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Formula 1 is heck.

Saturday, September 8th, 2012

At least it will be in downtown Austin in November.

“But they aren’t racing in downtown!” No, they’re not. The racetrack is out near the airport.

But the city is considering three applications that involve closing downtown streets for up to a week during the festivities. The closures would include seven blocks of Congress Avenue, the main downtown artery.

Twenty-eight blocks in the area between Lady Bird Lake, Interstate 35, MLK Jr. Boulevard and Lavaca Street would see full closures, some beginning on Tuesday evening before the race and extending until the following Tuesday, and four other blocks would have some lanes closed. Three of the closures wouldn’t end until the Tuesday after all the sleek cars have headed to the next race on the international circuit.

The next question: who and why? The people who are organizing the race have requested two of the three pending closures.

…requested lane closures on Trinity between East 15th Street and East MLK from Friday through Sunday of that week for the scores of shuttle buses that will ferry fans to and from the race. There will also be similar operations at the Travis County Exposition Center and at another yet-to-be announced location.
“They’ll be loading 12 buses at a time,” said Gordon Derr, assistant director of the City of Austin’s Transportation Department. “There may be one through-lane open, which we may close intermittently.”

I’m actually semi-okay with this. I’m not sure they need to close the entire street, but I’ve never tried to run shuttle busses for 30,000 people. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Next:

…centered on the Warehouse District west of Congress, will be the site of Fan Fest, which will “celebrate Formula One the sport,” circuit spokeswoman Julie Loignon said Thursday.
Loignon said the Fan Fest, which will run from the evening of Friday, Nov. 16, through early Monday, Nov. 19, will feature music, food vendors and other elements that she declined to specify. Circuit officials plan to announce details of the event in the coming weeks, she said.
If the permit is granted as currently contemplated, Congress between Second and Fifth streets would close in stages starting Thursday evening, Nov. 15, and would open before rush hour on Monday, Nov. 19. Parts of West Second, Third, Fourth and Colorado streets would also be closed for several days.

I’m less wild about this: it seems like fan wankery for the eurotrash that come in for these kind of events. But it is in the Warehouse District, and they’re only asking to close a few blocks of Congress for what amounts to a long weekend. Number three:

The other pending closure application is for Experience Austin, a festival organized by Run-Tex that will run through the race weekend. It would close Congress from Seventh to 11th streets, as well as parts of Eighth, Ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th and Colorado streets. Some of those closures would last almost a week because of the time required for setup and breakdown of the festival.

Alexandra Stewart, community events coordinator for Run-Tex, said it will be “your typical Austin street festival,” with food, drink, music and artists. “Think Pecan Street.”

Pecan Street doesn’t close Congress Avenue for a week, you maroon! And why do we need both this and the “Fan Fest”? I can’t see a good reason, except that “Experience Austin” sees a way to make a few bucks by screwing up downtown traffic for a week.

In case you were wondering:

By comparison, at this year’s SXSW Music Festival, 36 downtown blocks were fully closed, most for four days. Those closures did not include Congress Avenue.

I’ve got some frequent flyer miles on the former Continental Airlines. Cleveland in November is beginning to sound nice.

Posted in Austin, Cars, Clippings, Politics, Sports | 3 Comments »

TMQ Watch: August 28, 2012.

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

We are having trouble coming up with a clever introduction for this week’s TMQ, so let’s just jump right into the NFC preview, shall we?

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Posted in Cars, Music, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Is it just me…

Friday, August 17th, 2012

…or does P90X sound more like a product of FN (probably a bullpup chambered in .250-3000) or a Volvo sport-utility vehicle than an exercise program?

Posted in Cars, Guns, Wondering | Comments Closed

Random notes: August 15, 2012.

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

I think today is going to be a day for food writing. I have a longer post planned about last night. But in the meantime, here are some random things for you to chew on.

The NYT has made several discoveries:

  1. There are places outside of Manhattan, and even outside of New York state, with exotic names like “Iowa”.
  2. People in those exotic places sometimes gather during the summer, in what are called “state fairs”.
  3. At those “state fairs” you can purchase food items on sticks.

(Quote from the slide show attached to the article: “The fascination with food on a stick is difficult to explain, but it usually means a 30 to 40 percent increase in sales.”)

