Sam Worthington thought he went to strange places, with odd natives, when he went to Pandorain Avatar. Just wait until he meets Southeast Texas.
The Bayou blog informs us that details have been finalized on a new, very dark Michael Mann-produced film that involves murder most foul in an area most foul: The Golden Triangle.
Here's Mann describing it:
It's a brilliant screenplay, filled with things you cannot make up in Hollywood, things you would have had to find the dead bodies in a heroin operation to understand. That's why it's such a haunting piece. This is such a spooky zone in Texas where cell phones don't work, where the homes sit on trailer stilts, and where there's a hand-painted sign on the bridge that reads, `You Are Now Entering the Cruel World'.
Wearing his gear proudly, this Indianapolis Colts fan robbed a bank inside a Randall's on FM 1960 Friday night. We assume he needed the cash to put down a boatload on the Colts giving four and a half.
"The photo clearly shows the Colts logo on the shirt as well as the large handgun carried by the robber," FBI agent Patricia Villafranco says, although to us the gun is as hidden as Peyton's Manning comeback skills.
High winds knocked out power to Elkins High sometime last night, causing a basketball game to be canceled. But even though power wasn't restored as the school began opening this morning, parents were not informed and kids went as if it was a normal day.
Once they got there they were herded into a central area, where they sat around with no power, reportedly not being allowed to leave. Some of them hag gotten there by 7 a.m, and remained until power finally went back on at 9:20 a.m.
Which is when parents were finally informed of the whole thing. Some of whom started wondering if the district just wanted to make sure Elkins' Average Daily Attendance figures, which affect state funding, weren't affected by the outage.
What took so long to tell parents, Fort Bend ISD? "CenterPoint was at the campus early this morning, and felt they could get the power on quickly," FBISD spokeswoman Mary Ann Simpson tells Hair Balls.
In the end, all we want from any medium of entertainment is to be moved
emotionally in one direction or another. Whether that emotion is joy,
anger, or sadness, as long as it's removing us from the boredom of our
everyday lives in some way, then it is serving a purpose.
The late Jim Valvano put it quite well in his now legendary speech at the
first ESPY Awards, where he said (paraphrasing) that every day we should be
moved to laugh, think, and to cry. Valvano contended that if you laugh, you
think, and you cry, then "that's a full day...that's a pretty good day."
The same concept is put differently but no less poignantly by Stringer Bell
from The Wire when he gives his "Forty Degree Day" speech to the street
dealers that work for him in the bad lands of Baltimores drug districts....
In short, just get our internal "entertain me"-o-meter rolling in some
direction. Those who know me know that I'm just as happy watching something
that is delightfully terrible, as I am watching a masterpiece like The
Wire, The Sopranos, or any of the 30 for 30 documentaries thus far. But
it needs to be "DELIGHTFULLY terrible" -- key word "DELIGHTFULLY." (Note to
the producers and writers of 24 -- your show so far this season is merely
"terrible" and not delightfully so.)
This means that I am going in expecting terribleness, and I plan to spend
the entire amount of time basking in the horrific anti-glory wrought by
whatever show it may be. Hell, the entire industry of "reality television"
was built on this unique flavor of schadenfreude. The recipe is simple:
take people who think they are legitimately funny or insightful, make sure
their egos are cranked up to about thirteen on a scale of one to ten, enable
them, and watch them go.
It is with this preface in mind that I am openly begging the honchos at ESPN
to do whatever it takes to keep Chris Berman, and I mean WHATEVER it takes.
Not much is known about a man who was shot to death early Saturday morning, but it's a good bet that he didn't die thirsty.
Officers got a call about a shooting at 2054 Wirt in northwest Houston. When they arrived, they found a dead man in a parking lot.
The cops talked to witnesses who said that the victim had been inside a nearby bar when he was shot to death and then dragged out into the parking lot. The shooter is only described as being a Hispanic man.
