Before we start in on this week’s TMQ, we want to note a story from today’s New York Times that bothers us. We think it is appropriate to talk about here, as it deals with things TMQ has been hammering on as well. After the jump, we’ll get started…
Archive for October, 2012
TMQ watch: October 23, 2012.
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012Weirdness.
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012
This is a “chocolate pudding parfait” I purchased from our little lunch spot/snack bar downstairs at work.
It kind of looks like they had some issues with the topping.
Indeed, I might even go so far as to say that they were having…whipped cream difficulties.
(Thank you. I’ll be here all week.)
Formula 1 is slightly less heckish.
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012I wrote previously about the proposals to close large swaths of downtown streets, including Congress Avenue, so people could party when Formula 1 came to town.
We have a deal. The Congress Avenue proposal (from an independent promoter) has been dropped, and that festival is merging with the official F1 “Fan Fest”.
Unfortunately, Congress Avenue is still going to be closed, but it looks like the closures will be for a shorter period than under the original “Experience Austin” proposal.
This sounds like a fine idea to me, assuming there is an F1 race here in 2013. I wouldn’t recommend counting that chicken until it hatches, though.
Speaking of things that make me want to go full Nelson…
Monday, October 22nd, 2012…in the “Ha ha!” sense:
Parking in New York City is also expensive. Especially near Yankee Stadium on game days.
Good news: there’s a train! And a subway!
Bad news for the people who own the parking lots: they didn’t plan on having a train stop near the stadium.
More:
I find myself wondering where “new revenue” is going to come from, unless BPDC blows up the train and subway tracks. Come to think of it, this is New York; they could probably find a couple of guys who’d do that for a price.
Interestingly, the city’s Industrial Development Agency issued the bonds for BPDC, but the city does not have to pay if BPDC defaults. I’m not clear on how that works. But, “the company owes the city $25.5 million in rent and payments in lieu of taxes accumulated since 2007.”
Also, just to be clear: BPDC is a separate company from Satan’s minions, the New York Yankees. The Yankees don’t own the parking and have no say over it. Which is a shame; at least the Yankees could manage a team into the playoffs, so why not let them have a shot at parking?
Banana republicans watch: October 22, 2012.
Monday, October 22nd, 2012Gas is expensive in California.
Gee, I wonder why that is?
You don’t say? Tell us more, Los Angeles Times.
But why doesn’t someone come into the California market and open new refineries? Or re-open some of the mothballed ones?
By the way:
Obit watch: October 22, 2012.
Monday, October 22nd, 2012Russell Means, controversial Indian activist, actor, Libertarian Party presidential candidate, and vice-presidential nominee during Larry Flynt’s attempt to get the Republican nomination in 1984, has died. (LAT. NYT.)
Noted:
How’s that working for you?
I thought I’d give the George McGovern obits a day, which is why I didn’t post them on Sunday. For the record: NYT. LAT. WP.
Also worthy of immortalization.
Monday, October 22nd, 2012Another exchange from the weekend:
Me at the gun show, looking at a Remington XP-100: When I was six years old, I thought that was the coolest gun in the world.
My nephew: Why?
Me: Because I was six years old.
My nephew: (nods sagely, as if this actually makes sense to him).
(I still want an XP-100 chambered in the original .221 Fireball caliber. The one we were looking at was rechambered to .223, which I will admit is a lot more practical. However, the asking price on it was $1,300, which is much more than I’m willing to pay.)
(I also want a S&W Model 53, even though .22 Jet is even more impractical than .221 Fireball. I keep meaning to sit down and do the math to determine if you could actually do a .221 Fireball conversion of a Smith; off the top of my head, I think the cartridge length would require an N-frame or X-frame sized cylinder, so it wouldn’t exactly be a compact field gun like the Jet…)
Art, damn it, art! watch (#32 in a series).
Monday, October 22nd, 2012Once upon a time, there was an art gallery in New York City called Knoedler & Company.
Knoedler & Company made more than a fair amount of money selling art. As a matter of fact, they made a lot of money selling art supplied by one dealer, Glafira Rosales.
But there are some problems. Ms. Rosales’s “collection of works attributed to Modernist masters has no documented provenance and is the subject of an F.B.I. investigation.” One of the works that passed through her hands, a Mark Rothko painting, was sold by Knoedler for $8.3 million dollars, and has now been declared a fake.
Knoedler stopped selling works from Rosales in 2009, and immediately started losing money. They closed in 2011.
