Locke’s Entanglements Finally Get Some Scrutiny ... (UPDATED To Note $$ from Dynamo Owners)

One of the unexplored issues of the Houston’s mayoral race––probably the great publicly unexplored issue, but that’s just our subjective and possibly unschooled opinion––is Gene Locke’s partnership in a wide-tentacled law firm that has had a close and highly lucrative relationship with many of the large public taxing authorities of Harris County, including the city of Houston. We’ve been around for a while and we can’t remember anyone with those sort of very stark entanglements previously standing for mayor without getting a serious scrub-down by the media. Come to think of it, we can’t remember anyone with those sort of very stark entanglements previously standing for mayor, period. The general lack of interest in the subject by the media has been puzzling, but into the breach has barreled Texas Watchdog, from the emerging non-profit public-service (and therefore, unfortunately, not widely noticed by the general populace) corner of the journalism food chain, with a report exploring Locke’s partnership at Andrews Kurth and the firm’s work as legal counsel for the Houston-Harris County Sports Authority, which was charged with building the fine professional sports venues we all enjoy and now apparently does some other stuff we’re not quite clear on. Texas Watchdog raises some solidly documented questions about Locke’s continued relationship with the Sports Authority, where he is said to have stepped down as general counsel when he announced his candidacy in April. The report does not mention that since declaring his candidacy Locke has made a rather forthright commitment to seeing a new stadium is built to accommodate the wealthy California-based owners of the Houston Dynamo, a project that presumably would fall under the purview of the Sports Authority, thus providing that entity with a pretext for its continued existence while bringing additional business to Andrews Kurth. (To be fair, odds are the soccer stadium is going to be built whoever gets elected mayor. Still ... )

In a follow-up blog posting, Texas Watchdog’s Steve Miller quoted what he described as Locke’s “boilerplate response” to questions the Web publication submitted for its story of last week:

When I am mayor every decision I make will be based solely on what is best for Houstonians. I am proud of the broad coalition of support I enjoy in this race, but when I am elected my only debt will be to the city of Houston.

Was that the entirety of his response? Not to be gratuitously crude, but that's some weak-ass shit, as the kids say.

Miller goes on to add

The city has some formidable power with regard to the authority, in that it appoints board members that shape its direction — which, in turn, affects taxpayers when a situation such as the possible use of public money to cover a bond-related shortfall arises. The story is a blue-skyer that we feel should be out there, akin to the items anyone should take into account before making a big decision. In this case, the voters can now add this to the list of “what ifs” before they make their final choice on Nov. 3.

Hear, hear. And there’s more to it than that: What exactly is Locke’s financial arrangement with Andrews Kurth as of this moment (a question we believe that only Locke can answer, although if we're not mistaken all candidates for city office are supposed to have filed some general personal financial disclosure that covers the previous calendar year). And what would be his relationship with the firm if he’s elected mayor? (We presume he’d sever all relations, but we shouldn’t be too presumptuous.) Under a Locke mayoralty, would Andrews Kurth continue as general counsel to the Sports and Metropolitan Transit authorities, over whose boards the mayor, by virtue of his appointments, has, as Texas Watchdog put it, formidable power? Would Andrews Kurth act as counsel for city of Houston bond issues? And finally, would Locke plan to return to the firm after he’s done being mayor?

These questions should have been pitched at Locke months ago, but they’re clearly fair game now in light of the candidate’s TV ad, wherein Locke is identified as a “businessman” who “helped revitalize our downtown communities, creating thousands of god-paying jobs,” a claim accompanied by video of Metro’s rail line and Minute Maid Park. You can ignore the fact that neither of these projects is what you would call a triumph of free enterprise, or even what you would ordinarily call "business," and you can look the other way from the dubious assertion that these and other projects have created “thousands of good-paying jobs” (must be the magical “multiplier effect”). But it’s hard to get past the cold fact that Gene Locke is a lawyer, not a businessman, and what he “creates” is billable hours.

As you were, and carry on.

