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Strip club steaks beat Texas prison lunches; H-E-B cashier attacked in food fight.
Giving new meaning to the term bottomless brunch, a Houston strip club asked a federal judge to rule it could reopen as a restaurant under Gov. Greg Abbott’s guidelines. While sexually oriented businesses must remain closed for now, Club Onyx says it’s really a full-service restaurant, as its city health permit says — only with scantily clad accompaniment. Something akin to a steak house with a piano player, explained owner Eric Langan. Of course, a G-sharp is different than a G-string — even if the dancers had been donning their version of PPE: mask and swimsuit. The judge wasn’t entirely swayed. He allowed the club to serve up wings but hold the breasts. We’re not sure if it was strip steak, T-bone or ribeye, but we’re just glad no ribs or eyes were injured when an angry customer allegedly hurled a packaged steak and a bag of lettuce at an H-E-B cashier in Leander. The man’s beef was apparently over the grocer’s new limits on meat purchases. The suspect was quickly identified by police, banned from the store and cited with criminal trespassing and misdemeanor assault. The cashier was shook up, but at least the man’s dinner plans didn’t include a 10pound ham.
We know some folks who’d be only too happy to get a single steak — or any easily discernible protein at all. Prison food is usually bad, but the Marshall Project found that the pandemic has made it even harder to stomach. Texas inmates are reporting cold mushy lumps of mystery meat served in soggy white bread. In a word any Borscht Belt comedian would appreciate: the food is terrible — and such small portions! COVID-19 lockdowns mean the mess hall is closed and inmates have been getting bagged lunches, known as “johnny sacks,” at irregular times, leaving some prisoners to go to sleep hungry. You know things are rough when inmates long for the days of bread and water. Texas Sen. John Cornyn has good news for Americans who have lost their health insurance along with their jobs. “That is a significant life event, which makes you then eligible to sign up for the Affordable Care Act,” he told Austin
PBS this week. This would normally warrant a thumbs down, where we point out the massive hypocrisy in asking people to turn to a program that the senator has repeatedly tried to kill. Instead, we’ll join Cornyn on the bright side. We’re glad he recognizes the need for affordable health care that’s not tied to an employer. For his next act, he should convince fellow Republican Texas AG Ken Paxton to drop his Obamacare suit. Eccentric billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk apparently spoke with Abbott about moving the company’s headquarters from California to Texas. Musk was upset over pandemic restrictions on a Tesla factory when he tweeted he would trade the Golden State for the Lone Star State “immediately.” This would be good for Texas, but we urge caution during negotiations. The man and his partner named their baby X AE A-12.Who knows what he’d demand of state officials.
Houston said goodbye to the end of the universe this week — or at least to one of the two Starbucks that were christened as such by comedian Lewis Black. Its twin across West Gray survives, but the coffee shop at the River Oaks Shopping Center is gone with the froth. In Black’s bit, captured in the eponymous comedy record, the sight of the coffeehouse chain having locations across from each other blew his mind. We got excited for a second, thinking that in these dark times, maybe the end of the end of the universe signals the beginning … then we remembered that the surviving Starbucks has yet another sibling next door in the Barnes and Noble. It is indeed the end. Twinkies and cockroaches, meet your match. Among apocalyptic survivors, the Starbucks Siren stands triple tall.