Blogs

It’s that time of year again – yes, time for the 30-hour hunger-off brought to you by the socially conscious folks at World Vision. According to the organization, about 1,400 Houston-area teens will participate in a 30-hour famine fundraiser February 22 to 23, which will give them a “real taste of hunger while helping the poor and hungry around the world.” (Although, since there’s a break for sleep, it’s probably more like a 23-hour famine, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it.)

No doubt the worldwide distended belly set will thank these kids for their show of solidarity, going a whole 30 hours without eating anything – consuming only liquids. (It is not made clear in World Vision’s press release if the liquids must be retrieved from dung-filled mud-holes where the wildebeests bathe.)

Wondering what to do this weekend? You could go to the movies. Play a round of golf. Or -- and obviously, this is our recommendation -- step inside a big butthole. Okay, so Dan Steinhilber’s installation at Finesilver Gallery isn’t being billed as a butthole (it’s actually called Inflatable Black Box). But it sure looks like one, as a friend of ours pointed out at last night’s opening at the gallery. Step inside, and you can watch a video of a leaf blower scattering Styrofoam peanuts around what looks like someone’s apartment. We have no idea what it all means, if anything, but we’re absolutely okay with that, because buttholes are cool! (And yes, we just had to type that word one more time.) 3913 Main Street. For information, call 713-524-3733 or visit www.finesilver.com. – Cathy Matusow

It's always fun to see a local story make national news. And it always sucks when the local journalist who broke the news isn't properly credited.

It happens all the time, but that doesn't lessen the sting.

Scott Henson is the Austin-based blogger of Grits for Breakfast. Back in February, Henson posted his own public policy report based on a months-long investigation involving hundreds of open-records requests. Henson revealed that district and county attorneys across Texas were flaunting a new state law by prosecuting motorists who carried unlicensed weapons in their vehicles. Henson's report prompted a story by reporter Ralph Blumenthal in today's New York Times, which features a Katy resident who got busted.

Sure, Henson is cited ten paragraphs into the NYT story, but only as a "civil liberties advocate and blogger." Why not name the blog so interested readers can track down Henson's report and start to follow, if they don't already, what is probably the finest coverage of the state's criminal justice system?

Henson whines about the snub in a recent post, writing, "Blumenthal called me a 'blogger' in the story, but didn't name the blog! Come on, Ralphie, where's the love?"

Well, here is some:

Grits for Breakfast! Grits for Breakfast! Grits for Breakfast!

- Todd Spivak

We're generally not big on pointing out typos. Everyone makes mistakes, after all. And highlighting other people's linguistic peccadilloes is so Word Geek Level One. As you progress, you generally become more relaxed about such things.

That said, we just couldn't pass up this doozy in today's Chron, which we've highlighted below. It's one thing to make a linguistic mistake. It's another to make a mistake when talking about someone else's bad grammar. — Keith Plocek

Looks like our very own Robb Walsh just got name-checked in some publication called the New York Times.

To quote:

Anonymity is required for Robb's job, so we'll just provide an artist's rendering.

A few years ago, I went to see Robb Walsh when he came through town on a book tour. Robb is the restaurant critic for The Houston Press. He's the author of "The Tex Mex Cookbook." He's the founder and head judge of a hot sauce competition in Austin. The guy knows Texas food.

After the reading, a friend and I rushed the podium. We chatted happily for a few minutes, all smiles, until my friend suggested that while Robb was in New York, he really ought to try a great barbecue place that had just opened. I nodded and agreed.

Robb's face looked like the sky before a tornado.

"The next time one of you guys from New York tries to make me go to one of your 'great barbecue places,'" he said, "I'm going to take you on a Houston pizza tour."

Oh, snap! Sounds like Robb must've been a bitchy queen in a previous life.

Or not, as he explains in the comments section. — Keith Plocek

Looks like James Campbell, reader rep for the Chron, thinks the paper went too far with its story about Anna Nicole Smith's lesbian lover.

So, let's do the accounting: Essentially, we overplayed an old story that is based on the word of one woman -- a self-admitted recovering drug addict who is homeless and jobless. On top of that, we did not credit the Press for breaking the "news" seven years ago.

