Christmas Cards
Christmas card sending isn’t what it used to be. On the Friday before Christmas Day, I have received four and they are all great cards. I got my annual one from Andrea and former H-Town Mayor Bill White. Tessa and Eric Rudolphy and their dog Blue have a few photos on their card including one in front of Wrigley Field where the Astros are playing the Cubbies. Julie and Al Luna and their family have now grown to ten. I will see them all on Christmas Eve night. Margaret and Matt Luna, who are also on Julie and Al’s card, have sent their own card with their cute son Louis Robert who was born three months ago on September 17. Nice job.
The featured photo is a rerun of the cards I used to send out.
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The federal government shutdown is still in play thanks to the MAGA party.
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Remember when this fella ran for H-Town mayor five years ago. Here is a Chron headline today:
Tony Buzbee sued by Jane Doe in New York, claims embattled Houston attorney gave her venereal disease
Here is how the story begins:
An anonymous Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against Tony Buzbee in New York Thursday alleging the embattled Houston attorney gave her a venereal disease, according to court documents.
Buzbee, who is representing more than 100 alleged victims of Sean “Diddy” Combs in a civil suit, has recently become the center of a flurry of litigation alleging the Houston attorney engaged in fraud and other misconduct.
Buzbee told the Chronicle in a statement that this suit is just the latest move in a campaign to dissuade his firm from pursuing litigation against Combs and his associates.
“The conspiracy to discredit me and intimidate me from pursuing claims in the Diddy litigation has become criminal,” Buzbee said in an email. “This latest case, like the others, is frivolous, laughable and ridiculous and will be dismissed like the others.”
The Jane Doe alleged that she contracted the disease from Buzbee in 2018 after he flew her to Texas and seduced her, according to the suit. The woman claimed Buzbee concealed the disease during their initial intimate encounter, and later offered to represent her in a 2021 divorce proceeding in exchange for her silence.
“At Defendant’s insistence and direction, Plaintiff entered into a divorce agreement that resulted in a dramatic loss for Plaintiff, who otherwise stood to recover an equitable split of the marital assets,” the suit alleged.
Here is the entire read: Jane Doe sues Tony Buzbee in New York for legal malpractice.
This fella loves the limelight, and he is getting it.
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I mentioned recently that I now talk about college athletics because some players now have access to cash and can move around. In the past, the TV networks, coaches, and a few others made kazillions of dollars off the backs of the players. Now with this transfer portal, players are leaving their teams during the college bowl season to pursue better deals and playing time. See this column from the Chron today:
AUSTIN — College football, many observers are saying and screaming it loudly, is broken.
They’re wrong.
The sport is shattered and on shaky ground, at that.
Not that ratings are in decline.The sport is as popular as ever. ESPN’s GameDay averaged 2.2 million viewers for a 6% increase. Fandom is at a fever pitch in anticipation of the historic, 12-team College Football Playoff that will decide the best team on the field and not in back rooms. Sorry, Alabama.
But let’s be real. The system is in full chaos and desperately needs some solutions.
And fast.
“It’s a poor system right now that I think needs to be be looked at really hard to find a better mechanism,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said Thursday. “It’s a poor system and a poor calendar.”
Amen to that.
The advent of name, image and likeness has rocked the college athletics world with no guidelines and no restrictions. Was the Wild West ever this wild?
Everything’s a handshake deal, and the numbers blow our collective minds. Didn’t Michigan just “ink” a high school quarterback for an eight-figure sum?
We don’t have one, but two, transfer portal windows, the first coming before the actual season even ends. You know, the actual games, which seem to matter a bit. That’s an insane paradigm.
And we anxiously await the pending addition of revenue sharing with athletes for up to $20.5 million each year. Voluntary, of course. Your program is free to not participate and, of course, be banished to the ranks of the totally irrelevant purgatory. Right, Group of Five teams. Anyone seen the Pac-12 lately?
Here is the entire column by the Chron’s Kirk Bohls: UT football: Timing of transfers has sport in chaos ahead of CFP.
When reading this, I hope you were humming violin tunes in the background. Don’t forget the chaos that is created with all this conference realignment. I mean, SMU in the ACC. UCLA and USC in the Big Ten. The big-time college football programs created all this mess. They don’t get any sympathy from Commentary.
They also expanded the College Football Playoffs (CFP) to rake in more dough.
If greed has gotten out of hand, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Speaking of, the CFP starts this evening with Indiana at Notre Dame. Tomorrow features SMU at Penn State, Clemson at Texas, and Tennessee at Ohio State.
Enjoy the chaos, y’all.
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The Texans also play tomorrow at noon in Kansas City against the Chiefs. I am sure you know who will be in attendance.
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Christmas Day is in five days, and I don’t have anything to report from The Yard.
