Sing me one more song about them dusty plains / Them honky-tonk angels and their lonely beehive pain

I've made my bed, so here I'll lie / I'm rollin' West Texas teardrops in my eyes

There's a seat for you at the rodeo, and I've got every slow dance saved / Besides the Mexican food sucks north of here anyway

It's written all over the face of the daughter of the mayor of Marble Falls / When she winds up in Denton town, doing the Valium waltz

There only two things in life that make it worth livin' / That's guitars that tune good and firm-feelin' women

Alison in Galveston somehow lost her sanity / And Dimples who now lives in Temple's got the law lookin' for me

She lived in Berkeley till the earthquake shook her loose / She lives in Texas now, where nothing ever moves

Nighttime would find me in Rosa's cantina / Music would play and Felina would whirl

Well there's floodin' down in Texas, all the telephone lines are down / And I've been tryin' to call my baby, Lord, and I can't get a single sound

I sure do love them red-haired girls / I'm just like all the boys from Texas

A Lone Star State of Mind

Texas is one of the few places in the U.S. that's a vital character in movies. Los Angeles, New York, and even Chicago to an extent have definable, discernible screen presences, setting themselves apart with the crowds, taxis, and steam from the subway vents, or in the case of L.A., with heat, sand, and a kind of vapid languor that settles with the smog over the hills.

But, to borrow my own definition, Texas is Texas. It's the second-largest state in both land mass and population, and easily the largest of the contiguous 48 states. The plains and trees and cicadas and grass in the sidewalks look like they do nowhere else, and films set there, whether consciously or not, become fused with a unique mentality, a balance of slow movement and quick thinking, of life in big cities and the consistently pleasing sound of truck tires on gravel roads. I'm aware that Texas is responsible for many awful things in life, and more than a few bad movies have has their stories set there. But there have been some good films set here that, to varying degrees, have incorporated Texas into their stories, settings, and states of mind. Here, a list of some of the best:

Dazed and Confused
A modern classic that tracks a series of vignettes over the course of the last day of high school in a 1976 Huntsville. A friend of mine from this little hamlet can vouch for the film's authenticity. The cast featured a wide array of soon to be B-level actors, notably Ben Affleck as a douchey jock and Matthew McConaughey as Wooderson, aka the future version of Matthew McConaughey. Almost endlessly quotable: "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."

Primer
This is an amazing film not just because it's an inventive, genre-busting (which is important, let's remember) look at a group of hobbyists who cook up a time machine. It's also a tribute to truly independent filmmaking. Writer/director/star Shane Carruth put the film together over a couple years' time; his mom provided craft services and his friends acted as co-stars. He shot the thing on film scraps for $7,000, and got it into Sundance. The two commentary tracks offer amazing insight into the process. One track features Carruth and the rest of the cast and crew talking and joking about the film, but the other track is just Carruth, detailing what it took to put Primer together. I knew the film had to be shot in Dallas, even before Carruth confirmed this. There are too many trees and plains to be anywhere else, and one of the scenes features two characters meeting at a Sonic early one morning. That's Texas.

Office Space
Another film instantly recognizable as Texas-set, and one of the comedies that no one saw in theaters but that everyone owns on DVD. A creepy coworker of mine, The Guy Who Walks Really Fast, wore a T-shirt recently with the phrase "Damn it feels good to be a gangsta" on it, and he pointed this out to me while confidently nodding and muttering "Office Space, get it?" And the whole thing was so meta it freaked me out.

The Last Picture Show
Definitely Peter Bogdanovich's best film, starring Cybill Shepherd (who, frighteningly, used to be hot), The Dude, and Young Mr. Hart himself. A beautiful story, set in the dusty spaces of North Texas.

Blood Simple
Coens. Murder. Noir. Texas. Walsh.

Lone Star
An amazing murder story from John Sayles, one of the few directors who could turn Wooderson legit.

Varsity Blues
You knew this would make the list. Texas, as you know, places high school football above all other priorities, except of course for ranching, and keeping those dadgum rustlers off our property. Why, I still carry a six-shooter to this day, and I miss my horse like crazy. In all honesty, though, this movie is so joyously stupid that it's impossible not to watch it. Seriously, Dawson as the football hero? Brilliant. "I … don't want … your life." Burned into the brains of the members of my generation.

