The 4th of July: God or the Chi-Lites?

We hope there wasn't an unnecessary amount of evangelizing mixed in with your Fourth of July celebreation today, unless that's your specific cup o' tea and you can't wait til the Christian sabbath, which is what we would prefer, personally speaking.

Can't say the same for Lake Jackson, where some citizens, well-meaning and God-fearing no doubt, take the occassion of our nation's independence to tell us about all our salvation.

Really, how 'bout just a quickie history lesson, to remind all of this day was about a revolution?

But, as the local Clute paper helpfully explained, there was another idea.

"In the spirit of thanksgiving and celebration, community members have united to sing the praises of the nation and the Lord on Independence Day. First Baptist Church of Clute, First Baptist Church of Lake Jackson, Grace Fellowship, the Brazosport Community Orchestra and others have joined in a Community Choir."

Set up in the mall's parking lot, the musical revival took place before the annual local fireworks display, which also takes place near the shopping mall, so a captive audience was assured.

Frankly, we prefer a secular July 4th celebration, like they did in Houston, where the Chi-Lites (see photo above) performed. They're now in their 50th year of providing musical entertainment and they wore bright orange suits. (Thanks to Brazosport News reader Mike for shooting us the image via his Blackberry.)

No history lesson there, either, but at least we weren't reminded that a lot of us are going to burn in hell, allegedly.

Anyway, happy Fourth of July.

Need a new hobby? Learn in your own home. Make money in your spare time

Understanding Michael Jackson

If you're having trouble grasping what went wrong in the life of Michael Jackson -- aside from an apparent prescription drug addiction -- there is this story in the LA Times written by its former pop music critic Robert Hilburn.

In the '80s, Hilburn was chosen by Jackson himself to help put together a book, but the deal fell through because the pop star wanted mostly a picture book and the publishing house's editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, wanted a full-scale biography.

During our time together, however, the conversations with Michael led -- once the tape recorder was off -- sometimes to darker moments from his past. One night when we were going through a stack of old photos, a picture of him at 17 served as a trigger for a sudden openness.

"Ohh, that's horrible," he said, recoiling from the picture.

Michael explained his face was so covered with acne and that his nose so large at the time the photo was taken that people wouldn't even recognize him -- a rejection so painful that it contributed to a personality change in him, he said. "They would come up, look me straight in the eye and ask if I know where that 'cute little Michael' was." It was, he added, like the "whole world was saying, 'How dare you grow up on us.' "

After repeated rejection, Michael said, he started looking down at the floor when people approached or would just stay in his room when visitors came to the family house in Encino.

Michael vowed after those wounds to do whatever it took to make people "love me again." The rejection fueled his ambition to be the biggest pop star in the world and to try to make his face beautiful. Unfortunately, Michael's need was so great that no amount of love seemed to be enough.

Parts of Hilburn's story are excerpted from his memoir, "Corn Flakes With John Lennon, and Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life," which will be published in October, according to an editor's note.

In light of Jackson's death, here's guessing the book publisher may want to tinker with the book title and flesh out what Hilburn had intended to publish about the late King of Pop.

Dow Chemical penalized $166K for pollution violations, but it's alright Ma, my asthma will be getting better soon, lol

We put a story up on the Hairballs blog yesterday about the state regulators assessing a rather large fine (relatively speaking) on the local chemical manufacturing behemoth.

So go over there and read it in full, if you like.

No, it's not anti-Dow. It's about how Dow's pollutin sins really are a benefit to mankind, 'specially the chirren.

That is all.

it's too hot to blog so watch this

This was on Lance Zierlein's blog. Jose sent it in to Lance, who called it "One of the Greatest Remixes EVER." I can't disagree.

quote/unquote: Twitter, a living will, Googlizing books and Woody Allen subbing Larry David for Zero Mostel

(Editor's Note: quote/unquote is a regular feature of The Brazosport News. It is compiled by Wilson in St. Louis, the birthplace of "fried ravioli" which is sometimes known as "Chuckle Nuggets.")

“A beautiful Hispanic woman walked up to me and said ‘Senor Amor, may I take a picture with you?' Senor Amor. I like that.” --- tweet on Twitter by Kevin Love, player for the NBA Minnesota Timberwolves

"3. If I am unable to recognize or interact with friends or family members, I still expect gifts.
17. In lieu of flowers or donations, I would prefer rioting.
22. At my memorial service, I would like my clergyman to begin his eulogy with the words, "I suppose, in a way, we all killed him.'"
-- "My Living Will" by Paul Rudnick, New Yorker, 2005

"I enjoyed the fatuous surprise of Google's Sergey Brin discovering that 'There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site.' Translating this backhanded recognition of value into his own debased lingo, he understands that books make for 'viable information-retrieval systems,' information being the only cultural signifier he recognizes, evidently. His company's amazing presumption that book people should simply hand over the keys to their priceless kingdom shows how completely he and his colleagues misunderstand what is at stake. But these Internet people don't care. For billionaires like Brin, accessing the giant river of infinite book 'content' onto which they can glue paid advertising is simply a giant new way to make more money, and they are singleminded about that. The giveaway is not only in their ignorance but in their reluctance to share the wealth."
--- "The Long Goodbye" by Elisabeth Sifton in The Nation about the changing book industry

"It's a film I had written many years ago for Zero Mostel (pictured), and it was in the drawer, and I thought...who could possibly do it, and then it hit me: Larry David."
--- Woody Allen talking about his new movie "Whatever Works" which stars Larry David of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"

Chron.com gets a D+

The Houston Chronicle's Web site, Chron.com, fared poorly in an analysis of the online versions of the nation's largest newspapers.

We realize such rankings -- in this case grades of A through F were dispensed by Douglas McIntrye of Wall Street 24/7 -- don't amount to a hill o' beans in this crazy, mixed-up world.

Still, in this era of financially challenged newspapers, the thinking is that the online products of the nation's Fourth Estate take on new significance regarding survival in the future.

Chron.com got a D+ grade, but a handful of others fared as bad or worse -- the Dallas Morning News received a D-, the Boston Globe received a D, the Cleveland Plain Dealer a D+, the Philadelphia Inquirer a D- and the Newark Star Ledger an F.

Here's what was said about Chron.com:

This site is a bit of a mess and is as good an example of what not to do with a newspaper site as any in this survey. The navigation across the homepage includes twenty five tabs some of which are labeled poorly enough so that it is hard for the reader to understand what they are. The front page really does not have a headline per se. The stories at the top of the page are features which don’t appear to be chosen to compel the reader to go further into the website. Some of the stories near the top of the page are from the Associated Press, an indication that the editors don’t feel that they have enough compelling content from their own features. The stories do have the basic social network and reader interaction tools including the ability to comment on stories and share them on Twitter or Facebook. The large sections of the paper like “Business” are only a long list of headlines, some of which have brief story summaries. The only illustrations on many of these pages are low resolution headshots of bloggers. The main news page has nearly no illustrations at all. Multimedia features are completely missing, a sign that Chronicle management treats the online paper as an after-thought. Entertainment sections are the only well-designed portions of online newspaper. Most Chron.com sections look like cheap blogs. The site runs a fair amount of local advertising, much of it not very well designed. The Houston Chronicle is owned by Hearst.

For a subjugated gender some of these Iranian women are feisty

Maintaining your dignity

I'll bet you don't have one of these devices, described, literally, as "the first improvement to toilet paper, as we know it, since the 1880s."

Toilet paper, we're told on the commercial, is "archaic."

Joe Posnaski, who usually writes about baseball, can tell you more -- maybe more than you want to know.

Today's Bible lesson

Looking at video from Iran

You have to wonder if there's another Tianenman Square in the cards for the protestors in Iran.

American TV coverage of events must have been clamped down, based on what I'm not seeing, but you might want to check out the raw amateur footage on this YouTube channel to get a flavor of what's happenin.

Here's a BBC viddy too.

