Articles for July, 2011
Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: July 25
Monday, Monday. It just keeps showing up. And with the sort of heat that makes the wing walk (you know, arms and elbows up for maximum cooling effect) a necessity by 9 AM.
What’s on TV tonight? Not much, except for an early Freaks and Geeks rerun that I would obviously be into. So instead of sitting at home and blasting your A/C, head to the Texas Theatre and allow them to run up their electric bill for you. They’re showing The Apple, probably one of the most awesomely awful movie musicals of all time, on 35 mm. Which doesn’t exactly sound like a positive endorsement, but hear me out. In the wake of Amy Winehouse’s recent death and the speculation that comes along with it, the film’s plot (two naive kids trying to make it in the music business get dragged into some sort of drugged up underworld) might strike some as less than appropriate. But it’s so far out there that it’s just funny, one of those “so bad it’s good” things with the bizarre cult following to match.
I love Cool Out, and I love Shelley Carroll at the Amsterdam. But last week, I ended up at the Pussycat Lounge (I know, I know) with a small group of old friends, listening to the Funky Knuckles do their neo-soul jazz jam for a few hours. One of these friends, who, in my incredibly unbiased opinion is an extremely talented percussionist, was my prom date way back when. And turns out he’s still a great person to know. Jonathan pointed out the keyboardist as a guy who produced tracks for Beyonce’s latest album, and the drummer as one of his favorites in Dallas. Instruments and musicians rotate throughout a set that lasts until they’re all ready to quit. Which isn’t until very, very late.
Three fair warnings before you go. First, if you go with music nuts, you’ll probably witness a totally obscure game of “name that song.” I only got one, and it was Herbie Hancock. Two, the Pussycat charges a dollar for tap water, which annoyed me even though I end up tipping that for water anyway. Three, the weird nameless club around the corner from the lounge may or may not try to lure you in with the promise of “cool kid stuff.” Cotton candy? A game of Chutes N’ Ladders? It’s a real mystery.
For more to do around town this evening, go here.
Where You Should Be This Thursday: Watching Bottle Rocket at the Kessler Theater
This Thursday evening we’ll continue FrontRow’s latest film series, entitled “Dallas, Outlaws, and the American Dream,” with a screening of Wes Anderson’s debut film, Bottle Rocket. Doors open at 6 p.m. and before the screening, there will be live music from Kevin Deal and Miles Penhall.
Now, assuming you have all seen the comic masterpiece commonly referred to as “the best movie ever made in Dallas” (because if you haven’t, you need to be there Thursday), ask yourself:
When was the last time I saw Bottle Rocket on a big screen?
When was the last time I saw Bottle Rocket with a live audience?
When was the last time I hung out at a restored movie theater/music venue, caught performances by a pair of Texas singer-songwriters, and then watched one of the funniest movies ever made, which just happens to star Dallas’ own boy wonders, Owen and Luke Wilson, not to mention the great Bob Musgrave and James Caan?
Never? Been a while? Right. See you Thursday.
Rangers Ballpark Hosts Rehearsal Dinner
During Friday’s game between the Rangers and Blue Jays, broadcasters Dave Barnett and Tom Grieve said the Ballpark was hosting a rehearsal dinner. Both men said they couldn’t remember hearing of another such event at a big-league game.
That got me wondering about whether the wedding party dined on hot dogs and garlic fries, and where the actual rehearsal happened. The upper-level concourse? The centerfield pavilion? Barnett and Grieve didn’t provide those details, but they did mention that the groom was Stephen Howard of UNT’s sports information office. So I emailed him to get the scoop. Even though he was hours away from tying the knot, Howard was kind enough to send this response:
My fiancé and I had a suite at the Ranger game following our wedding rehearsal at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Keller.
She and I are huge Rangers fans and this was the best/only way we could think of to celebrate our special day.
My wife wasn’t that much of a Rangers fan when we got together. But now? We’ll probably renew our vows at a game next year.
Morning News Shows Poor Taste in Front-Page Photo
The front-page story (sub. req.) in today’s paper is about the shooting at the Grand Prairie skating rink. Accompanying the story is the photo you see here, run large enough that it extended below the fold. The caption reads: “An employee of Aftermath, Inc, a crime scene and trauma cleanup service, works at the Forum Roller World in Grand Prairie after Saturday night’s shooting rampage.”
