The Salt Lick Restaurant

I happened to be in Driftwood, Texas recently (no, really, I was vacationing in Austin) and I was lucky enough to get to eat at The Salt Lick. Open since 1967, The Salt Lick is known for its open barbecue pit, friendly staff, generous portions, and their convenient BYOB policy. I opted for the "Family Style" all-you-can-eat meat plate, which came loaded with pork ribs, sausage and brisket. And, since I was in Texas, I washed all that meat down with a few cans of Pearl beer. I ate until I was legitimately concerned that I might vomit and was subsequently full for more than 24 hours after I left the restaurant. Not bad for $16 plus the price of beer.

Rating: Meat Coma%

(Image from sweetleafteablog.com)

Dallas

Whelp, that about does it for Dallas. Everyone who gets a chance should check out the Seaquarium, The Granada Theater and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Don't go to UTD, which is an an intellectual and social ghost town despite having some of the best faculty money can buy. Overall, I'd say Dallas is a nice place to visit but an uninspiring place to live--not bad, just not for me.

RATING: 70%

(Image from api.ning.com.)

Stink Creek, TX

Yep, it's is a real place. It's eleven miles upstream from Sweetwater, TX, if you can believe that. If anyone bumps into Super Mario, they'd better tell him that the brown stuff in Soda Lake ain't Coca Cola.

RATING: 13%


(Image from www.sibleynaturecenter.org.)

Lookin' Out the Screen Door

Lookin' Out the Screen Door is, so far as I know, East Texas' own Adam Carroll's first full length album, and boy does it kick some ass. Included here is a ballad to Ol' Milwaukee beer, a crazy-awesome song about Sno Cones, a ballad for Blondie and Dagwood and the best song about Galveston I know of (I'm looking at you, Glen Campbell). Like Bone, Carroll is a better writer than about half the people in MFA programs. So praise be to Allah!

Listen for yourself.


Rating: 88%

No Electricity

Sometimes you might be a month late paying your power bill and TXU might send you a letter that says the payment is due on October 8th and then cut your electricity on October 1st. Then they might tell your wife that they'll turn the power back on that night so you'll forgo fast food thinking you can cook when you get home but guess what, you can't, and now you can't even go to Jack in the Box because it's 10:30 and you don't have a fucking car. The logistics of cutting Texas from the continental shelf, dragging it out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and carpet bombing the shit out of it seem formidable, but if Canadian Jesus can bury a bunch of Archean fossils that are billions of years old on a planet that's only 10,000 years old, he can do anything, so how 'bout it, CJC--for me?

RATING: 3%

(Image from http://3.bp.blogspot.com.)

Ya'll

Outside of "reckon," "fixin' to," and "ain't", I don't know of another word Texans (and Southerners) catch more flak for than ya'll. I don't see why, though. Ya'll works wonderfully for one of English's most difficult (spoken) conundrums: the plural second person. I suppose you could say, "You all," but doing so makes you sound like an uptight prick (We cannot attend tonight's party. I cannot apologize enough. If it were not for...). You could use "yous all" (which is pretty embarrassing) or "you guys" and "yous guys," but come on, Eddie Haskell! The fifties are over! So in conclusion, if you ain't using ya'll, you're prolly a dumb sumbitch.


Rating: 88%

Fancy Cheese

So I was at this wine and cheese party in Dallas a couple of weeks ago and I got talking to these two Texans who agreed that brie is delicious once you get rid of the nasty white rind on it. This reinforced my suspicion that Texans are animals who should probably be fed from a trough of some kind.

RATING: Vive le Quebec libre%

(Image from www.ou.edu.)