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​People who aren't fans of dogs accidentally strangling themselves with their leashes aren't going to like this story: On Wednesday, a dog at the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care died after, as previously mentioned, it got caught up in its leash while a staff member cleaned its cage.

Elena Marks of the Mayor's Office, which now oversees BARC, confirmed for Hair Balls today thart "it had been taken out of its cage and secured with a rope or leash while the cage was being cleaned. Apparently, it got the rope or leash wrapped around its neck. The staff person cleaning the kennel performed CPR and vet staff came and attempted to revive the dog, to no avail."

Now, here's what really gets us: This painful, disgusting death occurred on Wednesday. We e-mailed Marks -- who, along with Frank Michel, head of communications for the Mayor's Office, is the main media contact for BARC -- to try to confirm this on Thursday. We didn't hear a peep. This morning, we e-mailed again, at which point Marks told us that she was still gathering information. Then, a few hours later, we were told the scant few facts printed above.
 

​Get ready for the closing curtain of Rice University's production of Threepenny Opera. The grand story by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill is being touted as "a musical of murder, mayhem, and matrimony!" Meant to satirize traditional opera while creating an new kind of musical theater, Threepenny is set in London just before Queen Victoria's coronation. Characters include Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, a mob-boss of local beggars; Polly, his headstrong daughter; Mack the Knife, Polly's new husband and an infamous bandit; and Chief of Police Tiger Brown, Mack's old friend. Polly's father isn't pleased with the match and determined to break up the marriage, even if he has to send his outlaw son-in-law to the gallows. (Ouch.) 8 p.m. Rice University, 6100 Main. For information, call 713-348-7529 or visit www.rice.edu. $5 to $10.

This Saturday's screening of Entre Les Murs (The Class) is the last installment of The Tournées Festival, a series of French films. Focusing on a classroom of multicultural students in a tough Parisian neighborhood, Entre Les Murs is the story of Francois Begaudeau, a real-life teacher and author. Not content to take center stage in the classroom, Begaudeau also stars -- as himself -- in the film. Apparently he doesn't do too badly, since the film won the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. In an atmosphere where class, culture, and expectations not only clash but sometimes crash and burn, teachers and students alike face a seemingly insurmountable challenge -- to change a system that has little sympathy for kids and even less respect for the adults charged with their education. (In French with English subtitles.) 7 p.m. University of Houston-Clear Lake, 2700 Bay Area Boulevard. For information, call 281-283-3560 or visit www.uhcl.edu. $3.75.

​Do you remember The Alamo? Of course you don't. It was a terrible movie.

But boy, did it get a lot of hype here in Texas. Papers did stories, Texas Monthly gave it a cover, and the American public gave it the finger.

Which led to its inclusion as a 2004 Turkey of the Year, one in a string of years that saw a lot of competition for the spot.

Who won the grand-prize Turkey of the Year award that time?

Come one, you know......think nipple, and Justin Timberlake....Yep, it was Miss Jackson (if you're nasty).

She and The Alamo joined a very august group, including the comically named State Rep. Talmadge Heflin. We think every state legislature south of the Mason-Dixon line should include someone named Talmadge Heflin.

​Of all the columnists in the history of Houston journalism, Sigman Byrd was easily the darkest and the most literary. From the late 1940s to the early '60s, Byrd wrote a column called The Stroller for the old daily Houston Press and later, briefly for the Chronicle. He always much favored the city's dark shadows, scruffy neighborhoods, and forgotten, often wrecked people over the big affairs of the day and Houston's high and mighty.

As David Theis put it in his 1994 remembrance :

Byrd ranged for copy far and wide in the Houston of his day. He listened to the alcohol-treated stories of the merchant sailors in the bars on 75th Street, near the Ship Channel. He ate chicharrones and drank Jax beer with Don Antonio and the Laredo Bar regulars (who knew him as Don Segismundo) just off Navigation. He hung with the Fifth Ward's assorted cats. But it was downtown and its environs that Byrd had a particularly strong feeling for. It was possible to make a human connection with downtown then. The way Sig Byrd wrote it, at least, it was impossible not to, not if you had any feeling for raw, unadulterated humanity.

