Archive for March 30th, 2012

“I haven’t laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.”

Friday, March 30th, 2012

Current TV fires Keith Olbermann.

,,,the network was “founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers [and] these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann.”

Raise your hand if you didn’t see this coming the moment his hiring was announced. Oh, wait: Ray Charles could have seen this coming.

But it gets better. Would you like to know who is replacing Keith Olbermann? Why, none other than Eliot “Client Number 9” Spitzer himself!

And if you’d like to read Olbermann’s response, you can find it here.

(And subject line hattip here.)

Random notes: March 30, 2012.

Friday, March 30th, 2012

I don’t mind eels

Except as meals.

And the way they feels.

—Ogden Nash

(One of our local restaurants has a poster of that poem hanging in the men’s room, which I’ve always found kind of odd. Personally, I’m very fond of eel sushi, and would be very happy to try elvers.)

Obit watch: Harry Crews. (NYT. A/V Club.) I haven’t read any of his work, though I had heard of him. With descriptions like “the unofficial poet laureate of bare-knuckled, white-trash culture” and “a world of hard-drinking, punch-throwing, snake-oil-selling characters whose physical, mental, social and sexual deviations render them somehow entirely normal and eminently sympathetic”, I may have to give the man a try. He almost sounds like a mainstream version of Charles Willeford.

The HouChron has apparently fired society writer Sarah Tressler for the grievous crime of…being a stripper in her spare time.

“The idea of somebody outing me, seemed like it would be like such a mean thing to do that I never thought anybody would do it.”

You know, I’m kind of in agreement with that. Really, what was the point, Houston Press? Page views for your dying alt-weekly?

Setting that to one side for the moment, the HouChron hasn’t had good luck with society writers recently; Douglas Britt, who covered both society and art for the paper, left after he basically went crazy (or was driven crazy by the Art Guys).

Question for the huddled masses: what is the point of having a “society” reporter any longer? I know it sounds kind of class-warfare-ish, but it seems to me that “society” is basically code for “an in-group of rich people who get together and admire each other, and occasionally raise money for their favored charities”. What is the point of continuing to give news coverage to these people? If an event is newsworthy, such as an art opening, let the writers on that beat (art, music, etc.) cover it. Why assign a writer to basically stroke the egos of the “beautiful” people?

Final note: the gun blogger who went by “Newbiuspassed away suddenly this week. He wasn’t somebody I knew at all; our paths never crossed (I wish they had), though I did hear him a few times on Vicious Circle. By all accounts, he was a good man, and shall be missed. Jay G. is posting tributes here.