pestofan

Yeah, right. That article reads like so many other hyped projects that never end up coming close to the promises, if they even get built. So many of the usual warning flags: Grandiose scale, loads of promises, relatively new consortium without a track record, buzzword abuse, and a trendy but shaky theme overstretched to too many dissimilar aspects. "Eco-tourism! Theme park! Convention center! Water park! Museum! Night Life! Entertainment for all ages and interests! Retail! Office! Green research! Big Box! Apartments! Experimental new social research neighborhood! Cure for the common cold!" More likely just some of the retail, housing, and small strip offices/clinics get built, maybe the water park if the county is lucky. And perhaps a strip club ("Roman Forest, Russian Fingers"?)

University of Jan Brady. 'It's always UH, UH, UH!" Or perhaps: UH-Mulligan UH-Differentiate (no need to change initials) UH-We're Kinda Not UH TCBUH (This Can't Be UH!) Cougar High-Downtown U. of Inferiority Complex System-Downtown campus Stylz G. White U. U. of Fragrant Bayou U.'ve Got to be Kidding University of Talula Does the Hula From Houston University of Lemonjello UH-Surely (if they have a flight school) UH-And We're Not (perhaps better for the Chevy Chase, MD campus) Not You're Father's UH Preparation H Nosoupfor U. RFU ( )Client #9 U. U. Know What? U. Win U. Should See What We Rejected! U. Light Up My Life U. Might Be a Redneck I Can Name That U. in 3 Notes U. Whatever and my favorite choice: UH-Ostensibly Houston, aka UH-OH!

Like most of Comcast's commercials, simply stupid. But oddly and inexplicably they did have a brief break from that, the "Save a load of Benjamins" and "More bang for your buck" were some of the most genius commercials ever made. And yes, it is annoying and inexcusable for Comcast to spam its existing customers with so many bad commercials nonstop. One of the reasons why (along with the NFL Sunday Ticket) I've happily moved to Directv.

The mango looks great. We need more variety in housing color around here.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metrop...an/6081097.html How to navigate the new Katy HOV lanes open Wednesday with some restrictions for drivers to learn By ROSANNA RUIZ Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Oct. 27, 2008, 10:31PM The new curve on the expanded Katy Freeway may be a learning curve. With the construction complete, some motorists must become acquainted with the addition of four center "managed" lanes, when to use them and where to exit. Additional lanes already are open, but the five-year construction project officially draws to a close with the opening of the interior, managed lanes at 5 a.m. Wednesday. (excerpted) I posted this article because of this silly quote: But some are skeptical of the notion that managed lanes resolve congestion or increase carpooling rates. "When the (managed) lanes open, we'll see even more improvement in travel time, but the question is, how long will it last?" said Pat Waskowiak, transportation program manager for the Houston-Galveston Area Council. Well geez, you can ask the same basic question about emergency open heart surgery or any other lifesaving medical procedure. None result in immortality, but most provide a vast improvement and extend the patient's life expectancy. And bottom line, this major expansion of the Katy Fwy's capacity will result in shorter trip times for many, many years to come compared to if the freeway had remained in its original already overwhelmed state. And spare me the Induced Demand red herring. While there is some truth to the theory, it pretty much operates the same way the human induced global warming theory does: Subjective and unprovable enough to be morphed into anything the goalpost movers want for purely ideological reasons. Yeah, maybe in a couple of decades induced demand will have us right back where we started, but the 20 years of improved flow in between has a heck of a lot of benefits. That quote reminds me of the TV commercial, where the old man thinks he's discovered the internet, while completely oblivious to the real story.

Shouldn't a team named after detergent be helping to clean up?

Probably more accurately stated as just: "a prospective buyer went to the city inspectors." De facto membership has its privileges in this town. Perhaps the city can now abscond by ED an adjacent property as a pocket park for this developer, since there is such a dearth of parkland next to the state's largest urban park.

Bad omen?!

Eh, I sometimes like Popeye's and Frenchy's, does that count?

Then nursing home/assisted living would be the most likely conversion. I've never heard of a case where elderly facilities were a nuisance.

We already have an almost complete greenbelt encircling Houston, but most simply aren't aware of it and it isn't formally named. Take a look at a good map of our area (not Google, they don't show nat'l forests.) From Galveston Bay north to Lake Livingston is the heavily wooded Trinity River bottoms, in most places several miles wide. There's already a program to buy up and protect land in that floodplain. The huge Sam Houston National Forest encloses the north side from Cleveland-Livingston to above Lake Conroe and the western Montgomery Co. border. On the region's west side we have the Brazos River bottomlands from the Gulf near Freeport all the way up to Navasota, and the wide Navasota River floodplain above that. So there's only about a 15 mile gap between the SF Nat'l Forest and the Navasota River needing to be closed. Would be nice for one of the region's conservation groups to proclaim this a greenbelt project and start pushing to buy up development rights in Grimes County to make a complete Gulf to Bay ring. Formally designating this as a greenbelt could assist and encourage the local communities along those rivers to set aside the floodplain as parkland, so we don't get any more encroachment like the choke points in Rosenberg, Richmond, and Sugar Land that block having a continuous nature corridor. I'd also like to see a second phase of buying up agricultural bottom land along the upper Brazos and Trinity and letting it revert back to woodlands. Perhaps buy up development rights in a 20-mile strip west from the future lake south of Sealy to southeast of Columbus. Would connect the Brazos to the Atwater Prairie Chicken Preserve and the bottomlands of the San Bernard and Colorado Rivers. Wouldn't take much to tie the Trinity portion of this greenbelt into the expanding Big Thicket Preserve. As the comcast commercial says, "More bang for your buck!"

