Elephants at the Alamo

Well, Alamo Stadium, that is. A private group calling itself Gateway San Antonio is proposing a public art project to carve live-size elephants, giraffes, petroglyphs and other unique imagery on the limestone cliffs flanking U.S. 281 just north of downtown San Antonio. The animal motiff is appropos because of the close proximity of the San Antonio Zoo, which is one of the top 10 zoos in the country. The Express-News details the plans in 281 may become a real zoo:

The menagerie would be carved into rock beside U.S. 281 near the San Antonio Zoo. A group of private citizens wants to make the animal murals their gift to San Antonio, and city leaders have provided money for a fund-raising presentation.

On its Web site, Gateway San Antonio describes the public art project as "a timeless, panoramic storyboard so unique and compelling, so energized, it couldn't be told anywhere else."

Of course, San Antonio wouldn't be San Antonio if some controversy couldn't be wrung from this. In addition to complaints about $25,000 in city funding being given to the project early on--never mind that ultimately $10 million or more in private funds would come back to benefit the city. But here's the real howler:

The San Antonio Conservation Society sees something else.

"We think it's an inappropriate addition to a scenic corridor," said Barbara Johnson, the conservation society's president. "Being 'public art,' we feel there needs to be a lot more public input in the project."

Has Barbara Johnson ever actually driven down 281? Scenic? Two limestone cliffs that were bulldozed out of a hill way back when with no care given to aesthetics? The first thing of interest drivers see when headed southbound is the old shuttered Pearl Brewery, fer cryin' out loud! If you crane your neck just right, you can see the back of Alamo Stadium to the west, and the University of the Incarnate Word to the east. It's not a particularly ugly stretch of highway, but it's by no means scenic. No one will ever confuse it with a drive through the rolling Texas hill country, that's for sure. This public art project would make an otherwise boring and dull stretch of road funky and fun, with more than a passing touch of whimsy. No wonder there are sourpusses getting pissy about it...

Now Playing: Clandestine The Haunting

The Valley of Kings, American style

I am, quite simply, astonished. I had no idea an archaeological discovery of this magnitude would be possible anywhere in the world, much less in the United States. I seriously considered going into anthropology/archaeology in college, so this Range Creek find gets my blood pumping. By golly, there's the remains of an entire civilization dating back 3,000 years in Utah: Rancher keeps ancient Indian settlement secret for 50 years

Hidden deep inside Utah's nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles from Salt Lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles and include hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, stone houses built halfway underground, rock shelters, and the mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants.

The site was occupied for at least 3,000 years until it abandoned more than 1,000 years ago, when the Fremont people mysteriously vanished.

No looters. That is truly amazing. The mind boggles at the magnitude of this archaeological treasure trove. I think people everywhere owe rancher Waldo Wilcox a huge debt of gratitude for his efforts in protecting and preserving this chain of ancient villages. Sure, he made out okay with $2.5 million for the sale of the land, but I daresay most others in his position would've sold the artifacts off piecemeal for whatever profit they offered, and not done nearly as much as Wilcox to ensure their preservation. My big concern now is that pothunters will swarm to the site, stealing in under the cover of darkness to plunder like the poachers they are. If National Geographic doesn't have a crew there ASAP, they might as well stop publishing their magazine...

Now Playing: Joanne Shenandoah and Lawrence Laughing Orenda

South San Antonio celebrates new bookstore

The new Waldenbooks has opened in south San Antonio, the result of a multi-year lobby by Books in the Barrio. The 3,000 square foot store features everything you'd expect from a Waldenbooks, plus an expanded Spanish-language section, which is only good sense: South Side, bookstore celebrate:

Bookstores usually don't open with blaring mariachi music, beaming politicians and misty-eyed community activists, but on Wednesday an honest-to-goodness bookseller opened for business on San Antonio's South Side. About 150 people were there to celebrate an arrival six years in the making.

The vibrantly decorated 3,082-square-foot Waldenbooks store at South Park Mall was stocked with more than 20,000 books, magazines, newspapers and best sellers. Store managers wouldn't say how many books had been sold by early evening, but they said the day's tally was three times their expectations.

