A poll, for your amusement.
December 28th, 2010TMQ Watch: December 28, 2010.
December 28th, 2010TMQ has his party bus, WCD has our party van. Let’s get this party started, shall we?
Quote of the day.
December 28th, 2010By way of Daring Fireball, in a roundabout way (and, yes, it is kind of old, but it still tickled my gigglebox):
From Jon22, a site I was previously unaware of, but which I am now considering adding to the blogroll. I actually had a lot of trouble picking just one quote of the day from his site: there was also “Rob Enderle is the Sarah Palin of the technology world, minus all the fun jokes about the front-door view of Russia.” and “I find myself expanding the English language to properly encompass the unremitting catastrophe that is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest work, inventing words like omnihorrific and vomitacious and spectacuturd.“
Kubiak watch (and other stupid norts spews).
December 28th, 2010One HouChron writer says “Fire him now; don’t let him coach the final game.”
Another HouChron writer says “Firing him now is pointless.”
Meanwhile, the fans are restless and organizing a “Fire Kubiak” rally for Sunday.
And in today’s bulletin from a failing chain of restaurants desperately crying out for relevance, T.G.I. Friday’s is apparently lobbying to have their particular style of bartending (which has a name that I will not dignify by giving it here) made an Olympic sport.
L’affair Bell.
December 28th, 2010The LAT has a longish summary of how the city of Bell got to where it is today, along with some background on Robert “Ratso” Rizzo.
A few choice quotes:
Hmmm. Perhaps someone should have been reading documents.
…
Wait a minute. There was a former mayor who did time? That’s an interesting detail I don’t recall hearing before.
Quick update.
December 27th, 2010We previously noted the Chapter 11 filing of Mangia Pizza.
Word comes to us now that the Guadalupe location has closed. As far as we know, the other locations are still open. (As a matter of fact, we had an…interesting meal at the Mesa location a few days before Christmas.)
Crimestoppers!
December 27th, 2010What a day! Once again, we get to combine two more pet obsessions: food and the police blotter!
The Grinch, or someone equally mean, has stolen the main trailer of Lucky J’s Chicken & Waffles, an establishment we have not yet had the chance to try.
Luckily for Lucky J’s, they do have a second trailer (and I thought they were opening a sit-down eatery on Burnet as well), but in the meantime, please be on the lookout for a trailer that looks something like this:
The actual trailer, as far as I know, does not have a hand holding a giant plate of chicken and waffles in front of it.
Edited to add 12/28: Put a leash back on the dagron. The trailer has been found. You may resume normal activities.
Edited to add 12/28 part 2: An arrest has been made.
Updates from the Department of Mixology.
December 27th, 2010I did want to note the updated “Perfect Martini” recipe from Jim Coudal at Coudal Partners. I’m impressed with the seriousness of intent expressed in the recipe, and the background material about the changes in Nolly Prat is interesting. (Nolly Prat is our preferred vermouth, but we’ve been looking for others, and will have to give the Dollin a try.)
However, I am automatically skeptical of any “perfect martini” recipe that calls for vodka. While I allow room in my universe for the vodka martini, I do so reluctantly; the “perfect martini” should be gin-based. (I am especially skeptical when the recipe refers to a specific brand of vodka. Vodka, by definition, is a neutral grain spirit, so what the author is really saying is “I prefer the impurities in Belvedere Vodka to those in other vodkas.”)
Coudal’s “Friday Drink Links” looks like a good cache of stuff to browse, though.
(Hattip: Daring Fireball.)
And among the things Santa brought me was a copy of The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto
Art, damn it, art! watch. (#19 in a series)
December 27th, 2010Even better, I can tie two threads together!
Chinese artist Zhu Cheng has sculpted a replica of the Venus de Milo.
Zhu Cheng is from Chengdu, which is also the home of China’s leading panda breeding reserve. Why is that significant? Guess what material Cheng used for his sculpture.
Singularity watch.
December 27th, 2010Wait, did I say “singularity”? I meant “Singletary”. As in Mike Singletary, out as 49ers coach.
In other firing related news, Gary Kubiak has lost Richard Justice. Not just “fire him”, but “fire him now, before next week’s game”.
