Archive for the ‘Schadenfreude’ Category

Lord Nelson.

Thursday, February 21st, 2019

Item #1: the Circuit of the Americas is not going to get money from the state of Texas for last year’s Formula One race.

The stunning development means the track in Southeast Austin will forfeit $25 million or more in state funds through the Major Event Reimbursement Program. The state reimbursed the racetrack $27 million through the program after the 2017 U.S. Grand Prix, $26 million for the 2016 F1 race and $22.7 million for the 2015 U.S. Grand Prix.

Why are they being cut off? Would you believe…they didn’t file their anti-human trafficking paperwork in time?

According to an October 2018 letter from the governor’s office that was obtained by the Statesman, CELOC [Circuit Events Local Organizing Committee – DB] missed the deadline to submit a required human trafficking prevention plan by 30 days before the 2018 U.S. Grand Prix. Bryan Daniel, the governor’s executive director of economic development and tourism, wrote that because CELOC failed to meet the deadline, its application for reimbursement had been rescinded.
The plan was due Sept. 19, but CELOC did not submit it until Oct. 3.
“In this case, the law is clear that if a human trafficking prevention plan is not submitted 30 days prior to an event, a reimbursement from the Major Events Fund cannot be issued,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in an emailed statement. “The State of Texas and COTA have a productive partnership that has had a tremendous economic impact on the city of Austin and the state as a whole, and our office is already working with COTA on next year’s race.”

As much as I enjoy seeing these people cut off from their state subsidy, I have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of this, and that somehow somebody’s going to figure out an end run to get them their $25 million.

Item #2:

At a murder trial last week in Travis County, a defense lawyer for a woman accused of fatally shooting her fiancé approached the witness stand and began asking questions to an empty chair. The attorney, Brian Erskine, was expressing disbelief that forensic examiner Dr. Sam Andrews did not show up to testify about his autopsy on 37-year-old victim Bradley Sullivan.

Did the Honorable Mr. Erskine think he was Clint Eastwood? And why wasn’t Dr. Andrews in court?

Turns out…

…Andrews no longer is welcome in Travis County courtrooms. The district attorney’s office recently decided it will not sponsor his testimony amid an ongoing Texas Rangers and Texas Medical Board investigation into his work at his new job as the chief of the Lubbock County medical examiner’s office.

The basis for the investigation has not been revealed. However, a Lubbock County commissioner might have given hints in a letter to a judge Monday in which he alleged that Andrews had improperly harvested excessive body tissue from deceased children for research. The letter from Commissioner Jason Corley to County Judge Curtis Parrish also states that another doctor in Andrews’ office, Evan Matshes, had performed autopsies despite not being licensed to practice medicine in Texas. Similar allegations are outlined in a lawsuit against Andrews and Matshes by a former employee of the medical examiner’s office.

According to the Statesman, the DA’s office doesn’t think this is a huge problem: Dr. Andrews did a total of ten autopsies in cases that are still pending. But in eight of those, “the cause of death could not be reasonably disputed by the defense“.

However, prosecutors must appoint a second medical examiner to review Andrews’ autopsy reports in all pending cases. If the second examiner affirms Andrews’ previous findings, that doctor will then be permitted to testify at trial in place of Andrews.

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.

Friday, June 2nd, 2017

For some reason, I’ve been even grumpier than usual most of this week. But there were two stories in the NYT this morning that brought a smile to my face.

1) The rise and fall of Bleecker Street.

During its incarnation as a fashion theme park, Bleecker Street hosted no fewer than six Marc Jacobs boutiques on a four-block stretch, including a women’s store, a men’s store and a Little Marc for high-end children’s clothing. Ralph Lauren operated three stores in this leafy, charming area, and Coach had stores at 370 and 372-374 Bleecker. Joining those brands, at various points, were Comptoir des Cotonniers (345 Bleecker Street), Brooks Brothers Black Fleece (351), MM6 by Maison Margiela (363), Juicy Couture (368), Mulberry (387) and Lulu Guinness (394).

“six Marc Jacobs boutiques on a four-block stretch”. I have no joke here, I just like saying: “New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks”.

