I’ve been spending much too much time lately moving across our Texas highway system trapped inside the damnedest repeated clusterfracks. (Yes, that’s the technical linguistic term for a group of Texas drivers who have bunched up at high speed.)

I’m a gentle old man, but I’ve had too many recent inner visions of flames, explosions, and the deployment of my personal bazooka, to be satisfied with the current state of affairs.

Therefore, I’m posting so that everyone who drives in Texas will know how to better keep Rory alive and happy on the highway.

Here’s the One Rule to Rule Them All: Get Out of My Way.

Here are the Three Laws of Velocity:

1. If you’re driving faster than me, you’re a maniac, and should be removed from the road.
2. If you’re driving slower than me, you’re a granny, and should be removed from the road.
3. If you’re driving the same speed as me, you’re pacing me, and should be removed from the road.

This set of rules is simple, elegant, and results in me having the highway entirely to myself, which is as it should be. However, we live in an imperfect world, so I’m willing to put up with you as long as you Get Out of My Way.

There are, of course, some behaviors you shouldn’t indulge in, unless you want to make me suffer from Road Annoyance.

To be perfectly clear, I’m not doing this for your own good. I don’t care if you kill yourself and all your loved ones by driving stupidly. Darwinism in action is what that is. I just don’t want you to kill me, okay? I’ve already got enough problems with that whole natural selection thing as it is.

Though, since I’ve already passed my DNA along, I suppose it really wouldn’t be that wrong to run over me. And I know it won’t really upset you to kill a feeble old man whose life is practically over with anyhow, for more than a few hours, or until you’re distracted when the next episode of  “Jon & Kate Plus 8” airs.

But what if you hit Jon & Kate and the eight cute little kids and smushed them all? That would make you sad for a long time, wouldn’t it? Okay, maybe not about Jon and Kate. I mean, who cares about those two idiots? But the kids for sure, right? I bet that would make you sad for a loooong time.

So – remember these things I’m about to list, because you might kill a bunch of adorable little soon-to-be-adoptees instead of me, if you don’t.

Here are the Ten Tips to Avoid Bazookas:

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1. No driving while intoxicated, except maybe on very light doses of amphetamines, which can actually enhance alertness, focus, and motor skills. However, you should practice titrating your meth dosage extensively in non-driving situations, so that you know where your edge is. For instance, if you snort or shoot, it’s best to always wait until the initial rush has passed. No alcohol or other depressants, because they blow out your reflexes. No weed, because it distorts your time sense, which is a Very Bad Thing when you’re on a high-speed closing vector with an old man who owns a bazooka.
2. Do not lead the Pissed-Off Parade. This is what happens when you have somebody on a one-lane road that insists upon driving reasonably near the posted speed limit, or on two-lane roads where the person in the left-hand lane paces the vehicle in the right-hand lane. Everybody balls up behind them, and group rage explodes like chain lightning, with tailgating and headlight flashing and finger-shooting once you finally get past the miscreant. I speak from recent personal experience, though never as a miscreant, only as a finger-shooter. I think sometimes these miscreants feel all virtuous that they’ve held everyone else to the posted speed limit and thus increased safety on the road. In actuality, they’ve greatly increased everyone else’s anger, stress, and unsafe driving behavior, thus making it more likely that somebody will get hurt or killed.
3. Observe the Real Texas Speed Limit, not the posted speed limit. This is what the miscreants who lead the Pissed-Off Parade have failed to understand. The RTSL is around 85 to 90 mph when you can see far enough ahead to be sure that there are no lurking DPS troopers with their evil unAmerican radar guns. When you can’t see that far, the RTSL is between 76 mph and 79 mph, depending on how daring you are. Going 80 mph when you blow past the cops will always get you a ticket. Anything over 76 might get you a ticket if they’re doing some sort of  safety enforcement thing that week, or need the revenue to buy more ammo. Going 75 will never get you a ticket.
4. It’s never about the posted speed limit anyhow. And it’s often not about the RTSL. It’s about the flow. Drive with the flow that  has spontaneously emerged to match current road conditions, or drop back (and Get Out of My Way) if you can’t. You should drive fast enough that only a few people pass you, and you pass a few people, and you have plenty of space on all sides, even it if means going faster or slower to get that space. Yeah, I know, it’s safer if you don’t go faster, just slower. But let’s be real here, since we can’t be sane. A law has supposedly been proposed that makes it illegal to hang out in the left-hand lane when not passing anyone. I approve of that law. If you break everyone else’s flow, you’re endangering them. There would be a lot fewer rage-induced accidents if that law were enforced – because we all know that the person leading the POP is screwing with us on purpose, if it lasts longer than two minutes.
5. No cell phone usage. Not even hands free. All the studies are clear – this is the exact equivalent of driving drunk. It kills people and seriously messes up the flow, because cell-talkers drive slower than others, in the mistaken belief that they’re then driving more safely. They’re not. They’re driving blind, and blocking people behind them.
6. No texting while driving. I’ve been spotting this monstrous behavior increasingly of late. It shouldn’t be a ticket. It should be jail time. And the brass finger screws, to make sure there are no repeat offenders.
7. Also, no sexting. Unless you’re at a long stop light. And there’s an old man on a motorcycle next to you. He might even help you with the pics.
8. While we’re on the subject — No sex while driving. Yes, it can make a boring trip much more interesting, both for you and whatever truckers might chance to pass by. Once again, I have no problem with you killing yourself, as long as you don’t kill me. I simply don’t want to be going just because you’re coming. This means no JO. And no BJ. And no HJ, either, dammit. Also, no cowgirl, even if you have room for it. Especially no reverse cowgirl. Unless she’s driving, and you’re in a decommissioned milk truck, in which case it won’t really be reverse cowgirl, but doggy instead. Which probably isn’t a safe thing, either, but it can be a helluva lot of fun. (I actually do remember a little bit of the Sixties…)  Perhaps best to just pull over and park at the edge of a side road under a tree. Right? You can even practice safe text with each other afterwards.
9. No littering. I really don’t want to abruptly eat the rest of your Texas Double Cheeseburger at 79 mph.
10. THERE ARE MOTORCYCLES ALL OVER THE FRACKING ROAD !!! IF YOU ACTUALLY PAY ATTENTION, YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE US !!!

