The 2011 Houston Astros--I watch so you don't have to!

It seems a loss to the Astros by the New York Madoffs is too desultory to even describe. From The New York Daily News, via Deadspin:

Blah blah blah blah rain blah blah blah Niese blah blah Astros blah blah Mets got spanked. Blah blah, 6-1.

This has nothing to do with Tuesday's game, which was played in New York anyway, but the above lead (or lede) reminds me of treatment Houston itself--the city, I mean--receives from the sportswriting world in general. Houstonians will recall the first salvo during the '94 NBA Finals, (Rockets/Knicks) a back-page, off-day space-filler in the New York Post which was apparently written by a spotswriter who had never been south of Perth Amboy. The oh-too-subtle headline, describing Houston: WELCOME TO HELL.

A week-and-a-half after that valentine, all thoughts of city-as-hot-humid-nuthin'-to-do-in hell had receded behind the white Bronco interrupting Game 4 and John Starks's Game 7 awfulness (though I must say, when my date and I went out in the streets of Montrose to celebrate the Rockets' championship, it was breezy and cool). But the stigma stuck.

"WELCOME TO HELL" was not exactly "HEADLESS MAN IN TOPLESS BAR," but clear enough--and, more to the point, the article that set the tone for the countless Houston Sucks articles to follow. There was Bill Simmons, usually more thoughtful than this, writing from Houston after the 2006 NBA All-Star Game:

In the past four years, I made four separate trips to Houston and spent a total of 24 days here . . . And you know what? That's too much freaking time to spend in Houston. My editors just bleeped me, I don't care. Maybe Houston doesn't suck any more or less than 20 other major cities, and maybe the people are friendly and likable, but the fact remains, you would never come here for any reason, other than these three:

(1) For work.
(2) To gain weight.
(3) To get shot.

You just wouldn't. And yet, dating back to the Super Bowl XXXVIII in February 2004, three of the last eight major sporting events were held in Houston. Does this make any sense? There are 30 to 35 American cities that could host the Super Bowl and/or either of the All-Star Games ... and yet Houston pulled off the Ultimate Pro Sports Trifecta in a 24-month span, despite the fact that it's a sprawling city with traffic and safety problems (the three intangibles you always want to avoid for major sporting events). Here's what really frightens me: I have spent so much time here, I actually know my way around. Can I have this information removed from my brain? Is there a pill I can take?

Anyway, I have the following announcement to make: I am never, ever, ever setting foot in Houston again. I don't care if the Red Sox play the Astros in the World Series. I don't care if the Celtics play the Rockets in the NBA Finals. I don't care if my daughter gets engaged to an astronaut and has to have a quickie wedding in Houston hours before he gets launched to Saturn. I'm never coming back to Houston. Twenty-four days were enough. No offense.

To which one might simply reply:
1) Simmons's first love is basketball; clearly he was channeling the Post's account from '94, and
2) Simmons grew up in Boston and lived (and lives) in Los Angeles, so complaining about another city's "traffic and safety problems" is really quite hilarious. Los Angeles, at least, deals with the traffic the way Montanans deal with the snow--as adults. There are two things Angelenos approach with a degree of gravity: traffic and going to the movies. (Try whispering, "Why did he go in the chunnel?" to your companion during a Sunday matinee in Westwood. Twenty-five people will shush you, and ten more will hiss "Shut UP!") As for Boston . . . imagine the cast of Good Will Hunting multiplied by fifty thousand driving in Kenmore Square (with its five-way intersection hard by Fenway Park) on a street laid out 350 years ago for horses and milk wagons. I'll give you traffic.

The idea of Houston-as-craptown was revived once again this year, during the Final Four. Leaving aside that the worst basketball game in history somehow tainted the city. Every sports columnist, thinking himself the soul of wit, wrote on the Sunday off-day for the Monday papers. These guys work in journalism--they didn't know the Crown Royal is stuck south of the Medical Center and toward Fort Bend County, basically the Houston version of the City of Industry? Downtown--with 20 really nice bars and a dozen superb restaurants, Sam Houston Park giving onto Allen's Landing and Buffalo Bayou, plus a Hilton, a Hyatt, a Doubletree--is 20 minutes from Reliant Stadium. Really, is that so hard?

Anyway, just thinkin' out loud.

Hello, Dolly

Courtesy Brendan Loy, aka The Irish Trojan, who doubles as The Weather Nerd, some pictures of Hurricane Dolly, which thankfully (well, for Astro-Girl and me, and for Jimmy and family, a half-hour closer to the gulf from us) will touch down a few hundred miles from here. We're getting the "dirty side" of its most outward edge right outside our window, which would mean a frightful rainstorm for anyone not living in a coastal state. Our satellite is down, our power is flickering.

End result? The teachers will show up today, but not the students.

Funny. I grew up in Phoenix, which provided us with about fifteen days of rain per year: always, always, a three-day torrent in March, the heavy monsoons in late summer, one or two days right after New Year's, and a half-dozen showers spread out over the remaining 350 days. Now, living in Houston, who knows? I've gone to outdoor parties where the rain has fallen in the front yard but not the back. I've jogged down West Alabama bone dry and seen a rainstorm a block away, as if behind a glass shower door. I've gotten soaked right down to my socks while squinting at the sun. I've seen school closures that resulted in everyone going out to the pool and getting a tan.

