Coogs get their first win of 2025

Last Saturday, the Coogs notched their first win of the season by defeating the Sam Houston State Bearkats 31-10 at Robertson Stadium. Some might say that a win over a I-AA school is meaningless, but I’d have to disagree in this instance because, let’s face it, wins of any kind have been hard to come by for the Coogs lately. Besides, Sam is a pretty good I-AA squad, having gone all the way to the I-AA semifinals last season (a football playoff! What a concept!), and they always give the Coogs a good game. So I’ll gladly take it.

Play was sloppy at times, and the Coogs still have some problem areas that must be addressed: penalties, special teams miscues (several kickoffs went out of bounds) and turnovers. A better pass rush is a must, too. It will be a long season if these concerns aren’t remedied in a hurry.

Houston has a short week to prepare for their next opponent, the Texas-El Paso Miners. Friday night's nationally-televised game at the Sun Bowl is going to be tough, and it will be a good barometer of how good (or bad) the Coogs actually are.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. The week before, the Cougars lost their season opener to Oregon at Reliant Stadium, 24-38, in a game that was overshadowed by the Katrina evacuees from New Orleans being bused in to the Astrodome next door.)

Astroworld calls it quits.

At the end of the 2005 season in October, Six Flags is going to shut the 37-year-old theme park down and sell the property on which it sits. Six Flags claims that rising land values in the area have made the property worth more than the park itself, which has suffered from declining attendance, and that parking disputes with the folks at Reliant are also to blame. For whatever reason, a Houston landmark is disappearing.

I can’t say I’m surprised. The park has been on the downhill for a long time. It was aging and poorly-maintained, and was unable to expand beyond its 109-acre footprint. Attendance declined as the park suffered from a proliferation of new Six Flags properties in places like San Antonio, Louisiana and Mexico (whose thrill-seeking population no longer had to travel to Houston to get their roller-coaster fix) as well as a reputation as a gang-banger hangout. The exorbitant admission price (currently $42 for an adult) also kept increasing numbers of people away.

I have mixed feelings about AstroWorld’s demise. When I was a kid, I spent many a summer day there, riding the Greezed Lightnin’ and the XLR-8. When I was in college, I spent the summers of 1992 and 1994 working there, being treated like crap for minimum wage. (Somewhere in the Bush family photo album is a picture, taken during the 1992 Republican National Convention, of Bugs Bunny posing with a bunch of George and Barbara’s grandchildren and well as a few secret service agents. The guy in the Bugs Bunny costume would be me.) I hadn't set foot in the theme park for a long time, and really have had no desire to do so (my tolerance of long lines, brutal heat and overpriced food has waned somewhat since I was a kid), although I always envisioned that one day I’d be taking Kirby there. It looks like that’s not going to happen.

The site on which the property stands is has excellent access to transportation, since it is bounded by Kirby, Loop 610 and the light rail line. It is in a good location, near the Reliant complex and the Texas Medical Center. Given the fact that over 100 contiguous acres of property are hard to come by in this area, I’d have to say that this property probably won’t be on the market for long. Hopefully some sort of well-designed mixed-use development will appear there, with retail along the 610 frontage and a transit-oriented component adjacent to the light rail station.

AstroWorld was originally developed by Harris County Judge Roy Hofheinz as part of the so-called "Astrodomain" that included the Astrodome and Astroarena. It opened in 1968, three years after the Astrodome, and was purchased by Six Flags in 1975. The park’s signature ride, the Texas Cyclone, opened a year later. I think I’ll miss the Cyclone most of all.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. I wrote an article very similar to this in 2008. The anticipated redevelopment of the park's site has never occurred and, with the exception of its use as overflow parking during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the land still sits vacant. But I still don't miss that place.)

More on the future of New Orleans

Joel Garreau, author of Edge City and The Nine Nations of North America, wrote an article in Sunday's Washington Post exploring the future - or lack thereof - of The Big Easy. It is interesting to compare his take on the city's future with George Friedman's Stratfor article that I referenced last week. Friedman argues that, since a port at the mouth of the Mississippi River is critically important to the nation's economy, and ports need cities to support them, New Orleans will be rebuilt. Garreau agrees with the need for the port but is not convinced of the need for a city, because modern port operations are extremely automated and do not employ enough people to support a large city. Garreau argues that “a thriving port is not the same thing as a thriving city” and that New Orleans, with its high office vacancy rates, tourist-reliant economy, and crippling poverty, was anything but thriving. “The city of New Orleans has for years resembled Venice -- a beloved tourist attraction but not a driver of global trade,” he writes. Garreau looks back at Babylon, Carthage and Pompeii to remind us that “cities are not forever:”
 

What the city of New Orleans is really up against, however, is the set of economic, historic, social, technological and geological forces that have shaped fixed settlements for 8,000 years. Its necessity is no longer obvious to many stakeholders with the money to rebuild it, from the oil industry, to the grain industry, to the commercial real estate industry, to the global insurance industry, to the politicians.

