May 2005 Archives
31 May 2005
Chron.com's Music Blog
I see that Chron.com added another blog while I was away.
HandStamp is a blog devoted to the local music scene. I belatedly added some thoughts to Anne's earlier post on it here.
Chron.com is starting to move well beyond simply the online version of the Chronicle, and that's a really interesting development.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/31/05 21:34 | Media Matters | Technorati | Comments (1)
Back
Well, Float Trip 2005 is a wrap, and I think it was the best one yet.
The weather was perfect. The river level was just right. The campground rocked. The group of people who came to the thing was stellar.
It was really hard to leave this one. Even though there's a crew of us now that does this thing every year, one never knows how the next year will go, so trips like this year's are kind of hard to describe. It's good to see everyone who takes the time to roadtrip to the middle of nowhere to participate in this little ritual of mine. I have some great friends and family.
Some of the various participants -- me included -- snapped a few photos, but I don't even know where my camera is to download them at this at this point. I am still a few hours short of sleep. Eventually, I'll get caught up, and post a bit more.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/31/05 20:37 | Other | Technorati | Comments (0)
24 May 2005
Silence
I'm sneaking away to a campground to get an early start on the Memorial Day weekend.
It's not exactly primitive, but there won't be any internet, so I obviously won't be checking emails or doing any posting for a few days. Anybody who desperately needs to get hold of me will figure out how to do so, I imagine.
I thought about having a guest blogger do a bit of posting, but I think I'm gonna spare any of my friends the trouble this year, and just let it go quiet a few days. Anne will be posting over at the Houston blog, so go read Anne! :)
I'm going to turn on moderation here, so the spammers won't just trash the place while I'm gone.
I hope everyone has an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend when it finally rolls around. I'm looking forward to the first bottle of wine tomorrow night. :)
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/24/05 23:18 | Other | Technorati | Comments (7)
23 May 2005
Johnson Out At A&M
After failing to qualify for the conference baseball tournament, Texas A&M wasted no time at the close of the season in terminating coach Mark Johnson:
Texas A&M fired longtime baseball coach Mark Johnson on today following a 30-25-1 season in which the Aggies finished next-to-last in the Big 12 Conference.
Hired in 1985, Johnson went 876-433-3 in two decades as head coach after two seasons as an assistant under Tom Chandler.
"I'm really hurt right now," Johnson said. "We've won enough that the expectations are there. I knew we weren't doing well. I wasn't blind to that. I had hoped that it wouldn't be resolved by a termination."
The man had an impressive overall record, but clearly he was not meeting reasonable expectations. There is no reason that baseball program shouldn't be in a regional every year and contending for trips to Omaha many years. That program should not be missing the Big 12 Tourney.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/23/05 22:33 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (2)
JD Crouch In The WaPo
One of my grad-school mentors in geopolitics/national security, JD Crouch, is featured in the Washington Post today.
The article fairly well captures the difference between being an academic/think-tank analyst of American foreign/defense policy, and actually crafting American foreign/defense policy from a high-level position.
Crouch is one of the most thoughtful, realistic academics I've ever met. He's an asset to the administration.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/23/05 09:31 | American Politics | Technorati | Comments (0)
22 May 2005
Oh My!
Daniel Okrent's final column as the public editor at the New York Times is certainly a fun read.
No excerpt. Just a link.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/22/05 22:17 | Media Matters | Technorati | Comments (0)
It's The Unintentional Humor That Kills Me Every Time
Here's a funny from the folks at Lone Star Times:
In the meantime, the offer Dan [Patrick] made on-air still stands– he would like to buy Messrs Cohen and Sweeney lunch, for an off the record, frank discussion of the concerns conservatives and people of traditional faith have with the way the Chronicle covers the news.
Ha ha ha ha.
Now, if they had extended that invitation to James Howard Gibbons as well, I would say there's hope for journalism in Houston.
Hope that someone would have the good sense to lock all four in the restaurant indefinitely.
The toleration for dissenting opinions would surely go up, and maybe Dwight Silverman could stage a blogger coup at the Chronicle, remaking the entire Chron operation into the newspaper of the future hinted at in various writings.
Why not have a little fun if we're going to visit fantasyland?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/22/05 22:08 | Media Matters | Technorati | Comments (0)
21 May 2005
Chron Outdoors Columnist Defends Open Beaches Act
In April, I commented on legislation being considered in Austin that could eventually set the precedent to gut the Texas Open Beaches Act.
