The Pecan Park Eagle

Archive for 2013

ROOTS 2: 1965 Astros Radio and TV Network

January 31, 2013

ROOTS 2 is the second of numerous columns The Pecan Park Eagle plans to publish from materials found in the old attic box of a now deceased 9o plus years old widow and original Houston Astros fan. As each of these new, but old treasured subjects unfold, they will always be entitled here by the introductory “ROOTS” DESIGNATION, plus the number in the series. Today features ROOTS 2, the second in this now and then, ongoing look at Houston’s baseball past from one small box in a fan’s attic. Enjoy!

Voices of the Astros – Gene Elston (seated left) and Loel Passe (seated right) are the on-air broadcasters. In the background are engineer Bob Green (left) and producer Bob Boyne (right).

ASTROS RADIO AND TV NETWORK

What follows is a restatement of the written material shown above from page 138 of the 1965 program, “Inside the Astrodome”:

The Houston Astros radio and tv network reaches over 17 million people on 25 radio stations and 12 television stations throughout the southwest (Texas and Louisiana).

The Joseph Schlitz brewing company purchased the play-by-play broadcast rights for three seasons beginning in 1965 for $5.3 million dollars. The Coca-Cola Company and the Duncan Foods Company will be sharing the pre and post game show sponsorships.

Broadcasters Gene Elston and Loel Passe will be broadcasting 162 regular season games and 30 exhibition games on radio originating on KPRC in Houston. In addition, the Astros will telecast 14 road games on Sundays originating on KTRK-TV in Houston.

The Astros have a unique radio network set-up in that they are the only major league baseball club to operate their own complete network organization. Most clubs sell their rights to a station who in turn handles all packaging and network arrangements.

The Astros do their own “packaging”, network organization, production and promotion under Hugh Cohn, director of radio and television, and Dick Blue, supervisor of broadcast operations.

Bob Boyne, the producer of the broadcasts, and engineer Bob Green are always in the booth with Gene and Loel and make all trips with the Astros to visiting National League cities.

During the baseball season, the Astro network conducts special contests and promotions for fans including a “Miss Astros” contest and a “Boy’s Baseball Contest.”

Tags:electronic media, Houston Baseball History
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ROOTS: A Treasure Trove of the Astros in 1965

January 30, 2013

About a week ago, one of my 1956 classmates from St. Thomas HS called to offer me a small box (actually, a plastic bag) of baseball “stuff” that was left over from some estate settlement he had worked out for a client. Paul Sofka (whose father built and ran Otto’s BBQ on Memorial for years) had no idea about the early Houston baseball book we are working on through SABR; he just knew about me and baseball. “Either you take these things, Bill, or they go in the garbage,” was Paul’s approach.

No way that was going to happen.

Today I picked up these items at the funeral of our classmate, Sam Sacco. It’s all from 1965 and really offers nothing new to our earlier history project, but they are still a treasure trove on many other levels.

The central piece is a really good copy of the very first game program from the Astrodome, the 2-1 Astros win over the Yankees on April 9, 1965. It was even score-kept for the entire 10-inning drama and the winning RBI by Nellie Fox. – Next up are two attachments alluding to a 1965 fan organization called the “Astronettes” – apparently, a female fan club effort back in those more repressive days of male dominance and “don’t you worry your pretty little head” messages from the good old boys to their ladies. I never heard of them, perhaps, because I was too young, masculine, and single back then to be on this kind of Astros mailing list.

Interesting to note that “Anne Elston” was the author of the club letter to the Astronettes. She may have been the wife or some other relative of Astros broadcaster Gene Elston, but I have no confirmation of that assumption as a fact without further research. – The last piece here, “The Eyeful Tower” by Doug Freelander of the Houston Post, on some unsaved date in 1965, may have been the earliest attempt to treat the quickly discovered daytime baseballs-in-the-sky visual problem with degrees of measured reality and humor. Even then, Freelander is unable to conjecture the death of grass that will occur from a painted ceiling solution that will lead to Astroturf and a change in the way sports are played that is actually the broadest effect that spun from the creation of the world’s first domed stadium.

Other items include more Astrodome game programs and extensive newspaper accounts from that first big night in the Dome. I will be using other information in future historic columns here at The Pecan Park Eagle.

If anyone remembers the “Astronettes” – please leave a comment online with this column.

