We'll Be Away from Our Desk For a While

“¡El Lugar de Slampo es cerrado!” declared our erstwhile reader representative, Hidalgo Hidalgo, just moments after we had clamped the padlocks and repositioned the razor wire at the Slampo’s Place compound in southwest Houston and headed out in his Dodge Caravan.

We think that means “Slampo’s Place is closed!”

At least through Spring Break.

We’ll be accompanying Hidalgo on his annual “Spring Break in Nuevo Laredo” package tour. For some reason, we are his only customer this year. “You’ll have the place to yourself,” he has promised.

Good Lord willin’, etc., we will return the week of March 20.

Funniest Damn Thing We’ve Heard All Week

The Houston Chronicle’s Matt Stiles, who’s pursuing documentation of bonuses given to city of Houston employees last year, reported today that the city has a very special reason for denying the public that information about one city department:

Employees in the Houston Airport System also received bonuses, but the city's legal department so far has resisted releasing those payroll summaries, saying disclosing information about personnel at the airports could pose security and terrorism risks.

[Insert your own glib comment here.]

Joe Strummer's Ashes Are Blown on the Wind, But the Clash Will Never Die

Three synchronous recent events that lead us to believe that The Only Band That Matters may be getting a posthumous second or third wind. Or maybe they never went away.

1. Leaving our Y in southwest Houston last weekend we found our self walking behind two giggly young adolescent girls, maybe 12 or 13, when one starts singing to her buddy: “This … is … the Radio Clash … on pi-rate satellite…” We were tempted to compliment the youngsters on their refined yet somewhat anachronistic musical taste, but we kept walking lest we be falsely revealed as old and strange.

2. Watching bloggingheads.tv a few nights later, we were snatched from our torpor when David Corn began quoting the ancient wisdom of Joe Strummer to Robert Wright: “As the Clash said, ‘Let fury have the hour, anger can be power.” This was apropos of we’re not sure what, as we were doing two other things at the time and had the videoblog on as lulling background noise. But like Adorno, Clampdown can be cited to illuminate a variety of subjects.

3. Stopped at a light and spacing out while driving back from our post office late yesterday afternoon, we realized the college radio station was playing London Calling. We had the windows down and noticed some Southwest Cholo types, or more likely would-be Southwest Cholo types, giving us the Hard Eye as they loitered in front of a storefront that the last time we drove past was a taqueria but now appears to be a cell phone-eria. We turned the music up real loud and sang along: “The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in/ Meltdown expected ... Etc.” As the light changed we considered flippin' off the loiterers but then remembered that we had seen Crash and it was possible we were misreading their signals ... they might be Clash fans!

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

Just as Houston prepares for its solemn observance of Fastow Week, Newsweek offers a workman-like look at the city’s “compassion fatigue” from dealing with hurricane evacuees. The magazine reports that

as devastating as Katrina has been for the [Bush] administration, its impact has been far more visceral in those communities that received tens of thousands of evacuees overnight. In cities stretching from Atlanta to San Antonio, good will has often given way to the crude reality of absorbing a traumatized and sometimes destitute population … perhaps no city has been as convulsed as Houston, which took in the greatest number of survivors.

There’s an unsettling observation from an HPD patrolman on the evacuees’ impact:

''It seems like the face of crime has changed in Houston," said Officer Brandon Brown one night last week as he patrolled the sketchy Fondren area of the city, where many of the arrivals have settled. "It's more tense, more violent."

And bad news on the medical front:

Already burdened by a high proportion of uninsured people before Katrina, Houston has had to contend with thousands more. The problem will likely only get worse: on Jan. 31, more-generous Medicaid rules for Katrina victims expired. As a result, countless patients who had been receiving treatment in doctors' offices may now turn to overwhelmed emergency rooms. "Our hospitals are struggling financially to get by, and this doesn't help," says David Persse, Houston's EMS medical director. "Hospital CEOs are about to have coronaries." Worse still, infection rates for sexually transmitted diseases are increasing—possibly an outgrowth of high rates in New Orleans, city health officials say.

Sounds like it’s developed into our very own real-life version of Crash.

Al Edwards’ Last Booty Call?

Al Edwards is like the utility pole in the back yard: it’s there, always, yet we never have cause to think about it or even notice it until the transformer blows or it takes SBC three tries to properly string a new line through the neighborhood.

