Pethouse Pet of the Week
Pet of the week: Bouncy border collie Daisy calls scoreboard on Chicago
Name: Daisy, as in Daisy Duke, Daisy Fuentes, Dagwood Bumstead's dog, and "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do."
Birthdate: Dec. 29, 2017. I'm just a pup, so "the password is patience."
Ethnicity: I'm a border collie mix, and you know how smart we are. In fact, if you train me to go on the newspaper, please put down the sports section. That way I can read Brian T. Smith's column before I go No. 1 on it. Love Smith's column — best by far in the Chronicle."
Come and get me: I'm available for adoption at 11 am Friday at Citizens for Animal Protection (17555 Katy Freeway; 281-497-0591). Tell them, "Ken sent me."
Daisy's diatribe: Got a couple of emails last week: "Did you read the article in the Chicago Tribune, where the art critic slammed a new sculpture in downtown Houston, saying it was a ripoff of a sculpture in Chicago?"
As a foremost authority on sculpture, I dug up the column and, frankly, it was so poorly written, I checked out halfway through. But I got the gist of it. The writer was using the two sculptures as a metaphor for comparing Chicago vs. Houston.
I spent 20 years at the Houston Chronicle answering lazy, buffet-busting, out-of-town writers who spent 48 hours in Houston — and decided that was plenty to unleash a rip job. (Apparently Golden Corral wasn't offering bread pudding when they were here.)
So I'm not going to get into comparing restaurant scenes and parkland and medical facilities and...well, practically everything. Let's just leave it at: people are fleeing Chicago in droves and starting new-and-improved lives in Houston. That tells you all you need to know.
How's this for a coincidental metaphor? The same night I tried to read the Chicago Tribune's sculpture review, the Chicago Bulls were visiting the Houston Rockets at Toyota Center. Maybe you can help me out. I was busy that night admiring a new statue in downtown Houston. Anybody know the score of the Chicago vs. Rockets game?
Houston vs. Chicago is not a shutout
Gotta admit, though, Chicago has Houston beat in one department: springtime pollen. I was on vacation recently, and when I returned to Houston ... I didn't know that I owned a yellow car.
My car was covered in an inch of yellow pollen and brown squiggles or whatever you call that deadly congestive crap that falls out of trees this time of year. By the time I drove home from the airport, I was coughing up organs and sounding like the Arby's "We have the meats" guy.
Which propelled me into the allergist's office for my annual chest X-ray and begging for the "good stuff" cough syrup.
Time's running out
Have you heard the commercial for True Car with "little known facts about basketball."
1. The original hoops for basketball were peach baskets. True that.
2. A warm basketball will bounce higher than a cold basketball. True that, too.
3. A pro basketball player can run as much as four miles during a game? I'm calling b.s. on that.
I got out my calculator: A basketball court is 94 feet. Let's round that up to 100 feet. There are 5,280 feet in a mile. Essentially, a player would have to run the full length of a court 224 times to reach four miles. I just don't see that.
After many more calculations (offensive touches, minutes played, position played (a guard runs a shorter distance than centers), I finally clicked on NBA statistics. They actually have a line for "average distance run during a game."
Jimmy Butler and LeBron James currently lead the NBA in average minutes played per game - 37.1 minutes.
After all the numbers are crunched, including switching players on defense, Butler averages 2.6 miles of distance run per game. King James averages 2.39 miles per game.
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Dog lover? Ken Hoffman introduces you to an adorable pup available for adoption in Houston, every Thursday.