The Shadow Of The One-Armed Tandy Thin Man Thinking About Returning To My House In Washington

I have yet to tire of taking pictures of the Shadow of the Tandy Hills Thin Man. Today's Thin Man Shadow was across a dry creek bed at the bottom of a ravine. With leaves.

The leaves in the trees on the Tandy Hills have greatly diminished. Large areas of the trails are under a thick carpet of fallen leaves.

Fallen leaves in Texas are much more pleasant to walk on than fallen Washington leaves.

In Texas the leaves stay crunchy and quickly dry up and blow away. In Washington the leaves get wet and slimy and can make walking slippery. I prefer the Texas leaf disposal method.

In Washington my house had flat roofs. Four of them. Leaves would cover the roofs and need to be removed. Over and over again. The house was surrounded by trees, about half of them evergreen, the rest leaf shedders, of the big maple leaf sort that can easily clog a drain.

Go here to visit my house in Mount Vernon, Washington. It is a primitive webpage, made long ago, well before highspeed broadband, hence the little clickable thumbnails. On the webpage you'll meet my deceased cat, Hortense. She died in Texas my first year here. You will see a lot of trees and see why there were a lot of leaves. You will also see pictures of the most snow I ever saw on the ground in my zone of Washington. I was stuck on my cul-de-sac's hill for almost a week.

I had not looked at pictures of where I lived in Washington for awhile. This has put me in a sort of wistful, melancholy mood that fits perfectly with how tired I am feeling from last night's exhausting nightmares. Looking at the pictures brought back remembering how nice it was to walk out the front door, from the kitchen, to the rooftop garden to BBQ and pick fresh tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, basil and other stuff I'm not remembering.

In Texas there is no rooftop garden that I walk out to from my kitchen. Nothing grows on my Texas patio. Not even moss. I'm ready to move back to Washington. But doing so takes a lot of effort and bother. And right now I am tired.

Fort Worth's Native Son Rex Reed Shoplifting, Starting Rumors, Dissing Korea & Starring In X-Rated Movies

You likely do not recognize the person in the picture. His name is Rex Reed.

Rex Reed got himself a well-earned reputation for being a bit of a nasty, mean-spirited movie critic.

I always assumed Rex Reed was a New Yorker, for some reason.

Here in the boondock known as Fort Worth, the local newspaper with the largest circulation, it being the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has a habit of pointing out any possible remote connection between Fort Worth and some celebrity type in the news.

The Star-Telegram celebrity connection can be very tenuous, something like Joe Jones was once married to Fort Worth's Sprinkle Pants and visited Fort Worth once during the 1970s.

So, I was a bit surprised to learn that critic, Rex Reed, was born in Fort Worth on October 2, 1938, the son of Jewell and James M. Reed.I do not believe I have ever read mention of Rex Reed being a Fort Worth product.

I think I know why. Maybe it is because Rex Reed is a bit embarrassing to have known as a native son. He is a bit notorious.

Like the time, in February of 2000, when Rex Reed was arrested for shoplifting Peggy Lee, Mel Torme and Carmen McRae CDs from a Manhattan Tower Records. Peggy Lee was so impressed that Rex Reed went to so much effort to get her records that the sent him her entire CD catalog.

In 1993 Fort Worth's Rex Reed started the rumor that Jack Palance called out the wrong name at the Academy Awards for the Supporting Actress award, when he said Marisa Tomei's name. Reed claimed Jack Palance was confused due to being too drunk or stoned to be able to read the envelope. Four years later, in 1997, Rex Reed was still claiming there had been a massive cover-up to prevent the public from learning about this horribly serious Academy Award crime against humanity.

Then in 2005 Fort Worth's Rex Reed aggravated people by harshly reviewing a South Korean movie called Oldboy, writing, "What else can you expect from a nation weaned on Kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?"

Now, I think the Kimchi/Korean comment was funny. That Kimchi stuff is terrible.

Rex Reed is a bit on the old side of his life now, in his 70s.

Over the years Rex Reed has made a few acting appearances, including being in the X-Rated Gore Vidal debacle Myra Breckinridge, where he co-starred with Mae West, Raquel Welch and Farrah Fawcett. Fort Worth's Rex Reed was also in Inchon and played himself in one of the Superman movies. In the late 70s Rex Reed's tart tongue was a regular on The Gong Show.

To get a look and listen to of one of Fort Worth's favorite native sons, Rex Reed, watch the video below of a Rex Reed Appearance on the Dick Cavett Show in 1969, where Rex Reed disses John Wayne so bad it had to be bleeped out, while he discusses what he think about the 1969 Academy Awards.....