Bottle Rocket/Rushmore
Too brilliant to discuss here at any real length. They remain Wes Anderson's best films to date, and make subtle but definite use of Texas' open spaces and neighborhoods, particularly Bottle Rocket. Plus they're both just unshakeably awesome.

"Cowboys do it till you get rope burn."

"Christians do it with an overpowering sense of guilt and shame."

"BBQ cooks do it with spatulas."

"Small-town residents do it with a dull-eyed stare of ennui as if they've realized the pointlessness of their existence."

Coworker #1: Sports-related question?

Me: Sufficiently sports-related answer using detail cribbed from Bill Simmons.

Coworker #1: General approval of response.

Coworker #2: Arcane and rapid-fire question about baseball?

Coworker #1: Equally obscure statement of agreement, displaying casual use of facts I do not know.

Me: Joking attempt to steer conversation back toward basketball game currently being televised!

Coworker #1: [Blank stare.] Grudging acceptance of same.

Coworker #2: Another baseball question?

Me: [Silent wish for Coworker #2 to trip and fall and break something and die.] Extremely vague baseball statement, demonstrating a solid grasp of the basic rules but nothing more. Attempt at casual mention of DH. Woeful misstep.

Coworker #2: [Glance at Coworker #1.]

Coworker #1: Derisive comment about my sexual orientation and/or ability to physically satisfy a woman.

Me: Laughing acceptance of same.

[Game ends.]

• It's deeply unsettling to ride in a plane with propellers, i.e., a non-jet plane. I saw it pull up at the airport and felt like I was living in that scene in Major League where the team thinks they're about to board a jet but is instead shunted onto a small, rickety old deathtrap. If only I'd had Serrano to keep me company.

• Riding on said deathtrap is equally frightening. The single flight attendant, she announced to us over the intercom (though she really could have just raised her voice, it was that small an area), had been forbidden by the captain to walk around, because of the turbulence. As we began our descent into DFW, the captain told us to prepare for landing, only instead of using the airline-standard "Flight attendants, please prepare for landing," he said, "Jesseca, please get ready to land," because when you've only got one flight attendant, you might as well call her by name, no matter how much it might freak out the passengers.

• Her name really was Jesseca, with all Es, not 2 Es and an I. It's like her parents loved her enough to give her a normal-sounding name but also hated her enough to give it a brutally retarded spelling, so she'll have to correct people on the matter for the rest of her life.

• People in Texas get excited about pretty much anything; people in L.A. get excited about pretty much nothing.

• There's something in the air or the water in the middle of nowhere in West Texas that turns most of the girls there into some frighteningly hot women. And it's different than the L.A. kind of hot. Flying out of California, the woman in front of me as we boarded at LAX kept unconsciously shaking her head to show off her hair, and stood there with back slightly arched and chest high and ass slightly out, as if trying to signal to every nearby male her potential to breed. But the mix of desert and heat and decades of religiously and politically conservative ideologies in Texas adds like 19 new levels of psychic anguish to the whole ordeal, because the girls there are often known to wear the highest bottoms and the lowest tops and skip gaily through the May sun and in general destroy the central nervous systems of countless fraternity boys, but when it comes right down to it, their personalities are a mixture of a "Sorry, Bobby / Can't go past the lobby" kind of teasing disappointment and something bordering on shock that all these good ol' boys are walking around having these bad ol' thoughts about the legions of nubile coeds that seem to swarm underfoot like crickets in August. Los Angeles is a place of open sexuality, but the Key City seems to ask that those hormones be repressed, fought against, tied down, which leads to a generally palpable sexual tension in the air, sending many of the young men into alternately downward spirals of physical debauchery and self-flagellating periods of piety.

• All that to say that college is an emotionally interesting era.

• About the getting excited: This is mainly because there's not much to do in West Texas, so that social events become havens from boredom and rare chances to get all gussied up, whereas there's so much crap to do after dark in L.A. that you usually bail on it all and just stay home. It's a weird rule, but tends to hold.

• Many, many people in Texas use "Coke" to mean any kind of carbonated soft drink. It is useless to try and change their ways on this.