ADDENDUM: For what it's worth, Locke's latest campaign finance disclosure lists a $3,000 donation from California billionaire Phillip F. Anschutz of Anschutz Entertainment Group, 50-percent owner of the Dynamo and would-be promoter of the now-canceled but once-upcoming Michael Jackson tour. Locke reported receiving another $2,500 from Dynamo co-owner Brener Sports & Entertainment of Beverly Hills (the corporate PAC, we assume, although it's not listed as such) and $2,000 more from Brener-associated Oscar De La Hoya, a "self-employed boxer" from Los Angeles (and one of our favorite fighters of the past couple of decades) who has been reported to have some ownership interest in the local major-league soccer franchise. We know these are wholly meaningless and random acts of generosity and that all of these California-based parties are simply interested in enabling GOOD GOVERNMENT in Houston, Texas.

A Fug-Ugly Monstrosity, As Observed by a Stranger to Our Town

On Sunday the Times Book Review favorably eyeballed David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries, a book composed of journal entires the ex-Talking Head and cha-cha enthusiast made while touring various metropolises of the globe with his musical combo. A dedicated bicyclist in his hometown of NYC, Byrne totes a foldable bike on tour so he can get out and about and take in the local sight-age. As the Times reviewer put it, the book is “partly about cycling but also about whatever Byrne happens to have on his mind at the time.”

We assume (but we’re not spending $25.95 to find out for sure) that the book does not include what Byrne had on his mind regarding Houston, where he stopped for a concert this past summer at Jones Hall (whose sound quality he pronounced “possibly the best of any hall we’ve played in”––hey, that’s something if you’re keeping score), most probably after his book had gone to press. Just as well, because Byrne’s take on Houston––brought to our attention a few months ago by the infrequently active but excellently named Amnesia Houston blog––is painfully mundane. It’s the sort of routine surface-y observations an out-of-towner would commit to memory while pedaling around the downtown area for a couple of hours and then Googling around for another 20 minutes: Enron, no zoning, the lack of pedestrians on the streets, the proximity of old-black-guys-on-the-front-porch 4th Ward to the skyscrapers (complete with cliched photo of said from 4th Ward vantage, nowhere as striking as 25-30 years ago, what with the newish development in the far background), rumination on Jones Hall namesake Jesse, blah wheeze and so on. Byrne does, however, offer a ripe description of one off Our Town’s true monstrosities, one that certainly bears repeating:

A block or so past the run-down shacks — this is Houston where there is NO zoning — is the new Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a weird, almost surreal post-modern edifice.

The mind turns to Alan Greenspan, former head of the Fed, who helped via deregulation to get us into the mess we’re in today — the whole Goddamn world is fucked, Alan! This very out of place structure somehow lingers, like a fart left by someone no longer in an elevator. Alan was recently quoted as saying “I made a mistake.”

Perhaps this snooty New Yorker was unaware that the cheesy, Lego-like structure was designed by none other than internationally renowned architect Michael Graves, notable for also designing “a line of household goods” for Target and more recently was in partnership with [yellow tail] wines. Perhaps Sr. Byrne did not recognize the true genius of Graves' design as a “playful” metaphor for the Target-like facade of our increasingly abstract post-post modern economy. Perhaps the globetrotting bicyclist didn’t “read” it the way we read it as we hurtle past, on our way to purchase Chinese-made goods at the "River Oaks" Target: as a rebuke, and a warning that we should get busy converting our remaining assets into hard metals and burying the hoard as deep in the backyard as the occasionally permeable clay will allow.

Here’s an interesting critique of the building, prompted by the same Byrne journal entry.

Diversity=An Ever-Widening Variety of Ethnic Restaurants at which White People Like Me Can Dine

We can't let the week pass without calling attention to the almost too-perfect distillation of the mindless, happy-ass embrace of "diversity" for mere diversity's sake that was found in Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg's offering of this past Tuesday. The column was pegged to the news ... well, it wasn't really "news" ... a less-than-newsy Census update showing (again) that the white percentage of both Houston and Harris County's populations continues to decline. Here's how the Teen Columnist* found yet another way to let readers know what an all-around fine and sensitivie person she is:

Although the trend has been building for some time, it's easy for today's Houston, tomorrow's America, to have sneaked up on some folks.

But many of us experience the richness of Houston's diversity every day, at work, at Hermann Park, at the Galleria, and embrace it.

That's a mighty tepid embrace by the "many of us." We don't go to the Galleria too often, but we feel comfortable in pointing out that the overwhelming majority of the cell phone-mesmerized zombies gliding up and down its walkways are white, maybe seven out of 10 you'd corral at random. Not a place where an upscale shopper such as Falkenberg would be discomfited by a general lack of whiteness. Perhaps she meant to type "Sharpstown Mall," but then that's really no place to wrap diversity in a heartfelt abrazo, since white shoppers there are almost as hard to find as a black or Hispanic editorial writer at the Chronicle.

