Prosciutto and Mushroom Pizza from one of Florenceís best pizzerias. Pure heaven for around ten bucks.
Pizzeria I Tarocchi, Florence, Italy
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Category Archives: Culture
Townes, Pancho & Lefty
The late Townes Van Zandt tells how he met Pancho & Lefty in Brenham.
And almost 10 years later, he delivers arguably his best television performance of his legendary song:
Understanding storytelling
When young attorneys ask me how they can become more effective advocates in the courtroom, I usually tell them: "Become better at telling stories."
Several years ago, Derek Sivers interviewed the late Kurt Vonnegut, who was no slouch as a storyteller. Check out Vonnegut’s views on story-telling, which he believed promotes the need for drama in people’s lives.
Essential reading for anyone who seeks to persuade.
Love at the Five and Dime
Born in Seguin and now of Austin, the great Texas singer-songwriter, Nanci Griffith.
Confession and Avoidance
As our own country confronts the difficult issues involved in conducting war, it seems appropriate to recall the closing defense argument in one of the all-time great lawyer movies, Breaker Morant.
Crunchy excellence
Continuing on the thread of creative advertising, check out this brilliant series of Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials by McCann Erickson/Campbell Mithun.
Tecumseh Valley
The incomparable Nanci Griffith sings a classic song by the late, great Texas songwriter, Towne Van Zandt.
County Fair, L.A. style
Yet another example of how commercials (see earlier examples here) are providing some of the most creative product on television(H/T Glenn Reynolds ):
The Five Minute University
Food for thought from Father Guido Sarducci to collegians starting the new school year.
Re-tracing Graham Greene’s journey across Mexico
In the first of a series of upcoming blog posts that will interest most Texans, The Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood addresses many of the difficult issues facing Mexico that have been a frequent topic on this blog. Wood is re-tracing the journey across Mexico of Graham Greene of The Lawless Roads fame seventy years ago:
Seventy years ago, Graham Greene crossed the US-Mexican border into a land blighted by violence, unrest, insurgency, and religious and counter-religious mayhem. If he came back today he would find a country riven by other forces, but in some ways just as chaotic, and just as worthy of the title he gave his account of the journey, The Lawless Roads.
The news out of Mexico is all bad. When I was a kid, my parents and I went across the border at Reynosa, Matamoros, and Tijuana to take awkwardly posed photos on the backs of burros, buy cheap Kahlúa, and eat frog-legs at Garcia’s. Now the drug war has re-ignited, the rules of engagement between police and crime syndicates have changed, and the environment has become more savage. The government of Felipe Calderon has challenged the narco-traffickers and has militarized the border. Garcia’s is still open, but tourists have vanished. College kids don’t head down here from South Padre so much, which is a good indicator of the downturn, because they are college students, and that Kahlúa was awfully cheap. There are serious questions of whether Mexico is becoming that scariest of things, a military state in only partial control — i.e., a Latin American Pakistan.
Only some of the drama is on the border. Greene’s trip through Mexico crossed the country on its long axis and reported how Mexicans were dealing with the effects of the Cristero War, its violent suppression of the Catholic church, and the armed discontent that suppression sparked. Over the next cycle of posts, I will steer my rented Mexican Ford (an inglorious chariot that feels like it would crumple like a soda can, if I were to give it a bear-hug) along Greene’s path, with deviations, to see whether that lawlessness is a permanent condition.