That boy ain't right

An auxiliary building to the statehouse that's uncanny in its similarity to every government building in Saigon

We're touring the statehouse today. Must... refrain... from... acid... commentary...

Sigh.

Where all the trouble started

The obligatory picture of the rotunda, with its 7-foot-wide Texas Lone Star

The Senate chambers. A legislature that meets for 5 months and then takes the next 19 off. The best excuse they have for this is that it's tradition. Legislators are paid something insulting like $10K/year, basically insuring that only the independently wealthy can serve. Unless you're a senator who goes out job-hunting during the off-season, as some do.

The House. This coming Monday is actually when the compromise battles over redistricting will be fought. I'd ordinarily insist that we watch this puke-inducing political display, except that Monday is our last day here and we'll have better things to do.

Texas pride -- or boastfulness -- asserts itself everywhere in this building, from the lights even down to the restored 19th-century door hinges. Every last one.

The underground annex, built about 10 years ago, extending 4 stories underground, housing skylight-lit offices as well as a full cafeteria and gift shop.

William Tecumseh Sherman is an irrational hero of mine. I can't help enjoying the image of a pigeon taking a crap on Jefferson Davis' head.

The Lost Cause lives forever.

From complicated times to complicated people: we truck on over to the LBJ Presidential Memorial and Library. I'd always figured my first presidential memorial trip would be down to Yorba Linda, where I'd no doubt be arrested for urinating in a planter, or better yet on Nixon's grave. But no -- I'd have to go and visit a place honoring an American president I thought I understood.

At least the museum itself is freaky in its spare monolithic architecture.

Another view toward the UT campus from the Memorial

A presidential limo, under construction during Johnson's administration, in service during Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan

A singularly creepy animatronic Johnson telling homespun jokes. I'd only come upon this once Mer was already midway through the exhibit, but she informs me it's actually creepier. He blinks in the darkness until you actually sit down on the black couch in the enclosure, and then lights turn on and he starts up. Once you leave, he stops and goes back to blinking at you in the darkness again.

A 1/8 replica of the Oval Office during LBJ's administration, but the furniture is his and is actual size, down to the 3 TVs that he obsessively watched the news on.

All in all, it was fairly informative. I honestly did not know the full extent of the Great Society. Social Security may have been an FDR creation, but Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Job Corps, the NEA, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Food Stamps, VISTA -- not to mention important Johnson achievements that I did know, such as the Voting Rights Act.

A selection from his State of the Union speech of 1965:

TOWARD THE GREAT SOCIETY

World affairs will continue to call upon our energy and our courage.
But today we can turn increased attention to the character of American life.
We are in the midst of the greatest upward surge of economic well-being in the history of any nation.
Our flourishing progress has been marked by price stability that is unequalled in the world. Our balance of payments deficit has declined and the soundness of our dollar is unquestioned. I pledge to keep it that way and I urge business and labor to cooperate to that end.
We worked for two centuries to climb this peak of prosperity. But we are only at the beginning of the road to the Great Society. Ahead now is a summit where freedom from the wants of the body can help fulfill the needs of the spirit.
We built this Nation to serve its people.
We want to grow and build and create, but we want progress to be the servant and not the master of man.
We do not intend to live in the midst of abundance, isolated from neighbors and nature, confined by blighted cities and bleak suburbs, stunted by a poverty of learning and an emptiness of leisure.
The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed.
It proposes as the first test for a nation: the quality of its people.
This kind of society will not flower spontaneously from swelling riches and surging power.
It will not be the gift of government or the creation of presidents. It will require of every American, for many generations, both faith in the destination and the fortitude to make the journey.
And like freedom itself, it will always be challenge and not fulfillment.
And tonight we accept that challenge.

A NATIONAL AGENDA

I propose that we begin a program in education to ensure every American child the fullest development of his mind and skills.
I propose that we begin a massive attack on crippling and killing diseases.
I propose that we launch a national effort to make the American city a better and a more stimulating place to live.
I propose that we increase the beauty of America and end the poisoning of our rivers and the air that we breathe.
I propose that we carry out a new program to develop regions of our country that are now suffering from distress and depression.
I propose that we make new efforts to control and prevent crime and delinquency.
I propose that we eliminate every remaining obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote.
I propose that we honor and support the achievements of thought and the creations of art.
I propose that we make an all-out campaign against waste and inefficiency.

Many platitudes there. But also many promises kept. (It also reminded me of other very similar Presidential addresses.)

If I had to point out the two most interesting little historical details there, it would be the point at which I could put a finger on why he would propose the Great Society programs in the first place: I think it was because he spent his postgraduate years teaching school at a very rural Texas school, to children who could barely speak English, where poverty was (and still is) endemic. He wrote about the experience years afterward; the images he remembered there stayed with him for the rest of his life.

The other detail is his service in WWII, in which he regretted earning a Silver Star in spite of his self-confessed "brief service", when he was still a serving US Senator. That regret, as long as I'm armchair psychoanalyzing, probably had a small role in his quagmire of the Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam. He wasn't the only one, but he probably saw the modern world in World War II terms. It was something he later wrote about and regretted very much.

It was extremely hard watching footage of the Selma marches there. Watching the footage of police dogs and firehoses always makes Mer sick; it always makes me cry. Credit goes to him for always being able to see beyond race.

(Mer, in the gift shop, eavesdrops on the elderly lady clerks talking about church activities and major surgeries while I go rooting about in campaign button arcana.)

In all, I'd say he was a good man and a good President, in spite of Vietnam. And through it all he was more of a Texan than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will ever be.

And there I go getting all political again.

After all this somber reflection, it's time for some serious boogie. After getting lost for a while and circling back to a deserted office park wasteland in the dark, we find an unlit, dilapidated Skateland in the dark -- with hordes of cars filling a parking lot, and an inflatable screen rising 2001-like in the mist:

Everybody grabs something to sit on in the parking lot and gets drunk off of Lone Stars. I'd have to say it's the best cheap beer I've had yet. Certainly beats out PBRs or Milwaukee's Beast. And I won't even talk about the national piss brands like Bud or Miller.

There are hilarious bits of commentary -- after all, it is the Mr. Sinus (to avoid lawsuits) movie night.

Chernobyl Xanadu

The inevitable sing-along:

I'm alive - and the world shines for me today
I'm alive - suddenly I am here today
Seems like forever (and a day), thought I could never (feel this way)
Is this really me? I'm alive, I'm alive

I'm alive - and the dawn breaks across the sky
I'm alive - and the sun rises up so high
Lost in another world (far away), never another word (till today)
But what can I say? I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive

(Instrumental break)

Suddenly came the dawn (from the night), suddenly I was born (into light)
How can it be real? I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive

I'm alive - and the world shines for me today
I'm alive - suddenly I am here today
Seems like forever (and a day), thought I could never (feel this way)
Is this really me? I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive

(Instrumental break)

I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive

She's a muse -- inspiring plays, works of art, and now reduced to opening discotheques!

After the movie, everybody half-tipsily walks over to Skateland to put on ancient skates and totter around a rink for a while.

This picture is of Michael Beck, Olivia's love interest in Xanadu and a very good sport. No doubt they flew him out from his home in LA, where he says he's working on a novel. He seems to have made a nice life for himself -- apparently he has two children, a 21-year-old son who has never seen Xanadu and a 13-year-old daughter who has. He also seems to have a healthy, dry sense of humor about his adventures in Hollywood.

Trying to balance on 20-year-old skates

An accidental but brightly impressionistic shot of the roller rink

Disco -- and of course the entire Xanadu soundtrack -- well into the night