My Elvis Year

As I enter my 42nd year on the planet today, I’ve thought a lot about the day in August of 1977 when I walked to the Circle K down the street from my grandparents’ house in Victoria, Tex. and scanned a slew of “Elvis Presley Dead at 42” headlines while waiting to pay for a grape-flavored Slush Puppy.

I realized Presley’s death was undeniably tragic, but I also remember thinking, “Well, 42 is pretty old.”

And I guess it was if you were an 8-year-old kid whose parents were still in their early thirties and not cocked up on pills.

42 doesn’t seem so old anymore, though.

I’m vaguely aware of being well beyond the vaunted 18-34 demographic, but I never felt like I was at the zeitgeist to begin with. One part of getting older that I’ve always sort of looked forward to is the prospect of “aging into” the curmudgeonly nostalgia that was part of my personality even as a child.

Becoming a father has definitely made me feel older, but that’s more a function of parenthood than age. I still don’t feel the sociocultural gravitas I thought I’d feel at 42. I have a family and an accidental career in civil service, but I haven’t put away childish things and have no intention of doing it voluntarily.

I’m glad that spending most of my days garbed in jeans and a T-shirt just like my infant son makes me a thorn in the side of sphincter-lipped scolds like George Will. Let them choke on their dull, grey notions of maturity and propriety – plum-dumb commode humor has sustained me through far too much to give up on it now.

Continental Trailways

One of my fondest childhood memories was riding on a Continental Trailways bus with my mom from Dallas to Victoria via Houston to visit my maternal grandparents. In the early 70s, Continental Trailways Golden Eagle buses still had on-board hostesses who would bring you soft drinks and light snacks. Bayou City History blogger J.R. Gonzales has unearthed a November 1968 Houston Chronicle profile of one such hostess accompanied by plenty of hairspray-infused photos. Although the photos are in black and white, I totally remember the fabric patterns on those seat cushions.

The hostesses disappeared from the buses sometime in the mid-70s, but we continued to ride. Once we moved to Houston and I got a little older, my parents even let me ride the bus to Victoria by myself. I'm pretty sure we won't be letting Alex ride the bus alone until he's 35.

This is Only a Test

When I was growing up, long before I understood the threat of nuclear holocaust, I was profoundly disturbed any time a broadcaster in my area conducted a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

Having a mellow afternoon of Al Brodax-era Popeye cartoons callously interrupted by that godawful attention signal was pure nightmare fodder to my young mind. Even though the Emergency Broadcast System was replaced in 1997 by the Emergency Alert System - which has its own equally annoying attention signal - I still occasionally have nuclear war dreams in which EBS figures prominently.

When I was a college radio DJ at UT, I always hoped I'd one day get to conduct an EBS test myself as a symbolic triumph over childhood fear. Sadly, KTSB was only "broadcasting" on cable radio back then, so we didn't commit the time, training and expenses to do EBS tests. By the time the station took to the airwaves as KVRX, I'd long since graduated.

Occasionally, you'd hear a local EBS activation for a tornado warning or something like that, but the system was never activated for a national emergency. Except once. Sort of.

At 9:33 a.m. EST on Saturday, February 20, 1971, the EBS was accidentally activated because of an erroneous message from the National Warning Facility at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado. Interestingly, very few stations did what they were supposed to do if it had been an actual emergency. Many stations didn't get the activation messages and the vast majority of those that did ignored it. A contemporary Austin American-Statesman story about the goof reported that KVET didn't do an EBS activation because it occurred at approximately the same time as a regular weekly test of the system. Although the National Warning Facility sent a cancellation message at 9:59 a.m., that message didn't use the proper authentication code. A cancellation message with the correct code didn't go out until 10:13 a.m.

I've read several print accounts of this false alarm, but I've always wondered what it would've sounded like if I'd been listening to one of the stations that actually announced the false EBS activation back in 1971. Fortunately, an astute radiohead named Jim Cassell has preserved a recording of WOWO's broadcast out of Fort Wayne, Ind. from that morning. You can hear it - with the attention signal presumably (and mercifully) edited out - right here.

Although announcer Bob Sievers is very professional and careful not to unduly alarm the public, hearing this would've scared the oatmeal out of me. Needless to say, this would've been a much bigger deal had it occurred in the middle of a weekday instead of on Saturday morning. And the worst part of it is that the last record you would've heard before the missiles struck was "Doesn't Somebody Want to be Wanted" by the Partridge Family.

Over the Edge

Last September, Vice published an excellent oral history of Over the Edge, the awesome 1979 suburban teen rebellion film that launched Matt Dillon’s career.

Like many recovering teens my age, I stumbled onto Over the Edge via repeated airings on cable. It was quite a heady rush to see junior high school-aged kids portraying junior high school-aged kids setting police cars on fire while I myself was a junior high school-aged kid.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole for Harry Northrup, the actor who portrayed the much-reviled Sgt. Doberman, to hold Over the Edge in the same esteem as Rebel Without a Cause. Anyone who grew up on reruns will have a hard time watching the latter without likening Jim Backus’ portrayal of James Dean’s dad to Thurston Howell III, or worse, Mr. Magoo.


Although I wasn't much of an adolescent troublemaker, kids who looked and sounded like the kids in Over the Edge were ubiquitous when I was growing up. Maybe you'd go over to their houses when their parents weren't home to blast album-oriented rock music, take a few furtive belts from the liquor cabinet or pass a handgun around the room.

Looking back, I think most of these failed afterschool special auditions arose from boredom rather than delinquency. While Over the Edge took that notion to an exploitative extreme, no other movie does a better job of capturing the overall aesthetic of the late 70s/early 80s suburban latchkey kid generation.

Incidentally, I did a phone interview with Cheap Trick bassist Tom Petersson about 10 years ago and brought up the opening sequence of Over the Edge in which Cheap Trick's version of Terry Reid's "Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace" sets the film's desolate, sneering tone. I was surprised when Petersson said he'd never seen it.

Houston's Variety Fair Closing

Variety Fair 5 & 10 has been selling this and that in Houston’s Rice Village since 1948. Growing up in the nearby bedroom enclaves of West University and Bellaire, I purchased a healthy chunk of my Topps football card collection from Variety Fair during the late 70s and early 80s. It seemed like founder Ben Klinger was always there working the mechanical cash register, which was old-fashioned even in 1978.

After 61 years, Variety Fair will close up shop in June. So if you happen to be near Houston anytime soon, make a pilgrimage to see one of the last authentic five-and-dime stores in America.

Video on Variety Fair closing from Houston Chronicle:

The S from Hell!

Seeing and hearing the 1964 Screen Gems logo with its proto-synth score by Eric Siday takes me right back to the earliest days of my lifelong affair with television. Somehow, the logo evokes way more nostalgia than the TV shows that preceded it. Perhaps the logo's incidental, effervescent nature makes it feel like a more authentic totem to my lost childhood.

Sadly, not all of my generational contemporaries remember the Screen Gems logo with such fondness. In fact, some are downright terrified by it. Brave filmmaker Rodney Ascher chronicles the horror in his short documentary, The S From Hell.

25 years ago tonight

My 16th birthday was one for the ages. As Ronald Reagan was crushing Walter Mondale in the ’84 presidential election, a group of my friends threw me a surprise party at the long-since-shuttered Pancho’s Mexican Buffet on Bissonnet near the Bellaire Triangle. We commandeered an entire dining room, which saved non-celebrants the pain of watching me show off tasteful gifts like porn magazines and condoms that were doomed to expire long before I had any legitimate use for them.

In the midst of this flauta-fueled festival of pubescent ribaldry, Dana Gritzbaugh and her mom (!) presented me with the bodacious ta-ta cake you see above. I’d been admiring the R-rated display case at Three Brothers Bakery for several years, but my parents were noticeably unenthusiastic about the prospect of buying their son an adult-oriented dessert. Go figure.

As it was, this good deed fell to good friends, and I will forever be grateful to Dana and her mom for it.

Elmo fights flu with PSAs

CNN reports that beloved Sesame Street character Elmo has joined the war against H1N1 flu. So has Gordon, but apparently he's no longer the stuff of sexy news pegs.

A previously developed PSA campaign encouraging kids to wash their hands and sneeze into their arm bends is being relaunched as part of the federal government's pandemic flu response. You can view the four TV spots at flu.gov. Now that Elmo is enlisted in the H1N1 battle and Cookie Monster is fighting obesity, I'm thinking Oscar would be a perfect spokesgrouch for a campaign against pubic lice.

"We are thrilled to partner with Elmo, Gordon, and Sesame Workshop again to emphasize the steps kids and their parents can take to stay happy and healthy this school year," says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a prepared statement.

Man or Muppet, we bureaucrats are always "thrilled to partner."

The Manboy in the Mirror

I was at Sound Lab recording studio on W. 5th this afternoon for the production of a work-related radio spot. As I pulled into the parking lot around 2pm, Jammin’ 105.9 was playing “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” I had to cut the engine right as Michael Jackson got to that “tee-hahaha!” breakdown. Little did I know it would be the last time I heard a Michael Jackson song while he was still alive (to the best of our knowledge, anyway).

As the recording session inched toward closure, our assistant account executive said Michael Jackson had just died. Conflicting news reports made this difficult to confirm, but by the time I got home, everyone but CNN was reporting Jackson’s death as fact.

In November of 1984, I saw the Jacksons perform at the Astrodome in Houston on the Victory tour. The tour set a new bar for fevered hype and there was widespread outrage at the lofty $28 ticket price. I had no plans on going myself, but on the day of the show, a high school pal offered me his extra ticket as a birthday present.

The opening act was a guy who juggled to Beatles songs. Then they showed the S&M/jungle-themed video for “Torture,” which allegedly featured a wax dummy stand-in for Michael and was the only hint that the Victory tour was ostensibly undertaken to promote a new Jacksons album called Victory.

Finally, the Jacksons took the stage, opening with “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Although they ran a perfunctory medley of Motown hits, the brothers focused on the scintillating Quincy Jones productions from the 1979 template,“Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” all the way through to “Billie Jean.” Despite the Astrodome’s lousy acoustics, it was a pretty amazing show.

Although his death was shocking in its suddenness, I can’t say I’m surprised Michael Jackson didn’t live to a ripe old age. Succumbing to a massive heart attack at age 50 is tragic, but taken alongside Jackson’s post-Thriller unraveling, the suspected cause of death seems almost conventional.

As Jackson stood trial for child molestation, hearing the 10-year-old Jackson deliver his timeless performance of “I Want You Back” became a sad exercise in dissonance. Putting aside the question of did he or didn’t he, I couldn’t hear him sing without wishing that 10-year-old kid something better.

Our feature presentation

I can't count the number of times I was dropped off at a multiplex cinema as a child to watch a matinee that was preceded by the now-defunct General Cinema Corporation's "projector dots" jingle. Sure it's simple, but nearly three decades after they quit using this 1977 clip, I sometimes hear its ear-wormy jingle in my head when I can't sleep.

Here's a history of General Cinema from Pleasant Family Shopping via MetaFilter.

Sixth grade reunion party

Kate and I went to Houston last weekend so I could attend a reunion of my sixth grade class in the bar at Palace Bowling Lanes on Bellaire Blvd.

Clockwise from the left in the photo above are my classmates Israel Rodriguez, Gayle Carlisle, Steve Amaya, yours truly, Rose St. Andry, Shean Valentine and Shawn Stevenson. I'm rather proud of myself for not having reflexively flipped the bird like I did in a similar photo taken at our sixth grade graduation party.

Sixth grade reunions aren’t exactly common, but neither was our class. In fact, we were the last sixth grade class to graduate from Horn Elementary School 28 years ago this May.