 

Garreau is among those (such as myself) who suggest that New Orleans, with its population scattered across the nation – “the biggest resettlement in American history,” according to Rice professor Stephen Kleinberg in this Christian Science Monitor article – might end up much like Galveston did after the 1900 hurricane. “Galveston today is a charming tourist and entertainment destination, but it never returned to its old commercial glory,” he writes. “In part, that’s because the leaders of Houston took one look at what the at what the hurricane had wrought and concluded a barrier island might not be the best place to build the major metropolis that a growing east central Texas was going to need.”

This sentiment is echoed by an article in Tuesday’s USA Today regarding the instant boomtown of Baton Rouge, which is currently Louisiana’s largest city as well as its commercial center. The city is in the process of absorbing 200,000 new residents and at least two thousand businesses from New Orleans. Displaced companies are setting up shop in whatever space they can find, even abandoned grocery stores, and rental rates are skyrocketing. Homes are selling, oftentimes sight unseen, for $500,000 in cash. The city is choked with traffic. Schools are overcrowded. Hotels are all booked. Airlines are adding flights from Chicago, St. Louis and Newark. 

 

While Baton Rouge residents worry the boom may be temporary until New Orleans is rebuilt, the aftermath of another deadly hurricane may point to a different outcome.

A devastating 1900 hurricane in Galveston, Texas, forced a massive exodus of people and businesses to what was then a small community: Houston. Now, Baton Rouge is competing head-to-head with Houston, the fourth-largest city, with a population of 2 million, for businesses that are thinking twice about returning to New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina will be remembered for a lot of things, from its unspeakable devastation to its horrific human toll to its virtual destruction of a major American city to the miserably bungled federal, state and local response in its wake. But it will also be remembered for the profound demographic, economic and social changes it created – not just along the Gulf Coast but nationwide – as it scattered hundreds of thousands of displaced people across the country in a matter of weeks and permanently altered the urban hierarchy of the region, as cities like Baton Rouge, Jackson, Shreveport and Houston absorbed the people and businesses of New Orleans.The true effects of Katrina can only be accurately evaluated in retrospect, but its hard not to believe that this disaster will go down as one of the most monumental and pivotal events in US history. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. Ten years later, how accurate was this? It turns out that the hurricane's effect on Baton Rouge was short-lived; Katrina evacuees eventually returned to New Orleans and Baton Rouge's 2010 population was not significantly larger than its 2000 population. Those flights to places like Chicago, Newark and Denver were canceled a few years after they were started.)

The future of New Orleans

As the floodwaters are pumped out and the decomposing bodies are collected, the slow and difficult task of rebuilding this ruined city will begin. Amid the wall-to-wall media coverage of the aftermath of Katrina – an event which will almost certainly go down as the worst natural disaster in this nation’s history – a great deal of discussion regarding the future of New Orleans, and by extension the entire Gulf Coast, is occurring. What will a rebuilt New Orleans look like? Will it be able to retain its unique culture in the wake of this calamity? How many people will return to the city? Should the city, which sits below sea level, be rebuilt at all? These questions have spawned numerous articles in numerous publications, from the Boston Globe to the Chicago Tribune to the Dallas Morning News to USA Today. Even local bloggers are engaging in the discussion.

Most fundamentally, does it make sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild the flooded city at all? Jack Shafer at slate.com says "no" while George Friedman at stratfor.com says “yes.” Friedman’s argument is that New Orleans “is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist” due to its location at the mouth of the Mississippi River. There needs to be a place where the river barges carrying goods and materials from the Great Plains and the Midwest are  offloaded onto ocean-going vessels, and vice-versa. The Port of New Orleans is critically important to our nation’s economy, and for that reason the city that supports it will return, “because it has to.”

