Category: Uncategorized

According to school administration, 19 6th graders, 50 Jr Highers and 28 high schoolers left Ennis schools this morning to march against immigration policy.
The students are suspended until Monday, when a parent’s conference is required for students to be re-admitted to the school.
The school principals warned students yesterday, when rumors first circulated, that they would be suspended if they walked out of class.
The students apparently left the school after they first arrived this morning and did not attend any classes.

From the official website:

DON’T COME KNOCKIN’
A farce, a family story, a road movie
Synopsis by Wim Wenders
Howard Spence has seen better days. When he was younger he was a movie star, mostly in Westerns. At the age of sixty, Howard uses drugs, alcohol and young girls to avoid the painful truth that there are only supporting roles left for him to play. After yet another night of debauchery in his trailer, Howard awakens in disgust to find that he is still alive, but that nobody in the world would have missed him if he had died.
That morning Howard is absent from the film set. Instead, we see him galloping away on his movie horse in his costume – full cowboy regalia.
But there is no camera filming him this time. Howard is fleeing, from the film and his life.
At an old train station, Howard trades in his costume for the shabby clothes of an old ranch hand. He rides the train for a while and then he rents a car. Eventually he catches a Greyhound, after discarding his credit cards and cell phone. Finally he arrives in Elko, Nevada, the place that he ran away from years ago and where his 80 year-old mother still lives.
Mom takes him in, even if she hasn’t seen her only son for more than thirty years. Although she’s only seen his face on the covers of tabloids, and received nothing but a handful of postcards from him, it’s as if he had only left for a moment to buy a pack of cigarettes. She treats him as if he were still a boy. Perhaps Mom realizes that Howard is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. With her dry humor and matter-of-fact approach to his failed career, she awakens Howard to his self-loathing and self-pity.
Meanwhile, the film shoot that Howard has abandoned is interrupted. The insurance company is furious about the costly damage, which increases daily. They hire a private detective, Sutter, to find Howard. Sutter is a sort of bounty hunter. Like Howard, he is a figure from a different world. In the following scenes, we always see Sutter on Howard’s trail, in hot pursuit.
Howard, an alcoholic, doesn’t stay sober for long at Mom’s house. One night he wanders into the city and ends up in a crummy casino, drinking with an old school buddy whose pitiful existence mirrors his own life even more painfully. They get thoroughly drunk, have a mindless fistfight, and end up in the gutter where they get scooped up by the cops.
Howard wakes up in a drying-out cell. This police incident brings Sutter dangerously close to him, but Mom bails Howard out in the nick of time. Afterward, they finally have a real conversation about the past. Mom remembers that more than twenty years ago a young woman called her up trying to locate Howard. Mom figured that the girl was pregnant. Howard is shocked at the thought that he has a grown child somewhere. This child seems to be a ray of hope, a possible salvation from his narcissistic and meaningless life. When Sutter appears in town, reminding Howard of the reality he has escaped from, he flees again, this time to find his child
In 1900, Butte, Montana was the biggest city west of the Mississippi. Now it is a place of deep depression. Downtown Butte is a ghost town, barely recognizable as the setting of the film shot there 25 years ago, a movie that catapulted Howard to stardom. Many affairs and one-night stands took place during that shoot. Doreen was one of Howard’s flames then. She’s still working at the same coffee shop where she met Howard as a young, blooming beauty. She has a son, Earl, a rock musician and singer living in Butte.
Howard meets Doreen again. She reacts very calmly to the sudden reappearance of her old lover and the father of her son. Howard’s meeting with Earl, on the other hand, is quite violent. Earl completely rejects this unknown father who appears too late in his life. Saddened by this encounter, Howard is ready to give up and leave Butte again, when out of nowhere a young woman named Sky appears. She is exactly the same age as Earl. She is in fact, Howard’s daughter, the product of another short fling that happened during the filming of the same movie. She is Earl’s half-sister. These siblings do not know about each other. That’s when the real complications of this American family reunion begin…
For the first time in his life, Howard tries to do something unselfish. He tries to put this disconnected family back together. But he has little success. In the end, he is relieved when Sutter appears to forcibly escort him back to his role on the movie set. At least there he has written dialogue, a schedule, and an order to keep that he is incapable of mastering in real life. But even if his mission as a father is a failure, he has managed to bring a brother and a sister together, and mother and her son closer to each other…

Missed this last week, but Wim Wenders new movie, “Don’t Come Knocking” was released on the 16th in New York and LA.
The film, a western starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange and Tim Roth, won rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival.
Bono and The Edge wrote the title track for the movie and recorded while touring last year in Amsterdam.

With Edge on guitar and Bono – joined by Andrea Corr – on vocals, the track was produced by Garret Lee in a hotel in Amsterdam when the band were playing the city last summer. It was a close call according to Wim, who said that Bono and Edge had been planning to write a title track for the film but the pressures of the touring schedule nearly made it impossible.
“Our deadline was coming closer and closer and it was a very simple one. When we had to start making release prints, it would be too late. I kept that date open as long as possible and never gave up the hope that things would work out in the last minute. And they did! Literally in that last minute the song came in!”
But it was worth the wait, he says.
“I got goose pimples when we first heard it and saw it with the picture. It has heartbreaking lyrics and the duet with Bono and Andrea Corr is stunning… I can’t wait for you to all hear it!”

Watch a trailer from the movie here
Or hear a clip of the song here.

About 40 students from Waxahachie High School took to the streets Thursday morning to march to Waxahachie City Hall. The students were protesting recent talks in the House to “criminalize” helping illegal immigrants and the idea of putting up a wall along the U.S. border.
Several students I talked to were very passionate about the issue and said they had encouraged their friends not to walk-out of school unless they knew the issues and were truly concerned.
They also said they dissapointed by the recent behavior of other students in Dallas and Fort Worth, saying they felt many were ignorant and simply looking for an excuse to get out of school.

Got a press release from Willie’s publicity folks:

WHAT
Willie Nelson will be holding a press conference and breaking ground on a new biodiesel refinery, Pacific BioDiesel Texas, on a 2-acre parcel adjacent to Carl¹s Corner Truck Stop in Carl¹s Corner Texas. The refinery is the latest clean fuel venture with Willie Nelson and Pacific Biodiesel, Inc. of Hawaii. Carl¹s Corner Truck Stop is owned by Carl Cornelius and Nelson, and will be the main distributor of the biodiesel produced at the facility.
The new biodiesel refinery will process different feedstocks into renewable fuel for diesel engines, starting primarily with locally grown cottonseed oil. In keeping with Pacific Biodiesel¹s philosophy of promoting community-based biodiesel production, the venture has partnered with a nearby cottonseed crushing mill and hopes to offer longevity to an industry that has been struggling.

WHO
Joining Willie Nelson for the ground breaking refinery are Bob King, President of Pacific Biodiesel, and Mike Nasi BCOT (the Biodiesel Coalition of Texas).

WHEN
Saturday, April 1, 2006
1:00 PM Central

WHERE
Carl¹s Corner
Highway I-35 Exit 374
(South of Dallas near Hillsboro)

I just got test versions of Sprint’s Smart Device PPC 6700 and a Treo 650. I’m looking forward to testing the heck out of them.
I’ll post my results as soon as I finish.