Archive for July, 2007

Guns n’ Roses’ “appetite for destruction,” one of the greatest rock albums ever made, turned 20 years old earlier in July.
I just got my new Rolling Stone magazine with all the intimate details of the band that lasted about 10 years max and about that recording.
They broke up…Axl Rose kept the G n’ R name and the rest of the band formed Velvet Revolver a couple of years ago with the Stone Temple Pilots frontman…
I still have a little man-love in my heart for Slash (formerly known as Saul Hudson).
But one of the more interesting facts revealed in the article is the over-dubbing of a sex scene with the performers being Axl Rose and the then drummer’s girlfriend Adriana Smith. The drummer Steven Alder cheated on her and she wanted to get back at him. Why not sleep with the lead singer? The recording ended up on the album’s final song “Rocket Queen.”
How juicy, and sexy?

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For the first time in years I returned to the Plex….It’s fun-omenal. The wife, my bro, his fiancé and my kid trekked it up to the Plex with batting cages on the brain.
I figured, what’s the best way to waste $10 and not worry about buyer’s remorse. So after about 100 swings I remembered how much of a challenge it is to hit a ball covered in divots, knee high at 85 mph.
I got a couple good cuts and a couple bad ones.
It all went well until I almost saw a little girl get her head taken off by a 50 mph fastball. The best thing to do when something is being thrown at you — is to know its coming. Simple enough.
Paying attention is key, but this little girl was a lollygagger. She was in the batting cage for a few minutes until her allotted time ran out. She put in another token and started up the machine. Then for some reason her mind started to wander.
Wandering minds aren’t such a good thing when a baseball is coming right at you. Anyways second pitch she takes one off the leg. It takes her a few seconds to realize she had just been hit and then the tears start to flow.
Again still not a good time to not pay attention. She slumps over and crosses home plate and stops. One ball zooms by her head. At that moment I thought she was a goner. I tried to yell at her to get her out of the way, but it took one more pitch before she finally realized the balls were still coming.
I opened the batting cage gate, she grabbed sobbingly at her face threw her helmet to the ground and ran off to mommy….?

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I’m taking off today to play golf in the MSU football program’s tournament.
The boss is paying the bill.
I plan to have a lot of fun.
It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.
I will also be gone Monday and Tuesday for work-related reasons.
Blog returns on Wednesday.
Read some of the old ones while I’m gone.
Be safe.

I have become a big PETA fan.
If these people want to protest against Australian sheep farmers, Col. Sanders or Ringling Brothers — I’m with them.
Just get nekid and start the protest.
I’m not sure what showing off your titties has to do with protecting baboons in a zoo, but I’m all for it.
Take it off.
Take it all off.
This month a few hundred or our PETA friends protested the famous Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
Some stripped down to their underwear.
Many went topless.
One family — mom, dad, two kids and a best friend — wore their birthday suits.
And they walked down the same street where they run the bulls.
One chick work a thong with a green “N? painted on one butt cheek and a green “O? painted on the other one.
Check it out — http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/06/content_345915.htm
If that doesn’t make get a membership card to PETA, nothing will.

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I believe all of the really important parts of the Bible.
I believe this world was created by God.
I believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
I believe Jesus turned water into wine; made blind men see; raises Lazarus from the dead; fed 5,000 people with two small fish and five loaves of bread and still had leftovers; walked on water and every other thing the Bible says He did in His 33 years on this earth.
I believe He lived a sinless life; died on the cross for our sins and arose from the dead.
I believe that He is right now is in a place called Heaven sitting at the right hand of God
Some people will call me a fool for believing that.
Others will call me a fundamentalist.
I think you are all wrong.
Fundamentalism is defined as believing in the “inerrancy? of the Bible.
And there are parts of the Old Testament that I have a problem with.
Did this guy Methuselah actually live to be 969 years old?
Talk about screwing up Social Security.
I really have hard time believing that in a day when there was no running water, no modern medicine, no sanitation and no faith healers like Benny Henn that any man could live that long.
But the Bible says he did.
It also said he had a son when he was 187 years old.
The Bible records five men who lived more than 900 years — Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan and Methuselah.
Compare that to the today.
In 1900, the life expectancy of a man in the United States was 46.3.
Guys born here in 1950 had a life expectancy of 65.6.
In 2000, that had grown to 74.3

