Crash Hits the Heart

I always love to see what a filmmaker does with the first feature film after being a screenwriter. John Huston burst out of the blocks with "The Maltese Falcon," while "All About Eve" director Joe Mankiewicz started out slower, making "Backfire" in his directing debut after 17 years of writing scripts.

Paul Haggis has made more of a "Falcon" kind of splash with "Crash." He wrote "Million Dollar Baby," 2004's Best Picture, though his screenplay didn't win an Oscar. But that movie's writing was a promissory note on the payoff of Crash.

Who's Haggis? He earned nearly all of his stripes in TV, but some of the medium's best writing is on his resume. Tracy Ullman's show. LA Law. thirtysomething. Okay, he's also got credits for scripts for Love Boat and Due South. But there's 20 years of writing before he gets to make his first movie, an even longer stretch than Mankiewicz.

After I'd spent Memorial Day writing the day's news — holidays can be work days when you run your own newsletter — I took a movie break with my favorite gal and watched Haggis' fabulous story unfold at the Alamo Drafthouse. The movie carried high buzz from friends and family. You have a good idea of a movie's merit when a middle school principal in his 50s and a bank teller in his 20s both rave about it.

The movie earns its accolades. Crash brims with trouble, prejudice and heartbreak, from carjackings to the power of the stray bullet in LA. But while it paints a picture of people struggling to escape tragedy, it also gives some of them a chance at redemption. Like my friend Kate says, it's a movie where "Man falls into hole. Man climbs out of hole." We want trouble in our stories. Crash carries a story credit, something you don't see very often in modern movies. You can see why it deserves a separate credit for the story when the strands of its plot come together in a stout rope during a few scenes at the movie's end.

It helps a good story when the actors can pump up the characters. Crash has got Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser and most of all Don Cheadle, plus Sandra Bullock and Thandie Newton. The acting firepower propels dialogue crafted sharp enough to create tiny, standout roles. Watch for Keith David's commanding voice blistering off a few minutes of an arch scene as a black lieutenant in the LAPD. Hip-hoppers Ludacris and Larenz Tate play characters who expand stereotypes — so by the end of the film, the movie's tagline feels true: "You think you know who you are. You have no idea." There's even a Tony Danza scene that makes you believe he was underrated during his TV days.

Memorial Day gave us a memorable movie this year. We'll have to see a lot of films to find one better than Paul Haggis' directing debut. When you watch Dillon and Newton in their watershed second scene together, you might be moved to tears. Crash can make you cry over a story about the power of people to overcome their worst fears and hate, even if it does take a crash to shake their goodness free.

Link: Technorati on Film

Colors of our Caring

You can get your badge of caring at Costco this week. Yesterday the Costco checker asked me if I wanted to donate a dollar to "The children's hospital" along with my purchase. Costco's offer to help support 170 kids' hospitals is a typical way to pry loose some giving from middle-class consumers; lately I've been approached at the movie ticket counter and the grocery, too. At a dollar a donation, there's little reason to say no. The kids' hospitals are having a telethon this coming weekend.

At Costco, though, I got more than the momentary warm glow of self-appreciation after giving my dollar. Costco gave me a plastic colored wristband to wear after I donated. Lance Armstrong's cancer foundation made these efforts as famous as the AIDS effort made the ribbon symbol. I wear a Lance wristband and a cap with an AIDS red ribbon, each organization being the originators of the icon. I'm not big on the follow-on ribbons or bracelets. Everybody gets to use whatever works to raise money or awareness. But any ribbon you see printed on a magnet — like those on pickup tailgates in our red states — might be asking for awareness on a temporary basis.

The colors associated with such things have become an issue, too. Yellow ribbons have their own tie-in, thanks to Tony Orlando and Dawn. Yellow got staked out on the bracelets by a man who's worn the color in a certain bike race every summer since 1999. But the colors are getting crowded. My friend Steve sent me a black bracelet that says, "I Did Not Vote for Bush." Green is especially crowded, the wristband that symbolizes the fights against diabetes, lukemia, depression and the slaughter in Darfur.

My Costco wristband for the Children's Miracle Network breaks into new territory. It's multi-hued, an orange-yellow blend that reflects the Network's colors. Wal-Mart is participating too; the CMN was started by Donny and Marie Osmund's mom, and it raises $300 million every year. A couple of my friends wear two of these, a conversation starter. We are learning to expect these merit bracelets from our giving, a way to wear our feelings on our wrists instead of on our sleeves.

