We now know the former president and first lady have joined the tear-down club, but could they be connected to yet a third place on Daria Place?
1. The city is under pressure to write more parking tickets. If they don’t write enough — and it’ll be a stretch, since they only have 20 officers writing tickets these days — they have to pay a private company a penalty of up to $1,114,000. Yeah, I don’t know how that works either.
2. In other Dallas PD news, Accion America is calling on the department to create a task force to target crimes against immigrants in Pleasant Grove. If I had to guess, they’ll figure out a way to write more tickets first. Unless Accion America comes up with a way to make the city fork over a million bucks, too.
3. In still more DPD news, the murder total in 2009 was the lowest since the the mid-1960s, and the murder rate was the lowest per-capita since the ’50s. High fives all around, gang. Now get back to writing tickets. Tim got one already this week. So maybe focus on someone else in the office. Not Glenn. He still has all the relevant passwords to blog about it. Maybe Krista. She’ll go down without a fight. Unless I’ve read her completely wrong. Which is possible.
Have you ever seen All About Eve? Somehow I doubt Bette Davis could ever imagine any form of her great line–”Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”–used in conjunction with a dating show as bad as the season opener of The Bachelor. Apologies for how late this recap is, but I’ve procrastinated writing about this terrible show all day. Don’t get me wrong–this is a bad show all the time. But this episode was particularly hard to watch. I know, I know. Plenty of material. But good God. Forget making me embarrassed for womankind in general–this program makes me sad about being a person. But if we must talk about it, let’s do this. Jump if you care.
It’s either a stroke of marketing genius or a case of adding a stack of money to a stack of money that’s already burning. Read this DMN piece and figure it out. And thanks to hall-of-fame commenter Wes Mantooth for the assist.
Okay, a very tenuous local connection here – I really just want to link to this video. But yesterday Scott Cantrell offered his wish list for 2010, and at the top of the list was the desire for a more ambitious Dallas Opera. Hear, hear. Lo and behold, Dallas’s own Gorilla vs. Bear, while wondering what Swedish group The Knife is up to these days, unintentionally offers a suggestion: Tomorrow, in a year, an “electro-opera” written by The Knife and performed by the Danish theater group Hotel Pro Forma. Crazy/awesome stuff. An idea: produce this piece, which re-imagines the world through the eyes of Charles Darwin, alongside John Adams’ Doctor Atomic. Because we will get a production of that one in Dallas soon – right?
The formerly pro-capital punishment American Law Institute’s recent abandonment of its death penalty project is raising questions among people who like to argue about such matters, and although it may not be hyper-local, it is certainly relevant to execution-happy Texas. (The state executed 24 people in 2009, up from 19 in 2008. Alabama was a distant second, with six executions last year.)
The New York Times article quotes a law professor who says the ALI was “the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States,” and calls this “very bad news for the continued legitimacy of the death penalty.”
I’m sure there were some glasses raised on New Year’s Eve by our friends over at the DMN. And the Dec 31-to-Dec 31 measure doesn’t include the March low point of $.59, which would make its rebound up 1000% (the stock today is up to $6.00).
The conventional thinking that newspapers are dead (”My kids don’t read newspapers.” Ahem. When did kids ever read newspapers?) may need some revision. Here’s newspaper critic Allen Muter:
The average rise in publishing shares last year was 8.5 times better than the performance of the stock market as a whole. If you back out the total loss in value of the two publicly held publishers that went bankrupt in 2009, the shares of the surviving companies increased by an average of 200.6%.
The talk is about tech. It always will be. Tech is exciting and new (Android! Tablet! Nexus One!). But print performs. Forget the news. I say again, the newspaper is the single most effective delivery system ever devised, especially for printed coupons — the mainstay of American consumer commerce.
As part of the run-up to Super Bowl XLV — to be played in Arlington on Feb. 6, 2011 — the North Texas Host Committee has put together a list of the greatest 250 moments in the region’s football history. That history begins, according to them, with the 1912 game between Oklahoma and Texas in Fair Park (OU won, 21-6).
