The fall season has been postponed, and the staff offices have limited web access so the company's web site has been unable to provide much info for subscribers and fans.
Executive director Maureen Patton, however, updated matters in an e-mail:
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After several days of unbridled neediness on our part, CenterPoint finally gave Hair Balls a call back to answer some of our questions about outside electricity repair crews being sent home last week when nearly half a million customers were still without power. (That number is currently about 80,000.)
CenterPoint’s Leticia Lowe echoed earlier statements that the crews in question were not trained to climb the backyard power poles that keep many of Houston’s residential streets uncluttered and many of the city’s households running Amish-style after a natural disaster.
Lowe, who said there had been "a communication breakdown" that caused CenterPoint to not return our calls, tells Hair Balls that there was no financial motivation for sending extra crews home – it was simply a matter of a lack of work available for the non-climbing crews.
As WWII was winding down, McConn, a young GI, was in Munich, guarding the building that had once been Hitler’s headquarters. “I was a lieutenant at the end of the war,” he told Hair Balls by phone. “My CO had assigned me and my platoon to guard a place called the Feuerbau, which had been Hitler’s headquarters in Munich. I found a desk set in the cellar of the building. I boxed it up and sent it to my dad.”
Jeff Murphrey, an attorney with the Houston law firm of Tekell, Book, Matthews & Limmer, had a deposition scheduled in a case where the opposing counsel was a Dallas lawyer named Dale Markland.
Murphrey tried to reschedule the depo but apparently got some grief from Markland.
Resulting in the following classic letter:
Unless you're looking for premium gas.
Many stations have focused on getting as much regular gas as possible, leaving consumers who use premium gas scrambling.
In a lawsuit, Fred Beuckman of St. Louis claims his 16-year-old daughter was receiving psychological out-patient treatment for a condition involving a obsessive relationship with a boy when she struck up a dialogue over Facebook with a "Jane Doe." Beuckman says that once Doe learned of his daughter’s mental problems, Doe created a persona on Facebook with the name of "Jennifer Litzinger" who claimed to be a rival for the boy’s affections.
Enough. It's time to start looking for the benefits of Hurricane Ike. Over the next few days we'll be looking for the bright side of the big blow, starting with:
1. Exotic bird sightings.
While the dregs of Ike were still lashing my neighborhood in near southwest Houston, I donned some foul-weather gear and went for a little walk around my neighborhood. In almost every vestibule of the McMansions that loom over my house, I found little flocks of dazed birds huddling in desperation. Most were run-of-the-mill suburban trash birds like house sparrows and grackles, but in one doorway a few houses down my flooded street I sighted two electric blue indigo buntings, their wet plumage mostly brown in the storm's dim light. While this was not a first for me -- not a new addition to what birders call a "life-list" -- their storm-addled mental state afforded me the chance to observe them up close and "personally," as it were. Indeed, I think I could have picked them up and taken them home had I wanted to wade through the floodwaters with them in hand.
All bow before the power of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce!!!!
After their press conference yesterday, after a two-hour closed-door board meeting, it appears for now that HISD superintendent Abe Saavedra's job is safe for another year.
At least it is according to a terse statement by district spokesman Norm Uhl:
On Dr Saavedra's contract, the HISD board took no action last night and I'm told no action is expected today, which would mean the contract will automatically renew for another year as of tomorrow (October 1.)
So there you go. We assume Saavedra is even now planning another massive bond program without any input from neighborhoods or school-board members.
-- Richard Connelly
More than 1,000 inmates and correction officers did not evacuate from the jail, despite a mandatory order to do so and warnings from The national Hurricane Center that those who refused to flee would face "certain death." Even though city officials claimed before the storm that virtually the entire island could become submerged, the jail was not evacuated, says the ACLU.
The people left inside the jail are still battling conditions that include limited power and water, few windows for ventilation and having to use portable toilets, according to the ACLU. For three days, inmates had to use trash cans as toilets.
Anyone who's listened to a radio in the past two weeks has heard the heartwarming commercials from insurance companies, full of comforting music and sympathetic voices consoling you and informing you that an army of adjusters is chomping at the bit, eager to help you in any way possible.
Except now, it seems, those insurance companies are getting a feel for just how much they'll be paying out for Ike, and the sweet, sweet music isn't playing when they're inspecting your house.
"We've had reports of fisticuffs between adjusters and contractors," Dan Parsons of Houston's Better Business Bureau tells Hair Balls.
Not without a bunch of warnings, though.
Not only have the beaches been heavily eroded, but there are new riptides out there, sunken damage you can't see and who knows what else.
Here's the comforting assessment by the beach patrol:
Where in the world will the bachelorettes of Houston get their penis straws? The submissives their slave chokers? The premature ejaculators their Brasshead 5 Snap Adjustable Leather Cock Rings?
Um, Erotic Cabaret. The other location, at 1222 Westheimer.
As an email from the EC people says, “Our main store is now overflowing with inventory from both stores, so we’re having a HUUUGE HURRICANE RELIEF SALE! We were able to salvage a lot of great items including costumes, lingerie, clothing, shoes/boots, Halloween accessories and many more at discounted prices!”
Convinced the board is trying to dump superintendent Abe Saavedra instead of renew his contract, they held a press conference at HISD headquarters before a special board meeting today.
"We are calling publicly for the board to stop right now and do the right thing," said Laura Murillo, president of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Still, a drive through Sharpstown reveals lots of debris stacked up near the sidewalks, and other neighborhoods in town are lined with trash bags that have been sitting for over a week.