Since then, the House bill was killed on a point of order, but the Senate bill keeps creeping along.
This week, Chronicle outdoors columnist Joe Doggett cranked up the pressure on legislators who are stealthily trying to gut the Open Beaches Act:
That sprawling natural pass that cuts lower West Galveston Island and Follett's Island (Freeport side) is one of the great natural fishing venues on the Texas coast; however, a bill in the Calendars Committee of the 79th Texas Legislature would threaten public access to a portion of that area.
Senate Bill 740, authored by State Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, and sponsored by State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, would allow the construction of a bulkhead along 4,500 feet of beach at the Treasure Island subdivision on the pass' Follett's Island side.
The companion HB 1603 was killed by a point of order on the House floor last week.
Protecting property sounds reasonable enough, but beachfront homes are built at risk, and the bill would establish a legal precedent exempting them from the provisions of the Texas Open Beaches Act.
It would move the public beach boundary from the vegetation line in the primary dunes to the Gulf side of the shore-protection structures placed to protect the subdivision. As a big issue, due to storm erosion in the area, the effective barrier must be situated below the tide line. In short, the entire beach backed by this bill becomes private, and public access is prohibited.
With respects to property owners facing encroachment by the Gulf, this bill is not in the best interests of the citizens of Texas — especially those who depend on open beaches as a vital source of recreation.
Thanks to Banjo for catching this one.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/21/05 23:55 | Texas | Technorati | Comments (0)
How A Smart Governor Behaves
PowerLine comments on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's reception for a number of conservative bloggers.
One can't help but wonder why our embattled governor of Texas wouldn't adopt a similar strategy of at least trying to win over sympathetic bloggers to his re-election.
Instead, his staff seems satisfied to complain about liberal bloggers instead of getting in the game. If this guy loses his office, is anybody really going to care that much? I'm starting to wonder.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/21/05 23:13 | Texas | Technorati | Comments (1)
Oilpatch Democrats
Well well, there's a new blog written by Democrats who claim to work in the oil industry.
Welcome to local blogging, guys. Or at least I assume it's local, since I found it at Houston Democrats.
I can't see how the blog has much to do with the industry, but maybe that will come in time. If not, the name is clever anyway.
On a related note, there's been some serious discussion at my own BigCo in the industry about me doing a political risk weblog of sorts, with BigCo sanction. It's just talk at this point, but it could get me blogging more about international affairs again. If anything develops, I will of course point it out here.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/21/05 21:04 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (1)
18 May 2005
Blog Line Of The Week
It comes from Orrin Judd this week.
It may lack a bit of the punch (or graphic imagery) of past weeks, but it seems appropriate:
What's left of democracy if the majority rules?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/18/05 23:56 | American Politics | Technorati | Comments (1)
Armadillo Gathering
I haven't posted it here yet, but Friday is the big Houston-area Coven gathering at the Armadillo Palace.
Anybody who wants to tip a brew with some of the local bloggers is more than welcome to drop by.
We'll go from 5 till... sometime. There's a musician I'd like to see, so I might stick around for a while. Who knows. The more the merrier.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/18/05 19:09 | Houston | Technorati |
The Donner Party?
The Texas welfare system is in danger of imminent meltdown.
Why?
Here's one reason from Fr. John Whiteford:
The atmosphere in the Texas Works Division of HHSC is currently about where the Donner Party was when they had just polished off the last can of beans. People who I thought would never leave, are talking about getting out now. When a new job outside of Texas Works is posted, there is a general scramble to apply for it.
To give you an example, my people, in addition to having to do twice the work with half of the people that we used to have, they are now having to stick return address labels on window envelopes, because we can't even get window envelopes with our return address printed on them.
The horror!
Bloody hell.
(found on several left-leaning blogs over the last few days, the first of which I don't recall or I would link)
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/18/05 15:01 | Texas | Technorati | Comments (14)
Kenny Chesney
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/18/05 00:26 | Music | Technorati | Comments (6)
17 May 2005
It Figures
I decided not to catch the UH-Rice baseball game tonight, so UH finally pulled out a win against that old man*, 3-2.
The win takes the Cougars to .500 for the season, finally, with three home games left this weekend against Southern Miss. It is also UH's first victory against Rice this academic year in a major men's sport (having lost every other baseball game, the football game, and the basketball game).