Apple Joins the Intel Empire?

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal broke a story about Apple, which is allegedly considering Intel as a chip supplier for Apple systems. The Mac Observer has good commentary on what this story really means; the Observer said it's not an accident that the WSJ "leaked" a story about negotiations between Apple and Intel.

This is about getting IBM to perform better in its chip-building role for Apple. Macs are powered by the PowerPC line of chips, developed here in Austin at an Apple-Motorola-IBM startup called Somerset. A great article about Apple's embrace of IBM's chips 10 years ago is up at the bott.org site, a "museum space" donated by the supplier of Mac and iPod accessories and products Dr. Bott. My latest favorite Bott product (they distribute, not make most of what they sell) is the SmartWrap, a bit of plastic you wrap your iPod earphones' cord around. My iPod experience always starts with a minute or so of untangling my earphone cord. Apparently, this is a common beginning.

If Intel does replace IBM as a chip supplier, then Apple takes one more step closer to the Wintel Empire. Some Mac users lust for the day when Apple will make a Windows computer, and join the Empire. The dark side of the force is quicker, more seductive. They miss the point — the Mac experience is built around an operating environment that's safer. Bring any part of the wild Windows community into the Mac's low-virus sanctuary and you've introduced the tangle of viral checkers and spam nests. If I don't have enough time to untangle my iPod cords, I definitely don't have time enough to unmuck my Apple computer that runs Windows.

I hope the Journal story aids Apple's ploy to press IBM for better chip development. I think of us Mac folks as the Bespin mining colony, the Cloud City of computing, "small enough not to be noticed" by the Empire, as Lando Calrissian said in The Empire Strikes Back.

Muzzle the Poodle-Dog Shouters

Programs like Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn on ESPN might raise your heart rate, but they pander to lowering your sports IQ. These shows trumpet Poodle-Dog Journalism, a brand of yapping where education takes a back seat to excitement and entertainment. (To his credit, PTI's host usually says he and his partner are about to "yap about" one thing or another in his introduction. It reminds me of the line in The Natural where Roy Hobbs asks sportwriter Max Mercy if Max ever played in a game. "No," he said, "but I made it a lot more fun to watch.")

When the San Antonio Spurs reeled off 43 points in the fourth quarter of yesterday's conference finals game, the team surprised a lot of fans who rely on national media to know the NBA. The Spurs uncorked their explosion despite some desperate cramming on defense by the Suns, who seem to have skipped their D lessons and resorted to NFL-style defense, as shown at left. The local reports knew better of the Spurs offense, and pointed out that the team has a reputation of grinding out wins with penetrating defense, a strategy that glazes over the eyes of analysts on ESPN. That rep is out of date, as yesterday's shootout against the run-and-gun Suns proved. Coverage of the win also proved how little light the average sportscast sheds compared to its copious amount of heat.


Once in a while TV sports can help you learn about the game you watch. TNT led the way years ago, because it covers only the NBA in its sports lineup and it's broadcast games for more than 20 years. The network games in 1990s used Hubie Brown, who retired this year as the NBA's oldest coach after winning 2004's Coach of the Year Award, as its color analyst. Hubie is given to calling NBA players "the young man" while he explains the game, but Hubie is always teaching, so everybody must seem like a student to him. TNT is always grabbing the best talent, like scooping up ESPN's basketball reporter David Aldridge, the best in broadcast at getting the inside story on the sport. ESPN replaced Aldridge with Stephen A. Smith, a Phildelphia columnist who's only displayed a rap-style delivery and a tiny fraction of Aldridge's insights and NBA contacts.

At least Smith is fun to watch. Around the Horn gives air-time to Woody Paige, who has fallen from the ranks of regular sportswriters to become a TV personality, one whose bluster has caught on with the ESPN producers. He now works out of New York to do his three ESPN shows a day, pens a Sunday column for his Denver Post job, and appears to be polishing his performance skills while his analysis rusts. Paige can be counted on to know little other than the obvious while he predicts what will happen, crystal ball work that has been invariably cracked since he took on TV full time.

Print sports journalism can't rely on the silly haircuts and gimmicky props of TV. It must teach you something while it entertains and it's got to get closer to its subjects than a TV monitor and an earpiece. Another PTI regular, Bill Plaschke, sounds off with details and reporting insight, because Plaschke has to keep up with LA sports in his job at the LA Times. He hasn't cashed in his reporting skills for makeup tips.

