2. The bomb scare yesterday at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Arlington was found to be a false alarm, thank goodness. Turns out someone was simply overheard saying that being able to purchase a knock-off Affliction t-shirt for $8.99 is the bomb.

3. Former City Councilman Jerry Bartos passed yesterday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was on the Council during my first go-round at D Mag (he served from 1987-1993), and he was best-known for fighting to remove flight restrictions for Love Field. I remember him as smart, tough, and carrying a wry sense of humor, something lacking in today’s brand of politician. He’ll be missed.

Texans drive too fast. They’re noisy. They brag. They travel in packs, despoiling the land like grasshoppers or grackles. They’re déclassé.

Included in the article is a quote from former Dallas Business Journal Publisher Huntley Paton, who grew up in Denver. You’ll just have to click on the link above to read it all.

Dear Lance Armstrong,

I’ll stop smoking in bars when you can promise me I’ll never see another picture like this one. Or this one. Or this one. (That’s just a sample.) Because of you and McConaughey, everyone in America who is not a Texas Longhorns fan hates Texas Longhorns fans.

Sincerely,

Zac Crain

UT ‘96

P.S. Invoking the global economic crisis in your argument? Maybe overdoing it.

Okay, enough of the foolishness. Abthernabther has tongue-in-cheekily submitted drawings for the Art Conspiracy fundraiser. Check out the fourth one. Robert is a good likeness. Me, I wish I had that much hair.

2. If you’re still looking to cross a few items off your Christmas/Channukah/Kwanzaa shopping list, and hoping to do it on the cheap, you can always head to CityStore. That’s where you can — I’m sorry, I just saw that ex-Mav Devin Harris had a career-high 47 points last night, and I’m having trouble focusing, what with all the blood leaking out of my eyes, ears, and nose and everything.

3. Remember the guys who allegedly forced a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old to smoke a joint? One of them, Vanswan Polty, begins his trial on Tuesday. Not helping his case: the entire thing was filmed. Since testing revealed the kids had marijuana and cocaine in their systems, I hope Polty enjoys hell, or the closest equivalent the good people of Tarrant County can find for him.

2. Rod Dreher had this great line in his Points column today: “And having once given the nation George W. Bush — and given him to our countrymen good and hard — we Texans sure as hell owe them one.” The odd thing about the story: I’ve heard the DCVB is considering abandoning its “Live Large. Think Big.” slogan in favor of “Giving It to Our Countrymen Good and Hard.”

3. Speaking of which, Laura Bush did a turn on Meet the Press this morning. She still hasn’t picked a house in Dallas, but she said she and the mister will spend their weekdays in town and their weekends in Crawford. The odd thing about the story: if the Bushes move in next door to you, does that drive your home value up or down?

(Of course, fiscal stinginess can extract its own price. How about using some of that surplus to create a true Tier 1 public university in Texas? So that 5,000 Texas students don’t have to go out of state to get a superior education?)

Looks as if some trucker forgot his bridge height maps while traveling east on 635 through Valley Ranch. Been there most of the day already.

For the third quarter ending September 30, A.H. Belo had current assets of $122 million with current liabilities of $113 million, giving it a net working capital of $8 million $9 million. Cash flow from operations was $25 million but deducted from that were $14 million in capital expenditures, netting $11 million. (My rule of thumb for media companies, learned over years of hard experience, is that we need about 10 percent of our annual revenues in cash to operate: in A.H. Belo’s case, that would be about $60 million to $80 million.) Belo’s cash position, which looks perilous to me, has to have gotten worse since the economic collapse; ours certainly has. As for that real estate, in today’s market it could probably bring in $30 million or so, if anyone could get the financing to buy it. But it is co-owned with its broadcasting sibling, Belo Corp., so the net effect of a sale would only be $15 million or so.

This analysis is dated, to be sure: I’m depending on September 30 balance sheet numbers. On the other hand, things have gone into the ditch since then. Riverside, California, where the company owns the Press-Enterprise, is the worst real estate market in the country and has an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent. In Providence, where it owns the Journal, October home sales fell 12 percent, the largest decline in the Northeast.