There were times this season when I thought the team could finish with Rayner Noble's worst record. I still think this team should have won 5-6 more games with the talent it has, no matter what happens this weekend.
Ah well. Next season, some of this year's kiddos should be much better.
[Read More]Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/17/05 22:18 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (0)
PerryvsWorld.com Now Open For Business
Chris Elam and I have conspired a bit over the past couple of weekends to get our buddy Evan's Perry vs World site off blogspot and onto a platform with comments and trackback and the like.
The results of our efforts can now be found at PerryvsWorld.com
Go leave Evan some comments on the governor's race! And if you happen to find any bugs, let him know that as well so he can get the word back to us.
Bugs must be squashed!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/17/05 07:48 | Texas | Technorati | Comments (0)
16 May 2005
Another Case Of Sudden Acceleration!
This is certainly below average:
A slip of the foot sent a car into Brays Bayou in southwest Houston overnight.
Police say the driver was slowing to turn into an apartment complex on Club Creek near Beechnut when she hit the gas instead of the brake. The car swerved to the right, flew off an embankment, and into the water.
The driver and her three adult passengers all got out OK. A wrecker was called in to tow the partially submerged car away.
Now, if the driver of the car had been a regular reader of this weblog, she would have known to claim her car suddenly shot into the bayou as if possessed because of Sudden Acceleration Syndrome.
Sure, we would have ridiculed her -- because most so-called "Sudden Acceleration Syndrome" incidents occur because of driver error -- but it still probably sounds better than "I hit the wrong pedal."
And it would give Rep. Lampson (D) more nonsense to pursue. Oh, wait, that's former Rep. Lampson. Never mind.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/16/05 20:34 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (5)
14 May 2005
Danger Train: Collision #89 (17) (1)
KTRK-13 reports that another driver blitzed through a red light to take on the Danger Train:
The same spot where the METRO light rail had its first deadly crash was closed off again Friday. Another crash happened late in the afternoon on Jefferson and Main.
Police say a woman traveling east on Jefferson ran a red light and slammed into the train which was headed south. Four people who were riding the rail had to be taken to the hospital.
The driver of the car was not injured, but she was ticketed for running a red light.
Earlier this week, a man was killed when police say he ran a red light in the same spot and was struck by a METRO rail train.
A truly "world-class" train would have enforced the right-of-way rules by killing the offending motorist -- ESPECIALLY on Friday the 13th!
Still, it has tasted blood. It will surely kill again.
(Update): Here's a goofy comment on the Houston Architecture Info Forum:
I wouldn't feel bad about one death in a year and a half. How many people die on Chicago's train system in a year? Maybe 20 or 30? Almost all of those are suicides. If you count the regional (Metra) rail, the number's more like 70, and mostly accidents.
Maybe in terms of crashes Houston's record is bad. But in terms of deaths, it seems to be doing pretty well.
That bolded part is some world-class spin!
I propose that METROrail adopt it as the new motto, and trot Chief Lambert out to pound it home.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/14/05 08:15 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (2)
12 May 2005
The Perfect Job For Lee P
KHOU-11 reports on the problem of bandit signs.
I know a former mayor who heads a consultancy who would be JUST the person to head a task force town car on bandit signs.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/12/05 22:08 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (2)
Happy Birthday
Chris Elam sends a shout out to Evan of Perry v World, who's celebrating a birthday today.
Happy Birthday, fellow Taurus (or is that properly Taurean? Kyrie may smack me down if I get it wrong)!
We should be delivering your present by the end of this weekend.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/12/05 09:09 | Other | Technorati | Comments (2)
11 May 2005
I'm An Enterpriser
This little quiz produced no surprises for me.
I'm an Enterpriser.
Here's a brief description of the type:
As in 1994 and 1999, this extremely partisan Republican group's politics are driven by a belief in the free enterprise system and social values that reflect a conservative agenda. Enterprisers are also the strongest backers of an assertive foreign policy, which includes nearly unanimous support for the war in Iraq and strong support for such anti-terrorism efforts as the Patriot Act.
DEFINING VALUES: Assertive on foreign policy and patriotic; anti-regulation and pro-business; very little support for government help to the poor; strong belief that individuals are responsible for their own well being. Conservative on social issues such as gay marriage, but not much more religious than the nation as a whole. Very satisfied with personal financial situation.
That pretty much sums it up, aside from that last sentence. Come on, we Enterprisers want MORE MONEY! We're not satisfied!
