Articles for January, 2011
Things to Do in Dallas This Weekend: Jan 21-23
We’ve still got about five hours until the weekend officially begins, but I’ll go ahead and get the party started with two words.
Free. Pie.
Da Bears in Da Super Bowl? Moguls Weigh In
If the favored NFC team of energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens makes it to the Super Bowl here, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says security around the Feb. 6 game will be ramped up off the charts. Pickens says he’s rooting for the Chicago Bears to whip the Green Bay Packers this Sunday, mainly because Bears coach Lovie Smith coached at one time in Pickens’ native Oklahoma. And of course, if Da Bears do prevail, President Obama has vowed to attend the game at Jones’ Cowboys Stadium to support his hometown 11. Pickens, who’s a founding million-dollar sponsor for Super Bowl XLV, also will attend the big game along with 100 guests (family and friends). Says Jones: “We’re a five-star event for Homeland Security, just for the Super Bowl. What are we if the president comes? Off the Richter scale.” Whaddaya bet the feds are rooting for The Pack.
‘Nothing is Happening’ in Dallas? Says Who?
I really enjoy PvP, Scott Kurtz’s Eisner-winning comic strip about the staff of a video-game magazine called Player vs. Player. But something in the current storyline is sticking in my craw. Kurtz’s characters are moving from Dallas to Seattle, just as their creator did last year. The Jan. 7 edition includes a character’s assertions that “nothing is happening” in Dallas, while Seattle has “a very tech-savvy community.”
As Zac Crain recently found out, Dallas is awesome. And it is such a tech-savvy city, D CEO just published a special report on the subject.
Texas Tribune Adds Lege Bill Tracker
For all you budding would-be lobbyists or special-interest devotees or just plain regular good citizens, here is a great new tool for following bills introduced in the new session. You can choose by category or by representative/senator. You can read the bills. You can follow their progress or lack of same. You can decide which representative/senator is insane and which is actually doing the job you paid him to do.
Jean-Jacques Taylor Loves Him Some “Poppycock”
A complete accounting of each instance in which Dallas Morning News sports columnist Jean-Jacques Taylor has employed the word “poppycock” in his writing, just because I care about these sorts of things:
December 4, 2007: “Mike McCord, the Cowboys’ equipment manager the last 13 years, assigns numbers to free agents, rookies and new players. McCord wants you to believe it’s pure coincidence that DeMarcus Ware received No. 94, the same number as Charles Haley, the Cowboys’ last dominant pass rusher. He wants you to ignore the fact Ware and Haley play the same position, had similar heights and weights and skill sets. Poppycock.”
February 16, 2008: “Players get traded all the time because it’s in the franchise’s best interest. I have no problem with that because players get paid handsomely for that inconvenience. That said, I have no problem with George exercising his right to nix the trade. Now, I would like to hear the real reason — not the poppycock his agent wants us to believe.”
Ron Paul for Senate?,Ctd.
He’s not runninig, apparently. Instead, he’s waiting to see how the dollar does to decide on another presidential bid.
Hey, that’s what he said.
Leading Off (1/21/11)
Dallas Loses “Ultimate Super Bowl” Weekend. The financier behind the kid-friendly “Ultimate Super Bowl” weekend places the blame for having to move the event from South Dallas to Lancaster on the shoulders of Dallas City Councilman Tennel Atkins, and the expensive (and apparently growing) laundry list of things he was told he was required to do prior to the event. Fighting…the…urge…
NFL Gives First Glimpse at Super Bowl Tickets. I gotta ask – is it really such a big deal that Jerry’s Giant TeeVee Screen is not featured on the ticket? Still…fighting…
Alleged Park Cities Prostitute Arrested Again. Cynthia Martinez says she only gives body rubs. The police say, basically, that quotation marks should be around that. But now she got in trouble for alleged drug possession. Mug shot here.
Activists Want Arlington Teachers to Pack Heat. Two NRA members went before the Arlington ISD school board and outlined a proposal Thursday night to allow teachers to carry guns.
Weekends Are Far Too Short. Listen, I didn’t say it on the first item. Or the second item. It wouldn’t have made sense on the other two, but seriously – two-day weekends are too short. And that makes me sad.
Morning News Misses Big Picture
I have to take my former colleagues on the Morning News’ News Desk to task over a layout choice.
On Page 16A of today’s paper, there is a story about the final pre-Super Bowl meeting of the host committee. The story is accompanied by a photo of almost all of the committee’s 300-plus members. The caption IDs only three of them — Jerry Jones, Roger Staubach, and Bill Lively — but as I scanned the photo I also recognized Tony Dorsett, Ross Perot Jr., Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, state Sen. Royce West, and Pat Summerall, among others. It was sort of fun, like a civic version of Where’s Waldo?
The problem is, most of the people’s faces are too small to recognize because the photo isn’t even the largest one on the page. That honor was reserved for a file shot of a silhouetted Cowboys fan holding a beer. (Really.) I wish they had spiked that photo and run the group shot six columns wide.
As my former supervisor Marty Melendy often told me, “Go big or go home.”