Schedule for each section of the GP: http://www.grandpky.com/downloads/Segmenti...02008-07-08.pdf Loads of info at: http://www.grandpky.com

Lighten up, Francis. The phrase of the day is "Figurative language."

I will NEVER recycle as long as they keep running that insipid recycling commercial on the radio, the one with a theme song straight out of some kiddie show. Every time I hear The Wiggles or whomever sing that abominable sissy jingle I'm forced to: 1) Slap the radio's off button 2) Roll down the window and toss out any litter I can find as an act of civil disobedience. Extreme cheese and syrup = massive backlash of hate

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/spr...ws/5891195.html I have no doubt that they'll get the 10,000 signatures needed, but not sure whether they can overcome all the obstacles to incorporating. IMHO forming a city would be a good thing, there are too many service holes and poorer reaction times in the unincorporated areas that many people are not aware of when they buy their home. Would give the residents better control over their future, and who wants to be eventually sucked into giant and often poorly run Houston?

It reminds me of that song the Harlem Globetrotters use, which is about its namesake. ("Sweet George R. Brown")

Beautiful!

Thank goodness that they finally buried that stinking bayou. But I am NOT happy about all the stoplights added to Allen Parkway. I wonder if that rendering was inspired by the old phone book cover drawings. Hours of entertainment!

I can't believe that they were able to sell any houses at all with a name like Rodeo Palms. Tack-E! Reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live spoof of The Beverly Hillbillies called The Bel-Arabs, and their painting of the nude sculptures.

"Brown Line"?! Is that Metro's designation, or simply what some kid wrote in Wikipedia? (Was the name revealed in a vision he had in about 5th grade during a visit to Atlanta?)

I bought one to ride to the cafeteria. You could call it a Scooter Luby's.

Thanks for the answer. Isn't it amazing what some NIMBY's can get the vapors over?!

No. Try North Richland Hills (mall) and more recently Duncanville (Walmart.)

Anyone recognize this Houston 8-plex? http://greatlandlords.com/details.php?id=2...ogs_ok=&s=1 Call me crazy but I think it is awesome. I've never stumbled upon it while crisscrossing the Museum District, so perhaps is it actually in Montrose or east of 288? Beats the heck out of the Post-Post-Post-Post-Post-Modernist tin cans plopping up, and sort of makes me wish I worked intown!

I wish him well. The guy always had credibility in my eyes given his prior work at the Nat'l Hurricane Center. Wasn't perfect in his forecast (no one is) but I could tell that he knew what he was talking about. Personally I found his weather segment at times too drawn out (kudo's to Frank B. on Ch. 2 for doing an excellent job of packing lots of pertinent info into a quick segment) but appreciated his attempts to explain and go into detail. Too bad that Ch. 11 is replacing him with a buffoon. Anyone who has to resort to ridiculous gimmicks like a meaningless "Norman's Number" is a failure. A shame that local news around here is so pathetic these days. The passing of Ron Stone just highlights how far they have sunk. What an unintended contrast it was in the tribute segments between the genuine aura and professionalism of Stone and the overdone fake earnest style of Bill Balleza (though I certainly thank and commend them for attempting to memorialize Mr. Stone.) A calculated phony earnestness that Ch. 11 news has also adopted, an annoying schtik along with their inserting "We are learning/we have learned/we are watching/we are monitoring/we we we" at the start of every story, theatrical Sher Minh Chow, and the cut-n-paste folksy phrasing so many of their reporters attempt. Ch. 13's odious Ted Oberg is the worst about that, a bad attempt at Jimmy Stewart/Abe Lincoln down home style as forced as the bogus Whataburger cornpone guy. Yeah, yeah, we Texans surely all talk like that, have longhorns on our Cadillac's hood, and herd our cows with helicopters while checking on our Back 40 oil wells. Those consultants sure do know us... These reporters are just trying to stand out, but apparently can't fathom that most of us can tell the difference between a genuine innate style (Stone's) and phoniness. Speaking of sorry attempts to copy originals, Sweaty Wayne Doltchafino is no Zindler, just an embarrassment. He'd have a shot to actually do some good if he would simply drop the cheesy graphics and movie clips overkill. Not funny, just credibility killing. (There's nothing wrong with humor when done well. "OPEN THIS DOOR IN THE NAME OF EYEWITNESS NEWS!" was pure genius. Stale looping shots of rolling dice, cards and stripper music for half a corruption story is simply lame filler.) And why are Ch.13's chances of rain always 20% higher than any other station's and the weather service's? The silly finger point storm clouds and spinning temperatures don't help, either. Then their is wheel of justice, weather dog, collagen-lipped, "How YOUR child could be in danger" KPRC, still wallowing down in a minor league of its own. My how far the mighty have fallen! All those prop-infatuated reporters, shameless coached to wave something in their hands at the camera like it is Second City TV's "3-D House of Beef." Operating under the assumption that their core audience is ADD-addled grown crackbabies and thus gimmicky props must be employed at all costs, most only tangentially relevant in a "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" way. Oh how I wish the tabloid trash running our local TV news would actually listen and learn from Ron Stone's farewell, when he said "I never lied to you or tried to mislead you." That is why he had well-earned credibility. He had a style, but it was genuine, and people could sense that and trusted him. The first station here that returns to common sense, simply honesty, and respecting its audience will dominate the ratings.