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Five years and yet still no book. What a Dick!

Friends, Romans, Country Boys, lend me your ears. I don’t know quite what to do with them but I am certain I will find a use. Just keep your ear wax, you heah?

As you can see, I have nothing worth writing this afternoon. And, although that has not stopped me before I shall be brief here. That is, less than 500 words, or so I hope.

I thought I would update the writing project. What? You didn’t know I had a writing project? Why I do every day, or so. But other than hitting or missing here I have been continually on the path during the last four or five years of what some people call a “writing a book.” I just don’t know what I want to write a book about. That has been my problem for the last four or five years. That and medical problems. Those problems and financial problems. We’ve had hurricanes. A 32-hour-per-week job that is called “part-time.” And on and on.

I can say that this project will not be a work of fiction. Or for the most part that is. Or maybe it will be fiction that is based on truth. Or maybe it will be an epic poem. Or maybe it will be … Or maybe it will be. Hell. I don’t quite know still. I do have an idea, though it sounds kind of stupid. But perhaps Hemingway thought a fisherman’s obsessing over a large marlin was stupid. I don’t know. People have all sorts of stupid ideas.

My novel will need specific structure to succeed. It must be short. I mean really short. It should be so short that having finished this work might move even a village’s most accomplished nincompoop to boast of his bookish conquest.

My struggle with writing a book is probably my greatest conflict in life. Well, it is certainly one of those. I thought of passing along my idea in this blog. But why would I do that? What if it turns out to be an excellent idea that some smart but unscrupulous writer discovers? Then again, why would a smart writer be reading this blog? I’m just using a little self-deprecating humor there. I know I have smart readers. Especially those who continue to follow my work year after year.

Okay. That’s it for today. The next day I have off that I don’t have to visit a doctor, I will begin on my literary journey — once more with renewed purpose. I can see myself on Charlie Rose. Uh, on his PBS show, not on Charlie Rose himself, my heft sitting on his shoulders beating him upon the ribs shouting “Faster, faster, Rose, you old scoundrel!” Well, that just prevented me from ever appearing on the only interesting talk show to be broadcast these days. Plus, that sentence just kept me from all the rest of the TV shows. Why I couldn’t even get on Jerry Springer, I bet.

Enough grandiosity. I’ve yet to even write my first words. Well, okay, how about these?

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”

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Ad boys, ad boys, what’cha gonna do?

The eagerly-awaited season premiere of “Cops” — that is, eagerly awaited here in Beaumont, Texas — may just as easily been renamed “Ads.” You know, as in: “Ad boys, ad boys what’cha gonna do, what’cha gonna do when you bore us blue … ”

Spike TV’s long-running live police show, part-docudrama and part “reality” series, previewed last night with two of our local officers featured in what the Cops Website said was a 3-minute, 26-second, segment. Really? Because it seemed shorter than that. Maybe it was because the show was basically one long foot chase punctuated by TV commercial, after TV commercial, after TV commercial, etc., before the next short segment featured another department and its officers in some similar police situation.

I don’t know the officers who were on the segment last evening. At least, I don’t recall the officers. The fresh faces kind of all look the same to be truthful. I’m sure some folks said that about my fire academy classmates and me after we began riding those big red trucks. The only difference was that hair, at least some hair, was in vogue back in the day. The hairless dome look is popular these days, especially among the male police population. Not that I am complaining. I have the same look. The two policemen were engaging enough and didn’t smack the perp with a flashlight or Taze him once the “actor” was in custody.

Now I admit that I liked the opening scene for the Beaumont segment which starts with a shot of downtown from a view looking over the Neches River. The scene pans along the river and includes the 17-story Edison Plaza building, which if nothing else, will catch your eye when passing through town on Interstate 10.

The substance of the Beaumont Police segment was actually pretty tame all things considered. Actually, the city has enough mischief happening that might fill an hour-long program without the pesky commercials. Just in the last 24 hours, for instance, there were five people shot in three separate incidents. Luckily, at least according to media reports, none of the victims suffered “life-threatening” gunshot wounds. I have staked out way too many police scenes, and hardly does such a scene possess the minutes of action necessary for sustaining a docudrama such as Cops. For instance, the time when the police stopped me while walking to a local bar and then threatened to arrest me for walking on the wrong side of the road exhibited no real drama except for that which was going on inside my brain. I can sometimes lose my cool, I am told this stems from depression, and the results isn’t always pretty. Fortunately, I have always maintained my cool when faced with a situation that might result in that dreaded clanking of steel doors behind me.