Am I the only one who thinks that running this photo is this fashion was a bad call? Five people are gunned down at an 11-year-old’s birthday party. Their blood is still on the floor. A man in a hazmat suit is cleaning up that unspeakable mess, and you catch him with the joyful “Happy Birthday” sign as background. It’s a striking picture. But does it belong on the front page of the newspaper? To me, the picture feels appropriate for a DVD box set of Dexter, but not a front-page news story.
Leading Off (7/25/11)
Shooting in Grand Prairie A Grisly Tale of Domestic Violence: There’s more than enough to read about the senseless shooting over the weekend at a Grand Prairie roller rink. The Morning News’ (sub. req.) describes gunman Tan Do as “too calm” before he opened fired on his wife and four of her family members. The Star-Telegram reports that Tan Do’s wife had filed a protective order against her husband last December because he threatened her with a gun three times. Trini Do also filed for divorce before withdrawing the request. And while the Grand Prairie nightmare dominates the headlines, this piece (sub. req.) reminds us that under the radar domestic violence incidents occur at an alarming rate: three per hour in North Texas, according to police reports.
A Decade Later, Have TAKS Tests Worked? Texas education officials point to a steady increase in student performance on TAKS exams since they were introduced ten years ago, but national exams indicate that TAKS didn’t produce any real educational gains. “In some categories, the performance of Texas students has remained absolutely flat as TAKS scores climbed.”
Warren Leslie, Writer Who Implicated Dallas In Kennedy Guilt, Dies: Warren Leslie was a Dallas Morning News reporter who later was spokesman for Neiman Marcus, a job he held when he wrote Dallas Public and Private: Aspects of an American City, which, four months after the Kennedy assassination, implicated the city in those terrible events. From the book:
“They feel their worst enemies are other Americans who disagree with them. They are not equipped to deal with contradictory evidence; when it appears, they boo it and hiss it to make it go away.”
Do these words still accurately describe our city — or did they ever?
NTTA Causes FrontBurnervian to Headdesk
I really like getting e-mail from all of you. Generally, save for the once weekly, “You are a horrible writer,” e-mail I get from the same person, you are all as kind, funny and delightfully sarcastic as you are here. I’d totally invite most of you to a place that is not my house or anywhere near my house, have drinks with you, and then drive evasively home.
So last night, I got an e-mail from a FrontBurnervian who is a once and future resident of the Dallas area. Nowadays, he’s living elsewhere, but will soon move back. Because he’s living elsewhere and he’s a generally law-abiding citizen, he has an out-of-state license plate on his car. On his last occasion to visit Dallas, he took toll roads several times, opting to try out the Zipcash feature. I will let him explain the rest, after we jump: (more…)
Honky-Tonker Dale Watson Gets His Revenge
Dale Watson knows how to hit back when a body does him wrong. Seems the Texas honky-tonk singer–he’ll be appearing at the Granada July 29 with the Tejas Brothers–got jacked around over some lost CDs by a Singapore-based outfit called Tiger Airways. So the hard-core-country troubador recorded a song called Tiger Airways–We Don’t Careways and posted it online. Next thing you know, the airline coughed up what Watson had been asking for all along. Proving, it’s not a good idea to mess with a Texan. If you ask pretty, maybe he’ll sing the song here next Friday.
Oh, Shipp! JWP Bails on Park Cities Rotary
John Wiley Price was supposed to speak to the Park Cities Rotary Club this afternoon, but Channel 8’s Brett Shipp derailed that. Park Cities People’s Georgia Fisher has the details.
Borders Patrons Get While the Gettin’s Good
There was a mix of gloom and opportunism at the Old Town Borders this morning, like you were bidding
farewell to a friend who’d died but, before you left, you scoured his closet to see if there was anything in there you wanted. Today marked the first day of a “liquidation” period that’s likely to last through September, somebody said, and plenty of customers were in the store to help clean it out.
The cafe was closed already. But biographies and CDs/DVDs were 20 percent off, young adult books were 10 percent off, and you could pick up magazines for a 40 percent discount. (What the hell; I sprang for the new Texas Monthly.) An enterprising FrontBurnervian who wandered into the Old Town location sent along this photo, which pretty well summed things up.
Pickens and the Koch Brothers Lock Horns
The disagreement we told you about in May between billionaires T. Boone Pickens and the Koch Brothers was really just a skirmish back then. Now, as one-time supporters have defected from T. Boone’s Pickens Plan for natural gas, it’s erupted into a full-scale war. One observer likens the dispute to “two bulls in a field fighting each other.”
