"Gentlemen, our day has arrived! Fire up the AT-AT, feed the Wampas and go find some Tauntaun steaks for the celebration, we are officially on STAND BY!"

That's right, the weatherman is predicting snow in South Central Texas, hell may have just frozen over. I will believe it when I see it, last time we had snow here it was 1985, 26 years ago. and I am talking snow that actually stuck. They say conditions are right, but I have heard that before, either way I will be at home tomorrow either playing in the snow or thawing the outside faucets out, who knew that if you had them wrapped, twice, they would still freeze over! The past few nights it has gotten down to 16º degrees, two nights in a row. I know that is cake for my readers up north, but I would like to see you laugh in July and August when we hit the 30th day in a row of over 100º plus temperatures.

Even though these little guys do not see much action around these parts the Empire saw fit to assign a snow equipped outfit to the South Central Texas Garrison and they are officially on stand by. The rookie with the riffle is particularly excited for a chance to play in the snow. Believe it or not these guys even have an AT-AT at their disposal.

So with fingers crossed and a vacation day all queued up I am with these guys hoping we get some of the white stuff... even if it's only for the day.

I had these scans laying around from when Plaid Stallion's Brian Heller asked for submissions for his mall appearances section of his blog. Not technically a mall appearance he was looking for, he was nice enough to include it on his site. This is a promotional comic from back in 1985, when Northstar Mall in San Antonio added Foley's Department store as one of their anchors. These comics were included in the Sunday Newspaper at the time, plus I threw newspapers so you think I would be swimming in these things. Wrong I have two. One from my parents newspaper, and a second I acquired from another collection. Which is how it should be, I would hate it if I didn't get a complete paper on Sunday morning.

Some cool things to note, the cover building actually looks like the Foley's store that was added, come to find out that was a signature look for that store so the Marvel artist probably got a picture of one of the other stores. I don't think we had a rodeo going on at the time, but if we did it probably wasn't too far fetched that there would be a little parade going by the mall. During that time we used to have a little event called a Cowboy Breakfast that sort of kicks off the rodeo, held right across the street at a neighboring malls parking lot. Trail riders with covered wagons and the whole nine yards make a trek into town and stop at the breakfast, where everyone that attends is served free breakfast tacos at about five in the morning. Thousands show up for this event, makes the news every year. This past year was the first time it was held in a new location, just outside of town, but at that time it would have been close to where it is depicted on the cover. Also the newspaper's name in the comic was the newspaper that the comic came in, the San Antonio Express News, now the only paper in town. Back then there were two rival papers the Express News and the San Antonio Light, those Light paper carries could be jerks, they would steal your papers, throw them in water, you name it.



The story goes, Peter Parker and J.J. Jameson make a trip to San Antonio, Parker to cover the rodeo, Jameson to catch a break from Spider-Man, plus there happen to be a new Foley's store opening up in town. A crook makes way with the rodeos ticket money, Hulk happens to be traveling through town and chases the guy down, the Spider-Man joins in. San Antonio's a pretty jumping town! The money is recovered, the store remains standing, Hulk gets away, Spider-Man saves the day, and Jameson gets a headache! through out the comic the only ads are for children's clothing sold at, you guessed it Foley's! The ads even follow a comic style story line.



At the time this had to be the coolest thing in the world, your home town, your newspaper, being featured in a Marvel Comic! I realize now these were done a paid promotions, but the magic doesn't seem to fade, it's still pretty cool. To this day you can go into just about any comic book shop in town and they have these issues, not worth much, but you couldn't be a comic book collector in San Antonio with out one of these! I often wonder if there are others out there, if they followed the same format, or if they were personalized. How many towns have a rodeo that Hulk helped get the ticket money back?

So while I get pics of the Great Father's Day Transformer I received, I thought I would throw some pics of this steak house we found ourselves at this past Sunday.

As with every holiday we try to split time between the families, since they are both local. My wife's parent like to try new restaurants, and found this steak house called Cow Catchers Steak House out in the beautiful hill country of south, central Texas. Okay for starters I will go on record as saying for the most part, all those T.V. shows you see about Texas and their steak are pretty much true, King of the Hill is a pretty dead on likeness of the surrounding area and it's inhabitants, I think that's why it's so funny to me. I would say the only one that was a bit exaggerated was the Simpsons where Mr. Burns picked his cow out before he ate, though I will note the inside of the steak house was eerily similar to a steak house not far from where I work. So yeah pretty much all you see on T.V. about Texas steak houses is spot on.

Now having said that, I was born and raised in Texas, so you can't really surprise me too much when it comes to a steak house. We have steak house like most towns have 7-11's. They are all pretty much large rooms with antiques nailed to the wall, with the exception of those "fancy pants" places downtown, every surface in the place is wood and has something branded (I'm talking about a cattle brand, not marketing) and pretty much the only thing on the menu is meat.



