The Un-Texan: A Quinn Martin Production

"The birth of a child, your first kiss from a new lover - neither compare to that sweet moment when your hangover finally goes away."

Those sage words are one of only two things I accomplished today in the fog that followed a friend's birthday party at Brown's Social House last night.  The other "accomplishment" adorns the top of this page and makes less sense even if it was more fun to make.  I will try to explain:

Artist's representaton

This morning I browsed Facebook while waiting for the hammering in my head to subside.  It was there I noticed that one of my friends, writer, editor & fugitive American Bob McIntosh (@BobMcVictoria on Twitter), was himself friends with a man named Hud Bannon.  

The name immediately appealed to to the child in me who spent hours parked in front of the television watching re-runs of Quincy, Barnaby Jones, & The Streets of San Francisco on WWOR.  I could just imagine "hot-shot detective" Hud Bannon sliding across the hood of his black '71 Charger (hemi, of course) as he chased down drug kingpin Mookie Davis.  So, in tribute, I created the above image and sent it along to Bob for laughs.

As it turns out Hud Bannon is a writer, author of the blog The Un-Texan, among other things, and though that’s not his real name it damn well should be.  I haven’t yet had the chance to delve into the man’s work but what I have seen so far concerns things near and dear to my heart:  America, truck stops, dusty roads and the strange carnival of people who inhabit all three:

“Looking at Delta Dawn's bare shoulders and back was like gazing across several acres of pale, drought-stricken ground in the harshest light of day; from the front she looked like all of those acres had gathered themselves into a shivering heap that might collapse at any moment. None of that seemed to bother her in the slightest.”

                                    -          Hud Bannon, "The Un-Texan"

Click on over to the man's site using either the link above or by clicking the image at the top of the page.  On a related note, does anyone know the name of the guy who narrated Barnaby Jones & The Streets of San Francisco?  This is the stuff they should teach in school.

Photo Gallery: The Lonesome Creepy - Waiting

Of all the things that smartphones can do - help us cheat at pub trivia nights or avoid having to talk to strangers, for example - their greatest feature has to be the camera. Having a reasonably capable camera in your pocket at all times is useful when your friends and associates decide to do something blackmail-worthy or when, like me, you’re walking around at three in the morning and say, “That looks spooky.” Portability, and the fact that it does all the heavy lifting for you as far as settings are concerned, has allowed me to use my iPhone to capture images I never would have bothered with if I'd had to lug around a camera the size of Optimus Prime's lower 48.