Richard P. Sheridan, the nutjob who finished fourth in Saturday’s election for the District 13 seat on the Dallas City Council, is mad at me. To hear him tell it, it’s because I didn’t do enough to inform the voters that Leland Burk, who finished second to Jennifer Staubach Gates, is gay. But I think it also has something to do with the fact that all I said about Sheridan in my election preview for Preston Hollow People is that he is best known for being physically removed from public meetings after exceeding the time limits for speakers. Or maybe Sheridan is just mad in general because he received only 28 votes (0.27 percent), two years after he somehow backed into 1,054 of them (10.56 percent). Heck, a teenager did better than him this time around; 18-year-old Jacob King garnered 77 votes, and Sheridan vowed to stop running for office if King’s total exceeded his.
Whatever. The reasons don’t matter. You can’t try to apply logic to the raving lunatic who left me a voicemail at 9:24 on Saturday night in which he called me a coward six times, a “[see you next Tuesday]” five times, a “mother[lover]” four times, a bitch twice, “a disgrace to our city” once, and “a sorry ass” once. In the middle of all that, he also said, “I don’t think you have one testicle, sir.” (He’s wrong about that last point, but I appreciate him calling me “sir.”)
Well, Richard (or should I call you Dick? Yeah, I should), all I can say in response, Dick, is your talk is cheap; you’re not a man. The word is out, you’re doing wrong; gonna lock you up before too long. I’m telling you, just watch your mouth; I know your game, what you’re about. What I’m trying to say is, I’m bad. (And the whole world has to answer right now just to tell you once again.)
UPDATE: Listen to the full, NSFW voicemail here.
Word came late this afternoon that Bill Bragg, the voice of Big Tex, did not have his contract renewed. Here are some possible replacements:
- Michael Irvin
- George W. Bush, while eating a sandwich
- Deion and Pilar Sanders, together, for a month
- Hank Hill from King of the Hill
- Ashlee and Jessica Simpson, performing a duet for the length of the fair
- Mark Cuban
- Ross Perot and Ross Perot, Jr., performing a ventriloquist dummy routine
I’d go see #DunkCity in a heartbeat if it was at American Airlines Center. Who wants to drive to fArlington?
— patrick kennedy (@WalkableDFW) March 26, 2013
Noted walker and D Magazine contributor Patrick Kennedy raised the above question on Twitter this afternoon, and it got me thinking: Is anyone going to the Sweet Sixteen? It starts Friday, out at Cowboys Stadium. The other three Sweet Sixteen sites — the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Verizon Center in Washington, and Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis — are all in walkable, downtown areas, close to restaurants, shops, and hotels. At Cowboys Stadium, you can walk to the Ballpark at Arlington.
I know this whole thing is a dry-run for the Final Four, but Final Fours come with built-in, dedicated fan bases, ones that travel. Sweet Sixteens are more likely to draw walk-up ticket sales. And, as Kennedy notes, they also support the notion of, “Hey, the Sweet Sixteen starts tonight at the American Airlines Center, let’s see if there are still tickets available.” A trip to Cowboys Stadium does the opposite.
Thanks to reader Neal K for finding these charlatans. (“Ok, well, now you’re just using a bunch of words that I don’t understand.”) Justice will be swift.
Kicking around on Facebook this weekend was a security video from Deep Ellum Urban Gardens, showing a few young gentlemen trying to shatter a security camera at the community garden. Know this fool?
Contact Kelly Cromwell Clemons at kelly@deepellumtexas.com. And watch the video, because there are a couple other clowns who make an appearance as well.
If you’d like a Cliffs Notes version of the water conservation debate in Texas, look no further than two stories the Morning News posted yesterday. The first is a blog post about conservation efforts:
With the state in the midst of one of its worst droughts in history, local water conservation advocates gathered Tuesday to talk about how to address the crisis.
“People create problems and solve problems,” said Trammell S. Crow, founder of Earth Day Dallas. “Consumers have to take the responsibility for water conservation.”
The group highlighted a report released by the Environment Texas Research and Policy Center calculating that potential water conservation could help Texas save 500 billion gallons of water per year. Among the measures is proposed were making agricultural irrigation more efficient, using more drought-tolerant plants in landscaping and repairing leaky water mains. Other speakers who gathered at Winfrey Point on White Rock Lake agreed that building new reservoirs and pipelines, which Austin policymakers are considering funding, is not the answer to Texas’ water challenges.
And the second is about Burton Knight, a Junius Heights resident who — in an effort to conserve water — ripped out his lawn and replaced it with cacti and stones:
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Soccer game vs JJ Pearce at 7:30 (Home). Hopefully it’s the last rape in Lake Highlands. #WeAreOne
— W. [last name and Twitter account redacted] March 19, 2013
Also teach your children not to retweet or favorite rape jokes.
