Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2008 > August > 04
Monday, August 4, 2008
Ally Davidson wins ‘American Gladiator’
Ally Davidson, Austin’s honeymooning “American Gladiator,” fell behind during the grand finale round Monday. Despite tumbling into the valley of plastic balls, she zoomed ahead to win the ultimate triumph, broadcast on NBC. Soon after, she dived into the pool with new husband Jeff Davidson, who dropped out during earlier rounds of the “Gladiator.” “My family is the reason I won,” Davidson shouted, adding that this was “the best honeymoon EVER.”
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Mountain West No. 14: Politics West
The Mountain West is a key battleground in this year’s presidential election. Alert to their unexpected roles as kingmakers, Westerners are engaging in lively debate. Most observers tend to think that Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada are genuinely up for grabs, while Montana or Idaho are long shots for Democrat Barak Obama. Utah, Wyoming and Arizona belong to John McCain, the conventional wisdom goes.
The rivalry among ruling Republicans out West seems starkest in Idaho, where Republican Rep. Bill Sali faces conservative-to-moderate Democrat challenger Walt Minnick. Sali is such an outspoken cultural warrior, repeatedly linking abortion to breast cancer, for instance, that Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, a Republican, said of Sali: “That idiot is just an absolute idiot.” An opening for Dems?
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Mountain West No. 13: ‘Lonesome Dove’
The Bill Wittliff-penned TV miniseries — which turns 20 next year — matches the book character for character, scene for scene, almost line for line. At least it does in my memory. Only one character, a thin prostitute, seemed unfamiliar to me.
It helped reading this grand epic to hear the voices of Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Danny Glover, Anjelica Houston and other indelible performances as I read the dialogue. Soon enough, my traveling companions were complaining that my own conversation too closely resembled that of the Hat Creek outfit. Mark my word: People will be reading “Lonesome Dove” for as long as they recall the American West.
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Mountain West No. 12: Four Wisenhiemers, Part 2
(Page down for Part 1.)
“You are right.”
“That’s because you know more than anyone alive on the subject.”
“If I were lost in the middle of the Sahara, I’d trust you to lead me back to Bengal.”
These are the tools of the socially adept know-it-all traveling among know-it-alls.
I can think of no three more welcome words to the average smart aleck than: “You are right.” It ends more arguments, lowers more temperatures than almost any other retort. And my companions for the Mountain West tour — Joe, Edith and Rob — have perfected many permutations on this simple ameliorant.
Edith is a whiz at animal behavior, which helped not only on the horseback riding trail, but also whenever guessing how close one can get to grizzly bears without inciting a fatal attack. She also can — in sentences no grammarian could diagram — describe more weird novelties than Dickens could pack into “The Old Curiosity Shop.”
Rob’s strengths tend toward the verbal as well. He has mastered, oh, a half dozen modern languages, plus Greek and Latin, which means he can tell us to “shove it” in more ways than the average United Nations translator can.
Yet he doesn’t shout “stai zitto,” because he has learned that we can all be masters in our own minds, and who wants to ground down especially sensitive digits?
Which is not to say that bears were the only grouches on this trip. Compassion for strangers can be interpreted as criticism of dear friends, for instance, and misreading Google Maps on an iPhone can cause just as much social friction as foulest insult spoken in any tongue, ancient or modern.
Still, at the end of the two weeks, which afforded us slices of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Utah, and included seven days at glorious (melting) Glacier National Park, we chattered excitedly about a road trip to Mexico or Central America, then perhaps Alaska. Or, if the dollar mended, back to the Greek islands, or meeting up with friends in Australia.
One must cherish old friends. Like family, you can’t choose them. And you don’t want to lose them.
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Mountain West No. 11: Four Wisenheimers, Part 1
“These deck chairs aren’t very comfortable.”
“Yes, they are.”
“Well, they are and they aren’t.”
This conversation, engaged on the porch of a log cabin overlooking the Rockies, pretty much summed up the Hegelian social pattern — statement, counterstatement, resolution — of a two-week trip to the Mountain West just completed with longtime friends — all confirmed know-it-alls.
How do four wisenheimers stay friends for 30 years and still travel at close quarters without driving one another loco weed?
And, after all, we share so much. Including the urge to chasten.
Joe Starr, for instance, teaches English as a Second Language to recent immigrants at Houston Community College, where he is afforded endless opportunities for tender amendment. Rob Kendrick guides undergraduates at Colorado College through the dark wood of comparative literature, and while his students may demonstrate greater literacy than Joe’s, they nevertheless need constant correction. Edith Sorenson assists executives at the global accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche, and what these starched collars don’t know about the real world could fill more encyclopedias than Diderot ever imagined.
Your correspondent, of course, has served this newspaper as critic, editor and now social columnist for almost 20 years, and let’s just say the art of gentle rectification has been my constant companion. (Ask John Kelso, he of the canned weenies at dinner parties, if you doubt my word.)
We all met during the late 1970s. And we’ve tracked across more than one continent together, including a three-week retracing of the Lewis and Clark expedition during that historic road trip’s bicentennial year. (It proved the subject of my first serial blogging experience, too, in 2003.)
So how exactly do we get along? More to come …
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