Pethouse Pet of the Week

Major has ideas about size of Astros parade, Diddy's new name, and WWE upset winners

This week's Pethouse Pet of the Week is an adorable beagle mix, available for adoption, who has strong opinions on who will win the World Wrestling Entertainment smackdowns in Houston, Sean "Diddy" Combs' new name, and how big the crowd really was at the Astros World Series championship parade, along with some other topics.

Pethouse Pet of the Week

Name: Major, as in Applewhite, and CBS News White House reporter Garrett. Fun fact: I used to work with Major Garrett at the old Houston Post. He was a bigger deal than I was. But look at me now, I'm a once-monthly guest on the John and Raheel Show on ESPN Radio 97.5 FM. I need a new agent.

Birthdate: Oct. 28, 2010. I'm in the prime of my life, nowhere close to applying for a reverse mortgage.

Ethnicity: I ain't nothing but a Hound Dog and Beagle combo platter. I weigh a tidy 48.4 pounds (Citizens for Animal Protection must have a new scale that's very precise). I come with portfolio, I know how to walk on a leash and I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, all four of them. I just passed a complete medical and dental examination, so I'm wrapped up and ready for delivery. Just look at me, am I the classic house pet or what? I'm even fixed. Like I was broken? Oh yeah, I am housebroken. I'm super friendly with children and other animals, so what are you waiting for? Let's get this show, and me, on the road.

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."

Major's musings:

For years, I've suspected that the Nathan's hot dogs you buy in the supermarket are not the same hot dogs they sell at Nathan's hot dog stands in malls and airports, or the Nathan's hot dogs that Joey Chestnut eats by the dozens in Coney Island on July 4. I maintain that Nathan's supermarket dogs are "skinless" and bland because they don't have "natural casing" like Nathan's restaurant dogs. So let's call in an expert witness for the prosecution:

"You're right," said Chestnut, the reigning hot dog eating champion. "Nathan's does make a hot dog with natural casing for supermarkets, but they're hard to find. Even if you do find them, a lot of people don't know how to cook them to get the right juicy snap. You have to cook them low and slow, then finish with high temperature. If you do that, the store-bought hot dogs can taste right. It takes some work."

I've looked — can't find a supermarket in Houston that sells Nathan's natural casing hot dogs. You can order them online at nathansfamous.com, though. "Natural casing" refers to the small intestines of sheep. Not to be crude (although any discussion of hot dogs tends in that direction), but natural casing is sort of like a super-thin condom for hot dogs. It's the skin that bursts and cracks when you cook hot dogs on a grill. Mmm, they taste 100 times better that way. And natural casing hot dogs don't have unplanned births of cocktail franks.

WWE winners

World Wrestling Entertainment is coming to Toyota Center for four unprecedented nights of mega-watt "sports entertainment." It starts Saturday with NXT Takeover, featuring the future heroes of WWE. Sunday night is the Survivor Series pay-per-view spectacular pitting superstars of Monday Night Raw vs. the crew from Smackdown Live. Monday night has Raw, followed by Smackdown Live on Tuesday. Quite simply, this will be the biggest, craziest span of wrestling in Houston history. Tickets for all events are available at houstontoyotacenter.com. As always, be careful of websites with similar-sounding names offering tickets to Toyota Center shows. Those are secondary market sellers. Check houstontoyotacenter.com first.

Here are my predictions for Survivor Series' headline matches:

Enzo Amore will cop the Cruiserweight title by giving Kalisto a well deserved whupping.
In tag action, the reunited Shield will beat the daylights out of the New Day. Intercontinental champ the Miz will stomp a mudhole in U.S. champ Baron Korbin. Smackdown women's champ Charlotte Flair will stop Raw titleholder Alexa Bliss in her tracks.
In a battle of tag-team champs, Cesaro and Sheamus will teach the Usos a lesson they won't soon forget.
In a traditional Survivor Series match, I'm going with the Smackdown team led by Shane O'Mac and John Cena over the Raw team captained by Kurt Angle and Triple H.
In the hot main event, let's pick Smackdown champ AJ Styles to tie up Suplex City like the George Washington Bridge (political humor in a homeless dog feature) by upsetting Raw's" Beast Incarnate" Brock Lesnar and his advocate Paul Heyman.

