I'll try to hit the highlights of our 5 days in Texas. The day after Thanksgiving I wanted to go to the mall and Target, which are the hub of much social activity in Wichita Falls. The town has 100,000 people in it but you probably wouldn't guess near that much. I wanted to go to where everyone would be doing their Christmas shopping on the biggest shopping day of the year. We walked around the mall, past kiosks with blown-glass unicorns and oversized [aka Texas-sized] wreaths and the Gap, where a flaming gay guy bounced over to me and gushed about how he loved my outfit and that my shoes were fabulous.

My old friend Jason Stowe came over to visit that afternoon (we went to Southwest Texas together) wearing everything Polo with his shirt tucked in. He made amusingly polite conversation with my parents about how the Cowboys really suck and it's all Jerry Jones' fault. Then my parents offered to babysit and the only thing to do was go to Graham Central Station and laugh at people. Graham Central is this big conglomeration of kicker bars [kicker is short for 'shit-kicker', meaning cowboy] and I've never been in there but on weekend nights you see lots of cowboy hat- and Wrangler-wearing people in the parking lot, fighting or about to fight. So Mike and David and I went in there, and there was a big sign out front that said "Shirt tails MUST be tucked in" and "Only forward-facing baseball caps and western hats will be allowed." [Which are the only kind anyone would wear - if someone wore a fedora or sombrero or top hat in, would they make them leave it in the car?] Inside I found that it was about six or seven clubs all melded into one, with bars sprinkled throughout. When they stamped our hands at the door they also handed us a big plastic cup. We were like, what the heck? and found out that it was for keg beer. Beers and well drinks were only fifty cents. Yee haw! On the walls were neon cowboys and "Travis Tritt drinks Bud Light" and "Tim McGraw for Coors" signs. We went to the karaoke bar and saw the best reality-tv type stuff that couldn't be better if they were making it up. Lots of drunk country fans trying to sing. One girl got up onstage and was wearing a striped t-shirt tucked into shiny pleather pants. She looked sort of cute in a trailer way until she smiled with missing teeth. She sang "Why Not Me", which I actually love, but totally butchered it. There was a curious character sitting at a table - what made him curious was that I couldn't figure out what look or genre he was going for. He was wearing one of those nylon-y hats that rappers wear that tie around your head and hang down your back like an Arab, he had a mullet [or at least long hair, I couldn't really be sure cause of the hat], he was wearing George Michael fingerless gloves and studded black leather wristbands and shiny black MC Hammer-type pants. He wrote his name on the karaoke list as being Jimi. When he got up onstage I didn't know WHAT to expect. He started doing a softshoe sort of dance and I was even more freaked out. Then they started playing the song he picked to sing....and he sang in the most dead-on Frank Sinatra impression: "Start spreaking the newwwws...I'm leaving todaaaay..." After the first two lines I was starting to think that Jimi was someone I'd like to hang out with. Then when he got to "These little town blues" he sang in an Axl Rose voice! He looked exactly like Dwight Yoakam in the face too. After he got off stage I tried to get him to sing another song but he just played pool the rest of the night. We had to leave and get Judah, but on our way out the door they announced that a wet t-shirt contest would be held at midnight. I'm really sorry we missed that.

On the plane home yesterday, we were sitting behind a guy wearing an AARP baseball hat, and he was typing on this laptop. David had the vantage point to look over his shoulder and read, and he whispered to me "That guy is writing a really bad novel!" He started copying it down on a barf bag, and here is what he got: "Maybe she was nuts, but she must have liked something about him. Now he might as well be a cold fish. A cooked goose. Chopped liver. Rotten pizza." Then another paragraph: "She looked down at her body and ran her hands under the elastic of her panties. This is what they wanted, and nature had given it to her. She slid her panties down. Her blond pubic hair stood erect."

And unfortunately, that's all he copied.