I understand about demographics and disposable income. I know why market studies are relied on by corporate America. But sometimes this "research" can become little more than self-fulfilling prophecy. San Antonio is a city of 1.7 million people, the eighth largest in the U.S., but half of the people living there don't have a bookstore within 15 miles of them. Yes, that area of the city is overwhelmingly Hispanic, and yes, the average income level is lower than someone like, say, Macy's would want before opening a store there. No one was asking for a Border's superstore to be built across the street from a brand-new Barnes & Noble warehouse, with a Books-a-Million and Hastings down the street for good measure. But to say that a population amounting to a quarter of a million people couldn't support any bookstore is ludicrous.

Now Playing: Henry Mancini Instrumental Favorites

Frellin' A! Farscape is back!

I'll admit it: This isn't exactly breaking news. But my previous post had soured my mood so that I needed something happy to pick me up, and there's not much that can top new Farscape for that! The new, four-hour miniseries Peacekeeper War has wrapped in Australia, and promo shots are beginning to trickle out. I swear, it's almost like water torture. There's no way I can wait all the way 'til October to see this thing when I know it's already finished.



These first two pictures are interesting and give glimpses of the arc's setup. First, we have John and Aeryn. When last seen, these two lovers had been turned into pillars of brown ash, which then crumbled into dirty little piles. They apparently get better--as if that was ever in doubt. Other stills show Aeryn as being very obviously pregnant, so at some point the embryo she's carrying gets activated (the whole delayed gestation thing isn't something Farscape simply invented as a plot device--some marsupials have this ability to delay the development of an embryo if a previous offspring isn't sufficiently independent of the mother yet. Amazing what inspiration filming in Australia offers!). The second pic is more intriguing. Here we see Chiana looking slightly different (it's the eyes, I think), along with Stark, a somewhat greener Rygel and a mysterious bald woman in the background. Could this be Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan? Rockne S. O'Bannon told Virginia Hey he wanted the character to return in the future, Hey always said she was willing to return in a more limited role (the blue makeup was reacting badly with her skin) and her death was somewhat ambiguous. This looks to me like Zhaan 2.0 come a'callin'.



The third picture reveals hints about the plot. At the end of season four, it was revealed that Commandant Cleavage was working to sell out the Luxan worlds to the Scarrens in exchange for continued peace. Think of the Luxan worlds as a SFnal version of the Sudetenland, only instead of the British handing it over to the Nazis, the Nazis are handing it over to Satan. From this image, it looks like the Luxans don't take kindly to the deal. The fourth image shows that, yes indeed, the Scarrens are mixed up in this Peacekeeper war, and John and Aeryn are up to their eyeballs with the ugly aliens. I expect many of the dangling plot threads to be addressed here in this mini, namely John's conflicted use of the wormhole technology, the Scarren aggression, Sputnik's collaboration with the Scarrens revealed, Chiana's "second sight" and Zhaan's fate. I also would not be surprised in the slightest if Crais and Talyn reappear, in some sort of twisted man-Leviathan hybrid. What I don't expect we'll see resolved is Rygel's efforts to reclaim the Hynerian throne and the Nebari attempts to conquer the galaxy using that genetically-engineered sleeper virus we haven't heard anything about since season two. That, and the connection Earth has with the Peacekeeper worlds, as referenced in the archaeology episodes early in season four. But that's to be expected, I suppose, since all the storylines planned for a full fifth season have essentially been cut and trimmed and distilled down into the equivalent of four episodes. Ouch. Curse you, SciFi Channel!

Okay, I'd better sign off now, before the bitterness returns...

Now Playing: SubVision & Guy Gross Farscape Soundtrack

All the dinosaurs drowned in the Great Flood

I don't believe in a God that plays "Gotcha!" I believe the Supreme Creator wants faith as opposed to blind faith, and that Homo sapiens was given intelligence and intellect to use. God did not plant evidence of the universe being billions of years old, of fossilized dinosaurs and the chain of evolution simply so he could trick gullible intellectuals and pop out from behind creation on Judgement Day shouting "Fooled you! Damnation is yours!" That kind of petty, twisted juvenile behavior I'd expect from a Ba'al or Zeus, but from the Christian God of love and peace? I view humanity's intellect, curiosity and drive to question and understand everything about the universe as a gift given to us by the master, not unlike that in the Parable of the Talents. Those fundamentalists that reject the evidence God has placed throughout the universe simply because "The Bible says so" are playing the role of the servant who buried his money and sat smugly until his lord returned home, while the other two servants went out and did something productive with their gifts.