Even if New Orleans is rebuilt – and I think that much of it will be – it will clearly never be the same city it was before Katrina obliterated it. For one, it will be much smaller. It’s impossible to stay at this time just how many of those who called New Orleans home on August 28th will return once it is safe to do so, but it is clear that many of those who have left – some having been evacuated to places as far away as Utah or Alaska – have nothing to return to and very likely will not be coming back. Those that do return to the region are likely to choose a location that is not as vulnerable to tropical storms. That’s why I believe that Baton Rouge, which in the same general region but many miles upriver from New Orleans, and whose population has been swelled by refugees from New Orleans, will probably eventually surpass New Orleans to become Louisiana’s largest and most dominant city, much the same way Houston overtook Galveston to become Texas’s major city after the 1900 Hurricane. 

Houston’s future, likewise, will almost certainly be different. A New York Times article (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune) declares that “no city in the United States is in a better spot to turn Katrina’s tragedy into opportunity” and notes that corporations are already moving their headquarters from New Orleans to Houston, even if only on a temporary basis. Added to this is the influx of tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans, many of whom are likely to stay. There will be a short-term economic boost as evacuated businesses fill vacant office space, evacuated residents fill empty residential space, and millions of dollars in federal aid for the displaced flows into Houston. The long-term economic, demographic and cultural effects of Katrina on Houston are less clear but are nonetheless likely to be positive. And the positive coverage Houston has received from the media regarding the city’s generosity and compassion for the victims of Katrina is likely to boost the city’s national image as well. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.  Unfortunately, a lot of these links are now dead. The tenth anniversary of Katrina is approaching and I will probably write something about it later this week.)

Ecuador dumps another president

Last week, the National Congress in Quito ousted former army colonel Lucio Gutierrez, who had been in office since 2003, amid widespread anti-government protests in Quito. Gutierrez has since fled to Brazil and vice-president Alfredo Palacio has been sworn in as the Andean nation's head of state. Palacio becomes Ecuador's eighth leader in ten years (more details below); no president has been allowed to finish a four-year term of office since 1996. According to The Independent, Ecuador is now officially the most policially unstable nation in South America. And that's no small feat, considering that political crisis and Latin America seem to go hand in hand. 
 

Ironically, Lucio Gutierrez was one of the leaders of the January 2000 coup that deposed Jamil Mahuad. That coup was caused by widespread opposition to Mahaud's plan to dollarize the economy following the nation's 1999 economic meltdown. Economic instability doesn't seem to be an underlying cause of Gutierrez's ouster, however; the country's economy grew by 6 percent last year, and the nation has benefitted from high oil prices. Instead, this most recent round of political instability appears to be due to the Ecuadorean population's growing frustration with corrupt politicians, as a story in today's Chronicle notes:

[Critics] point out that Gutierrez campaigned for the presidency on a populist, anti-corruption platform. But once in office, they contend, Gutierrez approved harsh economic austerity measures, installed family members in government posts and cut deals with corrupt politicians rather than jailing them.

"You give them your trust, and they do the exact opposite of what they promise," said Carlos Tamayo, a taxi driver in Quito. "They suck the blood of the people like bats."

Indeed, the nation's political infrastructure is rife with corrpution - the watchdog group Transparency International claims that Ecuador is one of the most corrupt nations in the region. What really seemed to upset the Ecuadorean people, however, was Lucio's deal with exiled former president Abdala Bucaram and his populist PRE party (for more information on Abdala, see my 1997 Daily Cougar column about him):

The move that seemed to seal Gutierrez's fate was his temporary alliance with Abdala Bucaram, a former president who fled to Panama after being ousted from office in a 1997 uprising.

Pro-Bucaram legislators briefly gave Gutierrez a razor-thin majority in Congress. Gutierrez persuaded lawmakers to fire the Supreme Court and then reconstituted the judicial body with his cronies. The new court annulled corruption convictions against Bucaram, paving the way for the ex-president to return to Ecuador earlier this month.

The move sparked a wave or protests that came to a head Wednesday. Fearing a blood bath if they were ordered to fire on demonstrators, Ecuador's army and police withdrew their support from Gutierrez, and the Congress voted to dismiss him.

"The person who violated the constitution was the president," said Gustavo Larrea, director of the independent Latin American Human Rights Association in Quito. "The people were calling for a return to a state of law. This was an exercise in direct democracy."

