I will admit that, from time to time, this blog can get a teensy bit negative. That's probably more human nature than anything else, we tend to focus on things we feel need to be fixed after all rather than those things that are humming along smoothly.
To remedy that, I think I'll list out the things about Houston that I like. I haven't done that in a while so this seems like a good time to do so....
1. The way people helped one another during the Harvey Floods - It was cool, when I was cooped up in my house for a week, watching normal, everyday citizens and first responders busting their humps to rescue and evacuate their fellow residents.
2. The food and restaurant scene, even in the suburbs. - While I have to fess up to not venturing 'Inside the Loop' very often except for work (and number four which follows) even out here in the hinterlands there is a large selection of good places to grab a good meal that are not chains. And food trucks. Food trucks are good, very good.
3. The energy industry and job market. - The fact is, the energy industry pays pretty well, they have good benefits and it's a good industry in which to work. You hear a lot of bad about us in the media, but I've seen a lot of good inside.
4. The Houston Zoo. - The wife and I love the zoo here. It's great. The Houston Zoo is one of the underappreciated great places to go in Houston. People gush about the Museums and Theaters, but the truth is a lot of cities have facilities comparable to those.
5. The Houston Astros. - I don't like the Texans, I pull for the Rockets, the Dynamo (and the entire MLS for that matter) are minor league soccer but the Astros? I'm a fan. The first baseball game I ever saw was in the Astrodome and back then I thought it was the biggest building in the world (I was 5).
And that's it. Everything else about Houston is just 'meh' or substantially worse than other cities I've visited/lived in. But those five things are pretty great and I will miss them should I ever leave here.
Showing posts with label BadBlogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BadBlogging. Show all posts
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Friday, December 30, 2016
The (Official) YDOP 2017 Prediction Post:
Or, things that absolutely, positively, 100% are not going to happen next year.
A few days ago we took a trip down memory lane reliving a 2016 that was widely agreed-upon as one of the worst American years in recent history. It was a year that gave us President-Elect Donald Trump, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a new, expansive tax on Las Vegas hotels designed solely to enrich Sheldon Adelson and a 1-13 49ers team that just needs to be put down.
But....as in all things, 2017 offers us a new hope for a brighter future as baby new year births from the loins of old man 2016 with all of the promise and hope that these things typically signify.
Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, let's look ahead shall we?
The United States.
The biggest story is, of course, Donald J. Trump. Congratulations America, you finally did it, you elected an ape in a suit to be President instead of one of the many, qualified conservatives that stood against him in the primary. Of course, the Democrats put-up possibly the worst political candidate of the modern age to stand against him so.....
Contrary to the whinging of many, I don't predict an 'end to the Republic' in 2017. As a matter of fact, I think things will move along pretty much in the same shitty manner they are now. The Democrats, out of any semblance of functional power and lacking ways to pay off their various constituencies, will be loud, shrill, stupid and aghast at just about everything Trump does. They will be so shocked it will appear that a Tesla coil has taken full time residence in the Congressional chambers. The NeverTrump crowd, or what's left of them, will sheepishly move back onto their porches with psuedo-witty aphorisms such as "I'm old enough to remember" etc. etc.
The problem, of course, is that many of them are just that. Old.
Business, being what business is, will continue to saunter along without accomplishing much. Companies, still unsure about the long-term future, will continue to hoard cash and progress will be achingly slow. The past gave us the moon-landing and the internal-combustion engine, it also gave us the computer, refrigeration, radio, television and the internet. The future is going to give us faster internet speeds and 2-year commitment packages with phones that might, or might not, catch fire when we log onto TalkAbout, the new "big" social media platform that will enrich it's designers despite the lack of a clear path to profitability. Facebook will become both public enemy number one and the biggest social media platform out there, while Twitter continues to fall in on itself, buried under an avalanche of anonymous trolls and social justice warriors hoping to get noticed.
But, and this is the important part, the Federal bureaucracy will still function, and it will still continue to choke-off meaningful economic growth under the name of 'consumer protection' and 'safety'. The Alphabet-soup of organizations that de-facto run this country will continue to place out-sized influence into the hands of lower-level clerks who, in many cases, barely generate enough brain-power to keep their legs functioning properly. Due to federal employment laws that would make Franz Kafka stand mouth agape with wonder the government is unable, and unwilling, to get rid of these modern day miniature Torquemadas who run rough-shod across corporate profitability each and every day.
Houston
"Space City" as it was once called, is looking down the gun barrel of years and years of bad electoral decisions. From the man who gave us the current pension mess to the man who never found a crony capitalism deal he didn't like to the woman whose anger threatened to rip the city apart to a career back-bench legislator whose life ambition was to become Mayor (think about that for a minute), the incredibly sub-par run of Mayors lacking basic leadership skills has crippled the city to a level that might take municipal bankruptcy to recover from.
