Looking back with Lot's Wife

Las Vegas is supposed to be the ultimate cowboy Saturday night in town. Going through the McCarran Airport in Las Vegas last week, three old cowboys sat down across from me. They were bizarrely, incredibly handsome in their white shirts and blue jeans and they were there to make money running racehorses. They were having the greatest conversation about stud horses and blood lines and a kid they knew who was making money hand over fist right out of high school buying and selling calves and riding around in trucks. I fell in love right then and there. They were old Las Vegas. I needed to go to the restroom pretty desperately but I couldn’t bring myself to leave them I was so happy to listen. I had just finished two hours flying from Austin next to this really boring lady with this awful moony-eyed kid and I was crazy-starved for someone with a sense of humor. She shared with me the news of their earlier trip this summer to Cozumel; how her husband worked seven 12-hour shifts as a h...

When I go into Hollywood Video for a movie, or two, or three, or nine, it's because I'm going to have my own little orgy of movie watching. It's more like sneaking a 30-pack of Bud Lite from 7-11, ashamed to admit that you really plan to go home and drink it all that night. Except, of course, for me, it's a six pack of Ben and Jerry's on a Sunday, hoping my bishop doesn't drive by and see me. All the movies at the theaters right now are so awful, so I've been forced to fall back on rentals or TV shows. And who wants to say they watch TV shows? Except when we rent a whole season of one—my gosh, renting the first season of 24 almost ruined our lives. It was a miracle we took showers and bushed our teeth. I tend to be like a kid with cartoons—you know how they sit there with a little drool coming out of their mouths and you can't get them to hear you? That's me. And I like a bunch of them, like potato chips, all stacked up together so you can c...