High Plains Panhandler

Catwoman

A friend of mine had a free ticket for a screening of Catwoman and asked if I wanted to go. Well, free is free, and you got a bag of popcorn and a Coke to boot, so I said sure and met him at the theater at seven.

Most of the time I don't understand the Hollywood culture machine. I've been to L.A. many times, and every time I leave, I'm confused, bewildered, and, oddly, tanned. This time, though, I'm really confused because Catwoman was awful. I don't mean awful as in awfully good or awfully entertaining. I mean awful. Terrible. Horrible. Stick me in the eye with a flaming toothbrush bad.

Apparently Halle Berry, who has in a past life won an Academy Award, runs afoul of some nasty beauty cream evildoers, almost dies, an is resurrected by a gang of garbage cats who breathe cat powers into her lungs. She then trades in her life as a lowly beauty cream graphic artist and becomes Catwoman, which means she perches on her furniture, prowls around her apartment, eat a lot of tuna, and uses her new cat strength to kick down doors of loud neighbors. I didn't understand the strength bit. We used to have a cat and the only thing strong about him was the smell from the chunks of litterbox sculpture that he would leave for us every day.

As Catwoman, our hero decides on a new look and does a little Edward Scissorhands maneuver on her head. She chops off most of her hair and ends up with hair exactly like I have when I wake up in the morning. Trust me, this is not superhero hair. It's a far cry from it.

Catwoman has a funky walk. She walks with that chest-jutting, shoulder-pointing, you-want-fries-with-that-shake gait. She also wears heels, which must come in handy while fighting crime. Her head keeps jerking side to side, supposedly cat-like, but it really looks like she's being electrocuted every few seconds.

Her cat abilities let her climb up walls and jump to second story windows. She scurries around vertical surfaces as if she's Roachwoman and not Catwoman. And she uses a whip, which I found strange. Would a cat-o'-nine-tails be better for her?

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Catwoman (now using her secret identity) and a police detective (who detects all sorts of crime including robberies and murder; it's as if he's the only one on the job during this movie) are walking together and it starts to rain. Catwoman grabs the detective's hand and runs for cover. "I hate the rain," she says (because, I reckon, cats hate getting wet - that's a stretch but I think that's what she's meaning). This is when I really, really wanted the detective to say: "Yeah, I guess you hate showers too 'cause you stink sistah." This is keeping her in character. I don't think Catwoman takes too many baths. And if she bathes like cats normally do . . . well, that's a different kind of movie.

There are so many things wrong with this movie, so many things offensive to even the most casual movie-watcher, that writer's cramp will prevent me from jotting them all down. Pitof, the mysterious director with one name, wouldn't stop moving the camera. Up and down, through reflections, twisting, turning. Just stop it! And changing the focus so it feels like the audience has cataracts, well, that annoyed me enough that I actually think I wanted to murder someone.

After the movie, my friend said, "Aren't you glad you didn't pay money for that?" And all I could say was: "ME-OW! I want a two hour refund."

You know, sometimes free is free and sometimes free is too much.

A Boot to the Head

I was riding my bicycle a couple of weeks ago when an idiot (quantifiable by test scores, I'm sure) nailed me in the head with a large plastic bottle half-filled with water. Now I've had people yell unintelligible things at me, honk, and make all sorts of rude gestures while I was riding. One time a couple of surly looking guys pulled up next to me at a light and the driver looked at me and dragged his finger across his throat. I took this to mean something insidious.

At no time, though, had someone actually hit me. So when the bottle whacked my head it caught me by surprise. I barely stayed on my bike and watched the car fly past me, someone's middle finger sticking out of the passenger window.

So I did what any other respectable bike rider would have done. I pedaled hard and chased them, completely not thinking through what I was going to do when I caught them. Chastise them with a strongly worded reprimand? Squirt them with water? Scratch their car with the clip on the bottom of my shoe?

No, I did what I knew I could. I got their license number.

When I got home I called a friend of mine who's a prosecutor in town. He told me to call the police because this was assault. So the police came by the house later and asked me some questions, wrote some notes down on a small piece of paper, and told me they'd be in touch.

I didn't have high hopes for any action, but a few days later a detective called and told me they found the car and talked to the driver. The driver admitted that he threw the bottle, but he didn't mean to hit me with it. He was simply littering. And I bet he was just chasing away a bug when he gave me the finger.

The detective asked if I wanted to press charges, and I said yes. For a small, insignificant second I thought that maybe this guy had learned his lesson. After all, it's intimidating when the police show up with their jangling belts full of ammunition and handcuffs. Maybe, I thought, that had been enough to scare him, and my job would be done. But I thought better of that quickly. Municipal Court, here we come.

The reason I'm really angry about this is because there are many people in Amarillo who are trying to make this town a good place to live. It takes a lot of work, but we don't volunteer because of the work. It's because of what comes out of the work. Unfortunately, so much can be destroyed by a careless word, a stupid deed, or a idiot throwing a bottle from a car. That's what bugs me the most.