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….One last little bit, in case I haven’t yet penetrated your state of denial about your bad driving habits.

I have a daughter named Rachael, whom I adore, and who will miss me if you commit vehicular homicide upon me.

All of my friends know about her character, and you should, too:

Rachael is vindictive.

She will come for you.

You’re better off deliberately driving into a tree to avoid running over that old man on the motorcycle.

Hugs to everybody,

Rory

Feel better now? Of course not. You have cholera!

At least in my case, he was absolutely correct in his surmise. It’s a version of Ben E. King’s classic ‘Stand By Me’. It starts out small and personal, then quickly achieves orbital velocity as it goes global.

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It’s too late for us to be among the earliest adopters on this song. But, if you haven’t alrady seen it, you have my heartiest encouragement to click the pic. It’s uplifting. And it rocks.

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Hey, guys – Go visit any of the major news web sites. Cool stuff today. According to the CDC, the Swine Flu Pandemic is going to slam into us sometime in the next few weeks, slaughtering the population and destroying civilization as we knew it.

Finally.

I mean, just between you and me and the pigs, I was beginning to doubt that civilization as we knew it was going to end at all. It sucked to find myself being pessimistic about my pessimism.

Some days, I just wanted to smash my forehead into something, hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to actually damage my brain. You know?

That Bird Flu thing just never seemed to be able to get off the ground. And it looks like Apophis is going to stubbornly refuse to smash the earth into molten flinders.

The Global Warming thing was coming along nicely, after we convinced Bush and his crew that it was all a liberal conspiracy against Hummers – and you know how insanely freaked out they were with Clinton and his hummers in the Oval Office. Then we messed up and elected an administration that actually believes in science. Who knows what the hell they’ll do to demonize GW the climate like they demonized GW the Bush?

Nuclear war? Well, the Soviets were a great disappointment to me, personally. They had the capability for about thirty years, and could never sober up from the vodka binges long enough to push the red button. North Korea and Iran are just laughable wannabes.

I’ve got a small bet going that Pakistan will fall into the hands of the Taliban next year and, maddened by the presence of infidels somewhere on the rest of the planet, will launch their hundred nukes at somebody. If they hit India, then my job is less likely to be outsourced, so this is a two-fer. They’ve got enough bombs to trigger at least a Nuclear Autumn.

