Other: July 2009 Archives

Too hot to write long Contemplative thoughts today Instead: Haiku lite! Triple digit trip Me up triple digit trip Me up. Fucking heat. Barton Springs Night Swim is free but in this damn heat they could charge millions. Legal bare breasts catch The eyes of teen boys, old men And hungry babies.

With the beginning of football season finally in sight, fans looking to learn about what to expect are bombarded with a stream of lists and predictions. Too bad they're all bunk.

Two windows down, with an arm hanging out the driver’s side. Round about the roundabout on Riverside by Long. One ear has an iPod dripping down from it because the radio’s shot, but having both buds in place combines with the oppressive air temp and makes me feel too confined. Like a coffin of boiling music. A blazing cocoon of last year’s not-hot list. Tunes of was-hot which are no longer the now-hot that targets the aged and baby-like. So, so, so crippling, and the back of my seat is damp from my body’s tears.

The crowd at the World Swimming Championships in Rome saw more of University of Texas swimmer Ricky Berens than they bargained for Sunday. Berens' high-tech swimsuit tore down the back as he leaned down to stretch before the 4x100m freestyle relay. The Huffington Post has a gallery of the probably-NSFW photos.

With its announcement of the complete schedule for the upcoming season, the Texas men's basketball team left little to be desired, as the calendar includes dates with three of 2009's four national semifinalists.

After a seemingly endless hiatus, marked by the memory of a successful yet dissatisfactory conclusion to the 2008 campaign, football is once again in the air.

A couple of weeks ago Warren and I went to see the movie Moon, sort of a thematic mash-up of that old classic Gaslight meets the Disney flick Parent Trap meets Castaway with a dash of A Boy and His Dog thrown in and some sub-themes that might’ve been derived from Bowie’s Major Tom and Elton’s Rocket Man. That I was able to gather all this from the film is a testament to my ability to multi-task. While it’s true I sometimes purposefully multi-task in the theater—yes, I can knit in the dark—in this case I found myself unintentionally and unhappily tri-tasking. Because the couple sitting next to us WOULD NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP.

It turns out the person behind the Great Aggie Locker Room Caper isn't a Longhorn after all. Police used surveillance tape to nab the person who broke into the Texas A&M football complex this week, stealing equipment and leaving behind the message, "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" written in athletic tape.

When Lance Armstrong all but conceded a Tour de France victory to teammate Alberto Contador after Sunday's mountain stage, reaction was divided into the two camps that follow most any news about Armstrong: those offering unconditional support and those ready to slice him up with cutting opinions.

The Drive-By Professor talks wise in your ear on philosophy, art, science, and other non-profitable acts of genius. The declarations voiced by The DBP do not reflect those of anyone else in the Ist network. While The Orchid Thief, a fascinating effort in personal journalism, probably is best known as the inspiration for Charlie Kaufman's book-mutilating film Adaptation, Susan Orlean's study of orchid obsession covers everything from mid-century Florida land-scams to irresponsible adventuring to the seedy underbelly of plant collecting to the complexities of botany, hybridization, and cloning. Citing the orchid as evolution's most prized plant (orchids do not self-pollinate, thus requiring them to adapt especially crazily to their environment so as to avoid extinction), perhaps the most notable acclaim I can give this sometimes-meandering book is that, after all, it was captivating enough to get a dude to read 300 pages about flowers.

Beginning on July 22, you can use your credit or debit card to pay for on-street parking. Pay stations will appear first on Congress Avenue, with all 3,800 meters replaced by Thanksgiving. Each pay station will replace 8-11 meters.

Years ago I appeared in Mademoiselle magazine as one of those Before/After Fat/Skinny chicks that are constantly featured in women’s magazines. You know what I’m talking about—articles supposedly published to be all motivational for the fatties who dream of achieving that anorexic look we chicks have shoved down our gullets from the moment we wriggle our way out of the bloated, ruined, stretch-marked bellies of our mamas. Probably those articles are more about feeding what is, so often, an ongoing impossible dream. Because while achieving the look turns out not to be impossible for some of us, even those of us who manage to work our way back into our pre-adolescent jeans’ size have a hard time keeping it off. This is, of course, why diet books and pills, personal trainers, pre-packaged meals, gadgets like the Thigh Master, and programs like Weight Watchers do so well. It’s a perpetual thing, the yo-yo lifestyle. I’ve probably lost close to 200 pounds in my life. Now, I did not ever lose a grand total of 200 pounds. But I have, more than once, lost somewhere around fifty pounds at a time. If you want to know what lugging around an extra fifty pounds feels like, pick up a bag of soil next time you’re at Home Depot. Fifty pounds, particularly on the frame of someone who is 5’5” (as I am), is roughly a fuck ton of excess.

It’s been too long since we last spoke to one another, in earnest. Too much has been going down for so much distance to have rifted betwixt our talking parts. The parts that used to have coffee at Bouldin every Saturday morning. Avocado margaritas at Curra’s every Sunday. The Austin I used to get in slap fights with in the alley back behind The Ritz.

People, we need to talk about food some more. Awhile back I was discussing my addiction to food memoirs, particularly in the audiobook format. The past couple of weeks—as if purposefully trading in soft creamy brie spread across hot crusty French bread for Dickensian gruel—I swapped out those delicious bits of ear candy for more somber audio food fare. Which is to say I listened to The Omnivore’s Dilemma and currently am in the midst of The End of Overeating. Those books have left me with enough food for thought to merit a two-part series. I’m going to save the grimmer news for Part II—next week. For now, I’m going to tell you about the positive upshot of taking in exposes on the industry of food. Months ago, even before I checked out the books, I’d already made a note to myself on my Goals For 2009 list to eat better and more local foods.

Google's pending settlement with authors and publishers groups will make more books from University of Texas libraries available online.

Third Base Sports Bar is teaming up with the Lance Armstrong Foundation for a benefit viewing of the Tour de France on Tuesday.

Highlights from the week of June 29.