Mugshot Tuesday -- Greatness

Background.

Background.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Robin Williams, who suffered from depression and alcoholism, supposedly stopped drinking for twenty years until he made a film in Alaska. He said, "I was in a small town where it's not the edge of the world, but you can see it from there, and then I thought: drinking. I just thought, hey, maybe drinking will help. Because I felt alone and afraid." (emphasis added.)
• Maybe my favorite Robin Williams film is One Hour Photo.
• I was never able to make it through The World According To Garp. Even to weird for me. 
• Mork and Mindy was a spin-off from Happy Days where Williams was an alien who met Fonzie? I'm insane now. 
• The radio interview of some spare Dallas Cowboy is an instant power down for me. 
• I think the over/under for total wins for the Cowboys has moved to 7 1/2. I'm making an official sports prediction: Take the under. Write this down. I have had a Sports Genius Epiphany. 
• Junior Miller of The Ticket has calculated that today, the second Tuesday of August, at 2:00 p.m., is the worst moment of the year. A beaten down month. A beaten down day. And a time which is right after lunch but long before you get to go home. He may be right. 
• Wise County deputies will now switch from "58 .357 Sig pistols for 70 9 mm Glocks with GT Distributors". Someone translate that for me. 
• The death of four people from one family from Argyle while on vacation is heart breaking. 
• There would be nothing more entertaining than if the GOP nominee in the next presidential election were Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, or Rick Santorum. 
• Illegal aliens will cost us? Hmmm. More cops, more teachers, more jobs? Let's take it to the other extreme. What if no one was here. An abandon wasteland with just you. Which situation do you want?
• I just looked at the MLB standings and noticed the Rangers are 26 games out. That's astonishing. 
• The Sixteen Year Old in The House finally got her driver's license. To see her drive away to go to band practice was incredibly unnerving. 
• For the longest time I thought I was a technical wizard. As each year passes, I'm feeling like I'm being left behind. 
• I think Messenger sports guy Richard Greene is really good. 
• I saw one of the original Planet of The Apes movies as a kid in a theater in downtown Bridgeport. I have no idea which one it was. But the thought of Bridgeport having a movie theater downtown is now mind boggling and incredibly cool.

Wow. One Of The Greatest Actors Is Dead

I didn't care for his comedy (hated it, in fact), but his roles in things like Good Will Hunting were fantastic.

Random Bridgeport Index Post

I mentioned that someone on Facebook had been posting images from the Bridgeport Index. (All available archives are here.) Some of them are fascinating. Look at this one from 1975. That's a lot of news.

Pig News

Miley Cyrus got what I wanted:

This is what I'm afraid I've ended up with:

"'I'm just trying to be the best teammate I can be."

The original:



So the Houston Texans' cheerleaders decide to do a bit because bits are fun:

Celebrity Audition Tapes

Language warning. (Yes, I always post language warnings.)

If the phrase "time flies" doesn't cross your mind when you watch this, there's something wrong.

What? A 13 Year Old Girl Pitching Her Team Into The Little League World Series? And She's Good?

BRISTOL, Conn. -- Female pitcher Mo'Ne Davis led her team into the Little League World Series, throwing a three-hitter Sunday to lead Taney Youth Baseball Association Little League of Philadelphia to an 8-0 victory over a squad from Delaware. More.

Legalize marijuana. Gay marriage. And now this?

Well Maybe That Border Crisis Is Still A Crisis

Irony: Anson residents protest illegal immigration around statue of Texas President Jones /pic by @BrianBethel_ARN pic.twitter.com/t5GDJm9RSd
— Bud Kennedy (@BudKennedy) August 11, 2014

Edit:

At a protest in Massachusetts that was crashed yesterday. h/t @curlyseamonster who was there pic.twitter.com/FXyGjl7uA2
— Adrian Carrasquillo (@RealAdrianC) August 11, 2014