Juxaposition.
Monday, October 22nd, 2012I’m glad folks are out there doing this: cancer sucks. However, the Statesman doesn’t discuss how this figure differed from last years: did they get about the same number of riders, more, or less?
Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong is no longer a Tour de France winner. I wish I had something profound and insightful to say about this, but I need time to think.
Quote of the weekend
Sunday, October 21st, 2012From dinner Friday night:
I was going to buy you a book, but I figured you already had one.
–my mother
(This is somewhat more amusing if you’ve seen my library. What she meant was that she had considered buying this
I would post a runner-up quote of the weekend, but:
- It would mostly be incomprehensible screaming, and
- I wasn’t there for it, since I left my sister’s house shortly before the end of regulation in the Texas Tech – TCU game. Between that and the UT game, I have to ask; has defense become a lost art?
Breaking!
Friday, October 19th, 2012Big Tex, the iconic symbol of the State Fair of Texas, has apparently caught fire and burned to the frame.
A friend of mine sent me a Facebook link to photos of the fire, which is also being reported by a Dallas TV station. However, I do not have any working links yet.
Edited to add: HouChron. Statesman. WFAA (probably has the best photos so far). Dallas Morning News.
Your Austin nightclub legal update: October 19, 2012.
Friday, October 19th, 2012When last we left the Brothers Yassine, two of them had been convicted of money laundering; the third brother, commonly known as “Steve” had been acquitted on the money laundering charge, but still faced drug charges.
The Statesman is reporting that “Steve” just pled guilty to a single drug charge, with the prosecution recommending a year and day sentence (with credit for time served). All of the remaining drug and weapons charges against him will be dropped under this plea agreement.
Additionally, “Steve” will be deported after he serves his time.
Banana republicans watch: October 18, 2012.
Thursday, October 18th, 2012We may need a banana republicans police blotter, too.
The mayor of the city of Hawthorne has been charged with two counts of perjury.
The charges against Juarez allege that he took a $2,000 cash contribution from the manager of a Gold’s Gym in Hawthorne, and didn’t report it. This was in 2010:
Which makes me say, “Gold’s Gym needed a $2.5 million loan from a municipal government to open? They couldn’t get a private loan? Doesn’t that…I don’t know…tell you something?”
Salari, also indicted, allegedly “loaned” Noguez $180,000, and contributed $5,000 to his campaign. The indictment apparently alleges that the contribution and the “loans” were actually bribes; supposedly, bank records show that repayment of the “loans” started after the LAT began asking questions.
(The third person indicted is Mark McNeil, Noguez’s aide.)
Random notes: October 18, 2012.
Thursday, October 18th, 2012Now that we’ve had the better part of a day, here’s the Statesman‘s coverage of Lance Armstrong’s resignation, as well as his dumping by Nike, Trek, Radio Shack, and 24-Hour Fitness.
On the other hand, the Ride for the Roses (Livestrong’s major annual event) is coming up this weekend; did that cause a donation spike, or is the increase in donations over and above the normal run-up to the event?
The HouChron has been running articles on events at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. There’s a controversy over the organization’s grant approval process: the organization gave M.D. Anderson an $18 million grant to work on commercial production of cancer drugs, over the objections of various scientists who did scientific reviews and grant evaluations for the institute. Now, the agency’s two leading scientific officers (both of whom are Nobel laureates) and all of the other reviewers have resigned.
By the way, CPRIT is a state agency, established by a constitutional amendment in 2007, and funded with $3 billion in state issued bonds. And guess who was behind the campaign for CPRIT?
Newsweek has snuffed it. At least in print. The magazine is going all digital, which should be interesting; why would I pay for a subscription to a magazine that summarizes all the news I read online the week before?
Random notes: October 17, 2012.
Wednesday, October 17th, 2012This is just breaking, and I’ll probably have more to say about it later: Lance Armstrong is leaving his position as chairman of the Livestrong charity.
(I still haven’t had time to go through the USADA report. Sorry.)
Meanwhile, we have a couple of interesting things from the NYT:
There’s a longish piece about the “Rebecca” case, focusing on Ben Sprecher and how he claims he got taken.
More:
Somebody really wanted to believe. Either that, or there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Have you ever wondered where escargot come from? If you order them in many restaurants, they were probably imported from France in a can. But if you order them in a higher-end restaurant…
…the NYT has a profile of Mary Stewart, snail rancher.
J. Peterman, call your office, please.
($39.75 a pound.)