It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

I had a beautiful experience this afternoon.

I was at a Whataburger (a burger chain in Texas) for lunch.  This is, in and of itself, a wonderful thing, but it was made extra special by one  particular aspect of the meal.  And no, for those of you who know me and my Whataburger obsession, it wasn’t even the ketchup (although Whataburger ketchup is the greatest ketchup ever in the history of ever, but that’s a topic for another day).

I had a perfect Dr Pepper.

Now, I love Dr. Pepper to begin with.  Perhaps this is a side effect of my formative years being spent in the Greater Waco Area, augmented by time spent in the New River Valley (where the inventor lived prior to Waco; some also say the person for whom the beverage is named was from the NRV*).  Maybe it’s that one of the 23 flavors really is prune juice and I happen to love prunes.  But a truly perfect Dr Pepper is not something you get every day.  You can go years between them

There are moments where things come together just right and a good thing becomes even greater.  Namely, when the carbonated water to syrup ratio is perfect.  It’s like a little slice of tooth-enamel eroding heaven, right in the middle of a hot-humid Texas day.

The Whataburger hit that golden ratio today.  Not too much syrup to make it too sweet and flat.  Not over-carbonated such that you are distracted from the diluted flavor by the sting of tiny bubbles bursting against your tongue faster than you can handle.  Not even a mediocre average between those extremes.  This was utter and complete perfection.

I once had a Guiness appreciating friend who explained to me the importance of the taps and how to operate and maintain them when it came to that well-known brew.  She explained that a good bartender who knows Guinness knows how to handle the tap properly.

I believe the same level of skill should be applied to those who set up the Dr Pepper canisters in soda fountains.  Care should be taken to adjust that mix so that these moments of tasty 23-flavored bliss need not be a rarity, but something people can expect and depend on.

After all, isn’t it a noble thing to spread happiness?

*Side note:  I give little credence to any New River Valley connection to my beloved Dr Pepper, because while I lived there it was Coke infested and hard as hell to find anything other than Mr Pibb on the fountain tap, unlike Texas.  If the NRV had as great a connection to Dr Pepper as some have tried to argue to me, they have a really crappy way of showing it.

Fate was screwin’ with me today, but she tried to make it up with the wonder of Schlotzky’s.  For those of you not lucky enough to have savored the offerings of Schlotzky’s deli, I am so sorry.  It’s another one of those Texas things.  It’s a sandwich chain that started down in Austin.  I can’t put my finger on exactly what makes these sandwiches so awesome.  Maybe it’s the bread, which I would eat all on its own if I could, or maybe it’s because they put olives on the original and I dearly love olives.  Maybe it’s the mustard.   The point is, it’s fabulous.

Unfortunately, unless I’m down in Texas, I don’t get Schlotzky’s much.  And even there, you can’t find them just everywhere.  There was once one across from my law school campus, but it closed just after I got there.  The area where I grew up didn’t have one close by (you had to drive about an hour and fifteen minutes to Hillsboro). 

So, when I darted off yet another airplane today (because my 7-hour-difference jet lag between Budapest and home wasn’t enough, I got on a plane to California to make it more like 9 hours) and into the Bush Airport in Houston, my Schlotzky’s radar went off and I followed my nose as much as I followed the signs to switch terminals.  It was with a heavy (and somewhat pounding) heart that I had to race past that Schloztky’s on my way to change planes.  No one should have to pass so close to mouth watering goodness and not get to partake.

As it was, I got to my gate and they were boarding and I scurried onto the plane with no lunch at all for another 3 hours in the air.  Or so I thought, until Fate had her period and decided to attack. 

Mechanical problems.  Note to airlines:  don’t load the plane and THEN tell us we’ve got to sit there for 45 minutes.  It makes us pissy.  After a while they offered to let those of us who’d raced to make the flight and had no lunch a chance to deplane and go get something.  RAPTURE!  I thought I had my chance!  I could get that Schlotzky’s Original after all.  Oh the olives!  The lettuce!  That fabulous bread!  The mustard-y goodness!  Something was going right on this trip-I-didn’t-want-to-make after all!