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I have never cared much about family reunions.
That’s because the family that I really care about, I see more than once a year.
Uncle Derwood from down in San Angelo and Aunt Ethyl from out in Arizona were family in name only. They showed up once a year over fried chicken and potato salad and told me how much I looked like my Daddy back when he was a boy.
Once I dropped out of college and became the blackest sheep in the Gholson clan, they quit inviting me to their annual get-togethers.
Then when I became a famous sports writer, they started asking me back again.
Screw ’em.
This past Saturday, I went to a real family reunion.
Unless Daddy forgot to tell me something, I wasn’t related to anybody there.
But these guys are my people.
These guys are my life.
The idea of having an “Our Gang? picnic began a year ago at the funeral of Sam Milam.
All of us guys who grew up together — living in the same run-down neighborhood, going to the same schools, playing for the same teams — found out we loved each other.
It took us 60 years or more to find out that we share a bond of friendship that will we will take to the grave and maybe even beyond.
When I got my invitation to the picnic, there was just one rule.
No girls.
When I got there, I found out there was another rule.
No fighting.
Heck, those two things are the only thing some of these guys ever thought about for the first 21 years or more of their lives.
We had the Taylor brothers and the Lavender brothers together.
There was a time when that could never happen without somebody not named Taylor or Lavender getting their ass whipped.
But we are too old to really give a rat’s ass much about girls or fighting anymore.

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I know the title is a little crude, but after a weekend shopping experience in Dallas I figured I had to tell someone.
Saturday my future sister-in-law, my brother, my wife (I call them the gang) and I all went to the Northpark Mall in Dallas for a little fun. Northpark Mall might be the best mall I’ve ever been to by the way.
Anyways the gang and I had a little bit of money and figured why not blow it on fashion. Its fun and nobody has any chance of getting hurt.
The Northpark Mall has every store you can imagine. Lacoste, Nordstrom’s, Neiman Marcus…the list goes on and on.
I’ll return in a heartbeat to shop there, I will however have to bring at least $300 to make it worth the trip. Stuff there isn’t cheap. They have a Barney’s for crying out loud.
Anyways, I’ve never seen as many gay men at one centralized location as I did at that mall. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I was just a little thrown off.

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Since I am sure not many of you listen to my radio gig on Friday mornings, I wanted to share with you here what I had to say today about the Michael Vick deal.
Do you sense a bit of this “black vs. white? deal again with Michael Vick?
Is it going to be like O.J. Déjà vu all over again?
Personally, I can’t see how anybody can be pro-Michael Vick right now.
Innocent until proven guilty is only for the courtroom.
Public opinion says guilty until proven innocent.
So for me, Michael Vick is pure scum until he can prove he’s not.
Yes, this is America, where we let freedom ring.
But if there is justice, this scumbag is going down.
Feed him Puppy Chow for his final meal. Then treat him like a dog.
What will it be, Mike. Drowning. Hanging. Electrocution or being shot to death.
At least you have a choice. Those poor dogs didn’t.
If you saw our Thursday morning sports section, you couldn’t have missed the large picture of a black man at an Atlanta Braves game holding up a sign that said: “Michael Vick is innocent. Dog-gone-it.?
That made me wonder about the possible “black vs. white? opinions about Vick.

