This Is The Premise Of Idiocracy

What Happened To Hannah Montana?

"They grow up so fast."

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• DFW sports radio rankings.
• Tim Reiger of Decatur was mentioned  by the Rangers broadcast team member Tom Grieve in the 9th inning on Friday night.  But I forgot why.
• Mrs. LL left me alone for the weekend as she ran off to Sea World. "No parties," she told me. Didn't have to worry about that.
• I watched the first five episodes of Mad Men. I'm still not sure what I'm watching, but the feel of the show is very, very cool.
• Young (and attractive) lawyer was randomly stabbed inside of a Dallas Target late last week.
• Horrible misprint on a  UT commencement program.  
• Is bull-nettle still prevalent in Texas? I haven't heard of anyone getting into it in a long time.
• I'll say it again, those anti-Ted Cruz "he-represents-the-Chinese" aren't just borderline racist, they are racist. David Dewhurst should be ashamed of himself. Crus is the ultimate conservative Tea Partier, and I'm no fan of his, but he needs to win that race.
• Good grief: Five people leave a Hooters off of Hulen last night and then proceed south on I-35. A car then pulls up next to them and unloads five gunshots into their car killing two of them.  Not that it makes it any better, but I hope that wasn't totally random.
• Saw a Trooper stopping a kid on College Street in the Decatur city limits this morning.
• Lawyer stuff:  The guy who represents Torii Hunter's son in the Prosper sexual assault case was in Wise County a couple of months ago representing someone in a criminal case. He actually stopped me on the street to ask me some questions about the ins and outs of our courthouse. Lawyer stuff #2:  Denton lawyer Tricia Perry (who used to come to Wise County) is representing the kid accused of setting the dog on fire in Dallas. I heard her on 105.3 The Fan on Friday afternoon. 
• Watched a fantastic documentary on VH1:  "Uprising: Hip Hop and the LA Riots."
• I watch a lot of TV when Mrs. LL isn't around. (And throw the ball into the backstop a lot.) 
• She went to Sea World with what sounds like a ton of Girl Scouts who actually spent the night in the park.  Mrs. LL says she tried to sleep while next to a glass wall which, on the other side, had a penguin who starred at her in the middle of the night.
• Oh, and she reports the bypass around Austin is the greatest thing in the history of ever and has a speed limit of 80 miles per hour. 

Plane Crash In Wise County

One fatality so far.

Developing . . .

Channel 5 has the first pic:

Edit:

Edit: You can see the grass runway from this satellite view:

There Was An Eclipse Tonight

Pete Delkus believes this is real. I'm not so sure:

Edit: Tony Jackson took these in Wise County

Stuff I LIke

I stumbled on this about two weeks ago and it stuck with me. I've always been a New Order fan and this song takes me back to circa 1990. I don't know who Nada Surf is, and I'm not sure what the AV Club is, but this project is pretty cool.

The trumpet (?) replacing the electronica and the beatboxing in this is cool. Very cool.

Link.

Funny

I think Bobby Valentine was suppressing laughter as he walked back to the dugout.

And the last 15 seconds of this video is pretty good. Slow motion. In reverse. Guys laughing.

Completely Fake Poster For Decatur Fundraiser

Messenger Above The Fold

Cuteness Taking You Into The Weekend

I Find Humor . . .

. . . in (1) the insane gyrations the runner goes through to avoid being tagged, and (2) the ol-throw-your-glove-into-the-ground move by the pitcher.

And Another - New Jersey

Story.

These teachers are putting up record breaking numbers quicker than Josh Hamilton.

The Story . . .

. . . says the city attorney prepared a three page contract regarding the coin flip. That got me thinking. What rules or contingencies would you need covered. Let's see . . .

• When
• Where
• Type of coin
• Who gets to make the call
• What happens if coin doesn't land flat (i.e. rolls and ends up leaning.)
• Who flips the coin
• Does the coin need to be tossed to a certain height

What else?

