Forrest knocked around movies and TV for a long time, but he is perhaps most famous for this:

I am not ashamed to admit: I loved that show when I was a kid. And I still think it has one of the greatest themes ever, right up there with the original Hawaii 5-0 and Mission: Impossible.

NYPD blues, part 1:

A veteran New York City police detective once assigned to the mayor’s security team was convicted of attempted murder and reckless endangerment on Thursday for shooting a man while off duty, the Queens district attorney said.

Part 2:

“Opening 50 cases is a herculean task,” said Pierre Sussman, a defense lawyer who represents two of the men whose cases will be reviewed. “The first challenge will be culling information from files that are two or three decades old and trying to find witnesses who were hard to find even then. These are not people with bank accounts, library cards and Facebook pages.”

(Previously.)

And for Robert Hill to win release from his cell at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, prosecutors would have to reconcile why he told a parole board that he was remorseful for a murder he now swears he did not commit.

That part seems easy to me. In the wrongful convictions I’ve read about, a recurring theme involves the wrongfully convicted being offered a chance at parole, and being turned down or refusing because they are expected to admit their crime and show remorse. If you didn’t do the crime in the first place, but you’re offered a shot at getting out of prison, do you maintain your innocence even if it costs you that chance? Or do you tell the parole board what they want to hear?

My mother moved into a smaller place at the end of March, and bought a Pocket Hose around that time so she could water her plants without bucking around a big garden hose.

It lasted about two months. The hose now seems to have some sort of internal break such that, instead of water coming out the nozzle, it flows out from just below the faucet connection. It isn’t leaking at the connection, like it is improperly tightened or missing a gasket, but leaking in the hose portion below the connection.

Of course, this being cheap Chinese made crap imported by Telebrands, it doesn’t have any kind of warranty. Luckily for her, she bought it at Home Depot with her Home Depot credit card, and they’ve agreed to refund her money when she brings it back.

Seriously, guys, less than two months? Put that in your social media pipe and smoke it.

And just in case you think I’m being a crank, it sure looks like the Amazon reviews support my position.

Once upon a time, there was a rapper named “Tim Dog” (real name Timothy Blair). Tim Dog was a little better than aspiring; he apparently had a minor hit with something called “F–k Compton” back in the NWA days.

Sadly, Mr. Dog fell on some hard times. He was supposedly working on a comeback album, but, in February, his death was announced and reported on by such news outlets as the A/V Club and The Source.

Earlier this week, a judge in Mississippi issued an arrest warrant for Tim Dog.

“What?” you say. “How do you arrest a dead guy?”

You don’t. Evidence is accumulating that Tim Dog actually faked his own death.

And why would he do that? Spending a year dead for tax purposes? Close: a woman he met online is owed $19,000 as a result of Tim Dog being convicted of grand larceny. This woman, as well as other women, claim that Tim Dog scammed them out of money, claiming it was to produce the comeback album mentioned above.

Apparently, there is no death certificate for Tim Dog. There is some question as to whether there was a funeral; one report says that there was, and that Tim Dog’s best friend refused to speak at it (the whole “no death certificate” thing). Another report says there was but that Tim Dog’s family didn’t even show up, and they don’t believe he’s dead either. If you’re going to fake your own death, I figure you pretty much have to show up at the funeral (heavily disguised, of course) so you can hear all the good things people say about you. I wouldn’t call that rule #1 of faking your own death, but it would be in my top ten list.

If your own family refuse to show up, however, maybe there’s no point.

Over at Battleswarm, Lawrence has given my post a full ass, with a quick overview of the various bills and their individual statuses, complete with links. I commend his post to your attention.

(Subject line hattip.)

The list includes such banana republican favorites as the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon, Compton, and Mammoth Lakes (which, as previously noted, already filed for bankruptcy, but USA Today reports they withdrew that petition).

Not on the list, but should be: Bell. You may recall that one of Bell’s many issues was the collection of illegal taxes from residents. The city has to refund the illegally collected tax dollars to residents…

Bell currently has a negative cash balance, caused in part by the city’s move to stop collecting the illegal taxes, the state controller’s office found. Bell promised to refund more than $3 million in overpaid taxes to residents and busineses, but auditors found that the city has not done so.

And by the way:

Auditors also faulted the city for not following more than 20 recommendations the controller’s office made after the corruption scandal.

Yesterday, Ms. Rosales was charged with tax fraud.

Prosecutors charged that the dealer, Glafira Rosales, 56, of Sands Point, N.Y., failed to disclose $12.5 million that she had earned from the sale of the works and had never reported, as required, that she had Spanish bank accounts where she had hidden much of the proceeds.

And:

But according to the government’s case, an apparently talented forger — or forgers — confounded the art world for years by turning out realistic-looking works said to be by masters including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Authorities declined to comment on whether they have identified a forger, but a person briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said the investigation is continuing and that any leads on the forgeries will be pursued.

In other news: the LA County DA plans to retry the Bell city council members. As you may recall, the jury in the first trial completely acquitted one council member (Luis Artiga), convicted the other five members on some charges, acquitted them on other charges, and ultimately hung on the remaining charges.

Texas gun legislation update: things are getting interesting. The concealed carry on campus bill, and the ban on enforcing any new Federal gun laws, are tied up in the Senate. However, the Senate has approved…

…a bill Tuesday night to allow applicants to qualify for a concealed-handgun license to use either a revolver or a semi-automatic pistol.
Under current law, Texans who qualified to carry a revolver could carry only a revolver.

This same bill also prevents local governments from outlawing BB guns and Airsoft guns.

“There was a problem where some city outlawed the possession of a BB gun,” [State Senator Craig] Estes said. “A kid ought to be able to own a Red Ryder BB gun.”

My understanding is that the bill to cut back the number of hours of class time required for a concealed carry permit has also passed both houses, and is awaiting the governor’s signature.

More here. I was previously unaware of the TSRA PAC site; the front page summary of legislative events is very useful.

Mentioned by Lawrence last night: Manzarek wrote a horror novel (the A/V Club calls it “a Civil War ghost story”), Snake Moon. He also wrote some books related to The Doors, and…

…The Poet in Exile, that was little more than a therapy exercise masquerading as fiction, in which a Jim Morrison-type rock star known as “The Snake Man” fakes his own death, reunites with his keyboard player “Roy,” apologizes for how he treated him, then thanks him profusely for keeping his legacy alive. As of 2011, Manzarek was still trying to turn it into a movie, convinced, as always, that this story needed to be told… by Ray Manzarek.

And finally, we come to the modern-day Houston Astros, who lost 106 games in 2011, 107 games in 2012, and six weeks into this season are on pace for their worst season yet. They are a threat to become only the second team ever, after the Amazin’ Mets, to lose 106 games three years in a row. The Astros don’t simply personify awful. They embrace it, they lovingly caress it, they whisper sweet nothings to it.

But the main point of the article is that the Astros actually have a chance to be good several years from now:

And once this season is over and the Astros can end their charade of being the worst team in baseball every year, they can use the free-agent market to actually upgrade their roster. The team has incredible payroll flexibility — they have $5.7 million in contract obligations on the books for 2014, and few of their young players will even be arbitration-eligible next season. There’s no reason the Astros can’t be competitive next year, at .500 by 2015, and then become legitimate contenders in the AL West in 2016 and beyond.

Currently, Houston and Miami are tied for the worst record in baseball: 12-32, with a .273 winning percentage. That puts both teams at a projected 117 losses.

I know, I know, but does anyone have a better answer than “M-O-N-E-Y”?

Lawrence has said he’s not sure he wants to write a review of it, so I guess the duty of commentary falls to me. The problem is, I’m not sure what to say about it. I get the idea that Jean-Luc Godard is an important director, and Alphaville is an important film in the history of the French New Wave.

And the movie does have some things going for it:

• The women are beautiful, especially Anna Karina.
• “Hey, we don’t have a budget, so let’s use a Ford Mustang as an interstellar spacecraft, and Paris at night to represent an alien city.” Sounds good to me.
• Godard does do a lot with little money in this movie.
• It is shortish: 1:39.
• I am not sure, but I believe this may be the first pop culture example of the “destroy the computer by setting it up with a logical contradiction” trope. TVTropes is not helpful in this regard, but Alphaville does predate Star Trek.
  
• At least Godard had the good taste to give Lemmy Caution a 1911.
• Wow. What great staircases.

Beyond those things, though…wow, this is one hot pretentious mess. Alphaville is the kind of movie that is great to be able to say you have seen, but not all that great to actually sit through.

(I have a feeling this is going to make it much harder to talk Lawrence and everyone else into seeing Made in U.S.A.. Indeed, Lawrence commented as I was leaving last night that next week, we need to watch “something where stuff blows up”.)

(And no great shock here, but my guess was right: you can buy Alphaville buttons online. However:

1. Lawrence isn’t a button person.
2. $6.25 seems steep to me, especially given that…
3. …most of the things I’ve ordered from Zazzle have been disappointing, especially t-shirts.

Maybe if there’s a button maker at Worldcon I’ll get some done. Goddard won’t mind me infringing his copyright, will he? If he does, it isn’t like he has any room to complain.)

Having clicked through to the article and read it, my reaction is somewhat different: it is actually an interesting survey of Pakistan’s problems, as reflected by the state of the national rail system. That state is dysfunctional.