ESPN's crystal ball remains a favorite product of TV sports analysis, too. Telling us what's likely to happen has all the durable value of a stick of chewing gum — tasty at first, but useless once it's consumed. I prefer the insight on TNT with Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley, former NBA stars who can entertain and educate at once. They talk about what has really happened, so you better understand what's going on during the next game's broadcast. During these NBA playoffs, ESPN reminds me that its first initial stands for entertainment, not sports.

Force-Full Weekend

Nick and I lined up for the midnight show of The Revenge of the Sith late Wednesday. A few adolescents prowled the entrances in Sith capes and Vader masks, and one fellow whiled away the wait with his laptop in the theatre auditorium. Every preview shown before the film — a staggering eight — drew groans from the crowd, who applauded as the movie started. The geek factor was set on high, but not Rocky Horror Picture Show level. Despite a few bleary-eyed moments for this viewer just past his 48th birthday, the movie lived up to its hopes: The first Star Wars sequel to stand in the same rank as the original three movies. It surpassed Jedi, was a little better than Star Wars, and made a good attempt at catching the depth and character nuance of Empire.

It's earned a Megacritic rating of 68 so far, well above the 50-ish ratings of the three movies after Empire. Salon and the New Yorker were appalled at the film, but plenty of other top-line critics think George Lucas broke through with this one, at last.

Lucas has delivered a movie that doesn't care what the younglings think of it. Sith is no exercise in toy marketing, like Phantom Menace. It doesn't muff the character possibilities like Attack of the Clones did in its ill-trimmed romance scenes. It's dark and scary in plenty of places, with a few moments that make you feel just how low Anakin Skywalker falls to become Darth Vader. John Williams unreels a score that manages to strike new notes in themes he has mined in five other movies. Not a small feat. 61-year-old Ian McDiarmid steals every scene he's in as the Emperor, something you'd expect if you knew he's a theatre actor and director. Frank Oz shows us how powerful an actor's vocals can make an animated character, spark that springs Yoda like a lithe Jedi saber-wielder.

If only we could restrain Lucas from writing dialogue. Nothing's perfect, but the wooden, preachy lines remain a disturbance in his force. He still hasn't regained the courage to hire somebody like Leigh Brackett, the 65-year-old sci-fi novelist and Rio Bravo screenwriter who co-wrote Empire, then died before the movie was released. Her last project earned her a posthumous Hugo Award for the film. Although Star Wars and Jedi also earned Hugos, Episodes I and II weren't even nominated.

The story was good enough to drive me back to my VCR at home to look at the film that follows this one in chronology, Star Wars. Sith made the earlier film even more entertaining, which I think is a tribute to the character work in the new movie. Lucas hadn't done character work in many of his other movies. The brilliance of Empire came from the pen of screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and director Irvin Kershner. Lucas was busy setting up Lucasfilm while Empire was being made.

Making a better movie than his last two installments is going to earn Lucas a windfall compared to the Episode I and II box office. Nick and I helped Sith to a $16 million total for the midnight showings alone. It's broken box office records and left its creator with money enough for producing the remaining three films, though we'll probably have to wait for those until sometime during the next decade. With Hollywood so desperate for stories that it's remaking slight vehicles like The Dukes of Hazzard, the force of Star Wars will be with us, always. Lucas, after all, is only 61, and shows no signs of slowing down, opening up a vast new studio complex on the site of the old US Army base at the Presidio. After this weekend's force, he could probably pay cash for the whole new complex.

Get Your Headlines, Googled

Google delivers the news so much better than the TV or a single newspaper, but it's tough to select stories from such a bounty of links. Type a subject and you can get links to 400 reports, but 200 of them could be the same AP story in newspapers from around the world.

There's a better way to get Google News. An enterprising Japanese programmer has created a spiffy interface for the service, one that shows story headlines in sizes proportionate to their popularity. Color-coded, too. You can see what the online crowd is reading, even if it might not be the best story on the subject. It's just another way to tap into the resource that drives that $255 a share stock. You might cook up your own piggyback venture with some help from Google Hacks. Google, a company that would rather have the press interview its corporate chef than its CEO, doesn't seem to mind.

Those Geeks Got Your Excuses Ready

If you have somebody to answer to Thursday, somebody who will wonder why you're not at work because of a certain opening day of a certain prequel film, the Geek Squad is ready to help with a fill in the blanks excuse note.

The Squad will help you arrest those problems with your Windows PCs and wireless networks. They also have some funny TV ads, (check out the About Geek Squad link) and they have camped out in Best Buy stores, too. Why not? Some of us smug Mac users would argue that the place where Windows PCs get sold is the scene of the crime. (Okay, there's really no wrong computer to use. Just more troublesome ones, from time to time.)

Which is why having a sense of humor about it all, like the Geeks, is bound to make the pain recede a little sooner. They've got troubleshooting book, too. It's out of date (written six years ago), especially in its comparison of Windows and Macs, written before the OS X revolution. But even then, the Geeks had to admit Macs "lead in more categories, but we believe Windows has the edge." Odd logic, yes. But face it, if you've got Windows problems, you want a Windows advocate working on them.

Bloggers Need Journalism

A recent conference for bloggers included a few hours of training on standard journalism skills, according to a report from the Associated Press. The Media Bloggers Association gave 300 of its members two days of training in things like accessing and analyzing government statistics.

The association's president said there's now 8 million people blogging. ("There's eight million stories out there in the city," went a Sixties-era cop show voiceover.) Now some bloggers are getting an interest in research, having risen past the vitriol level of bare commentary. Good for them. A few more years of training, some exams and papers, and they'll have what degreed journalists have: Skills to create stories that exude more than lather.

Meanwhile, us journalists need to get Blogger, some Web design software, the time to post, and learn Javascript or know somebody who does. I think I like the equation solved from my end. But we're both headed to the same place.

At Information Week, the editors say the blogging concept is sparking record reader interaction. There's something about putting the reader comments on an equal footing with a journalist's reports, the editor says. Yeah, equality. Much better place to write and report from than calling a print reporter something like "a dead-tree journalist."

Face it, each side has something to teach the other: about immediacy and access, for the journalists. About accuracy and inclusion, striving toward balance, for the bloggers. Then there's that advertising thing. Bloggers need it. You can put your blog up in the cattle call for media buys through Blogads. Blogs with fewer than 3,000 page impressions a week need not apply. The deal makes you give up 20 percent of your revenue, plus the Visa fee, and then Blogads will put you into their cattle call. Your blog better be, as Blogads says, "laser-sharp" in its focus.

The Force Is Back With Us

In reviews at Variety and The New York Times, critics say this week's Star Wars movie Revenge of the Sith evokes the quality of the best of the series, The Empire Strikes Back. Variety, all about the business potential of any movie, reports that we can believe in the Force once more, after being disappointed by the last two movies:

Given the general awareness of what's going to happen, it's up to Lucas to make it exciting. Despite fans' varying degrees of loss of faith that set in with Menace and Clones, most will be inspired enough to believe again.

Variety, in its trademark telegraph styles adds, "Stratospheric B.O. is a given." And no, that doesn't mean they expect this one to stink up the theatres like Episodes I and II.

A.O. Scott in the Times says this is the best Star Wars movie George Lucas has directed. "That's right, it's better than Star Wars," he notes.

Nothing like a dark story — like my favorite, Empire, where Darth emerges as Luke's dad — to grab our hearts. Like anybody, I want to feel that surge of emotion again, experience the brain's mirror neurons I felt almost 25 years ago in the old one-screen Americana Theatre on Hancock Street in a much-smaller Austin. That old-style theatre, with one giant screen and an auditorium wide enough to have a middle aisle, it's gone. The lines wrapped around that building in June of 1980, when Empire opened. That theatre's site has morphed into a library. But PBS says that mirror neurons in brain circuitry let us "lose it completely" at the movies. That's the feeling I want to find again, the amazing sound of Yoda's voice, the thrill of Luke and Vader dueling, even though my fledgling Buddhist training tells me that some things never return, no matter how much we want to experience them again. No, that's grasping and attachment, like wanting another championship run for the Spurs to the NBA title.

At 11:50 PM, Wednesday night, the first screening unreels in Austin, at the Alamo Drafthouse North. Maybe I'll enjoy a chance encounter with my neurons there. It seems appropriate to watch the darkest side of the Force in the darkest side of the night, past midnight.

Miller's Un-Crossing

Dennis Miller, the only comic ever to get both an Emmy-winning show on HBO Late Night as well as a slot on the Monday Night Football crew, signed off of cable TV tonight in his last CNBC broadcast. His show, titled uncreatively "Dennis Miller" by CNBC, saw its ratings drop after the 2004 elections to just an average of 114,000 viewers nationwide. Our Austin Chronicle alternative weekly can boast more readers than that.