Edwards has spent much of his career in the state House trading on his sponsorship of the bill that made Juneteenth a state holiday (which is fine with us: Juneteenth is a day deserving of commemoration, and we’re for all the state holidays we can get). His other notable deed was the “booty bill” to ban lewd cheerleading routines at public schools---his very own blown transformer, replete with dead squirrel---for which he was derided by cosmopolitans the world over and which earned him an appearance on The Daily Show, where, surprisingly, he didn’t come off looking too much like a crank. (Yes, there was some other business about chopping off drug dealers’ hands and allowing prison guards to spank inmates---Al’s Old School, as in the 13th Century, but we guess you could argue that he’s just responding to constituents’ concerns).

Emboldened by the knocking-off of seemingly entrenched incumbent Rep. Ron Wilson two years ago, two guys with shaved heads, facial hair, presentable credentials and the ability to scare up a little money are challenging A.E. in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. One is lawyer Al Bennett, who’s gotten the Houston Chronicle endorsement (which may actually help a little in a three-way state rep race, especially among moderate white Democrats in the district) and whose bona fides include being the son-in-law of Harlem Globetrotter legend “Tex” Harrison. The other is Borris Miles, an insurance guy and former law officer who’s one of only three African-American males in Houston named “Borris,” according to the 2000 Census.

(We should disclose at this point that Edwards is our state representative. Our U.S. representative is John “Kid” Culberson. When it comes to representation, we’re covered.)

Interestingly (mildly), both Bennett and Miles are dogging Edwards with an almost identical bill of indictment: that he’s not a “real” Democrat, he’s too cozy with House Speaker Tom Craddick, voted to cut the CHIP program, etc. Ordinarily, we’d see these proclivities as evidence of an independent, think-for-yourself politician … except it’s Al Edwards.

The incumbent, it goes without saying, has the support of the usual suspects: Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green, Sylvester Turner, labor leaders and so forth. The phone calls and mailings have been assailing us at steady clip for the past two weeks or so, although we still haven’t gotten a call from Sheila (but we know it’s coming!)

From the little we’ve heard and read about the race, we’d probably be going with Bennett, if we were gonna vote in the Democratic primary, which we’re not, but we’ll be keeping an eye on the returns Tuesday night to see if voters can trim away some more deadwood on their own, without term limits.

More Tales from the Great Southwest

There was a palpably plaintive tone to the comments of Fondren Southwest (and nearby) residents who went before the Houston City Council earlier this week to plead, literally, for a heightened police presence in the crime-besieged area. They told the same sort of stories we’ve been hearing for months now---that things were getting bad crime-wise along the Fondren Corridor before the Katrina evacuees arrived, but since then the area’s been inundated by a tide of random gangsta-ism, and all the short-handed police can do is grab a pail and bail.

One resident used the terms “under siege” and “war zone,” and from the descriptions he and others offered, it didn’t sound like rhetorical overkill.

We didn’t hear any animosity directed at the mayor over this turn of the events, at least during the part of the meeting we caught on The Municipal Channel, but you can bet that it’s simmering there below the surface. We’d presume that White’s smart enough to have figured that out and is moving to get serious about the predicament, lest he jeopardize that bright political future he no doubt envisions for himself.

Meanwhile, we lost all respect for Council member Ada Edwards after watching her high-hat (with barely concealed exasperation/disdain) the president of the Maplewood West Civic Club over his entreaty that somebody please do something about the problem. We understand that the councilwoman is backing one of the Two Guys Who Aren’t Al Edwards (no relation, we think) in next week’s Democratic primary, and her performance made us briefly consider (but just briefly) casting our lot with Al, whose quarter-century in the state House is testament to the truth of the G. Harold Carswell Maxim that mediocre people deserve a little representation, too. (Very little, in Al's case.)

… And in case you missed it, check out the truly wonderful sidebar to the Houston Chronicle’s Thursday Enron coverage, wherein the paper suggests that Jeff Skilling may be sharing digs, or at least a mailbox, with college buddy Jim Dent, the wastrel, drinking-and-driving author of The Junction Boys (a good idea for a book), who, somewhat to our dismay, has already been sprung from the state corrections system. This is a coupling that's almost too good to be true. Perhaps Skilling is assisting Dent with his rehab (and if so, that’s good!)

We couldn’t find this story in the online version of the Chronicle, but it’s worth digging the Thursday paper our of the trash, if you have to.

Or maybe we just dreamed this ...

Kinky’s Punch Line: Soffar and Doc Farb (Melody by Billy Joe)

We’ve written on several occasions of our incremental disenchantment with Kinky Friedman’s gubernatorial bid (disenchantment sort of being our métier here at Slampo’s Place), although we’re not sure exactly what we expected from Friedman in the first place besides a little entertainment and an upraised middle finger at the status quo, neither of which has been issuing forth in abundance from the candidate (we’ve been drawing breath long enough not to hold out for a truly independent candidate with a coherent and independent critique of things-as-they-are and a willingness to pursue innovative and potentially controversial solutions to public policy questions, and so forth).