I’m not sure why the Houston Independent School District moved sixth graders from elementary to middle school in 1981. It probably had to do with overcrowding, but maybe they were looking to consolidate budding adolescent mischief under one roof. Perched precariously between childhood and teenhood, my sixth grade class constituted a force of fun-loving insolence that manifested itself in both mudfights and spin the bottle.

Our first-year teacher, Miss Collins, did her best to keep us in line and we did our best to drive her crazy. She actually had to blow a coach’s whistle in the classroom to get us to shut up. Even so, if the principal or the teacher next door tried to call Miss Collins’ teaching ability into question, we would collectively defend her (and ourselves, by extension).

I learned a lot of life lessons in sixth grade that proved to be more valuable than most anything you’d pull out of the Texas edition of a public school textbook. Perhaps most importantly, we got to grow into ourselves together. For me, that meant having a rare sense of belonging. At the end of the year, I knew we’d had something special and fleeting even though I couldn't have defined melancholy.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one because about 15 of us showed up in the Palace Lanes’ bar on Saturday for our Facebook-facilitated reunion. It was great fun to see everyone again. My only regret was not getting to see some of my classmates who arrived after Kate and I left.

I believe Miss Collins stopped teaching after that year, but I wish she could've seen us catching up and talking about the old times on Saturday.

Only the lonely?

After being asked repeatedly when she was going to give her daughter a sibling, Nataly Kogan wrote an essay that has now been picked up by Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog in The New York Times.

I've often heard people say you're depriving your child by not giving him or her a sibling. As an only child myself, I could interpret such a comment as an subtle indictment of my parents, but I don't. That's because almost every person I've heard lamenting the fate of only children grew up with one or more siblings they don't despise. They think about a world in which those siblings don't exist and it feels empty.

Fortunately for me, I've never felt "alone" or otherwise deprived by not having a sibling. I enjoyed the time I had to play by myself as a child. In our efforts to be "good citizens," I think we tend to overrate the benefits of companionship while understating those of solitude. Whether I had one child or six, I wouldn't want to raise kids that weren't okay with their own company.

Some people say only children tend to be selfish and antisocial. I would agree that only children may need extra adjustment time when they start interacting with other kids, but there's something to be said for the extra interaction only children get with adults. Parents who are keyed into this are likely to take steps to mitigate such challenges. To the extent that I can be a raving arsehole, I doubt the presence of a sibling would've done much to change that.

Which isn't to say I didn't sometimes wish for a guardian angel-type sibling to help me navigate the waters of adolescence. If I could've ordered up a sister willing to set me up with her hot friends, I would've, but who's to say fate would've acted in my favor? I could've just as easily wound up with a bullying older brother who beat the shit out of me for sport.

Either way, I don't feel deprived by what I don't long for.

Farewell to Texas Stadium

The Dallas Morning News published a special "Farewell to Texas Stadium" section last Sunday in anticipation of the Dallas Cowboys' final regular season game in the stadium against the Baltimore Ravens this weekend. I was in Dallas that day and would've picked up a copy had I known, but at least they have it on the website now.

My own memories of Texas Stadium come from the four or five years my family drove there on Thanksgiving to watch the Cowboys play. As I recall, we always sat in above the end zone because season ticket holders already had all the good seats. The game always started at 3pm, and if you were seated in the end zone facing west, you could count on being blinded as the sun receded between the roof and the top of the opposite-facing stands. This was before Jerry Jones filled in that gap with more luxury boxes, which probably improved the sun situation inside but made the stadium look architecturally slapdash from the outside.

Parking sucked. We always had to walk across the freeway and over a levee to a remote lot that was at least a mile away. It was usually cold during that time of year, too.

The first Cowboys game we saw was against the Chicago Bears in 1981. Walter Payton was playing for the Bears and Danny White was starting quarterback for the Cowboys, but he got hurt. As the fourth quarter wound down, backup quarterback Glenn Carano drove to within field goal range and kicker Rafael Septien won it for the Cowboys 10-9 with seconds to spare. None of the other games we saw were as exciting as that one.

I think we quit going to Cowboys games when I got out of high school. My family and I still recall those games fondly, but it was always kind of a relief to watch it on TV instead of schlepping through the parking lot and freezing in the stands.

