The UnTexan

SOOKIE SANDWICH: ON THE COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE

 "The blow that'll gitcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone."

True Blood. In the flesh.

And now for the best part (the doctor is in):

MAYBE TIGER CAN ASK PETA FOR HELP

I have always been interested in Tiger Woods. I have watched him play golf and I watched him give his speech today on television. I thought the speech was head and shoulders above the usual "I'm sorry" speech we hear from athletes. It was a serious occasion. And in the end it was funereal. When he stepped down from the podium to solemnly hug his mother and his various invited friends when the speech was over he looked for all the world like a man who had delivered his own eulogy and was consoling the mourners and thanking them for attending the graveside service. He buried himself and no one was allowed to throw even a handful of dirt into the hole he dug. Now we wait and see. Lazarus was called forth from the grave. But Tiger will have to be self-rising if he is to be Lazarus at all. Self-crucified. Self-buried. Can he be self-rising? And, if he rises, will he be Tiger again or will it turn out he is just another self-serving dough boy?

IT'S WOODSTOCK WEAK

Joni Mitchell said, "By the time we got to Woodstock we were half-a-million strong." I once published a short story in which the main character said of himself, his wife and most of the people they knew, "By the time we got to Woodstock, it was a movie." And face it, it was. That was made clear to me early on, when I attended a rock festival in Georgia and many of my fellow festival goers were already acting out Woodstock - the movie - rather than having their own good time. In a moment of clarity in my smoky haze, I remember watching them play Woodstock (mud wallowing was very popular at the time) and thinking what a sad commentary on the unoriginality of American youth that was, ignoring the fact that I was there among them. It was "Woodstock Lite" and it probably would have seemed more pathetic than it did, but I was too far gone for subtlety and nuance most of the four days I was there. Nowadays I am so overwhelmed by subtlety and nuance that I would like to get on the magic bus and head for the old fog of Woodstock. But it is a place most of us have never been, and, face it, a place we can no longer go.

Woodstock is 40 years old this week. Television will remind us. New CDs of old music are being released. The dead are being hauled out and counted. Everywhere there is talk of the "Woodstock Nation." People speak of it with fondness. But remember how we were never going to end up like our parents? Listen to the nostalgic voices of the Woodstock Nation, 40 years on. Our fathers and mothers talked about World War and the Great Depression just like that. Can you hear it?

OUR NEW TELEVISION/OUR NEW BLOG

The UnTexan and Mrs. UnTexan try to figure out television on Our New Television, our new blog. After 15 years without any tv, we Texas-sized everything from the HDTV to cable tv - LOTS of cable tv. We still don't know if we did this because we were trying to fit in or simply trying to zone out and keep all those tv channels between ourselves and -- well -- everything Texas. It's time to figure that out.

Our New Television. You can subscribe to our feed.

A FRIDAY TOAST TO THURSDAY'S DEAD

Here's to Michael's face and Farrah's butt
and to an America that's utt
erly drowning in this freaky stuff -- it's a glut -- but
can't get enough of Michael's face and Farrah's butt.