Touche, Campbell. There we were, calling out the Chron for rehashing our seven-year-old story, and you turned it around and bemoaned that your writers had stooped to our trashy level. Very nice.

Seems this attitude has even rubbed off on your readers. From the comments:

Now, we have a Chronicle reporter who has, if not plagiarized at least heavily borrowed, from a seven year old story first published in a gossip rag.

Wait a minute. Who you calling a gossip rag? Our last five features dealt with homeless teens, urban blight, college baseball, ... Dude, I'm in the middle of typing a blog post. Can't you wait a minute? Oh. Next week? Bald Britney on the cover? Oh, hell, yeah. She's actually bald in more than one place, you know what I'm sayin'. Okay, okay, her most recent baldness. Gotcha. Sounds like a winner. Now all we need is some kind of tenuous Houston connection. Hold on, lemme finish this blog post real quick and I'll come up with something. ... drug prohibition and nursing home abuse. What about that says "gossip rag" to you? — Keith Plocek

The Chron has a story today about Sandi Powledge, who was Anna Nicole Smith's lesbian lover back in the day. The article talks about their first date, their favorite bar, their visit to the convenience store to pick up Anna Nicole's first Playboy appearance. It discusses Powledge's photo album, her tattoos, her attempts to feminize herself once her lover became a star. It's a great article that provides an in-depth look at the blonde bombshell's bisexuality, although we liked the story a little better when we read it seven years ago in the Houston Press. -- Keith Plocek

Looks like we've got an early contender for Dumbest Press Release of the Week.

Here it is, with a couple of parts bolded for stupidity:

Alas, our love can never be.

I'm forwarding you this information to inform you of JAMIE FOXX: UNPREDICTABLE TOUR which is coming to Houston soon. Jamie starred as the legendary Ray Charles in the hit movie "Ray" and is also starring the new movie "Dreamgirls," which is in theaters now. Jamie is also a singer, song writer and producer. He's an Oscar Award winner and has received 3 Grammy Award Nominations since the release of his chart-topping album entitled Unpredictable. [...] I'm quite sure that your audiences would love to hear what he has to say about his performances, his life, upcoming projects as well as the tour itself. If you'd like to interview the artist, please give me a call at the number listed below or send me an email. Jamie Foxx Tour hits Houston on Thursday, March 7, 2007; therefore, if you'd like an interview with Jamie. Please contact me at the numbers listed below. However, I cannot guarantee that Jamie's time will permit him being able to do an interview. If something becomes available I will try to fit you in. But, I don't want to give you false hopes of one happening. We have been encouraging all journalists to pick up wire stories or do creative picture driven previews.

So our readers would most definitely want to read a Jamie Foxx interview, but that's too bad, because it's probably not going to happen? Well, shit, thanks for letting us know. — Keith Plocek

What is it with pompous Irish rock stars and schlocky corporate fight songs? From the same blighted and nightmarish corner of hell that gave us Bank One's fusion of U2's "One" and corporate banking jargon comes this sulphuric desolation of foul abomination — "We Are The World" re-written with lyrics touting Shell Oil's many wonderful virtues.

And remember, with our space level strategy, we will succeeeeeed....And what's with those accents? -- John Nova Lomax

Hightower High School kids in Fort Bend County just can't win for losing.

Earlier this week, they along with all the other kids in FBISD, were the only Houston area (well except for Humble ISD) school district not to get off from school after the mini ice storm. Needless to say, there was a lot of disgruntlement about the missed vacation day.

So Friday, some enterprising person or persons decided to break things up by lighting a fire in an upstairs restroom at the school just off Fort Bend Parkway. The Missouri City Fire Department roared in and everyone evacuated. They walked out of the school and its T-shacks into a cold, cold day where they stood outside as it rained on them for approximately 30 minutes. And since it all started just after noon, while all of the students were cold, wet and miserable — a lot of them were also very hungry. They were missing their lunch period.