That relief was particularly intense when we watched the icy 1993 Thanksgiving game against the Miami Dolphins in which defensive tackle Leon Lett mistakenly touched a live ball after a botched Dolphins field goal attempt, allowing them to kick again and win. O.J. Simpson was working as a sideline reporter for NBC Sports and his kids were throwing snowballs at him. I remember my mom saying she thought O.J. was really going to let his kids have it once the cameras cut away.

What's up with the waterfall billboard?

I was in Dallas for my job earlier today and noticed the landmark waterfall billboard on Goat Hill overlooking Stemmons Freeway is currently a skeleton of its former self.

Back in May 2007, this here blog noted a report about Trammell Crow building luxury condos on Goat Hill where Baby Doe's Matchless Mine restaurant once stood, but the billboard was supposed to remain.

Seeing such a nostalgic totem of my early childhood ripped up like that was traumatic, but I had to play it cool because I was piloting an embarrassingly large rental SUV full of fellow state employees. Fortunately, the waterfall billboard is merely being repaired, not done away with.

The Dallas Morning News reports Clear Channel Outdoor is restoring the iconic billboard to its original 1962 condition, when it was constructed to advertise Pearl Beer. This news segment about the billboard aired on KXAS in October. Restoration is expected to be completed in January.

All I can say to this ray of hope in a troubled world is, "Great job, Clear Channel!" Gee, that felt weird.

Photo by Debra Jane Seltzer

Smiling over spilled ice cream

Kate and I are in Dallas right now for her final bridal gown fitting at Priscilla of Boston. I walked in there when I dropped her off and immediately turned tail because all the brides and bridesmaids gathered at the front of the store had me feeling overwhelmed by estrogen.

The Priscilla location here is in Preston Center, a venerable shopping center at the corner of Preston Rd. and Northwest Hwy. Back in the day, my family used to go there to shop at long-departed stores like Sanger-Harris and World Toy and Gift. One of the places we used to frequent that is still located in Preston Center is Baskin-Robbins. It's right around the corner from Priscilla.

About 33 years ago on a warm summer night, I happily skipped out of that Baskin-Robbins with a scoop of something precariously perched on a cone. As my family and I walked across the parking lot to our 1966 Mustang, my scoop of ice cream toppled off the cone onto the hot concrete. I didn't see it happen and didn't even notice anything was wrong until I climbed in the back seat and realized I no longer had any ice cream to lick.

I asked my parents what had happened and they gently but firmly told me I'd dropped my ice cream. I flat out refused to believe this and asked them to show me where my ice cream had fallen. I'll never forget looking out the car window and seeing my fallen ice cream rapidly melting on the pavement. It was only then that I started weeping profusely.

As I walked by that Baskin-Robbins earlier this afternoon while my wonderful bride-to-be was getting fitted, I couldn't help but think that clumsy kid who'd dropped his ice cream had finally found redemption.

Steak & Ale: 1966-2008

I was waiting on an Austin-bound plane at Dallas Love Field yesterday when I found out from Kate that the parent company of Steak & Ale was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closing every last Steak & Ale on the planet effective immediately.

Although Plano-based MetroMedia Restaurant Group is also shuttering company-owned Bennigan's, that chain will live on through franchisees. Not so for Steak & Ale. Now my hypothetical children will never know the joys of the world's most antiquated salad bar.

The first Steak & Ale was opened in Dallas by future casual dining kingpin Norman Brinker in 1966. At one time, the restaurant was a trailblazing entity bent on bringing Ye Olde Englishe-style steakhouse experience to good working people like you and me. It was also a good place for Seventies high school kids to take dates when Bonanza wasn't serious enough to move things to the backseat.

My first experience with Steak & Ale came in 1975. My folks and I had driven from Dallas to Austin to go camping with a group of families. Unfortunately, the camping excursion got rained out and we wound up stuffed in an apartment watching Evel Knievel jump a bunch of Greyhound buses on live TV from King's Island, Ohio.

