So It Begins

Hello all. Welcome to my blog No Basement at the Alamo. Please hold all questions until the end of this tour, okay? Thank you. I encourage you to read the rest of the posts with Jan Hooks's FANTASTIC accent. It will help you through the boring parts.

So I started a bloggity blog.

Crap.

Now I actually have to write something.

Crap.

Is it too late to hire a ghostwriter?

Crap.

So it begins.

Most of my family and friends live far away. Where I live in Texas is not the mecca of excitement (unless you love mega churches and strip malls and big hair), so this is my place where the echo of my voice is less cavernous.

I promise my grammar and sentence structure will get better. I can FEEL my husband shuddering.

So here is where the blog thang started. Last month I watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure with my four-year-old daughter. She LOVED it. I haven't seen it in about 20 years, so this was my first adult viewing of the movie.

What a difference a little age, wisdom, marrying, screwing up marriage, fixing marriage, getting an education, living in utopia, tumbling into dystopia, traveling, getting lost, baby-making, toddler rearing, sandwich eating did to my perception of this movie. As a kid it was inexplicable entertainment, now I see the whole Tim Burton masterpiece as a meditation on life.

Here is the inspirational scene for this blog:

I am not very wise, so I use popular culture, music, movies and literature to make sense of my world. This three minute scene essentially sums up my current view on life. As a youngster, I was like Pee Wee as he arrived at the Alamo. FINALLY! He will get his bike. Life will resolve itself. Good will finally prevail! Then the reality there is no basement at the Alamo crushed Pee Wee's entire promise of peace and stasis. I consider the last ten years of my life my "no basement" discovery.

As a native Texan, the tour of the Alamo is hilarious. None of this stuff is at the actual Alamo. No one is that enthusiastic whilst on a tour. Jan Hooks doesn't work at the Alamo! Believe me, I looked for her. The gift shop isn't in that location in the courtyard! The image is not the reality. Very seldom in life it is.

So this blog is my ideas about life once you really start to live it. Without disillusionment or two-bit promises. Most of the time it is a fun journey, but it is also a constant struggle of finding what is real in an unreal world. I am interested in the space between blind optimism and unproductive pessimism. Hopefully you will be, too.

This is the life of a Texas lady simultaneously attracting flies with honey and pouring vinegar. The blog will inevitably be peppered with family stuff, as they are the most interesting thing in my life. I also tend to talk a lot about music and live entertainment and food and adventures.

I have time when I have it, so if you don't hear from me assume a) I have nothing to say, b) I am traveling or c) I died. If I die, my husband will remove the blog. Don't worry, it is in the will. Written on a bar napkin. In blood. A story for another time!

So rock on. Let me know your thoughts. Do something nice for someone each day.

Love,

No Basement

P.S.--Big thanks to my buddy Sean for designing my masthead. He took a lot of odd comments and images and spun it into gold. You are my Rumpelstiltskin, dear.