After my workshop in Houston ended last Thursday, I had a half day to kill before my flight home. Being a child of the ocean, I was going to check out the waterfront – and that meant a run down to Galveston.

I love history, and Galveston is dripping in it. The island city is probably best known as the victim of the 1900 hurricane which killed 8,000 of Galveston’s residents, still the worst natural disaster in American history. You can’t travel around the city without seeing signs of the storm, from the monuments along Broadway to the stone mansions that survived the storm, to the impressive 10-mile-long seawall that was built after the storm and allowed the height of the land behind it to be raised by over 10 feet.

Pink granite groins - imagine how many countertops that could have made!

Speaking of impressive, you should see the local choice for break wall materials. Like many beach cities, Galveston has a series of groins – short perpendicular break walls that extend from the beach and slow the lateral movement of sand. We have similar structures in Redondo, and use local materials to create them. For us, that means modest granite blown out of the quarry on Catalina Island. Here in Galveston, the material is also granite – but it’s pink, and looks to be high quality. Can’t help but think the stuff would look a lot nicer in some high end home somewhere.

The architecture of the homes here belies the biggest threat from a hurricane – storm surge. In 1900, the surge was several feet higher than the highest point in the island and basically swamped it; as a result, most of the deaths came from drowning. Even with the additional height of the seawall, the island is dangerously low – Hurricane Ike in 2008 managed to overtop the wall. Builders accept this a certainty, and take it into consideration when they design their homes. Most houses – and many businesses – have a sacrificial lower floor, consisting of little more than an enclosed staircase and a carport. All of the living spaces are on the second or third floor, presumably above any potential flooding.

Driving in this morning, and as I explore the island, it’s clear that the damage from Ike was significant. Nearly half of the waterfront homes show some level of damage or repair, and construction activity is evident everywhere. There are several piers on the south side of the island, and you can see that several are missing the final segments, presumably due to storm damage. On the bright side, one pier destroyed in 1961 and bashed again by Ike is about to debut as a tourist attraction on a par with our own Santa Monica Pier.

The wind is actually blowing pretty good here in Galveston today, and I suspect there are at least Small Craft Advisories in place. As you can see from the video I shot down at the seawall a little while ago, it’s no day to be on the water:

And this was only three out of five on the warning flag scale they use along the beach. Good thing it was low tide, or it would be slapping the seawall.

I actually started this MB entry while sitting in a restaurant on 61st street in Galveston, waiting to enjoy a different kind of cultural experience – a Waffle House breakfast. As a Cali guy, there are certain experiences that aren’t available to me, so I feel obligated to seek them out when possible. Last night, a bacon-and-cheese Whataburger; this morning a Waffle House All Star breakfast. Quite the cultural enrichment …

I’ve been kicking around this part of Texas for the better part of four days now, and I still don’t even know what to call it. The news peeps refer to the “Houston/Sugar Land/Baytown” metro region, but that’s all north of here. Whatever you want to call it, I like it – it’s close enough to the water to feel its effects without feeling its property values, and close enough to Houston to enjoy the city without having to enjoy the traffic. It is different than home, though, and as I drive around I continually see things that confuse, bemuse or amuse me …

Know what kind of trees these are? Hit the Comment button below ...

- Singing roads: If someone tells you “it’s hotter than asphalt in Texas,” you know they’ve never been here. I assume it’s due to the heat, but the roads here are all concrete. Being as this is hurricane country, and concrete and rain don’t play will with cars, the roads are all grooved to allow the water to slough off. The result is that as you drive down them, particularly at speed, the tires play a melodic tune. Takes a little getting use to, but soon you realize that sound like a squealing Britney Spears fan is in fact another driver about to overtake you. Which brings me to …

- Drivers: As a native Angelino, I take a certain amount of abuse about our drivers, but they’ve got nothing on the folks around here. I’ve never been to New York, but I’ve been to Tijuana, and I can tell you the locals here are far worse. They drive with their adrenaline at full, and consider turn signals to be for sissies. I can be going twenty miles over the speed limit on a midsize highway and traffic will be stacking up behind me – or passing me on the shoulder. From now on, when I need to kick it up a notch in LA traffic, my mantra will be “channel your inner Texan” …

- Signals: You know those traditional red-over-yellow-over-green lights we all have? Not here – rotate them 90 degrees clockwise and read ‘em left to right. I’m guessing it’s either a stable-when-it-blows-like-hell thing, or just a desire to be different.

- Starbucks: I don’t want this to make me sound too left coast, but it took me two days to find a Starbucks around here. Worth noting that in the same time, I found four Waffle Houses and six Whataburgers …

- Trees: There are two and only two kinds of trees here. The first is some kind of weed tree that seems to grow everywhere, and I suspect was the native cover here before any development. The other are the water towers that poke above the treeline, one per suburb. Inasmuch as this place is flat as a board, it’s the only way you’re ever going to have any water pressure. They also make wonderful navaids, since each is conveniently labelled with the town monicker.

Firepower is a wonderful thing ...

- DejaGoo: This isn’t so much a comment on the area as the the technology available to familiarize yourself with a strange region. I had an hour to kill last Friday, so, anal-retentive toad that I am, I scoped the place out in Google Maps. Using their Street View, I was able to virtually “drive” from my hotel to work, seeing all the landmarks. Once I arrived in the real Webster, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen something that I recognize – even though I’ve never been here. Cool and eerie all at the same time.

Our workshop ended earlier today, and I had a chance to spend an hour touring the battleship Texas – an awesome experience. Tomorrow it’s Galveston Island for half a day then home.

(C’mon … you knew I had to use that one …)

—–

Greetings from Deep in the Heart of Texas – specifically, Webster, a little town alongside I-45 about halfway between Houston and Galveston. Webster is one of several towns that surround the region’s most famous resident, the Johnson Space Center – home of America’s manned space flight program.

