Marty Robbins' "El Paso"... starring Steve Martin!

I envision this "video" ( a skit Martin did on his show once) every time I hear "El Paso" from Marty Robbins. I saw it the first time it showed on TV, back in the ole days, before everybody could tape or Tivo any and every show. Well, apparently somebody did tape it, and has put it on Youtube, for the enjoyment of all anew. [big grin] I think my favorite bit is where Martin rides off atop an elephant as his steed, as Robbins sings "Out thru the backdoor of Rose's I ran, out where the horses were tiiiiiiii-iii-ied, I caught a good one, it looked like it could run, up on its back and away I did ride," followed by a few scenes later when Martin rides back, surrounded by chimpanzee bandidos on their own Shetland ponies. I don't know why it took my brain this long, but I finally realized that somebody was bound to have put the clip up on Youtube, so I just looked there today and found it!

Regrets

I just finished reading about Lawdog's loss of his Moira.

It reinforced what hit me yesterday, about my own loss with Selkie. I was mainly beating myself up over the fact that after I moved out of my parent's house, I never took her to live with me. We rationalized it by saying she would be better off if she stayed with my parents because of the other dog, Maxine, would get too lonely. We took Emmett, my Sheltie, and he lived just fine in our apartment, until a couple of years ago when one of our other dogs attacked him. We decided to send him back to live with my mom, to keep him safe from our other male. Not long after that we had to put Sirius, the other male, down, because he was attacking our females too. That broke our hearts, but it was the best thing we could do. We see Emmett often enough since my mom lives here in town. Since my parents divorced the same year me and Phoenix got married, my dad moved a little north and took Selkie and Maxine with him. We'd go to visit him and the dogs, but sometimes the pain of leaving Selkie each time was too much and I'd start crying on the drive home. I never did bring her to live with us... sure, she'd stay a night or two if I asked, but she always went back to my dad. Then she got really sick and we had to put her down two years ago this July. I think what triggered it was getting the new kennel to keep the puppies in. They were tearing up the folding kennel, so I bought a sturdier new one, that is just like the other non-folding one, except it's blue instead of tan. The other one I had bought when Selkie was a pup, and this new one listed appropriate breeds, including "Australian Cattle Dog", which is half of Selkie's mix, the other being German Shorthaired Pointer. It just triggered a bunch of thinking about Selkie, leading to me regretting a bunch not bringing her to live with me once we started getting more than one dog in our place. Emmett helped me find Sydney one day; then one friend found Rosa but couldn't keep her; Teddy came to us from the couple who lived next to Phoenix's grandparents' house, when they couldn't take him with them when they moved back to Chicago; Stella just wandered up one weekend and stayed, despite our efforts to find her proper owner; and now we found two Black Lab pups on the street corner in front of our house last month. All these dogs, and I couldn't find room back when my Selkie was still alive. No wonder why I feel angry at myself for it. I'm trying to figure out what lessons I should be learning from this, beyond "Play with your dogs more NOW."

A belated Happy Birthday, Texas!

I apologize for my tardiness in wishing a happy Texas Independence Day to you all. (Altho I'm not the only one.) I finally watched most of The Alamo from 2004 the other day. (Yes, the one with Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Opie.) While I can see that some of the critics didn't like a particular part near the end, there is at least one historical account that describes that happening. (FYI, I'm referring to where Crockett was captured and executed after the Battle.) Overall I thought it was a good rendition and, as far as I could tell, historically accurate. I still prefer the version in Roswell, Texas. (Warning; R,T can become addictive!)

In other news, I drove past the Voth Road Feed Store last week... well, I should say, I drove past where it used to be. It had closed for a while, then reopened under a new owner, then Hurricane Rita bitch-slapped the place pretty hard, and it's been sitting there, a broken eyesore. The front of the building was gone, replaced by a yellow "Danger!" tape and the old corrugated tin roof was peeled back in several spots. Last week, someone finally came with a backhoe and knocked it down, leaving a vacant lot. It's kinda sad because both me and Phoenix have fond memories of going in there with our respective family members (me & my dad, her and her Grandma) and playing with the incubator trays of chicks and other stuff.

I heard in the news that Prince Harry is insistent that he be allowed to join his troops in their upcoming deployment to Iraq, despite fears that he may be especially targeted by "insurgents" because of his being part of the Royal Family. I say, "Good on ya, Your Highness!" I truly understand that esprit de corps a lot better since joining the Texas State Guard; that desire to be with your squad mates, no matter what, not letting them down, not thinking that you're special enough to be exempt from anything they have to do.

I finally saw a pack of Czechvar beer yesterday, at our Super HEB. This is the real Budweiser pilsner, not that American copy of it. Budweiser is the German name for the Czech Budvar, and when messers Anheiser and Busch came looking for their lager, they copied the German name and the style, altho most beer connoisseurs would say they missed on copying the quality. Last year, BBNP, the owners of the Czechvar/Budvar brand, and Anheiser-Busch came to an agreement for A-B to distribute Czechvar in the US, after a century-long legal battle. From Radio Prague's Beer FAQ (which looks to be a couple of years out-of-date):

In 1876, the name Budweiser was adopted by the American brewer Adolphus Bush. When the Czech brewery, a few years later, wished to begin exports to the New World, this caused problems, and Budvar had to be given another name. For a time it was sold in the United States as Crystal, hardly an original name for a beer. Now the two companies largely manage to avoid each other's markets (theoretically). Both companies are currently entangled in a trademark dispute involving the right to use the name "Budweiser" and variations of it in Europe for their two very different beers. Budvar still calls itself, with some justification, "The Original Budweiser". As far as we understand it, the American brewer has been selling its beer as "Bud" in recent years because of the dispute. According to the Czech press, the two companies have outstanding trademark lawsuits in Portugal, Egypt and Italy. The Czech Budvar has a unique bitter-sweet flavour and the brewery has taken up the study of Coca-Cola's strategies over the years for protecting its trademark and recipe. Anheuser-Busch, along with some 40 other foreign firms, has been trying to buy a stake in Budvar since 1989, but the Czech government has dragged its feet in privatizing the brewery. The Czechs are wary of foreign investment in what they consider part of their national heritage. But the world's biggest brewer (Anheuser-Bush annually brews 5 times as much beer as all the Czech breweries together) doesn't give up easily. The company spends thousands of dollars in Ceske Budejovice every year, funding everything from pre-schools to beer festivals to win over the locals.

Great, now I'm thirsty!