How’s that working for them?

Today, every one of those clothing and accessories shops is closed.

Oh.

While quirky independent stores couldn’t afford the new Bleecker, it became apparent over time that neither could the corporate brands that had remade the street. An open secret among retailers had it that Bleecker Street was a fancy Potemkin village, empty of customers. Celebrities shopped there because they wouldn’t be bothered. The “Sex and the City” fans lining up at Magnolia and snapping photos of Carrie’s stoop weren’t willing or able to fork over $2,000 for designer heels.
“Jimmy Choo — I never saw anybody in the shop,” Ms. Bowman said. “I don’t get it. Who’s buying this stuff?”

2) There was a music festival scheduled for the middle of Joly – the “Pemberton Music Festival in the mountains of Canada”. Tickets were $275.

The festival was cancelled, and the promoters filed for bankruptcy, about two weeks ago.

Pemberton, held in a picturesque spot about 100 miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia, was a typical entry into the frothy festival business. It was revived in 2014 by Huka Entertainment, a well-known independent promoter, after an earlier iteration failed. According to bankruptcy filings, the festival lost money for three years, and sold 18,000 tickets in 2017, down from 38,000 last year.

But wait, there’s more! The ticket buyers are being told that they are “unsecured creditors” in the bankruptcy proceedings! Which translates into, “Good luck getting any part of your money back, suckers!”

In filings, the two entities that controlled the festival — Pemberton Music Festival Limited Partnership and 1115666 B.C. Ltd. — declared $5 million in assets and $12.5 million in liabilities, with ticket holders listed as having an unsecured claim of $6 million. The first meeting of creditors is scheduled for June 6 in Vancouver.

Even better:

Music executives are now aghast over the failure to provide refunds and the maneuvering of investors in the weeks before the festival fell apart. Marc Geiger, the head of music at William Morris Endeavor and an outspoken voice in the business, called Pemberton’s collapse “a fraud and a scam” that could have a domino effect on the industry, hurting smaller promoters the most.

Mr. Geiger reserves a special ire for Pemberton’s investors, among them several wealthy Canadians with no background in the music business. As secured creditors, they now stand a better chance of getting their money back than the fans who paid $275 a ticket. One investor, Amanda Girling, is also chief executive of a company that owns the land on which the festival was held, and which is for sale for $12.5 million.

I hate to sound like a cranky old man who doesn’t get these kids today and their music (which is why I’ve avoided expressing an opinion about the top-billed artists) but: I don’t understand the point of spending that much money to stand around outside for two or three days in order to see one or two bands that maybe I kind of like, and a whole bunch of other ones where my feelings go from “totally indifferent” to “actively hate”.

If this really is “the symbolic end for independently promoted festivals”, would that be a bad thing?

Knee deep in the schadenfreude.

Friday, April 28th, 2017

I should have worn waders today.

(Fun fact: “Knee Deep In the Schadenfreude” was Starship’s working title for “We Built This City”.)

Local elections are coming up. I’m not sure what’s on the ballot for Austin specifically and Travis County in general. But in Lakeway, where I’ve been spending a lot of my time, three city council seats are up. Also, the city is considering a proposition to issue $23 million worth of bonds so they can build a new police station.

The new cop shop is kind of a big deal. I haven’t heard a lot of opposition to it, but most of the people I’ve been around in Lakeway are police or police supporters. I’ve been down and toured the current police station, and it is small and cramped and crowded: there’s no room to grow. On the other hand, the figures I cam up with for a certain property owner I know came out to around %6 a month more in property taxes. This is someone who is on a fixed income: six dollars here, six collars there, pretty soon you’re talking about City of Austin property taxes.

Reasonable people can differ on the merits of the proposition and the candidates. But here’s the problem: Lakeway’s mayor, Joe Bain, who is active on NextDoor (and has a blog on the city website) decided he’d be smart.

“John Smart” on NextDoor, to be exact.

Posts made under the name “John Smart” included advocating that residents vote for incumbent City Council candidates Bridge Bertram and Ron Massa.

