During the holiday season, two things are certain. One, you will get into a fight with a family member. Two, “Last Christmas” by Wham! is the greatest Christmas song of all time. Considering that neither of these things are especially uplifting, we’ve put together a handy guide to the best non-Grinchy activities around town.
Looking for charitable suggestions? You can find fun ways to give back right here. Tally ho, Scrooge McDuck.
Unless I’ve overlooked one, I see two local companies on the Forbes list of “America’s Most Promising Companies“: J. Hilburn, a clothier from which I have purchased shirts and highly recommend, and Cinsay, which makes an online video player with a shopping interface. I also couldn’t help but notice that Texas, the job-creating machine run by Rick Perry, doesn’t have nearly as many of these companies as California.
It’s a funny coincidence in light of Krista’s Leading Off, but I was contemplating my favorite quote on my chilly little trek into the office this morning. It’s from a Tom Stoppard play called The Real Thing (which Stage West plans to stage in the spring, actually). A daughter asks her father what happiness is, and he replies, “Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.” In the context of the play, you can’t be entirely sure that’s true or very real at all. But I’ve always found the statement comforting, mostly for the way Stoppard makes a difficult task sound so simple.
As promised, I did not coerce any poor soul into growing facial hair for my own amusement/Movember. Let’s all take a moment to remember Ryan’s sacrifice last year. Now. For the love of everything holy, please shave. Especially you, Anthony Weiner. You could undertake this task at home, or you could accompany your upper lip party caterpillar to the Dallas Moustache’s End of Movember Stache Bash for one last hurrah. Head to Hotel ZaZa and celebrate all the men (and their long-suffering significant others, I’m sure) who donated their faces to raise money for prostate and testicular cancer research and treatment. The evening is complete with a DJ, a live raffle, light bites, and a shave station provided by The Gent’s Place. It’s cocktail attire, so dress dapper.
As most of us have heard, Dallas ISD is looking to close some campuses in a bid to address a sizable shortfall in next year’s budget. The list consists of mostly elementary schools, with a couple or so middle schools thrown in the mix as well. One of those, as Robert Wilonsky points out, is Bonham Elementary.
Now, I’m sure just about every school on the list has parents, teachers and students who are ready to fight to keep their doors open. But let me tell you – I went to elementary school (swear) and never once have I been asked to join an alumni group with an eye toward helping out the school where funding falls short. But Bonham Elementary has such a group. A couple of years ago, in fact, I attended a fundraiser hosted by that group that featured one of it’s most familiar graduates – Rawlins Gilliland. And the group is rightly proud of their neighborhood elementary school (located just down the street from The Old Monk, The Porch, etc.),which was awarded a National Excellence in Urban Education award and was named a Presidential Blue Ribbon school.
I bring this up because someone has now started a petition to save Bonham Elementary. There is also one here. But do online petitions actually do anything?
Seeing that Businessweek quoted Ray Hutchison about how “very, very disappointing and sad” is the American Airlines bankruptcy reminded me of the story that the Vinson & Elkins lawyer (and husband of U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison) told us for our 35 Biggest Moments in Modern Dallas History issue last year about an attempt to prevent the air carrier from moving its corporate headquarters in 1979:
It was essential to the move that tax-exempt DFW Airport revenue bonds be issued to finance the costs of a new national corporate headquarters for American. Though such financings had been closed at airports all across the country, suddenly, the IRS, behind the scenes, prepared a proposed ruling that would have declared retroactively that bonds issued for the offices of an airline would not be tax exempt. It quickly became obvious that New York had put its political clout to work in the Congress in Washington and in the IRS, and that all political muscle had been flexed to stop American from moving its headquarters.
North Texas leaders won that fight. You can read Hutchison’s whole article (scroll down the page a bit, or read Jim Wright’s account of the birth of the Wright Amendment too) as a reminder of what American has meant to the region.
The WSJ today runs a story about luxury hotels courting extended-stay guests. Naturally, Rosewood is all over the story. Here’s my favorite tidbit: “At the Rosewood Crescent, housekeepers take pictures of long-term guests’ vanities to record and replicate the preferred placement of toothbrushes and cologne bottles.” I’d like to see a photo essay composed of those pics. And speaking of pics, the great Allison V. Smith shot the story for the WSJ.
People in 47 Other Cities Are Happier Than You. Men’s Health ranked how happy cities are based on the following: suicide, antidepressant use, and depression. Dallas came in at 48, after Austin (19), Lubbock (29, really?), Fort Worth (43), and Plano (10). Though I’m sure that list is super interesting, what really drew me to this story was the art that accompanied it on the Fox page. I mean, that’s good stuff.
The Biebs Grants Highland Village Girl’s Wish. The 10-year-old got to meet the “hot” Justin Bieber in New York recently. She’s been battling cancer and is currently in remission. It looks like she got a lot of stuff during her visit. I bet when she got back to school on Monday and had all her Bieber gear, she was the coolest girl on campus. Though, judging from the video, it’s obvious she’s already a pretty cool girl.
Arrows Could Fly in Urban Areas Soon. There are a lot of deer in the area. Many of these deer are finding their way onto car hoods. So some people in Collin, Dallas, and Rockwall Counties have a solution: allow bow-hunting in these urban areas. The proposal will be considered in 2012. Don’t worry about it, though. Arrows only travel about 30 yards. You should be pretty much safe.