This Is Not A Shotgun Wedding On Austin's Capitol Steps

The Texas open carry gun madness really is getting to be a bit much.

A shotgun type wedding on the steps of the state capitol?

That is just embarrassing.

What?

That's not the State Capitol Building in Austin?

That is the State Capitol Building in Olympia, in my old home state of Washington?

Now that really is embarrassing.

What is going on here?

Well, apparently in last November's election Washington votes passed something called Initiative 594. This new law allows expanded background checks on those wanting to purchase a firearm.

I wonder if Texas might get a voter turnout, higher than less than a third of those eligible to vote, if the state ever had anything consequential on the ballot? Like voting to legalize  marijuana, same sex marriage, legalizing casinos, ending the state's bizarrely Byzantine Prohibition-era liquor laws, prohibiting industry control of state agencies such as the TCEQ and the Texas Railroad Commission, that type thing?

So, what's the deal with this guy with the machine gun and the couple getting married?

Apparently, on Saturday, around 1,000 open carry gun rights type advocates had a protest rally outside  the Capitol building to voice their objection to the new background check law.

The couple in wedding attire were not protest participants. They were there to have pre-wedding pictures taken. The Best Man guy holding the gun also is not a protester. One of the protesters handed the Best Man the gun, who I guess then willingly posed like a Mafia hit man, allowing the photo to be taken.

This open carry thing is just not right. A couple days ago I was driving through my neighborhood Albertsons parking lot when I stopped to let an extremely fat man pass in front of me. I was appalled to see that the extremely fat man was sporting a holster around his expansive waist, with a gun stuck in that holster.

I really would not want to be bagging bananas in Albertsons and look up to see an extremely fat man coming towards me packing heat.

Same applies to an extremely skinny man.

Or woman.....

Fort Worth's Defunct Lagrave Field Is No Longer The Envy Of Its League

What you are looking at here is the home base view of Fort Worth's defunct Lagrave Field, where the Fort Worth Cats used to play baseball in an extremely minor league against towns a fraction of Fort Worth's size.

Over a decade ago I was motivated to check out Fort Worth's new ballpark after reading the following in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram...

In the late Winter of 2003, in the sports section of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in an article about the coming baseball season, the Fort Worth Cats and La Grave Field, the writer said that La Grave Field, in its short existence, had become "the envy of the league...". It was decided to have a look at this Ballpark which had become the envy of the league, as it was assumed it must be spectacular, what with the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington just down the road a few miles.

Well, it did not take me long to find out that the league of which Fort Worth's field was the envy consisted of teams and towns I had never heard of, such as the Alexandria Aces, the Jackson Senators, the Ozark Mountain Ducks, the Edinburg Roadrunners, the Coastal Bend Aviators and the Rio Grande Whitewings.

You reading this in cities of Fort Worth's size, give or take a few hundred thousand, I guarantee I am not making this up. This town, with a population over 800,000, prided itself on supposedly having a better ballpark than that which the Ozark Mouuntain Ducks, and others, play ball in.

Another look at Lagrave Field, the envy of its league, now out of business.

The above photos were taken back in 2003, back when the envy of its league was still in good shape, before deterioration and a broken scoreboard became the ballpark's norm.

Long ago I documented, via a webpage, my astonishment at this sad excuse for a ballpark in a big American city, in a webpage titled, Fort Worth's La Grave Field. Included among what I photo documented, was the fact that way back in 2003, when Lagrave Field was the envy of its league, it  had no indoor restroom facilities, instead using the Fort Worth standard for its parks.

Outhouses.

You reading this in other big towns in America, again, I am not making this up.

The Wikipedia article about Lagrave Field made no mention of it being the envy of its league, but did make note of the financial woes which drove the ballpark out of business....