So, I head up the jet way and just as I get to the agent at the top….the captain comes running up.  We need to go back and take our seats.  They realized the part they were missing was a part they didn’t need.  We can leave in 15 minutes.   No Schlotzky’s for me.  But I still had to sit there while we waited on the 15 people ahead of me who had made it off the plane. 

So, about 2 hours late, I get to my hotel in San Diego.  Of course, I’m having to PAY for internet again (FWIW, these high end hotels will never see my business outside of work because when I have to pay for what I get free down at the Holiday Inn?  I get pissy–but that’s another rant).  I get grumpy and head downstairs.  I need food and a stretch of the legs.  The college-aged guy acting as a valet points me in the direction of a shopping center and I take off.  I can wander around and amuse myself and get food somewhere other than the over-priced hotel restaurant.  I stroll along, thinking about how much it sucks that I’m on this trip at all and that I’m going to have to itemize crap on my expense report for the internet, and I’m not even near anything cool like  a beach or mountains or the Danube in this hotel….

And lo.  What is that?  Fate?  Can you have smiled on me?!?!?!?  Who the hell knew California had Schlotzky’s?!?!?  And guess who has free Wifi (of course, I didn’t have my laptop to take advantage of this, but I can tomorrow).  JOY!

So, here I sit, having just devoured the last slice of olive and with just a bit more hope that things might go my way.

Happy Texas Independence Day, ya’ll!

I actually hesitated before deciding to mention this in today’s post.  It’s been my experience that the mention of Texas from outside the borders of my home state has a disturbingly high-probability of subjecting me to eye-rolling and ridicule of a non-good-natured variety.  Examples of things I have actually heard in response to my saying “It’s Texas Independence Day”

1 ) “Texans are such douchebags.”
2 ) “I can’t believe you drank their Kool-aid.”
3 ) “Oh, God.  What a joke.”
4 ) “How could they be independent when they lost?” [Note:  this person had been laboring for several decades under the delusion that The Battle of the Alamo was the final battle of the Texas Revolution and that Texas was later liberated by America.]
5 ) “You can’t be one of them.”
6 ) “Why the hell do you know that?”
7 ) “I hate Texas.”
8 ) “You don’t sound hick enough to be one of them.”
9 ) “You know like, half the shit they tell you is wrong.  Crockett cried like a baby”
10) “Only Texans would be proud of stealing their state from the Mexicans.”

I didn’t respond to any of these (except the guy who thought we lost–I HAD to find out about that one).  About 10 years ago I gave up on trying to get others to love Texas.  I don’t even expect other people to like it.  I’ve also given up trying to defend it.  It’s just not worth the effort of trying to eliminate that much stereotyping and bad information.  But, I suppose, if there was any one day in the year to stand up and respond to the negativity I get for dropping the name of the Lone Star State, the date the Texians declared their independence from Mexico is probably as good a date as any, except possibly the Battle of Gonzales, but I really don’t feel like waiting until October.

So, since I never said anything to the statements above, here are my responses right now:

1 ) Yup, just like the rest of Americans.  We fit right in.
2 ) I drank it because it was exciting.  If your state had Kool-Aid this good, you’d drink it, too.  Sorry your state history didn’t include a revolution all its own.
3 ) That’s what Mexico said, too.
4 ) San Jacinto, asshole.
5 ) Yes, I can.  Sorry I don’t fit your stereotype, but my birth certificate and 6 generations of ancestors can’t be denied.
6 ) I know it because I reveled in Texas history because I’m a nerd.
7 ) And I hate most of Dallas.  But I have a good reason, do you?
8 ) Piss me off enough, and that could change.
9 ) Contrary to popular belief, most of our teachers bring up the “Crockett was a pussy” theory.  If you want to nitpick the things they leave out, start with the fact that there was originally a faction that just wanted to be a separate state of Mexico so we could have a capital closer than Saltillo, or the fact that Anglo-American introduction of slavery was a real issue….oh, wait….you’d have to know something about Texas history to actually nit pick it, wouldn’t you?
10) You do realize that most of the early Texians had become Mexican citizens when this started, right?  And among the signatures of the Texas Declaration of Independence are Jose Antonio Navarro, Jose Fransico Ruiz and Lorenzo de Zavala (yeah, because those names scream gringo).

