Thumbs: Root for the Rangers? Uh, no
That vacuuming sound you heard Monday night was Astros fans’ collective sigh after Rangers outfielder Adolis Garcia’s grand slam put Game 7 out of reach for good. There’s no point sugarcoating it: The ’Stros choked. The team’s inexplicable inability to win a single game in their own ballpark doomed them, along with some untimely terrible pitching from stalwarts Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier. So what do Astros fans do now? We’re tempted to throw our team merch in the back of the closet and shift attention to the surprisingly frisky Texans. Or what if, in a show of Lone Star Solidarity, we tip our caps to the Rangers for kicking our butts and cheer for them against the Diamondbacks in the World Series? Naaaaah: Too soon. Seeing Lina Hidalgo’s Twitter post of her wearing a Rangers hat — part of a friendly wager with Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins — our hearts sank. So we’ll watch the Rangers in the Series, but we won’t make a sound: We’ll be silently plotting our revenge next season.
In case the championship series loss wasn’t bitter enough, Astros fans also have to bid farewell to manager Dusty Baker. The 74-yearold announced Thursday that he’ll be hanging up his toothpick for good, one year after finally winning a World Series title. What can we say about Dusty that hasn’t already been said? The man is the epitome of class, composure and integrity. He restored an entire city’s faith in its baseball team after an ugly cheating scandal marred its first-ever championship. He seamlessly guided an eclectic clubhouse with both grizzled veterans and young upstarts. And man, what a career! An All-Star, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger winner as a player, and a three-time manager of the year with 2,183 wins on his ledger. Did we mention he was a lance corporal in the Marines, smoked a joint with Jimi Hendrix and quite possibly invented the high-five? The man is a damn legend. Dusty, we’d give you a gold watch to celebrate your retirement, but we agree with Paul Wall: A custom grill is far more fitting for Houston’s swaggiest skipper.
The Iraq War veteran’s job was simple. Get migrants at the border onto buses and out of Texas as fast as possible. A fan of Gov. Greg Abbott’s tough stance on immigration, David Dillard was eager to serve his country again, but in an interview with ABC News he explained why his views changed. Bus riders were not allowed to go “No. 2” and were forced to endure bathrooms overflowing with tampons, diapers and urine that flowed into the aisle. “I have pictures of it,” he said. “It’s disgusting and inhuman.” The migrants were misled
Also: Perfect swag for Baker; a war vet rediscovers America.
about their destinations and denied Wi-Fi, Dillard said, and his employers instructed him not to alert nonprofits to coordinate aid at their destinations. Once he was told to keep his passengers parked for 10 hours in Washington, D.C., until another bus arrived for a media spectacle outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris. But Dillard says that the main thing that changed his thinking happened on the first bus trip he accompanied to D.C. “Hey, there’s the White House,” he told the bus riders, and then, “There’s the Washington Monument right there.” That’s when the aging warrior experienced “the greatest feeling in the world.” Why? He said the bus riders “started clapping and crying, people were hugging, and from a U.S. soldier standpoint, that’s why I do this.” He added, “They were more American in that moment than I’d ever been in my entire life.”
Have you ever wondered what strange things go on inside Houston’s suburban McMansions? Well, now you can see for yourself. “Alpha Kings: Gen Z and the World of Financial Domination,” a 15-minute documentary by the New Yorker magazine, gives a taste of how weird life can be in Montgomery County. One scene shows “Alpha Robert” shirtless and leaning toward his webcam. “I want you all to go broke tonight,” he snarls at his online followers on Only Fans, commanding them to shower him with more and more tips until he eventually shows them his … socked feet. The film follows four such young men, and a girlfriend who appears to manage their accounts, as they make hundreds if not thousands of dollars per day by alternately insulting and then yielding to their patrons’ foot fetishes. “I think I’m a pretty average guy,” one of the men reflects after reading a particularly worshipful post from a fan. “How the f--- do they not know that nobody is perfect?” he wonders. There’s a softness then in that alpha’s eyes, a moment of compassion for the anguish and loneliness of his clients, before he gets back to the hard work of financial domination.
Will we ever understand the enigma that is Matthew McConaughey? His latest ad, for Pantalones tequila, is harder to make sense of than the plot of “True Detective.” The tequila’s name plays on the Spanish use of “pants” as slang for having guts, but in the ad, Mcconnaughey and his wife, Camila Alves, ride motorcycles down a desert road lined with agaves sin pantalones. “Please do not keep yours on,” they say in unison. Huh? All we can say is, depending on the party, at least you now have an easy Halloween costume option.