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I know some people just can’t wait, so here is a New York Times review of the book. How the publication was able to buy an advance copy I’ll never know….but here goes nothing.
Read at your own risk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/books/19potter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I have never had much respect for the people who run our schools.
It is my opinion that they waste a whole lot of our tax dollars.
And I have never thought our school boards — past or present — had the balls to really get things done.
Like why in the world isn’t Joe Golding’s name on our nameless football stadium?
The man won four state championships, is in the Texas High School Hall of Fame and was the person mostly responsible for building what was at one time in the early ’70s the best high school football stadium in the country.
But what should be Joe Golding Memorial Stadium does not have his name because past school boards didn’t want to offend a few naysayers.
Having to vote three times on a bond proposal shows that I am not the only person skeptical of anything the WFISD does.
So I don’t expect it to do the right thing when it comes to naming our two new elementary schools.
I have heard some of the suggestions and disagree with all of them.
When possible, I think our schools should be named after exceptional educators who have worked in the WFISD.
My vote right now is for Perry Goolsby and Linda Merrill.

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BOWLING FOR SOUP
COMING HOME
That was the big headline on the front page of our paper today.
The story about the local band from Wichita Falls coming back home to play FallsFest took up half the page — and then jumped.
Is this big news?
I had heard of Bowling for Dollars — a game show hosted by Verne Lundquist in Dallas back in the ’70s.
But not Bowling for Soup.
It seems that the group got its name from an old Steve Martin skit “Bowling for Shit? on his comedy album “Wild and Crazy Guy.? His skit mocks Bowling for Dollars.
To my knowledge, I have never heard one song by Bowling for Soup.
That’s no fault of theirs. It is just when you get old like me, you lose touch with the music scene.
I’ve been a rock and roll fan all of my life, so I just might like Bowling for Soup.
I know I am going to buy a couple of CDs and listen to them.
I had already planned to go see Grand Funk Railroad at FallsFest, so now I will get the chance to see Soup in concert the same night.
Their have been labeled “a comedy influenced pop punk? band.
Not sure what all that means.
The term “punk? will usually turn an old guy off, but I’m not your typical old guy.
I am open to new stuff.
Their album titles are cool.
Drunk Enough To Dance.
A Hangover you Don’t Deserve.?
The Great Burrito Extortion Case.
One of the early ones — “Rock On Honorable Ones? certainly has Hooterville Falls link.
ROHO.

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Here’s my take on the whole Jeffress ordeal: the man is as good as gone. He said the news was a little premature, but looking at it from the outside, I’m sure there is a lot of money calling him to Dallas.
I know he has a lot of supporters here locally, but when you start saying that news of a new job is premature, you might as well say goodbye.
Jeffress has really built up First Baptist Church. And most pastors enjoy a new challenge, like a lot of people, and Dallas sounds like a pretty good challenge.

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I have never been to Brattleboro, Vermont.
But if my buddies and I had known about it when we were kids, we would have found a way to get there.
If we had known there was a place where women walk around nekid, we boys would have headed in that direction.
1,738.22 miles?
No sweat.
A 27-hour drive?
I know a guy with a ‘57 Chevy.
You see, when I was growing up back in the Dark Ages, it was just about every boy’s dream to see as many nekid women as possible in his lifetime.
The magazines down at the drug store only had girls in swim suits.
Thompson’s Novelty Shop downtown had some nekid women magazines, but they were kept locked behind glass. And we boys were never allowed to peek inside one.
All of us boys would have given Mr. Thompson our movie and popcorn money just to look through one of those magazines, but he couldn’t be bought off.
I was 13 before I ever saw a real live nekid girl.
And I had to give her most of my Halloween candy to show me.
I’m just glad she didn’t ask for my lunch money for the rest of my life or the keys to my daddy’s car.
Then in high school, I never saw anything higher than a knee cap.
So when the weekend came, all of us guys would go to the old Scottic drive in theater to get our kicks. They showed nudist camp documentaries.
OK, it wasn’t exactly “Deep Throat,? but for a 15 or 16-year-old boy, it was nekid women and you take what you can get.
So all of us boys who grew up on Travis or Austin or Burnett streets — and those streets in between — would have loved to visit Brattleboro, Vermont.
With no state laws or city ordinances banning public nudity, people can just walk around in their birthday suits.
And some of those people are women.