Recent financial challenges

In February 2010, former Fort Worth Cats owner Carl Bell defaulted on $30 million in notes with LaGrave Field as collateral. Although Amegy Bank had the right to foreclose on the field and some of the adjacent acreage, the bank did not decide to immediately exercise that right. Former owner Carl Bell also owed over $195,000 USD in property taxes and penalties for 2010 and sought a buyer for the stadium. A scheduled (January 3, 2012) foreclosure auction was averted due to a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing by LaGrave Reconstruction Company. Several months later, the debt holder Amegy Bank of Houston finally completed foreclosure and became the landlord of the Cats. On Tuesday, October 2, 2012 it was announced that LaGrave Field had been bought by an affiliate of the team's new ownership group for $4.5 million USD.

This week's Fort Worth Weekly has an article about the Lagrave Field woes titled Needing a Forever Home.

I was a little confused by the Fort Worth Weekly article. Mention is made of the fact that former owner, Carl Bell, who brought the Cats back to Lagrave Field in 2001, had also bought many of the acres which surrounded the ballpark, anticipating this would become valuable land due to what is known now as The Boondoggle. However, when the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle project moved at a snail's pace, along with the Great Recession, Bell found himself having money woes, with the Fort Worth Weekly article saying Bell was rescued by a guy named Bryant and a former Texas Rangers President named Mike Stone, who bought the team in 2012 and paid off its debts. But could not afford the ballpark.

Which does not make a lot of sense to me.

What I am remembering is the reports that Bell got himself a sweetheart deal, arranged by a TRWD board member friend, with that deal purchasing a large chunk of Bell's land for a very healthy sum, with the TRWD then leasing part of that land to the entity which foisted on Fort Worth the bizarre first drive-movie theater of the 21st century, known as the Coyote Drive-In.

If no one comes forward to buy Lagrave Field the new owners have indicated it will be torn down in order to develop the property.

I think this would be a good thing to tear down that rundown eyesore. However TRWD board member Jim Lane thinks differently, quoted in the FW Weekly article as saying...

"If it gets town down, every elected official  in Fort Worth ought to be ashamed of themselves."

Well.

I think there are plenty of reasons every elected official in Fort Worth ought to be ashamed of themselves, but tearing down this ballpark is not one of them.

The fact that Fort Worth does not seem to know how to build a ballpark of the sort other big, and some little towns, do, well that is something for the elected officials to be ashamed of.

Just go to my old home zone of Washington and check out the minor league baseball parks in towns much smaller than Fort Worth, such as Tacoma's Cheney Stadium, Everett's Memorial Stadium, Bellingham's Joe Martin Field. Even my old home town of Mount Vernon has a baseball park, Sherman Anderson Field, where, while no minor league calls it home, the Skagit County Fair does. And Sherman Anderson Field has indoor restrooms of the non-outhouse variety.

Those elected officials who should be ashamed of themselves should just take a short drive north, to Oklahoma City and check out Bricktown, where they will find a new, but classic looking baseball park.

In Bricktown those elected officials who should be ashamed of themselves will also find a Trinity River Vision type project that has actually been completed. If I remember right the signage I saw at the time I visited Bricktown, well over ten years ago, indicated it was the result of around a $1 billion bond issue.

Yes. Oklahoma City voters voted to build Bricktown. Again, what a concept. And imagine that, voted on, approved by the voters, fully funded. And built.

Oklahoma got a lot for their billion bucks. A very cool San Antonio-like Riverwalk, with restaurants and shops. Another sporting venue, besides the ballpark. I think this may be where the basketball team Aubrey McClendon stole from Seattle plays. I don't know if Myriad Gardens was part of the bond issue which built Bricktown, but it is part of the complex, and very well done.

If only the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle had the vision to go about its project in the way Oklahoma City did, Fort Worth might be reaping the benefits at this point in time, rather than waiting for the slowpoke construction of Three Bridge Over Nothing, with another wait in four years, waiting for money to be found to start building the ditch so water can be added under the bridges....

Balmy Tandy Hill Hiking Finding A Mythical Monster Hoodoo Or Possible Snowman

Today was my first time back on the Tandy Hills since the last Friday of last month. I don't know why it's been weeks since I've done any high speed hill hiking.

