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Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl.
Night-time would find me in Rosa’s cantina;
Music would play and Felina would whirl.

Yes, there really is a Rosa’s Cantina out in the West Texas town of El Paso! With a hill behind and across the river the bad-lands of New Mexico. In the 1950’s Marty Robbins was a regular on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville Tennessee. He and his family would drive back to Arizona at Christmas and pass by Rosa’s Cantina on old Highway 80. It took several years and trips to get the words right but Marty came out with a hit.

Interstate 10 was constructed in the late 1960’s bypassing Rosa’s Cantina and leaving it off-the-beaten-path in an old industrial area. I-10 runs on a hill behind but unfortunately you can’t see Rosa’s cantina below. The Power Station sign, 2 blocks from Rosa’s, is visible from the highway - especially at night -and will help guide you.

Rosa’s Cantina is an easy on/easy off stop off I-10 at the Sunland Park exit. Rosa’s serves a family friendly lunch on weekdays and operates as a bar on Saturdays & evenings.

3454 Doniphan Dr
El Paso, TX 79922
(915) 833-0402

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Tags: el paso

The Baby Name Mapper graphically shows the most popular baby names by year and by US state going back to 1960.

The examples below show the Kyle craze of the 1980’s (centered in the northwest) while the popularity of Jesus mirrors the expansion of the Latino population.

Tags: baby names

Woman Locked in Her Car Calls 911

Dumb Woman Locked in Her Car 911 Call - Watch more Funny Videos

Tags: The Doghouse

After two years of touring and being exhibited with great success in several US cities the famous David by Michelangelo is finally returned to Italy (jpg).

I’ve been reading, and re-reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of  Time but still can’t get my mind around the General Theory of Relativity and it’s (apparently) obvious conclusions about the earth traveling in a straight line through the curved space-time continuum - and how Tibetans on top of a mountain age slower than Boca Ratoners on a beach. Might as well try and explain it to a dog - or a pope.

I’m tempted give in and agree with with the lady mentioned in Hawking’s first chapter:

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!””

Later in his book Hawking decides against explaining his theory of space-time to the Pope:

“The Catholic Church had made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference — the possibility that space- time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!”

Who is your real friend?  Try this test…

Put your dog and your spouse in the trunk of your car for an hour.  When you open the trunk, which one is happy to see you?

Tags: Humour

The internet is buzzing with stories about the bad deals at Circuit City’s liquidation sales. Here are some local (El Paso) stories with the requisite EastSide/Westside split:

An East Side resident said he bought a DVD movie for his 4-year-old son at a Circuit City store last week, only to find the DVD package empty when he opened it at home.

Store managers at the store in Las Palmas Marketplace refused to refund his money or give him a new DVD because all sales are final, as stated on store signs.

The Circuit City store had a table near the exit where a sign advised customers to open boxes and check merchandise before they leave the store. An employee said faulty merchandise could be returned if it was checked before a customer left the store. But the employee said DVDs and CDs could not be opened and checked.

A West Side resident also has a bad taste in his mouth from his recent experience at the Circuit City store on Sunland Park. Butler said he took his daughter’s laptop computer to the store for repairs a week before Circuit City announced it was closing. A Circuit City repair center sent the laptop back to the store with a note saying the computer was being returned unrepaired because of Circuit City’s decision to go out of business, Butler reported.

He tried to get a refund for the $65 diagnostic charge he paid the store when he left the laptop. But store managers said no refunds were being made because Circuit City is going out of business, and because a diagnostic test had been done at the store, Butler said. However, he said, the store had no proof that anything had been done to the laptop.

From: El Paso Times

Tags: circuit city

All the employees at a Wadswoth Illinois gas station were fired after a customer purchased a $25 million lottery ticket.

The employees, a former manager and three cashiers, allege that they were fired because the Wadsworth Mobil owner did not want to share the one percent commission [$250,000] he received for the winning ticket.

Wadsworth Mobil owner Jose Mathew of Elmhurst said he lost about $200,000 from the land’s high rent.

“God gave me the gift to cover the loss to pay back a credit card,” Mathew said.

He added that he felt no obligation to share the commission with any of the employees.

A Lottery spokeswoman says that while many owners share the commission with their employees they are under no obligation to do so.

Tags: lottery, rich jerks

Tags: beer, Budweiser

Macy’s and Dillard’s are the only two local retailer’s “participating” in the Free Cosmetics Give-a-way after being ordered to do so by a court which found them guilty of price collusion between 1994 and 2003. Both stores are located in two regional malls at opposite ends of town.

Freebie-lovers at both chains joined a line, viewed a product list and could choose 1 -and only 1 - product from the list. Customers had to print & sign their name - but not enter any contact information. Dillard’s called it a legal document.

Dillard’s had the longest lines at both malls. The west-side Dillard’s had a 50 person line at store opening while the mid-day line at the east-side Dillard’s went down one side of the store and across the back. I estimated a + 1/2 hour wait in that line while the Macy’s wait was only 5 minutes. Both Dillard’s used existing counters and only had 1 processing counter per store. Macy’s set up foldable tables at the entrance to both stores and kept the giveaway separate from the cosmetics area. Macy’s had 2 processing tables at one store and 4 at another. Macy’s had one clerk per counter & multiple counters while Dillard’s required 3 clerks plus a manager to handle just 1 counter. Even accounting for the additional counters Macy’s still had fewer customers than the Dillard’s in the same mall.

Christian Dior and perfumes sold out by mid-day. Products had an approximate $25 value. Some products were in a smaller than normal size to meet this price cut-off.

Macy’s just wanted to get it over with while Dillard’s tried to make it a selling opportunity. At their west side store Dillard’s made shoppers, after signing in, take a stamped receipt to the appropriate cosmetics counter (ie Christian Dior, Estee Lauder…), talk to the commissioned sales rep and sign their contact book. It sounds like good idea but the poor sales reps may be pressured to generate sales from these “leads” that only came in for the freebie.

At both malls shoppers could be seen walking from Macys to Dillard’s, or vice versa to double-dip. Lines at both stores contained shoppers blatantly clutching their samples from the other.

My overall impression is that Dillard’s is a more popular chain with greater sales/sq ft but Macy’s is more efficiently run.

Note that Macy’s is new to our town having taken over Foley’s locations 2 years ago. Foley’s in turn took over the old JC Penny’s and Montgomery Ward locations only a year or two earlier.

Tags: cosmetics, dillard's, macy's, retail