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This Just Got a Lot More Interesting...

Kiss the Good 'Ol Boys System Goodbye (Judges Edition)



When more than 20 of Houston's Republican judges were voted out of office in November, Democrats rode a good showing by Barack Obama to the benches in force. Now it seems like Bill White thinks he could ride Houston to a Senate seat (I hope he does). I didn't expect too much "change" out of any of the new judges- necessarily indebted to the criminal court institution that bred them. Then this article about Kevin Fine changed my mind. There's just a lot more transparency- certainly a welcome change from racist and sexist forwards getting thrown around the DA's office. Check it out.

1859

When newly elected Texas judge Kevin D. Fine took his seat on the bench of Harris County's 177th Criminal District Court, he'll bring a bittersweet qualification to his position: recovering addict.
...

os gemos @ tate modern

Fine's professional trajectory may have appeared textbook, but his personal life was more like pulp fiction.

First, there's his love of racing. "I've always liked stuff that has a motor and goes fast," Fine says with a laugh. As a kid, he raced BMX and motorcross. In high school, he took up drag racing. During law school, his only mode of transportation was a Harley. Today he races dirt bikes, and did so until he broke his foot last January.

...

Then there are the black-and-white tattoos that cover a significant portion of his skin. Fine's right arm is completely "sleeved," or covered, with art. He also sports various designs on his left arm.

...

Raymond Pettibon

He smoked his first joint in sixth grade, he recalls, when the group he was hanging out with ducked behind the back of a gas station next to the local skating rink.

Then he moved from Lubbock to Virginia and made new friends. "The first people I met were potheads, and I started smoking pot, and it did something to me," he recalls. By 14, he says he was smoking marijuana and drinking beer every weekend, and by his senior year in high school, he had tried cocaine.

...

"I definitely led a double life," he says. In college, he was making good grades and was never late for class, yet he'd spend evenings and weekends in techno clubs, doing drugs, he says.

...

By early 1995, Fine says, his addiction demons were becoming more difficult to manage. He was now working ... in Lubbock, handling a case load that he says was about 90 percent criminal defense. He represented clients accused of all types of crimes, including DWI, DUI and drug cases. And yes, he says, he fully appreciated the irony.

"I knew I was just like those people. There had been many occasions where I was sitting in the courtroom, just name the county, and they brought out the guy in orange, and I said to myself, 'Man, that should be you,'" he says.

...

Andrea Galvani, La Morte di Un'Immagine #9

After about a month off, including 10 days of detox, Fine returned to the firm, juggling his case load with six months of intensive outpatient treatment, which included therapy and AA meetings, he says. It wasn't about earning money, he says, more like staying busy to stay clean and sober. Although it wasn't instantaneous, he says, "life was so much better and sweeter."

In 2000, however, Fine decided to move to Houston. "I love the guys at the firm, but I didn't care for Lubbock," he says. Houston, he says, was where the legal action was -- "where the big boys played ball." He started up a practice and in 2002 joined colleagues Stanley G. Schneider and W. Troy McKinney in their criminal defense firm, Schneider & McKinney.

...

"Every time I had a client with a substance abuse problem, and I knew they were willing to do whatever it took to stay clean, I did everything in my power to get them into treatment or some program to keep them out of the penitentiary," he says. "Several times I would tell the judge my own life experience... 'I've been where he is, and I am better, so if you give him a chance, he could [be better].'"

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AJ Liberto

As the presiding judge in the 177th Criminal District Court, Fine will hear all types of felony cases, "from state jail drug possession to capital murder cases."

Although he does not know the exact percentages of each type of felony, "it is my understanding that a very high percentage of the dockets are cases involving state jail felony offenses of possession of a controlled substance weighing less than one gram," he says.

According to statistics from the Harris County District Clerk's Office, county prosecutors filed 20,476 felony drug possession cases in 2007, a 40 percent rise over the previous year, and the county now runs four drug courts.

And that's precisely where he's prepared to make his mark. "I am nervous because it's a big responsibility," he says of taking the bench.

Jenny B. Davis
via law.com

Free Press Houston sez:

"Good thing the IDF is attacking all these scary terrorists in Gaza before they come attack us here. I am even more glad my US tax dollars underwrite these actions. Thanks guys!"




a dose of effervescent sarcasm overflowing out of your eyesockets at the table at Chili's while your mother and your sister scream but the waiter doesn't pay attention to them and then the blood starts to flow gathering in pools on napkins and in your chicken caeser salad
via Free Press Houston

Play them at the same time

Bob Log III
(skip to 4:41)


Congress

Yo! Thought you might want to post this?