Tags:1965 Astrodome Artifacts
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Ben Milam’s Crumbling Goodbye.

January 29, 2013

What remains of the Ben Milam Hotel across the street from Union Station will not be around for long.

What remains of the Ben Milam Hotel across from Union Station will soon be gone.

The 10-story Ben Milam Hotel on Crawford at Texas Avenue came to life in 1928, across the street from Union Station, the city’s major long distance land depot to the rest of the Western Hemisphere. By 1932, the Ben Milam proudly advertised itself to the world as Houston’s only completely air-conditioned building. It’s a safe bet that those guests who traveled to Houston in the summer of 1928 to attend the 1928 Democratic National Convention would have appreciated the AC news even better, had the hotel started that way.

Maybe there’s a crate of old registration books packed away somewhere that will give us a better clue as to the names of all the world-famous people who stayed at “The Ben” during its hay-day. Along that line, Pecan Park Eagle reader Peter Denman wrote us this interesting back story on the Ben Milam this past weekend in response to the Sunday column about the SABR’s National Meeting story: “Dizzy Dean lived at the Ben Milam in 1931. If anyone in SABR is interested in Diz, there is an old magazine called the Gargoyle which they have down at the Houston Public Library, and one issue of it has a great interview with Dizzy in it which was conducted in his room at the Ben Milam.”

Wow! Those of us working on the Houston early baseball history book need to search out that issue of the Gargoyle to see what Old Diz had to say back in 1931. He apparently lived at The Ben a year prior to full air conditioning and we have no idea if that upgrade occurred gradually enough to have comforted the great young pitcher a year earlier – or if everyone had to wait until 1932 for it to arrive in one fell swooping flick of the power-on button.

Most of us emerging blue-collar middle class Houstonians of that earlier time didn’t feel the blast of home window air conditioning (and at first, only on a one-at-a-time-for-your-favorite-house-room-basis) until 1957. Until then, we lived through summers, damp-cool under the sucking breath of home attic fans and hot as hell in church with small undertaker-advertising-underwritten hand fans. Otherwise, we refrigerated ourselves as Texas cucumbers in one of the city’s many air-conditioned movie theaters. Night baseball was tolerable weather when the gulf breezes blew well into Houston from the coast, but if they died down, the Houston mosquito family took over the night. Those were the days, my friend.

At any rate, getting back to our central character for the day, the now deceased Ben Milam Hotel. It would have been a beautiful, but expensive restoration piece, but those costs, and the limited projections on income from its smaller space availablity to developers won out. As reader Bob Copus wrote in response to the same column this past weekend: “Due to the business I am in, I had many opportunities to get inside the Ben Milam Hotel within the last few years. It was the first hotel with air conditioning in Houston. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to enter the hotel, deterioration had set in and vagrants made their presence known. The site is going to become a multi-family hi-rise with retail and restaurant(s) on floor 1.”

Unfortunately, the now explosive new panorama of downtown Houston that is available only as a view from the highest points of the right field seats at Minute Maid Park (above the unspeakable internal signage), will be short-lived. Local historian and Executive Director of Houston Arts and Media Mike Vance explains clearly in a comment on yesterday’s signage column why we need to check out the new view early in the new season: “The giant new structure that will be built where the Ben Milam Hotel once stood will block not only the view, but much of the evening sun. Such is life in a city run by developers with no zoning or height/sight line restrictions such as exist in most every other city in the United States.”

This is Houston, folks. We’re getting better at historical preservation, but when the developers and their money talk hard, it’s “tear it down and build something new that makes bigger money now” time again.

At least, the developers will no longer have to worry about the Ben Milam getting in the way of progress. Nothing remains of it now, but a disappearing mountain of concrete rubble and a giant hole in the ground.

Have a nice Tuesday, everybody!

Tags:The Ben Milam Hotel Demolition
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One More Word on the MMP Signs and I’m Done

January 28, 2013

Minute Maid Park, 01/26/13: ... You know what? That guy that wrote graffiti on the Picasso at the Menil is still in jail. pending bail.

Minute Maid Park, 01/26/13: … Here’s how the “community leaders” sponsorship signs look from inside the ballpark to fans sitting along the 3rd base line. Can you find the train? Can you see the sky? Do you even care that the signs now interrupt the natural flow of the venue’s intended horizontal sight lines to the downtown skyline that fans on the 1st base side once got to see with unobstructed architectural clarity?

