Interesting article in the NYT about the state of the Houston Grand Opera, focusing in particular on their recent productions of “Dead Man Walking” and “Lucia di Lammermoor”.
Good to know.
Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category
I’m not worried.
Thursday, February 10th, 2011Obit watch: February 10, 2011.
Thursday, February 10th, 2011Emory Bellard, former Texas, Texas A&M, and Spring Westfield football coach.
There’s nothing wrong with breast cancer awareness, but where are the colored mugs and other tchotkes for ALS?
Impressive.
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Actual HouChron headline:
Actual text of article:
I see the Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification is still in use.
Followup roundup for February 9, 2011.
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Staff Sergeant and Medal of Honor recipient Sal Giunta is leaving the military when his current tour ends in mid-June.
You know, if I ran a public (or private) university somewhere, I’d come up with the money to offer Sgt. Giunta a full free ride for four years. Maybe he’d be willing to work part-time, perhaps as a mentor to younger students who could use some help?
The NYT reports on the controversy over early “Spider-Man” reviews.
Lucky J’s Chicken and Waffles has opened their sit-down restaurant. Until I visited their website, I had no idea how tough these guys have had it. I knew about the trailer theft, of course, but the death of a child, divorce, and reconstructive hand surgery? This guy sounds like Austin’s own version of Job. I’m going to try Lucky J’s this weekend; not because of the suffering, but because I like the idea, and because it’s sort of on my usual weekend path. (Man does not live by Torchy’s Tacos alone. Though I have to admit, the new location on Burnet Road is much nicer than some of the others I’ve been to.) Full report to follow.
The LAT would like for you to know that cockfighting is bad, m’kay? And not just because people sometimes get stabbed to death by roosters with blades.
Obit watch: February 9, 2011.
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, has passed away.
I came in right at the end of the DEC era, and never really had a chance to work on a PDP-anything, a VAX, or a DEC-XX. (There was, at one point, a scheme to purchase a used PDP-8, but nothing ever came of that.)
I still smile, though, whenever I see a reference to one of those machines (or, for that matter, one of those machines in person at DEFCON).
In honor of the late Mr. Olsen, here’s a link to SIMH, which will let you emulate much of the DEC line.
Today’s bulletin from the Department of WTF? (#2 in a series)
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011If you want a pretty constant diet of WTF moments, the best thing you could do is subscribe to The Agitator‘s RSS feed. Be warned, though, that Balko’s collection of “WTF” moments is also likely to lead to an increase in your blood pressure.
Sometimes, something just jumps out at me from his site that goes beyond the usual “WTF” moments. This story is one of those moments.
Short summary: Barney Brown was arrested at the age of 14, tried in juvenile court for a rape and robbery, and acquitted. But that’s not the “WTF?” part. The prosecutor put him on trial again for the same crimes as an adult. He was convicted, and sent to prison for life.
This took place in 1969. Barney Brown served 38 years.
The fact that one trial took place in juvenile court and the second in adult court doesn’t matter. There is clearly settled case law on this; once Barney Brown was acquitted in juvenile court, jeopardy protections applied. The prosecutor had no authority, no right, no legal ground, and no business trying Barney Brown again in an adult court.
This is the kind of egregious misconduct by a prosecutor that, I believe, rises to a standard where the shield of “sovereign immunity” can, and should, be pierced. In a just world, that prosecutor (if he is still alive) would be in prison right now, and his assets would be signed over to Barney Brown.
Spider-Man, Spider-Man…
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011Oh, look! The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are upset that reviewers reviewed the show when it was still in infinite preview mode!
If you’ll excuse me a second, I’m going out and purchasing tiny violin futures.
And I’d argue that part of being a “professional” is not giving the people you cover the power to jerk you around that Feldman and other critics (including John Simon) seemingly want the “Spider-Man” producers to have.
Meanwhile, Patrick Healy has a more comprehensive roundup of reviews.
(Hattip to Jimbo for both of these.)
Random notes: February 8, 2011.
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011There are a couple of interesting things in the NYT this morning.
J. Paul Getty III passed away over the weekend. That’s a name (like Koo Stark, he said, tipping his hat in Lawrence’s direction) I hadn’t thought of in years. Getty was most famous as the victim of a kidnapping “by Italian gangsters” during which his ear was cut off. I knew he was something of a party animal, but I was unaware of his 1981 stroke (apparently the result of an overdose). I was also unaware that Balthazar Getty was his son.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles (and specifically LACMA) are trying to figure out how to maintain the Watts Towers, and how to get more tourists to a part of town that’s most famous for riots.
And the NYT has made their move:
Yes, this is a real review.
The fallout from the NYT decision should be interesting. The pin has been pulled from Mr. Grenade. He is no longer Ben Brantley’s friend. On the other hand, Charles McNulty in the LAT has Brantley’s back:
And it looks like Peter Marks in the WP is standing with Brantley and McNulty:
Charles Willeford
In other news, the WP has discovered (reporter with a database!) that people in “Washington’s safest, most well-to-do neighborhoods” have registered more guns than people in “poorer, crime-plagued areas of the city”. I may have more to say on this later, time permitting.
