Marco Polo & Screaming Kids

What is the deal with kids in a swimming pool screaming "Marco Polo" back and forth at each other?

I first experienced this about 10 years ago at a horrible Six Motel in a dismal border town in Arizona, called Douglas. The Six Motel sat next to a former motel that had been converted into a makeshift prison, surrounded by concertina wire. I think a lot of the people staying at the rundown Six Motel were staying there so they could visit inmates next door.

I could not hear the kids in the pool from my room. But as soon as I opened the motel room's door I started hearing Marco Polo being yelled back and forth. I walked by the pool and watched and listened from above. There seemed to be no point, besides taking turns screaming Marco Polo.

Move forward a decade. I'm around a lot of swimming pools in Texas. I've heard a lot of Marco Poloing. About 5 years into my Texas exile I was told there is some sort of legit Marco Polo game played in swimming pools. A sort of waterborne version of tag. However, I've never seen this actually played.

All I've ever heard and seen is kids screaming Marco Polo back and forth at each other for no noticeable game purpose. I figure at some point in time some kids somewhere saw some kids playing the actual Marco Polo game, but didn't understand it. So they morphed the game into just screaming Marco Polo back and forth til they get bored with it. And then other kids saw those kids doing that and did that themselves.

Who knows how far this aberrant behavior has now spread. It needs to stop.

Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale Disappearing?

In the past week or so I've noticed a steep decline in the amount of propaganda being spewed by Chesapeake Energy. For months it has seemed you could not go through a day without getting multiple messages in multiple forms attempting to convince us that Barnett Shale and Chesapeake Energy are the most wonderful thing to ever bless long blessed Texas.

Yesterday, as I sat outside enjoying the ultra blue sky and the ultra white clouds, I saw at least 6 buses go by. Not a single one was plastered with a Barnett Shale message. Previously it seemed like one out of every two buses said something like "The Children of Texas Thank You Barnett Shale."

I have not seen Tommy Lee Jones on my TV all week long doing his shilling for the Barnett Shale. Yesterday, I noticed the Tommy Lee Jones Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale billboard I'd taken a photo of weeks ago is now gone. So are the other Chesapeake Energy billboards on the section of I-30 I drive regularly. There has not been a full page Chesapeake Energy ad in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram since last week's rather odd one featuring Tommy Lee Jones saying "Texans can live with industry. We always have."

I wonder how many dollars Chesapeake Energy has spent on its propaganda campaign? Those bus signs can't be cheap. I imagine Tommy Lee Jones charges a hefty fee to be a propaganda tool. Billboards are expensive. And then there are those TV ads. I wonder why Chesapeake Energy feels they need to try so hard to convince Texans that drilling into the Barnett Shale is such a good thing?

If we all agree that we all love what Chesapeake Energy is doing to the Barnett Shale, could Chesapeake Energy stop throwing money away on ads and instead, maybe, hold a weekly free beer party in the Fort Worth Stockyards? Now, that'd be the way to win the hearts and minds of Texans.

The Bluest Skies I've Ever Seen In Texas

I don't know what happened. We had had no storm blow through. It wasn't windy. But for some reason the air in the D/FW Metroplex appeared to be totally devoid of any pollution on Saturday.

Looking out the window, this morning, it appears Sunday's air is totally clear too.

That's the balcony view in the photos. The super white clouds and the extra blue sky made for good Texas scenery yesterday.

Of late, we've been under High Ozone Alerts. Supposedly this type air is dangerous to little kids, the elderly and those with respiratory problems. Of those categories, the only one I come close to is the elderly one. I've never actually been troubled by air pollution here. It's never been a bad thing, like being in Los Angeles and having the pollution sting my eyes.

The only jarring thing I saw in the sky yesterday was the weekly fly-by of a giant sign being tugged through the air by a little airplane, apparently trying to motivate me to go to something called Huggins to buy a car.

Tattoo Granny Revolting Reaction

Last month I blogged about a front page story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about a tattoo covered granny who calls herself Miss Dixie. I did not focus on the Star-Telegram's making this a front page story. My focus was on this granny's bizarre, in my opinion, behavior.

Well. A couple days ago there were a pair of letters to the editor that took issue with the Star-Telegram's bad judgement in putting this story on the front page.

Letter to the Editor #1---------

Furthermore...

