damicoaustin

Witnessed: Borderlands Podcast

Borderlands

Update: My podcast formerly known as Presidio is now Borderlands, the first season of Witnessed. Listen to the Trailer (and episodes beginning Sept. 7). https://podcasts.apple.com/…/witnessed…/id1578324041… The tall-but-true tale of a charismatic outlaw, an iconic small-town sheriff, and the record-setting drug bust that ensnared them both. Set in the rugged Texas borderlands, host Rob D’Amico transports …

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Moving Sale

    IKEA Bookcase with cubes and baskets: $30  Still Available!  Metal candle tree with individual candle holders, includes LED plastic candles. $10 SOLD Kitchen Dining Chairs. 4 Good, 1 with missing middle back piece, one with top piece needs repair: NOW FREE!  Candle holders: $5  Porch glider: $20 SOLD Porch table, glass and metal: …

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On Ponchos

Ruminating about el poncho. Why do I wear a poncho? Certainly to get attention. But that’s down around 14 on the list. Take my one of my memories: Though sweltering in a noon sun, I lay huddled under my poncho on the wooden bench outside the Mexican train station, while a squadron of black flies …

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Now

I don’t write poetry. But I did today.

Now is when the squirrels splay over center lines, their innards bubbling into their incisors.
When the din of dogs ricochets off alley walls, but no heed is paid from windows beyond.

Atttack of the thieving Gypsies

I’ve always heard that gypsies were a problem, that they were thieves, but I never worried about it. I figured I’d be able to spot a gypsy and everything, since they’re always traveling in bands with covered wagons and scarves on their heads and everything. Anyway, I was walking down the Piazza Madonna Fortuna with this Irish girl I’d met by a public toilet, and these two little girls come up to me like they’re going to ask me something. They were dark haired little things, with skin that looked like it had been dusted in dirt or soot. But they had the eyes of angels…

John Wayne

‘Fill your hand, you son of a bitch’

The recent revelation that U.S. interrogators in Guantanamo Bay used a horrific video of John Wayne beheading a detainee to shock other prisoners into talking has reignited a long-standing debate over using
clips of dead movie stars for roles they never signed off on while living.

Advances in digital filmmaking in the 1990s led to the use of deceased idols, primarily for advertising. Humphrey Bogart graced Pepsi commercials, Gene Kelly danced with Paula Abdul, Groucho Marx shared a Coca-Cola with Cary Grant, and John Wayne helped sell Coors beer.

Obiedo

The older of the two old men next door dumped a can of beans on the lawn. It was just one of many dishes fed to four or five cats that hung around their house and lounged the day away sunning on their fuchsia wooden porch or yellow stone walkway. The men who lived there were strange. One was in his fifties, the son, the other in his seventies, the father. Both were wid¬owed, both clothed eternally in plain white T-shirts that hugged their