But that’ll be offset by the damn global warming that we’ve been trying so hard to cause. Unless Obama or Steven Chu or Paul Krugman fix it first.

I’m immensely cheered by today’s news, though.

I went out this afternoon and bought my survival kit. Here are my top ten items:

1. Three boxes of Kleenex – Will need them if I get the flu, and the allergies have been really nasty all year anyhow.
2. Three containers of Crystal Light no-cal drink powder – I already got a bunch of iodine pills for purifying water, at Rachael’s insistence. Now I can drink both safely and deliciously.
3. Three boxes of wet kitty treats – Little Tex and Secret Kitty are likely to get grumpy while trapped in the house for a month or so, and this will help. I’m contemplating buying some more catnip toys tomorrow, before there’s a run on them.
4. A pound of Kraft Mild Cheddar cheese – It was on sale, and I like cheese.
5. Two pounds of Skinner Vermicelli – Yummy and nutritious and would survive a nuclear war, I think.
6. Two glass containers of Ragu Roasted Garlic spaghetti sauce – To make the Vermicelli taste even yummier. Also, the Ragu has catsup in it, which, as Ronald Reagan taught us, is an essential vegetable.
7. Four pounds of Folger’s coffee – Life isn’t worth living if I don’t get my coffee in the morning. Also, it’ll be worth its weight in hummers after the apocalypse.
8. Lots of cans of Dinty Moore beef stew and microwaveable plastic lunches of various types and brands – I think I forgot to get crackers to go with these. Dammit.
9. Four pounds of Imperial Pure Cane Granulated Sugar – Screw the Splenda if civilization ends. I want real sugar in my coffee.
10. A 1.75 liter bottle of Bacardi Gold – Should make a great internal antiseptic to help me avoid getting infected. I forgot to get the Coke that potentiates its healing effect. Dammit.

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Personally, I think I did pretty good, considering how off-the-cuff and panicky this was. I already had plenty of toilet paper. And you can use the Kleenex that way in a pinch, in case you didn’t know.

I think I’ll be able to survive in my apartment all through the Great Dying. Surely they won’t disconnect the Internet. It’s all satellite communications these days, anyhow, and the satellites will keep on working fine for years and years.

Then I can come out and the glorious dream of my childhood will begin – me, being one of the last ragged inhabitants in a post-industrial nightmare wasteland. Kind of like moving to Detroit, only more fun.

I’ll have my gun with me. I bet I can find some bullets for it, somewhere out there. Unless they’re all buried in some Teabagger’s back yard.

Rachael and Jesse will survive, as will all of you, and my sister and her husband, and all of my Goddam Neopagan Tribe™. We’ll form the nucleus of a new and intrinsically pessimistic society, as I’ve always hoped for. With motorcycles.

It’ll be great!

We should all meet at that filling station right outside Bastrop, where you turn to go to or from Austin, depending on the direction you’re traveling in. You know the one.

See you all in a couple of months!

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Hey….

….I just had the inevitable thought…

The CDC says the Swine Flu is mutating. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll mutate into —

Zombie Apocalypse Virus !!!!

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

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I saw it when Rachel Maddow twittered it. (Yes, I follow Rachel Maddow slavishly.) I’ve watched it six times and every time I end up with a big grin on my face.

A piece by Simon Johnson (a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund) and James Kwak (a student at Yale Law School) examining the lessons learned by the financial disasters in Asia in 1997:

The argument that A.I.G.’s traders are the people that we must depend on to save the United States economy is as weak and self-serving as it was in Thailand, Korea or Indonesia. A.I.G. is essentially advocating survival of the weakest. Thankfully, the American people are not buying it.

Essentially the countries (Korea and Thailand) that rejected the argument [that the traders who got them into the collapse were the only ones who understood it enough to get them out] ended up with banks that recovered more quickly and are handling the current economic crisis better.  Indonesia, which bought into this argument, ended up with failed banks.

Read the whole thing here.

This made me laugh.  The fact that it was sent to me by my husband, the original Shit-O-Phile, made me laugh harder.

I was supposed to be the offeeeeeecial photgrapher for the following event but one of the Team Mary’s sous chefs came down sick and I was roped in.