Miller ran through his usual standup routine on his last show, working too hard, then interviewed New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, who was plugging her book on the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun,Becoming Justice Blackmun. Miller managed to use the word "heinous" twice during his interview, another example of his erudite broadcast vocabulary. You can watch until the end of the year and probably not find another use of heinous twice in one comedy program. At one point during ABC's Monday Night Football experiment with Miller on the team, a wireless Palm broadcast tracked his exotic language and esoteric references during the game. (The title of this blog post is a little nod to his excellence, a reference to a certain Cohen Brothers film that fell a little short of their potential, too.)

Now he's just lost his edge, drifting over into right-wing politics about the time the US invaded Iraq. On a recent appearance on the Daily Show, he said he'd lost ground because "people think I'm some kind of right-wing nut job, because I backed Bush on the war." My brother Bob's blog Wissewig chronicled that appearance, exceptional because Miller was funny once more.

Comics take a risk when they go jingo on us, either to the left or the right. But since the right seems to have a stunted sense of humor anyway, it looks like Miller's crossing-off of the CNBC list shows there's more risk of being un-funny — and so un-broadcasted — on the right.

Have a listen (MP3) to my own little rant about Miller's fall from funny.

If You Can't Wait for the Dark Side

In one week, the last Star Wars film opens, and the local theatres are already selling advance tickets for the Big Day. People who attend the opening day of "Revenge of the Sith" run the risk of playing the character Big Honking Geek, of course. Andy Borowitz, the comic who fills many a mailbox with his daily fake news stories, ran an item this week titled "Shocker: Star Wars Fans Have Sex" (Insert derisive laughter here).

All that said, I'd like to have two of those tickets for one week from today, a seat for me and my wife Abby. (Insert sigh of relief on learning your correspondent has what can pass for a normal life.)

Some people can't wait, and others didn't need to. Last week a string of theatres around the US hosted a series of benefit screenings of Sith at the cool price of $500 a ticket. If you were lucky you also got an appearance of one of the film's production crew. It might not have been as thin as the Seinfeld episode where Kramer hosts a Spartacus screening with "the second assistant costumer" as a special guest. But that's a serious jones to shell out 500 beans for a two-week jump on the lines around your multiplex.

I found it far more entertaining just to consume the many bits of the film over the Web. Yesterday the Star Wars Web Site Empire sent me notice of the "End of War" trailer to watch over my Mac (set your bandwidth on stun, trooper), or the "music video" (quotes required) "A Hero Falls." No less than nine TV-ad-length snippets of the movie are online at the starwars.com site. You can probably see 10 minutes of the movie without even putting a toe across the geek line.

But the best representation of the depth of this culture — it's been with us for 28 years now, meaning the kids who saw the first movie when it opened are already older than Natalie Portman — to see how much Star Wars has spawned, head out the fan film frontier. This week at Cannes, Atom Films is screening the slickest of these little five-minute gems, built with "borrowed" seconds from the saga and often given a comic twist.

May the farce be you, young Jedi.

A Glance At Lance's New Gym

He might not work out much there himself, but Lance Armstrong's name is across the top of the latest 24 Hour Fitness gym to open in Austin. Abby and I are 24-hour members, so I drove a little north of the house to see what a 6-time Tour de France winner can do to motivate regular mokes like me.

It did feel like more fun, looking up at the enormous mural of Lance blasting out of the blocks on the time trials that started under the Eiffel Tower while I cranked up on some late-model cycling machine. There's a serious row of spinning cycles in another room, plus artwork of cyclists jammed tight in a peleton right above the crunch machines. All a better spark than the plain blue walls of the other 24 Hour club in our neighborhood.

Off in the locker room, a Discovery Channel Pro Team jersey and a UT Longhorn t-shirt hang in a glass-doored locker, lit for drama. 24-Hour has Shaq gyms, too. We might as well try to emulate the drive of these heroes, even if we can't expect to achieve their results with garden-variety genes.

Glen Rose, and Dinos, a la Nuke

Our Texas dulcimer fest has called Glen Rose its home for almost a quarter-century. This is my first trip to this part of the state, a string of little towns that dot the horse pastures and cattle ranches in a rolling part of Texas. Stephenville, maybe the biggest city just a little south of Ft. Worth, lies about an hour down US 67, and the whole area is a hub of horses. I see signs taped onto store doors around Glen Rose for riding lessons, horse training, breeding.

