Weirdness News

If you’re not doing anything tonight and you want to meet one of Austin’s leading weirdness icons, stop by Threadgill’s World Headquarters on Riverside Drive around 7 o’clock or so. The occasion? Leslie’s 60th birthday party, an event billed as It’s Beard, It’s Weird, It’s a Birthday.” According to Statesman humor writer John Kelso, it should be billed “It’s Thong, It’s Wrong, It’s a Birthday.”

In the spirit of Keeping Austin Weird, I have mentioned Leslie several times; here, here and here, for example. Just thought you might want to avail yourself of the opportunity of meeting a true Austin icon (or is that acorn?) up close and personal. I won't be there, as I've already been as close as I ever intend to get again.

I mention Austin's more colorful citizens from time to time as a public service to both my readers, and to promote my hometown as a bastion of, um, well, weirdness. I've mentioned the Thong Guy, and the WalMart Guy, and the Running Man, for instance. Funny thing about the Running Man - I have received more blog hits from Google searches with "running man" or "Austin running man" as the search topic than almost any other subject, and while they come from all over the country, most of them come from San Antonio, and a goodly number of those come from a domain registered to HEB. For a while there, HEB checked in every day to see if people were commenting on Mr. James and his use of the grassy strip beside the North Lamar HEB store.

I'm guessing that some corporate wonk keeps a close tab on any and all references to HEB in the public domain. Sounds like a good business practice. Frankly, I would be just a tetch nervous if I had a guy running up and down beside my store, proclaiming to the world that my life-work was " to inspire others to be bold in their dreams, their thinking, and be who they were created to be."

Let me just take this opportunity to say that I am a fan of HEB and hold them in high esteem. We shop at Central Market almost every week and we really like the place, okay? So if this blog mention brings  a few more hits from HEB.com let me say "Welcome, and I really like those small melons you have featured lately, and by the way you have the best shopping carts in town, and I'm very fussy about my shopping carts." 

Having said that, I haven't seen the Running Man in quite a while, but it has been 100+ degrees for a while and I suspect that even Captain America himself would lay off for a while in this heat. Surely some large unnamed corporation didn't run him off. Nahh.