Stewart and Stephen Colbert have signed a deal with NBC to create a sitcom.
Here’s Stewart’s description of what the show will be like:
“We were just thinking about what would happen if a gay man and a straight woman lived together in a bar in Boston and ate spiders for $50,000 every episode,” Stewart told Daily Variety. “We’re going to try to do a show that has everything that’s worked on NBC before. Before it’s over, Stephen could end up helming a genial black family. He could be the next Cosby.”
I can’t wait.
December 10th, 2002
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The end is surely nigh.
She was guilty of 2 out of 3. Not guilty of the most serious charge.
November 6th, 2002
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We here at get donkey! are quickly approaching that time of year when Rancho del Burro is happily besieged by various family visitors and houseguests. It will be the first trip to H-town for some, and I, being the 1999 runner-up for Dork of the Year, am the type of host that likes to point things out to my guests as we tool around town in the family truckster. Stuff like, “See that field over there? Well that’s where the old manse of Colonel Jim Tuckwilla, the Sausage King of Crababble County, once stood.”
It dawned on me the other day, however, that I know next to nothing about Houston history. As a result, yesterday evening became a quest for knowledge.
I found some cool stuff.
The first thing I found was 166 Years of Houston History which contains a pretty exhaustive decade-by-decade account of Houston. It is a bit out of date (they have a page about Ken Lay that still makes him look good), and perhaps a bit whitewashed, but it is nevertheless chock-full of historic goodness and interesting architectural information. Right up my alley.
The next thing I found was the Houston Heritage Society which explained what that collection of old houses on the North side of downtown Houston is all about.
I also found a site about Bayou Bend which answers one of the many “What do you think that is all about?” questions I annoy my wife with every time we drive down Memorial. Since Bayou Bend was her home, the site also contains information about Miss Ima Hogg. Miss Hogg was one of Houston’s most generous philanthropists and from what I read, an all-around interesting person. This site was also the final bit of proof I needed to convince my disbelieving wife that there was, in fact, someone named Ima Hogg.
Finally, the site that truly made the whole quest worthwhile was Houston Wet. According to the front page, the site is:
a web documentary about
the city of Houston,
a subdivision that sunk,
the flag on the moon . . .
and how we’re building
on Earth.
The centerpiece of the site is the tragic story of Brownwood, a Houston subdivision that, as the introduction snippet above implies, sunk underwater due to a bizarre confluence of geological and human-created causes. What fascinated me was that I was alive during most of the years the sad story of Brownwood’s sinking unfolded, but I don’t recall ever hearing about it. It seems like a sinking suburb would have been a major news story on the level of Love Canal or TMI, but somehow it never made its way into the national consciousness.
The other major piece of the site details Houston’s role in the 1969 Moon Mission. I haven’t finished that section yet, but so far it is just as good.
Anyway the site design alone makes Houston Wet worth a visit. Please go visit it. Now.
If anyone out there knows of any other sites or sources where I can find tasty tidbits of Bayou City history, please let me know.
October 9th, 2002
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get donkey! would officially like to congratulate Lily Chin on her unofficial world title. You knit, girl!
October 7th, 2002
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How can you not love this guy?
Joe Paterno will not be punished for grabbing an official after Penn State’s overtime loss to Iowa.
…
When the game ended, Paterno sprinted down the field and grabbed the jersey of referee Dick Honig as he was headed into the locker room.
“All I did was try to stop him because he was running ahead of me,” Paterno said. “I was running to the locker room, I grabbed him by the shirt and I said ‘Hey, Dick, you had two lousy calls.’ Not he, I said the two guys on the other side had two lousy calls.”
I’ll tell you what, “Hey, Dick, you had two lousy calls” is a lot tamer than what I was yelling in my living room after that game, and I wasn’t calling the referee by name either.
For those of you playing the Penn State Stadium Cheer Home game:
I say JoePa and you say…
October 2nd, 2002
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Guess who’s coming to dinner, or maybe breakfast…
October 2nd, 2002
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While I was busy doing a Grape Nut spit-take over this morning’s latest chronicle piece on the goings on in Montgomery County, Charles was writing an excellent post about the RLC wingnuts up there.
Basically, the Republican Leadership Council, that puritantical group that has been banning books in past weeks, has now managed to have a ceramic fig-leaf placed over the ween of a statue of David. The RLC had deemed the statue which is perched atop a strip mall “pornographic” (tacky, yes. pornographic, no). They have also gotten a restaurant to remove some “offensive” pictures from their restroom walls. They are marking this all up to a victory for morality and virtue.
They are not satisfied with their “victories”, however…
Dianna Whitt of Shenandoah, whose complaint led to the addition of the fig leaf, said she shares the RLC’s views but prefers to call her protest a personal effort by a concerned citizen.
Whitt said she is not satisfied with the fig leaf and will press to have the statue moved someplace where children cannot see it without parental permission.
…
The Republican Leadership Council is continuing a boycott of the Buca di Beppo restaurant in the same shopping center because it has photos of nude statues and paintings.
Jenkins said he is not satisfied that the restaurant had removed a photo of a statue of nude wrestlers and a photo in the men’s restroom of a boy facing a wall, apparently urinating.