The animal that Glen Rose is best-known for is the dinosaur, though. The local chamber likes to call it The Dinosaur Capitol of Texas, using the “alternate” spelling of capital to suggest we might find a massive building, like all capitols, where the dinos can be found. On the town square a dinosaur footprint, carved out of the nearby limestone, sits next to the town’s museum. Glen Rose claims to be the only city in Somervell County, the second-smallest county in Texas. That’s probably because Pecan Plantation sits 10 miles away in Hood County, and Walnut Springs is 12 miles away in Bosque County. The borders run close here.

That dino track needed a nuclear nudge to get onto the square. The block of rock came out during the creation of the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant, which sits about 5 miles from Glen Rose, one of just two Texas nukes on the state’s grid. Driving the hills and valley roads you can see the massive transmission lines running toward the plant. As we check in up in Granbury, 14 miles from Glen Rose, I spot a poster next to the hotel’s front desk: Emergency Evacuation Procedures in case of an accident. It’s worded matter-of-fact like the aircraft emergency cards you see in jet liners, assuring residents that "If evacuation is recommended, stay calm, you'll have plenty of time to leave." My favorite phrase from this “escape the nukes” placard advises folks to roll up their windows in their cars and "If you use your car air conditioning, set it on "inside" or "maximum" so it does not pull in outside air." Somervell County is a peaceful, beautiful place, so naturally Texans would abide a nuclear shadow over its grassy hills.

Granbury manages to sport a harbor, not a bad trick for a city that’s 300 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The Brazos River Authority has dammed up the river to create Lake Granbury. We ate at a floating dockside restaurant. You wouldn’t expect to be in what the chamber calls “the Threshold of the infamous ‘Texas Hill Country’“ and yet feel the restaurant's flooring sway beneath you.

Back in Time to Older Music

I rode up to Texas horse country today to saddle up in another way, sitting for hours to listen to instruments from an older time. The Lone Star State Dulcimer Society held its 24th Annual Dulcimer Festival in Glen Rose. Two dozen acts played, strumming the strings of mountain dulcimers or tinkling tunes across hammer dulcimers, backed up by fiddles and even a single-string bass, mounting a homey plywood stage in a throwback RV camp, Oakdale Park. (That's Ken Cook, dulcimer builder and one of the festival's main supporters, hammering away.)

They all called it “old time music” for short, with tunes from Ireland, Scotland and the early Middle West of America. But the dulcimer — an instrument with the flexibility of both piano and guitar — can be pressed into more modern compositions, too. We heard James Brown (I Feel Good). The Classic “I Will Fly Away” is followed by Bread’s “If.” The more recent songs ripple with novelty on the dulcimer. The classics ring out with the instrument’s true tenor. (As opposed to the hammer above, this contestant strums a mountain dulcimer, an instrument with the soul of a banjo and the voice of a modest harp.)

Oakdale Park opened its aging arms to a crowd of about 300 performers, families and bemused spectators (I count myself in that narrow group.) Yes, it’s a dale of arching oaks, set across the street from Big Rock Park in the Glen Rose outskirts (if a town of 2,400 can really have outskirts). The park accomodates RV campers and tent-toters, but it’s also flanked on one side with tiny 15x15 one-room cottages named things like Nest, Den, Hut, Pad and Cave. The ample swimming pool was dug in 1925 by excavators using mules, or so goes the legend. Oakdale opened for business in 1960, but it has a feel of the Forties. No alcohol, were reminded religiously, is allowed on the premises. The spirits are steeped from another source here.

Ron Wilcox, my guide and good friend, acted as the Mayor of my Dulcimer-ville for the weekend, steeping us in performance and then steering us to the outer realms of the bigger town, Granbury, where a Days Inn awaited. I scribbled and recorded and photographed and videotaped, like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. A story seems to sing out here.

The Eighties Arrive Again

No, not the era of Top Gun and Billy Idol. I’m talking about temperatures in our part of Texas. Yesterday in Austin we saw just about the last of our highs in the 70s. (Come to think of it, there were a lot of those kinds of highs in the Seventies. Ba-dum-bump. Thank you, I’ll be here all week.)

April left us with too little rain, but it hasn't kept the lawns and the Indian Paintbrush wildflowers, from growing in climbing temperatures at a healthy clip. We’re all comparing our cutting down here — “I only had to cut the lawn twice in the last three weeks.” But air from over Mexico, and that from the Gulf next to it, are about to overpower any cool fronts that jet through. Our weather service “forecast discussion” now warns of weeks where “Rain chances decrease and hot dry weather will result as a dominating ridge build into the southern plains.”