Maybe the lack of hill hiking is temperature related, with today's balmy 70s making it sound like it'd make for a mighty fine time to be enjoying the great outdoors, or what passes for the great outdoors at this location on the planet.

Today the Hoodoo at Tandy Hills Hoodoo Central at the north end of the View Street trail was a mere stub of its usual self.

But the Hoodoo at the Midway point on Mount Tandy was standing tall  and a bit bloated today.

When I first saw this Hoodoo I thought the Hoodoo builder was going for a Snowman Hoodoo. Then as I looked at it some more, particularly at the face, and the BIG round foundation, it started to look like a Fubboo Hoodoo.

But, a Fubboo is a mythical monster which haunts the Pacific Northwest, and is totally unknown in the Southwest, and Texas, so I think the uncanny resemblance is just a fateful coincidence.

I just got the oddest blog comment from someone named Anonymous.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Driving Over The Tacoma Narrows Suspension Bridges Looking For Fort Worth's Three Bridges Over Nothing": 

I don't want to get pithy, but that ain't your video. Enjoyed it though! 

That ain't my video? Whose video is it? I am fairly certain I am driving the car in the video. I sort of recognize my voice speaking. I remember driving along holding the camcorder. I remember making the video and uploading it  to YouTube. How is it not my video?

Why are Anonymous people so weird?

Driving Over The Tacoma Narrows Suspension Bridges Looking For Fort Worth's Three Bridges Over Nothing

Today, looking for a photo of my dad, and a video of Spencer Jack, had me coming across the photo you see here, and the video you can watch below.

In the photo we are looking north across a Tacoma Narrows waterfront deck, near the Steamers seafood restaurant, south of the Tacoma Narrows Suspension Bridges.

The closest bridge is the newest bridge. The new Tacoma Narrows Suspension Bridge was built this century in less than four years.

Built over water.

Built after the voters in the seven or eight counties most affected by the need for a new bridge approved a bond measure to finance the construction of the bridge.

What a concept.

Fort Worth is currently building Three Bridges Over Nothing. No water in sight. The Fort Worth Three Bridges Over Nothing are scheduled to take four years to build. And the public has never been allowed to vote on this particular public works project.

With those Three Fort Worth Bridges Over Nothing taking so long to build, longer than the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, longer than the Golden Gate Bridge, we can certainly reasonably expect that those Three Fort Worth Bridges Over Nothing are going to be spectacular.

At some point in time, in July of 2008, I drove across the old and the new Tacoma Narrows Suspension Bridges, using my antique camcorder to record the drive.

In the video you get a cloudy look at Tacoma, population much smaller than Fort Worth. But with a road system well designed to handle the traffic it needs to handle. In the video I make mention of The Mountain being out and clearly visible. However, The Mountain does not appear in my inferior quality video.

If I remember right I also made a video of Tacoma's Theo Foss Waterway and its surrounding museums. Theo Foss is a development of the sort the Trinity River Vision wants to be, but likely never will be, due to that boondoggle problem from which it suffers.

Below is the video of a drive over the Tacoma Narrows Bridges, along with my pithy commentary....

Happy Birthday To My Dear Ol' Dad

Today being my dad's birthday I found myself looking for a photo of my dad for happy birthday illustrative purposes.

Eventually I found the photo you see here, of All My Dad's Family.

Sounds like a soap opera.

If you are wondering what birthday number today is for my dad, well, my dad was not quite 15 when World War II came to an end after a couple big booms.

So, you will need some minimalist historical knowledge and slight math ability to calculate how old my dad is today.

Back to my dad's soap opera.

Currently, the cast of All My Dad's Family is almost the same as you see above, with a couple major changes, with the biggest change, I suppose, being the addition of Spencer Jack to the cast.

That is Spencer Jack's dad, my favorite nephew Jason, standing in front of me. I am holding my favorite nephew, Jeremy. Next to Jason, in front of my dad, is my favorite nephew, Joey. Next to Joey, in front of my mom, is my favorite nephew, Christopher.

