Articles for July 28th, 2010
Rick Perry Wants Me as His Homey Headquarters
I really hate to turn Gov. Rick down. He just sent the nicest video asking me to a Perry Home Headquarters. Yipes! Does that mean I would have to clean the place up? Is it like having a Tupperware party?
Then after asking me about that, he wanted to know if I could join him Saturday down in Austin to help launch his HQ Roundup to recruit other Perry Home Headquarters. Didn’t mention dinner, but I just know that he’d probably spring for some barbecue. Betcha he and Anita would even have us spend the night in his rental to show their appreciation.
Hate to tell him, but we’re already committed Saturday to taking a friend to the airport and then meeting up with a farrier in Cleburne who’s going to give pedicures to the equine members of our family.
Gee, Rick, if only you had asked earlier. We had to turn down the Clintons ages ago!
Celebrity Sighting: Jon Voight
An alert, fine-dining FrontBurnervian tells us:
Jon Voight was at Fearing’s last night, wearing his Varsity Blues jacket, no less. He is filming a new TV show called Lonestar and staying at the Ritz. I don’t know why he wears the jacket.
Because it was cold last night?
Frisco Family That Lost House Due to $800 HOA Debt to Get it Back
You may remember hearing about that Frisco family that lost their home because of $800 that they owed their homeowners association — while the husband was deployed to Iraq? Apparently, they’ve reached a settlement and will regain title.
Candy Evans has more on DallasDirt.
Manhattan Lounge in Uptown Dallas: A First-Take Review
You know what Dallas apparently doesn’t have enough of? Hip lounges where pretty people, all gussied up to attract the attentions of others of similar pulchritude, can go to escape the obscene mass of humanity that would dare to embrace the comfort of shorts on a July evening.
And so Manhattan Lounge, which opened last Friday, aims to fill the void. Our nightlife editor Christine Sracic has had a look inside the place. You’ve got to read about the restrooms, which have liberated the women of Uptown from the need for stalls.
What to Do in Dallas Tonight: July 28
Want to have something to talk about with your really cool friends? The ones with ironic glasses and hip T-shirts who fancy themselves pop culture experts? Get tickets to see Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier at the Granada Theater.
On an ordinary late-July night in Lakewood, I would probably recommend a dinner of chicken-fried steak and Bob Armstrong dip at Matt’s Rancho Martinez. However, knowing that your show is on Greenville Avenue with its 15 available free parking spaces, you’re best served arriving early and dining closer to the action. Aw Shucks is appropriately casual and fun for this occasion (and the crackers are free!). However, if it’s especially muggy out—and the data gathered from my command post here on the 21st floor suggest it may be—Café Izmir might be a more comfortable bet. Mmm. Tabouli.
The show is likely to induce side-splitting laughter, resulting in acute muscle pain of the torso. Before calling it a night, numb that pain with nature’s most agreeable analgesic, beer, at the Lakewood Landing. Sip your suds, relive the evening’s funniest moments, and impress yourself and others with your selections on the jukebox.
Tom Pauken Blasts “Bush Revisionists”
He lays it all out to Lloyd Grove over at The Daily Beast. One quote:
“The Bush years were a huge failure, both economically and internationally,” he tells me. “On the economy, we’re not doing anything to create private-sector jobs, and we’re losing our manufacturing base, but it didn’t happen overnight. It’s accelerating during the Obama administration, but from 1999 to 2009, we lost one-third of our U.S. manufacturing jobs. Five million good American jobs have gone away…”
Here’s the thing about Pauken. He is right. If more Republicans followed his lead in owning up to the truth, instead of clasping their hands over their mouths for fear of saying something that doesn’t follow the partisan script, conservative principles might stand a chance of revival.
News Readers Are Paying the Freight
Moroney delivered a flurry of figures yesterday in his talk to us, and Belo delivered a flurry of figures in its quarterly earnings report on Monday. Phillip Stone and I agree on the most important of those figures: circulation revenue now comprises 29% of its revenues. That’s the key to survival, as we’ve been telling you — and them — for years.
