David F. Friedman, film producer. You may remember him from such classic films as “Blood Feast”, “Two Thousand Maniacs”, “Trader Hornee”, and his masterpiece: “Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S.”.
Kenneth Mars, actor. You may remember him from the original version of “The Producers”. If not:
It has been said before, but apparently it needs to be said again.
Don’t put anything into an email that you would not want to see on the front page of your local newspaper.
This is especially true if your local newspaper is the LAT.
You may ask, what brings this on? I’m glad you did.
Remember Randy Adams? Former police chief of Glendale, California, who took a job as police chief of the city of Bell, at a much higher salary, while at the same time negotiating his disability pay from the city of Bell?
The LAT reprints some choice quotes from emails between Chief Adams and assistant city administrator Angela Spaccia. Quotes such as:
“I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money”.
and
As the LAT notes, the “Bob” in the above quote is Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator.
Speaking of Ratso, I meant to note this last week, but it got past me: Bell’s city clerk says that Ratso ordered her to give out false information about his salary, and the salaries of the city council members. Also worthy of note: the clerk testified under a grant of limited immunity. (“Use immunity”, which prevents the DA from using her testimony against her. That doesn’t mean she can’t be prosecuted if the DA finds evidence other than her testimony to use against her. I am not your lawyer, and neither is Wikipedia, but here’s a link that explains the difference between “use immunity” and “transactional immunity”.)
Edited to add: Slightly longer version of the story here.
TXDOT states that they’re planning to close I-35 at Ben White Boulevard again the weekend of February 25th.
Does anyone have any first-hand reports from this weekend’s closure they’d care to post? I tried to stay as far away from I-35 as I could; I saw one report in the Statesman of 15-minute delays at that intersection, but someone close to WCD stated they’d heard the delay was more like an hour.
“Hell yes. We have hundreds of people coming.”
—Danny Payne of III Forks, a steakhouse in downtown Austin, responding to the Statesman asking if he was going to be open tonight, after someone drove a car into the front entrance last night.
I have previously written about my interest in failure and failure analysis, so I feel compelled to link to this fine example of failure analysis:
Kirk Bohls and Randy Riggs on why the Texas Longhorns went 5-7 last season.
Some key points of failure:
(Speaking of bad Longhorn seasons, the question came up over the weekend: “What’s John Mackovic doing these days?” The answer to that is…weird, and kind of contradictory. His Wikipedia entry says he’s the head coach of “United States national American football team”, which apparently competes in something called the “American Football World Cup”. However, the Wikipedia entry for the “United States national American football team” shows Mackovic as the head coach for the 2007 team, and Mel Tjeerdsma as the coach for the 2011 team.)
…I live in Austin, Texas.
Spamming the comments in my blog with posts about your campaign for a City Commission seat in Lawrence, Kansas is a bad idea for the following reasons:
Hugs, kisses, and die in a fire Sven Alstrom you spamming scumbag. Sincerely, your friends at sportsfirings.com.
P.S. Strongly worded message follows.
Lucky J's menu.
I’ve had a couple of people ask me if I was going to do a review of Lucky J’s once I’d had a chance to eat there. Here you go:
Would I go back? I think I would, but they need a month or two or three to settle into a groove. It would help some if they had less of an Austin slacker vibe. I’d like to try some of the waffle tacos, but the lack of coffee and the weird 11 AM – 4 PM schedule are drawbacks for me.
It’s 7:15 a.m. at the Verizon store in Burbank, and tears are welling in Chelsea Northrop’s eyes.
Perhaps I should have sent my story to the LAT.
CSM headline: “Scientists discover how to make squids go completely berserk“.
We still have no cure for cancer, or ALS, but we’ve figured out how to drive (some) cephalopods crazy. Go science. I’m sure this will come in handy next time the SyFy channel wants to make a movie.
To be honest, I’m more than a little skeptical about this article. I’m hoping someone with a stronger biology background (like LabRat) picks up on this.
(Hattip: Dinosaur Comics, the go-to comic for biological news.)
I missed this one until Tam linked to it (with her usual dose of snark):
NYT architecture critic Nicolai Ourossoff reviews 8 Spruce Street, a new residential tower designed by WCD’s favorite living architect, Frank Gehry.
Speaking of Gehry, I can buy Frank Lloyd Wright Legos
This story is worth keeping an eye on, especially since it represents a weird intersection on the Venn diagram between the jihad watch and gun crankery.
In brief, Raymond Davis is an employee with the U.S Embassy in Lahore. Davis was out driving around when (he claims) two men on motorcycles tried to rob him. Davis shot them both, and claims self-defense. Pakistani prosecutors claim that Davis killed the two men in “cold blood” and are pressing murder charges against Davis.
More:
And:
CIA, maybe? That would explain why he was carrying a pistol. It would also lead me to give more credence to his robbery defense; somehow I doubt a CIA employee would blow his cover and blow away people in the street unless he had a genuine fear for his life. (This is where you all can accuse me of being naive, which is probably true.)
There’s a guy in Pflugerville who leases out food trucks to independent operators. He had some issues with the way the City of Austin regulated food trucks, and started lobbying for stricter rules “to address health, safety and environmental concerns”. Ultimately, the City Council did make some changes to the law.
Can you guess what’s coming?
More:
As much as I like LaRue Tactical and the 10/22, this is one product I won’t be purchasing.
(Hattip: Say Uncle.)
(Edited to add: Video of the product in action here. Thanks to our friend James.)
I generally don’t read Stratfor articles unless someone points me to them. Nothing against Stratfor; it’s just a matter of limited time, and the sort of geopolitics Stratfor usually covers being more along the lines of other bloggers.
However, Snowflakes In Hell has a link to a solid article on the Mexican gun issue.
Interesting fact: