5.25.2020

Random Monday Morning Thoughts


  • It's an official holiday. I'm officially the hardest working man in show business.
  • The Board:
  • Texas. While away it turned into a serious downward trend then we had an uptick on the 7 day average line. 
  • Wise County. 43 total. 11 active.  (Despite some questionable number crunching by officials for one day, my prediction of no more than 12 active cases -- at least until Fall -- is holding steady.)
  • As much as Trump is a master politician of keeping his 43% base fired up and loyal, he's completely clueless in trying to expand that base. Case in point: Golfing on Memorial Day weekend -- a  weekend as the country trends towards 100,000 deaths and 20% unemployment. Any way you slice it, that is a horrible, horrible look. 
  • Joe Biden's campaign immediately jumped on it with an ad.
  • And he deserves the grief he catches.
  • With regards to social distancing, a video of a pool by Lake of the Ozarks was all over social media this weekend. I'd be worried about catching more than just the coronavirus.
  • I didn't realize this was a problem. 
  • Lake Bridgeport, which was right at one foot above conservation level, was closed indefinitily late Saturday on this holiday weekend. That's dumb. You close the lake when there has been a rapid increase in the water level which has caused floating debris to be everywhere and/or boat wakes could cause damage to already flooding property. Neither of those are happening. 
  • We learned Trump's bank account and routing numbers. 

  • The wind damage in Bowie was very bad on Friday night, but the size the hail in Burkburnett was the eye-opener.
  • This occurred on sunny Friday afternoon. How in the world did that happen? 
  • aTm used the opportunity to announced that athletes could start returning to school for workouts on a limited bases to take a shot at Texas. 
  • If you would have asked me if I regularly see and speak to a lawyer in the Wise County courthouse that had personally argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, I would have bet big money on the answer of "absolutely not." I would have lost. I learned on Friday that Richard Gladden did just that in 1992 when he was just three years out of law school. And he did a good job. And won. (You can listen to it here with a cool interactive transcript.)  
  • Oh, my.

  • Crap like this would get a regular person banned from Twitter. (Yes, I'm especially hard on Trump this morning, but he proved once again over the last three days that he is a despicable and miserable human being. And I haven't even mentioned his disgusting retweets on this, of all things, Memorial Day weekend. ) 

  • Jacksboro made the front page of The Dallas Morning News over the weekend. 
  • Dateline Midland. This is ridiculous. (Video) He was being detained in the most bizarre of ways for, wait for it, rolling through a stop sign and a turn signal violation. Is anyone trained in de-escalating a situation? (Spoiler alert: When the camera pans to the right so you can see the person who it the object of the officers' attention, it is not Shelley Luther.)
  • I finally got around to watching Yesterday -- the movie about the Beatles being wiped from the memories of almost everyone except one small time musician. My verdict is the same as almost everyone else's: What a great concept and great movie for the first half that seriously lost its way down the back stretch.  And Kate McKinnon's over-the-top character had absolutely no place in Danny Boyle film.
  • I had never seen Band of Brothers so I made it through four episodes over the last couple of days.  I actually ended up wanting more of the veterans briefly talking before each episode and less extended fight scenes. (Side note: Band of Brothers came up on MSNBC this morning and one guest actually said we should also go back and watch Pearl Harbor. Huh?! They aren't even in the same ballpark.)