But we don't necessarily want it badly enough to throw up paypal links for volunteer blockwalking. We do have standards.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/11/05 22:03 | Other | Technorati | Comments (12)
Sports Blog
Richard Justice's blog has now been moved to Movable Type with the others.
That means comments and trackback are enabled.
Quite a few people have opinions on Houston sports, so I imagine this will be an active blog, especially if Justice interacts with commenters regularly.
Because it's such a local blog, though, it would be really nice if it had a blogroll that linked to some of the better local sportsblogs. Maybe we can get Dwight Silverman to consider that.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/11/05 21:38 | Media Matters | Technorati | Comments (1)
Danger Train: Collision #88 (16) (1)
(Photo via KPRC-2)
Houston drivers and even a few pedestrians have done their best to take on the Danger Train.
Last night, the Danger Train demonstrated that the dark side of the force is powerful indeed:
A pickup driver was killed in downtown Houston late Tuesday when his vehicle was broadsided by a Metro light rail train, the first fatality on the rail line since it opened to the public in January 2004.
The accident happened shortly before 10:30 p.m. on southbound Main at Jefferson. The driver, who was killed on impact, was believed to be a man in his 30s. He was the only person in the Dodge pickup truck, police said.
[snip]
The front of the train ripped through the driver's side door and pushed the pickup about 50 feet along the tracks.
"The impact is right on the driver's door, which is kind of a weak part of the vehicle," said Sgt. G.T. Hall, with the Houston Police Department accident division.
The pickup truck came to a rest against the Downtown Transit Center stop at Main and Jefferson.
Police said four passengers on the train were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries. Eight other riders were not injured.
Accident investigators confirmed that the train operator — who wasn't injured — likely would not be found at fault because the victim ran a red light and may have been speeding.
" We're very confident that the fault lies with the deceased," Sgt. Hall said.
One hopes that METRO police chief Lambert does not show up at the funeral and try to issue the poor man's estate a citation.
The Chronicle's coverage includes this snippet near the end:
Critics blame the record number of accidents on the system's at-grade rail design, with some nicknaming the $324 million MetroRail "The Danger Train." Questions also have been raised about confusing signage and traffic lights along the rail line. Additionally, MetroRail tracks share the left-turn lanes with motorists in the Texas Medical Center area.
That's a pretty fair assessment of some of the design flaws, the sort of assessment we didn't always get from Lucas Wall. I can't imagine Lucas referring to the "Danger Train" in a story either.
Sadly, I've had to add a new category in parentheses to these Danger Train updates. The first item in parentheses is documented collisions this year. The second item in parentheses is Danger Train fatalities. The first item (no parentheses) is, of course, total collisions.
Laurence Simon posted an early update on the fatal collision.
(Update) Chris Elam posted a late-night update as well. The blogHOUSTON/PubliusTX.net night desks were obviously not staffed as well. :)
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/11/05 07:48 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (8)
10 May 2005
No Suits In Today's NFL
Can anybody imagine Coach Landry wearing a ridiculous jumpsuit with a team logo on it on the Cowboys sideline?
I sure as hell can't.
Coach Mike Nolan recently petitioned the NFL to allow him to wear a suit on the sidelines during game days.
"To me, it's professional. I think it's respectful," Nolan said. "There was certainly no deal, no one came to me, there was nothing to gain. I wasn't trying to put the spotlight on me. But what I was trying to say, there's somebody in charge and this is what they look like."
The league turned Nolan down. Head coaches must wear the NFL-sanctioned team garb.
"There were marketing issues and sales issues, all that stuff," Nolan lamented. Beyond wanting to look the part of a man in charge, Nolan also viewed it as a tribute to his father, Dick, who was the coach of the 49ers from 1968-75.
"I must say looking at the pictures of my dad -- they are all around my office -- I thought, 'I'm going to do that.' But they are not going to let me."
That's just crazy.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/10/05 21:33 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (1)
Why Do They Write That Way?
This isn't blogHOUSTON-worthy because it's just a personal pet peeve flaring up, but for two days now Chronicle editor and blogger Kyrie O'Connor has been on the offensive against slangy language.
There's this:
Also, pet peeve time. "Quality" is not an adjective. You can't have "quality" anything. Everything has "quality", but some are bad and some are good. Just like your kid can't have a "temperature". Everybody has a temperature; sick kids have fevers.