(I would really like to know how well the vegetarian corn dogs are selling.)

Speaking of food, today would have been Julia Child’s 100th birthday. Expect festivities around the web, starting with the NYT.  I kind of like Julia Moskin’s “The Gifts She Gave” and Jacques Pépin’s “Memories of a Friend, Sidekick and Foil“.

(I note, with some bitterness, that our local PBS station is showing something called “Julia Childs [sic]  Memories: Bon Appetit” tonight. I say “some bitterness” because a) I expect this to not show any complete recipe preparations, from start to finish, and b) our local PBS station is in the middle of a pledge drive, so I expect constant “give us money” interruptions.)

Something I noticed over the weekend: the French Quarter Grille has opened a second location. In Round Rock. Specifically, in the old Gumbo’s location. Hmmmmm.

Obit watch for the record: Ron Palillo, “Horshack” on “Welcome Back, Kotter”.

The LAT has apparently discovered that used car dealers are…used car dealers.

From mid-2008 to this April, 862 licensed used-car dealers — about 1 in 8 statewide — sold at least one vehicle three or more times, The Times has found.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Food, Law, Obits, On a stick, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

After action report: Boise, ID.

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

This is going to be more like a collection of random notes towards an AA report than an actual report. I do plan on a longer more thoughtful blog post later; probably this weekend, if everything works out the way I want it to. (I’m waiting for something to come in, and I need to go out to my mother’s place to take some pictures.)

  • You can do blog posts from the Kindle Fire. I wouldn’t recommend it, and there are some issues with the WordPress interface on the Kindle, but in a pinch it can be done. And it is better than trying to post from a smart phone.
  • On the other hand, I was at dinner one night with some friends. One of them was talking about a new gun he’d bought, but wasn’t sure what variant it was. He (and several other people at the table) were very impressed when I whipped out the Kindle Fire open to the appropriate section of the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson 3rd Edition. At least one person said, “That’s it. I’ve got to get one.” Yeah, I like having the Kindle Fire.
  • Speaking of books, I started and finished The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl on the way up. Tam has written about this book previously, and anything I could add except “go read it” would be superfluous.
  • Supposedly, according to the TSA, you no longer have to take out your laptop if it is under 12″. At least, that’s what I was told by a TSA agent in Austin (too late to do me any good) and the first TSA agent I spoke with in Boise. The second TSA agent in Boise apparently either didn’t get the memo, or the other two were wrong. Good old government ineptitude.
  • I feel obligated to link to this Oatmeal comic.
  • I had a lot of good food in Boise. Other than Bar Gernika and the Moxie Java on Chinden, I had a fantastic breakfast (as in, one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had) at a small place called Goldy’s in downtown Boise, and a very nice meal off the prix fixe menu at Chandlers Steakhouse.
  • Speaking of Chandlers, some folks have been talking about martinis, so I thought I’d post this: Chandlers calls this “The ’33 Plymouth”; it is, of course, made with Plymouth gin and Nolly Prat vermouth. They do warn you that it takes 10 minutes to make one; I consider it worth the wait.
  • There was a restaurant near the hotel that I (sadly) did not make it to, but was notable for the carved wooden sign out front stating “Famous Prawns”. I am sufficiently geeky that whenever I saw that sign, all I could think of was “No prawns at this altitude!”
