After compiling my picks of 1969, I thought I was through with nostalgia for awhile. However, a spate of media retrospectives on the 30th anniversary of this or that[1] induced an ex-colleague and me into a recent reverie for 1980.[2] Specifically, mid-1980, or roughly mid-May through late July.[3] The period started about six or seven months into my paying attention to the world at large. If the high school graduation issue was about the beginning of the end of era, and my reaction to it, this is about the end of the beginning.

A quick check with YouTube and other Web repositories verified our recollections, but I'm still amazed at how vivid  the memories are of various news events and cultural offerings, my moods and reactions to aforesaid events and offerings, and other people's moods and reaction to same. Next, I re-realize it's 30 years later, my life is better now, the world at large is worse, yet I can't even say that the time flew by.[4]

Mostly, it seemed, then and in retrospect, to drag or actively resist my attempts to progress toward some better "transformation of self and circumstance." That’s besides other people’s static or active resistance.

Subjectively, the difference is that during progress, or at least the delusion thereof, the tempo accelerates. If circumstances are really good, time simultaneously quickens and stops. I haven’t come across any material that deals with this topic, so I don’t know if this is just my quirky perception or whether other people have experienced the same thing.[5]

Now, as I drive about Austin, the light, the still, humid weather, and the shaggy overgrowth of the untended land- and streetscapes remind me strongly of summer 2001. Given how that ended, my follow-up mood is uneasy.

On the Town

On July 10, a plethora of women from around Texas who looked like Miss Universe contestants gathered at a dance studio in the West Austin hills. The out-of-towners drove at least 75 miles for the salsa social. So what did they do? These women stood on the sidelines, guzzling energy drinks, checking their cell phones or yakking with each, and alternating between the averted gaze to avoid acknowledging men’s appraising looks or nervously glances about the room while they judged each other. They could’ve stayed in their towns to do all that and saved themselves a trip.

Despite this, I managed to dance frequently with numerous new acquaintances from outside Greater Austin.[6] Later, every light cooperated so that my trip home was nonstop, a rarity.

Sex and Violins

To my dismay, “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky,” about the fictional doomed adultery between the two real-life members of the international smart set 90 years ago, did not feature a cameo of my namesake great-grandfather. It’s conceivable he met Stravinsky, based on their close ages and shared nationality and occupation, though I never heard about it. Still, since the movie’s made up anyway, it would’ve been fun to see great-grandpa interrupting the proceedings with unsolicited comments: “You can’t score violins like that. Igor, you should’ve stayed in law school.”[7]

Austin Death Watch

Katz’s Deli has filed for bankruptcy reorganization. The papers think the irony of the story is that CNBC just featured the deli as an example of Texas’ great business climate. [8] The real irony is that owner Marc Katz proclaims Jews smarter than goyim on page 2 of Deli News, the menu designed to resemble a tabloid. Elsewhere, the City zoning regulators are hassling the owner of the El Patio restaurant over a dirt lot used for parking.[9]

Oregon State University is suing an Austin bar for using a mascot logo similar to OSU's "Benny Beaver." The bar paid the artist who created the logo in drinks.[10] Incidentally, OSU once received a jape from Mad magazine about the dismal quality of its football team.[11] Austin Dispatches will continue to gnaw on this case as quips come to mind.

The Daily Texan editorial board is incensed that Cap Metro is looking to gouge UT students for its shuttle service to make up for it's hemorrhaging revenues elsewhere.[12] It's not just you kids. We're all getting screwed by Cap Metro's continued existence.[13]

Also at UT, the university’s proposed UT brand water in a plastic water bottle incensed environmentalists so much they stopped squawking about the Gulf oil spill and started protesting about the water bottle on campus.[14] UT, like most campuses, chiefly pumps out credentialed people with no real skills except at undermining Western civilization (“social engineering”).[15] But occasionally, these enragés turn on their creators when the latter or trying to accomplish something – like funding the creation of more enragés.[16]

Public comments at the July 30 City Council meeting indicated a strong discontent with the Austin police, who behave like autonomous, quasi-criminal headbreakers. The comments were input as the Council considered, then rejected, paying the family of someone the police gunned down last year.[17] Unaddressed was the issue of whether we'd be better off without the police, but the sentiments expressed were just a few logical steps away.

Speaking of meter maids with guns, the City is mulling extended the operating hours of parking meters, possibly to 8 p.m., to gouge more money out of us and kill downtown.[18]

The Chronicle reports that the multiple plans for Central Texas painstakingly assembled by busybodies are uncoordinated with each other.[19] This might be the hairline fracture we can exploit to expand our freedom.

According to a report cited by the Business Journal and the Statesman, Austin is experiencing a big decline in volunteerism.[20] Various volunteer group leaders question the report’s methodology and conclusion, as does a friend of mine who’s volunteered in charitable efforts for several years. I suspect if we are seeing a decline in charitable activity, it’s a result of a multiethnic polity – “diversity” – experiencing the inevitible  decline in trust, and thus in social cohesion, and thus in willingness to volunteer to help strangers.[21] Also, there’s the inherent hypocrisy of smug social democratic hipsters.[22]

The City wants $14.4 million for a 1-mile boardwalk for bicyclists.[23] Remember, this is the same City that can’t seem to scrounge up enough money to fill potholes.[24]

Owners of the Echelon I office building are ready to rebuild. However, the makeover replaces the '80s exterior design.[25] Damn you, Joe Stack.

The Statesman reports the Austin Independent School District flunked its targets set under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. No child is left behind because no child ever advances, and too many children in the clutches of the district were learning and progressing.[26]

Community Impact News reports that more City residents have been getting chickens for pets. Far be it from Austin Dispatches to cluck about a story that’s already flown the coop. The residents must abide by chickenshit regulations, or else run afoul of City regulators, but that’s a bird of different feather.[27]

Political Follies

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Museum of San Marcos is expanding.[28] Yeah, like a cancer.[29] After a scummy political career and foisting a corporatist warfare-welfare agenda on America that hobbles us to this day,[30] "Central Texas remains his country," reports the Statesman.[31] That's because government programs have created a population of bureaucrats in our midst, determined to bleed us dry.[32] However, in all this time, I've met one local who volunteered for Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign. Whereas even now I can go anywhere in the country and meet numerous people who volunteered for Barry Goldwater.[33]

LBJ’s successor, Barack Obama, visited Austin this week, fundraising on behalf of Democrats and screwing up traffic for anybody who had to be downtown or in the U-District. Thanks, Barry.[34]

Business Roundup

A client with whom I worked briefly a few years ago is even further along toward complete disaster, with “contractual violations” and “chronic failures.”[35]

Dell paid $100 million to settle a fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.[36] However, the SEC has a history of its officials filing suit against successful businesses, businessmen and investors, for being successful, just to gain status among fellow bureaucrats.[37] The SEC’s actions even contributed to the 1990-91 recession.[38] In far too many instances, the defendants have concluded that it’s cheaper to settle than to fight these pests in court. 

The Onion’s July 22 Austin edition features a guide to eateries that serve offal.[39]

Neighborhood News

The Whole Foods grocery project at The Domain is back on, this time for an opening in 2013.[40] Two dessert shops have opened in the neighborhood.[41]

Media Indigest