Fans will be able to vote on what they think are the greatest of those 250 nominated moments, and the top 100 will be revealed in the fall. The nomination list will be revealed at an event next Tuesday at Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas. On hand will be Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Tony Dorsett, Daryl Johnston, and Craig James, among others. Why is the event at Woodrow? Because it’s the only public high school in the country to produce two Heisman Trophy winners (Davey O’Brien and Tim Brown).
Tawnell Hobbs, who covers the district for the DMN posted yesterday a year-in-review list of major events in DISD last year. Does the list lean to the negative side? We could debate that. There were certainly some negative stories out of the district last year. But what I found even more interesting is that DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander jumped into the comments to list the district’s achievements last year. Scroll down, and check them out. Dare I say it? They’re impressive.
1. After three “rough landings” (one of which sure looked to me like a crash), the FAA is investigating American Airlines. Should you be worried? No, not at all. Really.
2. For the first time ever, Dr Pepper will buy a Super Bowl ad. Allow me to take this opportunity to say how much Dr Pepper’s “Drink It Slow” slogan gives me the fantods. Would an “ly” have ruined it? There’s no need to sacrifice good grammar to sell soda. That’s my slogan.
3. Hotly Contested House Races is the name of my band’s third album. It’s also what folks are expecting around these parts in the March primaries. Whatever. I lost interest after they gave women the right to vote.
I think I’m the only one in the office without an iPhone, but that didn’t stop me from being the first person (I believe) to design an iPhone App for D’s blogs thanks to AppMakr, the open source program that unveiled yesterday and lets you design iPhone apps for any ol’ url you feel like. The catch: it costs $199 to publish the thing, which is not bad considering, though I didn’t have it on me at 11:35 last night when I made this in all of six minutes. So all I can offer this morning are images of the un-launched D app after the jump. But here’s the challenge, creative and witty denizens of the FB Nation: out-do this. Design a better D app, or better yet, design one for someone else. Surely there needs to be a John Wiley Price iPhone app, right? I bet there’s an app design that could help Mary Suhm choose a new police chief. The site couldn’t be simpler. So . . . go.
So, I mentioned this earlier, but I want to remind you that Bachelorette castoff Jake will be looking for love tonight at 7 p.m. on ABC. I am watching it with the guhls, but if you don’t have friends (or rather, you have friends with better television taste than mine), head to Madison Avenue (2710 McKinney Ave.) for a watching party hosted by We Matchmake. Apparently, the entire bar has been reserved just for this momentous occasion. The first 20 folks to mention FrontBurner or drop my name get a free drink. That’s better than a poke in the eye! However, I expect you to pay attention. Take notes. We will discuss at length tomorrow.
The delightful Meredith Land at NBC Channel 5 asked me awhile back to contribute to something they’re calling “DFW 2010,” a series of reports on what North Texas will like like 10 years from now. My topic: who will be the movers and shakers. Presumably I was chosen to speak on the topic because I both move and shake (still haven’t watched the video from the company Christmas party). Also invited to participate in the segment was Brooke Hortenstine, the co-editrix of PaperCity. You can watch the video for yourself, but here’s my take: I could take Hortenstine in a street fight. (Also, the best part of my segment came not when I dispensed wisdom but when I pretended to do actual “office stuff” for what TV people call “B roll.)
Correction: Yes, I’m still having trouble with 2010. Apparently the future is already here. It’s really called “DFW 2020.” Normally this is where you say you regret the error. But I don’t.
Remember AFI Dallas? Had some funding issues last year? Was still a success? But AFI’s contract with the folks in Dallas expired? Right. That thing. Well, now it’ll be called the Dallas International Film Festival, it’ll be held in April, and its executive director will be Tanya Foster. But what about Michael Cain, you ask? He’ll become the chairman of the board of the Dallas Film Society, the overlords of the new DIFF (NB: no “A”). Jump for the full release.
Update: Still waiting for Fingers of Fury to get this up on Unfair Park. I remember when they used to break news. Shame.