Articles for October 3rd, 2011
Architect Robert Stern Shows Off the Bush Center
Robert A. M. Stern
It’s a good thing today’s sneak peek/”Topping Out Ceremony” at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the SMU campus took place early in the morning. Because that’s when the guy who served as the main tour guide–world-renowned architect Robert A.M. Stern–really comes alive. “I’m an early-morning person, so you’ve caught me at my best,” Stern said, walking toward the mammoth, still-under-construction site with an army of media in tow. “At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, don’t even talk to me.”
Stern (pictured in photo by Jeanne Prejean) has served as the architect for a couple of projects in North Texas: a swanky manse in Preston Hollow, and the residences at the Ritz-Carlton. But the Bush complex is his biggest here to date. He said the 226,000-square-foot structure on 25 acres has been “designed like a federal building or an embassy.” (In other words: really, really secure, with back-up systems for the back-up systems.) Since it will house the Bush library and museum as well as the Bush Institute, though, it was also designed to be accessible to many types of visitors, Stern said, from sophisticated travelers to tourists in RVs and moms pushing baby strollers.
State Fair of Texas Picture of the Day, Oct. 3
The State Fair auto show was buzzing on a beautiful Monday afternoon. photo by Jason Janik
Check out our guide to plan your own trip to Fair Park.
Another Reason For Texas Rangers Fans to Hate the New York Yankees
I was all set to write this post complaining about how, yet again, the presence of the New York Yankees in the Major League Baseball postseason means that Rangers fans have to cut out of work early or call in sick to catch games.
Today’s pivotal game 3 between your defending American League champion Texas Rangers and the Tampa Bay Rays airs at 4 p.m. on TBS. Â Game 4 is going to be played at 1 p.m. tomorrow (central time). Â If both the Rangers-Rays series and the New York Yankees vs. Detroit Tigers series go to a fifth game, that decisive contest in Arlington will be played at 4 p.m. Thursday.
As if we needed another reason to hate the Yankees (besides their obnoxious payroll and their 27 World Series titles, compared to the Rangers’ zero), they are again hogging the prime time television spots this year. Â That’s what I was going to ask you to be outraged about.
But then I checked the local television ratings from this weekend, over on Uncle Barky’s site. Â Saturday’s exciting Game 2 at Rangers Ballpark (which I had the thrill of witnessing in person) drew an average audience of 433,542 viewers.
I know where the Dallas Cowboys are situated in the hearts of North Texas sports fans, so I shouldn’t be surprised (though I am disappointed) that their regular season game on Sunday drew three times as many viewers, an average of 1.3 million. Â But why must the Rangers face the indignity of seeing the Sunday night NFL game between the Ravens and the Jets (480,961 viewers)Â outdraw them? Â Not to mention the Packers-Broncos, in the middle of a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, which drew almost as many (419,994 viewers). Â (I know we’re comparing broadcast channels to a basic cable network, but come on.)
So maybe Dallas-Fort Worth gets the Rangers’ time-slots that they deserve.
Azle High School Senior With Down Syndrome Crowned Homecoming Queen
If you haven’t heard the incredibly touching story of Mariah Slick, check it out.
The HPV Vaccine Approach Rick Perry Wishes He’d Thought Of
As Rick Perry’s national popularity continues to slide–due in part to attacks on his 2007 executive order mandating that young girls in Texas be vaccinated against HPV–his campaign folks have to be wondering why they didn’t just come up with this years ago.
Kansas City Would Love Tony Romo, Writer Says
Some of you are still mourning the Great Cowboys Implosion of 2011 this morning (and some of you got the double whammy this weekend of the Second Great Aggies Implosion of 2011, too). There are many, many articles out there right now about what happened, how it happened, whether Tony Romo is to blame, etc. Even Dirk Nowitzki took to Twitter to comfort ToRo.