The Chronicle article, however, focuses on the possibility that these "exercises in direct democracy" that seem to be occurring with increased frequency in Latin America are not necessarily a good thing, because they are little more than incidences of mob rule mentality. Don't like the president? Then there's no reason to wait until his term of office is up - just take to the streets and force him out of office! Rather than being an affirmation of democracy, these uprisings could really be nothing more than events that undermine the democratic process and foment political instability:

[John] Walsh, of the Washington Office on Latin America, said people power doesn't necessarily lead to more democracy.

"Mob rule lends itself to any configuration," Walsh said. "The next time it happens, (people) might not agree with the result, and, in that sense, it's very dangerous."

Given the dangers of "mobocracy," however, I can fully understand the frustration of the Ecuadorean people and their propensity to take to the streets. Ecuador's leaders, democratically-elected as they might be, have collectively done very little to improve the impoverished nation's standard of living. As I noted in following my most recent trip to Ecuador, "the things that needed to have changed the most - the poverty, the lack of basic infrastructure, the corruption, the pollution - are still the same. It's depressing, since the country really doesn't seem to be better off than it was fifteen years ago, when I first visited." Contrast this to Mexico, the other Latin American nation I visit frequently, which, while still very impoverished, is clearly progressing economically and politically. Corrpution is waning, the infrastructure is improving and a middle class is emerging in Mexico. The same cannot be said for Ecuador, unfortunately...

Since Ecuador moved from a military dictatorship to a civilian democracy in 1979, the country has experienced the following results:

Jaime Roldos: 1979 - 1981: Killed in a plane crash shortly into his term

Osvaldo Hurtado 1981 - 1984: Finished Roldos's term; he left office right as a nasty El Niño and the oil bust decimated Ecuador's economy

Leon Febres-Cordero 1984 - 1988: This guy was lucky he survived a full term, considering the mess that the economy was in while he was president. He did spend an evening as a prisoner at a Guayaquil air force base during a failed coup attempt

Rodrigo Borja 1988 - 1992: The leader of the Izquierda Democratica (Leftist Democrat) party fancied himself as an enlightened neo-Marxist reformer - until his party's congressional majority was wiped out in 1990 mid-term elections

Sixto Duran 1992 - 1996: This Boston-born architect was Ecuador's last president to serve a full term; he presided over a short border war with Peru in 1995 (Jimmy Carter intervened and the two nations later signed a peace treaty)

Abdala Bucaram 1996 - 1997: It wasn't hard for the National Congress to dismiss this Guayaquil populist on grounds of "mental incapacity" - his preferred nickname was "El Loco" and he released an album entitled "A Madman in Love" shortly after his election

Rosalia Arteaga - 1997: She served as interim president for a few days, becoming Ecuador's first female head of state in the process

 

Fabian Alacran 1997 - 1998: Caretaker president appointed by Congress until new elections were held; he left office during the devastating 1998 El Nino and the Asian economic meltdown and subsequent oil crash

Jamil Mahuad 1998 - 2000: Ecuador's economy collapsed during his presidency; he was forced out by a coup led by junior military officers and indigenous leaders 

Gustavo Naboa 2000 - 2003: Tried to rebuild Ecuador's economy by pressing ahead with Mahuad's reforms, including dollarization. Ecuador's official currency is now the US Dollar

Lucio Gutierrez 2003 - 2005: One of the army colonels who participated in the 2000 coup now finds himself on the other end of the wrath

Alfredo Palacio 2005 - ???: Good luck, Al. You're going to need it!

If this political instability continues, Ecuador should consider changing its national anthem from Salve O Patria to Won't Get Fooled Again... 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. Palacio finished his term but was replaced by Rafael Correa in the subsequent election. Although Correa's left-leaning, authoritarian administration has been controversial, it has also resulted in the longest period of political stability in Ecuador since the mid-90s; Correa was re-elected in 2013.)

Boogie down at the UNT library!

One of the largest collections of disco music in the academic world can be found in the library of the University of North Texas. The Denton-Record Chronicle explains: 

Even Morris Martin, librarian of UNT’s music library, is unsure how many records are in the Bert Hile Collection, as it is formally known, though the number is probably well above the university’s Web site estimate of 2,500.

The amount of scholarly interest is easier to count.

"Hardly any, frankly," he said.

Part of the problem, Martin said, is that the collection has never been cataloged, which would make it more accessible to researchers. Another reason is that few musicologists are willing to invest their careers researching lyrics such as:

"Shake it/Doo, doo, doo, whoa/Shake it/Doo, doo, doo, whoa/Shake your groove thing/Shake your groove thing."

