War of the Worlds. It's here. The pre-opening publicity is over. Somebody kill Tom's mike. Please.
So far this year we've survived Michael Jackson, Revenge of the Sith and the Miss America television crisis.
Miss America? Yep, the pageant people worked out a TV broadcast deal with cable's Country Music Television channel. Is that match or what? Maybe the Hallmark Channel would have worked, too.
It might be interesting, though, to see the Miss America Pageant hosted by Toby ("I Love This Bar") Keith and Gretchen Wilson. Why, her song "Here for the Party" seems to have been written specifically for the Miss America Scholarship Pageant. Consider these lines from chorus:
"You know I'm here for the party
And I ain't leavin' till they throw me out"
and
"I may not be a 10 but the boys say I clean up good."
By golly, maybe pageant baton twirling will even make a comeback!
CHRISTMAS? It must be coming soon. My latest TV Guide has an ad for "The First Annual Yorkie Christmas Ornament." The Yorkie, in a sleigh, is characterized as "Santa's Helper." It's a $19.95 ornament. Thank you, Danbury Mint. And Happy Holidays. (Too late to order the First Annual Fourth of July Uncle Samoyed Ornament.)
ART FOR ART'S SAKE: I don't know who Art is. This picture is what folks in newspage layout call a "piece of art." In this case, it really may be art. Note the composition of the photo -- a gentle bit of nature against a harsh background at an odd angle.
Can you tell what it is? I'm torn. Do I get you to guess, or do I just confess?
OK, here's the story. This is a photo of our dog Annie's tail. I photographed it Tuesday as she law sprawled across the back of the couch awaiting the arrival of the daily mail.
Annie's mom is an Aussie and Annie's father is not. Her mom's tail is, naturally, about 4 inches long. Her father may be Davy Crockett's old coonskin cap.
Martha should never have given me a digital camera and taught me how to download photos. I am a menace.
TUESDAY NIGHT: We got to see the newlyweds, Bret and Andrea, in town for some sort of business deal at the Dallas Convention Center. The rendezvous spot was the El Fenix next to Woodall Rodgers Freeway. The topics were limited only by time and manners.
Speaking of manners, we chuckled at the tale of the mannerless iguana. In Playa del Carmen, as honeymooning Andrea and Bret lunched in beachside chairs, a 3-foot long iguana dashed up and nabbed Andrea's chicken salad sandwich. Imagine a 3-foot-long iguana with a sandwich in his mouth sprinting down a beach! Yes, the favorite iguana treat: chicken salad to go.
(Aside: These kids today. Martha and I honeymooned with a road trip to the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo. Oh, yeah, and a visit to the meteor crater at Winslow, Ariz., and the Grand Canyon, too. But no beach, no iguana. Road grit and desert lizards, maybe. And unless gasoline drops 75 cents a gallon, we've seen the Grand Canyon for the last time.)
Back to the newlyweds: We also discussed Bret's attire for his golf match on Monday in Fort Worth.
When someone steps up to the tee and "really rips it," this usually means he's swatted the ball to the other side of the planet. In this case, when Bret "really ripped it," he rent asunder some critical seams and, perhaps, one might say, went beyond the planet to expose the moon.
At one point, he says, he went to the trunk of his car and pulled out some baseball bat handle tape and tried to tape his pants seams into a less revealing configuration. The tape didn't make it 18 holes, so his pants turned out to be more revealing than a politician's secret diary in the hands of a scorned sweetheart.
Anyway, the topic of animals came up at some point. Andrea and Bret, upon wedding, had merged their "children." Bret brought a big black cat to the household -- that's the robust George W. Andrea brought two Great Danes, Frog and Henry.
I can't remember exactly what sparked this line from Andrea, but it is full of wisdom and truth. She said, "You can't move into any place and call it 'home' if your dogs aren't there."
I can't remember the context of that sentence, but I remember the spirit of it and it's a great sentiment. And today, I think, she's shopping for new golf pants for Bret. And a roll of "Big & Tall Duct Tape."
THE BIG BOOK SALE: For many years I have written about the American Association of University Women-Arlington Branch Book Fair. Thus, for many years my literatespouse Martha and I have packed up handfuls of money and driven from Oak Cliff to Arlington to buy boxes and boxes of better-than-half-price books. Some of them we "needed," some we "could use" and some we "might need someday." I know that some of you have this same habit. It's a habit you don't want to kick.
We're already setting aside our 2005 Book Fair Budget and we're trying to figure out how to add book shelves in a house that has no more shelf space!
Put this on your calendar: The 23rd fair is scheduled Oct. 27-29. More details later.
FYI, my longtime book fair tipster Diane Feldman has a tortoise shell kitty named for my funspouse, Martha. Diane says Martha the Newcomer Kitty is still working out boundaries with longtime resident, Mollie the Calico, but things are progressing. Diane writes, "Martha is fearless and often jumps (flies) from a shelf one foot below my kitchen ceiling to the top of my computer printer, landing with a thud. It's nice having something to blame my typos on."
I haven't mentioned this to Diane, but, to my thinking, the feline Martha is EXACTLY like the human Martha: taking great leaps and landing with a thud. I also haven't mentioned that to Martha whose next "thud" may be the sound of a blunt object striking a husband's noggin.
The Arlington Branch has a real charitable heart, by the way. The membership arranges scholarships for women and supports other programs that help women.
The Branch values education -- some day maybe the rest of the country will value education, too.
I hate to bring that up when the Texas Legislature is in session trying to figure out how to throw more and more money at a problem that can be solved with adhering to tried-and-true education methods rather than turning campuses into experimental labs and children into guinea pigs.
Anybody else remember "the new math" of the early 1960s? One plus one equals bitter, as I recall.
