Houston Museum of Fine Arts

http://www.mfah.org/

Click the link directly above to see the museum's web site.

They have free admission on Thursdays and also later hours.   We stopped by today & it seemed quite different from the last time I was there which was several years back.  There are two separate buildings and one of them houses displays of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and also Native American Art as well as some others that I can't remember right now.  They had a very nice persian rug in one room.  Across the street was a building that had Roman statues and also an ornately decorated coffin for a Roman general.   That is also the building with the paintings.   They really do have some good stuff over there and I would highly recommend a visit if you haven't been lately.  They also have a very attentive staff to make sure the art is not damaged or touched.  They also don't allow flash pictures in some areas and other areas they don't allow pictures at all.  There was one section with large paintings with biblical themes and there was one in particular that  I would have liked to take a picture of but it wasn't allowed.  I forgot the name of the artist so I have not been able to find it online but it was a scene with Solomon and the two mothers claiming ownership of the same baby.  There was also a dead baby and the dispute was who belonged to the live baby.  Of course Solomon in is wisdom is holding his sword over the baby getting ready to find out who the real mother is.  

Overall, most everything that I saw struck me as a bonified museum piece and I can only imagine the actual dollar value of some of the stuff on display.   Last time I went I saw a Van Gough and I am pretty sure they still own it but today the only ones I really recognized were the ones by Picasso.  They also had several from artists who tried to paint in the style of Picasso. 

In one section they had a child mummy in a glass display that alone was worth the visit.   I still have to go back because it was hard to move fast enough to take it all in properly.

The display of Native American art was not as extensive as I would have liked but it was truly amazing.  

The bottom line is that if you are near Houston you should check out the museums even if you don't think you would be interested.   Once you get there, you definitely realize that it is cool looking stuff and a good way to pass the time.    One tip I can give you is not to try to eat lunch around the museum district because there isn't much there. 

This one above is a Rembrandt that is owned by the Museum. 

Above is a pot from around 500 BC.  I noticed another smaller one in this section that had three legs also.

Baseball, Apple Pie, and steroids

The Roger Clemens trial is underway and you can read about it here if you want to:

 http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/baseball/other_mlb/view/20120418roger_clemens_jury_selection_like_slow_baseball_game/srvc=home&position=recent


It isn't my place to judge Roger Clemons, Barry Bonds, or Mark McGuire, but common sense will tell you that maybe Andy Pettit didn't lie when he said is friend Roger Clemons was using Steroids.

I was at Minute Made Park a few years ago when Barry Bonds broke Babe Ruth's walk record.  It was a magical moment.  I felt a connection to history and the significance of what Babe Ruth had done.  Turns out it was all phoney.

I used to think about what would have happened if Mohammed Ali faced Mike Tyson when they both were in thier prime.  If you take steroids out of the equation then Tyson probably wouldn't even have been considered. 

Steroids has been terrible for baseball.  In the short run it generated some interest when the home run records were being broken but it just comes down to cheating and that isn't what baseball is all about.

Roger Clemens should have just accepted the reality of the situation and kept his mouth shut.  He could have lived happily ever after with his millions of dollars and steroid shrunken penis.   I actually would like to believe he didn't use steroids and didn't lie to congress but somebody needs to explain why Andy Pettit would have lied and said he did and then I will give him a little more benefit of the doubt.

Little Joe YouTube Documentary

Here is a documentary of sorts that I ran accross when searching Little Joe on YouTube:

Watch it!

Little Joe on 45 rpm record

Little Joe Rocks it on this one back in 1963. 

I wasn't the only one who noticed

This morning I posted about the federal judge issuing what appeared to be a partisan order.  It appears that I wasn't the only one who got that impression:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/jerry-smith-obama-rebuke-questioned-legal-experts-213822371.html


..."I know and respect Judge Smith...But I am surprised to see a request to the Justice Department asking them to explain their views on judicial review," said Jeffries, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. "My position would be that judicial review is judicial review, whether you like it or not."

Other scholars concurred. University of Chicago Professor Geoffrey Stone told Yahoo News in an email that Obama wasn't actually questioning judicial review, but was cautioning the judges to remember the other branches of government. "Judge Smith's response was, in my view, quite inappropriate," he said. "It was an unmistakably political act that was well beyond the proper bounds of the judicial role."...

Too bad we don't have more judges like Sanders Sauls, the Democrat judge who ruled against Al Gore in the Florida election fiasco.   He understood that the responsibility placed on him was bigger than his own political viewpoint.

Hey Everybody Look at us! We are the 5th circuit and we want to be in the news.

Seems like the 5th circuit court of appeals has and empty docket and can move on to jump in the middle of partisan politics:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504564_162-57408827-504564/appeals-court-fires-back-at-obamas-comments-on-health-care-case/

I respect thier right to vote in November but when they call out the President of the United States for making comments about a law he signed, that is about as activist as it gets.  The whole thing has been turned over the Supreme Court so they need to remember thier place and do the specific job that the taxpayers are paying them to do.  

It is disheartening to hear that judges are behaving in such a silly manner because I know there are citizens depending on thier sound judgement.

We used to have a judge here in Houston who love to grab the spotlight by sentancing people to wear signs in public & other crap like that.  He was always on had to make a comment for the cameras.  His name is Ted Poe he is now an elected member of congress.   It just showed me that he wanted the free PR to promote his ownself and I have a general disdain for that type of bullshit.

couldn't even hurt a flea (even when I tried)

This past winter here in Houston was mild.  We didn't have a hard freeze that I remember and that means we will probably have plenty of misquitoes and fleas this year.   I am already noticing that the fleas are worse than normal.  We have some large shrubs that have attracted quite a few birds.  I am not a flea expert but I think they bring fleas with them. 

Last night I tried a little flea hunting experiment.   I read on the internet that you could make a flea trap using a candle and a dish of soapy water.   The idea is that the fleas will jump towards the heat and land in the soapy water.  It was suggested to be used indoors but I wanted to try it in the kennel area that extends from our patio.  It is not a kennel but more of a small wire fence that keeps our dogs from running to the edge of the yard and waking up the neighbors when we let them out at night to do thier business. 

I found a flat pan and filled it with soapy water and put a candle in the middle of it and placed it in the middle of the kennel.  I lit the candle and turned off the light  and went inside to allow time for my enginious plan to work.  I checked after about an hour and couldn't see any fleas but I decided to be patient and left the candle buring overnight.  This  morning I was all excited and went out with my reading glasses so I could get a good view of all the fleas that I had killed.  There was one June Bug and some miscellanous small gnat looking bugs and maybe one that looked like a flea but I wasn't sure.  I then dumped the soapy water in the yard, threw away the small pile of candle wax and ate a bowl of cheerios.

Little Joe Washington