NBC has promised thousands of hours of Olympic coverage on 6+ networks. But not so in Lawton. First of all, two of the networks, Oxygen (a women's entertainment channel) and MSNBC are not available at all on Fidelity Cable (formerly Lawton Cablevision). Keep in mind, this is the only town I've ever seen that didn't have MSNBC. But alas, even the coverage on CNBC is shockingly unavailable in Lawton. It seems that CNBC is playing normal financial shows on a feed for cable companies who don't play ball, in other words, cable companies who don't also carry MSNBC and pay a premium for Olympic coverage. So now we're down three cable networks (not to mention Universal HD). We get regular NBC coverage on KFDX, USA network and the Espanol on Telemundo. Also, NBC offers multiple live streams online. But when I entered Lawton's zip code, the computer said I couldn't watch because Lawton Cable hadn't signed on. But a little subterfuge (telling the computer I was a Charter Cable subscriber at another zip code) seemed to work. That's a lot of effort to watch rowing and archery at 1 in the morning.

This is unofficial, but the Seattle Times has a map showing the rumored closings. seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/businesstechnology/
locationsofstarbucksstoresclosingacrossthenation.html

It shows the Sheridan Road location as closing as well as the Altus location. These make sense, as Starbucks has said closures would be of stores opened 2006 and after. If it's not true, Starbucks is getting what they deserve. By saying 600 stores are closing, but not saying which 600, they are leaving everyone to guess, so such conjecture is very predictable. It is as though they wanted people to think their store was closing.

UPDATE

It's official, Altus is closing as is Sheridan Road.

www.starbucks.com/aboutus/USStoreClosureInfo.pdf

15 closures overall in Oklahoma. 8 closed in Nebraska. Starbucks is abandoning middle America and small-town America.

Longtime KSWO chief meteorologist Pat Walker is blowing out of town, making an interesting move to Independent News Network, a shop in Davenport,Iowa that creates news content for TV stations in small cities that can't afford a full newsroom. In an industry of tornado chasing blowhards (see Eric Law), Walker was a fresh breeze of understatement.

Replacing him will be David Baxley, an Alabamian who leaves WAKA in Montgomery, a larger market, to come to Lawton. I wonder if he's related to Bill Baxley, who lost the race for Alabama governor in 1986.

So Starbucks announced that it is closing 600 underperforming stores that opened in the last two years. That no doubt sent shockwaves up my spine. You don't know how serious some of us here in the catacombs are about our caffeine. That said, on the positive side for Lawton, most of the stores to close will be located near other Starbucks according to a corporate statement. Our new Starbucks location is indeed not very far from the Cache Road location. On the other hand, urbanites know that in big-city downtowns, Starbucks are virtually across the street from each other, so we wonder if these are the targets. Be that as it may, we have noticed that the Sheridan Road location is much less crowded than the Cache Road location. It is also located between CiCi's, Dollar Tree and a cheap shoe store, hardly a place you expect to see Starbucks. Be that as it may, we feel secure the Cache Road location will survive and give the Sheridan location 50-50 odds of surviving.

Have you seen the workers at Ramada Inn on 2nd Avenue busily adding a new facade? Ten will get you 20 that they're not doing much to the interior. Hmm. I wonder why Ramada would update the exterior. It wouldn't have anything to do with Lawton's urban renewal plans, calling for the motel to be bought out and converted for the multi-use, residential retail (read Target store) development city planners have in mind, would it? The owners probably think they can shake an extra $50K out of the city by making the building look better. It's a horrible location for a motel anyway. And if you check the reviews at places like Tripadvisor.com, most guests hate it.

Just as a preview, here are the headings for the last nine reviews, and I'm not leaving any out.

