Articles for January 17th, 2013
State Parks May Close Under Proposed Budget
State parks officials may be forced to close seven state parks due to a $12 million budget gap, the Texas Tribune reported yesterday. Texas Parks and Wildlife requested an additional $18.9 million from the sporting goods sales tax to keep all 91 parks operational, but preliminary House and Senate budgets released Tuesday only allotted an additional $6.9 million. The sales tax funds would be in addition to the department’s base budget of $507 million.
Parks and Wildlife executive director Carter Smith told the Star-Telegram it “is simply way too premature to talk about park closures…This is simply the first serve in a long tennis game.” No specific parks were mentioned; the state’s 10 most popular parks, according to the department, include:
Garner SP
Inks Lake SP
Dinosaur Valley SP
Pedernales Falls SP
Balmorhea SP
Guadalupe River SP
Enchanted Rock SNA
McKinney Falls SP
Ray Roberts Lake SP
Mustang Island SP
Nearly all of the most popular parks are located in the central part of the state; Ray Roberts Lake is the only North Texas park on the list.
Plano Is the Best Run City in America
An alert FrontBurnervian points us to a story on 24/7 Wall Street that ranks the 100 biggest cities in America in terms of how they perform in certain metrics. Crime, foreclosures, etc. Here’s the full methodology. Or at least the data they looked at. They don’t say how it was weighted. In any case, Plano takes the top spot. To which we say: better luck next year, Irving!
Dallas Police Need Your Help Solving a Vicious Armed Robbery Case
At 10 a.m. yesterday, a man walked into a shop in the 7500 block of Military Parkway in southeast Dallas, stabbed the clerk, beat the same clerk with a hammer, and fled with an undisclosed amount of money. The above video isn’t easy to watch, but if you know the man police would like to speak with you at (214) 671-3612. The suspect is described as 5’11″ and 210 pounds.
On Monday, the Dallas Museum of Art Will be Free. Here’s What to Expect, and What it Means for Museums
At a press event this morning, Dallas Museum of Art staff offered a sneak peek of the museum’s new DMA Friends program which launches Monday, January 21, at which point the museum will be free.
That’s right, completely free (well, except for special exhibitions). But what makes the DMA’s new program unique is not free admission, rather it is that the museum is offering what it calls free “membership” to anyone who walks in the doors. Membership may not be the right word; after all, for those who still want to pay to go to DMA, you can become a DMA “partner,” which offers some of the benefits that used to come with membership (free parking, tickets, etc.). The DMA Friends program is basically a credit card-style rewards program: sign up and earn points for participating in museum events and logging time in galleries. Then you can turn those points in for rewards, anything from gift store discounts, free parking, or special event tickets to higher value benefits like private gallery tours, free use of the museum’s Center for Creative Connections for parties, or a trip into the DMA’s underground art storage vaults.
So what does the museum get from this? Well, that’s where things get interesting. Jump.
Mike Rawlings Is Waiting For Joe Biden
Source: Facebook
A few options:
1. cut-off jean jackets
2. buffalo wings, “the ones with the real spicy sauce, not those sissy teriyaki ones”
3. his top 100 reasons why The Office was set in Scranton, not Wilkes-Barre
4. gun control
Also, Mayor, it’s 2013.
EXCLUSIVE: What the Other American Airlines Logo Finalist Looked Like
We’ve all seen the new American Airlines scheme. Many were underwhelmed, some were overwhelmed, others were just whelmed. We here at D Magazine have some connections in the biz, though, and were able to snag a copy of what the other finalist was in the logo competition. It’s incredible, and we’re not entirely sure why American didn’t pick it:
Survival of the Cutest: The Dogs of D
(left) Michael Mooney’ s Jailamony and (right) Jeanne Prejean’s Nellie
And I’m not talking about the guys that hit on us over by the copy machine. (Just kidding. We don’t have any of those.) I’m talking about the beloved mutts of D Magazine staffers. The furry love bugs that we employees return home to each night. In celebration of our ongoing Survival of the Cutest dog contest–but actually because we weren’t allowed to enter–I present to you The Dogs of D: Round 1. Jump for photos. And don’t forget to cast your vote for the cutest pooches in North Texas.
Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: Jan. 17
Rouge.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s Arts and Letters Live series is back, officially, tonight. In the coming months, we’ll see folks such as Jon Scieszka, author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Matt Bomer, who is just so attractive, and Madeleine K. Albright, who I assume needs no introduction from me.
But this evening, we’ll kick the 2013 season off with an “Artful Musings” event that centers around the Dallas Theater Center’s upcoming production of Red, the Tony Award winning play about abstract artist Mark Rothko that will open next month in the Wyly’s smaller theater space on the ninth floor. The DMA is in on the production, which makes perfect sense, considering that there’s at least one Rothko lurking in the halls. The museum’s director, Maxwell Anderson, will moderate a conversation between art conservator Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, who directed the restoration of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and Joel Ferrell, director of DTC’s production of Red.
Afterward, the audience gets a sneak peak at the play, which drops in on Rothko in late 1950s New York, working on a series of commissions in his studio and adjusting to the presence of his new assistant, Ken. Fun fact: freckled Eddie Redmayne, who plays adorable yet dishwater dull Marius in that recent cinematic flaying of Les Misérables, played Ken in both the original Donmar Warehouse production in London and on Broadway. You can still get tickets to tonight’s conversation online through the DMA.
Will the Greenville St. Patrick’s Day Parade Really Turn Into a Sober Event?
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again: there is no better day in Dallas than the Greenville Avenue St. Paddy’s Parade. People fly their freak flags. They get drunk. They wander around the M Streets, shambling from house party to house party. It’s a spectacle. It’s a celebration of spring. It’s a hell of a party. So you, like me, might at first have been a little worried when you heard that the city is stepping in this year to tone things down a bit. From Pegasus News:
Instead of a beer guzzling party, the focus will be on a family-friendly affair that honors the Irish tradition and the pageantry of the parade. “[The parade] had gotten a little raucous,” said Mayor Mike Rawlings. The new name of the parade is The Dallas St. Patrick’s Parade on Greenville Avenue …
I find a couple of things about that ridiculous. First, the parade is already family friendly. It’s a parade. People throw candy. There are kids and strollers everywhere. Sure, you’ll see people guzzling beer. But plenty of parents turn out with their kids, drink a beer or two, and then return home before the public urination begins in earnest. Second, in Ireland, they go to church on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a holy day. That’s their tradition. We’d be stupid to do that. Because going to church isn’t nearly as much fun as watching a parade and drinking beer.
But there’s no reason to worry, dear friends. Far as I can tell, the biggest changes they’re making involve the parade itself. According to Pegasus: “No sexually-oriented business will be allowed in the parade, and rowdier groups won’t be permitted to drink on the floats or toss drinks into the audience.” Puritanical in my book. I say let the strippers pole dance in the parade. But booting them out isn’t going to change the tenor of the event. Because the beer guzzlers don’t care about the parade. As long as people can drag around a cooler and have open containers in public – and far as I know, the cops will continue to ignore the open containers so long as you behave yourself – then the Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade will keep rocking. And no one but Mayor Mike is going to call it the Dallas St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Greenville.
Hard as it might try to ruin a good thing, the city, thankfully, can’t stop this party.
Is the South’s Political Power in Decline?
Yes, according to the New Yorker:
Now the South is becoming isolated again. Every demographic and political trend that helped to re-elect Barack Obama runs counter to the region’s self-definition: the emergence of a younger, more diverse, more secular electorate, with a libertarian bias on social issues and immigration; the decline of the exurban life style, following the housing bust; the class politics, anathema to pro-business Southerners, that rose with the recession; the end of America’s protracted wars, with cuts in military spending bound to come. The Solid South speaks less and less for America and more and more for itself alone.
Solidity has always been the South’s strength, and its weakness. The same Southern lock that once held the Democratic Party now divides the Republican Party from the socially liberal, fiscally moderate tendencies of the rest of America. The Southern bloc in the House majority can still prevent the President from enjoying any major legislative achievements, but it has no chance of enacting an agenda, and it’s unlikely to produce a nationally popular figure.