So now we pull into the gravel "parking lot" and I see the name of the place for the first time, I immediately thought we maybe picking out our own cows at this one, I was surprised to say the least. Well we didn't pick out the cow, but I will say it was a neat setup. You trekked across a small field past what I would term a dance hall, connecting to a long house, and finally connecting to the main dinning hall it's self. All the buildings have a porch system if you would rather wind around each of them to get to the food. You enter a little foyer that leads right into a large, and I mean large dinning hall. A 1900's Chuck Wagon is suspended above the main dining area and the hall has windows everywhere looking out at the hill country.



I didn't think to shoot the steak I ordered, but it was quite large, much larger than what I expected. Cooked it was about 3 inches thick and the size of my whole hand. Needless to say I couldn't finish it. They had a motto that was pretty much taken from a saying I have heard several time growing up, "if you leave hungry it's you're own fault". Now you know why San Antonio is the fattest city in Texas, and I think the U.S. The steak was good, but the cool thing about this place was that you could go out an pet some horses and feed the long horns that are in the coral to the right of the place. That was a first for me as far as steak houses go. I imagine that if we had been there on a Friday or Saturday night that they would have had a band playing in the dance hall as well.



So a pretty enjoyable afternoon, we decided it wasn't the everyday sort of steak house (yeah we have those too, hell we even have a drive through "Steaks to Go") but a cool place to take the out of town relatives when they visit. You know I'm going to have to start documenting Steak Houses around the area, I guess I better start carrying my camera with me more often, the mobile phone just doesn't cut it for photos.

So this past weekend I drove my wife and son to a family reunion on my wife's side near Dallas. We always take an exit at the "Biggest little town in Texas!" Italy, Texas. One because we can avoid construction on the highway, two it's a straight shot through to the little town of my wife's family, and three the scenery is much better than said highway. So what's with the Starship Pegasus here? I have no clue. It just appeared over the years and just as fast went out of business, leaving the shell of the former business sprawled out in the Texas country side like some sort of Roswell crash landing. It's funny we remember the exit because of a Dairy Queen and not this. Like I said it appeared one trip and the next it was out of business, we never got to stop and see what it was about. Now we make this trip maybe once a year, and the one where we first saw this we didn't have time to stop. But from the looks of it it was a little amusement area with a small miniature golf course and maybe an arcade. At least that's what I gather from the signage.




This time I decided when we made the trip back we would stop and get pictures of the remains of this out of this world building. My wife and son waited patently as I trekked around the structure snapping different angles. The inside is bare and what I could see through the doors it's been stripped down. The rectangle, or engineering section, could of housed a kitchen, which got my wife and I to thinking it might be fun to renovate and start a little galactic burger joint. Pretty much by the time we got home we had half the menu planned out, the interior re designed, and were joking about selling the house to go into the short order cook business. If anything I'm going to take this on as a side art project just to keep the imagination sharp.




Surprisingly the ships engines are still intact, and with a little work probably could make quite a light show in the Texas night. We would definitely want to add a laser light show and maybe some smoke f/x. the inside looks like it might only accommodate a few patrons, so we decided a patio area with UFO covered tables would be in order. I think at the center of the structure we would make a little control center with seating all around, and what the hell a little gift shop near the door. Now I also would like to add a Robbie the Robot at the door to great guests, and maybe the B-9 to warn of the upcoming laser show. See what I mean, we've put some thought into the theme. Not that the Starship Pegasus is not a good name, but we were thinking maybe Galactic Burger, or Off World Diner. We also thought that it would be good to just make it a family diner, the Dairy Queen looked like it was going down, but the area was starting to see the build up of a few shops, a huge rest stop type gas station, and the largest car wash I had ever seen, well it was an eighteen wheeler wash.




If anything it's fun to just think of things that could be. So back to walking around. The front of the ship sports three large bubble windows and what I can only guess is a UFO photo op at the front. It really didn't look much like a sand box, way too deep, and it didn't have any accompanying play elements. Besides the three bubble windows there were two sets of glass doors, and that was it for natural lighting. Now I'm not sure, but if the structure would allow, I would make the painted windows actual windows to make it less dingy and maybe more friendly. As I walked around the only signs of graffiti was in the back of the ship. Apparently aliens tag spaceships they visit as was evident by several alien drawings. Make me wonder do they bring their own spray paint, or do they stop at a True Value in the area. I thought the graffiti was pretty funny, maybe not too original, but funny non the less.



There is only one way to get in and out of the parking lot, that would have to be solved, plus I think I would take down the miniature golf area and make a playscape with those rocket shaped slides and space themed play elements. It would be great to make the surface like a moon scape with that soft recycled rubber play ground flooring. I also think it might be funny to add a couple of storage units in the back that look like those old airstream trailers, because lets face it UFO's only visit trailer parks right?



So if you happen to be heading towards Dallas and there is a UFO lighting up the night sky around Italy, you know I decided to quit the toy business and start serving up "the Best Burgers in the Galaxy!", so stop in an say hi! In the very least you might check back here from time to time as I get a chance to do some restaurant designs, that might be a little less expensive, doesn't cost much to dream.