Blogs

John Nova Lomax just did a column on the smoking ban’s effect on bars and music venues. The opinions of the musicians and bar owners he spoke with were decidedly mixed. Some loved the ban; some hated it; some didn’t care. But its effect on one Houston institution has been deadly.

Poor Cosmos Cafe is closing, and owner Pete Pallas cites the smoking ban as one reason for it. In fact, today is the last day to hang out in the laidback atmosphere of Cosmos Café, have a burger and a beer, and take in one last show, by blues guitarist Seth Walker. Tomorrow the place shuts down. RIP, Cosmos. – Cathy Matusow

Just in case you had any doubt that Houston is quickly becoming a brown city, check out the latest Nielson ratings.

The release from Telefutura – you didn’t even know we had a Telefutura channel, did you? – anyway, the latest release says that according to Nielsen Media Research, the Spanish language KFTH out-delivered NBC and My Network TV in adults 18-34 and beat MNT in adults 18-49.

No biggie on besting My Network TV, but NBC? Oops!

One of the benefits of living with a nerd like Mr. Pop Rocks is I get to take advantage of his awareness of such under-the-radar television shows as IATV’s “Chinese Superman.” Never heard of it? Don’t worry, I hadn’t either until a few weeks ago when I overheard Mr. Pop guffawing in the family room.

I ran towards the laughter and the television, hoping against hope that there was yet another “Mama’s Family” marathon on. Instead, I witnessed what was certainly the most bizarre program I’ve seen in years: “Chinese Superman.”

The show, which airs on Comcast’s Channel 241 with English subtitles, is essentially a Chinese variety program hosted by a very spastic host who acts as if all his guests are turning water into wine in front of our very eyes. In actuality, the guests are performing such “super” acts as:

There are some movies that are almost too hard to watch. Holly is one of those movies. It’s not what happens that makes Holly so difficult for viewers (well, at least this viewer), it’s what’s always just about to happen. The story of a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, Holly (Thuy Nguyen), and a 40-year-old American, Patrick (Ron Livingston), the film takes an unblinking look at child prostitution in Cambodia.

Governor Rick Perry announced some additions to his Competitiveness Council today, including Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

Never heard of the Competitiveness Council? Yeah, neither had we. Seems it's a group of " industry leaders, public and higher education officials, and representatives of key state regulatory agencies" who come together to identify "impediments to the state’s ability to remain competitive in a global marketplace and recommending steps the state should take to improve its economic footing."

Judging by the table of contents, Dr. S. O. Young’s True Stories of Old Houston and Houstonians, a 1913 work that’s being reissued*, is pretty juicy. Sections include “Some Characters and Their Misadventures,” “Politics, Gambling and Other Sordid Miscellany,” “Wine, Women and Song,” and “Critters (Natural and Supernatural).” The book is a collection of yarns Young wrote for the old Chronicle almost a century ago.

In one, newspaperman Mike Connoly, who’s boarding with another (very jealous) man and his wife, flees the house after being accused of trifling with the woman, who, the author says, is “as ugly as a brush fence.” Wearing only “a thin summer undershirt that reached scarcely to his hips,” the man creeps along the bayou until he convinces a building operator to lend him the clothes off his back while he finds others. Connoly gets drunk and forgets to return with the clothes until the next afternoon, when he finds the “half crazy operator, two-thirds suffocated, hiding himself in the battery room.”

When Houston attorney Gary Pitts cautioned the Houston City Council in 2002 about appointing former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas and well-known philanthropist and lawyer Arthur Schechter to chairman of METRO, Pitts alluded to something “ethically questionable” that Schechter allegedly did on behalf of former president Bill Clinton.

The City Council did appoint Schechter to the position, but now, according to a lawsuit and counter-lawsuit between Pitts and Schechter, the facts of Pitts’s allegations have surfaced.

Pitts claims in court documents that Schechter, who raised money for Clinton’s campaign, told Pitts after Clinton was elected in 1992 that Schechter destroyed a tape of Clinton at a party where illegal drugs were being used. And that’s just one of many accusations the two men sling at each other.

Houston Press staffer Olivia Flores Alvarez was on the way to work this morning when she saw a caravan of six trucks hauling ...uh, well... we don't know what exactly. They look like something aeronautical but we're not sure what. What do you think these are?

