It looks like Tyler has a new location to catch the game. Republic Icehouse on University Blvd, has a lot to offer. If you are looking to gather with some friends to watch the game and get a beer with, you may want to consider Icehouse.  If you’re looking for clean live entertaining and a cold one, Icehouse just might be for you.

Icehouse in Tyler has brought Nashville and Austin style music to the Rose Capital. There are several beers on tap and top of the line food you can’t get just anywhere else to go along with the great atmosphere.

Icehouse also provides the opportunity to rent a party room, whether you’re entertaining business clients from out of town, hosting a birthday party or wedding reception or any other occasion. Anyone looking for information on renting a party room can send an email to republicicehouse@yahoo.com

This type of place is something that Tyler has lacked for a long time. The whole wet vs. dry debate probably had something to do with it but it’s nice to know there are options for places to go when you want to enjoy a bacon cheeseburger with a Shiner Bock while watching the Monday Night Football sounds pretty good to me. It’s hard not to like the Texas atmosphere. In fact, Icehouse’s slogan is, “The Best Little Icehouse in Texas.”

I often look for seasonal topics on which to write, particularly around Halloween. And while spooky or creepy stories can be difficult to choose from, I had no such difficulty this year. It seems every industry has its trends and the funerary industry is evidently no different.
This past weekend I came across a news article on a funeral home in Michigan that has announced an exciting new service: drive through viewings! Grieving families now have the option of setting their deceased loved ones in what resembles a bank teller window, for xenophobic friends and loved ones to gawk at, as they drive by and “pay their respects.” According to the article, when a vehicle pulls up to the window, curtains open automatically, and soft music plays for three minutes while attendees and look at the dead body until the allotted time expires.
I don’t even know where to begin to raise my objections. First off, the traditional viewing is not about the viewer or the dead; it’s about bringing comfort to the living. My other objection is a bit more macabre. What’s to stop the weird kids in town from stopping by the morgue on Halloween night to see if there are any corpses on display?
As weird as all this is, it can, and recently has gotten stranger. My cousin introduced me to two words I would never have thought to put together: extreme embalming. Welcome to the hottest thing mortality has to offer, stylized wakes! It seems death and burial just got a little more fashionable. Some quarters of the embalming and preparation industry now offer viewings with the bodies of the dead posed in various “lifelike positions,” where the diseased appear to be doing the things they most enjoyed in life. One New Orleans resident was seated at a table “drinking and smoking,” while friends and family partied around her, as though she’s a centerpiece designed to complete the festivities. Thanks but I think I’d prefer an ice sculpture. Another newly deceased socialite was dressed in a pink feather boa, holding a glass of champagne and sat reclining gently on a patio loveseat beneath some indoor trees.
Really the whole thing is so irreverent and undignified; it reminds me of a bad remake of Weekend at Bernie’s. What’s happening to our society?! What’s next hanging loved ones on the wall with a plaque? We seem to have lost the point of the two most important lessons death has to teach; like the importance of morning as a community. Viewings are about weeping with those who weep, not about trying to avoid the hassle of getting out of our cars and extending some genuine comfort to another human being. Nor are wakes about throwing the best send off for someone who can’t enjoy it. Want to party and live life now? Fine go to a bar afterwards. The wake is about commemorating a life well lived or hard lessons learned. It’s not about the narcissism that comes with throwing a great party.

I feel like I’ve written this article before and I guess I have posted something very similar just a couple of years ago. So why the re-run? (Come to think of it that’s a very relevant term). Well it seems that Viacom is going around trying to shake down cable and satellite providers again, demanding huge rate hikes to make up for their shrinking revenues.

In recent years the corporation’s viewers have dropped off dramatically. Many customers no longer want to pay for large cable packages where networks with little or no viewers are subsidized by more successful ones. And with greater and greater streaming abilities, comes more and more customer choice. If I want to watch the one or two successful Viacom television shows, I can simply go to Netflix or god forbid, YouTube (enter gasp here), and watch without having to invest in a cable and satellite subscription. Which by the way is exactly why Viacom has struck deals with streaming companies like Netflix, Xbox Live and others while they tried to sue YouTube for copy right infringement. The fact is the general public is no longer all that interested in keeping networks afloat whose appeal is limited to one or two percent of the population.

