Archive for February, 2011

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Followup roundup for February 9, 2011.

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Staff Sergeant and Medal of Honor recipient Sal Giunta is leaving the military when his current tour ends in mid-June.

Giunta, 26, plans to move with his wife to Fort Collins, Colo. and will use the G.I. Bill to continue his education, according to Army spokesman George Wright.

You know, if I ran a public (or private) university somewhere, I’d come up with the money to offer Sgt. Giunta a full free ride for four years. Maybe he’d be willing to work part-time, perhaps as a mentor to younger students who could use some help?

The NYT reports on the controversy over early “Spider-Man” reviews.

Lucky J’s Chicken and Waffles has opened their sit-down restaurant. Until I visited their website, I had no idea how tough these guys have had it. I knew about the trailer theft, of course, but the death of a child, divorce, and reconstructive hand surgery? This guy sounds like Austin’s own version of Job. I’m going to try Lucky J’s this weekend; not because of the suffering, but because I like the idea, and because it’s sort of on my usual weekend path. (Man does not live by Torchy’s Tacos alone. Though I have to admit, the new location on Burnet Road is much nicer than some of the others I’ve been to.) Full report to follow.

The LAT would like for you to know that cockfighting is bad, m’kay? And not just because people sometimes get stabbed to death by roosters with blades.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Heroism, Theatre | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: February 9, 2011.

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, has passed away.

I came in right at the end of the DEC era, and never really had a chance to work on a PDP-anything, a VAX, or a DEC-XX. (There was, at one point, a scheme to purchase a used PDP-8, but nothing ever came of that.)

I still smile, though, whenever I see a reference to one of those machines (or, for that matter, one of those machines in person at DEFCON).

In honor of the late Mr. Olsen, here’s a link to SIMH, which will let you emulate much of the DEC line.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Obits, Retrocomputing | 1 Comment »

Today’s bulletin from the Department of WTF? (#2 in a series)

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

If you want a pretty constant diet of WTF moments, the best thing you could do is subscribe to The Agitator‘s RSS feed. Be warned, though, that Balko’s collection of “WTF” moments is also likely to lead to an increase in your blood pressure.

Sometimes, something just jumps out at me from his site that goes beyond the usual “WTF” moments. This story is one of those moments.

Short summary: Barney Brown was arrested at the age of 14, tried in juvenile court for a rape and robbery, and acquitted. But that’s not the “WTF?” part. The prosecutor put him on trial again for the same crimes as an adult. He was convicted, and sent to prison for life.

This took place in 1969. Barney Brown served 38 years.

The fact that one trial took place in juvenile court and the second in adult court doesn’t matter. There is clearly settled case law on this; once Barney Brown was acquitted in juvenile court, jeopardy protections applied. The prosecutor had no authority, no right, no legal ground, and no business trying Barney Brown again in an adult court.

This is the kind of egregious misconduct by a prosecutor that, I believe, rises to a standard where the shield of “sovereign immunity” can, and should, be pierced. In a just world, that prosecutor (if he is still alive) would be in prison right now, and his assets would be signed over to Barney Brown.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: February 8, 2011.

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Mystery! Suspense! Pathos! None of those are present in this week’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback“, but that doesn’t stop us from blogging it anyway. After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Neuroscience, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 1 Comment »

Spider-Man, Spider-Man…

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Oh, look! The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are upset that reviewers reviewed the show when it was still in infinite preview mode!

“This pile-on by the critics is a huge disappointment,” said Rick Miramontez, spokesman for the show. “Changes are still being made and any review that runs before the show is frozen is totally invalid.”

If you’ll excuse me a second, I’m going out and purchasing tiny violin futures.

“Personally, I really think that waiting and playing by the rules and being a professional is part of what separates the remaining professional critics from the glut of amateur critics that can post their opinions anywhere they want,” says Time Out’s Feldman. “It’s not like the public has no way to find out information about ‘Spider-Man.’ They can go online any day and see what random people are saying.”

And I’d argue that part of being a “professional” is not giving the people you cover the power to jerk you around that Feldman and other critics (including John Simon) seemingly want the “Spider-Man” producers to have.

Meanwhile, Patrick Healy has a more comprehensive roundup of reviews.

(Hattip to Jimbo for both of these.)

Posted in Clippings, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Random notes: February 8, 2011.

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

There are a couple of interesting things in the NYT this morning.