Birds identified as barn swallows (and no, I don't live in a barn)

Jessica in Clute solved the mystery about the birds nesting inside the front entrance of the porch. (See yesterday's post.)

They're barn swallows, she said, sending along this informative link.

As you can see from the above photo, it should be quite a sight walkin out the front door if all goes according to the swallow family plan.

Wild Kingdom part II -- a new set of birds of building a nest inside our porch

I believe these birds are part of the flycatcher family because they have forked tails, but I'm having trouble identifying them any narrower than that and I could use some help.

It's been fascinating during the past two weeks watching them build their nest.

Constructed with a mixture of mud and dried grass, it's entirely different from the other birds's nest that went up under the garage eaves last month.

Regular Brazosport News readers might recall that those baby birds hatched in that nest were growing up fine until one of the neighborhood cats lay waste to them. [See posts on May 23and May 17.]

(We've since identified the cat. It goes by "Whiskers.")

Back to the new set of birds. I give them credit for their engineering skills, not to mention their "work ethic" to use a cliché from the tiresome sports parlance of our times.

They started by building a thin ledge composed of moist red dirt. That base went up an inch or so, then they started bringing in black moist soil to continue building upward. Mixed into this, of course, is the re bar -- yellowing dead grasses.

They're at it all day from sunup to sundown.

As far as their appearance, you see from the pictures posted here they have a gray belly and chest and a rust-colored patch under their beaks that extends up between their eyes slightly.

Their backs are dark colored. I'd say black, but in just the right light, there's almost a sheen of dark blue in there.

So what are they? Do you know? Can you send this to somebody who knows a lot about birds and find out?

I've gone through many pages of Google images searching "flycatcher birds" and have yet to find a match.

Jessica Alba to OKC -- Sorry for vandalizing your city but it's really, like, the fault of these other people I totally shouldn'ta got involved with

So maybe waging a nighttime guerilla campaign in Oklahoma City to save the Great White Shark wasn't such a swift move for Jessica Alba.

She has apologized.

An investigation is underway, etc., etc.

Bad Ju Ju, Jess.

In Oklahoma, no less. The reddest of the red states. The state that gave John McCain the biggest vote percentage in the whole country. The state that does not like the defacement of private and/or private property. The state that doesn't give a shit about the Great White Shark or anything else that lives in the water, except for gigantic catfish, which they catch with their bare hands -- because it's fun.

How'd all this come to light and ignite a minor furor? A little blog in OKC. All hail The Blog. Power to The Blog!

Why the hell is Jessica Alba in Oklahoma City? Makin a movie up in Guthrie, a hour or so north. (Guthrie was the state capital of Oklahoma a long long time ago, they say. There's a banjo museum there. Seriously. But it's being moved to Oklahoma City pretty son, we heard on the radio.)

Run along now, Jessica. And put some clothes on! Company's comin over!!

quote/unquote: watching the feet, "El Pistola," sin in Bahrain, going to sea

(Editor's Note: Another in a continuing series of quotes from around the globe as compiled by Wilson in St. Louis, the fourth largest single city in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century which has since slipped to 52nd.)

"It is not the shoes. It is who wears the shoes. (Kobe) Bryant took baby steps toward learning those moves while playing soccer in Italy, where he spent part of his childhood and where his father, Joe Bryant, played basketball. His feet touched the ball as much as a basketball now meets his hands. When cousins in the United States sent him videos of NBA games, Bryant studied the feet of Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. “I’ve always worked on it, always worked on it since I was a kid,” Bryant said. “I just watched different players — Olajuwon, Michael, Charles — and just all kinds of footwork and just tried to emulate them. Playing soccer, I think, had a lot to do with it as well. It’s just growing up overseas.” ---- Jonathon Abrams, New York Times, June 6, '09

"Now it looks like we put a gun to his head to sign the contract. He was young, but he didn't come [to the table] all by himself and defenseless to see what we were going to do with him. We gave him the opportunity to develop as a player in the ACB, to grow as a player, to become an Olympian with the (Spanish) National Team -- he has accomplished these feats via the Joventut. That's what it is, that's what is signed and we will defend it." -- Jordy Villacampa, president of the Joventut basketball club, talking about Ricky "El Pistola" Rubio's (see photo) expected decision to sign with a NBA team, which would trigger a $6.6 million buy-out clause in his contract, even though Rubio would earn $175,000 next season if he stays in Spain.