“Vote for Bridge Bertram and Ron Massa – they actually volunteered for the City and worked hard to make it better, unlike the other candidate that hasn’t attended a council meeting for a long time nor has every [sic] done any work to try to improve the city – no committees, commissions or any other volunteer work,” a post by John Smart reads.

The mayor has confessed and deleted the account.

Bain confirmed by phone Thursday evening that he was behind the “John Smart” account, adding, “The city really doesn’t have anything [to do] with this … there are reasons behind all this.”

I’m not currently on NextDoor, but looking over their rules, Mayor Bain’s behavior is a pretty clear violation. I had thought that NextDoor actually did some validation on signups to make sure you were a real person and lived in the place you signed up for. (I know, I know, silly me: expecting a website on the Internet to do validation.) The one person I’ve heard from so far who is on NextDoor says they didn’t go through any validation process, but they used an invite code provided by their local neighborhood association. Maybe that bypasses the validation?

The first question this leads to is: how did he get a fake NextDoor account? Was someone else…helping him out?

The second question: how is this going to impact the election? Early voting started Monday. I can’t vote in Lakeway, but if I could, I’d be looking cynically at Mayor Bain’s endorsed candidates. Perhaps it is time for some new leadership? (I’d also be thinking about my support for the new cop shop. But honestly, I’d probably end up voting for it anyway.)

As a connoisseur of disaster…

Friday, April 28th, 2017

…I am enjoying reading about Fyre Festival so, so much.

It’s the feral dogs that really make a good music festival.

That reminds me. (adds Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus to his Amazon wish list.)

William N. Finley IV’s Twitter feed: Finley was boots on the ground at Fyre Festival and is quoted in many pf the stories I’ve seen.

Questions, so many questions: could Ja Rule and Kendall Jenner be prosecuted for fraud? Would this have been a justified use of a MOAB? And is it true that United Airlines was an official Fyre Festival sponsor?

Random links: October 30, 2016.

Sunday, October 30th, 2016

A handful of random links that I’ve accumulated over the past few days. Some of these are arguably appropriate for the season, some not…

By way of Lawrence, the first air hijacking.

… Midway through the third of these sessions, while airborne at 5,000 feet and sitting in the rear seat of a tandem training plane equipped with dual controls, he pulled a revolver from a trouser pocket and, without giving any warning, sent two .32 calibre bullets through Bivens’s skull. Pletch then managed to land the plane, dumped the instructor’s body in a thicket, and took off again, heading north to his home state to… well, what he intended to do was never really clear…

By way of Hognose over at the Weaponsman blog, a retrospecitve from Philly.com on a crime story I’d never heard of: 75 years ago, a spaghetti salesman and his co-conspirators murdered somewhere between 50 and 100 people with arsenic. It was your typical life insurance/double indemnity scam, distinguished perhaps only by the number of victims.

By way of Stuff from Hsoi, through Lawrence: Massad Ayoob’s latest “Ayoob Files” entry for American Handgunner is about John Daub’s shooting incident. Briefly, Mr. Daub (who instructs part-time for KR Training) shot and killed a man who kicked down the front door of his house while he was inside with his wife and kids:

Few people are able to recall how many shots they fired in self-defense when the matter goes beyond two or three rounds. John was no exception. What we have with him, however, is the rare case of a man who was a deeply trained firearms instructor becoming involved in a shooting. It’s rather like an oncologist who is diagnosed with cancer himself: an uncommon opportunity for someone heavily experienced in the thing from the outside, to experience it from the inside.

For the record: NYT obit for Jack Chick.

By way of the News@Ycombinator Twitter: ESPN lost 621,000 subscribers in one month.

So if we’re very conservative and project that ESPN continues to lose 3 million subscribers a year — well below the rate that they are currently losing subscribers — then the household numbers would look like this over the next five years:

2017: 86 million subscribers
2018: 83 million subscribers
2019: 80 million subscribers
2020: 77 million subscribers
2021: 74 million subscribers

At 74 million subscribers — Outkick’s projection for 2021 based on the past five years of subscriber losses — ESPN would be bringing in just over $6.2 billion a year in yearly subscriber fees at $7 a month. At $8 a month, assuming the subscriber costs per month keeps climbing, that’s $7.1 billion in subscriber revenue. Both of those numbers are less than the yearly rights fees cost.