I like newspapers. I grew up around newspapers. I’ve written for newspapers. Some of my best friends work for newspapers. But I’ve never seen a more unseemly and unprofessional front page than that on June 21 featuring a large color photo of a woman’s tattooed back and arms. And you wonder why revenues are down?

— Bruce Rider, Grapevine

Letter to the Editor #2---------

Lots of ink

I looked at the front page of the June 21 Star-Telegram and couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a large picture of a woman covered by tattoos over her whole body. The story said that her mother died of cancer when she was 47 and she had a small tattoo put on her in remembrance of her mother. I do not find fault with this, as a small tattoo on someone’s body does not upset me.

However, I can’t stand to see all these ballplayers covered with them — and especially not this woman, Shirley “Miss Dixie” Hammond. She does not have a spot left on her body except for her face, which will probably be next.

Using two types of cancer and family trauma is not an excuse. I suffered from three types of cancer for 10 years and have now been free of it for 10 years. I did not get one tattoo to get me over this cancer and the traumas I have had in my 76 years.

These tattoos kept her out of la-la land and alive and happy? Her psychiatrist said it’s because she is paranoid. Yes, he is right. Her disorder is characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur, often strenuously defended with apparent logic and reason.

These tattoos over her body did not keep her out of la-la land but put her in it very deeply. It was a very bad article for our young and upcoming generations.

— Don Vouky, Arlington

Texas Not In Top Ten Fattest States

I was shocked to learn today that something called CalorieLab used something called the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System database to determine the 50 states obesity levels, so as to rank them from Fattest to Leanest.

It is not too shocking that states in the West and New England ranked lighter, while the South and the Rust Belt ranked heavier.

Mississippi has been the fattest state for three years in a row. And Texas isn't in the Top Ten. Texas is the 15th Fattest State.

The leanest state is Colorado. Hawaii is the second leanest. My old home of Washington state is getting fat at #32, but not as fat as Oregon at #29. California is the leanest west coast state at #41. I guess Alaska is sort of on the west coast. Alaska is fatter than Texas at #14 fattest.

Washington has gotten fatter since I left the state and Texas has gotten leaner since I've been here. I don't know what to conclude. Maybe I should move to Mississippi, for awhile, and see if that causes the Mississippians weight to go down and Texans to go back up.

Texas 4th of July

Time seems to increasingly pass faster. It's already the 4th of July. Again.

My first 4th of July in Texas was not what I expected. I figured, in Texas, firecrackers and other explosives would be out of control. Instead, it's tightly controlled. I likely will not hear a single firecracker today.

Where I lived in Washington, in the sedate town of Mount Vernon, it was like a war zone, with neighbors launching simulataneous attacks trying to outdo each other. It was fun to watch. But not so fun when an errant rocket would land on my roof, still burning.

It's odd that the proud state of Texas, with its Cowboy, All American, supposedly Free-Spirited, Independence-Minded self image is, in actuality, one of the more repressive states in the union, where the pursuit of happiness is more tightly regulated than in the more progressive, liberated states. Like Washington.

In Washington there are dozens of casinos. For those for whom the pursuit of happiness means throwing money away on silly games. In Texas, casinos are banned.

In Washington there are no dry zones. In Texas, remnants of Prohibition remain. In some areas of Texas you can not find alcoholic beverages. In Washington you are free to pursue happiness via a bottle wherever you live.

In Washington you are free to pursue happiness without fearing that the government will abuse eminent domain laws and boot you out of your home. In Texas your house can be stolen via eminent domain abuse to build a sports stadium, a mall parking lot or a corporate headquarters. It seems totally Un-American to abuse an American's pursuit of happiness in this way.

In Washington, the people are allowed to vote on projects that may affect their pursuit of happiness. For instance, the citizens of Seattle voted 5 times on a billion dollar monorail project, with the final vote killing the project. The citizens of Fort Worth, Texas have not been allowed to vote on a bizarre project called the Trinity River Vision, that will result in the destruction of the convergence of two forks of the Trinity River in order to build a little lake and some canals. And force dozens of businesses to relocate, thus robbing them of their personal pursuit of happiness, in yet more eminent domain abuse in Texas.

I don't know how this can be done without a public vote. It seems, well, un-American to me.