Today’s bulletin from Bizarro World.
December 24th, 2010I’m a little behind on this due to last minute shopping, but I think it is worth noting.
Late last night, an APD officer shot and killed a man after a foot pursuit. The officer and his partner originally were trying to make a traffic stop; the suspect fled, the officers pursued on foot, the officer in question found the suspect, the suspect stabbed the officer in the neck (with a knife he took from the officer’s duty belt), and the officer fired one killing shot. (The officer is still in the hospital.)
This is weird enough to be noteworthy; things like this don’t happen very often in Austin. But the story gets even stranger; the dead guy was Maurice Pierce.
For those of you outside of Austin, or those who don’t remember, Maurice Pierce was one of four men who were charged in the 1991 murders of four teenage girls at a yogurt shop in north Austin.
The “yogurt shop murders” were, and are, a big deal in Austin. So far, nobody’s been convicted in these murders; the case against Pierce was dropped when prosecutors said they didn’t have enough evidence against him. One other suspect was freed before trial; the other two suspects stood trial, were convicted, and had their convictions overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals due to “unexplained DNA” that didn’t match any of the four suspects.
I’m not sure what to make of this; Pierce had earlier violent run-ins with APD and Lubbock police officers, according to the Statesman. Clearly, he wasn’t a choir boy, but nobody’s been able to come up with enough evidence to pin the murders on him. The only thing it seems like we can say is that this is going to make the truth about the murders much harder to find; I’m hoping APD doesn’t seize on this as a chance for “exceptional clearance“.
We’ve lost our lease! Everything must go!
December 23rd, 2010Okay, technically, the Chinese government has actually extended the lease on the National Zoo’s pandas while they try to work out a new deal. But did you know that there was a lease, and it had expired?
There’s something odd about that.
Blogging this also gives me a chance to bring up the odd conversation I had with my brother a few weeks ago; for some reason, he really seems to hate the giant panda. Part of his anti-panda rant included the statement that “any animal that can’t breed without assistance deserves to become extinct”. Which actually makes some sense, but the venom with which he delivered this was striking; the only other thing I can think of that he hates that much is seafood.
Poor, poor Prichard…
December 23rd, 2010I’m sure TJIC will have a lot more to say about this story, (Edited to add: Ha! Told you so!) but there was one thing in the NYT article about Prichard, Alabama that jumped out at me.
Basically, the city’s pension plan has run out of money, so they’ve just simply stopped paying people. And because this is a municipal government, they aren’t subject to the same laws that private plans are: there’s no PBGC coverage, for example. (It does seem that it is illegal for the city to just decide to stop sending checks, but it is unclear from the NYT article what anyone is planning to do about it.)
Anyway, much like the LAT coverage of Maywood, the NYT spends a good bit of space tugging at the heartstrings, and glosses over some significant facts. The first small warning flag pops up in paragraph five: “The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual — the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice”
But the flares don’t go off until paragraph 18:
Yeah, municipal pensions are a ticking time bomb. But wouldn’t the NYT have been better served by profiling a city without a history of mismanagement and corruption?
Obit watch.
December 22nd, 2010Well covered elsewhere, but for the sake of the record, Steve Landesberg. Yeah, I liked Dietrich better than any of the other guys (except maybe Nick Yemana).
Also: “Old Man” is dead at the age of 32.
If you haven’t seen Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
And Amazon’s prices on the first season
Breaking news!
December 21st, 2010Man, I wish I had one of those Drudge Report siren things to put up here.
Anyway, Katz’s Deli, an Austin institution famous for their slogan “Katz’s Never Kloses”, is closing January 2nd.
I need to get down there before the 2nd. They did a really good breakfast. And this reduces the number of Thanksgiving/Christmas Day dining options by one.
(Hattip: Mom.)
(Edited to add: A.T. actually sent this to me at 1 PM today, beating Mom by 2 hours and 38 minutes. However, Mom sent it to one of the accounts that goes to my phone, while A.T. sent it to an account I don’t read until I get home at night. So Mom gets the hattip, but A.T. gets an acknowledgment.)