Eight Feet Deep

CIA chief Porter Goss has an “excellent” idea where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but he won’t say where or when he will be caught. In an interview with Time magazine’s Web site, Goss said:

“In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links. And I find that until we strengthen all the links, we’re probably not going to be able to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice. … “

“Excellent,” as Bill and Ted (played by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves)would say. I have an excellent idea where bin Laden isn’t. He isn’t in U.S. custody, at least not that we know. So just how many weak links do we have to wrap up before we catch Osama? One, two, an entire sleeper cell? And who is the weakest link? And will that crappy TV show be revived?

A lot of questions remain yet to be answered. Personally, I think Osama is alive and living in a certain small Texas town which I will not name. I have the excellent idea that bin Laden is running a convenience store in that town, which by the way, is an excellent convenience store in an excellent little town.

So I don’t know how much stock I would put into Goss’ excellent wild ass guess that he knows where bin Laden may be. Because if the greatest military machine on earth has yet to find him then he may well be hiding out in that excellent little Texas town instead of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

And that wouldn’t be very excellent.

Isn’t it time you elected a dead man for governor?

In the ever-disappointing pre-run up for the Texas governor’s race I just don’t see anyone on the horizon that makes me want to get up in the morning and raise the Texas flag.

“Adios Mofo?” Did Rick Perry really say that on a television interview? He’s even more of an idiot than I thought.

I think, though, I have someone all Texans can get behind. Sam Houston. Yes. That Sam Houston. The same Sam Houston who defeated Santa Ana at San Jacinto. The same Sam Houston who was a friend of the Cherokees who called him “The Big Drunk.” The same Sam Houston who was the second and fourth Republic of Texas president, and was booted out as governor when he wanted Texas to remain a part of the union prior to the Civil War. Yes, yes, yes. The absolutely 100 percent dead Sam Houston.

It would not be unprecedented to elect a dead man as governor. It happened a few years ago when they re-elected Mel Carnahan as governor in Missouri after he was killed in a plane crash. I don’t think a dead person has been elected governor of Texas, at least anyone clinically dead.

I don’t know that the Texas Constitution allows electing a dead governor. But considering that the constitution has been amended more times than Michael Jackson’s nose there remains a good possibility that a “Draft Sam” movement might just be fruitful. After all, a good many Texas politicians (Lyndon B. Johnson for one) owe their office to all those dead people who elected them. Turnabout is fair play, so they say.

The state could really save a lot of money with Sam Houston as governor. He couldn’t endorse his paycheck. He would not be able to call special sessions of the legislature and run up millions in costs to the state’s taxpayers. He couldn’t even appoint anyone to boards and commissions. Just think how much money that would save?

It’s not a done deal that I’m going to come out for Big Sam (who by the way already has a huge statue on Interstate 45 south of Huntsville, so we wouldn’t have to build one of those) as my candidate for governor. I’m still thinking about Austin street person Leslie Cochran. But as it stands now it’s between Big Sam and Leslie.

I’ve been hearing a lot of advertising for Saturday’s Rock Fest ’77 at Ford Park here in Beaumont, Texas. A number of cover bands will be playing Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, etc., and people are encouraged to dress in 70s attire since the event is being filmed for a movie. The real “throwback,” according to the advertisement I heard this afternoon on the radio, is the price for the event of $15.

Now I must admit, $15 to see any show these days isn’t all that bad. But I don’t know about $15 being a 70s-style concert price. I seem to remember paying something like $4 to see my first concert, when Creedence Clearwater Revival played in the old Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston in the early 70s. I distinctly remember paying $6 for some other shows, although I only recall the price along with maybe the band’s name and where they played. Everything else is a little fuzzy.

If I were to dress in 70s garb I would have to go buy it. I did have a couple of my old Navy uniforms that I wore in the mid-1970s until I recently purged them along with tons of other packratta that needed to just go away. I didn’t even attempt to try on those uniforms. I don’t know, it’s just seems a waste of time when you know it’s not going to fit. I think I learned that in the O.J. case.

The thing is, I can’t recall too many features that set clothes that I wore in the 70s apart from what I wear today. I do admit to wearing some authentic 70s attire while in high school, the bell bottoms with deep cuffs and off-the-ground shoes. And polyester? Bad stuff happens with that around flames so I tried to avoid it like an STD.

Maybe I need to go to that show just to find out how stupidly I may have dressed back then. Maybe not.

I found this outside El Rincon de Villa restaurant on Greenville Avenue in Dallas. God knows what these people were thinking.

I watched most of the 1972 Clint Eastwood movie “Joe Kidd” on Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t seen it in who knows how long. Something that struck me in particular about this film was a scene in which all these Mexicans who were riding horses wore those big sombreros. You know the kind, they are usually gaudy and big enough to provide shade for a family of four people.

It had not really occurred to me before that probably every Western movie ever made that featured folks who were supposed to be Mexicans wore those double-wide hats. I don’t know if they really were worn a lot back in the old days. I am ignorant about a lot of Mexican culture. I have seen old pictures of vaqueros. In some photos they wore regular cowboy hats and in others they wore the taller and wider sombrero. These hats were not like the ridiculously large ones you see such as those in “The Three Amigos.” But whether Mexican cowboys wore such hats or not, at some point in time the hats became stereotypical. Perhaps even in SurroundSound. That was just only part of the stereotype in movies. Some were what I consider now to be rather culturally incorrect, if not racist.

But you got to love those wide old sombreros. I mean you’re a walking tree wearing that thing. There have been many times I could have used a Mexican sombrero. In the Texas heat this summer would be a good example.

The hats do pose a couple of problems. First, I drive a small Toyota pickup truck and there would be no way I could wear the hat while driving. I have a wide-brim straw hat and I can’t even wear it and drive. I perhaps could set the sombrero on the truck seat if no one else was sitting in it but it still would be a tight fit. Of course, I could always place the hat in the bed of the pickup but it would be vulnerable to wind blowing it away.

I need a sombrero but one is really impractical for me, I suppose. But now that I think about it, I wonder what reaction a driver might have seeing a big ol’ sombrero coming out from nowhere and flying toward them? Would the driver wreck? Would he or she curse en Espanol? Would they catch it, stop and do the Mexican hat dance around it?

So many things to ponder in this world and so little time.