As for "at work," we also feel comfortable in pointing out that the particular workplace where the Teen Columnist slaps together her schizz also is overwhelming white, almost as white as the ice rink at the Galleria, and the higher you go in the hieirarchy the whiter it gets. Not only does the paper boast (maybe it doesn't really boast) a downsized all-white editorial board, but the particular racket in which Falkenberg is engaged is so damn white it's funny: of the 20 personages listed as columnists for the paper, 18 appear to be as white as Falkenberg. That's 90 percent. The other two are African American. Not a Hispanic in view, in a city where, as Falkneberg "reported" with a touch of undisguised glee, Hispanics constitute a plurality of almost 43 percent. Not a one--nada.

This can mean only one of two things: either the Chronicle is one racist institution, nowhere near as willing as its Teen Columnist to embrace diversity, or the newspaper hires and promotes based on merit (and who you know, of course), not on race/ethnicity. Falkenberg could partly remedy this imbalance by voluntarily stepping aide for a Hispanic Metro columnist. Maybe the paper could find one who's a conservative ideologue AND knows something about the city, thus correcting three imbalances with one wild shotgun blast. Falkenberg could then go work the paper's police beat for at least a few months to get a somewhat deeper perspective on the city than can be obtained dining at the Cheesecake Factory.

We will grant that Hermann Park, the third venue where Falkenberg and the "many of us" embrace diversity, does attract a fairly mixed crowd, but outside of the golf course there's really not much of an entry requirement at the park.

*We noticed in her subsequent column Falkenberg seemed to indicate that she is with child. Of this we know no more, not having read past the second paragraph, but we do offer a heartfelt "Congratulations" and wish her the best of luck in finagling the magnet school thing.

Is Houston Ready for a "Gay" Mayor?

Since we asked: Sure, certainly, why not, etc.––with qualification. [Editor’s note: This posting does not advance too far beyond the previous sentence, so if you’ve got something in the oven or need to walk the dog by all means attend to those matters and don’t fritter away any more time here.]

By “qualification” we mean that if the leading candidate for mayor were a gay man, we suspect the issue/non-issue of the candidate’s homosexuality would have surfaced more prominently in the “public conversation” by now, although it’s unlikely it would have been raised there by any of our hypothetical gay-male mayoral candidate’s hypothetical opponents, because that would not only be tacky but most likely a vote-loser in the current climate. (In the interest of disclosure and so on we’ll note that we are leaning toward voting for the non-hypothetical gay female candidate, which certainly doesn’t give us pause in offering the following customary trenchant analysis that you’ll find only here and nowhere else.)

That’s just the way it is: At this stage of Western Civilization, the public is more accepting of lesbianism than it is of male homosexuality, at least when it comes to the sexual orientation of public figures. And while we’ve met many a lesbian in our day to whom we wouldn’t issue any smart lip, or even wish to face as a batter in a fast-pitch softball game, the public at large––males in particular but other women, too––is exponentially less threatened by gay females, especially the cute ’n’ cuddly type. Take MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, whose earnest, approachable, fresh-faced regular-gal-ness makes her rabid partisanship almost sugary-sweet. Or Ellen, who of course wouldn’t be the worldwide entertainment phenomenon she is if she were named Eddie ... or Elvis, whatever (particularly considering that Ellen’s not really funny).* Beyond mere temporal issues, Annise Parker has that Ellen-like appeal: wholesome good looks, not overbearing, doesn’t take herself too too seriously, etc. She’s the good daughter, and as a societal archetype the good daughter type has vast and still-virtually-untapped electoral appeal, no matter sexual orientation. It’s associated with “trustworthiness.” (Check it out.)