  • I find that what gets under my skin about travel these days is mostly the minor annoyances. The $3 bottled water in the room. (A buck or $1.50, maybe. That’s gas station price. And what do you suppose the gas station’s markup on bottled water is?) The lack of notepaper and envelopes. (Remember when hotels used to supply those? I know, everyone emails now, but an envelope is still useful to hold receipts and other bits of important loose paper.) Annoying WiFi networks. Etc.
  • Minor annoyances aside, I did like the staff and the facility at the Riverside Boise. (And at least the WiFi was free.) The cookie and milk/coffee break provided by the hotel on Friday was a particularly nice touch.
  • Anyone ever read Lawrence Block’s short story about Keller the hitman, “Answers to Soldier”? I understand how Keller felt about Roseburg; I feel much the same way about Boise. It reminds me a lot of Austin twenty years ago. (And, much like Keller, I have fantasies about moving almost every place I travel to. And then I end up going back to Austin…)
  • I was reliably informed that on Thursday (the first full day I was there, when we spent much of the afternoon tramping around the Old Idaho Penitentiary) the high was 92 degrees. Balmy by Austin standards, but the humidity was 6%. That would explain why I was drinking water like it was going out of style the whole time I was there…
  • As small town as Boise feels, it is big enough to have at least three gun stores. (There may be more, but the show host recommended three specifically.) I was able to visit two: the folks at Boise Gun Company were really nice, and have a huge selection. Cliff’s Guns, Safes, and Reloading seems to be a great place for reloading supplies; they didn’t have quite the new or used selection of Boise Gun Company, but did have a couple of interesting used guns. (On the other hand, $2,000 for a Model 16-4 strikes me as high. But I didn’t try to talk them down, what with being an out-of-state resident and all.) And the staff at Cliffs was perfectly pleasant to me, thankyouverymuch.
  • Sadly, I didn’t have a chance to search for used bookstores in Boise. I did look for bookstores in Ketchum and along the route between Boise and Ketchum, but didn’t see any. Oddly enough, I also didn’t see any gun stores along the route. (They probably would have been closed on Sunday, but I was specifically looking for both gun stores and book stores, just to satisfy my curiosity.)
  • Speaking of Ketchum and the general area around it, can you say “yuppie heaven”? I suspect if you planted magnets on old Ernie’s body and placed him inside a coil of copper wire, you could provide enough power to light all of downtown Ketchum at night.
  • On the other hand, the stretch of 51/20 between I-84 and 75 is an amazing drive. This is basically 82 miles of…well, nothing, except high desert country, farms and ranches, mountains, and lots of curvy mountain road. I have a track of the route I took, and may post it later so folks can get a feel for what the country looks like.
  • I haven’t been a big KIA fan, but the rental company gave me a KIA Forte, and it turned out to be a pretty swell car. It handled well on the road, got close to 30 MPG, and felt pretty stable at 85 MPH. Plus, it had two 12V sockets, an aux input, and a USB plug up front. I haven’t checked the Consumer Reports repair records, but the Forte might be worth looking at if you’re in the market for a 4-door sedan.
  • Boise seems to have nearly as many thrift stores as Austin, Mom. I didn’t see any Goodwill stores, though; the majority of thrift stores seemed to be affiliated with the “Idaho Youth Ranch“.