Things To Do In Dallas This Weekend: July 22-24
I’ve either been especially boring this week or the weirdos I usually encounter are indoors hugging their A/C units. Maybe both. Highlight? My car got broken into again. This would-be thief riffled through the stuff (read: mountain of Sonic peppermints) in the console, but decided against my old MIT Logarhythms and Rufus Wainwright CDs. My high school self who prided herself on her musical taste feels vaguely insulted.
Here’s hoping for a more thrilling weekend. But please, criminal element, leave my poor car alone.
Friday
You already know that you can’t text with a drink in your hand. But dancing is apparently a whole different ballgame. Artist Tom Russotti (currently at Centraltrak) came up with something called the Drinking and Dancing Competition, and it’s happening tonight at Sons of Hermann Hall. Peter has an interview with Russotti on FrontRow, but here’s the basic premise. You drink booze, you dance, booze in hand. Points are lost for spillage or drink abandonment, and the stronger your drink, the more points you get. So if you were planning on swaying middle school-style with cans of Tecate all night, you probably won’t win. Just don’t upchuck the boogie.
President Clinton With Harvey Lacey’s Ubuntu-Blox
In our July issue, I wrote about Harvey Lacey and his idea for building low-cost homes out of plastic blocks made from trash. Harvey had been hoping to get to Haiti to start field-testing the idea. He hasn’t made it — yet — but his blocks have. And they met Bill Clinton.
Mariano Martinez on the Margarita Machine
As we all know, Mariano Martinez invented the margarita machine. Also, as we all know, Sunday is National Tequila Day. Therefore, I bring you this clip from ABC News Nightline, which features Martinez. One fun fact from the clip: Martinez prefers his margaritas on the rocks, because, as he says, “his tastes have evolved.”
Is the Dallas Morning News Planning More Layoffs?
Back at the last round of layoffs, I added DMN Cuts, a blog dedicated to tracking the cuts, to my Google Reader. Today, I noticed a new post, which hints at a possible new round of layoffs. The poster, who calls himself Spartacus, said that there have been layoffs of non-newsroom positions over the past few weeks, but that rumor has it the newsroom will also face cuts – specifically editors and production editors, because newer technology has made it easier to do production, meaning fewer editors would be required.
Spartacus goes on to say:
It is possible that none of this is true. This will be a place where people who know better and want to share will be able to let the rest of us know.
One other consistent rumor is that this layoff will not the same as the last ones. Instead of an announced date where the cuts will happen, if the rumors are right, these will happen when they happen. That would mean no warning and no way to know if they’re over.
Leading Off (7/22/11)
I’m Your Ice Cream Man, Stop Me When I’m Passing By. Now, you’d think that since it is as hot as the face of the sun out there, ice cream – a cool, refreshing treat – would be in high demand. But according to ice cream man Moustapha Diop, it is now so hot that nobody will venture outside for the five seconds it takes to flag down the purveyor of frosty treats.
Pervez Musharraf, Rick Perry in Weirdest Game of Telephone Ever. From this story, we can either surmise that the governor of Texas and the former president of Pakistan are total besties who OMG, tell each other everything, or that Perry said something and Musharraf is a big ol’ gossip. Loose lips, Mushy. Loose lips.
Ozzie Canseco Is Not Jose Canseco … and some guy named Damon Feldman can totally tell the difference and that’s why the former Ranger now has to pay him some money for sending his brother in to fight in a celebrity boxing match that he was supposed to fight in. File this under “Loose Definition of Celebrity.”
You Probably Won’t Get That To Inflate In Hell. Someone stole Spirit and Indigo’s giant inflatable swimming pool, and they’re very sad. And hot. So if you have it, just put it back. Reinflate it if you can, and fill it with water. No wait, unicorn tears. Yes. Inflate it with the breath of wizened fairies and fill it with the tears of unicorns, you mean hooligans.
Play Along. Now, last week, AmyS was the only person to play along with this. So listen, it’s gonna be hot again today, and you really have nowhere to go because you don’t want to sweat or just combust (seriously, you go out there, and you run the very real risk of just you know, Boom! Fire). So just play this game. Here are your quotes. Use them randomly in comments all over the blog today. Because it’s fun.
Home |
Masthead |
News from D |
About Us |
Contact Us |
Subscribe |
Advertise |
Privacy Policy |
Customer Service |
Awards | Archives | Reprints | d custom | Jobs | Advertiser's Index
Awards | Archives | Reprints | d custom | Jobs | Advertiser's Index