On a personal note, my mother is planning to dump cable in the next few days, and I don’t even think she realizes that she’s paying $80 a year for the NFL and other crap she doesn’t watch on ESPN, and another $30 a year for the NBA (which she also doesn’t watch).

NYT obit for John Zacherle, aka “Zacherley”, one of the early TV horror movie hosts.

I didn’t grow up in the NYC/Philly area, so I never saw “Zacherley”, but the obit got me to thinking about him and Ghoulardi and all those other guys who seem to have died off or disappeared with the increasing corporatization of television. I missed this when I was young: as I’ve noted before, I was culturally deprived as a child. Also, I’m not sure we had any “horror hosts” in Houston. I do remember “Captain Harold’s Theater of the Sky”, but I don’t recall that fitting into the “horror host” genre. (Also, I would have sworn it was called “Captain Harold’s Theater of the Air” when I was growing up: is nostalgia a moron, or did the name change at some point?) This is another one of those things where I almost regret not watching those people when I was young, so that I could have grown up to be a famous horror writer with groupies and a cocaine problem, but I digress.

There is a guy on one of the nostalgia TV channels on Saturday night who seems to be trying to revive the Zacherley/Ghoulardi schtick. I don’t even know his name, but we’ve caught a few minutes of his show during movie night at Lawrence’s. The 51-year-old me says, frankly, he’s not very good. The 11-year-old boy inside me says, “Well, yeah, you think he’s not very good. But you’re a jaded 51-year-old man who is incapable of experiencing joy, and can watch things like…well, like “John Carpenter’s The Thing” anytime you feel like it. What about me? When you were my age, you would have lapped this stuff up like a thirsty man in the desert, bad puns and all!” The 51-year-old me thinks the 11-year-old me is being a little unfair with that “incapable of experiencing joy” comment, but he does have a point.

With all the old “horror hosts” dying away, and nobody seeming to replace them, who or what is fueling the imaginations of the 11-year-olds out there? What are they going to write or draw or film when they grow up? Who is educating them in the classics like “Island of Lost Souls” (about which, more, later), even if those classics are kind of chopped up?

What have we lost?

With a rebel yell, they cried “More! More! More!”

Monday, January 11th, 2016

More firings, that is.

The Houston Texans have fired special teams coordinator Bob Ligashesky, receivers coach Stan Hixon and defensive assistant Anthony Pleasant.

Some friends of ours who shall remain anonymous to protect their privacy (thank you, anonymous friends!) invited folks over on Saturday to watch the Texans playoff game. I was tied up with other events and arrived with only five minutes left in the game, but based on what I heard from my anonymous friends and Lawrence (and what I observed personally in that five minutes), it was a debacle.

Question: have the Texans gone far enough?

TMQ Watch: December 22, 2015.

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015

We pretty much have all of our Christmas shopping done now, barring a possible few last minute gifts or accessories for gifts already purchased. With that out of the way, we can focus on TMQ.

And what does he have to say this week?

(more…)

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#21 in a series)

Wednesday, July 1st, 2015

“…Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.”

Yes, I am chortling.

Indicted former California Democratic State Senator Leland “Uncle” Yee will soon be convicted former California Democratic State Senator Leland “Uncle” Yee.

Former California state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering in federal court Wednesday, admitting that he “knowingly and intentionally agreed with another person” to take part in a criminal enterprise and commit at least two offenses and affect state commerce.

More from the SFChron:

In return for the payments, which totaled $34,600, Yee said in his plea agreement that he promised to vote for legislation his donors favored, recommend a software company for a state contract, arrange a meeting with another state senator over legislation, and illegally import firearms, including automatic weapons, from the Philippines. He said the transactions covered a period between October 2012 and March 2014, when he was planning his campaign for California secretary of state.