Posted in Beef, Books, Cars, Food, Geek, Guns, Kindleing, Mixology | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 6, 2012.

Friday, April 6th, 2012

Enough said.

Nigel Tufnel’s amps were Marshalls.

In a tribute on Twitter, Mötley Crüe’s bassist, Nikki Sixx, said Mr. Marshall had been “responsible for some of the greatest audio moments in music’s history — and 50 percent responsible for all our hearing loss.”

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Kleptocracy.

Monday, March 26th, 2012

I can’t honestly recommend that you use your limited number of free NYT stories this month to go over and read this article. After all, it is about an obscure non-profit hospital in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn; unless you live in that area, why should you care?

What piques my interest about this story, though, is the chain of…shall we say, questionable management decisions by the hospital. For example:

  • The hospital’s former president was hired in spite of the fact that he’d never managed a hospital before.
  • He drove a Bentley Continental GT to work. (Yes, he has the right to drive whatever he wants, but that’s a $160,000 car for an administrator at a non-profit hospital. As a side note, why would anyone in NYC drive a nice car? I know I’d be worried about mine getting trashed. I’d get a cheap beater; if I really wanted a nice car, I’d garage it outside the city and drive the beater in and out.)
  • The operative word there is “drove”. He had his license pulled, under circumstances he’s not forthcoming about, in 2009.
  • At that point, he parked the Bentley at the hospital and had the hospital take over the multi-thousand dollar insurance payment. (He says that he reimbursed the hospital, but I’m not clear if that has been confirmed yet.)
  • Then he started using the hospital’s vehicles, a Lincoln Town Car and a Cadillac Escalade, for his personal use. He used two security guards, who were being paid overtime pay, as drivers.
  • “…he suspected that the drivers of the Town Car and the Escalade were eavesdropping on his conversations. So he had the hospital purchase a used stretch limousine for about $33,000. “
  • “One member of the hospital’s board obtained for the pharmacy that he owned the exclusive right to market prescription drugs to hospital patients.” (Is it just me, or is that a really badly written sentence? I know: glass houses, stones.)
  • “Another board member lent $2.4 million to the ailing Wyckoff at 12 percent interest, with the hospital required to put up several of its buildings as security.”
  • “13 of the hospital’s 22 board members declared at least one conflict of interest.”
  • Various politicians have managed to get friends of theirs hired into high level positions. For example, one councilman’s wife is the PR director.
  • “The hospital all but defaulted on its $109 million in state-secured bonds, forcing the taxpayers to cover $10 million due to bondholders before the state agreed in May to defer the hospital’s overdue payments.”
  • “Wyckoff no longer even carries malpractice insurance. ” Holy. Crap.
  • I haven’t even mentioned the disbarred lawyer who graduated from a Caribbean medical school and got a residency at Wyckoff, even though the hospital didn’t have any openings for residents. (Can you say “John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, the Senate Democratic leader”?)

Side note: “The hospital recently sold the stretch limousine for $18,000; it had cost $33,000 eight months ago. It sold the Lincoln Town Car for $9,000 and hopes to get $18,000 for the Escalade.”

I’d really like to know what year that Escalade is. You have to go back to 2006 to find one in the $18K range around here (at least on cars.com). If we’re talking 2008 – 2009 or later, I’d seriously consider flying up to NYC and driving back.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

TMQ watch: December 13, 2011.

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Before we start in on this week’s TMQ, we wanted to throw up a link to this fine article on the University of Alaska Fairbanks rifle team. Shall Not Be Questioned linked this yesterday, but we didn’t get around to reading the article until we started prepping this week’s TMQ Watch. Now that we have, we commend it to your attention.

And now the jump…

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Posted in Cars, Clippings, NFL, Politics, Sports, TMQ watch | 4 Comments »

Still alive.

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Just not much to write about, and working on a final project for school.

I feel like I should write something about the Austin F1 race, but I don’t know what to make of the situation at the moment. It feels like a huge scam, but I can’t tell who is scamming who.

I also feel like I should write something about the passage of HR822, but:

  1. Other people said it better.
  2. Okay, so it passed the House. It still has to pass the Senate, and be signed into law. When it becomes law, then I’ll celebrate. But I think there’s still a long road to travel.

I also feel like I should write something about the Astros situation. Not that I care about baseball, but I have covered it before. The problem I have is that almost all of the coverage at this point is speculative; ask  me again after today’s meeting, when a final deal is (or is not) made.

Edited to add: Okay, it is now official. Jim Crane is the new owner of the Astros.

As part of the deal, Crane was required to give baseball the power to move the Astros to the American League West. That move is expected to happen in 2013, but won’t be finalized until the sport’s new collective bargaining agreement is in place.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Guns, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 17, 2011.

Monday, October 17th, 2011

I feel like I should say something about Dan Wheldon, but I don’t know what.

When I was a little kid, I was a big racing fan; I especially enjoyed watching the Indy 500. I still have a closet fondness for NASCAR: open-wheel racing kind of lost me with the whole CART/IndyCar debacle. But this is still just shocking and awful.

Surprising thing, though: the FARK threads have been more respectful than you’d think (this being FARK and all).

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

I want to ride in the car…

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

…John Wayne drove.

Earlier this week, Lawrence noted the Heritage auction of John Wayne’s stuff.

Today, the HouChron kindly informs us that one of John Wayne’s cars, a “1966 International TravelAll”, is for sale on eBay. The “Buy it now” price is a mere one million dollars.

In one of those “only in Texas” things, the car is actually owned by a state legislator from El Paso who says that he only drove it to church on Sunday a few hundred miles.

“It’s got the original seat that John Wayne passed gas on,” Pickett said.

Yeah. I think now we know why Rep. Pickett went into politics instead of sales.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

Black comedy.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Last night in my “20th Century: Triumph and Tragedy” class, we were talking about World War I and the capping of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the hapless Gavrilo Princip (who used a FN Model 1910 chambered in .32 ACP: yes, another John Moses Browning design).