Somebody's going to have to work on their timing. — Margaret Downing

Back in June, we expressed certain rather vehement and negative comments concerning Blue October, Houston's most successful rock band since ZZ Top. In the article, I expressed my dismay at Justin Furstenfeld's continuing use of guy-liner and described his herky-jerky stage manner, which, as I put it, "reminded me of a woodpecker trying to dislodge water from its ear." I also savaged "Hate Me," the band's hit single thusly:

"Hate Me" is yet another in a line seemingly without end of Buzz-friendly, post-rehab, downtuned mush-guitar wankfests, complete with the requisite too-hastily-arrived-at chorus and 12-steps lingo-ridden lyrics about losing yet another girl after yet another bout with an (unspecified) addiction. And oh, yeah, bleeding brains, cockroaches leaving babies in his bed, porn and ye gods, he even spliced in a phone message from his mom. Evidently, the old dear's worried about his fragile state. (Hmm, maybe the song isn't about a breakup with a lover -- maybe it's about his mom. To which all I can say is "Yuck.") The snippet of classical violin at the end of the song only adds a veneer of cheesy grandeur to the horrific proceedings, sort of like slapping a Greek temple facade on a strip-mall proctologist's office.

To make matters even worse, Furstenfeld is still singing in an array of fake accents, including his default Peter Gabriel-esque setting, and in a new wrinkle, inserting random R's in words like "accomplishment," which comes out as "accormplishment."

The whole thing is so goddamned awful it honestly gives me chills.

Reaction was swift, both pro and con.

The Big Bopper — you know, the dead dude who sang "Chantilly Lace" — has been resting peacefully in a Beaumont cemetery for nearly 50 years now. But his son, who apparently performs as "The Big Bopper Jr.," tells the A.P. he wants to dig the old man up to finally solve the mystery of whether he initially survived the plane crash that killed fellow passengers Gary Busey and Lou Diamond Phillips. Or maybe it was Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Anyway, it was two other famous dudes, and one of them brought a gun on the plane.

I'm not sure what's more horrifying: the fact that this man earns a living as "The Big Bopper Jr.," or the fact that Big Bopper I is going to be disturbed to supposedly settle a mystery that is on the minds of exactly zero people, besides Bopper II.

Of course, the most tragic thing about that plane crash was its eventual canonization in Worst Song Ever contender "American Pie." If I could go back in time to one moment, it would be when Gary Busey shot Lou Ferigno on that plane (or something), thus causing it to crash, killing half of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Otis Redding. That way, Don McLean would've never had a reason to write that song, which is twice as malignant as cancer, with only half the fun. I just hope this exhumation doesn't make the song somehow more ubiquitous. Of all the people who need to die in a crash... -- Craig Malisow

Editor's note: Dusti Rhodes wasn't too pleased after reading the comments on Isiah Carey's blog about Gary Block's civil suit. She spit out the following remarks faster than you can say "blame the victim."

There's nothing like blaming a woman after she claims she was sexually harassed. I mean those eyes, those thighs — c'mon, how can men resist? Reading the comments from Isiah Carey's blog really puts things in perspective.

Mark Barrajas, who we're guessing is not related to this guy, screams:

THIS WOMAN IS A TYPICAL WHORE THAT GIVES WOMAN HOOD A BAD NAME. SHE SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN SERIOUS. SHE WANTS A PIECE OF ACTION. HE SHOULD SUE HER FUCKY ASS.

You heard it here first, folks: fucky ass.

Jeff Jancoat agrees:

Poor Father Joseph Tu Ngoc Nguyen. It seems like nary a month can go by without some uppity broad accusing him of abusing her when she was a kid. I mean, c'mon, the Houston Archdiocese said two years ago that the dude didn't like little girls — and if there is one trustworthy organization in this town when it comes to allegations of sex abuse, it's the Archdiocese.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported yesterday that the Fort Worth Catholic Diocese — where Tu used to work — filed a complaint with police after another woman accused Tu of abusing her in the 1970s. The 38-year-old woman, who was not named in the article, is the seventh woman to have accused Tu of sexual misconduct. Only problem is, the statute of limitations has passed. - Craig Malisow

To read internal church files on Tu, click here.

To read a recent Houston Press story on Tu, click here.

Texans fans have grown plenty accustomed to images of the team's hapless QB lying flat on his back. But today's Chronicle offers another, more personable side of David Carr: positioned doggie-style, in mid-thrust, atop his place-kicker. Is it a rare post-victory embrace? Or a glimpse into how they'll spend the off-season? -Todd Spivak