Articles for November 27th, 2012
Dallas’ Own Chris Bosh Is The Keeper of The Great Sword of Gorg-Dak-Tox
Before Chris Bosh led Dallas’ Lincoln High to an undefeated season and was named “Mr. Basketball Texas,” and before he became a human herbivorous dinosaur lunging down the floor for the Miami Heat, he was exiled on planet Earth from the planet Zorg-nok 7. Here on Earth, he is the keeper of the Great Sword of Gorg-Dak-Tox, gifted to him by an inter-dimensional star prince.
Or at least that’s the plot of Adventures Of Christopher Bosh In The Multiverse, an animated short directed by Ronnie Rivera, HuffPost Miami reports.
“The film is basically what everybody already knows about how Chris Bosh is a disgraced space prince from another reality who saved the human race from that evil space sorceress that one time,” Rivera told HuffPost Miami. “Dude is still trying to live off of that.”
Enjoy.
If Every U.S. State Declared War Against the Others, Would Texas Win?
“America” Source: Quora
Someone posed a similar question on the question-and-answer site Quora recently, and U.S. Marine Sergeant  (and North Texas graduate and Dallas resident) Jon Davis picked up the ball and ran about 6,500 words further than anyone anticipated.
First of all, I had to reread his lede to make sure what I was reading wasn’t actually happening right now, as we speak, which was terrifying:
“These are the accounts of the Second American Civil War, also known as the Wars of Reunification and the American Warring States Period.
After the breakup many wondered which states would come out in control of the power void created by the dissolution of the United States. There were many with little chance against several of the larger more powerful states. The states in possession of a large population, predisposition for military (i.e.) military bases and a population open to the idea of warfare fared the best. In the long term we would look to states with self-sufficiency and long term military capabilities.”
Those states were California, Texas, and New York, naturally.
Ex-Cowboy Martellus Bennett Is Basically The Greatest Human Being in History. Just Ask Him.
The other night, Martellus Bennett caught an overzealous fan who fell over a railing at MetLife Stadium. Great job, Martellus! Explain what it was like!
“I caught him and then I was about to set him down gently, kinda like when Lois Lane is caught by Superman and then he kind of takes her down and sets her down so she can land on her feet,” Bennett said.
Wait, wasn’t it kind-of more like an X-Men scene?
“Cyclops has super powers,” Bennett said of the X-Men leader whose mutant power is firing an optic blast from his eyes. “He’s caught people. He caught Jean Grey a couple of times. But all superheroes catch people at some point in time. Otherwise they’re not as super as they think they are.”
Good point! Martellus, is this the first time you’ve saved someone’s life?
Bennett said “this is probably like my fifth person I’ve saved in my life.”
No way! Was one of them a child at a Texas A&M basketball game?
“Everybody was jumping on him,” said Bennett, a two-sport standout at Texas A&M. “And I saw him down there. I wanted to keep jumping and celebrating. But I looked down, then I looked at everybody else. So I did the righteous thing, and I picked the kid up and carried him off the court. He had like a broken arm and a broken wrist.”
Wait a second. You’re a certified lifeguard, too, right?
“I’m a certified lifeguard,” Bennett said. “Me and my brother (Michael) that plays for the Bucs. We are certified lifeguards. He did more lifeguarding than me.
“I just save lives. I actually saved about 12 people but only like four of those were drowning. Some people was about to drown; they just didn’t know it yet.”
I’d like to thank ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk for holding on for dear life during what sounds like the greatest interview in history.
Perot Museum Makes A Pretty Commercial
Well, technically TM Advertising made it, but it’s still pretty. Museum opens Saturday, and, as a reminder, we liked it.
Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: Nov. 27
Pretty much.
Right. If anyone is looking to get me a super cool early Christmas present, here it is.
But that’s thinking ahead. Tonight, we have an evening at the Texas Theatre with the founders of Found Magazine, brothers Davy and Peter Rothbart. If you are unfamiliar, it’s pretty much exactly like it sounds: photos of “found” objects, letters, pictures, ticket stubs, and more left behind and picked up by strangers. Among other things, I consider myself a heavy eavesdropper, so I’m pretty into this. Anyway, the Rothbarts have been doing it for 10 years, and they’ve hit the road to celebrate a decade of peeking into people’s lives. They’ll share recently submitted found objects, songs, and stories from Davy’s new book of personal essays, My Heart is an Idiot.