Nobody really lost, especially all of us who got to eat it.

At midday on Friday, June 19^th, 1987, while en route to a convention in Minnesota, Barb and I stopped in Clear Lake, Iowa. I had just started writing my second novel, Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede, and Clear Lake was a logical place to take some pictures and do a little research. It was the town where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson had played their last concert on February 2, 1959.

At the Clear Lake Public Library, a helpful librarian told me a story about Buddy’s glasses. It seems that someone (the county coroner?) from Mason City (the county seat) had taken the glasses from the site of the plane crash . . . and as far as the librarian knew, they were still locked up in a desk at the courthouse. Buddy’s widow, Maria Elena Holly, had even asked for them – and had been refused. The county, for some odd reason, thought they should hang on to them . . .

(Maria Elena Holly would finally take possession of the glasses in 1994, and they’re now on display at the Buddy Holly Center in Buddy’s hometown of Lubbock, Texas. This story from the May 29, 1998 Lubbock Avalanche-Journal has the details.)

(It’s funny how attitudes change over time. When Barb and I visited Lubbock in late 1988, there was no Buddy Holly Center, and only token acknowledgment that Holly had ever lived there. To be sure, a bronze statue of Buddy had been unveiled in Lubbock in 1980 . . . but when we got lost trying to locate it, we couldn’t find a single Lubbock resident who could tell us where it was. Not even when we asked at the courthouse. We eventually found the statue on our own, but it was saddening to realize that, almost 30 years after his death, Buddy still wasn’t getting much love from his hometown. So I’m happy to say that things are different in Lubbock now, at least with regard to the legacy of Buddy Holly.)

After our visit to the Clear Lake Library, Barb and I went to the Surf Ballroom, the site of that last gig. Unfortunately, the building was closed, so we weren’t able to go inside.

(That’s different now, too. In 2009, the Surf has a gift shop and is open daily.)

But I took lots of pictures of the outside . . .

( . . . none of which I can find right now, although they’re in a box or envelope around here somewhere. So the photo above is one of many that I found on the Web.)

The Surf’s marquee, along with a poster in the box-office window, made it clear that rock’n’roll was still being played there. On Wednesday, June 17^th, 1987, for example, the Surf had hosted a “Rock Mega Party” including the bands “Critical Mass,” “Shark,” and “Tantrum.” (“3 Bands – 5 Hours of Rock!”) I was glad to see that . . . although, as I noted in a letter to a friend, I doubted that Tantrum played “La Bamba” or that Shark opened their set by crooning “Helloo, baaaaby!”

I also noted that the band scheduled to play at 8:30 PM on the 19^th was “Erwin Suess and his Oom-Pah All Stars.” But we decided not to stay for that, and drove on to Minneapolis.

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This past Tuesday, February 3, 2009, was the 50^th anniversary of The Day the Music Died. But I’ve already written about that day in a previous Eat Our Brains post.

Besides, the anniversary that matters more to me is February 2^nd.

You see, when they died in the early morning hours of February 3^rd, Buddy, Ritchie, and the Bopper were actually doing something boring. They were on their way to get some sleep and wash some clothes.

But on the night of February 2^nd, they were still doing what they were born to do.

They were rocking.

So this past Monday, February 2^nd, 2009, I celebrated that.

If I had been able, I probably would have done so at the Surf Ballroom – because that’s where the “50 Winters Later Commemorative Concert” was taking place.

And no, the Oom-Pah All Stars were not on the bill. Instead, the lucky ticketholders at the Surf this past Monday were treated to a jaw-dropping lineup including Tommy Allsup, the Big Bopper Jr., The Crickets, Pat DiNizio, Kevin Montgomery, Joe Ely, Wanda Jackson, Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys, Delbert McClinton, Graham Nash, Sir Tim Rice, Peter & Gordon, Dave Mason, and Bobby Vee . . . plus a house band that included drummer Kenny Aronoff, keyboardist Chuck Leavell, saxophonist Bobby Keys, and bassist Hutch Hutchinson. Holy moley.

So what was I doing while that grand memorial gig was going on at the Surf Ballroom?

Well, thanks to Barb, Maureen, and drummer extraordinaire Bob Y., I participated in a memorial gig, too.