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A 60-year-old woman in Colorado swears she sees Elvis’ head in a rock.
She plans to sell the rock on EBay.
Well, we didn’t have EBay back in 1969.
If we had, right now I just might be a millionaire rather than a hundredaire.
On a Saturday afternoon that year, I took a little trip with Dr. Timothy Leary.
Come early Sunday morning our trip had taken us to Jolly, Texas for breakfast at the Jolly Truck Stop.
I ordered scrambled eggs and toast.
A few minutes later, they showed up.
The waitress brought my food and there they were right there on my plate.
The Beatles were in my scrambled eggs.
John, Paul, George and Ringo were smiling up at me.
“I am the eggman.
They are the eggmen.
I am the walrus,
Goo goo g’joob.?
I looked at my buddy across the booth and told him that the Beatles were in my scrambled eggs.
But I think he was too busy looking at Jim Morrison in his oatmeal.
Then when I looked back at my plate, John, Paul, George and Ringo were no longer playing Jolly.
The eggs were slowly moving to the other side of the plate. . .
And then there he was.
Hendrix.
Move over rover and let Jimi take over.
Jimi Hendrix looked up at me and smiled.
“Purple haze all in my brain,
Lately things just dont seem the same.
Actin funny, but I dont know why
scuse me while I kiss the sky.?
Before I could say “Hendrix is in my scrambled eggs,? Jimi had left Jolly.

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This is a rerun of a blog I wrote on Friday, April 13 of this year.
After writing it, my son Tommy told me he had never heard the whole story before. And he’s 31.
Well, here it is again.
For most of you, Friday the 13th will come and go and you’ll never even know it was here.
But for me, I have a souvenir from a Friday the 13th gone by that always makes me stop and think about this supposedly unluckiest of days.
My right hand still has the mark from a 1967 skin graft. Technology back then left a person looking like something left over from a Frankenstein movie. My hand is living proof.
There are also a few scars on my right arm to remind me of Friday the 13th of October, 1967.
There are people who have known me most of my life who don’t know what happened to my hand and arm. Most are too polite to ask.
But every once in awhile, I’ll be in a grocery store line and some little kid will shout out:
“Hey, mister, what happened to your hand??
Mom will quickly slap him or shake him, tell him to shut up and then start apologizing for the honesty of a child.
For years, I tried to hide the scars.
But after awhile, you just say “to hell with it.?
Although I can still type around 90 words a minute and still do all the things I could do before Oct. 13, 1967, there are still limitations on the use of my right hand. I still can’t bend my fingers enough to make a fist and there are some missing tendons in my wrist that cause some problems.
If it weren’t for this, I am sure that Tiger Woods would now be only the No. 2 golfer in the world.
But the reason I am blogging about this today is to tell you how it all happened.

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I’m a Seinfeld fan.
If you’re not, you are missing out on TV greatness.
The 50s had Lucy.
The 60s had Andy.
The 70s had Archie.
The 80s had Cheers.
The 90s had Seinfeld.
So what are Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer up to these days?
Well, all have been in the news.
Kosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) is now “seeking spiritual healing? in Cambodia.
He and his fiancée’ went on a tour sponsored by the Nithayananda Foundation, a sect that adheres to the teachings of Hindu monk Nithayananda — “an avowed enlightened Master and modern mystic who is referred to by his followers as “Swami G.?
Sounds just like Kramer, huh?
Well, he has a lot of free time these days.
He can’t find work.
The NAACP held a funeral and buried the “N? word.
And his most famous act was shouting out racial slurs at hecklers during a stand-up comedy club routine,
“I’m taking time off to feel myself out,? he said.
George Castanza is more fun.
George (Jason Alexander) has been playing the World Series of Poker’s main event in Vegas.
On Sunday night, ESPN kept sending a camera man to his table, waiting for the hand where he busted out. But he won three straight hands without showing his cars and ended the nigh with $41,000 in chips.
He lasted until Wednesday where he was put out of the tournament along with pros Allen Cunningham and Phil Gordon.
“To me, this is like, if you jog at all, it’s a kick to be at the New York Marathon when it starts off. You know you’re not going to win, but you’re there. It’s pretty cool,? he said.