Dinner? I realized recently that I’ve never been to Hattie’s, though yesterday the Bishop Arts District restaurant celebrated its own 10th anniversary. I get distracted by the idea of Tillman’s goat cheese tater tots, which I explained to my judgmental, Hattie’s-loving friend. His response? “Man, you’ve been neglecting Hattie’s so hard.” Time to see what these fried green tomatoes are all about.
Also this evening, The Faint plays their 2001 album Danse Macabre in its entirety at House of Blues. This is significant to me for really one reason. Okay, two. I like that album a lot, and also, it was the first burned CD someone ever gave me. I spent a lot of time listening to it cruising around Dallas when I was in high school. Songs such as “Agenda Suicide,” “Posed To Death,” and “Total Job” have survived on my iPod to this day. Icky Blossoms and Trust, a group I’m told put on surprisingly great, poppy show at Fun Fun Fun Fest recently, support.
For more to do tonight, go here.
Petition Asks President Obama to Remove Jerry Jones From the Cowboys Organization Entirely
Now that the country has learned about democracy and technology and their combustible love-child known as the White House’s “We The People” petition page, it was only a matter of time before someone asked President Obama to step in and fix the mess at Cowboys Stadium.
Steven M., from Fort Benning, Ga., wrote:
We, the Citizens of the Great State of Texas, and Dallas Cowboys fans worldwide, have been oppressed by an over controlling, delusional, oppressive dictator for way too long. Request the Executive Branch’s immediate assistance in removal of owner and GM, Jerry Jones. His incompetence and ego have not only been an extreme disappointment for way too long, but moreover, it has caused extreme mental and emotional duress.
Some other petitions currently on the site, to prove that this is the real deal:
MSG and/or Monosodium Glutamate is a food additive that has no positive benefits in our food (468 signatures)
Require the National Park Service to allow camping to all self-propelled visitors even if campground is full (692 signatures)
Give us back our incandescent lightbulbs! We, the undersigned, want the freedom to choose our own lightbulbs (975 signatures)
Require zoo’s [sic] to have more secure cages & enclosures keeping animals in & people out of them thus preventing accidents (362 signatures)
Texas Boomed in 2011, Thanks in Part to Dallas
Source: Slate
According to Slate’s Matthew Yglesias:
Texas’ rapid economic growth has been largely a question of rapid population growth–it’s warm, it’s close to Mexico, and it has a very permissive building-permit regime, so lots of people have been moving there–but the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ new data release on personal income growth in 2011 shows a great year for Texas across the board.
Personal income grew in every metropolitan statistical area in America, but Texas was a star performer. Its biggest MSA, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was in the top quintile of all American metro areas. So was Houston. So was San Antonio. So was Austin. So was El Paso. That’s five out of the state’s top five metro areas, and you can throw in Corpus Christie [sic] and some of the small West Texas cities for good measure.
Yes, that’s true, but the Bureau’s report also shows that the worst performing county in the United States – at -28.8 percent personal income growth – is Texas’ Lynn County, south of Lubbock. Not sure if that’s entirely related to the fact that it’s a dry county, but that’s where my money sits.
Odessa and Midland – 90 miles southwest of Lynn County – had the highest MSA growth, at 14.8 percent and 14.8 percent, respectively.
Dallas Museum of Art Announces Free Admission
Source: WRR’s Facebook
The Dallas Museum of Art announced free admission and free membership this morning, two new – and welcome – changes that will go into effect January 21.
The change has been rumored for months, with a DMA spokeswoman telling Tim in May:
“We are exploring the return to free general admission, and the ramifications of a possible transition are currently being reviewed. We anticipate finishing our analysis within the coming months.”
Well, the coming months have arrived. Rush the gates. More as we get it.
Brian Sweany on Why His Son Won’t Be a Boy Scout
Former D Magazine staffer and current Texas Monthly senior executive major general editor Brian Sweany has penned an essay for their December issue explaining why he won’t let his son join the Boy Scouts — at least not until the organization accepts gays into its ranks. It was a tough decision for Brian, who himself is an Eagle Scout. You should probably read the piece.
Plan Commissioner Robert Abtahi to Run For Dallas City Council
Dallas City Plan Commissioner Robert Abtahi is officially a candidate for Dallas City Council, after rumors circulated for weeks that the well-liked commissioner would make the leap.