One thing that I really wasn’t totally conscious of was that Princip was not acting alone; I think I read somewhere previously that someone had thrown a grenade at the archduke’s car, but missed, and filed that away deep in my subconscious.

Anyway, that someone was Nedeljko Čabrinović, who threw the grenade, missed the archduke’s car, hit the third car in the procession, and then…

To avoid capture, Čabrinović swallowed cyanide and jumped into the River Miljacka to make sure he died.

The blackly comic aspect of this is: the cyanide that Čabrinović, Princip, and the rest of the conspirators were carrying had expired, and all the pills did was make them vomit.

The river Čabrinović jumped into? It was 4 inches deep.

And, of course, the only reason Princip was able to shoot Ferdinand in the first place was that the Archduke’s driver turned down the wrong street, directly in front of Princip, and then stalled the car while trying to turn around. If Ferdinand had been in a Mercedes, would World War I have been averted? Or would it have been some other “damn thing in the Balkans“?

Posted in Cars, Guns, History, Loser | Comments Closed

Roadtrip!

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

Yesterday was the 2011 installment of the annual BBQ Road Trip. (Previously.) This year’s edition went out to Texas Pride Barbecue in Adkins, near San Antonio. (Sorry about the auto-play video on that website; I don’t like it any more than you do.) After the jump, photos and commentary.
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Posted in Beef, Cars, Food, Photography | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 29, 2011.

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

David E. Davis, Jr., former editor and publisher of Car and Driver and Automobile. (LAT obit.)

When I was in high school, I read the Davis Car and Driver religiously. It was full of great stuff: road tests of radar detectors, explanations of why the 55 MPH speed limit was wrong, my first exposure to P.J. O’Rourke (“Ferrari Refutes the Decline of the West”, which is still one of my favorite pieces of writing in, like, ever), Patrick Bedard…the list goes on.

Eighty’s a pretty good run for a guy who destroyed his face in an M.G. crash. Rest in peace, Mr. Davis. I hope you’re driving something fast on heaven’s equivalent of the Nürburgring.

This has been noted elsewhere, but here’s the NYT obit for Diana Wynne Jones. (Edited to add: here’s a short but nice tribute from Michael Dirda in the WP.)

Edited to add 2: Bill Crider had these first, but the deaths of Farley Granger and the mystery writer H.R.F. Keating are being reported. I’ll have more to say after better obits are published.

Posted in Books, Cars, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 8, 2011.

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Slow. Slow. Slow. And WordPress ate the first draft of this post. Argh. “Introduction to Literary Studies” is finished, but “Applications in Business Programming” fires up tonight.

So where were we?

Ken Hoffman in the HouChron on more rodeo food. The chocolate covered pickle makes us gag.

The NYT reports that Julie Taymor and the “Spider-Man” producers are “negotiating”. “Negotiating” in this case apparently means either “work with a newly expanded creative team” or “pack your <stuff> and get out”.

Speaking of art, damn it, art!, Lawrence has brought us happy news for those of you who own iPhones and are fans of Guy Debord, Karen Eliot, Monty Cantsin, and the Karen-headed Smile Monty (see also): there’s an app for that.

By way of Tam, we have learned that the Department of Homeland Security, which is apparently not satisfied with not actually catching terrorists, is going around confiscating Nissan Skylines. The Skyline is a car we were previously unfamiliar with, perhaps because it was never officially imported into the United States. One of Tam’s commenters provided this link to an excellent article about the rise and fall of a Skyline importer in California, which we commend to your attention.

Speaking of commenters, “Bob” (thanks, “Bob”) posted in this thread and provided a link with some new information about our good friend, the spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom. That link, in turn, led us to this one, which also has some good stuff about Sven. We were particularly amused by these two comments from LJWorld staff members:

…we restored Mr. Alstrom’s access to our website, despite having banned him more than a half dozen times previously.

and:

Should Sven Alstrom not be elected to the Lawrence City Commission, his current account will be banned.

Sven makes friends everywhere he goes, doesn’t he?

Posted in Art, Cars, Clippings, Food, Music, Politics, School, Theatre | Comments Closed

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