Well, I arrived in upstate NY, the land of my birth, on the 17th, one fun week after leaving from Houston. I took my time, stopping frequently to visit friends I had long promised to visit, on a route that took me through LA, MS, AL, GA, SC, NC, VA, MD, NJ and NY. I left Austin on the 10th (after watching the Pats win their home opener) and left Houston late Tuesday afternoon. Here are some things along the way I found amusing or interesting:
Southern people (real ones, not Texans) are funny in a slow sort of way. Something about that drawl, makes most of them seem a bit Rainman, a bit Charly, but a lot nice.
Grosse Tete, LA (as a guy with a 7 3/4 noggin I can appreciate this, even en Francais)
During a stop at a Waffle House outside Mobile, AL: Real Mexican Salsa for my eggs: Casa de Waffle brand! Muy Authentico!
Cretin Homes billboard near Biloxi. Do they need a slogan? "When you want to work with idiots, you want a Cretin Home!"
People at the Waffle House are so friendly I want to choke them.
Instead of the usual pull-off for trucks at most state lines, Mississippi has a "Weigh In Motion" system that lets trucks drive through embedded sensors in the right lane at 100 foot intervals for weight verification, along with high-speed cameras I assume. Alabama has one too, but the trucks still have to pull off before they are allowed to bypass the weigh station, at speed. Cool technology.
Grits suck.
Montgomery has a very cool library at the spot where Rosa Parks boarded the bus, and then refused to give up her seat. The historical marker text has a note indicating it's continued on the other side. It's not.
The Capitol Building in Baton Rouge, LA is a 34-story tower, and the tallest in the country, natch. Kind of weird looking. Huey Long was assassinated there. If you ask me, the old Capitol had it beat, IMHO. The gothic castle look was kind of charming, and the interior fabulous.
Flomaton, AL Huh? On the way to Gandyville, near Oyster Lodge and Happy Valley. I'm not making this up.
My godsons Asa (A.J.) in SC, Jack in VA and Brendan in NY are cute as can be, and getting big.
89 mph is not too fast on I-81 in rural VA. At 85, cars and trucks passed me on both sides.
I followed a truck with what I thought was my first-ever mobile porn advertisement in North Carolina. "Badcock & More!" screamed the back of the trailer. "Visit www.badcock.com!" shouted the sign on the side. Was I ever disappointed. Check out the old slogan in the vintage pic on the bottom of this web page: "Badcock Will Treat You Right" What ever happened to truth in advertising?
Last, but not least, Barium Springs Childrens' Home, somewhere on I-77 in the Carolinas. If the springs contain barium, shouldn't we keep the kids away? Oh well, I guess if they drink there they'll be easy to find at night...
Now (Saturday) on my way back to Texas, picking up my newly-repaired car in Houston and back to Austin in time for the Pats next victory.
I can't explain why I'm having these feelings ... but I am so fucking scared about the decisions our government is making right now. My reactions are emotional and I don't have anything but my gut to go on. How are the rest of you doing?
I was just reading over Jim Romenesko's Media News and came across some more interesting commentary on Bob Greene's transgressions. I pulled this blurb verbatim from Jim's site:
Claim: It's tough to land after something like the Greene sex scandal Former Bob Greene colleague Ron Yates -- now a j-department head -- says of the Greene sex scandal: "It's pretty tough to land somewhere after something like this. You've got to understand that as a journalist, especially as a columnist, people are watching you all the time. ...As journalists, we're not priests, but there is a kind of service that we perform. Our relationship with some people can be a catharsis for them. We have the responsibility not to take advantage of someone in a vulnerable position. I think that's about the worst thing you can do as a journalist." (Chicago Sun-Times)
Oh, the Trials and Tribs of the Well-Connected ...
Is it really the same for them as it is for all the rest of us? Well, no. And it's been that way throughout the history of mankind. But it is nice that on occasion, as in the case of Noelle Bush, this hypocrisy becomes obvious and all of us plebes are able to rattle the bars on our cells a little bit in protest. One such protester is Arianna Huffington, and her current column for salon.com nicely compares the wee Bush's treatment to that of similar offenders who might be poor, ethnic or ill. Arianna is not bashing Ms. Bush. She is bashing the position of her father and his fellow conservatives for their War on Drugs. An excerpt:
And the White House continues to bombard us with those offensive -- and expensive -- TV spots implying that youthful drug users like Noelle Bush are the moral equivalent of Mohammed Atta. Maybe her Uncle George can get her an audition for the next round of taxpayer-funded ads. Show her pulling some crack out of her shoe while saying, "I helped blow up buildings."
Or does that kind of overheated and stigmatizing rhetoric only apply to those other, non-Bush-family youthful drug users?
Bob Greene, an entertaining longtime Chicago Tribune columnist, has admitted an affair with a teenage, who was of legal age yet still in high school. This is so sad on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that we seem to have a constant stream of these sordid tales, cutting a wide swath across professions. Here's the story from the Tribune itself:
