An Observer Story You Ought to Read

Oh, how it pains me to praise the Phoenix-based Dallas Observer. But praise it I must.

Hold Up, Cliff Lee. There is Another Offer You Should Consider.

So. Now you know what you are worth to the Yankees. Seven years, $160-whatever million. Soon, the Rangers will tell you what their offer is. But there is another team you should consider: D Magazine.

First off, we don’t have a baseball team. But we do have an opening for an events editor! Or sales. Do you like sales? Do you think you’d be good at sales? I actually wouldn’t mind if you took that job instead, because I’ll get a little finder’s fee. I scratch your back, you scratch mine, etc. and so on. If you’re really stuck on the baseball thing, I recall that, once, Tim Rogers and I threw a hard rubber ball at each other for several minutes in the hallway. I’m sure, if you agree to come aboard, we’d be willing to do that again. That’s basically all you do anyway, right? There is also a Y, like, a block away.

What else? Oh, let’s see. Do you like coffee? We have coffee. We have so much coffee. Do you like having long, drawn-out discussions about grammar, like the kind of detailed discussion where each side exhaustively — and I mean ex-haust-ive-ly — makes its case, and then, do it all over again not a month later, because someone refuses to write these things down? WE DO THAT ALL THE TIME. What about hypotheticals — you know, like, if you were homeless, do you think you could live on Whole Foods samples, if you were able to keep a clean set of “going to Whole Foods for samples” clothes somewhere? We had that talk just a week ago. But we’d do it again. Really! No problem at all! We’ll even talk about fishing or Wal-mart or whatever people from Arkansas like. It’s okay! We all work with Tim; we’re used to feigning interest.

Also, if you have an iPhone, you get $50 a month.

Leading Off (12/9/10)

1. The war between the Dallas Morning News and Parkland continues. In this salvo, Sherry Jacobson writes a lengthy story in an effort to gin everyone up over the fact that a grieving mother hugged her daughter’s corpse at the funeral — and discovered that her organs had been removed! Summon lawyer Domingo Garcia! Release the hounds! And notice the bitter tone of Jacobson’s story when she uses quote marks to mock Parkland for apologizing for a “miscommunication.” Except here’s the thing: the miscommunication concerns a signed form that pretty clearly allows for the possibility of organ removal. And the family acknowledges that before the daughter died, she got excellent care at the hospital. This is a non-story. Or it’s a story about how Parkland did everything it could to save a woman’s life. The only reason the story runs in the paper today with this slant is because the News is at war with Parkland, and Jacobson, dutiful foot soldier she is, spent a lot of time combing through documents she got from an open-records request, so she had to write something.

2. The Dallas City Council voted to create four “solicitation-free” zones where panhandling is now illegal. Excellent. But I want to know who is going to pay for the printing and distribution of the maps that the homeless will now need to avoid breaking the law.

3. In the coming weeks, if you see Mayor Tom Leppert at a holiday party or the like, DO NOT HUG HIM. The guy cracked two ribs and shattered a third in a cycling accident on the L.B. Houston nature trail. (Good thing for him that he didn’t go to Parkland. They surely would have sucked out all his organs and left him for dead.)