Narco gangster reveals the underworld
| June 16, 2011 | Filled under Internerd |
Awesomely horrific interview from the Houston Chronicle where they interview a drug trafficker under the condition of anonymity about the drug war’s death toll. Fuuuucked up.
There Is No Such Thing As A Bikini Body
| May 27, 2011 | Filled under Internerd |
Something to think about as we head into this holiday weekend:
The truth is, the "bikini body" craze goes so much deeper than fatism or fatphobia. It is part of our society’s relentless insistence that a woman’s body is not her own.
The last part of the line really struck me. I’ve been spending so much time lately thinking about all the ways the government tells us what we can and can’t do with our bodies that I have never really though about how the media sends us the same message.
Five Texas Sluts Worth Admiring
| May 25, 2011 | Filled under Internerd |
SlutWalk Houston is right around the corner. In case you’re not familiar with the march, SlutWalk was born of a Toronto police officer’s comment that women should avoid “dressing like sluts” in order not to be raped. It’s a chance to stop the cycle of victim blaming when it comes to rape, and possibly to strip a dirty word of its sting by owning it as only true sluts can.
Here’s an homage to our five favorite Texans who took a stand through the name of sluttiness.
(Via Five Texas Sluts Worth Admiring – Houston News – Hair Balls.)
Roger Corman’s The Oklahoma Woman
| May 25, 2011 | Filled under Photo Album |
Okie Pool
| May 24, 2011 | Filled under Photo Album |
In case you’ve ever wondered if the Governor of Oklahoma has an Oklahoma-shaped pool. (Via @kylejack.)
The Banana, The Fastest Fruit
| May 23, 2011 | Filled under Blog, Video |
Art Car Weekend embodies everything I adore about Houston. It’s not just that I love the parade and it’s accompanying festivities, it’s that Art Car is a normal, everyday aspect of Houston life that people who don’t live here rarely get to experience when they come to, say, Greenspoint for a business trip.
For example. This weekend was the inaugural screening of the Tex Hex, an artist-built boat that floats along the bayou and shows movies on a screen to people sitting on the banks. In keeping with the Art Car theme, the Tex Hex showed short films regarding car culture, from personal faves Kenneth Anger, Buckminster Fuller, Buster Keaton, and the short below, about what is possible the most amazing soap box derby to ever take place.
It’s easy to see how this event, in San Fransisco in 1975, could have been the genesis for the Art Car Parade.
On Basketball, Tragedy and How I Became A Writer
| May 17, 2011 | Filled under Video |
In 2008 Oklahoma finally got a professional major league sports team. For years people said OKC could not support such a venture. Boy were they wrong.
I’ve always been a college basketball, never a pro fan, but that’s changing now that the Thunder are in the playoffs, against a Texas team even. Yesterday, on the even of the Western Conference Finals first game, my mom sent me this video.
In Oklahoma, basketball goes hand in hand with tragedy. But something else struck me about the story above.
I was 14 years old when the Murrah Building was bombed. I was in junior high, had not yet taken my first creative writing class, had not yet worked for a newspaper. But I loved to write, and I had been keeping journals every year. Watching the video now reminds me of my desperate need for info after the bombing. How voraciously I consumed every newspaper, magazine, news report and update. It never occurred to me before, but in no small way did the OKC bombing influence my later development into a news junkie and journalist.
R.I.P. Cleopatra
| March 23, 2011 | Filled under Video |
Elizabeth Taylor has died. I loved her in nearly everything she did, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to A Place In The Sun, but the above scene has always been my favorite. The Film That Changed Hollywood, a feature-length documentary on the troubled production of Cleopatra, is an absolute must-see for anyone with an interest in the way cinema works, then and now.
Update: Here’s the obit I wrote for the Houston Press on her best movies.