Bob had been telling me about an Open Blues Jam on Monday nights at a swell bar called Nuno’s (the one on MoPac, in North Austin). So this past Monday, we went. Bob brought sticks. I brought a guitar and some harps. Then Bob & Maureen and Barb & I had burgers while digging the evening’s hosts, Kimo Sabe. (Damn fine band, by the way.)

Sometime around 11:00 PM, Bob and I went onstage with a bass player named Terry and a lead-guitar picker named Rick, neither of whom we’d ever met before. We started off with “Crossroads,” followed by what Maureen later described as “the Grateful Dead version” of “I Just Want to Make Love to You.”

Then I told the audience (mostly other jammers) why we were doing the next song. At which point Bob proceeded to lay down a heavy, driving Bo Diddley beat. It was the stuff, baby. I mean, it made my guitar quake.

Rick and Terry knew what to do, too. Rick was playing a hollowbody Epiphone that sounded darn near as good as B.B.’s Lucille. And Terry hit them thick ol’ Fender bass strangs right where they needed to be hit.

As for me, I just tried to keep up.

So. How did we celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of The Night the Music Lived?

How else?

We played “Not Fade Away.”

And for a few minutes, I could have sworn I heard them playing it in Clear Lake, too.

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A Few More Links:

“Fans Pack Surf Ballroom” (CMT.com, 2/3/09)

“La Bamba” jam at the Surf on 2/2/09 featuring Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys, Maria Elena Holly, and the Valens family.

Writer and musician Michael Hall visited Clear Lake and the Surf Ballroom for the Surf’s 60th Anniversary Concert in June 2008, and he wrote a terrific article about his trip for the February 2009 Texas Monthly.  He narrates an equally terrific slide show here.

Singer-songwriter Kevin Montgomery (son of songwriter-producer Bob Montgomery, who played with Buddy Holly in the “Buddy and Bob” duo) performed at the 2/2/09 “50 Winters Later” concert and has posted videos from the show . . . including interviews with Tommy Allsup and Maria Elena Holly.

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My 1991 novel Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede is now available for free reading and downloading from the front page at www.bradleydenton.net.  (It’s in four big pdf files, ranging from 75 to 87 MB.  I recommend 100% zoom.  Y’all let me know if something doesn’t work.)

It’s an actual toy.  The Playmobil Security Checkpoint*. Probably made to work with the Playmobil airport (now with extra delays and no in-flight meals!) and the Playmobil terrorist detaineecenter.

Actually, they do have a Playmobil Police Checkpoint and Playmobil Safe Crackers advertised on the same page.

I don’t know which is scarier.  The fact that this exists, or the fact that they’re charging $62 for the set.  I realize that Playmobil toys don’t come cheap, so maybe I shouldn’t fret about that.  But the fact that we’re now elevating All Fear All The Time to the same bracket as playing grocery or school makes me queasy.

But don’t just take my word for it.  The Customer Comments on this page are to die for.  Just note how many people have tagged the product under “Facism!”

*Found via Making Light

The new puppy has arrived. Click the pic for the full Flickr set.

I’ve been thinking a lot about internet snarkiness lately, and what I keep coming back to is that snark was a defense mechanism that evolved perfectly in the truth-deficient, cynicism-rich compost heap of the Bush era. [emphasis Steve’s] When most of everything that’s told to you is bullshit, it’s easier to treat everything with suspicion. Genuineness is met with skepticism. Enthusiasm with ridicule. Optimism with derision. It’s easier to keep things at arm’s distance that way - keep them where they can’t hurt you.

A Post-Snark Era?  From Enter the Octopus

You should also go see the picture of him fighting Darth Vader.

On a less satirical note, click the pic below to see an incredible interactive panorama of the swearing in.

Do try it the full screen option.

(Action figure seen at BoingBoing.  LDA sent me the link for the Obama-rama.)

And finally, seen from Janice Gelb, but we’re not sure who wrote it:

Dear World:

We, the United States of America , your top quality
supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy,
would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption
in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-
year service outage has been located, and the software
responsible was replaced November 4. Early tests of
the newly installed program indicate that we are now
operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully
functional on January 20. We apologize for any
inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward
to resuming full service and hope to improve in
years to come. We thank you for your patience and
understanding.

Sincerely,
The United States of America