My Favorite Key is “Return”: The Best of Steve Blow, by Steve Blow

Wildcatter: My Life In And Out Of Football As Well As, You Know, The Oil Business And I Also Talk About Other Things Such As My Life And, Of Course, Without Question, The Dallas Cowboys Are A Big Part Of This, Vis a Vis, The Broader Impact And So Forth, By Jerry Jones, with Jean-Jacques Taylor

The Further Adventures of Arthur & Archie, By Dwaine Caraway

9/11: The Sequel (ARE YOU TERRIFIED ENOUGH TO COME TO CHURCH YET?), By Robert Jeffress, Afterword by Michael J. Mooney

The New Quality Analects of Mr. Funny Guy, by Tim Rogers

I asked Rod about this $1 million figure (I’d heard it was slightly higher). He wrote back: “I’m not going to confirm a rumor, but I will say that the money will be sufficient to provide a college education for my sister’s children, provided they go to a state school and, unlike their no-count uncle when he was at LSU, stay the hell out of the barrooms.”

Dallas 1963 follows the city through three turbulent years, beginning with the Kennedy election in November 1960 and ending on November 22, 1963. Set against the backdrop of a nation in transition, Minutaglio and Davis explain what the President and his team were thinking and doing in those three years, and why they could never have really understood the swirling forces awaiting them in Texas, where a rich and surprising ensemble of characters defined the city many people would blame for killing the President: rabid politicos, gangsters, unsung civil rights leaders, strippers, billionaires, defrocked military generals, fundamentalist preachers, clandestine heroes, and marauding police, among them.

The book will be published by Twelve in 2013, to coincide with the assassination’s anniversary. North American rights were sold in a heated three-day auction by Dallas power literary agent David Hale Smith, who used to run his own DHS Literary but then sold out to the Man and now works for an enormous, soulless, New York-based publishing behemoth called InkWell Management. David used to be a friend of mine. I asked him to confirm for me that the book had sold for $650,000 and a reservation for four at momofuku. He just put his stockinged feet up on his desk, threw his head back, and laughed like Max Cady through the smoke from a fine Cuban cigar.

I like how candid Cuban is about just wanting to sell books. The last thing he wants you to do is weigh the likelihood of whether you’ll actually read the thing before turning over your $2.99:

“Don’t feel you have to read it like a book,” he writes in the book’s foreword. “Use it as a way to get fired up. A way to get motivated.”

Stephen King

As Carol reported earlier, Stephen King showed up at the Majestic last night for a chat with Lee Cullum about his new novel involving the JFK assassination, called 11-22-63. At a press conference before his talk benefiting The Sixth Floor Museum, the best-selling author said assassination-conspiracy theorists are unlikely to be fans of the book, which portrays Lee Harvey Oswald as solely responsible for the president’s murder.

“I have no bone to pick with conspiracy theorists, but they’ll have a bone to pick with me,” King said. Riffing on Deep Throat’s Watergate advice to “Follow the money,” King said Oswald’s guilt is evident when you “follow the gun” that was used to kill Kennedy. Oswald ordered the Italian rifle, King said, picked it up at the Post Office, was photographed with it in his backyard, used it to shoot at Army Gen. Edwin Walker here, took it to the book depository that fateful day, and shot Dallas police officer J.D. Tippitt with it. [See Update below.]

Said King of the skeptics: “It’s difficult to believe that one unimportant man can step forward and change the course of history.” He added later that, in contrast to Dallas’s image as a “hateful place,” he’s met only friendly people here who’ve been eager to help him. While the city was surely scarred by the assassination, King said, “my impression is Dallas has dealt with that issue, and pretty much put it to bed.”

UPDATE: Mea culpa, FrontBurner nation. Thanks to the commenters below, I cleaned out my ears and went back and reviewed a tape of King’s press conference. Sure enough, he mentioned that Oswald hid the rifle in the depository before later shooting Tippit. That part was pretty hard to hear, causing me and a journalist for another outlet to misinterpret and mis-report what was said. My apologies for the screw-up.

Hail to the King
By Carol Shih

Rarely does Stephen King make appearances at charity events, but lo and behold, the horror writer decided to grace Dallas fans with “A Conversation with Stephen King” at the Majestic Theatre last night. This benefit for the Sixth Floor Museum gave those who shelled out extra green the chance to drink cheap glasses of wine and rub shoulders with the King himself at a 6 o’clock reception. Afterward, DMN columnist Lee Cullum led King in an hour-long conversation over his latest novel, 11/22/63, in which an average English teacher uses a time machine to prevent the Kennedy assassination. Why does this plot sound familiar? Oh, right, it’s been done before. But instead of going on and on about the origins of King’s novel, here are some highlights from the slick King’s talk:

“1 in every 50 people — when they come to an event like this — forget to lock their car,” King said. I wonder if Stephen has magical powers that helped him publish every year for the last 35 years, and perhaps he was using said powers to distract us while stealing our cars. Anyone know if there were missing cars reported?

King called Oswald “a little shit, basically” because Oswald refused to pay his wife’s hospital bill, but humanized him anyway in 11/22/63. Aww, how nice of King. This guy’s got a heart of gold.

“What is your opinion of the DMN? Keep in mind that I am associated with the paper,” Cullum asked. “Oh yes, I think it’s an excellent paper! I think all the media in Dallas is just A-Okay with me,” King responded. We’re certain if Tim Rogers had been conducting the interview, D would’ve gotten a real shout-out. Instead, we’ll consider this comment the only King thing we didn’t like.

Cullum asked, “Why Batman over Superman?” King replied, “How boring is Superman? I’ve always wondered how he has sex. And when Superman goes to the bathroom, is that like the ‘poop of steel’? These questions don’t come up with Batman.” Yessssss, King. Pound it.

“[Dallas] hasn’t been anything but terrific to me. Something that we’ve noticed here is that you change lanes when you signal,” King said. I guess you haven’t seen the little snots who cut me off every morning, Stephen. That’s alright, though. You love Dallas and Dallas sure loves you back.

Perry Tries to Downplay Racist Name of Family’s Hunting Camp: So who had  a worse weekend, Tony Romo, who threw three interceptions to lay the ground for the worst collapse in Cowboys history, or Rick Perry, whose family’s hunting camp, we learn, has been long known by a racial slur? Perry spent much of the weekend denying the report.

UT Southwestern Professor Shares Nobel Prize for Medicine: Bruce Beutler, who will soon rejoin the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine along with Frenchman Jules Hoffman and Canadian Ralph Steinman for their work on immune system defenses. His most important discoveries were made, in part, during a previous stint at UT Southwestern, when he discovered a molecule that plays a role in the nervous system’s first line of defense against disease.