Minute Maid Park, 01/26/13: … Here’s the train! From the Crawford Street side, the Union Station memorial train is clearly visible and we still get a partially blocked, once inviting view of the interior scoreboard. (The pale blue backside of the signs shows here from the street.)

For the record here, I don’t dislike everything I see in the new Houston Astros ownership out of hand. I didn’t like the dismissive and disrespectful way they dumped Tal Smith at the start, but I respect the fact that they paid a whole lot of money for the sake of handling anything the way they chose. If they felt that taking a pass on Tal’s half century of baseball wisdom was the way to go, it was their right to handle things exactly as they did.

At the start, I was one of those people who hated the Bud Selig edict that forced the Astros to accept a move to the American League as the condition for determining MLB’s final approval of the club’s sale to the Jim Crane interests at a reduced sales price. In time, for some inexplicable reason beyond these few words, I simply caught up with the idea that, at my age, it might be fun to see how the Astros might fare in the Land of the DH Giants. I hated losing the Cardinals from our schedule, but the thought of the Yankees and Red Sox coming to Houston on a regular basis, as opposed to annual visits by the Brewers and Pirates, completely made up for my short-lived National League withdrawal pains.

I also have come around to liking the selection of Greg Luhnow as General Manager and I am wholly behind his plan to rebuild the club from scratch, starting with the revitalization of young talent infusion into the farm system – and extending to his use of statistical analysis as a parallel track to scouting in the determination of which players the club shall pursue.

From there, the hiring of Bo Porter as the new Astros field manager is the piece de resistance move on the get-results talent level prospectus sheet. Having now had the opportunity to have broken bread with Bo and heard him speak to SABR back on 01/14/13, I cannot recall when I have ever been more impressed with a managerial selection prior to actually seeing him work. Even now, this much appears sure: Under Bo Porter, the young Astros may not yet have the talent to win a lot of games, but they will not fail to put out effort to match or surpass any club they face. Bo is going to have those young legs, arms, and bats on a “running and gunning” pace from the git-go of spring training forward.

Throw in the fact that I love the new Astros caps and uniforms, and their return to the orange and dark blue color scheme of ancient history, and I’m also now set up for a 2013 case of baseball fever as I haven’t felt one in a very long time.

I just don’t like those ugly signs in left field, even if I do know that Jim Crane and the Astros are simply trying to honor the sponsors who support the club’s efforts to rebuild baseball opportunity for children in Houston’s inner city neighborhoods. That’s a wonderful program, one that all of us baseball fans should support and be quick to acknowledge in recognizing those same people and entities that subsidize its success.

I’m just saying, I’m just asking: Can’t we do the “thank yous” in a way that doesn’t detract from the beautiful architectural design of Minute Made Park? Or am I the only one who thinks that this sort of thing even matters?

How about using the new electronic scoreboard to periodically flash attractive acknowledgements of all sponsors at each game? It’s already been proven in marketing that moving, changeable messages hold public attention longer than dull stationary billboards ever do, anyway – and the signs at MMP are as deathly still and “dull as dishwater” as any billboard most people have ever seen. – Attractive “Hall of Fame” quality, eye-level plaques on the street level concourse at MMP would also grab more tasteful positive attention than those already-ignored-for-their-message-but-abhorred-for-their-clutter monsters in the left field Houston skies.

That being said, I will have nothing further to say on this subject – and I respect Mr. Crane’s right as the ballpark’s landlord to do what he thinks is best for the City of Houston and the paying fans in this matter.

To me, this isn’t about winning an argument or trying to tell Mr. Crane what to do. He’s apparently done all right in life for himself without input from people like me up until now, and I would expect that condition to continue full-steam, no matter what he eventually decides to do permanently in this matter.

I’m just hoping that he is willing enough to see this point of view and to consider other ways to fulfill his duty to public expressions of gratitude in more effective, less obstructive ways. I’ve suggested a couple of alternatives here, but I’m sure there are many others.

It’s about finding the best way to do the right thing, Mr. Crane. All we can hope for here is that you will show us your willingness to listen and do something alternative to the left field signs. As the keeper of the key to the lease on our Houston ballpark, we completely respect that the final decision is yours, whether we agree with you or not.

That’s it. Thank you for your patience.

Tags:obstructve signs at Minute Maid Park
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SABR SATURDAY ZOOMZ IN HOUSTON!