Next to me, is my little brother, Jake, who is Spencer Jack's grandpa. At the far left of that row is my favorite brother-in-law, Jack.

Spencer Jack is not named after my favorite brother-in-law, he is named after my favorite dad, Jack. And Spencer Tracy. I think.

Next to Jack is my favorite sister, Jackie. Jack and Jackie are Christopher and Jeremy's parental units.

Another big change to the cast of All My Dad's Family has been Spencer Jack's grandma, my favorite ex-sister-in-law, Cindy, being replaced by my new favorite sister-in-law, Spencer Jack's step-grandma, Jill.

Spencer Jack's grandma, Cindy, returns every once in awhile for guest appearances with All My Dad's Family, such as the guest appearance you can see in the video below, which took place in August of 2008. Cindy is expected to make a guest appearance with All My Dad's Family late next month, in Arizona.

Back when the above photo of All My Dad's Family was taken, the entire show took place in Western Washington. In 2014 All My Dad's Family also has locations in Arizona and Texas.

Below you can watch a very low quality video I took with my now antique camcorder, over six years ago, at Bay View State Park, documenting the first time Spencer Jack met me and my mom and dad, also known as Spencer Jack's great grandparental units. I already mentioned you will see Spencer Jack's grandma Cindy in this video. You will also see Spencer Jack's mom, Jenny. And others.

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

No J.D. Granger Clone Executively Directed Singapore's Successful Marina South Vision

No. What you see here is not an artist's rendering of what the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's Granger Bay Sands Resort might look like when, or if, it is completed decades from now.

What you are looking at is not a sad little pond in Fort Worth, Texas. The body of water you see here is Marina Bay in Singapore.

That would make what you are looking at the Marina Bay Sands, a Singapore resort complex which includes a hotel, convention and exhibition centers, theaters, concert venues, stores and restaurants.

Plus a casino is in the mix, due to Singapore deciding earlier this century to get into the casino business.

After an extensive search Singapore gave the job to project engineers from the Las Vegas Sands to develop the Marina Bay site, in what is known as the new business district of Marina South.

For our purposes we will refer to this as Singapore's Marina South Vision.

No Singapore politician's son was hired to be the executive director of the Singapore Marina South Vision.

Singapore is one of the least corrupt nations in the world.

On May 27,  2006 Las Vegas Sands learned they had won the job to develop Marina Bay. Construction began soon thereafter, in early 2007.

Marina Bay Sands opened way less than four years later, on April 27, 2010.

Another interesting fact.

Marina Bay Sands is currently the world's most expensive building, costing $4.7 billion in U.S. dollars.

I guess you get what you pay for. Literally.

Which leads me to wonder how can Fort Worth's relatively puny undertaking known as the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle be slated to cost around $1 billion? Is that high cost due to the slow motion, un-funded, poorly planned, incompetently directed method of project construction?

All that Fort Worth, and those in the rest of America who Fort Worth expects to help pay for their boondoggle, get for that billion bucks, is a short flood diversion channel, a little lake, three plain bridges over the flood diversion channel. Plus the removal of levees which have kept the downtown Fort Worth zone flood free for well over a half century.

Also, how can the small multi-purpose arena, which Fort Worth voters recently voted to help fund by charging $1 to rent a livestock stall, cost almost half a billion dollars? Look at what Singapore wrought  for $4.7 billion, compared with Fort Worth's puny half billion dollar arena.

Marina Bay Sands has a well done website which gives one a real good idea of what $4.7 billion buys in Singapore. Screencap of that website below....

Go to the Marina Bay Sands website and you will see what that is atop those three hotel towers.

Oh, why make you look for it, I'll just go find a photo of Singapore's version of a Rockin' the River Happy Hour Float venue....

The Marina Bay Skypark, atop the Marina Bay Hotel, featuring the world's highest and longest infinity pool, along with other amenities, like restaurants, with a view.