This isn’t freshman year of college, CenterPoint, and you’re not our long-distance girlfriend. There’s no excuse for not returning our calls for nearly a week. We’re sure you’ve had plenty to do since the hurricane stuck. (Not so much that you couldn’t find time for a Houston Chronicle conference call, of course.)
But that very story just added to the list of questions Hair Balls had for you: Was there a contingency plan in place for dealing with crews that were not equipped to climb backyard poles? Why can’t the work be divided so CenterPoint crews tackle the backyard issues while bucket truck crews continue to work hard on the lines they can access? President of regional operations Tom Standish was quoted as saying CenterPoing has devised a way to distribute the work more efficiently – what exactly is this new strategy?
We were up in Austin this weekend, so we apologize if this version of Over the Weekend is a little heavy on the ATX. But first things first...
The Best of Houston Party
Lucky's Pub was packed Thursday night for the launch party for this year's Best of Houston issue.
a) Your own attorney describing your mental state: "He can function. I mean, he's not like...a raving lunatic. He's not Anthony Hopkins. But he doesn't have the ability to discern things [and] can't make executive decisions."
or
b) The judge in your case describing your defense as "not sound science" and comparable to "Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland."
Either way, you're probably screwed.
Okay. That said, it turns out that while I was unhappily separated from the steady stream of pop culture news during the aftermath of Ike, everybody turned gay on me. Including me!
Rapidly accessing Facebook after the storm, I stumbled across a message from a guy I’d gone to high school with.
“Hey…you got married! To a guy! I had heard you were gay! Oops! Guess that was just some crazy rumor.”
Unfortunately, it was located near the Strand in Galveston.
"All those shops and restaurants on Strand, Mechanic and Postoffice were hit bad, and Midsummer Books got 8 ft of muddy water which soaked and ruined everything, books, furniture, computer equipment, etc.," owner Tim Thompson says by e-mail.
Scantily clad women wielding whisks, scantily clad women modeling lingerie, fully clad band 80 Proof -- the Best of Houston 2008 launch party had it all last night.
Lucky's Pub was filled as everyone tried hard to live up to the "Seven Deadly Sins" theme. We hope they all succeeded.
Check out the slideshow here.
-- Richard Connelly
Seems the Rice grad student pub and family-friendly haven for lovers of cheap beer and geeky conversation is at the very least a temporary casualty of Hurricane Ike. And not because the 30-year-old institution, a Best of Houston winner this year in the venerable, highly-competitive Best Place to Lie Around Drinking Beer category, took storm damage.
Waits were long and tedious at the center, located near downtown close to West Gray & Waugh. Voters faced waits up to two hours to cast an early ballot; many gave up.
Maybe -- maybe -- it will be different this year. Harris County has negotiated with the city and will have space for twice as many voting machines, the elections office tells Hair Balls.
The editors at the Victoria Advocate appreciate that input and are now letting you, the Internet reader, help produce the print version of the paper each day. All this month, there's been a live video stream of the paper's daily 10 a.m. editorial meetings, where editors chat with people online. That produces a list of possible stories, and an online vote determines the next day's front page.
According to Gabe Semenza, the paper's public service editor, once all the kinks are worked out, the paper will start advertising the broadcasts to hopefully drive up participation.
Bellaire High students, your vacation is over.
HISD spokesman Norm Uhl tells Hair Balls that power was restored to the building "about 15 minutes ago." School is set for Monday, much to the relief, no doubt, of Bellaire parents.
A bunch of other schools are set to open on Monday, too; check the list here, which will be updated throughout the weekend.
The way Uhl describes it, it's hard to tell if HISD is having good luck or bad:
That "Ike experience" included, as the Baytown Sun reports:
...her love of MREs, her habit of hitting up more than one Place Of Distribution (POD) in trips between Baytown and her Deer Park home, and her enjoyment of life post-Hurricane Ike.“This is great,” [Jacki] Steinhauer said in her blog. “I don’t have school and getting free food. I still will probably get paid at the end of the month also. Life is great after a hurricane when nothing really happened to your house.
While adding up her free loot, Steinhauer counted five cases of water, two 20-pound bags of ice, four 10 pound bags of ice, four boxes of MREs (two of the “real military ones” and two boxes meant to last one person one day, and a box with a variety of 12 sack lunches of Chef Boyardee microwavable cups, granola bars, fruit cups and almond cookies.)
That shouldn't piss people off too much.
It's art, baby. And it's art that might just be worth $2,000.
Fresh Arts has announced a contest that's looking for the best "Made From Ike" art.
Fresh Arts is calling the Greater Houston community to become cultural first responders and submit creations made from Ike remnants still littering the streets and yards of our city, celebrating the great spirit this city has shown in the wake of such devastation, and the compassion, humanism and healing that comes from making and appreciating art in our community.
In fact, a hurricane can become a hurri-can for a dedicated con artist. Of course, it also helps if you don't get caught.
Harris County DA Kenneth Magidson says two men have been arrested for identity theft, after they posed as potential employers at a Red Cross shelter.
The Washington Post reports the decision was announced by the Kennedy Center last night.
Eschenbach had recently been conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra until he left in a dispute. The National Symphony is not exactly considered a step up from that post.
The Post makes note of his Houston stint, but doesn't seem overwhelmed:
The phenomenon was born. Hurricane Bear has since been featured in the Wall Street Journal, on CNN and VH1, alluded to in a Ralph Nader campaign commercial, and the Channel 11 video has been posted on countless blogs.
Turns out, Hurricane Bear is Jacob Calle, a guy from Houston who made What the Hell: The Ultimate Stunt Movie and who appeared on Hair Balls about two months ago after a leg injury in an air guitar contest kept him from attending his own animal-rights protest.