"Do you think the tourists come here to Bahrain to see my face? There are tourist places in Saudi Arabia that are 100 times better than in Bahrain. They only come here to drink, and to have happy time with a Chinese or Thai girl." ---- Ahmed Sanad, president of the Bahraini Society of Hotel and Restaurant Owners, on proposals to curtail drinking and prostitution in Bahrain, which is a popular spot for Saudis. in The Wall Street Journal: "Bahrain Reconsiders the Wages of Sin" 6.09.09.

"Going to sea is like going to prison, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Jessica Alba: in LA, she's an animal rights activist; in Oklahoma City, she's just another criminal actor

First-of-its-kind tornado video

Clouds -- just because

These were taken over about a 10 to 15 minute time frame early this evening.

It certainly appeared that precipitation was imminent.

But then the momentum of the oncoming clouds was spent.

Now, some four hours later, it still hasn't rained.

In praise of the base-on-balls (ie. "the walk")

The basketball season is nearing an end, thank God.

No disrespect, but it's just not my game. I really can't stand to watch a whole game on TV, except maybe if the Rockets are playing a playoff game or there's an NCAA tournament game that catches my fancy.

Perhaps it's because I never played much of the game. Played two years in junior high, none after that. And our team, the Cedar Bayou Junior High Bears, were atrociously bad. None of us really grew up playing the game much. To call our game a Chinese Fire Drill would be an insult to the Chinese, to quote my friend Wilson in St. Louis (who not only is an avid hoops fan but hosts a weekly pickup game in the alley behind house, not to mention coaching youth teams.)

So, anyway, with basketball nearing an end, we all can focus our attention on baseball. Now, I know many of you can't stand the game, for any number of misguided reason, but I'm sorry to say this is simply ignorance talking.

This all is leading up to this link to a piece by Joe Posnanski, who is an excellent baseball writer up in Missouri.

It's about the importance of the "walk," officially known in your boxscore as a base-on-balls.

It's real important to winning games, Joe writes:

The thing is … everyone knows a walk (in some circumstances) is not as good as a hit. In other circumstances, it’s just as good as a hit. In rare circumstance, you could argue, a walk could be better than a hit. Joe Morgan always thought so. At least he did when he was a player … in a book I keep hearing about, Morgan talks about his perfect run, where he would draw a walk, steal second, steal third and score on a wild pitch or passed ball or short sac fly — he believed that scoring a run without a hit destroys a pitcher’s mental well-being in a way that even a 500-foot homer cannot. This does make sense to me, but obviously that’s just an opinion and anyway, I’m not here to say that a walk is ever better than a hit.

I’m here to say that a walk is NEVER an out. And, because a walk is never an out, it’s a powerful offensive weapon. It puts a runner on base, of course. But it also eats up a pitcher’s pitch-count. It makes the pitcher throw the from the stretch, opens up the left side of the infield, puts the middle infielders at double play depth. A walk changes the complexion of games … and even now, even with all the talk about walks the last few years, I STILL think people wildly underestimate the power of walks.

[snip]

… sure, there are variables with walks too. But in large part, a team can have a plan to walk a lot. A team can be be built to walk a lot. There have been countless stories written about the Tampa Bay Rays last year and why they were so successful. Well, the Rays had a lousy batting average, and they were middle of the pack as sluggers. True, they were second in the league in ERA, but, Toronto was No. 1 by a lot, and the Rays finished 11 games ahead of the Blue Jays.

Walks? Could be. The Rays went 44-15 in games they walked five times or more … those 44 wins were the most in baseball. Meanwhile, they only had six games all year where they walked 0 times, among the lowest totals in baseball.