At every major stop on the long line from Peshawar, in the northwest, to the turbulent port city of Karachi, lie reminders of why the country is a worry to its people, and to the wider world: natural disasters and entrenched insurgencies, abject poverty and feudal kleptocrats, and an economy near meltdown.

Chronic electricity shortages, up to 18 hours per day, have crippled industry and stoked public anger. The education and health systems are inadequate and in stark disrepair. The state airline, Pakistan International Airlines, which lost $32 million last year, is listing badly. The police are underpaid and corrupt, and militancy is spreading. There is a disturbing sense of drift.

An argument about the merits of various leaders erupted between a Pashtun trader, traveling to Karachi for heart treatment, and an engineer who worked in a military tank plant. “We’ve tried them all,” the engineer said with an exasperated air. “All we get are opportunists. We need a strong leader. We need a Khomeini.”

One thing towards the end of the article lept out at me: “Nazir Ahmed Jan, a burly 30-year-old and an unlikely Pakistani patriot” lives in Karachi. He migrated to the city in 2009, and makes a living…

…selling “chola” — a cheap bean gruel — as he guided his pushcart through the railway slum. It earned him perhaps $3 a day — enough to feed his two infant children, if not much else.

So? Mr. Jan also writes patriotic Pakistani poetry. Still “so?”

He had contacted national television stations, and even the army press service, trying to get his work published, he said, folding a page of verse slowly. But nobody was interested; for now the poetry was confined to his Facebook page.

His Facebook page?

In the corner of his home was a battered computer, hooked up to the Internet via a stolen phone line.

Wow. So even desperately poor people in a desperately poor kleptocracy can get Internet access and have Facebook pages? Not really a shocker, but worth noting next time someone starts talking about the technology gap between rich and poor.

On a tangentially related note, something else that should not have surprised me but did. Last night’s SDC was at one of the growing breed of “fast casual” Indian places. (Review to come.) The big screen TV on the wall was showing Indian cricket.

That wasn’t the surprise. I think you’re hard pressed to find that on US television, even if you have DirectTV, but I know there are satellite TV providers that target the Indian population in the US.

What surprised me, and, in retrospect, shouldn’t have, was: discovering that there is such a thing as “fantasy cricket“. After all, there’s fantasy football, fantasy hockey, fantasy basketball, and cricket really isn’t that far from baseball, so why not fantasy cricket? I guess it surprises me because I hadn’t really considered the idea until it was thrust in my face; now that I have, well, it is interesting, but I won’t be assembling a fantasy cricket team this year.

News: Assemblyman Lopez is resigning rather than fighting the charges.

FARK: Soon to be former Assemblyman Lopez plans to run for a seat on the NYC City Council.

The Assembly has not expelled anyone since it ejected five socialists in the early 1920s.

About a month ago, I noted the money laundering and gambling charges against Hillel Nahmad, a prominent member of the NYC art scene. Over the past two days, the NYT has run two longish articles going into more detail about the Nahmad accusations:

1. Shocked, shocked I am to find out that high-stakes gambling goes on in NYC.
2. “Information about how the family’s art business actually works has been difficult to pin down. In several settings, the Nahmads have described a company called the International Art Center as their base of art transactions. But in a federal suit last year the Nahmads sought to deny any legal connection between themselves and the center. Lawyers for the other side in that case said they were not even able to determine where the International Art Center was incorporated. A Christie’s invoice in the case showed the center’s location as Switzerland, but the auction house redacted the city and precise address before entering the document into court records. In a deposition in another lawsuit, Helly Nahmad said the International Art Center was based not in Switzerland but in Panama.”

Meanwhile in Utah, the West Valley City Police Department has problems.

Prosecutors have tossed out 125 criminal cases. Dozens of convictions may have to be re-examined. The F.B.I. is investigating the Police Department and several officers.

It all started when two undercover officers shot and killed a 21-year-old woman.

As police investigators combed through the crime scene, they popped opened the trunk of the car belonging to Detective Shaun Cowley — one of two narcotics officers who had been on the scene of the shooting. Inside, they found drug paraphernalia and items linked to previous drug cases.

More:

They found that officers had mishandled evidence and had placed tracking devices on suspects’ cars without getting necessary warrants. Confidential informers had been misused. In some cases, officers had removed trinkets like necklaces or candles from the scene of drug arrests as “trophies.” In a few instances, drugs and money were missing.

And:

The pattern was repeated in case after case, defense lawyers said: When they decided to challenge drug charges rather than accept a quick guilty plea, West Valley City folded up the cases. Then the district attorney, after reviewing hundreds of cases, began dismissing them by the dozen, saying he could not successfully prosecute them.