So it seems the market is being rational after all. In which case, it is time to be worried about how A.H. Belo and the Morning News will manage to survive. Any commenters who have a media financial background or inside knowledge would be greatly appreciated. I would love someone to challenge or — even better — disprove my gloomy assessment.

As punishment, he refuses to fire me.

2. I’ve got a ranch in downtown Dallas. I buy diamonds by the ton. Chase cuties in my cadillac, drill oil wells just for fun. But when it comes to boots, I need a deal that will fit me right toe to heel, so I get my boots at — not at Western Warehouse.

3. Things aren’t looking so good. People are leaping to their deaths. Beloved shoe stores are going out of business. It’s enough to drive a man to drink. And, locally, that’s exactly what people are doing.

Because of my own indiscretion, a dozen or so gays in Dallas now know who I am, and some of them now pull up this site occasionally. 

That means that I can never again be completely honest and forthright on this blog. 

Things I want to discuss or throw out there into the cyber universe for comments are no longer anonymous, and my reputation as a professional and as a gay man are now subject to scrutiny by acquaintances based upon the ramblings in my cyber diary.  

Many of us have “hookups,” and judging from what I’ve seen here in Dallas over the last 2 years, I am not the biggest slut on the strip. 

He asks for your advice and counsel. For some reason, I have a feeling he’ll get it. 

Update: Looks like there’s one for D Magazine, too. Murmur.

Last week I showed you these three covers and asked which you preferred. Thanks to everyone to shared an opinion. By now you might have seen the magazine on the newsstand, so you know we went the option on the right, chef Julian Barsotti from Nonna. Those Who Care can jump to read the results of our online poll and why they don’t scare me.

First the stats: 557 people voted on FrontBurner. 42 percent chose the cake, 40 percent went with the sloppy joe, and only 18 percent picked chef Barsotti.

So we screwed up, right? We had three options for a cover, and we went with the option that clearly is the least-preferred. Newsstand buyers will punish us for our bad taste. Feh, I don’t think so, and here’s why: on the newsstand, we give you only one option. Just because the one we published was the least-popular of the three we considered doesn’t mean that it won’t sell. On the newsstand, we’re essentially asking people, “Yes? Or no?” Not “Which one?” I think our cover is a “yes.” (And not because chef Barsotti’s deliciously full lips form that come-hither smile. Rather, the headline — “Best Restaurants” — will do the selling.)

Then, too, I believe — though I don’t have the data to back it up — that the FrontBurner audience ain’t the same as the newsstand audience. Which ain’t the same as the subscriber audience. I send a monthly e-mail to subscribers. I asked them the same question about the cover. I got a smaller sample size, but the votes from that audience were more evenly distributed.

Finally, we don’t design magazine covers with the single focus of selling copies. In fact, sometimes we design covers that we know won’t sell well. Because the cover is a marketing tool. It reflects and amplifies our brand. To my mind, the chef cover was the smartest, most elegant option. That’s what we want people to associate with D Magazine.

Why am I telling you all this? I’m in a sharing mood today. Plus, when we get the final sales numbers on this cover in a few months and we learn that it tanked, I’ll be able to refer back to this post and remind myself what the hell we were thinking when we didn’t chose that cake. Because at the end of the day, let’s be honest. Chocolate is gonna outsell smart and elegant every day of the week.

2. Jerry Jones is in his underground lair this morning, staring at the printouts from his evil computer, which show 85 percent of season tickets sold for next year at his new stadium. In response, he smiles his evil smile, incinerates one of his flying monkeys with his fire vision (to keep the others in line), and says softly, “What global economic crisis? Bwaahahahahahahaha!”

3. President Bush pardoned three Texans yesterday, but has yet to consider my case. Perhaps that’s because I’ve admitted I’m guilty…of love in the first degree.