We initially figured we might save our self for Kinky and forgo voting in either next week’s Democratic or Republican primaries so we could sign the petition to get him on the ballot (although by doing so we’d miss out on some interesting primary races, including a Democratic one involving our state rep, Al Edwards, and Two Guys Who Are Not Al Edwards). Now we’re thinking we might keep it tucked in for Ma Barker, since we believe in competition and independence and whatnot and deplore the Repubocrat ballot monopoly, but only if someone promises to drop by our house with her petition, as we won’t be wasting a drop of $2.07-a-gallon gas to get her on the ballot (kind of a moral stand we’re taking there). (Harrumph … )

We’ve now thrown in the towel on Friedman after learning of his testimony on behalf of Max Soffar during the punishment phase of the twice-convicted triple murderer’s latest trial, which could end up with Soffar again being sentenced to death. Prior to his testimony, Friedman had said repeatedly that he favored the death penalty but was against the execution of the wrongly convicted (in Texas it doesn’t hurt to articulate that addendum), so his longheld interest in Soffar’s case, subject of a Friedman column in Texas Monthly that was repackaged in one of his countless books, was based on the candidate’s contention that Soffar is innocent, despite his early-on confession to the 26-year-old crimes.

Friedman apparently based his belief on the “evidence” compiled by the lawyers who unsuccessfully represented Soffar at his second trial---evidence whose narrative was about as thin and incoherent as the plot line of a Friedman book (we think there was a one-armed man in there somewhere, and, oh yeah, Soffar had rough life)---and the indisputable fact that Friedman had actually traveled to Death Row and looked Soffar in the eyes while the convict professed his innocence. Or something like that.

A second jury disagreed, but Friedman was not deterred. Not only is he now against the death penalty, but he’s posited a new standard of innocence for Soffar:

"I said he had a higher innocence, an earned innocence, an achieved innocence. Like a guy who comes back from Iraq or Vietnam, from a war. He's struggled withhis demons and has conquered them."

OK, we’ll be getting off here. We didn’t think “independent” meant “independent of reality” (and how insulting is this to a “guy” who came back from Vietnam or Iraq?).

A relative of one of the people Soffar killed accused Friedman of pursuing a “political agenda” by testifying on Soffar’s behalf, but we don’t see any political profit at all in Friedman’s court appearance. Just the opposite. In fact, it shows Friedman to be a man of conviction, albeit one who’s under the misimpression that he’s still writing fanciful songs and books instead of running for governor. It’s just not our conviction.

We realize that by abandoning Friedman we may be jeopardizing the possibility that Texas will get to see and hear lots more from Dr. Carolyn Farb, who’s apparently glued herself to the Kinky campaign like one of those pilot fish we used to see sucking on the side of the crew boats we worked on in the Gulf. We kinda envisioned Farb as first lady material for the unmarried Friedman, or perhaps as the governor’s Chief Spiritual Adviser or Assistant Deputy Looker-in-the-Eye.

Doc Farb seems to be handling some of Friedman’s media chores, as evidenced by this “A Peek Inside” column written by some anonymous wise guy for the West University Examiner, a weekly paper that is on the enclave city of West U like brown on rice. Some excerpts that bear repeating …

the Kinkster is a hard man to get a hold of these days, whereas Dr. Farb answers her voice mail personally and quite early in the morning.

“Hello, this is Carolyn Farb. Is this too early? If you’re up this early, I bet you’re at the gym.”Betting otherwise we responded, “No, actually the Laundromat.”

The doctor recognizes different delivery styles:

… Hey, what do you think of the Kinky dolls?” we inquired. Another silence ensued, but this time only after Farb had excused herself. The next voice we heard was that of a plastic Kinkster saying something we can’t print without offending, well, pretty much everyone.“It makes people smile,” Farb said. “I don’t personally prefer someone speaking like that, but everyone has a different delivery style.”

She’s got an ear for music, too:

Farb has been inspired by her candidate and knows not only his position on the issues, but also his music, likening his band “to rapping in its use of social commentary.”At a fund-raiser for Friedman at her home a couple of weeks ago, Farb chatted with a couple of the candidate’s friends, “Jerry Jeff (Walker) and Billy Joe (Shaver),” as she knows them now. They inspired her as well.“I’ve written a song,” she said. “Billy Joe is working on the melody.”

God Bless Billy Joe and Doc Farb.

God Bless Kinky.

And God Bless Texas.