Brother Love

Rap artist, fashion designer and killer businessman Sean "Diddy" Combs has changed his name ... again. Now the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy, or P Diddy wants to be called, ready, Brother Love.

Combs may want to do hit up Wikipedia next time he changes his name. "Brother Love" is sort of taken, twice. First there was the Neil Diamond hit, "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show." More recently, and way more famously, Brother Love was a spoof character played on WWE television by Houston's own Bruce Prichard. Brother Love was the insincere, phony, money-grubbing televangelist who pretended to be interested in helping people, but really only cared about his personal wealth. Does Brother Love remind you of anybody?

Prichard now hosts a wildly popular podcast called Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard, available at mlwradio.com. He will host a live performance 1 p.m. Sunday at Houston's House of Blues. His special guest will be Josh Reddick, mullet-wearing wrestling nut and rightfielder for the WORLD SERIES CHAMPION HOUSTON ASTROS (never get tired of saying that). Tickets are $35 and $75, available at all Ticketmaster locations.

Astros crowd estimate

I'm getting a lot of emails asking for my estimate of how many people attended the Astros victory celebration downtown. Houston's excitable Mayor Sylvester Turner claims between 750,000 and one million. Here's the deal, I'm not going to rain on the Astros parade by giving a more realistic crowd estimate. The Astros brought so much joy to Houston, let's leave it at — it was a massive celebration and just what the doctor ordered for our city. I loved the whole thing, from spring training to Carlos Correa popping the question after Game 7 to our guys going on Saturday Night Live.

There will be another celebration next week our annual Thanksgiving Parade. Let's see what city officials claim for attendance, and then we'll bring that number back to Planet Earth.

Flying by the seat of his pants

It happened again - Monday night I flew from Frankfurt, Germany to Houston on a United Airlines flight (operated by Lufthansa). The pilot announced, "We've arrived 20 minutes early." Yay!

Uh-oh, "It seems our gate is occupied by another plane, so we're going to sit here a while until it opens up." That's grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory. I refuse to believe there wasn't one open gate at Bush-Intercontinental. It's a pretty big airport. So new rule (thanks Bill Maher): Pilots can't brag about an early arrival until the plane is at the gate, the seatbelt sign is turned off, and flight attendants are saying "buh-bye."

On a plus note: Lufthansa hands out a sensational welcome cookie to all passengers as they get on the plane. It's a giant Chocolate Chip and Cranberry cookie, weird combination but it works, and it's every bit as delicious as Doubletree Hotels' check-in cookie.

Buffet joins The Eagles

I don't know how to feel about this: the Eagles and Jimmy Buffett will do a stadium tour in 2018. Yes, it's a great pairing of perennial favorite acts, but Parrotheads love seeing Jimmy at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, where they can wear hula skirts and coconut bras and bounce beach balls on the lawn and do "Fins to the left, fins to the right." It's going to be different watching Buffett from the upper level at a stadium, and waiting for the Eagles to go on last. And should the Eagles go on last? Without singer Glenn Frey, are they still the act you've known for all these years?

Let's hope that Jimmy does his regular solo tour, too, and that includes a stop in The Woodlands.

The best two-sports athlete is......

I think the argument over "Who's the best two-sport athlete?" is now settled. And it's not Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders (baseball and football). It's got to be Mookie Betts, star outfielder for the Boston Red Sox. In addition to leading the BoSox to the American League East title in 2016 and 2017, Betts has a lifetime batting average of .292, higher than Jackson (.250) and Sanders (.263). Betts started the last two All-Star Games for the American League and won two straight Golden Glove Awards.

Betts also is an incredible bowler and last week rolled a perfect 300 game in an official Professional Bowlers Association tournament. Top that ... anybody.

Major needs a good home, He's available for adoption at Citizens for Animal Protection.

Major, beagle, Citizens for Animal Protection Pethouse Pet of the Week

Photo courtesy of Citizens for Animal Protection

Major needs a good home, He's available for adoption at Citizens for Animal Protection.

