TXOU

Sunday afternoon – a good time for laundry. Everyone who came to town for the “Red River Shootout” has checked out, and the business-folk coming in for next week haven’t yet arrived. In case you’re not aware, the Red River forms the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma, and the “Shootout” is the annual “derby” match between long-time rivals Oklahoma University (“OU”, or the Sooners) and the University of Texas (“UT”, or the Longhorns) – serious college football. I didn’t see it (either live or on TV), but the game, played at the newly refurbished Cotton Bowl in Dallas, was apparently pretty good. Certainly the victorious local fans (beating their number-one ranked opponents) were celebrating late into the night.

On the theme of football, The Dallas Cowboys are playing the Arizona Cardinals, and I’m watching it on TV. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and no doubt fathers and sons all over the country are watching it on ESPN. I wonder how some of the dads respond to questions from their younger offspring when commercials come on for Viagra. Impotence may have morphed into Erectile Dysfunction, and then to seemingly innocuous ED, but that’s no more than a deliberate marketing ploy to confuse the censors.

At breakfast this morning, a young man in a cowboy hat sat opposite his partner. She was eating her omelette, and drinking coffee, while he was immersed in reading his bible. At the next table, a mother and father, with 3 children seated round one of the larger tables, paused to collectively say grace before eating. This is not at all uncommon.

“Little Britain USA” aired for the first time this week on HBO. It was made in the USA, and features many of the usual sketches and themes, but with an injection of American characters. I’ll be very interested in the reaction to a show that pokes fun at the disabled, the fat, and the gay (and any other normally taboo subjects). In the UK, I think we have the admirable ability to find this amusing, as long as it is done well, and there is no malicious intent. In the USA, political correctness is taken literally, and to extreme.

 As you can see, there’s a curious double standard – not only here, but throughout the “bible belt”. So I also wonder how mums and dads, driving along the major highway I-635 at Farmers Branch, explain the billboard that features a young lady with her knickers around her knees.

Don’t blame me – I only work here.