The former assistant city attorney will go up against Jim Rogers and Philip Kingston for the seat vacated by term-limited Angela Hunt, and other candidates are expected to join the fray.
“It’s my view that leaders who look for common ground and find ways to rally people around a common goal can accomplish great things,” Abtahi said in his campaign literature. “I want to bring that kind of collaborative leadership to city hall.”
You might say the Dallas native started his campaign two years ago, in an editorial to the Morning News:
My uptown friends practically ignore me when I suggest having lunch somewhere south of the Trinity. They shrug me off when I suggest we spend the day at Cedar Crest Golf Course rather than Top Golf. They look at me like a mental patient when I offer up a late-night taqueria as an alternative to Taco Cabana. They are trapped in the bubble.
Too often, I hear negative things said about the various neighborhoods and parts of the city. The Uptown crowd loves to scoff at anything north of NorthPark Center and south of downtown. The North Dallas crowd is quick to bemoan what they consider to be confusing one-way streets and problems associated with parking in downtown.
If we are to become the big diverse city we strive to be, we must first get over our preconceived notions about the various parts of our city. Most of them are unfounded and outdated. Every part of Dallas has something special to offer, regardless of what you may think or hear people say.
Wick Allison’s Raspberry Secret Is Out
This makes me really happy. An anonymous prankster has just made my morning.
Every month, with the publication of each new issue of D Magazine, I write a letter to our good, strong advertisers. I let them know what’s going on at the magazine, the reasoning behind some of our editorial decisions, that sort of thing. This month, I explained how a raspberry came to grace our December cover. You see, that raspberry in the lower left-hand corner doesn’t really exist. Or it didn’t exist when Kevin Marple took the picture of the cake from Sissy’s. We dropped it into the image digitally. Why? Here’s how I explained it to our advertisers:
What happened was, creative director Todd Johnson and I were working on the cover when the owner of D Magazine, Wick Allison, strolled into Todd’s office.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“It needs a raspberry,” Wick proclaimed.
Todd and I rolled our eyes and made exasperated noises like 14-year-old girls who’d just been asked to put away all the clothes on their bedroom floor.
Dallas Murder Rate Ticks Back Up
The front page of the Morning News today reads something like this: “Murder, MURDER, MURDER.” It’s effective, and I followed the jump to 9A. Bleeding, leading, etc.
The crux of the story is that, at 141 murders, we’ve surpassed the 2011 tally. That means the city is experiencing an increase in murders – not murder rate, which is calculated by population – something it has fought hard against since the murder tally peaked at 500 in 1991.
Yesterday afternoon, Dallas Police’s media department sent out the below document, highlighting these trends, stats, and do-dads. It’s worth a look:
Leading Off (11/27/12)
Dallas ISD’s New Chief of Staff Quits. Last month, Alan King unexpectedly resigned as Superintendent Mike Miles’ right-hand man. To replace him, Miles hired Leonardo Caballero, paying him $180,000 a year. He was announced as the new chief of staff on November 12. Now, though, he has quit the gig (paywall), citing family reasons. I am absolutely certain that you should take Caballero at his word and that these unexpected resignations are not a sign of trouble. Yes, the position would have paid Caballero twice what he was making at his previous job. Sure, I know he was pretty vague about the whole “personal and family reasons” excuse. But here’s what you need to ask yourself: if the Zetas drug cartel kidnapped your daughter and would only return her safely if you quit your new job without offering a concrete reason, wouldn’t you do it? I thought so.
Plano Can’t Build Parks. Plano voters have approved $51.2 million in bond money since 2005 to build eight major parks and recreation projects, but the city can’t move forward because if those projects are built, Plano couldn’t afford to operate them (paywall). Citizens of Plano, this is a good thing. Learn from Dallas. If you build cool parks, it only makes parking a bitch. Thanks a lot, Klyde Warren!
P.S.: That Above-Referenced Story About Parking Around Klyde Warren Is Embarrassing. Seriously, people. A story you won’t see in New York: “Parking Tough To Find Near Central Park.” A story you won’t see in Chicago: “Parking Scarce Near Millennium Park.” Urban density. Get used to it.
Pack of Pit Bulls Maul Man. Pit bulls are unfairly stigmatized as aggressive, violent animals. Think about it. Golden retrievers could have done this. Labradoodles, too.
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