Happy Birthday tomorrow to MariGirl! Marisol Valero is celebrating another one!
The Chron E-Board and the Houston Press have takes today on the Astrodome proposal and they aren’t very good takes. I’m thinking my friend Edgar Colon and the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation might be heading over to the Chron to present their case on the proposal.
The E-Board thinks the fix is in and the Corporation is proposing an initiative that will fail. Here is how the E-Board take begins:
Friends, Houstonians, Harris County voters, lend us your ears. The Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation comes to bury the Astrodome, not to praise it.
Ouch! Here is how it ends:
County commissioners need to come out and say now whether they will support this plan or not come election day. The voters of Harris County deserve transparency from them as well as from the Rodeo and the Texans, two other very interested parties that play in a tax-subsidized facility. We’re afraid opponents will bide their time until election season and suddenly let loose a parade of horribles about every aspect of this Dome decision process, and it’ll be too late to do anything different.
Enough with the shell games, side corporations and every other trick to pass off responsibility on the Dome’s future. For once, county government faces an issue where it can’t merely fly below the radar. It is time to be honest with voters about the real goal.
Et tu, Harris County?
Here is the entire E-Board take.
The Houston Press was a bit more vicious. Here is how they start:
The Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation has spoken, and like much everything else that it has done during its existence, its great plan to save the Astrodome is a massive fail. A massive fail that, if actually put on the ballot and supported by voters, will end up costing $194 million.
The Corporation unveiled its grand plan on Wednesday, and in doing so, stated that no qualified private plans had been submitted, so it had to cobble together its own plan. A plan that essentially repeated warmed over plans that the Corporation had tried to pass off on suckers in the past. The difference being that this time the cost was an outrageous $194 million that, somehow, the public will be forced to fund.
Amazingly, there are sheep out there who think that not only is this a good plan, but that the costs are reasonable and doable. Those costs will be doable of course because taxpayers would be paying for it.
But being a doable plan doesn’t make it a good plan. Creating more convention and exhibition space that will only be used during the Rodeo, the Offshore Technology Conference, and the occasional Super Bowl at a cost of $194 million isn’t reasonable or doable. It’s idiotic. It’s moronic. It’s the work of imbeciles who, over past years, have also offered up proposals for turning the place into an aquarium, a movie studio, a hotel, and a theme park, to name just a few ideas.
Here is the entire Houston Press piece.
The credibility of the Corporation is being challenged big time. The whole problem is that over the past decade every single Dome proposal put forward has been underwhelming. Nothing has caught our fancy. The only thing that makes sense is tearing it down but that takes courage.
I’m not going to question the credibility of the Corporation but they and the County are going to have to sell this to the public. Hunker Down is going to have to take the lead. They are also going to have to draft a few prominent H-Town folks to be part of the selling effort. They have a long way to go. If this thing moves forward then a campaign will have to be put together and we all know that campaigns cost money. Stay tuned!
We’re at Wrigley this weekend. How many Cubbies have won the NL Cy Young Award?
James Gandolfini’s unexpected death got me to thinking about the final scene from the “Sopranos” six years ago. Here is what I said a couple of days later:
All Commentary wanted was for Phil Leotardo to bite the dust. Mission accomplished! It was pretty gruesome but fitting. I actually thought my TV set went south at the end but then I realized that “The Sopranos” will someday reappear – that’s a good thing. All in all, I give the finale 5 out of 4 stars.
A lot of folks afterwards were trying to come up with an explanation or interpretation of the final seconds that went dark. Some said Tony got whacked by the guy in the jacket and Meadow was the last person he saw. Some wondered why Tony kept looking at the door every time the bell rang. Some even mentioned the juke box playlist that Tony was checking out. Some have even gone as far to say that the creator of the show was just messing with our minds.
I just don’t know of an ending that would have satisfied the millions of fans that were watching that evening. We would not have wanted to see Tony get a bullet to his head in front of his family. We would not have wanted to see his arse get hauled off by the Feds. We would not have wanted to see something bad happen to Tony and be told by the show that this is what happens to bad guys after a lot of us spent 86 Sunday evenings rooting for this bad guy if you know what I mean.
I just kind of took the final dark seconds as this is the end so turn off the lights. One thing is for sure now is we won’t have to wonder if they ever make a “Sopranos: The Movie.” There is only one Tony Soprano so that’s it.
Ferguson Jenkins (1971), Bruce Sutter (1979), Rick Sutcliffe (1984), and Greg Maddux (1992) of course are NL Cy Young Award winners for the Cubbies.
17,000 and change showed up yesterday to see Carlos Pena put one into the upper deck for a 7-4 walk off win. We took 5 out of 7 in the homie and we look and play like a different team.
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