J. Paul Getty III passed away over the weekend. That’s a name (like Koo Stark, he said, tipping his hat in Lawrence’s direction) I hadn’t thought of in years. Getty was most famous as the victim of a kidnapping “by Italian gangsters” during which his ear was cut off. I knew he was something of a party animal, but I was unaware of his 1981 stroke (apparently the result of an overdose). I was also unaware that Balthazar Getty was his son.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles (and specifically LACMA) are trying to figure out how to maintain the Watts Towers, and how to get more tourists to a part of town that’s most famous for riots.

And the NYT has made their move:

…“Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst.

Yes, this is a real review.

I would like to acknowledge here that “Spider-Man” doesn’t officially open until March 15; at least that’s the last date I heard. But since this show was looking as if it might settle into being an unending work in progress — with Ms. Taymor playing Michelangelo to her notion of a Sistine Chapel on Broadway — my editors and I decided I might as well check out “Spider-Man” around Monday, the night it was supposed to have opened before its latest postponement.

The fallout from the NYT decision should be interesting. The pin has been pulled from Mr. Grenade. He is no longer Ben Brantley’s friend. On the other hand, Charles McNulty in the LAT has Brantley’s back:

Julie Taymor’s $65-million, accident-prone production, featuring an erratic score by U2’s Bono and The Edge, is a teetering colossus that can’t find its bearings as a circus spectacle or as a rock musical.

And it looks like Peter Marks in the WP is standing with Brantley and McNulty:

What’s apparent after 170 spirit-snuffing minutes in the Foxwoods Theatre – interrupted by the occasional burst of aerial distraction – is that director Julie Taymor, of “The Lion King” fame, left a few essential items off her lavish shopping list:

1. Coherent plot

2. Tolerable music

3. Workable sets

Charles Willeford, call your office, please:

A man who was at an illegal cockfight in central California died after being stabbed in the leg by a bird that had a knife attached to its own limb, officials confirmed Monday.

In other news, the WP has discovered (reporter with a database!) that people in “Washington’s safest, most well-to-do neighborhoods” have registered more guns than people in “poorer, crime-plagued areas of the city”. I may have more to say on this later, time permitting.

Edited to add: I was in a hurry to finish that last post and hadn’t got to the Statesman yet, unfortunately. I previously noted the fires at several Austin restaurants, including the Green Muse Cafe. (There was also a recent fire at Habana, which I didn’t note for reasons that escape me at the moment.)

Anyway, APD made an arrest:

According to his arrest affidavit, [Martin] Gutierrez [the alleged arsonist – DB] said he believed a large tunnel system lay under Gillis Park near Oltorf Street and that people were being held there against their will. He admitted he started the fire at the Green Muse Cafe because he wanted to inform the public of the tunnel and “what was really going on here,” the document said.

Posted in Art, California Über Alles, Clippings, Food, Guns, Law, Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Public service announcement.

Monday, February 7th, 2011

The Texas Department of Transportation is doing some work this weekend at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard (aka Texas 71). Specifically, they’ll be working on some new flyovers in that area. I would embed a Google Maps image here, but apparently WordPress 3.0.4 has a bug with embedding iFrames. You can try clicking here.

Anyway, what does this mean to you, Al Franken? TXDOT is closing the entire freeway from “late Friday evening to early Monday morning”. Yes, you read that right, the entire freeway. They’re diverting traffic onto the access road:

The frontage road traffic lights at Ben White (Texas 71) will be on permanent green during the 50-hour plus diversion, meaning that the regular I-35 traffic will be able to move on through without stopping. But given that I-35 has three northbound lanes and three southound lanes in this section, there will be 33 percent less capacity for about a mile and all of those cars will have to exit and then re-enter the main lanes.

If I lived in the area, I’d stock up on popcorn. This is going to be better than the zoo and the circus combined. As for the rest of us, I think staying far away from I-35 for the duration is the best course of action.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads, Stupid | 2 Comments »

Random notes: February 7, 2011.

Monday, February 7th, 2011

I know I’m “rooting for laundry”, but I have a certain fondness for the Green Bay Packers. A major reason for that is their unique ownership structure. The Packers are a public corporation, with stock and everything. (The NFL will not allow any other team to adopt this ownership structure; the Packers are grandfathered in. This is the kind of behavior by the NFL that would make me want my congressman to start asking questions, if I believed in that sort of thing.) Anyway, here’s a good New Yorker piece that explains how the Packers work in more detail. And yes, my black little heart is filled with delight today. (Hattip: Gruber.)

We have previously mentioned the death of General Vang Pao, and the question of whether he would be buried at Arlington. The answer to that question was “no”; the Pentagon turned down the family’s request. Mark Arax has a good piece in the NYT about the General’s funeral.

Posted in Clippings, NFL, Obits, Sports | 3 Comments »

The Washington Post FAILS to make me testy.