Not-gay-in-any-way-whatsoever magazine Details has just released its “Power 50” list, which ranks H-town’s own man of God Joel Osteen at number 16.

At first glance, this may sound respectable, but when you see that number one is occupied not by an individual, but a gruesome Hollywood cabal dubbed “Zac Efron, Shia LaBoeuf, and the Disney Kids,” there can be only one explanation: Details is written by Satan.

In our e-mail (and, probably, the e-mail of every other journalist in Houston) comes a letter from a Swedish television producer.

She asks:

Raise your hand if you are totally and completely icked out by Boy George right about now.

For you young ones, let me take a minute to explain something. Back in the day, Boy George was the lead singer of a little British pop group called The Culture Club. When Miss Pop Rocks was a young girl growing up in the 80s, she was simultaneously frightened by Boy George and oddly dependent on him for happiness and joy. (The same could be said about Reagan, I suppose.)

The Culture Club starring Boy George performed such catchy tunes as “Karma Chameleon” (which Miss Pop Rocks thought was “Come on, Chameleon”) and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Without Boy George, Miss Pop Rocks (and plenty of other children of the `burbs) would have never become aware that some boys like to dress like girls, and that’s okay. And they also would have never learned that sometimes, there is such a thing as too much eyeliner.

It’s Thanksgiving Eve, and you’ve got some shopping to do. You step outside your home only to see cop cars swarming the block. Turns out, at the house behind yours, an ex-cop is holding his ex-wife hostage, and the police need your backyard, and your house, to stake him out. The turkey will have to wait – you’re not going anywhere for a while. This is what happened to Trey Smith, amateur chef and friend of Houstoned, and his fiancée last Wednesday.

So the house where the hostage situation took place is directly behind you?

Our back fence, it’s the house behind that. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. We were going to go shopping for Thanksgiving stuff, and we were backing out, and there were all these cop cars and a bunch of people standing around outside. This cop comes up and says, “Y’all should probably move back, there’s somebody with a gun.” I walked up the stairwell to see if I could see anything. I didn’t realize the extent of what was going on. A SWAT team guy came up and said “Get out of there.” And he came up and put this camo net over the a barbecue pit, and he was squatting down behind it with the rifle trained on the back window. I knew which room it was but I couldn’t see him. He was barricaded in that room.

Were you guys scared?

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison sends over missives on a pretty regular basis - Senator Kay did this, Senator Kay did that. They are usually pretty boring. Today’s press release details the fact that Senator Kay presented Dr. Michael E. DeBakey with the signed bill she pushed through Congress awarding him the Congressional Gold Medal.

Nothing too unusual about that. The 99-year-old DeBakey has been racking up medals and awards for most of the last 50 years for his ground breaking cardiovascular surgery techniques.

Then, close to the end of the release, one line stands out: “Sen. Hutchison's legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Dr. DeBakey was first introduced in 2004, again in 2005 and once more on February 1, 2007. The Senate passed this legislation on March 27 and the House of Representatives passed it on October 2.”

What the hell? Senator Kay had to submit the bill three times before it became law?

It’s hard to fathom a time when Houston was a muddy area bound by the bayou on the north, Walker on the south, Bagby on the west and Caroline on the East. That was 1838. Dr. S. O. Young wrote about how the city came to be back in 1912 in A Thumbnail History of The City of Houston, Texas, which is being reissued by Copano Bay Press in a limited run along with True Stories of Old Houston and Houstonians by the same author. (They come together in a set – an expensive set. It’s $124.95 for both; see www.booksontexas.com. But if you’re rich and a history buff…)

The book painstakingly chronicles the evolution of government, transportation, commerce, churches, newspapers and education in Houston. It’s not easy to get through, but patience yields some interesting information.

One of the first public buildings was the jail built in 1838: “The jail was something of a curiosity, being simply a square log box with neither doors nor windows. There was but one opening, that being a trapdoor at the top.” Freaky.

Any mention of postprandial Thanksgiving seems to require a tryptophan reference, so let’s just pretend we made a joke about passing out in grandma’s lap and move on…

It was one helluva weekend.

There was the H-E-B Holiday Parade. We were way too hungover to make it out, although we did bring back some photos of the preparations.

The Aggies took down the Longhorns at Kyle Field in a game that wasn’t near as close as the final score (38-30) would have you believe. Any doubts? Just check out this maroon and burnt orange slideshow.