I wonder how many things there are in Singapore which make other towns, far and wide, green with envy....?

In Italy Mr. & Mrs.Galtex Found A Possible Parking Lot Turned Into Turin's Piazza Castello

Fort Worth globetrotters, Mr. and Mrs. Galtex, are currently in Italy, today in the Mediterranean port city of Genoa, a few days ago in Turin, also known as Torino.

While in Turin, Mr. Galtex used Facebook to ask me the trick question you read above the picture.

I had to ponder Mr. Gatlex's trick question a few minutes and then answered with...

Fort Worth has changed a lot since you kids have been out of town, but I am almost certain Fort Worth's teeny little plaza has not grown to big city size, so I'm gonna guess the above is Turin's Piazza....

Fort Worth calls its teeny little  plaza Sundance Square Plaza. Apparently Turin calls its big city plaza Turin Piazza Castello. Does Castello mean square in Italian? Making the name of the Turin plaza, Turin Plaza Square?

Or did the Turinians have the common sense to realize redundantly naming their plaza Turin Plaza Square was a bit ridiculous?

Or maybe Turin  confused its multitude of tourists, for decades, by referring to the Turin downtown as Turin Plaza, where there was no plaza, but plenty of parking lots, which many of the Turin tourists assumed must be the Turin Plaza. And then did Turin decide to turn one of their big parking lots into an actual plaza and then name it Turin Plaza Square?

I suspect that is not how Turin's plaza came to be.

The Italian reports from Mr.and Mrs. Galtex have been causing me some serious Italian food cravings.

One of which is a craving for Pecorino Spaghetti. I have acquired all the ingredients for this version of spaghetti, except for the Pecorino.

Mr. Galtex has let me know it is difficult to replicate the made in Italy version. Mr. Galtex has tried to do so, on some of those rare occasions when he and the Mrs. are stateside, and failed.

However, I have the advantage of having never enjoyed the real thing, so I'll likely be happy with however mine turns out.

And really, how can you go wrong with noodles, butter, pepper and really sharp cheese?

From Anonymous I Learned I Am Too Ignorant To Navigate A Texas Railroad Commission Website Map

On Sunday I blogged about wondering what was up with one of my Chesapeake Energy neighbors, due to its gas pad site being missing some of its usual signage.

I took a picture of a piece of the Chesapeake signage which was laying on the ground.

Someone named Anonymous then took the "Rutherford 1H" name off that grounded Chesapeake sign to, apparently, glean production information about this particular gas site.

Basically the Anonymous comment left me more befuddled than before...

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Wondering What's Up With One Of My Chesapeake Energy Neighbors": 

If you are able to navigate a GIS map, the Texas Railroad Commission has a much friendlier version available for your perusal.  It shows that the well (known as the Rutherford 1H) is in production for gas and, as of the last production record from July of this year, produced about 10,000 mcf of gas that month. Based on today's NYMEX Futures price for January delivery. That's about $37,310 for the month of July. I assume the lack of data from July to December is normal lag time from reporting to posting by the RRC. But I could be wrong. 

I went to the Texas Railroad Commission website to which Anonymous directed me to to see if I could alleviate any of my befuddlement about the well known as Rutherford 1H.

Below you are looking at a screencap of the Texas Railroad Commission website to which Anonymous directed me.

I entered "Rutherford 1H" into the search window to come with a no information found message. No matter what I clicked on I could not find specific info about any specific gas pad site's production records.

What I guess I have learned from this is not only am I not able to navigate a GIS map, as Anonymous suggested I do. I do not even know what a GIS map is.

Ignorance really is not all the bliss it is cracked up to be......

Anonymous Has Me Boosting The Color Of Fort Worth's Infamous Hillbilly Mudpit

A week or so ago I blogged about the fact that nowhere in the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's 28 page 2014 Fall Update did I see mention made of what J.D. Granger has previously referred to as one of the crown jewel stars of The Boondoggle, that being the pond known as the Cowtown Wakepark, designed by The Boondoggle to be the world's premiere urban wakeboarding lake, leading Fort Worth to once again be at the forefront of the world in offering its citizens one of those precious amenities everyone in the world is clamoring for.