These are dog days for the astronaut corps. The shuttle program has ended, and the remaining orbiters are being decommissioned as we speak in preparation for their new lives as museum pieces. The International Space Station still orbiting overhead, a huge and impressive piece of machinery that’s controlled from the Chris Kraft Mission Control Center over at JSC.

Unfortunately, it’s also a station that America currently has no way to visit or resupply. There are European and Russian and Japanese cargo ships, but none from the US (although the good folks at SpaceX are hoping to change that soon). And of course, the Russians are more than happy to sell our crewmembers a seat on one of their Soyuz workhorses – a set that doubled in price the moment the wheels stopped on the last shuttle mission.

Barring some unforeseen challenge from the stars (cue Bruce Willis’ asteroid here), we may have seen the end of America’s dominance in space. Born out of the chill of the Cold War and fueled by a desire to fulfill the dream of a dead president, NASA saw a similar doldrums in the mid-70s after budget concerns and dwindling interest led to cancellation of the last Apollo missions. Skylab and the Apollo Soyuz Test Program were done on the cheap by using excess moon flight hardware, but we didn’t really move forward again until the shuttle arrived.

While the results were spectscular, and we couldn’t have assembled the ISS without it, the cost of the shuttle in blood and treasure ultimately proved its downfall. Now we find ourselves once again becalmed, adrift in space awaiting the return of solar winds and political will. It’s a sad state for the proud men and women of NASA, but sitting as I am only a few blocks from the entrance of JSC, I can tell you this – I’m proud just to breath the same air they do.

Onward and upward …

Via iPad …

I am an unabashed music fan. I remember discovering pop AM radio in the early 70′s and quickly graduating to FM album rock. The day I bought my first album – Queen’s “A Night At The Opera” – was a game changer.

Although I’m definitely a rocker, I’m open-minded enough to appreciate the best of all genres. After all, while trends have come and gone, good music is always good music – you can sit me down with some big speakers and a copy of “Straight Outta Compton” and I’m a happy boy.

To me, the one thing that separates good music from the rest is talent. If you have skills, whether as a singer or a player or a producer, you’ll produce good music. There’s an honest to good music that can’t be faked.

Which brings me to Auto-Tune. A software plug-in used to smooth out the rough spots in otherwise good performances, it was the music industry’s dirty little secret until it was abused on Cher’s “Believe” in 1988 and became all the rage. As producers recognized the power of the tool, they realized it could not only be used to distort a good vocal performance but also to make palatable an otherwise-unlistenable one.

There are lots of examples of Auto-Tune cleaning up the performances of attractive but untalented Pop-Tarts (see Spears, Britney or Simpson, Ashlee), but nothing comes close to this. I have no idea who Lisa Gail is, and nothing indicates that this was done as some kind of joke, so I can only assume it’s a vanity performance paid for by a loving (or henpecked) husband. Be warned … you’re gonna want to poke chopsticks in your ears before the end of the first minute …

They say guns don’t kill people; people do. In this case, though, Auto-Tune is the gun and good taste is the victim …

A dusty room in a grimy building. A group of people sit on folding chairs, tightly packed into a circle. The smells of burnt coffee and cigarettes fill the air …

One man stands and looks at the group sheepishly. “Hello, my name is Stan, and I’m … I was … a blogger.”

(group, enthusiastically) “Hi, Stan!”

(group leader, with weary, knowing smile) “It doesn’t matter that you haven’t blogged lately … you’ll always be a blogger”

(heads nod around the room)
—–

Yes, once upon a time, I ran a little thing called the MarlinBlog. For four and a half years, the words flowed from my fingers like wine from a vineyard, and tens of people reveled in the unique combination of snark and humor it served up daily. But time takes a toll on creativity, and in December of 2010 the MarlinBlog went dark.

I’ve always enjoyed writing, even when it seemed a chore, so I knew I’d come back to this space one day – it would just take the right combination of time in my life to fill and angst/frustration at the world around me to serve as fuel. Looking at my life today, the work project I’ve been driving forward for the last few years has gone into production, the live-in girlfriend has moved out and I’ve received my first AARP card. As you might imagine, there’s a lot for me to work through. So, much like the recovering alky who is always a sip away from his next bender, I’m raising the bottle to my lips and taking a hearty swig. To the joy of some and the chagrin of many, we’re back – welcome to the resurrected MarlinBlog.

As before, look for the ol’ MB to be my unique, sometimes twisted look at life and the people who make it so damned interesting. One thing I learned long ago remains true now. While Daryn Kagan may be able to make a happy blog work, mine runs smoothest – and gets the most visibility – when I’m probing into the darker corners of society, looking for seams and cracks and voids where something might be hiding … and then dragging it into the light to poke fun at. Politicians, celebutards, even the common man aren’t safe from the rusty yet rapier-sharp wit of your humble host. We’ll find the silly and nonsensical and laugh at it together – and then drop in a serious-as-a-heart-attack post just to see if you’re paying attention. It should be fun …

Back in the day, we had regular features we’d run, such as the Monday Sports Rant and the Weekend Eye Candy, but I think for now we’re going to be a little more organic and avoid anything so predictable. That said, if I feel like bitching about the Marlins or sharing a picture of some hot little number I will, not because I have to but because I want to. Same goes for the regularity of posting – when I have something to say, I will, but I won’t bore you with crap. You can always visit Ariana Huffington for that.

So that’s it for now. If you’re excited, let me know. If you’re terrified, let me know. If you’re bored, well, you can just go in the corner and nod off. For now, we’re back – older, wiser but no less pithy. Tell a friend …