc jockey in Calgary before winning an acting scholarship
4) Was active into his eighties, even playing Clarence Darrow on the stage in his one-man show Darrow
5) Brother Erik was Deputy Prime Minister of Canada in the 80s
6) He looked pretty young and spiffy as the lead in 1956's Forbidden Planet


Something I did know about Leslie Nielsen:

1) Lt. Frank Drebin and Police Squad! introduced me to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker absurdist style of comedy and altered my reality. I was young and impressionable.

Leslie Nielsen will be remembered fondly by this blogger.

Linda and the Camera

Our good friend Linda realized, while on the plane out to visit us here in Austin, that she'd forgotten her camera. I let her use our camera to take any picture she wanted, and she held it for a while during a walk around downtown on their last day. I've since emailed the pictures to her, but some I like enough to put up here.

This is probably my favorite picture she took. You get the Frost Bank tower in the background behind Buffalo Billiards, a poolhall and bar that dates back to the late nineteenth century and, according to a local newscast, is haunted. I've been a big fan of asymmetrical juxtaposition photographs for a long time, and this one, capturing the "old Texas" saloon image with the "new Texas" post-modern glass tower, definitely counts.



Linda was very excited when we came across a restaurant named Spaghetti Warehouse; she professed her love for the string pasta. She tried, and succeeded, to frame-out the entrance and fill the upper half of the picture with downtown's towers.



Here'a another nice downtown frame with the Frost Bank tower captured wholly.



There were a plethora of these types of advertising banners for ACL, and Linda said she felt obliged to take a picture of it.



Here's one she took of us at Mt. Bonnell.



Linda and I are the amatuer photographers. Corrie could be a professional. The eye it takes to come up with homeruns in photography is present in folks like Linda and I, but in Corrie and Marc it's more of a characteristic than a presence.

Austin City Limits Music Festival

A television program began airing on PBS in Austin in 1976 that aimed to highlight the music in the area. The self-professed World's Live Music Capital, Austin had many different genres and off genre music being supported by fans. In 2002, the city of Austin decided to financially back a music festival put together by the producers of the Austin City Limits show, naming it, not surprisingly, Austin City Limits Music Festival. Like South-By, or SXSW, in March, the acronym ACL is acceptable in normal speech to reference the show, though ACL fest is used plenty as well.

The ACL fest is, like SXSW, an international event, but ACL is only a music festival (hence the name?) and doesn't screen films or try to get distributors for said films, it's music only. It appears to be one of the biggest annual events in the industry for musicians, as Austin is one of the music capitals in America. Other music cities (besides LA and NY) would be Athens, Georgia (New Austin), Atlanta (for hip-hop), and Nashville (for country and bluegrass).

In any case, Corrie and I finally were able to get our good friends from New York, Marc and Linda, a suitable wedding present. They flew out to visit us on their own dime, but we got their ACL tickets and I cooked for them for most of their visit.

I knew a few of the bands, but only from hearing them on the radio at work at my morning job. A few out of sixty over three days amounts to an open mind, maybe? We went to only one day, Saturday.

The fest is held at Zilker Park, just across the river from downtown Austin, in quite a beautiful setting. There were three major stages, and four other less major stages, and at high points, music was being played on all three majors, without interruption, which is neat. Major acts generally don't play simultaneously, usually starting a half hour later and on another stage, giving fans enough time to walk.

I've got some pictures...here are Corrie, Linda, and Marc at the south entrance.



Here's a shot of the Austin skyline, taken early in our day, right after we got there.



Not that you can really tell, but the band on the stage here is Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. The music they played wasn't the same as the music that Corrie has of them, and what they played was pretty great. It was rockin', high energy, and fun. They were described, unfairly I thought at first before I heard them, as Tina Turner singing with the Rolling Stones, a throwback to a rocking band and rocking girlie singer. Turned out that was pretty accurate, and it was a good show.



Later in the day, since we spent all day there, we found the Tent--a tent with a sandy bottom where kids could play and adults could nap, and nap we did.



Another act we saw was Gogol Bordello, a cool gypsy-punk act that puts on a great stage show, and one I mentioned in an earlier post about mustaches.



And, I guess, one last picture of the Austin skyline, around dusk.

A Note on Foxes

And no, I'm not talking about Alison Doody.

I heard about a Russian fox sanctuary trying to beef up the numbers of the Siberian fox; a captive breeding and re-introduction kind of thing. They discovered two things; one early, and one later.

The first thing they discovered, when they were possibly not acting in the best interests of any sense of re-introduction, was to bring in kits, little fox puppies, into their "home" and treat them like a family dogs. Do you know what happens when you bring a fox kit into your house and treat it like a puppy? Pretty much exactly the same thing as happens with dogs; they're lovable, loyal, and playful.

Not every single one was easily domesticated--some were still ornery. So they started to breed the nicer, more mellow foxes with other nicer, more mellow foxes. They realized while they were doing it that they were selecting for behavior. This led to their second discovery.

