And Another: Motorcycle Wreck at FM 730 & CR 4756

Credit: Emailer Amy

Motorcycle wreck in front of Taco Bell

No photo unless someone else got one. Barry (from mobile)

Lawyer Of The Year

Let's just say it involves prison, underage sex, and a wheels off lawsuit against American Express. You know, normal stuff.

Here. (And the comments, especially #5, are pretty funny.)

I feel pretttttty, pretttttty, pretttttty good about my life right now.

Update News

It's all about a shut down Wise County highway this afternoon, but if you are interested in things like that go here.

Hey, Heyyyy

I soooo stole this from D Magazine so everyone go buy a copy of their publication so they won't send one of their high priced, silk suited lawyers after me. (Don't sue me! If you think I'm letting you take that five year old Envoy from me, you are sadly mistaken!)

Anyway, to quote D about this pic:

"[Which] includes one of the greatest facial expressions I’ve seen in a while. Here’s what I imagine going through the guy’s head: 'Okay. Look good. Look sharp. Be cool for the camera …. whoa, HEY. HEEYYY.'"

And visit the D Magazine blog, Frontburner.

(I'm probably good now.)

I Have Discovered A New Mental Disorder

It's called Barnett Shale Tired Head (or "BSTH"), and I hereby claim copyright and trademark and all those other legal words. So everybody else back off.

I can't turn on the TV invention without seeing something about the Barnett Shale. Then there's billboards and the countless newspaper articles. Everybody is getting rich off that stuff except me. Not a dime. (OK, maybe a few bucks from some random oilfield worker gets falsely accused by a trooper of driving while liquored up.) But, in general, mention of the Barnett Shale causes a great deal of depression in my life including Barry tears rolling down my Barry cheeks. I mean, I can hardly breathe when I see terms like "$800 million," above.

Anyway, I'm working on getting "BSTH" included in the DSM-V. If I pull that off, I'll buy my own oil well. Just like Eddie Chiles told me to do when I was a boy.

As We Go Into A String Of 100 Degree Days

Let us all remember March 6, 2008.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• I'm not sure I've ever liked a Woody Allen film
• Stumbled across CSPAN last night and watched some of a daily press conference held by presidential press secretary Dana Perino. She's awful. She simply seems scared to death and I can't tell you the number of times she said, "I'll have to get back to you on that."
• Speaking of press secretaries, I never got to mention the death of Tony Snow. Probably the best ever at the job. And he seemed like a nice guy.
  
• The Drudge Report is obsessed with tropical storms and hurricanes.
  
• Hurricane Dolly is a big bag of nothing but be prepared for minute by minute coverage over the next couple of days.
  
• Anyone who is extremely close to me knows this fact: I have an uncanny ability to drop something but catch it before it reaches the ground. I know of three people that know that about me.
• In Mexico, I swam through a long underground cave that has only been open to the public for a about three months. Creepy. It was called "Rio Secreto" and some folks have loaded up pics of it on Flickr here. But, man, to get to it they put you in the back of some renovated World War II truck and then hauled arse down a bumpy narrow road for five miles.
• At one point in the cave, they shut off all the lights and allowed us to sit in the darkest of darkness for four minutes without sound. And then the silence was pierced with the sounds of my stomach growling. And then I had to suppress laughter. I wasn't mature enough to be there.
  
• I think I'm beginning to figure out why older guys wear some wheels off clothes. It's not that they don't understand fashion, it's that they don't care anymore. (I'll mow the lawn wearing some weird stuff sometimes.)
  
• Another death of a kid left in a car yesterday. It's both unthinkable yet believable when you consider the millions of people in the metroplex.
• There were more details released about the Russ Martin incident (he allegedly made threats to his fiancee while holding a gun and, legally speaking, some other stuff) but, man, his house in Southlake is huge.
• I'm not sure what I think about Fox 4's Emily Lopez. I see some "fake sincerity" but I need to observe her some more.
• The new Tiger Woods labeled Gatorade with "25% more electrolytes" makes me think of the movie Idiocracy.
  
• From The Ticket this morning: Greatest Sports Year Ever? (Great Super Bowl upset, NCAA Basketball Championship went to overtime, Tiger's crazy U.S. Open win, a Wimbledon men's final that was insane, an 80+ seed of Fresno State winning the college baseball world series)
• David Letterman last night: "It's so hot in the northeast that vice president Dick Cheney has replaced his pacemaker with an icemaker." Kill. Me. Hard.
  
• I couldn't pick the Jonas Brothers out of a lineup. But the Morning News is reporting the boys are buying a home in Vaquero in Westlake. (I drove by that subdivision once wanting to go in but the thing is built like a fortress.)
  
• More troubling banking news: Wachovia, the nation's fourth largest bank, reported this morning a loss of $9 billion for the second quarter. Last year it made $2.3 billion during the same period.
• Not sure why the "locally owned bank" in Decatur is opening a Colleyville branch. Other than they are sure they can make money by doing so.

Looks like grass fire but smoke thick enough to close 380

By 4;30 they were beginning to open the highway back up. And, for the life of me, I'm not sure why the smoke was a severe as it was. I don't know if any structures got in the way, but it wouldn't surprise me.

(Pictures taken from Shell parking lot on 380 looking eastward)

Fire

Dang it, my lawyer job kept me from posting about it. I know it was over by the Waggoner Mansion but I don't know how close. Developing . . .

Now This Is Big Time Law Practice

I just got appointed on a case where a guy is accused of using a make-shift Whizzinator. And I'll be dang if we don't have a statute broad enough to make it illegal. And as an attorney board certified in criminal law, I'd like to state: I had no idea.

Tragedy!

How did I miss this? FORMER Channel 8 sports reporter Erin Hawksworth is now working in Boston.

I'll be in the fetal position under my desk if you need me.

Things I Just Learned From The First 20 Pages Of Time Magazine

• Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman have split.
• Sixty one year old Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood has run off with an 18 year old Russian waitress. (Hey, now.)
• 1 in 4 Americans do not graduate from high school
• 1 in 6 Americans do not have health insurance
• Fannie Mae almost went under last week and its CEO makes $13.4 million a year. Fine job.
  
• 42% of Americans have tried marijuana
• That New Yorker cover sure got everyone riled up
• At age 41, Mark Spitz tried to make the Olympic team but failed.
  
• And this from a Letter to the Editor: "I'm sick of reading that the 15th Amendment of 1869 granted former slaves the right to vote. The 15th Amendment granted only male ex-slaves the right to vote. Women of all races occupied a rung well below males slaves on the U.S. ladder of rights. This failure to include women should not be ignored or forgotten." Duly noted.
• On an unrelated note, Rush Limbaugh is now referring to Obama as "Little Barry."
  

Generation Kill

I'm not sure if this is worth a post of its own (then again, what isn't?) but a commenter mentioned that I had missed the first two episodes of HBO's Generation Kill.

When I was trying to go to sleep last night, I had HBO on in the background and that show was already on. (The good stuff on Cinemax was already over.) And, man, that was some pretty good stuff - - - even if I did fall asleep due to exhaustion.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• My inbox that is right in front of me is so tall that i just powered down.
• Someone told me that the way to avoid post-vacation depression is to start planning the next one. Good advice.
  
• I watched the ESPYs last night for the first time in years. Justin Timberlake hosted and that guy was great. Smooth, funny, and overall in control. (One song and dance skit had a Fake Tony Romo dancing with a Fake Jessica Simpson.) Edit: Funny video of part of show here.
  
• Some pitcher for Minnesota had a perfect game against the Rangers yesterday through six innings. The some guy for Texas named Taylor Teagarden came to the plate in only his second major league game. And he homered. The Rangers won 1-0.
  
• And as a sidenote about that homerun: It landed a foot from a lady moving out of the way ash she held what looked like a newborn. I always take my newborns out to the ballgame.
• Laker Girl tryouts.
• My lawn didn't look too bad. Did it rain?
• You had to have seen it, but a lady from Fort Worth who lost her parents and brother in a plane crash in Kaufman County over the weekend was interviewd by one of the news stations last night. (I can't remember which one I was watching.) First, I'm never appearing on camera within 48 hours of the death of anyone close to me and, second, she didn't seem upset at all (but, once again, you really had to see it.)
  
• I never listen to Russ Martin but he's made the headline after being arrested in Southlake for Aggravated Assault. Trust me, aggravated assault cases, due to the way the statute is ridiculously overbroad, are notoriously nothing more than silliness.
• Not exactly fun stuff, but this was an interesting post about how Facebook/Myspace pics can become evidence of a defendant's character. That's ridiculous. My Facebook cover pic of me surrounded by Hooter Girls while I was only wearing a speedo reveals nothing about my character.
• Looks like the Messenger website had issues while I was away. But, when you could finally see Friday's Update, we learned that the Newark City Council will pass an ordinance limiting the number of pets for each household to five cats and five dogs. Gold.
  
• R and R reported on a suicide in Bridgeport. Horrible.
  
• The new Batman movie looks great which isn't exactly saying anything since it set a box office record this weekend with $155 million.
• This time one week ago I was throwing up in Cancun.
• I just noticed that Tropical Storm Dolly is hitting Cancun right now.
  
• While trying to catch up with the Bag Of Nothing's posts, this one broke my heart. The War in Iraq was not worth that one man's pain (or her's). Remember, Obama will get us out of there.
• Forks with any type of covering over the handles bug me.
  
• I hear more and more people say, "I don't like drama" (translation: "My friends can be freakin' crazy sometimes.") Ya know, me loves me some drama. I'm never involved in it, but I love watching it.
• Indy girl catfight involving Danica Patrick (who I still can't stand.) And I can't understand what the other girl is saying, but that accent jazzes me.
  
• I mentioned a couple of week's ago I mentioned I hadn't been in Burger's Lake in Fort Worth in years. And while I was away they shut it down due to a possible parasite.
• A movie star I thought was the perfect girl but who stopped acting years ago: Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl and My Chauffeur.
  
• Other news while I was away: Jesse Jackson is caught using the N Word on Fox while he thought tape wasn't rolling but Fox won't release it. You gotta be kidding. The man who railed against Seinfeld's Kramer for using the N-Word is being protected by Fox?
• Man, did you see the story of the lady who went in for a three hour manicure/pedicure on her wedding day only to learn that her four year old son had died in her car outside of the salon? (I thought it was interesting that temperatures outside "only" got as high as 89 degrees - which apparently is too hot.) They aren't sure if they knew he was in the car.
• That's Claire Danes in that pic up at the top. Can you believe that?
  

Initial Random Vacation Thoughts: Getting There

- How can you feel that it is good to be home and sad to be home at the same time?
- I could live in Terminal D. And I could spend hours people watching at any airport.
- Ticketing is a breeze. Swipe your credit card, swipe you passport, and a boarding pass comes spitting out.
- I was randomly picked to go into the new special see-you-neekid x-ray machine. I tried to suck in my gut.
- American Airlines gets a lot of bad press, but the airline worked like a charm for me. Both flights were on time, with no last second gate changes, no-waiting-forever-on-the-tarmac, and no baggage issues.
- In fact, I've never been on a flight like this one where we taxi down to the end of the runway to do the U-Turn for takeoff and (without coming to a stop) the captain says, "We're number one for take off."
- Also a first: The jet was barreling down the runway - seconds from the wheels lifting off the ground - when the captain suddenly shuts down the engines. He tells us about a minute later that he saw a "nuisance light" (the most confusing term ever) and didn't want to take any chances. I was afraid we'd head back to the gate and spend two hours having a maintenance crew check it out. But no. We just did went back to the start of the runway and took off.
- I love the first five minutes of a flight where I look out the window try to figure out what exact part of DFW I'm over.
- The plane was full. I got my tickets about a month ago with frequent flyer miles and that saved me a fortune.
- That American Way magazine isn't that bad. (But it also has a Mensa quiz that makes me feel stupid.)
- Took the above picture with a cell phone. I always wonder how hard it would be to arrange a trip to a part of the beach that no one else goes to.
- Filling out the Custom Declaration Form promising you aren't bringing certain things into the country seems silly.
- The Cancun airport is nice. Really nice. (Or maybe I believe that just because it's air conditioned.)
- Pushing the button which lights up either a red light (your baggage gets searched) or a green light (you are free to go), makes me as nervous as that guy in Midnight Express.
- Having pre-arranged transportation to the hotel is worth every penny. But I've learned that every Mexican airport will have a ton of guys trying to lead you to their transportation company. It took me about a minute to realize the guy I was talking to had nothing to do with my designated company - but only after he took my voucher out of my hand and started to walk away to lead me to his booth. I actually had to yell, 'Hey, give that back."
- The humidity in Cancun is brutal.
- I actually stayed about 25 miles south of Cancun, I think it's an area called Riviera Maya.

View from my just abandoned hotel room