And there's this:
Oh, OK. Yes, you're right. In fact, I will even grant you certain adjectival uses of "quality", as in "quality control." And yes, all children have temperatures -- that was my point. The hot ones have fevers.
In general, however, I maintain that to say "quality" when you mean "high quality" or "good" is just a degradation of the language, and you're going to sound like somebody in a bad marketing seminar.
Bah, I say.
You know what my pet peeve is? The sort of cutesy writing that finds its way into the Chronicle for no damn good reason.
Today's latest case in point:
Lawmakers' efforts to stop Houston from using cameras to catch red-light runners may hang on whether the Senate can consider the matter before the legislative session runs into a red light.
That bolded phrase is clunky. It sounds terrible. But it's "cute" because it ties into the earlier red-light phrase, and "cute" is often the standard at the Chronicle editing desk these days.
That phrase should have been cut and replaced with "ends." Actually, the whole lede should have been rewritten, into something less clunky, but at the very least, that cloying "cute" fragment I bolded shouldn't have made it into print.
(05-11-2005 Update) Here's an even better example from the newspaper today:
GOOD BUSINESS: Women entrepreneurs still need more opportunity
That's the headline for a house editorial. PROBLEM: Women is a noun, not an adjective! FEMALE is an adjective that might have been used.
That's the very problem O'Connor was nitpicking about abstractly -- yet concretely, there it is, in the newspaper.
That probably deserves a comment on her new MT blog, to test just how far this new era of Chronblog interactivity extends.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/10/05 21:26 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (2)
DMN: Anti-Abortion Legislation Is Coercive! *gasp*
Progressive bloggers are up in arms today over HB 1212 (legislation designed to curb abortions by young women in Texas), and they're all citing this bit from the Dallas Morning News:
The House State Affairs Committee voted Monday to require a pregnant teenager to secure her parents' consent before getting an abortion. This newspaper supports requiring teens to notify their parents before having an abortion, but requiring a parent's consent goes too far. Whether or not any of us likes it, desperate teens will get abortions, and some will go straight to the back alley if they must get their parents' permission.
What's more, the legislation would make it a crime for anyone to coerce a child into an abortion. If this provision passes, parents could get hauled into court for strongly urging their child to end a pregnancy. How can the state demand that parents be responsible for the choice, and then penalize them if they make a particular choice? That, in effect, coerces teens to bear unwanted children.
Re that bolded part -- wow, Texas progressives catch on fast!
Yes, legislation designed to curb abortions by young women can be thought of as coercing teens to bear "unwanted" children.
It can also be thought of as coercing mothers not to kill their children for trivial reasons.
Pointed rhetoric can cut both ways, eh?
It's just funny how shocking it is to some people that yes, conservatives are serious about restricting abortion.
I'm surprised the Chronicle's Andrea Georgsson didn't beat the DMN to the punch on this. Maybe she had a leftover crisis to tend to.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/10/05 17:27 | Texas | Technorati | Comments (3)
Neat Timing
I post this last night, and Dwight Silverman offers up this teaser this morning.
It looks like the Chronicle is moving full speed ahead with its blogging. I hope that experiment pushes along more interactive news sections as well.
Also, the LA Times has launched its new web product. I haven't had a chance to go through it yet, but the announcement says they've reopened the Calendar Live section. At some point, book reviews were in that section, which meant non-subscribers couldn't read them (and that annoyed me). Now, it seems book reviews are not in that section (maybe they haven't been for a while)-- but still, good move reopening it. All sorts of people might want to read entertainment news from the entertainment capital of the world. Why not cultivate that interest?
(Update) Laurence Simon evangelizes on the Chronicle news. (He'll probably smack me for using that particular verb, but what the hell). Spot on.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/10/05 09:59 | Media Matters | Technorati | Comments (0)
Blog Line Of The Week
It's early in the week yet, but I don't think any blogger is going to be able to top this imagery:
Of course, if something big happens at a Ringwald show, I might have to do some hand exercises to dust off the carpal tunnels and crank out another one of these gems.
Please, though, no photos of the hand exercises! The imagery is quite enough as it is.
That's nearly as much fun as Richard Justice being confounded by his two hands (but Justice's was more fun because for some reason, he actually draws a paycheck to write that dreck).
(Update) Of course, if there were a Blog Headline Of The Week feature, this would win.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/10/05 06:31 | Other | Technorati | Comments (1)
09 May 2005
No.... Renee.... Nooooo!
