Giant Black Snakes Attack Dallas

It’s not every day you get to put up two posts about snakes. The concept behind Susan Robb’s sculpture and what it’s doing in town are explained after the jump. (And, for the record, she calls them toobs.)

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Re: Museum to Change Name

Awhile back, when I spoke with PMNS CEO Nicole Small (pictured, with bear) for a short piece in our June issue about her gravidity and upcoming plans for the museum, I’d heard a big donation was in the works. Try as I did to pry something out of her (perhaps an unfortunate phrase, in this context, now that I think about it), she wouldn’t spill a word. (photo by Billy Surface)

Brad Oldham Poses at Future DART Stop With Subterranean Glass Snake

Once upon a time, Brad Oldham (on the left, with Brandon Oldenburg) almost got Eric and me killed. We were all on a rec league basketball team together. Brad was by far the best player (before the ACL went, he could jump out of gym). But he was also a hothead. One game, we played an all-Hispanic team. Brad egregiously elbowed one of the players, started shooting off his mouth, and then things quickly got racial. Our Hispanic point guard knew the other players and convinced them to give us a head start to our cars. Only by sprinting from the Centrum gym to our cars were we able to escape injury — injury that would have been deserved, by the way.

But that’s neither here nor there. Just fun for remembering. The point of this post is that Brad and his partners at Reel FX have been awarded a $1,365,000 contract to build sculptures at DART’s Deep Ellum rail station. Full release after the jump (which is just as tiny as Brad’s now).

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Museum to Change Name to Honor Ross (Not the One From Friends)

The Museum of Nature and Science just had itself a big news conference to make a Major Announcement. This just in from Intern Abby, on the scene:

The children of Ross and Margot Perot gave $50 million to the Museum of Nature and Science. So now it will be called the Ross Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Damn straight it will.

Update: The name will be the Perot Museum of Nature & Science. No “Ross.” More details.

Leading Off

1. DISD announces that the number of schools ranked “exemplary” or “recognized” by the state will double to nearly 100. (I know one proud papa with a thinning head of hair who will be glad to see Hexter Elementary on that list.) As well, the number of schools rated “academically unacceptable” will decrease more than 20 percent, to about 20. District officials made appropriately reserved remarks, saying these are steps in the right direction. Editors at Belo-owned companies vowed to redouble their efforts to find small instances of chicanery at DISD schools or within the administration and blow them out of proportion. “We won’t rest until this school system is brought down,” they said, “or we win some sort of mid-level journalism award for trying, whichever comes first.”

2. Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie says he and his wife will endorse Barack Obama. This is important because Richie is a superdelegate, although why he would reveal his secret identity to the press is a mystery to me. That’s not the way crime-fighting superdelegates did it in my day. Maybe he’s seen Iron Man.

3. Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief has a bobblehead. Please, let’s get to work on one for Tom Leppert. Please.