Chicago--"If you don't like the wseather, just wait five minutes"--has nothing on Houston.

The Houston/Katrina record corrected

Nice to know I wasn't the only one to catch ABC's--and correspondent Mike Von Fremd's--imbecilic swipe at Houston, namely lumping it with New Orleans as a city of "chaos" during the Katrina evacuation.

Apparently the editorial board at the Houston Chronicle was watching, too:

It bears remembering that the scenes at New Orleans' Superdome and Houston's Astrodome and George R. Brown Convention Center were direct opposites. The Superdome was dark and without needed provisions or relief workers. In Houston, public officials and thousands of volunteers, given little or no notice, welcomed more than 200,000 Katrina evacuees. The residents of flooded New Orleans, many of whom lost everything, were met with clothing and food donated by citizens and local businesses. Doctors from the Texas Medical Center and other facilities assembled to give all the evacuees complete health care.

In short, the Houston operation, jointly led by Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, was a model of speedy and efficient disaster relief.

To his credit, Von Fremd apologized for his error. Based in Dallas, Von Fremd noted that he and his family are now Texans, that he had covered Katrina and that he was all too familiar with Houstonians' commendable efforts and the "spectacular job" they did caring for the Katrina evacuees.

Which begs the question: Why such shoddy reporting?

There was also this, which I decided not to point out, but which is often on the mind of every Houstonian:

Many Katrina evacuees made Houston their permanent home, and Houston has paid a price for its largesse. The city experienced a surge in violent crime in part attributed to Katrina evacuees who were both the perpetrators and the victims. It risks a spike in its homeless population when housing assistance for Katrina victims is exhausted.

The editorial is here.

Oh, and, there is this, from one commenter:

The atmosphere provided at the Dome rivaled anything going on now at Qualcomm I assure you. There was plenty of food, water, air-conditioning, cots, rest-rooms and medical attention. They were right however to heap criticism on local New Orleans officials for not having the Super-dome ready. Notice this week you seldom hear the acronym FEMA. Why ???? Because local and state agencies are largely handling things themselves in San Diego with FEMA providing support and filling in the gaps.

Yes: no matter how far Mike Brown put his head up his ass (and he nearly disappeared) the failure in New Orleans during Katrina starts with Ray Nagin and works outward to Governor Blanco.

But . . . an argument for another day. Those of us who were here during Katrina owe it to one another to remain forever vigilant in keeping the record straight.

Houston and New Orleans

Last night, I saw the first part of "20/20," during which some airhead commented that the scene at Quaalcom was in marked contrast to the chaos in "Houston and New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina."

Ummm--what? Houston and New Orleans?

Look: We here in Houston have grown used to never being thanked for our city's finest hour, certainly not by Mayor Asshole, and not really by New Orleanians in general, with a few glorious exceptions, such as writer Richard Ford, who came here to give a reading and nearly broke down in giving thanks.

Well, fine. We did what we did--everyone I know played some role, in money, time, or supplies, some in all three--and we would do it again ten, a hundred times, gratitude or no.

But, gee whiz.

What correspondent Know-Nothing speaks of as "chaos" was confusion over who would be admitted to the Astrodome. On the Wednesday afternoon of that week--the first day the big crowds started to arrive--only those on designated buses were admitted. Before dinner the matter was resolved, with Mayor White stating emphatically that any evacuee who made it to the Dome was welcome.

That's it. In all, a few hours.

Otherwise, if by "chaos" the correspondent meant "The greatest act of charity by one city toward another," he pretty much nailed it.

And, for Pete's sake, the very Astrodome pictures ABC used to supposedly illustrate the "chaos" in Houston actually showed the truth: that the Astrodome was a sanctuary in those times.

Now it is a place of honor.

ABC ought to be ashamed of itself.

The Astronut

The latest here.

There is not much to add, except that in this corner of Texas--the Interstate 45 corridor, running from Houston through Clearlake, past NASA Road 1 on down to Galveston and the Gulf--the news is being taken almost as a family tragedy, as if watching a favorite uncle being led away in handcuffs.

On either side of this fifty-mile stretch of freeway, where the best and the brightest of the space program walk among us, astronauts are revered more than soldiers, and soldiers are plenty revered.

Bad things that happen to the space program hit plenty of people around on a personal, a gut, level. A speech professor at my college worked for NASA for years, knew all the crew of the Challenger that exploded, including Christa McAuliffe. He was working at a classroom at the Space Station when it happened, leading a group of visiting students through a closed-circuit broadcast of the blast-off, when the shuttle exploded and, a minute later, a group of NASA personnel quietly led the children out of the classroom and on to the buses. It was this professor who told me what many people suspected: that the crew was killed not by the explosion but by the nine-mile fall to the water off the Cape; when the capsule hit the surface, the impact shattered the crews' spinal cords, killing them instantly.

This farce is nowhere near as tragic as that awful day. But, believe me, it has hit home.