The classic definition is, of course, the guy who murders his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.
I think we may have a new one: the Fiesta Bowl wants their illegal campaign contributions refunded.
Chutzpah.
May 18th, 2011Man, that’s hardcore.
May 18th, 2011Writing about this makes me a little uncomfortable, but the weird factor supersedes. I’m not mocking the crucifixion of Christ here, for those of my readers of a religious bent.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself the same question I did (and the same question that came up during a recent dinner). I can see how you’d nail your feet, assuming you’re sufficiently limber, and one hand, but how do you get the other hand?
Uh, yeah.
I’m reminded of a story a certain individual used to tell when he was doing stand-up comedy about the late Henry Marshall. Mr. Marshall was a peripheral figure in the Billie Sol Estes scandal who was found dead one day next to his pickup truck. He’d been shot. Five times. In the chest. With a bolt-action .22 rifle. His death was ruled a suicide.
You’ve really got to want to kill yourself to shoot yourself five times in the chest with a bolt-action .22, or to drill holes in your hands and slip them over nails you’ve already put into the cross. I’d probably be rethinking my strategy shortly after driving a freaking nail through my feet, and certainly long before running a power drill through my hand.
The end of the Sahara.
May 18th, 2011Covered by the Las Vegas Sun. (To the best of my knowledge, it is only the Las Vegas Review-Journal that’s a Righthaven paper. If I’m mistaken, please correct me in comments.)
Hattip: Daring Fireball.
Pour out a fifth for the fourth.
May 18th, 2011First, the Indiana Supreme Court ignores hundreds of years of common law and asserts that there is no right to resist illegal entry by the police. I didn’t write about that decision because it’s been well written about here, here, and here, all by people much smarter than I am.
Next, the United States Supreme Court decides, 8-1 (!), that the police can basically create their own “exigent circumstances” in order to justify entering anyone’s home without a warrant.
And now, the RIAA is pushing for legislation that would allow warrantless searches of CD and DVD manufacturing plants. Apparently, if the police actually had to go to the trouble of getting a warrant, people making bootleg discs would flush them down the toilet…
Say what?
“wholesale fish dealers”?
Obit watch: May 17, 2011.
May 17th, 2011Harmon Killebrew. (What a great name. Why don’t parents give their kids names like “Harmon” any more?)
Yet another public service announcement.
May 17th, 2011Once again, our friends at TXDOT are closing I-35 at Ben White this weekend.
Fortunately, we’ve already picked our SDC venue, and it is almost as far away from that mess as we could get.
Sold!
May 17th, 2011Sorry, not really much to say beyond that.
Art, damn it, art! watch. (#21 in a series)
May 16th, 2011The LAT has a short, but interesting, article (tied to a book
I swear, I think I saw something very much like the Druzhba Sanatorium being used as the bad guy’s hideout in a James Bond film. As for the Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics…wow.
Meanwhile, by way of Popehat, I discovered this MSNBC article summarizing a study by some folks at Muhlenberg College (in Pennsylvania) involving…well, let’s just say it involves the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. I’ll leave it to the curious reader to click through for more details.
Sunday morning photo tinkering.
May 15th, 2011Messing around a little, so I decided to catch up on a couple of things I’d been intending to blog.
That was my present to myself for maintaing a 4.0 average: a Ruger .22/45. This should make a nice practice gun, and I got a good deal at Tex-Guns. There’s already a older Mark II in the family gun safe, but I like the idea of having a Ruger .22 pistol of my own. Also, I understand the .22/45 is a very hackable gun…
Also pictured: two things to make liberals angry. Left front, a 22-round .40 S&W magazine for my Glock 35. Right front, a 33-round 9mm Glock magazine. I don’t have a 9mm Glock at the moment, but I decided to go ahead and pick up one of each after the unfortunate events earlier this year. I placed the order on January 12th. It shipped April 27th.
Speaking of timing: I’d been hearing horror stories about how long renewals take through DPS. I sent in the paperwork for my CHL renewal on April 11th. My new license was in my PO box when I checked it on May 12th. (I’d previously checked it the Saturday before.) So that’s right around a month to process the renewal. And, except for the actual class, the process was relatively painless. I filled out the renewal completely online, TX DPS sent me a receipt page with a barcode, a list of paperwork I’d need, and a note “Send this in with the paperwork.” That’s all there was to it (except, again, taking the renewal class). Nice job, DPS.
Roadtrip!
May 14th, 2011Yesterday 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.
Read the rest of this entry »
How many bags of Tostitos will a million dollars buy?
May 12th, 2011The BCS oversight committee has rendered their decision in the case of the Fiesta Bowl. (See previous blog posts here, here, and here.)
And the decision is…the Fiesta Bowl stays in the BCS, but pays a one million dollar fine.
Also, there’s a bunch of happy horses–t about hiring outside auditors, doing an annual audit, “cut[ing] ties with board members who engaged in inappropriate behavior”. You know, the usual load of crap.
In other news, Captain Renault is shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on.