"Horrible experience"

"Humid & moldy"

"Dirty"

"DIRTY, SMELLY & NASTY"

"This place is a flea motel"

"Stinky and stinky"

"Rude dump"

(My personal favorite) "Yuck"

and "More than the room was hot"

If you have a death wish, or are hoping for a rear ender to earn an insurance payday on your clunker, try driving up and down North Sheridan in the northbound lanes. Not only is street construction limiting you to one lane near the critical turn into Wal-Mart, now that the new Carl's Jr. is open, there is also traffic exiting and entering just beyond the traffic cones, creating all sorts of peril. It has long amazed me someone hasn't been killed pulling into Wal-Mart. You'll note that traffic entering Wal-Mart and the main entrance has the right-of-way over those turning into the parking lot's main exit. But many turning into Wal-Mart treat it like a four-way stop, often backing traffic up into Sheridan Road. It's an invitation to a T-bone accident.

Speaking of lane blockages, Arts For All is limiting access to the Water Department, Library and Police Department. I have to hand it to whoever erected those tents. I was stunned they all stood strong through our Wednesday thunderstorms. Speaking of those storms, this is turning into the best spring I've seen in years, perhaps even better than last year. We were a little too inundated last year.

So Lawton now is home to a professional sports championship. After dispatching teams from such larger cities as Atlanta and Albany, New York throughout the season and beating the similarly sized city of Yakima (though the team is named YakAMA in an evident homage to Barack ObAMA) the Oklahoma Cavalry (the team is now renamed Lawton-Ft. Sill, in an evident homage to Lawton-Ft. Sill) beat a team from a city a third the size of Lawton. Minot, North Dakota, pop. 37,000, is almost exactly the same size as Muskogee, Oklahoma. And while the rest of the world wasted it's time with March Madness, Lawtonians with high-speed internet could catch the Minot Webcast of the game complete with play-by-play from the young guy straight out of "Fargo" (Dontchano?)

Or you could listen to Chris Needham on Magic 95 (FAST BREAK, FAST BREAK, FAST BREAK) Or you could do what most Lawtonians will do, peer out tentatively at their stoop, see if anyone is looking, sneak out in their nightclothes long enough to grasp the paper, hustle back inside, and open up news of the Cavs triumph. Such is the way of small-time, big-league basketball. It still doesn't have the Americana of minor-league baseball, but it's a title. It's our title. And today, we are title town.

Let's see, yesterday there was an 80 percent chance of snow today and the forecast was for 3 to 5 inches. Then it was for 1 to 3 inches. Then it was for at least an inch. Now Skippy (Dan Zarrow) has the audacity to say it was TOO WARM to snow. Hey Skippy, it didn't even RAIN!!! (By the way, I was once told that exclamation points are substitutes for poor vocabulary, so there you have it) Can anyone count the number of times we've had snow forecast that didn't happen? Why don't they just go on the air and say "We have absolutely no idea." Just forecast the wind. They're usually pretty good at that. Say "It'll be windy tomorrow and it will be out of the north." or "out of the south." For some reason they can predict the wind, but not the rain. Speaking of wind, how about that stop light mast blowing down at 67th and Cache Road? What if there had been a car there at the fateful moment? Who would be sued? The city? the light signal mast makers? God? I have a hard time believing that those masts ought to blow over, even in the 50 mph winds we were having.

So yet another affront to good taste bit the dust this week. This weekend I sampled the fare at Fire Mountain, and it was even blander than normal. The grill was barely running. Now I know why. Everything was winding down. Not that the employees had much of a head's up. They were only informed a day or two before the end came. The parent company that also runs Ryan's filed for bankruptcy reorganization. I'm not a big Golden Corral buff, but the Corral has been clearly the better trough over the last couple of years. Plus, Golden Corral has that cool, older lady waitress with the orange hair.

Speaking gastronomically, Olive Garden has gotten off to an unusually rocky start. Waits of an hour are not uncommon, even in off-peak periods. Many diners say it is by far the smallest Olive Garden they have ever seen. And several have testified that the food is not up to typical Olive Garden standards, though some say the quality has slightly improved over the last month.

Has anyone else been blinded by the light of a thousand suns that is the new Ramon's advertising board on Gore after dark?

Speaking of not being able to stand the light, did you catch the LPD's explanation of the 70 percent increase in robberies? They count crime differently. Only they didn't say in what way they count crime differently. No one doubts that crime is up, not even the city or the LPD. This is the confluence of a number of factors, not the least of which is an undermanned LPD.