• Texas looks like Texas, even from the air. Some people would say that roads and trees and fields look like roads and trees and fields pretty much anywhere, and that to distinguish Texas from the air is impossible, but these people are dead wrong, and if you follow their teachings you will stray from the path of learning. Texas looks like Texas. I'm a (relatively) smart guy, so I understand the idiocy of that tautology, but there's almost no other way to define it. It just looks like Texas: Wide fields, access roads next to the highways, a kind of casual enormity to the cities that communicates the idea that the planners and residents gorged themselves on the open space around them and decided to spread everything out just for fun. It's directly against the idea you'd expect most people to have, where you would put things in a city near each other for the sake of convenience. But Texas is second nationally in land mass only to Alaska, and its citizens like their space.

• People drive slow in West Texas, and I don't mean slower than you or I or slower than one would expect, but full-on objectively slow. It's amazing. If the speed limit on a given street is 40 mph, you can bet they'll be tooling along around 36, playing it safe, enjoying the sunshine and talking about how Dr Pepper is the only kind of Coke they like. But I think they drive so slowly because they have nowhere to go, both in the immediate and meta senses. It's not just that their destination of the store or the flea market is so mundane that any sense of urgency in travel has long withered and died, but that they're past middle age and have by some unknown force of the cosmos or some truly bad karma found themselves living in West Texas with nothing to do. They don't drive so slow because they're lazy, but because they've looked into the future and seen that they have nowhere important to go. Ever.

There's more info here, but basically, you should know that more than a few of these apply to me. ButterKrust, Mi Tierra, using the exit ramp to gain speed, the whole nine. All the list needs is a reference to El Raton.

Just a reminder to Keep San Antonio Lame. If you don't like it, lump it.

You Know You're From San Antonio When:

You lost your virginity at Mission Drive-In.
You know exactly how to get to the Ghost Tracks from anywhere in town. [true]
You think pro-choice means flour or corn tortillas.
You've never been to the Alamo.
You think a health drink is a margarita without salt.
You think being able to read the Taco Cabana menu makes you bilingual.
You used to live in a neighborhood you wouldn't even drive through now.
There has been a road crew on your street since before the Alamodome was built.
You remember when Crossroads Mall used to be called Wonderland.
You've been to Midget Mansion and the Fat Farm.
You know all about the Dancing Diablo and the Donkey Lady bridge.
You know that Wheatley and Brackenridge is the same school.
You remember the Captain Gus show.
Your subwoofer has twice the value of your car.
You have three rodeo outfits but never have been on a horse.
You are an expert with the brake pedal, but you have no idea what a blinker is.
Your idea of culture is wearing a Hard Rock T-shirt.
You think the last supper was at Mi Tierra.
You do your grocery shopping at a flea market.
You think local politicians are crooks, but you still do not vote.
You care if San Antonio is in the national spotlight.
A formal occasion is getting a glass with your longneck.
You believe tacos, barbecue, tequila, and beer are the four basic food groups.
You think wearing bows in your hair will get you a husband.
Your white mother learned how to make tamales & menudo from your neighbors.
You know the real definition of Fiesta is 'stay home if at all possible.'
You have ordered Mexican food at a Chinese restaurant.
You had breakfast tacos at Taco Cabana on Christmas morning.
You remember the Joske's Christmas display.
You remember when JC Penney's had a restaurant.
You remember hamburgers from Whopper Burger.
Your elementary school field trip was to the ButterKrust Bakery.
You complain about how cold it is when the temperature dips below 70.
Your cholesterol is over 300.
You had a birthday party at Kiddie Park.
You have had nightmares about the giant cowboy boots in front of North Star Mall.
You own an album by, have seen or are even aware of any of the following bands: 'Moxy', 'Legs Diamond', 'Trapeze', 'Garfield' and especially 'Ozz Knozz' or 'Heyoka.'
You know what people are talking about when they refer to the 'hey-she-b.'
Your idea of a tropical vacation getaway is Port Aransas.
You get defensive when your friends from Austin talk about the great show they saw last night.
You party with your cousin more than twice a week.
You call any convenience store 'icehouse.'
You have only seen snow once in your life and it was twenty years ago.
You think a flash-flood warning means 'go drive through a low water crossing.'
You think the exit ramp is your own personal lauch pad.
You get annoyed when tourists ask for 'fa-jite-as.'
You couldn't care less about the Rodeo but never miss the Cowboy Breakfast.
You know the location of both the Hanging Tree and the Hollow Tree.
You don't have to look at the menu when you order at Bill Miller.
You have never, ever called this city 'San Antone.'