He said he will be satisfied “if they put a sign up in front that says, `Caution, this restaurant is R-rated.’ “
There is at least one sane person in the area, however:
The original founder of the Republican Leadership Council does not share that view.
“I’m more offended by what they are trying to do to that sculpture than (by) the sculpture itself,” said Eric “Bulldog” Yollick, a lawyer who resigned as RLC president last year and made peace with Wilkerson.
Noting that the statue is on top of a building, Yollick said, “I couldn’t see that high up unless I had binoculars.”
He said statues would have to be removed from around the Vatican if naked sculptures were rated as obscene.
My predicition is that the next RLC campaign will be a push for an ordinance to force dog-owners to place pants on their dogs. The last thing that the impressionable youth in Montgomery County need to see are exposed dog willies.
September 24th, 2002
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Looks like I was 2 hours early!
Baseball: Deal Reached, Strike Averted
Major League Baseball players reached a new labor agreement with team owners in 11th hour talks on Friday, narrowly averting a strike that had threatened to damage the sport for years to come.
Donald Fehr, chief of the players’ union, confirmed there would be no strike as he emerged from marathon negotiations in New York. More details were due to be revealed at a news conference scheduled for 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT).
Yay!!!!
Now the Astros just have to catch Cards and this season will be worthwhile.
Thanks to Marc for notifying me.
August 30th, 2002
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Talks are going down to the wire.
Players are packing up.
It’s strike day, folks. It hasn’t happened yet, but I get the feeling somethings going to happen around 1:00PM CDT…
August 30th, 2002
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Marc points me to Adam Felber’s blog, “Fanatical Apathy“. Hoo boy! As we used to say back in PA Dutch country, “Dat one over dere once ist da funnyman.”
It’ll be in the blogroll shortly.
August 23rd, 2002
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I love ‘em, but Palmer Haas thinks the Yankees may be the key to the crisis in the MLB. Well sort of, anyway.
August 22nd, 2002
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They say diamonds are forever. And now the dearly departed can be, too.
According to this article, LifeGem, a company in Chicago has figured out a way to turn cremated remains into diamonds.
What better way to ask her to spend the rest of her life with you than to present her with a 1 carat crystallized chunk of late Aunt Gert surrounded by baguettes of Uncle Mel?
How do they come up with stuff like this?
August 22nd, 2002
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Here in Houston we tend to do weird things to honor our sports figures. Most cities may hang a “Welcome to our Town” banner, but not us. No, Sir! Here we make large food items.
Witness this little snippet from the Chonicle’s Ken Hoffman describing the way the town would like to honor recent Chinese draftee, Yao Ming:
Chinese basketball giant Yao Ming is slowly making his way to the Houston Rockets, and Compaq Center is cooking up a welcome wagon for fans.
“We’re tinkering with a few ideas. So far, it looks like we’ll have a foot-long egg roll,” said Reggie Davis of Aramark, the company that handles the food concessions at Compaq Center.
“We’ve had meetings with a local egg roll company, and it’d be fun to get a super big egg roll to match our super big player. We’ve successfully created a 10-inch prototype that doesn’t flop over. But our goal is to make it a foot long.”
Nothing says “fun” like a stiff foot-long egg roll.
UPDATE: You know, I was just thinking. The last paragraph starts out with: “We’ve had meetings with a local egg roll company…”. Okay, how lousy must your life be if you a.) work for a “local” eggroll company (as opposed to those national eggroll conglomerates) and b.) you have to sit in a meeting where the agenda topic is to discuss the logistics of constructing a foot-long, fried, phallic “appe-teaser”?
August 20th, 2002
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You’re killing us here, people.
This time last year we were on top of the world. We were living high on the hog, people were talking, and we were this close to inking a deal on another Jaws picture. You couldn’t turn around without seeing another story about a tiger in Tampa or a blue tip in Bermuda. It was great TV. You loved us and we loved to eat you.
So much has changed this summer. The whole crazy planet has gone cuckoo if you ask us. It’s all kidnaps, kidnaps, kidnaps. No one’s paying us any attention. Some hammerhead down in the Keys took a hunk out of a guy’s ass last week, and no one even noticed. Hell, the dumb mook reported it as a barracuda attack. A frickin’ barracuda!? What an insult! I got chunks of barracuda in my stool!
And we’ve tried being nice too. Some broad fell into one of your shark hoosegows in Orleans and we didn’t even take a nibble. Not even a taste. And what thanks did we get? Nada. Not a peep. Instead we had to listen to that crazy chick gab on and on about how she “just freaked out”. Take a pill, lady.
So what’s gonna take to win you back, baby? What do we have to do to get a little face time with Connie Chung? What, are you afraid we’re gonna bite? Okay, bad question. But hey, it’s nothing personal. After all, a guy’s gotta eat. It’s that whole circle of life number. We can’t help ourselves.
Anyway, we’re still swimming around out here and we’re getting jumpy. And I don’t have to tell you, mac, that a jumpy shark ain’t a happy shark. So throw us a bone already… or a kid.
August 15th, 2002
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And the report is that his family will sculpt his ashes into frisbees. That’s just weird. Remind me not to purchase any of Wham-o’s new Grey Ghost Edition flying disks. I don’t want my dogs catching dead people.
August 14th, 2002
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