A Cold Morning In Texas On The Last Day Of November Following A Night Of Nightmares

Looking out the window, on another cold morning in Texas, on this, the last day of the 1st November of the 2nd decade of the new century.

I am growing weary of time passing so quickly, I would like time to slow down and give me a break from the rapidly aging process.

This morning the rapidly aging process is manifesting itself in it feeling like every joint and bone in my feet and hands and shoulder is sore.

Why?

I do not know. Except for the fact that last night I had my most action-filled series of nightmares in memory. Disturbing nightmares where I would think I had awakened from the nightmare only to realize I was still asleep and still nightmaring. I've never experience such a thing before. It was exhausting.

It is only 36 degrees in the natural unheated zone this morning. No way am I going to try to go swimming. I will be totally over-doing hiking on the Tandy Hills today, barring some unexpected interruption of that plan.

George's Specialty Foods & White Settlement Road Under Attack By Chesapeake Energy & Fort Worth's Natural Gas Corrupted City Government Of Eminent Domain Abusers

You are looking at a mural at George's Specialty Food on White Settlement Road.

The mural depicts the view from George's, looking out at the Trinity Trail, the Trinity Levees and the houses in the hills on the opposite side of the river.

However, the mural is a bit out of date. Chesapeake Energy drilling sites need to be added to the view.

A few days ago I blogged about George's Specialty Foods closing in order to fight Chesapeake Energy's abuse of eminent domain to take property from the George's Specialty Food's owners.

I have gotten a few messages about this latest Chesapeake attack on Fort Worth Citizens. It is my understanding, now, that George's Specialty Foods was started by George and Helen Phiripes and is now operated by George's son Nick and Nick's son Theo.

Chesapeake Energy in the guise of one of its alias, Texas Midstream, want to take the Phiripes' property to run a pipeline from a couple Barnett Shale drilling sites Chesapeake has drilled and frac'ed.

I'm assuming this is another non-odorized natural gas pipeline like what Chesapeake tried to ram under Carter Avenue.

This morning I got an interesting comment to the blogging about George's Specialty Foods closing.

The commenter's name is Jim Bowe. Mr. Bowe has some interesting things to say regarding Chesapeake, and the City of Fort Worth's, rush to abuse eminent domain to steal citizen's property....

Now that all the bad publicity generated for two years by the Carter Ave. pipeline fight has come to an end, it appears that the gas drillers and the city need to make up for lost time and start putting those gathering pipelines in ASAP. 

That sector of gas drilling operations officially employed the outgoing TRR commissioner Victor Carillo as a consultant a few weeks ago---even while he's still in office. They also must hurry up because the legislators are fixing to meet next year and their man's prospect for another term as ruler, uh "mayor", of FW is not as secure as before. 

Gathering pipelines and eminent domain abuse appear to be the new hot issue in 2011. 

I guess we can help these business folks the same way we helped the residents on and near Carter Ave.: by keeping the story in front of the public and uniting to raise funds for legal defense. Not sure how much was raised to help those people on Carter Avenue fight for so long and then win an impossible victory. There must have been tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars collected in order to pay for a team of legal specialists to work on the case for two years.

Whatever money left from that Carter Ave. pipeline legal defense fund should be used to support these folks--if they want the help or their lawyer/s approve, of course. It would seem that these business owners have more financial resources than the working class folks on Carter, but they are going to need all the help they can get in going up against a multi-billion dollar corporation and its close city allies, though.

Well, Jim, I can tell you that no fortune of money was raised to save Carter Avenue. What happened was one brave Texan, Steve Doeung, fought back, alone at first. Steve acted as his own attorney. Because he could not afford one. Early one it was Steve alone, with Don Young pretty much being his only comrade in arms.

And then, it seemed to me, that a lot of people sort of got outraged over the bad behavior of the city and of Chesapeake. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram did not do too much to expose the dirty dealings. But, FW Weekly, did. Then various bloggers kept pounding away on the issue.

From what I've learned, from observing this, the people fighting Chesapeake Energy and the City of Fort Worth, can not expect any semblance of fairness if you get into a Fort Worth courtroom. What you can expect is to experience corruption up close. I'd never actually gotten to witness corruption up close til I spent time in a Fort Worth courtroom.

Why hasn't FW Weekly done a story on George's Specialty Food closing to fight eminent domain abuse? I can't help but wonder.