Houston is a mess, and it's going to continue being so long as Sylvester and friends sit around City Hall wondering what speech he can give next in order to fool the citizenry into believing that he actually has a clue. More importantly, can he forestall the coming financial vortex for eight more years allowing him to continue to claim the problem "fixed" (in the same manner former-Mayor Bill White "fixed" the pension mess and former Mayor Annise Parker "fixed" homelessness) and skate out of town with a few legacy-making projects under his belt? (Note: He might want to try and do better than Bill White, who only managed to escape with a sidewalk named after him.)
Because the financial and actual infrastructure of the city are crumbling the people have turned inward. Traffic is a mess on the best of days, a dystopian nightmare on the worst. People have gotten so selfish on the road that little things like courtesy and traffic laws have gone the way of the Dodo. Cutting people off to skip a turn line is now commonplace, as is undertaking on the right and pulling in front of people and slamming on the brakes. (Helpful hint: Stay out of the blind spot of other motorists, trust me on this one).
Houston's public transportation system has hit the skids, as reimagining turned out to be an art-installation where the artist (Christof Speiler) did little more than imagine empty buses and design a plan to make it so. Have you seen Metro's ridership numbers lately? It's not pretty. Of course, the toy train is chugging along, moving moderately well-off Houstonians to bars and events, and spit-polishing itself for the upcoming Stupid Bowl. It's Lady Gaga this year folks, let's pray we don't see HER bare breast during the halftime show. Maybe she'll sacrifice a nutria rat?
Speaking of the Stupid Bowl, rumblings are already starting that this, LI if you've been paying attention, could be Houston's last. The last that is unless we take a good, hard look at NRG and commit to providing Houston's middling football team with a Billion-plus dollar play-pen to compete with the likes of Dallas, Minnesota, Los Angeles and (soon) Las Vegas. NRG is not even 20-years old, and you're going to be pummeled with opinion pieces in 2017 talking about how "out of date" it already is and that only a massive injection of public funds is going to save it.
And then we get to the Astrodome, County Judge' Ed Emmet's great, gray, dingy, whale. Of course, there are plans, a parking garage-slash-er-uh-something-or-other that will be there and which will make the wheezing old building shine again because......I don't know, history? Every other city worth a damn, and many that aren't, rightly decided to implode their former "state-of-the-art-at-the-time" complexes but not Houston. In Houston it's been decided that almost anything older than 5 minutes is suddenly historical and deserves to remain standing, forever, even if no one really gives much of a damn about it, never visits any more and there's really no use for it.
It's much the same with Houston's restaurant and bar scene. When a place closes people lament the closure, rip their garments and dress in sack-cloth, right after admitting that they "haven't been there in years".
The Media.
2016 was the year we lost our faith in the media. 100%, totally. It's done, finished, and there's scant evidence that they're going to try and work their way back. Today the New York Times, the Old Grey Lady, dared to lecture Americans on the 'antiquated mechanism' that is the Electoral College. Coming from a newspaper that's a laughable argument. TV News is all but shot, newspapers are honestly at this point just too stubborn to die and anything on the Internet is just as likely to be so-called "fake news" as it is to be the ravings of some progressive nutter. Did you know that "Star Wars" is about *gasp* WAR? This was news to the functional idiots working at Vox.com after all.
2017 is, unfortunately, going to give us more of the same. Because for all of the hand-wringing and concern-trolling from the media on why the American people don't understand their brilliance, there's no talk of ideological diversity, which is the thing they are lacking most.
Want to annoy a newspaper person? Criticize them. Even justifiable criticism, calling out a factual error, is responded to with anger and vitriol. Pointing out bad reporting is met with "Don't you know we're PEOPLE?" and other nonesuch. And if you disagree too strongly? They just stop listening. Which is the good thing about living in an ivory tower, you can just shut the windows to drown out the noise.
There are going to be a LOT of stories in 2017 about the ridiculous nature of rural White America, and how it's ruining the multicultural, fair trade, organic crunchy future that the progressives have designed. Instead of telling us the news of the day, these modern-day low-functioning idiots think they are uniquely qualified to "explain" it to us because they possess a degree in journalism and a blow-torch coupled to word processing software with dodgy spell-check. Oh, and they're hip, everyone they hang out with tells them so. They go to poetry-readings and cocktail-happy-hours at the museum and trivia night at the bars where they drink beer so crafty it was fermented in the navels of local poets. Do you drink beer like that? Or wait in line for two hours to eat lunch at the types of places where people wait in line two hours to eat lunch? Do you dine at a restaurant that has a unisex bathroom?
No? Then you will need the news explained to you because you obviously aren't worthy of much more than having the news explained to you by those who do. Now, if you don't mind providing your credit card number and stop asking questions whenever they bill you randomly for "special issues" that have pretty much nothing to do with anything important.
