Whoa — Judge orders “fair market estimation’ for property ALREADY SOLD at foreclosure auction
Read all about it in the Kansas City Star.
–rm
: Grubb & Ellis’ Robert Bach: Good news comes in threes
–rm
Is anybody going to straighten out Bobby Ewing on …
… what you call a big hole in the ground with water in it, on a ranch (or farm) in Texas?
It’s a tank, dang it, not a pond.
He called it a pond last week.
Hellooooo, “Dallas” writers!
–rm
‘Brimstone and crazy’ continues on ‘Dallas’ at 8 p.m., TNT!
“The smell of brimstone and crazy filed the air when I arrived back at Southfork. Could mean only one thing. Cliff Barnes.” — J.R. Ewing, today, in a post on the “Dallas” Facebook page.
“Woo hoo. Dallas. Bwah ha haaaa. It’s so, almost hyperbolic in campiness, yet every lick of it’s in the realm of possibility. I had forgotten that Cliff Barnes was Pammy’s brother.” — She Who Is My Wife, a Texas native, in an email just now.
–rm
Livin’ on ‘Dallas’ time?
The “Dallas” revival continues tonight on TNT! Be still my inner child of the ’80s!
What do you think so far? I mean, it’s about land (Southfork) and mineral rights and the awl bidness — and, to really bring the storyline and the Ewing clan up to date, it’s got an alternative energy thing going.
Oh, and there is plenty of Texas cheese.
The new series started with John Ross Ewing, J.R.’s son, completing a well on Southfork (unknown to Bobby, who promised his mama, Miss Ellie, that nary a drillin’ rig would poke a hole in sacred Southfork).
The rig looked like it was made by Tonka. Or maybe it was a water well-drilling rig converted. Anyway, when the well came in, up blasted the crude — and then down it showered on John Ross and his crew — like it was the 1930′s or something. I observed to my wife: “I think the people who made ‘Twister’ are the ones who made the new ‘Dallas.’ ”
When the well popped, John Ross was catching a snooze on a mattress set out apparently for just such purposes (and Lord only knows what else, knowin’ them Ewingses) — and danged if in his excitement he didn’t doff his cowboy hat AND TOSS IT ON THE BED.
(Who can blame him? A few clicks on a soon oil-sheened laptop by his girlfriend, or fiance, or ex, I couldn’t keep them straight, revealed that the well was coming in at a rate of TEN THOUSAND BARRELS a day! From a pool of TWO BILLION BARRELS under Southfork! And it was all new news! “Whoop,” they hollered, “eeee!”)
BUT: Everybody knows that in the cowboy world John Ross was just asking for T-R-O-U-B-L-E. It is major BAD LUCK to throw your hat on a bed! Geez. What a plot portent.
If the “Dallas” writers knew that, if they knew what John Ross was doing, they’ll flash back to that scene and note that long-held cowboy hat superstition when John Ross gets into trouble, as he surely will.
But I wouldn’t count on it. Later, when Bobby finds out about the well on the sweet soil of sweet Miss Ellie’s Southfork, he heads to court and sends out the sheriff to stop the well in its tracks and John Ross in his boots. And he apologizes to the roughnecks, allowing as to how he knows times are hard in the awl bidness and that he hopes they can find other work.
Which suggests that the writers really don’t know the story of the awl patch right now, and probably know less about the cattle bidness and cowboy lore.
On Bobby’s side of the family, his adopted son, Chris Ewing, is going whole hog into the alternative energy bidness, specifically harvesting methane hydrates. That’s ice that burns, as demonstrated — maybe with a chunk of some dry ice doused with Red Devil or Ronsonol or something — last week.
Now, I know nothing about methane hydrates, but a friend of mine who does told me that the problems Chris and his experimental harvesting crew encountered — seaquakes in the China Sea, I think — are entirely plausible, since methane hydrates are extremely volatile and harvesting them would be fraught with explosive danger.
Will “Dallas” continue to engage the energy business and land-use issues, however faultily? Or will awl wells and hats and cows soon become no more than props for another nighttime horse opera? We’ll find out. Here’s hoping the writers at least try to keep the show and its already preposterous plots plugged into the real world.
And it’s a shame the show isn’t set in Oklahoma City, where the real action is in energy.
–rm
Behold: Edmond, OK
Cool video by Insight Visual Media Productions.
More from Insight Visual Media Productions.
–rm
: Thinking, and building, inside the box: Cool Sears & Roebuck kit houses
See ‘em here, http://www.retronaut.co/2012/06/sears-roebuck-kit-houses-1923/.
First seen here: http://www.facebook.com/TheRetroscope.
–rm
Methodist church house for sale in McAlester, OK
By Jeanne LeFlore, Staff Writer
McALESTER — The Grand Avenue Methodist Church is for sale with the anticipation that buyers will not destroy the historical building but keep the memory and the culture of the church alive.
It can be all yours for $250,000.
Read all about it from the McAlester News-Capital.
–rm
Mayor Cornett: Help increase the Power of the Beard!
My Facebook friend Mark Davies says of the NBA Finals and the Thunder:
“Okay, whoever knows Mayor Cornett well, ask him to declare the Oklahoma City area a ‘no shaving zone’ for all men until the end of the series to increase the Power of the Beard.”
Seconded!
–rm
Lost home equity by any other name (say, ‘reduced household debt service’) is still lost home equity
So, it wasn’t terribly huge news this week when the Federal Reserve released data showing that Americans’ net worth plummeted almost 40 percent from 2007 to 2010. After all, that was the worst of the Great Recession and included the bottom of the housing market. And vast amounts of home equity, most of it “on paper,” evaporated like so much disappearing ink.
Not terribly huge news, but terrible — turrible even — nonetheless.
But maybe it’s all in how you say it. Robert Bachman, chief economist for Grubb & Ellis, put it differently in his weekly Good News Friday commentary. Households, he wrote, have been “quietly deleveraging” since 2007.
Households have been deleveraging since the third quarter of 2007. The household debt service ratio (DSR), the ratio of outstanding mortgage and consumer debt to disposable personal income, ended last year’s fourth quarter at 10.9 percent, its lowest level since the second quarter of 1994. The financial obligations ratio (FOR), a broader measure that adds auto lease payments, rental payments on tenant-occupied property, homeowners’ insurance and property taxes to the DSR, ended the fourth quarter at 15.9 percent, its lowest level since the second quarter of 1984.
This rapid deleveraging has occurred in concert with steady, moderate gains in retail sales since the recession ended, suggesting that consumers have struck a balance between, on the one hand, spending for necessities and to satisfy pent-up demand, and on the other hand, putting their household balance sheets in order. This balancing act is keeping the economy afloat (consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of gross domestic product) and, at the same time, restraining the pace of the recovery – the reason it feels so unsatisfying. The global economy is at a precarious point right now, but the U.S. economy so far has been a counterbalance. With businesses easing back on their capital spending, consumers will have to carry the baton forward if the recovery is to continue. The deleveraging that has already occurred should give consumers a fighting chance to do that.
Am I missing something, or is Mr. Bachman just taking lemons and making lemonade?
–rm
