Randy Travis is the guy in the middle, in case you didn't know.

Reuse Jeans sent out an email today to share pictures from the Jan. 21 grand opening of its new store at the Shops at Park Lane. In the email, they were sure to note how grateful they were that country singer Randy Travis had been able to stop by (see photo above.)

This new photo, and Mr. Travis’ recent Denton County Sheriff’s Department mugshot, have sparked an intra-office disagreement.

Settle the argument: Does he look more like a vampire bat or a vampire from the TV shows Buffy and Angel?

“I got Mason chaps, a suede vest, a cowboy hat,” she said. “I got Mason a ton of stuff. Robert and I got two cowboy hats.”

Mason will surely blend right in. More interesting, for our purposes:

“Coming here, I can honestly say I have never felt more genuinely loved,” she said. “It’s not phony. People are just genuinely nice to you. They really just want to be helpful or hug you — but hug you not in a creepy way. It’s the Southern hospitality.”

Admittedly, I don’t know much about the Kardashians, but whenever they’ve been mentioned on FrontBurner, the reaction in the comments is, let’s say, divisive, especially regarding Khloe. In the office, however, she seems to be pretty much universally liked, if not loved. And according to her, that’s the reaction she gets around town. So, though I know how this will go, I’ve made a poll, to make this all scientific-like. It’s after the jump. If you don’t feel like voting, here is Beyonce’s “Love On Top.” Just because.

In it, in addition to declaring that he’s a “militant atheist,” he decries the GOP presidential hopefuls, especially Gov. Rick Perry:

He went on to say that he has been “disgusted, amazed, stunned” by candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination, such as Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann, who have been openly hostile to gay rights.

“But they disgusted me less than candidates like Rick Perry, who made that ridiculous advert wearing ‘the Brokeback jacket’, and I think pretend to be homophobic just to win votes.”

You remember the ad he’s talking about, right?

(H/T: DMN Trail Blazers blog)

DEION SANDERS Pilar’s Trying to EXTORT Me

PILAR SANDERS SLAMS DEION He’s a No-Good CHEATER … and a MEGA-Narcissist

DEION SANDERS Daughter SLAMS Step-Mom — You’re a ‘Gold-Digging H*e’

And so on. Do people click on those because they’re sensational subject-wise? Of course. Oh my lord. But also, because they generally make sure to CAPITALIZE a word in most headlines. That tells me, as a reader, “There is something important here. Something IMPORTANT. SOMETHING important.” See? You want to click on that sentence don’t you? But you can’t, because all it would do is highlight the sentence, and not take you to a magical, grammatically suspect blog post. Anyway, I’m doing this from now on.

The guys who came up with the greatest time-waster known to man, Words With Friends, had the best moment in this Best Buy ad, tweaking the recent Alec Baldwin-American Airlines brouhaha over playing the game on the plane. They show up at about the 30-second mark.   Rating: 9 out of 10

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban makes a cameo at the end of this Skechers ad.  Unfortunately, the line they gave him falls flat.  Rating: 4 out of 10

Deion Sanders shows up at about the 11-second mark in this Century 21 ad, having baked cookies for his open house.  Apparently he’s still having trouble selling his “$21 million” home in Prosper?  It’s solid work on his part.  Rating: 7 out of 10

And we got a double dip of Deion from this Bridgestone Tire commercial, where he tries to receive a pass from another Dallas Cowboys great, Troy Aikman.  Troy doesn’t get to do much, but Deion again gets to show how his “Primetime” skills.  Rating:  6 out of 10

“It never gets easy,” he said.

Based on his account of the evening, it was far more than just a drink or two.  He said he had 3 or 4 drinks with his dinner (after a difficult personal family matter drove him to be at a restaurant by himself.)  Then he called teammate Ian Kinsler for company. Kinsler stayed with him for awhile, and they moved to another place after the first place they visited closed.  Later, Kinsler went home, and Hamilton promised him he was not going to go out again on his own.

But he did. He went back to the place they’d just left and had more alcoholic beverages.  No one saw him drinking, he said, since he has a way to keep people from seeing him do it.

“Once I do drink, I can be very deceptive, very sneaky in a lot of ways,” he said.

The extra danger for Hamilton is his history with other drugs, and there’s no telling, once he starts drinking, when the “switch will flip” and he might be led to those other vices.  He said he didn’t use anything else that night and has been tested twice for drugs since then.

He thanked the Rangers for their support and didn’t field any questions.

It's good to be Mark Cuban.