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• James Brady's death has been ruled a "homicide". Not to start a rant about the arrogance of medical examiners but, in their defense,  there is a crazy "but for" rule in criminal law. That is, "but for" the bullet, Brady would still be alive. 
• I rewatched American Hustle this weekend. Man, I may have underrated it. It has moments of brilliance. 
• Kudos to whomever mentioned the current HBO Nixon documentary to me. It is fantastic. And the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are shocking. 
• And if you love that sort of stuff, watch the first three minutes of this video which shows him before he addresses the nation and resigns. I find it riveting. 
• I'm pleased and and comforted that we haven't invaded a different country over the last six years. 
• The Waggoner Ranch, with ties to Decatur, is for sell for almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.
• What if Charles Whitman would have had drones deliver him food, water and ammunition? (Assuming he had been smart enough to lock the door.)
• I didn't know there was a major league pitcher from Bowie. 
• There was a "legal analyst" on ESPN yesterday talking about the Tony Stewart incident. He said, "the issue will be whether he intended to commit murder or manslaughter." Intent to commit manslaughter? By definition, manslaughter means a reckless killing? I sighed heavily. 
• Football superstar Devonte Fields was kicked off of the TCU team, and he decided to transfer to Stephen F. Austin. But now a "committee" from the school has ruled that he can't play immediately and has to wait a year. How sorry is that? Let the kid get on with his life. And I have a sneaking suspicion that Gary Patterson is behind it. 
• I got called out by the Texas Tribune on Friday for posting one of their photos without credit. I apologized and fixed it. 
• Last night: Six dead in police chase near Houston. 
• I listened to the It's Just Banter podcast this weekend (Ticket related) and they played some of the youtube videos of the guy behind the Jerry Jones hot-girl-pictures. That guy is mentally ill, and he needs help. Despite millions of people in the metroplex, we will just ignore him instead. 
• Wise County had 12 people hurt in two accidents over the weekend? (And I'll admit I had never heard of "Fossil Pointe" before.)
• That first Wendy Davis ad is fantastic. I'm guessing it might not set forth the legal issues involved, but it serves the point of landing a right hook.  She won't win, but at least she's fighting. 

Did Tony Stewart Murder A Guy?

I don't know why I'm awake at the crack of dawn of Sunday morning, but I turned on ESPN to hear the very odd story of Tony Stewart running over a guy during a dirt track race. "No arrest has been made." Wait. What? Arrest? He ran over a guy during a dirt track race? Wouldn't that be an accident?

Maybe not.

I doubt he'll be charged. If charged, he won't be convicted. Not that he didn't intend to kill the guy. There's just no way to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Above The Fold

Crazy Rainstorm This Afternoon

Public Service Announcement

Photo stolen from the great Texas Tribune

That's Rick Perry this morning, and he's fired up.  Hard line Republicans are in Fort Worth for some convention today, and it sounds like they are working themselves up into a frenzy.

Ted Cruz is there!  Heck, it should be called Red Meat State Gathering.  By the time we wake up tomorrow, Texas may have seceded.

That is, after they have some Mexican food:

Get Me This Cat!!! .... No! Wait! Retract! Retract! Retract!

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• Jerry Jones didn't give a single interview during last night's pre-season game? (That's what I heard. No way I was going to watch that.)
• TMZ has identified the two "ladies" in the Jerry Jones' photo. Both are strippers and one works at Cabaret in Ft. Worth.
• Another motorcycle death. This time in Arlington. Sounds like a couple of bikes were racing and smashed into the back of a vehicle.
• I think I might have been duped by photoshop when I posted that Baylor Stadium picture when it was lit up like a nightclub.
• It's the 40th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon. If you have never seen the footage of him, before heading to the helicopter, going through a line and saying goodbye to every single White House employee, you should. 
• They found some bodies of the old Jonestown Massacre in Delaware. And that deadline confused me greatly when I first saw it. (Speaking of, the documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple is beyond fantastic. And it's on youtube.)
• Anyone else get beaten down when they walked out of the door this morning to face 80+ temperatures with a krillion percent humidity? And that's how the day starts. 
• My office went paperless over a year ago, and we haven't had a single problem. 
• I forgot to thank whoever pointed out to me that the guy behind Breitling Energy (the company runs crazy right wing radio commercials for some reason) was the head of the very troubled CI Hosting company a few years back. 
• Funny radio commercial about the old movie Armageddon which is being shown at the Granada Theater: "And we get to ask the question: Wouldn't it have been easier to teach a bunch of astronauts to drill instead of teaching a bunch of drillers how to be astronauts?"
• I finally got to see a part of the first episode of Hard Knocks. That Falcon that married that chick from Real Housewives has to be out of his mind. She's a train wreck. 
• Speaking of commercials, those Time Warner Cable ads where former NFL coach Bill Cowher just suddenly appears are the worst. And they make no sense. (The most recent one with two lawyers of the same firm involved in a "deposition" with him drives me nuts.)
• "Mission Accomplished" comes back to haunt us again . . . 

Clever Headline

It took me a second.

Drunk Wife Makes Worst Meal Ever

There's a lot going on here. I can't believe I clicked on it. Can't believe I couldn't turn it off. And I'm still not ruling out fake.