January 27, 2013

Mike Acosta (L) of the Houston Astros and Stan "The Man" Curtis of SABR get ready for the latter's presentation on the new team uniforms for 2013.

Mike Acosta (L) of the Houston Astros and Stan “The Man” Curtis of SABR get ready for the former’s presentation on the new team uniforms for 2013.

The Larry Dierker Chapter of Houston of SABR (The Society for American Baseball Research) in Houston played a doubleheader on January 26, 2013, adding the neat dimension of playing out their first priority shorter game of conducting a National SABR Saturday meeting inside the longer all day confines of participating across the street at Minute Maid Park in educating the public all day on the merits of SABR and the value of their personal membership.

All SABR eyes were still focused on the “new” old look of Houston Astros gear for 2013, although we’ve pretty much seen it all since shortly after the end of the 2012 season.

The SABR meeting was held at the Home Plate Grill on Texas Avenue from 12 NOON to 2:00 PM. The SABR educational/recruitment program was conducted at the ballpark of the Houston Astros, also on Texas Avenue, from 10:00 AM until about 5:00 PM as part of the ball club’s annual Winter FanFest. A good time was had by all in both places as we rotated people in out of the greeting program as well as we could and into the meeting across the avenue.

Matt Rejmaniak makes a strong point in his talk to the group. Matt also brought a seat from old Tiger Stadium in Detroit that he owns to show everyone.

Matt Rejmaniak informed us that the videotape we made of Monte Irvin speaking in 2010 is now on file at the Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown. That’s a real feather in our Houston cap as a contribution to oral history. Matt also brought a seat from old Tiger Stadium in Detroit that he owns to show everyone who attended SABR Saturday 2013 in Houston.

As one might expect from us in Houston this winter, the major buzz around here is about the Astros’ big move in 2013 to the American League West, the bad blood fomenting in some local National League traditionalists over our city’s surrender to the wide world of DH baseball, the impressive “pluck” in the words and attitude of new Astros manager Bo Porter, and the “plucked-clean” salary figures that now remain on Houston’s youngest, least experienced, and most poorly paid team in the big leagues.

It’s going to be interesting all year. The over/under pools on 100-plus losses this season for the third year in a row should be hot and heavy on the high side, but I don’t know. Something about Bo Porter tells me the Astros are going to be a better club, even if they do lose most of their games this year, playing in the land of the heavy bats. We’ll soon enough see.

01/26/13: We probably had a rotating group of 20 people in the SABR meeting room at all times.

The 2013 Houston grey road uniform (L) and the Friday night home orange jersey.

Houston Astros Authentication Specialist Mike Acosta was our featured speaker on SABR Saturday. Mike came with four of the new uniform models and a lot of information on how he and the club worked to get the club back to its early roots in orange and dark blue. With some adjustments, the uniforms, the lettering, and the decorative torso piping go way back to the early 1960’s – and perhaps, even further, if you care to compare the new “Houston” lettered grey jersey in the second (above) uniform color photo shown here with the black and white “Houston” grey road uniform of shortstop Billy Costa in the old 1952 Houston Buffs minor league photo that follows. I happened to have had this photo with me yesterday in a scrapbook of several we are considering for our major book project, but one of our members found it and spotted the similarity to its 2013 counterpart only after Mike Acosta had departed.

Billy Costa, SS
1952 Houston Buffs

It proves one of three things: (1) that chance similarity is wildly inexplicable; (2) that history has a subliminally powerful effect upon the future; or (3) that everything new is really simply a link in the chain of redundant replication of all that came earlier – or words to that effect.

We of SABR want to thank members Matt Rejmaniak and Stan Curtis for putting together yesterday’s meeting plan and we ask all SABR members to stay tuned to some further e-mail word from our Chairman, Bob Dorrill. We’ve been bumped from our normal second Monday date at the Inn of the Ballpark because of the NBA’s All Star grab on just about all downtown hotel space for the month of February and we may have to wait until March to meet again.

Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the other FanFest news was: (1) the altered way the ballpark now looks with the old Ben Milam Hotel in front now down; (2) the bargain on game-worn uniforms for sale at FanFest. (Wilton Lopez, #50, and others, were going for $20-$50, depending on whether it was the BP or game version; (3) the orange changes that are beginning to work into the color scheme at MMP; and (4) unfortunately, the continuing presence of those butt-ugly special sponsorship signs that continue to decorate/obliterate the architectural lines and beauty of our ballpark.

