Articles for December, 2010
Mark Cuban Just Might Put Together a College Football Playoff System
ESPN Dallas has a story about what happens when a billionaire reads a good book. The book is Death to the BCS, and the billionaire, of course, is Mark Cuban. If he does it, he’ll become an modern-day American hero.
NYTimes Census Map Reveals Dallas
I could spend all day with this excellent new interactive tool. It maps cities by race, income, housing, and education, with subsets in each category. For example, census tract 196 — the eastern portion of Highland Park — has a median household income of $157,000, and that’s probably because an astonishing 43 percent of its residents hold master’s degrees. Meanwhile the most explosive percentage growth in income in the last 10 years has been in the southern sector (on a very low base, but still), while some of the more affluent areas have actually lost ground.
FrontBurner Nation, here is a worthy way to waste an afternoon. Dig around in the data. Share your discoveries. There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. Tell us one of them.
Leading Off (12/16/10)
1. Who has the best title in Dallas today? Well, Dallas attorney John Barr, of course. Yesterday, he was named the new “graffiti czar.” I think we should all add czar to our titles. Tim is the documenting-a-garage-as-it’s-demolished czar. Zac is the writing-fictitious-stories-on-the-blog-while-on-deadline-for-the-print-edition czar. And Robert Jeffress is the Christmas czar. (I know Jeffress doesn’t work here, but I thought I should bring him up at least one more time in the blog).
2. Remember the story about the sex offender who had just registered as a sex offender in University Park, but not on the state database? Well, nothing’s changed.
3. A TCU athlete had a lot of college friends asking him to help them develop an exercise and diet plan. He thought, hm, if only these students had an app for that. So he created one. And now he’s going to be rich.
Movies Return to Highland Park Village
The popcorn won’t start popping at the Village Theatre until Saturday, but Georgia Fisher got a sneak peek at the renovated venue.
Jerry Jones Scores Cover of Texas Monthly “Bum Steers” Issue
Pretty solid “Bum Steers” cover this year from TexMo — though my copy-editing gene is driven absolutely nervous by the lack of commas after “buck up” and “Jerry and Bevo.”
For years, we did such an annual snarky review of newsmakers that we called our “Best & Worst” issue. From what I can remember, we stopped doing it with our January 2008 issue, the same month that Esquire stopped doing its famed “Dubious Achievement Awards.” Esquire editor David Granger wrote in that issue that the franchise had run its course because its descendants and imitators, available on the internet and TV “on a daily — if not instantaneous — basis,” had rendered it redundant (according to the New York Observer, which I used to refresh my memory). So, yeah. We’re just like Esquire, is the point I’m trying to make.
I do clearly remember the conversation I had with Wick when we killed “Best & Worst.” We actually had this conversation in the fall of 2008, as we were looking toward our January 2009 issue, with the benefit of having read Granger’s words (in January 2008, which means, really, November 2007, we had no idea that that would be the final installment of “B&W”). I fought the decision. We do a lot of reader service on our cover, and I always saw January as a month when we could do something different. Plus, I enjoy writing jokes and being snarky. Wick’s point was essentially Granger’s: used to be, rounding up all these oddball moments from the year was something of value. People hadn’t been overexposed to it. But by 2008 — and especially now — people are waterboarded with those oddball moments. They are the currency of social media. Sign on to Facebook and 15 of your friends will tell you about the postal worker who was arrested for delivering the mail while nude (to pick a non-local example). And, of course, we were one of those imitators that Granger was referring to. There were, and are, a lot of them.
Which brings me back to Indianapolis, Indiana-based TexMo. As I said, that’s a pretty good cover (though it falls short of the classic Dick Cheney cover from 2007). But I have to wonder. When will TexMo come around to the notion held at larger national magazines such as Esquire and D Magazine that this sort of year-end roundup feels stale and uninteresting? I think it’s pretty well-established that annual prediction issues are the future.
Lucky Magazine Calls the Dallas Shopping Scene “Balanced”
And also “inspirationally independent.” We’ll take it.
Things to Do in Dallas Tonight: Dec 15
Did I go out and buy a $100 knife after I started watching Top Chef? Maybe. And has that knife spent more time spreading peanut butter than julienning, um, anything? Maybe.
But now that I know that gastronomy isn’t my true calling, I find myself more intrigued by events like Loft 610’s Top Chef Guest Dinner, when I get to sit back and let the pros do the cooking. Former Shinsei chef Casey Thompson has teamed up with Loft gourmand Tre Wilcox to concoct a special menu for the evening, which includes dishes like jalapeno-marinated Texas shrimp, grilled Hudson Valley duck, and bacon-wrapped monkfish. What’s monkfish, you ask? Not sure, but it apparently looks like this.
Cap it all off with episode three of Top Chef All-Stars (they’ll be showing it at the restaurant), and I’d say you have yourself a night.
Dallas Is Trying to Scare Me Or Kill Me
As we all know, sometimes traversing the highways of Dallas is something regular people would do on a dare. But if you want to go home and you’re in Plano, you have to gird your loins and do it anyway.
But I really need Dallas drivers to do something for me: Please quit trying to kill me.