Have a happy 4th of July. I may be going to the Arlington 4th of July Parade this morning. It's one of the biggest in the nation. I've only watched it once. It was a very good parade.

It's only 16 days til I can buy booze wherever I want it, throw away money in a casino and blow up firecrackers to my heart's content. And smell pine-scented air and see big mountains and pick blackberries growing wild and free. Blackberries are regulated in Texas and are not free.

Texas Being Invaded By Ants

I'd barely finished a long-winded blogging about Seattle when I discovered I was facing my worst ant invasion of the year. This dwarfed last week's invasion.

I was sitting in the living room, when I looked out the patio window to see a line of ants moving on the wall. I followed the line up, then across the room, around the corner. And into my kitchen.

I grabbed my new can of almost empty ant spray and started exterminating the pests. I began at the patio door, because that appeared to be their entry point. By the time I got to the kitchen I saw they were swarming by my popcorn bowl, which sits on the shelf on top of the cabinets.

I grabbed the bowl. It was full of ants. I guess they like Parmesan cheese. I put the bowl in the sink and flushed them down the drain. It was disgusting. I turned on the disposal to make sure none survived.

This summer is looking to be a bad one, ant-wise. How can I leave this place un-attended by a responsible adult for a month? I could return to a total infestation.

Below is a video that shows you just how bad it is getting in Texas, ant-wise.

The Bluest Sky You've Ever Seen: Seattle

That's Seattle in the photo. You might already know that due to 2 iconic type images in the photo, that being the Space Needle and Mount Rainier.

Where I am right now, Fort Worth, Texas, there are no iconic images that anyone might associate with this town. Regardless of that, my long time reader knows Fort Worth is the envy of cities and towns far and wide. This is a well known fact. Has to be a fact. I read it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Below is a video, with a hit song from the 60s, by Perry Como, called Seattle. It was the theme song for a TV show called Here Come the Brides, set in the time Seattle was a frontier town in need of women for all the loggers.

Seattle has been my favorite big city for as long as I can remember. More than any of the other big cities I've been to, Seattle is like being in a theme park. So many attractions. Let me describe a typical visit to Seattle and you'll see what I mean. This may be instructive for Fort Worth readers in terms of understanding why Fort Worth tends to underwhelm me. And others.

I park at REI Corporate Headquarters flagship store. Free parking in a parking garage. The REI store is a theme park all by itself. It's got a mountain bike trail where you can test your new bike. An indoor rockclimb, a great view, extremely cool architecture. REI built this late in the last century. If this had been done in Fort Worth, 4 years later Seattle Community College would have bought the building from failing REI.

From REI I walk to the entry to the transit tunnel that runs deep under downtown Seattle. I hop a bus going into the tunnel. Transit downtown is free. I get off at the first station, Westlake. Westlake Station is a cavernous space that connects to several downtown stores, like Nordstroms. Westlake is called Westlake because it is at Westlake Center. Westlake Center is sort of a townsquare. This type thing is why I was confused by Fort Worth's Sundance Square, which is a bunch of parking lots.

Westlake Center is a vertical mall with a very good food court on the top floor. There are at least 3 vertical malls in downtown Seattle. And several large department stores. There are no vertical malls in downtown Fort Worth. And no department stores. Westlake Center is the downtown terminus of the Monorail.

So, let's take the Monorail to Seattle Center. Seattle Center is where the 1962 Seattle World's Fair took place. It's not a long ride. To get to the Seattle Center Monorail station you ride through the Experience Music Project museum. You need to go there if you are a rock and roll fan.

At the Seattle Center there are all sortsa things to do. Key Arena is where the soon to be ex-Sonics play. You can see Key Arena in the photo above at the lower right. You can easily spend a day at Seattle Center. Big events take place here like the Folklife Festival and Bumbershoot. The price to ride to the top of the Space Needle has gone way up over the years. But it's worth it.

Once we're done with the Space Needle let's walk down to the Waterfront. It's not a long walk and it's all downhill. I don't know if it's back in operation yet. It had to close while a new sculpture garden was installed. I'm talking about the Waterfront Trolley. You can ride that. Or just walk the waterfront. There is a lot to see on the Seattle Waterfront. Docked cruise ships, piers with lots of stores and restaurants, the Seattle Aquarium, marinas, lots of boats. Including ferry boats. You can easily go for a short ferry ride, like out to Bainbridge Island, for a fun side trip.

