Articles for November 1st, 2012
“Free Ryan Romo” Page Hits Facebook
You’ll remember Ryan Romo from such hits as this. Now, 90 of his (presumably) fellow students have liked the “Free Ryan Romo” page on Facebook. But really all you have to know about that page, and the intelligence of those “liking” it, can be summed up in this screenshot.
Update: More than 250 folks have now signed on, and the comments are about as hateful as you’d expect. There’s also at least one father of four girls defending Romo. Hope his daughters aren’t on Facebook.
Cops: Taking The Fun Out of Words Since Forever
I was skimming through this Morning News story this afternoon (a really fun, quick-hit crime story involving a fire extinguisher, and great mugshot) when I stumbled upon this line:
“Not knowing if arrestee had any saliva borne diseases [the officer] was forced to take ahold of arrestee’s head and secure it against the blacktop,” the report says.
Rewritten:
“I wasn’t sure if this lunatic was gonna bite me, so I had to grab his head and slam it to the pavement,” the report says.
See? How much more fun (and accurate) is that?
Taking the Treat Out of Trick-or-Treating
The scene’s a quiet, leafy, White Rock Lake-area neighborhood, one home in particular lit up, decked to the nines for Halloween 2012. Throngs of well-mannered, costumed kids with parents troop through as usual for their candy fix. Most tentatively pick out one or two or three pieces off a pile on a big round tray, politely say, “Thank you,” move on.
Then four trick-or-treaters show up, including a tall guy with a moustache who looks 20 but says he’s 12. The four pounce on the offered candy, driving the tray into the driveway gravel as they pick it clean. Walking away, one of them swipes a battery-powered “zombie hand” that flashes on and off, part of the home’s holiday decor for a dozen years.
A couple of groups later, a young boy accompanying four cheerful girls looks sullen. The girls explain that, a little earlier, the aforementioned “12-year-old with a moustache” had hauled off and slugged their friend in the jaw, and he’s embarrassed and angry.
This little Halloween tale involves three ethnic groups, and it doesn’t matter which group did what to whom. But it leaves one party feeling it can raise hell with impunity, and two others smoldering and resentful. The neighborhood turns off the lights early.
Denton City Councilman Learns the Wobble
In the words of a friend, “somewhere a future campaign manager is shuddering.”
Denton Councilman Kevin Roden recently learned the Wobble, a dance that (really) is more of just a shake. He puts his new skill to work 4:10 into this video, and then tweeted this:
You might recall a couple weeks ago when I learned to wobble. Proof now online – start at 4:10 #careerover iontams.com/2012/10/30/tam…
— Kevin Roden (@KevinRoden) October 31, 2012
Nah, man, I think you’re good.
Rick Perry Speaks at Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce Dinner Tonight In Dallas
Thanks to my side gig as a looper, I’ve seen the speech and, in a way I’m sure you are familiar with by now, I’ve recreated it.
We Should All Be Thankful Texas Isn’t a Swing State
Source: Washington Post
While I was back in Maryland this week for my wedding, I noticed something that somehow escaped my mind the past couple months: presidential campaign ads.
Slippery, gross little things, they are.
During Tuesday night’s Heat-Celtics game, every commercial break was full of them, up to five in a row at one point. Obama would trot out a blind steelworker, then Romney would find someone with a club foot who doesn’t think their club foot would much care for Obamacare. The Post has a running map/graphic that shows each campaign’s TV spending, and Texas is one of only seven states with zero presidential TV ads.
That fact doesn’t matter until you watch TV in a metro-area that’s had $63 million worth of them dumped into its collective living room. ¡Viva el estado rojo!
The Texas Rangers’ Adrian Beltre is a Hall of Famer
Anyone who’s more than a casual baseball fan should know that the Rawlings’ Gold Glove Awards are pretty much a joke. They’re supposed to be given to the best defensive players by position in each league, but more often they get handed out to some guy with big offensive numbers just because he manages not to trip over his own feet every time the ball is hit his way.
And yet, and yet, we still pay attention to the damned things because Major League Baseball pretends they’re important. So it’s nice when a true defensive master, like third baseman Adrian Beltre of your Texas Rangers, wins one. Yesterday he received the fourth such distinction of his career.