Parking meters.

The cinematic oeuvre of Brett Ratner.

People who really (i.e., unironically) like Steely Dan.

People who think Texas is awesome just because it's Texas.

People who think Texas sucks just because it's Texas.

Not getting free bread or something at a restaurant while you wait.

The fact that it's already 2006 and there seems to be no progression on the hoverboard front.

People who think Crash is deep.

People who think Brokeback is awesome just because it's about dudes.

The fact that my stupid college keeps calling and asking for an alumni donation, when I'll already be paying off student loans until my 40s.

People who talk in the movie theater.

People who talk in the movie theater.

People who talk in the movie theater.

The elderly. Mainly when they drive, though really, I'm hard-pressed to find a use for them in most any situation.

Rob Schneider.

The fact that no one seems to understand that correlation does not equal causation.

Knowing that it's probably all downhill from here.

The fact that B.J. Novak is only 26 and already an established writer-producer. Makes me feel like I haven't done anything (which I really haven't, so I guess it's not his fault, but still).

Nickelback.

The fact that you can't get decent queso west of San Antonio.

Girls who talk about their cats. Although really, any girl with more than one cat is a red flag.

Ted Nugent.

People who think Finding Forrester is in any way good, or about good writing.

The fact that "Yes, Dear" is still on the air. Actually, the fact that CBS still exists as a network.

The fact that every great TV show either is canceled too soon or slides inevitably into crap.

---

"We'll bring you the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie."

Dining at Taco Cabana late one night in the summer of 2000, my friend and I got drawn into a conversation with a homeless man on the patio. I don't remember why we were talking to him; probably because he knew he had a captive audience, since it's hard to simultaneously eat a breakfast taco and edge uneasily away from a crazy person. He had on a striped Wendy's polo shirt, the kind their employees wear, and a dirty beard. He said his name was Lee, and he was of the Baha'i faith. Since I had not yet moved to California, I thought he was making his religion up, but it turns out they're a real group. They've even adopted a stretch of the 101 out near Ventura County, and that's a pretty nice piece of road.

Lee told us that pretty much everything we saw was and/or could be God, like the pitcher of water on the counter or a nearby shrub. He said he didn't want to swear in front of "the lady," by which he meant my sister, but then he he promptly turned to face the street and flipped off several passing cars, shouting "Your mama!" at the traffic.

No idea what happened to him. He's probably dead now.

[This has been today's edition of True Stories With Real And Depressing Conclusions.]

---

"It's a vicious circle."

"Yep. Just keeps going around and around."

"Never stops."

"That's what makes it vicious."

"And a circle."

One

Two

Three

honeypie

suparpie

up close and personal

chicken fried steak

wetback

freedom fries

lynch

breakfast taco

After prodding from the people that prod me, or one of them anyway, I humbly offer a list of appropriate phrases that should provide the reader with some idea of what life might be like in Abilene. Don't forget, I should be doing actual work instead of this.

1. Abilene: Enjoy Leaving!
2. Abilene: Have Fun Driving Through Us On Your Way To Nowhere!
3. Abilene: Because You Can Never Have Enough Churches
4. Abilene: Now There's A Starbucks!
5. Abilene: Why?
6. Abilene: Prone To Flooding
7. Abilene: Because Sometimes You Make Bad Choices
8. Abilene: Come For The Schools, Stay For The Poor Economy
9. The Occasionally Friendly Frontier
10. The Friendly City (Because The Frontier No Longer Exists)
11. Abilene: We Let Students Pick Our Slogan
12. The Genial Frontier
13. The Complacent Frontier
14. The Semi-Positive Frontier
15. Abilene: Everything Is Brown Here
16. Abilene: One Day At A Time
17. Abilene Schmabilene
18. Abilene: The Key City To A Door You Don't Want To Open
19. Abilene: More Crime Than You'd Think


"We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."