You're not some kook stalker, are you? :-) Likely you just wanna e-mail me. Go ahead. My
wife Michelle and I, who reside in a Houston suburb, have been
happily married since 1994. Click here for a picture of us at Enchanted
Rock in I'm the marketing director for a medium-sized financial software/Internet company on Houston's west side. I'm one of those annoying people responsible for filling your mailbox with "junk mail", but I also create, print and mail things that people like to get, such as newsletters and magazine ads. (Speaking of junk mail, here are my comments on spamming. Rotten bastards.) Do you read Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities? You've seen my ads. At least, I hope you did! I also do a lot of Web-based marketing. Do you subscribe to a free online financial newsletter? You may have read my stuff. I'm not the financial wiz - I'm just the guy who puts all the financial jargon in readable terms. (Ask me about the MACD indicator sometime. On second thought, don't!) I'm always on the lookout for new opportunities, so please e-mail me if you'd like to see some of my work. Money's not always the issue - sometimes I just plain like doing new things. In case you're wondering, I have a taste for absurd humor. (For instance, I think John Waters has created some of the funniest, most original movies of ever produced, not counting the dreadfully dull "Pecker", but he redeemed himself with "Cecil B. Demented".) I'm also a die-hard skeptic when it comes to claims of the paranormal. The combination of those two traits, plus a web page, leads to vast quantities of hate mail. I enjoy reading hate mail, so keep those letters coming. Just do me a favor and please spare me the nonspecific "your Web site sucks" letters. I've never claimed to be a Web designer, and realize that good Web design is an art form that few people are truly good at. Oh yeah. Did I tell you I'm a huge Cheap Trick and Social Distortion and Sly & the Family Stone and Weezer fan?
I'm a fan of kooky conspiracy theories. I enjoy the tweaking conspiracy buffs with obtuse references to their absurd beliefs. "SpOOk Central", the prior name of my site, was a reference to UFO kooks who insist there's a secret cabal of CIA men ("spOOks") who are part of some vast, mysterious conspiracy designed to keep you from knowing the TRVTH about UFO's. UFO kooks (i.e., Whitley Streiber, Art Bell) like to pretend that we're all being watched by these spOOks. UFO kooks still haven't figured out that The X-Files is a fictional TV show. A few tightly-wound people who had visited my site and didn't like it claimed that "SpOOk Central" was racist. Some bigot buttholes call black folks "spooks," ergo, any use of the word "spook" has racist overtones. Follow that? To the tightly-wound: Get a life. What's next, you're gonna tell me the Cowardly Lion was making a racist comment when he said, "I do believe in spooks! I do, I do, I do"? Rest assured, I strive to be an equal-opportunity offender. I don't care what hue a person's skin is - if you're a kook, I'm gonna write about you. You may be saying to yourself, "Man, this guy sure has a lot of free time on his hands." No, not really. I've simply been building this site up since mid-1995. Over the years whenever something strikes my fancy, I add it. It's sorta like a dirty garage that you haven't cleaned in a long, long time - the crap keeps piling up, and soon you have a huge collection of stuff that you no longer have an interest in but you are reluctant to throw out.
Yeah, he was. And I was just a kid when the man died on the porcelain throne. And yes, his decline was pathetic. So it's hard to explain exactly why I believe Elvis was the coolest, baddest rock 'n roll star of all time. Sure, I'm hip with the latest music buzz. I like loud, fast, obnoxious rock music. But when Elvis was at his peak, no one could touch him. Not now, and I don't believe ever. Unfortunately, Elvis is doomed to be remembered as The Fat Guy With Sideburns And A Big Stupid Jumpsuit. But watch his 1968 special. That half hour or so he spent with his old band members Scotty and D.J., playing his old material, and wearing the all-time greatest rock 'n roll costume of all time... in that half hour, Elvis was a god. You hear the old E - the pre-1957 Elvis - in that half hour. Elvis was the ultimate cool.
 Michelle
and I live in Katy Texas, a suburb roughly
25 miles west of Houston. Katy was named after the old Missouri-
Kansas-Texas (MKT) railroad, then immortalized in the famous
blues song "She Caught The
Katy,"
mangled by John Belushi (it's the song played during the opening
credits of the original Blues Brothers movie.) The landscape
around Katy is very flat, and it's pretty hot and humid most
of the year. Katy and the rest of southeast Texas is the heart
of rice-growing country. (Look on the back of a box of Uncle
Ben's and you'll see what I mean.) Only recently, as the suburbs
have crept westward, has this changed. The rice fields are being
plowed under, thousands of homes are going up, and trees are
being planted. But it's still hot and humid.