If you find this preposterously boring, then you don't love baseball, but I urge you to give it a chance. It's a great sport, and it was invented right here in America.

A Hollywood story about the late David Carradine, American journeyman actor

Before he was found hanged in a Bangkok hotel closet, the actor David Carradine caused a bit of stir out in La-La Land during a screening of one of his best-known movies, Bound For Glory.

This occurred this past spring, and it sheds no light on whether Carradine committed suicide or died from one those auto-erotic asphyxiation hanging rituals that sometimes go wrong, but I post the link here (via an LA Times story) for the simple reason that I found it interesting.

Two witnesses at the screening event, which was followed by an hour-long panel chat that was dominated by Carradine, came away from the spectacle with two different reactions.

One called it "a deeply uncomfortable immersion in unalloyed anxiety" and the other said it was "an exhilarating look past the usual curtain of Hollywood bullshit."

Rest in peace, Grasshopper.

Texas finally takes the gloves off with a lawsuit against a repeat polluter

Well, this is a surprise.

The Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, filed a lawsuit today against BP for repeated pollution violations.

We are surprised since a majority of the big plants here in the Petrochemical Underarm commit repeat violations and AG Abbott (pictured) doesn't go to court against them.

The Texas Commission on Environment Quality handles that stuff, usually via an "agreed order" in which the state and the polluter agree on a fine and certain changes that are to be made at the offending facility.

The commission says it tries to "work with" polluters to clean up their plant operations while critics say the commission could be a whole lot more aggressive. (We agree with the critics, based on our years of blogging about this stuff, which, frankly, never elicits much reaction from our readership.)

Does this lawsuit signal a sea change in the attorney general's approach to environmental outlaws?

Don't know.

Is Abbott doing this cause he's gonna run for higher office and wants to burnish his green credentials?

Don't know.

We do know, however, that BP ran a slipshod operation for years at its Texas City plant and that 15 workers were killed and 170 injured in an explosion that didn't have to happen if BP had been running a decent refinery.

That was four years ago.

It's a shame it takes such a tragedy for public officials and the public to realize how some of these places are run.

quote/unquote: a soccer pep talk, pseudoscience, Twitter and the lifelong distraction known as work

(Editor's Note: "quote/unquote" is a weekly feature of The Brazosport News and is compiled by Wilson in St. Louis, located near the confluence of Mississippi and Missouri rivers and site of the 1904 World's Fair and 1904 Olympic Games, the first time either of those events were held in the United States.)

"We are the centre of the field, we have accuracy, we have effort, we are attackers who are defending, we are defenders who are attacking, we have speed, we have the respect of our adversaries, we are each goal that we score, we are the ones who are always looking for the opponent's goal. We are one."
--- the concluding message of a video shown to Barcelona's soccer team immediately before the European Champion League's game in which they defeated Manchester United 2-0 last week. the video also included scenes from "The Gladiator"

"Medical analogies, applied to social organisms, are apt to be far-fetched, and there is no point in mistaking mammalian chemistry for what occurs in a city. But analogies as to what goes on in the brains of earnest and learned men, dealing with complex phenomena they do not understand at all and trying to make do with pseudoscience, do have point. As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense......The pseudoscience of city planning and its companion, the art of city design, have not yet broken with the specious comfort of wishes, familiar superstitions, oversimplifications, and symbols, and have not yet embarked upon the adventure of probing the real world."
--- Introduction of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs (1961)

"According to the Harvard Business School's hard-hitting Twitter reports, 10 percent of Twitter users account for 90 percent of all tweets, and women outnumber men."
--------- promotional email from Mother Jones, June 3, '09

"For Mr. de Botton, there is something absurd about the energy and anxiety that we pour into our jobs, given that even our most glorious deeds are destined for oblivion. Work has no greater value, he suggests, than as a lifelong distraction from the fact of our inevitable demise. Having allowed us to put a roof over our heads, work is finally a way of keeping us 'out of greater trouble.'"
----- Francis X. Rocca's review of "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" by Alain de Botton, in the Wall Street Journal, 6.2.09