It's as plain as the blooming lawns that summer sets in by early May, as usual, and it won’t depart until October. Big glasses of iced tea, and livin’ in the AC, help us transplanted Yankees stay cool. Lessons I learned in the Eighties, when I spent my first summers here, astounded by the powerful heat. Today I got in my first long ride since the HCRA, and the last of my pedaling through cool air for the season, down Parmer Lane's broad shoulders and up through Breakaway Park, a "fly-in community" where you can taxi your private plane out of the garage and right onto the Breakaway airstrip.

Spurs' D Ices Out That Hottest Team

"The hottest team in the NBA" saw its fire doused by defense last night, as the Spurs stifled the Denver Nuggets to end Denver's season. For weeks we heard so much about how Denver was dangerous, had won 11 consecutive games at home since midseason, was 22-1 in the Pepsi Center since they got their new coach, George Karl. The most dangerous team in the playoffs, nobody wants to face them now.

Hey, we saw them beat the Spurs on a Saturday night down in San Antonio. It was one of just three home losses, even if we didn't have Manu and Tim Duncan on the floor. They looked vulnerable.

Then ESPN reported this breathless stat:

George Karl set an NBA record by leading the Nuggets to a 32-8 record after he became head coach in January. Karl's .800 winning percentage was the highest in NBA history by a midseason replacement who coached at least 20 games.

"Blah, blah, blah. Denver got beat in both of its home games in the series. The Spurs scratched them out of the playoffs in four straight losses, jamming up the likes of Carmelo Anthony with penetrating defense. So the Nuggets became the first team in 12 years to post the best second-half NBA record and then lose in the first round of the playoffs.

Coach of that other team, in 1993? George Karl. (That hissing sound you hear is the air escaping that gaudy "Karl for Coach of the Year" balloon. Fleeting glory is built on half a season, as Karl already knows.)

Our heart rates stayed below 140 we watched Karl's season end tonight. Not like that Spurs overtime win on Monday. We didn't get to sleep that night until nearly 2 AM, with the game running long out in the Mountain time zone.

Tickets go on sale tomorrow morning for the weekend's conference semifinal games against Seattle, another run and gun team. (The Spurs want to fill their SBC Center in San Antonio with friendly faces, so Ticketmaster won't process a playoff order if your zip code is further away than Austin. If you're not from around here, you gotta get yours on the street, or from a broker. Few NBA teams limit sales like this, and it really cheesed off the Dallas fans two years ago in the conference finals. Playoff games sell out in Texas. Who needs the out of towners?)

The Spurs are likely to see all three NBA hot shooters on the way to the finals. First Denver, scoring more than 110 points a game at home. Now Seattle, driven by the 3-ball master, Ray Allen, Mr. "Jesus Shuttlesworth" of He Got Game movie fame. The Spurs have their own 3-point shooter. Might have heard of him, a fellow with five title rings: Big Shot Bob Horry.

When the Spurs ground the Sonics, they probably face the flaming fast break of the Suns and Little Stevie Nash. For a spot in the Finals, no less.

Cool defense kills off these torch artists, those who play high-octane ball and not much D. In last night's fourth quarter, the Spurs held Denver to 14 percent shooting. Stifling.

And everybody thought the Spurs would have trouble breathing, up in Denver. Defense makes the air so rare, anywhere.

The Spurs D, which everybody outside of Central Texas calls ugly to watch, comes in so many little clampdowns. Like the offensive rebounding of Nazr Mohammed, who replaced fan favorite Malik Rose in February. Fans were angry then about the trade. But I don't remember many Malik nights in closeout games where he swiped 7 offensive boards. (It's been a tough spring for Malik, who got his two Spurs title rings stolen last week in a burglary at his home in San Antonio.)

We still can't figure why the Knicks traded us "Nazy," but their loss is our defensive gain. Those offensive boards keep the ball out of the hands of these barnburning teams. Defense isn't ugly. It's a cool way to bring another title to one of the NBA's smallest markets.

More Bullets to Dodge in Communication

After getting a comment from bullets-in-writing advocate BL Ochman about my entry that derided bullets in blog copy, I found a marketing maven who wants to see the bullets disappear like I do. He'd like to see them erased from PowerPoint presentations, too. I'd said that PowerPoint isn't a writing tool, but it's being used like one. Cliff Atkinson, who wrote "Beyond Bullet Points," says over on the MarketingProfs.com site that bullets are the bane of business communication.