Some people won’t vote for Parker because she’s gay––”Su homosexulidad podria afectar al voto conservador,” as the Houston Chronicle’s "La Voz de Houston" insert recently put it––but it’s not like they’d vote for her anyway, either because she’s a woman, or is perceived to be too liberal (because she’s woman, although at bottom and on top too Parker’s probably the most conservative of the three money candidates) or, most especially in the present arrangement, because she’s not black. And, of course, some people will vote for her just because she’s gay (these would be mostly other gay people, and why wouldn’t they?). Certainly there are evangelical white voters and others in the city whose minds will be privately (most likely) set against Parker because of who she is, but the probable concentrations of opposition, perhaps vocal, are more likely to be found in the smaller black churches whose congregants already have Gene Locke signs in their yards and who consider homosexuality an abomination, except for the homosexuality of the choir director who can supply his own keyboard instrumentation. You’ll remember that the outpouring of black and Hispanic voters for Obama was credited with helping sink California’s gay-marriage referendum. Life’s funny that way.

It’s possible that Parker’s lesbianism could become an under-buzz issue, of sorts, or already is, particularly given the lack of any real staggering bright-line differences between the candidates. But it’s not like that’s going to swing many if any votes in a first-round election or a runoff, and most likely would lose votes for the opponent who publicly brings it up (or, in a more probable scenario, doesn’t or can’t stop his supporters from bringing it up). We’ll see. Parker’s won six citywide elections so you'd assume that anyone who’s going to bother to vote in November knows she’s gay, but we still get the sense that she and the others are relatively unknown quantities to people who don’t play politics or keep a close eye on City Hall. It’s interesting, though, that the race has gone this far without some nasty public eruption or another (and it’d be splendid if it stayed that way), considering that 25 years ago the Houston municipal election seemed to be about nothing but homosexuality––or gay-baiting, to be precise––with the “Straight Slate” of council candidates and Louie Welch’s “shoot the queers” quip** and Steve Hotze’s Il Duce impersonation and ... wasn’t there some half-baked proposal to make restaurant waiters wear plastic gloves, something like that, to prevent them from infecting a diner’s salad with HIV? That amounted to nothing but sound and fury, but my was it loud.

*Our personal opinion, not verifiable.

**He must have thought it was funny.

Another Question for the Mayoral Candidates (A Continuing Series)

Q.: More than two years ago a “solid waste task force” co-chaired by Controller Annise Parker recommended to Mayor White that the city impose fees of $42 annually for residential garbage pick-up, which is now paid for out of general fund revenue. Other large cities already charge a higher rate for home-garbage retrieval. Although some changes in sold waste pick-up have been implemented, the residential garbage fee was never adopted. It still lurks, however, as a possible future source of revenue. Which of the following comes closet to your position?

• I favor imposition of a monthly fee for single-family home garbage pick-up.
  
• I favor imposition of a monthly fee for single-family home garbage pick-up, and any other revenue enhancement proposal that's brought to my attention. You got any?
• I favor imposition of a garbage fee if it can be coupled with a corresponding reduction in property taxes.
• I oppose--with no ifs, ands or buts--a garbage fee, and in fact you’ll see my own corpse mouldering in the landfill before the city implements one.
• I think it's best to wait until after the election to say much of anything about this one.
• Why would I want to address something as mundane as garbage pick-up when my consultants and advisers have crafted all these nifty PLANS and PROPOSALS and BLUEPRINTS to CREATE JOBS and IMPROVE EDUCATION and do all this ... stuff. Jesus!

Trippy Whacked-Out Cactus Flower, With Flies

A few years back a friend gave up some cuttings from a non-spine-bearing cactus and told us that every once in a while they'd drop these bulbous pods that would explode into really interesting looking flowers. Only thing is, he cautioned, the flowers emitted a strong "dead meat" smell and would attract lots of flies. We've never been able to detect the putrid odor, but it must be there because the flies just can't keep their their nasty little shit-stained feet off 'em. In addition to being "hairy" the flowers have a rough, leathery texture, and we're thinking that when times get really tough we can string together a dozen or so and fashion a snug little codpiece.

Alone at Last, In the Cold Bunkhouse of Time

Banjo Jones, Brazoria County’s strongest and handsomest blogger, has brought to our attention the news that Dennis Kucinich, in what appears to be an oblique attack on the Obama administration for not pushing hard enough on a public health-care option, has invoked the memory of long-dead cowboy star Roy Rogers and his faithful long-stuffed ride, Trigger (perhaps he’s metaphorically equating O to a dead horse, it’s hard to tell, although that would suggest a heretofore unseen level of wit on the congressman’s part).* Banjo, whose upbringing apparently was similar to ours, confesses that as a very small person RR was his hero--perhaps second only to Jesus in the pantheon?--and that he was so eaten up with the man that he demanded to be called “Roy” and wore a cowboy hat nearly ’round the clock.