As you're walking along the Seattle Waterfront, when you get to the Aquarium, you'll see the Pike Place Hillclimb. That's a wide series of steps that take you into Pike Place Market. There are restaurants to tempt you on the climb.

Pike Place Market can take hours to explore. It's huge. Multiple levels. Always busy. The Seattle Art Museum is nearby. Unlike Fort Worth, Seattle does not restrict its cultural amenities to one area and call it the Cultural District. Seattle spreads its culture all over town.

From Pike Place let's go back to Westlake Center, it's just a couple blocks away, and go down to the transit tunnel again and hop a bus (or soon a train). There are several transit stations, all huge and all themed to match their location. We'll get off at the last one, that being the International District Station. The International District used to be called Chinatown. But then Seattle got all politically correct.

When you get back to the surface, from the International District Station, you will be directly in front of the Seahawk Stadium, with the Mariner's Ballpark behind it, with a huge Exhibition Hall between them. Seahawk Stadium sits where the Kingdome used to be. Fort Worth can't figure out how to replace its antique Will Rogers Coliseum, used for rodeos, while Seattle somehow manages to blow up a perfectly useful Kingdome and build 2 new ballparks and a new exhibition hall. I love a dynamic go to it and get it done type city. But then there are some merits in being laid back and taking decades to get something done. I hope Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision town lake gets filled with water while I'm still on the planet.

From the International Transit Station there is a pedestrian bridge that takes you across the train tracks. On the other side you can go to the former Chinatown. You don't wanna miss Uwajumaya. It's an Asian grocery store, on steroids, with one of the best food courts I've ever seen.

After Uwajumaya you can go back to the transit tunnel, or get on that trolley I mentioned earlier. In other words you can find a number of ways to make your way back to your car parked at REI. The International District is right next to Pioneer Square. There are galleries, restaurants and nightclubs in Pioneer Square. This is also where Underground Seattle is, which is a tourist thing I've never seen.

On the way back to REI you might want to check out the Washington State Convention Center. It's a rather cool building. It is built over Interstate 5, creating a tunnel for the freeway. If I remember right the convention center opened in the late 1980s or early 90s. Since I've been in Texas they've spent $500 million adding on, with an atrium over 5th Avenue. Fort Worth remodeled its seldom used convention center in the past few years. In three stages. Because they couldn't afford the $138 million price tag in one shot. The Seattle Convention Center has plenty of hotels nearby, they didn't need to give tax breaks and concessions to get a hotel, like Fort Worth did. It's still under construction.

When you go into the Washington State Convention Center you go up a long long escalator. This takes you to a wall of glass that you can walk through and out to what is called Freeway Park. This is also built over the freeway. There are trails and waterfalls and greenery. There were some security problems and one murder, I believe. This was fixed with increased security and having more activities in the park. Fort Worth had a similar park, Heritage Park, that had similar problems. Fort Worth fixed their park's problem by surrounding it with cyclone fence and calling it closed. Right across from the county courthouse and next to a jail. One would think security would not have been a big problem to solve. But it's Fort Worth, little problems are not easy to solve.

Well, there you go, a small sampling of why I like Seattle. There is much more to like than the stuff I've described in the downtown area. Districts, like Fremont, which has seceded from the Union. University District, which is where the UW is located, is a good thing. Lake Union with Gasworks Park, good thing. I'll want to see Lake Union when I'm up there. Much has changed. In Ballard you can watch boats go through the locks to get to Lake Union or away from Lake Union. At the Ballard Locks you can go underwater and watch salmon go through the locks.

And now, Perry Como's ode to Seattle.

North Texas TV Connections. Again.

I'd grown bored with sharing each example of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's bizarre practice of mentioning any, no matter how remote, connection between someone on TV and North Texas, especially Fort Worth. The main perpetrator of this is the Star-Telegram TV writer, Robert Philpot. At times he sounds almost giddy with excitement that someone on TV has been to Fort Worth, or lived here for 2 months when they were 3 years old. As you can see from Mr. Philpot's photo, he does not look to be the sort of guy who gets giddy over such things.

So, why am I mentioning this odd Star-Telegram fetish again? Well. Today there was a new perpetrator, in addition to some fresh goofy verbiage from Mr. Philpot.