Current View of Union Station, with the old Ben Milam Hotel now down and out.

Minute Maid Park, 01/26/13: The view to center and right still bears that beckoning green call to baseball.

Minute Maid Park, 01/26/13: … Hope you like it, baseball fans.

On another level, the ugly sponsorship signs in left field that remain from last year’s nightmare, simply serve as ongoing proof of another old law in applied physics:

“If you want to raise ugliness to a new altitude of visual disservice to the community, all you need is one large and powerful crane.”

Tags:Astros Winter FanFest 2013, SABR Saturday
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So Long, Sweet Sam Sacco!

January 26, 2013

Smilin’ Sam Sacco, Class of 1956, at a 2010 St. Thomas High School “Good Old Boys” Luncheon at the campus in Houston.

“He was one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.”

As broad as that bucket gets splashed at the end, in the instance of 75-year old Sam Sacco, it is indisputably true. Sam passed away about 9:00 AM Friday morning, January 25, 2013, in a hospital at the Texas Medical Center, following a long and difficult spell of bad health. I don’t have all the particulars at this time, but I am informed by his good friend Garland Debner Pohl that he went out as he would have wanted, surrounded by family and the comfort of his Catholic faith. – How sweet is that? Who among us of sound mind could ask for anything more than to make that final solitary trip from life in the company of loved ones at the way station of one’s core beliefs in what this whole journey called life is all about.

As his early life friend and fellow student from the Class of 1956 at St. Thomas High School, Sam and I shared some good times together, even if our later years contact was mostly reduced to sporadic luncheon gatherings and reunions at our shared alma mater. Our sense of closeness always renewed upon contact, even if we could not name each other’s children in order to each other – or even name them at all. Life works out that way sometimes, but no matter what, we still shared a bond that never went away. We were St. Thomas Eagles. Not once upon a time, but forever.

Eagles Always! Pecan Park and Elsewhere!

Sam and I shared involvement in two major projects at St. Thomas and both took place in our senior year. In the fall of 1955, we both played central characters in the senior school play, “Brother Orchid.” In the spring of 1956, we each played primary roles in the mock version of a national political convention. Sam got to nominate Senator Estes Kefauver as a candidate for President; I got to deliver the keynote address.

The meaning of that jump into the school limelight for both of us was shared and clear: If St. Thomas had ever wanted to offer a course on “ham-ology,” Sam Sacco and I could have taught it.

Excerpt from the St. Thomas Eagle, November 1955.

In “Brother Orchid”, I was chosen for the lead role of “Little John Sarto”, an on-the-lam Italian mob boss who later finds God through his fake hideout identity in a monastery as “Brother Orchid”. – I didn’t ask for the part. I was handed the role by our director, Father (get this name) Walter Scott! – Edward G. Robinson played the role of John Sarto in the movie version.

Man! I figured that getting that role was half the battle won for even trying out. If Father Scott could hand an Italian gangster role to an Irish kid in the middle of our Houston high school version of Sicily, he either knew something special, or else, he was the worst casting director of all time. – As Sam Sacco and I soon enough proved, it was probably a whole lot of the latter.

Father Scott cast Sam Sacco as Fat Duchy, a smiling and happy bartender at the mob’s favorite watering hole who would always treat you right as he was selling you out under the table for a few quick bucks. We both had a lot of lines and some key scenes with each other. And, well, it didn’t take long for us to find out what happens in live theater when one person totally forgets his lines.

On opening night, we had this big early scene in Fat Duchy’s Bar, when I delivered verbatim the line from the script that Sam Sacco needs to answer correctly for the audience to make sense of what happens next. Silence. I could tell from Sam’s turning snow-white face that he has totally forgotten his lines. We both can hear Father Scott practically trying to shout his whispers from the prompter spot in the wings, but neither Sam nor I can hear him – and I can’t say them for Sam, anyway.

What to do? – What to do? – What to do?

All of a sudden, Sam starts saying “stuff” that makes no sense as a response to my lines and I am now forced to see that if I just stick with my next scripted response that it will make no connecting sense to the prattle that has just fallen from the mouth of my fellow would-be thespian friend.

Once more: What to do? – What to do? – What to do?