We, too, were besotted with Roy, we presume through repeated exposure to the Roy Rogers Show, which we must have been consciously viewing even before it was in the rerun cycle. Roy looms large in one of our earliest childhood memories/traumas: We were vacationing with our family in Galveston--the Jack Tar Inn being the preferred vacation destination until the rising affluence of the 1960s swept us to more exotic locales, such as Destin, Fla.--and playing on the beach with a set of small plastic figures (We called them “Little Men,” as in, “We’re gonna make these Little Men the Japs and these Little Men over here are gonna kill ’em all.”) that included representations of Roy and Trigger and possibly second bananas such as wife Dale Evans and TV sidekick Pat Brady. We had positioned Roy and Trigger, who must have been our prized possessions, atop a sand castle when an unexpected wave broke over the beach and swept Roy and his plastic steed out to sea. Forever. We have a faint Kodochromatic visual memory of searching frantically in the waves for the disappeared Roy while a sub-set of older relatives, sunning their flaccid and pasty skin on the beach, chuckled at the spectacle. We positively recall crying inconsolably over our loss. When our kids were younger and hung up on some piece of molded plastic from Wal-Mart our parents delighted in telling them the story of Roy’s disappearance at sea, an incident which of course we have now transubstantiated into a Grand Metaphor of Loss of Innocence, or sump’in. Jimi Hendrix wrote a song about it.

Looking back, we can’t fathom Roy’s widespread appeal, except for the fact that he always kicked the bad guys’ arses. From this vantage point, he looks to be just a square-jawed puffball of puddin' and virtue, nothing much to distinguish him, except from certain angles now his face definitely projects an Asiatic quality (seriously--check it out!). He lacked any semblance of edge, as compared to, say, Gene Autry, who as a younger man aspired to Sing Like a Negro and performed passably well at it, and who in the episodes of his TV show we catch on the all-Western cable channel looks more distracted than earnest, like he’s got business elsewhere and needs to walk through the scene as quickly as possible so he can get on with becoming an incredibly rich guy/baseball magnate. Our late ‘50s worship of Roy soon gave way to maniacal adulation of Mickey Mantle (a damnable by-product of which was a devotion to reading the sports page, which we trace to the Mantle-Maris home race of the summer of ’61), which then gave way to sublimated man-love of Bob Cousey, allegiance to whom we eventually shifted to another Bob, Dylan, who soon had to make way for Faulkner, William ... which was about our last stop for the hero worship route.

Then there was the always touchy question of Roy’s relationship with his ineffectual comic sidekicks, that hoary literary trope dating to Sancho Panza and beyond. On TV that role was filled by the aforementioned Brady, who never had a chick (or gal, as they were sometimes called) and instead spent his days riding an old jeep he called Nelly Belle, which often wouldn’t start or sometimes broke down when the bad guys were on his tail, while Roy consorted with Dale and never failed to shoot off his 6-gun. Hmm ... (To this day we cannot hear the Stones’ Start Me Up on a commercial for credit cards or an erectile-dysfunction medicine, whatever they’re using it to sell, without a picture of Pat Brady, struggling to fire Nelly Belle’s ignition, passing through our mind.)

Earlier, in the movies, Roy’s sidekick was played by the wispy-bearded George “Gabby” Hayes, perhaps the quintessential sidekick, a true exemplar of the Olde Weird America, much more fly-specked and funkier and easier to imitate than the smooth-shaven and TV-ready Brady. Gabby apparently was quite promiscuous in his sidekick duties, performing them under not only Roy and Autry but also Hopalong Cassady as well as John Wayne and Randolph Scott. That boy got around! We were never clear on on the true nature of Gabby’s relationships with these Alpha types, but check out the potential Brokeback scenario in this video segment, wherein Gabby and Roy are bivouacked in a room by their lonesomes while just outside some non-gay callebreros and their ladies jounce on the dance floor. The song these two sequestered cowpokes are singing? It’s called We’re Not Comin‘ Out Tonight ...

*Say what you will about Kucinich, but he far and away has the best-looking wife of any perennial presidential candidate, perhaps in our nation’s history, and that would include the late Mrs. Harold Stassen.