I suggest a doggie doo bin at the dog park be named in honor of Kelso with it's contents being delievered weekly to his desk.

That is totally rude and have a good mind to direct a strongly worded email his way!

He's no Dave Barry.

OTOH, I would be less than pleased if I were welcomed to your fine, tall city in such a fashion. The welcome I actually received when I visited was much, much nicer.

And three DQs, what does he know? There are two S$ as well! Idiot.

You know, I can understand an Austinite being afraid of police. Many have been faced with that "do I eat the whole kilo?" moment when they see the lights in the rear-view mirror.

My parents were stopped twice, once in Kansas and once in Arkansas, and invited to be guests of the city. Some of my favorite vacation memories involved one of those stops. The experience far outweighed any temporary anxiety caused by being pulled over.

Maybe if more people had some good experiences involving law enforcement we'd get rid of this sixties counterculture attitude that the police are to be feared.

Bleu, that's a good suggestion. After all, the guy's name is John.

Rach, your Kiwi outrage is appreciated! And the same for your Keystone State umbrage, Jim. ;-)

Many have been faced with that "do I eat the whole kilo?" moment when they see the lights in the rear-view mirror.

Heh.

The "John Kelso City Dump" has a nice ring to it.

Mr. Kelso does seem rather mean-spirited. Maybe the lingerie model blew him off when he tried to hit on her.

There was a great cartoon in The New Yorker once of a New York resident's view of the rest of the country -- the joke being local residents were so myopic/disdainful of everything else that the rest of the United States receded into nothingness. It actually was/is a point of pride for some New Yorkers to think that way -- their world is all that matters, and except for a few spots on the West Coast and a few islands in the middle of the country where the winter skiing is better, they take an elitist view of the rest of the U.S. Better to be in Europe than with all those hicks.

Kelso's just the Texas version of that same elitism, with Dallas, Houston and San Antonio replacing the West Coast or Aspen on the list of respectable places for the sophisticates in Austin to go to. Midland, Lubbock, Waco, College Station -- all Hicksvilles of cultural barrenness worthy of disdain (he no doubt wouldn't want to spend much time in the lower Rio Grande Valley, either, but they vote Democratic, so he'll avoid lumping them in with the Red voting sections of Texas).

The irony, of course, is that other than when something like SXSW is going on in Austin, the bi-costal snobs would diss Austin's cutural life with the same jibes that Kelso used on Midland. And he'd probably end up writing a Chamber of Commerce-like column trying to convince those people of how great the state capital is 365 days a year, to no effect.

John, excellent observations, as usual. I guess it's human nature to look for something or someone to which we can feel superior. The irony is that the instant we do that, we immediately invert the presumed relationship in some intangible but still very real way.