The tracks were donated by Bert Hile, who was a deejay at popular Dallas-area disco clubs in the late 70s. He reflects on the demise of the era of mirror balls and polyester leisure suits:

Disco is said to have died on Feb. 3, 1980, the day New York’s Studio 54 closed. But Hile said its fate was sealed by a movie released three years earlier.

"Saturday Night Fever is what killed disco. It ran it into the ground," he said. "You know how when you have a scratch and you keep itching and itching until it starts to bleed? Well, that’s what happened to disco. It got overplayed."

The article ends with Dallas Morning News music critic Mario Tarradell listing what in his opinion are the five best and five worst disco songs. The five best:

1. "Got to Be Real," Cheryl Lynn
2. "This Time Baby," Jackie Moore
3. "I Feel Love," Donna Summer
4. "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," Barry White
5. "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," Sylvester

And the five worst:

1. "Disco Duck," Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots
2. "Get Dancin'," Disco-Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes
3. "Ring My Bell," Anita Ward
4. "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty," KC and the Sunshine Band
5. "Macho Man," Village People

Can't say I really disagree with any of Tarradell's picks - I especially agree with his selection of "I Feel Love" as one of the five best. Kraftwerk may have pioneered the genre of electronic music, but Giorgio Moroder gave it a sound with this song. The eerie synthesizer chords, the galloping baseline, Donna Summer's sparse yet sexy lyrics... An all-around awesome tune. Here are a few other tunes that would be on my personal list of best disco songs: 

"Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," Michael Jackson: the younger generation might not believe this, but a long, long time ago, before he became a bleached, plastic freak of nature who (allegedly) molested cancer-stricken young boys or dangled babies out of hotel windows, Wacko Jacko actually made some great music. If this whirlwind of a song didn't get you off the couch and onto the plexiglass dance floor with the blinking lights underneath, you simply didn't have a pulse.

"I Will Survive," Gloria Gaynor: This disco standard had a message as well as a beat. Her man left her, but she "was strong, and learned how to get along" without him. When he returns, she tells him off with a voice and a brilliance that is nothing short of triumphant.

"Born to Be Alive," Patrick Hernandez: this is the quintessential disco song, incorporating a thumping beat, teeth-sucking cymbals, synthesized baseline, guitars, horns, strings, backing vocals, the nonsensical lyrics, the works. When this piece of vinyl hit the turntable, it was indeed "good to be alive." I'd have to say that this song is, in my 

opinion, the greatest disco song ever recorded.

Of course, I didn't exactly experience the disco scene first hand - I was a bit young for that, although I do remember, as a five or six year old kid, hearing a lot of these tunes on the radio as I rode around in the car with my mom. Throughout my childhood and teen years, disco was considered "trash" and nobody played it; it didn't get popular again until the early 1990s, and that's when I started paying attention to to the music. I realized that, contrary to what the bumper stickers of the early 80s claimed, not all disco sucked. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)

Wrapping up the 2004 college football season

The 2004 college football season ended in a rout Tuesday night, as the USC Trojans flattened the previously unbeaten Oklahoma Sooners 55-19 to win the FedEx Orange Bowl and claim the Mythical National Championship for the 2004 college football season. I don’t think anybody was expecting the game to be as lopsided as it was; the Sooners just didn’t seem to be prepared for USC’s relentless offense (this year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Matt Leinart, threw five touchdown passes) and made too many mistakes (last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Jason White, threw three interceptions) on their way to their second consecutive BCS title game meltdown. I really didn’t care who won; I just wanted to see a good game. Needless to say, I, like millions of other college football fans, was disappointed. 

Auburn fans are probably especially cranky today; given last night’s performance, they no doubt believe that their undefeated Tigers, who beat Virginia Tech in Monday night’s Sugar Bowl but were left out of a shot at the national title, would have given the Trojans a better game. The Rose Bowl, on the other hand, was a classic. Putting aside for a moment the fact that the 5th-ranked Longhorns probably should have beaten the 12th-ranked Wolverines by more than a point, and ignoring for a second the pathetic whining to the media Mack Brown did in order to get his team there instead of California, the game itself, replete with spectacular performances from players like UT’s Vincent Young or Michigan’s Braylon Edwards, was one of the most thrilling and complete college football games in recent memory.

