The Historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio

My wife and I spent a night at the Historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio last week, and I wanted to put a quick review up for it. In a word: fantastic!

I loved this hotel. The staff were incredibly kind to us, and the service in every part of the hotel was terrific. The front desk people, the valets, the bellmans, even the staff in the cigar store downstairs were all wonderfully helpful and had a great sense of humor. The rooms were spotless and well-decorated.

We were lucky enough to get a room at the Menger overlooking the Alamo from our balcony. This was my first trip to San Antonio, so the view of the Alamo was really cool since I'd never seen anything but pictures before. It really is smaller than you'd expect it to be, and since it's now in the middle of a bunch of skyscrapers and office buildings, it looks even smaller by comparison.

The mango ice cream at the restaurant in the Menger hotel was unbelievable. We also enjoyed the cinnamon ice cream. The breakfast buffet was delicious, and the prices on the food were very reasonable.

My favorite memory of the Menger Hotel will be the amazing history that practically screams at you from every side of the property. There's a photo of Bill Clinton eating mango ice cream on one wall, and a photo of Babe Ruth in front of the hotel on another wall. The Menger Bar is where Teddy Roosevel recruited many of his Rough Riders, and Oscar Wilde drank spiked lemonade and smoked funky European cigarettes in the garden. Not bad for a little hotel in San Antonio Texas.

Anyway, bottom line, I heartily recommend the Historic Menger hotel to anyone staying in San Antonio.

Review of Win a Date with Tad Hamilton

My wife and I watched Win a Date with Tad Hamilton on HBO in a room at the Menger Hotel day before yesterday. I'd heard good things about the movie, but wasn't sure if I wanted to watch it or read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. I'm glad that I watched this movie though, because it turned out to be very good indeed, actually.

My wife was a huge fan of Legally Blonde when it came out, and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton was directed by the same guy. I did not enjoy Legally Blonde as well as Tad Hamilton, however, and I don't think that a film being directed by Robert Luketic is going to instantly hurl it onto my must-see list. But he did a nice job on this film.

Basically, Rosalee, played by Kate Bosworth, wins a date with a Hollywood super-hunk named Tad Hamilton, and Tad and she start falling for each other. Rosalee's best friend, played by Topher Grace, also has feelings for her though, and the resulting love triangle is what propels this movie forward. What's interesting about this movie though is the Topher Grace character. He's an excellent actor for one thing, and his character is delightfully quirky for another.

And the other interesting thing about the movie is that Tad Hamilton turns out to be a pretty good guy. A lot of times in this kind of movie, the Tad Hamiltion character would have been shallow and unlikable, but in this movie, you might argue that he's a little on the shallow side, but he's too likeable a guy to hold that against him.

Another cool thing to look for in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton is Gary Cole's performance as Rosalee's father. It's a small part, but he's fantastic and very dry in the role.

The movie also features from great one liners, my favorites being: "Guard your carnal treasure." and "Sometimes Goliath kicks the shit out of David. It's just nobody bothers to tell that story."

Thoughts of Jim Croce Tonight & Favorite Singers

I'm a huge Jim Croce fan. My friend Larry will attest to this fact, as he is also a big Jim Croce fan. Tonight while I was playing poker online, I was listening to launch.com and they played a song by him, so I did a search and found the official Jim Croce website. What a terrific find. There's a video there of Croce performing "Operator" live that just about transcends the medium. It's far better than what you even should be able to watch and listen to on a computer, and I just watched and listened to the song in a kind of open-mouthed wonder.

Who are some of my other favorite singers these days? John Prine is right up there toward the top of the list. I love Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin very much too. Neil Diamond is terrific. Lately I've been listening to quite a bit of Gordon Lightfoot too. As far as country music goes, I couldn't imagine life without Willie Nelson, or Merle Haggard, or Chris Ledoux. (And yeah, I did cry when he passed away.)

Some of the local talent here in Texas that I truly love: Brian Houser, Brian Burns, Max Stalling, Chris Wall. If you're interested in a list of Americana musicians, the Beer Bytch has a pretty neat list of artists available too. (I was lucky enough to dance with the Beer Bytch one night at the Top Rail Saloon about five years ago. I'm sure she doesn't remember me.)

Anyway, I guess tonight's post is just stream of conscious nothingness, but I guess there's room for some of that on the internet too. Funny thing...I was reading on Roger Ebert's website the other day about how movies can enrich our lives, not just help us get through them, and that's kind of how I'm feeling about music tonight.

Red Dead Revolver - Xbox Game Review

"I feel very close to the western. There are not too many American art forms that are original. Most are derived from European art forms. Other than the western and jazz or blues, that's all that's really original." - Clint Eastwood

If you love the Western genre as much as I do, then you'll probably love Rockstar Games's Red Dead Revolver for the Xbox. (I think it's available for Playstation 2 also, but I don't know for sure since I don't play on a Playstation 2.) The atmosphere for Red Dead Revolver is about as true to a genre as any video game I've ever played. The main character is appropriately grim and silent, and the supporting characters are appropriately interesting.

Red Dead Revolver is third-person shooter revenge story set in the Old West. The main character, Red, sees his parents killed by bandits early in the game, and you get to play out the scene where they're attacking the family farm. Red's a prodigy of sorts with a handgun, and you get to shoot lots of bad guys in this part. It also serves as the main training level for the game, although there are a couple of other chapters that offer training too.

One of the more entertaining scenes in the game is when young Red shoots the arm off one of the bad guys. Which of course means that Red is going to be looking for a "one-armed man" for a good bit of the game.

The soundtrack for Red Dead Revolver is stellar (which is no surprise since it's a game from Rockstar Games), and the graphics are good but not great. You actually feel like you're watching an old Western movie while you're playing the game. In terms of fun, this game gets high marks from me. Like Grand Theft Auto Vice City, it's so damn much fun that you don't mind that the game designers didn't take full advantage of the graphics capabilities offered by the Xbox platform. I'd rather play a fun game with average graphics than a game with great graphics that isn't fun any day of the week.

Aggressive Military Recruitment & The No Child Left Behind Act

A few weeks ago my wife told me about a new law that had passed that would force my local public school system to give our phone number to military recruiters. I was surfing online today, and found an article about this at the Utne Reader: Leave My Child Alone. According to the article, some recruiters are contacting children as young as 14 to begin recruitment efforts. Schools who refuse to comply with the turning over of this information risk losing federal funds.

This is one of the saddest and most angering things I've lived to see. No one under the age of 18 should be submitted to the hard-sell techniques of military recruitment. It's not fair, and it's not right. One of the fundamental tenets of law that I've always been taught is that people under the age of 18 or so do not have the mental or emotional capacity to make their own decisions about things like sex, or alchol, etc. Why would making a decision about something as drastic as joining the military be different?

Frankly, there's only one reason: it's in the government's military interest to do so. It's a sad day when the US government is so wrong about its foreign policy and its use of the military that it can't staff the military sufficiently without recruiting children.

One thing you can do is make sure that you send your school's superintendent a letter asking that your child's information NOT be released to military recruitment officials. It's an exception letter, and it's one of the things that's very high on my wife's and my to-do list this week. Our son is only ten years old, and if we can prevent him from being recruited by the military, then we will.

Another thing you can do is support the Sojourners' petition in favor of the Student Privacy Protection Act.

I have one final thing to say in this post, and I'm going to join the other outraged parents' voices when I say this. "Leave my child alone."