I’m a fan of the ABC show Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs ask for investments from a group of venture capitalists (the “Sharks.”)  Some of the business ideas are great (like the “Netflix for kids’ toys”) but others seem to be ideas that the producers only allowed to get on the air because they’re so laughable.

During the second season Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made several appearances, and in this current season he’s become a regular. At first I found him to be a nice addition, but his celebrity power — he’s by far the most famous of the “Sharks” — is killing the game of it.  Entrepreneurs seem to get weak-kneed when they see Cuban, and they’re willing to accept lesser deals from him (rather than a better deal from another Shark) just for the chance to continue to bask in the glow of his star power. The playing field is tilted in his favor.

Also, on last week’s show, he invested in a website where a guy will draw a cat for you for $10.  The idea was worth a good laugh on TV, but I thought surely the Sharks would say thanks-but-no-thanks.  Cuban put $25,000 into this “business.” He said he was investing more in the guy himself than in the cat-drawing enterprise.

And because of Cuban’s star power?  TMZ says the cat-drawing website has gotten over a thousand orders in a few days, when it had been averaging fewer than 40 in a week.  Cuban tells TMZ he is “fired up.”  Basically he thinks he’s found himself the next Cosmo Kramer.

Mr. Cuban, I will sell you 33% of any of the following ideas in exchange for $25,000:

1) “I Will Draw You a Rabbit.” — Cats are over. Rabbits are the future.

2) FurryBook — Social networking site for the “Furry” community.

3) ToastFlex (Netflix For Toasters) — If you’re like me, you get tired of using the same toaster every day. But who can afford to keep up by constantly buying the latest bread-roasting technology?

4) Gaggle —  A search engine specifically geared towards all your goose-related searches. Just type any phrase in the Gaggle box, and it will automatically append the words “goose,” “geese,” or “gander” onto your query. It may seem as though it saves only seconds off your typical search, but, over the course of a lifetime, our calculations show that those seconds will total nearly three full years of life for the average person.  (Note: Study results assume the average person is a goose or poultry fetishist.)

5) How to Improve the NBA —  Everyone knows you don’t have to watch anything more than the last few minutes of a typical professional basketball game. Few contests are decided before that point, and those that are are dull blowouts. Plus, no one likes to watch teams dragging out the last minute of play by intentionally fouling on the off-chance that turning it into a free-throw contest will turn the tide. The solution? Simple: The end of NBA games should no longer be determined by the clock. The first team to 90 points wins, period. Or 95. Or 85. Or whatever. You can work out the details.  I’m just the idea man.

Watch Cuban continue to big-foot around the Shark Tank when the show airs at 7 p.m. tonight.

"Celebrities" are "people" too.

The restaurant sent over this photo, and the details.

Today Khloe, Kris Jenner and Rob Kardashian ate lunch at Arcodoro & Pomodoro. They loved the carpaccio, pizza, and Khloe’s risotto. Rob had to slip out early in order to catch a beauty treatment. They spent most of the meal trying to teach Rob to be nicer to women.  The girls were heading out to go shopping afterward. CHA-CHING.

Later in the day, Khloe shocked the world with this tweet before the Dallas Mavericks game:

My sisters just surprised me in Dallas!!!! @KimKardashian and @KourtneyKardash what what!!!! The game is going to be wild!

Someone give this woman a radio show.

By that headline, you might think that Dallas expat actor Owen Wilson were himself nominated for an Academy Award. Though I think his performance might have been worthy, he’s not. Midnight in Paris really only has that single, tenuous local connection.

So it’s a stretch. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that there’s another film on the list of Best Picture nominees that actually had segments filmed in downtown Dallas: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. The Chapel of Thanksgiving and Reunion Tower can both be prominently seen in the movie.

Plus Art and Seek notes a local nominee in the Best Animated Short category.

But yes, I know, Owen Wilson has got more star power.

That there is a video of Mr. Glenn Beck—who comes across like that uncle of yours who spends all his time in his wood-paneled den fiddling with electronic doodads he bought at RadioShack—giving a tour of his new HQ being built at the Studios at Las Colinas.  You may remember that he was initially going to set up shop in a former megachurch in Southlake, but he decided instead to work from the place that made Walker, Texas Ranger such an iconic television program.

He’s calling the place the “American Dream Labs,” and he hopes that it both inspires and will “drive the left out of their mind.”

Speaking of the left being driven out of places, July 26-28 might be a good time to plan to leave town for your summer vacation this year. Those are the dates when thousands of Beck’s acolytes will descend upon Dallas-Fort Worth for his “Restoring Love” event, which will conclude with a rally at Jerry’s Death Star.

(H/T: NBCDFW)