The new perpetrator of the local connection thing turned up on the Sports page in an article about the Tour de France. There was a list of 5 questions, such as #1 "Can the Tour keep clean?" Or #4 "Will an American win?"

And then there's #5. "Are there any local ties?"

With the answer being...

"Not at first. But one Fort Worth business has a tie to the American team Garmin-Chipotle. Garmin-Chipotle took a stock of carbon-fiber Arundel bottle cages along with the team supplies to the Tour. Officials at Fort Worth-based Arundel aren't sure if their products will be used, since it might conflict with the team's sponsorships. But the lightweight cages could help Garmin-Chipolte shed some grams in the moutains."

So. The Texas connection, to the Tour de France, that the Texas locals absolutely needed to know was that a bike team might use a bottle cage that was built in Fort Worth.

Lulu called just as I was typing the above. She asked what I was blogging about. I read it to her. Lulu said, "That's so pathetic." I agreed.

And then in the Your Life section, the above mentioned Robert Philpot wrote an article about some Disney TV Shows. The first paragraph says, "It's not really that surprising that so many young actors from Dallas-Fort Worth are on TV right now. After all, this is a major metropolitan area, and its bound to produce a few people who'll make it to Hollywood."

If it's not surprising then why mention it????

Philpot goes on to mention the names and Texas hometowns of several people on Disney TV shows I've never heard of and few watch. Like Lulu said, pathetic. And so small townish.

Cousin Scott In Paris Texas

Yikes. I've become more of a Texan than I realized. In that I took extreme umbrage at my Yankee cousin Scott's rude blogging remarks yesterday about my adopted state. Rude remarks that sort of remind me of things I used to say, quite often, early on in my exile in Texas. I've lost count of the times a Texan has told me if I hate it so much here to please leave by whatever means I arrived. I phrased the sentiment more delicately than I've had it expressed to me.

I'd say the same thing to cousin Scott, but he's already left Texas, I expect never to return, so it isn't necessary to advise him to get outta here.

Cousin Scott went to Paris, Texas but did not mention the Eiffel Tower with the cowboy hat on top. Instead he went around town asking if the Hilton girl had been there.

Below is cousin Scott's uncalled for, totally without merit, yesterday diatribe about Texas. Like I warned you yesterday, cousin Scott does not believe in capital letters or paragraph breaks, so it's a bit of a challenge to read his amusing verbiage....

"seems like i've been in texas a long time. not sure whether that's because it's big or because it's still BORING. why did we want texas anyway? of course, i'm saying this having seen just the northern part. i'm sure places like brownsville are much more scenic and interesting. galveston! oh, galveston. i don't really have anything to say about texas despite umpteen hours driving through it. except it has nice speed limits. you go 70 on the freeways, and you go 70 on little farm roads. everyone goes 70, all the time. nice. and i absolutely detest texas mud. yesterday, when i had to take a little detour because of a "major accident," according to the sheriff's deputy, i was following a car with texas plates that pulled into a driveway, then backed out to turn around. after i did the same and got going down the road again, it felt like the entire car was going to fall apart. shimmying, shaking. if the car had a front axle, i would have been certain it had fallen apart. got out and looked, but saw nothing, so started slowly down the road again. little by little the shimmying smoothed out and i picked up speed. eventually i was doing 70 and everything was fine. the only thing i could figure is that i had picked up some nice red texas mud on part of the front tires when i turned around, and it had dried and was causing the problem. but when my shimmy problem was gone, so was the car i had been following. I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF TEXAS AND HAD NO CLUE WHAT DIRECTION TO GO TO GET OUT OF TEXAS. fortunately, a nice guy driving a huge combine stopped and opened the door when i climbed onto the thing and told me where to go. today, there were a couple of firsts. number one, i was so engrossed in the fabulous texas scenery that i missed a turn and had to backtrack about 20 miles. the second was when i made an intentional detour and drove north about 10 miles into oklahoma, just so i could say i had been to oklahoma. noticed on the map that there's a durant, oklahoma, and i almost went there to see what marketing plans they had for kevin durant of the sonics when he becomes an oklahomaniac. also stopped in paris, texas, but the hilton girl wasn't there, and the guy putting out flags around the town square for the fourth of july didn't know if she had ever been there. i just finished spending a day and a half driving across texas, and i must admit i'm still looking for a reason for its existence."