Final Report From My 19-Year-Old Shadow
I asked John Michel, recent St. Mark’s grad and my shadow yesterday, to tell us what he made of the experience. I think he acquits himself rather well. Pretty sure I’ll be working for him someday.
D is a unique publication (although I say this when the sole basis of my journalistic perspective is my conservative, highly-regulated high school newspaper). Ideas flow freely, none off-limits, and the writers’ language exudes personality. I can’t say I was surprised by the staff’s liveliness and openness, but, not before having seen such an atmosphere in person, I was refreshed; my perceptions of professionalism until today were dictated by visions of straight-laced, 9-to-5, number-crunching and document-devouring business tycoons and corporate lawyers. I enjoy the experiential, humane aspects of journalism, as I did in high school. I’ve always seen myself as a creature of habit and, thus, as someone who would find comfort in a more consistent desk job rather than in the mercurial life of a journalist. Today, however, made me rethink my self-image. Observing, identifying, and drawing one’s own conclusions about local and worldly events seems, to me, almost too recreational – too fun and rewarding – to be a real profession, although I see that the realities of making ends meet for a newspaper or magazine make journalism as difficult as the next job. In other words, my experience at D certainly attracted more than detracted from my interest in journalism, and I enjoyed it heartily.
Lastly, to the cynics who commented candidly on my previous posts: I know I’m idealistic, and I know I’m privileged. I realize I haven’t “had it hard” yet, and I’m well aware (and constantly reminded) that I can’t even conceive the imminent reality I’ll likely be faced with at some point in the next fifteen years: the cold, hard fact of having to work not just to satisfy my own self-worth or to enrich my resume, but to put food on the table. I don’t pretend to comprehend that future, but I recognize it, and I respect it.
And it sounds like I haven’t considered every job option yet – a place with long enough lunch breaks to make snarky comments to teenage bloggers on Tuesday afternoons sounds pretty good.
Stray Dog Stripped of That Status by Lodge Owner
On July 9, I alluded to a dog that kept tying up traffic near LBJ and Marsh by running out on the highway. It took a writer in Baltimore (and a link from Rawlins Gilliland) for me to find out that the story did indeed have a happy ending.
It appears that after radio personality Richard Hunter (who recently adopted one of Michael Vick’s pit bulls) and comedian Hal Sparks caught the dog with help from Operation Kindness, Dawn Rizos – owner of The Lodge – adopted the dog, now named Ace. Ace spends his time at the club well, as you can see from the photos in the story.
I love a happy ending early in the morning.
Correction: One should not post immediately after waking up. Ace is the writer’s dog. Rizos named her dog Alley. Word of advice: Never give up caffeine.
Get Your Groupon On With a $9 Subscription to D Magazine
Surely you’re familiar with the greatness of Groupon. The one-deal-a-day site uses “collective buying power” to get low, low prices on all sorts of stuff — including, today only, a subscription to D Magazine. Normally you’d pay $18 for a year’s subscription to that fine, full-color magazine. Today, you can get 12 issues for half that amount. You won’t regret your purchase. Probably.
Leading Off (7/28/10)
1. Yesterday DMN publisher Jim Moroney said the paper will soon announce its iPad app (which kinda means they already announced it). It can’t come soon enough for me, though, because on my iPad now, I can’t watch their video of the hot Russian (alleged) smuggler from Plano because of that whole Adobe-Apple pissing match. Seriously. The smuggler might need an app all to herself. I’d download that.
2. Speaking of how technology can make our lives more awesome, Dallas Police Chief David Brown told a group of homeowners that we need to use social media to bust bad guys. You can start by getting on the Facebook wall of the mom in item No. 3 and telling her to get her act together.
3. A Pleasant Grove woman whose children were found swimming unattended in a pool yesterday faces five counts of child abandonment. I’m unfriending her right now.
4. The autopsy reports were released on the Coppell mayor who killed her daughter and herself. Nothing surprising, really. Just tragic. That it appears so premeditated makes me think angry thoughts that I’m really in no position to have.
4. But let’s end on a high note, shall we? The Rangers and A’s were locked in a 1-1 tie last night when, in the bottom of the 10th, Nelson Cruz knocked one out of the park. Do you believe yet?
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