Blogs

In December, Hair Balls brought you the story of Dymond Milburn, a 12-year-old girl whose family is suing several Galveston police officers after the cops allegedly beat and injured her while trying to arrest her for suspected prostitution. The lawsuit claims that the police hopped out of an unmarked car at night, did not identify themselves and tried to arrest Milburn in her yard when the girl began screaming for her parents and fighting back. Several weeks later, police arrested Milburn at her middle school on charges of resisting arrest. The officers' attorney has insisted that his clients did nothing wrong.
 
Our initial blog item spread across the Web like wildfire, and within days big boys like CNN, Good Morning America and Inside Edition were trying to book Milburn's attorney, Anthony Griffin, on their shows to discuss the case. But to no avail.
 
Griffin tells Hair Balls that he simply ignored their offers without even a return phone call because it was the holiday season and because, as a Galveston resident who survived Hurricane Ike, "I'm more concerned about the hurricane than I am anything else right now and getting my office back together," says Griffin.

Since the initial wave of reports and news stories about Milburn's lawsuit, not much new info about the case has surfaced. Until now.

If you're looking for a little Hump Day time waster, we suggest strangeusa.com, which lists haunted locales across the country. Houston has a bunch of them.

Many on the site are ones we've heard before - the Spaghetti Warehouse, La Carafe, the old Jeff Davis Hospital, various cemeteries - which are all, by the way, part of Discover Houston's Ghost Tours, which take place the fourth Friday of every month. What's interesting about strangeusa.com, is that the majority of its "haunted" spots are schools. Among the legends listed:

At Hogg Middle School, it's said that late at night, you can hear the footsteps of a famous gangster, who was supposedly dug up from his grave and hung from the flag pole as a practical joke back in the '30s or '40s (WTF)

At Austin High School, students feel someone following them, "but only on the third floor"

People here expend lots of energy bitching about how HISD implements a bond program -- and with good reason, god knows -- but they should see how things are done in the school district of Judson near San Antonio.

A Houston architectural firm is in the middle of a messy battle because the district essentially handed over the job of implementing a 2006 bond program of $236 million (including a $100 million high school) without seeking competing bids.

On the other hand, the folks at PBK Architects were nice enough to pay so that relevant district employees could golf at legendary golf courses Torrey Pines in San Diego and Spyglass in Pebble Beach, according to an audit.

The school district tried desperately to keep that audit hidden, but television station WOIA wormed it out and put it online.

Since its inception, Houston's Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care has been defined by mismanagement. Relegated to an unsightly corner of Houston's Fifth Ward, the facility, which operates with a staggeringly high 80-percent euthanasia rate, has been a historically low priority for Houston's leaders.

While other cities throughout the country have taken proactive measures to implement low-cost spay-and-neuter programs and create foster homes and successful off-site adoption centers, Houston's leadership has been apathetic, even though the city boasts a healthy population of animal welfare advocates crying for change.

(The Press has written about BARC here and here, among other stories.)

Recently, these advocates have begged the city to allow a "no-kill" shelter consultant named Nathan Winograd to inspect BARC and issue a public report. The city has tried to get Winograd to agree to prior restraint and baffling insurance demands, once again displaying typical resistance to reform.

While an outside assessment could only help, it remains to be seen whether Winograd is the man for the job. While his book, Redemption, is the Bible of the "no-kill" movement, it appears that very few people who've read the book have actually wanted to verify Winograd's claims, as well as his background.

That proposed restaurant in the River Oaks Shopping Center that had everyone up in Armani-clad arms?

It's not going to happen.

It wasn't the Lexus Revolution that killed it, though -- the city gave Weingarten Realty pretty much everything it asked for in the way of variances.

No, it was the economy that killed it. Food king Tony Vallone, who had planned to put in an Italian (really?) bistro in the spot that had rankled neighbors, told the River Oaks Examiner that he's dropping the idea for now.

You should feel really bad if you work for HISD and you didn't get a bonus this year.

The school district announced this morning that 88 percent of eligible employees got a bonus because of the "tremendous academic growth of its students."

The total handed out rose from $24 million last year to $31 million this year.

"HISD holds the highest of standards for academic student growth. We are so pleased that so many of our staff exceeded this standard" said HISD Superintendent of Schools Abelardo Saavedra. "It is great to be able to have a board that supports such a cutting-edge program to recognize employees for making a positive impact on the lives of students."

The average bonus was $2,777; the highest was $8,580.

Of course, things are more complicated than the HISD release implies.

Hair Balls talked to La Marque city manager almost two weeks ago about events in his city, which included a crime spree, a resigning mayor, and calls for, well, the city manager to leave too.

Robert Ewart admitted things were a bit hectic, but he indicated it wasn't anything he couldn't handle.

Not anymore.

Ewart resigned this week, telling city council members he was tired of "too much drama."

We're only days away from what's become known as America's biggest secular holiday -- the Super Bowl.

This year's match-up is underwhelming, to say the least: the Pittsburgh Steelers should beat the Arizona Cardinals easily enough.

But the atmosphere surrounding The Game has long become bigger than The Game Itself.

Which makes it even more stunning to think that, 35 years ago, the biggest game on earth was played amongst the leafy confines of the Rice University neighborhood.

Headlines that make you stand up and go "whoa": Well, not really.

Fox 26 reported on a Houstonian who got picked up in Thailand for his habit of diddling young children.

The headline? "Captured Fugitive Led Secret Life."

Nooooo shit. We're just shocked the guy chose not to follow what is apparently the standard fugitive modus operandi, which is to walk around wearing a t-shirt emblazoned "Arrest Me, Pigs," with his FBI case number underneath.

In case the headline wasn't obvious enough, there was the lede: "An accused sexual predator from Harris County led a secret life while avoiding capture for three years."

Damn....If it wasn't for that whole "secret life" thing, they might have caught him a whole lot sooner.

-- Richard Connelly

Bill Arning, the current curator of the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will assume his position as director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston on April 6, 2009.

His hiring ends a 10-month search.

"It was a long process," Arning tells Hair Balls, "but I'm very happy with the way it turned out."

Even before his career in the art world, he was a freelance writer and a proud member of a small punk band named The Student Teachers.

 "Mr. Arning impressed us not only with his experience and scholarship but also with his infectious energy and love of contemporary art," CAMH board chair Reggie Smith said the museum's official announcement. "He is an internationally respected art curator and writer whose prior experience as a director satisfies the Museum's long-standing conviction that a successful museum leader possess an understanding of both roles."

Arning will be taking over as director after Linda Shearer who has served as the CAMH interim director after Marti Mayo's departure from CAMH in June 2007.