By selecting for behavior they got kits that were well behaved, of course, but they were surprised by the other changes, physical changes. Among the changes were bigger ears, curly tails, whiter fur, longer legs...the foxes were becoming even cuter.

Selecting for behavior led to physical changes in Siberian fox appearances that were pleasing to humans.

Then the researchers realized that this makes sense, since the DNA of a Great Dane, a Chihuahua, and a wild wolf from Yellowstone Park is the same. The domestication of the wolf has been a long process--a fifteen-thousand-year-long process--but it started with, most likely as this Russian study has shown, selecting wolf pups for behavior. If physical appearance changes can be seen in only a few breeding cycles in foxes, then given the fifteen-thousand year period for the wolf/dog, the dimorphism (Great Danes vs Chihuahuas; Mastiffs vs Shi-tzus) doesn't seem so shocking.

And, by the way, Alison Doody, whose name cracks me up, is an Irish actress who was offered the lead role in Basic Instinct, the role that eventually went to Sharon Stone. Miss Doody turned it down for being too sexually explicit. Lovers of cinema would remember her as Ilsa, the blond Nazi who seduces both Sean Connery (albeit off-screen) and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Happy Thanksgiving

Now that I'm off work and have finished spoiling my cat (not that he gets that much, but oh how he loves stuffing with a touch of gravy), I wanted to ruminate on Thanksgiving a little. During the slow points at work this afternoon, when I was at the height of motivation to complete a true rumination on this day, the computers wouldn't let me log into this blog site--part of the banned content, gmail and the like. That thwarted me and sapped my desire.

So now I don't feel like giving such an effort to solidly ruminate, so I'll give just a few thoughts.

Thanksgiving as a holiday feast has many various beginnings, one of the oldest being something that predates America, the colonies here, or natives sharing food with them. One of the most basic things our Thanksgiving Day festivities mimic is a harvest feast. The workers during a harvest season work very hard, and mostly can't consume what they're harvesting. Once the work is done, there would be a large feast with plenty of overeating and over drinking of whatever grog or beer was available. It wasn't a celebration where you gave a gift to someone else, like those pagan holidays that "Christmas" has copied, but rather a celebration where you receive gifts from the earth. Earth gives you the gifts.

Another thing that I think is cool, and noticed before, I guess, is that the food, the feast, tends towards the same colors as autumn; golds, oranges, warm creams, and soft reds.

Longhorn Caverns

In the '30s, FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) gave work to many young men who'd been on the skids because of the Depression. The young men worked all over the country in regional CCC camps doing all sorts of public works, and many of our state and national parks were created from the work done at that time. The CCC is generally hailed as a triumph by historians.

One project here in central Texas that was a CCC deal was to make an old Sam Bass hideout, and an even older living space and meeting grounds for the various aboriginal Americans living in the area--an extremely long set of underground caverns--into a viable visitor destination.

The clubhouse was built first. The structure was to seem as if it was growing out of the land. Inside, there are pictures of the mostly 18-25 year old guys working in the summer--shirts torn off long ago and long pants pulled up to the knees.



They next plugged up most of the entrances that had been used variously through time by natives, by Sam Bass, by Confederate gunpowder makers, and by speakeasy operators, and installed a Grand Entance. From the steps of the Clubhouse, the view looks strange:



And heading towards that spot, you see a kind of Grand Central-like stairway down to a metal gate.



Nowadays a tour guide will escort paying customers through artificially lit beautiful areas.



We were told that this cavern system, the Longhorn Caverns, along with a system in Kentucky, are the only two types of a special type of cavern system in the States. They were formed by flowing river water--running sideways--instead of the more common vertical water flow created caverns.



A mineral that is very common in this system is calcite. It is a soft crystal, like quartz, but less valuable and less useful. When the CCC boys were cleaning debris from the caves, they found areas like this and thought they'd struck diamonds and were filthy rich.



Then we moved into a different stretch of the system, where both the amount of water and the speed of it's flow were greater than before. This made the walls much smoother, with less stalactites and stalagmites.



It reminds me of the smooth table-like "beach" at Montana de Oro, solid stone smoothed over by rushing water, as opposed to a slow drip from above or slow gurgle from below.



Then we reached the largest concentration of calcite in the whole US, a room lit with multi-colored lights that glowed in a juxtaposition to the wildly beautiful natural sights we'd been walking around for an hour already.



If planning a trip to Austin, think about a day excursion to the north-west, close to the small town of Burnet, out in the Hill Country. You won't be disappointed.

One Beater and One Adult-Style

We've had the '93 Saturn fixed, and she's running again. I've learned a few things from the gentleman who replaced the ignition module (ouch): the Saturn engines were built for performance, like racing engines, and can be pushed and pushed. Many other things under the hood, not so much, but the engine will last for a while.

After the perceived (and prematurely concluded) death of our Bandito Rojo, we decided that we're too old to rely on a seventeen-year-old beater (I don't really consider our Saturn a "beater"). We went looking for a car to purchase, one that would be reliable for some years to come. We wanted something with a standard transmission, good mileage, and the ability to transport larger items for moving, travelling, or camping purposes. Sounded almost too difficult to find that in our price range but:



It's the nicest car of which I've ever been in the ownership group, that Passat Wagon. A 2004 with only 100k miles--all freeway, tinted windows, heated seats, defrosting mirrors, enough room to fold down the seats and sleep, five strong speeds, single owner with records, and an iPod attachment already installed.