Edited to add: I was in a hurry to finish that last post and hadn’t got to the Statesman yet, unfortunately. I previously noted the fires at several Austin restaurants, including the Green Muse Cafe. (There was also a recent fire at Habana, which I didn’t note for reasons that escape me at the moment.)
Anyway, APD made an arrest:
Public service announcement.
Monday, February 7th, 2011The Texas Department of Transportation is doing some work this weekend at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard (aka Texas 71). Specifically, they’ll be working on some new flyovers in that area. I would embed a Google Maps image here, but apparently WordPress 3.0.4 has a bug with embedding iFrames. You can try clicking here.
Anyway, what does this mean to you, Al Franken? TXDOT is closing the entire freeway from “late Friday evening to early Monday morning”. Yes, you read that right, the entire freeway. They’re diverting traffic onto the access road:
If I lived in the area, I’d stock up on popcorn. This is going to be better than the zoo and the circus combined. As for the rest of us, I think staying far away from I-35 for the duration is the best course of action.
Random notes: February 7, 2011.
Monday, February 7th, 2011I know I’m “rooting for laundry”, but I have a certain fondness for the Green Bay Packers. A major reason for that is their unique ownership structure. The Packers are a public corporation, with stock and everything. (The NFL will not allow any other team to adopt this ownership structure; the Packers are grandfathered in. This is the kind of behavior by the NFL that would make me want my congressman to start asking questions, if I believed in that sort of thing.) Anyway, here’s a good New Yorker piece that explains how the Packers work in more detail. And yes, my black little heart is filled with delight today. (Hattip: Gruber.)
We have previously mentioned the death of General Vang Pao, and the question of whether he would be buried at Arlington. The answer to that question was “no”; the Pentagon turned down the family’s request. Mark Arax has a good piece in the NYT about the General’s funeral.
The Washington Post FAILS to make me testy.
Monday, February 7th, 2011(I’m not going to put a “Part 1” on that because this is probably the first and last time you will ever see those words together.)
Stephen Hunter, former WP movie critic and awesome thriller writer
(Hattip: Say Uncle. Actually, one of his commenters.)
(Edited to add: Better Say Uncle link here.)
Slow down, pussycat.
Monday, February 7th, 2011Obit watch: Tura Satana, of “Faster Pussycat!! Kill! Kill!
($31.99? Are they pressing the DVDs out of solid gold?)
William Gibson, call your office, please.
Saturday, February 5th, 2011I’ve been thinking a lot about cyberpunk, especially the early work of William Gibson, recently. So I was struck by this tale from the LAT. Apparently, at least according to Microsoft (and we all know how trustworthy Microsoft is) the “La Familia” drug cartel has branched out, and is selling…bootleg copies of Microsoft Office 2007.
The LAT article in turn links to this Microsoft blog post, which in turn quotes the Mexican Attorney General’s claim that “the group’s illegal counterfeiting activities involved a sophisticated distribution network of 180,000 points of sale in stores, markets and kiosks, earning more than $2.2 million dollars in revenue every day.”
I’m more than a little dubious about those numbers, and about the survey also mentioned in the blog post: “More than 38,000 consumers in 20 countries participated in the survey, and a large majority said they want the industry (72 percent) and government (65 percent) to do more to protect them from software piracy.”
Assumin the truth of these stories, this does not strike me as being a wise strategy for the drug cartels. I mean, ticking off the DEA is one thing. But ticking off Microsoft? Not smart, though perhaps not quite as dumb these days as making Google angry.
Obit watch: February 3, 2011.
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011Barney Hajiro.
Here’s Mr. Hajiro’s Medal of Honor citation:
Mr. Hajiro was nominated for the Medal of Honor at the time, but did not receive it until 2000, after a Pentagon investigation into why more Asian-Americans had not received the MoH.
“The Leonard Cohen of drinks”?
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011That’s the NYT‘s description of sake: “passionately adored by a small cadre of loyalists, but relegated to the category of ‘mysterious obscurity’ among the masses.”
In spite of this unfortunate metaphor, the actual article, about Japanese restaurants in Las Vegas that serve very high end sake, contains some interesting bits. For example, there’s Frozen Beauty sake, aged for 12 years in cold storage and selling for a mere $2,388 per (720 ml) bottle.
And let us not overlook Divine Droplets, “made by hanging canvas bags of fermenting mash in a handmade ice dome, during the frigid winter in the Hokkaido Prefecture, and patiently letting the sake filter out in a slow, pure drip.” That’s a mere $72 a bottle. (I am assuming that all of these bottles are 720 ml, but I’m not sure; the NYT annoyingly doesn’t specify.)