As a Suddenlink subscriber, I was actually proud of my provider for not caving to the media giant’s unreasonable demands. And the more I hear Viacom’s attempts to enrage the “low information viewer,” on television and radio concerning the loss of our supposedly favorite programs I’m tempted to spent a few extra dollars on my provider’s products. The fact is I’ve not missed Viacom’s channels even a little bit. I couldn’t care a wit about their largely salacious programing. I mean honestly who even watches MTV anymore? If I never hear the words “Dating Naked,” in that order again it will be too soon! Thanks Viacom, not interested in “Rocking the Vote.” And I haven’t watched Comedy Central since they lost Mystery Science Theater, back in the 90’s sometime. So as the saying goes “good riddance to bad rubbish I must say.”

Oh and by the way Suddenlink has done a pretty fair job meeting popular demand in replacing the lost networks with ones customers actually want. Among other additions they’ve replaced Nick Jr. with Sprout, a network Direct TV’s been carrying for years. And they’ve picked up Glenn Beck’s fledgling news and current events network the Blaze.

If having an opinion about anything political makes one a partisan, I guess I should go ahead and confess to the crime, but I cannot for the life of me conjure up a scenario by which I would ever cast a ballot for Wendy Davis. And the task of conjuring that scenario has gotten even more difficult over the last four days. The fact is I’m pretty hard pressed to come up something… anything, about the candidate that doesn’t bug the crap out of me. (Please excuse the vulgarity; I’ll try to do better). From her use of depends adult diapers during her infamous filibuster, to her referral to the campaign as “Team Wendy,” (can I get burger and fries with that Team Wendy?), she rubs we the wrong way in every possible way.

On one hand I can’t help but see her as an intellectual carpet bagger, a long shot shill for out of state radical pro-aborts and old school feminists whose time has come and gone. On the other hand she seems like a clumsy narcissist who is desperate to make use of fifteen minutes of fame by running for an office that is entirely too big for her. Ironically, while I disagreed with Dems like Anne Richards or Bob Bullock, I generally thought they believed in Texas. I feel like Wendy Davis believes in Wendy Davis… and maybe not much else.

And that aforementioned desperation was on full display this past week in a low rent ad attacking Gregg Abbot, using his disability to level charges of hypocrisy. The ad in question was released on Friday. Today in a move that would make the Vice-President blush, She STOOD against a backdrop of disabled supporters and attempted the explain herself while actually doubling down on her point.

The fact is Davis is a political novice, the activist du jour, popular in the moment but with no real appeal outside Texas liberal enclaves like Austin or Houston. Now her amateurish campaign has successfully killed any faint hopes it may have been holding onto, (not unlike a Democrat version of Clayton Williams by the way), by exercising perhaps the poorest political judgment possible. Oh well, look on the bright side Team Wendy, maybe you could join the Joe Biden ticket in 2016!

One of the most embarrassing gifts on the market both for the giver and receiver would have to be the product offered by the International Star Registry, (ISR). The company boasts having been around since 1979, and charges somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty dollars to sell the customer something they cannot own, and that no one else (and I mean no one) will ever actually associate with the recipient. For those who don’t know what I’m referring to, ISR offers to name a star after the individual of the customer’s choice, in exchange for a rather significant fee. The giftee will also (or rather only) receive a certificate (which could be made on anyone’s computer in about five minutes), and a star chart “to locate their star.” I keep waiting for this sca… uh company, to disappear entirely, but every so often the commercials start popping up again.

Here’s another important factor: the International Astronomical Union, you know, the actual scientists who study stars and give them names (which are largely numbers by the way) are in no way associated with the International Star Registry. Perhaps some customers envision astronomers staring through a telescope and exclaiming to a colleague “wow! Mary’s star is bright tonight! Did you know that Mary’s star was named for her by her husband on the anniversary of their first date?! She must be a very special lady!” Sorry to burst any bubbles out there but that doesn’t happen… ever.

The fact is anyone can claim to name anything for a fee, and by including the words “international” or “foundation” one can add instant credibility. For instance, I’m starting an organization called the International Foundation for the Naming of Interstellar Bodies. And to demonstrate my belief in my new company, I’m going to name the first star after myself. And I choose… the big Star I can see during the Day! The great thing is I don’t even need a chart to locate my Star!