houstonian

Sadly I agree. Blogs would be fine if they were serving a purpose, but the larger problem is that the Chronicle is just weak journalism. The only reason they've gotten any attention lately is because of the sheer number of scandals, potential scandals and natural disasters that have been somehow related to Houston over the last few years. I'm no fan of Dallas and I don't bother to read their paper, but the DMN is the only paper in Texas that deserves and receives any national prominence. This is, as you said, a disgrace.

Dammit, I thought La Carafe would be open - that's one of our annual Christmas Eve hangouts. We even got close to downtown to check it out, but some genius in the group vetoed it. Thanks for the tip! You're right about the media too. I can't prove anything, but I'm pretty sure that Jeremy Desel (and every other reporter) was kicking over trash cans and sticking "missiles" in the shrubbery between reports just to have something to talk about. At one point the lady on CNN broke in to report that she had rescued a flag that had blown down and landed on the ground. While it's a nice gesture to the stars and stripes, I'm not really sure it qualifies as news.

There are two major lasting effects for me: 1) I'll remember that the only bar in town that you can count on to stay open during every night of an evacuation is The Volcano, which makes Pete a local hero in my book. There was a really fun crowd there both Thursday and Friday, and Pete was manning the entire place alone on Friday. Quite the Herculean feat. 2) I believe Mayor White (whom I think is doing a great job, but who isn't the most eloquent orator of all time) needs to add a "The following bars and restaurants are open..." section to the emergency press conference they hold every few hours for those of us who haven't left the city but are going stir crazy. The word of mouth network among our acquaintances began to resemble something from a post-apocalyptic movie, with everyone calling one another to exchange information about potential sightings of a Schlotzky's open in West U or drinks being served at McElroy's. If it kept up much longer we were going to put on metal hockey masks, drive up to the Schlotzky's, point a spiked club at the front door and demand their food like the guy in Mad Max did. WHO RUN BAYOUTOWN? =D

Yeah, all Houston ads that aren't national accounts with a big firm somewhere else are really bad. Love my city, but man do we have some bad ads. Conan O'Brien actually held a contest a while back making fun of Houston letting people vote on the worst Houston ads. Of course the ads were Hilton Furniture, Mattress Mac and someone else. I think the winner - Hilton - was flown to NYC to do a live ad on Conan. Sealy's about the only example of a local business with decent ads that I can think of, but that's a national account - you know the one, it's the little computer animated sheep that goof around. IIRC, Love Advertising is probably responsible for setting the tone of Houston's horrible advertising. I think they started the SAVE YOU MONEY thing doing Mattress Mac's ads as well as OOH AAH Mattress Giant. Pretty much if you sell mattresses and want to annoy Houstonians into buying them, they're the firm for you. For my money though, the worst current ads are these ads for a local church with freaky looking people that run on Time-Warner cable (I forget the church name) and the Mattress Mac/George H.W. Bush Tsunami ads where Mac looks like he's coked up and thinks the former President is going to whip out a gun and shoot him at any second. He's so damn fidgety and nervous it makes the ad unbearable. Honest to God, if Apple computer - who have some of the best advertising historically - were started in Houston, the ads would just be Steve Jobs standing on a pile of Macintoshes with a chainsaw, wearing a Superman outfit and screaming incoherently at the camera.

My favorite question that Frank took - and I say took because it was an email, so he screened it and answered it anyway - was the dude who emailed in and asked "Why don't we just blow up the hurricane with a nuclear bomb?"