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game, set, zina.

Best of Ken Hoffman: Interviewing Houston's greatest tennis icon

ITATennis

Garrison, a tennis legend, is now the tennis director of Houston Parks and Recreation.

Editor's note: After the sudden death of beloved columnist Ken Hoffman on July 14, CultureMap is republishing some of our favorite "Hoffman's Houston" columns. In honor of the U.S. Open, here's Ken's interview with Houston tennis legend Zina Garrison; it was originally published on June 27, 2022.

As a child, Zina Garrison learned how to hit a tennis ball on the public courts at MacGregor Park during the 1970s and became, simply, the most accomplished player ever from Houston.

She developed into a Grand Slam champion, a Top 5 ranking in the world, Wimbledon finalist in 1990 with 20 tournament titles, Federation Cup captain, and Olympic gold medal winner and later Olympic coach.

Now Garrison is back where she started, only this time she’s devoted to making Houston a great place to learn and play tennis … again. Like she did.

“I am now the tennis director of Houston Parks and Recreation,” Garrison tells me. “I’m over all the public tennis programs and facilities. The job came open recently and I applied for it.”

Wait... she’s the greatest champion this city has ever produced — and she had to apply for that job?

“To be honest, I was more interested in the benefits than the money. As you get older, you start thinking differently,” she shares.

Unlike the major sports leagues in America, tennis doesn’t provide any healthcare insurance or assistance once a player, even a legend, retires.

“They’re working on it,” Garrison, 58, notes. “But as of now, nothing.”

Garrison said her first priority as Houston’s tennis director is to repair the public courts.

“I want to bring the public tennis facilities up to where I’d be proud, where everybody would be proud, to bring people to use our courts. There are cracks in the courts. Nothing’s really been done in the last 20 or maybe 30 years,” she says.

“I’ve traveled to Florida and some other places and they have really nice public courts. Tennis in Houston was really thriving for a while and we had nice courts and people could play in the parks. We had junior programs. We flourished. That’s my main goal.”

While I had Garrison on the phone, I served up some questions:

CultureMap: Wimbledon is on. You’re familiar with that tournament, right? Who are your picks to win the men’s side and women’s side?

Zina Garrison: Yes, I’m familiar with Wimbledon. I have my alarm set for the early morning so I can watch. I have a weird pick, a more personal pick, for the men.

I would love to see Rafael Nadal keep going on, but it’s going to be tough for him. The guy from Italy, Matteo Berrettini, I watched him play a couple of weeks ago and I think he’s going to surprise a lot of people. And I am absolutely in love with that little guy, Carlos Alcaraz, from Spain. He’s made me watch tennis again.

On the women’s side, I don’t think it will be Iga Swiatek. I think it’s just too hard to keep a streak like hers (35 matches in a row including the French Open title) going in today’s game. It’s really wide open. I don’t really have a pick, it’s just who comes in and plays well at the right time.

CM: What do you think about Natela Dzalamidze, the doubles player from Russian who switched her nationality to Georgia so she could play Wimbledon, which has banned players from Russian and Belarus this year?

ZG: I don’t like that she was able to do that. I was just on the phone with (former pro turned broadcaster) Chanda Rubin talking about what’s going on in tennis these days.

First of all, there is the human rights stuff that’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. We have to start forcing accountability for actions. A lot of people didn’t agree with what Wimbledon did, but I think they had to take a stand.

CM: The women’s GOAT is easy — it’s Serena. But who do you think is the men’s GOAT?

ZG: Wow, that’s a hard one. If you had asked me earlier this year, I would have said Roger Federer because of everything he’s accomplished. But right now I’m going to have to go with Nadal. Nadal has taken tennis to a whole ‘nother level, of getting people to watch, coming out of the pandemic, where he has matches and you think he can’t come back and he’s still grinding no matter what.

For me, he is the epitome of what we need in this world right now: Never give up but not be selfish about helping others. I know it sounds clichéd, but that’s what I’m going through right now.