And then I came across this on Yahoo Sports – an article that says that if we were Kansas City or Cleveland or Seattle, we’d be thrilled to have Romo. That he’s actually a decent quarterback that does better than most of his post-Troy Aikman predecessors, and it’s just following people like Aikman, Staubach and Don Meredith that makes him seem so lackluster. I’m not entirely certain I agree that it’s just a case of Romo having the bad luck of being on a team whose fans expect a lot of their quarterback, though. You guys?
Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: Oct. 3
On October 3, he asked me what day it was. “It’s October 3.” Happy Mean Girls/Last Really Good Thing Lindsay Lohan Did Day.
Reports from the State Fair’s opening weekend are coming in, and by reports I mean tales of epic overeating. Which is wonderful, but in case you wanted to do something else, you can check out our handy week-long guide.
Monday night is usually a dark day for theater, but WaterTower Theatre makes an exception for their opening night performances for reasons that make plenty of sense sense. Namely, reviews and the like. This evening, they’re putting up Spring Awakening, a coming-of-age tale you may have seen at the Winspear last year. To be honest, I haven’t been entirely enthusiastic about this production. It’s been done, obviously, very recently– and this isn’t the sort of musical that should become comfortable or comforting, though of course its mainstream appeal makes that unavoidable.
But this morning I was thinking about the first time I saw Spring Awakening, and how sometimes I’m probably too cynical about this sort of thing for my own good. It does the musical a disservice to forget how excited I was a few years ago when friends and I student rushed an evening performance and lucked out with second row orchestra tickets. It was Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele pre-Ryan Murphy, and I’d never seen actors get so naked on stage (a novel thing, way back in 2007.) The songs were infectious; even non-theater geeks had the soundtrack on their iPod. And the message was and still is important: not talking about sex doesn’t make its complications and consequences go away. We’ve learned that lesson especially well, or maybe not at all.
I guess what I’m saying is, if you’ve seen this show before, you could give it a skip. But if you haven’t, or it’s been a few years, you should go, preferably tonight when the energy will be high. You have to call the box office for tickets, but I’ve been assured there are still a few available. I like the nearby Dream Cafe for a pre-theater meal, and as always, I recommend telling your server that you have theater tickets so he or she knows to pace you accordingly.
For more to do this evening, go here.
The Immense Ego of Michael J. Mooney
It’s now official: working with Mike is impossible. We learned this morning that the Daily Beast picked his Rais Bhuiyan story as one of the week’s best reads. And when I say “we learned,” what I really mean is that Mike walked into work this morning shouting, “Get your popcorn ready! The show’s about to start! Big Miiike in the house!” Then he spiked a copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage and did the Dougie. The other Daily Beast selections from the magazines you see pictured included a Michael Lewis story in Vanity Fair. Right now Mike has a group of interns gathered around his desk, and as one of them braids Mike’s red locks into cornrows, he’s going on about how Lewis is a hack and how Moneyball is overrated and how he, Michael J. Mooney, could bed Tabitha Soren if he wanted to. Somebody needs to take this guy down a notch.
Leading Off (10/3/11)
Peter Gent, North Dallas Forty Novelist, Dies: The former receiver for the Dallas Cowboys who penned the behind the locker room door exposé of football’s rough and tumble youth, North Dallas Forty, died Friday. He was 69.
Perry Tries to Downplay Racist Name of Family’s Hunting Camp: So who had a worse weekend, Tony Romo, who threw three interceptions to lay the ground for the worst collapse in Cowboys history, or Rick Perry, whose family’s hunting camp, we learn, has been long known by a racial slur? Perry spent much of the weekend denying the report.
UT Southwestern Professor Shares Nobel Prize for Medicine: Bruce Beutler, who will soon rejoin the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine along with Frenchman Jules Hoffman and Canadian Ralph Steinman for their work on immune system defenses. His most important discoveries were made, in part, during a previous stint at UT Southwestern, when he discovered a molecule that plays a role in the nervous system’s first line of defense against disease.
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