Artist Opportunities


Performers Workshop with International Sensation Pascal Rambert
In conjunction with Mercury Baroque and Texan French Alliance for the Arts , DiverseWorks hosts internationally renowned Director, Choreographer and Curator Pascal Rambert for a two-day workshop.

Known for his incredible avant-garde interpretations of classics and new creations, Rambert seeks a new theatrical vocabulary, what he calls “real time writing,” a challenge to the centrality of text in dramatic presentation.

For Houston, he states:

I am the stage director of a contemporary French-American musical show that will b e presented at the Wortham Theatre in May 2009. I came to Houston in last August to prepare this artistic production. What struck me was the energy of the city. I would like to show this energy, coming from the numerous communities of Houston, on stage. This is the heart of my show. So I need you. If you like the idea of participating in the show, please come! No artistic knowledge is required. I’m just need you to be truly yourself.

Thank you.
Pascal Rambert

To participate in a workshop/audition that will take place on January 23 and 24, 2009, please contact julia@diverseworks.org

Born in 1962, Pascal Rambert began his career as a director in 1980 staging bold productions of Marivaux, Buchner, Brecht, Dario Fo and Shakespeare. In 1984, he began to direct his own plays in avant-garde theaters across France, in Nice, Lille, Rouen, Nanterre, Cherbourg and twice in the Avignon Festival (Le réveil, 1987; Les Parisiens, 1989). On previous working trips to the US, he mounted John Strand’s Burying Molière for the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU and his own play, Race, with the Los Angeles Povert y Department at California State University. In 1998, Rambert began work on his celebrated production of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which had early productions in New York (again at NYU), Marseille, France and Damascus, Syria, before its memorable presentation in a 25-acre sunflower field at the Avignon Festival in 2000. The years 2002-03 were devoted to workshops for PARADIS, a process recorded by Jean-Christian Riff for his film documentary, S’éloigner du Théâter (Leaving the Theater); the production had its premiere at the National Theater of La Colline. He is currently at work on Quand Nous Étions Punk and Car Washfor France 2, directing Philomela, the first opera by composer James Dillon, and Pan, an opera by Marc Monet for the National Opera of Strasbourg.

Don't Do It

Because too many people take themselves too seriously too often.

click it

FUUUUNK OUT

from da joanna

New Pics from the Museum of Unnatural History

Featuring Nancy the sci-fi docent :)

Well why don't you just put a dildo in my fishbowl

Aquarium by Matteo Cibic

Aw, shit that's funny- Wallpaper has the worst design crap of 2008. Enjoy.

via c-monstah

Feelin'

“You know The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche?”

The Phoenix Commotion, builds [homes] in Huntsville.

The house [Dan Phillips] working on now — his 12th in an oeuvre that’s garnered national attention — is made almost entirely from materials that had been bound for the trash. There are leftovers from other builders’ projects. Bits of broken mirrors. Wine corks and beer-bottle caps. T-shirts. Wood scraps. Signs discarded by a state park. Brown paper. And bones: beef bones, deer bones, even a whale rib.

By all rights, the place ought to look a mess, like “a slum admixture, or something out of Sanford and Son.” But it’s not a mess at all...

The secret, Dan says, is design and philosophy.

Which, like his materials, are free.

“You know The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche?” Dan asks.


“You know how he described the two strains of culture? There’s the Apollonian culture, where everything is crisp, tidy and perfect. And there’s the Dionysian culture, where everything is passionate and organic.

“If an Apollonian is hanging a picture, he gets out his level and his measuring tape and precisely centers the picture on the wall. If a Dionysian is hanging a picture, he takes the picture, holds it up to the wall, and goes, “Hmmm. Does this look about right?”

“Our building industry is entirely Apollonian. Architects pre-think their design, specifying these ideal materials and aiming to create these idealized shapes. They’re at a disadvantage. They work off in an office, drawing blueprints. They can’t get feedback from the materials and let the designs evolve.”

...

Recently, a butcher offered to give him as many beef bones as he wanted. Dan likes bone — it’s elemental, he says — and he recognized that beef bones could be treated like ivory. Bone, he decided, would be the motif he’d repeat , the concept that defines his project. The Bone House was born.

He tiled the kitchen counters with rectangles cut from rib bone. Bits of bone decorate the wood mosaic floor. Ribs form the balustrade on an upstairs balcony, and in the kitchen a jawbone with two gold teeth serves purely as a decorative flourish. Cross sections look like round tiles atop the stair treads. Outside, leg bones alternate with vertebrae over windows and under eaves...


excerpt from article by Lisa Gray
via Chron