I mean, even the Catholic Church has come out in support of the theory of evolution, albeit with some attached theological caveats.

So is it any wonder that stories like Christian dinosaur hunters dig for signs of Biblical dragons from The Telegraph drive me absolutely bonkers?

Evolution is "the dumbest and most dangerous idea in the history of humanity", said Kent Hovind, a vocal enthusiast for the cause who also runs the theme park in Florida. Explaining his Creationist creed, he said: "We think dinosaurs were part of the normal Creation and were just big lizards. Noah took some of them on the Ark, probably babies, when the floods came."

This is one of my really big push-button issues. Byzantium's Shores gets credit (or blame) for setting me onto this story. I've see so much faked "evidence" on the part of Creationists, outright fabrication and lies--I saw lots of this during my college years, as Creationists saw Texas A&M as fertile ground for their "seminars"--that I have to wonder how fragile their faith actually is, if they have to literally cheat to validate their own beliefs. Shouldn't the Truth be sufficient?

My family and I go to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose on occasion. Right outside the park entrance is the Creation Evidence Museum. Their claimm to fame is an "excavated" imprint of a human footprint overlapping a dinosaur footprint. Which, of course, "proves" that dinosaurs and man walked the Earth at the same time. I've been very, very tempted to go in, but never have. First, we suspect they charge an entrance fee, and I have no desire whatsoever to financially support these lunkheads. Second... well, Lisa doesn't want me to have a stroke or aneurysm. I wouldn't intentionally create a scene, but keeping all that contempt bottled up inside might send me into convulsions.

Now Playing: The Gypsy Guerrilla Band Ernie's Ottoman

Tonight's the Battle of the Network Stars

While watching the twins edition of Fear Factor the other day in all it's jiggly glory, I had a sudden and profound flashback to the '70s of my childhood. I'd seen all this before. The force this realization struck me with was like that of an epiphany: The reality TV craze of today is a retread of that from three decades earlier. Instead of Real People we have The Simple Life. That's Incredible! has been retooled as Jackass. Wild Kingdom lives again as The Crocodile Hunter, and so on. Even Ripley's Believe It or Not! has resurfaced, albeit in a cruder, louder, freak show format.



But Fear Factor is the key. It's setup is so much like that old classic Battle of the Network Stars that I'm surprised some enterprising producer hasn't launched a campaign to revive the old chestnut. After all, Battle of the Network Stars boasted as much jiggle appeal as the current bikini-clad contestants on Fear Factor, especially if you consider the all-supermodel contests that show has featured of late. Sure, a Network Stars revival wouldn't quite be the same without Howard Cosell and Dan Haggerty, but wouldn't it be great to see Bob Costas in the booth with Kiefer Sutherland and Jennifer Garner running a modern-day obstacle course, or the cast of Survivor in a life or death tug-o-war against the housemates of Big Brother? The mind boggles.

Now Playing: Sheryl Crow Tuesday Night Music Club

Nothing to see here...

Excruciatingly tedious on the writing front. Proofing of Voices of Vision continues, albeit at a snail's pace. The final revisions to the proof pages are due one week from today, so I'm certain this task will consume more and more of my waking hours until I reach the point of saying, "To hell with it. It's fine as it is." Which probably wouldn't be such a bad thing, as there aren't all that many errors in it to be corrected.

I also finally decided to get off my duff and catch up on all the reviews I've been putting off for The Unofficial Green Arrow Fansite. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that three issues cannot be found. I don't know where the heck they might be. My last update was back in the fall, right around the time we moved. I've got all the issues prior to that time, and everything since, but I have no idea where those three may have gone. I'll probably go ahead and review what I have available, but geeze Louise, it's embarassing. And this has happened once before: I wanted to review Green Lantern no. 47--the one right before Emerald Twilight, but my copy had vanished, and I had to buy a new one. What's more unfortunate is that during one of the site's server migrations (possibly even back when my Green Arrow Shrine merged with Scott McCullar's Green Arrow Compendium) that review of issue 47 got deleted. Poof. Gone. Someday I'll have to rewrite it. But not today.

Now Playing: Don Williams 20 Greatest Hits