Burnt Orange Report

Jimbo's Grab Bag, 20.July.03

By Jim Dallas

DCI marches through Texas; The Houston Press says 2003 might be "Turner time"; Michael Berry goes nuts; and the Houston Chronicle says NASA is lost in space.

Get your roll (and your tap, and your flam, and your diddle) on

I had an opportunity to go up to Rice Stadium in Houston on Friday to catch this year's "ExSightment of Sound", which brought down five Division I drum and bugle corps including the Cavaliers of Rosemont, Ill., the defending world champions. Thanks to my roommate and buddy Dave for letting me in on this.

The San Antonio Revolution, a Division II corps, also performed.

The Boston Crusaders and Cadets (Bergenfield, NJ) are both doing "Malaguena" this year. The piece has probably been done umpteen gajillion times in the past, but both corps still made it fun. As usual, the Santa Clara Vanguard show was weird, but far more accessible to non-musicians such as myself than last year's.

About 6000 people - mostly high-school band kids - were in attendance.

Drum corps also made stops this last week in Leander, Midland, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Sylvester Turner*
*But were afraid to ask.

Tim Fleck of the Houston Press has a piece on Sylvester Turner this week which ought to be required reading for those following the Houston mayoral race.

It's kind of puffy though, be warned:

Snaking with his entourage through the chanting crowd of 1,500 or so, the candidate seemed more like a heavyweight boxer headed to the ring of some Vegas prize fight. Sylvester Turner, the still-youthful-looking state representative ready for his mayoral rematch, mounted the Hyatt Regency stage in front of an imposing red-and-black graphic of the Houston skyline, while Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" thundered over the PA. As he began to speak, those who had closely followed his 1991 campaign must have had the sensation they were switching on a TV and catching an early scene from an all-too-familiar movie.

"My dad taught me something in living and dying," Turner declared in his lilting orator's voice. "When you get knocked down, you got to learn how to pull yourself right back up. This evening I offer myself as a candidate for mayor of this great city."

In this remake, the character at the ballroom microphone is the squeaky-clean Horatio Alger Sylvester, the sixth of nine children born to a painter and a Rice Hotel maid, the brilliant student who starred from Klein High School to the University of Houston to Harvard Law School. From there the story shifts to the contract law offices of Barnes & Turner and successful attorney Sylvester, who won his north Houston seat in the Texas House and carved a legislative record to be envied by his peers.

Then the script begins to diverge from the 1991 version. Legislator Sylvester touts his recent elevation by Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick to speaker pro tempore, and his advancing to become one of ten lawmakers on the powerful appropriations committee faced with solving massive budget deficits.

There are other plot improvements. This time around, Sylvester is blessedly free of an embittered wife. She'd made token, sour-faced appearances on the campaign trail clutching their little girl, but had secretly retained a private eye to investigate her husband. And other than a legal misstep last year -- he was fined by the Texas State Bar for inadequately representing a client in a divorce -- the candidate's professional life has not provided grist for negative media stories.

The half-million or so Houston voters who weren't around in 1991 may need a quick synopsis of the original Sylvester flick: An overachieving, innocent homeboy is within a whisker of becoming Houston's first black mayor. Then he's attacked for personal flaws such as failing to pay a college loan, magnified by a media blitz from a hardball opponent.

On the eve of a tight runoff election, Channel 13 investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino drops allegations that our hero may have been in on an insurance fraud scheme. The stories are never confirmed; Turner is never charged with anything; but the news reports are devastating. He narrowly loses to former mayor Bob Lanier and then wages a legal jihad against Channel 13 in a showcase libel suit.

By reminding me of Wayne Dolcefino - who in other parts of his ignominious career with Channel 13 has probably managed to tick of just about everyone in the KTRK viewing area - Fleck has managed to make me pretty sympathetic to Turner. Sort of the same way I always root for any football team that can beat the Dallas Cowboys.

For more on the candidates check out Off the Kuff, the other "must read" for spectators of Houston politics.

Call in the Cavalry, or send in the clowns?

Speaking of Houston politics, Michael Berry is running a really - uh, silly - campaign commercial on Houston radio right now. Despite being a bit behind in the money race, Berry decided to try to use humor (well, I suppose this is humorous?!?) to stake out turf as the "fiscally responsible" candidate:

Download the ad here.

It's great to use a little humor to dull the edge of political attacks, but the cartoonishness of this ad makes it hard to believe. Everytime I hear this commercial at work, I giggle like a schoolgirl. It's that bad.

But then again, who's supposed to believe that Berry knows what he's doing, anyway? (Thanks Kuff!)

Danger Will Robinson! Danger Danger!

Finally, 34 years after putting men on the moon, NASA is facing some pretty hefty charges from... the hometown paper. The Houston Chronicle is running a six-part series on how NASA is mismanaging the nation's space program:

Twice before, the space agency dealt with human tragedy and moved on, making changes to hardware and management practices. There was no widespread clamor for a new direction or a call to justify the mission at hand.

The same cannot be said today. The Columbia tragedy has forced into the open long-standing concerns that the nation's human space program is seriously adrift and needs far more repair than a new skin on the shuttle. Scores of interviews with space advocates, policy experts, congressional committee staff, members of Congress, industry executives and former NASA officials -- as well as a nationwide survey of the public conducted for the Chronicle -- give voice to a notion previously unthinkable: Astronauts may have died pursuing goals that are not worthy.

But... the Weekly World News provides ammunition for those who would think otherwise, with a full story on President Bush's plan to invade the moon and make it the fifty-first state!

Best damned investigative reporting on the planet, indeed!