Romenesko Tackles the “Rogers Situation”
I know, I know. Enough already. But this makes me sad, so I had to share it. Jim Romenesko has since changed the image, but here’s how his post originally appeared:
Westlake: Most Affluent Neighborhood in the Country
It must be tough to keep up with the Jonases in Westlake. With an estimated median household income of $250,000, Forbes.com has named it the most affluent neighborhood in the country.
The Town of Westlake, Texas, might be best-known for being the home of the Jonas Brothers. But this Dallas suburb, where Buffalo roam the ranch land, is crawling with the rich and famous. Texas Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton has a house there, as does his boss, Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg. Vernon Wells, the Toronto Blue Jays center fielder, is building a massive home in Westlake; New York Yankee Mark Teixeira already owns a house there that he’s been trying to sell.
Westlake boasts a Tom Fazio designed golf course and some famous golfers like K.J. Choi and Todd Hamilton live there, too. Former Exxon chief Lee Raymond is building a house in Westlake, which is already home to Matthew Rose, the CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, who is seen as a potential successor of Warren Buffett.
No word on whether Kevin Jonas’ plans to sell his home in Vaquero will affect the rankings.
The NYT Tackles the Texas Budget
What’s the matter with Texas, anyway? The New York Times takes a crack at the question with a package of four good opinion pieces about the “huge” budget deficit. (BTW the answer to the question, one commenter says, is “self-evident. It is filled with Texans.”)
Things to Do in Dallas Tonight: Jan 20
Google has informed me that it is exactly freezing right now in Dallas, and it doesn’t figure to get much warmer the rest of the day. So tonight feels like a good night to snuggle up with complete strangers and jump around to loud noises for an hour and a half.
Fortunately, we’ve got a trio of concerts lined up that will help you do just that, starting with Ozzy Osbourne’s show at the AAC. By my count, Ozzy’s been a part of 13 studio albums that have gone platinum over his 40-plus year career, and he’s managed to stay relevant and continue touring despite his well-documented eccentricities. Plus, he scores bonus points for his use of bad puns as album titles, like Blizzard of Ozz and Ozzmosis.
But maybe you’re not much of a metalhead. Well, my friend, your options are as follows: go see Keller Williams at the Granada, or catch Gaelic Storm at the House of Blues. Williams is a veritable one-man band, looping virtuosic guitar riffs over grooving bass lines to create music that crosses over quite a few genres. Gaelic Storm is an Irish outfit with peppy tunes that’ll make you jig like no one’s watching. Either way, you’re bound to pick a winner.
Or perhaps you feel like doing something else this evening. You can find it right here. Just make sure central heating is involved.
The “Rogers Situation” Spills Over to YMCA Locker Scandal
I received the following e-mail this morning from a FrontBurnervian who works downtown:
Imagine my surprise as I strolled through the T. Boone Pickens YMCA this morning, feeling good about my new gym membership, and wondering how long the waiting list for a full-size locker would prove to be, when I noticed that one of those very lockers was occupied by one Tim Rogers.
How did you wheedle your way into the good graces of the YMCA, Tim? Did you threaten the Y with bad publicity? Promise to expose their overly complicated parking payment situation? For the love of God, man, have you no shame? How many needy locker users did you bypass to secure your coveted spot? Will no one think of the children?
And that makes me sad,
[name withheld]
Leading Off (1/20/11)
Mavs End Losing Streak. Big win last night against the Lakers. Jason Kidd and Shawn Marion looked like they did a deal with Mephistopheles to give them the ability to play as if they were 10 years younger than they really are. I wonder what they promised Old Scratch in return? He doesn’t do favors like that for courtside seats.
The Rogers Situation Drags On. DMN reporter Tawnell Hobbs has written — reluctantly, it seems — a correction to her earlier story that implied my daughter took a pre-K spot from a needy kid. Now she tells us that there are only 171 kids on the wait list, that there are 501 open spots across the district, and that one of them, in fact, is at my daughter’s school. Thanks, Tawnell! You’re the best!
The Design District Booms. A developer is putting up a 23-story apartment tower in the Design District. Somewhere Shannon Wynne is stroking his long, white beard, laughing maniacally as he considers all that new business headed to his Meddlesome Moth.
Teacher Arrested for Peeping. If Fort Worth is good enough for ESPN’s Super Bowl broadcast, then it’s good enough for FrontBurner. A high school band director out there was arrested for being a peeping Tom. Cops found hundreds of pictures on his cellphone of buttocks and cleavage that he’d taken at school functions. Ladies, let’s be careful out there today.
Ron Paul for Senate?, Ctd
A new poll suggests he well could win it. Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen looks at the numbers:
A much more obscure Tea Party candidate, Debra Medina, got 19% of the vote in the primary for Governor last year even though she was running against two heavyweights in Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison. If she could get almost 20% against that pair, why couldn’t Paul get 30-40% against what’s likely to be a much weaker field of candidates?
That, of course, is enough to dominate in the primary and get him in good position for the inevitable runoff. By the way, PPP puts David Dewhurst in the lead with a couple of points more than Paul. I don’t believe it. That’s just name ID talking. Dewhurst may have money, and he may know how to pander, but in a real race he would come off as pandering. He’s fine in an obscure job (how many Texans know what the Lt. Gov actually does?) But these are tough times, and Repubicans are in a toughened mood. If the right candidates get in, we could be in for a good ole Texas brawl.
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