All for less than bluebook. We caught a break.

The seller said he liked us and wanted us to buy it, that it was time for his family to upgrade (his first non VW purchase: a diesel BMW wagon), and, when it came time for him to hand over the keys, he stalled and was reluctant to the end.

We feel really lucky.

Unhappy Customer

As a customer of eSurance for our two automobiles, I can't say that I've had any experience like the customer who made this sign. Also, with as little as we pay for auto insurance, I half expect that in the event of an accident I might be making a similar sign.

The Slow Lifecycle of a Statlactite

Here is a moment in the growth cycle of a stalactite, brought to you by the Longhorn Caverns, a cool geographic formation about which I will discuss more in depth in the future.

Something Familiar

The media presence in New York surrounding the Yankees (and Knicks in good years) is pervasive in the least and is matched mostly in major European and South American soccer cities, and probably the Tokyo baseball market.

As I've said before, Texas, while not really a baseball place, is absolutely mad about its football. That similar media scrutiny is felt here, two-hundred miles south of the source. Observe:

"The Dallas Cowboys have finally hit rock bottom. The dream season has crumbled into the abyss. Not only is there no hope for recovery, the Cowboys don't even know where to turn."

Those are the opening three sentences from the analysis providided by Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His column ran yesterday, the day after the Cowboys quit against the Jacksonville Jaguars and were stampeded. They "played" so poorly that they made a rather mediocre Jacksonville team look like the '85 Bears on defense with a young Dan Marino on offense.

That melodramatic tone in Clarence Hill's column is the kind of drivel that I read everyday in New York about my team, and while it's annoying and a waste writer's talent and reader's time, there's only so much actual news about a given team that can be printed in a newspaper, and that doesn't sell papers. (It's usually found in two spots: the "Notebook" section that details how an injured player's practive went; and the "Transactions" section, where you can see who's been sent down and who's been called up, or worse, been cut)

When I read it as a Yankee fan, I knew it was ludicrous crap, but I like reading and I like the Yankees, so it was the combo I got into. You just make jokes about it, like the writers fretting about the Yankee's Wild Card position in mid-May (true story, that year was 2007).

When I read it about the Cowboys, a team I pretty much loathe, at first I chuckle about their plight, then I kind of grow nostalgic for the time when as a reader you feel like trying to calm the writer down about the team you both love. Then I just smile, because the Cowboys suck this year.

What do you call sixty millionaires watching the Super Bowl?

The Dallas Cowboys.

Congratulations Corrie! (Part 2)

Corrie is currently one-seventh an architect, having whooped her first licensing test's ass. That test she came away from with a less than uber-confident, "I think there may have been a chance that I actually passed that test." The second test she took before she'd gotten the results from the first test, and came back feeling much better about that one. The results from the second test aren't in yet, and she's scheduled for a third test tomorrow, and the fourth soon after.

Then there are only three (yikes) left!

In other notes...

So...I got to just five posts last month, and none had any pictures of Marc and Linda or any discussion about their visit to Central Texas or the Austin City Limits Music Festival...I'll be rectifying that soon, since I'm sure all my readers are breathlessly waiting to hear how a couple of New Yawkers felt about Texas hospitality...well, I'm breathlessly waiting to write it up, before I stop caring. Not really, but the exact day after they left, our '93 Saturn kinda crapped out, and life suddenly got very interesting and much more difficult.

The Saturn is working again, we have a new (to us) automobile, which I'll be discussing in detail very soon (it's the nicest car of which I've been in the ownership group to date).

For my mom: I really appreciate what you had to say about the freeways in southern California on the comment screen a while back, and despite your apology about not having any real information, I felt like you gave exactly the insight for which I was fishing.

For my dad: I have, in fact, heard that particular style of mustache/soul-patch called the "Zappa", and used it a few times myself on that day when I wore it, and even had believed that I'd called it a "Zappa" on my mustache post, only to read that I hadn't after reading your comment about it. I believe that Frank's partial gypsy background could account for the thickness and darkness of the combo-'stache-soul-patch, which ultimately would lead to it's success, if you will, of that rather porn-star-like facial hair arrangement. For a comparison of some kind, check out on YouTube "Start Wearing Purple" by Gogol Bordello...the lead singer of the band Gogol Bordello is part gypsy and resembles FZ...maybe he just reminds me of Frank. It's a funky little song, though.

Also: my apologies to my mother's sense of baseball tradition in our household, but I've been rooting for the Giants to win it all. I realized: while she won't/can't root for them (something I understand having rooted hard for St. Louis and Colorado in '04 and '07 respectively), I enjoy the city of San Francisco, and think that funky zone should get to celebrate...I also find myself not hating the 'niners as much anymore--how blasphemous is that?