Renee Zellweger has married Kenny Chesney.
I guess she must have a thing for short bald guys who play terrible music.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/09/05 21:12 | Other | Technorati | Comments (4)
08 May 2005
Armadillo Palace
The Armadillo Palace gathering seems to be firming up.
It looks like a Houston-area blogger blowout is in the works for May 20.
And we're even going to get Anne Linehan out to this one!
We'll plug the thing more heavily as it gets closer, I'm sure.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/08/05 21:53 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (0)
Bloggedy Blog
I've gotten a number of email requests to plug certain websites, and I can't see why the hell not, as they may well be of interest to some of the readers here.
First, there's the Texas Golf Blog. Obviously, I like niche blogs like this one (conceptually at least -- I'm not a golfer). Blogs are tailor-made for people with keen interest in some area to share their passion with the masses. That's my vision of the power of blogging (and not efforts like this or this, which cause many of my fellow bloggers inexplicably to wee wee all over themselves).
Second, there's the Harvard Plagiarism Archive. Niche? You bet. Interesting? Yeah, I think so.
Finally, there's the Houston Classifieds.
So there you go. Give those sites a visit if they interest. Ignore them if they don't.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/08/05 21:47 | Other | Technorati | Comments (3)
07 May 2005
A 12 Point Quarter?
That was certainly poor.
Thankfully, I was at a UH game that set a new UH and conference record for strikeouts (21).
Who cares if it took UH 13 innings to win against a crap team? A win is a win.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/07/05 23:41 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (0)
05 May 2005
Nice One
The blog line of the week is this:
The man couldn't find the plate if he were the floor at a Greek restaurant at the end of the night.
Opa!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/05/05 22:20 | Other | Technorati | Comments (1)
05/05/05
So, today is 05-05-05.
I just thought that looked cool.
Thanks to ESSfingers for entertaining me with this.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/05/05 22:17 | Other | Technorati | Comments (3)
Poor Me
Phantom of the Opera is now out on DVD.
No, if you're wondering, of course I don't care.
EXCEPT, Callie is watching the thing right now. I don't know what that brings the total count up to. Seven times maybe?
It has zero appeal to me. Honestly, it's almost like it's in a foreign language. Hell, it even has me posting whines here, and we all know posting here has been rare of late.
Very strange.
(Update) I'm not alone. The dog just groaned at it.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/05/05 00:09 | Other | Technorati | Comments (6)
Another Blown Game For Clemens
If I were invested in the Astros, I'd probably be having this reaction.
But honestly, we just had college football spring practices, the NFL draft, we've had some minicamps, training camp isn't that far away, and there's college baseball (even though my Cougars are horribly inconsistent this season, they're still fun to watch). Plenty to look forward to.
So screw Drayton McLane.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/05/05 00:01 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (4)
04 May 2005
Not Nitpicking, Just Nitwittery
Most of the time I don't find Michelle Malkin that interesting one way or the other.
But, this was sort of a notable bit of nonsense from her:
My discomfort with "South Park's" increasingly mainstream vulgarity is not a matter of nitpicking. We're not just talking about a stray curse word here or there. As liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich points out, "South Park" "holds the record for the largest number of bleeped-out repetitions (162) of a single four-letter expletive in a single television half-hour." That's probably about the same number of profanities uttered at John Kerry's infamous New York City celebrity fundraiser last summer, which Republicans rightly condemned for its excessive obscenities.
She kind of missed the point.
But that's okay. As my favorite talker in town might say to a goofy caller, "Umm, okay, well, thanks for calling!"
Here's a more serious take on Brian Anderson's book.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/04/05 23:46 | Other | Technorati | Comments (1)
03 May 2005
The Armadillo Palace
I keep hearing that Jim Goode's Armadillo Palace is going to feature good Texas country music.
So, tonight I checked out the website to see what kinds of acts they're booking.
Very pretty website, even with the annoying music in the background (it can be turned off).
I couldn't pull up the events calendar in Firefox (BIG annoyance), but got to it with IE. Right now, it looks like they're mainly booking acts that would often be openers at the Firehouse. That's not bad, since newer bands could use a friendly venue. And it looks like they'll have an occasional "bigger" act.
I'll have to get by the place sometime soon.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/03/05 23:33 | Music | Technorati | Comments (9)
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