Articles for October 18th, 2012
Previewing the Dallas Mavericks’ 2012-13 Season, Part 1
I think I’ve made it clear in this corner of the internet and beyond that the only sport I truly love is basketball, and, furthermore, that my preferred brand of the game is of the NBA variety, and, further still, that I live and die by the Dallas Mavericks. So, naturally, I am quite excited by the impending return of basketball and the NBA and the Dallas Mavericks. After the jump, I have some thoughts about the new faces on the squad. Before we get there, note that one of our regular contributors, David Hopkins, will also be a regularly contributing to the ESPN-affiliated Mavs blog The Two Man Game; his first piece is here. OK, let’s hit it.
Boy Scouts Forced to Release Secret ‘Perversion Files,’ Too Late For Some Young Victims
A clipping about Piotti's arrest, from my hometown newspaper.
Fifteen years ago, Vinnie Piotti was arrested at his Poughkeepsie, New York, home, thrown in a state police car, and led to the town court of Hyde Park.
There he was charged with 66 counts of sodomy for “deviant sexual encounters” with a child. Piotti was the scoutmaster of Troop 80 in Hyde Park. I was a Boy Scout in Troop 80, a 13-year-old with a penchant for sleeping in the woods, breaking wood in half with sharp objects, and punching other boys when there were no adults around. Piotti did not rape me, but he raped someone I know. He raped him 66 times, in campgrounds and cabins and his own basement. He raped him for two years, until the boy grew into a man and told him to get his dirty troll hands off him.
I bring this all up because today the Irving-based Boy Scouts of America will be forced by the Oregon Supreme Court to release 1,200 “perversion files,” their pedophile records the group kept from police, families, and vulnerable Scouts for decades.
The files are full of broken childhoods, inconvenient truths, and mountains of lies. They’re full of adults who knew better, and worse, adults who had an opportunity to do something but failed. Somewhere in those 1,200 files is, likely, the story of Vincent Piotti, the man who plucked one boy from his troop for his own sick pleasure.
There are also 21 cases from Dallas, five from both Garland and Plano, four from Mesquite, three each from Irving and Arlington, and a handful from other area suburbs. All told, at least 49 Boy Scouts were manhandled by their scoutmasters within a quick 30-minute drive of the association’s Irving headquarters.
Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: Oct. 18
Peeping James Stewart.
There are people in this office who may disagree with me on the extent of this film’s brilliance, but I am a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Maybe because I’m occasionally prone to seeing or hearing something and then immediately executing an Olympic-worthy long jump to the absolute worst/most ridiculous conclusion. Maybe because when I was a kid, the police hid in my playhouse to wait out a mentally disturbed neighbor with a gun and took turns peeking out the tiny play window.
Regardless of my reasons, it’s a good day for Hitchcocktober at Mockingbird Station tonight. The free screening starts at 8 p.m. out on the mezzanine, and some seating is available. You’re also invited to bring your own lawn chairs or blankets, and to partake in Hitchcock trivia for the chance to win prizes. Some people might be there in their fanciest jammies, since DFW Style Daily is throwing sort of PJ party, but in the immortal words of Hall & Oates, I’ll do almost anything that you want me to, but I can’t go for that.
Tomorrow is the Dallas Museum of Art’s monthly scheduled Late Night, but if it’s anything like the Late Night’s I’ve attended previously, it’ll be so jammed that actually enjoying you’re there to see is akin admiring the physical beauty and discriminating appetite of a pigeon. That is to say, impossible. Of course, if you go tomorrow, you can see Concentrations: Karla Black and Difference?, two new exhibits, on the first night they’re open to the public. But since getting cozy with strangers freaks me out, I’d go tonight (the museum is open until 9 p.m.) just to see Posters of Paris: Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries and pretend I am either back in the City of Light or a college dorm room with the obligatory Théophile Steinlen Le Chat Noir print. Or both. For dinner, I’m interested in checking out The Greek in Once Arts for the first time, not in the least because I want to make the obvious The Wire reference. The restaurant, which moved in the Commissary space, opened earlier this week. It would be sort of awesome if a nutty not-really-Greek crime boss was running it, but I take what I can get.
For more to do tonight, go here. For State Fair fun, go here.
Richard Malouf Sues Candy Evans, Laura Wilson, Byron Harris, and WFAA
Candy Evans just got herself some more material to write about. But it’ll cost her. Evans, as you might know, once covered real estate for D Magazine and D Home. While working for us, she was the first one to learn the location of President George W. Bush’s pad. She’s dogged when it comes to tracking down real estate rumors and news. Lately, she has focused that doggedness on Richard Malouf’s house on Strait Lane. It’s big. He’s building a water park in his backyard. And Malouf has been the subject of media scrutiny for his high-flying lifestyle and the way his dental clinics conducted their business.
As you can see from the filing below, Malouf has had enough. He has petitioned for a temporary restraining order against everyone in the headline above, and he’s seeking damages for invasion of privacy, trespassing, libel, and defamation. In cases like this, my default is to side with the reporters for obvious reasons. Malouf doesn’t like the fact that WFAA flew a chopper over his house to take pictures (they must have used a pretty big lens, because Malouf’s house lies in the no-fly zone around Bush’s house). Don Henley sued us a number of years back for doing the same thing. Apologies to rich people with big houses, but the media are allowed to do this (and so is Google). Too, Malouf’s filing is about as purple as it could be, calling Evans’ work a “photographic assault” and saying that she has been “seizing images.”
But certain of Malouf’s claims, if true, I think will cause Evans trouble. He says that she approached a former house manager with the proposition of planting a hidden camera inside the Malouf house. Laura Wilson, mother of the famous brothers, lives next door. Malouf claims that Wilson colluded with Evans, allowing her onto the Wilsons’ roof to take pictures. And Malouf claims that a couple years ago Evans entered his property uninvited during his daughter’s birthday party and started interviewing the girl.
Really, though, it doesn’t matter whether Malouf’s claims are true. Fact is, the man clearly has money, and he’s clearly pissed. He has the means and the motivation to rack up some stout legal bills. WFAA has the resources to deal with this challenge. Candy Evans? The increased traffic to her site that this development will bring won’t begin to cover it.
See the suit document after the jump.
State Fair of Texas Picture of the Day: Oct. 18
photo by Jason Janik
Win Free State Fair and Chinese Lantern Tickets
Let’s do some more micro fiction. In the comments, write a story of 200 words or fewer whose plot includes Mayor Mike Rawlings and a pair of vice grips. Best submission, as judged by us (by which I mean me), wins four tickets to the State Fair and four passes to the Chinese Lantern Festival, which Zac says is the best thing he has seen since Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. If you’ve won something from D Magazine in the past six months, you are not eligible. Given how soon the Fair ends, tickets have to be picked up at D Mag headquarters, downtown. Contest ends at 5 o’clock today, and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter. May the muse be with you.
Leading Off (10/18/12)
Plano PE Teacher Accused Of Indecency With a Child. It’s at Martha Hunt Elementary, where convicted sex offender Joseph Garbarini molested two kindergarten girls in 2010.
Grand Prairie Businessman Charged With Bigamy. He was living with one wife in Grapevine, and the other in Arlington. Married twice and living in Grapevine AND Arlington? Let’s call it time served, huh?
Referee Banned From Garland ISD Athletic Events After Shushing Middle School Band. Kind of harsh, but I was in the middle school band once, so I know where the dude is coming from.
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