Greg Abbott Urges Gun-toting New Yorkers to Point Their Wagons Southwest and Move to Texas
Source: Facebook
“Wooooohoooo howdy you Yankee commies! You like guns, but hate living in New York? No problemo! Down here in TEJAS we gots buttloads of land, enough beef to make your ‘veganese’ neighbors knit a harmony quilt outta Janeane Garofalo’s leghair, and freedom. Lots and lots of freedom. Like a gushing faucet of freedom.”- Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, presumably.
After New York passed wide-ranging gun legislation earlier this week, Abbott rebranded himself as AG of Tourism, and took to Facebook. The ad to the right is just one of the Facebook ads currently popping up on the screens of New York residents this week. Another reads, in Olde Tyme, Wild West font:
WANTED. LAW ABIDING NEW YORK GUN OWNERS LOOKING FOR LOWER TAXES AND GREATER OPPORTUNITY.
“The ad is inviting New Yorkers to come to Texas because we believe that the Constitution is sacred, and there to protect Americans from whimsical and knee jerk reactions by political leaders,” Eric Bearse, an Abbott spokesman, told the Daily Beast. “And obviously citizens of New York are facing the prospect of further restrictions on the ownership of firearms…We believe it is never good a thing when politicians try to take advantage of a tragedy when the results is the trampling of constitutional rights.”
The ad is strange to out-of-staters, sure, but it’s clear that Abbott isn’t really trying to lure New Yorkers to Texas. What he’s trying to do is become governor in 2014, provided the ol’ chard sack doesn’t run again. This (along with many, many photos of him with dead animals) just helps the gun-toting, liberal-hating image.
American Unveils Its New Logo, ‘A-meh-rican’ Jokes Expected
Here’s a clear picture of the new logo of American Airlines as the plane rolled into DFW just a few mintues ago. twitter.com/wfaachannel8/s…
— WFAA TV (@wfaachannel8) January 17, 2013
A new font, and a tail that looks like a crosswalk. Way to invigorate a dying brand, folks. Video of the unveiling here.
Leading Off (1/17/13)
Two DISD Elementary Schools Without Heat. The heat has been out at Lenore K. Hall and Margaret B. Henderson for at least three days. When will it be fixed? Well, Hall should be good to go today, in theory, but Henderson’s time frame has been ominously listed as “could take some time to fix.” I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s not like elementary-age kids are germ factories, fueled by the slightest of inclement weather, walking, complaining, lingering-illness sweatshops banging out snotty noses and hacking coughs easy and cheap because they’re too disorganized to union up. Everything should be A-OK.
Governor Perry Makes Statement On New Federal Gun Control Measures, May Have Gotten A Word Of The Day Calendar For Christmas, Probably Unclear On The Principle of Separation Of Church And State. “As a free people, let us choose what kind of people we will be,” said Perry. “Laws, the only redoubt of secularism, will not suffice. Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help.” I think, and I need to check, but I think Karl Marx said that. Again, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Probably work itself right out on its own. I mean, it’s not like we’re so gun crazy that some police departments, albeit small ones, are having trouble finding backup parts for AR-15 rifles because regular citizens are buying too many of them.
Mavericks Put Together First Four-Game Winning Streak Since, Well, I Don’t Know. Feels like forever.
Neighboring Businesses Ready For the Bush Center To Open Already. They’re anxious for people to start showing up. That’s not news, or at least not a surprise. But how will they get there? “We think a lot of people will not be necessarily coming here by plane but either by bus or by car from neighboring states,” said Jon Pettee from TriGate Capital, new owners of the Holiday Inn Central Park Cities (but you knew that). Pettee also speculated that some would, yes, come on motorcycles, a much smaller number would arrive via bicycle, one, maybe two would arrive by a dirigible of some sort, that no good Perkins kid up the street would, of course, come by on his damn skateboard (hoodlum), and like a handful, at most, would come on Segways, only because they don’t make them anymore and, listen, you watch, that was an idea ahead of its time.
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