Leading Off (11/3/11)

Lewisville Coach Quits After Being Charged With Human Trafficking. Coaches quit or get fired or whatever all the time, but I’m pretty sure this is the first one who has resigned for this particular reason. If I were a coach, I’d want to get fired for getting my kids interested in literature and so on, and then one of them discovers a gift for acting, but his father doesn’t like it and makes him quit, even after he did so well in the play, and the kid dies and the dad blames me, and now I realize I’ve  just basically typed a synopsis of Dead Poets Society. And I’m crying.

Occupy Dallas Protesters Get Ready For Cold Front. This isn’t really news. Just wanted to put it up for sentences such as this one: “The protesters do have access to coats and sweaters that have been donated.” They “have access to coats.” Oh, really? The coats are not in the vault anymore? BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SWEATERS? Ah, sorry, just noticed it says “coats AND sweaters.” Never mind. If you boiled down that story to its essence it would say, “It’s going to be cold for a few days, but they have coats and some of them are going home for a few days, and they aren’t all morons who will freeze to death because they don’t understand how weather works.” That said, I do hope they’re OK. And by that, I obviously mean the coats. And, sure, the sweaters. As long as they’re not cardigans.

Two of the Texas 7 Get Execution Dates. George Rivas, the mastermind behind the operation, is due for lethal injection on February 29, and his confederate, Donald Newbury, had his execution set for February 1. Your impassioned arguments for/against the death penalty happen momentarily, I suspect. We have plenty of room in the comments for that to segue into an attack/defense of Rick Perry, George Bush, and the state of Texas in general, as well as some brief commentary on that movie where Billy Bob Thornton played a death row prison guard and Halle Berry won an Academy Award for crying a bunch. Or whatever. Take it wherever you want. I merely set up the tents; you guys have to put on the circus yourself. Just don’t draw Tim offsides. We’re shipping a magazine, and he’s too busy to make phone calls, and at any rate, I’m still polishing up a script for him to use. A three-act structure is hard to work into one minute.