That, and I could have been killed. But I try not to think about that part too much.

Invasion

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are brave. They just finished a three week mega trip driving around the southwest and dropping into all sorts of exotic national parks. They're brave because they decided that a nice conclusion to their trip would be to swing by Amarillo and stay for a few days.

Here's the thing about them: they have three kids - seven, five, and two years old. That means that our house had the Brady Bunch worthy kid population of ages eight, seven, six, five, three, and two years old. That's almost a NASA countdown.

That's why they're brave. It takes a certain kind of person to say to themselves, "Let's create a tornadic storm of frenzied sugar-boosted non-stop activity and see if we survive."

Of course, everyone survived because they've got a great family (and I say that fully realizing that my sister-in-law is reading this and I fear her punches). It was a blast having them here, and although Amarillo isn't quite the hotspot of Things To Do, I think everyone made out just fine. We even had doughnuts one day and no one exploded from the sugar rush. That, in itself, is a small miracle.

My brother-in-law, Mark, is a marathon runner, so we went out for a run one morning. Let me correct that. He went running. I observed from the comfort of my recumbent bike, because, simply, I enjoy comfort. I wanted to show him that we had a couple of hills a few miles from our house. (Most people think that Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle are flat, but that's not true. Amarillo is unobscured. There's not much to ruin the view between you and, say, Canada. But there are hills, steep nasty things erupting out of the canyons around here. We live on a caprock, which I think means the cap of a rock, or, in Latin, a rock's cap. Once you leave the caprock heading south it gets very flat with stretches of very long, neverending roads.)

So I rode and he ran and after about 14 or so miles we got back home. Let me stress this: 14 miles. Running. No coasting downhill. Just running. 14 miles.

I can't fathom that. If my nose runs I get shin splints. (I have been blessed with enormously flat feet, the kind that make suction cup noises on linoleum. So running for me is similar to jogging in swim fins for normal people. I can pick up a tennis ball with my toes though. At least that's something.) Yet there went Mark, running a wicked pace yard after yard, up and down my show-off hills. He looked like he sweated once, but I think that was from a sprinkler in someone's yard.

Karen, my sister-in-law, is fortunately not a marathon runner. If she were I would feel depressed that all I do is toodle around on my bike and listen to my iPod instead of running a thousand miles a week. I set Karen up with iMovie so she could polish a quick video edit or their trip so far. I helped her out a little bit, but as much as she was cramming in the work to get it done, they had to leave town before the final cut. I told her I'd finish it up, which is a dangerous offer. I need to wear a monocle and peer through a little rectangle made from my fingers. Then I'll be ready to direct. I'm thinking their vacation movie needs spaceships, baby. Spaceships and robots.

Mark and Karen and their kids are the kind of family that self-loathing neighbors might think: "they are so perfect and happy. We must hate them." You know the kind of neighbors I mean. You might not have them on your block, but we've had them on ours. Oh brother, did we ever.

Mark fixed our sink and one of our toilets while he was here. He even went to the hardware store to get the right tools. I've never fixed their toilet but I have left their house in a toy-strewn mess. That's the kind of crummy brother-in-law I am. I'm from the 'jiggle the handle' school of toilet repair philosophy. Jiggle it enough and it'll stop whatever it's doing.

We're all glad they came by. Their kids were great. Our kids we very happy and excited to see them. I disappointed Andrew, my nephew, though, because we ran out of time for a special extra little magic trick I had for him. I had once disappointed by nieces by goofing up their Flat Stanley project (oh, did I have a great idea for that one!), and I don't think they've ever forgiven me. I'd hate to be on the same list for Andrew.

I hope the rest of their trip back home went well. It's still about 10 hours from here to Houston, plenty of time for extra adventures and mishaps.

I just hope Mark resisted the temptation to fix anyone else's plumbing on the way home.

Vacation 2004

For the first hour or so of vacation I have the audacity and egoism to think that the world back at work is going to fall apart without me, and that I should really keep my cell phone close by just in case. Then a couple of hours pass, the lazy plains of the Texas Panhandle start changing as we wind our way south, and I start realizing that it's going to be fine back at work. A little bit after that, before lunch, a thought pops into my head: why don't I just stay on vacation? They won't miss me back at work. They probably don't even know I'm gone.

That's the thing about vacations. It just takes a little bit of time until the realization soaks into my brain that I could be on permanent vacation and love it. That's why I must figure out how to become independently and fantastically wealthy so we can all travel wherever on whatever whim strikes us. It'd also be nice to have a robot manservant and a hovercraft, but that's another story.

We spent the first day driving to New Braunfels, Texas for my brother-in-law's wedding. New Braunfels is a small town close to San Antonio. It sits on the Guadalupe river and is the source of all things tubing, floating, and other watery fun. It's very pretty in that part of Texas, and it's radically different than the panhandle, where our rivers have the width of a bicycle tire and the depth of a Charlie's Angels movie.