On May 12 Atkinson leads a free online seminar at MProfs: "Transform Your PowerPoint Beyond Bullet Points!" In the interview he says film is the medium to mimic if you want to make PowerPoint communicate:

"People have been communicating complex information using projected images and spoken words for more than a century without bullet points — in the form of films. We have a thing or two to learn from filmmakers about how they do that."

Film is a great teacher for writing skills. Ron Shelton, the director and screenwriter who gave us "Bull Durham," has a sign next to his keyboard that says "Don't think. Just write." You can make writing simple without biting those bullets.

A Sweet Finish of Sweat and Tears

People crossed new thresholds today as they crossed the finish line of the ride. The picture at left includes two first-year riders, Abby (far left) and Elaine (very middle), the kind who make our efforts grow with each year. Our gallop down to that finish felt so fine. Since last year's ride was rained into a single-day event, it had been two years since I had the thrill of riding downhill for the last two miles into Austin, every stroke of the pedal carrying me closer to the cheers of the crowd at the finish line. My finish was even more exciting because Abby was riding 200 yards in front of me, finishing up a complete last leg of the ride that she thought she might have to sag through. While I yapped encouragement at her up the last of the hard hills, she cleaned her plate of courage to grind up the inclines. Angels of volunteers stood at every turn, telling us the finish line was not far, and the top of the hill was close.

The ride can do that for you: Give you the strength you were not sure you had. The hidden power comes from the spirit of supporters all along the road, at the tops of hard hills and long climbs like the one on that final leg, a finish more than six hours away from that hard Sunday morning start. While I was stuggling up the 303 hill again, Abby was recovering from a fall right at the starting line, a tough way to begin a long day of biking in wind and up hills. While she had no road rash, she came home tonight sporting some impressive bruises.


At the first pit stop my friends Ron and Steve joined me in some clowning for the cameras. There's not a one of us who's younger than 48, but we keep after each other on so many miles in training and fun rides that their spirit turns my cranks as much as any power. After yesterday's grueling start, we all felt thrilled to push off into sunny skies with virtually no wind for the first hour or so. I got to power through a 16-mile segment to dash to lunch in the early afternoon, cutting through the leg in a little more than an hour and 10 minutes. Those muscles were sore, sure, but they were also accustomed to responding to the challenge after my 50 miles yesterday. I wanted to catch up to those fellows, and Abby, who'd gotten into the "Dollywood" lunchtime pit before me:


The parking lot on Southwest Parkway couldn't have been more transformed from Saturday morning's rainy scene. The air was warm and the sun shone bright, but the brightest light on that pavement was the beaming smiles of riders and volunteers and family and friends, all waiting to welcome the riders just returning. The Ride is extraordinary among bike events I've ridden: The later you pull in, the bigger the cheers. It's a tribute based on the level of your effort, not the speed of your day. Our mantra has always been "It's a ride, not a race." Sunday's sweet reward showed how deep we hold that belief.

Then the ice water and ice cream flowed, along with the tears of unbridled joy from the first time finishers, and those whose hearts were moved along with them, like mine. Abby and I, the Duo-Tones, finished with our Elvis "Road King" socks on our feet and big grins for the cameras. Every rider got a cool bandana draped around their neck at the finish, along with a big hug from the ride organizers.

After we'd taken off our riding shoes, stretched and removed our helmets at last, we tottered back to the finish line to cheer in the later riders. The last bike that came in, along with the SAG trucks just behind it, touched off an ovation that rocketed off the office faces and pounded back onto our sunburned necks. We didn't feel any pain, the endorphins already shooting through us after the exercise.

Our physical effort astounds us when we take ourselves beyond our ideas of capability, but that work pales to the challenge of living HIV positive or surviving AIDS. Our ride was dotted with "Positive Pedalers" and those SAG angels whose hearts were big enough to help us climb Lance-class hills. It's a marvelous thing to do something so dramatic, scary and fun and have the effort inflated by raising funds and awareness.


Over these two days we flaunt a community of kindness. We'll miss the contact, a sadness that crept over me even as we loaded our camp gear and bikes into our van. I'm glad to have volunteer work to do for the ride in the months to come. I want to rub this feeling deep into my self, so I remember the scent of sweet tears mixed with sweat and burnished by loving smiles.