Today, Lone Star Ball argues that the Man Who Really, Really Hates His Head to be Touched, may well end up enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame:
But as we saw for the last three weeks in Detroit, San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bronx, defense at third can prove critical, and not all defenders are created equal. Indeed, since his sad tenure in Seattle, Beltre’s career has undergone a kind of renaissance and the stathead community has come back around on defense. Now, we understand that he has been, by far, the best-fielding third baseman since Brooks Robinson. In fact, according to Ultimate Zone Rating, Beltre has been the best fielder in baseball over the last decade at any position. Even if he didn’t have an All Star-quality bat (which he totally does, by the way), he’d be the Ozzie Smith of the hot corner. But once you factor in his offense, it’s clear that Beltre has been one of the two best third baseman of his generation.
Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: Nov. 1
It’s November, which means the passengers in my car can no longer complain when I don’t skip Taylor Swift’s version of “Last Christmas” whenever it pops up on shuffle. That is my holiday jam, I have six covers of it on my iPod not including the original, and everyone is just going have to have to deal with it until January.
Now for tonight. If anyone’s familiar with the television show Party Down (and you should be, for heaven’s sake, I mention it enough and it’s awesome), you’ll remember that the character of Roman, an aspiring science fiction writer/screenwriter who surprisingly does not have a way with the ladies, spends a lot of time yapping about the difference between what he calls hard sci-fi and well, anything else (but especially Star Wars). I mention this because Roman is my favorite character, and I’m fascinated by things I don’t fully understand, which is almost everything that Texas Tech professor Bruce Clarke does with his life.
Clarke is the author of The Ecology of Neuromancer: Cyberpunk, Cyberspace, and High Orbit in Planetary Context, which sounds awesome even though I’ve never read a word of either the original Neuromancer or this, and he’s also tonight’s guest lecturer at SMU. I’ve been reading this interview with Clarke all morning, and the connection he makes between music, cybernetics, and the science fiction universe is some fascinating stuff. Anyway, I’ll be attending his talk tonight, waving my little geek flag.
Who Really Killed the Sacred White Buffalo?
When news broke a few months ago, that the sacred white buffalo born less than a year earlier in Greenville had been murdered, approximately half the journalists in Texas felt their ears perk up. As far as news stories go, rarely do you have so many great elements all at once: plenty of interesting characters with colorful names, an ancient culture full of lore, and some pretty incredible accusations.
Just yesterday, we linked to a story about the investigation from WFAA. Today we bring you this week’s Dallas Observer cover story, by my always-observant friend Brantley Hargrove. (Be warned, the story runs about 6,000 words.) The short: Arby Little Soldier, the white buffalo’s owner, claimed the animal was butchered by two Lakota rivals. But that doesn’t seem to be the case at all actually.
Make sure you read far enough to get to Little Soldier’s “spiritual elder,” Sam Lone Wolf. Here’s a one-sentence description, from the story:
“In an online martial arts profile, Lone Wolf says he runs a wolf sanctuary and rarely travels without one of his animals at his side ‘for protection.’”
Dallas Will Soon Probably Be Renamed Klyde Warren, Texas, so Get Ready
A friend of the program sent along this photo, of the newly-dubbed Klyde Warren Auditorium at the Lamplighter School.
Quick checklist:
1. Five-acre park
2. Private school auditorium
When I was in fourth grade, I had a sign on my bedroom door with a couple baseball bats that spelled out “BRAD,” so naming rights were a pretty big deal in my household, too.
I have a call in to school officials to see just when, exactly, young Klyde was honored with this auditorium. I’ll update accordingly. Until then, though, let’s take a quick tour through Lamplighter’s annual giving report.
Leading Off (11/1/12)
Highland Park Athlete Arrested for Rape: Ryan Romo, an 18-year-old baseball player for Highland Park, was charged with sexual assault on a child Tuesday, after the senior allegedly raped a fellow student after a show Saturday night. CultureMap was ON IT, concluding its story with: “If it’s a case of impulsive teenage decisions, remorse and guilt, then no one suffers more than 18-year-old Ryan Romo.” Except it’s, you know, rape, not an impulsive teenage decision, remorse, or guilt. The Observer took the Map (as in, all over the) to task.
Kidnapped Tyler Boy Found in Louisiana:Â After a short car chase through Monroe, La., police arrested James Calvert, charging him with the murder of the boy’s mother. Officers found the boy unharmed in the backseat, hopefully with some candy or at least a granola bar or something.
Hello, I’m Brad:Â And I’ll be your new FrontBurnerer.
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