National Hot Dog Eating Contest Coming To Plano

I love this event and I challenge any of you big mouths out there to participate in the upcoming Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Championship that will take place at Sam’s Club in Plano on June 21 from 11:00am to 1:00pm. The competition has been happening in Coney Island since 1916 and last year’s champion, Joey Chestnut (what a great name), ate 66 dogs in 12 minutes. The pig out was televised on ESPN. I want a member of the SideDish/FrontBurner Nation to bring the Yellow Mustard Belt to Dallas. Let me hear from you if you are serious. In the meantime, sign up here. (Mrs. Joey Chestnut has such a great ring to it.)

Someone at Seagate is Hitting Mark Cuban Where It Hurts

Right in the hard drive.

Poor, Poor SMU Ponies

This just in: SMU athletics is suffering. By “just in,” I mean The Daily Campus reported it about a week ago. And by “reported,” I mean the paper published dollar figures to represent a trend that just about anyone who has driven on Mockingbird Lane on any given Saturday in autumn might have guessed. The lede:

Over the past four years, the SMU athletic department has lost $56.7 million.

The department is projected to lose $16.8 million in 2008 and $16.3 million in 2009.

If those projections hold up, the SMU athletic department will have lost almost $90 million over six years, figures far larger than previously published estimates.

As Athletic Director Steve Orsini points out, Division I programs typically run at a deficit, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to get the bottom line to look better. Still, the $2 million contract the school gave Coach June Jones tests the theory of “gotta spend money to make money.”

Procrastination is Part of the Creative Process™, Continued

I’m up to 300 award-winning words and three bluebird fledglings that have spent the day at my meal worm feeder. FrontBurnervian Birders, meet Larry, Curly, and Moe.

The New Cowboys Stadium Is Going to Be Big

Matthew Shelley is our office manager. On occasion, he also wields a camera for our Nightlife page. Plus he know jujitsu. So we dispatched him to the big press conference yesterday out at the Cowboys stadium site. After the jump, you’ll find his report (and more photos).

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We Shot JR Obama Benefit Postponed

Your Thursday night is now free. Says WSJR’s Stonedranger:

we had to cancel the obama event due to security issues, but we will be doing the same show with the same line up at a different venue some time in the next couple of weeks.

Procrastination is Part of the Creative Process™

I have worked at this magazine long enough to gain the distinction of Master Procrastinator™. What does it take to be a Master Procrastinator™? I’m so glad you asked. Around here, the first week of each month is filled with looming deadlines and blank computer screens, the perfect storm for closet cleaning, errand running, and the ultimate important task of bird watching. My desk faces a floor-to-ceiling window that looks over a yard that is currently filled with all kinds of birds and their young. To say that it is a live nature show is an understatement. Just a while ago I was focused and typing away on my travel column when my deep concentration was broken by a pair of Red-Headed Woodpeckers that landed about 30 yards away. I felt it was my duty to get out my camera and document this rare, for me, sighting. I hope you enjoy. Gotta go put the clothes in the dryer. Next.

Programming Note: Let Your Ears Think Today

The first hour of Think today will feature sometime D Magazine contributor Rawlins Gilliland talking about street food. Read his story in the May issue of the “print product,” then call in to the show and ask host Chris Boyd how much she’s looking forward to seeing yrs trly in a swimsuit this summer at our neighborhood pool. You know, or you could ask a question about tacos. Whatever.

Georg Schaeffler’s Complicated Love Life

Over the weekend, a fair number of people around town received an e-mail from Erika Nazem, owner of a Plano gym, saying that she’ll soon begin shooting a reality show about her life. Our friends at People Newspapers posted the e-mail. Who cares, right? Well, the thing is, Nazem has been romantically linked to Georg Schaeffler, a man who prefers to keep a low profile, and Nazem hinted in the e-mail that he might appear on this supposed show. I profiled Schaeffler in March 2007, in a story titled “The Billionaire Next Door.” At the time, I was told that Schaeffler and Nazem were breaking up. So I called Schaeffler’s D.C.-based lawyer to find out whether Dallas’ most under-the-radar billionaire was ready for his close-up.

Says Christopher Smith: “He did end his relationship with her about a year ago. It stays mostly off but it goes back on every once in a while. Georg is incredibly disappointed and frustrated with her shenanigans. He would never be on such a show. He won’t participate. If he were on a show like this, he’d be the laughing stock of Germany.”

So the question is, why would you send out an e-mail blast that would clearly anger your on-again, off-again reclusive billionaire boyfriend? My guess is that hell hath no fury.

Eh, Nazem?

What’s Up With FrontBurner: A Pseudo-Techie Explanation

Dear, kind, patient FrontBurnervians,

You may have noticed some strange things afoot on FrontBurner yesterday — things like posts disappearing, reappearing, and then disappearing again. You may have wondered a) Why would they do such a thing?, and b) Do they know magic? The answer to the second one is no (apart from a couple of card-tricks). The answer to the first is: It’s not our fault.

Okay, it’s *kind of* our fault. After weeks of planning and days of testing, we switched hosting servers over the weekend. I won’t go into the reasons why. But with the switch, we changed our DNS — you know, the thing that makes words like www.frontburner.dmagazine.com into numbers like 192.43.735830573053 (where the content actually is). We kept the old hosting server active as a precaution against losing data, but your ISP should know that it’s the old version and that there’s a newer one out there. If all had gone to plan, when you (and you and you and you) went to FrontBurner, the new DNS entry that we updated would have directed you to the data on the new hosting server. Worse case scenario, if your ISP had cached (remembered) the old hosting server’s numbers, that server should have told your browser “Nope, nothing to see here,” and your ISP would have looked around for two seconds and found the new hosting server’s numbers in the DNS listing, home of FrontBurner’s freshest content. But not all ISPs are cooperating (ie. they are not all looking for the new numbers), which is why you might see fresh FrontBurner at work but not at home. Or vice versa.

So that’s what happened and we know what’s going on, but we’re at the mercy of everyone’s individual ISPs to catch up. We’re removing the old version (all content will still be on FrontBurner, don’t worry), which should help speed up that process. And, as you probably could guess, the same situation has affected SideDish, DallasDirt, Overheard, and D Home’s blog.

Sorry, folks. (And a shout-out to Josh for working on — and helping me explain — the problem.)

Leading Off

1. Dallas police tracked criminals who stole an ATM from the Velvet Hookah in Deep Ellum, and nabbed them with the ATM still in the car. Which reminds me: I love the Velvet Hookah. And I’m currently out of cash.

2. Candy Evans is all over this story on DallasDirt: In Preston Hollow, a couple’s pit bulls have attacked neighbors walking their dogs for a second time. And they feel like everyone hates them. Awww. As you know, my sympathy for pit bull owners is nil. If you own one, and it attacks someone, I hope you go to jail, and they kill the dog. But I don’t hate you. That’s a little strong.

3. It looks as though HBO will feature the Dallas Cowboys in this season’s episodes of Hard Knocks. That noise you hear is Karma doubled over with laughter.