Byrd's was the pre-Interstate Houston, a Houston of strongly distinct neighborhoods and districts with poetic names like Catfish Reef (the 400 block of lower Milam), Pearl Harbor (the corner of Hill and Lyons), Vinegar Hill (the eastern terminus of Washington Avenue) and the corner of Six-Bit Street (75th) and Canine Street, as one local wag designated Canal, because it was "dog-eat-dog."

Here, from his long out-of-print Viking Press collection Sig Byrd's Houston, is Byrd's report of the action in Catfish Reef, written in typically Byrd-ish noir style:

​It happens to the best of us. One minute, you're singing its praises, zealously licking some of its naughty bits not otherwise visible to the sun, offering up your most personal information like free fellatio, and spreading your virtual legs, letting it have its way with you. And sickeningly, to both your horror and your fascination, you liked it. Every. Last. Oozing. Dripping. Sticky. Ounce of it.

And then? You came. To your senses, that is. And you terrifyingly realized that the Internet may not be getting you off any longer. So to speak.

But you're not entirely certain. Could it be? Something that once gave you hours of quivering, shivering pleasure suddenly fell limp between your thighs? Maybe all you need is one more animalistic romp to figure out whether it's only the rain making you wet.

So how do you feel out a case of Internet overstimulation? Well, if any of the following apply to you, consider yourself dry, dry, dry as a bone:

​Houston's wackiest, silliest married couple is at it again: Last Sunday night, Rachel Brown, wife of cocaine-enthusiast and medical-license-losing former surgeon Michael Brown (star of local television ads featuring his kids) called 911 because, per the offense report, "her husband is trying to kill her and her family." 

Those ku-raaazy Browns! We only hope their children (both under 5 years old) were there to witness the whole brouhaha, which Houston Police Department Spokesman John Cannon said went like this:

She stated that she was snorting cocaine with her husband and that she got really messed up, and her husband tried to force her to take several other pills," Cannon said, per the notes. "And that she believes that her husband is trying to kill her, and she told the officer she needed to go to the hospital because she thinks that her husband poisoned her. And then the husband, for his part, said that he doesn't know what she's talking about, that they were both watching television and before he knew anything -- after she had gotten out of bed -- [Houston Fire Department] and the police show up. And he claims that she's constantly making up stories and has done so on several occasions."

​Less than two years removed from taking home the Bear Bryant Award which goes to college football's top head coach, Kansas coach Mark Mangino's mouth is getting him in trouble. No, I'm not talking about the fifth serving of cheesecake he may or may not have had (ok, DID have) after dinner tonight putting more undue stress on his ticker. No, it's not an eating issue, it's a talking issue. Well, a yelling and screaming and ranting and raving issue, more accurately.

You see, Mark Mangino likes to push his players' buttons by belittling them with insults. Nothing new there, some coaches have been doing the whole "break 'em down to build 'em up again thing" since the dawn of time. Bill Parcells won Super Bowls doing it. Bobby Knight became the all-time winningest coach in college basketball doing it. But we all know the best insults are the ones that are really personal, and when it comes to spinning a barb that cuts to someone's core, Mangino is apparently a maestro.

For the record, these insults have now become an issue which threatens Mangino's employment. While I can't say I condone the things Mangino said (which I will list in just a moment), I do find his overuse of the word "homies" to be delightfully uncomfortable in a "WOW, he sounds even whiter than me" kind of way. Also, I find it funny that none of these things were an issue when Mangino was going 12-1 and winning the Orange Bowl. Apparently, back then he could have sat on his players' heads and farted or shown them videos he took of himself in the shower, and it wouldn't have been an issue. But lose five in a row in a season where hopes were high, and the receipts for years of verbal abuse will get presented to you like you're the Best Buy customer service desk.

Part of me wants to tell the former players alleging the verbal abuse (which also for some has a side order of chest-poking or jersey-grabbing attached to it) to turn the page; part of me hopes Mangino gets canned for the damage he's inflicted on my "Kansas over 7.5 wins" wager this season; and part of me hopes that he survives this turmoil because the "when in doubt, write about Mangino" adage is important for those of us in the content-generation business.