Like it or not, whiny Mack Brown was vindicated. Not only did the ‘Horns win the Rose Bowl, but the 4th-ranked Cal Golden Bears were embarrassed by 23rd-ranked Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl. I know Cal was not happy to be playing in this game, but a big win here would have made a statement; a loss makes them look like pretenders. Too bad Mack can’t beat Oklahoma or win a conference championship…

Other notable bowl games included the Capital One Bowl on New Year’s Day; 11th-ranked Iowa defeated 12th-ranked LSU 30-25 on a 56-yard touchdown pass as time expired. A pretty amazing finish, considering that LSU overcame a 12-point deficit in the fourth quarter to take a 25-24 lead with 46 seconds left to play. The New Year’s Eve Liberty Bowl between 8th-ranked Louisville and 10th-ranked Boise State was also a thriller. The matchup between the two highest-ranked non-BCS schools was expected to be an offensive showdown, and it did not disappoint. Louisville won the see-saw battle, 44-40, to give Boise State its first loss of the year.

Steve Casburn and I went to see the EV1.net Houston Bowl on Wednesday afternoon. Colorado and UTEP were evenly matched for a while but as the game progressed the Buffs’ strength and depth began to take over. Colorado won 33 to 28 in an entertaining, back-and-forth game.

The announced attendance for this game was 27,235. There just wasn’t a lot of local interest in this matchup, and the game’s start time of 3:30 pm didn’t make it easy for people to attend either. UTEP did their part, however, bringing several thousand fans and their entire band with them; their fans filled the entire west side of the field boxes. The Colorado contingent was perhaps only a fourth or a fifth as large. Colorado didn’t bring their entire band, either, although they did bring Ralphie the Bison with them.

Steve and I originally had tickets on the upper endzone, but we were asked by Reliant staff if we wanted to move down to the lower endzone seats; they clearly wanted to make the crowd look bigger for the ESPN cameras. We took up their offer and moved; the view wasn’t quite as good, however, and there was simply no way to make the stadium look “full” no matter how many fans were moved around. 

So ends the 2004 college football season. Hopefully 2005 will be a better one for my Houston Cougars. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)

On becoming homeowners

Although it probably won't completely sink in until I write that first mortgage payment, Lori and I are now officially homeowners. We closed on our house, in the same University Oaks neighborhood where I grew up (my parents still live two blocks away), last Wednesday.

Since our lease here in Midtown runs through the end of February, we have a couple of months to do some remodeling before we move in. Which is good, because the heater needs to be replaced, the kitchen (which lacks a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, and a stove that actually works) needs a complete facelift, the yard could use some landscaping, Kirby's room needs to be painted, the leaky sunroom roof needs to be replaced, the downstairs bathroom needs immediate attention, etc. The joys of homeownership!

Lori and I are looking forward to it, however; we're glad to finally have a place we can call our own.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. That old house has become a veritable money pit in the years since, but it became Lori's after the divorce, so it's not my problem anymore!)

White Christmas

That's something I never thought I'd see here in Houston, so I never even bothered to dream about it!

It was very cool; Lori, Kirby and I were eating tapas with my parents at Mi Luna restaurant in Rice Village when the flakes started falling Christmas Eve, and the flurries continued throughout the evening. Here in Midtown, the snow didn't completely melt from lawns, rooftops and parking garages until well into Christmas morning.

It made for a truly memorable holiday; I doubt I'll ever see a Christmas snowfall in Houston again in my lifetime.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. Houston has only seen a couple of snowfalls since, and certainly no more White Christmases.)

Bowl season begins with Mean Green defeat

Bowl season began yesterday evening, with North Texas and Southern Miss squaring off in the Wyndham New Orleans Bowl. Lori and I watched part of the game with other Houston-area UNT alumni at Noche restaurant on Montrose, but the game didn’t turn out to be very watchable. The Golden Eagles dominated the Mean Green 31-10; the score would have looked worse had North Texas not scored a touchdown on the last play of the game. This is UNT’s third loss in four consecutive New Orleans Bowl appearances; Darrell Dickey’s squad continues to be unable to win games out of conference.

To be fair to the Mean Green, they’ve had a rough season. Quarterback Andrew Smith was killed in a car crash shortly before the season started; Chronicle columnist John Lopez wrote a good article about the tragedy and local furniture mogul (and UNT alum) Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale’s response to it. The Mean Green then began the season with four straight losses. To their credit, however, they overcame these setbacks to dominate the Sun Belt conference for the fourth year in a row; they haven’t lost a conference game since 2001.

However, the Mean Green must find a way to begin winning out of conference; last night’s performance against a decent but not invincible Southern Miss team was simply unimpressive.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)