Police say they haven't figured out a motive yet as to why someone would snuff out a man in a bar. They are still investigating.
Anyone with information about this case can call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
Basically, it was a tough, tough gig. And when six civilian drivers were killed in an incident six years ago, they their survivors sued in federal court in Houston.
District Judge Gray Miller had ruled that the decision to send the doomed convoy forward was the Army's and not KBR, but after an appellate court remanded the case he changed his mind after seeing some internal company e-mails.
"You, your team or any individual (as you have previously indicated to everyone in theater), have the right to say no to anything that is unsafe or where security is not available," a KBR exec said in one e-mail before the incident.
The thinner, younger version of Vince Vaughn of a few years ago was more physically attractive, but the heftier, 40-year-old version we see in Couples Retreatis more attractive in other ways. He's smarter, for one. (Vaughn not only stars - with name-above-the-title credit - he also co-wrote the screenplay with friend and frequent co-star Jon Favreau and screenwriter Dana Fox.) He's more self-assured. (Even when he's being an ass onscreen, he seems to be more comfortable about it.) And he seems slightly more grown-up (hey, don't underestimate the attraction of maturity).
In Couples Retreat, Vaughn appears as Dave, a man who goes on vacation with his wife and three other couples. At least it's supposed to be a vacation. Once they get there, the couples - each of which has hit a few marital bumps in the road - find out that this is actually a retreat with mandatory couples counseling and they're forced into therapy. This particular brand of therapy involves feeding sharks and yoga with a touchy-feely Romeo.
The latest poll on the GOP gubernatorial primary has just been released, and it's got some surprising stuff in it.
Rick Perry still leads the field, albeit with an uninspiring 39 percent. After that, though, is where the surprise comes in -- Kay Bailey Hutchison leads tea party favorite Debra Medina by only four points, 28 percent to 24 percent. That's within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percent.
"The big question for Debra Medina is whether there's enough unhappy voters out there for her to get into a runoff with Rick Perry," said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. "That would rank up there with the results of the Massachusetts Senate election as an early shocker in the 2010 political season."
It appears there are a lot of voters out there unhappy with incumbents, and that's not a good thing for someone who's a longtime Senator....or possibly for someone who's the longest-serving governor in state history.
Houston was the epicenter of Palinmania this weekend, as her fans breathlessly awaited her appearances at a Rick Perry rally and some sort of motivational convention.
There were many things to take away from the whirlwind visit of the woman who is ostentatiously keeping open the possibility of running for President in 2012, just in case the nation demands it.
Here are five things we learned:
1. She's not necessarily the draw she's made out to be. Right up to the event, organizers were still pleading for fans to get tickets and bring out friends and family to the Berry Convention Center, which seats about 11,000. This despite the fact that, as Hair Balls learned from an organizer, there was a pranky Facebook group dedicated to Houstonians requesting tickets and then not using them, in the hopes that organizers would believe it was a sell-out and stop giving tickets away. (Sadly, supposed ticket-requesters Anita Mann and Ima Jackauff were no-shows.)
"I reserved 10 seats. They required names of each guest. I mostly used drag queen names," prankster Michael Copenhaver tells Hair Balls. "It really would have been interesting if my "guests" had shown up."
In Spring, which really is the heart of the Palin demographic around here, the hall was only half-filled, on a weekend. Which also says something about Rick Perry's ability to organize a successful event. Bus in those seniors, dude!!
No one had seen Marilyn Sue Gillespie for days. Then, not surprisingly in this homicidal town, she turned up dead.
Police say they fielded a call Friday morning about a possible dead person at 3333 Cummins Lane, near Lakewood Church. And sure enough, when officers arrived they found the 58-year-old Gillespie in her home, apparently riddled with stab wounds.
Gillespie was last seen alive three days earlier, police say. Her car, a 2006 green Subaru Tribeca with Kansas plates, is missing from the parking lot. Police are continuing to investigate.
Anyone with information about this case can call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
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