College Football Going Old School

The SEC and Big 12 just announced an agreement to have its conference champs play a bowl game on New Years Day.  The site is still undetermined but Jerry World has to be in the mix somewhere.

The only down side, if you can call it that, is that there will be a four team national championship playoff in a format that is yet to be determined. If the Big 12 Champ or SEC Champ it in the top four, they'll bypass the new bowl game. The last time that the Big 12 and SEC (combined) did not have a team in the final top four in the polls was 2001, so this new game will probably have a conference champ runner up in it every year.  Still, it's great.

Edit: Someone pointed out that they announced this game for prime time on New Years Day and they don't even have a television contract for the bowl. No worry. They'll come lined up with sacks and sacks of money.

Edit: Here's the matchups the game would have produced over the last ten years or so.

Mark Cuban Rolling Big Time At Some Restaurant Named Blowfish

He throwing down the Duck Face?

Source.

Right Now, You Can Own A Portion Of Facebook

Google opened at $100 in August of 2004.  It is trading at $626 when I last checked.

So this is a sure bet, right?   Then again, as someone once told me, "There ain't no free lunch."

FB on Nasdaq.

Edit:

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• A homeless man steals food from the Marriott in Southlake and breaks into a car. Sitting in jail, to poor to make bond, he is found hanged to death. Now police think the accused capital murderer of a pastor may have killed him.
• If you are the Harris County (Houston) DA, why have a trial in that cop-beating-black-kid case right before an election? There are a million ways a prosecutor can dodge a trial (dismiss the case and refile it, for example). Now the predominately Democratic Harris County electorate is fired up about turning the DA out.
• Funny moment in my trial yesterday. Right in the middle of jury selection, a guy just walks in and wanders around. He finally looks up and asks, "Is this the courtroom?"
• Funny moment #2 after the prosecutor ask the jury panel if they had ever had a bad or good experience with police: A lady, with a thick British accent, said, "I was stopped once by not one but by two policemen and they were both very good looking. [Laughter.] You asked if I had a good experience with police and that was a very good experience." Prosecutor: "OK, anyone else been stopped by a couple of Chippendale dancers?"
• Mrs, LL and I played catch in the back yard last night. That was fun until she took over my backstop/pitchback.
• I don't know exactly what happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, but the news of Zimmerman's injuries yesterday makes the prosecution's case a lost cause.  It's all about reasonable doubt.
• I think Fox 4 spent 15 minutes with the SMU women's rowing team last night about a viral video they made that doesn't look interesting enough to watch. 
• It's official: Decatur Middle School will receive 750 iPads for students and 50 for teachers. Are there 750 students in the middle school?
• I received a spam comment from this law firm calling themselves "DWI Sharks". If they are resorting to spam, I'll call them a bunch of spares. But the women are hot. 
• A donation was made to Baylor yesterday to build a bridge across the Brazos to connect the campus to the new football stadium. The undisclosed amount came from Walter Umphrey who was part of the  “Tobacco Five” lawyers who shared a $3.3 billion fee from the tobacco companies when the State of Texas sued them, using private lawyers, over a decade ago. What a scam. What an embarrassment. (Former Texas AG Dan Morales even ended up in prison for falsifying documents in an attempt to get a lawyer buddy part of that fee. )
• Can you ever quote any parts of the Old Testament since Christ brought forth a new covenant? (It does have some rather bizarre rules. Can you ignore those without ignoring all of it?)
• A faithful reader who attends college out of state posted this pic this morning on Twitter saying it was outside her window and asking "What is this?" It looks like a 25 pound squirrel.
• Skinny, "Hey, now."
• Why spend so much to capture a U.S. Senate seat? A vacancy hardly ever occurs and once you are elected, you'll never be defeated.

Trial Over

I normally do this exact same victory dance if I win but I didn't get to today. But I didn't lose either. We had a mistrial* followed by a mutually agreed upon resolution. I'll take it. Fair result for everyone.
_______________
* For you DWI lawyers, it was an "Emerson" error. That is the fourth trial I've had where that problem occurred.