You may recall that Yee was a gun control advocate, and was honored by the Brady bunch.

Also pleading guilty to racketeering were Keith Jackson, a former San Francisco school board president who served as a consultant and fundraiser for Yee, Jackson’s son, Brandon, and sports agent Marlon Sullivan.

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

The racketeering charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

This appears to be the Federal statutory maximum sentence. As we all should know by now, this figure is misleading. But:

Yee’s plea agreement, as described in court, did not include a recommended sentence. But the agreement for Keith Jackson, who admitted the same charge, specified that prosecutors could seek a maximum of 10 years in prison, and the defense could request a minimum of six years.

And the judge can ignore those requests and recommendations.

The important question: what of Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow? Still awaiting trial, but the judge “asked prosecutors to include Chow, who is still in custody, in the next group scheduled for trial.”

Related question that you may have been wondering about: does the plea deal mean that Yee is going to roll on Chow? I can’t deny it: I love using the phrase “Yee is going to roll on Chow”. But:

The plea agreements do not require any of the four defendants to testify or cooperate with the prosecution, said Brandon Jackson’s lawyer, Tony Tamburello. Both Brandon Jackson and Sullivan pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy involving the Ghee Kung Tong.

The Ghee Kung Tong was Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow’s organization, which is described as “…as a racketeering enterprise that trafficked in drugs, weapons and stolen goods” in the Federal charges against Chow.

Edited to add: Thanks to Ken at Popehat for linking to convicted former California Democratic State Senator Leland “Uncle” Yee’s plea agreement. I apparently can’t copy or paste stuff from the plea agreement PDF, so I’ll just note that Yee specifically admits to the gun running charges in his plea.

Your loser update: April 17, 2015.

Friday, April 17th, 2015

The end of the NBA regular season has snuck up on us.

Early in the season, it seemed like Philadelphia was the favorite to go 0-82, or at least set a record for futility.

How did that work out for them? Well, they finished 18-64. Which is bad.

But it isn’t as bad as the New York Knicks, who finished 17-65. Philadelphia didn’t even lose their own division. Which I think says something about the team, but I’m not sure what.

But, surprisingly, the Knicks weren’t the worst NBA team this year. That honor goes to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who finished the season at 16-66, for a winning percentage of 0.195. ESPN has a very nice list of the worst NBA teams, which currently includes the Timberwolves, and lets you do side-by-side comparisons with the legendary 72-73 Philadelphia team.

By the way, the Lakers finished 21-61. Just saying.

In Birmingham they love the football (woo woo woo)…

Monday, February 9th, 2015

Previously on WCD: the University of Alabama-Birmingham shut down their football program.

Now:

In the turbulent weeks since the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced that it would shutter its Division I football program, rallies and protests have erupted on campus, powerful donors have threatened to withhold their support, and the faculty senate approved a resolution of no confidence in President Ray L. Watts’s ability to lead the university.

The university has appointed a task force to review both the finances of the athletic department and the consulting firm’s report that led to the decision.

And in other news:

Kent State recently paid $35,000 to an outside consultant to review the fiscal viability of its $26 million athletic department and its football program, which has had only one winning season since 2006.

There once was a man from Nantucket.

Tuesday, January 27th, 2015

The storm may not have lived up to its billing in New York City, but it more than delivered in New England. It cut off Nantucket, where almost all 12,000 year-round residents lost power and telephone service, and it flooded the Atlantic coastal town of Scituate, where a car floated downtown.

My phone tells me it is currently 81 degrees here. I may have to turn on the AC when I get home.

Yo, dawg.

Friday, January 23rd, 2015

The bankruptcy of SkyMall and their parent company, Xhibit, has been well covered in many places.

But I wanted to link, again, to this Priceonomics article from 2013 about SkyMall, Xhibit, and their questionable dealings, just in case folks forgot about it.

Skymall is by all accounts a reasonably successful company with $130 million in annual revenue, a differentiated offering, a well known brand, and at least some happy customers. Xhibit on the other hand, appears to be a company with dubious sources of revenue, a very thin competitive advantage, and more hype than substance.