World-renowed Rice University chemistry, physics and astronomy professor, Richard E. Smalley, died today at the age of 62. The Chronicle’s Eric Berger provides an excellent obituary of Professor Smalley, who was one of the best of Houston’s numerous fine scientists. Among his numerous awards, Professor Smalley won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Eric’s obituary passes along a fine anecdote about Professor Smalley’s Nobel award banquet that had been passed around Houston professional and business circles for years:

The chairman of Rice’s board of governors at the time [that Smalley was awarded the Nobel], William Barnett, recalled Smalley agonizing over whom to give the 10 tickets he had received for the awards banquet in Sweden. Barnett said Smalley gave two to his son, Chad, who later told his father he was bringing his mom, one of Smalley’s ex-wives. Smalley had three.
“I think his reaction was, ‘Oh lord, now I’ve got to ask the other one,'” Barnett said. “The Swedes were so taken with this, the joke going around the banquet was that they were going to tell Rick, if they had only known this in advance, they would have awarded him the peace prize as well.”

Among the interesting aspects about living in the Houston area are the interesting things that one can find near one of the area’s many bayous in residential areas within or near Houston’s inner loop:

A contractor hired by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department captured a 9-foot-long, 275-pound male alligator Thursday near Greens Bayou just outside Houston.
“He was removed without incident,” said Capt. Albert Lynch, a state game warden in Harris County, “but as many alligators as I’ve moved over the years, they usually do put up quite a fight.”
The alligator was caught right off Interstate 10 near the intersection of Normandy, in a flood-detention canal near Greens Bayou, . . .

Financially-strapped Six Flags, Inc. — the subject of an ongoing takeover battle — announced yesterday that it would close Houston’s AstroWorld theme park at the end of October and that it had engaged Cushman & Wakefield to market the valuable 109-acre site just south of the Reliant Park complex for sale.
The 37 year old theme park is overdue for finally being put to rest. AstroWorld was not originally a Six Flags Park, so it was not as well-planned as most other Six Flags Parks. Moreover, the park was landlocked from expansion and had poor relations with Harris County with regard to parking issues at adjacent Reliant Park. Consequently, Six Flags minimized capital expenditures at the park, which turned it into a decaying mess over the past several years. Thankfully, the value of the land is finally prompting Six Flags to put the underperforming park out of its misery.

Almost overlooked in the Hurricane Katrina news is this Chronicle article regarding the sentencings of two former Houston officials — Lee Brown Administration chief of staff Oliver Spellman and building services director Monique McGilbra — who entered into plea bargains in connection with their testimony for the prosecution in the criminal trial of Cleveland entreprenuer Nate Gray. Both Mr. Spellman and Ms. McGilbra admitted that they accepted cash and gifts from Mr. Gray in connection with his attempts to gain their influence in approving him for lucrative city contracts.
Last Friday, Ms. McGilbra received a three-year sentence in the criminal case against here in Cleveland, Ohio, and she received a concurrent two and a half year sentence earlier this week on a related criminal case against her here. Mr. Spellman received probation and a $10,000 fine last Friday in Cleveland for taking a $2,000 bribe from Mr. Gray.
Earlier posts on the Gray trial and the related investigation of Brown Administration officials are here, here, here, here and here.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle — the favored candidate of most of Houston’s criminal defense bar — was recommended to President Bush today by Texas Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to become the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. Mr. DeGabrielle will replace his former boss, Michael Shelby, who resigned in June to join Houston-based Fulbright & Jaworski’s white collar crime section.Chuck Rosenberg, a former chief of staff to U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey, has been the interim U.S. Attorney since Mr. Shelby’s resignation.
Inasmuch as Mr. DeGabrielle has been with the local U.S. Attorney’s office since 1986, he is well-known to the local criminal defense bar that has become somewhat frustrated with the revolving door nature of the U.S. Attorney’s job in Houston over the past decade. Given the misconduct of the Enron Task Force in a number of high-profile Enron-related criminal cases over the past year, a huge sigh of relief could be heard from Houston’s criminal defense bar when Mr. DeGabrielle was recommended instead of one of the prosecutors off of the Task Force, at least one of whom was known to have applied for the position. Mr. DeGabrielle and the rest of the local U.S. Attorney’s office recused themselves at the outset of the criminal investigation into Enron, which led to the creation of the Enron Task Force in the first place.
Meanwhile, Senators Hutchison and Cornyn also recommended to President Bush that Fulbright & Jaworski partner and well-known local maritime lawyer Gray Miller replace U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr., who is scheduled to take senior status at the end of this year.

The City of Houston webpage now provides this online search tool for reviewing current health department reports on Houston restaurants and other eating establishments. It’s sort of like an online version of Marvin Zindler‘s “Slime in the Ice Machine” local television segments.
As an aside, after watching one of Marvin’s slime machine reports while on his first evening visiting Houston several years ago, a London solicitor asked me the following question in that quintessentially understated manner shared by many British lawyers:

“To what parallel universe have I been transferred?”

Some of the online reports are quite interesting. For example, as a result of this one, my wife and daughters are going to be avoiding an inexplicably popular restaurant in the Galleria.