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Anytime somebody named bin Laden gets married, it’s big news.
Maybe not Tony Parker-Eva Longoria type big news, but you have to wonder:
What kind of nut would marry a guy named bin Laden?
I guess though when you’re 51 years old, have multiple sclerosis and are already a five-time loser at this marriage thing — what the hell?
It’s not exactly like guys were lining up outside the door of Jane Felix-Browne bin Laden.
The British woman said she was riding a horse near the Great Pyramid when she met bin Laden.
Was he hitchhiking?
Was he standing on a street corner hawking copies of the daily Al Jeel?
Maybe he was just in the neighborhood shopping for a Father’s Day gift.
What do you buy your Daddy when he is the most wanted terrorist on the planet?
An electric razor?
A tie that says “I love New York??
A Coleman lantern to light up his cave?
Old Spice?
Sorry, but I just had to digress a bit.
Back to Omar and Jane.
Jane was 24 years old when Osama and Najawa bin Laden gave birth to little Omar.
And since Osama and Najawa are first cousins — there’s a good chance that Omar is not right in the head.
But like I said, this old British broad can’t be too picky about who she’s going to marry.
Any 27-year-old guy would be a step up for Jane — even if he is an SOT (son of a terrorist).

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I don’t know anybody in either the PLM or the VC gangs. I’ve written numerous stories about people police suspected to be involved in the gangs.
I’ve seen a lawsuit handed down by the city and county restricting the rights of suspected gang members.
After recent deaths, of Joel Gutierrez and Christian Gallegos, the gang warfare doesn’t look like its going to end anytime soon.
The police, district attorney, and on and on and on…are doing what they can to stop the madness. But for a bunch of kids, I’m suspecting with no place to really call home, I can only assume that this isn’t going to stop.
I pray that it does. There have been way too many lives lost to the streets.

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Just finished reading an interesting story in our paper about a man in Afghanistan who traded his 16-year-old daughter for nine sheep.
Makes me wonder — what could I get for three ex-wives?
A couple of billy goats?
A short tour of a poppy field?
OK, so they are a bit old.
Forget the poppy field tour.
I have known guys who had a crush on sheep, but just never was my thing.
However, there were times when my daughter was 16 that I would have traded her for something of equal value.
Like a cheese whopper, large fries and a large Coke.
No deal?
OK, make it a medium Coke.
Just kidding, Christy.
You know I would never have traded you.
Sold you — maybe.
But never traded.
Well, unless someone had offered a Nolan Ryan rookie card.

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I noticed that after his brush with death, Joe Brown has decided to experience some of the really good things in life.
Like P-2.
In a front page “Brownie? this week, Joe — back from work after a quadruple bypass — said he stopped into the “Deuce? this week to have a steak on garlic.
Throw in a red draw or 10 — and that really is one of the good things in life.
The “Deuce? and the Bar-L have both endured for six decades and are true landmarks here in Hooterville Falls.
And I grew up in the neighborhood.
The beer drinkers and barmaids simply knew me as “Earl’s Boy? because my Daddy was a customer at both places.
When it came time to sell those kid baseball or midget football buttons, the Deuce and the Bar-L were my territory. Every beer drinker and bar maid in the house bought buttons from “Earl’s Boy.?
I couldn’t have been but 10 or 11 when my Daddy first sent me to the Deuce to get burgers and fries.
I remember looking up at the sign over the door and wondering what in the heck is a “Stag Bar.?
Could this be a place where they keep deer?
I finally learned it was a place where old men stood around a bar and said things you would never hear over at the 10th and Broad Church of Christ.
I loved it.
I also loved beer smell in that dark Stag Bar.
But what really intrigued me were those beer signs.
Schlitz,
Falstaff.
Hamms from the land of sky blue waters.
My first beer was a Pearl that Keith Lavender and I took out of his mother’s ice box.
If you’ve never had a Pearl, then you have never tasted horse piss.
I am amazed that I’m a beer drinker after losing my cherry on a can of Pearl.

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