Famous people from Katy? Clint Black is from Katy. (I can't stand modern country music. When I'm in the mood for some C&W, I listen to Hank Williams or Patsy Cline. And I mean the cool Hank Williams, not the fat geek with the sunglasses and C. Everett Koop beard who shills for Monday Night Football.) The rock band King's X is from Katy. The actress Renee Zellwiger is from Katy. Baseball great Roger Clemens is from Katy (still lives here, in fact). That's about it. This photo was taken from the Shuttle back in 1994. Folks in the Houston area may want to visit the NASA photos site for some more local images. Katy is an OK place. There are better places to live, but not everyone can afford to live in La Jolla or Hawaii. On the plus side, housing is very affordable. There are whole neighborhoods filled with brand-new, 2-car garage, 4 bedroom houses - houses available for less than $95,000. Land is cheap! The weather's nice in Katy if you can stand really hot and humid weather from April-early October. Winters are great here. There are thousands of good restaurants and plenty to see and do, just a short 20-minute drive away. San Antonio is just 2 1/2 hours away. We have some great city parks - Mary Joe Peckham park (5597 Gardenia Ln) on the north side of Katy proper has a nice big lake stocked with bass, a free miniature golf course, a great playground for the kids, jogging path and nice trees. On the minus side, many people wilt in hot, sunny, humid weather. But things are changing here in Katyland - we got a Home Depot and Best Buy last year! That's big news out here. An enormous mega-mall called Katy Mills was just completed - we'll finally have a decent book store and two mega movieplexes! And hell, everything's air conditioned. Or just hang out by the pool and drink beer all day. ;-)
A lot of people stumble onto this page via search engines, then ask me for tourist/travel information on the Houston area. Frankly, while Houston is a large and highly ethnically-diverse city, it's not a prime tourist destination, despite the attempts of the Houston Convention and Visitor's Bureau to sell it as such. Houston is about business. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, it's just a fact. (Europeans are invariably horrified or fascinated by Houston's hyper laissez-faire business climate.) Sure, there are plenty of things to see and do, but Houston is also a big generic US city. In other words, you'll find the same stuff in Chicago or Dallas or Atlanta... If you want historically interesting or lots of scenery (in other words, tourist haunts), San Antonio and the Big Bend region are the outstanding places to visit in Texas. With that said, if you're in town there are a number of places and events worth seeing: Galveston - Now almost a Houston bedroom community (and Galvestonians will hate me for saying that), Galveston has a rich history. Once the premier city in Texas, if not the entire southern US, Galveston was destroyed in the great 1900 hurricane. It was by far the worst disaster in US history, with over 6,000 people killed. It also sealed Galveston's fate and helped make Houston one of the largest deepwater ports in the US. But many of Galveston's historical buildings survived, and it is well worth spending a day visiting the city. Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo - Don't guffaw. This is BIG, with over a million attendees each year. For about 3 weeks in late-February to mid-March, the world's largest livestock show and rodeo is held at Reliant Park. It's a great place to spend a day, with lots for adults (and kids) to see and do. Kemah/Clear Lake - Just a few miles from NASA lies one of the best tourist attractions in the Houston area. The Kemah Waterfront on Galveston Bay is a massive tourist complex with spectacular restaurants, hotels, a midway, carnival and miniature railroad. We went there recently and were totally surprised by the changes there. It's a serious tourist attraction, worthy of spending a long day or even overnight. Check it out. Downtown Aquarium - This massive brand-new aquarium/entertainment/restaurant complex just opened in downtown Houston. Created by the same company that developed the Kemah Boardwalk, this is a good place to spend a few hours. NASA/Space Center Houston - Very cool for adults the first time you visit. A guaranteed winner for kids. There's a great visitor's center where you can get up close to a Saturn V, numerous other rockets and space capsules, play around with space hardware, and see and touch rocks brought back from the Moon. Lots of cool displays and things for kids to do. You'll also see Mission Control, places the astronauts train, and lots of Space Station mockups. San Jacinto State Park - Where the final battle for Texas independence took place, where the fledgling Texas army beat Santa Anna's Mexican troops while shouting "Remember the Alamo!" Underrated (and also poorly marketed) in my opinion, due to the fact that the park is surrounded by miles of refineries and industrial complexes. Also on site is the USS Texas, the only surviving dreadnought battleship. Finally, there are many fun ethnic places to explore. Check out the funky wholesale stores on Harwin, the many enormous flea markets, or the hundreds of Asian businesses in the Bellaire Blvd. area in west Houston. Fiesta Supermarkets around town are also fun to visit, especially the one near the Southwest Freeway and Hillcroft. Fiesta's cool because you can find all kinds of unusual food, like a cow's head wrapped in cellophane. :-) |
central Texas, or 