(Hattip: NRO‘s “Right Field” blog.)
Investigative reporting!
May 11th, 2011We were planning to try out Dominick’s Italian Restaurant in Lakeway this weekend. Dominick’s was formerly known as Ciola’s, but last year the Ciola family sold the restaurant. Lawrence was going to call ahead for reservations, but told me this afternoon that he didn’t get any answer when he called the phone seemed to be disconnected.
We had not seen this report from Rob Balon’s web site:
And I was in kind of a foul mood (for reasons unrelated to dining) and figured a drive out to Lakeway and dinner at Pao’s would help. (It didn’t, much.) Since Dominick’s was on the way, I could see for myself what was going on.
What was going on was that there was a lockout notice on the door, dated May 6, 2011, from a lawyer who apparently represents the former owners. It looks like Dominick’s was subleasing the space from the owners of Ciola’s (who, one can assume, are making their own lease payments to the owners of the space), and were locked out because they owed the following:
- $6,015.63 for May 2011 rent.
- $645.82 for April 2011 water bill.
- $2,882.64 as payment on a promissory note for April 2010.
- $6,382.64 as payment on a promissory note for May 2010.
- $278,420.16 as payment on a promissory note for July 2010 (!)
So apparently, Dominick’s has owed over a quarter of a million dollars for close to a year (according to Balon, the sale took place in July of 2010), Ciola’s let the money go this long, and finally moved to shut them down on one of the busiest dining out nights of the week. Interesting.
Also interesting is the amount of money. $275,000+ is a lot of money. As Lawrence put it, “Christ, for a quarter-million you should be able to easily open up your own restaurant just about anyplace but downtown Manhattan…”. I’ll admit to not being an expert on the restaurant business, but certainly $250,000 seems like it should be enough to open a restaurant, especially if you’re using an existing restaurant space (one that doesn’t need to be renovated to be brought up to code). And that’s just the amounts that were not paid; we have no idea how much money changed hands before signatures were affixed to contracts.
I’m not blogging this because I want to poke fun at either the new or old owners; I have some sympathy for both parties. But I think this is blog worthy for the insight it provides into restaurant economics. $6,000 a month for a moderately sized space in Lakeway? $650 a month just for water? How much spaghetti do you have to sell to bring in that kind of money?
(Oh, yeah: the new owners never bothered to change the large sign out in front of the center that said “Ciola’s”, though they did change the name on the awning in front of the building.)
Johnny’s been hurt. He’s been hurt bad.
May 11th, 2011Continuing on with the 70’s crime film theme, a group of us watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle
My own reaction to the movie is somewhat skewed. I’d read the book fairly recently, and thought it was fantastic. William Landay’s writeup for The Rap Sheet does a very good job of explaining everything I love about the book, particularly when he says
(Charlie Stella also has a nice tribute to Higgins at the same site.)
I think that my fondness for the novel colors my view of the movie. Peter Yates made one of the most faithful adaptations of a novel I’ve ever seen: pretty much every scene and every line is straight out of the book. (There are only three significant exceptions I can think of; the scene where Coyle delivers the guns to the trailer is cut short. Cutting that scene short sets up the final scene in the movie, which has a similarly nihilistic, but different, ending. There’s also a scene with Coyle and his wife that I think was inserted to make him somewhat more sympathetic.)
I got the impression that Lawrence and the other viewers were not as impressed, and I can see why. Like Mean Streets, Friends is very much a “slice of life” film. There’s more action in Friends, and I think much more going on in general. But the heart of both the movie and book is the window they give into the life of this small-time hustler, trying to make a living and stay one step ahead of the law but failing at both.
I loved the movie. Your mileage may vary.
Edited to add: Here’s Roger Ebert’s original review of the movie.
Why we should worry about the Chinese.
May 9th, 2011One word: diversification.
More:
Meth, coke, cigarettes, and missile systems? Most crooks specialize in one or two areas, but not Mr. Chen; he apparently wanted to be the Wal-Mart of smugglers. You’ve got to give the guy props for ambition.
Edited to add: Darn it, I just realized; if he had done something with booze (untaxed maotai?) he could have had the trifecta.
Captain Cranky wakes up and checks the newspaper.
May 9th, 2011On Friday, the Statesman was pushing a Sunday profile of Maurice Pierce.
“Who is Maurice Pierce?” you ask. You may remember him from this blog entry back in December, but if you don’t: Pierce was one of four men charged in the “yogurt shop” murders, had the charges against him dropped, and resurfaced back in December when he cut a cop’s throat and was shot dead.
Oddly enough, the promised profile never showed up either online or in the print editions of Sunday’s paper. I shall be keeping my eyes open; perhaps they decided to push it out a week for some reason.
In the meantime, our local paper brings us the happy news that SB905 passed the Texas Senate by a vote of 25-6. What would SB905 do?
As Lawrence said when I sent him this link, “Some animals are more equal than others.”
(I’m a wee bit skeptical about relying on the Speciman for coverage of this bill, but I can’t find anything on the TSRA web site.)