CM: When I first met you, you were painfully shy. It was hard to get an answer out of you. Now you’re a TV commentator and a regular chatterbox. What happened?

ZG: I was an introvert but I had always been intrigued by people of wisdom. A lot of it came as I developed confidence in myself. I had always been told at a very young age, if you really knew me, I spoke a lot. If you didn’t know me, I would be quiet. I would only speak about things that I was extremely passionate about.

As I’ve gotten older, because of my experiences. I feel like I can help people so I’m not afraid to say what I want to say.

CM: Starting the week after Wimbledon, coaches will be allowed to communicate with men players during matches. Up to now, that’s only been allowed in the women’s game. Every other sport allows coaching. Do you think tennis should allow coaching, too?

ZG: I don’t think coaching should be allowed. That’s one of the great things about tennis. That’s a part of the sport, that you grow and figure things out. You learn to think for yourself.

There’s always been little signals from coaches, but now you have these full blown conversations. Another bad thing about allowing coaching is it gives the players the opportunity to blame a loss their coach. That’s not good for the sport.

CM: You were known for wiggling your butt when receiving serve. Did you know you were doing it? Did you do that on purpose?

ZG: It started off as kind of a joke with my coaches. They said, we need you to move your feet. I said, you mean like this?

So, it started as a joke but I realized that it helped get my feet moving: Okay, I’m going to keep doing this.

I’ll never forget that year after I got to the Wimbledon finals, 1990, I went over to Japan and there were 1,200 people there … and all of them started wiggling!

CM: What was the first extravagant thing you bought for yourself when the tennis prize money started rolling in?

ZG: It was 1982, and I bought a candy apple red Volkswagen convertible with a white top.

CM: You were on the Biggest Loser, the show where contestants compete against each other to lose weight. Let’s just say you didn’t win. Are you happy you went on that show, or do you regret it?

ZG: I was one of the first who had to leave the competition. (No, you were THE first.) It was an experience, but I probably shouldn’t have done it. I think I regret going on there. It wasn’t what I thought it was.

It was reality TV and at the time I didn’t know what reality TV was .I was more ready to get out of there than anything else.

CM: Now here’s the big question, Zina. For years, I’ve had a running disagreement with ESPN 97.5 FM morning host John Granato about which is a more demanding, tougher sport – golf or tennis?

Granato says it’s golf, because the tournament winner has to beat every other player that week, while in tennis the winner just has to beat seven players at most. And, each week, golfers have to contend with a different course.

But, I say it’s tennis because players have to be in top physical condition, while nearly anyone in any shape can win a golf major.

Plus, in golf, players have a caddy helping them make decisions. In tennis, players are on their own.

In golf, you can have a bad day on Thursday and still win the tournament. In tennis, if you have a bad day in the opening round, you’re on a plane out of there.

In golf, it’s the player against the course. There’s no defense in golf. In tennis, there’s a human opponent trying to beat you.

In golf, the ball is lying still. In tennis the ball is coming at you at 140 mph.

So which is the tougher sport, golf or tennis? I’m right ... right?

ZG: Are you serious? Who is this guy who says golf is harder? The answer is tennis and it’s not even close.

You’re playing against someone. You’re only controlling the ball when it’s on your side of the net. You can’t control what the other player is doing. It’s almost like a boxer coming at you.

You have to have both the physical and mental capacity to win. In golf, if you have a bad day, it’s because you’re having that bad day. There’s no opponent competing with you. So, I’m saying it’s tennis.

CM (note to John Granato): I win. Granted, it might have been the way I asked the question. Also, Garrison is a former tennis pro.

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Pethouse Pet of the Week

Major has ideas about size of Astros parade, Diddy's new name, and WWE upset winners

Major needs a good home, He's available for adoption at Citizens for Animal Protection.

Ben Stiller delivers lighthearted fun in new Hulu movie Nutcrackers

Houston’s 13 most festive holiday bars serve lots of Christmas cheer

Chopped champion's Indian-spiced fried chicken joint opens in Midtown

game, set, zina.

Best of Ken Hoffman: Interviewing Houston's greatest tennis icon