I have to start winging it too; and Sam and I manage to wiggle our way off-stage talking about something that may have never risen above our imagined discussion of property values on the Jersey shore. I was briefly tempted to throw in an Edward G. Robinson classic line like, “Oh, so you’re a wise guy, eh?” But I held off.

Once off stage, I literally tried to choke Sam.

“Sam,” I said, “if you want to be an actor, it has to start with you remembering your **** lines!”

“A good actor doesn’t have to remember all his lines,” Sam answered, “he just has to feel the part and act out what he’s feeling.”

By the end of the first night, it was my time to flub-the-dub, as we used to proclaim. (Spoiler Alert!) I get shot in the last scene by a special needs gangster named “Dum Dum”, played by Michael Storey. The trouble was, the blanks-loaded gun doesn’t go off. As the recipient of this alleged bullet, I view the hand action of the gun being fired at me, but I also hear the silence, so I just stand there, for about ten seconds.

Then I fall.

And after I fall, the gun goes off. The audience roars in laughter. The curtain closes. And Sam Sacco laughs his head off in a real-time version of ROFLMAO that far precedes anything we have going on today as an Internet exclamation point.

Sam, I told you that I was going to remind you of that great night we both made our acting debuts until the day that one of us died. I had to write this column to keep my promise.

I promise you this too, even if we haven’t seen much of each other in recent years. I shall miss you more than words can say, my dear old friend!

God Bless you too, Sam! Thank goodness you don’t have to know your lines to pass through The Pearly Gates. You just have to be the soul that is Sam Sacco.

_________________

Funeral Arrangements

Arrangements are pending, but the funeral is to be held at St. Anne’s on Tuesday morning Jan. 29th. Carter- Bradshaw Funeral Home is handling arrangements. Burial will be at Forest Park Lawndale in the Sacco family plot. Check online at chron.com or watch for the paper edition of The Houston Chronicle for the exact times of services.

Tags:Sam Sacco Remembrance
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Tagging Up at Third

January 23, 2013

Uh Oh! It’s not even February and I’m starting to wish it were closer to Opening Day.

Skeeters Seeking Interns. Some stories knock us home from third faster than a long fly ball to center with less than two outs. The Sugarland Skeeters are looking for ways to expand their involvement in the community and also offer those who may be interested a chance to learn from a baseball club working experience. The Club has established an internship program that will allow qualified and accepted applicants to pretty much work full-time this spring and summer at Constellation Field in exchange for either college credit or career-building experience.

They are calling it the Skeeters Swat Team program and, right now, they are accepting applicants for both their spring and summer internship programs. If you want to learn more, check out their information page at this link:

http://openingdaypartners.teamworkonline.com/teamwork/r.cfm?i=49515

What’s Up with the Television Media Today? Yeah, I know, it’s always been this way to a certain degree, but now it’s grown into a practice of ridiculous proportions. I’m talking about the way all the local stations go on lock down, as they did yesterday, to cover the shooting at Lone Star College. In the process, they knocked out about three hours of programming and advertising that both the regular viewers and sponsors were expecting for the sake of burning helicopter fuel as they continued to advise the audience that “we don’t really know what is going on here!”

How about leaving things normal on the screen until you do know something. Then you can interrupt or wipe out what we were hoping to watch with your idle prattle. And while you’re at it, how about allowing us to enjoy the next frontal rain storm without trying to put everyone on “better-build-a-raft-in-the-backyard” alert. A lot of us survived growing up in Houston without Frank Billingsley showing us the digitalized rain bans every five minutes on their way to Houston. – OK, hurricanes and tornadoes and quick freezes are fair notice for serious interruption, but let us just go through the rest of the weather changes as though it were the normal thing to do.

BANG! BANG! We went to see the new movie “Gangster Squad” Monday night. If you like those post WWII crime movies set in LA, or the art of quick and violent retribution for earlier grossly criminal acts, you should love this one. Sean Penn is at his despicable slimey-souled worst as the psychotically sadistic gangster Mickey Cohen on his way to making LA the capitol of his west coast crime empire. Josh Brolin is the throw-out-the-rules-book cop who both looks and acts like Dick-Tracy-on-meth in his relentless effort to bring down the evil Cohen. In spite of its limited “Good vs. Evil” plotline, the movie is Grade AAA escapism, a real “beauty and the beast” sensory experience.