It was a nice wedding, held outside under a beautiful canopy. Megan was a flower girl (she had practiced scattering pretend flowers the entire week before to make sure she was going to do it okay). Afterward the reception was held a few feet away under a few more tents; it had been raining on and on for the past few days, so we were all afraid the wedding would be washed out, but it ended up being a wonderful night.

We had magnificent plans to take the kids to Schlitterbahn, a gigantic waterpark in New Braunfels, the next day, but the rain conspired against us so we kept to the hotel, declaring domain over the swimming pool and sauna and frightening away any other hotel guests that might want to take a quick dip. Even though these couple of days were lazy and drenched, they went by quickly, and in no time we dropping off Colleen, Megan, and Alex with my very kind and insane brother-in-law and sister-in-law in Austin, who had said they'd look after our kids for a few days while Suzanne and I headed for the hill country for a mini-vacation. I say they are insane because they already had four kids of their own, and even though math is hard, four kids plus three kids equals a whole lotta craziness.

The night before Suzanne and I left, Alex had some trouble sleeping on Scott's (my seven-year-old nephew) floor. Alex wanted to be with the girls, and since it was his first night in a strange place, I understood his anxiety. So I stayed in Scott's room with Alex. The three of us talked for a little and then we decided to set up a Dudes' Club (Scott, alas, has three sisters, so no good dude material there). I couldn't really think of what a Dudes' Club meeting might be like, but I figured that since we had a quorum, we should start taking about ninjas. That never fails to be a good dude topic. (A few days later, when we picked the kids up, Scott told me he had been working on a Dudes' Club secret handshake, which looked suspiciously like he was smoking pretend marijuana and then passing it around. This was, of course, a disagreeable Dude handshake, which should really consist of something ending with a thumbs up and not a puff of smoke.)

Suzanne and I drove to Fredericksburg, a small German town in the Texas hill country about an hour and a half from Austin. On our way, we stopped at Pedernales State Park to see the waterfalls. Since it had been raining for the past week, the Pedernales river was pretty high, so when we checked in the ranger told us we shouldn't have any "interaction" with the water. I guess this means don't swim. Once we saw the river we understood that swimming wasn't a good idea. The river looked like churning chocolate. It certainly was different than when Suzanne and I were there 12 years ago when the water wasn't nearly as angry and a couple of naked people were lying on a rock in the middle of the river.

When we finally arrived in Fredericksburg, we were surprised at how swanky it had become. The line of shops on main street used to sell simple crafts, most of them quaint and potholderish; they all had the feel that the same 104 year old lady had knitted and stitched everything herself. Now it looked as if everyone had expanded into wine making, jewelry, or antique furniture. One antique store had a beautiful round dining table for sale by its front door. I checked the price. $5,500! That's a table you don't serve spaghetti on. And as for crayons? Forget it. Not even with a lead table cloth.

We stayed in a Bed and Breakfast run by a friendly woman who is an animal loving dyslectic poet who had named one of her cats Itty Bitty Kitty With A Big Fat Titty, a name that conjures up a disturbing feline image.

The neverending rain prevented us from going to Enchanted Rock State Park (my favorite park in Texas), so we walked around town for a bit and settled in back at the room with a video of Secondhand Lions, a movie made for a rainy night at a bed and breakfast.

We made it to San Antonio the next day where the rain forced us to a theater. We made it just in time for Fahrenheit 9/11, which I thought was a very good movie (incidentally, I've talked to many people who have a few macho gripes and critiques of the film, but none of those people have seen it. That really bothers me. I'd recommend you see it, if not out of partisanship, than out of curiosity. Then we can have a discussion. If you want to argue about something that you haven't read, seen, or lived, I'm not interested). Afterward we checked into our hotel, the historic Menger hotel, which is right next to the Alamo. The Menger was built in 1859, and I can tell you right now that our room's mattress was made in 1860, chiseled out of granite and unforgiving to anyone but the dead.

Austin took up part of our last day. We had an amazing dinner at a restaurant called Wink. The hostess said she recognized me, but I am forbidden from using my old standby "I'm the star of several major motion pictures," so I simply looked at her stupidly. A couple of house payments later we said goodbye to the chef, our waiter, and the hostess and wandered back to our hotel. We were staying at the The Driskell, which is a wonderful hob-nobby place with beautiful art and gorgeous rooms. Walking down the hallway to our room I kept thinking: "This place has got to be haunted." But, alas, we ran into no ghosts of Jim Bowie or Sam Houston. In fact, it was kind of hard to even find the ice machine.

We picked up the kids the next morning from my sister-in-law who, for watching everyone with no loss of life, either deserves a medal or heavy-duty medication. Then we drove back, 12 hours, to Amarillo, the kids gloriously hypnotized by our new ceiling DVD player that we had installed before the trip.

Then, like a puff of air, that was it. We were back home, back to lawn mowing, back to laundry, back to errands and groceries and reruns, back to the heat and cloudless skies of the long, unobscured Texas Panhandle.

And back to work.

Then again, if I stay away, maybe they won't even know if I'm gone.