The State of Texas: Dec. 19, 2013

Thursday Playlist

Houston’s music scene is known for putting out some pretty solid tunes, so perhaps it’s not surprising that those artists are now producing some pretty solid music videos. Continuing their collection of awesome end-of-year lists, the Houston Press has put together the top five Houston music videos of 2013.

Daily Roundup

BP B.S. — Three years after the BP spill, the legal fights keep gushing. It took a jury a couple days, but they’ve convicted former BP engineer Kurt Mix, from Katy, of obstructing the 2010 investigation into the spill by deleting a string of text messages that described just how much oil was spilling out of the well. And in another case, BP is fighting off litigious vultures circling all that settlement cash. In the wake of its settlement costs, BP has filed its own lawsuit accusing a Texas lawyer of “brazen fraud.” More specifically, the lawyer is said to “represent [40,000] clients who turned out to be ‘phantoms.'” Those phantoms account for 80 percent of a $2.3 billion settlement program. It’s hard to feel sorry for BP, but it’s a shame more lawyers are making a buck off the disaster.

Wallace and Grumpy — Members of the House Select Committee, which has run a quasi-kangaroo trial of UT regent Wallace Hall, are downright upset that Hall won’t help in destroying his own career. According to the Dallas Morning News, committee chairman Representative Dan Flynn called Hall’s refusal to testify without a subpoena a “slap in the face.” And sounding a bit like a mafia don, Committee member Representative Charles Perry said Hall not testifying would leave a “bad taste” in Perry’s mouth. The committee has decided it won’t subpoena Hall.

Jingle Bell Theft — Ah, yes, that lovely time of year when Christmas holiday trees alight, children dream of break-dancing sugar plums, and thieves channel their inner Grinches to steal all the things. One Houston burglar stole from the “museum home of a former Texas governor,” according to the Houston Chronicle, with some of the loot including a “sword and an American Indian headdress.” There’s surveillance video and officials are now asking the public for help. One historical society official called the theft “shocking,” but so was the other Houston theft yesterday: a bank robbery with the culprit quietly demanding money from the teller “as customers were listening to a holiday choir performance.” It being the holiday season, the FBI has dubbed him the “Ebenezer Scrooge” bandit.

Unsafe At Any Speed — In news that’s unsurprising to any Lone Star transplant from another state, Texans were recently crowned the fourth-worst drivers in the U.S. The report came from a car insurance company and data was collected from a few organizations including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Motorists Association. Texas earned it’s fourth-worst status after considerations like fatalities, careless driving, and ignoring traffic signals. As CultureMap notes, though, “it’s a slight improvement from last year’s third place” and at least we’re not as bad as our eastern neighbor, Louisiana, which was declared first-worst.