What To Do On Monday

If you’re free from 5:30-7 p.m. and have a spare $10,000 or $15,000 lying around, that is. Actually, you can get in if you only have $1,000 lying around, too. Those are some of the prices of admission to a March 10 event to “thank” Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick at the Beverly Drive home of Terry and Robert Rowling. Thank the speaker for what exactly, we’re not sure. Rowling, Forbes magazine readers know, is the Omni Hotels magnate whose fortune is estimated at $6.2 billion. Wonder if they’d take a “check.”

What To Do This Weekend

If you’re not too busy with this, check out the 7th Annual Outside the Loop Festival, which started last night and goes through March 16. The week-and-a-half-long festival features theatre, dance, music, and art. For a full schedule and ticket information, visit the WaterTowerTheatre Web site.

Pitching Dallas: We’ll Be Awesome In 20 Years Or So!

Our Fearless City Leaders were in DC this morning, trying to drum up convention business and such. A report from a D.C.-based reporter:

It was basically a sales pitch to DC-based associations who might have trade shows or meetings or whatever to bring to Dallas in future years. It was promised that the mayor and the CEO of the Dallas CVB would discuss, “what’s hot for visitors in Dallas right now.”

I didn’t hear that. I heard the mayor talk about all kinds of stuff that will EVENTUALLY be hot. The Trinity. The arts district expansion. The park on Woodall. The convention center hotel. But, as you know, there’s a lot of stuff that has to be done on all of those projects — not the least of which is getting the convention center thing approved and the Trinity financed (which the Mayor acknowledged) before any of those things are ACTUALLY “hot.” Still, that’s sales, right? So, whatever.

The most interesting part to me was that, at my table, most of the pre-speech conversation was about DC. In part this was because most of the people at the table live in DC, including the two — TWO! — people who live in DC and work on behalf of the Dallas CVB here. So, we talked running trails and parks and the river and so on. You know, stuff Dallas would like more of. At one point, one of the CVB people said the Trinity would someday be like the Potomac. Then, he rethought and said, Dallas would actually be like San Diego and the Trinity would be like the ocean. He may have been kidding. I couldn’t tell.

Our breakfast conversation ended with a mention of chicken fried steak. There were a lot of “mmms” going around. Because, I can tell you for a fact: You can’t find chicken-fried steak in DC.

Friday Fun Revisited

Vegas is on and full trip is planned. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that “Carla” at American Airlines is one of my new favorite people: pleasant, helpful, and courteous. She mentioned the snowball effect of weather problems and seemed sincere when she apologized for my inconvenience. Go, Vegas.

Jessica Simpson News That, Surprisingly, Doesn’t Involve Tony Romo

Daisy Duke herself is appearing at Stonebriar Centre starting…now 11 AM tomorrow. She’ll be there til 1:00 promoting her new line of handbags. Want to meet her? You’ve got to fork out $75 or more.

The Primary That Never Ends

Tried to upload the latest unoffical results from the Texas Democratic Party, but I’m too klutzy to figure out how to do it. So you’ll have to do the work yourself. Start by going here.

UT Southwestern Prof Leads in Bush Library Design Contest

Thanks probably in large part to the publicity efforts of Fingers of Fury over at Unfair Park, a professor of biomedical communications at UT Southwestern by the name of Lewis Calver has an early lead in a contest set up by the Chronicle of Higher Education to design the new Bush library. Calver’s “Hole in the Ground” design so far has 30 percent of the votes. Go here, sign up for a free account (takes two minutes), and show Calver some contest love.

Bum Bright’s Old House Razed

Bum Bright’s former Lakeside Drive pad, seen here, has been torn down. It’s a corner lot, so I assume a CVS is going up.

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Friday Fun

Today’s Friday Fun isn’t very fun, but there’s a reason for that. It’s called Snowman Skiing and the object is to ski the snowman down the mountain to pick up snowman parts. Why is it intentionally not fun? Because technically I should be in Las Vegas right now having a different kind of fun, but my American Airlines flight yesterday afternoon was canceled. Then the American Airlines flight yesterday evening was canceled. Then we found out that there were zero American Airlines flights available for today. (Seems Southwest Airlines isn’t having any trouble … nor every other airline, so it seems.) So enjoy. If I ever get to Vegas, I might not come back.

Leading Off

1. The snow skirted Dallas proper, but hit hard west and north of town. Dallas and Collin counties are under a snow advisory until midday, which is a technical way of saying “the TV stations would like to stretch this out a few hours longer, for ratings purposes.”

2. Dirk was suspended last night against the Rockets. This did not, repeat, did not, lead to a victory.

3. Maybe I’ve seen the opening 10 minutes of Lost one time too many, but I think it’s kind of a big deal that Southwest Airlines is being fined more than $10 million for not immediately grounding jets that had cracks in them. Especially since there are allegations that FAA inspectors were asked to keep quiet about it. Murmur, and developing.

Basquiat Painting Still For Sale

MAASTRICHT, HOLLAND—Ahoy, FrontBurnervian art lovers. Last night I celebrated the close of the first day of TEFAF with 149 of my newest best friends in the international media at a dinner in the Fort Sint Pieter which is located about 50 feet above sea level  in the nosebleed section of Maastricht. All of the “critics” at my table were buzzing with reports of the day: one reporter witnessed a $500,000 earring sale at Graff Diamonds (the gal wore them out) while another didn’t get the price of a rare teapot transaction that was, according to her, “at least a couple of million as it was a one-of-a-kind.” (Whatever, if I had a million dollars, I’d buy you a teapot.) But before dinner I slinked back into the exposition to see if “Red Skull,” the battle scarred Basquiat was still up for sale. It was and this time I had my trusty little pocket camera. Above left is the complete painting; to the right,  a close up of the notch taken out when the painting fell. Somewhere in rock n’ roll hevean Jean-Michel is undoubtedly having a good laugh.  Meanwhile, in Maastricht, the show goes on.