Gno Chiled Lepht Beehined

Jodie Foster stars in a new thriller called Flightplan, which according to the trailer is about a woman who can't find her kid on an airplane.

Here's a nugget the major entertainment outlets won't give you: this film was inspired by the time my family drove to Florida and left my sister at an Exxon. The working title of the film was Urinal, but I think they thought Flightplan sounded a little more, I don't know, antiseptic.

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Kinky Friedman, the self-proclaimed Jewish cowboy who is running for governor of Texas in 2006, truly puts the guber in gubernatorial candidate. And if the election were held today, he'd get my vote. Some of my favorite quotes from his website, www.kinkyfriedman.com:


I’m a Jew, I’ll hire good people.

If elected, I would ask Willie Nelson to be the head of the Texas Rangers and Energy Czar and Laura Bush to take charge of the Texas Peace Corps to improve education in the state.

I’d ask my Palestinian hairdresser, Farouk Shami, to be Texas’ ambassador to Israel. We’ve worked together to create Farouk & Friedman olive oil. The oil comes from the Holy land and all of the profits go to benefit Israeli and Palestinian children.

Our icons are being demeaned. Cowboys are no longer heroes for our children, but subject to derision. We are being laughed at instead of respected in the rest of the country. What has happened to our glorious heritage? This is the great state of Texas! We are not wusses, we are Texans. We will beat back the wussification of Texas if we have to do it one wuss at a time!

The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark.

My new mantra is "Go Kinky in 2006!"

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Saw something on a plane the other day that you almost never see: an elderly man with a goatee.

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It was poetic justice that Jason Gore won the 84 Lumber Classic the other day. That was the same number he shot in the final round of the U.S. Open to fall from second place to 49th. At the time, he was a journeyman pro who became the people's choice to win at Pinehurst with a grin as wide as the Open fairways. Since then, he's won three times on the Nationwide Tour - which earned him an instant promotion to the PGA TOUR - and now his first PGA TOUR event.

On Sunday at Pinehurst, the darkhorse spit the bit. Last week at the 84 Lumber, Gore brought the wood.

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It's a toss-up as to which has had a more deleterious effect on church growth: the people inside the church or the signs out front.

I've seen the following "marquees de sade" near our house in the last week:

Fight like a real man...
Down on your knee's in prayer

On your knee's? Your knee's what? Your knee's cap?

At least that church got its message out in a timely manner, thus parrying the thrust of this purl uv wizdum from another congregation:

Procrastion is the thief of time

Come again? A better question might be, "What thief stole the rest of the letters needed to spell procrastination?" They left out "t-i-n-a." Where's tina? Poor girl. Maybe she's with Jodie Foster's kid. Or maybe they know they misspelled the word and just haven't gotten around to correcting it.

Where were these people trained? Quayle Theological Simminairy?

And after 2,000 years are signs really the best we can do as the people of God? It seems a lot like Seinfeld's observation that men, as a species, have found nothing more creative over the last several millenia than whistling at women, vis-a-vis va-va-voom, if you know what I mean.

If you must resort to signage as a tool for evangelism, how about something like,

Can we have a mulligan?

or

For the record, we neither advocate Pat Robertson nor the assassination of the President of Venezuela.

Even Outback's catchphrase would work,

No rules. Just right.

And then maybe serve up free steak and a Bloomin' Onion as a peace offering. Just promise me you'll mix in a quick spellcheck and some decent punctuation. Call me crazy, but I don't think poor grammar and butchering the king's English are what Paul had in mind when he suggested we be fools for Christ.