Someone with a name about as common as Jones, that being Anonymous, made an amusing comment about the Cowtown Park being missing from The Boondoggle's Update....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "28 Pages Of Boondoggle Propaganda With No Mention Of The Trinity River Vision's Shining Cowtown Wakepark Star": 

Local hero Brian Luenser needs to photograph Granger's hillbilly mud pit and show us its true beauty. I don't know of anyone who can boost the color intensity of photos like ol' Bri'.

I borrowed the term local hero from the December issue of Fort Worth Magazine and I got hillbilly mud pit from Durango Texas at Blogspot.

I have no memory of referring to the wakeboard pond as a hillbilly mud pit, but I am sure I did, I just don't remember when or where. Though I suspect, via entering the term 'mud pit' into the blog's search window, I could quickly find it.

The reference to Brian Luenser, to those outside the Fort Worth information distortion bubble, is to a guy who takes photos of the downtown Fort Worth area, including the Trinity River. Some think these photos to be works of beautiful art. Others think these photos are works of distorted propaganda, hence the remark made by Anonymous about the Luenser tendency to boost color intensity.

When I was first exposed to the Brian Luenser School of Chamber of Commerce Photography I was reminded of those photos one often sees of Seattle from the perspective of looking south from north of the Space Needle, photos in which Mount Rainier is made to look much larger than it does in reality. I have wondered, more than once, if this has ever annoyed any Seattle tourists, of which there are many, when the clouds lift and they see The Mountain way in the distance.

I have wondered if the Brian Luenser photos have ever annoyed any of Fort Worth's tourists, of which there are few, when they see the Trinity River, expecting to see what they saw in the Luenser photo's, and instead see a littered ditch without free flowing water.

I decided to see if I could do what Anonymous suggests, and see if I can apply the Brian Luenser type of photo color boosting to put lipstick on that messy pig known as the Cowtown Wakepark.

The un-boosted photo below is from a blogging from way back in 2012 titled Trying To Wakeboard Today At Cowtown Wakepark. That photo is pretty much a documentary look at what this poorly kept eyesore actually looks like. Litter and junk laying about. Green astro-turf atop a beached floating dock.

Applying a saturated boost to the above photo turns the astro-turf into an otherworldly shade of green. The pile of debris in the foreground now looks like some sort of carcass, ready for a BBQ pit. The water is almost an inviting shade of greenish blue. The grass looks so green one might think one was looking at Ireland.

Even if the Cowtown Wakeboard pond looked as good as the boosted version above, I still would not want to get in that water.....

Slowly Making My Way Through A Dense North Texas Fog To A Steaming Hot Tub

Last night in the middle of the night, as in at 3 in the morning, my phone went off with its incoming text message type noise.

After the phone woke me up I woke it up to find the message which woke me up was from AccuWeather, alerting me to the fact that a heavy fog would be blanketing North Texas by morning.

Why did I need to know this in the middle of the night? I must find out how to shut AccuWeather up. It's more annoying than Pete Delkus in Weather Drama Queen Mode.

By the time the sun arrived this morning following by me opening that which blocks the incoming sun from coming in my windows, it was obvious, without any sort of AccuWeather alert, that a heavy fog had descended upon the land.

I don't recollect seeing a pea soup thick fog of this level at my current location previously. This is like a thick fog rolling in from Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean. There is no ocean within hundreds of miles of my current location.

The foggy view in the above photo is from the vantage point of this morning's foggy hot tub soak. Normally in this view, without fog, you could see the redrock colored walls of Albertsons. This morning all you see is a wall of fog.

I do not know if it is safe to drive anywhere, what with this almost zero visibility thing happening. I suspect by the time I'm feeling like rolling any sort of wheels the fog will have lifted sufficiently to make it safe to do so.