Should he stay or should he go? Well, some of it comes down to the answer to "Just how hurtful were the things he said?" As winner of five Smack-Offs on the Jim Rome Show (the
foundation of the Smack-Off being personal insults and figurative chest-poking), I feel I'm uniquely qualified to judge just how biting Mangino's chops are. Consider me like the Roger Cossack of hurtful, personal insults. When you need an expert in the area of being verbally ugly to others, I'm the guy.

So according to Mark Mangino's former players, here is a scorecard of Mangino's hurtful, personal smack:

QUOTE: "If you don't shut up, I'm going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies."
TARGET: Former Kansas WR Raymond Brown
BACK STORY: Raymond Brown has a brother (one he presumably also considers a "homey") who was shot in the arm in St. Louis.
SEAN'S ASSESSMENT: Mangino pulled off the "double dip" here, managing to insult and belittle one of his players, while at the same time trivializing a near-death experience of his brother....it's like a downfield block that takes out two DB's at the same time. Bonus points for use of the word "homies."
GRADE:  A-
POTENTIAL COMEBACK BROWN SHOULD'VE USED: "Sending back something other than a steak for being undercooked would be a good start for you, Coach."

​Earlier this month we wrote about how a Metro vice-president blatantly told some citizens that he considered part of his job to be keeping those nasty homeless people off the light rail. Let them take the bus, he more or less said; the light rail is for winners.

He has at least one supporter in that theory. Here's an e-mail we've received that heartily endorses the policy:

the homeless and the trian where shall I start....I take it none of you there take the train on a daily basis to go to work..well I do every darn day and the homeless are a big issue,,first off if you want them to use it for free then we should all use it for free and since that isnt going to happen so sorry but they need to pay just like the rest of us,,many mornings I dont want to go to work either but If i dont go whos gonna support your homeless,,further more let me ask u this how would u like to get on the train downtown, have to go all the way to the medical center and cant sit down because the homeless have urinated and manytimes done worse on all the seats so you cant sit down and the smell is awful,,,,or get sandwiched between several that smell horrible and you have to take the stench to work with you and have your pts comment...No im tired of getting on to packed trains when the minority that paid and all the seats are taken by your homeless sleeping.....Before you judge the people at metro you take the train back and forth to work for a month and tell me how much you enjoy the ride and take a mask and spray cause your gonna need it....

We'd take this person up on the offer, but our co-workers might complain.

​The newest edition of Texas Monthly has a lengthy profile of candidate (for something) Bill White, erstwhile mayor of Houston.

The first few grafs give the flavor:

by S.C. Gwynne Mayor Bill is on the move. Strapped into the passenger seat of an unmarked Lincoln Town Car, cell phone stuck firmly to his ear, he rolls through the vast grid of streets. He issues orders, barks out instructions. In the waning days of August 2005, something terrible has happened, and in some ineffable, fate-ridden way, it has fallen to him to fix it.

That terrible thing is Hurricane Katrina. The storm, which has slammed into the Gulf Coast, has also loosed a flood of evacuees. Of these, 200,000 have landed in Houston. There is no guidebook or FEMA manual that addresses such a massive shelter operation. In Dallas, 30,000 victims have arrived, and Mayor Laura Miller is already complaining that her city is nearing the saturation point. In Houston, 30,000 people will come through the Astrodome alone.

This is Mayor Bill's problem. This is why he is pounding through the city at all hours of the day and night in the wilting, late-summer heat. He is learning, as the rest of America will soon realize, to its horror, that the federal government cannot be counted on for much of anything. Nor, really, can the State of Texas. Nor, really, can anyone else. No one knows what to do.

Except, as it turns out, Mayor Bill. In those first moments of chaos, he makes a large conceptual leap: The evacuees are not going home. Almost no one believes this, because it's unthinkable that a single city could possibly absorb so many people. Mayor Bill believes this. Even better, he has a plan. Well, it is more of an objective, with the details to follow. But it is an extraordinary idea. "The overriding policy goal," he will say later, "was to treat people the way we would want to be treated. We wanted people to be on the path to living with independence and dignity, to finding work and getting their children in school." Permanently. Mayor Bill is old-fashioned: a Sunday school teacher who believes in the mysteries of God and in the quaint notion that people are inherently kind and generous. Each time he welcomes someone into the shelters, he offers a verse from the New Testament: "When I was hungry, you fed me. When I needed shelter, you took me in." The Book of Matthew is the overriding policy goal.

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