The media will also be turning up their "fact-checking" and "news analysis" as means to insert their political opinion into the news of the day which was once taboo but is now widely praised and, here's a bold prediction, will result in the first Pulitzer Prize being given to a full-on opinion piece disguised as a hard-news expose. Hell, they're not even going to hide it any longer.
The World.
News flash: There will be wars, rumors of wars, natural disasters, man-made disasters, shootings, stabbings, muggings, beatings, honor-killings etc. The Jews still won't like the Muslims and the Muslims still won't like pretty much anyone. The Americans and Chinese will continue to demonize one another publicly (while speaking diplomatically privately) because their leaders understand the controlling power of a faceless boogeyman. North Korea will continue to live in the dark ages and Cuba will continue to oppress it's people. Raul Castro is not a reformer, but the ideological successor of Fidel. People will continue to wear Che shirts not understanding that, if they knew him in real life, they would either hate him or, more likely if they are women, be raped by him. The UN will continue to tut-tut at everyone and seek for more money by claiming the world is on the verge of overheating in a man-made microwave.
We'll continue to hear how climate change is going to bring about doom and gloom, despite the actual weather and climate results not matching up with the computer models. Scientists, whose very careers are almost totally dependent on continued funding for climate disaster research, will assure us that it's the models that are correct and reality that has it wrong.
Oil will continue to be relatively low priced, as will natural gas, coal will continue to become more and more scarce in the developed world, but will be more and more valued in the developing world due to low prices. Around once per month we'll be reassured that workable, economicly renewable energy is 'right around the corner'.
But we'll see some good things too. We'll hear stories of generosity and bravery, of hope and kindness. There will be beauty in tragedy and mercy in times of war. We will see acts of courage so grand they bring tears to our eyes, up until the point the media/Hollywood machine seeks to capitalize on them that is.
And all of us, the wealthy, the poor, the somewhere in between, will continue to live our day to day lives trying our best to eke out an existence in spite of, not because of, our ruling class and their courtesans.
Such has it always been, such will it always be.
A few days ago we took a trip down memory lane reliving a 2016 that was widely agreed-upon as one of the worst American years in recent history. It was a year that gave us President-Elect Donald Trump, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a new, expansive tax on Las Vegas hotels designed solely to enrich Sheldon Adelson and a 1-13 49ers team that just needs to be put down.
But....as in all things, 2017 offers us a new hope for a brighter future as baby new year births from the loins of old man 2016 with all of the promise and hope that these things typically signify.
Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, let's look ahead shall we?
The United States.
The biggest story is, of course, Donald J. Trump. Congratulations America, you finally did it, you elected an ape in a suit to be President instead of one of the many, qualified conservatives that stood against him in the primary. Of course, the Democrats put-up possibly the worst political candidate of the modern age to stand against him so.....
Contrary to the whinging of many, I don't predict an 'end to the Republic' in 2017. As a matter of fact, I think things will move along pretty much in the same shitty manner they are now. The Democrats, out of any semblance of functional power and lacking ways to pay off their various constituencies, will be loud, shrill, stupid and aghast at just about everything Trump does. They will be so shocked it will appear that a Tesla coil has taken full time residence in the Congressional chambers. The NeverTrump crowd, or what's left of them, will sheepishly move back onto their porches with psuedo-witty aphorisms such as "I'm old enough to remember" etc. etc.
The problem, of course, is that many of them are just that. Old.
Business, being what business is, will continue to saunter along without accomplishing much. Companies, still unsure about the long-term future, will continue to hoard cash and progress will be achingly slow. The past gave us the moon-landing and the internal-combustion engine, it also gave us the computer, refrigeration, radio, television and the internet. The future is going to give us faster internet speeds and 2-year commitment packages with phones that might, or might not, catch fire when we log onto TalkAbout, the new "big" social media platform that will enrich it's designers despite the lack of a clear path to profitability. Facebook will become both public enemy number one and the biggest social media platform out there, while Twitter continues to fall in on itself, buried under an avalanche of anonymous trolls and social justice warriors hoping to get noticed.
But, and this is the important part, the Federal bureaucracy will still function, and it will still continue to choke-off meaningful economic growth under the name of 'consumer protection' and 'safety'. The Alphabet-soup of organizations that de-facto run this country will continue to place out-sized influence into the hands of lower-level clerks who, in many cases, barely generate enough brain-power to keep their legs functioning properly. Due to federal employment laws that would make Franz Kafka stand mouth agape with wonder the government is unable, and unwilling, to get rid of these modern day miniature Torquemadas who run rough-shod across corporate profitability each and every day.
Houston
"Space City" as it was once called, is looking down the gun barrel of years and years of bad electoral decisions. From the man who gave us the current pension mess to the man who never found a crony capitalism deal he didn't like to the woman whose anger threatened to rip the city apart to a career back-bench legislator whose life ambition was to become Mayor (think about that for a minute), the incredibly sub-par run of Mayors lacking basic leadership skills has crippled the city to a level that might take municipal bankruptcy to recover from.