UPDATE: So young W. took the tweet down. I’m not sure he really understands what he did wrong, but at least he took it down:
Rape jokes are bad. Trying to build up a big game by making light of a bad situation. Lets not write an article about it.
— W. [last name and Twitter account redacted] March 19, 2013
Every day, we receive a hundred or so Tweets mentioning @DMagazine. A lot are people telling me that I’m doing a terrible job, and I print those out and bring them to my psychiatrist. Many of the others are PR people pitching us stories. Today’s finest is just bizarre:
@texasmonthly @dmagazine @carsondaly @cityoffriscotx @collinsworthnbc cherryontop.com/2013/03/deion-…
— Pilar Sanders (@PilarSanders) March 18, 2013
The link in the tweet is to the site Cherry on Top, which dubs itself “Hip Hop With a Cherry on Top.” I do not know what that means. The story itself is about how a woman is gearing herself up to testify that Deion Sanders conspired to hide money from Pilar Sanders, so during their divorce proceedings it would seem like he wasn’t as well-off as he was. Over the past hour, Pilar Sanders has sent that link no less than 22 times, to a wide range of entities:
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During last night’s GLAAD Awards, Madonna — dressed in a Cub Scout uniform with way too many patches to be believable — took the Irving-based Boy Scouts of America to task for its anti-gay policies.
“I think they should change their stupid rules,” she said, after dubiously claiming that Boy Scouts rescue kittens from trees.
Anyway, the BSA is supposed to vote on removing the ban — or passing the buck and shifting responsibility to local councils and troops — in May.
(Some NSFW language)
Laura watches The Bachelor for this entire office, so my knowledge is limited in this field. Still, I know enough that this season’s bachelor was from Dallas, his name is Sean Lowe, and, according to US Weekly, he doesn’t like fame.
“I’ve always said that I’m not looking for fame,” he told reporters in a teleconference Tuesday. “In fact, I don’t like the fame aspect of being the Bachelor or being on Dancing With the Stars. I wish I could — you know, I can’t go out in Dallas with my buddies anymore because I’m left taking pictures the whole night because people — you know, they recognize me and they want to take pictures.”
There seems to be a very simple solution to all this: stop signing up for reality television shows. And stop doing teleconferences with reporters.

Free eucharist to the first 100 parishioners through the doors on Easter Sunday! Get there early for all the best deals on one-way trips to heaven! Robert Jeffress will be signing Bibles in the lobby after church ($5 for members, $10 for non-members)! DEALS DEALS DEALS.
At 1:30 p.m., on an admittedly Spring Break-skewed day:
- lines of 20+ customers at every food truck
- children literally hanging from trees
- not a single table available
- trolleys full of vistors
But by all means let’s abandon this natural, organic explosion of community and replace it with a skating rink that will take up much of the space.
Valley News Live – KVLY/KXJB – Fargo/Grand Forks
From North Korea to a paid appearance at a bar in Fargo, North Dakota in 10 days. Dennis Rodman’s whirlwind life just keeps amping up. Come for his description of North Dakotans as “consistent,” stay for his travel plans with Kim Jong Un.
- It’s at State Highway 121 and Plano Parkway
- It’s for Nebraska Furniture Mart’s 560,000-square-foot retail showroom and 1.3 million-square-foot distribution center
- Nebraska Furniture Mart will anchor Grandscape, a 3.9 million-square-foot monolith that will probably have the capability to detach from Earth and self-sustain, should the need arise
Last point: the first person to snag a picture of themselves in the chair will win a free year’s subscription to D Magazine. I will pay for it myself, since I can’t imagine our marketing team is too keen on the idea of a contest where I tell folks to trespass. And I don’t mean next to the chair, or one of those photos where your fingers look like they’re smushing the chair. IN IT.
Get to snappin, and send the photo to bradford.pearson@dmagazine.com.
UPDATE: I assumed an email like this would land in my inbox today. From Jeff Lind, chief strategy and development officer for Nebraska Furniture Mart:
“I’m contacting you because safety is a huge priority for Nebraska Furniture Mart and I believe this could put someone at needless risk of injury. I’m sure it was for fun but I can’t bury my head in the sand when safety is involved. Any action you could take to cancel the ‘contest’ could potentially help avoid an injury. I hope you will consider this course of action and I encourage you to do so. Thank you very much.”
So, contest off. It was fun (?) while it lasted.
.@35denton #ProTip: First person to show up with a full sized, color tattoo of our sticker wins a wristband. #35D twitter.com/granadatheater…
— Granada Theater (@granadatheater) March 6, 2013
My thought: only the first person? And only for one year? Come on, if someone’s getting inked you gotta give em more than just a $55 wristband. The tattoo alone would cost more than that.