I hope more scenes from our fair city are highlighted on Cops. It is nice to see familiar spots on TV even if they are populated by criminals. For my TV consumption, that is about the only way I would watch the show except perhaps adding sheer boredom as a reason. The problem with Cops is you’ve seen it all before. That is why it was finally dropped by Fox TV and now maintains a much lower presence beyond syndication. I mean, how many times can you watch some methed-up pendejo with his shirt off and his drawers showing?

And finally, commercials. I know a show must have commercials to survive. There is no doubt about this. But I would bet many, many viewers other than myself “go off” when six or seven ads are piggy-backed and the substance results in a top-heavy commercials-to-program ratio.

So I say good job to the Beaumont officers in the starring role on Cops. They didn’t embarrass out community nor themselves. And everyone made it home that day. Well, I don’t know about the fleet-footed perpetrator. But something tells me he didn’t spend a lot of time in the Jefferson County Correctional Facility.

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Paying tribute to a couple of Cowboys, one well known and another …

We lost a couple of much admired cowboys from our Southeast Texas area over the weekend.

O.A. “Bum” Phillips, best known as Houston Oilers head coach during it’s “Luv Ya Blue era,” died Friday. He was 90.

John Garner, 82, a Southeast Texas TV icon who played “Cowboy John” on the local “Circle 4 Club” from the late 1950s to 1972, died Sunday evening.

Phillips died on his ranch near Gonzales, Texas. He was probably was as well known for his cowboy hat and his homespun sayings as a grid iron genius. But many who loved the Oilers of the “Luv Ya Blue” era loved Phillips as well. The love for the ball club came to a screeching half when, Bum having been fired and hired by New Orleans, would soon see the Oilers moved by owner Bud Adams to Nashville. Adams, who coincidentally died today, was not as beloved by Houston fans as Phillips, to say the least

Certainly, not as many folks knew John Garner as Bum Phillips. But thousands from back in those days knew Cowboy John as well as John Garner the Channel 4 weatherman.

Perhaps Cowboy John indeed has a place in national TV lore. Although, if that is so, it is likely to be verified only by friends and relatives of the real John Garner. But it matters not from where the laughs and smiles we remember came from. In any event, goodnight Cowboy John, wherever you are.

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I can walk only so far from the insanity of Congress and the lockdown

Update: Cantor sounded optimistic, said Wolf. But why didn’t the GOP House members go outside to talk to the media instead of sneaking out the back door?

The gorgeous and not-so-hot day of early autumn has given me an added incentive to get outside and walk.

Walking is needed for my health and my sanity in normal times even though my health prevents me from those treks of a length I once enjoyed. I also find myself needing more walking in these maddening days of the government lockout. I call it a lockout and not “a partial shutdown” as some of the mealier-mouths in media have muttered simply because many of us government employees are locked out. I sit around in my tiny abode with little more to do than read what I find on the Web and what I can see on TV. Somehow it is though that everything I see or read takes me back to news of the lockout, which is in turn increasingly frustrating.

“If ands or buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas.” -- John Boehner, starring in "It Takes One To Know One,"
“If ands or buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas.” — John Boehner, starring in “It Takes One To Know One,”

Today’s big headline is that Speaker John Boehner and other top Republican House members will meet with President Obama later this afternoon and talk over the latest GOP proposal. Boehner wants Obama to agree to hike the debt ceiling for six weeks. Apparently, the Speaker has no provision for keeping the government open simultaneously. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, after repeated questions, sounded as if he found such a proposition absurd. However, some of the media and chowder talking heads seemed to interpret Carney’s remarks as indicating Obama might find such a proposal agreeable.

Whether my interpretation is right or not, I have to say that if an agreement was reached by the President temporarily hiking the debt ceiling with or without re-opening the government then Obama needs to have his head examined. Hell yeah, I want to go back to work. I want to get paid. If, in fact, I am ultimately paid unemployment it will be a very small amount. But the thought of traveling down this same crappy old road another six weeks depresses me to no end.

For God’s sake man, will government workers and veterans and the war dead’s spouses and kids have their money held up a week before Thanksgiving? Will we all go through once more in six weeks? I don’t know where you live but from where I come — Planet Earth — this is just plain insanity!

I just saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after a small presser say the six-week debt hike deal is a non-starter, that is what I thought I saw at least. I have also read that Boehner might be such a sweetie that he could go for the six-week deal with the government re-opening.

It’s driving me nuts, I tell you. Well, perhaps nuttier.

When this all will end, well, your guess is as good as mine. But I predict I will be taking more long walks in the immediate future.