Houston is a mess, and it's going to continue being so long as Sylvester and friends sit around City Hall wondering what speech he can give next in order to fool the citizenry into believing that he actually has a clue. More importantly, can he forestall the coming financial vortex for eight more years allowing him to continue to claim the problem "fixed" (in the same manner former-Mayor Bill White "fixed" the pension mess and former Mayor Annise Parker "fixed" homelessness) and skate out of town with a few legacy-making projects under his belt? (Note: He might want to try and do better than Bill White, who only managed to escape with a sidewalk named after him.)
Because the financial and actual infrastructure of the city are crumbling the people have turned inward. Traffic is a mess on the best of days, a dystopian nightmare on the worst. People have gotten so selfish on the road that little things like courtesy and traffic laws have gone the way of the Dodo. Cutting people off to skip a turn line is now commonplace, as is undertaking on the right and pulling in front of people and slamming on the brakes. (Helpful hint: Stay out of the blind spot of other motorists, trust me on this one).
Houston's public transportation system has hit the skids, as reimagining turned out to be an art-installation where the artist (Christof Speiler) did little more than imagine empty buses and design a plan to make it so. Have you seen Metro's ridership numbers lately? It's not pretty. Of course, the toy train is chugging along, moving moderately well-off Houstonians to bars and events, and spit-polishing itself for the upcoming Stupid Bowl. It's Lady Gaga this year folks, let's pray we don't see HER bare breast during the halftime show. Maybe she'll sacrifice a nutria rat?
Speaking of the Stupid Bowl, rumblings are already starting that this, LI if you've been paying attention, could be Houston's last. The last that is unless we take a good, hard look at NRG and commit to providing Houston's middling football team with a Billion-plus dollar play-pen to compete with the likes of Dallas, Minnesota, Los Angeles and (soon) Las Vegas. NRG is not even 20-years old, and you're going to be pummeled with opinion pieces in 2017 talking about how "out of date" it already is and that only a massive injection of public funds is going to save it.
And then we get to the Astrodome, County Judge' Ed Emmet's great, gray, dingy, whale. Of course, there are plans, a parking garage-slash-er-uh-something-or-other that will be there and which will make the wheezing old building shine again because......I don't know, history? Every other city worth a damn, and many that aren't, rightly decided to implode their former "state-of-the-art-at-the-time" complexes but not Houston. In Houston it's been decided that almost anything older than 5 minutes is suddenly historical and deserves to remain standing, forever, even if no one really gives much of a damn about it, never visits any more and there's really no use for it.
It's much the same with Houston's restaurant and bar scene. When a place closes people lament the closure, rip their garments and dress in sack-cloth, right after admitting that they "haven't been there in years".
The Media.
2016 was the year we lost our faith in the media. 100%, totally. It's done, finished, and there's scant evidence that they're going to try and work their way back. Today the New York Times, the Old Grey Lady, dared to lecture Americans on the 'antiquated mechanism' that is the Electoral College. Coming from a newspaper that's a laughable argument. TV News is all but shot, newspapers are honestly at this point just too stubborn to die and anything on the Internet is just as likely to be so-called "fake news" as it is to be the ravings of some progressive nutter. Did you know that "Star Wars" is about *gasp* WAR? This was news to the functional idiots working at Vox.com after all.
2017 is, unfortunately, going to give us more of the same. Because for all of the hand-wringing and concern-trolling from the media on why the American people don't understand their brilliance, there's no talk of ideological diversity, which is the thing they are lacking most.
Want to annoy a newspaper person? Criticize them. Even justifiable criticism, calling out a factual error, is responded to with anger and vitriol. Pointing out bad reporting is met with "Don't you know we're PEOPLE?" and other nonesuch. And if you disagree too strongly? They just stop listening. Which is the good thing about living in an ivory tower, you can just shut the windows to drown out the noise.
There are going to be a LOT of stories in 2017 about the ridiculous nature of rural White America, and how it's ruining the multicultural, fair trade, organic crunchy future that the progressives have designed. Instead of telling us the news of the day, these modern-day low-functioning idiots think they are uniquely qualified to "explain" it to us because they possess a degree in journalism and a blow-torch coupled to word processing software with dodgy spell-check. Oh, and they're hip, everyone they hang out with tells them so. They go to poetry-readings and cocktail-happy-hours at the museum and trivia night at the bars where they drink beer so crafty it was fermented in the navels of local poets. Do you drink beer like that? Or wait in line for two hours to eat lunch at the types of places where people wait in line two hours to eat lunch? Do you dine at a restaurant that has a unisex bathroom?
No? Then you will need the news explained to you because you obviously aren't worthy of much more than having the news explained to you by those who do. Now, if you don't mind providing your credit card number and stop asking questions whenever they bill you randomly for "special issues" that have pretty much nothing to do with anything important.
The media will also be turning up their "fact-checking" and "news analysis" as means to insert their political opinion into the news of the day which was once taboo but is now widely praised and, here's a bold prediction, will result in the first Pulitzer Prize being given to a full-on opinion piece disguised as a hard-news expose. Hell, they're not even going to hide it any longer.
The World.
News flash: There will be wars, rumors of wars, natural disasters, man-made disasters, shootings, stabbings, muggings, beatings, honor-killings etc. The Jews still won't like the Muslims and the Muslims still won't like pretty much anyone. The Americans and Chinese will continue to demonize one another publicly (while speaking diplomatically privately) because their leaders understand the controlling power of a faceless boogeyman. North Korea will continue to live in the dark ages and Cuba will continue to oppress it's people. Raul Castro is not a reformer, but the ideological successor of Fidel. People will continue to wear Che shirts not understanding that, if they knew him in real life, they would either hate him or, more likely if they are women, be raped by him. The UN will continue to tut-tut at everyone and seek for more money by claiming the world is on the verge of overheating in a man-made microwave.
We'll continue to hear how climate change is going to bring about doom and gloom, despite the actual weather and climate results not matching up with the computer models. Scientists, whose very careers are almost totally dependent on continued funding for climate disaster research, will assure us that it's the models that are correct and reality that has it wrong.
Oil will continue to be relatively low priced, as will natural gas, coal will continue to become more and more scarce in the developed world, but will be more and more valued in the developing world due to low prices. Around once per month we'll be reassured that workable, economicly renewable energy is 'right around the corner'.
But we'll see some good things too. We'll hear stories of generosity and bravery, of hope and kindness. There will be beauty in tragedy and mercy in times of war. We will see acts of courage so grand they bring tears to our eyes, up until the point the media/Hollywood machine seeks to capitalize on them that is.
And all of us, the wealthy, the poor, the somewhere in between, will continue to live our day to day lives trying our best to eke out an existence in spite of, not because of, our ruling class and their courtesans.
Such has it always been, such will it always be.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Without further ado: Looking back on 2016
Well, we made it, barely, through 2016. And while my prediction that the former President of Metro Garcia would be mayor by famously riding the wave of Adrian Garcia's name ID proved to be incorrect, my prediction that Houston was in for a rough fiscal time of it proved telling. Also accurate was my tongue-in-cheek prediction that an angry Annise would burn hot, and then fade away.
Of course, the reality in 2016 was almost weirder than the fiction I created. We elected a lifetime back-bencher as Mayor of the City, who immediately did what back-benchers do: Kick the can down the road on important issues and talk, a lot. In short, for 2017 I see more of the same. Houston will continue down her spiral of trinket governance and irresponsible spending. Progressives will do their level best to chase "world-classiness" while continuing to try and keep the poor just above water, while enjoying their "white-linen nights" in the Heights and telling us how good they have it.
But, and let's face facts here, 2016 was foul.
Not just bad, but historically bad. Not only were we forcibly exposed to an election campaign that felt like the political equivalent of Ebola, but we had to sit through three Presidential debates where an ape in a suit and the worst political candidate in the history of ever dressed up like the Emperor Palpatine in a pant-suit and then wondered why she wasn't "connecting with the people."
It was Sally Fields who famously gushed "You like me! You Really Really like me!" We really didn't (although the Hollywood establishment did) which is kind-of the same dynamic that Hillary has going for her.
2016 saw Katy Perry cry, Kanye West meltdown and a host of Hollywood stars welsh on their promise to leave for Canada should Trump win. The Bastards.
Nationwide the Democrats took a political beating, their power now confined to some failing metropolitan areas, the West Coast, and pockets of New England. As the Country continues to geographically sort itself out along political ideological lines a stunning realization has hit the Left. They are currently so concentrated that they've messed up the electoral math for themselves. Plus, 1/2 of the country simply can't stand them.
This has led to some amusing temper tantrums from the dimmer of the dim lights in the Dim party. Markos Moulitsas responded to the election results with an f-bomb laced tirade against pretty much everyone, Ezra Klein has pushed Vox into La La Land with wild theories and stories of fantasy and whimsy, and has just realized that "Star Wars" is *gasp* about......war. Greg Sargent is ranting to everyone his little Washington Post blog reaches that something is amiss, and the king of clowns Paul Krugman seems perpetually stuck in the anger stage of coping.
In fact, a LOT of people are ending 2016 firmly planted in the Anger stage. Celebrities from what's-her-name to Lena Dunham have had a good public cry, shaken their fist at 'white people' (think about that) and have pretty much declared the election of the ape in a suit to be the worst thing in America since ever.
Locally however Harris County Democrats are doing fairly freaking spiffy. They had a complete sweep in the down-ballot elections taking every contested county office, judgeship, most of the Constables and contested legislative races at the State and Federal level. In fact, it's pretty safe to say that, except for Commissioner's Court, Harris County and Houston are in total Democrat control.
What this means is for another post. For the look-ahead to 2017. But if the City of Houston is any predictor the County is in for a bumpy ride.
Because Houston did NOT have a good 2016. Financially the city is struggling, Annise Parker tore us apart trying everything she could to provide the transgender community with a special accommodation, and the oil and gas industry has gotten shellacked due to a glut of supply, relatively weak global demand, and some fairly short-sighted business leadership.
But Houston keeps spending money like a terminal cancer patient on a last, blow-out-the-pension smash-up in Las Vegas. Turner continues to take junkets like his frequent-flyer miles will expire if he doesn't, plans are in place to spend Millions on bike paths, Millions on concert venues, and Billions on as yet to be determined flood-control project whose parent funding mechanism, the rain tax, was declared null-and-void in a court of law. In short, Houston has stolen the taxpayers credit card, has maxed it out, and is now openly kiting checks from their stolen check-book.
All in the name of trinkets.
Which means that, in many respects, 2016 was not all that much different than the years that preceded it. Just a little bit worse.
Amazingly, this is better than the 2016 that the media in Houston had. That was like prior years but a LOT worse. As meaningful reporting in Houston has gone the way of the DoDo and is being replaced with info-tainment and fake news.
2016 was supposed to be much, much better than 2015. Or so we hoped. What we ended up with was a turd of a year floating around in the pool of time.
Thank goodness it's coming to a close.
Of course, the reality in 2016 was almost weirder than the fiction I created. We elected a lifetime back-bencher as Mayor of the City, who immediately did what back-benchers do: Kick the can down the road on important issues and talk, a lot. In short, for 2017 I see more of the same. Houston will continue down her spiral of trinket governance and irresponsible spending. Progressives will do their level best to chase "world-classiness" while continuing to try and keep the poor just above water, while enjoying their "white-linen nights" in the Heights and telling us how good they have it.
But, and let's face facts here, 2016 was foul.
Not just bad, but historically bad. Not only were we forcibly exposed to an election campaign that felt like the political equivalent of Ebola, but we had to sit through three Presidential debates where an ape in a suit and the worst political candidate in the history of ever dressed up like the Emperor Palpatine in a pant-suit and then wondered why she wasn't "connecting with the people."
It was Sally Fields who famously gushed "You like me! You Really Really like me!" We really didn't (although the Hollywood establishment did) which is kind-of the same dynamic that Hillary has going for her.
2016 saw Katy Perry cry, Kanye West meltdown and a host of Hollywood stars welsh on their promise to leave for Canada should Trump win. The Bastards.
Nationwide the Democrats took a political beating, their power now confined to some failing metropolitan areas, the West Coast, and pockets of New England. As the Country continues to geographically sort itself out along political ideological lines a stunning realization has hit the Left. They are currently so concentrated that they've messed up the electoral math for themselves. Plus, 1/2 of the country simply can't stand them.
This has led to some amusing temper tantrums from the dimmer of the dim lights in the Dim party. Markos Moulitsas responded to the election results with an f-bomb laced tirade against pretty much everyone, Ezra Klein has pushed Vox into La La Land with wild theories and stories of fantasy and whimsy, and has just realized that "Star Wars" is *gasp* about......war. Greg Sargent is ranting to everyone his little Washington Post blog reaches that something is amiss, and the king of clowns Paul Krugman seems perpetually stuck in the anger stage of coping.
In fact, a LOT of people are ending 2016 firmly planted in the Anger stage. Celebrities from what's-her-name to Lena Dunham have had a good public cry, shaken their fist at 'white people' (think about that) and have pretty much declared the election of the ape in a suit to be the worst thing in America since ever.
Locally however Harris County Democrats are doing fairly freaking spiffy. They had a complete sweep in the down-ballot elections taking every contested county office, judgeship, most of the Constables and contested legislative races at the State and Federal level. In fact, it's pretty safe to say that, except for Commissioner's Court, Harris County and Houston are in total Democrat control.
What this means is for another post. For the look-ahead to 2017. But if the City of Houston is any predictor the County is in for a bumpy ride.
Because Houston did NOT have a good 2016. Financially the city is struggling, Annise Parker tore us apart trying everything she could to provide the transgender community with a special accommodation, and the oil and gas industry has gotten shellacked due to a glut of supply, relatively weak global demand, and some fairly short-sighted business leadership.
But Houston keeps spending money like a terminal cancer patient on a last, blow-out-the-pension smash-up in Las Vegas. Turner continues to take junkets like his frequent-flyer miles will expire if he doesn't, plans are in place to spend Millions on bike paths, Millions on concert venues, and Billions on as yet to be determined flood-control project whose parent funding mechanism, the rain tax, was declared null-and-void in a court of law. In short, Houston has stolen the taxpayers credit card, has maxed it out, and is now openly kiting checks from their stolen check-book.
All in the name of trinkets.
Which means that, in many respects, 2016 was not all that much different than the years that preceded it. Just a little bit worse.
Amazingly, this is better than the 2016 that the media in Houston had. That was like prior years but a LOT worse. As meaningful reporting in Houston has gone the way of the DoDo and is being replaced with info-tainment and fake news.
2016 was supposed to be much, much better than 2015. Or so we hoped. What we ended up with was a turd of a year floating around in the pool of time.
Thank goodness it's coming to a close.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Adventures in bad food writing: Pappa Geno's (N. Eldridge Parkway)
One of my pet peeves in food writing is when people (usually anonymous commenters to reviews or Yelp reviewers) spend most of the review talking about how what they've eaten in Houston is "nothing like the 'authentic' (insert food/drink here) version that they had while in (insert other City [typically European] here). It seems these days that everyone is a world traveler and they spent a lot of time eating a regional delicacy that they wish they could find in Houston. The counterpart to this are imports, people from other cities who move to Houston and then bemoan the fact that their favorite (insert food/drink here) isn't just the same as it was back (wherever).
Houston's FoodBorg are legendary at this, understanding how each and every nuance for each and every food or drink item you can imagine is made in it's native land, by old grandmothers usually who have cooked these specialties for years.
This is annoying for a couple of reasons. First, these people never seem to bemoan Houston (or Texas) specialties that you can never find in other places. Tex-Mex, Barbecue (sorry New York, but it's true) and Gulf Coast seafood is never quite the same in other locales. Second, these reviewers are insufferable, and will find something wrong (no matter how minute) with any option the other people commenting bring forward.
I'm not here to do that. For one, while I've been through Philadelphia, I've never had a chance to stay there and eat a Cheese Steak at either of the three main chains. For the second, even if I had, I find most city's specialty dishes to be overrated just a touch. Chicago dogs, Italian Beef and Deep Dish Pizza Pie are good, but in the end they are just a couple of sandwiches and a pie. New York pizza is good. But it's just pizza. So, I imagine that Philadelphia Cheese Steak Sandwiches are good, but they are, in fact, just sandwiches.
With that out of the way, here's my thoughts on Houston chain Pappa Geno's based on my visit there recently.
Decor: Pappa Geno's was brightly lit, with an orange and while color scheme that made the restaurant feel more spacious than it really was.
The N. Eldridge Parkway location was steady, but not busy, when I arrived for lunch, it was clean, and they had one lady working the register with two cooks in the back. Given that I think this location does most of it's business during the work-week this seemed to be sufficient staffing.
The Menu is both on the wall, and available as part of a tear-off sheet at the register, and in a to-go pamphlet as well. I walked in and, after a short wait as the person in front of me ordered, placed my order for a #2 ($7.99) (Philly style [with grilled onions and cheez whiz]) sandwich which I made a combo (add fries and a drink) for $3.49 more. The total, with tax, was $12.49 plus the $2 I threw in the tip jar by the register. By any means, this is not cheap. The service was friendly, but not especially outgoing, as the lady at the register was pretty busy. I received my cup, went over and filled it with iced tea, took a seat in the dining room and, within 5 minutes, the lady working the register brought my sandwich and fries to me. So the service was fine, and my sandwich reached my table still hot. But, was it good?
The Sandwich: This checked in at around a foot long, but the first problem that I had was that this felt more like Po' Boy, and not much like what I've seen to be a Philly Cheese Steak. The bread was crispy instead of soft, and it's flavor was almost non-existent. The filling of the sandwich was fine, but I wish there was more of it. At the ends of the sandwich I felt the bread/filling ratio moved too heavy toward the bread, but the middle of the sandwich was just fine. The flavor of the filling was good as well. Overall it was a good sandwich, on par with Cheese Steaks that I've head at other places, but I prefer the bread that used to be used by the former Texadelphia.
They have several other options, the original, something called a "fat" cheese steak, a chicken cheese steak and more. I've heard that these are very good. I should note here that, despite the shortcomings mentioned above, I did LIKE this sandwich, a lot. I'm sure to go back and try several of their other options.
The Fries: Good, but probably pre-cut and shipped to them frozen. I've got a feeling they have a 'coating' on them as well to make them crispy. I don't think that these were cut in-house and double fried. Unfortunately, on their website the company doesn't provide much information.
The Verdict: Good, not great, option for lunch if you like Philly Cheese Steaks, or other deli style sandwiches. Pricey, but you do feel full when you leave the place so there's that.
Last Thought: I know that it's almost sacrilegious to say this, but I always thought that Texadelphia had about the best Philly Cheese Steak that I have had. Since I've not had the actual Philly version of the sandwich I realize my perspective is flawed, but I also don't have the "not just like Philly" bias that most Yelp reviewers have. Hopefully, some day, I'll be able to visit the City of Love and try the versions that have inspired many a Food Network TV show. Until then, I'll just be happy in my ignorance and keep enjoying the options we have in Houston.
Yelp Reviews: (For your Entertainment) Forgot to add this initially, but if you want to be entertained go read the Yelp reviews. Truly Yelp is one of the funniest sites in the world, and should convince you that food writing is indeed a skill and good restaurant reviewers in a city are worth their weight in Gold.
Houston's FoodBorg are legendary at this, understanding how each and every nuance for each and every food or drink item you can imagine is made in it's native land, by old grandmothers usually who have cooked these specialties for years.
This is annoying for a couple of reasons. First, these people never seem to bemoan Houston (or Texas) specialties that you can never find in other places. Tex-Mex, Barbecue (sorry New York, but it's true) and Gulf Coast seafood is never quite the same in other locales. Second, these reviewers are insufferable, and will find something wrong (no matter how minute) with any option the other people commenting bring forward.
I'm not here to do that. For one, while I've been through Philadelphia, I've never had a chance to stay there and eat a Cheese Steak at either of the three main chains. For the second, even if I had, I find most city's specialty dishes to be overrated just a touch. Chicago dogs, Italian Beef and Deep Dish Pizza Pie are good, but in the end they are just a couple of sandwiches and a pie. New York pizza is good. But it's just pizza. So, I imagine that Philadelphia Cheese Steak Sandwiches are good, but they are, in fact, just sandwiches.
With that out of the way, here's my thoughts on Houston chain Pappa Geno's based on my visit there recently.
Decor: Pappa Geno's was brightly lit, with an orange and while color scheme that made the restaurant feel more spacious than it really was.
The N. Eldridge Parkway location was steady, but not busy, when I arrived for lunch, it was clean, and they had one lady working the register with two cooks in the back. Given that I think this location does most of it's business during the work-week this seemed to be sufficient staffing.
The Menu is both on the wall, and available as part of a tear-off sheet at the register, and in a to-go pamphlet as well. I walked in and, after a short wait as the person in front of me ordered, placed my order for a #2 ($7.99) (Philly style [with grilled onions and cheez whiz]) sandwich which I made a combo (add fries and a drink) for $3.49 more. The total, with tax, was $12.49 plus the $2 I threw in the tip jar by the register. By any means, this is not cheap. The service was friendly, but not especially outgoing, as the lady at the register was pretty busy. I received my cup, went over and filled it with iced tea, took a seat in the dining room and, within 5 minutes, the lady working the register brought my sandwich and fries to me. So the service was fine, and my sandwich reached my table still hot. But, was it good?
The Sandwich: This checked in at around a foot long, but the first problem that I had was that this felt more like Po' Boy, and not much like what I've seen to be a Philly Cheese Steak. The bread was crispy instead of soft, and it's flavor was almost non-existent. The filling of the sandwich was fine, but I wish there was more of it. At the ends of the sandwich I felt the bread/filling ratio moved too heavy toward the bread, but the middle of the sandwich was just fine. The flavor of the filling was good as well. Overall it was a good sandwich, on par with Cheese Steaks that I've head at other places, but I prefer the bread that used to be used by the former Texadelphia.
They have several other options, the original, something called a "fat" cheese steak, a chicken cheese steak and more. I've heard that these are very good. I should note here that, despite the shortcomings mentioned above, I did LIKE this sandwich, a lot. I'm sure to go back and try several of their other options.
The Fries: Good, but probably pre-cut and shipped to them frozen. I've got a feeling they have a 'coating' on them as well to make them crispy. I don't think that these were cut in-house and double fried. Unfortunately, on their website the company doesn't provide much information.
The Verdict: Good, not great, option for lunch if you like Philly Cheese Steaks, or other deli style sandwiches. Pricey, but you do feel full when you leave the place so there's that.
Last Thought: I know that it's almost sacrilegious to say this, but I always thought that Texadelphia had about the best Philly Cheese Steak that I have had. Since I've not had the actual Philly version of the sandwich I realize my perspective is flawed, but I also don't have the "not just like Philly" bias that most Yelp reviewers have. Hopefully, some day, I'll be able to visit the City of Love and try the versions that have inspired many a Food Network TV show. Until then, I'll just be happy in my ignorance and keep enjoying the options we have in Houston.
Yelp Reviews: (For your Entertainment) Forgot to add this initially, but if you want to be entertained go read the Yelp reviews. Truly Yelp is one of the funniest sites in the world, and should convince you that food writing is indeed a skill and good restaurant reviewers in a city are worth their weight in Gold.
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