I’m on to you. Maybe it was just yesterday, but I swear to every known deity that 18-wheelers trying to turn INTO MY LANE, the 15 Mr. Magoos that tried to change lanes on top of me, and general vehicular tomfoolery made my commute less boring yesterday to say the least.
But the cherry on the top of last night’s commute? Sitting at the intersection of Walnut Hill and Marsh, waiting at a red light. A man begins walking on the crosswalk. He pauses at my car, walks over, and licks the window. Then, just as nonchalantly, he continued on across the street, never looking back.
I tell you, after avoiding death for a hour, that was almost enough to make me put the car in park right there, get out, walk the rest of the way home, put on sweat pants and never leave the house again. And seriously, window licker, I haven’t washed my car in a month. There were bird droppings on that window. You need to see a doctor now, because according to Dr. Google, you may die.
So, in summary, Dallas: Quit trying to kill me. And quit licking my car.
George Seay Gives Me Hope for the GOP
For those of us who have been forced to the outer rings of today’s Republican Party by disgust at its hypocrisy, cowardice, and — let’s admit it — signs of insanity, there are not many rays of hope (Chris Christie, maybe?). So when I read this profile in D CEO this month of Dallas’ George Seay — of the notable and philanthropic Seay family — I grabbed on to these sentences like a drowning man reaching for floating planks of wood.
Texas “cannot go the way of California or New Jersey,” Seay says. “We must maintain a pro-business and economically vibrant atmosphere.”
What’s the main obstacle to this goal? Republicans, Seay answers surprisingly—or some of the Republican establishment, at least. Though he declines to name names, Seay says the party has created an image of being angry and favoring big corporations, rather than standing for opportunity and entrepreneurs. “When anyone is in power for a long time, they get comfortable and complacent,” he says. “Hispanics and young people are not favorable to the Republican Party right now.”
Amen, brother.
Exxon Mobil Lawsuit: Has Texas Just Given Up?
The suit filed yesterday over Exxon Mobil’s massive pollution in Baytown is notable in that the giant oil producer didn’t even bother to deny the plaintiffs’ claim. In fact, this statement pretty much confirms it:
“As a concerned member of the Baytown community, we are fully committed to improving air quality for all workers and families in this area” refinery manager Steve Cope said in a statement. “We will continue to build on our recent successes and seek ways to address and advance the issues of environmental quality in this region.”
So if Exxon Mobil has been egregiously violating the law, why does it take outsider groups filing a federal lawsuit to call them on it? Where is the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality? At a Sunset hearing today in Austin, the agency will be reviewed. One recommendation is to stiffen the fines the TCEQ can assess; some say they are so low that they are not a deterrent. But surely there is a problem with the Commission’s makeup itself; all are appointees of Rick Perry. And their oversight — or lack of it — has resulted in Texas being “the nation’s leader in greenhouse gas emissions and industrial pollution.”
Leading Off (12/15/10)
1. Aaron Cheung owned a restaurant called Bacon & Friends, so you know he was a good guy. Which makes it sadder that he was killed in Lake Highlands by a man who stole Cheung’s wallet. Now that killer is going around using Cheung’s debit card, which isn’t quite as effective as leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for police to follow, but it’s close. Here’s hoping the perp gets what he deserves.
2. Speaking of notable names for enterprises, the West Side Gator Boyz, a “drug gang” operating on the west side of Dallas, is not having a good year. All three of its leaders have been busted. The third, Devinn Mitchell, just received a sentence of 170 months. (I’m thinking that Bacon and the Gator Boyz would be an excellent spinoff series from Rica y Chato, kinda like how Rhoda spun off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I’ll start workshopping that.)
3. Finally, how about something positive and uplifting to balance out all that murder and drug dealing? UTA professor Allan Saxe must be atoning for some horrible sin, to judge by all the good and generous acts the man continues to commit (giving away a $500,000 inheritance, paying to keep the Christmas lights lit on Arlington’s downtown library mall, etc.). What do you figure he did that was so bad? Drown a box of kittens? Anonymously deliver pot brownies to the teachers’ lounge at a montessori school? (Sorry, I went and took that one negative, too. Must be the season. I promise to improve my attitude.)
We Have A Heap of Tickets for Tonight’s Dallas Symphony Christmas Concert
As Jason mentioned, where you should be headed this evening is to FrontRow’s screening of Cinema Paradiso at the Texas Theatre. But if you have seen the film a ba-gillion times and are looking for something else to do with your evening, we are giving away four sets of four tickets to the DSO’s Christmas Celebration, presented by NorthPark Center.
Perfect Holiday Gift: D and D Home Magazines
And you can obtain both these fabulous publications through one of those new-fangled “Group On” offers, at just $19 for a year.
Burglars Steal Family’s Gifts – and Their Little Dog, Too
Listen, I know that breaking into houses and taking other people’s stuff is probably way fun. I mean, I hope. Because all the work involved – and the risk – in breaking and entering seems like it would be harder than, you know, getting an actual job. Unless the job is digging ditches or something. It might be easier than that.
But I digress.
My point is, breaking in during Christmas is a really, well, heir-to-the-Massengill-fortune thing to do. But you know what tops it? Stealing a family’s dog, too.
So criminals of the world, at the risk of sounding naive, would it be to much to give the family back their dog, and perhaps lay off at Christmas? I know the economy sucks, but it sucks for all of us.
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