The “beauty” just flows from the costuming and setting of LA in 1949. With today’s high-tech support to movie setting and the use of soft color cinematography, the viewer really gets to feel that they have been transported back in time to a visually much more beautiful world. The “beast” nature flows from the creative way the director uses both sight and sound to show all the patterns of blood splattering and body parts flying from various doses of differing sources of violent trauma.

If you can’t handle movie violence without wanting to go visit it upon others, don’t go see “Gangster Squad.” On the other hand, if you are someone capable of using movie violence as an escapism prescription for subliminally converting movie villains into symbolic representations of the negative issues you would like to overcome in your own life, step right up and buy a ticket. – Just don’t sit in the front row. You might get blood in your popcorn.

Have a nice day, everybody!

Tags:Review of "Gangster Squad", Skeeters Internship Program, TV Hysteria-Casting
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Rest in Peace, Stanley and Earl

January 20, 2013

Stan Musial

Dear Stanley and Earl,

Yesterday, January 19, 2013, you each caught the same flight to Hall of Fame Heaven.

We shall miss both of you, but we shall also thank the both of you forever!

Rest in Peace to the two newest stars in the night skies of our fondest baseball dreams!

Affectionately,

The Baseball Fans of the World

Earl Weaver

Tags:Earl Weaver, Stan Musial
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Advantages of an Imaginary Girl Friend

January 19, 2013

The Ten and More Links in the Imaginary Girl Friend Chain

1) An imaginary girl friend can only lead to an imaginary engagement.

2) An imaginary engagement can only lead to an imaginary marriage.

3) An imaginary marriage can only lead to imaginary fighting.

4) Imaginary fighting can only lead to imaginary make-up time.

5) Imaginary make-up time can only lead to imaginary children.

6) Imaginary children can only lead to imaginary debt and family stress.

7) Imaginary debt and family stress can only lead to an imaginary state of lost marital intimacy.

8) Imaginary lost marital intimacy can only lead to an imaginary affair with an imaginary third-party.

9) An imaginary affair may lead to an imaginary discovery and an imaginary divorce.

10) An imaginary divorce under these imaginary circumstances may only lead to one or more of the following imaginary outcomes:

imaginary bankruptcy … imaginary alcoholism or drug addiction …imaginary delusions that getting married again in the same way will this time lead to an imaginary state of “happily ever after” … and, of course, years and years of either imaginary psychotherapy, imaginary AA, and/or imaginary religious conversion experience.

What are the advantages of an imaginary girl friend? Isn’t it obvious? – All of the unfolding ugly, but potentially real consequences are only imaginary.

Save your “paper dolls” and get involved with a real one, Manti Teo. Maybe you too will turn out to be one of us lucky ones.

Tags:imaginary girl friend
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The United States of Autisia

January 18, 2013

Welcome to the United States of Autisia! In our land, Lady Liberty puts down that right arm and uses it to help hold the giant ipad she now snuggles safely on the left side in the featured photo. Then, with both hands holding the ipad in front of her for easy touch manipulations, she stares down at it all day as visitors to these shores pass merrily by her into the harbor.

What’s going on today with our shorter and shorter attention spans is essentially complicated by the process of what we are becoming as a culture as a result of our diminished, or re-wired, attention spans.

And what are we becoming? (I have to say this fast before I either lose your attention – or you lose mine.) …

1) a nation of people who only seem to care about contact with those items that come to each of them separately in digitally transmitted form on a 24/7 basis;

2) as a people with damaged awareness of our social or physical surroundings, we are rude and/or indifferent to others (“speaking” to an absent person digitally with our thumbs while we ignore the person who is on site with us); we are less considerate of how our behavior disturbs strangers (texting in movies); and we are unable to risk evaluate that driving a car and simultaneous texting are deadly dangerous partners;

3) we credit ourselves for our growing capacity for multi-tasking, but we dismiss the evidence that we are also learning to take less personal responsibility for own behavior in each little new area that we take on;

4) like the true autistic, we are seeing signs of serious impairment in our culture’s ability to promote healthy interaction and effective communication with others while we also give ourselves more and more to the kinds of compulsive and repetitive patterns of behavior that are the lifelines of digital pursuits like texting and tweeting;

5) this point is a question: What do we now call a body of several hundred autistics that we have gathered together for the sake of resolving our greatest national problems? Answer: Same as always, we call them Congress.

Welcome to the United States of Autisia!

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