With all that out of the way, enjoy what remains of this Texas Independence Day, and take a little heart in the fact that in 1836, a group of people even more diverse than in 1776, proved, once again, that it’s possible for a bunch of folks who’ve had enough crap to sit down together and write a document that, when backed with effort and a lot of sacrifice, can put them on a path to ditching their oppressors.  You don’t need to be from Texas to appreciate that.

It’s that time of year again.  This morning, writers, actors and directors awakened at insane hours, not to be at the set on time, but to listen to the nominees for Ye Olde Oscars.  It’s that whirlwind season of awards galore:  Grammy’s, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Razzies…..  So why not add a few more commendations to the honors already bestowed on Film, Music and TV?

But unlike the major awards, we at It’s My TV….It’s My Peanut Butter understanding that properly recognizing a work means going beyond the best (or worst) actor in a limited time period, looking deeper than just the best adaptation of last 365 movie watching days, and seeing more than just the ubiquitous on-screen kiss.  Some elements of film and television are so rarely captured, that not every year yields an example truly worthy of an honor.  The absence of awards for these –how shall we phrase this?– “less mainstream” elements means that we are forced to look backward to pay homage to the great works before as well as to present day efforts.

And so, we submit to you the first of many very different award categories here at It’s My TV….It’s My Peanut Butter:

The Award for Outstanding Geographic Inaccuracy In a Feature Film

Once upon a time a girl, transplanted from her life in Texas to a new life in Virginia went to see a movie about alien conspiracies.  She settled in, surrounded by native Virginians as the lights dimmed and the film began.  And when it was over, she was the only one left thinking that the real conspiracy lay not in the massive alien space-ship hidden under an ice-shelf in Antarctica, not in the alien-virus-take-over plot allegedly being enacted by a shadow government.  No, the darkest, most sinister, un-explained phenomenon was the fact that Dallas, Texas was shown in the middle of a desert….with massive mountains behind a skyline which looked nothing like the real thing.

And no one else in that theater was confused.

Geographic Inaccuracy.  It plagues everything from animated features, to your favorite weekly TV series.  Sometimes there are just limits to how many places you can imitate using only Southern California, or the Greater Vancouver area, but some errors are so heinous, so erroneous that you question whether even the most remedial geographic education would be able to help the folks in Film and TV who managed not to care enough to right the wrong.

In the Category of “Outstanding Geographic Inaccuracy in a Feature Film” we are pleased to honor X-Files: Fight the Future for its stunningly inaccurate portrayal of Dallas, Texas.

A city with an average annual rainfall of between 32 and 48 inches, located in a region where the elevation ranges from approximately 450 ft. to 800 ft. above sea level (across the entire Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex–an area covering thousands of square miles).  And yet, flying in the face of common sense and what would probably have been minimal impacts to budget, the X-Files folks still decided to try and pass off establishing shots of a desert-mountain backdrop with a bone-dry desert foreground for this well known, flat and (relatively) green Texas city. Wow.

For this shocking abuse of basic geography, we at It’s My TV….It’s My Peanut Butter shall, henceforth, refer to this illustrious category not simply as “Outstanding Geographic Inaccuracy” but as   “The Mountains Outside Dallas Award” for Outstanding Geographic Inaccuracy in a Film.  Congrats.  Your lack of simple research brought a whole new conspiratorial level to this already paranoia-heavy picture.