Monday, February 7th, 2011

(I’m not going to put a “Part 1” on that because this is probably the first and last time you will ever see those words together.)

Stephen Hunter, former WP movie critic and awesome thriller writer (actually, scratch the “thriller” part) writes in the WP defending normal capacity magazines.

(Hattip: Say Uncle. Actually, one of his commenters.)

(Edited to add: Better Say Uncle link here.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Slow down, pussycat.

Monday, February 7th, 2011

Obit watch: Tura Satana, of “Faster Pussycat!! Kill! Kill!” fame.

($31.99? Are they pressing the DVDs out of solid gold?)

Posted in Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Matters of cinema.

Sunday, February 6th, 2011

As you might have guessed, I like movies. I do not, however, go to see as many of them as perhaps I should.

There are several reasons for this. Obviously, I have to be interested in a movie before I’ll plunk down $7 to go see it. For example, I don’t do FaceBook, so The Social Network holds almost no appeal for me.

A second reason is that there’s only two places I will see movies: in a private home (my own or someone else’s) or the Alamo Drafthouse chain of cinemas in Austin and certain other areas of Texas. If I go to an Alamo Drafthouse, I know I will get the following:

  • No commercials. The Alamo does show interstitial material before the movie, but the clips they show are always entertaining and relevant to the movie in some way. They do run brief house ads, and trailers for coming attractions, but I know I won’t have to put up with a Pepsi or Chevy Volt commerical.
  • Food that ranges from good to excellent, a larger selection of beers than many bars in Austin, and highly efficient at your seat service.
  • No disruptions. The Alamo theaters are serious about this, and make it known upfront. I have never actually seen someone evicted from an Alamo for talking or otherwise being disruptive, but I’ve also never been in one where it was actually necessary. People who go there know how to behave.

So if a movie doesn’t play the Alamo, and I don’t catch it in someone’s home, I’m not seeing it. All this is by way of saying that of the Oscar nominated films this year, I’ve seen exactly…one, so far.

I didn’t have any notions going into True Grit, beyond “Oh, look, a Coen Brothers movie.” I haven’t read the book, although I hear good things about it from many folks. (Charles Portis is a big blind spot for me, and I’d like to fix that.) I also haven’t seen the original John Wayne version. (I’d like to, but the current DVD release looks cheap; I’m hoping the success of this version will result in a better DVD release of the original. I haven’t seen the Blu-Ray version in stores yet.) Lawrence and I and some other friends finally got it together, after several false starts, to go see it, and…

…I thought it was a perfectly okay movie. I realize that’s not exactly wild praise, but I just thought the brothers took a simple story and told it very well. It didn’t have the same emotional impact on me that No Country for Old Men did, but it was a fine movie. Without being condescending, I wish my stepfather could have lived to see it on home video; I think he would have enjoyed it.

Bonus movie note: There’s a series of Japanese werewolf movies that go by the name “Kibakichi”. I watched the first one a few nights ago, and, with all due respect to our gracious hosts: don’t. The fire our host built in his fireplace was vastly more entertaining to me than Kibakichi was. Lawrence blames the dubbing, but I’m not sure better dubbing would have saved this movie. Nothing basically happens until the last 15 or so minutes of the movie, the werewolf transformation scene is unexceptional, the story is incomprehensible, the use of firearms (when is this movie supposed to be set, anyway?) is incompetent, and, at 1:37, the movie is about 1:36 too long. Perhaps other people are more fond of the Asian supernatural genre than I am, but I still say “Avoid”.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »

William Gibson, call your office, please.

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

I’ve been thinking a lot about cyberpunk, especially the early work of William Gibson, recently. So I was struck by this tale from the LAT. Apparently, at least according to Microsoft (and we all know how trustworthy Microsoft is) the “La Familia” drug cartel has branched out, and is selling…bootleg copies of Microsoft Office 2007.

The LAT article in turn links to this Microsoft blog post, which in turn quotes the Mexican Attorney General’s claim that “the group’s illegal counterfeiting activities involved a sophisticated distribution network of 180,000 points of sale in stores, markets and kiosks, earning more than $2.2 million dollars in revenue every day.”

I’m more than a little dubious about those numbers, and about the survey also mentioned in the blog post: “More than 38,000 consumers in 20 countries participated in the survey, and a large majority said they want the industry (72 percent) and government (65 percent) to do more to protect them from software piracy.”

Assumin the truth of these stories, this does not strike me as being a wise strategy for the drug cartels. I mean, ticking off the DEA is one thing. But ticking off Microsoft? Not smart, though perhaps not quite as dumb these days as making Google angry.

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

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