It was a Twin-Turbo Ford GT, which I guess is a thing. And now there is only one of them.
The Dallas Morning News had a chat with Herschel Walker, who is in town for an upcoming Strikeforce event (notice how I made it sound like I know what that is?). He says he’d like to fight Clint Black and Dennis Rodman at the same time.
So, dear FrontBurnervians, who would you like to fight two of at the same time?
Remember back in September when DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa was up for a gig in Las Vegas? A few people got their feelings hurt when they found out. But then Hinojosa didn’t get the job, and, as the folks over on the News‘ Dallas ISD blog point out, he said his heart was still in Dallas. “Now, I get to focus my energy for the next five years on the Dallas ISD,” Hinojosa said. “Our best days are still ahead. There’s still much work to do.” He also said he wouldn’t be looking for another job. “My name is off the market,” he said. He signed up for another three years.
Guess what? That was all a lie. As you’ll see on the Dallas ISD blog, it appears we will have confirmation this evening that Hinojosa is leaving to take another job. And the real slap in the face? The job is with a smaller district. In Georgia. For $120,000 less than he’s making now.
He should be run out of town on a rail.
Update (3:14) Big Bob has an interesting detail on the salary thing. By quitting DISD, Hinojosa will collect $180,000 per year from the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Good grief.
I’ve been seriously thinking about joining the Dallas chapter of the Alliance Française. Not because my French is actually that great, but because I seem to recall our friend David Brooks – columnist, author, and newly minted Internet meme – saying that joining a club is basically like giving yourself a happiness-shot equivalent to doubling your income. Sign me up.
Alliance de Dallas also happens to be hosting a wine tasting tonight at Calais (I’m not an alcoholic, guys. It just so happens that when the weather gets nice everyone seems to be hitting the bottle). The five different varieties of wine up for sipping include a port, which intrigues me. Very, very briefly, I was a hostess at a fancypants restaurant in Greenwich Village with a bar that stocked an impressive selection of the dessert wine. The servers were quizzed daily about it. I can’t say I’m sophisticated enough to enjoy drinking it too much– too sweet– but it does pack a nice boozey punch. And where would a tasting be without bread and cheese? Nowhere. Yum. I called over, and you can still get tickets via the club’s website. Reasonably priced, too, which is nice since I don’t actually see myself doubling my income anytime soon.
And last Thursday as I was leaving work around six, quite a few people had already staked out prime spots on the lawn for the DMA’s Jazz Under the Stars free concert series. One couple was building a really fancy looking wooden table. It wasn’t just one of those fold-up things, this was a legit effort. I guess the early bird gets the worm, since the music doesn’t actually start until 8 pm. The One O’Clock Lab Band from UNT pretty much guarantees a delightful time. Just watch the weather, because what might have been a romantic picnic could also be a soggy mess. No glass containers allowed, so bring a thermos of whatever you’d like to drink if it doesn’t come in cans. Bonus points if you have one of these extremely realistic cell phone flasks.
Looking for something else to do this evening? It’ll be over here.
Something like that. Yesterday’s Financial Times had a piece about how Dallas might serve as a model for how the American economy can move forward. Our fair city is having a “normal recovery” while the rest of the nation is stuck with a “speed limit” recovery, the paper says. (Check out the oddly simplistic photo illustration they used to sum up this idea.)
The reasons they give you’ve probably heard before: the 1980s banking depression in Texas made our bankers less likely to pursue risky practices, the rise in oil prices is a boost to our energy industry even as it’s a pain for those of us at the pump, and we Texans are just so gosh-darn optimistic.
Within these many words of analysis by a respected financial newspaper, there are some strange (yet standard) tactics for underlining points. For instance, how’s the local housing market doing? Let’s ask a real estate agent – after all, they’re never prone to exaggeration. (It’s going “gangbusters,” by the way.) Â And how’s the Dallas economy as a whole? Â Let’s count cranes downtown:
Crane counting is an economic indicator that works anywhere. At the height of the 2005-06 boom you could see 11 of them from the windows of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. In the recession that followed, they all vanished.
Look out at downtown Dallas today and you will count six cranes. There is a recovery under way in this city at the heart of Texas, at the heart of America.
So what does it say about us that three of those cranes, as of yesterday, were working on First Baptist Church?
Anderson Cooper has added the Dallas County Republican Party to “The Ridiculist.” Why? Because at last night’s special election to replace chairman Jonathan Neerman, they chose Wade Emmert over Debbie Georgatos. And why was that such a bad move? Well, because judging from her campaign video, Debbie Georgatos is outer-limits nutbar. You have to watch this yourself. My favorite part is the “super-massive blue hole” and the knock on Detroit. Amazing.
Family Spotlighted on Oprah Today. Be careful while watching this story. You’re going to need a Kleenex. Thirteen years ago, Erin Kramp started chronicling her fight with cancer. She made hours of tapes that contained messages for her then 6-year-old daughter. Her daughter is now a freshman at Duke, her husband has remarried and has two more kids, and now her tapes are going to appear on Oprah today. The message she hoped would be spread is that she just wanted to say thank you to God for her journey. I doubt she ever imagined her words would be broadcast on Oprah.
Smoke in Grocery Store Possibly Harms Food While Workers Outside Store Possibly Harm Journalist. What gets this post the number 2 spot this morning in Leading Off is not the news story, but more so what happened while gathering the story. Just watch the video. The guys tried to claim that the photographer attacked them. But. Well. The cops didn’t believe it.
Video Games Lower Crime. Possibly. Or at least that’s what a UT Arlington economist is saying. I was just telling friends how hours of playing Halo caused me to get my first B. I didn’t even think about how it was keeping me off the streets and from attacking people. So, I say we all go play video games! I’ve got an N64 with GoldenEye for those who are interested. I’ll take on anyone in the lavatory with proximity mines. (Really, I just wanted a reason to link to this.)