When suppertime rolled around, we convoyed over to a Steak & Ale near the intersection of Anderson Ln. and Burnet Rd., just a few blocks from where I sit typing this. I recall the two-story restaurant's exterior gaily festooned with flags and the interior being thematically faithful to the chain's Anglo-happy roots. Our server gave me a paper placemat to color and I remember getting really into it. The one-trip-only salad bar, which would be rendered pathetic in three decades, seemed positively bountiful to my young eyes.

I occasionally dined at that Steak & Ale once I moved to Austin. In fact, I took the Peenbeets there back in 2002 right after we broke up as a beef-enhanced fin de siècle to our (ahem) career, but Steak & Ale was already a shadow of its former "unmisteakable" self. The restaurant closed a week or so later and became a flower shop.

My final Steak & Ale repast came with Kate in January 2007 in Arlington during an ice storm. "The restaurant was almost completely empty, which made the rancid mix of braying ballads blaring over the PA system all the more disconcerting," I noted at the time, "but I enjoyed my mixed grill and some of Kate’s filet mignon, too."

Fare thee well, Steak & Ale. I raise a glass of something to the medium rare memories of your shuttered remains.

To toll a Mockingbird

The well-to-do Dallas area enclave of Highland Park has had it with dirty commuters cutting through their municipality on Mockingbird Lane.

About 18,000 drivers roll through Highland Park on Mockingbird every day. Most are non-residents. To address the issue, Highland Park is considering the possibility of tolling non-residents who drive the stretch of Mockingbird between Hillcrest and the Dallas North Tollway during peak congestion periods. This would make Mockingbird the first tolled surface street in the country.

In the early 70s, my family lived just inside Highland Park in a rented duplex on Mockingbird across the street from SMU. It was a busy street even then. I don’t have much sympathy for property owners along Mockingbird because virtually all of them knew it was a busy street when they bought their houses.

I’m not against tolling surface streets on principle, but this particular case is all about a wealthy suburb trying to opt out of the regional transportation network as it suits them while continuing to leech off the Dallas city infrastructure that gives Highland Park reason to exist in the first place. You can bet other Texas enclave cities like West Lake Hills, Bellaire and Alamo Heights will consider tolling their own through-arterials if Highland Park's scheme succeeds.

If Mockingbird becomes a tollway, maybe Dallas should start tolling Highland Park’s attorneys driving to their downtown offices and its society matrons on their way to Northpark.

Not-So-Good Vibrations

When I was a kid, I hated it when the Emergency Broadcast System’s awful two-tone attention signal disrupted my after-school diet of Flintstones and Brady Bunch reruns.

Even before I was old enough to know that the attention signal I just heard might be the precursor to getting cooked by a Soviet missile or impaled by a tornado-propelled lawn gnome, I inherently sensed it was bad news. The jarring header bursts that trigger the Emergency Alert System aren’t much better.

Therefore, I’m heartened to hear our federal government approved plans last week to develop a nationwide text-messaging alert system. Finding out you’re about to be massacred by terrorists via a pleasant “vibration cadence” in your pocket is real progress.

The Bong Tolls for Tootie

I didn't know what a bong was until I watched the "pot episode" of The Facts of Life.

Believe it or not, you really could buy bongs at some record stores in 1980. It was a "heady" time. That said, I can't imagine where a couple of 12-year-old girls would've pulled together enough bread to buy three of them. All that just to hold jellybeans!

California Fever

Here's the opening of California Fever, a short-lived CBS series from 1979 that was apparently picked up by BBC at some point. The show starred Jimmy McNichol (Kristy's bro) and Lorenzo Lamas. Basically, Jimmy and his friends hung out on the beach, roller boogied down the boardwalk and cruised around in muscle cars as the week's extra-vapid plot unfolded.

Being an impressionable 10-year-old boy who watched way too much TV, I thought California Fever was pretty awesome. I hoped maybe one day I could move to sunny Southern California and be a boss teen like Jimmy McNichol.

As it was, I moved to Austin and then a good portion of California followed.